The Ghost Agent

by Alex Berenson

  ‘You my prisoner now,’ Cao said. ‘Stay quiet. Understand?’

  Wells nodded. Already he was pulling on his pants. Even the lightest touch of the cloth set his bruised and swollen legs afire. He tried to put on the green T-shirt but couldn’t get his arms over his head. Coursing under the sharp pain of his broken ribs was a deep throbbing bruising that was getting worse by the minute. He wondered if he was bleeding internally.

  Cao gently pulled Wells’s T-shirt over his head. Then he cuffed Wells’s hands behind his back and nudged him forward. They picked their way through the blood and brains on the floor as carefully as children stepping over sidewalk cracks. And not for the first time Wells wondered why he’d been allowed to live, and what price he would pay.

  Cao slid the cell door open. Behind it a short corridor ended in another steel door. Cao punched numbers on a digital keypad until the second door snapped open. They walked down a concrete hallway to a double set of gates where a guard sat in civilian clothes. Cao said a few words. The guard nodded and the gates slid open. As they walked through, Cao pointed to the cell where Wells had been held, pointed at his watch, said something sharp. Wells imagined he was warning the guard against entering the cell. He probably didn’t need to explain much. Generals rarely did.

  And then they were out, into the Beijing haze. Wells had the strange sense of being on a movie studio back lot, rounding a corner and traveling from New York to Paris in a second. He’d figured they were in the belly of a military base outside the city. Instead they were in the middle of Beijing, and the nondescript building behind them could have been a cheaply built elementary school, two stories high and concrete. In fact Wells could hear children shouting not far away. Only the guardhouse at the front gate and the razor wire atop the property’s outer walls offered a clue to the building’s real purpose.

  Cao helped Wells into a jeep. They rolled up to the thick black gate at the front entrance, and a uniformed soldier jumped out of the guardhouse and trotted over. He pointed at Wells, but before he could say a word Cao began to shout. Without understanding a word, Wells knew that Cao was reaming out the soldier for daring to question him. The soldier turned tail and pulled the gate open with almost comic speed.

  Five minutes later Cao turned into an alley and unlocked Wells’s cuffs.

  ‘What about the kid who gave me the flash drive?’ Before anything else happened, Wells needed to hear the kid was okay.

  ‘The kid?’

  ‘The boy. In the Forbidden City.’

  ‘Nothing happen. He not know. I give him fifty yuan, tell him he playing game,’ Cao said. Wells bowed his head. He wanted to rest but feared what he would see if he closed his eyes. ‘No other way,’ Cao said. ‘We have spy in your embassy. Know you coming.’

  Wells understood. Cao had known that the PLA had intercepted his message to the embassy. He’d known that whoever the CIA sent would be arrested at the meeting point. He had no way to warn his contact off or change the meeting place. But no one would question his presence at the prison afterward with Li.

  Still, Wells couldn’t see how he and Cao could possibly escape. As soon as someone found the bodies in the interrogation room, all of China would be searching for them. ‘Why didn’t you just defect?’ Wells thinking out loud. He figured his broken ribs gave him the right to ask.

  ‘Didn’t know about spy in embassy. Wanted to stay in China.’

  ‘When will they find the men you shot?’

  ‘Two, three hours. I warned the guards, don’t go to the room.’ Smart. Cao had bought them some time, Wells thought. But soon enough another officer would come along with different orders. ‘Anyway, things very bad now with America,’ Cao said. ‘We torpedo Decatur.’

  ‘You really must want war.’

  ‘America not understand what happening,’ Cao said.

  ‘So tell me.’

  In his strained English, Cao explained to Wells what Li had done. How he’d betrayed the Drafter to the North Koreans, made the deal with the Iranians, and maneuvered the United States and China closer to war. When Cao was finished, Wells felt like a treasure hunter who’d drilled through a mountain to find an empty tomb. But not quite empty. In a corner, a single, tiny gold figurine. One man? One man had brought the world’s two most powerful nations to the brink of war?

  ‘Why doesn’t anyone stop him?’ Wells said when Cao was done. ‘On the Standing Committee.’

  ‘They afraid they look weak. And also, they don’t like America telling China what to do. America should be quiet when China make agreement with Iran.’

  ‘But the defector, Wen Shubai, he said –’

  For the first time, Cao raised his voice. ‘Wen Shubai not real defector! Li Ping send Wen Shubai to fool you.’

  ‘But the mole – Wen gave us enough to catch our mole –’ Wells sputtered silent. Of course. Keith Robinson had been the bait that Wen had used to prove his bona fides. Li had known that Robinson’s most useful days as a mole were behind him. He’d told Wen to sacrifice Robinson. That way, Wen’s defection would seem credible.

  Then, after Wen had proven his reliability by giving up Keith, he’d encouraged the United States to confront China – exactly the wrong strategy, one that gave Li Ping the leverage he needed internally to take control. Give up a pawn to position your forces for a wider attack. The gambit had worked perfectly. No wonder the agency and the White House hadn’t been able to understand why confronting China had backfired so badly. Li’s foes on the Standing Committee were probably equally bewildered that the situation had deteriorated so fast. Li had played the United States against his internal enemies, and vice versa. For the biggest prize in history, the chance to rule the most populous nation in the world.

  ‘Li want to be Mao,’ Cao said.

  ‘To save China.’

  ‘Yes. But China not need saving.’ Cao gestured at the prosperous street behind them. ‘Li good man, but he not see all this.’

  Good man? Wells wasn’t so sure, not after the casual way in which Li had waved a hand across his throat and ordered Wells dead. He says it is nothing to him whether you live or die. The casual cruelty of a man who had risked billions of lives in his quest to rule. But they could save that discussion for later.

  ‘Then what?’ he said to Cao. ‘When he takes over? Does he want war?’

  ‘No war. He think once he take over, he make everything okay.’

  ‘Nice of him.’ Wells laughed. A mistake. The agony in his ribs surged and he bit his tongue to keep from filling the jeep with vomit. He closed his eyes and tried to be still. Cao squeezed his shoulder until the pain faded.

  ‘So . . . General . . .’ Wells fought to stay focused, keep the fog away. ‘How do we stop him? Can you tell the Standing Committee?’

  ‘Say what to committee? That Li wants power? That I spy for America?’

  Wells saw Cao’s point. ‘Then why did you bring me here if you didn’t have anything?’

  Cao was silent. Then: ‘I don’t know. I thought –’

  Wells fought down his anger. He couldn’t spare the energy. He rested a hand against his wounded ribs and tried to think things through. ‘The committee wants to stop Li. Some of them, anyway.’

  ‘Yes. Minister Zhang hate him. But he afraid.’

  ‘I understand.’ Cao might have stars on his collar, but he wasn’t meant to lead, Wells saw already. He was a born subordinate. Smart and tough. But unimaginative. ‘We need proof he’s planned this all along. Something they can see. What did he hide from the committee?’

  ‘Never told them about Wen.’

  Wells felt a flash of hope, but it faded. The agency would need time to prove Wen’s defection was fake, and time was just what they didn’t have. ‘What else?’

  The jeep was silent. Wells waited, meanwhile wondering if Cao had an escape route planned or if they’d be reduced to making a desperate break for the embassy.

  ‘What else. Li had one other operation. Top secret. Started last year. I set
up the money.’

  ‘The funding.’

  ‘Yes. Funding. Said United States would be angry if it knew. Was in Afghanistan.’

  Just like that, Wells knew. ‘You were helping the Taliban.’

  ‘He never told me, but I think so. But no Chinese soldiers.’

  ‘No. Russian special forces.’ Wells wondered if Pierre Kowalski had known all along where his money had come from.

  ‘The account was in Banco Delta Asia,’ Wells said. ‘In Macao. Yes?’

  Cao didn’t hide his surprise. ‘How you know this?’

  ‘Did he tell you what this was for, Cao?’

  ‘For Iran. All he said.’

  Of course. Wells saw the logic of the scheme. The Iranians had worried that China might walk away from the nukes-for-oil deal. By supporting the Taliban, Li had convinced Iran he was serious about standing up to America.

  ‘Cao, those records prove Li has been planning war against America since last year. And he never told the Standing Committee. If you get them, we can stop him.’

  If we live long enough to get them out of China, Wells didn’t say. If my guess is right, and they prove the money went to Kowalski. If the White House can get them back to Beijing, and to Zhang. And if Zhang can use them to get control of the committee back from Li.

  But first they had to get the records, and get out.

  ‘No war?’ Cao said.

  ‘No war.’ Maybe.

  ‘Then I get them.’

  Cao reversed the jeep onto the road, looking sidelong at Wells as he did. ‘What your name? Real name.’

  Crazy but true. Cao had saved his life, killed three of his own countrymen to do so, and didn’t even know his name. Wells wiped his hand against his mouth and came away with a pungent coating of dried blood and vomit. ‘John Wells.’

  ‘Time Square Wells?’

  ‘Time Square Wells.’ Wells wondered if Cao was ready to move to Florida, live in a witness protection program. No matter what happened next, this would be his last day in China. ‘But if we get out, you can call me Tiananmen Square Wells. When we go to Disney World.’

  ‘Disney World? Don’t understand.’ The jeep hit a bump and Wells moaned a little.

  ‘Me neither, Cao.’

  Fifteen minutes later Cao honked his way across four lanes of traffic and swung into an alley cluttered with wooden crates. A cloud of flies hovered around a pile of rotten vegetables. Normally the trash would hardly have bothered Wells, but the beating had left him weak and queasy. His green T-shirt was black with his blood. His heart was randomly speeding and slowing – thump, pause, thump, pause, thump-thump-thump-thump. He figured he was coming down off the adrenaline rush that had carried him through the immediate aftermath of the beating. Or maybe they’d done more damage to him than he first thought.

  Cao stopped behind a low concrete building with a heavy steel door. The words ‘Dumping Home’ were painted, in black and in English, on a splintered wooden sign. Dumping Home? Wells wondered if he was delirious, but when he looked again, the sign hadn’t changed.

  Cao pointed at the building. ‘Friends inside. Christians.’

  Wells wondered if he should mention his own confused beliefs. Probably not the time.

  Cao honked. The back door creaked open and a man in a dirty chef’s apron jogged over. He and Cao spoke briefly before he nodded and ran back inside. Cao tapped his watch. Four p.m.

  ‘One hour. If I not back, you go with them. To Yantai –’

  ‘Yantai?’ Wells was struck again by how little he knew about this country.

  ‘Port. Five hundred kilometers from here. Shandong Province.’

  Now Wells understood, or thought he did. Shandong Province – the name literally meant ‘east of the mountains’ – extended into the Yellow Sea toward the Korean Peninsula. They were going to make a run for South Korea.

  ‘They take you to boat.’

  ‘To Korea?’

  ‘Yes. Korea.’ Cao’s lips twisted in what could have been a smile. ‘Make sure not North Korea.’ Cao reached into his bag and handed Wells a little pistol, a .22 snub.

  Wells pulled back the slide. It was loaded all right. It was too small and inaccurate to be useful at more than thirty feet. Still, better than nothing.

  Two men emerged from the Dumping Home and trotted to the jeep.

  ‘Rest,’ Cao said.

  ‘Good luck, Cao. Vaya con Dios.’ Wells extended a hand and Cao shook it awkwardly. Cao reached across Wells and opened his door. The men helped lift him out, staggering under his weight. Wells could hardly feel the ground under his feet, as if his legs were encased in ski boots that ran from ankle to hip. The men guided him to the door, as Cao put the jeep in reverse and rolled out of the alley.

  Inside, Wells found himself in a busy kitchen. Two women and two teenage boys were making dumplings, their hands flickering over the balls of dough, shaping and smoothing each one before moving to the next. Wells understood now. The Dumping Home was a dumpling restaurant.

  The men started to let Wells go, but as they did his legs buckled. One of the women squawked and the men grabbed him and guided him to a storeroom off the kitchen. They sat him down and left. Wells tried to rest, but if he closed his eyes for too long the dizziness took him. He focused on the room around him, looking from shelf to shelf, examining the baskets of vegetables and spices, the glass jars of green tea.

  A couple of minutes later, he wasn’t sure how long, the women came in, carrying a pot of bubbling water, a soup bowl, and a big shopping bag. Wells watched mutely as they extracted the tools for minor surgery from the bag: two quart-sized brown plastic bottles, a water bottle, scissors, a knife, a tube of something that looked like antibacterial cream, a roll of surgical tape, and a half-dozen clean white cloths. One of the women, tall and thin, her hair streaked with gray, put a soft hand on his shoulder.

  Meanwhile, the other woman, the shorter and stockier of the two, lifted the bowl of soup to Wells’s mouth. He sipped, a few drops at a time. Chicken stock, with a few mushy carrots. Liquid kindness. His stomach clenched, but he held it down. He drank as much as he could, maybe a half-cup, and then shook his head. She nodded and set the bowl aside. Now the gray-haired woman was cutting off his shirt, careful not to touch the flayed skin underneath. When she was done, she gasped, one quick breath. Wells looked down and wished he hadn’t. His chest and abs were skinned raw, and blood was oozing from the wounds. No wonder he couldn’t close his eyes without getting the spins. He had to make sure he stayed hydrated. If he wasn’t careful, the blood loss would put him into shock.

  The gray-haired woman dipped a cloth into the pot of boiling water. Then she unscrewed the plastic bottles and poured their contents over the cloth. She held the cloth to his face, giving him a whiff of rubbing alcohol and hydrogen peroxide. Wells understood. She wanted him to know what she was about to do. He nodded. She pressed the cloth to his chest.

  After the beating he’d endured, the burn of alcohol and peroxide was barely a pinprick. Wells nodded. The woman seemed to understand. She pulled away the cloth and poured the rubbing alcohol directly onto his chest. She wiped him down with a fresh cloth, then rubbed the antibacterial ointment across his chest. She said something to the other woman. They leaned him forward and slowly they wrapped a long white bandage around his torso, compressing it tightly. Apparently the gray-haired woman had decided Wells had a high pain tolerance.

  When they were done, his chest and abs were bound in white. Despite the pressure of the cloth against his broken ribs, Wells felt stronger than he had just a few minutes before. He reached for the soup and slowly sipped it until the bowl was empty.

  ‘Good as new,’ he said.

  For the first time since the beatings started, Wells could think clearly enough to see his next move. He reached into his pockets. There it was. His new phone, bought five days before and registered to Jim Wilson of Palo Alto. Still in his pants. He’d debated carrying it today before deciding that there was no reas
on an American businessman wouldn’t have a phone with him. Now he was glad he had. Extremely.

  He removed the slim Motorola from his pocket, turned it on, saw he had full service. Thank God for technology. Wells wondered whether the Chinese had put a bug in the phone, before deciding they probably hadn’t. They’d had no reason to imagine that he would escape.

  Anyway, he had to reach Exley now, before the Chinese cut off all communication to the United States. He’d be as quick as he could. Wells called her cell phone, not the 415 number but her real one, the one she always carried. Three rings. And then –

  ‘Hello. Hello?’ Washington was twelve hours behind, Wells remembered. She must have been asleep, or wishing she were.

  ‘Jennifer.’

  ‘Yes. John.’ She’d blown his cover, but he didn’t much care. In his name, he heard all her questions: Where are you? Are you okay?

  ‘Remember where Ted Beck went down, Jenny?’ In the Yellow Sea, southwest of Incheon.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I need a pickup. In that vicinity. Or west. As far west as possible.’ Even if the Chinese were monitoring this call, Wells didn’t think they would understand what he meant.

  ‘When?’

  Five hundred kilometers to Yantai, then a boat ride. ‘Eight to twenty-four hours. Any longer, I’m in trouble.’

  ‘Can you help us find you?’ Exley was wondering if he had a transponder or any other equipment to aid the search.

  ‘No. But Red Team’ – the standard American military description of the enemy – ‘will be looking. Hard.’

  ‘Figured.’

  ‘One more thing. Whatever they’re planning, make them wait. No counterattacks. I know why it happened, all of it. And we can stop it.’

  ‘I’ll tell them.’

  ‘I love you, Jenny.’

  ‘Love you too, John.’ Exley sighed. Even from 6,000 miles away, Wells knew her tone, sad and prideful at once. ‘Try not to die.’

  Wells hung up and turned off the phone. Now it was up to Exley to find a way to make the White House and the Pentagon back off for a day or two, long enough for him and Cao to get out.