by Brad Thor
“And then what are we going to do?”
“We’re going to pray.”
“Pray for what?” said Harvath.
The Old Man took a long drink of beer. “We’re going to pray that we catch a break. A big one.”
• • •
They finished their beers in silence and then Harvath walked the Old Man back out to his SUV.
“I can’t help but feel there’s something we may be missing here,” said Carlton.
Harvath smiled. “You always feel that way.”
“So do you,” he replied.
“That’s only because paranoia is highly infectious.”
This time, it was the Old Man who smiled. “If this was your operation, if you were running cells here with six engineering students out of the UAE, what would be your biggest concern? What would be the thing that kept you up at night?”
Harvath thought about the question for a minute before answering. “Usually, it’s the little things that screw it all up. Most people lack discipline and because of that, they lose focus.”
“You don’t think engineering students have discipline?”
He shook his head. “I would imagine they do, but my concern would be their motivation. Why are they doing this? The control files we get off Hanjour’s computer will tell us for sure, but I’m willing to bet this is all about money for them. This isn’t about Islamic ideology.”
“There were some pretty sharp, pretty well-educated guys among the 9/11 hijackers,” said Carlton.
“But that was a martyrdom operation. They were recruited because of their ideology. Our engineering students were recruited because of their backgrounds.”
“Okay, so if you were their handler, what would be the one thing you would worry most about them doing that could blow the operation?”
Harvath let the question percolate for a moment and then replied, “I think I may have an idea.”
“What is it?”
“Come back inside and I’ll show you.”
CHAPTER 25
* * *
* * *
LOS ANGELES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
When Tai Cheng traveled to the United States, he preferred American Airlines. Their flight crews weren’t as professional as the Asian or European carriers; they were too informal, too chummy, but he always developed excellent American contacts while flying in their first class. They tended to be men and women of means with wide circles of acquaintance. It was a boon for a Chinese intelligence operative always looking for ways to expand his human network. Being subjected to American English for the interminably long flight also helped get his mind in the game.
He was entering the country as he always did, as a Chinese entrepreneur named Bao Deng, traveling on a legitimate American green card issued by the United States government. It was his golden ticket. Never once was he detained, hassled, or given a second look.
The American green card had cost him, or more appropriately had cost the Second Department, only five hundred thousand dollars. Posing as a wealthy Chinese businessman, he had invested in a poultry-processing plant in rural Nebraska. That was all it had taken. In exchange for the investment, plus lawyers’ fees and a little paperwork, his Bao Deng identity had been granted a green card and permanent resident status.
The only thing the Americans cared about was money. They would sell their worst enemy the keys to the castle as long as the price was right. It never ceased to amaze him how easily their national security apparatus could be circumvented.
After moving effortlessly through customs and immigration, he exited the Tom Bradley International terminal and headed for American Airlines’ domestic operations in Terminal 4. He had passed through LAX so many times that he knew it like the back of his hand.
He cleared security for Terminal 4 and, towing his wheel-aboard bag behind him, walked down the concourse to the American Airlines Admirals Club. His contact would not arrive for another hour, so Cheng availed himself of a hot shower, a shave, and something to eat. As much as he despised America and its decadent culture, there were some things the Americans got right. Of course all of these things came with a price—far outside the reach of the everyday man or woman.
The bartender asked if Cheng wanted a cocktail or glass of wine to go with his meal. The intelligence operative declined. He never drank when he was on assignment, and seldom even when he was at home. It dulled the senses and made you susceptible to all forms of entrapment or attack. He had only made one recent exception—when he had learned of his wife’s infidelity.
He should have anticipated it. Mi was a beautiful but weak woman. She had been a rising Chinese actress. Modeling jobs had led to bit parts in low-budget movies. From there the budgets had increased and so had the roles. She had graduated from playing the attractive girlfriend of mobsters and street thugs to roles of sensitivity, scope, and intelligence. But with fame had come temptation. In her case, it had been drugs, and drugs had been her downfall.
When Cheng had discovered her, she had hit bottom, twice, and was attempting for a third time to get back on her feet. Cheng was a handsome man in his own right, ten years her senior. He had seen all of her films. For him, it was love at first sight.
She had returned to her family in Nanjing. He had been there on business. She had stopped into her father’s restaurant to speak with him. Cheng had followed her home and arranged to “bump” into her the next day.
They dated for a year and he came to see her in Nanjing whenever possible. He knew important people in the city and made sure favors were done for her family. A small-time criminal enterprise had been shaking down her father. When he learned about it, he brought a stop to it immediately. The family loved him. They had no idea what he did for a living, only that he was a businessman who traveled often and brought them wonderful gifts. If Mi had any suspicions whatsoever, she never voiced them.
Her heart had been repeatedly broken in her painful rise to fledgling stardom and all along her subsequent fall. It had been torn from her chest again and again. Eventually, she had learned it was safer to feign love than to actually succumb to it.
She had wanted to love Cheng, but she couldn’t. It was as if the capacity to love no longer existed in her. She loved her family, though. That love had not been ground down and blown away. And they loved Cheng, or at least they loved what he did for them. In her way, she also loved what he did for them. But loving the deeds and loving the man were two different things.
There was something about him, something she couldn’t put her finger on. She didn’t want to call it evil, but she didn’t know what other word to use. It was cold and dark. She caught flashes of it from time to time and it frightened her.
Sometimes she chastised herself for feeling that way. She had never seen any outward acts that could specifically be described as evil, but there was something burning just below his surface that she was certain wasn’t good.
With her own heart a cold, dead thing that did nothing more than move blood through her body, she feigned love for Cheng. She did it for her family. She did it for herself. She still had her looks and Cheng wanted her. He was a good lover and he would provide for her and help protect and provide for her family. They dated and she agreed, with squeals of joy and the most passionate love scene she had ever performed, to marry him.
She had slept with so many two-bit producers, directors, and casting agents on her way up the ladder that she couldn’t recall all of them. She could, though, remember the after-hours trips to the doctors. The ones with the cold, nondescript offices who would scrape the consequences of her thirst for fame from her womb. She remembered them all, especially the last one, the one who had arrived smelling of gin and who had rendered her barren. She would never forget him, ever.
She came to see it as a blessing. Cheng didn’t want to have children and in a sad way, she saw it as a sign that they were meant to be together. Perhaps they were meant to start anew, to slingshot each other forward.
Cheng’s home was in Beijing. He lived in the Chaoyang district near the St. Regis Hotel. He liked to be close to the action, he said, so he could entertain his clients when they came to the city.
On weekends when he was in town, he would take her sightseeing to the Temple of Heaven and the pearl market, or Hou Hai Lake and the Summer Palace. When he traveled, he encouraged her to go back home and be with her family, or to invite them to come to Beijing. He was incredibly generous, and she sometimes lamented not being able to love him. Her mother, so dependent upon his generosity, railed against Mi if she so much as gained an ounce between visits. They all expected her to stay as attractive as possible for her husband. There was no doubt the role she filled for her family. Her husband was the meal and she was the ticket.
She settled into an uneasy but somewhat predictable rhythm with him. When he was home, they never stayed there longer than was necessary to make love, grab some sleep, change clothes, and go back out. Cheng was a physical fitness fanatic. He involved her in none of his businesses, but he expected her to run and lift weights with him when he was in town, and to continue the practice without him when he was gone.
With or without clients, they ate at the best restaurants and danced at the best nightclubs. This was her favorite part. People recognized her, and Cheng proudly showed her off. She was glad to see what he was getting out of the relationship. She wasn’t just a sex object—he could have slept with her without marrying her—she was a status symbol to him. In fashionable, fast-moving Beijing, she was an extension of him, a reflection of his worth. Only an important, successful man could land a woman like her.
Suddenly, her past no longer mattered. She began, slowly, to think about the future. Cheng had begun talking about buying a house on a lake outside Nanjing—one that they could spend summers in. He talked about her father working too hard, that he should hand more of the business off to her brother so he and her mother could enjoy the warmer months along with them. It was like a fairy tale, and in that fairy tale the black ice that surrounded her heart was beginning to melt.
Of course she was a fool not to see what was happening. Cheng knew her better than she knew herself. He knew she didn’t love him, not truly, and he had been looking for every single thing he could do to make her fall for him. He had quietly interrogated her parents, her siblings, and anyone who had known her as Mi the person, not Mi the actress. He spoke with two aunts and even an old schoolteacher. What made Mi tick? What were her fears and what did she dream about? He had tried to ask her, but she always told him she was happy, and that she had everything she could ever want.
The summer home near Nanjing had been a stroke of genius on Cheng’s part. Even just talking about it produced a noticeable change in his wife, but he was convinced that there had to be more, something else he could do that would melt the rest of the ice and win her heart once and for all.
Amazingly enough, the best suggestion had come from someone at the Second Department—another intelligence agent. Cheng had overheard him talking about how his relationship with his wife had been faltering. He had tried, as best he believed any man could do, to listen and attempt to reconnect with her. He had wanted to do something big, put a score on the board that would keep him out front for a long time. He succeeded and had blown his wife away.
The men had eagerly gathered around him to learn how he had done it. “Simple,” he responded. “I stopped treating her like my wife and started treating her like a target.”
It was both disturbing and brilliant at the same time. Cheng had kicked himself for not having thought of it sooner. He paid more attention to and knew more about his intelligence assets than he did his own wife. It wasn’t for lack of trying. For some reason, he just hadn’t found that secret channel to her heart. He decided to flip everything on its head and treat her like he would any target he had been assigned. He wanted to know everything about her—where she went, what she did, who she saw, right down to what she thought. If he could do that, he would have the intelligence he needed to finally win her over completely.
In his rush to know his wife, Tai Cheng sped right by one of the most popular Chinese proverbs—one known even by every child—be careful what you wish for. And as he sped right by it, he crashed and burned.
The Chinese entertainment industry was littered with the mistakes of young actors and actresses. Some were so desperate for fame and advancement that they would do almost anything. Throw in drugs and a stalled or failed career, and “almost anything” became “anything.”
When Mi had reached the “anything” stage, she had slept with multiple men to support her habit. Pictures had been taken, and unbeknownst to her a video had been made. That video had made its way into the hands of a Communist Party official who could not have shown up in her world at a worse time.
She had gotten her life together, she was trying to learn to love her husband, and she desperately wanted her marriage to work. Things were actually going her way. She was as close to happy as she could ever remember being. Then a snippet of the video showed up in an email. Her husband “never needed to know.” “One time together” and the official would destroy the tape. She couldn’t see any other way out. She didn’t want to lose her husband. As stupid and wrong and deceitful as it was, she agreed to meet with the official.
They had met at a hotel while Cheng was out of town. It was to be a onetime thing. One and done. But it was only the beginning. The blackmailer called her for another meeting within a week.
In his desire to know his wife better, Cheng had violated the trust that should remain sacred between a husband and wife. He had spied on her. And it wasn’t just spying. He followed her, bugged her cell phone, and hacked into her email account. That was how he had discovered the affair. That was when he had gone over the edge.
He sent Mi to her parents in Nanjing. He didn’t tell her why. She was terrified. Did he know? Was their marriage over? What would happen to her? What would happen to her family? She had been given a second chance at life and she had screwed it up. No husband sent his wife away without warning or explanation unless something was very bad. She knew what it was. She knew why she had been exiled.
No sooner had Cheng gotten Mi out of their home in Beijing than he started drinking, heavily. No matter how proficient at meting out violence or death they might be, intelligence operatives were social by nature. Their business involved guns and knives and all sorts of black arts, but at its heart it was about people. You could not recruit and control people if you didn’t understand them. In his way, Cheng understood his wife.
By spying on her, he had come to better appreciate her pain. His only regret was that he hadn’t done it earlier. He blamed himself. He had plucked her from ignominy in Nanjing, polished her up, and brought her back out, all bright and shiny, to be put on display in Beijing. In a certain way, he had asked for what had happened. He had been prideful, boastful, a show-off. He had used his wife’s allure to make him feel like more of a man. How could he expect that men wouldn’t take notice of her? That’s what he had wanted and that’s what had happened.
He may have borne some responsibility for what had happened, but not all of it. The worst offender was the official who was blackmailing his wife. Cheng could think of no worse a character than a man who would prey on women, particularly someone else’s woman.
It made no difference that the man in question was a high-ranking party official. He could have been on the PSC for all Cheng cared. His sin was unforgivable. There was only one way he could make restitution—with his life.
But before he died, Cheng wanted the man to repent for what he had done. While he could have beaten him into repentance and then death, Cheng wanted it to appear to have been an accident. The less people suspected, the less of an investigation would be conducted. The man was overweight, a drinker, and a heavy smoker. A heart attack wouldn’t have surprised anyone, but that might elicit pity. He wanted people to shake their heads when they reflected on the embarrassing s
tupidity of his death.
Cheng waited until the official’s family had gone to Shanghai for the weekend and he was alone. When he came home from dinner and drinking, Cheng, pistol in hand, was waiting for him. The man was belligerent at first. He had no idea what was happening. He thought it was a robbery. Then Cheng explained who he was and why he was there. The blood drained from the party official’s face completely. He was afraid, and with good reason.
Cheng forced the official to hand over the video of his wife. Then he forced him to open the email account he had used to solicit her. When that was done, Cheng directed the man to a small powder room off the kitchen.
There, a bottle of scotch and a glass sat on the sink. Cheng ordered him to fill the glass and drink it down. The man found it difficult. He was already drunk and gagged several times. Eventually, he succeeded. Cheng then told him to refill the glass and do it again.
As the man tried to get the smoky beverage down his raw esophagus and into his inflamed stomach, Cheng explained the price he would exact on the man’s legacy.
Chinese culture was about its male heirs. The party official had been blessed with one boy. Cheng explained that the boy would spend the rest of his life paying for the sins of the father. Drugs and a murder weapon had already been planted in his apartment where police would find them. He had made sure the boy had no alibi. His life would be ruined and along with it, the family’s reputation. Everything the party official had worked so hard for was about to crumble.
Enraged, the man charged, but Cheng was ready for him. He deftly parried the clumsy attack and spun him back into the bathroom where he stumbled and ran headfirst into the toilet. He lay on the floor not moving. Cheng felt for a pulse. He was alive, but unconscious.
Cheng picked up the glass and the bottle of scotch in his gloved hands and placed them on the island in the kitchen. He then retrieved the Styrofoam cooler hidden in the front closet, along with a bath towel and roll of painter’s tape.