Lee strode in a brisk walk along Plymouth Street, small snowflakes swirling about. The gray sky above seemed to swell to where it appeared to hover over the Brooklyn Bridge, cloaking it in a freezing gray mist. With some strain, she opened the heavy iron door, which provided entry into the north side of the building, and entered into a tiled lobby. She took a lift down a floor and traversed a hallway until she came to a door with the number four on the front, on which she knocked sharply. A few moments later, Wang’s slim frame appeared in the door. He was dressed in black jeans and a plain light green T-shirt with dark green trim around the sleeves and neck.
“Hey, Lyn. Long time, no see.”
Lee had always been hesitant to visit him in his apartment, although the reasons for this varied over time. In his younger, more carefree days he’d been lazy about keeping it clean. However, as he’d grown older, he’d matured. He’d changed a lot in recent years, particularly after he’d nearly been indicted by the FBI in charges related to his hacking activity. The very real threat at the time of being thrown into prison had been a wake-up call, as he’d already admitted to her privately. Since then, he’d lived his life with a new sense of purpose and discipline, which had been reflected in his domestic habits. As small as it was, the apartment she entered into was relatively clean.
“Hey, Kep,” she said as she followed him into the small living room. The room was cast in shadows, the only light coming from a halogen light next to a cloth sofa and from one of the three monitors sitting atop a homemade desk, which extended across the entire length of the east wall. Wang had situated the largest of these monitors, which Lee estimated at about four feet by six, in the northeast corner. The screen was blank but it glowed pale green, casting an eerie light throughout the apartment. Wang flipped on the ceiling light, bringing the two framed pieces he’d placed on the walls into view. The first was an abstract painting of a series of electrical wires, conduits, and semiconductors. The second was a blown-up photograph and accompanying news article of a hacker hero of his named Krystal Juric.
Juric was a Croatian woman who had been poor and had taught herself her skills prior to becoming an underground cult hero with her creation of a sophisticated piece of open source remote control software. Juric, who’d been caught stealing identities, had used the funds from theft to pay for an undergraduate degree and part of a post-graduation education at Oxford. After being successfully prosecuted for a small percentage of her crimes, she spent four years in prison, sold her story, and eventually became wealthy as a tech entrepreneur in Silicon Valley.
Wang’s affection for Juric was due, in part, because he’d known her since before she’d become famous. Juric had traveled in many of the same hacker social circles as Wang had, and Wang had even collaborated with her on coding for a few scripts. Later on, he’d gotten into serious legal trouble by using Juric’s software to, along with several others, hack into a number of websites protected by the U.S. government, including one of the FBI’s Computer Forensics Laboratories and other sites related to the U.S. Army, a number of U.S. government contractors, and privately owned banks. He likely would have spent multiple years in prison, except that he negotiated with the FBI to help them in tracking and capturing his international counterparts who were spread out throughout the U.S., Europe, and Russia.
“Coffee? Water?”
Lee nodded. “No, thanks.” She slipped her coat and scarf off and flopped onto his sofa.
“Gimme just a sec,” Wang said as he dashed to one of the computers, sat down on an office chair, and typed rapidly on his computer for a few seconds. When he finished, he swiveled around to face Lee. “What’s new with you?”
“Well, I’m in a little bit of a…situation. I’m hoping for a favor.”
“Favor?”
Lee nodded. “Yes. A pretty big one.”
“What’s going on?”
Lee told him the whole story of her involvement with the FBI, starting with her recruitment and ending with the photos that Dvorak had given her at the Ingenuity Ball. As she finished, Wang rose from his chair and began pacing back and forth with his hands behind his head.
Wang asked, “What is your relationship with the FBI now?”
“I haven’t spoken with them since the night of the Ingenuity Ball.”
“Do you have a lawyer?”
“Yeah, I’m using a guy named Reynolds. He was referred to me by my father’s lawyer. He’s the one doing the negotiating with the feds.”
“Any progress so far?”
Lee nodded. “No, not yet. The FBI hasn’t been willing to take the more serious espionage charges off the table. At least, not yet.”
“That’s a pretty good indicator of where you stand with them now.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“What is it you’re asking of me?”
“I want to absolve myself of this situation I’ve found myself in. In order to do that, I need to find out where the abductees are located and figure out who’s behind the leaks at Brooklyn Capital.”
“You want me to help you?”
Lee looked him in the eye and smiled her killer smile.
Wang grimaced and his pacing quickened. “You know I’ve given up illegal hacking. I can’t go back to that. If I’m caught doing something like that again, I’ll spend twenty years in a federal prison.”
“Use my accounts, Kep. Do everything under my name. I don’t care. I just need to figure this out.”
Wang didn’t respond, but kept pacing. “Do you have any leads? Anything at all?”
“I’ll start with Susan Meng and her father. I really believe Mr. Meng is involved somehow. I just need to figure out how to get the information I need.”
“You know it usually takes a long time to hack into an account like that. The Wall Street firms don’t mess around. They know how to protect their accounts. They have access to a lot of talent. To hack something like that will probably take a long time, if it can even be done.”
Lee remained silent. Wang seemed to be formulating some ideas in his head. “To speed things up, you’re going to need to do something a little more direct.”
“Like what?”
“You said Meng’s firm is a consulting firm? They help American businesses get into the Chinese marketplace?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“What I would do is to try and take advantage of that.”
“How so?”
“For example, you might try and pose as a company that can offer something of value to him.”
“Like what?”
“Information.”
“Information? You mean information from China?”
“Yes, exactly. Economic information. Financial information. Meng’s firm would value information about markets in China.”
“You recommended I pose as a company. What do you mean by that? How does a person pose as a company?”
Wang’s pacing slowed in inverse proportion to his thoughts, which seemed to gather momentum.
“You’d need to set up a website, for example.”
“I don’t understand what you mean, though,” Lee said. “How would I take advantage of Meng?”
“Well, for example…” Wang stopped the pacing and leaned against the wall. “You could pose as a representative from this fictional company making calls to potential clients. You could call into Meng’s firm and request to speak with him.”
“Call him directly?”
Wang looked her in the eyes. “Exactly. You call and ask for Meng, introduce yourself as a rep from your fictional company and explain how you have superior data and how you can help him.”
Wang had walked to his desk and picked up a half-expired pack of cigarettes. “Do you mind?”
Lee shrugged. “It’s your home, Kep.”
He lit the cigarette with a butterscotch-colored lighter.
“And then what?” Lee asked.
“You’d have a goal in mind.”
“What goal?”
“The goal would be to install software on his computer. Software that can be used to gain access to his computer remotely.”
Lee thought about how she might make that happen, thinking out loud. “If I can convince him my product is good, I could direct him to the website where he can download more information. Could the software you speak of be embedded within this download?”
“Yes, it could. The best thing would be to convince him to allow you to send him an email directly. It’s more likely to make it through the firewall and other failsafes they’re likely to have installed in their systems.”
Lee let the room fall into silence for a moment. “I can’t do this without you, Kep. Will you help?”
Kep was leaning against his desk, his left leg crossed over his right. He took a pull on his cigarette and exhaled a plume of smoke.
“Please,” Lee said.
“Of course, I’ll help. I’m not going to just abandon you.”
“Thank you, Kep.” Kep hugged her with his right arm since he was using his left to balance himself on the desk.
“That being said,” Kep said, “there are some things I simply can’t do that I used to do.” He walked toward one of the windows into the room, opened it a crack, and turned back to Lee. “But we’ll figure it out.” Kep paused for a moment and said, “And I’m not familiar with economics and finance, especially as they relate to China. Do you know anyone who might be able to help with that?”
“Hmmmmm.” Lee thought for a moment. “Yes, I think I know someone who could be very helpful with that.”
Shanghai, China
Saturday, March 1, 9:00 a.m. CST
A long, flat triangular stretch of light gray clouds extended below the plane’s window, expanding into the distance like a firmamental delta plain. For a few moments, the tumbling of the feathery swells tossed and rolled in synch with the tumultuous strains of Schubert’s Symphony No. 9 playing in Terry Phong’s earphones. He fancied the jet a celestial cutter slicing through frothy seas as he drew his sight away from the window and scanned through a photo montage on his smart phone. The montage was a mix of photos of his wife and young son: Jonah and Cynthia posing in a stairwell, Cynthia out back in their garden, Jonah looking perplexed as he discovered himself in a mirror. The latter photo, in particular, stood out to him. The arch in young Jonah’s thin nose and his eyes were strikingly similar to his own, but the curiosity and surprise in the boy’s expression was something he rarely saw in himself. Tonight was an exception, however. He imagined his own face had taken on a similar expression at the moment when Rose had told him he would be the one to go to Shanghai.
Terry Phong slid the headphones off of his ears, and the gentle sounds within the cabin of the 747 filled his ears: the turning of pages of a magazine, a child’s warbled cry, a muffled cough. The whine of the jet’s engines interfused with the cabin’s soundtrack as it made one of its many automated course corrections during the long flight to Shanghai. Phong’s thoughts of his wife dissipated as the notes from the headphones faded from his short-term memory, replaced by those of a more somber variety.
He sighed heavily as he slid an FBI-issued tablet computer onto his lap and clicked on an encrypted file. The file contained information accumulated by the FBI related to its investigation into the smuggling ring. It was information he had not been privy to, initially. Rose had explained that he didn’t want him to know anything about the investigation. What would have been the point? But after he’d gotten over the initial realization that he would be going back to China, and Rose had discussed in further detail what his mission would be, he began to suspect he had some leverage. After all, it would be relatively easy to get him back into China with legitimate credentials. All he would need to do was get his paperwork renewed. So he was only mildly surprised when Rose had relented and given him access to a limited amount of information on the FBI operation, which the FBI had dubbed Operation Vanguard.
It was mostly high-level information, where the data was summarized and most of the details had been left out. The FBI’s investigation, which was being led out of the Los Angeles office by a senior agent named Scott Carlton, had officially begun in 2012. The investigation, which was ongoing, had thus far led to the identification of fifty-four individuals spread between five states, including New York, New Jersey, California, Hawaii, and Nevada. Within the report, the network had been described as slightly less nefarious than many other trafficking networks that had been investigated by the FBI in the sense that the victims had, at the least, left China voluntarily. The victims had been from middle- to low-income families, by Chinese standards, who had wanted a chance at an American education and access to its capitalist economy. The network bosses had carefully chosen people who had some wealth and support available on the front end in order to increase the odds of repayment on the back end. Once the victims reached America, the extent of victimization was similar to any other trafficking network, including sexual exploitation, physical torment, and threats to harm family members still in China.
The other difference was that the network had been run from Shanghai to Los Angeles via Hawaii and some other smaller islands along the oceanic path from China to California. One of the surprising revelations for Phong was the number of Chinese migrants in other networks that were being smuggled, not through California, but through Central America and Mexico and across the Mexican-American border. In recent years, there had been a high amount of cooperation between Chinese and Mexican smugglers, the Chinese taking advantage of routes and connections already developed by the Mexicans.
He clicked to another page, which showed a series of photos of the higher-level managers. His attention flashed toward the abrupt blaring of a music player, which was quickly extinguished by its nonplussed owner. Refocusing his concentration on the photos, he noted that each photo had a short blurb describing the person’s role in the network. His eyes were immediately drawn to one man with a riveting profile: a thin head with black sideburns, a series of tattoos along the neck and cheek, a hard jawline, and a set of bloodshot eyes with deep, dark shadows underneath. The name under the photo said Guo Huadong, and under the name was the Mandarin equivalent for “assassin.” Phong took a discomposing sip of his airline juice, its sweetness chased with a slight, bitter aftertaste after it slid down his throat. He asked himself the same questions he’d asked repeatedly since he’d left the FBI facility. Is this really worth it? How did I get here?
Phong finished sifting through the photos, and laid his phone in his lap as he listened to Schubert’s notes play softly in his ears. He felt the plane bank to his right, bringing into view the magnificent skyline of Shanghai. Far below in the distance, the dense clusters of skyscrapers appeared. As he traced the hulking expanse of the skyscrapers from the East China Sea, extending inland beyond the Huangpu River and to a series of lakes and waterways further to the west of Shanghai, his thoughts settled on one name: Tersun Tuniyaz.
Chapter 32
Manhattan, New York
Saturday, March 1, 11:23 a.m. EST
It had been an unusual few days for Kurt Metz, leader of FBI Hostage Rescue Team Alpha, being in New York for the past few days and away from home base, home base being the hostage rescue compound in Quantico, Virginia. Occasionally, the team confronted situations that lasted an extended period of time, but, once the last shots had been fired and the victim freed from the captors’ bondage, the team went home to Virginia until the next crisis presented itself. But, due to the unusual nature of the situation involving the abductions of Brooklyn Capital’s employees, FBI leadership had decided to keep a team in New York indefinitely until the crisis was resolved. Thus, Metz and his teammates had spent each day since the raid on the small Chinatown apartment on the twenty-first of February waiting impatiently for the next call.
Metz, never one to handle idleness very well, had spent a restless few days lifting whatever weights were available in the gym or at the shooting range within the FBI headquarter
s building, or going on training runs through Central Park. He spent some time sightseeing along with a few other members of the team, which inevitably brought about the recounting of old war stories. Most of the hostage rescue agents had military experience, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan. Metz himself had served in the U.S. Marine Corp during the Iraq War and had been part of some of the heaviest urban fighting in the city of Fallujah at the end of 2004 before leaving the military and joining up with the FBI. The skill sets he’d learned in the Marines had made the transition from FBI agent to a member of the hostage rescue team a relatively easy one.
The “next call” had finally come at nine o’ clock the previous evening from Jermaine Simmons, leader of Team Echo, who advised him that they were to meet the following morning at New York Headquarters. It was because of this call that Metz now found himself in an elevator within the FBI headquarters building, coffee in hand. Jeff Birch, also a member of Alpha Team, slipped into the elevator with him. “Ready to roll?” he asked.
Metz took a sip of his coffee and said, “I’ve been ready for a while now. Getting tired of sightseeing. It’s time to get to work.” The elevator buzzed and Metz followed Birch out of the elevator to a small auditorium on the second floor, where only a few HRT personnel had yet made it in. Standing at the front were Andrus Fleischer, the head of the hostage rescue teams, and John Rose, head of the FBI’s criminal division in the New York office, who Metz had only been introduced to a few days ago, prior to the initial raid in Chinatown. The two were engaged in an animated conversation.
Metz followed Birch up a few rows to where Jeremy Oteri, another of Metz’s teammates on Alpha Team, had already taken a seat. As he made his way up the stairs, Metz acknowledged Donnie Trumane, leader of Team Delta, who was in a conversation with Luis McCollum, one of the snipers on Sniper Team Zulu.
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