False Flag

by Jack Slater

  A single gunshot rolled across the mountainous terrain, and an emaciated body slumped against the ground.

  2

  Jason Trapp sat in a dark, empty booth of the bar at the Peninsula Hotel, swirling a glass of expensive scotch. Neat, just the way he liked it. The scotch was a Glenrothes 1985, and came in at almost seventy dollars for just two fingers of amber liquid. But it wasn’t his money, and he needed to play the part.

  He wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.

  Trapp was in Hong Kong, and he was there to kill a man. With any luck, things would go smoothly, and it would be the last time he would ever spill blood in the service of his country. But he was experienced enough an operator to know that things rarely went smoothly.

  Still, this target was personal. And once the man’s name was crossed off Trapp’s own personal list, it would close a very painful chapter in his life. So on this one, Jason decided, he could take a little bit of rough. Especially if the Agency was going to put him up in a place like this.

  A woman appeared at the end of the booth. She was tall, with golden brown skin, and looked to have Japanese blood in her. Her name was Eliza Ikeda, and she was his contact while he was in town.

  “You’re late,” he said, finishing the dregs and motioning toward the bartender for another. “What are you drinking?”

  “Had to lose a tail.” The woman smiled. “Looks like you’re enjoying your vacation.”

  Trapp grinned. She wasn’t afraid to give it back to him. He liked that. He worked with too many operatives these days who were, put politely, factory settings. Dull. By the book. Everything Trapp himself wasn’t.

  But Eliza, he sensed, was different.

  “Wouldn’t you?” he said, gesturing at the expensive wood-paneled bar. “In this place?”

  “I take your point.”

  The bartender appeared silently, and Eliza ordered a gin and tonic, two cubes of ice and a twist of pink grapefruit. Not what Trapp would have chosen, but it was humid as all hell outside, and this was Hong Kong. The British had ruled here for a hundred years and then some more—and they had left their mark. Trapp ordered another Glenrothes, and put both drinks on his room.

  Once the drinks had arrived, and the small talk dispensed with, Ikeda got down to business.

  “Mind telling me why I’m here?” she asked, eyebrow arched. “And what was so damn important I got pulled off all my cases to come meet a man in a bar?”

  “I’m sorry about that,” Trapp replied. “But I need some help, and I need you to keep this off the books. This is the kind of operation you were never involved with, understood?”

  Ikeda nodded slowly. She glanced around the bar, making sure that no one could overhear the conversation. Trapp had scanned the place himself, and a device inside an expensive leather attaché case was jamming any listening devices in the immediate vicinity. He didn’t think there would be any, but it paid to be certain.

  “Don’t worry, I figured that much,” she replied, taking a sip of her drink.

  Trapp withdrew a single sheet of paper from his briefcase, and slid it across the polished mahogany table. Ikeda took it from him, and glanced at it briefly.

  “Do you recognize him?”

  She shook her head. “Should I?”

  “His name is Emmanuel Alstyne. Until five months ago, he was a silent partner in Atlas Defense Systems.”

  “What happened five months ago?” Ikeda quickly asked. And then the light of understanding blossomed in her eyes. “Oh.”

  “You know the drill, so I won’t bore you with the ‘if you tell anyone this, I’ll have to kill you’ routine. Mr. Alstyne was involved in an attempted coup against the United States. I’ve been tracking his whereabouts for months. I’m here to eliminate him. And I need your help to do it.”

  Ikeda nodded, a pained expression appearing on her face. Trapp knew that she would never breathe a word of what she learned in this meeting. He had read her file. She was a conscientious, intelligent agent who had aced every personnel evaluation since she joined the Agency seven years before. She was half-Japanese, half-American by birth—and she was a patriot.

  “Then we have a problem,” she said.

  “What?”

  “We can’t do it in Hong Kong.”

  Trapp paused a beat before replying. He knew everything she was about to say, but wanted to gauge her reaction regardless. It would tell him a lot about the kind of operative she was. Trapp liked to know who he was working alongside. So far, his impression of Ikeda was positive. She hadn’t blinked at his revelation that he was here to kill Alstyne. Whether or not the idea offended her on the inside, she didn’t let anything show on the outside.

  “Why not?”

  “The Chinese tolerate our presence here. They let us, the Brits, the French, and a dozen other agencies operate without too much interference. But they do it on the basis of an understanding that we won’t kill anyone. It’s win-win. They get to watch what we’re doing”—she grinned—“when we don’t ditch our tails, of course. And we get to operate with a freedom that we simply can’t on the mainland.”

  “We could take him alive?”

  “That’s out, too. Unless you get my station chief authorization from the White House, we can’t do much but watch your guy. If we blow things up in Hong Kong, we lose our foothold in this part of the world, and that’s a non-starter. Not to mention our allies would raise hell.”

  Trapp knew that if he dialed the phone, President Nash would sign an executive order authorizing the elimination of Emmanuel Alstyne within minutes. The man been involved in a conspiracy to kill Nash himself—and take down American democracy with him. It wasn’t just Trapp for whom this was personal. It was the president, too.

  But he didn’t reveal that particular piece of information.

  “What about Macau?”

  Ikeda looked up, her eyes glinting with interest. “Now that,” she said, “is a different proposition entirely. Macau is the Wild West. As long as we don’t get caught red-handed, anyone’s fair game.”

  “Good,” Trapp said. “Alstyne will be there in two days. He’s booked into a suite at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.”

  “Okay. What do you need from me?”

  “A couple of spotters. Surveillance equipment. Weapons. But there’s a catch.”

  Ikeda’s eyebrow crinkled. “There always is. What is it this time?”

  “Alstyne is carrying a flash drive.” Trapp leaned across the table, resting his elbows and fixing Ikeda’s eyes with a gaze of deadly seriousness. “The contents of that drive cannot be allowed to fall into Chinese hands.”

  “What have the Chinese got to do with it?”

  Trapp grimaced. “You know I said there was a catch?”

  Ikeda nodded.

  “There’s another one. The MSS are sitting on him. He’s in Hong Kong to negotiate a deal with them. Information for protection.”

  The MSS was the Ministry for State Security—the Chinese equivalent of the Soviet KGB. They were a feared, secretive organization. Just in the past few years, they had rolled up most of the CIA’s human intelligence assets within China after penetrating a cyber dead drop system. The breach had set the Agency back in the region by years, perhaps decades—and had left dozens of good assets dead or incarcerated.

  Eliza Ikeda leaned back in her padded leather seat, gripped the gin and tonic tightly and drained it in one gulp. “State security,” she groaned. “Great. You holding back anything else that might ruin my day?”

  “The seventh floor wants this done quietly. We’ve got to make it look like an accident. And we need to switch the flash drive. I brought an exact replica.”

  Ikeda did not look convinced by Trapp’s plan. Admittedly, he didn’t have much of one. “You don’t think they’ll notice?

  Trapp grinned. “Of course they will. They’ll suspect it was us—but they won’t know for sure.”

  “Until they inspect the drive. Then the game’s up.”

  “Th
at’s where you’re wrong. The drive is encrypted. That’s the only reason the Chinese are negotiating with our friend Emmanuel, and not simply strong-arming him. They’ll never break the encryption algorithm protecting it—at least, not without a hundred years of brute forcing it with their most powerful supercomputer. From what the boys down in the Directorate of Science and Technology tell me, if the activation sequence isn’t managed correctly, the drive will wipe itself. So the Chinese can’t go with the torture route, either. At least, not until it’s their only option.”

  Ikeda smiled. “So that’s why they’re letting him go to Macau. Warming him up, getting on his good side.”

  Trapp nodded grimly. “You got it. I want to go in, under my current cover as an American businessman. Bump into him at the craps tables. Maybe invite him for a drink. He’ll be dying for talk from back home. The next bit—” He shrugged. “I guess I’ll have to figure that out later.”

  Ikeda rubbed her temples for a second, with her eyes closed. Then she looked up, meeting Trapp’s inquisitive gaze. “You mind if I speak plainly?”

  “Be my guest. I’ve got a thick skin.”

  “Good. Because honestly, I think you’re out of your depth.”

  Damn, Trapp thought.

  The girl had balls. That was for sure. Ikeda didn’t have to have looked at his file—not that one existed—to know that he was one of the CIA’s prized assets. You didn’t get the kind of carte blanche that Trapp had on this mission without being friendly with some very powerful people. And yet the CIA officer hadn’t blinked before delivering the coolly worded insult.

  Ikeda raised her finger before continuing. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure you have a significant amount more expertise in the field than I do, in some much nastier places than Hong Kong. But you don’t know Asia. And you sure as shit don’t know State Security. Those guys don’t mess around. They’ll have your boy locked down tighter than an asshole in a prison shower. You won’t get within 50 feet of him. Even with that nice new suit of yours.”

  Trapp couldn’t help but notice the way Ikeda was looking at him. He was in good shape, and he knew it. The suit didn’t hurt. It was Italian, made with Trapp’s precise measurements by a high-end bespoke tailor in Malan. It had set the Agency back several thousand dollars—Trapp didn’t have to have seen the receipt to know that for a fact.

  The other detail that had not escaped Trapp’s attention was quite how attractive Eliza Ikeda was. It wasn’t her lithe, healthy frame, or her exotic features. It was something less obvious from a passing glance, but significantly more alluring. Her confidence. The way she carried herself. Even her build, which was powerful, yet still most assuredly feminine.

  “I’m glad you noticed. So what do you suggest?”

  “Let me go in.”

  Trapp shook his head. “I can’t authorize that. You said it yourself, State Security won’t mess around with this guy. He is quite literally holding the keys to the castle—designs for almost every American military project Atlas has worked on in years.”

  “Jesus,” Ikeda breathed. “Isn’t that—”

  “All of them?” Trapp nodded. “More or less. The ones worth a damn, anyway. So now you know why I’m here. And why the Chinese will do anything to keep this guy alive. I can’t let you go in. It has to be me.”

  “Bullshit,” Ikeda said, fishing an ice cube from the bottom of her empty glass. Trapp beckoned for another couple of drinks.

  “I’m the best option, and you know it,” she continued, crunching on the ice. “So why don’t you humor me for a second?”

  Trapp admired Ikeda’s fire. She knew what she wanted, and she wasn’t afraid to go after it. And she certainly wasn’t afraid of putting herself in danger.

  “Okay then, I’ll bite,” he replied. “What’s your plan?”

  “I’ll go in alone. Dressed like an escort. Tell the muscle at the door that I’m on the room. It’s not unusual for whales in Macau. Which I’m figuring your boy is.”

  “Three commas,” Trapp agreed. “That we know of.”

  “I’m figuring you were thinking of going chemical? Something undetectable?”

  Trapp nodded. “I brought something I’ve used before.”

  “Good. I’ll tell him I want a drink. Slip a sedative into it. Then when he’s passed out, I’ll inject him, switch the drive, and walk out of there without anyone suspecting a thing.”

  Trapp leaned back, considering Ikeda’s plan. He had to admit, it was a good one—certainly better than his wing and a prayer option. And Eliza was no naïve girl. She was a well-trained field CIA officer, with years of experience under her belt, and clearly a deep understanding of the melting pot of the Far East.

  As he contemplated, the bartender arrived with the two drinks he’d ordered, set them out on napkins, and disappeared with their empties.

  Trapp picked up his new glass of scotch. He raised it to Ikeda and clinked it against hers.

  “Okay then. We do it your way.”

  3

  Trapp was in his suite at the Peninsula Hotel.

  It was about four in the afternoon this far east, which meant it wasn’t yet dawn back home. He was lying on the thick, luxurious four-poster bed, drinking in the delicious cool of the air-conditioning and attempting to get to grips with his jet lag. Outside the wall-to-ceiling glass windows, the bright lights of the skyscrapers that bristled from Hong Kong Bay rose through a light fog, and the iridescent waters of the bay itself glimmered against the warm sun occasionally breaking through the clouds.

  Trapp was, of course, accustomed to long-distance travel. It was one of the benefits—and drawbacks—of his line of work. The CIA, ordinarily speaking, is not supposed to operate within the borders of the United States, so most of his career had been spent far from home. Of course, several months before, when VP Robert Jenkins had waged a war of terror against America and her president in an attempt to install himself into the Oval Office, Trapp had been forced to take up arms to save his country.

  Although in truth, six months earlier he hadn’t just been retired from the Agency—he’d technically been dead.

  Trapp had only returned from the grave out of necessity, not any great desire to resume his career with the CIA. Even now he wasn’t an employee, strictly, at least. He was operating in a gray zone—and a darker shade than ever before. He was a contractor, paid with black budget funds into an offshore bank account, working on a program that was authorized by President Nash himself—but if discovered, would be denied to the man’s dying breath.

  It was the way Trapp liked it.

  And before very long, the last of his debts to his murky past would be paid, and his time with the Agency would finally be over. He didn’t know what he would do afterward. Maybe spend some time working in Joshua Price’s bar back in Boston. Trapp was a partner in it now. A silent one, out of necessity, for Price wouldn’t accept the money any other way.

  Hong Kong in August was a cauldron of heat, into the nineties in the shade and hotter in the sun. Spending just a few minutes on the streets outside, craning his neck up at the vast glass skyscrapers which dotted the skyline was enough to leave his T-shirt soaked with sweat. Unlike back home, the humidity here was a killer. It was a heavy, soaking blanket that drained the strength from Trapp’s exhausted mind and sapped the energy from his limbs.

  Trapp tipped his head back and sighed. All he wanted to do was climb in between the sheets of the luxurious hotel bed, drift away, and not have to think about his mission for the next twelve hours.

  But he knew he could not. Not just because if he succumbed to the clutches of sleep now, he might as well dash his body clock against the wall, but because he needed to feel out Eliza Ikeda, his partner on this mission.

  He had read the basics in her file, but Ikeda was an NOC, so her jacket was thin to the point of pointlessness. In Agency parlance, NOC meant ‘No Official Cover.’ Just like Trapp himself, Ikeda was an illegal. She didn’t have a diplomatic passport, or a job
at the embassy. If she was caught in the act by the Chinese Ministry of State Security, she would be imprisoned or killed—and certainly tortured either way.

  That meant Ikeda was an enigma. And Jason Trapp didn’t like working with operatives he couldn’t trust.

  His cell phone buzzed on the bed next to him. Trapp briefly considered ignoring it, but opened his eyes, taking in the silk canopy of the four-poster, and reached for the device. The number was blocked. He brought the black rectangle to his ear. “Who is it?”

  “Eliza,” came the simple answer. “I’m outside.”

  “Why?”

  “Did you bring swimming trunks?”

  Trapp’s face creased at the question. What the hell is she talking about?

  “What do I need them for?”

  “Come downstairs and I’ll show you.”

  Eliza Ikeda leaned against her matte black Triumph Bonneville T120 motorcycle and watched as Trapp strode confidently out from the Peninsula Hotel. The hotel was by Kowloon Bay, so salt was heavy in the thick, humid air, and the raucous cry of diving seagulls competed with the thundering of waves crashing against the shore.

  Trapp was wearing dark jeans, black boots, Ray-Ban sunglasses and a thin, cream linen jacket over a white T-shirt. Ikeda couldn’t help but cast an interested eye over the man. A light stubble covered his cheeks, but the outfit had a little of James Dean about it, even if the muscular frame underneath made it plainly obvious he was no movie star. His bulk was effective, not for show.

  She lifted her arm and waved Trapp over, studying him as he moved. He had a predator’s grace, which reminded Ikeda of the wraithlike quality his eyes had possessed the previous night. She filed away the note. That was why she was here, after all: to observe, to discover exactly who she would be working with.

  Eliza Ikeda had not survived as a CIA operative for as long as she had without being careful. Though the Hong Kong posting wasn’t as overtly dangerous as the CIA’s outposts in war-torn countries like Afghanistan or Iraq, the Far East had its own hazards.