by Ryan Quinn
“Mr. Gao!” she called. All six men spun around. One of the guards took a step toward her, putting himself in front of the two spies. “I was just heading up to the room myself. I’ll ride with you.” She smiled pleasantly.
The escort caught up to them then, red in the face from embarrassment and apologizing to his superiors.
“It’s OK,” Gao said in Cantonese, indicating to the guards that he didn’t consider her a threat. He flashed Kera a wry, sporting smile that made her wonder if he was conceding that she’d played this well.
The elevator chimed, and a few seconds later the doors parted. Gao took a half step in and held the door with his arm.
“Please,” he said in English, beckoning them aboard. “We’re all going to the same place.”
In the elevator, Kera caught Ren studying her. He was middle-aged with serious black eyes and thinning black hair. She took the fact that he’d actually shown in person as a promising sign that they hadn’t planned to kill her. When they reached the room, Kera swiped her key card and invited everyone in. On Gao’s orders the guards and the escort were made to wait outside in the hall. That left Kera alone with the two men inside the room, which turned out to be a spacious luxury suite. Gao extended the proper introductions. Ren was still eyeing Kera strangely. Then she remembered her wig. Removing it, she shook out her darker natural hair and sat on the couch.
The suite was easily a thousand square feet, with full-length windows and a hand-painted mural in the master bedroom. The living area where they sat provided dramatic views of Victoria Peak soaring over the city’s narrow band of skyscrapers.
“You are a difficult woman to pin down, Ms. Mersal,” Ren said, leading the conversation. “An international enigma.” He spoke easily in English, using a soft, even voice and a showy vocabulary. “We’re honored to have you pay us a visit.”
“I did not intend to visit Hong Kong. I was detained at customs.”
“No one has been detained.” He opened the file on his lap and read the name on the top page. “Sabina Francis was questioned at customs. Because she was suspected of not actually existing. A small technicality.”
“What do you want?”
“What do we want? Didn’t you ask to meet with me?” He leaned forward, smiling at her warmly. “I saw the security tapes from the airport, Ms. Mersal. Your performance was masterful. And it’s gotten you what you wanted, hasn’t it?”
Kera knew Ren was not naïve and that he would not have interpreted her customs foibles as mere coincidence, but they were playing a game. She did not break character. “I was interrogated for hours. When I realized I’d missed my flight and that my delay was going to drag on, I remembered that Angela Vasser had spoken kindly of you. No offense to Mr. Gao here, but I thought it might be in my interests to make contact with a friend of a friend.”
“I’m glad that Ms. Vasser considers me a friend.” Ren smiled briefly, but an unhappy expression followed. “You are aware that Ms. Vasser has been detained by your government?”
In her shock, Kera allowed a telling beat to pass.
“I see. Then you didn’t know,” Ren said. “She was detained on charges not dissimilar to those you have endured, if I remember.”
Kera shook her head. “How typical of the American government. They have grown too fearful. Their solution to every threat is to lock someone up, to erode more freedoms and privacy. I’m sure you are aware that the charges against Vasser are false, as are the charges against me—though for now she is safer in custody. Her life is in danger.”
“You don’t have a similar fear for your own life? Or are you just braver?”
“Neither fear nor bravery has anything to do with me being here. I’ve already told you, I didn’t plan to stay in China. I’m not here on a professional basis.”
“Where were you headed?”
“You know the destination of my next flight. I’m not going to tell you any more than that. I would not be alive if I was in the habit of keeping intelligence agencies apprised of my location.”
Ren chuckled at this. He seemed to appreciate her sparring attitude. “You’ve survived this long. You must be doing something right. Have you considered the possibility of remaining in China? Perhaps it would be safer than wherever you were headed?”
Kera stared at him, signaling that she knew what he was getting at. “The United States mishandled my case, and that has left me disillusioned. But if I’d wanted to betray my country for the benefit of yours, you and I would have spoken much sooner and under much different circumstances.”
“What do you want?” he asked her directly.
“I’ve been traveling for almost twenty-four hours, and now you’ve made me miss my flight. I want to get a good night’s sleep.”
“Very well,” Ren said, rising. Gao looked up in protest, but Ren beckoned him to stand as well. “We’ll go.” He took a few steps toward the door and then turned back to face her. “If you’d like, we can talk again in the morning. Sleep on it. Is that the expression?”
Kera studied him. “And if I decide tomorrow to continue on to Malaysia?”
Ren shrugged. “Then we’ll give you a ride to the airport.”
He’s bluffing, she thought. He’s testing me. Would they really let an American intelligence agent just walk? Not a chance. They knew what kind of opportunity they had on their hands. And she’d just bought them another twelve hours to figure out how to take advantage of it.
When they’d left her, she looked around the luxury suite, wondering whether the Ministry of State Security made use of this room regularly, or if they’d managed—in the time it had taken to get her here from the airport—to install hidden cameras and mics in the walls, lamps, and furniture. If it was the latter, they were good. They’d left no trace.
To keep the pressure on them, she picked up the desk phone, which was almost certainly bugged, and called the airline. She apologized for missing her flight on account of a customs mix-up and asked them to rebook her to Kuala Lumpur the following day.
MINISTRY OF STATE SECURITY COMMAND CENTER, HONG KONG
Ren Hanchao returned to his office in a tower in the Wan Chai District. He sent word of his meeting with the fugitive American spy to Beijing and then sat waiting for his orders.
Ren was fifty-three and had been stationed in Hong Kong for five restless years. There had been flourishes of promise, signals from Beijing that his service was highly regarded. But the lack of anything concrete had begun to agitate his feelings of restlessness. Ultimately, he’d been disappointed with the posting to the Third Bureau in Hong Kong. The Third Bureau spent a lot of time spying on domestic political dissenters in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, intercepting and blocking their communications to make it more difficult to organize protests. Ren would have preferred an assignment with the First Bureau, based out of headquarters in Beijing, where he might be noticed more quickly and promoted into Feng’s inner circle; or a posting to New York or Washington with the Second Bureau, which handled foreign intelligence and might have given him an opportunity to prove himself in the field.
When he’d received the call that Kera Mersal, the notorious ex-CIA operative, was being held at the airport and had asked for him by name, he immediately hoped it might provide more than just a welcome change from days spent monitoring the social media networks of college students with strong opinions about Taiwan and democracy and Beijing’s political influence over Hong Kong. After speaking with Mersal himself, he began to hope that she might be a legitimate walk-in. If he handled this right, it might even earn him a transfer of his choosing. He grew anxious waiting for a reply from Beijing. He was eager for things to proceed quickly.
An hour after he’d cabled Beijing, he got what he wanted—and more.
A secure teleconference link was established so that Ren could brief a dozen senior officers and analysts at headquarters. The first thing he noticed on the conference room’s large screen was that Feng Xuri himself, the head of the Ministry
of State Security, was seated at the head of the table. Ren’s chest swelled and his thoughts swirled. This was significant. The MSS was a government bureaucracy; things typically moved much more slowly than this.
Ren spent fifteen minutes summarizing the circumstances under which Kera Mersal had appeared to them as well as the conversation he’d had with her. He could tell from their questions that consensus in Beijing was split. Did they treat this like a walk-in, a foreign agent who was eager to offer intelligence on her home country? Or was there a risk that she was being dangled by the CIA as a double agent? Or perhaps they could take her at her word that she was neither and had just been passing through?
When the debate subsided, Feng asked Ren to stay on after the others cleared the room.
“What does your gut say?” Minister Feng asked.
The video and audio connections were good. Feng’s voice was clear, and Ren could see the minister scrutinizing him on the HD picture. Ren had reported directly to Feng Xuri on several past occasions, which put him in elite company. His relationship with the minister, though, was still formal. Several key operations—operations that Ren could only imagine were some of the MSS’s most sensitive—required a competent point person in Hong Kong, and Ren had been called upon to carry out those duties.
“She is tired,” Ren said. “She knows she can’t run forever. She harbors bitterness for the way the Americans have treated her. Do I think she came here seeking to harm the United States? Not exactly. But perhaps we have planted in her mind a glimpse of a life that is safer and more stable. She might see that it’s worth it to cooperate with us.”
“If she cooperates, how could we possibly trust her information?”
“It’s true that it would be unwise to trust her at face value. But she is still valuable to us.” Ren hesitated. He was on the verge of broaching a topic that had not come up in the larger meeting, mostly because he didn’t know who was cleared to discuss it. It concerned a secret operation—one that he knew Beijing was handling very delicately. He’d at first been grateful to be given a role in the operation; he felt his contributions were important and he knew they were being watched closely by Beijing. And then recently, very suddenly, things had gone sideways. “I think she might be able to help us with our other problem.”
Feng was silent for a long moment, thinking. Ren could tell that his idea had not completely surprised the minister. Finally, Feng responded. “I am beginning to think we would be better to simply get rid of the other problem.”
Ren nodded. “With respect, sir, it is my understanding that we need him. For technical assistance. Just for a little while longer. He is crucial to the final phase.”
Feng shook his head. “The young Russian knows too much. I was assured that wouldn’t happen.”
Ren had no idea who had given the minister that assurance, but he was glad it wasn’t him. “I don’t think anyone could have foreseen the complications that developed. But that is the reality we face. If I may, sir, I might have an idea to fix it.”
“An idea?”
“A test. For both the American and the Russian. Remember, each of their lives is in our hands. That makes them very motivated to please us.”
“What sort of test?”
“We want to know if the Russian went out on his own and initiated that most recent attack. The elevator in San Francisco. And, separately, we want to know if Kera Mersal will be valuable to us. I propose a meeting between them, arranged so that they might reveal each other’s loyalties. Under our close supervision, of course.”
Feng did not think about this for very long. Perhaps he’d conceived of something similar on his own ahead of time, or maybe it was immediately clear to him that of all their troubling options, this one had the greatest potential for an upside. “Go ahead. But if it goes bad, the Russian is done. We’ll find a way to finish the operation without him.”
FORT MEADE
“I want to ask you a few questions about Kera Mersal.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Lionel Bright. I was Kera’s mentor while she was with the CIA. Do you know where she is?”
“No. I already told them that.”
“I understand. I apologize for any redundancy. We’re all trying to be thorough here. We don’t want to miss anything.”
“Near as I can tell, you’re missing just about everything.”
Bright’s eyes narrowed. So this was the trademark defiance that he’d heard about from everyone who’d interviewed Angela Vasser. “Then perhaps you can help us find our way. You met with Kera last week in a hotel restroom in DC.”
“She approached me. It was not a meeting.”
“Did you see her again after that?”
“No.”
“I see.” Bright glanced down at the file he’d received from FBI Director Ellis. “I understand you were detained last night in a cabin reserved under the name Abigail Dalton.” Bright held up the Xerox copy of Abigail Dalton’s driver’s license, which Sundown Sanctuary had turned over to the FBI. “This is a picture of Kera Mersal.” He turned the page so he could look at the photo. He smiled at it, a little proudly. “Not a bad disguise. But I can tell it’s Kera. There’s no doubt.” He paused to give Vasser a chance to respond, but she just stared at him, expressionless. “The Feds found something else interesting in the cabin. In the refrigerator, I’m told. Was that burner phone yours?” Still no reaction. “It had been used only once, two days ago, to receive a call from an encrypted satellite phone that was used in the Manhattan or Queens area. Did you take that call, Angela? Who was it from?”
Anger swirled in Vasser’s eyes, but she said nothing.
Bright leaned forward, resting his elbows and forearms on the table. “Here’s the thing. Either you’re a patriotic diplomat and you inadvertently got caught up in this mess—which is what I’m inclined to believe—or somewhere along the way you received training in clandestine intelligence from an entity other than the US government. Those paths lead to very different outcomes for you. If I were you, I’d start trying to convince us of your innocence.”
Vasser had been watching his face intently as he talked. She looked down at her hands now, which were wrung with silent frustration. She shook her head. “You’re missing the bigger picture. Someone is murdering people—Americans. They tried to kill me too.”
“That may be true,” Bright said, leaning back as if they’d reached a stalemate that Vasser alone could end.
“I won’t talk about Kera.”
“I’m sure your lawyers have informed you of the plea bargain. Immunity for someone in your situation could be very valuable.”
“I don’t need immunity. I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“You had very close associations with two of the deceased. In fact, it was very fortunate for you that you were not on the ambassador’s plane that night. Too fortunate, some might say.”
“Greg never would have been on that plane either had the CIA not asked him to form ties with Hu Lan,” Vasser countered. The chill in her voice was getting to Bright.
“That still doesn’t explain why you weren’t on the plane.”
“I was doing my job.”
“Were you? I thought you were spending the night with Conrad Smith, who, it turned out, perished just weeks later. Meanwhile, here you are. Your survival skills, relative to your friends’, are remarkable.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“I’m suggesting that you start explaining yourself. Specifically, talk to me about your associations with Kera. What is she up to?”
“That won’t happen. I don’t need your immunity. You know the government’s case is weak; their release of my private photos and e-mails and other records suggests that. A judge already released me once.” Her stare, those piercing eyes, pinned him against the back of his seat. She kept going. “But I get it: You need scapegoats. If you have villains like me and Kera Mersal, you can still pretend to be the good guys. You don’t car
e about laws or due process, and you certainly don’t care about the truth. All you care about is secrecy and covering up your own messes. What you don’t seem to understand is that I’m the one who’s been wronged here.”
Bright shook his head. “What you don’t understand is that you’re not the one who decides who’s been wronged. You’ve been charged with very serious crimes. I, for one, don’t think you wrote those e-mails discussing classified programs with a foreign citizen. But the e-mails exist. Right now, that doesn’t look good for you. The benefits of cooperating with us have been explained. It’s very clear: take the plea deal and the immunity, prove your patriotism, and avoid a very public trial.”
Vasser’s eyes burned with a clear conviction that did not allow her to be intimidated by him. “Mr. Bright, this ordeal has indeed made something very clear to me: there is a difference between the courageous people who leak information because it is newsworthy—that is, because it is in the public’s interest to know—and the cowards who seek only to tarnish someone by destroying their privacy, in order to cover the asses of people like you, who get to bury their mistakes in secrecy and claims of patriotism. I don’t want to avoid a trial. I welcome it. I will talk about Kera Mersal only after everyone involved with accessing, storing, and releasing my private communications has been named publicly in that trial, and every agency involved has admitted to abusing their powers by spying on an American citizen. Then we can talk about the evidence against me and Kera Mersal, if any exists.”
Bright had tried to interrupt her but found that he could think of nothing to say. Now suddenly he wanted out of the room. “I didn’t come here to be lectured. If you don’t want help, I can’t make you accept it. Good luck, Ms. Vasser.”
Instead of rejoining Director Ellis in the observation room, Bright hurried down the fluorescent-lit hallway toward the nearest exit. He needed air. Outside he wiped sweat from his forehead. He was furious, mostly at himself for taking this case so personally. He’d let Vasser get under his skin. Not just because she was difficult, but because she was right—they were still missing something big.