Hostile Contact

by Gordon Kent

  Dukas wanted to pick her brains—and take her to bed—so he tried to explain the case as he understood it. The burst transmissions, the case’s being kicked around among NSA, the Bureau, and the CIA.

  “Now does it sound familiar?”

  “Not even remotely. Sorry.” She smiled at him. “Why?”

  “Because I’ve got the case, and it seems to me to have a kind of tang. What the Brits call a pong. A hint of fish.”

  “Like what?”

  He was thinking of how to propose that they start over, go to his place, get in the sack— “Like I need your help,” he said.

  Jakarta.

  Bobby Li was awake. He was a nervous man, easily kept awake by the tensions of the family or his business. Now he was awake because of the operation. Nothing would go wrong, but—

  The telephone rang twice and stopped. He felt his wife tense beside him; he realized that he had tensed too. The telephone rang again—twice. And stopped.

  Bobby sighed.

  “You have to go?” she said.

  “Only a few streets.”

  He dressed quickly, not even bothering with socks, and went out into the warm, wet dawn. Three streets away was a public telephone. He leaned into its plastic shelter to escape a sudden patter of rain and dialed. He knew the voice at the other end at once: Loyalty Man, his Chinese control. He flinched.

  “The southeast corner of Suharto and Nyam Pareng. Now.”

  He knew better than to object or ask a question. He hung up, found he was trembling, lit a cigarette in the shelter of the phone, and then splashed off into the night. His sockless shoes rasped on his feet and he shivered as if the warm rain had given him a chill. He was at the proper corner in six minutes, but there was already a dark car there waiting. He saw from thirty feet away that there were three men as well as the driver, and he knew what sort of car it was and what sort of people were inside.

  “Get in.” A man he didn’t know, sitting with his knees drawn up on a jump seat, had opened the door from inside and was holding it open. Loyalty Man was against the far window, a young, foolish-looking stranger closer to Bobby.

  “Get in!” the young one screamed.

  The air inside was bitter with cigarette smoke. The car pulled away but went slowly, so that he knew they were not really going anywhere yet. Whatever it was, they were going to talk first. Did they know about Andy? Did they know he was helping on an operation he hadn’t told them about? He began to think up excuses—

  “I am Qiu,” the foolish one said. “I am your superior, and you will do precisely what I tell you.”

  Bobby tried to look at Loyalty Man, through whom this insane youth should have been speaking, but Loyalty Man was looking out the window, as much as to say to Bobby, I have nothing to do with this.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I have orders directly from Beijing. I am from Beijing. Flown in expressly for this.” Bobby knew he was from Beijing from his accent.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You have been added to my team. I have a strict plan. You will conform to it. Well?”

  “Yes, sir.” This didn’t seem so bad as he had feared. Nothing about Andy, at any rate. Merely some stupid, extra work. Bobby kept himself from sighing.

  “In”—Qiu looked at his watch, which he had to hold up in the light of a street lamp to read—“precisely one hour and forty-three minutes, my team will report to a site for an operation. You will be there.” The young man paused, perhaps debating how much to tell Bobby, then, if he was at all wise, seeing that time was so short that he had no choice. “I am making a hostile contact in a place called the Orchid House, in a park called Fantasy Island. My arrangements are none of your affair; however, I have been ordered to allow you to observe the meeting. Therefore, you will make yourself available at the Fantasy Island Park at—” He looked at his watch again. “From precisely ten minutes before nine, local time, until completion of the operation. You will do precisely as I say. At six minutes after nine, I will enter a certain entrance of the Orchid House and will proceed to a certain place. You will go in another entrance and find a place from which to observe. If you get in the way or cause any trouble, you will be dealt with. That is all you need to know. Understood?”

  Bobby felt nauseated. Surely it couldn’t be happening. Surely—were they testing him? Did they know all about Andy, after all?

  “Well?”

  Bobby forced himself to mumble, “Yes, sir,” and Qiu spoke to the driver and the car rolled to a stop. Again, the man in the jump seat opened the curbside door.

  “Get out,” Qiu said. “You will be at the Fantasy Island Park in precisely”—pausing to study his watch—“one hour and forty-two minutes. Meet me at the main gate. Now get out.”

  Bobby Li stepped into a puddle. The car pulled away, sending slow waves over the tops of his shoes. He watched it go, unable even to step up on the curb. At ten minutes after nine, he was supposed to meet an unknown American in the Orchid House for Andy, but at the same moment he was also supposed to watch Qiu meet the same unknown American in the same place. His life had turned into a contradiction. And a mystery: Nobody had told him why Qiu was doing this to him!

  He walked home. Passing the telephone, he thought of calling Andy and telling him—what? That he was too sick to go? No, you were never too sick for an operation, not when it was Andy, and not when it was for George. Tell him that his Chinese masters also had a job for him? But Andy didn’t know about the Chinese masters, and, because Bobby loved Andy, he couldn’t let him know. It would make Andy hate him, and he couldn’t bear that.

  Loyalty, Andy said. It’s about loyalty.

  He let himself into his house and sat in the little front room. His wife came in and stared into the dark where he sat, then went away.

  Bobby thought it through. He had to do what Qiu said. He knew what the punishment would be if he did not—Loyalty Man’s attitude had told him that the thing was serious and out of his hands. To disobey was to end his life here, his family’s life. Maybe to see his children shipped to China, to disappear there. Therefore, he would have to do as Qiu ordered. How, then, would he keep Andy from knowing what he was doing? If he stayed far enough back, maybe Andy wouldn’t see him through the greenery—was that possible? But even then, there were the photos—Ho was supposed to get photos. Andy would see the photos.

  And, of course, Andy would see Qiu meet with the American.

  I never saw him before, Andy; he stole The Economist from me and his guys held me and he went into the meeting—

  Andy wouldn’t believe it. Andy didn’t believe in unmotivated acts.

  Well, the photos. Maybe he could just not hand over the film. No, Andy wouldn’t believe it if he said he lost it or Ho kept it. Or he could expose the film—pull it out of the canister. No, Andy didn’t believe in accidents, either.

  But if the photos were simply bad photos—out of focus, for example—

  Bobby went to the bedroom and turned on a light without warning his wife and without apologizing. He took his own camera from his drawer, hesitated, and then burrowed deep under his four shirts and took the gun that was concealed there. In the bathroom, he opened the camera—his pride, a good Nikon, 3X zoom, internal motor drive—and smeared Vaseline on the inside of the lens. He put in a roll of film.

  Back in the living room, he sat with the gun and the camera in his lap. The gun had lost most of the bluing at the end of the barrel and a lot along the edges of the slide. It was a thirty-year-old Walther PP .32, an old police pistol from somewhere in Europe in the days when policemen could enforce the law with little guns that were now thought too weak for even ladies to carry. He put on a light. He took out the clip. Seven cartridges, their ends open—hollowpoints, segmented for expansion. Like looking into the heart of a flower. Well, you could kill with those.

  It had been so good for the first day with Andy. Now it was all awful. He went back to the bedroom and began to change his clothes.

  “Is
it bad?” his wife said.

  “Don’t take the kids to school today. Take them to the place in Tangerang.” He had a shack out there under a different name. Sometimes he went there to be alone. He had a garden out there, like his father. “Park the car in the trees, where it can’t be seen from the road.”

  “How bad is it?” she said.

  He finished dressing. Out of deference to her, he hadn’t brought the gun back into the bedroom. “It will be all right,” he said. He kissed her and went into the living room and put the gun inside his waistband just by his right kidney, and he picked up his camera and went out. It was daylight.

  USS Thomas Jefferson.

  Cyclic air ops went on, creating thunder that went pretty much unnoticed in the corridors of the O3 level. In the ready rooms, crews preparing to fly were gathered around the TAMPS; others stood or sprawled to watch ongoing landings on the Plat camera. For the air group commander, a walk past the ready rooms was a mixture of envy, nostalgia, and irritation, the last because every squadron had its own problems, its own flaws, which he was supposed to solve and correct. To Rafehausen, who wasn’t flying that day and who could hardly find time to fly enough to stay qualified, the ready rooms were also a nagging reminder of what he had given up.

  “Approval came through for Craik’s orders to Miramar,” a voice said at Rafehausen’s shoulder.

  “Say again?” Both men flattened themselves against the bulkhead as a cluster of aviators hurried past. “Sorry, Deak, I was woolgathering.”

  “Not important. I just saw a message that Al Craik’s orders to Miramar to advise a second MARI det will be cut in a couple days.”

  It took an instant for Rafehausen to switch focus. Then: “Oh, sure. Right, I wanted to find something for Craik. That’s great!” He detached himself from the bulkhead and started toward his office. “What’s being done about the parking problem behind cat three? They were supposed to have the mess there cleaned up by 0600 and now I learn that—”

  Overhead, the engines screamed and the colored jerseys moved and spun, and aircraft blasted into the sky, and Alan Craik was forgotten.

  5

  Jakarta.

  At five-thirty Alan was up, adrenaline and delayed jetlag combining to get him out of bed and into the shower. He had been awake for a long time, waiting for the alarm, and he was charged with energy, like a kid waiting for his parents to get up on Christmas morning. He shaved and had a long shower, humming something he had heard the day before, and then dressed carefully in slacks, a fancy T-shirt, and the linen jacket Rose had packed for him. He felt that he looked like Don Johnson in Miami Vice, but so did everyone else in Jakarta. The air outside was already hot and heavy with moisture by the time he emerged to catch a taxi, almost an hour early. He told himself that he would spend the extra time making his route really complex. The truth was, he had to get out of the room.

  Make some stops before you get to the park, Triffler had ordered without really explaining why. Alan knew it had something to do with helping his minders make sure that he was clear of surveillance, but Alan couldn’t for the life of him see how he could have acquired surveillance in Jakarta when traveling on his own passport. Nonetheless, he obeyed. Coffee and a decent roll were high on his morning agenda, so he asked the cabdriver where he could get the best cup of coffee in Java. The man smiled wickedly, as if he had just been asked where to find something far more sinister, and he left the curb with a jolt reminiscent of a cat shot.

  Twenty minutes later, his insides comforted by a chocolate croissant and a cup of excellent coffee, Alan left the café and walked through the steamy morning. He window-shopped along a closed arcade and made left turns until he found an open news store, the magazines and newspapers international and mostly concerned with the upcoming presidential election in the United States. The subject didn’t interest him much, but he had a tiny cup of espresso and bought a copy of The Economist, skimmed it to eat the rest of his surplus time, and departed with a much better understanding of the economy of oil in Indonesia.

  His second cab of the morning was duller; the driver was quite young and didn’t seem to want to talk. He made good time, though, and Alan arrived at the gates of the park that contained the Orchid House with fifteen minutes in hand and a charge from all his energy and caffeine on top. He was beginning to feel nervous, the nerves of inexperience, concern about making mistakes through ignorance—feelings he hadn’t had in a long time. Then he told himself, for the twentieth time, that nothing was going to happen, and he sagged and felt the fatigue under his energy.

  It was damp and hot. He started to walk.

  Washington.

  Dukas had got as far as suggesting to Sally, while Rose was out of the room, that they maybe check out his apartment, and then the shit had hit the fan. He had hardly tried his dessert when she had seen something in his open attaché and gone through the roof. “What the hell is this?” she cried.

  “Hey, what—?”

  “What the hell are you trying to pull?” she said. She didn’t seem vulnerable any longer.

  Dukas misunderstood. He thought it was something about his clumsy approach to sex. “Hey, I was only—”

  She tried to speak, moved her lips to form words that didn’t come, and then slapped the attaché and shouted, “This is Chinese Checkers!” She began to scrabble in the old papers, knocking them out of their neat alignment, dropping some on the floor and not caring.

  “What the hell?” he said.

  “You bullshitter, what have you done to—” She shook the folder. “This is the Jakarta part of Chinese Checkers!”

  Dukas tried to focus. He had an idea what the code name Chinese Checkers meant. Chinese Checkers had been a CIA operational project—a comm plan that George Shreed had covertly used to meet with his Chinese control. When Dukas and Alan Craik had gone into Pakistan after Shreed, they had known he was following one of the Chinese Checkers comm plans to a village near the Kashmir border. That’s how they caught him—because Sally Baranowski had illicitly given Dukas a copy. But he had seen only the Pakistan section, and then only long enough to know where Shreed was going.

  But Jakarta?

  “Chinese Checkers is a defunct Ops comm plan,” Sally Baranowski snarled now. “And now here it is! I risked my fucking career to give you this stuff, and you’re walking around with it in your attaché!”

  Dukas didn’t say that everybody walked around with classified material in his attaché. He was too stunned by what she was saying, stunned by the implications. A warning bell was sounding in his head. “This is Chinese Checkers?” he said.

  “What did I just say?”

  “Maybe it’s just like Chinese Checkers. Sally, it can’t possibly be—”

  She simply looked at him.

  “This comm plan can’t—I don’t see how it can be part of Chinese Checkers.” He grabbed her upper arm, then let it go and leaned back so she wouldn’t think he was bullying her. “I just sent Al Craik to Jakarta to road test it. He’s there right now.”

  Sally stared.

  “All I’d paid attention to in Chinese Checkers was the Pakistan part. I didn’t even read the rest. If this is really—”

  Her look told him everything. She said, “I helped Shreed edit Chinese Checkers. I used to pull it up to see why it never got activated. There were three comm plans, Mike—Pakistan, Nairobi, Jakarta.” She picked the pages up again. “And why the hell is it typed this way? It’s beat-up, like you’ve had it forever. I didn’t give it to you like this—I gave you a goddam floppy! Where the hell did you get this?”

  “It’s part of Sleeping Dog.” Even as he said it, Dukas saw the abyss that was opening.

  “This was never part of Sleeping Dog!” she shouted. “Never, never, never!”

  He realized that Rose was standing in the doorway and that she had heard. He ran for the telephone.

  6

  Fantasy Island Park, Jakarta.

  Jerry Piat was up early and feeling good�
��rested, strong, wired just enough to stay alert. He got a paper cup of coffee and walked to the park. He took his time; it was only a little after seven, the streets already hideous with traffic, sidewalks still puddled from a rain that now steamed in early sunshine.

  The Glorious Mornings. Title of some book. Nice phrase.

  He looked around like a tourist, checked out a couple of ethnic displays, tossed his coffee cup at an overflowing trash bin, and went into the Orchid House.

  Bobby Li hitched a ride on the back of a scooter to within five streets of the park gate. He’d shoved the gun down into his pants, with a loop of string holding it to his belt, a trick that George had taught him and that he said his side had used in World War II. The Economist and the envelope full of newspaper that was supposed to be money were inside his shirt. He kept the camera in view, like a tourist.

  His heartbeat was way up. He thought a heart attack might be a good way to get out of this fix. His wife would get the business and a little insurance, and Andy and Qiu would forget him. But his heart wouldn’t cooperate.

  A woman in a headscarf was sweeping the area in front of the park gate. He went around her and sidled in, looking for Ho, anxious not to miss him. Ho was lazy and would more likely be late than early. Bobby walked around, feeling his bowels get queasy. He couldn’t do it, he thought. He couldn’t walk in there behind Qiu and risk Andy’s seeing him. He was in a vise, being squeezed.

  Ho grunted behind him, and Bobby whirled. His breath came too fast, and he had to breathe through his mouth or faint. “Give me the camera,” he managed to say. He had just seen, beyond Ho, a Chinese who looked professional and dangerous. But every Chinese he saw today would look as if he belonged to Qiu. “Don’t give it to me here; walk down to the toilets and meet me in the men’s.”