Sea of Lies: An Espionage Thriller

by Bradley West

  “Why are you calling me? Shouldn’t you be onto Burns?” Constantine wanted no part of what was looking like a career-ender.

  “Because you called me last night when I reported that Nolan and the Chinese woman had checked into the Jetwing Blue’s honeymoon bungalow. You said it would be a feather in our caps if we had ears on Nolan.”

  “Yes, I remember what I said. Now what I propose—”

  “Hold on, Dick. It’s the surveillance team.” Doyle took the other call while Constantine contemplated his next posting: probably washing Agency vehicles in Sierra Leone.

  “Long’s dead. Found in the bushes outside the bungalow by my people. It seems Nolan and the woman just drove off toward town, so they took a look rather than follow.”

  “Nolan murdered him?”

  “Not according to my men: professional job with a slit throat. Left hand over the mouth and a right-handed cut that severed the trachea and carotid artery. Lots of blood. Body searched and everything taken.”

  “God in heaven! What do we do now?”

  “I don’t know what you propose, but I’m going to turn this city inside out until I find Nolan,” she said.

  “No, you’re not! That’s exactly what Burns said not to do. For the time being, you do nothing. We may have already ruined whatever the play was here. It all depends on who did the killing. For all we know, it could be a Russia or even a China hit. We’ll figure it out, but right now you tell your team to stand down, or else we’ll both be shining shoes outside Grand Central Terminal!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHANGES IN ATTITUDES

  THURSDAY MARCH 13, BEIJING, RANGOON, COLOMBO

  Yi Xiubao’s palms were already damp and he wasn’t even in the president’s office. He nodded to new head of MSS, Ding Taiping, who also looked nervous. A member of the president’s security entourage showed them from the anteroom to a small meeting room off Gao’s office. The two men waited in silence another fifteen minutes and shot to their feet when the president burst into the room. Gao impatiently waved them back to their seats. Fixing Yi with a stare, the president said, “I named you secretary of the Central Commission for Intelligence and elevated you to the Politburo Standing Committee to solve problems, not create them.” Gesturing toward the MSS vice minister, Gao continued, “Ding’s been in office barely two days and already his head is on the block as well.”

  “I . . . I . . . I don’t know what you mean,” Yi stammered. He was simultaneously confused, humiliated and insulted by the president’s unfair statement in front of a junior Politburo member.

  “We’re on the verge of launching a major military operation, Polar Bear, supported by two interlocking intelligence initiatives, Dolphin and Menander. You jeopardized everything by sending the deputy of Liu Zhenchang, the man Vice Minister Ding replaced on Tuesday, to Sri Lanka in the company of a rogue CIA officer.”

  “I don’t see how this has to do with—”

  “If you don’t see very quickly, at tomorrow’s PSC meeting there will be eight chairs filled instead of nine. Now listen very carefully: that woman was Liu’s protégé. She may be prepared to sacrifice her career out of loyalty. A trait I admire, but one you must anticipate and thwart.”

  “Liu? He’s out of action. I . . . I have him under house arrest at his country home,” Yi stammered.

  “Yes, and this morning, according to Ding’s report, which I received an hour ago, he had two visitors: Joint Chiefs of Staff General Yao and Professor Lai. They spent seventy-five minutes with him in a room you didn’t bug. And if you think they were discussing anything other than a division of power should I be ousted, then you should be running a pig farm in Kunming.”

  “I . . . I didn’t receive that report,” Yi said, glancing to his right at Ding. Ding averted his eyes. I’ll be damned, thought Yi. That shifty bastard has been in office two days and he’s already going around me.

  “What you see or don’t see isn’t important right now. What you hear and what you do are vital. At yesterday’s PSC meeting, you said the Iranians promised to release the six Unit #61398 programmers from Beirut. Has that happened?”

  “The word last evening was that secure travel arrangements were taking the Iranians longer than anticipated, and—”

  “So they’re still in that Beirut basement?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Leave them there. Under normal circumstances, we’d use those nuclear weapons triggers as collateral against the return of our people, but now I’m alerted to the information passed along last night from Yu in Singapore. Counter to what you told the PSC yesterday, MH370 didn’t crash with complete loss of life. The CIA hijacked the plane—if the fugitive agent Nolan is to be believed—with two or three passengers offloaded before it took off again and disappeared. Nolan claimed a uranium purification centrifuge was also offloaded. This meshes with what Iran’s ambassador told us. If true, then Rear Admiral Zhao and Iran’s scientist are under interrogation by the Americans. That would mean that Operation Menander will fail. Depending on what Zhao knows, he could also imperil the Dolphin misinformation campaign. While he doesn’t know about Polar Bear, without the DDOS, we cannot execute the masterstroke. Nothing less than the country’s top military and foreign policy objectives are at stake.

  “Meanwhile, you and Ding agreed that Yu—who was reassigned to run Singapore station—could be entrusted with the most delicate of assignments. She is to convince the CIA officer to destroy his copy of Watermen’s NSA files in return for the release of his family?”

  Ding and Yi looked at one another. Finally, Yi spoke. “Yes. To protect Dolphin, we do not want the CIA thinking we have any doubts as to the authenticity of the NSA files we took from Watermen in Hong Kong last year. As long as the CIA thinks we were fooled by their fakes, the more apt they are to accept as genuine the false information we feed them through the compromised coastal national defense network. This in turn supports Polar Bear—”

  “Don’t lecture me! This was always high risk, but with MH370 hijacked it’s now untenable. If the Americans capture Nolan, he will tell them China didn’t want the NSA files. Instead, he will say we wanted them destroyed. If they don’t capture Nolan, but realize he has been traveling with the head of Singapore MSS, they’ll conclude that China has a second copy of Watermen’s NSA files. And if the provenances of the two sets differ, China would naturally conclude that those mismatched files were either fraudulent or had been altered. That should be enough to induce us to switch from the backup defense network to the primary coastal tracking system.

  “Now there’s one, and only one, reason why you still have a job. The MSS sniper team deployed to Sri Lanka was to target Watermen.” Turning to the MSS head, he said, “Ding, re-task them. The death of Nolan becomes their number one objective, followed by Watermen and concluding with Yu. This is of the highest priority. When will the team be in place?”

  Ding spoke, sounding only a little less rattled than Yi. “The team is in the air and lands this afternoon in Colombo. The two assassins will travel to a safe house for weapon supply and briefings. We could deploy them as early as this evening if we had locations for each target.”

  Yi jumped in, eager to redeem himself. “Watermen will arrive in the next hour in Abu Dhabi and then on to Colombo. His flight lands 21:15 Colombo time. We could terminate him at the airport.”

  President Gao shook his head in dismay. “If we kill Watermen at the airport, Nolan will go to ground.”

  “Comrade President, we can change Yu’s directive to include terminating Nolan. Let her take care of this,” Yi said, almost pleading.

  Ding said, “I don’t recommend this course of action, Mr. President. First, as you said earlier, we don’t know where Yu’s loyalties lie. If she believes that failing to execute her orders might help Liu regain his influence, she might deliberately botch the assignment. Second, our associates in Singapore report that Yu and Nolan likely had intercourse yesterday evening before flying out. Nolan an
d Yu shared the honeymoon suite in a beach resort hotel last night after arriving in Sri Lanka. We don’t believe Nolan and Yu met before Wednesday, so this behavior is perplexing. We think Yu prostituted herself in order to gain Nolan’s confidence, but we cannot be sure. Perhaps she is a double agent and has been working for the Americans all along.”

  “So what do you suggest?”

  “Use Yu to find out where the exchange for Watermen is to take place on Friday. Position our team there. When all three targets are in the same location, execute the plan. With any luck, the SVR or CIA will receive the blame.” Ding looked expectantly at the president.

  Yi couldn’t stand being outmaneuvered by an inferior. “Comrade Ding, are you forgetting that Nolan represents the best chance of identifying the people who came off MH370? As long as we have Nolan’s family, he’s worth more to us alive than dead.”

  Gao looked at Yi with resignation. “Comrade, you need to reread The Art of War. Every battle is won or lost before it’s fought. We’ve no choice but to assume that Zhao and the Iranian are alive and will break under questioning. Short of having the location of their prison and dispatching a missile, there’s nothing we can do. Instead, we need to accelerate implementation of the alternatives.

  “Yi, after this meeting, go to the Iran embassy. Tell the ambassador that he will receive a single repaired nuclear trigger today as a sign of our good faith. In addition, he can keep the PLA programming team in Beirut to help with the immediate implementation of Menander. Once Operation Menander goes live and the NRO satellites are blinded, we will deliver the second trigger. We will pass across the corrected schematics for the trigger once he shows evidence of the liquidation of the Unit #61398 programmers post-Menander.”

  “Liquidation?” Ding’s surprise showed on his face.

  Gao’s gaze bored into them. “Once Operation Menander goes live we’ll initiate the invasion of the Diaoyus and bait the trap for Polar Bear. When we use an anti-ship missile to destroy an American nuclear carrier, they will be looking for someone to blame. On the face of things, China will be the culprit, as we’ll have fired the fatal missile. On another level, provided there’s no proof of our involvement in Menander and all the evidence points to Iran, we will weather the storm. The only way to be certain there’s no leakage is to kill everyone who had a direct hand in the DDOS. Ensure the Iranians leave no one alive in Beirut with knowledge of China’s role, and dispatch one of our own teams to follow-up just to be doubly certain.”

  Fixing Ding with a stare, the president said, “Ensure that Yu has orders not to leave Nolan’s side. She’s to accompany him everywhere, even to another country if need be. That should ensure that our sniper team has at least two ready targets.” Gao rose, the meeting over. “Don’t fail me, Comrades.”

  “We won’t, sir,” they said in unison. Yi and Ding stood frozen as the president retreated into his office. An aide on the other side shut the door soundlessly behind him. Ding left without saying a word. Yi trailed Ding into the corridor, both men deep in their own thoughts.

  * * * * *

  Gonzalez was in a foul mood. “I hurry back from Penang, spend half the night in a Bangkok jail, and now there’s no room on the plane that’s taking the Delta team to hit Teller?”

  Hecker saw Latino temper sparking in those dark eyes. “With Ryder down, you’re acting head of security for South and Southeast Asia. I need you here at Hogwarts. Other than a couple of guards on the gate, we’re defenseless. There aren’t even enough Marines to fend off an assault on Dubern Park, much less a safe house hidden across town. Neither of us can afford to be in the fight, particularly if it doesn’t go well.”

  “Come on, boss! You’re sounding like Matthews!”

  “Calm down and let me explain what you need to do this afternoon. You will take a photo of a crate. A very special photo. Do you know what type of phone Ryder carries?”

  “Yeah, he loves his crappy old Blackberry.”

  “Can you get another one just like it?”

  “I was using the same model until I bought a new phone at Christmas. It’s in my desk at the office.”

  “You’re going to need it. Let me explain what to do. Be sure to let Ryder know what’s up, too. This could keep Nolan’s head out of a noose.”

  With an enormous clap of thunder, the skies opened.

  * * * * *

  The expressway from the airport to Colombo twelve miles distant cut the drive time from seventy-five to twenty-five minutes for a $2.25 toll. Balendra’s driver executed the surveillance-evasion plan to perfection, accelerating to 100mph on the nearly empty freeway to leave pursuers behind, and taking the first exit at Ja-Ela where they switched cars under cover, then spent seventy minutes laboring on surface roads. Nolan and Kaili watched the procession of pedestrians and vehicles whirl in a kaleidoscope of directions and speeds, and yet somehow manage to avoid collisions. They reached the Colombo Racquets Club in one piece, always a minor miracle.

  Colombo needed that same fresh coat of paint that Rangoon was missing, plus a new layer of asphalt. Even so, five years after the end of a long and bloody civil war, there were signs of prosperity: new cars, construction and the ever-present billboards advertising rival mobile phone operators and consumer electronics. At seven degrees north of the equator, Sri Lanka weather was familiar to those living in Southeast Asia: hot, humid and wet, with only a little variation over the course of the year.

  Once known as Ceylon, the Pearl of the Indian Ocean, many in the 1960s tipped Sri Lanka to achieve the economic success Singapore eventually attained. Instead, progress was slowed by a combination of socialist governments, corruption and ethnic tension between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Muslims and Tamils. In 1983 the pot boiled over and the country fell into a civil war that raged for twenty-six years, punctuated by a failed peacekeeping intervention by India, the 1991 assassination of India’s ex-prime minister Rajiv Gandhi by the Tamil Tigers, and a lapsed truce in the early 2000s. The victors suffered through two-plus decades of suicide bombings and casualties inflicted by a fanatical foe. Tamil civilians suffered doubly, having been targeted by both the national government as well as the Tigers, who stole and brainwashed their children. The aftermath of the Tigers’s 2009 defeat saw government soldiers occupying the traditional Tamil territories in the north and east. Five years later, displaced persons were still in camps, their homes and farms confiscated.

  The Sri Lanka government defied the international diplomatic community by refusing to create an inquiry into human rights violations during the war and paid a steep price for their defiance in foregone aid and diminished investment by the West. China stepped in to fill much of the funding gap and now counted Sri Lanka as its greatest ally in South Asia, leaving India and the US nervous and strategically vulnerable.

  Nolan had always liked Sri Lankans. They were affable, smart and eager to learn. When they weren’t killing one another, they were the nicest people he’d ever met. However, whoever had coined the expression “island time” to describe a torpid pace of business must have visited Ceylon. Much of the time it was more sensible to measure progress with a calendar rather than a watch.

  Kaili looked like a Chinese Jackie Onassis with her oversized designer shades and Gucci scarf. Nolan floated a question that had been nagging at him since the previous night. “What did you mean when you said Mark Watermen had betrayed me?”

  “Well, he’s the one who told the FSB that you had a copy of his NSA files, isn’t he?”

  “Assuming that’s true, how did you know that?”

  “Oh, Bob. The MSS has people in Russia, too.”

  Nolan remained silent. He was reminded of that old joke from training. Question: How can you tell when a spy is lying? Answer: Her lips move.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  COLLATERAL DAMAGE

  THURSDAY MARCH 13, MOSCOW, SINGAPORE, COLOMBO, RANGOON

  FSB minders shepherded Watermen through check-in, skipped security and spent perhap
s a minute in the immigration director’s office before his passports—real and fake—received the requisite exit stamps. Watermen believed in traveling light, but this was ridiculous. His eligible ensemble fit into a carry-on bag suitable for a bowling ball. He brought no laptops, as he had cut the hard drives into bite-sized wedges just before leaving his apartment.

  Watermen’s guide dogs navigated him to a familiar, if despised, face in the first-class lounge. Looking up, Chumakov said with more menace than he felt, “Sit. We have forty minutes before boarding.” Watermen sat. A flunky brought out coffee and a tray of pastries. Watermen nibbled on a croissant while waiting for the latest mind-fuck.

  “I’m guessing you didn’t bring a laptop as I requested. Never mind.” Reaching into his oversized accountant’s bag, Chumakov fished out a MacBook Air and handed it across. “It’s on loan, so please don’t chop it up before we land in Abu Dhabi. The flight takes four hours. You will list the names and brief descriptions of the most important NSA files you stole. In Abu Dhabi I will hand the file to a comrade for assessment. Tomorrow I will match it against what Godpa Bob supplies. Any material differences, or if any files you mention are missing, then our deal is off. If you don’t list important files that Nolan supplies, our deal is off. If you try to run in Abu Dhabi or Sri Lanka, our deal is off. If you attack anyone, starting with me, I will use a straight razor and cut your balls off. If you do anything to annoy me, I might visit your mother when I’m next in Maryland. Are we clear?”

  “Perfectly.” Although Watermen wasn’t a violent person, he fantasized about strangling that thick neck.

  Chumakov sat back and sipped his cold coffee, eyeing Watermen as he played with the Mac. He had come at him hard so Watermen wouldn’t smell a rat.

  * * * * *

  Constantine’s stomach was so tense that he’d left his lunch untouched after viewing the gruesome photo of the dead agent’s slit throat. What in heaven’s name was going on? Doyle’s people had concluded that it was a textbook Spec Ops execution: gloved hand over the mouth, big blade and plenty of force to cut past the windpipe. A gurgle was the loudest noise Long could have uttered. Constantine agreed that Nolan didn’t have the strength or training for this. So who else was lurking in the weeds? And why weren’t Nolan and his newest girlfriend in custody already? That the hands-off had come from the very top wasn’t any comfort.