McGarvey had done little else but think about just those questions ever since he’d listened to Shahrzad’s wild story. He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But between the woman’s story, the assassination of one of our people, Liu’s presence, and Otto’s lavender, I’m not going to walk away from it.”
“I’m glad that you’re going to help, but the question remains what do I tell the president this afternoon?”
“I don’t know anything about the oil deal. Could be a separate issue that Liu’s not involved with,” McGarvey said.
“You spotted Newell at Liu’s house,” Adkins pointed out.
“I said that it could be a separate issue. Tell the president that you’ve instructed Station Mexico City to put Updegraf’s assassination on the front burner, and in the meantime if the president wants to know what Newell is trying to do, he should ask the good congressman just that.”
“If Liu had Louis killed, for whatever reasons, it might be next to impossible for us to prove anything,” Perry said.
“Doesn’t matter, as long as you make a lot of noise trying to find out what happened.”
“What if the media get onto the story?” Perry asked. “We’ve been lucky so far.”
“Where’s Updegraf’s wife?” McGarvey asked.
“Here in Washington,” Adkins said. “McCann wants her isolated until we find out what happened.”
“Loosen the strings and let her go to the Post,” McGarvey said.
“Christ, we’ll have every network, every newspaper, and every tabloid on us like paparazzi on a bad-girl movie star,” Perry protested.
“And I’ll be called to the Hill to find out what the hell we think we’re doing in Mexico,” Adkins said. “It’ll become a media circus.”
“Exactly,” McGarvey said.
Perry suddenly caught McGarvey’s intent. “Leaving you completely out of the spotlight,” he said admiringly. “I like it.”
“I’m glad you approve, Gil,” McGarvey said, unable to keep himself from the small sarcasm, which Perry didn’t catch.
“What about the woman down at Longboat Key?”
“Leave her there for now,” McGarvey said. “I’ll let you know. Meanwhile I want you to terminate Gloria Ibenez. Immediately.”
Perry smiled. “Nothing I’d like better, but it probably won’t be that easy. She’s a lawyer, and she’ll probably sue.”
“Just get rid of her,” McGarvey said. “I’ll take care of the blowback.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
THE WHITE HOUSE
Adkins was shown into the Oval Office a few minutes before two in the afternoon. President Lawrence Haynes, in shirtsleeves, his tie loose, was seated at his desk talking on the telephone, while his national security adviser, Dennis Berndt, stood in front of a television set, the sound turned low, watching an ABC News report on Congressman Newell’s oil-deal announcement.
Aides came and went practically on the run, laying files, documents, and what looked like press clippings on the president’s desk, and rushing back out. The White House was in crisis mode.
Haynes put the phone down. “I hope you’ve got some good news for me, Dick.”
Berndt looked away from the television. “Any news would be appreciated,” he said.
“If you mean the oil thing with Newell, I’m sorry, Mr. President, but that part took us completely by surprise,” Adkins said. “I’ve come over to brief you on the Updegraf situation. And frankly we’re at a loss there as well, although we’ve stumbled across what could turn out to be even bigger news.”
Haynes was a large man, he’d played some football in college, but he’d not let himself go. Despite his schedule he managed to watch his diet and maintain a rigorous routine of workouts every day except Sunday, even when he was traveling. Air Force One had been equipped with a small but complete workout center.
He gave Adkins a flinty look, but nodded. “Dennis, I want you to stay, but get everyone else out of here now,” he said. He picked up his phone and told his secretary to hold all calls and visitors, no matter who they were.
As soon as the Oval Office was cleared and Berndt had the door closed, Haynes motioned for Adkins to have a seat in front of the desk. “You have my attention,” he said coolly. No president liked to hear bad news, but this one, unlike a lot of others, never shot the messenger.
“So far we’ve been able to keep the story out of the media, but that’s about to end,” Adkins said. “Which itself isn’t so bad, unless it gets out whose company he was in the night he got shot and beheaded. Evidently he was seen at a party held by a Chinese intelligence officer.”
“The code clerk he was trying to burn?”
“No, sir. This was with General Liu Hung, who we didn’t even know was in Mexico until last week. He’s on the FBI’s persons-of-interest list because of a series of murders in New York and here in Washington. There’s no concrete proof that Liu was involved, but the State Department did send a back-burner warning to the Chinese ambassador, and last year Liu was pulled back to Beijing.”
“Apparently Updegraf was aiming higher than a code clerk,” Berndt said. “What’s General Liu doing in Mexico?”
“We don’t know that yet,” Adkins said. “But there’s more.”
“There always is,” Haynes said. “Continue.”
“A few days ago Liu held another party, this one at his house a few miles south of Mexico City. Lots of young women, some of them only girls, booze, drugs, the whole thing. Lots of Mexican government people, a few high-ranking military officers. I’ve brought a partial list for you.”
“And who else?” Haynes asked.
“Congressman Newell.”
“Jesus H. Christ,” Haynes said softly. He exchanged a look with his national security adviser. “How sure are we about this, Dick?”
“Kirk McGarvey was there. He took the pictures.”
The president was stunned speechless for a moment. He and McGarvey had a history together that went back a few years. McGarvey had saved the lives of Haynes and his wife and daughter by stopping a terrorist attack in San Francisco, yet just last year Haynes had been forced to accept McGarvey’s resignation as director of the CIA, over a sharp difference of opinion. But everyone in Washington, including the president, had a great deal of respect for McGarvey’s judgment and abilities.
“You’d better start at the beginning,” the president finally said.
Adkins nodded. “You remember Otto Rencke.”
“Your computer genius?”
“Yes, sir. One of his analytical programs has been warning that the U.S. may be on the verge of another terrorist strike. Maybe as big as or bigger than 9/11, and soon, though he hasn’t come up with a time frame yet.”
“Why wasn’t I briefed?” the president asked.
“I decided to keep it in the Building until we had something more concrete, which we didn’t until just this morning, when Kirk came back from Mexico City,” Adkins said. “Rencke’s program warned that whatever was coming our way probably had something to do with General Liu, either as some sort of a government-sanctioned operation, or more likely as a rogue mission.”
“I can’t believe that Beijing would do anything of that sort,” Berndt said. “China is not Syria or Iran.”
“That’s been our thinking from the start,” Adkins said. “But Congressman Newell’s presence at General Liu’s house on the evening before he showed up in front of the Chinese embassy for the oil-deal announcement has got our attention.”
“That’s no coincidence,” Berndt said heavily.
“No, sir, it’s not likely.”
“Whose decision was it to send McGarvey, and what was he supposed to look for?” Haynes asked.
“It was my decision, on Rencke’s recommendation, but there’s even more.”
The president nodded tightly. “Let’s hear it.”
“Our people in Mexico City found out that Updegraf had a mistress, and he was using her to spy on Gen
eral Liu. We have her in protective custody, and McGarvey has interviewed her. It’s why he agreed to go down there to take a quick look at Liu’s operation.”
“What did McGarvey find out?”
“Liu is up to something, there’s little doubt about that, but as soon as Congressman Newell showed up to make the oil-deal announcement, McGarvey flew back to Washington.”
“He’s here in town now?” the president asked. “He’s agreed to help?”
“He’s agreed to take this business a little further, but I don’t know where he is. It’s possible he’s flown back to Mexico City already. He keeps in touch through Rencke.”
“What can you tell us about Updegraf’s mistress?” Berndt asked.
“That’s the last part that no one understands,” Adkins said. “It’s just too big a coincidence to swallow. The woman is an expat Iranian belly dancer, whose father was a high-ranking Iranian intelligence officer until he was tried for treason and shot a few years ago.”
“Good Lord,” Berndt said softly.
“When she turned up at our embassy after Updegraf was murdered she said that she wanted to speak to Kirk McGarvey.”
“By name,” the president said. “Did they know each other?”
“Apparently not, but she said that her father had been warned about Kirk by a Russian KGB officer fifteen years ago. It impressed her enough so that she remembered his name.”
“McGarvey is going after Liu and he’ll use this dancer as the key, is that what you’re telling me?” Haynes asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“What about Walt Newell? Has any of this been turned over to the Bureau?”
“Not yet, Mr. President, that’s your call,” Adkins said. “But Kirk did suggest that you have a little chat with the congressman and ask him what’s going on.”
Haynes uttered a short, sharp laugh. “I’ll do just that,” he said. “In the meantime, let me know what happens, Dick. Everything that happens.”
“You may want plausible deniability, Mr. President, if Beijing is involved with something.”
“I don’t want to hear the term,” Haynes said. “Find out what’s going on down there. If it’s a threat to us I want it taken down, no matter who’s behind it.”
“I’ll pass the word to Mac.”
“Yes, do that,” the president said. “And whatever help he needs, give it to him.”
PART
TWO
The next day
TWENTY-NINE
XOCHIMILCO
Liu Hung awoke in a cold sweat, and for the first moments he was disoriented, with no grasp of where he was or what was expected of him next. All of his life he had lived with expectations. He’d never known a time in which he’d been totally free to be himself, to do what he pleased, when he pleased, and how he pleased.
And now he was backed into a corner that could very well result in his disgrace, his arrest and imprisonment, and possibly even his death.
That was his first coherent thought of the day as he opened his eyes in the predawn darkness and listened to the vagrant sounds of the house, and to the noises outside his open window, which faced the hills from where the intruder had spied on them.
He pushed the covers back and got out of bed, padded on bare feet across the tiled floor, opened the sliding screen, and stepped out onto a broad balcony, where he breathed deeply of the cold air, fragrant from the dwarf pines that grew here.
He was naked, and when he lowered himself to the balcony’s bare floor his scrotum tensed from the cold. Nevertheless he sat cross-legged, his hands, palms up, resting easily on his thighs, his back erect, his head held high.
The Japanese warrior’s code of Bushido rested on five moral principles that the Chinese master Confucius had laid down. They were the relationships between the supreme ruler and those he ruled; between a father and his son; between a husband and his wife; between older and younger brothers; and between friends.
He closed his eyes and slowly cleared his mind of his most urgent problems and expectations and chanted the three sounds of his om word.
He’d been born in late 1965 in Beijing just before the start of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, which lasted until the Chairman’s death in 1976. Liu’s father was an important lawyer who had traveled, lived, and worked in Europe, in Great Britain, and for a time in Washington, D.C. He became an important behind-the-scenes voice of reason in Mao’s government, and had been so well respected, and feared, that he and his family were bulletproof in the middle of the chaos. People across China were either starving or being tossed into reeducation camps, while the Liu family lived in quiet luxury behind high walls.
There were no brothers or sisters, no aunts or uncles or grandparents, only house staff and guards. The Lius, father and mother, lavished all their attention on their only son. From the beginning they convinced him that he was the golden one, that the sun rose and set on him, that he was and would always be the center of the universe. But with such high honors came expectations. In public he was to present a humble posture. In fact, the best path was for Liu to be seen as little as possible by the public, which was why after his education he’d enlisted as a major in the army and immediately gone to work for the Secret Intelligence Service. He’d been raised to be an honored shadow, so it was the world he was most comfortable in.
He was also expected to do his duty to his country, by way of which he would guarantee his survival.
“The mighty oak tree topples in the strong wind,” his father impressed upon him. “But the willow, which knows when to bend, survives.” This was in the early fall of 1976, when the Liu family attended Chairman Mao’s funeral.
The metaphor had not been lost on the eleven-year-old boy, and at that moment he truly opened his eyes and his ears not only to what his father was telling him, but to what was going on in China and in the rest of the world.
Finally, and perhaps the most important lesson he’d learned from his father, was that he was expected to make his mark not only on China but on the world. It wasn’t necessary for him to make things better, but simply to make the world a significantly different place.
Which he had done, spying on the U.S. for his country, sending back hundreds if not thousands of important military and civilian technology documents.
But all of that took money. His father and mother died in an airplane accident eighteen years ago, and Liu had gone through the family fortune within a few years. Ever since then it had been a struggle for him to keep up with the lavish lifestyle he’d been born into. It was a lifestyle he needed to maintain in order to continue his spectacularly successful espionage work.
In Beijing he was still the golden boy because his product trumped his indiscretions. But that status would not last much longer if he failed now.
From the beginning his father had trained him as a warrior, so naturally he had gravitated toward the ancient Japanese code of Bushido, a practice he’d always kept strictly to himself, for obvious reasons considering his nationality. And his meditations had always worked to calm him down in times of crisis, to make him see reason, to make him understand the path to success.
But it was not working this time, nor had it worked since the disturbing photographs they’d found on Louis Updegraf’s body. He’d known that the CIA agent had targeted him through the stupid woman, and he’d allowed it to happen, merely to see how it played out. But he had not realized the extent of Updegraf’s spying until he’d seen the digital images, some of them showing his computer files, and until the woman disappeared so suddenly that she’d left her money behind.
He stopped chanting and opened his eyes, his gut still tied in knots, his head seething with dozens of possibilities, most of them grim.
Shahrzad Shadmand had disappeared, and within a week the man had shown up and started snooping around.
He looked up toward the spot in the hills where the intruder had done his spying the first night. Liu had sent two of his Mexican security people to find hi
m and bring him in. But they’d come back empty-handed, one of them with his kneecap destroyed by a single bullet.
“Allow me to take care of this business for you,” Miguel Roaz had suggested that night. “They said he was an American, could be CIA. But their operation here is a joke, you know that.”
“If there’s a connection between him and Louis I want to know about it,” Liu had insisted. “I don’t want our operations jeopardized. Don’t kill him, just find him and bring him to me.”
“It’s as good as done,” Roaz had promised. “I have just the three men to do the job. Real professionals, not merely house staff.”
Liu closed his eyes again and tried to conjure up an image of the only woman he’d ever loved, but he couldn’t do it this morning. She was a figment of his imagination, a woman he dreamed of meeting, one he’d looked for all of his adult life, but one he’d never found, though in his mind’s eye he knew exactly what she looked like—tall, slender, with large dark eyes, a pretty mouth, and a flawless body. He sometimes thought of her as his porcelain doll. She was intelligent, yet she knew how to be a wife and adviser without ever becoming a demanding shrew like all of the women he’d ever met. She was perfection, but right now he had too much on his mind, too much to worry about, too much anger, to bring up even the outline of her face.
It had been ridiculously easy to find the man. He’d shown up right outside the embassy when they’d staged that media circus, and he’d acted like an amateur, allowing himself to be tracked to a sidewalk café.
Yet the three “professionals” that Roaz had sent came back almost empty-handed, one of them with a bruised windpipe, the other with a broken wrist.
“Was he armed this time?” Liu demanded.
“I didn’t see a weapon, though we were told to expect it,” the one with the broken wrist answered. He had to be in a lot of pain, but all that showed on his broad Mexican face was anger. “But he knew how to handle himself.”
“So I see,” Liu shot back. “Get out of my sight,” he told them. When they’d left he turned to Roaz. “Those are your best?”
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