by Tom Clancy
Todd Wicks nodded distantly, still not believing this was happening to him. But then he had a thought, and he jolted with excitement as he looked up. “I could provide a statement. I could pay a fine. I could promise to—”
Wu shook his head, and the low bags under his eyes seemed to droop even farther. “Todd, Todd, Todd. That sounded like you were trying to offer some sort of bribe.”
“No. Of course not. I would never consider—”
“No, Todd. I would never consider it. Here in China there is some corruption, I can acknowledge that. But not as much as the rest of the world insinuates, and, if I may be so intemperate to say, much of the corruption comes from Western influences.” Wu waved a small hand around the room, indicating that Todd himself had brought corruption on his poor nation, but he did not say it out loud. Instead he just shook his head and said, “I don’t know if there is anything I can do to help you.”
Todd said, “I want to talk to the embassy.”
“There is a United States consulate here in Shanghai. The United States embassy is in Beijing.”
“Then I would like to speak with someone at the consulate.”
“Of course, that can be arranged. I will mention, however, as a family man myself, that notifying American consular officials of this situation will make it necessary for my office to provide our evidence to the consulate. It is important for us to show them that this is not some sort of unfair charge against you, you understand.”
Todd felt a glimmer of hope. Having the U.S. consulate know that he had cheated on his wife with a Chinese hooker would be even more humiliating, but maybe they could get him out of this.
“And please don’t think the consulate can sweep this matter under the rug. Their involvement in this will be chiefly to notify your loved ones back in the United States about your situation, and to help you find a local attorney.”
Fuck that, thought Todd, and his glimmer of hope faded in an instant.
“What if I just plead guilty?”
“Then you will be here for some time. You will go to jail. Of course, if you fight the charge against you”—Wu scratched the back of his head—“although I don’t know how you would make that claim, as we have video and audio recordings of the entire . . . the entire act, but if you do, there will be a trial, and that will receive some publicity, certainly back in the States.”
Todd Wicks felt like he was going to be sick.
Just then, Wu raised a finger into the air as if he just had a thought. “You know, Mr. Wicks, I like you. I see you are a man who has made a serious mistake by listening to his prurient desires and not the wisdom of his brain, yes?”
Todd nodded vigorously. Was some sort of a lifeline coming?
“I can talk to my superiors to see if there is another way out of this for you.”
“Look . . . whatever you need me to do . . . I’ll do it.”
Wu nodded thoughtfully. “I think, for the benefit of your wife and your two small children, that would be best. I will make a phone call.”
—
Wu stepped out of the room, but he did not make a phone call because, in truth, he did not need to talk to anyone. He was not Shanghai police, he was not a family man, and he was not here investigating the hotel. No, these were all lies, and lying was an integral part of Wu’s job. He was MSS, the Ministry of State Security, and Todd Wicks had just been caught in his honey trap.
Normally Wu attempted to lure targets of opportunity into his traps, but Todd Wicks of Richmond, Virginia, was different. Wu received an order from his superiors with a list of names of technology employees. The Shanghai Hi-Tech Expo was one of the largest in the world, and it was no great surprise that three of the men on his superior’s wish list were in attendance. Wu had struck out with the first man, but he’d hit a home run with the second. As Wu stood in the hallway, he knew that in the suite on the other side of the wall he leaned on was an American man who would jump at the chance to spy for China.
He did not know what his leaders needed this Todd Wicks for, it was not his job to know, and it was not his way to care. Wu lived like a spider lives; his entire life, his complete being, was tuned to feel the twitches in his web that told him a new victim was approaching. He had wrapped Todd Wicks up in his web as he had done so many others, but already he was thinking about a Japanese salaryman in the same hotel, a target of opportunity Wu already had on the edge of his web, and a man Wu expected to wrap up before dawn.
Wu so loved the Shanghai Hi-Tech Expo.
—
Todd was still naked, though through the use of persistent hand gestures he’d persuaded one of the cops to bring him a towel that he could actually wear without pinching it together with one of his hands.
Wu entered the room and Todd looked to him hopefully, but Wu just shook his head sorrowfully and then said something to one of the younger officers.
Handcuffs appeared, and Todd was lifted off the bed.
“I have spoken to my superiors, and they would like me to bring you in.”
“Oh, Christ. Look, I can’t—”
“The local jail is awful, Todd. I am personally and professionally humiliated to take an educated foreigner there. It is not up to the standards of your country, I can assure you.”
“I’m begging you, Mr. Wu. Don’t take me to jail. My family can’t know about this. I’ll lose everything. I fucked up. I know I fucked up, but I am begging you to let me go.”
Wu seemed to hesitate for a moment. After a tired shrug that conveyed noncommitment, he spoke softly to the five others in the room, and they quickly filed out, leaving Wu and Todd alone.
“Todd, I see by your travel papers that you are to leave China in three days’ time.”
“That’s right.”
“I may be able to prevent you spending time in jail, but it will require some help on your part.”
“I swear to you! Anything at all and I will do it.”
Wu still seemed to be vacillating, as if he could not decide. Finally he stepped closer, then said softly, “Go back to your room. Tomorrow, return to your normal routine here at the trade fair. Speak to no one about this.”
“Of course! Of course. Oh my God, I can’t thank you enough!”
“You will be contacted, but perhaps not until you return to your country.”
Todd stopped his proclamations of thanks. “Oh. Okay. That’s . . . whatever you say.”
“Let me give you a warning as a friend, Todd. The people that will ask a favor of you will expect you to repay them. They will retain all the evidence against you about what happened here.”
“I understand,” he said, and it was true, he did understand. No, Todd Wicks was not particularly worldly, but at this point he had the distinct impression that he’d been set up.
Damn it! So fucking stupid.
But set up or not, they had him. He would do anything to keep that video from getting to his family.
He would do whatever Chinese intelligence asked him to do.
ELEVEN
Jack Ryan, Jr., got the senior staff meeting scheduled for eleven a.m., and now he was back at his desk, looking over some more analysis that he would present today. His coworkers were focusing on material they had intercepted from CIA discussing the death of the five Libyans in Turkey two months ago. It was no surprise that CIA was more than a little curious about who the killers were, and Jack found it at once creepy and exciting to read the Langley spooks’ theories about the well-orchestrated hit.
The smart ones knew good and well the new Libyan government’s spies had not orchestrated this as a revenge operation against the Turkish cell, but beyond that there was little consensus.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence had worked the equation for a few days, and even Jack’s girlfriend, Melanie Kraft, had
been tasked with going over the evidence about the assassinations. Five different killings in the same night, all in different manners and all against a cell with a decent level of communication between its members. Melanie was impressed, and in the report she had written for her boss, Mary Pat Foley, director of national intelligence, she had raved about the skill of the perpetrators.
Jack would love to tell her some night over a bottle of wine that he was one of the hit men.
No. Never. Jack pushed that out of his mind immediately.
Melanie had concluded that whoever the actors were in the assassinations, there was nothing to indicate they were any threat to the United States. The targets were enemies of the United States, after a fashion, and the perpetrators were talented killers who took some serious chances but managed to pull it off with skill and guile, so the ODNI did not linger over the event for long.
Even though the U.S. government’s understanding of the events of the night in question was limited, its knowledge of the Libyan cell itself was interesting to Jack. NSA had managed to pull text messages off the five men’s mobile devices. Jack read the translated transcripts from NSA—short, cryptic dialogue that made it clear that these men did not know any more about the identity or overall mission of this Center character than did Ryan himself.
Odd, Jack thought. Who works for someone so shadowy they do not have a clue who they are working for?
Either the Libyans were utter fools or their new employer was incredibly competent at his own security.
Jack did not think the Libyans were fools. Lazy in their PERSEC, perhaps, but that was a result of the fact that they felt the only group after them was the new Libyan intelligence agency, and the JSO men did not think much of their successors’ capabilities.
Jack almost smiled at this as he scanned files on his monitor, looking for anything else from CIA with which to update the senior staff in his meeting.
Just then Jack felt a presence behind him. He looked over his shoulder to see his cousin, Dom Caruso, sitting down on the edge of Jack’s wraparound desk. Standing behind Dom were Sam Driscoll and Domingo Chavez.
“Hey guys,” he said. “I’ll be ready to head up in about five minutes.”
They all had serious looks on their faces.
“What’s wrong?” Jack asked.
Chavez answered, “Clark quit.”
“Quit what?”
“He turned his resignation in to Gerry and Sam. He’ll spend a day or two getting his stuff cleaned up, but he’ll be out of here by midweek.”
“Oh, shit.” Ryan felt an immediate sense of foreboding. They needed Clark. “Why?”
Dom said, “His hand is still messed up. And he’s worried all his shine time on TV last year might compromise The Campus. He’s made his mind up. He’s done.”
“Can he really stay away?”
Chavez nodded. “John doesn’t do things in half-measures. He’s going to work on being a granddad and a husband.”
“And a country gentleman.” Dom said it with a smile.
Ding chuckled. “Something like that, I guess. Jeez, who’d’a thunk it?”
—
The meeting started a few minutes late. John was not in attendance. He had an appointment with his orthopedic surgeon in Baltimore, and he was not one for dramatic good-byes, so he slipped out quietly as everyone was heading up to the ninth-floor conference room.
The early conversation was about John and John’s decision to leave, but Hendley very quickly brought everyone’s attention back to the problem at hand.
“Okay. We’ve spent a lot of time scratching our heads and looking over our shoulders. Jack warns me he doesn’t have much in the way of answers for us today, but we’re going to get an update from him and Gavin about the forensic investigation of the drive.”
Both Ryan and Gavin spoke to the others for fifteen minutes about everything they had learned from the hard drive as well as from CIA sources. They discussed the hacking of Emad Kartal’s computer by Center, the work Center gave the Libyans in Istanbul, and the fact that Center seemed to be setting the Libyans up to penetrate a network in the future, though he apparently changed his mind.
Gerry Hendley finally asked the question that everyone in the room wanted answered. “But why? Why did this Center guy just sit there and watch you guys kill his entire cell of assets in Istanbul? What possible reason did he have?”
Ryan looked around the conference room for a moment. He drummed his fingers on the table. “I don’t know for sure.”
“But you have a suspicion?” asked Hendley.
Jack nodded. “I suspect Center knew for some time that we were on our way to kill the Libyan cell.”
Hendley was gobsmacked. “They knew about us before that night? How?”
“I have no idea. And I could be wrong.”
Chavez asked, “If you are right, if he knew we were coming to Turkey to kill the Libyans who were working for him, why the hell didn’t he warn the Libyans?”
Jack said, “Again, just speculation. But . . . maybe they were bait. Maybe he wanted to watch us in action. Maybe he wanted to see if we could do it.”
Rick Bell, Jack’s boss on the analytical side, leaned in to the table. “You are taking some massive subjective leaps in your analysis, Jack.”
Ryan’s hands came up in surrender. “Yes. You are one hundred percent right about that. Maybe it’s just a feeling I have at this point.”
“Go where the data leads. Not where your heart leads. No offense, but you might just be freaked out by finding yourself on candid camera,” Bell cautioned.
Jack agreed, but he wasn’t crazy about the comment from the head of analysis. Ryan had an ego, and did not like admitting that he was letting his own personal prejudices into the equation. But deep inside he knew Rick was right. “Understood. We’re still trying to put this puzzle together. I’ll keep at it.”
Chavez said, “There is something I don’t get, Gavin.”
“What’s that?”
“Center . . . this guy who obviously had control of the machine. He wanted Ryan to know he was watching.”
“Yeah, obviously.”
“If he was able to delete all but the faintest trace of his malware, why did he not delete every e-mail related to him and his operation?”
Gavin said, “I’ve spent weeks racking my brain on that one, Domingo, and I think I’ve got it figured out. Center would have deleted the delivery malware as soon as he made a successful penetration on the computer, but he didn’t scrub the rest of the drive, the e-mails and stuff, because he did not want to tip off Kartal that he had hacked his machine. Then, when Ryan got there and whacked Kartal, Center pushed those photos of the rest of the team to the computer so that Ryan would see them and e-mail them to his own address or grab a thumb drive or a DVD off the desk and load them on there.”
Jack interrupted, “And then take them back here to The Campus and put them on my machine.”
“Exactly. His idea was cunning, but he messed up. He thought of every way Jack could have moved that data back to The Campus except for one.”
Hendley said, “Stealing the whole damned computer.”
“That’s right. Center sure as hell did not plan on Jack running out the front door with the computer under his arm. That was so dumb it was brilliant.”
Jack’s eyes narrowed. “Maybe it was just brilliant.”
“Whatever. The important thing is you didn’t just bring a disk back home to check it out.”
Ryan explained for the benefit of anyone in the room who wasn’t following. “He was trying to use me to plant a virus on our system.”
Biery said, “Damn right. He dangled those e-mails so you would bite, which you did, but he figured you’d leave with the digital data but not the entire device. I’m sure his
plan was to completely sanitize the computer before the cops arrived.”
Hendley asked Biery, “Could Center have infected our network that way?”
“If his malware was good enough, yes. My network has anti-intrusion measures that are better than any government network. Still . . . all it takes is one asshole with a thumb drive or a USB cable to bring all this down.”
Gerry Hendley looked off into space for a moment before saying, “Guys . . . everything you have told us today makes me more certain that someone knows a lot more about us than we want them to. I don’t know who this potential bad actor is, but until we get more information, our operational stand-down will continue. Rick, Jack, and the rest of the analytical team will keep up the hard work of finding out Center’s identity through all the traffic we have access to from Fort Meade and Langley.”
Hendley turned to Gavin Biery. “Gavin? Who is Center? Who does he work for? Why did he focus so hard on compromising us?”
“Beats me. I’m not an analyst.”
Gerry Hendley shook his head, unsatisfied with the nonanswer. “I’m asking for your best guess.”
Gavin Biery took off his glasses and rubbed them with his handkerchief. “If I had to guess? I’d say it was the best, most organized, and most ruthless cyberespionage and cyberwarfare folks on the planet.
“I’d say it was the Chinese.”
The conference room erupted in low groans.
TWELVE
Wei Zhen Lin drank yellow peach juice from a tall glass as he stood in the sun. His toes were sunk into wet pebbled sand, and water licked his bare feet and rose to his ankles, nearly touching the fabric of his slacks, which he’d pulled up to his shins to keep dry.
Wei did not look like a beachgoer. He wore a white pinpoint oxford shirt and a regimental tie, and he held his sport coat over his shoulder with a crooked finger while he gazed out to sea, across blue-green water that shone under the noon sun.