The Paladin

by David Ignatius

  The name of Adele Hecht’s largest financial holding was a bank in Geneva called Maison Suisse.

  Dunne closed his eyes. The images cascaded in his mind: the perfect, intolerant mother; the mesmerizing, rebellious child; the perfume of danger; the ruinous consequences.

  Psychologists speak of “paramnesia,” in which reality and fantasy are momentarily confused, and a person can feel as if a new discovery is duplicating an earlier one in every detail; he may be uncertain for an instant whether he is in the past or the present. Dunne felt some of that disorientation now, as he stared at the information on his computer screen. The arc he had been following was bending back toward him. The knot he thought he was untying had become more tangled.

  Move, Dunne told himself. When the present collapses into the past, the only path of escape is to drive toward the future. When you don’t understand a problem, that means you haven’t yet gathered enough information.

  * * *

  Dunne went back to his computer and found a flight later that day to Taiwan via San Francisco. Goldman had let slip in the monitored conversation that Jason Howe was working in Taipei. Dunne didn’t have an address or number; just the fleeting reference that Howe was designing chips for a semiconductor company, and living on a lane in the old part of town near the river. Goldman had also said that Howe was watched carefully by the local security service.

  Dunne had never operated in Taiwan. He couldn’t advance without help. But the S&T fraternity was large, and Dunne had done favors for most of his colleagues over the years, without asking for much in return.

  As Dunne pondered the Taiwan challenge, he recalled an old friend from S&T named David Mazor, who had sometimes used Taipei as an operational base a decade ago and knew the local service there as well as anyone in the agency. Dunne had rescued Mazor from a jam once, when Mazor had planted a bug that didn’t work in the hotel suite of an Iranian diplomat in Paris and Dunne had quickly improvised another.

  Roger Magee would know how to find Mazor. But Dunne hesitated as he was about to dial Magee’s number. He felt a shadow of doubt, not rooted in anything specific, but he had started to obey such warnings even if he didn’t understand them.

  Who else would know where to find David Mazor? Dunne consulted his mental list of contacts. He had another former chum from S&T, a colleague who’d been in his trainee class and had sent him a heartfelt letter of support when he was sentenced to prison. Dunne had never answered the note; he was too angry then to accept kind words from anyone. But now he called the man, who had retired in Camden, Maine, and asked if he had any way of contacting their former colleague Mazor.

  And, of course, he did. These were fraternity brothers in the secret world. Mazor was now living in Santa Clara, California, reported his Camden friend, and getting rich working for a social media company there.

  Dunne called the number his friend provided, waking his former colleague in the California predawn. He said he needed a favor, big time. He was heading for Taiwan that day and needed to find an American who was working for a semiconductor company there and living in the old part of Taipei.

  “You’re the one who got screwed,” said Mazor, sleepy but wanting to be helpful.

  “That’s me,” answered Dunne. “And, yes, I did.”

  “Will this help you get even?”

  “Maybe,” answered Dunne. “Right now it’s the best shot I’ve got.”

  “Edward Chen is the man to call. He can find anyone in Taipei, if I ask him. Hold on while I look.” The phone was dead for a moment, and then Mazor’s voice returned. “Chen’s WhatsApp number is 886-955-5273-88. I’ll message him now and tell him to help you.”

  Dunne paused. He’d been burned so often, there was scar tissue.

  “Why would this guy Chen help me, David? We’ve never met, and if he does any research, he’ll know I’m trouble.”

  “He’ll do it because I ask him to. I helped him a lot once. Really a lot. He’s never forgotten it. And look, in our work, you’ve got to trust someone in the end. Isn’t that right?”

  Dunne closed his eyes. “That’s right,” he said.

  Mazor offered to come meet Dunne’s plane at SFO and to buy him dinner in the city if he could stay overnight in San Francisco. Dunne said his connection time was too short.

  “Okay, my friend, you’re getting the special former-colleague-who-got-fucked package, okay? I’m going to reserve you a room at the Regent Hotel in Taipei, hire a car and driver to meet you at the airport and drive you around Taiwan. When we hang up, I’ll send you on Signal the private number of the director general of the National Security Bureau, in case you get in any trouble. You have any problem with that?”

  “I’m grateful,” said Dunne. “I need help. I wouldn’t have called you otherwise. I’ll explain when it’s over.”

  “No need,” said Mazor. “Explanations are bullshit. Good luck. I hope you get what you want.”

  “Okay,” said Dunne. “So, like, just, thanks.”

  32 Taipei, Taiwan – June 2018

  The big Boeing jet touched down a day later in a rainy Taipei, bathed in the sweet, moist perfume of late June. Dunne had slept for the first half of the flight and awakened to watch an adolescent Bill Murray comedy movie; he laughed so loudly at the jokes that his Chinese seatmate glared at him. He moved through passport control and customs easily; whatever mischief had been done to him in Italy hadn’t followed him to the other side of the world. As he approached the baggage claim carousel, he saw a jaunty Chinese man carrying a sign displaying the name DAVID MAZOR.

  Dunne gave him a thumbs-up. The man approached and took the handle of Dunne’s bag; he offered to carry the padlocked backpack, too, but Dunne demurred.

  “I’m Tony Tsai,” the man said, with what sounded like a New York accent overlaying his Chinese accent. “I’m your driver, secretary, whatever you need, that’s what Mr. Mazor told me. In America, people call me TT, or Taiwan Tony, or whatever you like, it’s cool.”

  “Thanks. Tony.” Dunne stuck out his hand. “You a Yankees fan or a Mets fan?”

  “Are you kidding? Yankees. Okay, Mr. Dunne. Follow me. My car’s in the next lot. Come on, we’ll get you to your hotel, take care of business.”

  They walked out of the immaculate, pagoda-shaped terminal toward the adjoining parking lot. Tsai had a black Lexus sedan. He opened the back door, limousine-style, but Dunne slipped into the front passenger seat. Tsai steered the vehicle out of the airport compound and onto the elevated highway into the city.

  The rain was pelting as fast as the wipers could push it away.

  “Rainy season, Mr. Dunne. May and June, you need to be a duck to live in Taiwan.”

  “You sound like you lived awhile in New York, Tony.”

  “The Bronx, then Queens, then Long Island City. And you asked me about the Yankees. I was there when Chien-Ming Wang won nineteen games for the Bombers. Do you feel me, Mr. Dunne?”

  “Definitely,” said Dunne. He gave Tsai a sidelong glance. How long had this polyglot Taiwanese man been on Mazor’s payroll, and in how many places had he operated?

  As they entered the city, the rain slowed and banks of fog settled over the low-rise skyscrapers. Taipei had the shopworn look of a capital whose wealthy younger residents had decamped for the mainland to embrace the “China Dream.” Left behind were Grandma and Grandpa, a whole lot of money, and some rambunctious kids who liked the idea of living in a democracy, even if it wasn’t quite a country of its own.

  They rolled up a driveway past an ostentatious fountain to the Regent Hotel entrance, flanked by French luxury boutiques. Dunne told Tony to wait while he checked in. The reception clerk treated him like a viceroy; he upgraded Dunne’s room to a junior suite, overlooking a park that was like a box of green velvet in the concrete jumble.

  * * *

  Dunne unpacked and took a catnap for an hour. When he awoke, he called David Mazor’s Taipei contact, Edward Chen.

  “I have been expecting you,�
�� said Chen, soft-voiced, his speech plump and well turned. “I hope you had a good flight. How I can be helpful?”

  “Maybe I should come in person,” said Dunne. “I’ll be able to explain better.”

  “Come now, if you’re not too tired. I’ll give you a glass of very good whiskey.” He provided an address on Xinyi Road, near the financial center. Dunne put on a crisp white shirt and a suit and tie. In Asia, it was never a mistake to overdress.

  Chen’s assistant was waiting in the lobby of the office building. He escorted Dunne to the twenty-eighth floor, where Chen’s holding company had its headquarters. Night had fallen, and the city was twinkling all the way to the Taiwan Strait. The offices were understated; the décor, like Chen’s business, was between China and the West.

  Chen was wearing a tweed sports coat in the air-conditioned chill of the skyscraper. He offered Dunne a selection from a cabinet of whiskeys. He was a collector, he explained. He liked to take a trip every summer with one of his sons to a distillery in some remote bog or island in Scotland and add to his cache.

  Dunne asked for a suggestion, and his host proposed a twenty-one-year-old Glen Dronach, which he said was his own favorite. It had been aged in casks that had previously held sherry, so it had a hint of sweetness along with its peaty Highlands flavor.

  Chen poured two glasses and handed one to Dunne. He waited while Dunne took a sip. It was unlike any whiskey Dunne had ever tasted, sharp and spicy, with caramel-sweet flavors that lingered in his mouth. Chen looked pleased. He liked doing favors for members of the fraternity that had helped him build and protect his business empire.

  “Tell me how I can help you, Mr. Dunne. David told me that you are looking for someone here in Taiwan. An American who is a chip designer. That is a big category, but this is a small island, and the odd peg sticks out. I’d like to invite my assistant, who has a better brain for these things than I do. You can trust his discretion.”

  “I’m happy for your help, Mr. Chen. But can our conversation be private? You must have many friends at the American Institute in Taiwan, and probably back at Langley. But this is a personal matter, and I don’t want it showing up in message traffic. If that’s an impossible request, let me know, and I’ll finish this delicious whiskey and go back to my hotel.”

  “I understand. Life has compartments, just as intelligence work does. David told me that you had encountered difficulties with your former employer. I gather that you were treated in a way that was unworthy of your fine organization. I’m sorry for that. I give you my word that these conversations will be entirely private. No tracks, no traces, no traffic.”

  Dunne thanked his host, and Chen picked up his desk phone and summoned a young man named Alton Chen, whom he introduced as his youngest son. The young man was dressed in a blue blazer and a striped tie bearing the colors of his Cambridge college.

  Dunne and Chen sat together on a couch, facing the lights of the city. Alton sat in a straight-backed chair a few feet to the side.

  Dunne began to unspool his request. The assistant took notes on his iPad as Dunne spoke, while Old Man Chen smiled and poured himself another dram of Glen Dronach.

  “The person I’m looking for is named Jason Howe,” said Dunne. “He is a computer scientist who made a reputation as a free-speech activist. He ran a website called Fallen Empire and worked with a group of hackers called Quark Team that was based in Urbino, Italy. They had top-of-the-line servers, way beyond what they needed. I’m still not sure just what their business was, but part of it involved putting damaging, often false, information on the Internet. Sometimes they tried to destroy people using their information.”

  Chen reached out his hand toward Dunne, not quite touching his guest.

  “I gather that this Mr. Howe was involved in the events that led to your own personal and professional difficulties. Is that so?”

  “He harmed me and my family, in a way that can’t be fixed. That’s why I’ve come here to find him.”

  “I understand, of course I do. Forgive my interruption. Please provide any details that can help Alton find this unpleasant fellow.”

  “I don’t know much. I’m told he’s working in Taipei, helping design logic chips for one of the big semiconductor companies. He’s a tall white guy, lab rat, wispy blond hair, so thin he can barely keep his trousers on. I don’t have a photograph, but I could work up a sketch.”

  “Let’s do that,” said Chen, nodding to his son. “Then we can run the image against data from the police bureau’s surveillance cameras. They have installed quite a few of those nearly everywhere, and my friends give me a back door. Nobody does anything in Taiwan that is not knowable these days.”

  Alton brought over his iPad, on which he had loaded a modern photo-based version of the old Identikit system that police used to sketch portraits of suspects. Dunne sorted through pictures of eyes, cheeks, noses, foreheads, hairlines, lips, and chins until Alton had assembled a pretty good likeness of Jason Howe, as Dunne had last glimpsed him in the dim light of an underground trattoria.

  “Anything else we should know about this character?” asked Chen.

  “I was told that Howe lives in a lane house in the old part of the city, in a hutong, if that’s the right word, near the Tamsui River. The only other thing I heard was that your National Security Bureau keeps a close watch on him. I know that makes it complicated for you. I apologize for that.”

  “We have a Chinese saying, if you will forgive me, Mr. Dunne. ‘Before telling secrets on the road, look in the bushes.’ As I said earlier, a well-ordered life has compartments. People who have secrets know that other people have secrets, too. That’s how we all get along.”

  Chen sat back in his chair and stared for a moment at the lights of the city he had helped to build, and then turned to his ruddy red-haired guest, who was an animal of a slightly different species.

  “Here in China, we think red is a lucky color. But red-haired people, I don’t know. Sometimes people say ‘ang mo kui,’ which means red-haired devil. But that was a superstition from a long-time ago, when people were afraid of Dutch traders. Now I think red is a good omen.”

  “I hope so,” said Dunne. “I could use some luck.”

  * * *

  Chen sent his guest back to the Regent to get some sleep and promised that he and his son Alton would get to work immediately on the missing-person request. For that’s all it was. A “gweilo,” a white ghost, had vanished into an enclosed island space that numbered just twenty-three million residents. He would be found. Dunne should await a call.

  Chen dispatched his son to an office in the interior ministry, in the Zhongzheng District near the old monuments and museums of the Chiang Kai-shek era. Everyone owed favors in this country, but few people had larger networks of guangxi than Edward Chen. It was convenient for the deputy chief of the national police to assist in Mr. Chen’s search. It would have been inconvenient to refuse.

  When Dunne awoke, he went to the gym in the subbasement of the hotel. The air didn’t circulate very well down there, and the exercise room had the smell of old sweat flavored with garlic and fish sauce. Dunne watched Chinese cartoons on television while he jogged on the treadmill. Dunne returned to his room and was finishing his breakfast when the phone rang, just before ten a.m. It was Chen.

  “I think we have something,” he said. “It’s not so hard, when you know where to look. Alton will come by the hotel presently. I believe that he will be able to take you to see your Mr. Howe. There will be a policeman there, in plain clothes. If you have a score to settle, please don’t do it there, with my son and the policeman present.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Dunne. He was astonished that his request had been answered so quickly and efficiently.

  “It is my pleasure,” said Chen.

  33 Taipei, Taiwan – June 2018

  Alton Chen arrived at the Regent Hotel entrance in a small yellow Toyota taxi, the last car anyone would think to follow. He was dressed more casually th
an the night before, in jeans and black sneakers and a flowered shirt he had left untucked.

  Dunne entered the cab; he had worn a tie but removed it. They drove east from the hotel toward the old city and the river; the streets got narrower and the shops were no longer selling Western goods but more exotic Chinese wares: teas and herbs and traditional medicines.

  When the cab reached a derelict temple, with the round, battered face of a smiling Buddha peering down at them, Alton told the driver to stop and paid the fare. He beckoned for Dunne to follow him on foot. They walked from the bustle of the shops down a narrow lane toward a park by the river. The river smells of early June were in the air: diesel oil from the ships passing down the Tamsui to the mouth of the strait, and fish rotting where they had washed up against the riverbank.

  As they neared the corner, Alton stopped at an old brick building bearing intricately carved stone and wood panels on the façade. A square-legged man in a bulky suit stood outside. Evidently he was the plainclothes cop Chen had mentioned. Alton whispered in his ear, and the policeman nodded. He stood at ease, hands together behind his back, to guard the site while they entered.

  The first interior room was a commercial shop selling porcelain. Alton approached the shopkeeper and spoke in her ear. She nodded and escorted Alton and Dunne into an inner courtyard, hidden from the street; it was a small garden amid the city, with orchids in bloom, and lush ferns and several potted bonsai trees.

  A sound of chanting came from the inner courtyard. The words were Chinese, but the voice had the flat throatiness of American English, even as it intoned the words: Na mo ho la da nu do la ye ye…

  The shopkeeper motioned for Alton and Dunne to follow her upstairs, following the voice, to a wooden balcony with a couch and chairs that overlooked the courtyard. The chanting continued from an interior room. An, sa bo la fa yi, su da nu da sia…