by James Rosone
“I think I may have misspoken, Hank,” Dan insisted. “Jade Dragon is a very sensitive program I’ve been working on for Alibaba. It’s going to help our company capture the entire world market now that China’s trade deal with the US is signed. It is not this massive government program you think it is.”
Iverson paused. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Dan, I need to level with you on something. This needs to stay between the two of us. If you ever say anything aloud about it, I’ll deny it. While I am the chair of the computer science department, I am also a member of the Secret Intelligence Service—”
“Whoa, you mean to tell me you’re MI-6? This entire time?” Dan interrupted in abject horror.
“I am. I have been for more than thirty years. My job is to identify people we can potentially recruit—people with the right placement and access to give us information of value.”
“I’m a dead man. I’m dead as soon as they find out,” Dan said, wringing his hands. “I can’t believe all this time I’ve been sharing information with MI-6.”
Leaning forward in his chair to close the distance between the two of them, Iverson countered, “No, Dan. You do not need to die. I have been very careful around you. It is highly unlikely your government or even Jade Dragon knows who I work for. My cover has been soundly built over the decades.”
Dan just shook his head in disbelief. “You don’t understand, Hank. Jade Dragon will know. If not right now, it will in the near future. It’s only a matter of time until it has built a comprehensive social profile of every person it deems valuable. Since you and I have met on many occasions, it will have you near the top of the list. It’s only a matter of time until they learn who you are. Once they do, they’ll terminate me to make sure I can’t possibly say anything else.”
Hank reached out to Dan, taking his hand. “I know, Dan. That’s why I wanted to talk with you privately right now. You’re probably right—Jade Dragon will eventually piece together who I am, and it’ll make the Ministry of State Security concerned enough that they will recommend you be killed. Dr. Xi will not be able to stop them.”
As the realization washed over Dan, he could feel himself breaking out in a sweat. Iverson pressed in. “Knowing this, Dan, I need you to make the most difficult and consequential decision of your life. I need you to defect. I need you to agree to cross over to our side and assist us in unraveling what you’ve built and what they are going to do with it. We need your help in countering this program and stopping whatever is going to happen next.”
Dan sat there in stunned silence. He pulled his hands back from Hank. With a slight tremor, he grabbed the bourbon and finished the rest of the glass off. The alcohol was starting to have its effect, but it was doing little to remove the sheer terror welling up within him. He thought about his parents and what would happen to them if he defected. Heck, what will happen to them once Jade Dragon figures out Hank is really MI6?
Dan stammered, “I…I can’t. My parents still live in Shanghai, Hank.”
“We can arrange for them to get out of the country. We can put you all in a sort of witness protection system. Give you a new identity and move you guys into a safe house and hide you for a period of time. Literally make you disappear from the grid,” Iverson explained gently.
“I don’t know. This is all happening too fast.”
“If I may, Dan—let’s do this, then. We’re supposed to meet up in Macau in a couple of months. Why don’t you have your parents join us?” Iverson asked. “When everyone is there, we’ll look to evacuate you and them out of the country.”
Dan thought about that for a moment, then shook his head. “It’s too risky. The final stages go online next week. In a couple of months, Jade Dragon may have already figured out your identity. They’ll know who you are, which means I’ll be exposed.”
“Then we need to extricate you now. What if we arrange for an accident to happen that requires you to be hospitalized? Could your parents fly to come see you here? Could that work?”
Dan thought about that for a moment, then nodded slightly.
“Then that’s what we’ll do. But first, I need to let some people know you’re willing to defect. We’re going to take you to a safe house right now and begin your debriefing. Things are starting to move fast, and we need to uncover what’s happening before it’s too late. We’ll also put into motion an accident that’ll give your parents the excuse to fly here. We have a stuntman we can use to make it look legitimate.”
Hank pulled out his phone and made a couple of quick calls. In minutes, two men showed up and escorted Dan through a couple of secret corridors within Christ Church that led them to a small hidden room on the campus.
During the English Civil War of 1642, King Charles I had retreated to Christ Church and established his court at the college. During that period, a series of clandestine rooms and passages had been built. Over the years, many of them had fallen into disrepair or been boarded up. During World War II, British intelligence had converted a few of them into safe houses to conduct secret meetings or hide defectors.
When Dan’s escorts unlocked the chamber, he found a double bed, a set of bunkbeds, a couple of chairs and couches, a table and a kitchenette. It looked like someone could hide in this place for some time without feeling like they were being cooped up in a jail cell.
While the bodyguards worked on getting Dan secured, a body double and stuntman showed up and started engineering a very public accident that would result in Dan’s hospitalization. An SIS member got an ambulance on standby while a couple of compliant cops were told to head toward a particular section of Oxford. Dan was supposed to be on an afternoon flight out of London back to Beijing the next day, and it was now nine p.m., so they didn’t have long to get things sorted.
Once Dan had been situated in his room, a couple of interviewers showed up to work with Iverson on debriefing Dan. They needed to know an enormous amount of information about Jade Dragon and what had transpired up to this point. Despite the late hour, the team of interviewers spent nearly four hours debriefing him. Iverson stayed and asked a lot of very technical questions about the program, specifically about what JD, as Dan called it, was working on next.
While Dan didn’t have complete access to everything Dr. Xi had been working on, he was able to provide Iverson with the specifics of what JD was capable of, and what he shared was enough to send shivers down anyone’s spine.
“The software and the brain you’d built for Jade Dragon is beyond anything I had thought possible,” Iverson admitted.
*******
JBCC – Computer Lab
Beijing, China
“Dr. Xi, I am sorry to interrupt, but this is important,” one of his assistants said.
“What is so important you have to interrupt me at a time I told you explicitly not to?” Xi growled. He was finding it harder and harder to work on some of these complex coding problems when he was constantly being asked questions.
“Sir, it’s Ma Yong—Dan. He’s been in a terrible accident in England,” the assistant blurted out.
For a moment, Xi didn’t say anything. He was trying to digest what he’d just heard. “Is he OK?” Xi finally stammered. “What happened?”
“I don’t know a lot—just that he was apparently hit by a car in Oxford. He was airlifted to a hospital. The man he was with, a Professor Hank Iverson, called Ma’s parents and told them what had happened. He told them they should catch the next flight to London.”
“Geez, is he going to live? How badly is he hurt?”
The assistant just shrugged.
Xi looked at the man. “How about you find out? If you can’t speak directly to someone at the hospital to check on him, then get with the embassy and have them do it. We need to know what happened to him.”
The assistant backed out of his office and went to work on finding out how acute Dan’s injuries were. An hour later, Xi was told Dan had broken both his hips, his left femur, and his right shou
lder. He also had a severe head wound, and was apparently in a medically induced coma to stop the brain swelling.
Not sure what more to say, Xi asked his assistant to have someone at the embassy continue to track his progress and report back to him every twelve hours.
Chapter Thirteen
Cuba Libre
February 2024
Isla de la Juventud, Cuba
José Santiago walked up to the counter to check in and presented his Canadian passport and credit card. “Good morning, Mr. Santiago. Is this your first time staying with us here at Hotel El Colony?” the receptionist asked warmly.
“It is. I’ve heard wonderful things about this place from some of my coworkers who stayed here previously.”
The receptionist smiled as she checked him in. She gave him a key to a room situated on the ground floor and told him a bit about the hotel and the restaurant. Once he’d gotten things settled at the front desk, José walked to his room to drop his stuff.
He planned to spend a long four-day weekend on the island. It had taken him nearly a month to concoct a legitimate reason to visit the place and make the appropriate arrangements so he wouldn’t get flagged by the secret police.
Once he got settled in his room, José couldn’t shake a paranoid feeling, so he double-checked the burner phone he had brought with him to make sure he had the correct new SIM card and an increased memory card in it. José admired these Chinese knock-off versions of the Apple phone. They had some additional features the American versions didn’t—like a removable memory card that allowed you to increase the phone’s storage. José wanted to make sure he’d have plenty of space to take some photos and videos as he explored the city.
José ventured out of his room and wandered down to the hotel’s restaurant. As he sat down, he couldn’t help but notice there were a lot of Chinese people there. While there had always been a fair number of Chinese nationals in Havana, the number had tripled in the last twelve months.
José knew about the oil deal with the Chinese and the revamping of the ports, but he couldn’t help but wonder if something else was afoot. The Chinese he saw around him weren’t the usual tourists with cameras and selfie sticks. These were military-aged males. It was like an entire Chinese army had suddenly descended on the island disguised in civilian clothes.
A few hours later, José wandered through the city of Nueva Gerona. It was a small city, fifty thousand people according to the information he’d read. Oddly, the more he walked around the place, the more it appeared to be abandoned.
Where have all the people gone? he thought.
José also noticed the number of construction vehicles and lorries driving through the city from the harbor. These weren’t small trucks either. Some were loaded down with shipping containers, others with enormous steel beams, while still others held construction material. José noticed the trucks were operated by Chinese workers.
After looking for a café to sit in and ask some questions, José found a quaint little place called El Galeón, overlooking the city center of Nueva Gerona. The décor, with netting hanging from the walls and decorative lights, gave the café the feel of a pirate ship. The bartender wore a pirate hat while the two waitresses wore skull-and-bones bandannas covering their hair. It was probably a hopping place in the evenings.
When he walked out to the outdoor eating area, José saw mostly Chinese workers and a few locals. It took him a moment, but he found an empty table near the rear but still next to the inside seating. This seat gave him the best angle to watch everyone in the place.
As José waited for the waitress to bring him a menu and take his order, he pulled his phone out. He took a selfie from the right angle to capture the faces of military officers, then panned his camera to capture images of the other Chinese men seated at the café, looking like a tourist capturing images of the restaurant. Once he got back to Havana, he’d upload the photos to be analyzed.
Nearly five minutes after he’d taken a seat, the waitress came by, but only long enough to bring him a menu before leaving to serve the three tables with the Chinese workers and soldiers. The three groups appeared to be in good spirits, talking happily amongst each other in very rapid Mandarin.
While José waited for the waitress to return, he pulled the pack of Cohiba Originals out of his breast pocket and lit one up. It had taken José a few years to get the routine of being a native Cuban down, but he felt he was finally fitting in. Granted, he’d grown up in Venezuela before his parents had fled the Chávez regime for Florida, so he still knew how South American men acted. But Cubans…they were different. He certainly looked like a native, and he’d picked up the Cuban accent, but he was still working on that swagger of a Cuban man his age.
José took a couple of drags on the Cohiba cancer stick, as he liked to call them. The waitress returned to his table carrying a water pitcher. She refilled his glass before asking, “What can I get for you?”
José glanced down at the menu briefly. “I’ll take the arroz con pollo and some iced tea.”
The waitress smiled as she wrote his order down. She said she’d be back in a few minutes with his sweet tea, the only kind they served.
When she returned a few minutes later, José saw her name tape and asked, “Bernita, this is my first time to the island. Have there always been so many Chinese workers here?”
Bernita smiled at the question. “No, not always. It’s more of a recent thing. Several years ago, the Economic Minister came here and told everyone a geology team had discovered a valuable mineral on the island. The Chinese started construction of a new oil refinery too.”
José stuck his lower lip out as he nodded. “Wow, that sounds great. So where is everyone? Are they all working at the new facilities?”
Bernita laughed as she shook her head. “Well, everyone had a job at first. They were even paying everyone eight hundred pesos a month. Then a month ago, they told everyone we need to leave the island and relocate to the mainland. Apparently, they’re expanding the mines and the new oil refinery. A lot of people weren’t pleased about having to move. You know, many people have lived on this island for generations. Eventually, the Chinese offered everyone that relocated by March twenty thousand pesos to compensate us for losing our homes and businesses. Well, nearly everyone has taken them up on their offer, especially when the government said they would provide us with land to build new homes over in La Coloma along the water, or up in the mountains near Pinar del Río. You are lucky you’re visiting us now; the island will be closed off to the public starting in March.”
José smiled at the woman’s good fortune as he nodded in approval. He joked with her, “That’s a lot of pesos. Maybe I should find a local woman here to marry so I can be rich.”
The waitress, a woman easily in her midforties, practically cackled. “Señor, you are too late. Maybe if you had come here this time last year, you might have found a good woman, but most of the people have already left. The only reason my husband and I have stuck around is because business has been so good with all the workers. The Party says we can keep our business open until the end of March if we’d like, then we need to leave.” The woman seemed happy with how things were working out.
José tried to probe further. “Do you know why there are so many Chinese workers and military officers here?”
Bernita shrugged. “I do not ask questions like that. It’s not my place. I know a lot of soldiers and workers continue arriving. I suspect they are working on the new mine.”
“You don’t happen to know where this new mine is located, do you? I want to make sure I don’t go near it,” José replied.
Bernita nodded and told him approximately where it was. José made a mental note to look the place up on his laptop when he got back to his room.
Once his food arrived, he chowed down on some of the best chicken and rice and beans he’d eaten in a long time. José didn’t know what made the food so good, but each time he ate in these little towns outside of Havana, it
was pure heaven. The chicken had incredible flavor. He supposed that was one of the benefits of not having animals raised on GMOs and hormones.
Later that afternoon, José changed into his running clothes. He attached his phone to an arm strap and inserted his earbuds. Looking at the map, José found the approximate location of the new airport he’d really been sent to the island to investigate and outlined his run. He started listening to a book on Audible and headed out for a run. It wasn’t quite sunset; that would come in about ninety minutes.
He found it somewhat odd the government was building a new airport on the island while relocating everyone to the mainland. José decided to develop a running routine over the next few days so it wouldn’t seem out of place when he ran past a few of the locations he’d been sent to observe and take pictures.
Forty minutes into his run, with sweat running down his face, José saw a slew of construction vehicles working in the large field where this new airport was being built. He paused his run long enough to do some stretches, then some push-ups, sit-ups, and a few other calisthenics. This allowed him to stand nearby and continue to observe the activity. During his exercise routine, he casually pulled his phone out of its case and took a few pictures.
Once he completed a few routines, he got back on the dirt road and continued his run. He saw a truck heading toward him. It had a shipping container on it with a company name stenciled on it—China Nonferrous Metal Mining Company.
Why build an airport if you’re moving the population off the island? José wondered. Something isn’t adding up.
As José ran back into town, he made sure his path took him by the harbor. He hadn’t paid a lot of attention to it when he’d arrived this morning, but now, he noticed at least five dredging ships there. On the far side of the harbor, they were building up the pier wall with some large cranes. Whatever was going on, it was big.
For the next three days, José spoke with five different people and took two guided nature tours, two self-guided nature tours, and three more long runs. What he saw wasn’t exactly giving him warm fuzzies. When he returned to Havana, he’d need to write up his findings and see what the folks on the seventh floor thought about it. Maybe they’d have a tasking they’d want him to look at. Then again, this was an election year and the economy was in the toilet, so they might not want to do much of anything until after November.