The Quantum Spy

by David Ignatius

  “What do you want me to do? I can bail on the trip.”

  “Hell no. Fly out to the coast with her. Keep her talking. She’ll make a mistake, eventually.” He paused and shook his head.

  “Smart lady,” said Vandel. “Her family were screwballs, from what I hear. But they weren’t traitors.”

  Flanagan got up to leave, but Vandel, usually so quick to adjourn a meeting, was staring into space. He looked preoccupied. He hadn’t moved even when Flanagan was punching out on the cyber-lock.

  “Anything wrong, boss?” asked Flanagan, turning back. “Something I can help with?”

  Vandel came out of his bleak reverie. He waved his hand, dismissively.

  “No big deal. Harris is late coming home from Mexico. He sent me a cable. I don’t know what to make of it.”

  Flanagan had talked briefly with Chang before his trip. Chang had wanted advice on resisting interrogation, if it came to that.

  “Is Harris alright? He said he was meeting a Chinese woman in Mexico City. What happened? I hope they didn’t mess with him.”

  “No. That’s just it. Harris says nothing happened. He says every thing’s fine. An MSS man just talked to him for a few hours up in the mountains. He sent me an ops cable, but there’s nothing in it, really. That’s not like him. He’s usually meticulous.”

  “How can I help?” asked Flanagan.

  “Harris will be home tomorrow. After I debrief him, you should go see him. He likes talking to you. Find out what the hell happened to him in Mexico. I get nervous when people tell me that everything’s fine.”

  Vandel remained seated, head in hands, after Flanagan let himself out the door. He was trying to put himself into the mind of someone else. Not Harris Chang, or even Denise Ford, but Li Zian, the Minister of State Security.

  25.

  GREAT FALLS, VIRGINIA

  Harris Chang brooded on the way back to Dulles. He put on his earphones, not to listen to music but to muffle the noise around him. Self-reflection was not his natural state. From his earliest days, he had been a doer, the Chinese kid who could hit the baseball farther than anyone, do more push-ups, stay later in the weight room, help the other, slower members of his team with their homework. When he thought of himself, he saw a face in the sun in the high plains of Arizona. He didn’t see yellow, but a deep, rich tan, like all the boys.

  When Chang graduated from West Point, the superintendent had told him he was one of those soldiers who gave meaning to the phrase “the American dream.” That had made Harris Chang happy. His personal beliefs were summed up in the West Point motto: Duty, Honor, Country. He didn’t know much about his Chinese past; his family went to a Methodist church but not very often. He spoke a little Chinese, but he couldn’t read it. The superintendent had been right.

  Chang wondered what he should tell John Vandel about the meeting in Mineral del Monte. He knew that until he told the whole story, including the awkward facts about his family history, he would be subtly in Wang Ji’s power. But explaining what had happened wasn’t as easy as going to a private confessional. If he spoke up, he would set in motion a process that would trigger an investigation that might—no, that would—harm his career.

  CIA officers didn’t just discover, in the presence of a foreign intelligence officer, that one of their family members had served time in prison for subversive activity. They didn’t suddenly disclose, after nearly two decades, information that had never surfaced in scores of background checks and polygraph exams. Facts had consequences, especially when they were previously unknown.

  Harris Chang knew that he was a bad liar. Deception was a life skill he hadn’t managed to learn at Flagstaff High School. When his pals told little fibs about shoplifting or smoking weed, Harris froze. He knew that if he echoed a lie, he would get caught.

  Chang called Vandel when he landed in Washington just after 3:00 that afternoon. The DDO was busy, but he called back a few minutes later.

  “I’ve been waiting,” Vandel said coolly. “That wasn’t much of a cable.”

  “I need to see you right away, sir,” said Chang. “I wasn’t candid about what happened in Mexico.”

  “Oh, Christ,” said Vandel. He exhaled and took a slow breath. “I’m sending a car out to the airport to get you.”

  “I’ll take a cab,” said Chang. “I can drop my stuff off at my apartment and then come to the office in Arlington.”

  “I’m sending a car. Be at the United exit in twenty minutes. They’ll come get you. Don’t talk to anyone, anyone, until I see you.”

  Vandel closed the connection. Chang knew that he was, from that moment, under investigation.

  The car brought Chang, not to the familiar clandestine location near the Ballston Metro stop, but to a safe house in the Virginia countryside, off Route 193 near Great Falls. The driver put a hand on Chang’s elbow as they walked up the front steps. Inside were John Vandel and Miguel Votaw, the deputy director of the FBI, flanked by an armed man and woman from the Office of Security. They ran Chang’s briefcase through a metal detector and then handed it back.

  “A welcome home party?” asked Chang, smiling, trying to keep himself from feeling guilty.

  “You could say that,” said Vandel. He extended his hand to Chang, greeted him, and introduced Votaw. His tie was loose and there was a day-old stubble on his face. He looked like he had been brooding. “Miguel and I just want to hear what happened down in old Mexico. You said you hadn’t been ‘candid.’ That worried me a bit.”

  Chang looked at Votaw warily. Vandel had gone outside the family; he had invited a member of the Justice Department to hear his personal account. Votaw was a big man with a gut overhanging his trouser tops. He was wearing a white shirt and an embroidered silk tie. He looked like he was on his way to church.

  “Should I ask to speak to a lawyer?” said Chang.

  “Hell, no. Not unless you’ve done something wrong. But we can play this however you want.”

  “Shit,” said Chang, shaking his head. He pondered the situation, but not very long.

  “I’m fine with whoever you want in the room, John. I have nothing to hide. That’s why I asked to see you right away. I want you to know everything about what happened. Even the stuff that’s going to sound strange. ‘All in,’ as my unit commander liked to say.”

  “Good boy,” said Vandel.

  He motioned for Chang and Votaw to take seats in the living room. A steward appeared. Vandel and Votaw both requested glasses of whiskey. Chang asked for a Coke and then reconsidered and asked for a beer. Only a guilty man would drink soda pop.

  “So what happened to you up in those mountains?” asked Vandel. “Did Carlos put a hex on you? Feed you some peyote or something? Tell you his life story? Open a bank account for you in Vanuatu? Inquiring minds want to know.”

  “He told me about my family,” said Chang. “I don’t know how the MSS got all the information, but they obviously have been working my file ever since Singapore. You wanted them to be all over me, John. Well, they were. They found some stuff that surprised me.”

  “Oh, yeah? Like what? You’re a war hero. You’re Mister America. What’s there to know?”

  “Let’s start with the fact that my mother’s father was a communist. He supported Red China. He served time in federal prison. He was a subversive.”

  “You’re shitting me, right?”

  “Nope. Wish I were.”

  “That’s not in your personnel file,” said Vandel. “Why didn’t you disclose that? It’s not a disqualifier. There are lots of red-diaper babies in the agency. Or there used to be. You’re just supposed to tell us. Why not?”

  “I never knew. It was a family secret, apparently. Everyone was ashamed. Nobody talked about my grandfather. I thought he might have been a gangster.”

  “And Carlos Wang thought he could squeeze you, by telling you this family secret and holding it over you?”

  “I guess so. It didn’t work. Right? Here I am. Red Chinese commie’s g
randson faces the music.”

  Vandel sipped his whiskey and studied Chang’s face. He’d “spotted” Harris Chang that day in Baghdad, recruited him into the agency, steered good assignments his way. It was on him, too, if there was something irregular in Chang’s story.

  “What about the intel? What did he ask about Dr. Ma? What did he want to know?”

  “Zip. That was the weird part. He said they already knew everything. I pushed. Believe me.”

  Miguel Votaw, the FBI man, had been twirling a pen absentmindedly in his fingers, like a slow-turning baton. He turned to Chang. His voice was deeper than Vandel’s with a south Texas drawl.

  “And that’s all this Chinese fellow did, was tell you about your communist granddaddy? Seems like an awful long way to have you come, just to hear that story. He could have sent you a postcard.”

  Chang sighed. This part was the hardest, because there wasn’t any scandalous fact, just the reality of his Chinese-ness.

  “He knew everything. About me and my family. It was spooky.”

  “What do you mean, son?” asked Votaw.

  “Wang had my family history on both sides. He knew about my great-grandfather, how he worked on the railroad, and where he came from in China. He knew the village. He even showed me pictures of my distant relatives.”

  “Well, isn’t that nice. Can I see the pictures?” asked Votaw.

  Chang stared at him. He reached into his briefcase and removed the photos of the two villagers from Baisha and the railroad records. He handed them to Votaw.

  “What about your commie grandfather?”

  Something in the FBI man’s tone bothered Chang. It was disrespectful. It touched a nerve that had been sensitive since he began work on the Ma case and was now raw. Feeling wounded, Chang did something dumb.

  “Sorry, I don’t have a picture of him,” he lied.

  It was a stupid falsehood, so easily disproven. The moment Chang uttered the words, he wished he could take them back. It was mistake ever to deceive a colleague. Especially if you were a bad liar.

  “Un-huh,” said Votaw, nodding dubiously. He paused. “So I gather all this talk about your family was an effort to appeal to your sympathies. As a Chinese-American.”

  “American of Chinese descent. And yeah, I guess so. I told him it was a waste of time. I bleed red, white, and blue. Those were my words. It’s true.”

  “Look, Mister Chang,” said Votaw. “This is what they do. I’ve run dozens of cases involving the Chinese service. Katrina Leung. Hanson Huang. I was involved in all of them. And this is the card they play. Loyalty to the motherland. Help out your compatriots. Don’t forget your village. Respect your ancestors. This is their M.O. And you know what? It works.”

  Chang looked at the FBI man and then at John Vandel, who had been his friend and defender until he walked into the door of this house in Great Falls. Chang closed his eyes. He could feel the ground slipping away under him, his career ending, a shame that had been hiding all these years, now devouring him. He opened his eyes.

  “I need to tell you something,” said Chang, looking directly at Vandel. “I lied about pictures of my grandfather. I kept two of them. They’re in my bag.”

  Chang handed over the two pictures of Henry Suh Kwan: the hopeful young man and the one who had been broken by America. Votaw took them, snorted, and put them in a file next to his chair.

  “Now, why did you do that?” asked Votaw, his low voice a bassoon of reproach.

  “I’ll handle this, Miguel,” said Vandel. “Talk to me, Harris. What’s up?”

  Chang shook his head. He felt exhausted. He wanted to get out of this room, quit the agency, and leave the business of deception.

  “I haven’t done anything wrong. They tried to work me, just the way Mr. Votaw said. But I didn’t bite. I thought my grandfather’s pictures were mine, a private part of my life. When you asked for them, I froze. I screwed up. But it was just a mistake. I’m no traitor. Hook me up to a polygraph. Whatever you like. But I promise you, John. I didn’t get bent.”

  They were shaking their heads. Chang wanted to scream, but instead he took off his jacket, rolled up his sleeve, and showed them his West Point tattoo.

  “Read it, sir,” said Chang.

  “I know what it says. Don’t push it.”

  “Duty, Honor, Country.”

  “Which country?” said Votaw.

  “Fuck you, sir.”

  Once again, the moment Chang had spoken the words, he wished he had kept his mouth shut.

  Harris Chang was polygraphed three times over the next two days. He consented to have all his telephone calls and Internet messages monitored, at home as well as at work. He was initially suspended from working on the case, but Vandel decided that was a mistake. If Harris Chang was innocent, so much the better. If he was in play, that might be useful, too.

  “I believe in you, Harris, honestly I do,” Vandel said when he welcomed the case officer back to the command post on North Glebe Road. Chang had hoped he might really have been forgiven, until he heard the word “honestly.”

  26.

  IN FLIGHT, IAD TO LAX

  Most people wear simple clothes on airplane flights: warm-up suits, or comfy jeans, or even baggy shorts. Denise Ford appeared at the airport in a tailored green dress, a blue cashmere cardigan sweater, and low heels. She looked stylish, comfortable, in every way a well-composed picture. Mark Flanagan was dressed casually in chinos and an open-neck shirt. He had booked himself in economy and was standing in line with the other steerage passengers when Ford approached him.

  “I upgraded you,” she said. “I have an expense budget. You’re in business class, with me.”

  Flanagan stepped away from the gym-suit-clad economy travelers and walked with Denise to the counter, where he received a new boarding pass. They joined the line that said “Premier Access.” Flanagan had been planning to sleep on the flight out, and he had packed his good tape recorder and microphone. He excused himself and went to the men’s room while she held their place in the boarding line and tested the fidelity of his iPhone recorder. He decided it wasn’t good enough in addition to being too obvious. He returned to the line just as “Group 1” was moving toward the door.

  “I need to talk to someone,” Ford confided, when the flight attendant brought her a glass of wine, thirty minutes into the flight. “I need advice.”

  Flanagan mumbled assent as the flight attendant handed him a gin and tonic. He didn’t want her to confess anything, not when he didn’t have the tape recorder rolling and nobody to witness the exchange. He felt in his pocket for his cell phone.

  But he had misread her; she wasn’t in a confessional mood, but rather one of embellishing details of the portrait she had been painting of herself. Her eyes narrowed; her brows tightened. She leaned toward him.

  “I’ve been thinking the agency needs to invest more in neuroscience,” she said in a confidential whisper.

  “Say what?” answered Flanagan.

  “Neuroscience. We’re at the frontier, from what I read. There are laboratories now where scientists can watch people thinking. If you see a movie, they can reconstruct how you registered the characters and stories. Isn’t that our business? These neuroscientists say they can detect thoughts we may not be able to verbalize, although I wonder about that. You remember what Wittgenstein said.”

  “Who’s Wittgenstein?”

  “Ludwig Wittgenstein. A philosopher of language. I wrote a paper about him in college. One of his precepts was that if you can’t say something, then you can’t whistle it, either.”

  “Nice,” said Flanagan. “What does it mean?”

  “It means that a thought doesn’t exist apart from the language that expresses it. If you follow me.”

  “Sort of,” said Flanagan. He lapsed into silence.

  Flanagan studied her. He wanted to understand, not just the words but also what motivated them: What would a person say if she knew she was under surveillance? How would sh
e craft her “legend,” for best effect? She would talk about her work, of course, her dreams and aspirations. She would design a world that was parallel to her betrayal, but where all her suspect actions had noble motives.

  Ford was sipping her wine, still waiting for Flanagan to respond to her neuroscience-funding idea.

  “I love these mixed nuts,” said Flanagan. “They’re the best thing about flying in business class. Lots of cashews and almonds. Brazil nuts, even.”

  “You can have mine,” she said.

  Flanagan poured her nuts into his own nearly empty white cup and continued popping them in his mouth.

  “What do you think about robots?” she ventured. “Not little ones, like Charlie the fish, but big autonomous systems? The Pentagon thinks they’re the future.”

  “They’ll never take my job. I can’t see a robot bugging another robot.”

  “How trusting you are. You think that we’ll have only ethical robots that won’t steal each other’s algorithms?”

  “Who said anything about ethics? I just want robot cars that don’t hit other cars.”

  She shook her head and gently pointed a finger at him. Her nails were painted a light aqua blue.

  “I don’t think you’ve thought much about this, Mark.”

  “You’re right. I haven’t.”

  “You should: The ethical decisions have to be made beforehand and programmed into the robots. Take driverless cars. What happens when two pedestrians jump into the road from different directions? How is the robot car supposed to decide which pedestrian to hit?”

  “Beats me.” Flanagan had raised his hand to get the flight attendant’s attention.

  “Another gin and tonic,” he said. “And more nuts.”

  “I’m fine with my wine,” said Ford to the attendant. The glass was still nearly full. She turned back to Flanagan.

  “Do you like animals?”

  “Of course. Everybody likes animals.”

  “So how much should a robot care about animals, compared to people? If your driverless car hits a deer, head on, the deer will be dead but the human passengers inside will probably be safe. If the car is programmed to swerve, on the other hand, then the deer will live but the passengers may get hurt.”