The Altman Code c-4

by Robert Ludlum

  The longtime prisoner dropped his spoon into his soup. The younger man’s voice had been soft and low, yet somehow carried clearly to his ears.

  The newcomer stared calmly up at the ceiling. His lips had not moved.

  “Wha … what?” “Keep eating,” the motionless man said. “He wants you to come home.”

  David Thayer remembered his training. He bent to his soup, lifted a spoonful, and spoke with his head down. “Who are you?”

  “An emissary.”

  He sipped. “How do I know that? I’ve been tricked before. They do it every time they want to add to my sentence. They’ll keep me here until I die. Then they can pretend nothing ever happened … I never existed.”

  “The last gift you gave him was a stuffed dog with floppy ears named Paddy.”

  Thayer felt tears well up in his eyes. But it had been so long now, and they had lied to him so many times. “The dog had a last name.” “Reilly,” the man on the pallet said Thayer laid down his dented soup spoon. Rubbed his sleeve across his face. Sat for a moment.

  The man on the floor remained silent.

  Thayer bent his head again, hiding his lips from anyone who might be watching. “How did you get in here? Do you have a name?”

  “Money works miracles. I’m Captain Dennis Chiavelli. Call me Dennis.”

  He forced himself to resume eating. “Would you like some soup?”

  “Soon. Tell me the situation. They’re still not aware of who you are?”

  “How could they be? I didn’t know Marian had remarried. I didn’t even know whether she and Sam were alive. Now I understand she’s dead.

  Terrible.”

  “How did you find out?”

  “Sam’s visit to Beijing last year. I get the newspapers here. I … ”

  “You read Mandarin?”

  “Washington wouldn’t have sent me if I weren’t fluent.” Thayer smiled thinly. “In nearly sixty years, I’ve become expert. In many of the dialects, too, especially Cantonese.”

  “Sorry, Dr. Thayer,” Captain Chiavelli said.

  “When I read about Sam’s visit, his name jumped out, because Serge Castilla had been my closest friend at State. I knew he’d been helping in the search for me, too. So I did some calculations. President Castilla was exactly the right age, and the paper said his father was Serge and his mother Marian. He had to be my son.”

  Chiavelli gave an almost invisible shake of his head. “No, he didn’t. It could’ve been a coincidence.”

  “What did I have to lose?”

  The Covert-One agent thought about that. “So why did you keep quiet until now? You’ve waited a full year.”

  “There was no chance I’d ever get out, so why embarrass him? And why risk Beijing’s finding out and vanishing me completely?”

  “Then you read about the human-rights treaty.”

  “No. It won’t be announced in the Chinese papers until it’s signed. The Uigher political prisoners told me.” Thayer pushed the soup bowl away.

  “At that point, I allowed myself to hope. Maybe there was a chance I’d be overlooked among the crush of releases and accidentally let go.” He stood up and walked to his hot plate.

  Chiavelli watched with half-closed eyes. Despite Thayer’s advanced age— he had to be at least eighty-two, according to Klein — he walked energetically, steady and firm. His posture was erect but relaxed. There was a spring to his step, now, too, as if he had shed years in the fifteen minutes they had been talking. All of this was important.

  Routine had saved Thayer’s sanity. He picked up a chipped enamel kettle, carried it to the scarred sink, filled it, and put it on the hot plate.

  From a little cupboard, he brought out two chipped cups and a tin canister of black tea. His method of making tea was an unusual mixture of traditional English and traditional Chinese. He poured the boiling water into the earthenware pot, rinsed it, poured it away, then measured in four teaspoons of tea. He immediately poured more boiling water onto it and let it steep less than a minute. The result was a pale, golden-brown liquid. The pungent aroma filled the cell.

  “We drink this without milk or sugar.” He gave Chiavelli a cup.

  The undercover agent sat up and leaned back against the wall, cradling it.

  Thayer sat at the table with his. He sighed. “Now I’m beginning to believe getting out because of the treaty is just the pipe dream of a man at the end of his years. They’ve held me in secret far too long to admit that they’ve held me at all. It’d make their human-rights record look even more despicable.” Chiavelli drank. The tea was light-bodied and mild for his Italian-American palate, but it was hot, a welcome improvement to the underheated barrack. “Tell me what happened, Dr. Thayer. Why were you arrested in the first place?”

  Thayer set down his cup and stared into it as if he could see the past.

  When he looked up, he said, “I was working as a liaison with Chiang Kaishek’s organization. My job supposedly was to bring about some kind of detente between his Nationalists and Mao’s Communists, so I thought it’d help the process along if I personally went to Mao and reasoned with him.” He gave a smile that was half grimace. “How ludicrous. How naive. Of course, what I didn’t see was that my real mission was to keep Chiang in power. I was supposed to make deals, hold talks, and stall until Chiang could destroy Mao and the Communists. Going to Mao was the quixotic notion of an inexperienced intellectual who believed people could talk rationally together even when power, values, cultures, ideas, classes, haves, have-nots, and geopolitical spheres of influence were in conflict.”

  “So you really did it? You actually went to see Mao alone?” He sounded both amazed and horrified.

  Thayer gave a thin smile. “I tried. Never got to him. His army decided I was an agent of the West, or of Chiang, or both. Of course, they arrested me. I would’ve been shot by the soldiers, if Mao’s politicians hadn’t intervened because I had diplomatic status. Over the years, I often wished I had been shot on the spot.”

  “Why did they report you dead and then hold you like the Soviets held Wallenberg?”

  “Raoul Wallenberg? You mean the Soviets did have him?”

  “Denied they did, never released him, and for fifty years continued denying they ever had held him. He died early on, in custody.”

  Thayer seemed to sag. “I expect what happened to me was what happened to him. They couldn’t believe he was nothing more than he appeared. That’s the direct result of paranoia, the kind that happens when anyone who speaks out is ruthlessly suppressed. At the time I was captured, the Communist revolution was sweeping China. There was such chaos … endlessly changing commanders, new civilian orders, confounding proclamations, and bureaucrats who had no idea what was going on. I think I must’ve been simply lost in the machinery. By the time Zhongnanhai stabilized, it was too late to send me home without creating an international incident and losing face.” He turned the warm cup between his gnarled fingers. “And here they intend for me to stay. Until I die.” “No,” Chiavelli said firmly. “What happened to Wallenberg isn’t going to happen to you. You won’t die in captivity. When the treaty’s signed, China will release all political prisoners. The president will make a point of bringing you to the attention of Niu Jianxing and the rest of the Standing Committee. I’ve heard he’s called the Owl, because he’s a wise man.”

  David Thayer shook his head. “No, Captain Chiavelli. When that treaty is signed by the general secretary and my son, I will have been conveniently ” again. If my son pushes too hard and makes an issue at this late date, no one will ever find me. Instead, a hundred old men will appear and claim to have witnessed my death a half century ago.

  There’ll be assorted proofs. Probably pictures of my grave that is now, alas, deep underwater behind some new dam.” He shrugged, resigned.

  Chiavelli studied him. The Covert-One agent was a former special forces captain who had operated in Somalia and the Sudan. Recently, he was called back into action in the valleys, ca
ves, and mountains of eastern and northern Afghanistan. Now his new assignment was David Thayer. His first question was whether Thayer could be extracted.

  He had surveyed the immediate area and found it encouraging. It was sufficiently rural and remote, if not sparsely populated — nowhere in China, except for Xinjiang, Gansu, and the Mongolias, was sparsely populated. Outside Chongqing, the roads were bad, military installations scattered, and airfields primitive. Fortunately for his assignment, outside Dazu, they were largely nonexistent.

  The camp guards were well armed, but they lacked sharp discipline. Their resistance to a swift, heavily armed, and well-planned raid would likely be minimal. With some help from inside, which he planned to provide, and a certain amount of good luck … experienced raiders could be in and out within ten minutes, back in the air within twenty, and more than halfway to the border and safety before significant military force could be assembled.

  The big question now was Thayer’s stamina. So far, Chiavelli liked what he saw. Despite his age, he seemed in decent condition.

  “How’s your general health, Dr. Thayer?”

  “As good as could be expected. The usual aches, pains, discomforts, and annoyances. I’m not going to leap tall buildings or climb Mount Everest, but they keep us in shape here. After all, there are fields to be plowed.”

  “Calisthenics, jogging, walking, working out?”

  “Morning and evening calisthenics and jogging, when the weather’s good.

  Minimal calisthenics in the barracks, when it isn’t. The governor likes to keep everyone busy when we’re not working. I do clerical work, of course. He doesn’t want us to sit around and plot or get into arguments.

  Inactivity leads to thinking and restlessness — a dangerous combination in a prisoner.” Thayer hesitated. He sat up straighter. His faded eyes narrowed as he turned to stare at Chiavelli. “You’re thinking about getting me out of here somehow?”

  “There are considerations. Constraints. Not just your health, but what my boss thinks and what the president can and can’t do. You understand?”

  “Yes. That was my life. Politics. Interests. Diplomacy. Those forces are always at work, aren’t they? The same ” that made State keep me ignorant about what we were really doing back in ‘-eight.

  That and my naivete got me into this mess.”

  “The Chinese won’t keep you here much longer, if I have my way. And I think I will.”

  David Thayer nodded and stood. “I have to go to work. They’ll leave you alone for now. Tomorrow, you’ll go to the fields.”

  “So my friendly guards tell me.”

  “What’s your next move?”

  “I make my report.”

  Hong Kong.

  In a pricey boutique in the Conrad International Hotel, Jon bought a white Stetson hat, using the credit card for one of his covers — Mr. Ross Sidor from Tucson, Arizona. He put on the hat, checked into the hotel, and overtipped the bellman so he would remember Mr. Ross Sidor. As soon as Jon was alone in his room, he went to work: He changed into the gray slacks and neon-bright Hawaiian shirt from his backpack. Over the shirt and slacks, he put on the suit he had worn yesterday to Donk & Lapierre.

  It was tight but manageable. Finally, he added the blond wig again and shoved his Beretta into his belt at the small of his back. Ready to go, he packed the blue seersucker sport jacket, canvas running shoes, folded Panama hat, and backpack into his black attache case. He picked it up and left the room. He saw no one suspicious in the lobby. Outside on Queensway, he walked deeper into Central, carried along by the mob of pedestrians that seemed to live their entire lives on the streets of the city. He had gone a block when he spotted three of the armed men who had searched for him around the public phone in Kowloon yesterday. As soon as they saw him, they spread out through the traffic and pedestrians.

  They made no attempt to close in; he made no effort to lose them. He also did not try to disguise his destination. If they recognized him as Major Kenneth St. Germain, they might be surprised and, he hoped, confused to see him return to the high-rise that housed Donk & Lapierre.

  When he spotted the building, he shoved through the crowds to the entrance. As he went inside, his three tails took up posts across the street, one talking urgently into a cell phone. Jon smiled to himself.

  Altman Asia occupied the top ten floors of the building. The head of Altman Asia was Ferdinand Aguinaldo, the former president of the Philippines. His office was even higher — the penthouse. Jon took the elevator up. The waiting area was decorated with green bamboo, tall carved tables, and high-backed chairs and sofas. The Filipina receptionist smiled politely. “May I help you?”

  “Dr. Kenneth St. Germain. I’d like to see Mr. Aguinaldo.”

  “His excellency is not in Hong Kong at this time, sir. May I inquire why you want to see him?”

  “I’m here on behalf of the surgeon general of the United States to consult with Donk & Lapierre’s biomedical subsidiary on mainland China and its research into hantaviruses.” He showed his USAMRIID credentials and flashed a fake letter from the surgeon general’s office. “Mr. Cruyff downstairs sent me up to talk to Mr. Aguinaldo.”

  The receptionist’s eyebrows raised, impressed. She studied the surgeon general’s signature and looked up. “I’m sorry that Mr. Aguinaldo isn’t here to receive you, sir. Perhaps Mr. Mcdermid can help. He’s chairman and CEO of the Altman Group worldwide. He’s a very important man.

  Perhaps you could speak with him?” “Mcdermid is here?” Jon said, as if he knew the CEO and chairman personally.

  “On his annual visit,” she said proudly.

  “Mcdermid will do. Yes, I’ll see him.” The woman smiled again and opened her interoffice line.

  Lawrence Wood stepped inside the elegant penthouse office of Ferdinand Aguinaldo, head of Altman Asia.

  “What is it, Lawrence?” Behind the big desk, Ralph Mcdermid stretched and yawned.

  “The receptionist says a Dr. Kenneth St. Germain has arrived with a letter from the U.S. Surgeon General. He wants to see Aguinaldo. He says Cruyff down at Donk & Lapierre sent him up, and she wonders if you’d care to meet the man, since he has such good credentials.” Mcdermid said, “Tell her I’ll be free in fifteen minutes.”

  Wood hesitated. “Cruyff couldn’t have sent him.”

  “I know. Just give her the message. On the other hand, I’ll do it myself.”

  “As you wish.” Wood frowned and returned to his outer office.

  Mcdermid touched his intercom button. He was feeling more cheerful. With the strange arrival of Jon Smith, things were looking up. “I’d be delighted to see Dr. St. Germain,” he told the receptionist. “Ask him to give me fifteen minutes, and then I’ll be down.” As she gave her usual pert reply, he severed the connection and dialed his man, Feng Dun.

  “Where are you, Feng?”

  “Outside.” Again Feng cursed Cho, the assassin chosen for the night. He had failed to eliminate Smith, and his corpse had not been discovered in time to send a replacement. “My men saw him go in. Did he return to Donk & Lapierre?”

  “No. He’s up here in the penthouse lobby. He wants to see me.”

  “You?” A moment of shock. “How does he know you’re even in Hong Kong?”

  “One wonders. I’m fascinated. I think we’re lucky he survived your killers. I want to learn more about this unusual doctor’s sources.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Beijing.

  To Major Pan Aitu, the small office of Niu Jianxing — the legendary Owl— was intriguing. As ascetic as a monk’s cell, it had unadorned walls, shuttered windows, a worn wood floor with no rug, a simple student desk and chair for the master himself, and two wood chairs for visitors. At the same time, the desk and the floor were clogged with haphazard piles of files and documents, ashtrays stinking with masses of half-inch butts of the English cigarettes that were Niu’s one indulgence, stained tea mugs, food-encrusted paper plates, and other detritus that indicated his da
ys were long and intense. It was a contradiction that mirrored the man himself.

  As a longtime intelligence agent, Major Pan was an astute reader of the intricate maze of individual psychologies, and so he enjoyed himself while Master Niu continued to read the report he had been bent over when Pan arrived. The only sound was of Niu’s turning over sheets of paper.

  Major Pan decided the office displayed the serenity of the solitary thinker, as well as the cluttered turmoil of the man of action, fused together in the same person. Yes, the Owl was a throwback to those giants who had founded and led the revolution. Poets and teachers who became generals. Thinkers who were forced by the necessity of history to brawl and kill. Pan had known only one of those revered ones — Deng Xiaoping himself, in his extreme old age. Deng had been but a young general back in the idealistic years between the Shanghai Massacre and the Long March. Major Pan did not like many people. He found it a waste of time. But there was something about Niu Jianxing that appealed to him. Niu, true to form, broke the silence without looking up, a hint of rush in his voice.

  “General Chu tells me you have a report he would have you give me directly.”

  “Yes, sir. We thought it best, considering your request for information on the cargo ship.”

  “The Dowager Empress, yes.” Niu nodded down toward his paperwork. “You have what I want?”

  “I may have some of it,” Pan said, cautiously. He had learned to use extreme care when making claims or promises to leaders of the government, especially to those on the Standing Committee. Niu Jianxing looked up sharply. His decidedly unsleepy eyes were hard points of coal behind his tortoiseshell glasses. His sunken cheeks and delicate features showed displeasure. “You don’t know whether you have it, Major?” The intelligence agent felt a moment of emptiness. Then-. “I know, Master Niu.” The Owl sat back. He studied the small, pudgy Major Pan, his little hands, his appeasing voice, his benevolent smile. As usual, Pan was dressed in a conservative Western suit. He was the perfect operative — slippery, anonymous, clever, and dedicated. Still, for all that, Pan was also a product of the Cultural Revolution, Tiananmen Square, and a too-rigid system that left little room for the individual.