The Vigilant Spy

by Jeffrey Layton

  Yuri spotted his contact standing in the lobby. He signaled with his right arm.

  “Good morning,” FBI Special Agent Michaela Taylor said as she slid into the bench seat opposite Yuri.

  “Thanks for meeting me.”

  A waitress approached the table with a coffee pot.

  “Just coffee for me,” Michaela said, sliding a mug toward the server.

  Yuri declined a refill.

  After the waitress left, Michaela said, “So, what’s up?”

  Yuri reached into a pocket of his windbreaker and extracted a thumb drive. “I have some intelligence data here that I’d like to get to Captain Clark and Steve Osberg as soon as possible. It’s raw video footage from my mission at the Yulin Naval Base on Hainan Island. I just received the data files.”

  Michaela’s eyes ballooned.

  Yuri smiled. “Please consider this a goodwill measure on my part.”

  Chapter 25

  Day 20—Monday

  Ministry of Public Security technical specialist Yu Ling monitored the grilling of the Uyghur suspect remotely. An HD video camera in the interrogation cell transmitted images and audio via cable to a wall-mounted monitor in the observation room. The image of a thirty-five-year-old woman sitting rigid in a metal chair filled the LCD screen. Pixie faced with a button nose and auburn hair hanging below her shoulders, she was pretty. The prison jumpsuit concealed her lissome five-foot four frame. Her right wrist was handcuffed to an armrest. Sleep deprived, famished and scared out of her wits, Meryem Ahmet stared at the tile floor, avoiding eye contact with her tormentor.

  The female People’s Armed Police officer conducting the interview was eighteen years older than Meryem. The cop’s prune face and gray hair, butchered to a bob, contrasted sharply with the captive. Major Huang Genji was a practiced interrogator with decades of experience dealing with dissidents from Tibet and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. After Yu Ling managed to track down Meryem in a suburb of Qingdao, Huang was flown in from PAP headquarters in Beijing to conduct the interview. About the same height as the prisoner, Huang was forty pounds heavier.

  “We know you were sleeping with Ismail Sabir,” Huang said. “Who else did he associate with besides Yusup Tunyaz?”

  “Yusup is the only one I know. Ismail worked with others but I don’t know them.”

  “Tell me about the company Sabir worked for…what was his position?”

  “He installs electrical equipment. The company builds and repairs boats and ships.”

  “What kind of equipment?”

  “Radios, navigation systems. That’s what Ismail told me.”

  Huang switched gears. “When is the last time you went home?”

  Meryem looked up. “To Ürümqi?”

  “Yes.”

  “Last summer to visit my mother. She was very ill.”

  Huang consulted a tablet she held. “I see that she was hospitalized for lung cancer. You went to visit her after the surgery. Correct?”

  “Yes,” Meryem said, perplexed that Huang had researched her family.

  “Did Sabir go with you?”

  “No, he had to work.”

  “Doesn’t your faith frown upon having sexual relations outside of marriage?”

  Meryem again studied the tile floor.

  Not expecting a response, Major Huang said, “Why did you meet with Sabir’s brother when you were in Ürümqi last year?”

  How could she know that? Meryem pondered. But then she remembered; a couple of months earlier the Armed Police picked up Ehmet. He was still confined to a reeducation camp. “Ismail asked Ehmet to check on me to see if I needed anything.”

  “So, you had dinner with him?”

  “He owns a small restaurant and invited me.”

  “He’s not married. Correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you sleep with him, too?”

  Her ire peaked, Meryem managed to restrain her voice. “Of course not. I’m not like that.”

  Yu Ling continued to watch the interrogation. Major Huang’s questions were relentless and at times petty. Designed to wear down the interviewee’s defenses, Yu admired the senior officer’s skills.

  So far, Meryem Ahmet had not revealed any useful information that the MPS and the MSS had not already discovered. Major Huang was thorough in her questioning and appeared to be wrapping up the interview. That’s when Huang hit the bonanza.

  While Huang consulted her tablet, Meryem asked, “What happened to Ismail and Yusup?”

  “We don’t know. As I said before, we’re trying to track them down. The boat they were working on is missing.”

  “You think they stole it?”

  “The company that owns the boat contacted us. They reported it stolen. Ismail and Yusup were the last ones that had access to it—doing some kind of repair work on it. We’re interviewing anyone that knows them.” Huang fabricated the theft story to pump Meryem.

  “They’re not thieves.”

  “I tend to agree with you. They appear to be hard workers with clean records but then again—”

  “The boat must have sunk,” interrupted Meryem.

  “There have been no reports about that.” Huang decided to explore a new angle. “Could they have been someplace else with the boat other than in Qingdao?”

  “I don’t know. Ismail said they had some repair work to do at the port.”

  “Could they have been working for someone else, without the company knowing?”

  “Ismail never said anything like . . .” Meryem’s voice trailed off as a new thought developed. “He did get a call from someone I’d never heard of the night before he left for work.”

  That statement captured Huang’s attention. “And who was the caller?”

  “His name was Talgat.”

  “His full name, please.”

  “I don’t know, just Talgat.”

  “Did you meet him?”

  “I spoke to him on the phone once.”

  “He called you?”

  “No, it was Sabir’s cell phone. He was asleep. I thought it was about work so I answered.”

  “Go on.”

  As Meryem continued the rundown on the Talgat contact, Yu Ling accessed her laptop computer and submitted a name check inquiry for “Talgat” to the Ministry of State Security’s ethnic Muslim citizen database. She started with the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and got the phone book. She refined her search to the coast from Shanghai Municipality to Liaoning Province. The list decreased to several hundred. When she added the keywords “boat repair” and “boat electronics” to the search, just one name was left, Talgat Ramazan.

  The forty-four-year-old was born in Yining, Xinjiang near the border with Kazakhstan. After receiving a mechanical engineering degree, he moved to China’s east coast. He was currently employed by an engineering company based in Tianjin. The business specialized in the design and renovation of commercial workboats, fishing boats and small ships. The file reported Ramazan was single with both parents deceased and no siblings.

  As Yu Ling stared at the digital photo of Talgat Ramazan, she whispered to herself, “Gotcha.”

  Chapter 26

  Day 21—Tuesday

  The USS Tucson was berthed alongside a wharf at a U.S. Navy base in the western Pacific Ocean. The attack submarine slinked into Guam’s Apra Harbor the previous evening. A prefabricated cover composed of heavy-duty aluminum struts and Kevlar reinforced nylon fabric spanned SSN 770’s sail. The awning concealed the damage to the submarine’s superstructure from spying satellites and aircraft.

  A collection of senior American naval officers and civilian employees hovered under the awning this afternoon. They were atop portable aluminum scaffolding that surrounded the entire sail. Most in attendance had arrived late morning aboard a U.S. Air Force C-17 t
ransport from Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.

  Standing beside the jagged remains of the bridge station, Tucson’s commanding officer, Commander Scott Arnold, continued with the rundown. “As you can see, the device latched onto the leading edge of the fairwater in this area and—”

  “What did it sound like,” interrupted one of the onlookers, “when it attached itself?”

  Arnold glanced at the Navy captain. “I don’t recall hearing anything other than the detonation. We were running at flank and had launched decoys so it was noisy inside the control room.”

  “Got it, thanks.”

  Arnold pointed to the sail’s damaged leading edge. “The explosive used in the device appeared to be some form of a linear shaped charge. Note the severed surface where it detonated.”

  “It looks like a line charge alright,” commented one of the civilians. “What’s the overall length of the detonation pattern?”

  Commander Arnold shifted his stance while turning to address the visitor. “At least sixteen feet.”

  “That’s incredible…what kind of weapon could do that?”

  “Something quite radical, that’s for certain.”

  Arnold took a couple of steps aft on the scaffold deck, beyond the remnants of the peeled back cowling that had covered the sensor masts and periscopes. Prior to heading to Guam, part of the damage had been cut away with a torch to free the radio mast and the search scope. The torched fragments lay on the aluminum deck.

  Commander Arnold pointed to the marks that ran along the aft section of the sail. “Gentlemen, you can see the indentations of the coating in this area. Identical marks are on the port side.”

  The navy Captain who had commented earlier ran a hand across the abrasion. “Looks like something cut right into the steel, like a clamp or some kind of a grapple device.”

  “Yes, sir. It’s right in line with the line charge area, which makes me believe they are connected.”

  “Misfire?”

  “That’s my thinking at this time.”

  “What’s the circumference of the fairwater?” asked another officer.

  Arnold was ready for the expected question. “About sixty feet.”

  It took several seconds for the revelation to sink in. The captain connected the dots first. “How the devil could something that long chase down and wrap itself around a six eighty-eight running at flank?”

  “I don’t know, Captain. At least two of those damn things attacked us. If just one of ’em had managed to attach itself to the pressure casing rather than the sail, we would not be having this conversation.”

  * * * *

  Two thousand nautical miles northwest of Guam, Dr. Meng Park and Captain Zhou Jun met in Zhou’s office at the South Sea Sound Surveillance System. Meng had arrived half an hour earlier at S5, taking a commercial flight from Hefei to Sanya. It was late afternoon. Like the Americans who also caucused in Guam, Meng and Zhou conducted their own post-mission debrief.

  The pair had just finished listening to an acoustic recording of the undersea battle that took place offshore of Hainan Island the previous week. The soundtrack was an amalgam of data collected by subsea hydrophones spread across the South China Sea and a mini acoustic recorder left aboard Viperina Six. The digital device housed in V-6’s computer compartment had been used to collect test data after it returned to its seabed base—Viper Hub Station 1. Captain Zhou was awestruck with the results revealed by the recording; Dr. Meng less so.

  “Something failed,” Meng said. “The Americans escaped.” She wore a silk blouse and a pleated skirt cut an inch above her knees. A pair of three inch heels completed the assembly.

  Captain Zhou wore his summer whites. He countered Meng’s doubt. “The submarine was obviously damaged. For the first strike of the system, that is most impressive.” Over the objections of Dr. Meng, Fleet had ordered S5 to activate the first Viper station.

  Meng’s eyebrows arched, hardly marring her lovely face. “The recording clearly revealed that V-5 detonated. I just don’t understand why it didn’t sink the submarine.”

  V-5 and V-6 hunted as a pair. V-6 broke off the pursuit when its battery reserves reached the mandatory minimum. It had just enough juice to return to the hub. V-5 had not yet reached its minimum and prosecuted the attack.

  “It’s impossible to tell from the recording just where V-5 attached itself to the hull.” Zhou rubbed his chin. “It may have latched itself to a non-critical part of the casing…the bow cap covering the spherical sonar array, the rudder assembly, diving planes. Maybe even the fin. The weapon detonates but does not breach the hull.”

  Meng said, “Perhaps I should refine the attack parameters to prioritize specific target areas.”

  “That would be helpful.”

  “But I’d still like to find out exactly what went wrong with Viper Five.”

  “Other than analyzing the recording data, I don’t know what else can be done.”

  “What about using a submersible?” Meng offered.

  “To do what?”

  “Search the bottom below the attack area for possible remnants of V-5. We have the coordinates from V-6.”

  Captain Zhou considered the request. “We could try that but you know it’s unlikely we’ll find anything.”

  “I know but we should still try—before the American’s do the same.”

  The specter of the U.S. Navy returning to investigate the attack galvanized Zhou. “I’ll set it up for tomorrow.”

  “Thank you.” Meng peered at the tile floor, another frown broadcasting her disappointment. “I just don’t understand what went wrong.”

  “Park, you have much to be proud of. What you have developed is a true game changer. When Serpent is fully deployed, the Americans will no longer be able to intimidate us with their submarines.”

  Meng looked up. “Thanks, I really do appreciate your support.”

  “You’re welcome.” Zhou checked his wristwatch. “Let’s wrap this up. I have a table reserved at the Red Sun.”

  Dr. Meng beamed her approval.

  Meng Park had anticipated the pending rendezvous, even fantasizing while aboard the Airbus during the southbound flight. Although Zhou Jun was ten years her senior she longed for his company. With legions of younger men available for sex back at the university, Park preferred the navy captain. Jun was the consummate lover, focusing first and foremost on her pleasure.

  Chapter 27

  Day 22—Wednesday

  It had been over two weeks since Yuri last visited the FBI’s Seattle office. This morning he was alone in a conference room deep inside the warren of offices and cubicles. He nursed a cup of coffee, offered by his escort. The FBI logo filled one side of the ceramic mug.

  Yuri employed the usual countermeasures to ensure he was not tracked. He parked in an underground garage at Union Square where he was picked up by an FBI agent and driven to the garage of the nearby Seattle field office. After a security guard collected Yuri’s cell phone and the Colt, placing both in a secure locker and providing Yuri the key, the driver-agent escorted Yuri to the conference room.

  Yuri’s mug was empty when Special Agent Michaela Taylor entered the conference room. She carried a manila file folder. “Good morning,” she announced. “Nice to see you again.”

  Yuri returned the greeting.

  As Michaela settled in, she said, “Thanks for coming in today.”

  “No problem.”

  “Just so you know, Captain Clark and Steve Osberg have the data you provided me last week. They both asked me to thank you personally.”

  Yuri flashed a smile.

  Michaela opened the folder and briefly studied the contents before glancing Yuri’s way. “The reason I asked to see you this morning concerns the issue with Ms. Newman’s missing bodyguard, Sara Compton.”

  Yuri’s spine stiffened.


  “As you know,” Michaela said, “Compton’s family has been pursuing the issue regarding her fate. The Sammamish police are also investigating and reached out to our office for assistance.”

  “Is this about the hearing?” Yuri asked.

  “Yes, the family’s attorney has been pressing hard for a court hearing to declare Ms. Compton dead.”

  “And they want Laura and me to testify.”

  “Yes. Since Laura was the last person to see Ms. Compton before Laura and her daughter were kidnapped, the family wants to make the case that their abduction led directly to Compton’s own abduction and eventual death.”

  Yuri said, “This would be a public hearing where the press could have access?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  Yuri massaged his forehead. Laura’s attorneys had managed to keep the kidnapping out of the news because the police were not involved, but a public hearing would put a spotlight on Laura. “The local reporters will be all over it because of Laura’s wealth. And then someone might get interested in me.”

  “I agree, and so does the Attorney General.”

  Taken aback, Yuri cast a questioning gaze.

  Michaela said, “In order to keep you off the radar, we have quietly squashed the hearing process.”

  “How?”

  “The Department of Justice informed King County and the City of Sammamish that neither you or Laura can participate in the hearing due to an ongoing national security investigation related to Laura’s kidnapping.”

  “That will stop the hearing?”

  “Yes, since neither of you will be available to testify, they don’t have a case.”

  “What happens if they go directly to the press?”

  “They could, but I don’t believe they’ll do that. DOJ left a juicy carrot for the family.”

  Yuri puckered his brow, not sure of Taylor’s idiom.

  “Ms. Compton was in the Army reserves and the company she worked for has security contracts with the U.S. military. At the request of Justice, the Department of Defense indicated it would invoke federal statutes to declare Compton dead. That would take just a fraction of the typical time if left up to the state. With an official declaration of death from the federal government, the family would be eligible for death benefits from Compton’s employer, which are significant—five million dollars in life insurance. It will also offer some form of closure for them.” Agent Taylor recalled another item. “The family may also be entitled to DoD death benefits; a couple hundred thousand.”