The Good Traitor

by Ryan Quinn

  “What’s on this other one?” she said, examining the flash drive he’d kept hidden in the planter. When he didn’t reply, she set it aside to free up a hand. She pressed her palm into his cheekbone and repeated the question.

  The Russian tried to shake his head, but that was more painful than holding it still, so he just gritted his teeth defiantly. She could open the drive on the laptop and have a look for herself, but first, while she had him in this position, she wanted some information. She leaned toward his ear and spoke coolly.

  “Why did they hire you to bring down Ambassador Rodgers’s plane?” On the last word, she increased the pressure on the point where her knee dug into his back between his narrow shoulder blades. His one visible eye popped a little, and he made a futile effort to speak. She let up on the pressure, just enough so that he could talk.

  “Get off me. I can’t breathe.” He wriggled beneath her.

  “What about the people in those elevators? You murdered them too, didn’t you? Why?” She sent a new surge of pressure through her knee where it ground into his spine.

  “OK, stop! Please. I did it,” he mumbled. She eased up on his skull. “But it’s not like you think. I didn’t know that innocent people would die. It wasn’t until after the plane and the first two elevators that I figured it out. After that I started working against them.”

  “Working against whom?”

  “Have you heard of Unit 61398?”

  “Of course. They’re the elite cyberspies of the MSS. They target computer networks, though, not people.”

  The Russian shook his head. “They follow orders like everyone else. This time their expertise was called upon to take out human targets.”

  “Orders from the MSS?”

  “Yes. All the way at the top.”

  “Bullshit.” Kera shook her head. Even if he was privy to the knowledge he was claiming—which she doubted—what he was saying didn’t make sense. Assassinating an American ambassador invited some hefty consequences. There was no way Beijing would take a risk like that. “If you stopped working with them after the first round of attacks, what happened to Conrad Smith? He was killed in an elevator two weeks after the others.”

  “They were going to kill him anyway. He was on their list. They were planning to shoot him. But by using the elevator, I—”

  “Established a trend,” Kera whispered, understanding. “It made it obvious that the string of elevators falling out of the sky wasn’t a coincidence—or an accident.”

  “Yes.”

  “But didn’t that anger your MSS handlers?”

  “Of course. But I knew they wouldn’t do anything to me. Not yet.”

  “Why?”

  “They don’t realize just how much I’ve figured out about their plans. I know, for example, that they need me alive and they need my fingerprints all over these assassinations. That’s the real reason they granted me asylum in China. If a lone Russian hacker with anti-American motivations can be blamed for these attacks, then there will be no retaliation from the United States. And China won’t be responsible for starting a major conflict between the world’s two largest superpowers.”

  She thought about this for a few moments before she found a hole in his story. “What about Charlie Canyon? He was killed after Conrad Smith. Did you have anything to do with that?”

  His voice was softer this time when he replied. “That one I couldn’t stop.”

  She rocked forward, digging the sharpest part of her knee into his back. The Russian moaned.

  “Please! I tried, I promise. The MSS are desperate to take out Gnos.is. I didn’t want to help them with that, but I had to at least appear to be going along with their attempts. The problem was that Gnos.is couldn’t be fully infiltrated remotely. We needed to get someone physically in front of one of their machines to log in and keep a session going long enough to exfil all the files. The MSS has an agent in New York who got a meeting with Canyon by posing as a tech-industry lobbyist. When Canyon visited the cover website we built for the lobbyist, malware was transferred to his computer. This malware sat dormant until Canyon’s meeting with the agent. Once the agent was in the room and could prevent Canyon from logging off, I woke up the malware.”

  “You did that remotely?”

  “Yes. From the Unit 61398 facility in Shanghai.”

  “You’ve been inside Unit 61398?”

  “Yes.” The Russian’s eyes flicked briefly to the flash drive that Kera had set down next to the laptop.

  Kera suddenly had a hundred new questions for him. But first she had to know what happened to Canyon. “How did this agent get Canyon to log in? Did he just put the gun to his head?”

  “No. We were afraid Canyon wouldn’t log in if he felt threatened, or that maybe he could use a decoy account or something. We had to be sure he logged in for real.”

  “Go on.”

  “We couldn’t get into his computers remotely, but his phone was more vulnerable. I designed a way to ping his phone with a fake cybersecurity alert, which I did once his meeting with the MSS agent had begun. It compelled him to log on.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “The malware started queuing Gnos.is files to send to us—”

  “No. I mean, what happened to Canyon?”

  “The agent attempted to take control of the computer. It’s not totally clear to me what happened next, but apparently Canyon did not surrender the machine to the agent. The outcome was that he got shot, though he must have survived long enough to perform some sort of operation that encrypted everything on the network. Canyon died and the MSS got nothing from Gnos.is. It couldn’t have gone worse for anyone.”

  She looked down at him. She still had his hands pinned behind him with her body weight, but she’d let up on his head and back so he could speak freely. “Why are they so desperate to take out Gnos.is? There are news organizations all over the world. They can’t take them all out.”

  The Russian parted his lips to speak, then decided to remain silent.

  Kera rocked forward, reapplying the pressure that had been so persuasive up to this point.

  “Ow. OK. But are you sure you want to know more? The people they’ve killed didn’t know half of what I can tell you.”

  “Tell me.”

  “It’s on the flash drive,” he said quickly, to prevent her from administering another pulse of discomfort with her palm or knee.

  Kera weighed whether they had time for this. What if he was bluffing, hoping to stall her until Ren’s men could find them? On the other hand, he’d admitted his involvement in the death of the ambassador and the others, including the attempt to hack Gnos.is that had resulted in Canyon’s murder. He even claimed to have been inside Unit 61398. Was it possible that he had on this flash drive an explanation for why all of these victims had been targeted by the MSS?

  Without freeing him, she pulled the laptop closer. Immediately she saw that the David Cornwell session was running. At some point while they’d been talking, the Wi-Fi connection had been strong enough to get through.

  LANGLEY

  “Where are you? Do you have eyes on them?” Lionel Bright said into his satellite phone. After waiting out a series of tense moments in which the only signs of BLACKFISH had been the two bodies he’d left in his wake, Bright was relieved to hear the man’s voice.

  “Negative. I found an apartment full of computers and Red Bull. Someone left in a hurry.”

  “What was on the computers?” Bright stepped to a corner of the ops center so he could speak freely in private.

  “I didn’t have time to look around. I’d just shot two MSS guys; I had to get the fuck out,” BLACKFISH said. Lionel heard the adrenaline in his voice.

  “You’re out now?”

  “Yeah, I’m out. And not afraid to say I got lucky. The building’s hot. They’ve got an army of plainclothes assholes with firearms searching the site bottom to top. Who’s this subject that everyone’s so interested in?”

  Brigh
t exhaled. “We lifted some footage from the building’s security system. Facial recog confirms that a11Egr0, the Russian hacker we like in the ambassador’s assassination, lives in a unit on the top floor. And it looks like Kera Mersal paid him a visit today.” He paused to let this sink in. “You just missed them. They exited together through the east stairwell door. It leads to an alley. You copy?”

  “Yeah, I heard you. But I don’t like it. They’re together in one spot? And they did something to tip us off to their location? Doesn’t that seem a little too good to be true?”

  “I don’t know what it means, but I think she’s trying to send us a message.”

  “A message? Are you sure it’s not a trap?”

  Bright grit his teeth. “I’m not sure of anything. For what it’s worth, it doesn’t feel like a trap to me.”

  “You’re not the one getting fucking shot at,” BLACKFISH said, and he had a point.

  “I know, I know. Listen, we think they may have slipped into that construction site just east of the building. Can you get in there?”

  “I can try. But Lionel, I’m not super psyched about risking my life for this woman. You might have reason to trust her, but from where I sit, she’s no great American hero. First she leaked classified files, and now she’s cozy with MSS assets.”

  “Believe me, I understand. But with Kera it’s . . . complicated. I know I’m in the minority, but I actually think she went over there looking for some way to redeem herself. Now she seems to be trying to get our attention, and I’m more than a little curious to find out why.”

  “All right. But if I have to choose between my own life or hers, I’m coming out of there alive.”

  Bright shut his eyes. “Understood. Proceed with caution.”

  Five minutes later, Bright was standing nervously in the middle of the ops center, bathed in the glow of live satellite images, when the room’s pass code–protected doors parted. Bright turned at the sound to find Director Tennison walking toward him. This was unexpected. Bright’s first instinct was to look at the clock. Was it already eight in the morning? He’d never seen the director on campus earlier than that. It was only 5:28.

  “What’ve we got?” the director grumbled.

  “Sir?”

  “Is it true? We have eyes on Kera Mersal in Beijing?”

  The director now stood before Bright, though his gaze was trained beyond him, up at the satellite and video surveillance images on the ops center’s main tactical display.

  “That’s our understanding. We’re still trying to confirm the circumstances.” Another of Bright’s sudden understandings was that someone on his team must have the ear of the director—at least on the issue of Kera Mersal. This was only a minor surprise. The role of CIA director often included making calculations that were political. Ever since Kera’s disappearance, Bright had been aware that the director was eager to make an example of her, to bring her very publicly to justice in order to create a precedent that might deter any future would-be intelligence leakers. So it made sense that he’d recruited an informer among Bright’s team to keep him intimately apprised of the Kera Mersal case. The surprise was how quickly he’d been rustled from bed and rushed to the ops center.

  The director had two men with him, senior ops-center techs Bright recognized vaguely. When the director nodded to them, they went directly to two open terminals.

  “What are they doing?” Bright asked.

  “They’re mobilizing people who are going to get Kera Mersal for us.”

  “That isn’t necessary.”

  “The hell it isn’t.” The director’s glare, when he swung it in Bright’s direction, was part surprise, part anger. “This is the woman who, maybe you remember, dealt herself a royal flush of espionage charges. Leaking those HAWK files made her a pain in our ass. The company she’s keeping now makes her an imminent threat to national security.”

  “I know what this looks like,” Bright said, willing himself to deal coolly with his superior and keep the panic from his voice. “But hear me out. I think she’s got something there and she’s trying to let us know.”

  “Forget it. We’ve been waiting for her to make a mistake. Now she has. We’re not missing another chance to bring her in.”

  “We won’t miss anything,” Bright said. “I’ve got a man on the ground there who’s trying to do just that.”

  “This isn’t an operation for your man, Bright. This has gone way beyond that.”

  “Sir, please.”

  “Sit this one out, Lionel,” the director snapped. “You’re too attached.”

  “No, sir. It’s my duty to give you an honest assessment, even if it’s not the one you want to hear. We need to give Kera a chance to come to us. We need to see what she’s got.”

  “You misunderstood me. I’m ordering you out of this facility. We’ve got a job to do here, and you clearly aren’t fit to do it.”

  “Sir—”

  “Out!”

  Bright glared at the director, permitting his eyes to express the insubordination that he knew he wouldn’t be able to get away with voicing aloud. The worst part was that he knew it was hopeless. The director’s mind could not be changed, least of all by him. Bright turned for the door. He was halfway across the room when he heard one of the analysts address the director.

  “Sir, they’re back up. The signal’s spotty, but it’s coming from inside that construction site.”

  That was the last thing Bright heard before the ops center door locked shut behind him.

  BEIJING

  “It’s encrypted,” Kera said, staring at the window that had appeared on-screen when she slid the Russian’s flash drive into the USB port. She angled the screen so he could see it. “What’s the key?”

  The Russian attempted to shake his head. “We can’t open that here. It isn’t secure.”

  “I don’t care.” Her knee found his spine again.

  “Ah! OK, then let me enter the key.”

  “You don’t understand, do you? You’re not in a position to negotiate.”

  He closed his eyes tight and, out of options, told her the key. It was twelve digits, a mixture of numbers and case-sensitive letters. She pictured the characters in blocks of four to help herself commit them to memory. The flash drive, once she was behind the encrypted security wall, revealed two folders. The first had been named MAYFLOWER, the second BYZANTINE. The latter jumped out at her. The MSS’s Unit 61398 was widely referred to as BYZANTINE CANDOR. She steered the cursor toward it.

  “No, the other one first,” he said.

  She flashed him a warning glance—a reminder not to waste time—but then did as he’d suggested. Inside the MAYFLOWER folder she found only one document, an Excel spreadsheet file, also named MAYFLOWER. When she opened it, the screen filled with columns and rows of numbers and dense text entries, all in Mandarin. Kera started to read as fast as her passable grasp of Mandarin would allow. The title at the top of the page translated to “OPERATION MAYFLOWER.” She was about to start making sense of the column headers when he stopped her.

  “Click the second tab. I’m still in the process of translating it, but you’ll get the idea.”

  The spreadsheet listed over twelve hundred entries, nearly eight hundred of which had been translated into English. Alongside each name were columns of data: home and work addresses, employer names, and the names of relatives with addresses in China. Also recorded were IP addresses, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and, most telling, a field called “Date of Recruitment.” Some of the dates stretched back nearly a decade. Scrolling through the entries, she felt a chill as she read the employers associated with each name: General Electric, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Apple, Amazon, Google, AT&T, BP, InspiraCom, and so on.

  “What is this?” she said.

  “The Chinese have been assembling OPERATION MAY-FLOWER for over a decade. This is a list of the people they have in place, working inside American companies.”

  “These people are spies?�
� She lightened the pressure on his back. “Twelve hundred of them?”

  “Not exactly. Not by choice. Most of them aren’t even aware that the Chinese government is using them. They’re business executives, engineers, scientists. You can see, they happen to have family who still live in mainland China. Naturally, these people want to help to modernize China and improve life for their loved ones. So the government asks them to do a small favor here and there, like plug a certain thumb drive into their computer at work or copy a few files. Those who hesitate are soon reminded that they’re vulnerable. It is not so hard to blackmail people if you have the resources of the MSS. One way or another, they’ve all been recruited and cultivated.”

  Kera shook her head as she scrolled through the list. “They’ve convinced or coerced twelve hundred people to participate in a spy network this big?” She kept going back to that number. “How are they keeping it secret?”

  “It is not a network. These people are not working together—at least they’re not aware that they are. And given the nature of the relatively small favors they’re encouraged to do, it never occurs to them that they are acting on behalf of the MSS. Individually, these people don’t present a danger; they are not motivated to harm the United States. So it has remained a secret. But—” He paused to gauge whether she understood where this was going. When she didn’t react, he continued. “But if Beijing were to coordinate the timing of these coerced ‘favors’ and leverage them toward one malicious end, the cumulative effect could be devastating to America’s infrastructure and economy.”

  “The thousand grains of sand,” Kera whispered.

  “Huh?” the Russian asked.

  “How did you get this file? Can you be sure it isn’t a fake?”

  “I’m sure. I stole it—as insurance against what they were doing to me.”

  “You stole it how?” She wanted to make sure that the Russian hadn’t been duped into the MSS’s version of the David Cornwell backdoor, which led only to spoofed data.

  “Like everyone else, I knew it was more than suspicious when the American ambassador died on a jet owned by Hu Lan. But unlike everyone else, I knew that the Chinese had recently asked me to write a bug for the flight-management system of a specific model of Gulfstream jet—the same model that Hu Lan owned.”