“No,” said Westfall. “You know those antique porcelain dolls from Victorian Britain or nineteenth-century Germany with those creepy stares and Cupid’s bow mouths, and rouged fever cheeks? Not the whole dolls, not the antique dresses, the admiral just collects the heads. She’s got hundreds of them, all on some shelf, staring.”
“At this point Marty Gable would make a crack about inflatable love dolls,” said Benford.
They were all quiet for a second. “Frigging dolls. Ask the shrinks what it means,” said Nate. “Maybe the admiral’s got a secret life.”
“With that hair?” said Benford. “She looks like Martha Washington.”
“That comment is mildly unpatriotic,” said Nate. Benford swiped the air as if batting gnats.
“It doesn’t matter how clean the admiral seems. Don’t underestimate military culture,” said Forsyth. “Advancement is everything, especially for women in the services. Bringing military discipline to a civilian agency might appeal to her scientific mind. For flag-rank officers, finding a job with influence after retirement is important. It could be a lot of factors.”
“I still think the admiral comes in as the cleanest of the bunch. I can’t see her meeting with the Russians and hiding blood diamonds under the floorboards.”
“What about the third guy?” snapped Benford.
“The ambassador. Sort of a lightweight, but during his four years in Embassy Rome he was reading plenty of classified cables. Now he’s on the Intelligence Working Group, which gives him moderate access the Russians would want. Lots of business travel overseas for years, including commodities deals in Belarus, so that’s a red flag. He was in Hollywood once, and likes money. He’s worth around one hundred million dollars, so maybe becoming Director is just an ego thing.”
“But no access to the railgun, right? We can cross him off,” said Forsyth. Westfall handed him a sheet of paper.
“That’s what I thought,” he said. “But it happens that he worked on a five-year navy railgun contract because his precious-metals company manufactured beryllium oxide ceramic heat diffusers for the magnetic rails—they get hot with all that juice running through them, and Ambassador Tommy Vano knows railgun design intimately. He made another bundle on the contract, donated to the right campaign—he’s moderately liberal but he looks out for himself—and became an ambassador.”
“Who thinks he can run CIA. Christ. So any of the three could be MAGNIT,” said Forsyth. “The admiral is least likely, for reasons of motive and ideology, are we agreed? And there’s another briefing tomorrow. The Acting Director wants Russia cases to be briefed this time.”
“We’re not opening our restricted cases to these fuckers,” Benford said.
“Not smart, Simon,” said Forsyth. “The Director would love to take you down as he walks out the door.”
“I will not brief any of the three on DIVA. She would be dead in a week.” There was silence at the table, until Benford raised his head.
“I need to speak to Nash. May we reconvene in two hours? Thank you.”
* * *
* * *
The conference room cleared quickly. Benford stared at Nash for a full minute. “Please do not utter a word until I finish speaking.” Benford was always telling people not to speak, but the tone in his voice this time told Nash he was waltzing on the rim of the volcano. Benford handed him a cable from Moscow, a translation of a note Dominika had passed to Ricky Walters during a dangerous personal meeting. She had written that the death of Gable had affected her deeply and that she would curtail personal meetings until such time as she could be resupplied with SRAC. She would, of course, inform colleagues whenever she was in the West to arrange meetings then, but no more inside contact.
“I advised you to keep Marty’s death from her, given her attachment to him. I have consulted the Gregorian, Julian, and Coptic calendars and conclude there is not enough time before the next solstice for me to enumerate the ways you have been stupid,” said Benford, baring his teeth and wearing his Fall of Ancient Rome Face, the one the emperor used while watching Christians in the Coliseum being fed to lions. His unblinking eyes held Nate’s, something rarely seen with Benford, and it signaled real danger. “That I acquiesced in letting you develop a romantic attachment to a sensitive asset was an abrogation of my personal and professional standards and a failure on my part as an operational manager.”
This was bad. He had not only fucked up personally, but also, Nate now realized, caused Benford professional vexation. He wondered if the day would end with his being walked out of the Headquarters building, escorted by two crew cut linebackers from the Office of Security in blue blazers who would yank his ID badge off his lapel as the automatic doors slid open to welcome him to a sunny civilian world without spies, and secrets, and without Dominika.
“So now we must contemplate the scale of your fuckup,” continued Benford. “Not only have you resolutely shagged this Agency’s premier penetration of the Kremlin, with all that portends, but you could not, or would not, keep devastating news from her, with the result you now hold in your hands: a cessation of timely reporting from her while a Russian mole is possibly to be named Director of this Agency.” Nate held his breath; he didn’t dare offer an explanation.
“It is an axiom of our profession that this work is experiential; one is not born to it, one only becomes more skillful with time. In the arc of your semen-roiled career, you can boast of notable accomplishments and now, of an elephantine failure. The question I am asking myself is whether redemption is possible.
“Redemption is not automatic; a second chance is given only if merited. God knows we have suffered abject, irredeemable fellows in our service: Gondorf, Angevine, the self-congratulatory directors who only read of operations but never manage them.” Benford scowled in thought. Behind him was a photograph of a snow-blasted wall with an inverted V marked in chalk on the masonry—a Moscow signal site from the 1960s.
“Are you redeemable, Nash?” said Benford. “Or more to the point, are you worth redeeming?” Benford stared at Nate for twenty seconds, testing him, assessing his nerves. “Speak,” he said.
Okay, dickhead, the most important sentence of the rest of your life, thought Nate.
“Simon, Marty Gable once told me an officer in the Service can never achieve greatness unless he or she failed big, at least once. I’m not going to explain my mistakes to you, because you know what the situation is between me and DIVA. I’m committed to her and to this job. You know what I’ve done, and what I can still do, if you give me a chance. You asked whether I’m worth redeeming. Well, Simon, you fucking tell me. But with all respect, if you give up on me, you’re a bigger asshole than everyone thinks you are. I’m ready to go to work and do any job, so you decide. Do I stay or are you kicking me out?” Nate meant what he said, but would the ever-profane Simon swallow the insubordination? Nate thought it probably would come down to what Benford had for lunch that day. Nate waited for the hammer to drop.
Benford ran fingers through already-tousled hair. “You have balls talking to me like that. Jesus, you sound like Al Gore,” he said. “All right, now get out of here and get to work.”
CARROT FRITTER WITH YOGURT SAUCE
Squeeze all the water out of grated zucchini and carrots, and mix them with chopped scallions, parsley, dill, and garlic. Add flour and egg to make a wet paste, and season. Form a large spoonful of the mixture into a ball and press a pitted brine-soaked olive (Kalamata, Picholine, or Niçoise) into the center. Slightly flatten the fritter in a pan and fry in olive oil until golden brown. Serve hot with yogurt sauce (stir pureed garlic, red wine vinegar, and olive oil into yogurt).
23
A Bit of Groan and Grunt
That is how Simon Benford sent Nathaniel Nash to the Orient. At first, Nate thought the temporary assignment was, besides a blessed reprieve, a form of geographical exile to keep him separated from Dominika. But the next day, when he went with analyst Lucius Westfall to meet Elwood Holder
, the Chief of China Operations, and they were briefed on what had happened in Hong Kong, he knew there was a real clambake on, an opportunity so astronomically lucrative that even Benford later agreed that the counterintelligence risks of operating inside Chinese territory were outweighed by the potential gains.
Holder was a thirty-five-year veteran of China Ops, a plank owner, a daaih ban, an esteemed taipan, one of the Agency’s original China hands who spoke fluent Mandarin and wrote both simplified and traditional Chinese with pen or brush. His office walls were decorated with rice-paper banners covered in spidery flowing logograms that Holder himself had painted. Lucius admired a particularly elaborate scroll.
“Sun Tzu, fifth century BC,” said Holder, running his finger down the paper. “In all military affairs, none is more valuable than the spy, none should be more liberally rewarded than the spy, and none should work with greater secrecy than the spy.” He returned to his desk, sat down, and leaned back in his chair.
“Which one of you is Nash?”
Nate nodded.
Holder looked at Westfall. “And you’re Benford’s new PA, from the DI? Good luck with that, and welcome to the Ops Directorate. You’ll note General Tzu did not say ‘In all military affairs, none is more valuable than the analyst’ but at least you’re working with the Dark Prince now.” Lucius said nothing; he was getting used to the jockstrap patois in this side of the building.
Holder was short and stocky with thinning sandy hair and merry blue eyes behind octagonal wire-rimmed glasses, eyes that missed nothing and stopped twinkling when he started talking about taking scalps—recruiting human sources—something he had frequently done around the world, from the Taiwan Straits to the Tiber. Holder’s fabled recruitment in 1985 was of a thirty-year-old telephone technician in the secretariat of the Communist Party of China. In exchange for VCR tapes of all thirty-one Elvis Presley films and a signed photograph of Ann-Margret, he identified the junction box in Beijing serving the Zhuan xian, the encrypted internal telephone system of the 12th Central Politburo. This resulted in the bugging of the line, which produced a stream of astounding code-word intelligence for thirty-six months.
“Hong Kong Station’s been burning up the wires for a week, a dozen immediate restricted-handling cables,” said Holder. “COS Hong Kong is an old whore, a top pro, knows China like the back of his hand, name’s Barnabus Burns. By the way, do not, ever, call him ‘Barn’ for short; he hates the nickname Barn Burns.
“The local Hong Kong ASIS rep, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, called on Burns and made an urgent proposal for a joint op. Seems they’ve been looking for six months at a high-ranking general in the PLA, People’s Liberation Army, a zhong jiang, a middle general, equivalent to lieutenant general. This Chinese general, name’s Tan Furen, comes from Guangzhou in the south. But he’s a big noise in the Zhōngguó Rénmín Jiěfàngjūn Huǒjiànjūn, the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force—PLARF for short—a top intelligence target for years. The PLARF owns all Chinese land-based and submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and maintains their nukes, the whole deal.” Holder read from a black-striped folder.
“The Aussies to their delight discovered that General Tan likes to gamble in the casinos of Macao; he’s addicted,” said Holder. “There’s widespread corruption in the PLA. You get general’s rank by shelling out five hundred thousand dollars, and once they pin on your stars you stand to make three times that from skimming contracts and from kickbacks. They’re all dirty as hell.” He rubbed his hands together, as if he were smelling hot-and-sour soup on the stove.
“Tan secretly has been gambling with—and losing—official army funds. The Aussies figure he’s a million dollars in the hole. Beijing finds out, they’ll stand him against a wall and shoot him.”
“How do they know how much he’s lost?” said Westfall.
“ASIS is a small service, but aggressive. They have ears in all the casinos. Gaming in Macao is bigger than in Vegas, and they have it covered. They say Tan is scared to death and desperate, and they want us to bankroll the pitch. We give the general the cash to replenish his cash box, and he starts reporting to us on the PLARF.”
“And we share the take,” said Nate. “That’s a lot of money; he worth it?”
“We’d pay twice that. The Chinese say an ding zi, to push a nail, to recruit a source inside their rocket forces. Real strategic intel.”
“Will he go for it?” said Nate. Holder nodded.
“It’s start spying or get the chop. But there’s a problem. ASIS says the general is a real chicom, a diehard, a true believer. He won’t accept if the pitch comes from the West, especially the United States. It’s complicated, all wrapped up in miàn zi, loss of face, reputation, shame.”
“Seems like he’s not in a position to be picky,” said Westfall.
“You’d think so, but I’ve seen them walk away over saving face, even if it means they go to prison later,” said Holder. “Lost a few good recruitments myself by trying to muscle them, believe me.”
“So how do we sugarcoat it?” said Nate.
Holder pointed at him. “That’s where you come in. Benford volunteered you,” he said. So Benford already had me scoped for the job while he talked about redemption, thought Nate. He smiled to himself.
“We ran traces based on ASIS info,” said Holder. “General Tan was a military attaché in Moscow in the nineties,” said Holder. “He speaks some Russian and likes Russians—there’s a faction in the PLA that still buys into the Sino-Russian friendship bullshit, and he’s one of them.”
“What am I hearing?” said Nate. “A false flag?”
“That’s right,” said Holder. “You pitch Tan in Macao as a friendly SVR officer offering to discreetly help out an ally in exchange for PLARF secrets. The Aussies don’t have a fluent Russian speaker who could pull this off. Benford tells me you speak like a native.” Nate flashed back to when he had played a Russian reports officer with Dominika—it had been her idea—with an Iranian scientist in Vienna. A million years ago.
“I speak it pretty well,” said Nate.
“You gotta speak it better than pretty fucking well,” said Holder. “General Tan smells CIA and he’s out the window. MSS calls it dǎ cǎo jīng shé, beating the grass and startling the snake, telegraphing your intent. We want to avoid that.”
“I’ll try my best,” said Nate. “Is ASIS cool with me making the pitch?”
“COS floated the idea to ASIS of using you as a Russian and they liked it,” said Holder, smiling. “We hide the Western hand, Tan saves face, and we bag a sensitive source inside the PLARF. Epic once-in-a-decade recruitment.” He loves this Wilderness-of-Mirrors shit as much as Benford, thought Nate.
“There’s the small matter of pitching a Chinese lieutenant general in Chinese-controlled Macao,” said Westfall, the innately practical analyst in him showing.
“The Aussies have an access agent in the casino who’s been buttering the general,” said Holder. “They can get him to a quiet restaurant on the beach, out of town. It’s not that tight, operationally. Macao is nothing but casinos, a Special Administrative Region under the control of the Guangzhou MSS, and they thumb their nose at Beijing. They don’t do anything too squirrely to upset the tourist industry—they all make money on the side.”
“As long as they’re not watching the general already, we probably can swing it,” said Nate. “If he says yes, how do we handle him?”
“Just get him into harness and we’ll do the rest,” said Holder, obliquely, which suggested to Nash that Holder already had inside handlers in Beijing. They didn’t have a need to know. “An ASIS case officer in Hong Kong will watch your fanny.” Westfall stirred in his seat.
“I know I’m new to this and all, but I have a question,” Westfall said. “Nash would be on temporary duty in Hong Kong. There’s no diplomatic immunity for TDY personnel if there’s a flap, is there?” Nate winced slightly. Westfall didn’t know better.
“Nothing’s per
fect,” said Holder. “This is too big not to try.” Westfall blinked at him. Holder pointed to a framed scroll with Chinese characters on the wall behind him.
“Know what that says? ‘If I offend you, I’ll help you pack.’ Old Confucian proverb.”
* * *
* * *
Eighty-four hundred kilometers east from Elwood Holder’s Headquarters office, Gelendzhik Airport in Russia’s Krasnodar Southern Federal District was bounded on the west by a low range of tree-covered maritime mountains, and on the east by the broad horseshoe-shaped Gelendzhilskaya Bay, which emptied out into the Black Sea, a deep-blue sheet of motionless glass this time of year. Dominika was met at the bottom of the stairs of the Sukhoi 100 by a blond courtesy hostess who looked sideways at the stunning dark-haired woman who walked with a barely perceptible limp, and who was dressed in what the hostess identified as the European style. She was going to “the cape”—no one called it Putin’s Palace out loud—which meant she was someone important. But the tailored jacket, the shoes, the expensive sunglasses meant that she was neither from some clunky ministry in Moscow, nor one of the pneumatic “hospitality greeters” brought in for long weekend parties, the majority of whose clothing involved sequins or feathers. In Russia, people who do not fit into familiar categories are usually dangerous and best left alone, so the hostess said nothing as she made sure this unsmiling beauty was securely belted into her plush seat in the AW139 VIP helicopter, closed the door, dogged down the handle, and stood with heels together and waved until the twin engines began a low growl and the rotors began turning, at which point she held on to her pillbox hat and ran.
The helicopter rose, banked sharply, straightened out, and followed the rocky coast for ten minutes before banking sharply again over a wooded peninsula that ended in a crumbling bluff down to the sea. Dominika caught a glimpse of a massive Italianate mansion surrounded by trees and flanked by formal geometric gardens that extended from the main house in all directions. Putin’s Palace. As they descended, she picked out paths through the forest that led to a dozen smaller houses, some of them perched on the edge of the seaside cliff. On land, another hostess with a clipboard—she was short, dark, and dour—rode with Dominika in the backseat of an electric cart behind two bulletheads in black suits.
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