Sea of Lies: An Espionage Thriller

by Bradley West

  “Sir, depending on when they get to the airstrip, it could be almost dark. We might be engaging at two hundred meters. We won’t be able to tell uniform types or weapons at those ranges,” Michaels explained.

  “Use the methods that safeguard your lives,” Hecker said.

  “Then we’ll set an ambush and execute the plan,” Gerard said.

  Hecker stared at the coffee cup in his hands as the two men gathered their belongings and awaited a reply. This was a screwed-up situation, to be certain. The borrowed Special Forces operators weren’t even supposed to be in-country. Tonight he was flying to Singapore en route to Tokyo on Friday for the showdown that might cost him his job. Bob Nolan was on the run, either because he was part of the Watermen NSA conspiracy or because he was damned close to solving MH370 with the blame aimed at the heart of the Agency. Nolan didn’t have a leg to stand on if Teller was dead. Still, Teller tried to kill Hecker’s wife and son. He was an animal. A rabid dog.

  “Sir?” prodded Gerard.

  Hecker looked up. “Shoot anyone who doesn’t surrender. Bring back anything you can salvage from the site: bodies, clothes, equipment, papers. Thank you for everything. Stay safe, gentlemen.”

  The Delta Unit operators bared their teeth in lupine smiles and left.

  * * * * *

  Constantine hadn’t slept well—not at all, truth be told. He’d sought refuge in his office since before sunup, reading Nolan’s file and pondering whether Nolan was doubling for Russia or China, tripling for both, or clean. Monday the SVR tried to kidnap Nolan. Wednesday night Nolan flew to Sri Lanka with “Mimi Chan,” whom they’d not yet identified. She could well be from China military intelligence or even the MSS. In between, Nolan claimed to have solved the MH370 mystery, implicating the CIA. There was a highly radioactive centrifuge missing and inexplicable orders from HQ not to interdict Nolan’s flight to Sri Lanka. The dirty station chief in Burma. And it was likely, but not certain, that Nolan had fled to Sri Lanka to try to ransom Mark Watermen at the cost of US national security. Constantine took comfort in knowing Nolan was now on a very short tether, but he also accepted that this awful man could have been playing Singapore station for quite a while.

  He shifted tack and picked up another folder on this desk. Nolan had a daughter, Mei Ling; she was an interesting character study. She paid cash for a one-way ticket on Monday afternoon at the Vancouver Airport. Her work colleagues had no idea she was visiting China. They thought she had picked up her brother in Seattle for a big sister pep talk. There was a single distress text from the Guangzhou airport to her father’s cell, presumably from her, as the originating phone number was from BC. She vanished from there: no phone calls or internet traffic according to the NSA.

  Constantine tried hard to keep his personal dislike of Bob Nolan from clouding his judgment. Nolan was an adulterer, with two new conquests this very week, and now he was holed up in the honeymoon suite of a Sri Lanka beach hotel. That spoke to a complete absence of decency, but maybe that wasn’t the proper focal point. Mei Ling was now in the same city as Joanie Nolan. Maybe Nolan’s wife hadn’t left him. She could be picking out furniture for the new family home, assisted by her daughter. If true, then the next step would be to bring the son, Bertrand, to China, too.

  Hellfire! Bob Nolan was defecting to China. The Agency needed bargaining power, and Bertrand Nolan was the last chip on the table. Constantine picked up the phone and dialed Tokyo.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  BAIT AND SWITCH

  THURSDAY MARCH 13, NEGOMBO AND COLOMBO, SRI LANKA

  Nolan’s alarm trilled. Turning it off made his whole body ache. A night on the sofa bed had left him feeling like he’d fallen down a flight of stairs. He hauled himself to the desk and was relieved to see that Deshan Pathmarajah, his second Lankan hacker, had confirmed arrangements overnight. Pathmarajah and Balendra each didn’t know the other existed, and he aimed to keep it that way for another day.

  Balendra’s surprise retention of two SBS commandos as bodyguards was welcome on one level and a source of dire concern on another. Friday’s plan was taking on ever more complexity. It wouldn’t do for Pathmarajah’s man to get tangled up with Balendra’s commandos . . . .

  Through the bedroom door, he heard Kaili speaking animatedly in Mandarin. According to several academic studies, Nolan’s gift for mathematics made him a prime candidate for virtuosity in languages and music as well. In truth, he was awful at everything but numbers, codes and poker. After twenty-five-plus years of marriage, he had only the rudimentary ability to discern the guttural Cantonese from the mother country’s lingua franca, Mandarin. Conversational Cantonese sounded to him like two fishmongers arguing. Mandarin was positively soothing in comparison. Kaili’s voice was indistinct, but as she didn’t sound like she was cursing the taxi driver who had just run over her dog, she wasn’t speaking Cantonese.

  Kaili came in, dressed for high-powered shopping on the streets of Paris. Last night’s kerfuffle seemed forgotten, but Nolan knew better. She was just adjusting her role to suit the current circumstances. If he didn’t destroy or hand over those microSD cards on Friday, then Kaili and her MSS compatriots would treat him as an adversary. Which, after all, he was.

  She had a room service menu in her hand. “I’ll have the Sri Lankan chicken curry with roti prata,” she said.

  “That’s a fiery way to start your day. I’ll aim for something less spicy. Could you call room service? I have a few more emails here. I’ll have a bowl of mixed berries, granola and yogurt.” He sensed her stiffen. She was used to giving the orders. Kaili retreated into the bedroom and in a loud English-as-spoken-to-non-speakers voice, placed the order. “Thirty minutes,” she announced before shutting the bedroom door a tad forcefully.

  The encrypted Safe-mail account had one fresh message. Bert was back at the Kamloops cabin after dropping Mei Ling at the airport. It was a short, angry note designed to hurt, and it did. Nolan urged Bert to stay put for another week, and not do anything to draw attention. With any luck, Hecker would neutralize Teller while proving the CIA was behind the MH370 hijacking. Once the story made international headlines, there would be no further need to remain in hiding. He advised Bert to consider his Safe-mail account dead and wipe all prior communications. Nolan passed along the two Sri Lanka phone numbers Bert could use for the next thirty-six hours, and told him to use WhatsApp for his text comms henceforth. He sent the message and immediately regretted the decision. A hot-headed twenty-two-year-old wouldn’t stay put after discovering his sister was in detention along with his mother. Eventually, Bert would take matters into his own hands.

  A third interesting email was posted to his old IPPL hacker inbox from Director Central Intelligence Admiral William Perkins. Perkins ordered him to produce Watermen and surrender any and all NSA files in his possession. There was no need to throw away a distinguished career; Nolan simply had to render Watermen into custody and all would be forgiven. Failure to do so would result in a charge of treason.

  Really? Nolan thought it over. Then he thought some more. What if he didn’t want to forgive the CIA back? What if he didn’t want absolution bestowed by an organization that murdered 235-plus passengers in return for secret access to a handful of offloaded people and cargo? The CIA forgave, condoned and sponsored a murderous son of a bitch like Teller. Nolan didn’t feel he belonged in that same category. What was an email worth promising forgiveness without a signed presidential pardon stapled to it? He thought about replying to Perkins and copying The New York Times and Washington Post, but that wouldn’t set free his family in China.

  He showered and shaved while mulling over matters. He still wasn’t used to his new look; with glasses and a crew-cut, but sans mustache, he looked vaguely menacing. Based on Hecker’s feedback, it was a coin flip as to whether Nishimoto was taking orders from Teller. Chances were high, however, that the bogus CIA Harcourt charter would be discovered well before it was time to fly on Friday. If Nishimoto really was alli
ed to Teller, he had missed his best chance to kill or capture Nolan last night. On balance, Nolan figured he had a long way to go before the disposition of the Gulfstream pilots made it onto his top three worries list.

  One disheartening aspect of aging was that the hair you nurtured fell out, while the hair you didn’t need sprouted. He was doing a little trimming when it struck him that the CIA must have had Watermen under surveillance in Moscow. With Watermen on the move, they’d surmised that he and Nolan were meeting. Maybe they knew Watermen was headed to Colombo, putting Nolan on the scene as well. That meant he would have to lie even lower than planned. He still had to figure out how to incorporate the MSS’s needs without blowing up tomorrow’s swap. The last thing he needed was either the MSS or CIA crashing the party.

  A knock on the front door brought him back to the present. The room service attendant presented the breakfast bill in the name of Vishnu Balendra. Two hundred rupees tucked behind the receipt ensured that nary an eyebrow was raised when the paleface signed Balendra’s name and sent the young man on his way.

  The next order of business was securing the releases of Mei Ling and Joanie. Kaili sat across from him at the newlywed table for two and ate. Her breakfast looked a lot better than his tasted. He launched straight in. “We have to agree to the steps that lead to the release my family.” He took a spoonful of yogurt and looked at her with fresh eyes.

  She’d applied makeup and lipstick while he’d been in the bathroom. Kaili was quite a temptation, pouting lips and full bosom with that lustrous hair and expensive clothes. “You have another proposal?”

  “You’ll have to trust me that the disk I pass to the Russians will be rubbish. A mixture of truth and fiction, with many of the more sensitive files edited in ways they won’t be able to track. The past nine months, I’ve spent over two hundred hours doctoring those files in anticipation of this day. If I don’t give the FSB what looks like the entire trove, then Watermen won’t be released, and both of us are likely to be killed on the spot. If you’re there, your life will be in danger, too.”

  “I saw on the plane that you have two disks. I’d like them both.”

  Hell, she hadn’t been prepping food after all. She had been spying on him. Imagine that. “If I give you the disks, it’s treason.”

  “Not at all. It’s my intention for you to destroy them in front of me after you and I use your laptop to match the contents of the disks to my master index. I’ll obtain another disk from my embassy later today. On Friday you’ll trade the disk I give you to the FSB for Watermen’s release.” Overnight she’d received these more detailed instructions from someone on the Politburo Standing Committee. She concluded it was Yi’s doing, and suspected that Liu would have given a very different set of orders had he been able.

  Now Nolan was on the back foot. “If I let you copy those two—”

  “I’m not copying anything. I have a file on my phone that will compare the contents of those two against the master index of what the MSS took off Watermen before he left Hong Kong.” Gesturing with her new phone, she said, “I can show you the one hundred fifty thousand file names. It’s a simple checking algorithm to ensure that one disk matches the other in the case of your original. The second disk you altered obviously won’t match.” She hid a smile as she thought of the genius of this plan hatched by her colleagues overnight. The new program on her phone would extract a copy of every file name and document size on Nolan’s disks, and he’d never know it.

  “I have a second problem. I need to control what goes to the FSB, because if Chumakov doesn’t accept the contents, then Watermen and I are both dead. I can’t just hand over whatever you give me. I’ll need to check it first. And if I don’t like the way it looks, then I’ll want to give them my doctored version instead.”

  “Let’s say my superiors agree to your proposal. Right now, we run the checking routine over your two disks. One will match and one won’t match what’s on the master index. You destroy your uncorrupted disk in my presence. Next, drive me to town to the China embassy to pick up the version of the doctored files you will pass to the Russians. You inspect it, and if you can find any error that you can’t repair, we will consider allowing you to give the FSB your own disk. We’ll need to add a few files to it first, however. Let’s leave the mechanics until later. If you don’t want to hand over your version, then destroy it in my presence and we’re done.”

  “When does my family go free?”

  “As soon as you destroy both disks, or pass your doctored copy to the FSB.”

  “And what happens if the exchange fails, and I’m killed or captured?”

  “We will still count the disk as destroyed as long as the Russians get it. Your daughter and wife will go free, but the Russians must take secure possession.” She gave Nolan an imploring look while she thought about what they had agreed to last night via encrypted calls and texts, long after he was asleep. The MSS was counting on the Americans to end up with China’s doctored version. Nolan was a support player in a much bigger scheme.

  His facial features registered resignation, but he needed a concession to save face. She waited for it. “One final requirement. I don’t want us out of each other’s sight until tomorrow. So if you have to pick up a disk, have it brought to the lobby of Satya Gems on Galle Road at noon today, and we’ll collect it together.”

  “Fine, but are you sure you want to be seen in a jewelry store?”

  Nolan smiled. “Actually, you’ll be meeting in the showroom of G-Wis, an office equipment store next to Satya Gems. There’s no CCTV in there.”

  “I accept. So let’s compare file names on those two disks.”

  “Alright. Let me see that file on your phone. If it’s already on your SIM card, it will be easy to upload to my laptop.”

  Nolan disabled the Wi-Fi radio and ran the program, knowing he was injecting China’s latest malware to do battle with his own, non-Agency sanctioned encryption routines which guarded his recently-uploaded personal files and programs. Given that the CIA banned Lenovos for their MSS-readable architectures, he could never have used the machine for any work-related tasks anyway. He would dissect the Lenovo’s mishmash of spy software in his retirement if he ever made it to that day.

  “First, compare the true master file. That’s the one we’re most interested in.” Kaili’s voice was the tiniest bit insistent. You didn’t turn fifty-five in the Company without living on your instincts as well as your intellect. Nolan inserted the doctored Russian disk and initiated the compare sequence. Thirty seconds later, the result came back a match.

  “That’s a relief,” she said.

  That’s a crock of bullshit, he thought.

  “Now do the other one.” To no one’s surprise, the second file came up a mismatch.

  Nolan held up his doctored Russian memory card and said, “I will destroy the original master Watermen disk in front of you. Are you in agreement?”

  “Yes.”

  Nolan used the small tweezers to hold it. He lit one of the candles in the floral arrangement on the coffee table. The microSD memory card melted in the flame, taking with it two hundred hours of his best work. He flushed it away while she watched over his shoulder, manipulating her phone to enable the activation and transmission sequence. The malware turned on the Wi-Fi radio in Nolan’s new PC, transmitted to her phone the file names and sizes from the two microSD cards, before it shut down. The malware then self-erased to leave no trace. It was PLA Unit #61398 at its finest.

  Returning to the laptop, he removed the card and its adapter and held it up. “This is the doctored disk. I’ll hang on to it for now until I can see what your team wants me to give to the FSB instead. However, if I decide to use China’s version, we’ll destroy this second disk, and you’ll turn my family loose?” She nodded in assent, though she knew this would not happen, short of Nolan’s passing a polygraph in Beijing and writing a multivolume history of the Stuxnet project in between interrogation sessions. That could take year
s, especially if he wasn’t a willing participant.

  Nolan accepted that he was handing the Russians whatever Kaili sourced. He sure as hell wouldn’t give them the real NSA master files, but she couldn’t find that out.

  Balendra knocked on the door. “Good morning. You’re checked out. If you could pack your belongings, my vehicle’s outside.”

  Kaili looked at Nolan. “Are we not staying another night?”

  “Oh, no. That would be too rich for my budget. We’re going to move into town.” All this time, Nolan’s head was filled with the implications of that phony file comparison he’d just run. Obviously, the MSS was trying to steal data. Presumably they actually had a copy of Watermen’s NSA files, or else they would have come for his disk already. But why let him know this? Because they didn’t expect him to be around to share the information with his Agency brethren.

  On the way to the SUV, Balendra casually said, “It’s a good time to be leaving, before anyone finds the body around back.”

  Maintaining a façade, Nolan asked, “One of ours?”

  “Oh, no. One of yours,” Balendra said.

  Nolan turned, expecting him to be pointing at Kaili. A dead ethnic Chinese would confirm the alternative hypothesis. Instead, Balendra was smiling at Nolan. “Some American embassy man with burglar tools and nifty microphones. The contents of his wallet and pockets are in the SUV.”

  * * * * *

  Gretchen Doyle, chief of Colombo station, was agitated. “I don’t know where the hell he is. Pat Long is our best snoop. We sent him in without backup because you told me Burns said that Nolan was hands-off. Well, we made it as low-key as possible. He entered the hotel grounds just before 4 a.m. local time, confirmed by our surveillance team. We haven’t heard anything since, and it’s now 9:40. He’s either captive or dead. What do you propose?”