False Flag

by Jack Slater

  And he’d made it to the top.

  Secretary Liu had most probably sent men to their deaths on more than one occasion. Trapp just hoped he wasn’t about to join that illustrious list.

  “I said halt!” the same officer growled, raising his weapon more for show than anything else. His toes remained where they were, at ten and two, and Trapp figured he took the oncoming Liu for a drunk.

  “Get out of my way,” Liu snarled. His chest was puffed out, just as it had been when he first informed Trapp who he was. Despite himself, Trapp was impressed by the man’s confidence. For such an unremarkable little man, he certainly didn’t seem cowed by the two policemen in front of him.

  They glanced at each other uncertainly. “Sir–I don’t know who you are, but this whole area is off limits.”

  Liu came to a stop just a few inches in front of the police officer on the left, the one who had spoken. Though shorter than either of the Macau cops, he seemed to loom larger every second as the confidence grew within him.

  “Not to me,” he asserted confidently.

  Trapp watched the scene play out with hawk-eyed fascination. A long career in clandestine operations had taught him a fundamental truth about human nature. Most men, and women for that matter, are extremely simple. They respond to a short list of motivations: fear, greed and power.

  Many times, Trapp himself had impersonated a senior officer, a CEO or even a doctor, and used the implicit imbalance of power to get his own way. Even in free Western countries like the United States or England, most people would not question someone above them in their chain of command. It was a truth that held in companies, just as it did in military organizations–and apparently, it worked with the Macau Police Department too.

  That was exactly what Liu was doing.

  “Do you know who I am?” Liu asked, balancing on his toes and prodding the officer in the chest.

  That old line again.

  But it worked. The two policemen glanced at each other nervously, the one on the right backing away slightly as though to indicate he had no desire to get involved in this conversation. The one on the left grimaced. “Sir, it doesn’t matter. My orders are clear.”

  “And what about your loyalty to the Party?” Liu said, his voice low and cold.

  Trapp watched intently. Macau wasn’t mainland China, but just like on Hong Kong, ever since the city returned to Chinese control in 1999, the Party elites had exerted their control over the once separate province. In theory the city governed itself, but in practice it was anything but independent.

  “The Party –?” the officer whispered.

  “I am the general secretary of the Shenzhen Communist Party,” Liu said, “and right now I see two men impeding my business. Should I report that to your superiors?”

  Two heads turned inward. The men communicated silently. And then, like low-level bureaucrats across the world, they decided that this was way above their pay grade. And Trapp found his way out of Dodge–and not just a way out, but a path guaranteed by the might of the Chinese Communist Party itself.

  20

  The tender used to ferry guests to and from Liu’s yacht was big enough to carry six passengers. It had a dark, rubberized exterior, a choice of material Trapp presumed was intended to ensure the boat was light enough to be winched aboard the yacht, and was finished with a varnished hardwood decking.

  In short, it was the kind of boat Trapp himself would like to own, if he ever retired and found himself a nice cabin by the sea. Just forty-eight hours before, he’d allowed himself to picture that life, after meeting the irrepressible Eliza Ikeda for the first time. It was far from the first of several such incidents, of allowing himself to wallow in what could be, and Trapp knew it was a sign that he was losing his edge.

  Very few operatives could push themselves past all natural limits, and do so for year after bloody year without allowing their instincts to rust, their bodies to fade. Several months before, he’d had keyhole surgery on the rotor cuff issue that had bugged him for so long. For the first time in years, he could manipulate the joint without pain and apply its full range of motion without restraint. But it was only the first in a long line of physical complaints that, after almost two decades in the service of his country, were making themselves impossible to ignore.

  Concentrate, old man, he chided himself.

  Trapp leaned back, a warm breeze tousling his close-cropped dark hair as the small boat cut through the water. Now they were out of sight of land, he didn’t bother hiding the pistol, though he kept it in his lap. Not directly intimidating, but a reminder nevertheless of the deadly threat he posed.

  “Not too fast,” he chided Liu. “I don’t want to attract any prying eyes.”

  His prisoner grimaced, but eased back on the throttle. “What are you expecting to get out of this?” he asked. “I’m an important man. People will realize I’m missing.”

  “Not until the morning.” Trapp smiled. “And by then I’ll be long gone. And you, my friend, can forget that any of this ever happened.”

  The tender chugged through the water, the low, throaty roar of its engine suggesting to Trapp that if he needed to, they could open up the engine and outpace most pursuers. Of course, if it came to that, then he was as good as dead already.

  Under the cover of darkness, he removed the only remaining spare magazine for his pistol from his pocket, looped the chain of the USB drive around it several times, and made sure it was stuck fast. If the Chinese figured out his ruse, he intended to toss the device overboard, ideally without them noticing. They were a couple of hundred yards out into the South China Sea, and the ocean floor beneath them sloped away sharply. If he tossed the drive, the chances were it would never be found. Especially if no one knew what he’d done.

  Liu shook his head. “You’re crazy.”

  The bubbling white wash behind the outboard engine faded as the boat slowed, beginning a lazy arc in the water. Trapp jerked the muzzle of his weapon at the plush yacht emerging from the blackness about twenty yards away, navigation lights twinkling at the bow and stern.

  He whistled. “Who’d you have to blow to get one of these?”

  Liu’s face crinkled. “Blow?”

  “Forget about it. It’s a saying. How did you afford a boat like this on a public servant’s salary?”

  Trapp knew that for most of the past decade, the Chinese government had been engaged in a relentless crackdown on corruption. Bureaucratic exploitation was rife across much of Asia, and bribery was needed to get much of anything done. He also knew that the Agency estimated the Chinese president had a personal fortune that ran into the billions of dollars, even as he accused those below him in the pyramid of corruption, to cover his own tracks. Just like back home, the politicians were the biggest crooks of all.

  Go figure.

  Liu pointed toward a coiled length of rope instead of replying. “Tie us up,” he said.

  Trapp sprang into action, leaping onto the decking at the stern of the yacht and lashing the two boats together. The tender now seemed positively Lilliputian by contrast with its older, and significantly more luxurious, brother. The two men winched the smaller boat aboard, and once the job was done, Liu turned to Trapp. “What now?”

  Trapp gestured for Liu to climb the small set of stairs that led up to the body of the boat ahead of him. Though he was a keen swimmer, he didn’t have much experience fighting on ships. Trapp had cut his teeth in Delta, the army’s premier special forces unit, but most of the wet work was left to the SEALs. Still, he didn’t expect Liu to pose much of a challenge. If the MSS came after him, of course, he might be forced to rethink his position.

  “Now,” Trapp said, “you rest.”

  He didn’t have any plastic cuff ties on him, but there was no shortage of rope on board the opulent yacht. Trapp quickly and efficiently lashed the senior Communist Party official to a chair in one of the sleeping cabins, wondering the whole while if he was about to cause an international diplomatic in
cident. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d stumbled into a nest of hornets, but China would definitely be the biggest country whose nose he had put out of joint.

  Still, that was a matter for the State Department to lose sleep over, since Trapp definitely wouldn’t.

  With his prisoner properly secured, Trapp entered the yacht’s small but highly advanced bridge. The yacht was anchored close enough to the shore that the boat rose and fell as the seeds of waves grew beneath them, and he could have been forgiven for imagining that all was right with the world.

  The control panel in front of him gleamed with chrome and high-definition LCD monitors. He didn’t know precisely what he was doing, but he had picked up enough about these high-end yachts in the brochures on offer at the show to know that they were designed to be fairly idiot proof. The millionaire businessman who purchased these extravagant boats wanted to be able to sit up in the captain’s chair and feel the grumble of the engines beneath them without having to complete a doctoral dissertation first.

  Trapp punched a couple of buttons and the system blinked into life. All he needed to do was enter the memorized exfiltration coordinates into the GPS navigation system, and the yacht would do most of the work. But as he looked at the glowing screen on the console in front of him, Trapp’s stomach fell straight through the floor.

  A GPS unit took pride of place in the center of the console. The map view was familiar: focused on the Zhujiang River Estuary, with Macau and Hong Kong at opposite ends of the river’s mouth. But where the icon for the yacht should be, it wasn’t.

  Instead, it was pulsing on the screen, dancing from spot to spot, as though its tiny electronic brain was stuck in an endless loop. Trapp frowned, then his eyes flickered as he tried to make sense of the Chinese language information on the screen in front of him. All he could understand were the numbers–and they were not good.

  His eyes crossed the figure 1/24, and he instantly realized what it meant. The GPS unit on this boat was only able to connect with one of the twenty-four Global Positioning Satellites in orbit over the planet at any time.

  And that was bad. Very, very bad.

  Trapp knew that for an accurate reading, the system needed at least three available satellites, and preferably more. Whatever had happened in the skies above, it had wiped out the GPS coverage above the Asia-Pacific. The satellites orbited the planet, so coverage would be reestablished at some point–but how long that would take, Trapp had no idea.

  Jesus, how could he have been so stupid?

  His mind raced as he tried to figure out a solution to his problem. He ground his teeth and returned to the man tied up below decks. Liu’s head was resting on his chest when he stormed through the cabin door, and jerked upward sharply.

  “How do you navigate this thing?” Trapp grunted.

  “I don’t,” Liu replied with a supercilious sneer. “My pilot has the night off.”

  Trapp bit down on a wave of frustration that threatened to boil over. He wanted to smash the butt of his pistol into the smarmy, corrupt communist’s mouth, but knew he couldn’t. He needed his help.

  “You know how this thing works?” he asked.

  Liu shrugged, though his movement was hindered by the ropes lashing into the chair.

  “Do you, or don’t you?” Trapp said, a note of danger accenting his voice. “I’d advise you to answer me very carefully, Mr. Secretary. I’m in no mood to be played with.”

  Liu’s eyes widened, and his breathing once again grew ragged. He nodded quickly. “Yes.”

  “Why do you have a pilot?” Trapp asked.

  No answer.

  Trapp let out a short, sharp laugh. “You nearly crashed, didn’t you?”

  Again, no answer, but the reddening of Liu’s cheeks was all the confirmation that Trapp needed.

  “Just my luck,” he muttered, chewing his lip as he figured out what the hell to do. “I’ll be right back.”

  He spun on his heel and went to the yacht’s small galley, where he found a kitchen knife. When he returned, Liu flinched, staring at the knife in his hand with terrified eyes.

  “I’m not going to kill you, dummy,” Trapp muttered, sidling behind the diminutive Chinese man and cutting him free of the knots he’d tied just moments before. “Upstairs, now.”

  Liu didn’t seem entirely convinced of Trapp’s intentions. He walked slowly, with all the enthusiasm of a dead man, scuffed shoes dragging against the boat’s decking. Jason figured he probably figured that he intended to stab him, then throw his body overboard for the sharks to deal with. In fact, that couldn’t have been further from the truth – but Trapp was happy to go along with the man’s fears. They entered the bridge together.

  “Are there any maps on this boat?” Trapp asked. “Real ones. Paper.”

  Liu turned and stared at him quizzically. “Why? Just use –”

  “If the GPS was working, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” Trapp growled. “I need a real to goodness map, secretary, otherwise my day is about to get real bad. And trust me when I tell you, that won’t be any good for you.”

  Liu’s face crinkled up as he thought about Trapp’s question. He did a sort of pirouette in the small bridge, his eyes flickering over the many small cabinets. And then he stopped dead, turning to face his captor. “What about BeiDou?”

  “What?”

  Liu grimaced, and Trapp could almost hear him thinking dumb American. He–mostly–kept his irritation out of his voice when he spoke. “It’s like… China’s version of global positioning. Did you try it?”

  “Mister Secretary,” Trapp muttered, “until about a second ago, I didn’t know it existed.”

  Liu crouched and retrieved a small black device from a cabinet beneath the main console. He powered it on and handed it to Trapp. “It’s new,” he said. “The government mandated all boats above a certain size had to carry one only last year. So you got lucky.”

  “Apparently,” Trapp said. He cast his prisoner an appraising look. Why had the man helped him? And how far was he willing to go to save his own hide?

  “We need to have a conversation,” he said.

  Liu nodded cautiously, as though not wanting to risk speaking.

  “Do you know who I am?” Trapp asked.

  The Chinese man winced. “A criminal?”

  Trapp shook his head. “Try again.”

  Liu’s eyes flashed with recognition. He opened his mouth to speak, then caught himself, his expression tightening with concern. Trapp grinned, and gestured at him to continue. Liu spoke slowly, hesitantly. “A… spy?”

  “Bingo,” Trapp grunted. “Now, I have no particular desire to have to kill you.”

  At this, Liu blanched, his eyes bugging half-out of his head. “Good to hear,” he choked.

  Trapp leaned forward, his expression grim. The pistol was an unspoken warning, but no quieter for it. “But I will. Believe me when I tell you that.”

  Liu fell silent. Though a moment before he had been on the verge of panic, he visibly exerted his will to calm himself. “So what do you want?”

  Trapp was reminded that the very fact that Liu had risen to his position meant he must be a canny political operator. Though he was clearly terrified, he knew better than to let the emotion overpower him. “What’s best for both of us.”

  “Which is?”

  “Your silence.”

  Liu returned Trapp’s steady gaze without speaking. The experienced operative knew the game– the Party boss wouldn’t reveal his hand until he saw it was to his advantage. “Go on…”

  “How do you think your people will react when they learn you helped me?”

  “Who says they will?” Liu said, his tone laced with outrage that built as he continued. “And it’s not like I had a choice!”

  Trapp shrugged slowly. “You were very convincing at the pier…”

  “At gunpoint!” Liu shouted, slamming his hand down on the yacht’s control console.

  The CIA man made the pistol disap
pear beneath his clothing. He painted an innocent look on his face. “What gun?”

  Liu pulled up his fists, teeth grinding together audibly, and mastered his rage. “What then?” he spat.

  “I knock you out. Bruise you up a bit. Maybe split that lip of yours. And when your people find you, you tell them you don’t remember a damn thing.”

  Not for the first time since his ordeal began, Liu visibly trembled. “Why would I agree?”

  Trapp spun, gesturing at the beautiful boat, and more broadly out to the sparkling Chinese coast. “Because, my friend, the alternative is losing all of this. How do you think your bosses will react if they found you helped a Western spy escape the country?”

  “Not well.”

  “Maybe they would prefer to sweep the whole thing under the carpet?” Trapp asked, his tone the picture of reasonableness. “Forget it ever happened.“

  “They might…” Liu admitted.

  “Then what’s it going to be, Mr. Secretary? Tell the truth and lose all your perks, or tell a lie to save your lifestyle?”

  There was a long pause before Liu replied. He spoke quietly– with the embarrassed tone of a man selling out his principles for a life of comfort. “I’ll do what you want.”

  A smile broke on Trapp’s face like a tropical sunrise. He wasn’t exactly looking forward to brutalizing the old man, but it was better than killing him. And ultimately, it was his own choice. “Then you know the drill. Get back down below.”

  21

  Jason Trapp glanced at the mariner’s watch on his left wrist for the hundredth time. Just under twenty minutes remained until his scheduled pickup time with the USS Cheyenne, and he was unable to relax. He scanned the distance in a bid to release his tension. Lights glistened on the Chinese mainland, twinkling in all manner of colors, like the Christmas lights in Times Square. A ribbon of car headlights outlined the coastal road, and Trapp’s wraithlike eyes were drawn to it like moths to a lamp. The unbroken chain of cars seemed never ending.