“Just goes to show you how well these people are organized, doesn’t it, Doctor,” Hingham said, with a triumphant sneer. He’d come up behind them and overheard what Allender had been saying. “Think about it: In our own capital city, they can go anywhere and do anything. Can you imagine an American team doing that in Beijing? That’s what I’ve been talking about all along: China. A billion of them. China is invincible. America is in decline. There can only be one end to all this. Now, enough chitchat. Chiang, if you please?”
Chiang stepped forward and motioned for his two teams to surround their captives. Hingham stepped out of the way, as if to supervise. The leader of one of the teams drew Chiang aside to tell him something, and Allender saw the general’s face darken. He swung around and stared hard at Allender and Melanie.
“Perhaps we should just end this little drama right here and now,” he growled in Mandarin.
Wait a minute, Allender thought. That’s not Chiang. That voice is all wrong.
At that moment, the station reverberated with the ding-dong sound of the “doors opening” chime on that dark train. All the lights in the station flared to life, as well as the lights in the cars of the train, revealing about a hundred SWAT officers in full gear, who poured out of the cars and filled the platform without a word being spoken. The Chinese snatch teams grabbed their weapons but then looked to Chiang, who sighed and then gave a barely noticeable shake of his head. Their hands fell back to their sides.
Hingham’s eyes, however, were out on stalks at the sight of the police. A police captain materialized in front of Allender and Melanie. He asked them both to come with him. He took them back on board the first car of the train, which was when Allender realized there was a Metro driver in the front compartment. The captain motioned for them to take seats and then waved toward the front of the train. The doors closed, and then the train’s motors hummed to life and the cars accelerated into the tunnel. Allender’s last glimpse of Metro Center was a scrum of black helmets, NVG goggles, and batons. Hingham, Chiang, and his helpers were somewhere in the middle, but no longer visible.
The train rushed through the tunnel and right through the next station without stopping. Allender was reassured to see people in that station doing what he’d expected the night shift to be doing. The next stop was Dupont Circle. The train slid to a stop, the chimes sounded, and the doors opened. The captain motioned for them to debark, and then he escorted them up the escalator and all the way to Allender’s town house. When they got there they met some of the same Secret Service people who’d been there before they’d made their run standing at the front door. Some of them had uncomfortable expressions on their faces as Allender walked by them. Melanie’s glare might have had a bearing on that.
The captain did the handover, said good night, and left. They went inside, where they were met by a supervisory Secret Service agent.
“Doctor Allender?” the supervisor said when he spotted them. “Mister Wallace is inbound in about ten minutes. He wanted to make sure you were physically and safely back here.”
“Physically, yes. Safely? I’m not sure. You guys going to hang around this time?” Allender asked.
The agent nodded. He started to explain, but Allender waved him off. If Wallace was coming, they’d find out what the hell had been going on. He told the agent they’d be in his study.
* * *
“I need a drink or six,” Allender said. “And then I want some goddamned answers.”
“Heard that,” Melanie said, dropping into a chair. “Should we rearm ourselves, in case Mister Wallace is not forthcoming?”
“To do what? Shoot it out with the Secret Service?”
“No, to kneecap Wallace into telling us what this is all about in case he gets all coy on us.”
He shook his head, went to the decanter tray, and poured two substantial Scotches. He thought about putting his glasses back on but then said to hell with it. He handed his bloodthirsty companion her Scotch and then took a solid draft of the smoky whiskey and sat down.
“You do think we’re going to get an explanation?” Melanie asked.
“I hope so,” he said. “Although technically, you’re his employee and I’m just a temp. He could cite national security, thank us for our deep interest in national defense, fire me and maybe even you.”
“Lovely,” she said. “Now I do want a weapon.”
“You were pretty impressive tonight. I keep forgetting you’re a real operative.”
“We’re trained above all else never to get captured,” she said. “As soon as their leader turned his back on us I knew I could take them. I wasn’t prepared for what happened after they fell onto the tracks, though.”
Allender nodded. He thought he could still smell the aftermath on his clothes.
“Seeing Chiang was a shock, too,” Melanie said.
“I’m wondering if that was Chiang,” Allender replied. “There was something—”
They heard noises at the front as a Secret Service agent admitted Henry Wallace, accompanied by none other than Carson McGill, into the house and pointed them toward the tower study. Allender put his glasses back on.
“Got any more of that?” Wallace asked, eyeing Allender’s Scotch.
“Only if you’re going to tell all,” Allender said, getting up to retrieve some more glasses. “Why isn’t he in custody?”
“Preston, my dear fellow,” McGill began. “Good to see you, too. There’s much you don’t know yet.”
“Glad to hear the ‘yet,’” Melanie snapped. She looked ready to attack McGill.
“Then it’s showtime,” Allender announced. He looked meaningfully at McGill, but apparently it was Wallace who was going to tell the tale.
“This all started when someone told us that Maxine Greer had a Chinese girlfriend,” Wallace began. “The girlfriend part wasn’t the surprise. The Chinese part was, because the ‘someone’ recognized her as being a member of the MSS stationed at the embassy here in Washington.”
“Who was the someone?” Allender asked.
“The Agency guy assigned as liaison between Greer’s office and Langley,” Wallace said. “The one who got ‘sent home,’ for being little more than just a spy for the Agency, as Maxine put it? Which was, of course, his exact job description. Thing was, he’d been on the black-swan operation, where he’d been briefed on all the faces we could expect to show up as General Chiang’s security detail at the hotel that night.”
“‘We’? I thought you’d been cut out of that entire operation.”
Wallace sighed. “As if,” he said. “Carson here is fully capable of going behind my back, of course, but he most definitely did not cut me out of that particular op. And that’s because Chiang wasn’t the real target that night. Now, here’s your chance to impress me: Can either of you guess who was?”
Allender thought hard. He’d been asked to come up with something that would irreparably damage the MSS network here in Washington. Chiang’s loose zipper had provided the perfect opportunity. So, if he hadn’t been the target, then who?
“I think I can,” Melanie said, surprising him. Wallace raised his eyebrows at her.
“The real target was Hingham,” she said. “And tonight, you achieved your objective, didn’t you?”
Wallace looked over at McGill as if he’d just won an interesting side bet. “Very good, Ms. Sloan,” he said. “Can you connect the dots?”
She shook her head. “Above my pay grade,” she said. “Besides, I want to hear your version.”
“Good thinking, Ms. Sloan,” Wallace said, looking over at Allender. “Then I shall continue. The problem was indeed Chinese in nature, which is why we needed to construct something of a Chinese box in order to get our arms around it. Carson?”
McGill leaned forward. “Your involvement resumed when I called you that day to bring you back on active duty. Remember?”
“Yes. You said that Hank here was dead, under mysterious circumstances.”
“And wha
t else?”
“That your real problem was that he had been running a swan, but you didn’t know who the swan was.”
“Exactly so,” McGill said.
“And none of that was true?”
“Not exactly.”
“Let me give you some background, Doctor,” Wallace said. “You were in the training department, and you were most valuable in the matter of current assessment of our training staff, as well as in the fine arts of interrogation. What was your sense as to what the Agency spent most of its efforts and energy on?”
“The war on terrorism,” Allender replied. “The defeat of intelligence efforts mounted against the United States. A resurgent Soviet Russia. The development of global espionage networks of our own. I suppose those are the main lines of effort.”
“Yes, all correct,” Wallace said. “Those are the efforts that occupy the headlines and most of our day-to-day work and budget. But there’s also a long-range, not-so-well-known mission, and that involves China.”
“Our director’s favorite country,” Melanie offered.
“I don’t know about favorite, but it certainly is his major preoccupation. As he is fond of saying, ad nauseam, China’s triumph on the world scene is inevitable.”
“We heard some of that tonight.”
“So I’m told. He has a point. China does pose a special threat to America, and for one main reason: They are here, and in great and growing numbers. In our universities. In our labs. In our high schools. In our dot-com tech world, our hospitals. I’m not saying every Chinese person you see is a spy for China, but: China remains a harsh Communist dictatorship. If the MSS contacts a postdoc scientist working at JPL and asks him for some information, they’ll begin with the news that his mother and father back in Beijing are currently in good health and there’s every hope they’ll stay that way.”
“Subtle.”
“Isn’t it. But the point is that they’ll never have to invade the US of A; they’re already here and, in terms of scientific and technical progress, we’re probably dependent on them.”
“So what’s this long-range mission?” Allender asked.
Wallace hesitated. “Yes, that is the question, isn’t it. Carson here and I disagree somewhat on the answer.”
“Hank wants to interdict totally the theft of America’s premium intellectual property by the Chinese,” McGill said. “I want to attenuate it, because in my heart of hearts, and as much as it pisses me off, I think the director’s thesis is correct. We’ll never stop them entirely, and eventually, they will rule the world. I think the mission is to slow that prospect down.”
“You’re saying that Hingham was actively helping them?” Allender asked.
“‘Actively’ is the key word. He was in the sense that he strangled that part of the budget used to deal with Chinese espionage. Was he giving them secrets? No. Was he in contact with the MSS? Yes, but not at secret drop boxes around the city. It was more like a discreet lunch with the counselor at the Chinese embassy. Where they’d play chess and discuss history and the long-range trends in human enterprise. All very intellectual and academic.”
“But not actionable?” Melanie asked.
“Precisely,” McGill said. “Good choice of words. Not like catching him handing over state papers. Hence the second swan.”
“Wait a minute,” Allender said. “Are you saying that the black swan was not an operation in its own right? That it was an opening phase of a larger op?”
Wallace nodded. “You were told that your objective was to crash the MSS infrastructure here in town by taking down Chiang Liang-fu in a highly public and embarrassing manner. Which it did. A welcome bonus, but not the main event, as you were led to believe.”
Allender looked at Melanie. “Yes,” he said. “We both believed that. So Chiang was, what? Just a precursor? You’re saying that Hingham was the objective?”
“You will recall that his reaction to the Chiang affair was to—?”
“Exile me into early retirement, among other things.”
“Exactly.”
“So why didn’t he fire you two as well?”
“Believe me, the thought crossed his mind and some shots crossed our bows,” McGill said, with a wry grin. “But I convinced him that the Chiang business was a necessary slap in the face, that we had to demonstrate from time to time that we could if we wanted to. A matter of maintaining respect. They’d call it face. He probably considered the trade-offs, and then let us get away with it, mostly to protect Rebecca Lansing.”
Allender looked at the two bureaucrats sitting there like a pair of satisfied cats, trying not to look quite so pleased with themselves. “And Rebecca, or Mei Ling, was his controller?” he asked.
“‘Controller’ imputes active espionage,” Wallace said. “She was his back channel to the MSS in the sense that she encouraged his crusade to acknowledge China’s ultimate superiority to America. Throw in some artful adulation and maybe even some social privileges, and she could keep Hingham on track. She was exceptionally competent, and, unfortunately, an unplanned-for surprise.”
“Talk about penetration,” Melanie said.
“It was all about China,” Wallace said. “I agree. We should have known. By the way, she was the second dragon-seed agent the MSS has managed to get into the Agency.”
“Doctor Allender mentioned dragon seed down at the Farm,” Melanie said. “Is that for real?”
“The MSS have a list of countries throughout the world where they want to achieve agents in place of the same ethnicity of the ruling majority of the population. In other words, a native Japanese for Japan, an Arab for Saudi Arabia, a Persian for Iran, or an American Caucasian for the US. They obtain a baby of the required ethnicity, usually from secretly vetted parents in order to enhance their chances of getting a smart child.”
“Obtain?”
“Kidnap, usually,” McGill said. “Or they buy them. The Chinese have long been in the baby buying and selling business. Then they raise that child entirely within the Chinese version of the nomenklatura in Soviet Russia. Is there a Chinese term for that, Preston?”
“It’s the zhiwu mingcheng biao system,” Allender said. “The gold-plated political layer in the Communist Party. In ancient times, we’d have called them Mandarins.”
“Precisely,” Wallace said. “They get sent to special schools and are indoctrinated from infancy through adulthood in the philosophy, morals, and lofty goals of the Chinese Communist Party. They make some of them into intelligence officers, teaching them a specific second language from the age of two right through their operational training. They get sent to the appropriate embassies, purportedly as family members of embassy staff, to become culturally colloquial. By the time they’re in their early twenties, their legends are impenetrable. Consider Lansing’s case. She was a graduate of Columbia University and NYU Law, and could speak English with a New York City accent.”
“She told us her mother won the lottery,” Melanie said.
“Her ‘mother’ was the MSS, doing what the Chinese do best.”
“Taking that very long view,” Allender mused.
“They have the people, and they have the time, don’t they,” McGill said. “Her assignment was to get hired by the Agency and then work her way into the director’s office, which she did. It didn’t hurt that she and Hingham shared the same worldview, although I doubt he initially knew she was MSS. Certainly neither Hank nor I ever suspected. She was one of those best-and-brightest officers, attractive, whip smart, and eagerly intellectual, just the type to appeal to a snob like Hingham. And being female, she helped with the gender-equality initiative.”
“How did you get on to her?” Allender asked, before Melanie could pounce on that comment about gender equality.
“When she killed General Chiang’s son,” Wallace said. “We knew, of course, that Hingham had sent her to the Bureau, and that she would be your POC once we folded you into the op. We did not know that Chiang’s son was in the c
ountry, or that he was planning to kill you in revenge for what happened to his father.”
“And?”
“And, if we didn’t know that, how did she know that? When we couldn’t answer that question, we started pulling scabs until we figured it out.”
“It had to be through Yang Yi,” Allender said.
“Yes. But her meeting with Yang Yi was not for a warning—it was for instructions, as best we can tell. As in, Don’t let Chiang the younger do a revenge murder on a CIA officer while we’re still spinning silk over Hingham’s dewy eyes.”
“But nothing happened to his father,” Melanie pointed out. “We saw him, tonight, alive and well.”
“Actually,” Wallace said, “you saw his older brother, Chiang Ho-liu. He took over the Chiang faction once his brother was executed. He apparently made the case to Yang Yi and the Central Committee that he ought to go to Washington to put the MSS network back together. General Chiang’s immediate family was flattened, of course, but many of their operational people already in place here in D.C. were still here and partisans of the Chiang faction, so that kinda made sense. The quickest way to recover from the disaster in the hotel, so to speak. His arrival in Washington was the defining moment, because he knew, of course, that the MSS had an agent in place in Hingham’s office.”
“That would be some amazing leverage,” Allender said.
“Yes, indeed,” McGill said. “He called a meeting with Hingham in a restaurant in Old Town Alexandria. Because of our suspicions about Lansing, we were by then up on Hingham and, wherever he went, there we were. He never suspected because he never went anywhere without minders. They made a deal, to which we listened: Hingham agreed not to obstruct the reconstitution of the MSS network in Washington in return for Chiang’s silence on the delicate matter of Rebecca Lansing. All part of the inevitable victory of China over the decaying Western countries, a notion for which Hingham was already an apostle. We then had Chiang, the brother, picked up, discreetly, of course, and we made an even better offer: We would allow Chiang to reconstitute his operation in Washington in return for his facilitating our takedown of Hingham.”
Red Swan Page 26