Hostile Contact

by Gordon Kent

  NCIS HQ.

  Dukas called Triffler at ten—seven A.M. in Seattle, plenty late for a dynamite NCIS special agent to be awake and alert on a Wednesday morning. Triffler was, in fact, awake and doing push-ups, he said. Certainly, he was breathing hard.

  “You could have a great career in telephone sex,” Dukas said. “Listen up, we got a breakthrough.” Dukas told him what he had got from Menzes. “You were right, Dick. George Shreed killed Sleeping Dog. He’s also got to be the one that sat on the guy’s report that the Seattle observatory interference coincided with the intercepts. But the people who planted the Jakarta stuff and the fake newspaper story in Sleeping Dog are old Agency guys.”

  “Not Chinese.”

  “True believers in Shreed’s innocence. That’s how they made such a balls of Chinese Checkers and then of Sleeping Dog; what we got are two times that these true believers missed what we know is the truth—the Jakarta comm plan, which they didn’t get was Shreed’s contact with his Chinese control; and now Sleeping Dog, which I think they never suspected Shreed killed, because he was a Chinese agent.”

  “Then why did they point us toward Seattle?”

  “Because: A, they had an old file focused on Seattle; and, B, they have somebody in Seattle who’s waiting there to spring something on us. The bad news is, we’re not supposed to touch him.” He explained to Triffler about the FBI’s prior investigation. “I kicked it up all the way to Kasser.” Kasser was Dukas’s boss’s boss. “He says we have to make nice—we continue with the investigation, but we don’t do anything.”

  “Mike, this is my case!”

  “And I’m your boss. For now, I’m telling you to liaise with the local Bureau office. Inform, but keep your distance. Know what I mean?”

  “I know what you mean, and I disapprove.”

  “I’ll make a note of your disapproval.”

  “Does this mean that we never get to bust these guys?”

  Dukas sighed. “I’m working on it.”

  “The Bureau’ll take it away from me.”

  “Over my dead body.”

  Triffler was silent for some seconds. Dukas had never seen him angry, never seen him throw a tantrum or even raise his voice. The silence from the other end was this quiet man’s kind of rage.

  Jakarta.

  Piat walked through the house as dark was falling—night birds wheeling overhead already, a touch of coolness, just detectable along the edge of the heat, that smelled of the sea. He stopped with his hand on the brass handle of the dining-room door, then took his hand away. He couldn’t face it yet. He went into the pantry and got the whiskey bottle and poured himself a tumblerful. Fred was sitting there. Fred said that they had eaten and Bobby Li had been restless.

  “And Derek?”

  Fred shrugged. “He come down once. I tole him, have another whiskey or Bud knock you out. He sleeping now.” He had put more opium in the whiskey, he said.

  Piat got a cup and poured some whiskey and pushed it over, then added to his own and went out into the rank garden. A few stars were already visible; the wild trees almost closed above him, one star fading and brightening as he moved around the house and the star flickered behind the black leaves. He planned what he would do now, how he would squeeze the rest of it out of Bobby Li. He didn’t like himself much.

  Back inside, it was as if nobody had moved.

  Piat got his attaché, which held the syringe, now filled with sterile saline solution. He went into the dining room. Bobby was lying on his cot, awake, and when Piat came in, he got up and half-trotted to his chair as if he wanted to show what a good boy he was.

  Piat put down the attaché. “How you doing?” he said to Bobby. Bobby looked like hell and smelled worse.

  “Wiped, man. Like I been eaten, digested, and shit out.”

  “You’re doing good, Bobby. We’re almost there.”

  Bobby’s eyes were larger, darker. They accused Piat, even while appealing to him. “How come we aren’t there already, Andy? I tole you everything I know.”

  “Maybe you don’t know what you know.”

  “Yeah, I know what I know. I tole you I’m a double, man—I thought I’d never tell you that. I thought you kill me.”

  “See? I didn’t, did I?”

  “Now you say gotta be more. I’m wiped, Andy.”

  “We’re getting there, Bobby. We’re on a roll. You’re doing great. I’m really happy with what you’ve been telling me.”

  Bobby folded his arms and pulled his knees up, his heels on the front of the chair seat. “I tole you everything now.”

  Piat pulled his own chair close. It was almost dark in the room. Outside the high windows, the trees were silhouetted against the last ghost of brightness. “I want you to do something,” Piat said.

  Bobby raised his head. The eyes were black shadows.

  “I want to give you something that will help you remember,” Piat said.

  “Hey, no, Andy—!”

  “It’ll wind it up, Bobby. Make it quicker, easier. Get you home by midnight.”

  “What you want to give me?”

  “It’s a chemical.”

  “Aw, no, man— How?”

  Piat cleared his throat. “Needle.”

  “Aw, no, shit! Andy, please! Aw, Andy, no, I tole everything, honest, I tell you the truth.”

  Piat dragged the attaché case over without getting out of his chair, bending far to his left and reaching with one of his long arms. He put it on his lap and popped the locks, and there, under a folded T-shirt, was the syringe. Piat got up and put the attaché on the chair, bent and picked up the gasoline lantern and shook it, to listen to the slosh of gas inside to make sure there was enough. He pumped it and lit it, and the brightness of the light made them both flinch. When Bobby Li could see again, he stared at the attaché case. He shook his head. “No way.”

  Piat took the syringe with the saline solution and closed the attaché and put it on the floor. “I want you to do this, Bobby. For me.” Even as he was thinking, This is cruel; this is shitty; this is sadistic. “Which arm?”

  Bobby held on to his upper arms. “Please don’t.”

  “Bobby, it’s better if you help me do it. If I have to call the guys in to hold you, it doesn’t look good, you know. Just when you’re doing so well.”

  “No, please, please—Andy, we’re frands, please—” He began to cry. Piat smelled urine and saw, in the harsh light, a dark stain on Bobby’s crotch. Bobby blubbered and stammered please and said, “I’ll tell you anything, Andy, anything, honest, okay, yes, I held back, okay, yes, sure I lie to you before, but now I tell everything. Please don’ use the needle on me!”

  Piat hated himself. What he was doing was sadistic—or, because he didn’t enjoy it, maybe not sadistic, not quite, but certainly cruel. Bobby was a poor little jerk who had simply wanted, all his life, to trail after somebody bigger and stronger, to be a little accepted and a little loved. Now, Piat was torturing him.

  Piat sat in his chair, knowing that, for Bobby, it was like the moment when the dentist stops the drill and you think, Maybe he’s done. Maybe it’s over. He shouldn’t give him this chance to recover—but he couldn’t stand what he saw of himself. “What have you got to tell me, then?” he said, holding the big syringe so the needle glinted in the light.

  His eyes on the needle, Bobby said, “I tole you I was a double. That’s true. I tole you I started five years ago. That was a lie. I’m sorry, Andy. I lie.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m afraid of the Chinese guy.”

  “Your case officer?”

  “No, top guy. I go to work for him long time ago now.” He was almost whispering. “He kill me, he find out about this.”

  “Did he recruit you?”

  “Yah. Long time ago.”

  “Where?”

  “Here. Jakarta.”

  “How?”

  “Oh—you know—”

  “No, I don’t know. Bobby, if you’re bullshitting
me—”

  “No, no!” Eyes on the needle. “He jus’—get in touch with me, offer me money—”

  “How’d he get in touch with you?”

  “Guy I knew, we both young then, playin’ basketball. That way.”

  “What way? I don’t get it.”

  “You mixin’ me up! Andy, I tellin’ you all about it, the truth! This Chinese guy, he wears a suit, he come by where we play and he buy us Cokes and like that, then we talkin’, by and by he offer me money.”

  Piat knew now when Bobby was spinning a story. When he was making it up as he went along, his voice got a little higher, his eyes a little brighter, as if he liked what he was doing and thought he did it well. And Piat knew it was all invention. “Hold out your arm,” he said.

  “No!” A scream.

  “You’re lying. Hold out your arm, or I’ll call the guys.”

  “I won’t do it anymore, honest, Andy, no, no—” He was clutching his arms and hugging them to his chest, curling up his knees and rounding his shoulders. He was panting, weeping again, but he said, “The guy took me over! I was already a double!”

  That brought Piat up short. “How long ago?”

  “Long time.” Eyes on the needle again.

  “How long, Goddamit? I want answers!”

  “Ten years, maybe longer. Twelve. This guy, he really did come where we play basketball; he come around, looked at me, lotta times. Then I get a message to make a meeting, there he is, he says, ‘I’m your new officer. You do what I say now.’ ”

  Twelve years! Until then, Piat had thought that maybe Bobby had become a double after Piat had left Jakarta on his second tour. Now he was saying it was before. He sat down again. “This guy is the ‘top man’ you told me about?”

  “Yeah, yeah—the one I tell you, I know he order me to go to the Orchid House, help run that operation with the Chinese guys. I couldn’t help it!”

  “You’ve been his agent for twelve years.”

  “Yeah, about twelve. Last four or fi’, he run me through another guy we call Loyalty Man, but top guy still in charge. I think he was in Beijing a lot, from things Loyalty Man say. But this last time, this op where I shot the guy, he’s not in Beijing.”

  “Not Loyalty Man, the top guy.”

  “Yeah, top guy.

  “Was he at the embassy?”

  “I don’t know. We always meet out someplace.”

  Piat thought that all this would be great stuff if he had Bobby in a real safe house, with other interrogators and maybe a competent doctor and nurse and maybe a hypnotist to work on Bobby over a long time. It could take weeks to get the details out of him.

  “Okay, there was this top guy. He took you over in eighty-seven or so. Who’d he take you over from, Bobby?”

  Bobby’s body stalled. It was like a hiccup in his physical processes. Piat had seen it before, and he knew it meant that Bobby was scared suddenly and would start to invent. This, then, was a subject that was a bad one for him, one he had planned not to get to. Piat moved the needle forward. “Who’d he take you over from?”

  “A Chinese guy.”

  “Okay. Age?”

  “Oh, thirty-five. Forty. You know.”

  “Bobby, you’re tired. When you’re tired, your lies show. If you lie, I’ll have to use the needle.”

  “No, you said you wouldn’t.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “No, yeah, but I thought you meant we were over with that. I tole you the truth. Please, Andy.”

  “But you’re starting to lie again.”

  Bobby hugged himself, then threw his head back so hard that Piat could hear it hit the wood on the back of the chair. Bobby’s black hair, uncombed, sweaty, fell around his face. “Oh, man—” he whimpered. He looked around the room, moving mostly his eyes. “Mister Chen was a guy about forty, forty-five.”

  “Was that his code name—Chen?”

  “No, that his real name—Chen. I find it out one day. I don’t remember how.”

  “Bobby—!”

  “Oh, man! Okay, I hear somebody say it one day. He say, ‘That’s Chen, big shot at Chinese intel.’ ”

  “You could see the guy?”

  “Uh— Andy, look— This was a long time ago; I don’t remember it good. Maybe I got it wrong.”

  “Tell me the truth. You do remember it, Bobby; you don’t forget things like this. What did he mean, ‘That’s Chen.’ ”

  “He had a photo. Chen, some other guy.”

  “You saw the photo?”

  Bobby sighed. “I took the photo, okay? Long time ago, Andy. I was just a kid; I did what I was tole!”

  “You took a photo of your Chinese case officer?”

  “Sort of like that. Not at a meeting. Guy tells me, ‘Hang around the Chinese embassy, your guy comes out, snap a pic.’ Like that. I pretend to be a windshield kid, you know—rag, bottle a water, wipe down the windshield, ask for money. I do that two, three days, I see Mister Chen go by in a car, I get the pic.”

  Piat felt dizzy. He was tired, too, and he hadn’t eaten anything since morning, and what Bobby was telling him was so new he couldn’t make it sit still. He hesitated, letting the rhythm of the interrogation falter. “Who told you to take the picture?” he said. It had been before his time, surely—or had it? His head spun. “Come on, Bobby, who told you to take the picture?”

  “Mister Shreed, he tole me.”

  “George Shreed was running you then?”

  “Yeah, he was my frand.”

  “That’d be twenty, twenty-five years ago.”

  Then Piat thought he saw it clearly, and his head settled down. Of course, Shreed would want a photo of his Chinese counterpart if he could get one, and using a kid wasn’t such a bad idea. “You were Shreed’s agent, even then.”

  “I was his frand. Little kid. He was good to me.”

  “Was that when they called you Kim?”

  Surprisingly, Bobby Li smiled. Through the wetness of his tears, through his swollen eyes and his disordered hair, he smiled. “Yeah. Mister Shreed call me Kim. He read that book to me. I was just a kid. He was my best frand.”

  Piat let the rhythm go again. He was thinking about what Bobby had said and where it led. Finally, he said, “But even though he was your best friend, you were a double agent, even then.”

  The small man unfolded himself a little. He even leaned a little forward, moving into the space threatened by the needle. His eyes were somber now, adult, and—another surprise—almost pitying. “Don’t go there, Andy.”

  “I want the truth.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “Bobby, come on! We’re almost at the end. Don’t make me—” He moved the needle. “Don’t.” Bobby sank slowly back and put his head against the chair back again so that Piat was looking at the underside of his jaw and his eye sockets. Bobby wasn’t crying anymore. He wasn’t even breathing hard. Looking at the ceiling, he said, “I was a double then, and it didn’t bother Mister Shreed, okay?”

  “He knew?”

  Bobby sighed. “Andy—” He sighed again. “He sent me to Mister Chen, okay?”

  “Now, wait a minute— Bobby, I want to be clear here. Your story is that George Shreed sent you to this Chen?”

  “He did.”

  “To be a double?”

  “Yeah, I guess. It got to be that, sure. He sent me first just to be a gofer, you know? With him and Mister Chen.”

  “Gofer? What the hell does that mean? Spies don’t use gofers!”

  “I was a little kid, Andy. I—it was— Mister Shreed says to me, ‘This is the Great Game, Kim. Now the Great Game begin.’ That’s what he said. I’m not bullshitting you, Andy. He was happy about it, man! And he sends me to Mister Chen with a message. That was the first time.”

  “Bobby, George Shreed recruited you.”

  “Yeah, when I was a kid.”

  “And then Chen turned you into a double.”

  Bobby didn’t say anything. He sighed. Piat said, “Answer me,
Bobby! This was when Chen recruited you—yes?”

  “Andy, I tole you not to go there. Don’t you get it? Mister Chen never recruited me. Mister Shreed recruited me.”

  Piat stared at him, the syringe forgotten. “That could be true only if Shreed was a double himself.”

  Bobby sighed. “I tole you, man. I tried to keep you away.”

  Piat reached across and smacked him as hard as he could with his left hand. In his right, the needle gleamed.

  Washington.

  At two, Dukas was in the CNO’s office with Pat Feisel, two lawyers from the JAG’s office, and the overworked man who was running the Navy. He had fifteen minutes to explain why the Navy ought to go head-to-head with the Central Intelligence Agency in federal court. The lawyers were wary but a little excited, he could see. Suing the CIA was a fairly racy idea.

  “And it’s the right thing to do,” Pat Feisel said. “The boy’s rights are being trampled.”

  That was not as impressive for the other lawyers as she hoped. Nickie Groski was not, after all, a sailor.

  “How about we let his lawyer file, and we file an amicus?” one of the JAG’s men said.

  It was the CNO himself who nixed that. “That’s wishy-washy,” he said. “The hell with that. Dukas, you really need to talk to this young man?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, I don’t know about you guys, but I’m impressed by the argument that his civil rights are being ignored. This is America. Can you guys handle the Agency?”

  One of the lawyers grinned.

  “Dukas, give these guys everything they need that can be said in court. Missus Feisel, I’d appreciate it if you’ll put full time on this, because you’re already ahead. They’ll need chapter and verse, the boy’s lawyer—”

  “His mother,” one lawyer said.

  “All that. Dukas is in a hurry. How fast can you move?”

  The two JAGs looked at each other. “Two weeks?”

  Dukas eyed them. “Today?”

  The CNO looked from one to the other. “Gentlemen, I trust experts. You’re experts in different fields. Dukas, how bad do you need to see this boy?”

  “Bad, sir.”