Sea of Lies: An Espionage Thriller

by Bradley West

  Lying little bitch, thought Flynn. “Chief, I’ve seen the transcript of their lunchtime cafeteria conversation. There’s no mention of NSA or Watermen.”

  “He told me on the walk to the cafeteria.” Millie looked imploringly first to Flynn, who was having none of it, and then to Constantine.

  Turning to Shoenstein, Constantine asked, “Do we now have enough for a good arrest?” The former Columbia Law School salutatorian nodded.

  “Good.” Turning toward Flynn, Constantine said, “Call the surveillance team and detain Nolan at his home. Then get the ISD over there for the formalities.” Flynn picked up Constantine’s desk handset and dialed.

  Constantine also wasn’t buying Millie’s story. “Maury, please advise Ms. Mukherjee of her rights. We’ll need to interview her more formally. Maybe she’ll have better luck on the polygraph than those two Russians did this morning.”

  Millie felt nauseated. Her career was over and Bob headed to jail. Why had she said that?

  Flynn put his hand over the mouthpiece. “Dick, they’re already in Nolan’s house. They heard screaming from the helper. He’s gone. His home office is a mess, and the laptop and home PC hard drives are sitting in a sink full of acid.”

  “Damnation! Put out a domestic arrest order for Nolan via the Singapore Police. Alert the Terrorist Screening Center that he’s a priority arrest and add him to Secure Flight’s no-go list as well. Get all available field agents on the street. And I want copies of all his calls from whenever the taps started. Do we have any video footage?”

  “No, Collins only wired it for audio and data. Don’t worry, we’ll get him. We should have a two-mile radius cordon up within ten minutes. I’ll have the police alert the cab companies, too,” Flynn said.

  Millie’s stomach knotted into a softball. She groaned and clutched her abdomen, rocking in place on her chair. Flynn caught Constantine’s eye. “You should read the lunchtime printout. Nolan sounds as if he has hard evidence of current or former CIA involvement in the MH370 mess. You know Compliance has a copy of the transcripts, but I doubt they’ve read anything yet or else you’d have heard from them.”

  Constantine turned to his PC and checked his email. Looking up, he said, “Nothing here.” Millie was still clutching her stomach and grimacing. Shoenstein looked on in discomfort, waiting for Constantine to act.

  “Go to Compliance and pull the hard copy out of the tray if it’s still there,” ordered Constantine. Shoenstein winced and turned away. Millie had straightened up, her jaw clenched tight. The room fell silent.

  * * * * *

  Around the front of the neighbor’s house, he unlatched the wrought iron driveway gate, exited and re-latched it without alerting either man or beast. It was now fully dark. Nolan might have been pushing fifty-five, but he was deceptively fast on a bicycle given his mountain biking forays over Singapore’s mean streets and the hilly jungle park within a few miles of home. He figured Juanilla would keep his secret for five minutes at most. He started pedaling as hard as he could and within five minutes he was in the near-deserted city campus of the National University of Singapore. Another five minutes of uphill pedaling took him onto Nassim Road. Many foreign embassies, including Russia’s, were on this quiet, moneyed street. If the watchers were sufficiently on the ball, their surveillance cameras would pick him out. Although unlikely, he kept his head down and continued to ride hard.

  Ten minutes later he arrived at Orchard Towers, hooker bar central. From the basement to the fourth floor, he knew every nightspot; he’d had many a beer and a few fondles during the thirty months since the Joanie-imposed sex embargo post-Melissa. While a couple of the girls might know him on sight, at 7:30 p.m., the hostesses who could pick him out of an ID parade were still at home putting on their makeup. The top-drawer whores didn’t come to work before nine. Their businessmen clientele needed to wine and dine before they wooed and screwed. He chained the bike to a railing in the darkest area abutting the parking lot.

  Climbing the back stairs two at a time, he was breathing heavily when he arrived at the fifth floor. This was above the popular fourth-floor demarcation line for debauchery. Fifth-floor office tenants included importers, marketing agents, the occasional property manager and a few two-man accountancy practices. The blue steel door with a peephole and an automated security lock at the end of the hall was what held his fascination: the illegal Paradise Alley, the only on-premises brothel in Orchard Towers. He’d visited here half a dozen times since the marital ice age started. How it hid in plain sight had always been a puzzle. He rapped his knuckles hard twice, paused for a full two count and repeated the sequence. Linda Leong, the mama-san, pulled open the door.

  “Mr. Gladstone! Do come in. May I offer you some company, or would you like to freshen up first?” While over forty, she sported a voluptuous figure thanks to diet and twice-weekly expensive electro-shock treatments. Nolan could see how she might still command six hundred Singapore dollars a night when the standard rate was four hundred. “Lickin’ Linda” possessed the looks, conversational ability and performance-enhancing sexual techniques that fifty-year-old married men craved.

  “Were you able to buy those things I asked for?” he asked.

  “Of course. They’re in your room along with the change. Would you like a girl to keep you company?

  “Maybe later. Right now I’m going to rest in my room.”

  “Well, you’ve paid until midnight, so plenty of time left. Just press the bedside button if you need anything. Anything at all.”

  Nolan shut the door and gave the deadbolt two full turns. Picking up the bedside phone, he dialed Mimi Chan’s cell. They’d be putting a trace on her, but he had no alternative.

  Yu Kaili answered in a seductress’s voice, “Hello?”

  “Mimi? It’s me. Look, there’s been a change of venue and time. Can you meet me at Orchard Towers, unit #05-01? The door is dark blue metal and unmarked, except for a peephole. Ask for Madam Leong and then Mr. Gladstone.”

  “It sounds as if you are in trouble.” Kaili was purring.

  “Time is short. Come here within the next half hour if you can.”

  “Looking forward to it already,” she dripped and hung up. An hour reading Nolan’s file pointed to a past marital transgression and a predilection for hanging out in girlie bars around Asia. Maybe she could get him interested. She’d do whatever it took if it helped her mentor Liu regain his influence. She picked up her secure office phone, and connected to Beijing while she pulled up Google Maps to look for Orchard Towers.

  A Wyatt Earp mustache was Nolan’s signature feature for almost twenty years, morphing along the way from jet black to salt-and-pepper to today’s gunmetal gray. Using the Linda-supplied shears, it took but a minute to chop it down to where he could shave the stubble. Next he pulled out Bert’s old hair clippers from his Singapore Army Commando days. He set the lever at two and let fly. The resulting gray crew-cut didn’t do much to create a more youthful appearance. Black hair dye helped, but his eyebrows proved a pain in the butt. To finish the makeover, he ditched his contacts in favor of the prescription black-rimmed designer eyeglasses he seldom wore.

  These measures would buy him maybe five minutes tops if he entered a room with video feeds into high-end facial recognition software interpreted by trained operators. However, all he needed to do was fool run-of-the-mill security guards who probably wouldn’t have even seen his old Agency photo, much less this new look.

  The Harcourt Aviation charter flight should be on the ground at Seletar Airport.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  TRACKING ERRORS

  WEDNESDAY MARCH 12, FT. MEADE, MARYLAND; PENANG PORT, MALAYSIA; SINGAPORE; SHAN STATE, BURMA; MOSCOW

  “Buster, what’s the latest?” The NSA’s Tim Weill was usually a cool customer, but with DCI Perkins calling him twice in the past twenty minutes, he was looking for reassurance.

  “No change in the last ten minutes, boss. We stepped in shit about six hours ago when w
e decrypted one of Nolan’s hard drive partitions. That turned out to be Brer Rabbit’s briar patch. We’ve been cleaning up since then, and his laptop went into lockdown. Nolan’s a clever man. Why the urgency?”

  “No one is telling me anything. What about his cell phone?”

  “We’ve been through it all once. He has over three thousand contacts with lots of notes. Some of it’s further encrypted using German software we’ve only partially cracked. Nothing useful to date, and not much likely. There aren’t any documents, PDFs or big files on the phone to begin with. I’ll let you know as soon as we get anything,” Buster Gregory said.

  * * * * *

  Gonzalez dialed Hecker on an encrypted satphone. “Boss? Howard and I are standing on the SS Bandana here in Penang Port. He ran a Geiger counter over the entire cargo and recorded one hundred fifty rad off the onboard crane. He only got tiny clicks otherwise. It’s not on the ship. That fucking container went over the side.”

  “Ah, hell. I guess we should have expected that. I’ll contact the NRO and see what kind of eyes they were able to put on the SS Bandana. Maybe we’ll get a smoking gun or at least pinpoint where they dumped it. There should be enough radioactivity that the fish will glow in the dark.”

  “You want me to sweat the crew? I’ve locked them in the mess. I recognize the two pricks who tried to run away in Thilawa. The ones we later had to let go at Club Avatar. Maybe they’ll talk.”

  “Don’t touch anyone. I have Steinlager all over me as it is. Even with the Wild Bunch going or gone, she’s still riding my ass. The Malaysians don’t know what we’re chasing and I’m not authorized to tell them. Think what happens overnight if we tell them a nuclear centrifuge—that’s what Nolan thinks it is, by the way—was on MH370, and we’re trying to track it down. Our heads would be chopped off, right or wrong. The Malaysians are emotional and desperate for leads. We can’t trust them to keep any secrets, either.”

  “So what do you want me to do?”

  “Thank Howard for his help and send him back to Fukushima or wherever he goes next. His two buddies are already at the airport. You need to come back to Rangoon. Gunny Tanner thinks either the Army or Teller will come at us hard once they learn that the Wild Bunch is gone. With Travis down, you’re the acting head of South and Southeast Asia Security.”

  “Well, I might as well be a colonel in the Iraqi Army for all the good that title’s gonna do me.”

  “Whatever. Just hop the next plane to Bangkok and carry on to Rangoon first thing tomorrow.”

  “Sí, señor.”

  Hecker tried Nolan, but no one picked up after a half-dozen rings. That was odd.

  * * * * *

  Nolan unlocked the backpack he’d dropped off earlier and saw with relief that the money was still there. He transferred the wrapped notes to the travel backpack and was busy dumping clothes on top of the rubber-banded hundreds when Linda knocked and announced he had a visitor. “Mr. Gladstone, you are a very important customer, but you know the rules here. No outside women.”

  “Linda, this is all business. Trust me,” Nolan said as he opened the door a foot to make eye contact.

  Linda took a step back and was visibly shocked. “Mr. Gladstone! If I didn’t know your voice, I wouldn’t have recognized you.”

  “Yes, I’ve decided to change my look. Do you like it?” Nolan wasn’t selling it very hard.

  “It’s certainly different,” Linda offered. “I’ll show your friend in.”

  Nolan stuffed his bike bottle, gloves and helmet into the recently emptied office backpack.

  * * * * *

  Bert awoke with a start. The cabin was cold, the wood stove having gone out hours ago. He went out on the front porch to take a whiz. He heard coyotes yipping a quarter mile away. Maybe they were running a deer. Dad had left a 30-06 in the cabin and a box of shells. He’d go out tomorrow and see if he could bag one of the varmints.

  * * * * *

  Nolan ushered Kaili through the door and shut it behind her. She was very attractive, a shapely figure highlighted by a form-fitting white silk cheongsam sprinkled with red flowers. Her makeup rested lightly on high cheekbones, a broad but symmetrical nose and porn star puffy lips. Shoulder-length wavy chestnut hair completed the tai-tai look. He put her in her late thirties, but with Asian women you never could tell.

  “May I sit?” Kaili asked.

  “Certainly. Sit anywhere.” She sat on the bed, kicking off expensive pumps as she did. “You look different than in the file photos. Younger.”

  The false flattery wasn’t lost on Nolan. He loved it. “What can you tell me about my family?”

  “Shao Yin and Mei Ling are fine. We have time before we can call them, as I didn’t think we were meeting until later.” Lifting her arms, she showed her 32C cups to maximum advantage as she reached behind and fretted at her neckline. “Why don’t you come over here and help with the catch? It’s new and I don’t want to tear it.”

  She was using him. After this week’s shenanigans-to-date, he wasn’t biting so easily. On the other hand . . . . He leaned over and deftly undid the China agent’s snap. She was surprised when he straightened up and stepped back from the bed.

  “Don’t you want to come over here next to me?” she purred as her hands reached back to tug her zipper down the back. Shedding the cheongsam to her waist, her white half-cup push-up bra displayed her ample assets.

  Nolan sat beside her on the bed and said, “If you think you can blackmail me with sex, it’s too late for that. My wife is divorcing me even if I walk out of here right now.”

  “Then help me with my zipper. It’s cold in here.”

  * * * * *

  Teller teetered over the man lying in bed in the makeshift infirmary. “Dr. Wang, damned glad to see you, but you look like shit.”

  “I was stocktaking in the opium warehouse last week when I fell off a pile of sacks and one of them landed on me. I think my back is broken. I can’t move my legs, but they gave me several morphine shots, so I’m not certain what is wrong.”

  “You told me down south at the toll road that you used to work in North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. Is that so?”

  “Yes, I commanded the hospital at the Nuclear Scientific Research Center at Yongbyon, sixty miles north of Pyongyang.”

  “Did you treat patients with radiation sickness?”

  “All the time. Sadly, many I could not save. I see symptoms in you.”

  “Can you cure me?”

  “Not with the medicines and equipment here.”

  “Where, then?”

  “I don’t know. Singapore, Japan or perhaps Bangkok. I can give you list and you can see what is available.”

  “I’ll get everything you need; you do the rest.”

  “It is not simple. The lab equipment and diagnostics require a hospital. You probably need a bone marrow transplant. That takes a special hospital. You must travel soon. And if I help you, I will need a doctor to treat my back.”

  “Listen, Wang. You’ll get the treatment you need. Just make certain that when we get to Bangkok, the quacks there get my diagnosis right. If I don’t make it, you don’t make it.”

  * * * * *

  “I don’t even know your real name,” he said.

  “To save time, let us be honest. My name is Yu Kaili. I’m newly in charge of the Ministry of State Security in Singapore. I arrived just yesterday. Our Guangzhou office asked me to meet you.”

  “I appreciate the candor. I’m a lifelong CIA officer who hoped to retire at the end of the month. That won’t happen now, and I’m running from the Agency which seeks to falsely imprison me. What do I have to do to get my daughter and wife released?”

  “We know you have a copy of the files Watermen took from NSA.”

  “You want a copy?”

  “On the contrary. We want you to destroy all your copies. And, just as importantly, never speak of this.”

  This development had him flummoxed. “You want me to destroy my copie
s of the files Watermen stole?”

  “Yes, that is the offer.” Kaili hid her own surprise at these instructions. They’d come from Beijing after she logged her pending meeting with Nolan, and they weren’t from Liu/Meng, either.

  “Let’s say I do it. What happens to my family?”

  “We give their passports back and take them to the airport. No tricks or no deal.”

  “I think we can make this work, but you have to do two or three things for me.”

  Brow furrowing, she said, “Go on.”

  “One, I need you to fly to Sri Lanka with me tonight. I’ve chartered a jet. Friday I’m meeting the FSB and/or the SVR. They want the NSA files in return for Watermen. You can help me figure out a way to ensure they don’t get the files and Watermen still goes free. Two, China wields much influence in Sri Lanka. Ensure that Sri Lanka grants Watermen permanent asylum. And three, my family has to be out of China before Friday’s Watermen exchange, and I destroy those files.”

  “This sounds complicated and potentially quite risky. I am especially concerned as it relates to Watermen and the timing of your family’s release. I can’t authorize this on my own.”

  “Oh, that’s not all. I’m also close to solving the MH370 disappearance, and I’ll tell you what I know. I think the MSS will be very interested to know that former CIA senior officers may have been involved.”

  “MH370? I don’t understand.”

  “I can explain it all on the flight to Colombo. It’s about four hours in a Gulfstream 550 executive jet that I’ve leased.”

  “What will Constantine think about a senior China intelligence officer flying with you to Sri Lanka?”

  “I’m a fugitive. They don’t know I’ve chartered the G550. Check with your boss and let me know. I’m leaving for the airport just as soon as I speak to my family.”

  She said, “If you hand me your phone, I’ll dial them. They should be waiting.”