The Altman Code

by Robert Ludlum

  “The way they instructed, with a few surprises. Feng should be nearly in Dazu by now.”

  “If Li Kuonyi is as intelligent as you say, she’ll expect him.” There was a thoughtful pause, and when the stranger spoke again, Randi realized she’d had an eerie feeling about him since she first heard his voice. She had heard him somewhere, perhaps not long ago. “I’m not at all sure you’re well advised to continue to use Feng.”

  “There’s no time to replace him. Besides, he not only knows all the players now, he spent time in Dazu on some kind of operation. He has the kind of free movement in China that’s hard to find for a Westerner.”

  The voice said nothing, but its familiarity continued to resonate in Randi’s mind. Where? When? Who was he?

  McDermid continued, “There may be another problem with Feng. An unfortunately large one.”

  “What?”

  “He may not be working only for us.”

  “Explain.”

  “Just as I paid him to work for Yu Yongfu so he could report on his activities to me . . . I’m beginning to wonder whether he’s reporting on our activities to someone else. Someone in Beijing perhaps. Whoever it is must have either a lot of money or a lot of power. Otherwise, Feng wouldn’t bother.”

  The voice was grim, alarmed. “You had him checked.” It was a statement not a question, and Randi realized one of her problems. This was the man’s private voice, sarcastic, dry. What lingered in her mind was a public voice, but she’d had contact with so many men in high government posts that her memory was overloaded with them.

  “Thoroughly,” McDermid said. “We know he isn’t Public Security or the military. No, it’d be a private party.”

  “One with an interest in the Empress?”

  “That’s how I read it.”

  “Very well. Do whatever you have to. I don’t want to know the details. Just make sure the president doesn’t get the manifest.”

  “You want the profit not the problems.”

  “That’s our arrangement.”

  McDermid’s words were sharp, a warning: “Your hands are as dirty as mine. If I go down, you do, too.” The phone slammed into its cradle.

  In the Buick, Randi sat back and closed her eyes, running the voice through her mind. She attached faces to it. She tried it out in different environments. After a half hour, she gave up. The answer would come to her at some unexpected moment, she told herself. She could only hope it would be soon.

  She dialed her cell. “Allan? You heard the new call?”

  “Sure did,” Allan Savage said.

  She told him about the familiarity of the voice. “Did anyone there recognize him?”

  “I’ve heard him before, too. But I can’t place him, and no one here can either. But then, most of our guys are electronic geeks with atrophied recall systems who don’t know who the DCI is and think the Gipper’s still president.”

  “Okay. I get the picture. See that the tape gets sent to Langley in the next pouch. Have the lab boys check it against other voice prints.”

  “You want me to make our report?”

  “No. I’m coming in.” She would talk to the DCI directly.

  Beijing

  The night enclosed Wei Gaofan’s office in Zhongnanhai in soft darkness, with the lights of Beijing glowing above his walls, turning the starry sky a shining pewter gray. He stood in his doorway, staring out at his courtyard and the graceful willow tree and the groomed flower beds that usually gave him a sense of tranquility. Still, tonight he was heavy with distrust.

  He was called the ultimate hard-liner, as if it were an insult, but his was the vision that was pure. The Owl and his fellow liberals were politically blind. They were incapable of seeing what he saw. He pitied them, but at the same time, they were his ideological enemies. China’s enemies. They were forcing the country on an unnatural path that would do more than expose it to the world. Their way invited in the three contagions—capitalism, religion, and individuality.

  When his phone rang, he returned inside to his desk. The call had come in on his private line, known only to his network of cronies, protégés, and spies.

  He had a premonition of bad news. “Yes?”

  Feng Dun’s tones were corpselike, confirming the premonition: “Yu is alive. It was the woman. She tricked me.”

  Wei inhaled sharply. “And the Flying Dragon manifest?”

  “Li and Yu still have it. Yu never burned it.” He reported in detail.

  Wei fell heavily into his chair. His stomach knotted, but he kept his voice steady. “Where are they?”

  “Dazu. I’m on the road now. Heading there from Chongqing.”

  “What are they doing?”

  Feng explained the call from Li Kuonyi to Ralph McDermid and the deal they made. “I’ll have Yu, Li, and the manifest in less than forty-eight hours.”

  “You’re positive?”

  “It’s hardly to our benefit for me to be unrealistic.”

  Feng’s voice had returned to its normal, whispery timbre. This turn of events had shaken him, but already he was showing renewed confidence. In all the years Wei had employed Feng, he had never known him to lack self-assurance. If anything, the former soldier of fortune had an overabundance of it. But this was no small problem, and the political complexity of it would be beyond the grasp of most security experts.

  Feng had always been loyal to him, even when sent off to work for others so he could bring back information. But then, Wei had taken Feng with him as he had risen in government. Yu Yongfu would never have been able to do for Feng what Wei could. Likewise, neither could an American, even Ralph McDermid. For a former mercenary like Feng, it was an honor to work so intimately for a member of the Standing Committee, and the income was more than generous, especially when others paid him as well. When Wei became general secretary, Feng’s future would be secure, too. They were locked together, two ambitious talents who each had need of the other.

  “Do you want help in Dazu?” Wei asked. “Now isn’t the time to go off like a solitary desert wolf.”

  Feng hesitated. “If you have a trusted army commander in the area, his presence with a unit of troops could prove useful, if by some accident we’re detained by the local authorities.”

  “I’ll arrange it. And Feng? Remember, Li Kuonyi is cunning. A dangerous adversary.”

  “There’s no need to insult me, master.”

  Those were apparently harsh words from an underling, but Wei accepted them with a smile of understanding as he hung up. Feng had definitely returned to normal. Like the wolf, hunger drove him, and he was ravenous for the two people who had made him look like an amateur. Now he was even more determined to bring home the wayward manifest.

  Wei gazed out his window at his garden again. The premonition of bad news persisted. He had begun to suspect that Major Pan’s investigation into Colonel Smith and the family of Li Aorong had turned up more about the Empress than the major had written in his report to General Chu or that Niu Jianxing had communicated to the general secretary or the Standing Committee. At the same time, Wei was quietly lining up support on the Politburo and the Central Committee.

  It was an unfortunate possibility that he would have to eliminate Feng Dun and Ralph McDermid, as well as Li Aorong and his daughter and son-in-law to cover all trace of hard-line involvement in the Empress scheme.

  When Feng initially alerted him to McDermid’s plan, it had seemed a stroke of good fortune. But now he sensed danger. For a lifetime, he had survived and prospered by acting quickly and ruthlessly on what he sensed.

  At the top of a ladder set against a courtyard wall inside Zhongnanhai, a maintenance mechanic completed his repair of one of the floodlights that illuminated Wei Gaofan’s garden. As he worked, he muttered under his breath at Wei Gaofan’s paranoia. Wei’s fear of assassination meant he would allow no shadows in his garden.

  His impatience with the eminent member of the Standing Committee was at a higher level than usual, because he was not
only a maintenance worker, he was a spy. He had used the directional microphone hidden in his toolbox to record the recent phone conversation inside Wei’s office and was now anxious to deliver the tape to his superior in the counterintelligence section of the Public Security Bureau. Besides, his replacement had arrived and was already raking dirt near Wei’s office. His listening device was in his toolbox, too, which was sitting on a granite boulder, aimed at the office window.

  The spy climbed down and carried his ladder and toolbox to a shed hidden by dense shrubbery so as not to detract from the manicured park. Once inside, he opened a compartment in the bottom of the toolbox and removed the miniature audiotape.

  He put everything away and dialed his cell phone. “I have a recording.” He listened. “Ten minutes, yes. I’ll be there.”

  He switched off the cell, locked the shed, and hurried through the lush lakeside grounds to a guarded side door in the outer wall. It was used only by service workers.

  The guard, who passed him out every night at the end of his shift, still insisted on seeing his ID. “You’re leaving late.”

  “Command-performance repair for Master Wei. One of his damned lights went out, and he nearly had a stroke. Couldn’t possibly wait for morning.” It was only a partial lie. He himself had knocked out the floodlight so he would have a reason to sit up there for a couple of hours, recording conversations. There was a lot of political turmoil right now, according to his handler, and every phone call to and from Wei must be recorded. His job was to find excuses to be in a position to make the recordings.

  The guard rolled his eyes. Wei Gaofan’s demands were well known. The guard stepped aside, and the worker walked into the street, turning away from Tiananmen Square. He pushed through tourists still strolling around the Forbidden City. Finally, he entered an old-fashioned tea shop, where he paused in the doorway. There was his handler. He was reading a newspaper at a table in the middle of the shop.

  The maintenance man ordered a pot of low-grade Wu Yi and a packet of English biscuits. With them in hand, he walked to a table toward the rear. As he passed the man, he dropped his biscuits, bent, and picked them up. He continued on and sat.

  Major Pan Aitu was in a hurry. Still, he finished his tea first and folded his newspaper before he left. The spycatcher walked two blocks to his car. Once in the car, he picked the tiny cassette from inside his shoe and inserted it into a mini tape player. He listened to the entire conversation, stopping at points to rewind and listen again.

  Then he leaned back against the headrest, frowning. The meaning was clear: Li Kuonyi and Yu Yongfu were not only alive, they had the invoice manifest of the Empress’s cargo that Colonel Jon Smith had come to China to find. The Shanghai couple were probably already on their way to Dazu, preparing to sell the document to Feng Dun on behalf of Ralph McDermid. But in truth, Feng would take back the document and kill the couple for Wei Gaofan.

  The implications of Feng’s report to Wei Gaofan were also clear. Implications the Owl would be most interested to know. Wei Gaofan was personally involved in the Empress and its cargo.

  Events had progressed to the point that he must come to a decision as to where his best interests lay. On one hand, Wei Gaofan already employed Feng Dun, had clearly been involved in the Empress and its cargo from the start, and would not likely welcome a counterintelligence agent such as himself, who knew too much.

  On the other hand, the Owl—Niu Jianxing—who was obviously opposed to Wei Gaofan and his hard-line stance, knew nothing of these developments. He would be most grateful.

  Now Pan must go to Dazu, which was a considerable distance. When he got there, he would have to make the decision. He had done well in the new China, had no desire to return to the old, and all in all his best interests might indeed lie with the Owl.

  Chapter

  Thirty-Four

  Aloft over Sichuan Province

  Jon sat against the bulkhead of a high-flying Navy E-2C Hawkeye AWACS jet, his head resting back. It was nearly eleven P.M. The vibration of the aircraft’s engines hummed into his ears. The plane was totally blacked out, as it always was on a reconnaissance mission. But this was no ordinary recon.

  Edgy with nerves, he wore his usual black working clothes, with his Beretta holstered at the small of his back. A black insulated jumpsuit lay ready beside him. Since he would leave the plane at thirty thousand feet, he would need it. He had made hundreds of jumps, but never from such a height, and the truth was . . . it had been a long time since his last one. The navy personnel on the carrier had gone over the basics with him and thrown in a couple of tips.

  He had oxygen equipment because he would free-fall to ten thousand feet before opening the chute. There was no war down there, at least not a shooting one, and no one would be watching and waiting . . . theoretically. The drop zone had been calculated carefully—created from satellite photos that were less than twenty-four hours old. Cloud cover was expected to be adequate. Winds were relatively mild.

  Every technical precaution and preparation had been made. Now it was up to him to ready himself psychologically. He went over each step in his mind, looking for human error and unforeseen problems. He shook out his arms and legs periodically to keep his muscles loose.

  A crewman came back. “Time, Colonel. Suit up.”

  “How long?”

  “Ten minutes. Skipper said to tell you everything looks on the button. Moon won’t be up for a couple of hours, weather’s holding, and no one’s locked onto us. All’s quiet, as they say. I’ll be back to test your equipment and give you the heads up. Remember, when you jump, make sure you don’t fall upward. That wild-and-crazy tail assembly of ours can chop you like salad greens.”

  The crewman went away, chuckling at his own bad joke. Jon did not laugh. He hooked his Heckler & Koch MP5K to three rings on the special harness that crossed his chest to hold it in place. He dabbed blacking onto his face, avoiding his wounds. He struggled into the insulated oversuit and gloves and zipped the suit closed. After buckling on the outer harness, he hooked on his two parachutes and attached his oxygen, altimeter, GPS unit, and other equipment.

  Getting hot, he felt as if he weighed a half ton. He wondered briefly how troops dressed for full combat could even move and answered his own unspoken question: Because they had to. He remembered. He had been there himself.

  Ready, he waited, overloaded and overheated, hoping it would not be long. He was sufficiently uncomfortable that all he wanted was to get it over with. Jump, fall, and land. Almost anything was better than this . . . even facing the black void outside the AWACS.

  “Here we go.” The same crewman was back, tugging and checking his equipment for proper attachment and functioning. At last, he slapped Jon on the back. “Start breathing your oxygen. Watch that light up ahead. When it flashes, slide open the door. Good luck.”

  Jon nodded and did what he was told. As he fixed his gaze on the light, he felt the compartment depressurize. When the light flashed, he slid back the door. As the inky air sucked at him, he had one moment of indecision. Then he remembered something his father had told him a long time ago: Everyone dies, so you’re one hell of a lot better off to live your life now than to look back and wonder what you missed.

  He jumped.

  Washington, D.C.

  It was nearly noon in the nation’s capital, and the president was working at his table desk in the Oval Office. He had received and discussed the contingency war plans of the joint chiefs, from a mere show of force against Taiwan by the Chinese to full-scale invasion of the island nation and the unthinkable—a nuclear strike aimed by mainland China at the United States.

  President Castilla leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. Under his glasses, he rubbed the eyelids, then he clasped his hands behind his head. He thought about war, about trying to fight a nation of 1.3 billion, give or take a few million the Chinese had probably lost or never counted. He thought about nuclear weapons and felt as if he were losing control. It was one t
hing to face off against small, poorly armed nations and terrorists, homegrown or foreign, whose limit was to kill thousands, and quite another against China, which had unlimited capacity for mass devastation. He doubted China wanted war any more than he did, but what was the difference between a submarine commander so angry he was ready to fire a torpedo and an outraged hard-liner in a high place with his finger on the nuclear trigger?

  A light knock on his door preceded the head of Jeremy. “Fred Klein, sir.”

  “Send him in, Jeremy.”

  Klein came in like a nervous suitor, eager but apprehensive. Both men waited for Jeremy to leave.

  “Why do I think you’ve brought me good news and bad news,” the president said.

  “Probably because I have.”

  “All right, start with the good. It’s been a long day.”

  Klein hunched in his chair, sorting everything in his mind. “Colonel Smith is alive and well, and the original copy of the invoice manifest Mondragon tried to deliver to us has reappeared.”

  The president sat up like a shot. “You have the manifest? How soon can you get it here?”

  “That’s the bad part. It’s still in China.” He detailed Jon’s report from the time he was captured, his escape, and the phone call from Li Kuonyi. “He had to tell the CIA team he was working for the White House, but that’s all. Covert-One was never mentioned. A special, one-time assignment again.”

  “All right,” Castilla said grudgingly and scowled. “Now we know Ralph McDermid is definitely in the middle of the whole thing. But it changes nothing about the danger presented by the Empress.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Without the Flying Dragon manifest, we’re facing war. Li Kuonyi and McDermid’s people are meeting in Dazu tomorrow morning?”