Sea of Lies: An Espionage Thriller

by Bradley West

  “The air ambulance arrived last night. It’s out at Ratmalana Airport. Someone was expecting trouble and prepositioned it.”

  “I’ll be damned.”

  “One other thing,” Malaki said. “The body on the beach missing its face is likely Watermen’s. We’ll have fingerprint confirmation soon, but he had a full head of brown hair whereas Nolan has a black crew-cut. The body is younger and a lot thinner than Nolan’s based on his file. How do we play this with the media?”

  “I don’t know. Give that one to Madam Ambassador. Press relations and PR seem to be up her alley.”

  After Malaki left she picked up a one-time pad and began coding an Eyes-Only message for Burns. It had been twenty years since she last did one, but Mark Watermen’s death and the NSA files back in US hands were big news. Bob Nolan was still at large, but they’d remedy that shortly.

  * * * * *

  On the runway, the black Audi turbo diesel was up to one hundred twenty-five miles an hour by the time they were a third of a mile inside the main gate. The corporal recounted with taciturn pride how he’d invoked the first family’s name to coerce the security guard into putting him on the phone with the base commander. His story was that Nolan was a wounded advisor to President Abeysuriya requiring an urgent medevac, accompanied by a senior official from the China embassy. The gate security guard corroborated Nolan’s wounds and Kaili’s ethnicity to the big boss, and he gave the go-ahead. Chanakya made damned sure they reached the plane before the base commander changed his mind.

  Nolan had time to think as the car decelerated to a hard stop, and they waited for Jenkins to lower the stairs. These nick-of-time escapes were becoming almost routine: Hawaii in May 2013, Rangoon last Sunday night, Singapore a couple of nights ago, and now Sri Lanka. However, he was at peace; Mei Ling had texted him twice. She and Joanie were out of Changi Airport and headed home. Their Singapore PTF and ISD escorts had thwarted the mainland Chinese on the plane, and later the CIA in the arrivals hall.

  Naveen guided a shaky Nolan out of the back seat and up the steps behind Kaili. Once he was on board, the corporal shook his hand and said, “You must promise that you will avenge my brother’s death.” His unblinking brown eyes met Nolan’s gaze.

  “You can come with us and make it happen,” Nolan said in reply.

  “I have to look after my brother’s wife and small children. And I have to explain the last three days and protect the other people who helped us. It will be complicated. But you must swear that you will punish the killers.”

  “I swear on my children,” said Nolan. Naveen stood tall, gave him a snap salute and left the jet after bending down to have a quiet word with Kaili. Jenkins hoisted the stairs up and sealed the door. Nishimoto started the engines and they began to roll. Out the window he saw the Audi in front, running interference in case anyone wanted to play hero and ram the plane prior to takeoff. Chanakya might not be very smart, but he had balls of steel.

  Nishimoto punched the throttle, and the Gulfstream 550 shot down the runway before leaping up at a steep angle and banking out to sea. The captain’s deep voice resonated over the PA, “We have thirty-seven hundred miles before reaching our destination, Truscott Field on the Mitchell Plateau, Western Australia. Flying time this afternoon and tonight will be approximately nine hours. You’ll find that we’ve supplied a variety of duty free beverages as well as Sri Lanka culinary delights. So sit back, relax and wait for a fighter escort at some point over international waters. We also have a medical kit for those of you suffering from shrapnel or gunshot wounds.”

  Kaili said, “Will you really kill the people behind the hijacking?”

  “I may not have a choice, or else they’ll kill us. But right now, I think I’m just going to pass out.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  SUSPENDED ANIMATION

  FRIDAY MARCH 14, BEIRUT; COLOMBO; TOKYO; ADMIRALTY GULF, WESTERN AUSTRALIA; SINGAPORE

  An out-of-breath Arshad “Mormoroth” Mazdaki entered his boss’s Beirut basement office. He’d sprinted over from the hackers’ room, where the Chinese and Iranian programmers were monitoring the DDOS attack. “Colonel Gilani, I’ve just learned from Abouzeid that the Russians reneged on their agreement to supply two hundred servers. The DDOS will fail!”

  “Relax, relax, my boy. NRO satellites are offline as we speak. Everything is progressing as per plan.” Colonel Gilani had just sent a self-laudatory message to Iran’s High Council of Cyberspace. He would have waved a victory cigar if smoking hadn’t been banned.

  “True enough the satellites are down, but only temporarily. The DDOS hasn’t done enough damage to keep them offline for more than another three hours. The Russian servers would have been sufficient to shut down the NGA for far longer, several days at a minimum. China’s malware makes it impossible for NGA to download and process satellite imagery. Given that the DDOS and the China worm struck simultaneously, we expected the NGA to conclude erroneously that the DDOS was the root cause of the imaging blackout.”

  “So everything is proceeding as per plan,” Gilani said.

  “Only for the time being. You see, Colonel, the Chinese hackers programmed their malware to self-erase once the DDOS crashed the NGA’s overall information-processing infrastructure, or within a few hours of the attack, whichever came first. This was to keep the Americans from ever connecting China with the DDOS. Since the NGA servers will now come back online later today, the image processing functions will return to normal, too.”

  Gilani was damned if he’d understood half that techno-babble, but at least one thing was clear. Those no-good Chinese infidels were ruining their plan. “Tell—tell the PLA programmers they have to leave the worms in place,” Gilani sputtered.

  “It’s too late for that. Those were planted long ago in ways we don’t understand. Unit #61398 team leader Kuo just told me the NGA could be reading satellite feeds by as early as 11:30 Beirut time, only three hours from now.”

  “Are the Chinese in the position to help us any more with the attack?”

  “No, they’ve done all they can. For several hours, they rerouted configurations to minimize the impact of the missing Russian servers and ensure that the DDOS utilized every conduit and portal. Several of their exploits were breathtaking, but that’s over now.”

  “Listen carefully, Mormoroth. Do not speak of this to anyone. Cut the power to the China team’s workstations. Take guards with you and confiscate their cell phones. Put them in a guarded conference room and tell Hezbollah to shoot anyone who leaves.”

  “But why, Colonel? How is this—?”

  “Don’t ask any more questions. It is the wish of our Supreme Leader the Grand Ayatollah, and that is all you need to understand.”

  “Yes, sir.” Mormoroth left, albeit at a much slower pace than he had arrived.

  Gilani sighed and picked up the phone. This would be an awkward call.

  * * * * *

  “Madam Ambassador?” The head of the Ministry of State Security, Colombo, was not on good terms with Ambassador Li Xiulan. Madam Li was the brightest person in the embassy and suffered no fools, earning her the nickname “Devil Dragon” in the process.

  “Yes, what is it?”

  “Yu Kaili texted just now; her aircraft was taking off. She’s still with Nolan and he’s alive. Her orders are to remain with him until she can confirm his death.”

  “Weren’t your people monitoring the airport? How could they take off unobserved?”

  “We don’t know. The speed with which they’re in the air suggests Ratmalana Airport, ten miles south of here. It is not an international commercial airport, so we don’t have anyone there.”

  “Where is our sniper team?”

  “Ah, ahem, it seems they are both dead. They were unresponsive to radio calls, so we contacted our man at the Grand Hyatt. He went up to the seventh floor on top of the podium and found three Caucasians, either Americans or British, leaving the scene. Our men were both dead from gunshot wounds. He retrieved
their radios unobserved, so there’s no link to the embassy.”

  “The Americans killed our team?”

  “I can’t say for certain. The police are on-site, so our man cannot get close enough to the bodies to take photos. Once we’ve had a chance to view the corpses in the morgue, we’ll have a better idea—”

  “Enough! Where was their backup security? Why am I working with an imbecile? Get out of my office. Get out of my sight!” As the MSS head of station left the room, Ambassador Li hit the talk button on her squawk box. “Get me Defence Minister Gihan on the phone. Make certain he knows it is a matter of national security for both our countries.”

  * * * * *

  The hand-encrypted message received from Gretchen Doyle took one of the junior staffers fifteen minutes to transcribe using a one-time pad. Damned if Burns was going to mess with those infernal decoders, Eyes-Only designation notwithstanding. With Watermen dead and the missing NSA files apparently in custody, there was finally a reason for optimism. If he were a betting man, Burns would wager Nolan and his MSS fuck-buddy were holed up in China’s embassy.

  The direct line rang. It was Doyle. Burns said, “I just read your message. Good news. But what’s so urgent that you’re calling me on an insecure line?”

  “A USAF air ambulance crew at the Colombo city airport saw a Gulfstream 550 take off less than a half hour ago. Nolan flew out on a chartered jet with the China agent. Destination was unknown, but yesterday the pilot filed a flight plan for Dili, East Timor. Does that make sense?”

  “Not in the least, but I’ll be damned if they’re flying to East Timor. Let me take care of this right away.” He hung up. “Jeanie! Get me Rear Admiral Cochran in Singapore. And find the name and number of Harcourt Aviation’s CEO. I’ll need to speak to him after Jon Boy.”

  * * * * *

  “Mr. Minister, thank you for taking my call,” Madam Li said with all the charm she could muster.

  Gihan Abeysuriya, the Sri Lanka President’s iron-willed brother, wasn’t long on affectation either. “Not at all, Madam Ambassador. I was planning on calling you within the hour. As you see, there’s—”

  “Yes, yes, I heard about the shootings. We have identified the person responsible for the killings. He’s a CIA officer and he has taken a senior China intelligence officer hostage. He departed in a private jet roughly twenty minutes ago from Ratmalana Airport. Order the Air Force to compel the plane to return to Sri Lanka.”

  “Madam, it sounds as if this aircraft is already well into international airspace.”

  “Scramble your Chengdu F-7 interceptors. If it doesn’t turn around, shoot down the plane.”

  “I’m afraid it’s not that simple, Madam Ambassador.”

  “Oh, but it is. China gifted those fighters to your country. We need you to—”

  “Giving us obsolete aircraft and then selling us overpriced training, armaments and spare parts is scarcely free. Before I contact the president to see what his views are, I want you to provide an explanation.”

  “What do you need?”

  “I’d like you to tell me why there were two China snipers in the Grand Hyatt building site shooting civilians on a train. We have eight dead and seventeen wounded at or near the Colombo Racquets Club. That excludes your two agents.”

  “I have no knowledge of anyone from the embassy who would or could do such a thing. We have accounted for all our staff —”

  “Don’t play word games. I didn’t say they were from your embassy. I said they were from China. There was a QBU-88 sniper rifle and a PLA spotting scope next to their bodies. I received a complaint from US Ambassador Stiles that PLA snipers murdered Mark Watermen. The US was in the process of taking the NSA fugitive into custody when he was shot in the head by the pair on the top of the podium block.”

  “This is preposterous! You are wasting time. Now you need to either send up those fighters or else—”

  “Or else what? China will no longer want to use Sri Lanka as a forward naval base? China won’t be sending submarines here later this year for resupply? China doesn’t want to base an Indian Ocean submarine listening post in my country? You forget yourself, Madam.” The minister hung up and dialed his brother, Milanka. The Chinese always wanted something for nothing.

  * * * * *

  The helicopter flight from the Mitchell Plateau to the Eco-Camp on the Admiralty Gulf took twelve minutes and rolled back the calendar thousands of years. The scrub glowed green thanks to the wet season’s torrential rains, the ditches now rivulets and the gullies raging streams. Sheets of fresh water poured off the tablelands into the bays, fingers and estuaries ringing this otherworldly land of orange rock. Nothing had changed in the last forty thousand years, except that now there were a few huts and barrels of fuel where before there had been only crabs, quolls and crocs. Johnson and Coulter had never seen anything like it.

  Their pilot Andy gave a running tourist commentary. “In a couple of weeks, the rains will stop and there won’t be another drop till November. Those floodplains right now have heaps of insects, minnows, frogs and snakes. Right behind them are the barramundi, mangrove jacks, sharks, and of course, Mr. Saltie. There’re some lizards up here that go about sixteen feet. Wilbur’s pet will get your attention. That’ll be Elvis, and he goes almost fifteen.”

  As they came in low over the beach, Johnson saw large outlines cruising along the shoreline. “Those are big sharks! What species are they?” he asked into the headset’s hands-free mike.

  “If they’re light-colored, probably lemons. Requiem sharks, so man-eaters, and can get to almost three meters. They rarely bother people unless you’re bleeding or splashing about in the shallows.”

  “Where are the crocs?” Johnson asked.

  “Hell, who knows?” answered Andy. “Sometimes farther out to sea and submerged, but most of the time up some creek or another waiting for dark and feeding time. Big ambush predators. If you’re taking a slash in a billabong, don’t stand on the same rock twice. They’ll spot an animal at the waterline one day and the following they’ll be lying in wait submerged next to that very same rock. If a buff or roo comes down to drink out of his old footprints, it’s croc fodder.”

  The helicopter landed in front of a half-dozen corrugated tin sheds ranging in size from ten-by-ten to twenty-by-twelve feet. Two armed sentries stood outside one of the huts. Johnson noted that the generator was just outside the interrogation shed, so running the power toys wouldn’t be a problem.

  Coulter’s attention was focused on a gray crew-cut sixty-something-year-old fireplug. Nimble despite his age and bulk, he reflexively but needlessly ducked under the slowing rotor to unlatch the door. “Frank Coulter! It’s been a long time. How do you like the back of beyond?”

  “Wilbur, it’s been twenty years and you haven’t changed a bit,” Coulter said with genuine affection. Wilbur Wollam was a retired intelligence officer in the ASIS. He’d first met Coulter during the plot to overthrow the Gough Whitlam government back in 1975.

  Walking out one of the huts with an air conditioning unit hanging off a window was a nattily dressed middle-aged Asian. Johnson noted he wasn’t under guard. He acted as if he was on holiday, so Johnson doubted he was part of the interrogation team. Tough questioning took the starch out of you. After a few days, you wondered who was in captivity. Johnson long ago realized that he was different, viewing the extraction of information from enemies as his life’s calling. Fifteen years in a job where most burned out after only a few, yet he still looked forward to doing business with the next ugly character.

  The stumpy man jolted Johnson out of his reverie by thrusting out his hand and giving his knuckles a vicelike squeeze. “Wilbur Wollam at your service. I understand you could get a confession out of Ayers Rock if you had enough electricity.”

  Johnson gave Wollam a wan smile. “If you tell me where I’m sleeping, I’ll drop my things. I’d also like to get a progress report from your team so we can map out the next forty-eight hours.”
<
br />   “Yes, of course. Right over here. You’ll be rooming with Jack Wong. He’s from China. He’s not involved in the interrogation, so best omit him from your briefings.” Johnson introduced himself and shook hands. In a light accent, his new roommate said, “You can call me Wong,” before he returned to their tin shed and shut the door against the afternoon sun.

  * * * * *

  Huddled around a speakerphone deep beneath the Singapore embassy were Lucy Kellogg, compliance, and Maury Shoenstein, legal. They’d spent last fifteen minutes laying out their findings to their respective bosses in Tokyo. Lucy summed up, “There’s incontrovertible proof that, at a minimum, Matthews and Burns were aware of Robin Teller’s presence in Rangoon and did nothing. That alone is grounds for termination for cause, and perhaps prosecution.

  “In addition, there’s strong circumstantial evidence that those two helped shield Teller from detection since 2012 when Matthews arrived. Burns’s suspension of Matthews less than ninety minutes ago—precipitating this call in the first place—doesn’t absolve Burns from guilt. Far from it.”

  Shoenstein weighed in. “Nolan’s allegations regarding MH370 were sufficiently credible that Constantine sought approval from NID Morris to have us investigate Burns for obstruction of the investigation. Burns’s suspension of Matthews is just blame-shifting. We have enough right now to remove Burns, pending the outcome of an investigation, one in which he’ll have the full right of rebuttal. At the moment, he’s issued an order to Rear Admiral Cochran to launch F-18’s to intercept a US-registered private jet that’s carrying Nolan. The orders are unambiguous. If the plane doesn’t land in Singapore, the F-18s are to shoot it down. Not only has Burns exceeded his authority by ordering a Navy officer to interdict a civilian aircraft without a court order or presidential sign-off, but it also smacks of trying to silence Nolan, irrespective of the legality or consequences.