Hostile Contact

by Gordon Kent

  Bobby shot the fucker himself!

  Then Bobby Li, or a smudge of him, was standing, still at the right side of the frame. The dancing column on the left had metamorphosed into a fuzzy worm that was almost horizontal now, down at the bottom of the frame. A black smudge toward the center might be a shock of Asian hair. Hovering over it was a white moth, or maybe a white bird, something as big as a head but winged, with bits of color over one wing like light through a stained-glass window. Qiu’s Confucian soul, caught on the way out? His aura? Craik was reacting away from Bobby and the shooting. Who could blame him?

  In the next photo, the bird or moth had flown, nowhere to be seen; Bobby Li’s maroon jacket was still identifiable on the figure on the right; the worm had expired into a large pile of gray dogshit. Craik was a mass moving out of the frame, fast. Then Piat understood the white moth-bird with the splashes of color—The Economist. The dying man must have let go of it. Meaning that he, too, was there to make the meeting, following the directions in the comm plan. It was like a goddam Marx Brothers movie. Why? Bobby Li was supposed to make the meeting with Dukas—now Craik—and hand him a package inside his folded Economist, and those assholes were supposed to have got a photo that would make it look as if Craik had been passed something by an Asian. Instead, Groucho and Harpo and Chico had bought out the entire Jakarta stock of The Economist and then started shooting at each other!

  Piat’s focus was on Bobby Li. Bobby was supposed to have been there because he, Piat, had put him there. What the hell game was he playing? Jerry drank a lot more and thought, insofar as his boozy brain could think, about Bobby Li and what the photos really showed. Even drunk, he saw that the fuzziness of the photos was probably deliberate, to forestall the very thinking he was now doing.

  Piat poured himself more bourbon. He went to sleep with his clothes on.

  In the morning, there was mail in his box, including a postcard from Seattle signed Bob. It meant that he was supposed to go to Seattle and report.

  Fuck, Piat thought. He felt like hell.

  NCIS, Washington Navy Yard.

  Mike Dukas was eating a glazed doughnut that he’d found in his desk drawer and thinking that it was, in fact, older than yesterday’s, and maybe from a batch he’d brought in the day he got the Sleeping Dog file. It was as chewy as a bagel, but at the same time flabby and musty-tasting. Not what a man who loved glazed doughnuts wanted when he was having his mid-morning sugar crash.

  “Those things’ll kill you,” Dick Triffler said from the other side of the plastic egg-crate divider. Triffler had made his way back from Manila. For the moment, he was still Dukas’s assistant, but doing everything he could to get assigned somewhere else.

  “When we gonna knock down the Berlin Wall here?” Dukas said, nodding toward the divider.

  “Your mama ever tell you not to talk with your mouth full?”

  “If I didn’t talk with my mouth full, I’d never talk.”

  “Oh, happy day.”

  “Aw, come on, Dick—! Christ, I’m a wounded veteran!”

  Triffler came to the wall and peered through the white plastic crates. “I felt deeply for you when I heard you were hurt,” he said. He was quite sincere. He was, in fact, probably the most sincere man Dukas had ever known—distressingly honest, incapable of breaking any rule once he knew of its existence. He had a somewhat flutelike voice that sometimes seemed effeminate but that perfectly conveyed his seriousness and provided a resonant tenor to the Northeast Washington AME choir. “I don’t think you should trade on your injury, however. You could have got Craik killed in Jakarta.”

  “Trade on it! I’m wearing a fucking harness that makes me look like Roger Rabbit, and you say I’m trading on it!” Dukas was, in fact, wearing the plastic rig that kept his hands high. Dukas sighed. “That was the worst doughnut I ever ate.”

  “You’re getting fat.”

  At that point, Alan Craik walked in, and after the amenities, he got himself coffee and said to Dukas, “Admiral Pilchard’s in my corner. I think we’re a go for Whidbey.”

  Dukas tried to get his elbows on the desktop and gave up. “Triffler’s got a mad on about Jakarta, and he didn’t even get there.”

  Triffler looked through the crates at Alan. “ ‘Mad’ wouldn’t quite cut it. I told the boss I’d go anywhere, do anything to get out of this office.”

  “Great! I got just the job for you, then.” Dukas grinned through the plastic crate. Triffler, stooping down to look back at him, scowled. Dukas said, “Ever been to Seattle?”

  “I didn’t like it.”

  “Couple weeks there, it’ll grow on you.”

  Triffler came around the partition and said that he was a married man and he had social responsibilities; he mentioned his church, the choir, Little League. His father was coming for a visit on Monday.

  Dukas was trying to get out of the rabbit rig, which he couldn’t stand for more than an hour at a time. “We need you in Seattle.”

  “No!”

  “Yes.” Dukas pulled the plastic contraption off his shoulders like a feather boa. “Al Craik needs a minder.”

  “Oh, spare me—not again.” Triffler looked at Alan. “No offense—”

  “This time,” Dukas said, “it’ll work. This time, we know what we’re doing; we’re focused.” He smiled. “Trust me.”

  Triffler groaned. A few minutes later, he was up the hall, trying again to get a transfer. When he came back, Dukas said, “I got there before you this morning. I told him you’re indispensable.”

  “Yeah, that’s what he said.” Triffler exhaled, stood with his hands on his slim hips, staring at Dukas. “Mike, you do great work sometimes and you get results, but, boy, do I hate working for you!”

  Dukas winked at Alan. “Tell you what I’ll do. Because you’re good, Dick—there isn’t a better special agent in this building, and I think you know it—I need you in Seattle. If you go and if it goes down the way I think it will, when we’re done I’ll get you out of here. Deal? This one job for me, and then up, up, and away. Deal?”

  Triffler came a step closer. “Promise?”

  “On my mother’s grave.”

  “You had a mother?”

  “Watch it!” Dukas picked up his coffee mug, which had what appeared to be permanent drip stains down the side he always drank from, moved past Triffler and around the plastic barrier, and poured coffee from Triffler’s personal coffee machine.

  “You have no shame,” Triffler said, coming behind him.

  “None.” Dukas sipped, made positive signals with his eyebrows at Alan Craik. “Let’s put our brains together.” Dukas and Alan pulled chairs around from their side of the office and sat, and Dukas told Triffler everything that they had gone over the night before: that the Jakarta comm plan was part of Chinese Checkers, that the likelihood was that the Sleeping Dog file had been doctored, that Dukas was convinced that the Chinese had done it.

  “Son of George Shreed?” Triffler said.

  “Maybe Ghost of George Shreed,” Dukas said. “Anyway, Sleeping Dog gets folded into the ongoing Crystal Insight file, and that way we don’t have to make foreign-contact reports for Jakarta and hand it back to the Agency. We get to keep it.”

  “Why don’t we just hand it back to the Agency?”

  “Because it looks like somebody worked through the Agency to lay it on me. You think I’m going to give it back without knowing who or why?”

  “Yeah, but, Mike, what you’re saying is that somebody Chinese doctored an Agency case file, inserted another file that supposedly nobody knew about, and sent it to you as a supposedly all-but-dead horse. That looks to me like a perfect thing to kick back to Carl Menzes. Investigating crap inside the Agency is his life!”

  Alan stirred. “Menzes wouldn’t know what to do with it. He wouldn’t have caught the Jakarta plan, for example.”

  Triffler sighed. “And now it’s sending us to Seattle. Shh-boom, shh-boom.” He gave Dukas a fishy look. “Why?”

&
nbsp; Alan answered. “Because that’s what Sleeping Dog is about—Seattle—and we think that whoever doctored the file chose it on purpose. There must have been lots of files they could have sent over, but this is the one that came, and it’s the one that’s been doctored.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Okay, that’s where the probabilities point, how’s that?”

  Triffler shook his head. “I don’t like it. Jakarta, you had a comm plan—very specific. Seattle, you got nothing.”

  “I’m trying to get something,” Dukas said. “I’ve got one half-time clerk checking to see if there’s another inventory someplace so we can cross-check, because the one we got has obviously been tampered with. Then I’m going to chase down everybody who ever had the file and see what they remember; so far, I’ve got Sally Baranowski and an FBI guy.”

  Triffler looked skeptical. “What’s in Seattle?”

  Alan tilted his chair back. “You mean, for us? If we knew, we wouldn’t have to go.” He got up and headed for the coffee machine. “Nothing good, I’m sure.”

  “So I go, and I set up countersurveillance for Al, and I’m—what?”

  “Case officer. Op manager.”

  “With whom? Help from local NCIS?” Triffler actually said “whom.” Dukas had learned to ignore it.

  “At least two guys, more if I can get them.”

  “And you think it’s the Chinese. Huh.” Triffler went down the hall to wash the coffeepot and the filter, and Dukas sat there, massaging his scar and scowling, and Alan took out a cigarette and then put it back and looked sheepish. Triffler came back whistling, and, as he started to make a new pot of coffee, he said, “Has it occurred to you guys that there could be a third party who’s been in this all along?”

  “Say again?”

  “You assume everything’s the Chinese because we know they used to be at the other end of the comm plan. But think a minute—Craik leaves the signal, their watcher picks it up, they do everything the same, even if they’re not behind giving you the Sleeping Dog file. They could be as surprised as anybody by his mark, but they’re still going to send people to the Orchid House and then try to get in touch, because they have a copy of the comm plan and that’s what they’re supposed to do.” He measured his custom-blended coffee with the precision of a pharmacist measuring a controlled substance.

  Dukas groaned. “Dick, you’re making things worse. I don’t need a third party!”

  Triffler used the spoon like a lecturer’s wand. “The Chinese wouldn’t shoot their own intel guy. Somebody else did—and it wasn’t Al. That says to me a third party. Mike, the Chinese would have been in the Orchid House whether they doctored the Sleeping Dog file or not. They have to have a lot of questions—wouldn’t you? Like how come a dead comm plan came alive?”

  Alan sat with his legs apart, one hand with the coffee cup between them. “Yeah, like, was it Shreed who left the mark? Or did Shreed tell the Agency about it before he died, and the CIA left the mark?”

  Dukas chewed on a finger. “Well, it wasn’t Shreed, because we went to his funeral.” He handed his filthy cup over; Triffler backed away from it. “Come on, it won’t bite you!” He sat back. “Anyway, your point is the Chinese have a lot of questions. So?”

  “So all I’m saying is, the Chinese have been alerted by what happened in Jakarta, and they want some answers—but that doesn’t mean they’re the ones who put the Jakarta comm plan into Sleeping Dog.”

  Dukas groaned. Triffler leaned his buttocks against his desk, and Alan stared into his cup. After a long silence, Alan said, “Anyway, you and I are going to Seattle.”

  “So what’s waiting in Seattle?”

  Alan looked up and grinned. “That’s what you and I are going to find out.”

  Seattle.

  His code name was Jewel. He was sixtyish, a naturalized American who had emigrated from Hong Kong before the British left. He had brought money and an entrepreneurial spirit, and now he had his own company and a handsome house right on the water. He also had access to several buildings where it was necessary to have an ID that required prior vetting.

  Jewel showed his ID to the watch officer of a downtown building leased by the U.S. Coast Guard and was waved through the turnstile. His crew waited on the quarterdeck as the petty officer of the watch emerged from behind a security desk and checked their equipment. The young sailor was careful, and he had the three chevrons of a petty officer first class on his sleeve. His scrutiny made Jewel nervous.

  “You guys are early.”

  “We got a lot to do,” said Jewel, deliberately sounding like a new immigrant. He smiled a lot around the military people. He gave this one a big smile, although one of his hands was trembling. “We got secret plans, heh!”

  The petty officer frowned. “I hope not. Petty Officer Nguyen will be with you while you work. You know what you’re here for?”

  “Sure, sure. Air-conditioning ducts. Clean and purify to prevent against Legionnaires’ disease. No problem.” Jewel had a lifetime of being scared of authority to fall back on. He smiled like an idiot to hide his fear.

  Jewel’s people came past the quarterdeck and headed down the hall, following PO Nguyen. She led them past the watch floor, where Jewel was careful to display no interest, past a small room that housed Jewel’s target, and through a short corridor to a concrete-floored maintenance area. There were shelves of cleaning supplies and racks of brooms.

  He barked orders at his team and they began to unpack equipment. In fifteen minutes they were in the air-conditioning ducts throughout the building, scrubbing away with remote-controlled vehicles. Jewel had considered using the cleaning ’bots to plant bugs or leave remote cameras, but the risk of discovery outweighed the possible gain. PO Nguyen sat down against the wall and read a magazine. Jewel did the job that the Coast Guard was paying for. It would take three nights to complete, and he needed only a few minutes for his real work. He could be patient. His nerves screamed that he should do it now, get it over with, but his training was good, and he kept to his plan, his nerves visible only in a sort of bouncy energy that caused him to overturn his can of Coke early in the evening.

  The watch changed at midnight. Forty-five minutes before midnight, PO Nguyen went down the hall to check that her relief was on his way and to use the head. She didn’t come back for ten minutes. When she returned, she was replaced by an older petty officer with a deeply lined face. He made a few jokes in bad Mandarin, but Jewel laughed along with him and listened to his stories of Taiwan with interest. He, too, left his post fifteen minutes before the arrival of the oncoming watch.

  Jewel had his times. He was able to walk the corridors all the first night, usually under the scrutiny of military personnel, but not always. Now he knew the layout. He knew the exact location of the JOTS terminal that the Coast Guard used to help monitor the traffic in the sound. It was a much more elaborate form of espionage than watching the sound with binoculars or cruising it in his boat with the depthfinder, but he had trained for it twenty years before. He was ready. He reviewed the commands he would give to the JOTS terminal when he got his hands on it. He needed less than one minute.

  The watch was the same the next night. He had hoped it would be. Nguyen was again assigned to them, and she watched them less, going out the back of the maintenance room to smoke at least twice, and leaving them early to find her relief.

  The moment she left, Jewel put his tools down and followed her into the short corridor. He didn’t try and explain himself to his men. They didn’t ask him questions. His hands were shaking again, but his breathing was good. He had had long minutes to prepare for Nguyen to leave.

  He emerged from the corridor into a bleak gray room with a JOTS repeater terminal. JOTS was the Joint Operational Tactical System, a networked military computer system that displayed every unit in the U.S. Navy with its location, course, speed, and the units it had identified in its area of operations. There were repeater terminals on every ship in the
Navy and at many shore installations. China had nothing like it.

  Jewel didn’t hesitate or spend time looking at the terminal. It was on, and focused on Puget Sound. He took a photo of the initial screen in case there was information there that could be deciphered later by Jewel’s case officer. Then he reached for the trackball. He had been trained for this, but the training couldn’t keep his hands free of the tremor from his neck. There were loud noises from the next room, where the watch did traffic control for merchant ships in Puget Sound. He flinched. The noises calmed. He reached for the ball again and used the mouse pad key to enlarge the view.

  All of the West Coast.

  All of North America.

  He moved the trackball until the cursor was on Africa. He clicked to refine the screen.

  Just the east coast of Africa.

  Just Kenya and Tanzania and the water off their coasts.

  And a little cluster of circles. He ran the cursor over them. As the cursor touched each one, its name lit up next to the circle.

  USS Esek Hopkins. USS Yellowjacket.

  USS Thomas Jefferson.

  Click. Location. Click. Course and speed.

  Done.

  Eight hours later, Jewel had his transmitter out and warm in the trunk of his car, high up in the Olympic Mountains. His message was very short.

  Well out to sea, Admiral Po came to periscope depth in broad daylight, a maneuver her captain hated like death itself. If Jewel was passing them information on the American boomers, their ballistic missile submarines, then the risk was worthwhile. His operational clock was running down, as well. He had perhaps twenty days left on station before he’d have to turn for home.

  His communications officer nodded almost as soon as the mast was up.

  “Message incoming.”

  He nodded.