The email in Solarez' inbox from Birdie might as well be iridescent, that’s how easily Solarez spots it.
Have information about the China/North Korea meeting. Ryan and Amanda Michaels in China. Wire $100,000.00 USD to my account for more info. I need a favor too this time.
Solarez reads the email again, then checks the time at the top of his screen: 1:00 a.m. Knowing he can’t complete the transfer without approval, he dials the CIA director’s home phone number. After the third ring the director answers.
"Sir, I'm sorry to bother you so late, but Birdie claims to have information pertinent to the Chinese-North Korean summit tomorrow. He also knows about Ty Ryan and Amanda Michaels. He wants $100,000. I need your approval for the wire transfer."
"You're in favor?"
“I don’t think we really have a choice. If we don’t pay for the intel and Ryan somehow manages to disrupt the summit, it’ll wreck our diplomacy and cause increased tension between us and China. As for North Korea, their dictator is so volatile, who the hell knows. Plus, we need to get Amanda back to the U.S. safely and as soon as possible. So, yeah, I think we need to pay for whatever he knows.”
The CIA director gives his approval and Solarez contacts his assistant to complete the transfer. Once he has the confirmation, he emails Birdie.
Wire is complete. Need info ASAP.
Solarez nervously taps the desk next to his laptop. When a response doesn’t arrive right away, he gets up and walks over to his bar where he pours two shots of Jack Daniels in a cocktail glass before carrying it to the kitchen to add some ice from the dispenser on his refrigerator. He downs a couple swallows as he paces for a minute or two. Hearing the familiar ping, he returns to his laptop to read the message.
Lu Li Xi holding Justin Michaels but I don’t know where. Contract out on Ryan. China believes he is plotting to disrupt the summit, but not how he plans to do so. Need to ask favor over secure line. Send number and I will call you, noon your time tomorrow.
Solarez provides his encrypted satellite phone number and tracks down Britt Hays in China.
Chapter 90
Intercept
The black limousine approaches the entrance to the United States Embassy in Beijing; the first black iron gate swings open, and the guard with a semiautomatic weapon over his shoulder steps toward the driver’s side of the vehicle and peers inside. He nods, waving him forward with his free arm; a second iron gate swings open, and the limo continues driving to the embassy.
Britt Hayes meets with the CIA station chief and a state department officer under diplomatic attaché cover. They review the information obtained in Guandong Province, tracking every significant move of Liza Zhang. The dossier reveals Zhang visited a factory operated by Morse Clothing, then within the next 24 hours boarded a jet and flew to Beijing, where she rented two cars from different rental agencies under aliases and had them delivered to the guest parking lots of two separate hotels. Zhang herself got a room at the Emperor's Plaza, a hotel within blocks of the Beijing International Airport. An advance team of two agents shadowed Liza and surreptitiously confirmed the location of her seventh floor room.
The CIA director provides Britt the assistance she requests: one agent for the interception of Liza Zhang, and two inside analysts at the embassy. Given Zhang's prior CIA training and the uncertainty of whether or not she is working alone, the details are run through a second time. Amanda Michaels and Ty Ryan have disappeared; while the CIA is fairly certain their goal is to disrupt the North Korean-Chinese summit, none of the intelligence channels have located them. Britt still hasn’t figured out their plan, but she’s confident Zhang is the best way to find them.
The Emperor’s Plaza Hotel lobby is sparsely furnished with contemporary white plastic couches topped with orange cushions and a few matching end tables. The center of the lobby features a long rectangular table with numerous large computer monitors for guest use. After she arrives and confirms the lack of surveillance cameras, Britt settles on one of the couches and pretends to browse the internet on her tablet computer. Her associate has been shadowing Liza Zhang for the last hour and just messaged Britt, she is returning.
Liza feels satisfied with the way the plans are coming together. She daydreams about the $200 K landing in her secret bank account. Maybe after this mission Ryan would join her for a vacation to New Zealand and Australia, two places she has always wanted to tour. The hotel rooms are secured, the rental cars placed, the weaponry she managed to secrete onto the ferry was stashed in the lockers. In about an hour, she will walk to the Beijing train station to pin the pink marker on the bulletin board, notifying Ryan the operation is on. Until then, she needs to bide her time. Assuming Ryan doesn't lay any additional tasks on her, this is the easiest several hundred thousand dollars she has made in her clandestine career.
She stops at the Starbucks attached to her hotel, one of several that have sprouted up in Beijing over the past few years. The décor is remarkably similar to those at home, with the exception of the signs hanging over the cashier being in Chinese. A café Americano espresso, no sweetener, just the jolt she needs. As she swings the doors open to the hotel lobby, she takes a look around, assessing the various international visitors hurrying in different directions.
Spying Liza over her screen, Britt closes the laptop and slips it into her carry bag, which also conceals her weapon. Liza walks to the bank of elevators and Britt follows a few steps behind, relieved no one else is headed in their direction. Within a few seconds, the elevator doors open, and the two women enter. Liza presses the button for the seventh floor and Britt leans forward and selects 12. The elevator chimes softly as it passes each floor.
Just before they reach Liza’s floor, Britt draws the pistol with silencer out of her bag and points it directly at Liza’s back. "Liza, don't move. We know who you are, and we have some questions."
Liza was trained by the same organization as Britt, so Britt takes nothing for granted. "Well, I don't know who you are, who do you work for?" she inquires, feigning compliance. She turns as if to get a look at her captor, but instead tosses the hot coffee in Britt's face and backhands her in the torso. Britt recoils against the metal back wall of the elevator, her pistol now aimed at the ceiling. She kicks her leg forward to smash her heel into Liza, but it glances off her thigh.
On the seventh floor, the elevator doors start to open. As soon as her body can slide through, Liza bursts out, but her forward motion is met by an equally powerful motion—a punch in the gut from the operative working in tandem with Britt. Liza drops like a boxer down for the count, barely past the threshold of the elevator doors. Britt composes herself and steps out of the elevator, looking in both directions for witnesses.
Archer, her associate, says, "I'll get her, you get the door.”
He slings Liza over his shoulder and carries her like an oversized ragdoll to the door, which Britt opens. Dropping Liza on one of the two beds, Archer cuffs her hands and zip-ties her legs. Britt rifles through Liza's pants pockets and finds her hotel key.
"Give me a minute, I’m going to see what else she brought with her.”
Britt walks down the hall and enters Liza's room. She locates a laptop and tosses it toward the foot of the bed. The main part of the suitcase is filled with clothes and shoes, but in a side compartment Britt finds a phone, which she decides must be Chinese because it doesn’t resemble any American model. This may come in handy. More clothes hang in the valet area, so she runs her hands through all the pockets. Nothing. Same with the clear toiletry bag on the bathroom counter. She scoops up the laptop and phone and heads back down the hall. A young couple approaches from the opposite direction, so Britt walks past her door and waits until the couple enters a different room before doubling back.
Chapter 91
Familiar Voice
Amanda hears the announcement, and waits for the English translation: “Beijing East train station, five minutes.”
As the other passengers in the sleeper b
erth scurry to organize their belongings, Amanda turns on her burner phone. When it powers up, a message flashes on the screen.
Compromised. Meet at second location.
What the hell does that mean? She powers down the phone. Where is the second location? Yeah, in my cryptic notes.
Amanda considers going in search of Ryan before the train stops, but she doesn’t even know where his room is. She feels the train changing speed. Wait, the disguise. Ryan said she should be wearing the young Chinese girl mask when they arrive in Beijing. Amanda rummages through her backpack, locating the items she needs, smiles a quick goodbye to the woman across the aisle, and bolts from the sleeper berth.
She finds the public restroom and locks herself in. She carefully rolls the thin, pliable silicone over the top of her head and face and under her chin, checking the fit in the mirror. Halfway convincing. Then she slips on the white face mask and adjusts the elastic behind her head so it fits over her nose and mouth. She still wears the orange UVA hoodie with the navy blue “V” logo. It looks a little strange, but who knows, maybe she visited Virginia, lots of foreigners do. Amanda turns on the phone again. Nothing since Ryan’s earlier message. She shuts it off, a little voice inside telling her not to panic. But her adrenaline has amped up big time.
The train slows even more, creeping toward the South Beijing Railway Station. Showtime, she hears Ryan saying in her head. How does he know we’ve been compromised?
She peeks outside the bathroom and sees a number of people walking down the aisle toward the exit door. Ryan was going to find the rental car, and she is supposed to meet him at Concourse A. If he’s not there in 10 minutes, she is to abort and go to the contingency location. Is that what he meant by the second location?
Masses of people exit the train cars. As she hits the concrete platform, Amanda looks left and right, but doesn’t see Ryan. She follows the crowd, pretending she knows where she’s going. She takes the escalator up and sees the Concourse A sign, which reminds her she needs to look for Liza’s mark at the coffee shop. She stops at an information desk in the middle of the terminal to ask for directions, then realizes how strange it would be for a Chinese woman, which is who she is supposed to be, to speak in English or very broken Chinese. Instead, she finds a map of the station and searches for the nearest coffee shop. A mug with a swirl rising from it shows it is to her left, a few hundred feet away.
She quickly heads toward the Starlings Coffee Shop. Past the front counter, down a short hallway, she finds the women’s restroom and the bulletin board. Business cards and all kinds of little notes covered with Chinese characters remind Amanda how far from home she really is. She frantically scans the board and lifts up some of the overlapping papers, but there’s no trace of a pink peace sign.
Amanda wheels around. She foolishly entertains the idea of getting a cup of coffee for about half a second before coming to her senses. The mission has definitely been compromised, maybe even more than once, based on Ryan’s message and now the missing peace sign from Liza. She dashes away from the restroom area and out into the main concourse. If Ryan did get a rental car, she needs to get to arrivals. Several uniformed guards with submachine guns run past her and across several lanes of traffic as she makes her way through the automatic doors to the passenger pick-up area. No, they couldn’t be looking for us, could they? She adjusts the white face mask, assuring herself it’s in place, and watches for Ryan and a rental car. Instead, she just sees more armed police running her way.
Rows of taxis and cars slowly come and go. Amanda turns on her phone, twelve minutes have passed. Remembering Ryan’s instructions to only wait for ten, she gets a sinking feeling in her stomach. Ryan thought of everything. How could he not be here to pick me up? I must be at the wrong place. She scans the cars one last time before trotting back inside to check the signs, which show the familiar Hertz and Avis logos Ryan specifically mentioned. She glances back at her phone, 15 minutes. I’ve got to text him, she decides.
Concourse A. Are you coming?
The phone vibrates.
No. Second meeting place.
No? She finds herself feeling light-headed and gasping for breath, the corpuscles of blood pulsing violently through her temples.
This is exactly why Ryan had concerns about me as his mission buddy. I refuse to prove him right, I need to calm down. Think. She reaches into the pocket of her hoodie and pulls out a wad of Chinese currency. I have yuan. I can pay my way, I just don’t know which way that should be.
Amanda looks up and again sees several police officers, this time standing guard outside the terminal. She pushes her hoodie up over her head, paranoid her disguise may not be enough, and walks purposefully through the doors, past the officers, toward the long line of taxis.
It dawns on her she doesn’t know the name of a single street or hotel in Beijing, but now that she has her wits about her, she remembers she is to meet Ryan tomorrow at 11:00 a.m. if they don’t find each other at the station. She’ll scroll through the notes on her phone to find their rendezvous point later, but right now she’s on her own. As she goes through the list of American hotel chains in her head, trying to decide which ones might have hotels in Beijing, she swears she hears a voice speaking English from behind her.
"Rachel? Rachel Michelin?”
She is momentarily blindsided. They know I’m here, and why. She doesn’t turn to face the voice right away; instinctively swings her backpack off her shoulder, to reach for the pistol in her backpack. Then she freezes. I know that voice. It’s An Ling, her checkers opponent. She slings the pack back on to her shoulder and with her other hand stealthily removes her mask and stuffs it into the front pouch of her hoodie before turning around a second or two later.
An is leaning out of the rear window of a bright red compact car a couple lanes of traffic away.
"I thought that was you, Rachel, I saw your hooder. Do you need a ride somewhere?”
Amanda knows An Ling means “hoodie” but decides now is definitely not the time to correct her English. Amanda can see the car is driven by her father, and her mother occupies the front seat. She walks across the two lanes of stopped traffic to her newfound friends.
“I was supposed to be picked up by a tour guide driver, but there must’ve been a mix-up. I waited for them for a while and finally just decided to take a taxi to the hotel."
"We can give you a ride. Or, wait one minute." An Ling pokes her head back inside the car and Amanda can tell she's talking with her parents. She reappears with a smile on her face.
"We have a room, you can be a visitor at our home tonight. We do not live far from station. Then you can get a taxi ride tomorrow. My parents said this plan okay."
A horn blasts behind An Ling’s dad; he moves a few feet forward and partly onto the raised median to allow the impatient driver to go around him.
"Rachel, it is fine, we give you a ride and you may stay with us one night,” An Ling’s mother confirms. The trunk opens to reveal several suitcases, and An’s dad gets out to help her squeeze her duffel into the tiny space.
Amanda considers the weapons she is carrying. “Not a problem, I’ll hold my everything on my lap,” she says, and walks toward the rear door. She climbs into the car on the right, An's brother sits on the hump in the middle, and An Ling sits on the left.
"I never thought I would see you again, what do you call it in English, when you are, uh, surprised?” An asks Rachel.
"A coincidence.”
“That’s it, co-in-ci-dence. You can teach me more about American music," An says, and her dad, makes a strange face that Amanda notices in the rearview mirror.
Amanda feels safe, at least temporarily.
Chapter 92
An Ling
The car pulls into a driveway in a residential neighborhood, which An’s dad explains is called the Baizhifang residential district. Amanda notices the home is a detached two-story building, not an apartment, and assumes An Ling’s parents must be paid well as univ
ersity professors. There is a small patch of a front yard with some shrubs and a pebble walkway from the driveway to the front door. Mrs. Ling shows Amanda to a guest room with a simple fold-out bed and a hall bathroom. There are a couple paintings, which appear to be of Chinese temples.
“We are pleased to have you as our guest, Rachel. If we can drive you to meet your tour tomorrow, please let us know in the morning.”
“I’m sure I can find transportation. Thank you for having me. Can I pay you for—”
“No, no. Please.” An’s mom walks back downstairs.
Sheets lay on the couch, waiting to be put on that evening. An Ling sits on the floor next to it, showing great interest in everything American and revering every word that comes out of Amanda's mouth.
"Do you listen to Beyoncé? I also listen to Jay Z, but we do not receive best music in China. We receive it years after you do.”
"I like Jay Z," Amanda offers. "I've got Run This Town with Rihanna on one of my playlists. Have you heard Bitch Better Have My Money?"
"Oh no, that is a U.S. obscenity word. China does not allow bad U.S. words in songs. We have to get those on uh, unauthorized website. Chinese government deletes websites, then they come again, then they delete. That is what it is like here. Scared Chinese minds get poisoned by American culture."
Amanda shakes her head.
“We have lots of problems, but artists say anything they wanna say.”
As An gets lost in her music again, Amanda’s mind turns back to the mission. How will I make it to the rendezvous point? Is the mission still a go?
The news on the TV opposite the couch catches her eye. It’s showing the Chinese President, followed by clips of the North Korean dictator. An Ling looks up and stares at the screen too.
Targeting the Telomeres, A Thriller Page 26
