The Ghost Agent

by Alex Berenson

  Inch by inch the rock womb darkened. Soon Wells couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or closed. He straightened up slowly. Before he could stand, his helmet bumped the ceiling, sending a jolt down his neck and into his damaged shoulder. The passageway had shrunk. The ceiling here was lower, no more than five feet. Wells wondered how much smaller it would get.

  He leaned back against the wall and tried to orient himself. When he looked back the way he’d come, he could see a pinprick of light – or more accurately, a slightly paler shade of black. The outside world was at most a hundred yards off, but it seemed much farther away. Wells’s pulse quickened. Twice in college he’d gone spelunking. But those had been afternoon trips into the White Mountains with a half-dozen friends and a guide, not excursions into the heart of darkness.

  Don’t be dramatic, Wells told himself. If he needed light, he had his headlamp, and a flashlight too, a tiny Maglite hooked to his belt. He closed his eyes and thought back to his days playing linebacker in college, watching the quarterback’s eyes, knowing where the ball was going even before the receivers did, stepping in front of the errant pass and in a few seconds turning the game inside out, the big men on the other team trying to reverse course, all that momentum heading the wrong way as Wells cruised down the sideline to the end zone. Six times in four years he’d returned interceptions for touchdowns. Wells opened his eyes and found that his heart had slowed to its usual pace, forty-eight beats a minute. His fear was gone and he knew he’d be calm for as long as he needed.

  The good news was this cave ought to be easy to navigate. The men who used it wanted shelter, not excitement. Its most dangerous passages should be walled off. And knowing that he might have to fight underground, Wells had come prepared with two special pens. One marked rocks with a fluorescence visible in the dark from hundreds of feet. The other gave off a glow visible under a special ultraviolet light he carried. If the tunnel got complicated, Wells would use the pens to mark his return path.

  Besides the pens, Wells carried glowsticks and two high-intensity flash-bang grenades, concussive bombs designed to stun rather than kill. The flash-bangs, a more powerful version of the ones that police carried, had two big advantages over standard high-explosive grenades. They kicked up less shrapnel, and they wouldn’t collapse the roof of the tunnel and trap Wells inside the mountain.

  Wells also carried an expandable rubber-coated titanium baton, the caver’s equivalent of a blind man’s cane. But he hadn’t bothered with more traditional spelunking equipment, like climbing gear or rope. He had already decided he would turn back if he reached a passage he couldn’t navigate with his hands.

  The air in the cave was cool, almost clammy, but surprisingly fresh. The tear gas was gone. Ventilation shafts must connect the cave to the surface, Wells thought. In the distance, water trickled faintly, an underground spring. Air, water . . . if they had food down here, guerrillas could hide in these tunnels indefinitely. As long as they didn’t go crazy.

  Then, somewhere in the distance, Wells heard a hacking cough that started and stopped like a sputtering engine. The sound of a man who was torn between the need for silence and the even more powerful instinct to force out every molecule of tear gas inside him. The coughing went on a few seconds more, then stopped for good. But Wells had heard enough to know he was on the right track.

  Baton in hand, Wells edged forward, deeper into the darkness. Rushing would only hurt him now. Either this passage led to a much larger network of tunnels, in which case he couldn’t possibly catch the man ahead of him, or it dead-ended and his enemy was waiting. In that case, silence, not speed, was his most important ally.

  Meanwhile, Wells would keep his headlamp dark and hope to sense changes in the layout of the tunnel without seeing them. He would trust his balance, try to handle the curves of the tunnel the same way he felt I-95 under his bike at 125 miles an hour. Of course, he might wind up crawling into a crevasse. But if the man ahead of him was preparing a trap, silence and darkness would be Wells’s best hope.

  The passage twisted right. Wells touched the baton against its walls and ceiling to be sure it hadn’t forked somehow, then edged forward again. A few yards farther on, the tunnel tightened and dropped steeply. Wells tucked his knife sideways into his mouth, his teeth clenched around the rubber handle, and crawled forward inch by inch. He was glad he’d chosen the thin bulletproof vest. A flak jacket would have been uncomfortably tight. The passage here was four feet wide, not quite as high, just big enough to give him space to turn around and crawl back out if he needed to. But if it became much tighter, he would no longer have that option. Had he missed a fork somehow? Was he lost already?

  Wells reached for his headlamp – and again pulled his hand away. The ceiling and walls here were still smooth, proof they’d been bored out over the years. He had to trust he was on course. He began to crawl again. He’d never been anywhere so dark. Unmoored from light, his eyes made their own world. White flashes and red streaks darted through the blackness like fish. Wells took a chance and lit up his watch, cupping his hand over the glowing dial. 2130. He’d been in here barely twenty minutes. He would have guessed hours.

  Already the T-shirt under his bulletproof vest was damp with sweat. A maddening rivulet of sweat trickled down his nose. He wiped it off twice and then gave up. The burn in his right shoulder worsened steadily. Wells wondered whether the injury would betray him in close combat.

  Every couple of minutes, Wells stopped to listen. But he heard only a distant trickle of water. Then he lost even that comfort. Silence and darkness entombed him.

  Crawl. Wait. Listen. Nothing.

  Crawl. Wait. Listen. Nothing.

  Crawl. Wait. Listen. Something.

  A scraping in the distance, the sound of a man moving. After a few moments, the noise stopped. Wells crawled on, faster now, but doubly careful to move in silence. At last the tunnel flattened. When Wells stopped again, he felt that the air had changed, freshened somehow. Which meant that ahead of him this tunnel opened up into some kind of cave. And there he’d find his quarry.

  Wells moved forward, confident now. His adrenaline surged, a natural high stronger than any drug, strengthening and focusing him. The burn in his shoulder faded. Far better to be the hunter than the hunted.

  Yard by yard, the tunnel widened out. Again Wells heard scraping. He unholstered his Makarov.

  Then he saw the light – a hundred yards ahead, maybe less. Wells raised a hand to shield his eyes, which had grown used to the darkness. A flashlight, shining down the tunnel toward him, though the beam didn’t reach him directly because of the curve of the tunnel. Wells flattened himself against the rocks and waited. If he’d been seen, the shooting would start soon enough.

  But instead of shots, he heard a voice. No, voices. Two men, speaking a language Wells didn’t immediately recognize. Not Arabic or Pashto. Certainly not English. The words were muffled, but the men seemed to be arguing. The light snapped off, on again, off again. Then a word rang clearly through the darkness. ‘Pogibshiy.’ Russian for ‘lost.’

  Wells realized he’d caught an incredible break. These men weren’t Taliban guerrillas. They were Russian, hard as that was to believe. And they were confused. They’d reached a junction, and they didn’t know which path to take. One probably wanted to give up, crawl out and take his chances with the Special Forces. The other wanted to push on and risk getting lost forever. Or maybe just sit tight, wait, and come out in a day or two. But the first man feared that the SF would dynamite the cave entrance and again they’d be stuck.

  Because they couldn’t agree, they’d given away their position with their fighting. A stupid mistake, born of fear.

  Now that he knew that he faced two men, prudence – that word again – dictated that Wells turn around, crawl out, and wait. In a space as confined as this, they could easily overpower him even if he surprised them. But what if they didn’t come out? What if they went deeper into the cave? They would either find another path out
or die in here. Either way Wells would lose the chance to interrogate them.

  And Wells wasn’t willing to lose that chance. He needed to know who’d sent them. The Talibs, brutal as they were, were fighting for their God and their country. These Russians were nothing more than mercenaries, killing American soldiers for money.

  Forget prudence.

  Wells crawled forward, Makarov in his hand, flash-bang grenades on his hip. He’d left the baton behind. It was useless to him. He moved fast now, as fast as he could. Which wasn’t all that fast. The tightness of the tunnel restricted him to a crablike scuttle. But he figured he’d reach the end of the passage in less than a minute, and then –

  Then he tripped.

  He banged down hard. Hard and loud. Wells heard the Russians scrambling. A flashlight beamed at him, no more than twenty yards away.

  Seconds later, the shooting started.

  SIXTEEN

  GUANGZHOU, CHINA

  THE THREE ELEVATED highways came together in a jumble of ramps that soared above the warehouses of northern Guangzhou. Once called Canton, the city had been a commercial center in China for centuries. Now Guangzhou was a metropolis of eight million people, the manufacturing heart of southeastern China. The trucks and buses on its highways never stopped, even on damp nights like this one, when rain pounded down and the air seemed too humid to breathe.

  Beneath the highway junction lay a darker world. The concrete pillars that supported the roads formed a kind of room, noisy with the thrum of big engines in low gear. The space had no lights, but it was illuminated secondhand by cars passing on the nearby surface roads. Their headlights gave the space the unsteady glow of an after-hours club, offering glimpses of the rats that dodged through the pylons. The place wasn’t exactly a five-star hotel.

  But it was dry, Jordan Weiging thought. He had walked for hours, looking for a place to escape the rain, ever since those cops had chased him from Huangshi Boulevard. Damned cops. Jordan had learned to hate the police since he came to Guangzhou six months before. They seemed to be everywhere, and they were quick to use their sticks.

  Jordan hadn’t been looking for trouble on Huangshi, only a doorway where he could sleep in the shadows of the street’s skyscrapers. He hadn’t thought anyone would care. Huangshi was Guangzhou’s version of the Las Vegas Strip, giant hotels beside low-rent two-story bars. Even in the rain, whores walked the avenue, smiling and blowing kisses at the men who surveyed them. They wore thigh-high skirts and tight tank tops and were barely in their teens. Even the ugliest ignored Jordan, though. In their own way, they were showing him mercy. He was so obviously broke that tempting him would have been unkind.

  But the police hadn’t been so polite. Tonight they had pulled up as he rested in the shadow of the Guangdong International Hotel and told him to move on. He pleaded with them for mercy, told them he meant no harm, and one seemed ready to let him stay. But the other, a skinny man with dirty yellow teeth, spat at his feet.

  ‘Damned migrant,’ the cop said. ‘We have too many of you rats already.’

  ‘What about them?’ Jordan pointed to four street-walkers. The girls cocked their hips and cooed like pigeons at the cops.

  ‘The hotels don’t mind them. Anyway, they pay us in ways you can’t.’ The cop tapped his wooden nightstick against his hand. ‘Now move.’

  So Jordan moved. The rain cut through his jacket and sweatpants and soaked his feet until he couldn’t feel them. He wanted to lie down on the cracked sidewalk and let the water wash him away. Let the cops find him and do their worst. Then he stumbled onto the space under the junction, where the North Ring Highway met the Airport Toll Road.

  The McDonald’s wrappers and dirty blankets showed him he wasn’t the first to find the space. Jordan wondered why anyone who could afford the luxury of eating at McDonald’s would sleep here. Probably the wrapper had come from the road above.

  At least he was out of the rain. He pulled off his jacket and folded it neatly, then slumped against a pylon on the cleanest patch of ground he could find. Whoever had been here before had a taste for Red Star Erguotou – cheap, strong sorghum liquor. Empty bottles of the stuff littered the place. Jordan reached for one, hoping for a few drops. He was amazed when he heard liquid sloshing inside, almost half a bottle. He took a tiny sip, coughed as the liquor burned his mouth.

  He waited a moment to be sure the bottle wasn’t contaminated, then took a longer swig. His stomach was empty – he hadn’t eaten all day – and the liquor hit him quickly. He rubbed his eyes. He wanted to believe that this bottle proved that his fate had changed. One day, when he was rich, he’d hold it up and explain to his children how he’d come to Guangzhou and built a fortune from nothing.

  He looked at the Red Star bottle, still a quarter full. He ought to save it, he knew, but he couldn’t help himself. Tonight he would drink like a rich man. He tipped up the bottle and gave himself another slug.

  Jordan’s real name was Jiang. Jiang Weiging, in the traditional Chinese style, family name first and given name last. But he thought of himself as Jordan, hoping that some of the luck of Michael Jordan’s name would rub off. In his pack, he carried a dirty Chicago Bulls cap, black with a snorting, red-faced bull over the brim. His most prized possession.

  He had loved basketball as long as he could remember. During the good years, before his father got sick, his family had enough money for a television and a VCD player – a cheap Chinese version of a DVD. Jordan’s father liked basketball too. Together they’d watch highlights from the NBA that had been copied onto video disks and sold for two yuan, barely a quarter, at the market in Hanyuan.

  In his heart, Jiang knew he wasn’t much of a player. He was strong but small, barely five feet. When he was seven, he’d lost his left pinkie and ring fingers to the spokes of his father’s bicycle. So he’d never play in the NBA, the National Basketball Association – he felt a chill at the mere thought of the words, and he wondered whether the rain and the Red Star were making him sick – but he loved the game anyway.

  Americans thought the Chinese liked basketball because China was jealous of America, Jordan thought. But he didn’t want to be American. He couldn’t even imagine what it would be like to be American. He didn’t care about other American sports. But the flow of basketball, the mix of grace and power in the game, felt natural to him.

  Jordan reached into his pack and pulled out his Bulls cap. He rubbed its logo and a genuine smile creased his face. Even now he could see his namesake jumping high, slamming home a dunk.

  Jordan had come to Guangzhou from Chenhe, a village in Sichuan Province. Ziyang, his father, had died of AIDS three years before, after getting HIV from a contaminated needle. He’d been infected while selling plasma to raise money for Jordan’s school fees. To save money, the plasma collection stations reused needles, a horribly efficient way to spread the virus. Whole villages were infected before Beijing outlawed the practice.

  After Ziyang got sick, Jordan took his father’s place in the fields. He couldn’t afford more school anyway. ‘Without money you can’t expect a miracle,’ his mother told him. Jordan had gotten seven years of school, and he figured that was enough. He could add, subtract, multiply, and divide. He read well enough to get by, though the complicated characters confused him. For two years, he and his mother muddled along.

  Then she took sick, losing weight, coughing furiously, clots of phlegm and blood. Jordan brought her to the hospital in Hanyuan. The doctors looked her over and said they couldn’t do anything, even if she could have afforded treatment. She died a few months later, leaving Jordan alone. His nearest relatives were his second cousins, who lived in a village a few miles away and could hardly feed their own children.

  He collected a few yuan by selling off his mother’s clothes and the little television, and set off for Guangzhou, the heart of the Chinese manufacturing miracle. He’d just turned sixteen. Everyone knew there was work to be had in Guangzhou and Shenzen, the twin boomtowns of Guangdong Prov
ince. Boys not much older than Jordan had come back from Guangzhou with motorcycles and computers. Some had even built houses for their families. He would find a job too.

  But he didn’t.

  What Jordan didn’t know, what he couldn’t be expected to understand, was that China was a victim of its own success. The factories that made toys and shoes and cheap furniture, the low-skill products that had provided jobs for tens of millions of migrants like Jordan, were themselves migrating to other Asian countries. In Indonesia and Vietnam, land was cheaper, construction costs lower, the workers equally diligent. In higher-end manufacturing for laptops and televisions and cars, China was still growing. But no chip company would hire a sixteen-year-old boy with eight fingers and a seventh-grade education. For the low-end jobs that were left, in construction and basic laboring, Jordan was competing with men who were older and stronger than he. The cop who’d rousted him was right. Guangzhou had too many migrants.

  So Jordan joined the endless stream of workers who trudged between construction sites and run-down factories, offering their labor for a few yuan a day. Some days he found work, and on those nights he slept with his belly full. But even in the last few weeks the jobs had gotten scarcer, the crowds outside the factories bigger. He’d worked only three times in the last week. He’d spent his money as carefully as he could. He hadn’t permitted himself a bottle of Coke, his favorite treat, in months. Even so, he was down to his last twenty yuan – less than three dollars – hidden in the brim of his Bulls hat. He didn’t want to spend those two crumpled ten-yuan bills, didn’t want to be left with nothing. So he was holding on to them, even though he felt faint with hunger and had begun to hear the voice of his father in his head telling him to eat.

  Maybe tomorrow he could convince a restaurant to let him wash dishes in return for some spoiled vegetables or day-old fish. Yes, tomorrow he’d try the restaurants. He closed his eyes and thought of steaming hot soup, thick with dumplings, as his mother had made during the good years. He took another sip of the Red Star and drifted off to sleep.