The Altman Code c-4

by Robert Ludlum

  Viktor Agajemian was a former Soviet hydraulics engineer, now officially Armenian but still living and working in Moscow. His firm was helping to build the mammoth Yangtze Gorges Dam project, and he had papers to travel anywhere in China. He was also one of Klein’s first recruits to perform occasional tasks for Covert-One in Asia, particularly in China.

  “You made contact?” Klein asked.

  “I did. Chiavelli says, and I quote, ‘ prisoner appears authentic.

  Physical condition is good. General area rural, infrastructure bad, military installations few and scattered, and airfields primitive.

  Potential resistance average-to-minimal. Estimated time: ten to twenty minutes, total. Escape is promising.’ That’s it, Fred. You planning to break the old boy out?”

  “What do you think about an operation like that?”

  “From what I saw, Captain Chiavelli may be right. On the other hand, I didn’t actually see the prisoner.”

  “Thanks, Viktor.”

  “Anytime. The money will arrive in the usual manner?” “You’d be told of any change.” Klein’s mind was already back on Jon Smith.

  “Sorry to be crass, but times are not the best in Russia or Armenia.”

  “I understand, Viktor, and thank you. You are, as always, the professional in everything.” Klein hung up, thinking that they might possibly have to use Captain Chiavelli’s report if … Where the devil was Jon?

  He studied the clock. At last, he took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes, and sat staring at the blue telephone, willing it to ring.

  Sunday, September 17.

  Hong Kong.

  In the CIA safe house, Jon turned on his heel. “I have to go.”

  “Whoa, soldier,” Randi said. “You go nowhere until you tell us what this is all about.” Jon hesitated. If he did not explain, they would report to Langley and start digging. But how much could he reveal without disclosing everything? Not much, and this time there was no clever story to throw them off track. The resurrected wife of Yu Yongfu had supplied too many details, including the freighter’s illegal haul. He could say nothing more without hinting at what Li Kuonyi had not described — his mission.

  “All right, I’ll level with you,” he said, “but I can’t reveal exactly what’s going on. The need-to-know is off the scale, and I have my orders. But I can tell you this much: I’m working for the White House.

  They sent me because I happened to be in Taiwan at a scientific meeting and had the opportunity to get into China right away. It was a matter of convenience for them. The woman you just heard is the wife of someone who’s vital to the situation. Both she and her husband had disappeared.

  We’d heard nothing about his being dead. I’ve got to get this new information to my chief immediately.”

  “What was all that about a ship and a manifest?” Randi wanted to know.

  “That’s what I can’t tell you.”

  Randi stared into his eyes, searching for deception, but this time she could find none — just worry, which worried her. “Does what you’re working on have any connection to leaks of information from the White House?”

  “Leaks? Is that your assignment? Is that why you’ve been following Mcdermid?”

  “Yes. Your operation turned up Mcdermid, too?”

  “Yeah,” Jon said. “I’ve got a lot to report.”

  “I’d say we both do.”

  Tommie, who had left the room, rushed back inside, swearing. “We were tailed. If you’re thinking of leaving, Jon, you’d better go out the side way, through the next building and the next. That will put you on a cross street.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Feng Dun and his people. They’re watching the street and the alley. The only good thing is they don’t seem to know exactly where we are.”

  “Is that exit clear?” Jon asked. No safe house could exist unless it had two or three ways to escape.

  “Not yet. You’d better wait.”

  “You have a back room I can borrow? I need to report in.” Randi said witheringly, “You sure you want to risk it? The room might be bugged. We might hear something.”

  Jon did not like keeping her in the dark any more than she liked being in it. He looked around at the CIA agents and offered his most ingenuous smile. “I trust all of you. Hell, you saved my butt. And I sure do appreciate the doctor and the food and the help getting out of here.

  With luck, I’ll be able to return the favor.”

  Randi glowered and shook her head. At last she heaved a dramatic sigh.

  She hated it when he was being charmingly right. “You’re such a pain, Jon. Oh, very well. I’ll find you a place myself.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  The two men were alone in Mcdermid’s luxurious penthouse office, surrounded by museum-quality paintings and Ming Dynasty vases. Feng sat with his thick arms crossed, his broad face emotionless, in the chair opposite Mcdermid’s desk. “Smith and the woman have gone to ground.” Feng had ordered most of his men to pursue the pair after their escape, while others had stayed behind to question the crowd. That was how Feng had learned an American voice had shouted to the woman from the escape car. The voice had called her Sandy or Mandy or Randy.

  “What the hell does that mean?” Mcdermid asked, barely able to contain his anger as he waited to play the tape of his conversation with Li Kuonyi.

  “It means my men were able to track them to Lower Albert Road, where they disappeared into an alley.”

  “Disappeared? What are they, shamans?”

  “There’s obviously some kind of safe house on the street, and it has hidden entrances. My men are watching.”

  “Are they CIA after all?”

  “We still can’t find any affiliation to a known intelligence agency for him. We have only a partial name for her, not heard clearly. It could be a first or a last name. We’re checking our sources to see whether we can identify her. But provisionally, I suspect she’s CIA. What or whoever they are, they’ll reappear.”

  Mcdermid had not counted on so many problems. Give him a sick company or an underperforming portfolio, and he was in his element. Better yet, show him a politician at loose ends or a defeated senator growing bored, and he would use them to pull in investment funds or to lobby a piece of legislation until it passed. For him, that was child’s play. The Empress cargo was something else. It was a deal so big it would crown all others.

  Inwardly, he sighed. It was worth any amount of trouble. “Maybe. Forget Smith and the woman for now. Listen to this.” When the tape finished playing, Mcdermid’s usually smiling face was flushed with outrage. “Is that Li Kuonyi and Yu Yongfu?”

  Feng Dun glanced uneasily around the penthouse aerie and nodded. “They fooled me.”

  “They fooled you!” he exploded. “That’s all you have to say? You idiot.

  Yu’s alive, and he still has the manifest! They switched documents so you’d see him burn something else, and his suicide was smoke and mirrors. That’s why he had to fall into the river, so you wouldn’t have a corpse. He used blanks, dammit. How could you be so stupid!”

  Feng Dun was silent. Disgust for Mcdermid glinted in his eyes and then was gone. “It was the woman. I should’ve suspected. She’s the man in that family.”

  “That’s all you have to say!” Mcdermid raged.

  Feng shrugged and offered one of his marionette smiles to the outraged CEO. “What do you want, Taipan? Li Kuonyi tricked me. I’d guess she’s fooled many, including her own father. He believed Yu died, just as I did. We must see she doesn’t fool any of us again.”

  “What we need is to get that manifest before the Americans do!”

  “And we will. She called you first. That’s a good sign. She either doesn’t think the Americans will pay as much or she doesn’t trust them.

  She won’t contact them unless she has no other choice.”

  “How can you be so damn sure!”

  “The Americans want good relations with China. Once they have the
manifest, the crisis will be over, and she’s smart enough to know that if Beijing wants her husband and her returned so they can be punished, the Americans will hand them over. She’d rather have your money than rely on Washington to treat her kindly.”

  Mcdermid’s anger cooled as he reflected on Feng’s explanation. “You may be correct. It’d be a greater risk for her and Yu. All right, I bought some time for you. Go to Urumqi and find them.”

  Feng’s expression was close to a sneer. “I wouldn’t count on that, Taipan. Do you know where Urumqi is?”

  “Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, and Chongqing. For all I care, the rest of your benighted country is a desert.”

  “You aren’t far wrong.” Feng’s wooden expression had an edge of both mockery and admiration. “I told you Li Kuonyi was smart. Urumqi is in Xinjiang, at the northern edge of the Taklamakan Desert. There’s little in China farther from Hong Kong, and it’d be impossible for you or me to get there before late tomorrow. But inside China, they can go almost anywhere from Urumqi in a few hours. There are two major cities near Dazu — Chongqing and Chengdu. They can fly into either, but so can I.

  Still, they’ve made it twice as hard for anyone, even me, to find them.”

  “But you’ll do it anyway, won’t you, Feng.” It was an order.

  “I’ll fly to Chongqing immediately. Find them first or not, I’ll be at the Sleeping Buddha hours before the dawn meeting.”

  “You intend an ambush?”

  “Naturally.”

  Mcdermid flared up again. “The woman will expect an ambush!”

  “To expect is one thing. To prevent is another. I’ll plan well and make them wait for what they guess will come, or perhaps I will surprise them first.”

  “Why would they bother to meet you at all?”

  “If I’m right, they’re afraid of both Washington and Beijing. Sooner or later, Major Pan and his secret police will track them down. You and your money are the best chance for them and their children to survive in the manner they want. So yes, they’ll suspect. Which means they’ll try to safeguard themselves and whoever’s with them. But as Li Kuonyi said on the tape, they have no choice.”

  “I hope you’re right this time.”

  “They won’t trick me again.” His eyes seemed to darken.

  “The woman’s been a step ahead of you since Shanghai.”

  “That will make her overconfident.”

  Mcdermid considered. He was not a physical man, but he was not weak either. He could hike to wherever this Sleeping Buddha was, and he could shoot. He had survived as a lieutenant in Vietnam, where lieutenants were food for pigs, and he had beaten Washington at its own game, becoming the ultimate insider. As he weighed everything, he decided the manifest was far too important to trust to Feng alone.

  “We’ll both go,” he decided. “You leave tonight, and I’ll follow tomorrow night. Who’s your contact in Beijing?” Increasingly, Mcdermid wanted to know the identity of who had the clout not only to order a submarine to follow the John Crowe, but who could convince the sub’s captain to act upon unconfirmed information that SEALs were planning secretly to board the Empress.

  Feng raised one eyebrow. “You don’t pay me for names. You pay me to get the job done.”

  “I pay you to do whatever I damn well say!”

  “No one pays me that much, Taipan.” There was scorn in Feng’s voice.

  Mcdermid glared, while Feng’s expression was impassive. The Feng Duns of the world were minor players in Mcdermid’s mind — necessary but of limited use. He had employed such men on various projects for two decades, finding them among the globe’s underground of mercenaries, agents extraordinary, and assassins, who survived not only by wits and skill but by connections. If they wanted the next job, they avoided burning the last.

  “The Altman Group has holdings in Chongqing,” Mcdermid said at last, dropping the subject for the time being. “Get me permission from your friend in Beijing to fly there on business. I’ll need the papers immediately, of course.”

  “And the money?”

  “I’ll arrange for it.”

  “You’d give them two million?” Feng sounded almost impressed.

  Mcdermid nodded. “We won’t fool Li Kuonyi without it. Besides, two million is nothing compared to what I’ll gain from success.”

  “Aren’t you worried the cash will tempt me or my men?”

  “Should I be?” Mcdermid studied him. “You’ll get a substantial bonus when this is over.”

  “Your generosity is well known.” Feng’s soft voice was almost ghostly.

  “I’ll prepare my team and arrange for your passage, Taipan.”

  Mcdermid watched him leave the office. He had again heard the contempt in the use of the old honorific taipan.

  Dazu.

  Dennis Chiavelli sweated in the unseasonal heat of the early September afternoon as he chopped green heads of bok choy from their roots and tossed them into wheelbarrows that were being pushed up and down the long rows of vegetable fields by older inmates. The work was exhausting but mindless, and it gave him time to reflect on how fortunate he was to be a soldier behind enemy lines instead of a field hand breaking his back.

  The light whisper seemed to carry on the breeze. Except there was no breeze. “They’re transferring the old man.”

  “When?” “Tomorrow,” the guard said as he passed along the rows. “Early.”

  “Where to?”

  “Didn’t hear,” the guard said and was out of earshot, walking ahead, his old Type 56 assault rifle slung muzzle down from his shoulder.

  What had happened? Had he made a mistake? Chiavelli chopped angrily at a bok choy. Had one of the guards betrayed Thayer? No, if that were the case, the old man would be gone already, and he, Chiavelli, would have been interrogated or killed. He remembered what Thayer had said: They’ve held me too long to admit they ever held me at all. With the human-rights accord actually possible, someone might have realized they still had at least one American prisoner. They were probably moving to isolate Thayer once more, storing him where he would never be found.

  He must alert Klein. When the lunch signal sounded, the prisoners fell into line, and the guards marched the ranks to the dirt road where a pickup truck waited to feed them. Chiavelli stalled and fussed until he was able to drop in beside one of the Uigher political prisoners.

  “I need to get word out,” he whispered. The Uigher nodded without looking at him.

  “Tell your contact they’re moving Thayer tomorrow morning. Ask for instructions.”

  Without acknowledging the request, the Uigher got his food and joined the other Uighers at the side of the road. Chiavelli took his meal to the shade of a stubby oak tree. As one of only two Westerners in the prison complex, no one wanted to eat with him. The risk of suspected contamination by outside political ideas was too great. His mind in a turmoil of rotten possibilities, he forced himself to eat. He doubted Klein would have time to set a rescue operation in motion, which left him with no choice but to bust Thayer out before morning himself.

  At which point, he and Thayer would have to take their chances in the open country with the Chinese army after them and everyone else too frightened to help. He did not like those odds.

  Hong Kong Alone in a back room of the CIA safe house, Jon called Fred Klein on a borrowed cell phone.

  “Jesus, Jon! Is that you?” The relief in the Covert-One chief’s voice was palpable.

  “Yes, alive, with quite a bit to report.”

  “I’ll bet.” There was something different about Klein’s breathing. It was slightly uneven, ragged, as if emotion were interfering with the spymaster’s ability to talk. And then the moment was gone. He demanded with his usual brusqueness, “Tell me everything, from the beginning.”

  Jon reported finding the arrogant note from “RM” at Donk & Lapierre, Feng’s capture of him, and Randi’s arrival in Feng’s interrogation chamber. “Ralph Mcdermid was there with Feng. Our escape was more
flamboyant than I liked.” He described Randi’s investigation of the White House leaks, which was why she had been following Mcdermid, and the conversation between Mcdermid and Li Kuonyi and Yu Yongfu that all of them had heard over the CIA phone bug.

  Klein bellowed, “They’re alive?”

  “And with Flying Dragon’s original invoice manifest.”

  Excitement pulsed in the Covert-One chief’s voice. “Dawn two days from now in Dazu?”

  “Yes. Mcdermid pushed the meet back a day. I think he hopes Feng Dun can locate Li and Yu before then and grab the manifest.”

  “Remind me to thank Mcdermid when we lock him up in Leavenworth. His time’s coming, believe me,” Klein vowed in his lowest growl.

  “Can you get me to Dazu by then?”

  “I’ll get you there. As for Ralph Mcdermid and the leaks, I was just recently informed about his role. Disgusting and apparently true.”

  “How do you figure to get me back into China?”

  “When was the last time you made a parachute jump?”

  Jon was not sure he liked that question. “Four or five years.”

  “What about a high-altitude jump?”

  “Depends on how high.”

  “As high as I can get you.”

  “You’re going to whistle up a nice big plane for me?”

  “If I can land it somewhere and not draw attention. Meanwhile, since Mcdermid’s there in Hong Kong, see whether you can turn up anything about him and the leaks and why he’s involved in a smuggling deal like the Empress. On your own and from the CIA. Might as well use them if we can.”

  “You’re all cooperation.”

  That earned a hoarse chuckle. “Glad to have you back, Jon. I missed our amusing repartee.” Klein broke the connection.

  Jon went looking for Randi. Now that Mcdermid and Feng Dun were focused on retrieving the last invoice manifest, their interest in Randi and him would plummet. After all, what could he do without it? If he were careful, that meant he could return to his hotel, change his appearance, and pick up Mcdermid’s trail again until he had to head off to a refresher course in jumping.

  He found Randi sitting in an office with Tommie Parker. “I have to leave now,” he told them.