Rogue Empire (Blake Carver Series)

by William Tyree

  CARVER: anything useful?

  TITU$: Nothing. As a language, Chinese has been much more difficult to learn than I expected.

  CARVER: what????

  TITU$: Kidding! I am fluent in Putonghua/Mandarin. But before I tell you what they said, tell me about the progress you’ve made on acquiring the Lycurgus Cup.

  The request caught Carver off guard. He had hardly forgotten, but it was way down his priority list. Still, Nico was his only intelligence pipeline at this point, and he had to keep him happy. Even if that meant telling a white lie.

  CARVER: i told you that the president and the british PM are tight. he promised Eva he would personally deliver the cup to the G8.

  TITU$: Excellent! And when will I receive it here?

  CARVER: working on that.

  TITU$: Good. So here is what I know so far: President Kang is actually scared to death. If his inner circle was responsible for the drone strike on their embassy, he doesn’t seem to know it. Nor does he know anything about the so-called retaliatory flash crash on the U.S. Stock Exchanges. However, Beijing is in full operational mode now. They have begun quietly pulling their people out of the United States in expectation of a full escalation.

  Sweat ran down the inside of Carver’s arms. Kang was scared? There was nothing more frightening than imagining the leader of a billion Chinese making decisions out of fear. He was the most powerful Chinese leader in modern history. To say nothing of the economic power he wielded, he was in charge of more than 400 nukes.

  Scared people didn’t make rational decisions. They usually made rash ones that put lots of people in danger.

  TITU$: My larger point is that China feels they are threatened. My guess is that they will continue to escalate in hopes the U.S. will back down.

  CARVER: the conversations you’ve recorded will be helpful. please send the audio transcripts directly to julian speers.

  TITU$: With pleasure.

  CARVER: here is what i want you to look into next:

  He typed in the latitude and longitude of the old Supa Biwa Lake Resort, describing in great detail the monolithic structure, the camouflaged satellite dishes, and even the dialogue of the coders he had overheard talking outside. He gave him the license plate of the Eel’s car – the lone piece of information they were able to get out of Sho. And finally, a name: Prime Minister Akira Ito. No return text appeared on the screen.

  CARVER: still there?

  TITU$: You want me to spy on the Japanese? Please! These are the people who brought us the Prius, Hello Kitty and the robotic cat that washes my dishes.

  CARVER: trust me. Ito is behind this. i just need proof.

  TITU$: Well, as you wish. But this is out of the scope of our agreement. I’m afraid the Cup alone will no longer be satisfactory compensation for my services.

  CARVER: hilarious.

  TITU$: Not joking, Agent Carver.

  CARVER: ok. can we talk about this later?

  TITU$: Now is better. I’d like some fine wine to accompany the Cup. Namely, a 1787 bottle of Château Lafite Bordeaux, once owned by Thomas Jefferson.

  While not a wine drinker himself, Carver had, of course, read about the so-called Jefferson wines, which were purportedly discovered in Paris in 1985, more than 200 years after Jefferson had signed the declaration of independence. The bottles — which had no label, but were etched with the year 1787 and the letters Th.J — were of dubious authenticity. That mattered little when the first bottle went up for auction, fetching $175,000 dollars.

  CARVER: fine. deal.

  TITU$: May the light of Apollo shine on you!

  Tripoli

  Smuggler Aldo Rossi, captain of the Sicilian Prince, suppressed his anxiety as he ventured into the market where Kyra Javan had once shopped with her fellow Butcher Brides. He walked under a white archway and passed a section of carpet sellers, their long geometric patterns hanging from the rafters like elaborate sports banners. He paused at the fish section, regarding a vendor with dozens of swordfish stacked with their heads pointed at the ceiling. From a distance, they looked like a company of soldiers carrying bayonets.

  The look on Kyra’s face as she boarded his boat in the marina had never quite left him. The woman had been through something terrible. What, exactly, he did not know. But he felt that there must be far more to her stories than the ones Al Jazeera had published in recent days.

  Since the Chinese Embassy attack, he had planned on keeping his distance from Libya. But money talked, and here he was putting himself in harm’s way again. Not that he could complain. The Americans paid well and on time. All he had to do was dock in the harbor, come to the market, go to the Japanese shopkeeper, explain that he desperately needed to send an email, and offer him a king’s ransom for the quick use of his computer. And then, as his CIA contact had told him, all he had to do was connect to a specific website. The American hackers would do the rest.

  At last he came to the stall he had been looking for. But its tables were bare, its doors shuttered. Aldo went to an adjacent fruit vendor. A young entrepreneur standing behind vast buckets of figs, dates, apricots and olives. Smoke wafted from a hand-rolled cigarette as he greeted Aldo with a grin.

  “Ciao,” Aldo said. He spoke some Arabic, as well as some French, but he found that many of the locals treated him better when he made it clear that he was Italian.

  He asked about the empty stall. The fruit vendor told him he had not seen the shopkeeper in some time. “The day after the Americans killed all those Chinese. He is gone. The landlord came around yesterday, looking for his rent money.”

  “Could you call this landlord for me?” Aldo said. “I might be interested in renting the stall, but I want to see inside first.”

  Minutes later, the landlord showed up. Aldo introduced himself as a fisherman who was looking for a way to sell his catch directly. He watched eagerly as the shopkeeper rolled up the steel door. It was dimly lit, with just one working light.

  “I apologize for the mess,” the landlord said as the foul stench of spoiled seafood escaped the shop. “The previous occupant left everything behind.”

  Just as Aldo had hoped. Holding his shirt over his nose, Aldo feigned interest in the space as he made his way past unsold inventory to the back room. To his surprise, an ancient computer monitor still sat on an old desk. But his heart sank as he noted the CPU, smashed in several pieces, underneath it.

  “Say,” Aldo said, thinking on his feet, “I think the stall is too small for me. But my son is a computer repairman. He is always looking for spare parts. Would you sell me that broken CPU?”

  Then he heard the steel door roll down behind him. “My friends here have some questions for you,” the landlord said.

  Aldo turned. A tall, rough-looking Asian man had joined them. Then a third man stepped into the light. Aldo would have recognized him anywhere. Saif Al-Mohammed. The Butcher of Bahrain.

  The Green Ghost

  Carver sat on a kitchen barstool, watching as Eri cooked. Over the stovetop were six monitors showing live feeds from security cameras on the property’s perimeter. All was calm, but it had been dark for two hours, and Sho still hadn’t returned.

  At least Carver had dinner to take his mind off his worries. Eri was making gyu-don, literally translated as beef bowl. In reality, it was gristle with onion over white rice, and topped with shaved ginger root. Carver inhaled the meaty aroma and groaned approvingly. “I ate this fatty stuff every day for lunch when I lived here.”

  Eri smirked. “I know. That was cute. At first.”

  “At first?”

  She sucked air through her teeth. “To be honest, it was a little embarrassing.”

  “How so?”

  “Remember when I first came to live with you in America? What if I had eaten a cheeseburger for lunch every day? And told your friends over and over how great cheeseburgers were?”

  “Speaking as an American who actually ate a cheeseburger every day until he was 30, I would have seen nothing
wrong with it.”

  Eri scooped the gyu-don into an earthen bowl and slid one across the counter to him. “Just eat. I’ll talk.” She had organized the stack of Fujimoto’s investigative documents recovered from the compound into folders. “Fujimoto was careful not to upload to the cloud, where they might be hacked. He was far too smart for that, so he kept these hard copies around, with duplicates in a safe deposit box. I had the only spare key. But when I went to the bank to collect the files, his account had been closed.”

  Carver bet her visit to the bank hadn’t gone unnoticed by the Kuromaku. He pinched one of the pieces of marinated gristle between his chopsticks and put it into his mouth. It was every bit as juicy and flavorful as he remembered. “Mmm. This brings back memories. If you would have cooked this for me when we lived together...”

  “You would have stopped being such a jerk?”

  “Most definitely.” He pinched a piece of the fatty meat between his chopsticks and held it out for her. And when she took it into her mouth, he could have sworn that she lingered over the end of the chopsticks for a moment longer than necessary.

  A world war might break out at any second, but my ex is actually flirting with me. Here’s to small wins.

  Eri set a paper map on the counter, unfolded it, and ran her index finger along a yellow line. “This is one of the maps Fujimoto had hung on his apartment wall. These yellow lines mark the border between Japan’s election districts. Just two years after Ito formed the Restoration Party, they were already winning a significant number of seats in the Diet against the Liberal Democratic Party, or the LDP.”

  “And what were the odds of that?”

  “Slim. The LDP has pretty much dominated Japanese politics since the 1950s.”

  “And they did it with a nationalist platform, no less.”

  “Right. Restoring Japan to its rightful place as a superpower. Standing up to China. Changing the pacifist constitution so Japan could build a strong military. Cutting back on foreign work visas to preserve our culture. Increasing incentives for women to have more children.”

  “And beyond speculation, how did Fujimoto actually figure out they were cheating?”

  “Statistical anomalies in the voting patterns. Across three consecutive election cycles, Fujimoto noticed that the final vote tally was usually well outside the standard deviation when compared to voter exit polls. For example, if a race was too close to call based on exit polls, the Restoration Party candidate would typically win by at least seven percentage points. On the other hand, if a Restoration Party candidate was shown to be behind in the polls by less than seven percentage points, that candidate would nearly always pull an upset, edging his opponent out by only a few hundred votes.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “When Fujimoto presented his evidence to his superiors, they shut him down. But Fujimoto did not stop. He was obsessed. He hired photographers to follow the candidates and their entourages.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “In hopes of documenting the relationship between election officials, judges and the candidates. Fujimoto’s photographers went to fundraisers, weddings, sporting events, parties, you name it. They took thousands of pictures. And it cost him more money than I’ll ever earn in my lifetime.”

  Eri began thumbing through a series of photos. The first one she showed him was of a shirtless middle-aged man at an outdoor onsen. He had the Rising Sun burnt into his back. “Here is an election worker in Nagano.” She then flipped to a vacation shot of a younger man on a beach with his children. Unlike everyone else on the beach, he wore a t-shirt, but as he bent over, it rode up on his back, revealing the Rising Sun brand of the Kuromaku. “National Diet member from Chiba.” Eri flipped to another photo, this one showing a man swimming freestyle in a narrow backyard lap pool. The next photo showed the same man backstroking. “The head of the Public Security Intelligence Agency. My boss.”

  That got Carver’s attention. If Eri’s boss was in the party, then he had to be considered the primary suspect in Fujimoto’s murder. No wonder they had connected the dots to Eri so quickly.

  Next, Eri showed him a photo that had been taken through the window of an apartment building. The man was changing clothes. Like the others, he had the Rising Sun burned into his lower back. But it was the second image - showing the man’s face - that got Carver’s attention. It was Prime Minister Ito.

  “So Ito isn’t just the head of the country’s most powerful political party,” she said. “He’s Kuromaku.”

  This put new perspective on the political assassination Sho was training for. Carver swallowed his last bite of dinner. Then he rose and reached for his jacket. “Sho should have been here by now. I’m going to the Blue Monk.”

  “Want company?”

  “Yes. But you should stay here. Just in case.” He reached down and unbuckled the ankle holster. He set it and the loaded Glock on the counter. “You know how to use this, right?”

  “I think so.”

  “Good. At least one of us has to survive to tell this story.”

  The White House

  On the East Wing of the White House, the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden was a field of grass framed on the north and south sides by a holly hedge. A row of linden trees and boxwood hedges provided additional privacy. Kennedy herself had been in the process of restoring it to resemble a traditional 18th century garden when her husband’s assassination abruptly ended her residence. It was completed by her successor, Lady Bird Johnson, and subsequent first ladies had used it for events such as teas and award ceremonies.

  President Hudson found the area ideal for playing fetch with her dog, Trapper, an eight-year-old Belgian Malinois. Speers stopped at the garden’s edge, watching as the president tossed a rubber duck. She had personally adopted Trapper after his handler, a Special Forces officer, had been killed in action. The entire staff had been overjoyed by the move. Having never remarried after her husband’s sudden death in a traffic accident years earlier, the president had lived a monastic life. There were rumors of an intimate relationship between Eva and the British PM, but Speers had a hard time believing it was true.

  “Madam President?” Speers called.

  Trapper broke from his retrieval pattern and turned, teeth bared, growling. Speers leapt to his right, putting a rosemary bush between him and the dog.

  The president enjoyed Speers’ discomfort for a moment before settling Trapper with a snap of her fingers. “What is it, Julian?”

  “Sorry for the intrusion, Madam President, but this couldn’t wait. We received a gift, of sorts.”

  “What sort of gift?”

  “Audio transcripts of President Kang and his staff, discussing the security crisis.”

  She guided Speers to a more secluded area of the garden. They stopped under a trellis and sat on a bench. Her fear of foreign spy satellites was so great that this was the only place on the grounds where she felt comfortable discussing business.

  She spoke in a whisper. “You’re telling me that we’ve been bugging Kang’s office?”

  “Not us, Madam President.”

  “Who?”

  “I think it’s in your best interest to stay ignorant of that fact.”

  “Who, dammit?!?”

  Speers sighed. “Nico Gold. I was unaware of his involvement until late last night.”

  The president’s demeanor changed quickly from that of a stateswoman to of a sullen teenager. “Carver hired him, didn’t he?”

  “That’s not important.”

  “I’ll decide what’s important. I’m told Carver failed to report to the task force.”

  “That is true. Whatever he’s doing, he’s doing it as a private citizen. As for Nico’s audio files, we’re not done transcribing them, but I’ve seen enough to be convinced of one thing — President Kang did not orchestrate the bombing of the Chinese embassy.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “President Kang has in fact demanded a full investigati
on into certain fringe elements of the Communist Party. He said he hopes they find something internally, because if they don’t, then they have no choice but to” – Speers made air quotes – “punish the United States.”

  Trapper brought the duck and laid it at the president’s feet. The president bent down, picked up the duck, swung it over her head and flung it to the other end of the garden. The dog galloped after it.

  “So if China didn’t do this, and we didn’t do it, then who did?”

  “I’ve got all hands working around the clock to find the answer to that question.”

  “It’s not enough,” the president said, taking the slobbery duck from the dog’s mouth once again. “At this point, I have to accept that we may never find out.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Barring a miracle, war may be inevitable.”

  The Blue Monk

  In the narrow alley behind the Blue Monk, Sho Kimura angled his umbrella so that the wind and rain might better shield him as he fumbled with the keys to the service entrance. As he opened the door to the kitchen, the utter absence of carnivorous fragrance was his first sign that something was wrong. As soon as he turned the corner, he spotted the problem – Blake Carver sat at the carving table, grazing on a bowl of candied grasshoppers.

  “I was wrong about these,” Carver said. “Once you get past the texture, and the wings, they’re actually delicious.”

  Sho frowned. “Where’s my brother?”