Red Cell

by Mark Henshaw

  Pioneer had never seen her before, so there was no question the MSS wouldn’t be able to figure out their relationship. Almost certainly that would put them on alert. If she was CIA, here to exfiltrate him from China, they wouldn’t have much time.

  “I missed you so much. It’s been so long!” she said in her poor Mandarin. In fact, her intonation sounded robotic, like she didn’t understand what she was saying.

  “Yes, it has.” It was best to keep his answers short and simple. If this woman didn’t speak Chinese, she wouldn’t be able to form answers to complex statements. Her replies would be nonsensical if he even asked her a simple question, and that would almost certainly bring the MSS running.

  “I’m so happy you are free tonight. I promised you dinner at the Yueming Lou if you would show me the Forbidden City, remember?”

  Pioneer stepped back. Yueming Lou. He had almost forgotten, but in the instant she said it, the memory came back with force.

  Yueming Lou, he thought.

  The Yueming Lou was a three-story restaurant in the Xicheng district converted from a church by the owners and popular with the Western tourists. The food was good, not excellent, traditional Hunan, and the prices were reasonable. He enjoyed it more for the third-story terrace views of the northern Beijing lakes and the hutong, the ancient narrow alleyways that had once spiderwebbed across Beijing before the party rebuilt the city after the Revolution. Pioneer had dined there many times, at least yearly, under orders that his case officer gave him starting in the third year of his treason. The request surprised him initially. Once he had earned the trust of his case officers, in the fifth year of his labor, they made their reasoning clear. Not every asset earned the promise of exfiltration to the United States. Many didn’t really want it. Abandoning home was not an easy matter even for traitors and especially for those motivated by ideology and not money. Among those who did want the promise, relatively few proved themselves worth the risks involved. Pioneer had.

  Clark Barron—Pioneer had not known him by that name—was the case officer who made the promise. When Pioneer had asked him about the details of the plan, Barron had refused to answer. It was better if he didn’t know the details. What he did need was the signal that the plan was in motion. When the moment came, Barron explained, the case officer would give him a code phrase. “Whatever you’re doing,” Barron said, “drop it. Walk away. We’ll give you some warning if we can so you can pack some things, one bag at most. But when you hear that phrase, you leave with the contact right then. Whatever the contact tells you to do, follow their orders and they’ll get you out.” What Barron didn’t say, but what he had implied, was that hearing the code phrase meant that after he left China, he would not be coming back.

  The code phrase was dinner at the Yueming Lou. The woman was here to keep Barron’s promise.

  Pioneer stepped back and for a moment Kyra wondered whether his nerve was going to break.

  The man looked at her. His face became a serene mask, but she had seen the brief emotion on it. The look on his face at that moment was a pure expression of his true feelings before it hardened to control his surprise.

  For the first time in her life, Kyra had seen pure, unrelieved bitterness. It was hatred so intense she couldn’t understand what could cause it.

  Then he looked at her again and she knew that she was not the target. They were the target of his anger, whoever they were, the ones who had driven him to choose this life. They had led him to this moment when he had to abandon his homeland or die. Kyra Stryker had no idea exactly who they were, but in that moment she hated them as much as Pioneer did, and then she understood.

  She looked back at him. They’ll have to kill me to stop me from getting you out, she thought. Kyra hoped that he understood.

  Pioneer eyed the young woman. She was still smiling, but it was a facade. There was a hard look in her eyes that sent him a very different message and, in the instant he saw it, he trusted her. She couldn’t speak Mandarin, which perplexed him for a second. Why did they send someone without that skill? Something was wrong. But this girl had come for him anyway, and that meant she was a bold one. He hoped it would be enough. His options were limited at the moment.

  “I remember. Let me get my coat. It’s very cold outside,” he said in his native tongue. He saw that she tensed up as he started speaking. She clearly didn’t understand a word he’d said, but she relaxed when he turned away, walked to the closet, and retrieved a thick jacket. Then he indulged in a moment to look around home. It had never been a beautiful place, but it had been his shelter. The dishes were undone, food was still on the table. His books were lined up neatly on the shelf by a small television where he spent most of his nights watching party-approved foreign movies. The bed was unmade and his dirty clothing would now sit in the basket until the MSS took it away, searched it, and then burned it. His desk was neat at least. It was a writing desk built by his father for his mother from light brown Chinese elm with a matching chair. It was one of the few gifts that his parents had been able to leave him. He’d committed much of his treason sitting at that desk as he typed out reports on his laptop for the CIA. There was not much here that he could live without, but the desk he would miss. He prayed that rather than destroy it, some MSS officer might appreciate the craftsmanship and take it for his own. He thought for a moment that it might have been better to burn it, but in truth he wanted it to survive even if he couldn’t be there to own it. He’d known for years that he wouldn’t be able to take the desk to the United States were he ever exfiltrated. It was far too large and he’d known there wouldn’t be enough time to pack it up and ship it out of the country.

  The CIA had not confirmed that they would be getting him out, so he had packed nothing. He did have a few photographs of his parents in a small envelope; he slipped them into his pocket. His parents were dead. It was the first moment that he was grateful for the party’s one-child policy. He had no siblings, so there was no one else to leave behind. No wife, no children, no lover, not even a pet. He’d only allowed himself a few friends at work, who would wonder tomorrow morning where he was. The party would almost certainly never tell them the truth about his disappearance. Perhaps the MSS would feed them a lie about his being killed in an automobile accident. He hoped they wouldn’t stage one and kill someone to provide a plausible foundation for the story.

  He put on his coat and took his last look around his home. Thank you, he thought. He had suddenly become a sentimental fool, but this once he could not bring himself to care. A man who couldn’t be sentimental at such a moment didn’t deserve to live.

  He looked at the young American woman and smiled. “I’m ready. Lead on,” he said. He motioned with his hands so she would understand.

  Kyra took him by the hand and led him out the door. He turned, locked it, and they walked down the hallway toward the stairwell.

  The stairway shaft leading to the first floor was filthy beyond anything Kyra had ever seen. She refused to touch the handrail and prayed that she wouldn’t fall, more out of fear of touching some organism that she’d never be able to clean off than for physical safety. She was unsure that the builders had ever painted the walls, much less repainted them over the years. Years of grime covered the steps, and the smell rising from below was ugly enough to be nauseating.

  Kyra held Pioneer’s hand as they took the stairs by twos as fast as she thought was safe. They’d covered less than half the distance to the ground floor when she heard a noise from above. Several pairs of feet struck the metal stairs. She took a short moment to judge their direction of travel by the volume and decided they were descending the steps at least by threes. Kyra grabbed Pioneer by the arm and led him down the next flight to the sixth-floor exit. She tested the knob, found it unlocked, and no one was standing on the other side. Kyra pulled her charge through the door and closed it as quietly as she had opened it. She scanned the hallway and looked around the corner for any alcove deep enough for them to hide. There were n
one. The choice was to remain in place or run around the curved hallway to the opposite stairwell. Kyra judged the distance and decided they could not get out of sight before the men on the stairs would reach their level. She pushed Pioneer against the wall next to the door hinge so the opening door would give him some cover. She stood on the opposite side and set her balance for a strike to the face of anyone who came through.

  The feet on the stairs reached their level. The men on the other side did not test the door. They continued down and Kyra counted to thirty before cracking the door. Without it closed and impeding her hearing, she took another moment to judge their distance and direction. The men were nearing the bottom and still moving.

  She had focused on sounds in the stairwell too much. The MSS officer came around the corner, his feet silent on the worn carpet, and he caught Kyra across the face with a stiff forearm, pinning her against the wall. Pioneer grabbed for the man’s head. The attacker kicked backward into Pioneer’s stomach and knocked him to the ground with a hard grunt. It was a moment’s distraction that he couldn’t afford, and Kyra made him pay for it.

  She kicked her own foot back against the MSS agent’s knee, and the man’s joint bent in the wrong direction almost to the point of breaking. He cried out and staggered back, unable to keep his weight against the woman to pin her to the wall. Kyra threw a hard elbow, caught him square on the nose, and she felt the crunch against her arm. The adrenaline killed the pain from the unhealed wound in her triceps; she felt nothing but the hard hit of the man’s face against her elbow. Her attacker fell back further, his hands over his face to hold back the blood that started to flow from his damaged nose. Kyra drove her foot into his stomach, but the officer was too close to the wall and Kyra’s kick compressed his solar plexus enough to drive the wind and vomit out of him. He started to double over. Kyra pivoted, stepped forward to close the distance, grabbed his hair, and pushed down as she drove her knee against his face. The bones she had cracked before shattered this time. The strike knocked him backward against the wall. Kyra finished him with a forearm across his throat. The officer fell to the floor, curled into the fetal position, unable to make a noise other than a rasping gurgle as he tried to suck in air and tasted his own blood for his trouble.

  Kyra led Pioneer around the bending hall to another stairwell. She had planned to cross over to the building’s other side at some point, but Mitchell had left it to her discretion when to make the move. They entered the second shaft, as filthy as the first, and she listened. There were shouts from far above and below, but Kyra started down anyway.

  She surprised her charge by leaving the stairwell again on the third floor. Pioneer watched as the woman reached into her pocket and pulled out a disposable cell phone. It had only two numbers preprogrammed. She speed-dialed the first as they ran. Eight doors down on the left, a door opened and Pioneer heard a telephone ringing inside. Kyra pushed him in.

  The apartment was decorated in modern Chinese fashion with only a few nods to traditional furniture. The television was on with the volume unduly loud, the blinds were drawn, and the lights dimmed. A Chinese woman stood behind the door and closed it behind them.

  “You’re Kyra?” she said.

  “I am. You speak English?” Kyra said.

  “Duke University, class of 2003. The package is on the counter by the stove.” Kyra nodded and made for the tiny galley kitchen.

  The woman turned to Pioneer. She was Kyra’s age as best he could judge. She was young, lithe, taller than the average Chinese woman by several centimeters, with blond hair, which shocked him. He had seen her on occasion in the building lobby, but never often enough to warrant his close attention and always with black hair. Now, with light hair and casual Western clothing, he realized that she was not pure Chinese. He inspected her face closely and saw that her Chinese features were softened by some Western traits. “You are Long Jian-Min,” she said. Her Mandarin was flawless.

  “I am.”

  “I have waited a long time to meet you, but I had hoped that it would be some other way,” the woman said. “My name is Rebecca Zhou.”

  “You are American?” Pioneer asked.

  The woman nodded. “My grandparents fled to the United States during the Revolution when they were very young.”

  Pioneer stared at her. “How long have you lived here?”

  The young CIA officer smiled at him. “Six years.”

  “Six years? CIA officers have lived in my building for six years?” He was astonished.

  “CIA officers have lived in your building for almost as long as you have been working for us. You are a very valuable man. We are the fourth team to hold this post. Our job was to watch you, report back on your condition, and assist in your evacuation if it became necessary,” Rebecca said.

  “Then you knew that the MSS was watching?” he asked.

  Rebecca shook her head. “Not until you signaled. The MSS has been far more subtle than we ever expected, so we didn’t know until you discovered it yourself. But they have overreached, trying to use you to find a larger network of assets that doesn’t exist. We changed some of our tradecraft just for you. They didn’t realize this, and so they waited too long to arrest you.”

  Kyra emerged from the kitchen with an open box. She dropped the red backpack, shed her coat, and began to pull off layers of clothing. Pioneer wondered for a moment just how much clothing she intended to remove.

  Rebecca reached into the box and pulled out a bundle of clothing. “Please put this on, and hurry.”

  Pioneer looked at Kyra, who had removed all but the base layer of her clothing. Rebecca took Kyra’s outer-layer shirt and pulled it over her head. Both women were wearing casual blue jeans cut slightly large to facilitate quick movement. Standing next to Rebecca, he saw that her appearance was similar to Kyra’s from moments ago. Not similar, he realized. Identical, as much as two unrelated women could appear. “And where is my twin?” he asked.

  “My husband, Roland, is in the bedroom, waiting for your clothing,” the young woman answered.

  Pioneer removed his coat, shirt, shoes, and pants and handed them over. Rebecca took them and disappeared into the darkness in the rear of the apartment. He donned the clothing the woman had provided for him. The fit was perfect. How did they know? he thought. He supposed that over the years, at least one of the people who met with him had had a trained eye for clothing sizes. Or had they been in his apartment as well? He doubted they would ever tell him.

  Kyra pulled out another package from the box, this one zipped inside a black nylon case. She gestured for Pioneer to come with her and led him into the light of the kitchen.

  The disguise package was descended from the “Silver Bullet” technologies developed by the Agency’s Directorate of Science and Technology in the 1970s to help case officers penetrate KGB surveillance in Moscow. Kyra had never seen the original disguises. They were older than she was, but the pieces she applied to his face and body were realistic enough to make her stomach turn. The sight of blood had never fazed her, but holding body parts realistic enough to pass close inspection was another matter. They took thirty seconds to apply. She stepped back, inspected him, nodded, and led him back to the entryway. He looked around for a mirror but could not find one.

  Rebecca was waiting with another man who was dressed as Pioneer was when he had entered the apartment.

  “Are we ready?” Roland said in English.

  “Ready,” Kyra said.

  Rebecca reached down and hefted the red backpack. It was full of books, newspapers, pencils, and other items common to any Western exchange student. There was nothing to incriminate the carrier. The color was the only feature that made the pack important. “You have the keys to your car?” Rebecca said.

  Pioneer nodded. It took him a moment to understand that she was asking for them. He handed them over. He was about to tell her where to find the car when it occurred to him that she surely knew.

  Roland turned to Pioneer and spoke
in his own perfect Mandarin. He also appeared Chinese, but Pioneer inspected his face and saw that he looked more like a Beijing native than his wife. “I regret I didn’t get to know you better. Perhaps we’ll get to talk in the United States one day soon.”

  “I hope so,” Pioneer said. “You have my gratitude. But you could be arrested. Why would you do that for me?”

  Roland grinned. “The director says that risk is our business. It’s what we do. And you have earned it.”

  “Thank you.” The words felt insufficient.

  “Thank us after you’re out of China,” Roland said. Pioneer nodded and smiled. Roland turned to Kyra and switched back to English. “We leave first. Give us ten minutes to draw surveillance. You’ll get a call, one ring only, if they figure things out before time is up. If that happens, you run. Which stairwell did you come down?”

  “The west,” Kyra said.

  “Anyone pass you?” Roland asked.

  Kyra nodded. “We had to switch over on six.”

  “We’ll take the central elevator down. They’ll think that’s as far as you went when you left the stairwell. Take the east stairwell. Turn left when you get outside, one block, and then cut through the park. That’ll send you north. The taxi will be waiting on the far side,” Roland said. “The driver is one of ours. We’ll buy you as much time as we can.”

  “Done deal. You’re on the clock,” Kyra said.

  “See you in the States,” Roland assured her. “Ready for dinner and a movie, hon?”

  “Six years. You have no idea how ready I am,” his wife answered. She put the red backpack over her shoulder, then turned back to Pioneer. She leaned in close and put a hand behind his head. She whispered something in Mandarin that Kyra could not understand.

  “You were never alone.”

  Rebecca smiled at the man and took his hand as his facade finally cracked and he began to sob. His body shook and he covered his face, trying to hide the sudden shame he felt at crying before women. His knees felt weak. He feared that he would fall to the floor when Rebecca put a hand to his shoulder and pulled him close, saying nothing, until he could compose himself. Though he had controlled his emotions for decades, it still took a full minute.