by Gregg Loomis
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.”
“Touche.”
“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 Haitian
s 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.”
“And why us?” Lang wanted to know. “The Agency must have a dozen or so employees who’d love to spend a few winter days in the Caribbean.”
“Because you, both of you, can easily pass for Europeans on a holiday.” Lang started to protest but Miles dashed forward. “Look, you owe me a favor, remember? I’m the one who stuck out his neck to identify those people as Chinese intel. We, the Agency, can’t currently spare any Ops personnel who could pass for a German couple taking advantage of Haiti’s low hotel rates.”
“The rates are low,” Lang observed, “because few people want to go there. And you can’t spare any operatives because this is ninety-nine percent certain to come up empty.”
“I have never been to the Caribbean,” Gurt announced.
Lang was surprised. Not that Gurt had never been to the Caribbean but that she was showing interest in Miles’s suggestion. “If you want the Caribbean, believe me, Haiti is not the place to begin.”
Gurt gave him a quizzical look. “Is it not warm and sunny there this time of year? Do they not have beaches like I see in the magazines?”
Lang could see Miles was anticipating victory. “Yeah, but…”
“And is it not possible that the people in Venice who tried to kill us were Chinese?”
“Certainly possible,” Lang had to agree.
Miles clapped his hands. “Good! It’s settled then. I’ll make the arrangements. Now, where am I taking you to lunch?”
“Not so fast,” Lang cautioned. Turning to Gurt, he said, “We’ve just come back from several days in Venice. I don’t want to impose on our neighbors to keep Manfred again so soon…”
Gurt turned to Miles, saying conversationally, “Lang believes his son cannot live a few days without him. When he is away, he has to call the child at least twice a day. It as though Manfred is some sort of vegetable that will perish without his attention.” To Lang, she said, “Manfred will get along fine with Wynn Three, his best friend. Besides, we are keeping the neighbor’s little boy for two weeks this summer.”
News to Lang. What wasn’t news was the fact they were going to Haiti. Gurt had made up her mind.
From the diary of Louis Etienne Saint Denis December 20, 1802 The First Consul’s ^ 1 favorite sister is again troublesome! For some years the sexual conduct of Pauline, the second of the three sisters, has been the talk of all France. Though charming and beautiful, the woman is without discretion. In June of five years past, the First Consul was at Mombello Palace near Milan when he walked in on his sister in the process of having congress with one of his generals, Leclerc. ^ 2 Feigning fury, the First Consul demanded her honor be salvaged, and on June 14 of that year, they were married at the home of the then general, all as previously described in this diary. The couple do not match each other. Leclerc is serious, his face in a perpetual frown, while his bride is frivolous and quick to laugh. She continues her flirtatious ways, while he blushes at attention from other women. In October of this year, realizing how tenuous is this union and aware of the scandal already growing concerning Pauline’s ill-concealed infidelities, the First Consul appointed Leclerc to put down the slave insurrection in Saint-Domingue
. ^ 3 She refused to go despite the pleas of her new husband, who in desperation appealed to her brother. Pauline also refused him. Under no illusions as to the scope of the scandals Pauline would create if left alone, Napoleon ordered a sedan chair to be brought to his sister’s home by ten of his largest grenadiers. The soldiers strapped her into the chair and marched her to a carriage in which she was sent to the port and bodily carried aboard ship, screaming and cursing. The First Consul is well shed of her. A strange thing happened as the ship slipped its moorings and let the tide take it from the quay. I was sitting in the carriage with the First Consul when General Leclerc appeared at the rail with what looked very much like the selfsame box the First Consul had held so dear when we departed Egypt. Leclerc held it aloft for the First Consul to see. The First Consul replied with a salute, and Leclerc turned and disappeared from view.
1 Josephine thought her husband was to arrive at Le Havre and rushed there to meet him in hopes of squelching the news of her multiple adulteries. Napoleon was in Paris before she caught up to him.
2 Junot was the only general of Napoleon’s staff at this time who did not eventually achieve the rank of marshal of France. Could it be Napoleon blamed him for his wife’s indiscretions, a killing of the messenger?
3 She was born Marie-Josephe-Rose Tascher de La Pagerie. “Josephine” was the name Napoleon gave her.
4 Robespierre was overthrown and sentenced to the guillotine himself. A much-admired orator, he was on the scaffold addressing the mob when someone shot him in the jaw. He went to his death mute. Thus ended the Terror.
5 Martinique.
6 Small by the standards of Versailles, perhaps. Even today the formal garden surrounding Malmaison is impressive.
7 In June or July of 320 BC, Perdiccas arrived on the banks of the Nile to do battle with Ptolemy to retrieve Alexander’s mummified body. He was defeated by a combination of better intelligence by Ptolemy, having to cross a river with tricky currents and the voracious appetite of the Nile crocodiles, who fed on the living and dead for days afterward.
8 In spite of the mania for “logic” and “science” in postrevolutionary France, Napoleon had his personal astrologer, whom he consulted on matters both military and civil.