Ted stopped moving. He glanced down at her, but did not look her in the eye. “What’s there to talk about,” he said. “It’s the President’s call, not mine.”
“You don’t sound too happy about it.”
He stuffed his hands in his pockets and surveyed the galaxy of blinking lights beneath them. He rocked back and forth on his heels. “I’m not happy. It’s a bad deal, and you’d see that if you weren’t taking it personally.”
Rebecca rolled her chair in front of Ted and spun around to face him. She tilted her head, forcing him to make eye contact. “The transfer is a Presidential order. There’s nothing personal about it.”
The blinking blue lights of the server farm blazed in the darkness. They illuminated Ted’s round, cherubic face with a soft, purple glow.
“Rebecca, despite what you may think, I like you. And I respect you. After what you’ve been through, I’d be a fool not to. So I’m going to be honest with you.”
“Well, now we’re finally getting somewhere.”
“Bernatto went off the reservation, no doubt about it. He killed Jack Tyler, hurt friends of yours. And he hurt you. So now you’re throwing all your weight behind this kid. And I get it … he’s a victim here, an idealist in the wrong place at the wrong time. But I think, on some level, you’re still fighting Bernatto. Still trying to undo the damage he did. That’s not your job. Your job is to defend the interests of the United States.”
“My job is to provide the President with accurate, objective, and actionable intelligence. Not to make policy.”
Ted shook his head. “That’s a cop-out. For all Bernatto’s faults, at least he had some skin in the game. You want to do his job, you’re gonna have to pick a side and start playing offense.”
He smiled and started walking towards the other end of the catwalk. “I have to get to my briefing. Next time you want to drop by, call my assistant, she’ll put you in my book. The cafe here makes the most amazing Waldorf salad. It’s got candied apples in it, tastes like those Jolly Rancher candies!”
“Ted!” Rebecca’s voice crackled through the dry air. Ted spun around, but kept walking backwards. Rebecca rolled towards him.
“Sorry girl, gotta go—”
“It’s my turn to be honest. I received intel that the NSA is running black operations in China. That you have an unauthorized asset in place there. Is that true?”
Ted stopped walking and laughed. “What? Where did you hear that? WikiLeaks?”
“I have assets of my own, Ted. Is it true?”
Ted shook his head. “Come on, you’re the ‘boots on the ground girl.’ I’ll stick to my computer geeks and web crawlers.”
“The exchange is happening, Ted. The President signed his approval.”
Ted smiled. “I know, I know. We’ve both played this game long enough to know how these things work.”
He walked away from her down the catwalk. He turned and looked back over his shoulder. “You win some, you lose some.”
Ted exited the catwalk through another security door. He quickened his pace and walked over to a small alcove just off the side of the corridor. He slipped his encrypted cell phone from his pocket and checked the screen.
There were no messages. No texts.
“Not good,” he muttered to himself. He tapped on the screen.
RED PHOENIX: REPORT OPERATION STATUS. GO OR NO GO?
He waited a few minutes, pacing back and forth in the small alcove.
There was no response.
He entered a different number into the chat app. The contact info was not stored on his phone, but he knew the digits from memory.
RED PHOENIX NOT RESPONDING. STATUS UNKNOWN. RECOMMEND ABORT OPERATION. CLEAN ASSETS.
He walked over to a vending machine and swiped his credit card across the magnetic reader. A plastic bottle tumbled out of the machine. As he twisted the cap off the soda, his phone beeped in response to his message.
He checked the screen.
NEGATIVE ON ABORT. TANGENT MUST BE SECURED. TANGENT IS PRIORITY ONE.
Ted sipped his fizzing beverage and thought for a moment. He hesitated, not sure how much to information he should to reveal.
CIA INVOLVED, POSSIBLE ASSET IN CHINA, he typed. D/NCS ASKING QUESTIONS. SHE WILL NOT LET THIS GO.
He looked down as he sipped more soda. This time the phone beeped its reply almost instantly.
REPEAT, TANGENT IS PRIORITY ONE. CIA IS PRIORITY TWO. SEAN TYLER IS PRIORITY TWO. ALL ELSE PRIORITY TWO.
UNDERSTOOD, he typed back. He closed the app, erasing the digital traces of his conversation from the ether. There was no record. There was no evidence. It had never happened at all.
It's the same in life, as in computers, he thought. Sometimes things just have to be erased.
Outside the shadowy confines of NSA headquarters, the sun overhead seemed almost blinding. Its rays battered the shimmering black glass building, as if struggling to expose its secrets to the light of day. But the massive obsidian cube remained a dark enigma. It was a vault of shadows, even in the face of the most powerful light in existence.
Rebecca was glad to see her SUV was already waiting for her outside the entrance to the building. The driver side door opened, and Josh hopped out. “One second, ma’am.”
He jogged around to the passenger side of the vehicle and opened her door. With the flip of a switch mounted on the door frame, a metal platform emerged from the passenger area. It lowered to the ground with a hydraulic whine.
Josh smiled, his eyes sparkling in the bright sunlight. “Here, I’ll help you up.”
“No.” Her voice was harsher than she intended. She shook her head. “No, thank you,” she said, softer this time. “I can manage.”
“Okay then.” Josh watched as she maneuvered onto the platform, then he walked back to the driver’s side.
He touched the radio mic in his ear. “Package is on the move. Repeat, package is on the move.” He got into the car and started the engine.
He turned towards Rebecca.
“They wouldn’t let the rest of the detail through the main gate. Just me.”
She locked her chair in place and fastened the seatbelt across her chest. "Josh, I’m going to give you a tip if you want to keep working with me. Don’t ever refer to me as ‘the package’ again.”
Josh chuckled. “Yes, ma’am, you got it.”
Rebecca stared out the window at the glossy, sinister black building. As they drove toward the front gate, they passed row after row of parked cars. The building now housed a staggering number of employees. The NSA’s operational budget grew larger with each passing year.
“Well, how did your meeting go?” Josh asked, as he turned the wheel, taking them out of the complex and onto the main road.
“That depends on your point of view.”
“How do you mean?”
Rebecca looked in the rearview mirror and saw the second vehicle in her security detail pull up behind her. For once, she was thankful for the extra protection.
“Just about every other word out of his mouth was a lie. But that tells me something useful.”
Rebecca pulled out her phone and opened her calendar app.
“What would that be, ma’am?” Josh asked as she checked her agenda for the day.
“It tells me he doesn’t want me to know the truth. By the way, if there’s one thing I hate being called more than ‘the package’ it’s ‘ma’am.’ Got it?”
Josh kept his eyes on the road and forced himself not to grin. “Yes, ma’a—Yeah, got it.”
He looked over at her. “For what it's worth, I do want to keep working with you. You’re the only spook in this business I trust.”
She closed the app and slid the phone back into her Hermes purse. "Why? Because I’m a woman?”
He shook his head. “Hell no. Most of these suits in Washington, guys like Lapinski … they sit behind desks and make life and death decisions for people like me. Soldiers, spies, men and women in the trenche
s. We’re the ones eating sand, taking bullets, and sweating blood. But these jokers …”
He looked up at the reflection of the black slab-like building in the rearview mirror. “It’s all just a game to them. They’re playing poker with someone else’s chips. When they win, they take the credit. But when they lose, other people pay the price.”
“What makes you think I’m any different?”
Josh stared at her for a second. She found herself examining the tiny crow’s feet that surrounded his eyes. They reminded her of someone. They reminded her of …
“You’re a fighter,” he said, cutting off her train of thought. “I heard what you did, in Thailand. That took guts. Most people, in that situation … they would have folded.”
She looked out the window, silent.
“You paid a price, ma’am,” he said, his voice low and soft. “You know what it means to fight for something you believe in, to put your life on the line.”
“Josh?”
“Yeah, sorry, I guess I’m rambling.
“You called me ma’am.”
Josh’s rugged, weathered face broke into a grin. The wrinkles around his eyes turned upwards, like miniature reflections of his smile. “Yeah, sorry about that, Director Freeling.”
“Let’s go with Rebecca.”
He nodded and smiled again. “Rebecca it is.”
They continued down the winding, tree-lined road.
Chapter Nineteen
Caine walked down the center aisle of the bullet train as it streaked through the Chinese countryside. Outside the long windows that ran along the length of the car, the scenery was a blur of green and brown. Factories and forests, cities and suburbs… All reduced to ambiguous streaks of color rushing past.
The train shuddered, and Caine rested a hand on the seats to either side of him to maintain his balance. An elderly Chinese woman looked up at him and smiled. Caine nodded and continued down the length of the car.
He finally reached the end of the car and pressed the button next to the narrow door that blocked his progress. The door slid aside. He moved through the tiny, flexible corridor that connected the two cars. For a moment, the noise outside rose to a loud, violent clatter as the train hurtled forward. Then he moved through another door and into the next car. The door slid closed behind him, and the noise died down once again to a dull, muted roar.
He looked up at the digital display mounted over the entrance. The crimson LED lights ticked up as the train increased in speed. He watched as they hit 348 kph. Despite the occasional lurch or shudder, the train was remarkably smooth for traveling at such a high speed.
Caine had acquired the tickets the previous night. After their escape, they had abandoned the van in an empty warehouse outside the city. Caine had doused it with gasoline and set it aflame to hide any DNA evidence that might link them to the vehicle.
They took two separate cabs to the train station. Alton had purchased a ticket there using money borrowed from Caine. They boarded the high-speed rail one by one so as not to attract attention by traveling in a group. This was the second stop the train had made since leaving the city. At each station, Caine exited onto the platform and did a quick recon. He pretended to look for a magazine, or souvenirs, while keeping a close eye on the passengers boarding the train. He scanned the crowds, looking for police, or agents from the Ministry of State Security. So far, no one had caught his eye.
A petite woman in a navy-blue attendant’s uniform pushed a trolley cart down the center of the aisle. She stopped next to a row of seats. “Yinpin he xiochi, qing,” she announced in a soft, gentle voice. She pushed the cart forward again and repeated the phrase a few rows down.
Caine had no idea what she was saying, but her cart was filled with soft drinks, bags of chips, and boxed meals. He pulled some Chinese yuan from his wallet and held it out to the woman. “Lunch?” he asked, holding up four fingers.
The woman smiled and handed him four boxes, a collection of drinks, and some change. “Braised beef,” she said in English. “Very tasty!”
Caine looked down at the strips of gray meat and withered vegetables. The questionable meat was sealed beneath the cellophane box wrapper.
“Looks delicious,” he said. “Xie xie.” He gathered the stack of food and slid sideways past the attendant. She continued pushing her cart forward down the aisle. “Yinpin he xiochi, qing,” she continued to call out.
Caine made his way through another sliding door to the next carriage. It was a sleeper car. A narrow corridor ran along one edge of the car. A series of wood-paneled doors lined the other side of the passageway.
A young Chinese couple approached him from the opposite side of the car. They were laughing, holding plastic cups of what he assumed to be beer. He pressed against the outer wall and let them pass. When he was sure they were in the next car, he turned and knocked on one of the doors.
The wood panel slid aside, revealing Jia’s worried face. “What took you so long?” she said, uttering an exasperated sigh.
Alton looked up at Caine over the rims of his glasses. “You get food? I’m starving.”
Caine stepped into the tiny sleeping chamber and slid the door shut behind him. The cabin consisted of two bunk beds facing each other. The upper bunks were folded back into the walls.
Caine sat down next to Alton on one of the bunks, and Jia sat across from him. She crossed her legs and looked out the window at the scenery rushing by. Her eyes appeared to glaze over, and Caine once again suspected she might be in shock. He could hardly blame her. In less than twenty-four hours she had seen more violence than most people did in their entire lives.
He handed her one of the boxes. “Here. I wouldn’t exactly call it food, but it’s the best I could do.”
She took the box, but did not open it. Caine handed her a bottle of green tea. She unscrewed the cap and took a long sip, never taking her eyes off the window.
Alton grabbed one of the boxes and peeled off the clear wrapper. “You know, I like train food. Reminds me of vacation.” He broke apart the slim wooden chopsticks and began shoveling meat and rice into his mouth.
Caine handed a box to Sean. “You should eat. I don’t know when we’ll get another chance.”
The young man opened the meal and began to pick at the scraps of food.
“Did you see anyone?” Jia asked.
Caine shook his head. “No. The next stop is Zhengzhou East. That’s a decent amount of distance between us and Beijing. If we don’t see anyone there, I’d say we should be in the clear for a while.”
Caine opened one of the bottles and sipped some green tea. The cool liquid felt refreshing. For a brief moment he forgot the aches and pains radiating through his bruised body.
“And then what?” Jia asked.
Caine screwed the cap back on the bottle of tea and looked up at Jia. “You can’t go back to Beijing. Not for a while. Do you have someplace else you can go?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know, I’ll have to think. I … I don’t have any family. Some friends maybe, in Hong Kong.”
“Good. Don’t call them until you get there. Don’t call anyone. The fewer people who know where you’re going, the better.”
A cloud of worry crossed Jia’s face. “Oh, my friend in Beijing! The one whose apartment I was staying at … I have to warn him, tell him to stay away!”
Caine nodded. “We’ll be in Hong Kong in eight hours. Will they be back before then?”
“No, I don’t think so. He’s on vacation, in the Philippines.”
“Good. Call when you get to Hong Kong. Tell him to stay away from the apartment for as long as he can. When he gets back to China, tell him to report a break-in. I’m sure the authorities will have raided the place by then. Your friend should act like he has no idea what happened.”
Sean dropped his unfinished meal on the seat and looked up at Caine.
“I can’t go to Hong Kong,” he said.
“I have some contacts there,” Ca
ine said. “It will be easier to get you out of China from Hong Kong.”
“I can’t leave China. Not yet. I have to go back to Shanghai. I have friends there, people who—”
“No," Caine said. "We have to get out of the country as soon as possible.”
“Look man, I appreciate what you did, but I don’t know you.” Sean nodded towards Jia. “I don’t know her either.”
She gave him a nervous smile. “I work with Human Rights Now, in Beijing. When we heard you were transferred to that place, we organized a protest. We thought since you were American, the government might release you as a gesture of good will.”
Sean nodded and looked back at Caine. “Okay, that’s her story. What about you? How do you know my father? Where the hell is he; why didn’t he come to get me?”
Caine sighed. “You can call me Tom. Look, I don’t have time—”
“You just broke me out of a Chinese black jail,” Sean interrupted. “You act like it’s no big deal. Who the hell are you? Why should I listen to a word you say? Christ, now I’m an international fugitive. We all are!”
“Better than being a corpse,” Caine snarled. “You couldn’t stay in that place. In case you forgot, someone in that jail wanted you dead.”
Alton swallowed a lump of food and nodded. “That guy in the hallway, the albino. As soon as the power go out, he come right to your cell. He knew where to find you.”
Caine lowered his voice. “I can’t explain everything, not now. Your father and I were friends, we worked together. I promised him I’d look out for you. You were in trouble, so I came to help. That’s all I can say.”
“And where is he now? My father?”
Caine was no stranger to death. Sometimes he was the instrument of its execution. He delivered its cold embrace to his targets with swift, impersonal precision. Other times, more often than he cared to remember, he had born witness to death’s aftermath. Corpse-strewn battlefields, back alley executions … forensic analysis, casualty reports, strategic calculations …
Red Phoenix: A Thomas Caine Thriller (The Thomas Caine Series Book 2) Page 15
