by Tom Clancy
Just minutes after Ding announced he had the eye, Jack saw Zha and the others, moving under a tight pack of umbrellas, approaching his position near the ferry entrance.
Jack said, “Looks like they are getting on the ferry.”
“Excellent,” said Yao. “He’s probably going to Wan Chai. That’s where the bars are. He’s done that several times in the last week, hitting the girlie bars around Lockhart Road. I don’t think he gives a shit about naked girls, but the Fourteen-K run most of those clubs, so it’s probably where his guards feel comfortable taking him.”
“Can we go in without being compromised?” Jack asked.
“Yeah, you’ll just have to watch yourselves. There will be other Triads in the crowd. They may not be working on the Zha detail, but they are a rough bunch when they are drinking.”
Jack said, “Don’t they all know martial arts?”
Yao chuckled. “It’s not one long Jackie Chan movie over here. Not everybody is a kung fu master.”
“Well, that’s comforting.”
“It shouldn’t be. They all carry pistols or knives. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather take a donkey kick to the chest than a nine-millimeter round to the chest.”
“You got a point there, Yao.”
“Jack, you go ahead and get in line for the next ferry across. They shouldn’t suspect you if you are in front of them, but be careful where you position yourself.”
“Roger.”
“Ding, I’m en route to pick you up. We’ll take the tunnel to the other side and be there waiting when they get off the boat.”
—
The old Star Ferry boat bobbed and swayed in the choppy Victoria Harbour as it crossed between thick harbor traffic on its eight-minute journey to Hong Kong Island. Jack sat well behind the 14K men and the computer hacker as they rode at the front of the covered deck.
He was confident he had not been spotted by the opposition, and he was also confident they were not meeting anyone on the boat, as no one had approached.
But something else caught Jack’s eye about midway through the crossing.
Two men entered the passenger cabin and walked right past Jack’s position. They sat down several rows behind Zha. They were fit men in their late twenties or early thirties; one had a red polo and jeans, and on his right forearm was a tattoo that said “Cowboy Up.” The other wore an untucked button-down and cargo shorts.
They looked—to Jack, anyway—like Americans, and both men had their eyes trained on the back of Zha’s head.
“We may have a problem,” Ryan said softly as he looked out the window in the opposite direction of the Triad group.
“What’s up?” asked Chavez.
“I think there are two more guys, two American guys, who are watching the target.”
“Shit,” said Yao.
“Who are they, Adam?” asked Chavez.
“I don’t know. They could be U.S. marshals. Zha is a wanted man in the USA. If so, they won’t know their way around HK. They won’t know how to blend. They won’t know that Zha and the Fourteen-K are watching for a tail. They will get burned.”
Ryan said, “They are a little too close, but otherwise they aren’t being obvious just yet.”
Yao countered, “Yeah, but if there are two on him now, there will be a half-dozen on him soon enough. There’s only so many wide-eyed Americans you can stick in one place over here without the Triads figuring out their protectee has grown a tail.”
The ferry docked on Hong Kong Island a few minutes later, and Ryan was the first off, well ahead of Zha and his crew. He walked down a long ramp into the Central neighborhood, then disappeared down an elevator to the MTR without ever regarding his targets.
He did not need to. Chavez was positioned at the exit to the ferry, and he followed Zha and company as they climbed into a taxi van. They headed off to the south.
Adam had seen this from the Mitsubishi minivan. He announced over the conference call, “I’ll tail them. Ding, get down in the MTR with Jack and take a train to Wan Chai Station. I’d bet money that’s where they are going. You can be there ahead of them if you hustle, and I’ll guide you to wherever they are.”
“En route,” said Ding, and he disconnected from the conference call and ran down to the MTR entrance to meet Jack.
—
As Chavez and Ryan rode in the long subway car, Jack disconnected his phone from Adam and leaned into his superior’s ear. “If the marshals get too close, Zha’s going to bolt. If he does that, then we’ll never know about Center and the Istanbul Drive.”
Chavez had been thinking the same thing. “Yep.”
But he had not been thinking anything along the lines of what Ryan said next: “We need to grab him.”
“How, Jack? He’s got a significant security detail.”
“Manageable,” declared Ryan. “We can orchestrate something quick and nasty. Look how big the stakes are. If FastByte Twenty-two did the UAV hack, then he’s got blood on his hands. I’m not going to lose sleep over wasting a couple of his henchmen.”
“Then what, kid? We’re going to take FastByte back to the Peninsula and interrogate him over room service?”
“Of course not. We slip him out on the Gulfstream.”
Ding shook his head. “We stick with Adam Yao for now. If an opportunity arises that looks good, we consider taking him, but right now the best thing we can do is support the Agency guy who knows his way around.”
Jack sighed. He understood but worried they would miss their opportunity to bag FastByte and learn who he was working for.
THIRTY-NINE
The two Campus operatives exited the MTR at Wan Chai Station, and by then Adam had tracked the taxi carrying the five men to a strip club called Club Stylish on Jaffe Road, just a few blocks away. Yao warned the two Hendley Associates men that the girlie bar was a known 14K hangout, and there would be, among the crowds of lonely businessmen and Filipino waitresses and strippers, some presence of heavily armed and heavily drinking 14K mobsters.
Jack and Ding suspected they had a different definition for “heavily armed” than did Adam Yao, but neither Jack nor Ding was carrying any weapons whatsoever, so they told themselves they would keep their heads on a swivel and do nothing to raise the ire of the locals in the establishment.
Jack and Ding found the entrance to Club Stylish to be just a narrow dark doorway at the street level of a high-rise ramshackle apartment building on a two-lane street one block over from Lockhart Road, the nicer and more touristy section of Wan Chai. Ryan pulled off his paper mask and entered first, passing a bored-looking bouncer, then descended a little staircase lit only by Christmas lights strung along the ceiling. The staircase seemed to go down at least two stories, and at the bottom he found a large basement nightclub with a high ceiling. On his right was a long bar along the wall, in front of him was the floor of the establishment, full of tables and lit by candles, and on the far wall was a raised stage made out of see-through plastic tiles over garish amber lighting that gave the entire room an odd golden glow. Above it, a large spinning disco ball created thousands of swirling white lights that painted the crowd.
Four stripper poles stood near the corners of the raised dance floor.
The establishment seemed to be running at about twenty percent capacity, and a strictly male audience sat around at the tables, in booths along the walls, and at the bar. Some talked to the bored-looking dancing girls who milled between them. Jack saw Zha and his group of four Triads sitting in a large booth in the corner of the far wall, to the right of the stage on the other side of the entrance to a darkened hallway that led out the back of the club. Jack assumed there would be restrooms back there, but he did not want to pass so close to Zha to get a better lay of the land. Instead, he saw a spiral staircase off to his left, and he climbed to f
ind a little mezzanine over the back bar area. Here a few businessmen sat in groups and looked out over the paltry action. Ryan liked it up here—he could watch Zha while keeping a low profile with the dark and deep booths. He sat alone, and he ordered a beer from a passing cocktail waitress a few minutes later.
Within moments two young Filipino exotic dancers took the stage and went through the well-practiced motions of dancing seductively to loud, thumping Asian-influenced techno music.
Zha and his security detail remained in their booth stage left of the strippers. Jack saw that the young man remained more interested in his handheld computer than he was in the semi-naked women twenty feet away from him, and he barely glanced up at them as he typed furiously with his thumbs.
Jack thought about how much he’d love to get his hands on that handheld device. Not that he’d know what the hell to do with it, but Gavin Biery would likely have a field day cracking its secrets.
Domingo Chavez entered the club a few minutes later, and he sat back by the downstairs bar near the entrance. He had a good view of the stairwell up to street level and a decent view of the 14K entourage, but mostly his job was to back up Jack, the eye in the surveillance.
They communicated with Adam through their tiny earpieces. Yao was sitting out in the borrowed Mitsubishi, positioned in a back alley that ran between the rear of the high-rises on Jaffe and the high-rises on Gloucester, just blocks from the northern shore of Hong Kong Island. Here he parked in a small lot and had a view of the back exit of Club Stylish, which was good, but he was parked next to dozens of full garbage bins outside a seafood restaurant, meaning a foul rotten stench and the scuffling feet of rats were all he had to keep him company back there.
Adam informed the Hendley Associates men how lucky they were, via the conference call. Chavez sipped his first beer of the evening and regarded the women working for tips on the stage and the other dancers milling about the crowd.
He assured young Adam that he was not missing much.
The two mysterious Americans who had been on the ferry entered the club a few minutes later, confirming Jack’s suspicions that they were, in fact, tailing Zha. Ding reported this to Ryan, and Jack saw them from his overwatch on the mezzanine when the men sat down in plush chairs in a dark corner, far from the stage. They bought Budweisers from a cocktail waitress and sipped them while rejecting advances from the strolling bar girls.
As Chavez turned and scanned the stairwell, two more Western men, both in blue blazers and ties, entered together.
There were a dozen other Westerners in the bar, Ding and Jack and the two younger guys from the ferry included, but these guys stood out to Ding. They looked like Feds, and Chavez could ID Feds easily, which wasn’t saying much, because they had a way of standing out. The two men sat down just a few tables from the Triad entourage, positioning themselves awkwardly so that they had a better view of FastByte22 than they did of the stage.
“Looks like a damn weatherman convention in here,” Chavez said softly, hiding his moving lips behind his beer bottle before taking a swig.
Adam Yao’s voice came over the headset. “More Americans?”
“Two suits. Could be DOJ guys from the consulate, here trying to confirm Zha’s presence.”
Yao said, “Okay, maybe we should think about backing off. By my count there are now six gweilos in there with eyes on Zha. That’s too many.”
Chavez said, “I hear you, Adam, but I’ve got another idea. Wait one.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out his mobile phone, then opened a video camera feature. He put the conference call with Ryan and Adam on hold and called Gavin Biery at the Peninsula.
Gavin answered on the first ring. “Biery.”
“Hey, Gavin. I’m sending you video transmission from my phone. Will you get on your laptop and check that you are receiving?”
“I’m already on. I’m picking it up.” A few seconds later he said, “How ’bout you zoom in on that stage for me?”
Ding placed the phone on the table, propped it against a small glass candleholder, and turned it toward Zha’s table.
Ding said, “I need you to focus on the target, not the dancing girls.”
“Oh, all right. Zoom in a bit.”
Chavez did so, and then recentered the image.
“Got it. What am I looking for?”
“Just keep tabs on them. You’ve got the eye. I’m pulling Ryan out, and I’m turning away from them. There is too much surveillance in this room already.”
“Got it.” He laughed. “I’m on a mission. Well . . . a virtual mission anyway. Hey, by the way, I’m sending you that cleaned-up image of the guy you photographed back at the Mong Kok Computer Centre. You should be able to see the man in the dark now with no problems.”
Domingo brought Gavin into the conference call with the other two and then explained to Jack and Adam what he’d done. Jack left the club and went out front, crossed Jaffe and sat at a tiny noodle bar open to the street. From here he could see the stairway entrance to Club Stylish.
Yao, Chavez, and Ryan simultaneously received e-mails on their phones. They opened them to see a good picture of a quarter-shot of Zha’s face and three-quarters of the back of his head, as he spoke to an older Chinese man in a white shirt and a light blue or gray tie. The older man’s face was clear enough, but none of the three recognized him.
Chavez knew Biery had special facial-recognition software on his computer, and he would be trying to get a match right now.
Yao said, “He’s not familiar to me, but you think he looked important, Ding?”
“Yes. I’d say you might be looking at the MFIC there.”
Yao responded, “The what?”
“The Motherfucker in Charge.”
Ryan and Yao just chuckled.
Gavin Biery’s voice came back over the headsets of the team a minute later. “Domingo, pan the camera to your left.” Chavez reached out and did so as he kept his eyes in the opposite direction, toward the bartenders.
“What do you see?”
“I noticed that the tough guys around Zha were all looking at something or somebody. I think it’s those two white guys in blue blazers. One of the Triads just pulled out his phone and made a call.”
“Shit,” said Ding. “I’d be willing to wager that the consulate guys made it obvious they aren’t here to watch the dancers. Adam, what do you think Fourteen-K is going to do?”
“My guess is they will bring in a few reinforcements. If they were really worried they would shuffle Zha out the back door, but all is quiet back here. Ryan, what’s going on at the front?”
Jack noticed a group of three Chinese men entering the club. Two were young, early twenties or so, and the third was perhaps sixty. Jack thought nothing of it, people were coming and going with regularity.
“Just regular traffic out here.”
“Okay,” said Yao. “Be on the lookout for more Fourteen-K, though. If those guys just called in a potential threat, things might get tight in there.”
—
Our boy has visitors,” Biery said a minute later, when the three newest patrons to the bar, the older Chinese man and his two friends, slid around Zha into the booth. “I’m sending a screen shot to your phones so you can see.”
Adam waited for the picture to arrive, and looked at it closely. “Okay. The older guy is Mr. Han. He’s a known smuggler of high-end computer equipment. He’s the one I was tracking when I ran into Zha in the first place. I don’t know what his relationship to Zha is. Not sure who the other two are, but they aren’t Fourteen-K. They are too puny and bewildered-looking.”
Gavin came over the call: “I’m running their faces through facial-recognition software against a database of known Chinese hackers.”
No one responded to this for several seconds.
At th
e noodle shop, Ryan cursed to himself, and at the bar in the strip club, Chavez groaned inwardly. It was going to be a hard sell to Adam Yao that this database, which The Campus had pulled from a classified CIA database, would be something a financial management firm, even one hunting for a Chinese hacker, could just call up on a laptop.
Ryan and Chavez waited to hear what Yao said next.
“That’s pretty handy, Gavin. Let us know.” His voice was overtly sarcastic.
Gavin was clueless about what he had done, and it was clear he did not pick up on Yao’s sarcasm. “I’ll let you know. And by the way, I ran the other guy, the MFIC, too. No match at all,” he said, a tinge of frustration in his voice.
Yao said, “Hey, Domingo. Any chance you could meet me around back of the club for a quick chat.”
At the bar by the entrance to the strip club, Ding rolled his eyes now. This young NOC was about to take Ding to the woodshed, and he knew it.
And at the noodle shop, Jack Ryan put his face in his hands. As far as he was concerned, their cover was blown to the CIA man.
Chavez said, “I’ll be right out, Adam. Ryan, why don’t you come on back in and take the eye up on the mezzanine? Keep a soft surveillance. Just make sure nobody joins the entourage without getting a look at them.”
“Got it,” said Jack.
—
It took a few minutes to get Jack into position and Chavez back out the front, up the block, and back around into the small street behind the nightclub and high-rise apartment buildings, but finally Ding climbed into the passenger door of the Mitsubishi.
He just looked at Adam and said, “You wanted to talk?”
Yao said, “I know you are ex-Agency, and I checked you out. You retain your TS security clearance.”
Chavez smiled. The sooner they got this charade over with, the better.
“You’ve done your homework.”
Yao was not smiling. “You have friends at the Agency, friends all over. And I am going to go out on a limb here and say that you know good and damn well that I am Agency, too.”