The Quantum Spy

by David Ignatius

  “Yes. That would make a difference to my friend. But you must deliver. If this is a false promise, it will be a fatal one.”

  “I’ll deliver.”

  She squeezed his hand. A sure, confident smile formed on her lips.

  “I was right about you, Harris. You are a citizen of the world. The true patriots, people like you and me, are vilified, but we’re right. You are very brave. I am so proud of you.”

  “We have to move fast. Do you have a clean alias passport and credit cards?”

  “No. But my friends can get me out of the country if they need to. They’ve already told me that.”

  “Okay. Use the most secure communications you have. Make sure there’s nothing anyone could find that would give you away. When you hear back from your friend that he can see us, leave me a message.”

  “How should I do that? We’re both under surveillance.”

  “I thought about that already. Go to the CIA employees-only website and post online on the swap-mart that you’re selling your car.”

  “In the classified chat room? Under their noses?”

  “It’s the one place they would never look. What kind of car do you drive?”

  “A 2014 Lexus Hybrid SUV. Light green.”

  “Offer it for sale. I’ll check the swap-mart every few hours and look for your post. As soon as I see it, I’ll know we’re on. In your post, say where you bought the car. That’s the city where the meeting is set.”

  “Okay. Purchased in Berlin means meet in Berlin.”

  “Then say how many miles the car has on the odometer. The first digit is the number of days until the meeting. So, if you say five thousand miles, that’s five days. If you say three thousand miles, that’s three days.”

  “Pretty good tradecraft,” she said. “Mine would be better, but we don’t have time.”

  “I will meet you in that city, on that day. I will check into the Hilton Hotel, in whatever city it is. Leave a message for me under my Peter Tong alias. That’s it: Hilton Hotel. Peter Tong.”

  “Why the Hilton?” She was wary about ceding control.

  “Because they’re everywhere. And it’s easy to remember. When I get to the hotel, who should I ask for?”

  “Audrey Fingerhut. That’s my alias name.”

  “Okay, Audrey. We need to arrive a day before the meeting, so we have a chance to plan.”

  “What if my friend says he won’t meet us?”

  “Then don’t contact me. The deal’s off. You get out of the country however you can. But I’m not coming.”

  “Hard bargain. You’re good at this, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I am. But I’m nervous. If either of us makes a mistake, we’re both dead.”

  She took his hand again.

  “This is what we do.” She waited a long moment. “I always hoped there would be someone like you, who understood.” She gave his hand a last squeeze.

  “We’re out of time,” said Chang. “I’ll see you downrange.”

  “Don’t play any games,” she said quietly. “I may look nice, but I’m not.”

  Denise Ford walked easily toward the door. She thought she had won.

  Harris Chang strode past the reception desk to the men’s room at the end of the corridor. He was just zipping up when John Vandel strolled in and parked himself on the marble bank of sinks. He was shaking his head and clucking his lips.

  “You deserve an Oscar,” said Vandel. “Seriously, that was pretty damn good. She bought it. And I’ll wager that she can sell it to her friend at the Ministry.”

  “Thanks,” said Chang. He was exhausted from his moment on stage. He didn’t feel ebullient. “I’m going to need some collateral.”

  “What collateral? You’re the trophy. Li wins. He doesn’t need anything else.”

  “I told Ford I would give Li secrets about his enemies in the PLA. What if he asks for them? I don’t have anything to give him.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll have him in our hands by then. All he’s going to ask for is asylum.”

  “I need something. Just in case. Otherwise you need to find another Chinese-American defector.”

  “Christ! You are a pain in the butt.” Vandel thought a moment, then gave Chang a wink.

  “I do have a little something. Some pictures we took in Dubai of me and General Wu Huning, the archenemy of the Ministry of State Security.”

  Chang gave a thumbs-up. “That will work. I’ll tell Li you recruited him. Photographic proof.”

  “I didn’t realize you were such a conscientious liar, Harris. It gives me a whole new insight on you.”

  “Inscrutable Chinese, right?”

  “You’re just being cranky. Go home and get some sleep. And pack your bags. You may be leaving in a hurry.”

  Vandel gave him a jocular punch on the arm.

  “I feel sorry for that woman,” Chang said.

  “Fuck her. She deserves whatever she gets. Don’t get moody on me. We’re in the red zone here. Get the ball across the goal line. No mistakes. Is that understood?”

  Chang wanted to say more, but as usual with Vandel, he simply assented.

  “Yes, sir. No mistakes.”

  For once, Chang was the first to leave. Vandel sat for a while on the sink top, congratulating himself, and then returned to the dining room to dismiss the brigade of CIA security officers he had assembled. He had a proprietary air when he sent them off, as if he had set in motion a lucrative business scheme. Chang had vanished, out the door and into the November night.

  35.

  BEIJING

  The enemies of Li Zian within the bosom of the Party had become increasingly bold. They had bugged his office at the Ministry of State Security, as well as his residence and his limousine. When he walked outdoors, vans moved slowly behind him on the streets; when he ventured off the sidewalks into parks or wooded trails, pedestrians followed him at a measured pace. His rivals did not bother to hide their tracks anymore. Li was in retreat; his enemies sensed his weakness and took advantage of it.

  Li turned for help to an old friend who was the chief of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of State Security, the MSS’s branch in the capital. Li called him “Ali,” as a kind of personal code, because he had served for nearly a decade in Tehran. Ali understood surveillance technology, and how to counter it, because his bureau oversaw technical operations against the U.S. embassy in Beijing. Li asked him to arrange safe places for conversation using the resources of his bureau. It worked for several weeks. But in the middle of an early December night, Ali was arrested on orders of the Commission for Discipline Inspection. Like everyone around Li, his friend had been greedy and incautious.

  When the officers of the Central Guard Bureau searched Ali’s apartment in northwest Beijing, they found something that astonished even those who feared and hated the Ministry of State Security. Hidden behind a false wall of Ali’s penthouse were several thousand pages of transcripts of private telephone conversations of the president of China. Ali had been bugging the leader. Li swore to his comrades that he knew nothing about it. Whether they believed him or not didn’t matter. He was running out of string. His deputies had been purged, one by one. Power was draining from Li’s network. He needed to recharge himself somehow, soon, or his power would flicker out.

  Li summoned Wang Ji the morning he heard the news about Ali’s arrest. He had been up much of the night, puzzling about a message that had arrived the day before with his unique cipher, which he had decrypted himself. As he lay awake at 3:00 a.m., turning the puzzle over in his mind, he received the news of the arrest of his friend and confidant, Ali. Li could think of only one person left whose advice he could take. He was uncertain of Carlos Wang’s loyalty, but he had nowhere else to turn.

  Carlos had cut his hair. He had restrained his machismo swagger. It was no longer the season for ostentation. Luxury was dangerous. The authorities were closing the golf courses that had become so popular with Party officials only a few years ago. Sales of f
ine French wines and Iranian caviar, products for which China had become a principal market, had almost stopped. Party officials no longer entertained each other with lavish banquets. Before, stealing money had been part of the “China Dream,” but now, it seemed, no one wanted to look rich.

  It was a December morning, bitter cold, but Li asked Carlos Wang to walk with him outside in the garden behind the gray brick of the Ministry. They wore bulky overcoats; Li covered his head with a red fur hat. Their breath condensed in the chill. Li brought along an old analog tape player, whose tinny sound covered their conversation.

  “You have heard the morning’s news about the arrest of the director of the Beijing Bureau of State Security, I suppose,” Li ventured.

  “Yes, minister. Bad news travels fast. I am sorry for him. My brother told me this morning that people are very angry about the tape transcripts.”

  “I didn’t know about the tapes,” said Li. “He did that for someone else. Or for himself.”

  “Of course, minister,” said Carlos Wang. “Placing bugs in people’s office is not your manner. That’s what I told my brother.”

  “What we discuss is not for your brother’s ears. Or anyone’s. Is that understood? Do not think you can escape, Xiao Wang, if this house collapses.”

  “Yes, minister.”

  As he often did when he had something especially sensitive to discuss, Li shifted the conversation to the solid, reassuring foundation of Chinese history. It soldered the present to the eternal past.

  “In intelligence matters, there are always rivals,” said Li. “It is our Chinese way. Today it is the Second Department of the PLA that combats our ministry. In other times, it was the same story with different names.”

  “Tell me, minister. My understanding of history is not as good as yours.”

  “The imperialist puppet Chang Kai Shek had two sources of intelligence. The Zhong Tong, the central investigation bureau, was like our ministry. But he also maintained the Jun Tong, which we might compare to 2PLA.”

  “And in our era?”

  “After the revolution, inevitably, there were also two factions. There were the cadres that had fought in the countryside, the military men. And there were the cadres in the city, the secret fighters, led by the revolutionary comrades in Shanghai. My father was a Shanghai man. I am his son. We cannot change who we are. Who are you, Carlos?”

  “I am your deputy, minister.” He bowed. “If you fall, I fall with you.”

  Li nodded. He was silent. He removed his glasses and polished them against his jacket and then continued.

  “What we never imagined, Comrade Carlos, was that China would become so rich. That is the source of our good fortune and also our difficulty. Do you know what Deng Xiaoping said before he died in 1979?”

  “No, minister. Those secrets of our party’s history are hidden except to the most senior cadres.”

  “Deng summoned Jiang Zemin, who was general secretary of the Party and paramount leader. He warned Jiang that as China had grown rich, corruption had become widespread and asked what he was going to do about it. Jiang requested advice, and here is what Deng told him: ‘If you don’t fight corruption, China will collapse. If you fight corruption, the Communist Party will collapse.’

  “Our leader has decided to fight corruption,” Li continued, “starting with our ministry. He believes he can have both, China and the Party. But he has too many enemies now. The internal fighting cannot stop. It will not stop. It makes me sad that I must watch.”

  They continued strolling through the garden, leaving a circular trail on the frost-hardened grass.

  “Let me tell you something, Carlos, a secret that I have never told anyone. When our leader came to power, he had a problem with his relatives. We all have problems with our relatives, don’t we? They see that we are powerful, and they want to profit from it. So when our leader knew that he would become general secretary, he told his sister, who is head of the family, to sell anything that could cause trouble. She sold nine real estate ventures in Hong Kong, which were worth $260 million. Very quietly, very carefully.”

  “But you learned of it.”

  “Yes, I did. One of the Ministry’s assets was the family butler, who knew all the secrets. I obtained the details from him. I have the files in a safe place. I have never used them. I hope that I never have the need.”

  Carlos Wang nodded. His boss had just taken out an insurance policy, but it was late in the day to do so. A more ruthless man, or one less devoted to his party and nation, would have played that card long ago.

  “I think I understand everything you say, minister. The words, and the spaces in between the words.”

  “Good. I am making a bet that you are a trustworthy man. I hope that I am right.” Carlos touched his heart in affirmation, as one of his Cuban heroes would have done.

  “I have another secret I want to share with you. It’s the reason I needed to talk with you.”

  “What is it, minister? If I can help, I will.”

  “I received a message yesterday from Rukou. Our agent in America. I had heard from her recently, but this was different. The woman says that she wants to leave America, immediately. They have discovered her identity. They are about to arrest her.”

  “I believe you said ‘the woman,’ minister. This is the first moment I have realized that Rukou was not a man. You live inside surprises.”

  “How soon can you get her out?”

  “We have planned for such an ‘exfiltration’ operation. That is what the Americans call it. It will take me a week to arrange, maybe less.”

  “We don’t have that long. She said it was very urgent. She asked to meet me overseas, so that we can take her ‘in from the cold’ outside America.”

  “That is possible. We can create documentation quickly.”

  “Carlos, listen to me now. She said one more thing. That was the most remarkable part of her message.”

  “I am listening, minister.”

  “Rukou said that the young CIA case officer you met in Mexico, Harris Chang who calls himself Peter Tong, was ready to defect. He has come under deep suspicion in America, as we had hoped, and now he wants to come over. To the motherland. And I must ask you: Do you believe that?”

  Carlos Wang didn’t answer for a long while. He walked slowly, hearing the grass crackle under his feet, watching his breath turn into a fog of tiny crystals. He did not want to get this answer wrong. His work was his art. His hero Leon Trotsky had written once that art wasn’t a mirror to reflect life, it was a hammer to pound life into a different shape. Carlos Wang felt that way about espionage. It was an art, and a hammer. He exhaled one last cloud of crystallized breath, and then spoke.

  “Yes, it is possible. This Chang was shaken by our meeting. I know how to read people, and I can tell you: He was changed. Whether he is sincere in his profession of loyalty and his desire to escape, I cannot say. But I know that he was altered by our encounter. And if he has taken the next step, and the next, well, he would not be the first.”

  “The CIA officer Chang offers something as a proof of his good faith. Bona fides. He says that the CIA has collected secrets about our ministry’s enemies, which can help us survive. What do you think of that?”

  Wang paused again before responding, weighing this information against what he knew about recruitment of foreign agents.

  “Yes, that is logical, to make such an offer. That is what I would do, if I wanted to defect. The agent must have a prize that is too tantalizing to resist.”

  “But doesn’t that worry you, Xiao Wang, when the package is so perfectly wrapped? Doesn’t that make you suspicious?”

  “Yes, minister, of course. We should always beware of provocation. If something seems too good to be true, then it is often false. But this information comes to you from Rukou, a source that you trust. Would she deceive you? That is the question you must resolve. If you trust your agent, then it follows that you trust what she brings with her.”


  Li lowered his angular body toward Carlos Wang. His face was creased with age and worry. He believed in his ministry the way he believed in China, but he was running out of time. He had needed a miracle, and now, perhaps, one was at hand. Should he accept it?

  “Rukou wants to meet me in the next few days. She says that she can travel with Harris Chang to any city that I name, using false identities that they both have prepared, but I must go to meet them immediately. Otherwise, we will lose Chang. I am trying to decide how to answer this request. I have only a few hours.”

  “What is possible, minister? Do you have any foreign travel that would disguise this meeting?”

  “A liaison trip was scheduled for this month. The plan was to go to Amsterdam and then to Brussels and London, then back home. Visit our stations. Talk with foreign services. My wife wanted me to buy presents for the holidays. The usual business. With all the commotion, I had thought I would cancel the trip. But maybe I could go. What do you think?”

  “Yes, you could go. I can cover for you here. If there are any questions, I can deflect them. In that, I am adept.”

  “What city would be best for the meeting? Where would we have the best advantage, in terms of tradecraft?”

  Carlos Wang pondered this request. He didn’t know all the MSS stations in Europe, but he knew many of them.

  “Amsterdam, I think. We are strong there, and our adversaries are not so strong.”

  “That’s what I thought, too. Amsterdam. I could go there, and if the meeting goes well, I could abort the rest of the trip. I could fly directly to Moscow with our two assets and then safely back to China. I would not be very long in airspace that is not friendly.”

  “This operation could save you, minister. It would be a great prize and a triumph. Even your enemies would have to concede your success. It would be harder to destroy our ministry, if you achieved this victory. Your friends would sing late into the night in the Punjo Hotel.”

  “Stop the flattery, Xiao Wang. It makes me mistrust you. And are you sure this is your advice, and that you will protect it? I am putting my life in your hands, truly, and the future of this thing that we have tried to build.”