K Street

by M. A. Lawson

  That was a lie; Callahan was not a friend and Prescott didn’t trust him any farther than she could spit his fat body.

  “Give Callahan the envelope,” Prescott said, “and tell him to put it in his safe. I’ll get it from him when I return from London tomorrow. But don’t tell Callahan what’s in the envelope. Just go to his office and tell him I asked you to deliver it to him. Do you understand?”

  “Yes. I know we’ve had our differences, Olivia, but I trust your judgment in these matters.”

  “Good. I’ll see you when I get back.”

  Prescott disconnected the call. She wasn’t going to phone Callahan. It was bad enough that she’d mentioned his name on a cell call, but there was no way she wanted there to be a record of her contacting him. With the type of phone she had—there were only a couple thousand like it on the planet—it was highly unlikely that anyone could monitor her conversations, but you never know.

  There was one thing Olivia Prescott knew for sure, though: She’d find Sally Ann’s mole and she’d crush him like the small rodent he was.

  DAY 1—9:30 A.M.

  Lin Mai was sitting at her desk in the Chinese Trade Association on New York Avenue in Washington, D.C. The mission of the trade association was to encourage the American government and American businesses to buy and borrow from the Chinese. The trade association employed almost two hundred people, and two-thirds of those people were American citizens: lawyers and ex-politicians and others of that ilk who could lobby the U.S. Congress and develop position papers to persuade those who had to be persuaded.

  Lin Mai was an active participant in the trade association’s legitimate endeavors. She attended meetings and conventions; she socialized with powerful American officials; she hosted parties at her home in Georgetown. She had a more important job, however. She was a spy. Or, to be precise, she was a Chinese intelligence officer who controlled a number of American spies.

  She was sitting at her desk, reading a draft of a bill that would soon be introduced in the House of Representatives. It would limit the sale of certain computer technologies to China and it was just one more of the Americans’ futile attempts to stay ahead of her country. The bill was so new that few members of Congress had seen it, and Lin Mai knew that most members wouldn’t even read it before they voted on it; they would vote based on summaries prepared by low-ranking aides—and she might be able to influence one of them. As she was struggling to grasp a complex paragraph, one of the four phones in her purse rang.

  All four phones were marked with a plastic stick-on label, which identified in Chinese characters the name Lin Mai was supposed to use when she answered. She was shocked to see the phone that was ringing was the one she used to communicate with Winston. Why would he be calling her? She and Winston never talked on the phone; on very rare occasions she would send him encrypted text messages. She figured someone must have dialed the number by mistake but decided to take the call.

  “Yes?” she said.

  “Happy birthday, Jane. Or should I say, Happy birthday, Lin Mai?”

  Lin Mai almost dropped the phone, like she’d just realized she was holding a poisonous snake in her hand. The man calling was not Winston but he knew her name and her cover name. Even Winston didn’t know her real name. And the caller knew about the e-mail Winston had sent her yesterday. She wondered if this phone call would simply end her career or if it would end her life.

  “What do you want?” she said. She could hear the tremor in her voice.

  “This morning I was forced to give a copy of the attachment—you know, the birthday card—to someone. But if you act very, very quickly you can protect yourself and the man who sent it to you. If you don’t give me what I want, however, then the birthday-card sender will be arrested and you’ll be deported. Who knows what will happen to you after that. Your masters are not known for their forgiving natures.”

  “What do you want?” she asked again.

  “A hundred thousand.”

  “Dollars?”

  “Of course, dollars.”

  “Okay,” she immediately said. She wasn’t going to haggle with him; protecting herself and Winston was more important than money. “But it will take me some time to get that much.”

  “Bullshit. You can get your hands on that amount of cash in no time at all. That’s one reason I’m asking for so little. I could have asked for a million, but I’m in a hurry. But take all the time you want. Just keep in mind that if you don’t act fast, the person I gave the attachment to will give it to somebody else. And then this whole mess will be out of your control.”

  “How do I reach you?” Lin Mai asked. “I need to talk to my superior.”

  “I’m calling from a pay phone. I’ll wait half an hour, and then I’m leaving.” He gave her the phone number and hung up.

  DAY 1—9:40 A.M.

  Lin Mai squeezed her eyes shut, trying to keep the tears from leaking out. It was not her fault that she was in this situation. It was the fault of people back in China who told her she needed to get the information immediately, that it was extremely urgent, but she was not told why.

  She normally obtained documents or flash drives from Winston from a drop box they used, and she would then send them to China via diplomatic pouch. That was the safest way.

  This time, however, she was given a lengthy technical document that had been overnighted from China. The document was too scientifically complex for her to understand, so she couldn’t summarize it and it was too long to read to Winston over the phone, not that she would have ever used a phone. So she flew up to Boston, met with Winston so he could read the document, and then told him that he was to give her what the people in China wanted via e-mail as soon as he had the information. She and Winston both knew that sending an e-mail was dangerous, but it was urgent. Winston had not been happy when she gave him the order but he complied; he had no choice if he wanted to get paid.

  Kenneth Winston was a physicist at Zytek Systems. The company was located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Winston had been providing information on American submarine sonar technology to the Chinese since 2010. He was fifty-seven years old, and he was one of those destroyed by the American financial crisis. He had been planning to retire at the age of sixty-two, sell his home for a large profit, downsize to something smaller, and live off his investments. Thanks to Wall Street, however, Winston’s dreams of retiring to a condo in Florida were blown to smithereens. His 401(k) was reduced to almost nothing, his one-point-four-million-dollar home became worth approximately eight hundred thousand dollars, and his wife lost her job.

  Winston made a good salary—he was a talented man involved in cutting-edge work at Zytek—but he depended on both his and his wife’s salaries to support their lifestyle and pay their mortgage. He had also accumulated over seventy thousand dollars in credit card debt. Lin Mai was always surprised that even brilliant people could dig their own financial graves.

  Following the American financial meltdown—which became a global financial meltdown—four hundred Chinese analysts were put into a warehouse filled with computers and they worked eighteen hours a day for six months looking for people like Kenneth Winston: people in sensitive positions who were now financially vulnerable. It was simple to access credit card and mortgage and bankruptcy records. Winston was one of eighteen people eventually recruited, and Lin Mai was the one who recruited him.

  Lin Mai sat for only another minute pondering her potential fate and blaming the fools in China who had done this to her, then she called Fang Zhou. She told Fang they needed to meet immediately. She said that she had less than half an hour to resolve a critical situation, and it would take her twenty minutes to drive to the Chinese embassy. She asked Fang to meet her halfway between the embassy and the trade association. Fang Zhou agreed.

  Fang Zhou terrified her.

  Ten minutes later she was sitting in Fang’s car in the park
ing lot of a restaurant that was closed, and she quickly told Fang what the man had said to her. Fang didn’t waste time reprimanding her; he knew there was no time for that.

  “Okay. Call him back and tell him you’ll give him what he wants.” He looked at his watch and said, “Tell him you’ll meet him in forty-five minutes at a park in Anacostia. Tell him you chose that location because you don’t want anyone to see the two of you together. Try to sound timid and frightened when you talk to him.”

  “What’s the name of the park?” Lin Mai asked. She wouldn’t have any problem sounding frightened.

  While Lin Mai was speaking to the blackmailer, Fang drove them back to the Chinese embassy. From a safe in his office, he took an untraceable .38 revolver and a handful of bullets. He also grabbed a briefcase; Lin Mai would need to carry something large enough to hold a hundred thousand dollars. They then drove to the park in an older model sedan that didn’t have diplomatic plates.

  Fang Zhou had no idea what had gone wrong between Lin Mai and Winston. He had no idea what information Winston had sent. His job was not overseeing their spies. Fang Zhou was Damage Control. His job was fixing things when they went wrong—and this time, something had gone very wrong. He actually felt sorry for Lin Mai. He’d known her for several years and she was an intelligent, appealing woman, but a bit full of herself. He was certain this experience would make her much more humble.

  As they were driving toward the park, he said, “Tell me about Winston. How valuable is he?”

  “Extremely valuable. As you must know, we are building the next class of ultraquiet diesel submarines. The more we know about American sonar capability, the safer our submarines will be.”

  She was right. One day China and the United States might fight a real war as opposed to an economic war, and if that happened, every American submarine had to be located before they could fire their nuclear missiles, and Chinese subs needed to be so quiet that the Americans would not be able to target them. Submarines were the most powerful weapons in each country’s arsenal and very few things were as important as counteracting America’s capability for hunting Chinese subs.

  Two blocks before they reached the park, Fang pulled over so Lin Mai could drive. He got into the backseat of the sedan and crouched down on the floor out of sight. This was not easy because he was so tall. He was also annoyed because he hadn’t had time to change and was wrinkling his expensive suit.

  DAY 1—10:45 A.M.

  Parker didn’t like the place Lin Mai had selected for their meeting. It made him nervous. It looked like a place where a person could get mugged.

  The park was on the banks of the Anacostia River in a poor section of Washington. At one time it had contained a couple of swings, a teeter-totter, and a small wading pool, and there had been a patch of grass for those who wished to picnic. The grass was now gone, replaced by weeds that were two feet high. Paper cups, wine and beer bottles, and Styrofoam fast food boxes littered the ground. The wading pool had an inch of water in it that was covered with a film of green scum. A car, minus its tires, had been set on fire in the small parking lot, and only the blackened, charred body remained.

  As he drove toward the parking lot, Parker could see a Chinese woman sitting in a car by herself. He looked around to see if anyone was lurking in the untended bushes surrounding the park but they were too dense, and he couldn’t be sure that no one was there. It appeared they were alone, but just to be safe, he backed his car into a parking space so that it was facing the exit.

  • • •

  FIVE MINUTES AFTER Lin Mai and Fang parked, an unwashed Honda Accord drove into the parking lot. Lin Mai could see the driver, a man, looking around, checking to see if she’d come alone. Then he backed his car into a parking space a few yards from where she was parked. Barely moving her lips, she told Fang what she saw.

  Fang whispered from the backseat, “Get out before he decides to take off. Take the briefcase with you and go sit in his car. Move! I want him to remain in his car and I don’t want him driving away.”

  Fang waited until he heard the door of the Honda slam shut before he slithered out the back door and peeked over the trunk. Lin Mai was in the passenger’s seat of the Honda and the man’s head was turned toward her. Fang ran up to the Honda, yanked open the driver’s door, and placed the muzzle of the .38 against the man’s head. “Don’t move,” he said.

  In Chinese, he told Lin Mai to walk up to the park access road and to call him if she saw anybody approaching, then he took Lin Mai’s place in the passenger seat of the Honda.

  The man was in his thirties. He had a short, scraggly beard that was darker than his thinning blond hair. He wasn’t fat but he had the soft body of a man who spent all day sitting behind a desk. He wore a blue short-sleeved shirt with a button-down collar, beige pants, and white running shoes; his shirt and pants were clean but in need of ironing. Fang suspected that he didn’t have a wife.

  “Hey, look,” the man said. “You don’t want to kill me. I can be useful to you. Really.”

  Fang almost laughed. Two minutes ago the man had been a blackmailer; now he was applying for a job.

  “Maybe,” Fang said. He wanted him to remain hopeful. “What’s your name?”

  “Parker. James Parker. Jim.”

  “Show me your driver’s license, Jim,” Fang said.

  Parker pulled out his wallet and showed his license to Fang. His name was indeed James Parker.

  “Put your wallet back in your pocket, Jim,” Fang said. “Now tell me who you work for.” Fang was pretty sure he already knew who employed Parker, but he asked anyway.

  And Parker confirmed what Fang suspected. “The NSA,” Parker said.

  “So tell me about this e-mail. You told Lin Mai you gave a copy of the attachment to someone. I want to know everything you did and what you told this person.”

  Parker didn’t hesitate; he was too frightened. He told Fang about his relationship with Sally Ann Danzinger—whom Fang had never heard of—and about Danzinger’s political war against the Layman brothers. Fang had heard of the Layman brothers, and privately admired them. According to Parker, he’d been helping Danzinger for the last nine months, attempting to gather incriminating information against the Laymans. Fang didn’t ask why he was helping Danzinger, but when he asked Parker why he had decided to betray Danzinger, Parker hesitated, so Fang pinched a nerve in the man’s neck, causing Parker considerable pain.

  After Parker was able to speak again, he explained that Danzinger had refused to pay him for the information.

  “What will Danzinger do with the information you gave her?” Fang asked.

  “I think she’ll eventually give it to somebody who will try to arrest Winston, but I don’t know who. Maybe the FBI. Maybe a politician. I don’t know, but she’ll give it to someone.”

  “And you only gave Danzinger a copy of the e-mail attachment? You didn’t give her the e-mail that showed the contact information?”

  “No, just a copy of the attachment. I didn’t tell her Winston’s name and I didn’t say who he sent it to. I just told her that the e-mail was going to a foreign government. I swear. I did tell her the attachment came from Zytek. I had to tell her that much so she’d know it was important.”

  “How do you know Danzinger won’t tell somebody that you gave her the attachment?”

  “She won’t. You don’t know Sally Ann, but I do, and I know she’d never give me up. She’d go to jail first. In fact, she’s the type that would want to go to jail. She’d love the publicity of being a martyr.”

  “How do you know Danzinger hasn’t already given the copy to someone?”

  “I don’t. I met with her about”—he glanced at his watch—“an hour and a half ago. So maybe by now she has, but I doubt it. She’ll have to figure out who to give it to and then set up a meeting to hand it over. She won’t scan and e-mail it like, well, you know.
So if you act fast, maybe you can stop her. All I was trying to do was let you know that your spy at Zytek is vulnerable. I figured that information would be worth a lot to you.”

  Then Parker, who was not totally stupid, began to bargain. “Look,” he said, “I can be very valuable to you. I have access to—”

  “Shut up,” Fang said, “I need to think.”

  He needed to decide if it was still possible to save Winston. Parker knew about Lin Mai, he knew about Winston, and he knew what the e-mail contained. But all Danzinger knew was that the e-mail had come from Zytek. Yes, Winston could be saved, but only if Fang acted quickly.

  “If Danzinger gave the e-mail attachment to the FBI, could they trace it back to you at the NSA?”

  “No, no way. After I made a copy of the e-mail I buried that information so deep and in so many places that nobody will ever be able to trace it to me. The FBI wouldn’t even know where to begin to look for it. And even if somebody at the NSA saw the attachment, they still wouldn’t be able to trace it to me.”

  Fang wondered about that. This arrogant fool had probably done everything he could to make sure that no one could figure out he’d intercepted the e-mail. But was Parker really smart enough to hide his identity? And although Parker was confident that Danzinger would not give his name to the FBI, what if the FBI forced it out of her? Then they might be able to force Parker to confess.

  “Where is the copy of the e-mail you made? You said you gave the attachment to Danzinger, but what did you do with the e-mail?”

  “It’s right here,” Parker said, and removed a folded piece of paper from his shirt pocket and handed it to Fang.