The Quantum Spy

by David Ignatius

  A half-dozen résumés arrived in the first few hours. Grayson’s secretary brought them in a stack. Ford was pleased to see that the application on top was from Mark Flanagan, an S&T veteran, who was home on leave.

  When Flanagan arrived the next morning for his job interview, Denise Ford shook his hand firmly and then patted him on the back, not quite a hug. He was, like her, a veteran who had never quite risen to the top with the flyboys.

  She was dressed in a light blue chiffon blouse and a well-cut leather jacket. Her hair was pulled back from her wide face in a ponytail. She motioned him toward the couch under the window that looked out at the back side of the Seventh Floor.

  “Well, you haven’t changed, Mark,” she said with a smile. “Edith must be taking good care of you. Although she needs to take you clothes shopping.”

  Flanagan did look like a perpetual undergraduate. He was dressed, as ever, in a tweed jacket, chino pants, and his Bass loafers. He was wearing an especially short pair of socks, so there was a gap of mottled skin between the bottom of his pants and the tops of the socks.

  “I’ve been keeping busy in Tokyo,” Flanagan answered. “Headquarters has been so busy reorganizing things, they forgot about my little tech-support hub. But I’ve been living on airplanes. It’s wearing me down. I decided I need a change.”

  She appraised him; still fit, still irreverent toward management, still enjoying the arcana of espionage. But wanting the calmer, leeward side.

  “I got your application. Do you really want to work for an old has-been like me?”

  He held back a moment, not wanting to seem too eager.

  “Sure. Until we get tired of each other. It’s time for me to come home. I need somewhere to land. I don’t want to leave S&T, and I don’t want to work for an asshole. So you’re it.”

  “Do you really want to be somebody’s deputy?”

  “Happily, if it’s you. I don’t want to be thrown in the motor pool by HR and have to work for people I don’t respect.”

  She eyed, him, not suspiciously, exactly, but with a wary curiosity.

  “You don’t know me that well: I studied French literature. I’m obsessed with computers. And I’m a Democrat. You probably wouldn’t like that.”

  “I could care less.”

  “Well, well, well.” She looked at him, rose from her chair, and walked over to the bookshelf that displayed her toys. She picked up something that looked like a fish and handed it to Flanagan.

  “Remember Charlie the robot fish?” she asked.

  “Of course. We thought we were so cool when we got it to swim up the Neva River in Leningrad.”

  “Have you seen the new ones? They release little crawlers that can go anywhere. Jump up trees and telephone poles. Slither into your router. Amazing battery life.”

  “What’s the new fish called?”

  “ ‘Willy.’ The tech shop can’t make enough of them.”

  She put Charlie back on the shelf and picked up what looked like a mechanical dragonfly. She held it in her hand and then let it drop to the floor. She picked it up and cradled it, head high.

  “This one is my pet. She has every sensor you could want, all miniaturized, low voltage. She’s beautiful. Aren’t you, sweet thing?”

  Ford gently stroked the mechanical dragonfly as if it were alive in her hand.

  “My little friend has just one problem. Do you know what she misses?”

  “Tell me.”

  “She can’t see what people are thinking. She can’t tell us about intentions. Or loyalty. The things that matter most. How frustrating, to get so close but never know.”

  Ford was watching him as she spoke, looking at his face for any sign of recognition beyond the straightforward words and sentences. But Flanagan’s putty face was immobile. If he caught any special meaning when she talked of “intentions” and “loyalty,” he didn’t betray it.

  “We’ll get along fine, Denise. I’m low maintenance. Long battery life.” He spoke like a man who wanted a job.

  Ford returned to her chair, sat down, crossed her legs, and leaned toward her visitor to make one more foray.

  “What do you know about bats?” she asked.

  “Not much. Actually, that overstates it. Nothing, is what I know about bats.”

  “Grayson told me to read up on bats, for a meeting at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. I thought it would be a waste of time, but it surprised me. The little fruit bat can fly in the dark for thirty miles, straight line, and perfect navigation, to get to its favorite habitat. It seems to have a nearly flawless radar and GPS system.”

  “The Air Force must be studying that,” said Flanagan. “Sounds like their sort of thing.”

  “The Air Force.” A shadow passed across her face, as quickly as the exhaust of a Hellfire missile. “Yes. The Air Force. Probably already in the pipeline.”

  She was silent, studying the very practical man across from her. Was this a trap? She couldn’t know, and it didn’t matter.

  Flanagan waited for her to continue, and when she didn’t, he asked the question.

  “So can I have the job?”

  “Are you sure you want it? I am one of those quirky people who still thinks she can make a difference in the world. I hate surprises. And I dislike people who undercut their colleagues. If I discover you have another agenda, I will make your life very unpleasant.”

  “Got it. I know how this place works. One boss at a time.”

  “How soon can you start?”

  “I’m already on TDY in Washington. I can start now, if you want me.”

  She paused a moment, and then nodded and extended her hand.

  “As you’ll see, my end of S&T isn’t very interesting, compared to what you could do out in the field with Charlie and Willy and the fruit bats. But I’d like to have you. And you won’t mind if I’m away, sometimes.”

  “Sounds good,” he said. “Should I tell Grayson?”

  “I’ll tell him. He won’t believe it from anyone else.”

  She led him to the door. “Honestly,” she said, “I need help.”

  Denise Ford’s new deputy began work the following Monday. He went to the DDO Small Group office on North Glebe Road after he had finished work the first day, and each workday after that, to report what he had heard and to check the take from the sensors he had discreetly placed around his boss’s office.

  The reporting was meticulous and recorded in rich detail the bureaucratic journeys of Denise Ford, the diligent assistant deputy director of Science and Technology. But they could not find a hint, in anything she said, wrote, or looked at that she was anything other than loyal to the CIA. In that sense, she had achieved the highest art of her profession, which is the ability to appear ordinary.

  Several days passed before John Vandel received a response from the director of national intelligence to his query for a “restricted handling” review of data collected by the National Security Agency and the National Reconnaissance Organization. Vandel had asked them to mine their massive sound and image archives to find any record in foreign locations for Denise Ford’s voice and face. The databases had included camera footage at airports, embassies, and consulates.

  At Vandel’s request, the surveillance agencies made a similar check for any images outside China of Li Zian, the head of the Ministry of State Security. Vandel had reasoned that Li would never give such an assignment to one of his subordinates. He was the America expert; he understood the leading adversary.

  The search was slow but more than successful: It produced too much data. Li had been in Russia several dozen times; he was in Southeast Asia even more often. So Vandel advised the analysts to focus on Li’s travels in Europe. It was so easy to operate there with open borders: Fly into Paris, take a train to Milan, or Madrid, or Brussels.

  The facial recognition matches taxed the capabilities of the government’s supercomputers. There were tens of thousands of camera locations and billions of faces. Some matches appeared
for Li in Berlin, and then in Paris, and in Oslo. But those locations didn’t fit Denise Ford’s travel, so Vandel told the analysts to push again.

  Vandel complained about the delay to the DNI’s chief of staff. Why did it take so damn long to do the searches? The aide explained the limits of conventional computing power. Even using arrays of servers in the cloud or superfast high-performance computers, many, many hours of computing time were required.

  “Jesus!” exploded Vandel. “This is why we need a quantum computer right now, not twenty years from now.”

  “Excuse me, sir?” asked the DNI man, puzzled by Vandel’s outburst.

  Vandel apologized. It was a pet interest, he said. He didn’t mean to lose his temper.

  The DNI’s rep called Vandel when the facial recognition matches came back and hand delivered the product in a blue-bordered folder: A police surveillance camera showed Li and Ford entering the same hotel on Avenue Louise in Brussels, an hour apart, in May. That couldn’t be a coincidence. Ford was wearing a wig, but the facial confirmation was one hundred percent. The hotel was loaded with surveillance cameras but there was no audio. The subject of their discussion was unknown, but what mattered was the fact it had taken place.

  Once the analysts had confirmed the Brussels meeting, they went back and re-queried the Europe databases. It didn’t take quite as long on the second run. But it was another full day before they had a shot of Ford wearing the same wig when she met Li six months earlier, in November, in Helsinki, Finland.

  Vandel noted the dates on a pad. The two had met in November last year. They had met again in May, six months later. It would be time for another meeting soon. But where?

  22.

  MEXICO CITY

  “Hello, James Bond,” began the voicemail message to the Peter Tong alias telephone number in the Operations Center. The woman spoke slowly and carefully in Chinese-accented English. She said she had a “big difficulty from the consulate.” She implored Peter Tong, who had been so kind and had volunteered to help, to please call her back. “You are so strong. Can you take care of me now?” Her last words were silk. She left a number in Vancouver.

  Harris Chang listened to the message on a secure circuit. The voice was unmistakably that of Li Fan, Jasmine, the mistress of the late Dr. Ma Yubo. The message arrived just before noon, Washington time. Chang’s heart raced for a moment when he heard the voice. He bit his lip.

  Chang’s first move, after digesting her seeming plea for help, was to contact John Vandel. The deputy director for operations was eating lunch at his desk; he had food in his mouth when he said hello.

  “My Tong voice-drop just got a message from Dr. Ma’s girlfriend,” said Chang.

  “I know. She’s hot for your bod, Harris. Did you fuck her?”

  Chang felt a flush of embarrassment. Of course, Vandel had listened to the tape first. He was the boss.

  “We established some rapport. Good tradecraft.”

  “Well, you little sidewinder, you. You left that out of the cable. And now she wants to talk. For openers. Frankly, I’m delighted.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Call her back,” said Vandel. “Tout de suite.”

  “What if it’s a trap?” asked Chang.

  “It’s almost certainly a trap. We want to know who’s running it, and why.”

  “What if she asks me to go somewhere to meet her?”

  “Then say yes. Mr. Bond is at your service.”

  “Okay,” said Chang dubiously. “What if she wants to meet somewhere that isn’t Canada or the U.S.?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t go to Beijing. But otherwise, yeah, sure. Why not? You could suggest Iraq.”

  “Ha, ha,” said Chang. “You’re not taking this very seriously.”

  “To the contrary. I am more invested in your rescue mission than you might realize. This is what we want. Keep pulling on the thread.”

  “What am I pulling? What intel am I after?”

  “We want to see their cards. They’re running a mole and they’re scared we know who it is. They just lost a senior adviser to their service. They must be suspecting that we recruited him. And even more, they must be worrying that he blew their secrets before he died. Like I said, pull on the thread. Eventually, no more sweater.”

  “And what do they want?”

  “Who cares? Watch and learn. That’s all you have to do. They’re not going to shoot you. The Chinese don’t do that. Just listen. Whatever happens, it’s all good.”

  Chang swallowed hard and brought the telephone close to his mouth.

  “Level with me, boss: This is what you wanted all along, right? That’s why you sent me to see this woman in Vancouver in the first place, and then had me go to Stanford, handing out my card. You were chumming the water.”

  “Guilty as charged,” answered Vandel. He rang off, leaving Chang to return the call to the young Chinese woman in Vancouver.

  Li Fan sounded more than grateful when she received Harris Chang’s phone call. She needed him. She choked back a sniffle when Chang finally said he had to go.

  The damsel in distress had been well briefed. She told her rescuer that it was too dangerous to meet in Vancouver and that America wasn’t possible because she had no visa. She proposed instead that they meet in Mexico City in two days. She had even picked out a rendezvous: Gran Hotel Cuidad de México.

  “Good hotel. Best in town. I made a reservation. Is that alright, my dear? I am so frightened. I will be waiting.”

  Harris Chang said he would meet her at the hotel in two days at 4:00 in the afternoon. He would call up to her room, and if Jasmine answered with the address of her apartment building in the Burnaby suburb of Vancouver, he would come up and meet her. Any other greeting and he would abort the meeting.

  Li Fan repeated the address coolly. This was a setup, stone cold, on both sides. Chang stopped by Kate Sturm’s office that afternoon to request Support to make arrangements. She wasn’t encouraging.

  “We’re not well staffed in Mexico, I’m afraid,” said Sturm. “It seems like everyone has better operational resources there than we do. Not our turf.”

  “Well, find some, please,” said Chang. “I’m going to need some watchers in two days, no matter whose turf it is.”

  Carlos Wang slipped into the Chinese Embassy in Mexico City. The front entrance on Avenue San Jeronimo was simply a gatehouse, a façade with five Aztec carvings, the middle one crested with the Chinese seal, and the red flag flying behind. It was covered by constant U.S. surveillance. But the street behind the compound had a back entrance through a big office building.

  Carlos checked in with the MSS resident at the embassy when he arrived. He was the head of the American Operations Division—visiting royalty, in effect. Carlos informed the Mexican intelligence liaison officer, too. The MSS wanted to maintain the comradely environment of Mexico City, a city where Chinese money was augmenting the “fraternal ties” of leftist solidarity.

  The Chinese had built their embassy not in the fancier, northern districts of the city but in Coyoacán, the place of the coyotes, the historic home of the Mexican left. The Autonomous University was nearby, and just north was the “Blue House,” the home of the painters Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, red priest and priestess.

  For Carlos Wang, there was another spot of veneration nearby, one that he didn’t dare mention to his colleagues at the embassy. Carlos left his leather jacket and beret in the closet. He wore a proper blue blazer with brass buttons, pulled his long hair back into a pony tail, and slipped out the back way onto Rio de la Magdalena.

  Wang walked northeast. He knew the way by heart because he had made the pilgrimage before. He took side streets and paused occasionally to look for surveillance in the storefront windows. But who would be following him, except for other Chinese? Those he could spot in a heartbeat. He ambled down the alleyways, listening to an old Cuban recording from the Buena Vista Social Club through the ear buds of his iPhone.

 
He approached the shrine on a frontage road parallel to Avenida Río Churubusco. The house was a museum now, painted bright red with a red picket fence: “Museo Casa de León Trotsky.”

  Wang entered the courtyard of the old house, unchanged since the day in 1940 that Trotsky was murdered. It was a pleasant villa but topped with a crude masonry watchtower for Trotsky’s bodyguards. Trotsky had known they were coming for him; they had tried to kill him once before. But still, he had stayed on, feeding his chickens and rabbits and writing his biography of Stalin that would expose all the secrets of the red monster.

  Carlos Wang lingered in every corner of the house. The dining room, with its black-and-yellow tables and chairs, painted like bumblebees—the simple whitewashed quarters for his comrades and bodyguards, the “family” that had braved machine guns in the attack three months before his assassination and had stayed.

  And then the study. Carlos Wang was not a religious man, but he did venerate the ancestors. Nothing on Trotsky’s desk had been moved since the day the assassin plunged an icepick into his head. His reading glasses were on the table; his typewriter was behind him, awaiting the final revisions of the Stalin exposé; a crude Dictaphone stood next to the desk to record his words.

  And the books of his little library, arrayed just so: Marx and Engels, of course, and also several volumes of a Russian encyclopedia. Carlos Wang studied the Cyrillic writing on the spines of the books. Lev Bronstein was a revolutionary theorist, certainly, but also a man of meticulous fact. That was what Carlos Wang remembered, every time he visited this shrine and thought of his own intelligence agency, encrusted in bourgeois wealth and aspiration, and their rivals in the PLA even worse. Like Trotsky, he hated watching a revolution decay.