by Alex Ryan
The heavily redacted file on Yu himself was also frustratingly lacking in substance: Peter Yu, age thirty-two, only child born to first-generation Chinese immigrants. Fluent Mandarin. Bachelor’s degree in political science from UVA. Recruited as a senior by the CIA. After graduation, went straight to the Farm, where he finished top half in his class. Then three years spent working at <
Yu’s staffing company had no ties to ViaTech, a fact not lost on Nick. The events in Beijing two months ago had blown Lankford’s cover and had revealed ViaTech to be a CIA front company. But Yu had never worked for ViaTech, so there was no reason to assume that Yu’s cover was compromised. Nonetheless, any possible paper trail connecting Yu to Lankford was something Nick would have to investigate.
After three hours at the office, he turned down a lunch invitation and headed west in his Geely along the South Ring Road West. His Chinese driver’s license gave him considerable freedom but had been hell to acquire. The Chinese didn’t recognize his international driver’s permit, and the only way to get a Chinese license was to endure considerable testing in a system far more bureaucratic than in the States. In the end, it had been easier to get a license in Hong Kong, one of only two licenses valid to convert to a Chinese license, the other, strangely, being a license from Belgium. He was in Hong Kong frequently with W4H, so it had been the path of least resistance.
He imagined his NGO team had been glad he’d cut his impromptu visit short. He’d offered to meet them in the morning to drive up to the Yaojiagouzhen project, and they had all eagerly volunteered to join him. They had not traveled tens of thousands of miles to China to sit in an office, so going into the field—even with the boss—would be a treat. Nick would see what he could find out about Peter Yu today, inspect the water project at Yaojiagouzhen tomorrow, and be back in Beijing by tomorrow night.
He crossed over the ring canal around central Xi’an on Tianshuijing Street and merged left onto the Huoyaoju Alley after circumnavigating the circle. A moment later, he pulled into the lot at Huoyaoju number thirty-two. The dull, nondescript building stood in stark contrast to the colorful buildings on the far side of the park, but Peter Yu’s apartment on the fifth floor would have a great view of both. Nick locked the car and made a great effort not to look around as he crossed the street and buzzed himself into the building with the key card Lankford had provided. He needed to look like he belonged here, in case someone was watching.
He rode the elevator up to five, an operation that again required the key card, and then walked confidently to unit 512 on the west side of the building. With the traditional metal key clipped to the key card, Nick let himself into Yu’s apartment and shut the door behind him.
The apartment screamed “American expat technophile.” The furniture was sleek and modern. To the left, two Eames lounge chairs with matching ottomans—probably Chinese knock-offs—sat facing an enormous LED television. The TV hung over a black modular entertainment center decked out with a Bang & Olufsen stereo, an Xbox gaming system, and a satellite box. To the right, a glass dining table was positioned under a window and flanked by two polished aluminum chairs. Beyond the dining area was a pass-through bar to a contemporary kitchen. He padded into the kitchen and found it to be fastidious, save for some unwashed dishes in the sink. He opened the refrigerator to find what he deemed ordinary fare for a bachelor: leftovers, condiments, beer, and butter. He opened the freezer door: ice cubes, ice cream, a bottle of vodka, and frozen vegetables. He shut the fridge and freezer doors, made his way out of the kitchen, and walked down a short hallway leading to what he presumed was Yu’s bedroom.
The bedroom door was cracked open four inches. He assured himself that the room was unoccupied, but his adrenaline jumped as he approached the threshold. He paused to listen, wishing for a Sig Sauer to clutch in his right hand. Hearing nothing, he eased the door open with his left foot.
The hollow wood door swung easily on new, silent hinges.
He glanced left and right, clearing the corners out of habit, then exhaled with relief.
Directly ahead, an unmade queen-sized bed dominated the bedroom. A cell phone charger cord was draped across the top of a bedside table, with no cell phone in sight. A pile of dirty laundry lay strewn on the floor of the open closet on the left. He peeked inside: trousers, dress shirts, and two suit coats hung from hangers in the otherwise Spartan closet. Finding no wall safe or file cabinet, he turned back to the bedroom. On the facing wall, he spied a stainless-steel Tag Heuer sports chrono resting on top of an IKEA-style dresser. He left the watch untouched and opened each of the drawers in turn, finding nothing but neatly folded clothes. On the right-hand wall, Yu had set up a tiny modern desk and task chair. Nick inspected the desk and opened the lone underhanging drawer: no computer, no USB drives, no notebook, no journal, and no tablet PC.
Shit. There’s nothing of interest here at all.
He exhaled with annoyance.
Only one thing was certain—if Yu had met a violent end, it hadn’t happened here. There was no sign of forced entry and no indication the apartment had been searched. The state of the apartment gave off a life-as-usual vibe. However, that wasn’t necessarily a positive sign either. This was exactly how agents were trained to evacuate their personal spaces when things got nasty. The only detail of interest, in Nick’s opinion, was the conspicuous absence of a computer. Lankford confirmed that Yu had been issued a Company notebook computer, and the prospect of finding the machine had been the primary impetus for Nick entering the apartment. If Yu had known he was compromised or in immediate danger, his first action would have been to scuttle his laptop. The laptop had not been found in Yu’s office, according to Lankford, and Nick found no evidence of one here either. Again—interesting, but alone it meant nothing.
Nick wandered back into the living room and looked around one last time—checking in and behind the entertainment center. He felt himself getting antsy. Time was ticking. If he was being followed by Chinese G-men, then he preferred to be outside if they confronted him. Satisfied there was nothing else here to find, he decided to leave. At the apartment door, he paused and looked over his shoulder one last time to see if anything new caught his eye. It didn’t.
He reached for the doorknob and found it already turning.
A surge of panic washed over him.
Go into character, he told himself. You’re an American expat catching up with a friend from back home. No laws against that.
Instead of retreating, he grabbed the knob and swung the door open.
A young, diminutive Asian woman looked up at him. She gasped and backpedaled, dropping a silver key on the tile floor of the hall.
“Who the hell are you?” Nick demanded in English, hoping to keep the woman off balance. “And where is Peter?”
The girl tried to speak, but all she managed was a soft clucking noise. She swallowed hard and then tried again. “I am Lihau,” she said, this time in perfect English with a slight Irish lilt. “Peter’s girlfriend. Who the hell are you?”
CHAPTER 6
Suantang Dumplings Beef Noodles Restaurant
Two blocks from Peter Yu’s apartment
Xi’an, China
1715 hours local
The girl who called herself Lihau was trying not to look worried as she sipped her tea.
Nick fought the urge to pity her. Nothing was ever what it seemed in the world of espionage—Lihau’s concern for Peter Yu seemed genuine enough, but Nick didn’t trust his instincts today. When he was deployed in Afghanistan, he’d gotten pretty good at reading the Pashtun. He’d learned how to detect when they were bullshitting him a
nd when they weren’t. But parsing the tells and decoding fictions employed by tribal Afghanis in no way qualified him to suss the truth from a woman who could be a Chinese agent trained by the Ministry of State Security. He reminded himself of the facts: Lihau had found him inside Yu’s apartment; she’d had a key; she spoke fluent English; and her arrival had coincided almost perfectly with his. Taken together, the odds were better than average that Lihau was a spy. Unfortunately, ascertaining that for certain was something he simply did not consider himself qualified to do.
Of course, that wouldn’t stop him from trying.
“So when did you last see Peter?” Nick asked, deciding it best if he controlled the conversation.
“It’s been four days since I’ve heard from him,” she said.
“Is that unusual? I mean, do the two of you talk regularly?”
“Peter travels often for business. Sometimes we go a couple days without talking, but we always text. He hasn’t responded to any of my text messages.”
“Are you worried?”
“Yes,” she said and sipped her tea. She glanced at him over the rim of her cup. “Why do you have a key to Peter’s apartment?”
If he hadn’t had time to prepare for the question, she might have caught him off guard.
“Usually, I don’t,” he answered. “But when I told him I was coming to town, he offered to let me stay at his place. He left a key with the building manager for me.”
“Funny, he didn’t mention you were coming,” she said, eying him.
“And he didn’t mention to me that you two lived together.”
“We don’t,” she said with a defensive edge and glanced away.
Hmmm . . . if she’s an agent, she’s either been working Yu and has lost him, or she’s already gotten her man, and now she’s tying up loose ends.
“Your English is excellent, if you don’t mind me saying,” he said, probing. “Where did you learn?”
“I studied English in primary school, of course, but I became fluent during my graduate studies abroad in Dublin.”
Nick nodded, confirming his earlier suspicion about the hint of an Irish accent. “What did you study in Ireland?”
“Molecular biology.”
“Oh, so you must work with viruses and bacteria?” he asked, silently praying he wasn’t stumbling into another bioweapon case.
“Yes and no. My particular area of expertise is CRISPR,” she said absently, looking out the window.
“What’s a crisper?”
She chuckled. “CRISPR is an acronym. It stands for Clustered Regular Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, which are segments of prokaryotic DNA that convey adaptive immunity in bacteria and archaea. But when someone says they work with CRISPR, what they really mean is that they are using CRISPR Cas9 proteins for genome engineering. Even though CRISPR Cas9 was discovered in bacteria, it can be utilized to edit genes in eukaryotes.”
Nick had absolutely no freaking idea what she was talking about, but he committed her last sentence to memory for later. “Sounds interesting,” he said.
“It is,” she said.
He waited for her to elaborate, and when she didn’t, he shifted gears. “So how did you meet Peter?” he added with a grin, trying to sound more familiar.
“We met at my work,” she said, her face lighting up. “Well, sort of. We met at a coffee shop just outside my company’s offices here in Xi’an. He had just tried—unsuccessfully—to get a meeting with the human resources people. His company does IT staffing.” She looked at Nick again as if to see if he knew that.
“Yeah, so I heard,” he said. “Peter has done quite well for himself since he left George Washington University.”
“Yes.” She looked at her teacup and then smiled at some fond memory. “Anyway, that was a couple of months ago.” She blushed. “Things went very quickly with us.”
Nick smiled at her. “Did Peter ever get a staffing contract with your company—what was the name?”
“Nèiyè Biologic. And no, he did not. He used to complain all the time about it, but now he says it doesn’t matter because fate had other reasons for bringing us together. He said if his meeting with HR had gone better, we might never have met.”
“I’m sure he meant it, Lihau. He was never slick enough to make something like that up.”
“Thank you,” she said, smiling warmly at him. Then, with a pent-up urgency that surprised him, she reached out and grabbed his wrist. “Do you think something terrible has happened to him? It is not like Peter to ignore my text messages and voicemails.”
Either this girl is in love with Peter Yu, or she’s the best damn liar I’ve ever met.
“I think he’s fine,” Nick said, again resisting the urge to emotionally invest in her. He had to assume she was working him—just as he was working her. “I’m sure he got called away on business and hasn’t been able to reach you because he’s been traveling.”
“Perhaps,” she said and pulled her hand away. “But since he knew you were coming to visit, you’d think he’d have at least tried to call you.”
A very good point.
“Maybe he tried and couldn’t get me? I’m not sure, Lihau. I’ll tell you what—I know you’re worried—how about I get in touch with Peter’s boss? If Peter’s traveling on business, then I’m sure his boss would probably know something.”
“You know Peter’s boss?” she said, confused.
“Yeah, of course,” Nick said with a laugh. “How do you think Peter got this job in the first place?”
She nodded and chuckled politely. “Okay.”
“Okay, what?”
“Can you call him now? Peter’s boss . . .”
“Uh, sure.”
Shit. Now what?
Nick thumbed the volume control down on his phone as he dialed Lankford’s number. After a few rings, the CIA man picked up.
“So what the hell is going on in Xi’an, Nick?” Lankford demanded. “And why are you calling me on your personal phone? Did you find him?”
Nick looked at Lihau and smiled.
“I got his voicemail,” he said, loudly so that Lankford would hear, get the idea, and shut up. “I’ll leave a message.” He waited a moment, pretending to wait for the beep, and then spoke into the phone again: “Hi, Mr. Lankford, it’s Nick, Peter Yu’s friend. I’m in Xi’an, and Peter is not in his apartment and won’t answer his phone. I’m here with his girlfriend, Lihau, and she is worried about him because she can’t reach him either. Can you call me back when you get this and let me know if, perhaps, he is traveling on business? We’re both worried. I’ll wait for your call. Again, it’s Nick Foley, Peter’s friend. Thanks. Bye.”
Nick clicked his phone off.
“I’m sure he’ll call me when he gets the message.”
“I hope so,” Lihau said.
A wave of paranoia suddenly washed over him. He’d fucked up and used Lankford’s name. Lihau hadn’t flinched, but that didn’t matter. He’d voluntarily linked both himself and Yu to Lankford. But Lankford’s cover was blown, so now he was blown. If Lihau was a spy, he had just become a loose end she would need to tidy up.
He did not want to be a loose end.
He pulled out enough renminbi to cover the tab and tossed the loose bills onto the table.
“I’m sorry, I have to go,” he said, standing. “If you give me your mobile number, I’ll call or text you the moment I hear anything from Peter.”
She looked taken aback at his abrupt exit, but she quickly collected herself. “Thank you,” she said, and then she jotted a phone number down on a scrap of napkin and slid it over to him.
“No problem.” He slipped the number into his left pants pocket. “Nice to have met you, Lihau.”
“You too, Nick.”
He turned and walked out of the café, very much feeling her eyes on his back as he headed out the door. He crossed the street and turned right, striding hard and straight toward the lot where he’d parked his rental car a coupl
e of blocks away.
“I’m an idiot,” he muttered under his breath. “Dropping Lankford’s name like some goddamn rookie.”
The interaction with Lihau had been necessary, and he’d handled himself like a pro until the very end. His gut told him that Lihau really was Yu’s girlfriend, but he didn’t dare take any chances. The longer he stayed in town, the more risk he assumed. Realistically, he’d probably discovered everything worth discovering in Xi’an pertaining to Peter Yu’s disappearance. He quickly cataloged his findings: one, Peter Yu wasn’t dead in his apartment; two, he supposedly had a Chinese national girlfriend named Lihau who worked for a biotech company called Nèiyè Biologic—the same company that Yu’s files indicated the agent had an interest in, not coincidentally, he was sure; and three, his computer was missing. He’d have Lankford look into Nèiyè Biologic and Lihau. Yu wasn’t deep undercover in some NOC—nonofficial cover—so in his “routine monitoring and surveillance” role, as Lankford had put it, dating a cute girl like Lihau was probably okay. Hell, it probably helped solidify Yu’s cover with . . .
Something felt wrong.
Nick glanced to his left.
He spied a sleek, black Mercedes two-door coupe with dark windows parked first in a row of cars directly across the street from the lot where his Geely was waiting. Something about this particular car set his “spidey sense” tingling. Was he being paranoid? Hell, there were Mercedes everywhere in the financial district of Beijing, and from what he could tell, Xi’an was no different. German luxury imports were a prominent status symbol among China’s nouveau riche. Nick squinted, trying to see if the car was occupied, but he couldn’t make out anything inside the dark cabin.
From his current position, he’d have to turn his back on the Mercedes to cross the vacant lot to his car. Get a grip, dude, that’s just some hotshot banker’s ride parked in the pole position.