“They call me Dugout. Why not start out hot and then go blue. So, maybe ‘Mercy, Mercy, Mercy’ then switch up to ‘Mood Indigo’?”
The group looked around at each other, nodding. “Let’s try it,” the bass player agreed.
As the blue lights came up on the little stage and the group appeared from the darkness, the bass player spoke into the mic. “We had a little problem tonight with Harold Rainman Rollins. His appendix done burst this afternoon. So, in the spirit of brotherhood, we are integrating the group tonight. So on tenor sax, we have Dugout. And because we haven’t played a lot with him before, we ask of you ‘Mercy, Mercy, Mercy.’ Hit it.”
After the first two bars, the drummer hit the cymbals and the room started to clap, Dugout leaped into the sax solo, and handed off to the piano player amid a round of applause. The drummer gave Dug a wink and a thumbs-up. As the piece ended with Dug squeezing out a high note, the bass player intoned in a deep voice over the audience’s approval, “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy.”
“Mood Indigo” gave way to “Green Dolphin Street,” “Desafinado,” “I Remember Clifford,” and “Isfahan.” Dugout had soaked through his black T-shirt under the lights and was wondering how long a set these guys played, when the bass player stepped up and explained to the crowd. “We appreciate that it seems like none of you all have left during this set. That’s always a good sign. So, maybe we found us a good sax after all.” There were hoots and clapping. “So, we’re going to close out with a piece that will let him strut his stuff. A piece made famous by his hero Charlie Parker.”
Dugout felt a moment of fear, not knowing whether this was a setup, whether this was going to be something he knew how to play.
“‘A Night in Tunisia,’” the bass player exclaimed.
It was the classic Charlie Parker piece, written by Dizzy Gillespie. He knew it cold. Dug hit the opening bar and it was all his after that.
After the set, the group sat around in the audience, drinking on the house. “We’re hoping to get Harold back next week, but you are welcome to join us anytime,” the bass player said as they were closing the hall.
“Yeah,” the drummer agreed. “After all, you can never have too much sax.”
It was after three in the morning when Dugout got on the red Capital Bikeshare bicycle on F Street and pedaled past the White House toward Foggy Bottom. The streets were far from empty. Students from George Washington were finding their way back to the dorms from 14th Street, from H Street, from wherever they had eaten a grease burger to sop up the booze after the bars closed. As he dodged them on his way to Navy Hill, the breeze giving him a little chill after the heat of the club, Dugout still felt the high of the music, the audience, the group. His good feeling was reflected by the fun the college kids were obviously having that night. He thought of texting a friend to see if he was still up, to see if he wanted a late-night visit.
Then he thought of the work he had to go in to do, and why. He had needed the break of playing his music, but he also felt guilty taking any time off, with Ray out there with people trying to kill him. He really should not have a life of his own, Dugout thought, until he had cracked the problem. And he had thought of new ways of running the correlations, new databases to add. As he passed a knot of students horsing around outside a fraternity, he sensed sobriety overtaking him. Unless he could crack this jumble, find out who it was they were up against, there might not be many more fun nights in this city.
He flashed his badge at the gate into the Navy Hill complex and punched in his PIN. The guard in the gatehouse knew him by sight and waved. Dugout showed up a lot in the middle of the night.
23
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 29
GULFSTREAM 650
TAIL NUMBER JY-RF3
FORTY-THOUSAND FEET OVER KUWAIT
Not flying over Iran added a few miles to the flight, but this was one of the King’s private planes that could fly over eight thousand miles without touching down for fuel. They could make it to Hong Kong without a full fuel load. As he explored the cabins and amenities on the aircraft, Ray wondered how many electronic intelligence services would be tracking the aircraft: the Saudis, the Russians, the Chinese, the Israelis, obviously the Americans, and the Brits. The Paks and the Indians would take note when the aircraft went through or near their air space. How many of them would wonder why the King of Jordan was flying to Hong Kong? How many would know that he was actually in his palace near the Red Sea planning the moves involved with dumping yet another Prime Minister?
“Finding everything all right?” It was the blonde flight attendant, or rather one of them. She was Dutch. The other one had said she was Estonian. “We’ve made up the bed in the rear cabin and, if you are going to try to sleep, I can give you some Ambien,” she said.
“Oh, no, thank you,” Ray replied, “I’ve sworn off the stuff. Better off being jet lagged and groggy. Besides, I prefer the natural method. Do you have any single malt?”
“There are three bottles of the Macallan twenty-five-year-old,” she said.
Of course, there were. With a bottle retailing at a little under a thousand dollars, Ray Bowman found himself wondering why you would need three bottles on any flight.
He shuddered at the thought of the sleeping pill and the memory of his own Ambien horror three years earlier. He had woken, or semi-woken, in the middle of the street three blocks from his condo in Foggy Bottom, naked. He had no idea how he had gotten there, but later deduced he had sleepwalked from his bed after taking an Ambien to deal with jet lag.
In one very quick instant, he had calculated his options: skulk back home through back alleys, where he might be arrested as a lurking rapist; saunter nonchalantly down the brick sidewalks, acting as if he were some protesting nonconformist; or run as fast as possible, hoping that no one would notice that he had no trunks on. He chose the jogging option and, since it appeared to be deep in the middle of the night, and he ran faster than he ever had in his life, a blur of a six-foot-two man with very white, hairy skin, he had made it to the town house without seeing another human and, more importantly for his career, not being arrested for indecent exposure. There he had another moment of fear stabbing at his stomach, as his hand went to his pocket for the keys.
Another flash and he remembered that the backup key was in the dirt around the little fir tree in the giant pot. Later as he sat on his deck, wearing running trunks, watching the sun begin to turn pink the distant sky over Maryland, he sipped a twelve-year-old Balvenie single malt and told himself he would never again use Ambien.
“That would be great. The Macallan. Three fingers, neat,” he told the Dutch woman.
As he sipped the liquid mahogany, he thought how well he was dealing with the fact that there were people trying to kill him, people whose identities he did not know. He had focused instead on the more important fact that those same people were probably trying to kill a lot more people than just him, that they were even at this moment probably moving nuclear warheads into place in some great cities.
When they did that, there was no way of knowing what the consequences would be beyond the immediate disaster area. They would, however, be momentous and negative. And when exactly they would do that, Washington thought in its collective, classified wisdom, was sometime in the next week, the last week of the presidential election campaign. He tried to find hope in a scenario in which the Hong Kong meeting would reveal that some of the new Trustees knew who had bought the nuclear devices. Just a lead, that was all he needed, a thread that he and Dugout, and Dugout’s machines, could pull on.
The Gulfstream had climbed to forty-two thousand feet as it headed out of the night and the Arab Gulf into the Indian Ocean, racing toward the sun.
He sipped the single malt and thought of what was waiting ahead when the Gulfstream touched down. He knew the last Police Commissioner of Hong Kong, but not his replacement. At least the new guy had agreed to meet with him. What a story the Commissioner was going to hear.
24
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 30
HONG KONG GOLF CLUB FANLING
NEW TERRITORIES, HONG KONG
“You should let me win once in a while. Maybe you would get promoted, Richard,” Stephen Cheung joked as they walked toward the clubhouse.
“I don’t think I am ever being promoted again, Commissioner,” Richard Taylor laughed. “There is a glass ceiling for people with English surnames and I have hit it. So, after thirty years on the force here, I take my little satisfactions where I can.”
“You must be our guest for drinks,” Commissioner Cheung said, looking up at Raymond Bowman, standing on the steps of the clubhouse. “This is Assistant Commissioner Richard Taylor, Crime and Security. We have reserved a private room. Follow me, if you would.” The threesome walked past portraits of English military officers and colonial officials from earlier centuries, up a narrow back stair to a perch atop the clubhouse, looking out and down on a city in the distance, in the smog.
“We know who you are Mr. Bowman. The American Consulate has explained who you report to,” Commissioner Cheung began. “My predecessor, Peter Wong, recalls you fondly from his year at the Kennedy School. He sends you his best. I did not get to go to Harvard. My year it was the Royal College of Defense Studies, which made my wife happy. You see we met twenty-two years ago when I was a bobby for two years in Scotland Yard. She still loves London.”
The Assistant Commissioner was mixing two gin and tonics at a drinks dolly. “Will you join us in a G and T?” Taylor asked. “Can I make a third?” Bowman nodded agreement.
The Commissioner waved Bowman out on to the small balcony. “Don’t let all this British atmosphere fool you, Mr. Bowman. We are ruled by Beijing. Our semiautonomous stature goes only so far. That city in the distance is in China.”
“You seem rather unlike the People’s Armed Police,” Bowman replied.
“Very unlike them, yes,” Richard Taylor agreed, joining them on the balcony. “Hong Kong Police are independent. We get no help from the mainland. We have to have our own little navy of boats and our own little air force of helicopters to secure one of the most densely populated cities in the world and its many islands. But the Ministry of State Security and the People’s Liberation Army stay in their compound in Central, where the British Army used to be. Beijing knows what goes on here, although not always in real time.”
“So it is I who will decide whether to assist you, not Beijing,” the Commissioner asserted. “Tell me why I should.”
“No city anywhere in the world has been destroyed by a nuclear weapon in over seventy years. That may be about to change,” Bowman began. He told the two Hong Kong policemen most of what he knew. “What I am asking your help with is surveilling the new Trustees and their meeting.”
The two Hong Kong officers looked at each other in a way that said they were used to being told bizarre stories that were unfortunately true. “Do you know where they are now?” Commissioner Cheung asked.
“I know where their mobile phones are. All at the Upper House, the five-star hotel owned by Robert Coetzee, one of the new Trustees. They are waiting for the last Trustee to arrive and she gets in late tonight. Their meeting is scheduled for tomorrow morning.”
The Assistant Commissioner laughed, “You just want us to get into Mr. Coetzee’s hotel tonight and bug the conference room he plans to hold his secret meeting in tomorrow morning. Is that all?”
“Yes, and we need to get a man into the hotel’s server and telco room,” Bowman replied. “And you always have two off-duty officers working security at the hotel at night. Naturally, we will pay them for their cooperation.”
“Naturally, you will not,” Cheung shot back. “This is not Shanghai. We are a clean police force. No bribes. They will help you because I will order them to help you.”
“Thank you, Commissioner,” Ray said.
“You want them all under physical surveillance when they leave the hotel?” Taylor asked.
“Yes, if possible. Three men, two women. But we have a few of our own people who have been picking them up at the airport and following them to the hotel.”
“CIA men stand out in Hong Kong,” Taylor observed.
“But the people they hire do not. And six South Africans flew in to help.”
“Blacks will stand out even more,” Cheung laughed.
“Yes, sir, but they are not black, although they work for a black woman. I think you might like to meet her and I know she would like to meet you. She is the Director of their Special Security Services. Right now she is running a little ops room we have set up.”
“At the American Consulate?” Taylor asked.
“Ah, no,” Bowman admitted. “We are using a company in a high-rise in Central.”
“We will pretend we don’t know that,” Commissioner Cheung said. “Now Richard will help you get all of this in place and will get you some bodyguards, while I go home to see the grandchildren before they go to bed.”
“Bodyguards?” Ray protested.
“Mr. Bowman, you just told us they have tried to kill you in two countries. Third time may be the charm. They, these unknown bad guys, must be here, too, and they may eventually kill you, but they will not do so in my city. I like to keep my murder statistics low.” With that, Cheung left the two men to their nightwork.
25
MONDAY, OCTOBER 31
FORTY-SIXTH FLOOR
PACIFIC TRUST TOWER
CENTRAL, HONG KONG
“There is a great view of Kowloon across the bay,” Mbali said, “or at least there was before they put up the blackout curtains. Welcome to our upscale offices.”
“CIA spares no expense when it comes to their own real estate needs. They’ll say it adds credibility to their cover, whatever that is,” Ray replied as he walked into the conference room filed with computer monitors, television screens, headsets, and other electronics.
“We’re a hedge fund, Emerging Opportunities,” a man with Mbali explained. “Peter Mason, Base Chief Hong Kong.” He looked like he might have been an Assistant Professor of Economics, in a blazer, bow tie, and horn-rimmed glasses. “They’ve finished the small talk over breakfast and are convening in the hotel conference room on fifty-two. The audio and video feeds are working well from the room and we are running the audio from their cell phones as backup. All set.”
“I wish we were closer, in case anything goes wrong,” Mbali said to Ray. “Pacific Place, where the hotel is, even though it looks near, would take us almost half an hour in this traffic.”
“We’re fine. You have two guys in the hotel and two guys outside. Peter, here, has twice that number. And Hong Kong Police have undercovers everywhere, including doing counter surveillance to see if anybody else is here.”
“You mean besides Danny Avidar’s team,” she said.
“I told the Commissioner they were ours. No need to complicate things. Where are they?” Ray asked.
“In the next room,” the CIA Base Chief answered for her.
“A nice young couple. They live here full time. He actually does work at a hedge fund, when he’s not doing errands for Mossad. They are getting the same audio feed we are, but they have some special link back to Tel Aviv so they wanted their own space.”
“So we have Israeli, South African, American, and Hong Kong agents all set up on this meeting. I am sure no one will ever notice,” Ray deadpanned.
They could see the meeting beginning. Five people arranging themselves around a round table, placing their coffee mugs and teacups next to their papers. “Amazing that Coetzee is using a room with videoconferencing,” Mbali noted.
“All of his conference rooms have videoconferencing,” the Base Chief observed. “He just thinks the camera is off. He unplugged it. We swapped it out for a look-alike with a battery pack and a wireless feed.”
Robert Coetzee began. He was still a large man, even though he was in his late seventies, with a pink head of thinning white hair. “We meet as the Trustees of a cha
ritable foundation, created to care for the needs of those who became exiles after the fall of the government of South Africa. We are fiduciaries of that fund. Yes, we are compensated for managing the fund’s investments, but fundamentally we are the leaders of a global fund that is housed in several different countries. We each manage a portion of the money individually, but we decide together how the funds are spent.”
Coetzee continued. “As you know, the tradition among our predecessors was that there was no chairman. The meetings rotated among the five cities and the host always played the role of informal chair. So, it falls to me under these sad circumstances to welcome us all as new members of the Trustees, to our first meeting. Rachel, I am glad that you asked for this session. I am sure that we need it. Before we hear from Rachel, however, maybe we could each introduce ourselves and say a little about what we do, who we are. Paul Wyk, will you start? You are the youngest.”
Wyk looked even younger than the twenty-nine years that he was. Tall and thin, with the wiry look of a tennis star, he was in fact an investment banker. “I live in Wellington, New Zealand. I replace Willem Merwe of Sydney, who replaced his father before him. My late father was the head of Army Research and Development in South Africa. He resettled in New Zealand when I was little. I have no real memories of Africa. The books I have taken over from Merwe show that we have slightly over 1.8b U.S. dollars under management from the Sydney office, some of it newly arrived. I can go into the details of how it’s invested when we get to that part of the meeting.”
“Hesitant, very matter of fact,” Mbali observed to Ray Bowman in their observation post a half mile away.
“Like he’s not sure what it’s all about,” Ray added.
“Liz Pleiss, from Toronto. I replace my father, Marius, who lived, and, ah, died in Dubai.” She looked to be in her early forties, dressed in a gray business suit. She looked like she felt at home in a boardroom. “I have been a management consultant, specializing in making mergers work, but now I think I may have to leave that work to do full time on these investments. I have an MBA from the Sloan School, but investing is not my expertise. My father’s data show a book value of 1.3b U.S. dollars, although much of the original 800 million dollars is tied up in real estate.”
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