The Enemy Inside

by Steve Martini

  “What are you talking about? You mean bribes?”

  “Shh, not so loud,” says Harry. He gives me an exasperated look. “It’s one thing to be bought off by some lobbyist in D.C. representing poultry producers in Iowa. Or, for that matter, even if the chickens are in Poland. But what if some of this money is coming from a foreign government, the recipient may not even know it,” says Harry. “He knows he’s being bought. But if he fulfills the quid pro quo, he may also be committing an act of treason.” Harry looks at me. He is stone-cold serious.

  “Take that and multiply it by a dozen other members, and ask yourself, does the IRS or for that matter any other government agency really want to roll that rock over? Given the low public esteem of Congress or government in general?” says Harry.

  “Holy sh . . .”

  “Shh. Quiet,” says Harry. “It could be nothing. Maybe somebody popped a window and I’m feeling the effects of the thin air. Then again that might explain why so many people have been dying in accidents lately.”

  Four rows back and on the other side of the aisle, the dark-haired woman holding the novel tried to listen to what the two men were saying. Their heads kept moving closer to each other as they spoke. The engines were too loud and their voices too low.

  When they landed she would wait for the other passengers to unload, then check the seats of the men for any scraps of paper they may have left behind. There was a two-hour layover in Amsterdam. They weren’t going anywhere. Ana knew she’d catch up with them again, on the connecting flight to Zurich, and if not then, on the train to Lucerne. It was going to be a long trip.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Great Britain held possession of the island of Hong Kong and the southern portion of the Kowloon Peninsula since the mid-nineteenth century. They acquired the area known as the New Territories later. The British had seized them in two successive opium wars, first the Island and then Kowloon across the narrow waterway, the harbor they would later name for Queen Victoria.

  Both wars were fought against fading Chinese dynasties by the British Empire, which at that time was at its zenith. It stood alone as a world power with the largest navy on earth.

  The Opium Wars, while adorned by diplomacy with the trappings of state policy, were in fact little more than naked acts of economic aggression by a powerful nation against a weaker one.

  Britain wanted Chinese goods, silks, spices, tea, and other valuable commodities. The problem was that it had nothing to trade in return, nothing that China wanted or needed. What they wanted was to be left alone.

  British business interests struck upon the idea of selling opium to the Chinese, which was then abundant in the far-flung British Empire. They reasoned that the Chinese would become addicted, thereby feeding future demand for the product.

  When the Chinese government resisted by seizing loads of opium entering their country on British ships, war followed.

  The Chinese were quickly defeated. In 1842 Britain took as part of its prize the Island of Hong Kong. In 1860, following the Second Opium War, the English took Kowloon. By the terms of treaties signed under the muzzle of British cannons, Great Britain took and held both of these possessions in perpetuity.

  Western historians would call it “the opening of China.” The Chinese would refer to it as the time of the “unequal treaties.” Regardless of the name, it marked the beginning of China’s colonization by Western nations, spheres of influence that would over time be seized for concessions by the world’s other major players.

  During the early years of British administration, what had been a sleepy fishing village on the eastern shores of Hong Kong was transformed into a thriving center of British colonial commerce. The island’s population grew geometrically. It became a magnet for trade. Development and construction on the island spread. When Kowloon was added to the British possessions, it too prospered and grew. By the end of the nineteenth century the explosion of commercial growth and construction in what was a limited area had taken its toll. Economic success had its price. It placed a strain on the domestic water supply as well as the arable land available to grow food for what was becoming a densely populated British colony.

  In 1898 Britain once again approached a fragile and increasingly unstable Chinese government. This time, rather than using force they used their diplomatic muscle to negotiate a ninety-nine-year lease for an area adjacent to Kowloon. The lease embraced 368 square miles of the mainland as well as numerous small islands.

  What would become known as the New Territories would total more than eighty-six percent of the entire area of the Hong Kong colony. Its lease would also become the straw that broke the lion’s back. In time, with patience and changes in geopolitics, China would force Britain to surrender its infinite hold on the commercial prize, the skyscrapers of Hong Kong and Kowloon, and the bustling harbor that separated them.

  The Creeping Dragon alighted from the small Chinese Army executive jet inside a military hangar at what most residents of the island still called the new airport—Hong Kong International. It has been built on reclaimed land not far from Kowloon in the New Territories and was considered by many to be a marvel of modern engineering.

  Built under British administration, it took six years to complete, cost twenty billion dollars, and was turned over to the Chinese government one year after Britain ceded Hong Kong back to China in 1997.

  Cheng considered it a coup. Icing on the cake. Into the early nineties the British had dragged their feet. They tried to negotiate a joint-sovereignty agreement, seeking to keep their hand in Hong Kong. They saw no rational reason why the Chinese government would want them out. British colonial administration was a model of efficiency. Besides, without the British government to ensure stability, might China not be killing the goose that laid the golden egg? What if foreign investment fled Hong Kong? China would be left holding a bag of bones.

  The government in Beijing wasn’t buying any of it. What made the British think China couldn’t administer Hong Kong at least as well as they had? After all, most of the residents were Chinese. To them the argument was an insult.

  Added to this was the fact that Chinese history was a bitter pill, fruit from a poisonous tree. They reminded the British of the inequitable treaties that allowed them to take Hong Kong and Kowloon in the first place. And of the wars that led up to them, wars that ultimately left a legacy of Chinese opium dens fostered by British mercantile interests.

  Britain claimed an obligation to look after the interests of their Hong Kong subjects. Beijing told them that if they felt strongly about it they should give these people British passports. This was a prickly domestic issue back home in Britain, what to do if there was a panic. Millions of Chinese immigrants flooding into the British Isles.

  There were many meetings over months and years between various leaders. Sometimes there were hostile words and threats. If China wanted to, it could simply have taken the colony. Geography was on its side. With the largest standing army in the world there would be little Britain could do to stop them. But why do it if it wasn’t necessary? Patience!

  In the end, it was not threats but a practical argument that won the day. Beijing made it clear that on July 1, 1997, the ninety-nine-year lease would end. On that day, the New Territories would revert to China. Britain had no right under international law to extend the lease. Beijing wouldn’t hear of it. All access to the Chinese mainland beyond Kowloon would be cut off. If Britain wanted to remain on the island of Hong Kong or the tip of Kowloon, they did so at their own peril, because chaos would follow.

  The unstated question was, Where were they going to get the food and water necessary to support the more than six million people then living in what was left of the British colony?

  It was a question for which the British government had no answer. They had run out the string. They had no desire to leave China with feelings of open hostility between the two countries. The handwriting was on the wall. After one hundred and fifty-seven years, Britain woul
d go as they had done from India a half century earlier. The difference being, Hong Kong was not going to become part of the British Commonwealth. It belonged to a sovereign country already, China.

  Cheng was right, to those with patience came the fruits of victory. China established a Special Administrative Region for Hong Kong with assurances that it would remain that way for at least fifty years. It was business as usual. Unless you followed the news you might not even realize that the British had left except for the recent disruptions, which had already fallen off the front pages of most newspapers around the world. The democracy movement was dying largely because the lawyers and businessmen who made the island hum with commercial activity were so busy making money that they couldn’t be bothered to attend the protests.

  The well-monied movers and shakers told the movement’s leaders, mostly disorganized college students and a few professors, that they would try to show up if the organizers could reschedule the “demonstrations” for a weekend. Such was the practical nature of the Chinese mercantile mind. As far as Cheng was concerned, any thought that this might evolve into a real revolution died of embarrassment.

  This morning Cheng had his own business to attend to. The government limo whisked him along the highway and threaded through the crowded downtown streets. Twenty minutes later it dropped him under the portico at the entrance to the Intercontinental Hotel, overlooking the water at the tip of Kowloon.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  On the way to the airport to pick up the second car in Zihua, Herman’s head finally cleared enough that he was thinking once again.

  He was confident there was no one following them on the highway. But whoever was tracking them and was able to find them at the condo probably possessed high-end assets. Merely looking in the rearview mirror or backtracking to trip up anyone following on the road wasn’t going to cut it.

  Depending on who they were, they could have been watching the condo by satellite or using one of the small remote control drones. For a few hundred dollars anybody could buy one of these little bastards and equip it with cameras. If they were flying high enough, people on the ground couldn’t see or hear them. With three or four they could conduct twenty-four-hour air surveillance over a building and watch anyone fleeing from it.

  Whoever it was could have been tracking the van as they fled south along the highway and Herman knew it. He needed to change out vehicles, but do it in a way that it could not be seen from the air.

  The parking garage at the resort on the beach was perfect. Inside there were enough cars already parked, with traffic moving in and out that anyone watching overhead would see only the van going in and never coming out.

  A half hour after entering the garage, Herman, Alex, and the other two men emerged in a dark blue Range Rover, but instead of heading south, they went north. With enough time to think they came up with the perfect location, the fishing resort of Manzanillo.

  A few hours north on the coast highway, Manzanillo had an airport where, if they needed to, they could rent another vehicle. It was a sport-fishing mecca, sailfish capital of the world, blue marlin and dorado. It was large enough with plenty of tourists so that four American men looking for fun would not be noticed. It also had a very active cargo-container port and was only a few hours by car from the dirt airstrip where Herman and Alex had flown in. For anyone on the run it offered multiple means of transport and escape.

  It was their second night in the seedy hotel at the south end of town near the container port. The air conditioner didn’t work and there was enough grease and dirt on the windows that no one could see in or out.

  Herman couldn’t sleep. In the morning they would move again, just to be on the safe side. Though he was certain that if they got away clear in the car there was no way anyone could have tracked them here. They were cut off from the world.

  For Herman that was part of the problem. He wanted to get word to Madriani and Hinds back in Coronado that he and Alex were all right. But he didn’t dare. An incoming call even from a pay phone to the office on Orange Avenue might alert anyone listening in as to their location in Mexico.

  Herman couldn’t be sure if Madriani even knew about the attack at the condo in Ixtapa. He might have seen it on the news. Then again, with the level of narco violence in Mexico, a shooting with blood in the parking lot and no dead bodies was not exactly a hot international bulletin back in the States.

  The bigger fear were messages from the law firm coming south. There was no one in Ixtapa to receive them. But Harry and Paul didn’t know that. It was clear from the shooter’s uniform shirt that their method of communication was compromised. Anything coming this way might be read by the people chasing them.

  Finally he couldn’t wait any longer. About midnight Herman roused one of the other men and the two of them headed into town. They purchased a small stack of international calling cards at a shop on the main drag, then drove fifteen miles farther north up the main highway to a pay phone at the airport.

  Herman hoped that anyone intercepting the call might assume that they were traveling on through, headed north up the coast to Puerto Vallarta or, better yet, catching a chartered flight.

  He placed a call to the unlisted number at Paul’s house. There was no answer. One o’clock in the morning in Manzanillo, midnight in San Diego. Where was he? Perhaps burning the midnight oil?

  Herman called the back line at the law firm. What he heard this time alarmed him: a recording telling him that the office phones were temporarily out of order. What the hell was going on? He wondered if whoever came after them in Ixtapa had also attacked the office. Herman immediately called Harry’s number. Again there was no answer. This time he left a message.

  “Where the hell are you guys? Your office phones are out of order. There was a serious problem at the condo here, repeat serious problem, but we are all OK. Repeat OK! Do not . . . repeat, do not use previously established method of communication. It is compromised. Will contact you again when I have time.” Herman went to hang up, then stopped. He lifted the receiver back to his lips and said, “Headed east on charter flight, Tampico. Will contact you from there.” Then he hung up. At least this would give anyone listening something to waste their time on.

  He called Paul’s house and left the same message. Herman didn’t have home numbers for any of the other office staff. He considered calling Sarah, Paul’s daughter up in L.A. He desperately wanted to know if her father and Harry were OK and, if so, where they were. But he didn’t want to get Sarah involved. Calling her number could present problems. There was no way to be sure just how sophisticated the people trying to kill them were, or what kind of eavesdropping or tracking software they might have. Herman knew that if anything happened to Sarah he wouldn’t have to worry about the people trying to kill him, Madriani would do it himself.

  He slipped the calling cards back in his pocket and the two of them headed back to the dingy room near the port.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  This morning Cheng was not in uniform. Instead he wore a stylish dark blue sharkskin suit, starched white dress shirt, gold cuff links, and a striped silk tie.

  Two security men followed behind him in a separate car, also dressed in civilian clothes.

  None of the local authorities in Hong Kong had been alerted to Cheng’s presence. He would slip in and out of the city unnoticed. To anyone looking at him, Cheng could easily pass for an affluent Chinese businessman. His face was not known to the public. In fact, most officers in the Second Bureau made a point of staying out of the media. If you took their picture there was a good chance you would have your camera smashed.

  He walked into the lobby of the Intercontinental. Under his arm he carried a small leather folio.

  One of the security men stepped out of the car and followed behind at a discreet distance.

  The Intercontinental was one of the more expensive hotels in town. The Presidential Suite would run you almost fourteen thousand dollars a night. Ying, the man he was coming to me
et, liked to live well. Cheng knew he was also careful. He wasn’t staying in the hotel. He was merely taking a room as cover for the meeting. He did this each time they met in Hong Kong.

  Ying owned a luxury condominium high up on the island on the other side of the harbor. It was a very expensive address. Ying thought he had covered this well, but Cheng knew about it. Title to the estate was held in the name of a corporation registered in Andorra, a tiny principality and banking haven tucked in the Pyrenees Mountains between Spain and France. Hong Kong might be a Special Administrative Region, but it was not exempt from Chinese Intelligence.

  Ying had a lot of houses. He could afford them. When you did business with other people in Cheng’s line of work you always wanted to know what they did with their money, how they spent it, what they bought, and if they made investments, how they hedged their funds. It told you a lot about their goals and ambitions, their tolerance for risk, character, and sometimes their weaknesses.

  He checked his watch, ten thirty-five. He was five minutes late. Cheng went to the house phone, picked up the receiver, and when the operator answered, he gave the name Joseph Ying and asked her to ring his room. Cheng knew this was not the man’s real name. He used a number of aliases. Given his government connections he possessed bona fide passports in all of them. Ying was the name he used when doing business in Asia.

  Three minutes later Cheng walked into the blue-tinted lounge with its angled walls of floor-to-ceiling glass looking out over the harbor. He walked over to one of the low cocktail tables, laid the leather folio down, and waited. A few seconds later one of his security men walked in and took a seat at the bar. The place was nearly empty. By noon it would be getting busy. Cheng hoped to be out of there by then.

  He sat down at the table. Ying kept him waiting. Five minutes, then ten. Cheng looked at his watch. He wondered if Ying was sending him a message. Perhaps he had appeared too anxious. Finally, after fifteen minutes the American sporting a Chinese name came through the door. Cheng stood up, reached down, and furtively wiped the perspiration from his right palm onto the back of his slacks so that by the time Ying reached him he was ready to shake hands.