by Barry Lancet
“No.”
“So there was a panic. Everyone was calling in markers but you had disappeared. It was as if you weren’t even in Japan anymore. We only knew, instinctively, that we had to move quickly.” She looked to me for confirmation and I nodded. “I tried everyone I could think of. My colleagues at work. My boss and his boss. I even went to my father and his cop buddies. My father was my last resort. Him, and Ibata-san. You know I’ve always tried to avoid Ibata-san.”
“True,” I said.
From my first mention of the PSIA, she had sidestepped the issue of using him. It was only after I pressed her that she acquiesced with a reluctance so great I wanted to retract my request, but hadn’t. Had my visit to the PSIA put her back on his radar?
“I’m not sure how but Ibata-san found you. He and his family have high-powered government connections.”
“What about Noda’s friend at the PSIA?”
“He came up with nothing. Ibata-san told me you were going to die.”
My brow darkened. “He knew that? Are you saying Ibata would have let me die?”
“Let has nothing to do with it. He had no control over what happened. There are treaties and secret agreements between our government and yours. You may have been on Japanese soil, but you were in American hands. Ibata couldn’t interfere. The PSIA wouldn’t interfere. We were lucky to find you. Ibata mentioned someone by the name of Haggis. Are you sure there was no mistake?”
Even among secret agencies, not all secrets stayed secret.
“I’m sure,” I said.
Rie’s shoulders sunk. “Then I do owe Ibata-san.”
“No, I owe him.”
“You weren’t in a position to bargain with him. Only I was.”
“And his price for locating me was you?”
“Yes. I was the only thing he would accept.”
* * *
A bleak silence welled up between us. I hunted for a way out of her bind, and Rie watched me struggle.
“Why didn’t you call his bluff?” I asked eventually.
“There was no bluff. I either accepted or you died.”
“What about money?”
“He comes from a wealthy family.”
“He couldn’t let me die once he told you. He’d know you would know.”
Resignation flooded her features. “Even if he had had the power to save you or sound an alarm, he wouldn’t have. Because as long as you were alive, he knew I was lost to him.”
“So you agreed?”
She twisted her hands. “It boiled down to whether you lived or died, which was no choice at all, so I asked for traditional omiai conditions. A Japanese arranged marriage in a year’s time.”
“And he agreed?”
“He’s from the countryside. He loved the idea.”
“I bet. So what happens now?”
“We’ll meet for coffee, the occasional light date, but nothing heavy or intimate.”
Completely traditional and even a step back from what is practiced in most places today. She could keep him at arm’s length for twelve months.
“I hate this guy.”
“Don’t say that.”
Her defense of him devastated me. It meant the hook had been set.
* * *
We stewed in yet another uncomfortable silence until I said, “You sacrificed yourself to save me.”
Her smile was crooked. “I saved myself too. If you . . . had . . . had . . . died . . . when it was within my power to prevent it, I don’t know what I would have done. It would have destroyed me. At least I know you are alive. And knowing that will warm me on cold days. Even if it must be from a distance.”
I was lost for words.
She said, “One last thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Remember the message I gave you to deliver to your daughter?”
“Every word.”
“Don’t forget to pass it on to her.”
“Of course not.”
“There might be something in there for you too.”
With that, Rie rose, bent over the bed, and kissed me. A light, feathery kiss. Her lips floated over mine, brushing them, drifting away, then pressing forward with a feverish passion.
After a long moment she pulled away.
“Please save that for a bad day,” she said. “That’s what I’m going to do.”
Rie straightened and smoothed out her uniform. I tried to rise too but she waved me back. She drew open the curtains, then the door, then she was gone.
Around me, the monitors beeped and flashed and showed no indications of flagging vital signs.
Physically, I was on the mend.
CHAPTER 97
AGENT Haggis’s account of the NSA op turned out to be accurate on a number of levels, several of them unsettling.
The NSA and Homeland Security had developed a joint disinformation operation housed in the NSA’s massive data center. Hundreds of false files and so-called sanctioned ops were ladled into separate servers. For the NSA, the massive disinformation plan would distract cyberattackers from the agency’s real data banks and could hamstring enemy spying activity. For the DHS, it was a proactive plan to undermine potential espionage or terrorist plots from North Korea before they were conceived, or misdirect any that might be activated. Since the success of the scheme depended on keeping its true nature a secret, the number of people who knew of its existence was severely restricted. For that reason, I was kept out of the loop.
Anna Tanaka was one of the key operators. She layered in the information in any number of convincing ways and wrote programs to capture the hackers’ data and trace them back to their home bases. She was strictly behind-the-scenes, stashed securely away at Fort Meade, where she applied her talents to various other projects as well.
The data banks were located inside one of the NSA’s operational centers at Fort Meade. A DHS hub in Japan handled the on-ground aspects in Asia. When the program went operational, the NSA baited hooks and North Korea nibbled.
The project was Haggis’s brainchild, inspired by his years in the field as an agent for the CIA in Europe and Asia before he moved over to the DHS. He held the overall managerial lead, and it was understood a successful launch would result in a decent though not stellar promotion. But he wanted into the upper ranks of the DHS, and only a spectacular success could propel him as high as his ambition reached.
So he came up with his “tweak”: he attached Anna’s name to the project in a place where North Korea would stumble on it, then drew her from the protective cocoon at Fort Meade to Japan by having her mother killed.
If the North Koreans got their hands on Anna, they could get into the system that much faster. The NSA-DHS team could then reel out more disinformation in a speedier fashion. North Korea would share some of the stolen data with its allies, including China, in return for favors or lucrative payments. The disinformation would spread. The possibilities were nearly endless and the project promised to contain, cripple, or mislead the spying and/or terrorist activities of some of America’s enemies for years, if not decades.
Just as he’d claimed, Haggis had managed to keep his tweak a secret. As soon as Anna was kidnapped, he made preparations to scuttle investigations into her whereabouts, then grew alarmed at the unexpected involvement of the first lady and my subsequent recruitment. He sent Swelley to block me at every juncture.
Simultaneously, Haggis turned his attention to laying the groundwork within the agencies for the worst-case scenario. If Anna vanished into the North before she could be found, the DHS and the NSA might be better advised to hold back for six months to a year before making an official protest. The North Koreans wouldn’t release her immediately in any event, if ever, and on no account until they’d siphoned off all of what she knew.
Since that was the case, Haggis argued, they might as well take advantage of the unfortunate situation to ramp up the disinformation project as rapidly as possible. Haggis promoted this not-altogether-unattr
active alternative with such exuberance, while maintaining the proper amount of anguish over Anna’s dilemma, that both agencies saw the efficacy of using their tech whiz from the other side of the border if they couldn’t get her back. After all, Haggis pointed out, she would be a prized prisoner and would not be mistreated. Further, they needed to keep up the pretense of the disinformation project as an authentic cache of NSA files, or Anna would be labeled a plant and executed as a spy.
In short, Haggis had gone rogue in an extremely clever and unconventional manner.
Had he pulled off the feat of getting Anna into North Korea or China and boosting his disinformation program, three events would have followed in short order. First, the success would be considered, off the record, a home run. Second, in the corridors of the DHS, Haggis’s status would have skyrocketed for his ingenuity in creating the program, and for his back-end leadership in salvaging the mishap for the agency, if not for Anna. Third, Haggis would have been in line for a major promotion.
More than one official expressed shock at how close Haggis had come to realizing his goal. I supplied one more piece of the puzzle by furnishing the description of the Kennedy Center shooter to the DHS. A review of Haggis’s CIA career turned up the identity of the asset he had used to kill Sharon and Mikey. Interviewed on his home turf in an unnamed South American country, the gunman confirmed the assignment. Haggis had led him to believe it was a CIA-backed operation, which, apparently, was not beyond the realm of possibility, despite the CIA’s clear mandate to operate exclusively on foreign soil. Not that the assassin cared either way, as long as he collected his fee.
The Japanese government was intent on extraditing the assassin to Tokyo to stand trial for Sharon’s murder. In the United States, one arm of the government urged the same course of action, while the clandestine branches believed that a trial would set a bad precedent. An anonymous third party settled the issue by making the problem go away.
* * *
A joint DHS-NSA team flew to Tokyo to debrief Anna, who wished to stay with her family for the immediate future. Normally, an interviewee would be sequestered until the debriefing was concluded, but considering the emotional elements of the case an exception was made.
Her American husband had voluntarily stayed away from his mother-in-law’s funeral in order to avoid drawing attention to his wife’s secret departure, but now he could be found by Anna’s side every moment she was not locked in with the debriefing team. She wound up her testimony, and despite her traumatic experience at the hands of the kidnappers she steered toward a swift and steady recovery, which, according to Mari, was to be expected of someone of Spiker13’s caliber.
The same team debriefed Swelley and his Homeland crew. The probe confirmed that Haggis acted alone. Swelley recovered from my assault without any lingering effects, aside from an unquenchable desire for revenge. He was ordered to cease and desist, but whether the order would take root was questionable.
I heard through Margaret, the first lady’s chief of staff, that Ambassador Tattersill had elected to take an early retirement from the diplomatic corps. Officially the decision was predicated on health issues, but unofficially his departure was the result of President Slater’s displeasure with his actions over the whole affair. I lost no sleep over the dismissal. Overseers considered the inexperienced attaché Gerald Thornton-Cummings a small fish, so they threw him back, with a warning.
Trending in the opposite direction, Joan Slater saw to it that Jacobo Perez, the Marine who had helped us out at the ambassador’s residence, received a presidential commendation and a sterling recommendation to the Marine Corps officer program. KC and his unit also received commendations.
As to the existence of a tunnel under the infamous Infiltration Tunnel Three, the South Korean government investigated the report but would neither confirm nor deny the existence of a new subterranean incursion.
I passed on what I knew about the black site in Tokyo to my Japanese journalist friend, Hiroshi “Tommy-gun” Tomita. His story led to the closure of the facility, assuring that I would not one day find myself an unwilling returnee. He and his gang of reporters next set their sights on the Farmhouse.
Several of my acquaintances in the American security services contacted me to express their displeasure with my role in exposing the facility. When I told them I had been an involuntary guest, they universally reversed their stance, with comments about better controls being needed.
On the art side of things, Dr. Kregg and her museum outbid two other contenders for the Kabuki robe. The costume became part of the permanent collection, and was currently on exhibit. Attached to the acquisition was a memorial plaque and an art intern program in memory of Sharon Tanaka and Michael C. Dillman, funded by a single anonymous donor. The unnamed benefactor was none other than the first lady. I had this firsthand.
Noda had lugged the shell-shocked Anna Tanaka to the safe house in Changbai, then returned for me. He arrived in time to see a cluster of police and the retreating taillights of the tangerine Geely hatchback. Having no means to follow the vehicle, he approached Pak with the task of tracking me down, offering the plate number of the Geely as a good place to begin. Pak’s group could not field the resources for such an assignment, so Noda contacted an outfit in Hong Kong, which initially accepted the job but soon reversed itself. After informing him the plate number did not exist and I had vanished from the grid, the agency hurriedly refunded Noda’s advance and dropped the case. Which is when the chief detective had dug in. He’d kept at it through various channels until I’d resurfaced in Mongolia.
During a celebratory evening of saké and sushi back in Tokyo, Noda let slip two new items. He and Jiro Jo, the Korean bodyguard, had been talking over a couple of beers about maybe working a case together if the right one came along. But despite their growing friendship, the Great Wall still wanted a piece of my hide. I rolled my eyes but said nothing.
Next, the chief detective told me it had been a mistake to let me out of his sight. I told him not to worry about it. He grumbled about my disappearance turning into a pain in the neck for him and the rest of Brodie Security. I apologized for the “inconvenience” I’d caused everyone—a very Japanese gesture—and Noda, in turn, offered his own platitude about not concerning myself since he’d found a solution should it ever happen again. When I expressed some curiosity, he said, “The plan next time is to shoot you myself. Put us all out of your misery.”
* * *
The president caught me in my antiques shop on Lombard, arranging the stock.
In the three weeks since I’d escaped from the Tokyo black site, I’d talked to his wife four times and him twice. Now seemed like a good time to pass on Zhou’s warning about his country’s hundred-year game plan, so I did.
“All that from a high-ranking Chinese spy?” Joe Slater asked with some amazement when I’d finished.
“Yes.”
“Why you?”
“As much as he trusts anyone, he trusts me.”
“Again I’m forced to ask, why you?”
“He has an expression: ‘An enemy well regarded is better than a friend you doubt.’ ”
“A well-turned phrase.”
“Apparently, I fall under the ‘enemy’ category.”
“Obviously, Mr. Zhou is an observant fellow.”
“Obviously,” I said, and we shared a laugh.
The next instant the president’s tone turned reflective. “I will give your report serious consideration. There has been vague speculation about such matters but never anything this concrete.”
“Do with it what you will. But if you want my opinion, Zhou was sincere and everything he says jibes with everything I’ve come across in my years of travel across Asia. Which is anecdotal, of course.”
The president was quiet for a moment. “I will pass it through the White House bullshit detector, then run it by a few experts. If it holds up, I may want you to retell the story in person to several members of my cabinet as well
as a handful of officials in several key posts. Would you mind?”
“Not at all.”
Joe Slater gave a soft grunt of satisfaction, then said, “Once more, my wife and I wish to thank you for all you have done. There will be settlements with the Dillman and Tanaka families. We cannot replace what they lost, but the terms will be generous. I will see to that personally.”
“Thank you.”
“No, thank you, Jim. Sincerely. We could never put a monetary value on the torments you went through in China, but I hope my wife’s remuneration will keep you in saké for a spell. Or in whatever your particular poison may be.”
“You were more than generous. And thanks for covering the damaged camera too.”
“We wouldn’t have it any other way. Are you still seeing the doctor?”
“Three times a week until the end of the month, as an outpatient.”
“And no complications?”
“Not yet.”
“I’ll pass that on to Joan. She asked.”
“Please thank her again for the signed photographs for the staff in Tokyo. Your wife is quite popular on that side of the world.”
“She’s popular everywhere. At times, more so than her husband.”
“Way of the world, maybe.”
“And not a bad way.”
After we finished, I leaned back in my office chair and stared at a framed ten-by-fourteen group photograph of about half of the Brodie Security staff holding up signed personalized photographs of the first lady of the United States.
Everyone in the shot looked happy.
* * *
I showed up at the Dillman eatery and pub down by the bay without calling ahead. They had a number of tempting local craft beers, but considering the place and the occasion I ordered a Guinness on tap, a personal favorite, even if the brew didn’t measure up to its cousin across the pond. I carried my pint over to an empty booth in the back, polished off the first third in one go, then sat back to wait.
