Radar man OS2 Fred Baum was leaning back in his chair, drinking a Diet Coke. There had been nothing on the screen except the Empress since late yesterday. The Crowe was in action, and the excitement of pursuit, which had sustained Canfield’s people for most of the last twenty-four hours, was exhausted. Now they faced another day with only a blip on the radar or, when on deck, a distant silhouette. Boredom was becoming a danger.
Canfield decided to give them a version of the captain’s lecture. “All right, people, let’s shape it up. The Empress skipper could make a move any damn time. Don’t jump to conclusions about the actions of another ship. It all may look routine, but she can turn on you in a second. We can’t be sure what the Chinese have aboard or what they have in mind.
They might have a big gun or missiles, too. Always think every second about what could be in the mind of the enemy skipper.”
“Aye-aye, sir.”
“Sorry, Lieutenant. You’re right.”
“Wish they’d do some damn thing.”
“You can say that again.”
“I mean―”
“Hold it!”
The shout came from OS2 Baum at his radar monitor. For a long moment, no one reacted. At first, the warning seemed nothing more than another comment in the stream of weary complaints about inaction.
Almost in unison, they turned to look.
“Report, Petty Officer!” Canfield snapped.
“I’ve got something!” Too excited to remember to say sir when talking to Canfield. “I think it’s a new bogey!”
“Take it easy, Baum.” Canfield leaned over his shoulder. “You think?”
Baum pointed to a tiny dot that appeared and then disappeared at the edge of the screen, astern of the Crowe. “It’s damn low in the water, Lieutenant. A real small profile.”
“Where?”
“Dead astern.”
“How far?”
“Maybe fifteen miles.”
Canfield turned his head. “Radio?”
“Nothing, sir.”
Canfield bent again. The blip had vanished. “Where’s it gone?” “It’s still there, Lieutenant. Like I said, it’s low, so it gets obscured by the running sea. Trust me, it’s there and coming closer.”
Canfield was having difficulty spotting it as the radar arm swept around. “You sure it’s not some weather anomaly? Maybe a surface disturbance?”
“Yessir, I’m sure.” Still, Baum craned, not quite as certain as he claimed. “It’s just damn small.”
“But coming closer?”
“Yessir. I mean, we’re hanging back, matching that tub up ahead.”
Canfield knew the Empress could do only fifteen knots at top speed, and that was pushing it.
“Damn!” Baum peered at the sweeping screen. “Now it’s out of sight again.” He looked up at Lieutenant Canfield. “But I know I saw it, sir.
It was there, and moving―”
“Lieutenant!” Sonar Technician First Class Matthew Hastings bellowed.
“What, Hastings?”
“I’ve got it, too. Dead astern!” Hastings held up earphones.
Canfield clapped one phone to his ear. “How far astern?”
“Right where Freddy’s bogey was.”
Canfield turned his head. “Baum?”
“Still nothing on radar yet, sir.”
Canfield glared at Hastings. “How fast?”
“Twenty knots, maybe twenty-two.”
“Whale?” It was a possibility. A big whale, logging on the surface.
Hastings shrugged. “Could be, but they don’t usually swim so fast unless they’re scared. Wait!” The sonar technician cocked his head as if the motion could make him hear more clearly. “Propellers, sir. It’s got an engine.”
Canfield’s voice rose. “You’re sure?”
“Shit, Lieutenant. It’s a sub. Closing in on us!”
All talk was cut off as if someone had pressed the mute on a TV remote.
Silence enveloped communications-and-control like a cocoon. Canfield hesitated. It had to be the same bogey as the one Baum had spotted on the radar — a sub running with only its conning tower above the surface.
Now it had dropped off the radar screen because it had submerged. Would it have dived if it did not intend to attack? Commander Chervenko’s words reverberated inside his head — be sure before you act, be very sure.
“Can you identify the sub, Petty Officer?”
“No, sir.” ST1 Hastings sounded uneasy. “Single screw, I’m sure of that.
The engine’s quiet, but kind of ragged. I’m getting a resistance signature I never heard before.” He listened for a time. “It’s not ours.
I can guarantee that.”
“Conventional or nuclear?”
“Nuclear for sure, but not Soviet. I mean, not Russian. I know what those suckers sound like. A small sub, attack type, nuclear.”
“British, maybe?”
Hastings shook his head. “Too small. Doesn’t sound right for that.” He glanced up at the lieutenant again. “If I had to guess, from what I learned in training, I’d say it’s an old Chinese Han class. They got new ones in the works, but I ain’t heard they launched any. Besides, it’s got the burred sound of an old design.”
The silence hung heavier as Hastings continued to listen. “It’s closing in, Lieutenant.”
“How far.”
“Ten miles.”
Canfield nodded. His lungs felt squeezed. Still, he shouted, “Sparks?
Call the bridge! Pronto!”
On the bridge, Commander Chervenko said quietly to It. Commander Bienas, “You have the bridge, Frank. Better clear for action. Everyone their posts. I’m going below.”
“Aye-aye, sir.”
Chervenko slid down the gangway, entered communications-and-control, and nodded to Lieutenant Canfield. “Tell me, Mose.”
Canfield filled him in on everything that had happened from the moment OS2 Baum had spotted the small blip on his radar.
“All right. Are we sure it’s Chinese?”
“Hastings can’t identify it as anything else so far.”
“I’ve had some experience with a Han class, maybe―”
ST1 Hastings looked up. “Captain! She’s slowing down!”
Commander Chervenko moved in to stand behind the sonar technician. “How far back, Hastings?”
“Five, six miles, sir.” The first-class petty officer’s eyes stared into some empty, distant place as he concentrated all his senses on his hearing. “Yeah, definitely slowing, sir.”
“You hear any activity?”
Hastings concentrated. “No, sir. Just the screw. It’s at a way lower speed.”
“Matching us?” He looked up, impressed by the commander’s accurate prediction. “Yessir, I’d say that’s exactly what she’s doing.”
Chervenko nodded. “Shadowing the shadower.”
The technicians glanced uneasily at one another.
Chervenko turned to Canfield. “Keep on top of it here, Mose. Report any change, no matter how small. I want to know if they hiccough back there.”
“Aye-aye, sir.”
“I’ll be in my quarters. Tell Frank on the bridge.”
Chervenko left the electronics-crammed center and hurried to his cabin.
He dialed his secure phone again.
The big voice on the far end of the line boomed, “Brose.”
“This is Commander Chervenko on the Crowe, Admiral. We’ve got some company out here. You’re not going to like it.”
Hong Kong.
When Jon thought back over the past few years to how much his life had changed since the Hades virus had killed his fiancee and had been on the verge of a world pandemic, one of his few pleasant constants had been her sister, Randi Russell. Although he seldom saw Randi, since she was usually in the field, they sometimes found themselves in the Washington area at the same time. They had a standing arrangement to leave a message on the other’s answering machine. When
they connected, they would have drinks, dinner, and dancing — but their dancing was almost entirely verbal, because neither could divulge their espionage activities.
Covert-One was such a highly secret organization that he could not mention its name, much less that it existed. At the same time, she usually could say nothing about her Langley missions, which took her around the world. Occasionally, they found themselves involved in similar assignments, such as when Jon had convinced her, Peter Howell, and Marty Zellerbach to help him stop the terrifying geopolitical threat caused by Emil Chambord’s futuristic DNA computer.
Instead of returning to the corridor where so much shooting had happened only moments before, Randi opened a side door in the office. They ran across a storage area to another door that opened into another corridor.
Their first priority was to get out before the police arrived. The sirens in the distance were growing louder, closer.
“Thanks for the diversion,” he told her. “They were closing in on me.”
“Always glad to help a pal.” Her American voice from the Chinese face was unnerving. The CIA had done a remarkable job of turning a citified blond Caucasian into a black-haired Chinese peasant.
“Where are we?” “Same building,” she told him, “but a different wing. It’s the old English style of office construction. It kept the ” and corridors from being too crowded.”
This wing was quiet after quitting time, too. They rushed into an elevator and headed down to the ground floor — and then down one more level toward the basement.
As the elevator clattered, Jon said, “Impressive how well you know this building.”
She glanced at him. “Research.”
“So my problem upstairs was impacting your assignment.” She said innocently, “Ralph Mcdermid not only likes acupuncture, he’s been panting after the girl who gives the shiatsu massage. This time, he seemed to have more than needles and flirtation in mind. You must’ve activated him somehow. Could there be something not on the up-and-up in the Altman Group’s China installation?”
“How do you know those gunmen were here for me? Maybe I bumbled into a trap set for you. The CIA doesn’t tail private American citizens for the fun of it. Langley must suspect Mcdermid’s up to something against our interests.”
The dance had begun. They looked away from each other as the elevator stopped and the door opened onto a storage basement, complete with the stink of dampness and the scurrying noises of rats.
“Why in the devil were you tailing Mcdermid?” Her voice was half aggravation, half resignation. The perfect Chinese mask of her face remained impassive.
To reveal his investigation into the Empress would encourage her suspicions about his Covert-One activities. He needed to tell her something plausible. She might not believe him, but she would be in no position to accuse him of lying. He decided the same story he had given Charles-Marie Cruyff would have to do.
As she led him through a dim maze of cellar rooms, he explained, “I was at a biomedical convention in Taiwan for Fort Detrick when I ran into a fellow from Donk & Lapierre’s field lab in China. What he described was intriguing, so I caught a flight to Hong Kong, hoping to get permission to take a look at his work. The lab’s honcho, Cruyff, sent me to Mcdermid, who I guess is his boss. Mcdermid’s been impossible to pin down, so I tailed him and stumbled into this hornet’s nest.”
“Right.” Randi shook her head. “And I’m here for the noodles.” He thought he heard her chuckle. He said, “Far be it for a humble scientist to inquire into a CIA field operation.”
“You always hang around office mezzanines in a Hawaiian shirt, straw hat, and running shoes, when you want a professional, scientific favor?
Probably for the same reason you carry a Beretta and extra ammo. Oh, gosh, wait a minute. I’ll bet you planned to put a gun on him to convince him to be nice.”
So she had either been watching him deliberately, or they had crossed paths because of the similarity of their missions. “In case you haven’t noticed,” he said blithely, “Hong Kong’s miserably hot. Of course I wear Hawaiian shirts. As for the Beretta … remember, my final destination was mainland China. I arranged with the Pentagon for permission to carry, because the field lab’s in a remote area — bandits and all.”
He had managed to turn her suspicions into an innocent story. In fact, all of it could be true. But he knew her well; she would not drop this.
She would find harder, more probing questions. It was time to distract her and to get out of the building.
He nodded at cement stairs ahead. “Those for us?”
“Clever of you.”
Again, she led the way, bending so her tall hat did not catch on the low ceiling as she climbed. At the top, she pushed open a slanting door and slid out. He followed, lowering it quietly behind. She was already moving away. He fell in beside her. They were in a narrow alley that smelled of urine and charcoal. Moonlight reflected off the grimy brick-and-stone walls.
Five minutes later, they were in a taxi heading back toward Central.
“Where do I drop you?” Randi asked. She pulled off the hat, shook out her black wig, and sat back.
“The Conrad International,” Jon said. “Listen, everything I told you was true, but there’s a little more―”
“What a surprise, dearie.”
He shot her a look. “USAMRIID thinks there’s something fishy going on at Donk & Lapierre’s Chinese lab. Maybe they’re conducting research, doing experiments that’d be illegal in the States, and putting government grant money intended for basic research into applied research to develop commercial pharmaceutical products.”
“I expected something like that. So you’re here investigating?”
Jon nodded. “I won’t ask exactly what the CIA’s interest in Mcdermid is, but maybe we could share anything we find not directly related to our own assignments.”
Randi turned away, looking out the window. She was smiling. Despite all the baggage between them since her sister’s death, she liked Jon. She enjoyed working with him. She turned back, still smiling. “Sounds like a good thing. Okay, soldier. Whatever I turn up that I can’t use, I’ll tell you. And vice versa.”
“Deal.”
The taxi stopped at his hotel on Queensway. As he got out, he turned back to ask, “Where do I contact you?”
“You don’t. I know where you are. If anything changes, leave a message at your hotel’s front desk addressed to Joyce Ray.”
Despite the proposition he had offered her, he wanted very much to know what the CIA’s connection to Mcdermid and the Altman Group was. He would ask Klein to check into what Langley was up to, which meant he would have to let Randi go her own way for now.
“Fine,” he said. “Keep in touch.”
She was still smiling as the taxi pulled away into traffic.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Washington, D.C.
In his bedroom, the president was still buttoning his shirt when Jeremy knocked and spoke through the door, “Director Debo, sir. She says it’s urgent. Would you like to take the call?”
One more emergency was not what he needed. “Of course. Put her through.”
The Director of Central Intelligence, Arlene Debo, had been appointed to the position by the previous administration, and he had kept her on, despite her affiliation with the opposition party, because he trusted her. She was very good at the job.
Her voice was just below strident, her natural tone. “Mr. President, my people ran the statistics on the leaks. The vast majority of them are related one way or another to defense and military matters. Did you know that?”
“Yes, why?”
“Because I instructed our agents to concentrate most heavily on the area on and around the joint chiefs, and it’s paid off with our first hit.”
The president sat down on the edge of his bed. “Who?”
“Secretary of the Army Jasper Kott.”
“Kott? Kott himself? Are you sure?” He was shock
ed.
“He went to Manila on somewhat questionable army business, so we put an agent with him. Sure enough, he slipped away in civvies and went into the city to what appeared to be a pleasure trip to a brothel where our agent was unable to follow. However, she’d had the foresight to contact our station chief, and he had a man there quickly, who went in as a customer. He learned Kott had insulted the house by not being there for ‘fun.’ He was meeting a man and reporting on your recent military budget session.”
The president frowned. “What man?”
“Ralph Mcdermid, CEO of the Altman Group.”
“Mcdermid? My God. He was telling him about our budget discussion?”
“Indeed, Mr. President.”
“Insider trading?”
“We don’t know yet, but we’ll find out. Our agent and her team are shadowing Mcdermid now, too, as we speak.”
“Keep briefing me, Arlene. Thanks.”
“My job, sir.”
After hanging up, he finished dressing, his forthcoming breakfast with the vice president far from his mind as he pondered the possible motives for Secretary Kott’s deceit and Mcdermid’s involvement. Was it simply extremely bold economic espionage to gain a business advantage … or something else?
Few people knew the White House had two family dining rooms — one in the northwest corner of the main floor and the other upstairs in the private quarters, remodeled with a small kitchen originally for Jack and Jackie Kennedy in 1961. Like Jack Kennedy, Sam Castilla preferred to keep the upstairs one private for his family, too. He and Cassie could sit around with uncombed hair, still in their bathrobes, drink coffee, and read the Sunday papers without worrying about being disturbed except under the most unusual emergencies.
Still, he liked this family dining room on the first floor, too.
Although it had a vaulted ceiling and was furnished with solemn Hepplewhite and Sheraton pieces, it was small relative to other White House rooms, and the fireplace and yellow walls gave it warmth and intimacy. This morning, it smelled pungently of chiles and cheese. He had invited Vice President Brandon Erikson for breakfast to discuss his coming trip to Asia.
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