The Bonaparte Secret

by Gregg Loomis

  Specifically, Lang thought, it is a DetectEar, available for just under five hundred bucks plus shipping and handling from any spyware order-by-mail warehouse. With a collapsible twenty-inch dish and only three triple-A batteries, it can pick up voices three hundred yards away. A glance told Lang it had obviously been modified in some manner to pick up the vibrations of conversations inside, the modification that had caused the humming sound on the phone.

  That there was a market for such things was not a favorable comment on contemporary American society.

  He said nothing.

  “Looks like some kind of spy-movie stuff” came from a group of curious residents who had gathered.

  “Someone was snooping!” Hopkins’s tone indicated national security might rest in the privacy of Ansley residences.

  Shrugging, the policeman put it in the cruiser and pulled a sheet of paper from the glove box, holding it up to the light. “Car was rented a week ago by a James Wang of Doraville.”

  Doraville was an Atlanta suburb popular with Vietnam immigrants, Koreans and Chinese, so popular that the local city council had required all business signs to be in English in addition to their proprietors’ native alphabets so fire and police could find them in an emergency.

  “That should make it easy to check out,” Hopkins volunteered. “How stupid can you get?”

  If Lang was going to bet, he’d put his money on the fact Mr. James Wang of Doraville was in for a very unpleasant surprise. Either his identification or rental car or both had been stolen. Again, he said nothing.

  Twenty minutes later, Lang garaged the Porsche and walked into the kitchen, where Gurt was bent over, opening an oven that emitted a delicious aroma of freshly baked bread. Manfred was seated at the kitchen table, moving a pair of toy trucks around with appropriate sound effects. Grumps, ever the optimist, was attentively watching Gurt in hopes of a stray scrap or dropped morsel. He gave Lang the briefest of glances before returning his attention to the stove.

  “Whatever happened to the tail-wagging welcome?” Lang asked rhetorically before giving Gurt’s rear an affectionate pat, much to Manfred’s amusement.

  “Vati schlug Mommy’s ass,” he chortled.

  “It appears our son is learning more in school than we might wish,” Lang observed, lifting the little boy by the arms and swinging him in a circle.

  Gurt straightened up, a pan in her hands, and gave Lang an appraising look. “You have been to the boxing ring instead of the office?”

  Following her gaze, Lang noticed for the first time that one of the seams of his jacket was ripped and his knee gaped from a hole in his trousers.

  “I met someone on the way home,” he said pointedly, setting Manfred down. “We can talk about it later.”

  Gurt set the pan on the table. No doubt about it, it was home-baked bread. She gently slapped Lang’s hand as he reached to break off a piece. “And you can let it cool. Your friend Miles called. He said he’d call back at ten o’clock our time.”

  Lang reached to his belt and removed the weapon he had taken from the listener, laying it on the kitchen counter. He was not surprised to see that it was another knock-off Tokarev.

  Gurt’s eyebrows arched. “Perhaps the person you met was Chinese?”

  “Too dark to tell, but that’d be my guess. Oh yeah, I got this, too.”

  He dropped the wallet beside the pistol. By this time Manfred’s attention had returned to the trucks.

  Gurt picked it up, flipping it open. “James Wang? He was the person you met?”

  Lang took it from her hand and started pulling out credit cards. “I doubt it, but I intend to find out. What’s for dinner, er, Abendessen,” he said, remembering to speak German in front of Manfred. Except when the subject matter was one he preferred his son not understand.

  “Schweinefleisch mit Apfel.”

  Pork with apples.

  With Manfred now in prekindergarten, Gurt spent her new leisure time preparing native German dishes contributing to both Lang’s delight and his potentially expanding waistline. He put in extra time at the driving club’s gym to remove the extra five pounds. Observing her domesticity in the kitchen amused him: the world’s only gourmet cook who had repeatedly won the Agency’s marksmanship trophy.

  She rapped his knuckles with a spoon as he attempted to lift the lid of one of several pots on the stovetop. “It will be ready by the time you have a drink and watch the news,” she said in German, “unless you continue to get in the way.”

  Evicted from the kitchen, Lang wandered into the library/den and opened the doors of a walnut buffet de corps to reveal a sound system and TV screen. Punching the remote, he moved to the bar and poured a liberal dose of scotch into a glass as the newscaster interviewed an official with the water department. In the third year of a drought, the city had imposed strict limits on watering lawns, washing cars or filling swimming pools. The decline in water usage had, predictably, resulted in lower water bills. The water department’s solution to declining revenue was to raise rates.

  Government’s principal function: extorting money from the governed.

  Lang was tempted to add more scotch.

  Or turn off the news.

  22:01

  Manfred long asleep, Lang and Gurt were propped up in bed themselves, engrossed in separate books.

  When the phone rang, Lang looked at the clock on the bedside table before picking it up. “Hi Miles. I was beginning to worry.”

  There was the usual split-second delay of multiple relays. “Sorry. You have any idea what time it is where I am?”

  Lang flicked his eyes to the bedroom windows, making certain the sound shields were in place. “Of course not. I have no idea where you are. What did you find out?”

  “You sure this line is secure?”

  “Reasonably certain. Why?”

  “You’ve been keeping some pretty questionable company. The guy you wanted ID’ed goes by a number of names, Wang Jianfei being most likely his real one.”

  “I’m not planning on Googling him.”

  “Wouldn’t do you a lot of good. I doubt he’s on Facebook, either.”

  “OK, Miles, what did you find out other than a possible name?”

  “Nasty character. Works for the Guoanbu.”

  “The Chinese state-security people? Last time I looked, their spooks were busy ferreting out dissenters and other troublemakers in their own country to send to the Chinese equivalent of the gulags. Why would they go extraterritorial?”

  “We’d like to know that, too. In fact, it’s part of a puzzle we’re working on right now.”

  “Care to tell me about it?”

  “Not on a line I’m not one hundred percent sure is secure. Tell you what, though: I’ll be in Atlanta day after tomorrow and I’ll buy lunch.”

  “Great! Let me give you my office address.”

  A dry chuckle. “We’re an intelligence agency, remember? I already have it.”

  The line went dead.

  Gurt lowered her book. “Chinese state security?”

  “Miles thinks the guy who broke in here works for them.”

  Gurt turned toward him, an elbow propping up her head. “But why . . . ?”

  “Same question I asked Miles.”

  “He is coming here, Miles?”

  “So he says.”

  Gurt was staring into space. “Strange. He never came back to the States the whole time I knew him. We used to tease him that he wouldn’t come back to this country because he’s knocked some woman down, made her pregnant.”

  “Knock up, not down.”

  “But you knock someone down, not up.”

  “Too bad Miles didn’t know the difference.”

  “To come here maybe he wants something.”

  “Perhaps. But what?”

  The question might have been answered had Lang and Gurt been privy to the phone call Miles made after hanging up.

  “Ted? It’s me, Miles.”

  “Hello Miles.
In case I forgot to thank you, that was great paella in San Juan last week. What’s up? But remember this isn’t a secure line.”

  “Glad you liked the paella. Nice thing about San Juan is there’s plenty of it, and Puerto Rico is geographically desirable for keeping an eye on the Caribbean. Speaking of which, you recall I spoke of a fishing trip?”

  Ted had to think a moment to recall the remark. “ ‘Fishing around’ for a new asset, I believe is how you put it.”

  “Well, I think I have a nibble.”

  Law offices of Langford Reilly

  11:52 two days later

  Miles had changed little in the years since Lang last saw him, his wardrobe not at all. He could have stepped out of GQ. Silk foulard peeping out the breast pocket of a tailored double-breasted blazer with brass buttons bearing the seal of Princeton University, glen plaid gray wool slacks that just caressed loafers that, if you happened to be some sort of lizard, were literally to die for. A red silk tie nestled on a pinpoint oxford shirt. His hair, cut fashionably long, was parted along a streak of premature silver.

  Hands clasped behind his back, he was studying the view from the floor-to-ceiling window behind Lang’s desk. Seasonal winter weather had returned. Ragged patches of dirty gray clouds smeared the window with moisture. The mist parted occasionally to allow sights of the street twenty stories below. Pedestrians concealed by umbrellas scurried back and forth to get out of the bone-chilling drizzle that lasted days at a time, uninterrupted by sunlight. Lang had to make an effort not to let the monotonous damp and chill become depressing.

  “Weather’s the same, but not quite the view of the Frankfurt Bahnhof,” Miles ventured.

  “Thankfully.”

  Miles turned to appraise the office’s appointments: eighteenth-century mahogany partners desk with fruitwood inlay. An elaborately carved hunt table behind it served as a credenza. A pair of leather wingback chairs with the distinctive carved-claw feet of Irish Chippendale were on either side of a small Boulle commode. To the right of the desk, a Georgian breakfront showed leather-bound books through wavy, handblown glass at least two and a half centuries old. The muted reds and blues of a Kerman rug floated on the polished wood parquet floor.

  Hands still behind his back, Miles moved to study a landscape on the wall facing the desk. “Reynolds?”

  Lang smiled. “Good guess. School of.”

  Miles waved a hand, including the entire office. “No more government issue for you! I’ve seen lesser antiques in museums. Any chance your clients have a clue what they’re looking at?”

  “Probably not, but they know they’re not in the public defender’s office.”

  “Ah, well, wasn’t it Shelley or Keats who observed, ‘beauty is truth, truth beauty’?”

  “Keats, in ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn.’ Your Ivy League education is showing.”

  “Never could keep those guys straight.” Miles helped himself to a seat in one of the wing chairs. “Well, the point is, you have these things here because you enjoy them.”

  “I have these things here because I charge outrageous fees.”

  Miles thought about that for a moment. “Nice to make money without risking your neck.”

  Lang grinned. “Miles, you’re still with the Agency because that’s what you want to do. Which includes why you’re here today.”

  “Touché.”

  “Which raises the question . . .”

  Miles cleared his throat. “I thought we might discuss it after lunch.”

  “I thought we might discuss it now, in case it makes me ill.”

  “Ah, Lang, where is the charm, the gracious manner of our native Southern homeland?”

  Lang couldn’t suppress a chuckle. “You have it all, Miles. You want something and you know I know it.”

  “Never could slip one by you, Lang.” Miles leaned forward in his chair, elbows on his knees. “In one word, Haiti.”

  “Haiti?”

  “You know, the western half of the island of Hispaniola. Voodoo, zombies, Papa Doc.”

  “Poverty, disease, corruption. Not exactly a place Club Med would locate. I can’t imagine anything happening there that would interest anybody but hand wringers, missionaries and the other do-gooders.”

  Miles was twisting the tip of his tie between his index and middle fingers, a nervous gesture Lang recalled from years ago. “Until about a month ago, we weren’t.”

  “And then?”

  “You recall the old SAMOS-F satellite?”

  “Navy intelligence, low earth orbit. One of the first to send encrypted surveillance photos. Mostly phased out years ago.”

  “That’s the one. We have a couple still functioning.”

  “You’re not telling me this to demonstrate how the taxpayers’ money is being saved.”

  Miles dropped the tip of his tie. “Hardly. The one I have in mind has an orbit that covered the Caribbean. Someone noticed a series of ships transiting the Panama Canal from east to west and heading from the canal to the north coast of Haiti.”

  “So?”

  “Since the company owned by the Chinese army has the operating contract for the canal, we monitor Panama fairly regularly. These same ships, the ones headed for Haiti, were Chinese freighters.”

  “Maybe the Chinese have found a way to build a car cheap enough for the Haitians to afford it.”

  “Cars aren’t crated for shipment. Whatever was unloaded was in containers.”

  Lang leaned back in his chair, his hands intertwined across his stomach. “Miles, even back in the dark ages when I was still with the Agency, the resolution of the intel from satellites could distinguish a Ford from a Chevy from three hundred miles up. Whatever was in those containers should have been visible when they were unloaded.”

  Miles shook his head. “Should have been. But the Haitians, or whoever was on the ground, dragged them up into the mountains. Those hills are high enough to be in the clouds. The SAMOS-F didn’t have the technology to photograph through cloud cover.”

  “I’m sure it’s classified, but I’ll bet we do now.”

  Miles was playing with his tie again. “Without saying we do or don’t, I can say that wherever the contents of those containers are now, they aren’t where we can see them.”

  Lang pondered this a minute. “What about HUMINT, human intelligence? Surely you have someone on the ground.”

  “Until now, Haiti didn’t rate more than a single full-time asset. He disappeared. We have a stringer or two but no idea how reliable they might be. So far, whatever was in those containers might as well have vanished.”

  Lang stood, seeing where this was headed. “Miles, I am glad to see you, and Gurt is thrilled to join us for lunch. We’d be pleased if you could stay awhile, have you as our guest. That being said, I am not, repeat, not, going to Haiti.”

  “But what makes you think—?”

  Lang held up an index finger. “You make your first visit to the U.S. anyone can remember.” A second finger. “You aren’t telling me this story to pass away the time until Gurt joins us.” Third finger. “And you just got through telling me you are shit out of luck when it comes to assets already on the ground. I may have been out of the game for awhile but the rules never change: when you need assets, you get them wherever you can. Now, did I miss anything?”

  Miles held up both hands, feigning surprise. “Did I say anything about you going to Haiti?”

  Lang sat back down, smirking. “No, of course you didn’t. I suppose I got some exercise jumping to conclusions. I should never have thought it would have crossed your mind to try to employ a retired agent, someone with no publicly known ties to any U.S. intelligence agency, and therefore plausible deniability, to go snoop around to see what’s going on between the largest remaining communist state and one of the world’s craziest dictators, right on our Caribbean doorstep. I know that’s something you would never do.”

  “Do what?”

  Neither man had noticed Gurt step into the office.


  “Gurt!” Miles embraced her—a little too enthusiastically, Lang thought. “You’re more beautiful than I remembered!”

  “Beware of Miles bearing compliments,” Lang said dryly as Gurt disentangled herself. “Our friend here wants to send me on an all-expense-paid trip to sunny skies, summer temperatures, white beaches, the whole lot.”

  Gurt looked from Lang to Miles and back again, aware she had missed something. “Only you? Why not us both?”

  “That could be arranged,” Miles said.

  Lang sat back down. “Go on, Miles, explain.”

  Miles did, ending with, “However you two got tangled up with the Guoanbu and their man Jianfei, it may well be related to my problem.”

  “Just how do you figure that?” Lang asked, leaning back in his chair, hands now clasped on top of his head. “Seems like a bit of a stretch.”

  “Maybe so,” Miles replied. “But the Chinese have historically shown little or no interest in operating in the Western Hemisphere until they took over management of the canal some years ago. We have cracked Cuban, Soviet, even Israeli spy rings operating in the country, but never Chinese. Now, all of a sudden, one of their operatives is caught in your house only a few weeks after we find they have some sort of an interest in Haiti. I know how much you, Lang, believe in coincidence.”

  “Not at all, but what you’re suggesting is still pretty lame.”

  Miles held up both hands again, this time in submission. “You’re right, lame as a one-term politician. I’m probably grasping at straws.”

  Lang narrowed his eyes. Miles wasn’t one to give up so easily. “But?”

  Miles watched Gurt slide into the other chair, nylons whispering as she crossed her legs. “If there’s no connection between the Guoanbu’s sudden interest in you and what’s going on in Haiti, then you, Lang, or better yet, both of you, get a few days in the sun at Agency expense.”

  “And on the off chance you’re right?”

  “Then you’ll know.”

  “Know what?” Gurt asked. “It is a . . . a . . . what do you say? A ‘stretch’ to think we will find out why Chinese state security broke into our house by going to Haiti.”