Enemy Contact

by Mike Maden

  His wife was right to be worried. Even when he finally came around, Christopher always played right up to the edge.

  Gage’s phone finally engaged Christopher’s encrypted cell, to judge from the long, tonal pulse common to European phones.

  “Hello, Father.”

  “Can you speak privately?”

  “Yes. I’m at home.”

  “You know that ‘vacation’ we had coming up? The one you’ve been planning lately?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Well, I need you to postpone it.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a bad time. Your mother—”

  “The senator isn’t my mother.”

  “Your stepmother is preoccupied at the moment.”

  “She’s always preoccupied. She’s a senator.”

  “She’s particularly preoccupied at the moment. The vacation won’t work right now.”

  “I thought she didn’t want to go on vacation with us.”

  “She doesn’t. But that means it’s not a good time for me, either.”

  Christopher was silent on his end for a moment, processing.

  Aaron added, “We can do it later. Just not now.”

  “But you don’t understand my situation. I’ve already purchased the tickets. The reservations are set. And there aren’t any refunds.”

  “That can’t be helped.”

  “The people I’ve made arrangements with will be extremely disappointed.”

  “I guess you’re not hearing me. Cancel the damn vacation. Today. Capisce?”

  “Yeah, sure. Understood.”

  “Good. We’ll talk again soon. Stay safe.”

  “You, too.”

  Gage ended the call. He smiled.

  A fucking stallion.

  He just needed to keep the reins tight.

  15

  SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

  Fung stood at his workstation in his private glass-walled fourth-floor office, a perk of the job and a nod to his exalted status in the organization. His oversized monitor faced away from the door.

  The rest of the team had gone to lunch at a new Asian fusion pho joint a few blocks away. Fung passed, citing work deadlines and a weak stomach, both of which were true. More than three hundred e-mails sat unopened in his inbox, and his irritable bowel syndrome was boiling his guts. Why in the hell did he agree to do this? An extra twenty-five thousand wouldn’t mean jack shit if he was rotting away in a federal supermax somewhere.

  His eyes scanned the open work floor again. Most of the desks were empty. The programmers that remained were midwits scrambling to finish a project for a northeastern grocery chain.

  Losers.

  Fung’s fingers hovered over the keys to his computer. A few keystrokes and he could once again invisibly slip into the National Reconnaissance Office desktop that linked to a CIA comms satellite. Fung was able to mirror one particular NRO machine without the operator knowing it or alerting the security algorithms monitoring workstation activity. It was a clandestine version of Apple tech support screen-sharing with a customer and manipulating the computer during a service call.

  In fact, any action Fung took was automatically hidden from the NRO station logs as well, so that any digital footprints he theoretically might have left were never recorded.

  But even knowing he couldn’t be caught and with six figures riding on the transaction, Fung still hesitated. His boss wasn’t stupid. She was a worthy opponent. What if she had uploaded some new security package overnight and he was walking into a trap?

  “Larry? I thought you’d be at lunch.”

  Fung nearly jumped out of his skin. Amanda Watson, his immediate supervisor at CloudServe, stood in his doorway.

  “Oh! Amanda. Hi.” He tapped a function key that pulled up a fake desktop image.

  Watson frowned with concern. “You okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Sorry. Not feeling one hundred percent.” Fung felt beads of sweat forming on his forehead.

  “You look sick. Maybe you better get home and take care of yourself. I can’t afford to lose my number two.”

  “I’m fine, really. I just need to grab some aspirin.”

  “I’ve got some in my desk. You want me to get it?”

  “Uh, yeah. Sure. If you don’t mind. That would be great.”

  Watson smiled. “Glad to. Be right back with that aspirin and a Fiji.”

  “Thank you.”

  Fung watched her march toward the break room to fetch a bottled water.

  Damn, that was close.

  But Fung suddenly had to fight the urge to laugh.

  The stupid bitch didn’t realize how close she was to the man who had hacked her “unhackable” cloud. She knew the system’s vulnerabilities and had given those to her Red Team, which included Fung. She had suggested multiple lines of attack, and the strategies to exploit them, over the last year. What she didn’t realize was that Fung had managed to find the single crack in the system, and to break through it just over a month ago. The resulting dopamine rush was pure ecstasy. He had beaten the system, which meant he had beaten her. His first urge that day was to rush into her office and rub her face in it and show her who really was the smartest person in the building.

  But he didn’t.

  Why tell her? It was his perfect, delicious secret. Gloating over her would have given him temporary satisfaction. But hiding the golden key from her and everyone else? That was more than satisfying. It made him feel absolutely dominant.

  And when CHIBI came calling again and again, asking if he could find something for him for big bucks? And never getting caught?

  Better than sex.

  But Watson had been acting suspiciously lately. Hovering over him, always seeming to keep her eyes glued to him. Did she know? No, it wasn’t possible. He’d already be in jail. But did she suspect something? Maybe.

  Fung checked the original Seth Thomas mid-century sunburst clock on his wall. Time was running out. His assignment was time-specific. But he also knew that Watson would be leaving for the gym shortly. She was as regular as a metronome when it came to her Pilates class. He could afford to wait a few more minutes and enjoy a few sips of cool Fiji water in the meantime.

  Watson returned, handing Fung a bottle of water and a packet of aspirin.

  “Thanks.”

  “My pleasure.” Watson leaned on the doorjamb. “You do so much for so many people. Are you sure you’re taking care of yourself?”

  “Just a little behind on my sleep is all.”

  “Anything I can do to help?” She nodded toward his workstation.

  “If anybody has too much on her plate around here, it’s you. But I really appreciate the offer.”

  “I can pull somebody else in to assist.”

  “Everybody around here is slammed. I’ll turn the corner here in a few hours. Maybe I’ll head home after that.”

  Watson shrugged. “Well, don’t hesitate to ask. We’re all on the same team, aren’t we?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Watson’s iWatch alarmed. “Time for Pilates.”

  “Have a great workout.” Fung winked. “You know where to find me.”

  Watson winked back and sped away toward her desk to grab her car keys. When the elevator doors finally shut, Fung was already back on his screen.

  Time to get to work.

  16

  GDAŃSK, POLAND

  They were princelings.

  Christopher Gage, the stepson of one of the most powerful women in the world, Senator Deborah Dixon, and Hu Peng, the son of a high Party official and a director of China’s largest state-owned bank.

  The two men, both in their late thirties, shared many of the qualities common to princelings everywhere, not the least of which was the compul
sion to prove themselves worthy of inheriting their respective kingdoms.

  Gage’s father had proven easy to please, particularly after Christopher’s graduation from the Gage alma mater, but nearly impossible to satisfy. Hu Peng was in no better a position, and, arguably, a worse one. It was Peng who insisted they meet inside the angular composite steel walls of the European Solidarity Centre near the port and leave their phones in their offices on the tenth floor of the Citi Handlowy building in Gdynia some twenty kilometers away. Gage was wary of all electronic communications but took precautions. Peng, however, was paranoid about it. Especially when discussing matters that might displease his superiors or, worse, reach his father’s ears.

  It was also Peng who taught Gage the useful but awkward practice of surveillance-detection routes, and using his peripheral vision to check for tails in the reflections of door mirrors and office windows.

  They stood in front of the hanging display of two large plywood sheets listing the twenty-one demands of striking Polish workers against the Communist government in 1980—the Polish equivalent of the American Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights combined. These demands, and the workers’ refusal to back down from them, led to the formation of the independent Solidarity labor union and marked the beginning of the end of Communism first in Poland and, soon after, in all of Europe, including the Soviet Union.

  Both Gage and Peng wore English language headsets but with the volume turned off. They stayed close to a group of bored but chattering middle-school kids for audio cover.

  “I’m sorry,” Gage said in English. “It can’t be helped.”

  “The wheels are already in motion—”

  “I explained that to him.” Off of Peng’s concerned reaction, he added, “Not in any detail, of course.”

  Peng’s eyes constantly scanned the room. It wasn’t hard to pick out any Chinese who might be trailing them in a place like Poland. He knew each of the Chinese consular officials in Gdańsk on sight, including the MSS officers stationed there, but none were present here today. His superiors would never use Chinese operatives in a Caucasian nation for undercover work to spy on him.

  “Did you explain to him the consequences we’ll face if we stop this?”

  “Not in so many words.”

  “Then perhaps you should,” Peng said, drifting behind the jabbering students and toward the next exhibit. His English accent betrayed the fact that he’d learned the language from Oxford-educated tutors in China, and reflected the two years he spent drinking in pubs and sleeping with English girls while earning his master’s at the London School of Economics.

  “There must be alternative routes.”

  “We’re not talking about changing a bus schedule.”

  “Well, it’s a no-go. Call it off.”

  “Because your father told you to? Or your mother?”

  “Stepmother. And don’t blame her. It’s Ryan that’s yanking her chain.”

  “Then let her worry about him. You have bigger worries at the moment. So do I.”

  “You don’t know my father.”

  Peng darkened. “You don’t know mine.”

  They moved toward a corner, away from the group. The room was still filled with their incessant noise.

  Peng lowered his voice. “You are five thousand miles away from the two of them. They don’t have a knife to their throats like we do. Besides, there’s no way this shipment will be a problem. Everything is arranged, everything is accounted for. We just need to be patient for a few days more. Nobody will know a thing.”

  Now it was Gage’s eyes that scanned the room, half expecting his father to march into the gallery. In truth, his father didn’t fully understand what was going on, or what was at stake—including his life. But the payoff would be huge, and a chance to step out of his father’s long shadow. Maybe even to earn his respect.

  Failure was not an option.

  A careful planner, Christopher had other safeguards in place, the biggest one being his dearly beloved stepmother, whether she liked it or not.

  Only she didn’t know it.

  “Fine. But so help me God, this better not blow up in our faces.”

  “How could it? You and I are the only people in Poland who know about this. Grow a pair and relax.” Peng smiled. “Let’s get out of here. I’m starving.”

  “To hell with food. I need a drink.”

  “There’s a new place not far from here, and the Ukrainian girls there are super hot.”

  The princelings stripped the audio guides off their heads and sped for the exit.

  17

  ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA

  Jack’s brain was busted.

  After ten uninterrupted hours poring over an extensive LexisNexis search, including records of incorporation, liens, business licenses, and even boat and aircraft registrations, Jack was both bleary-eyed and frustrated. Aaron Gage’s record was squeaky clean.

  He suspected as much going in, but he had to do his due diligence. Besides the fact that Aaron Gage was both smart and cautious, Jack also knew that most of Gage’s business dealings were conducted within the framework of his private equity firm, Gage Capital Partners. The details of those transactions were not required to be disclosed under the rules governing private equity firms either here or abroad. Private equity firms like GCP were the perfect place for shady dealers to hide in plain sight, if they so desired.

  Jack’s only recourse was to turn to OSINT—open-source intelligence, otherwise known as the Internet. Also a mind-numbing exercise, as it turned out. Aaron Gage and GCP had been in the news for decades, the beneficiaries of a carefully orchestrated PR campaign dating back as far as the Reagan administration.

  In the last ten years, PR turned to the socially conscious efforts of the Dixon-Gage Charitable Trust, featuring frequent donations to women’s shelters, symphony orchestras, inner-city schools, breast and ovarian cancer research initiatives, and a host of other programs supporting Senator Dixon’s political platform. The trust had also served to bolster the image of GCP as a socially conscious civic entity. In the last five years, the Dixon-Gage charity expanded to Africa, building schools, digging wells, and microbanking.

  But Gerry had pointed Jack toward the China connection, and that was where he focused his latest efforts. He started by refreshing his memory of U.S.–China trade relations for context, especially after 2001, when China was admitted to the World Trade Organization, owing, in part, to then-Congresswoman Dixon’s strong advocacy for it and her promise that capitalism would democratize China. Just the opposite occurred. “Red capitalism” actually strengthened the power of the Chinese Communist Party at home and abroad. It leveraged WTO membership to acquire extensive foreign investment and technology to launch the greatest manufacturing and export boom in the history of the world at the cost of more than three million American manufacturing jobs. China also used its enormous trade surpluses with the United States—currently in excess of $300 billion per year—to fund a massive military buildup. In less than a decade China had become number two in the world, both economically and militarily.

  The Chinese Communists clearly used trade policies such as WTO membership and the BRI as tools to further their national interests, and many of China’s largest global corporations were SOEs—state-owned enterprises—under the control of the Party. American corporations, on the other hand, appeared to influence U.S. foreign policy mainly as a means to enrich themselves.

  But all of that was above Jack’s pay grade. Right now, he had smaller fish to fry.

  * * *

  —

  Like many other American and European companies, Gage Capital Partners had rushed into Beijing to start doing deals.

  After all, the business of America was business, wasn’t it? Still, it bothered Jack that so many corporations put their profits before their patriotism. Offshoring manufacturing, impor
ting subsidized commodities, utilizing corporate inversions—moving overseas to avoid paying American taxes—and demanding cheap labor on American soil all added to the corporate bottom line. All perfectly legal, because senators like Dixon wrote the laws that made them legal.

  What angered Jack was the hypocrisy. Those same corporations that dodged American taxes legally and offshored American jobs legally would appeal to the aid of the U.S. government—paid for by federal taxes on American workers—for protection against hostile governments and terrorist groups.

  Didn’t that require some measure of loyalty to the American worker? To American jobs? The American taxpayer?

  Apparently not.

  Jack rubbed his tired face. He knew his brain began wandering down these long, speculative corridors when he got tired. He needed to stay focused.

  One particular item in his OSINT research grabbed his attention. The Stanford Graduate School of Business alumni newsletter announced Christopher’s promotion to CEO of Gage Group International—a transportation and infrastructure company.

  Interesting.

  Following that announcement, Jack discovered that in the last three years, it was exclusively Christopher Gage who traveled to Beijing.

  Whatever the Gages were now up to in China, Christopher was the point man.

  Gerry steered Jack in the direction of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. But he had also mentioned that Senator Dixon killed the Poland deal—and that was the whole reason for Jack’s investigation.

  Was there a connection between BRI and Poland?

  Jack kept digging.

  He discovered that the BRI was firmly establishing itself in Gdańsk, Poland, one of the most significant ports on the Baltic Sea.

  Interesting.

  Millions of dollars of Chinese loans were being arranged for upgrades to port, rail, and road facilities in the ancient seaport. For centuries, the city—formerly known as Danzig, especially when under German occupation—was one of the largest and wealthiest trade centers in all of Europe. For many centuries it was long coveted by major powers in the area, including the Teutonic Knights, who captured it in 1308. Now the Chinese had their eye on the Baltic jewel. Perhaps it was destined for greatness again.