by Marc Cameron
He’d just said okay and walked away smiling, to figure out how to sink her. It wouldn’t be hard. Blue-flamers were easy to shoot down.
The best way was probably to find something good himself that she’d missed.
When he’d been approached by the Chinese woman, it had been a no-brainer. China butted up to most of the countries in his division, so there was always crossover. The woman, she said her name was Dot, short for Dorothy, was pretty, she smiled a lot and touched his arm when she talked, like they were old friends, and she was happy to be around an American man instead of the Chinese guys she worked with who didn’t treat her so good. He’d answered a few questions at first, always telling himself that he would reel her in just a little further and then turn her with his enigmatic personality.
There had been no big reveal, no traumatic moment when she’d said, “Sorry, Tim, you’ve gone too far with us. We have you now.” He’d just known it. In truth, he’d enjoyed the work, the feeling of superiority he got from sitting at his desk and knowing when everyone else did not. Clandestine CIA officers felt that a little bit when they just went to the store, or to a family reunion, but pulling the wool over everyone at Langley—and getting paid for it—that had to be the most satisfying feeling in the world. And if he got to topple the imperious Odette Miller off her lofty career ladder when he popped smoke and left right under her nose, that was just gravy.
Rask had unwittingly passed on intel the Chinese had been salivating to get for years. Oh, the stuff about the Albanian op was interesting, and Meyer’s handler had paid him a bonus for it. Meyer had done a little digging, tangentially, so he didn’t get his hands dirty, and it turned out that the same officer who Leigh Murphy mentioned in her report was planning something big. Meyer could only glean bits and pieces. Requests for some unspecified activity in Novosibirsk, Russia, and a safe house in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
All of it was good stuff—get-imprisoned-for-espionage stuff—but Dot pressed him hard for one thing above all else. She wanted to know the identity of the case officer who had called Leigh Murphy in the first place, the person who had asked her to interview the Uyghur. According to Rask, she must have known him well. They’d probably worked together on a past op. Murphy had been stationed in Africa before, Meyer had that much. Maybe they’d been stationed there together. He’d do some checking, ginning up some connection to a CI case he was helping with. Hell, maybe he’d just call Murphy, tell her he was running something down and needed her help. Rask said she seemed like a ladder-climber. She’d probably be happy to help out someone from HQ. He’d play her a little and get some leads. The thought occurred to him that the Chinese might talk to her first, but he put that out of his mind.
With the mole hunters poking under every stone, Meyer needed to work quickly so he could get out of here before they started casting wider nets. So far, nobody expected he would know anything about the China desk. In fact, no one expected him to know much about anything at all.
He’d find out what Dot wanted. Rask had told him about Murphy’s after-action report, how she was vague to the point of insubordination. She’d identified her friend only by a cryptonym, an NOC, or officer with no official diplomatic cover. This guy wouldn’t get booted out of the country and declared persona non grata if he was caught. He’d be imprisoned or killed. If the Chinese were smart, they would watch him for a while, learn who his assets were, and then scoop everyone up at the same time.
Meyer had heard the cryptonym before, and it gave him a place to start.
CROSSTIE.
34
Fu Bohai woke to the hum of his mobile phone on the nightstand next to his hotel bed. He peeled back the Egyptian cotton sheet, sodden with sweat, and rolled away from the naked Russian woman who lay draped across his chest and thigh.
She stirred, smacking her lips in sleep. “Tell them to crawl away and die,” she said, her Russian thick with the aftereffects of too much blini and Ossetra caviar, and precisely the right amount of vodka and sex.
Her name was Talia Nvotova. They’d met that evening at a Chinese embassy function in Moscow where Fu had been tasked to look into a Chinese diplomat suspected of selling secrets to the Russians. They were “strategic partners,” Russia and China, tenuous allies. But, as the adage went, there were friendly countries, but not friendly intelligence services.
Fu Bohai was known by his superiors to be particularly unfriendly, and it was this quality for which he was sent to Moscow. His direct supervisor, Admiral Zheng, who commanded PLAN intelligence, operated by what he called the fifty-fifty rule. If Fu was fifty percent convinced that the diplomat had turned traitor, he was to take care of the matter then and there, sparing the Motherland the bother of a trial. Beijing had suspected for over a year that someone within the Ministry of State Security or PRC military intelligence was leaking classified information to both the Russians and the Americans. They hadn’t narrowed the field very far as of yet, and could not very well approach the SVR and say, “One of your spies who has betrayed China is also betraying you to the Americans,” though Fu Bohai suspected it would come to that eventually if the traitor could not be found, in order to plug the leak. He smiled at the idea of the mushroom cloud that would cause in both countries.
Officially, Talia was a Russian/Mandarin translator for Moscow state television. Her surname was Czech, but she was a Russian citizen. Fu made certain of that. Well-known in diplomatic circles, Talia had been invited to the function because of her beauty and ability to keep the conversation going. Fu Bohai felt she was probably a case officer with SVR, the Russian foreign intelligence service akin to MSS and the American CIA. He was a newcomer to the embassy, so the alluring Miss Nvotova had naturally done her job and cozied up to him at the party. It did not hurt that he was over two meters tall, had a boyish face but the experience of forty-two years, and could bench-press over a hundred and fifty kilos. He happily went along with the getting-to-know-you charade, inviting her to stroll with him around the park across Druzhby Street from the embassy. Moscow springs are notoriously chilly and Talia looked ravishingly Russian in her silver fox coat and sable ushanka. She’d complimented his fedora; he’d complimented her cold pink cheeks. They’d ended up together at his hotel, where she looked ravishingly Russian with nothing on at all.
She tried to roll back to him, but he pushed her away again, harder this time, giving himself distance.
She snorted, collapsing onto her back in a huff, not bothering with the sheet while he lifted his fedora to retrieve the phone under it.
Fu spoke in Chinese, knowing Talia understood every word. He shifted in bed so his thigh ran alongside hers as he talked, skin to skin. He kept the volume of the phone low, so she could hear only his side of the conversation.
It was Admiral Zheng.
SURVEYOR had information that someone from the CIA office in Albania had spoken with a Uyghur refugee who had links to separatist groups in China, possibly the Wuming. It was weak, as far as intelligence product went, but it had caused some movement from the Americans. The admiral wanted Fu to speak to the Uyghur and the woman from CIA—find out what they knew that might help lead him to Medina Tohti, and then do with them what he did best. Fu did not know the entirety of the situation with Tohti. He did not need to. What he did know was that it was a sensitive matter that the admiral did not trust the Ministry of State Security to handle. What’s more, the admiral cared little about finding anyone associated with the terrorist organization known as Wuming. Locating them would provide a method to capture Medina Tohti. She had to be brought in alive and able to think and communicate. The last was an important detail. A prisoner could be very much alive, but unable to do much beyond a blink or grunt. Anyone else should be terminated if possible, but Fu was not to go out of his way for that. Wuming was a problem for law enforcement. The admiral wanted Medina Tohti in custody sooner rather than later—and the fewer people who knew about it, the better.
>
Fu picked up his watch, a Tissot, also on the nightstand by his hat. “I will check the flights,” he said. “But it will take all day to get there via commercial airline.”
Talia’s beautiful thigh tensed—possibly because he spoke about leaving . . .
“Stand by,” Fu said, muting the phone and holding it away from his ear to check the distance between Moscow and Tirana, Albania, on the Internet. He turned the phone away so Talia could not observe his search.
The movement brought a whiff of Talia’s shampoo and he had to rub a hand across his face to stay focused.
“If I take a company plane I can be there in under four hours,” he said.
Her leg tensed again. Relaxed. A delicate foot tick-tocked back and forth at the end of the mattress, red toenails bright and stark against the white sheet. Her brain was working through some problem. Was it how to get Fu to stay with her, or was she instead envisioning a large map, as he would have done had he heard her having this same conversation? Was she trying to work out what important destinations a corporate jet might reach in less than four hours?
The admiral easily agreed to Fu’s use of the company plane, a Cessna Citation CJ3 registered to an Internet gaming company in Beijing. The company did not mind the use of their name on the international paperwork, and members of Admiral Zheng’s intelligence service enjoyed some degree of anonymity when they traveled. Four of Fu’s men were already in the air from Beijing. They would meet him in Tirana.
Fu ended the call and set the phone back on the nightstand beside his hat. He waited for Talia to speak.
She rolled toward him, draping her leg across his thighs again, nuzzling his neck with her button nose, kneading gently at his shoulder with her chin. “Do you really have to leave me, dorogoy?” My darling.
“I am afraid so,” Fu said, attuned to the reaction of the muscles in her belly as she lay flush against his hip.
She groaned, pouting, pulling herself closer to him, as if getting any closer were even possible. “Ya nye magu byes teebya zheet.” Fu didn’t understand her, but he’d observed many times since he’d taken her to his bed that though her Mandarin was near perfect, she stuck to her native Russian in matters of the heart. She stuck out her bottom lip and translated. “I cannot live without you.”
She did not ask where he was going, which made him doubt his earlier assessment. Instead, she asked when he was coming back.
“I am not certain,” Fu said, being honest. He did not know if he would ever return to Moscow.
She nuzzled him harder, breathing against his neck. “You have at least one more hour, no?”
He shook his head. “I must leave now.”
She pulled away, far enough to lift herself up on one elbow and stare down at his face, head tilted, auburn hair draped to one side, exposing the small diamond stud in her beautiful ear. She kept her leg where it was, hooking him gently with her heel.
“What could be so important that you have to rush away?”
“Work,” he said, leaving it at that. Now her questions would come. The angled interrogation of a spy hiding under the guise of a wistful lover.
Instead, she collapsed beside him, dejected and glum, and pressed him no further. “Very well,” she said. “I am not accustomed to this. It is usually I who leaves.”
Fu kissed her on the shoulder and got out of bed.
Talia pulled the white sheet to her chin and rolled on her side to watch him get dressed. She slipped back and forth between Chinese and Russian as she talked about all the things they might do together when he came back to Moscow.
She was still in bed, naked but for the sheet, when he shrugged on his long wool coat and pulled his gray hat snug. The odds were sixty-forty against her working for the Russian SVR—and that saved her life.
For the moment.
35
Commander Wan’s exposure suit gripped him like a fist as water flooded the trunk and pressure equalized with the sea outside. He climbed the short ladder and unlocked the hatch. He took a deep breath before he gave it a kick. It opened easily, and he pulled himself through, clinging to a small exterior handle long enough to shut the door behind him, throwing him into complete and utter darkness.
And then he let go.
* * *
—
The sonar technician aboard Long March #880 had been off watch during the accident and sustained burns to the side of his face as part of the fire-suppression crew. At his station now, he turned his bandaged head toward the captain.
“Con, Sonar. Heavy screws. Close. Zero-five-zero.”
Captain Tian pursed his lips. Perhaps the distress buoy had gotten through the ice. “Another submarine?”
“Negative, Captain. A surface ship. Icebreaker.”
* * *
—
In training, Commander Wan had been taught to yell “ho, ho, ho,” like Santa Claus all the way to the surface to keep venting air so his lungs would not burst as the pressure increased as he shot to the surface. In truth, he simply screamed. The huge hood shot him upward at two meters per second, as if pulled by a hoist, arms outstretched over his head like Superman. Even moving so quickly, it took almost a minute and a half for him to reach the surface. Ears squealing, his lungs on fire, his face felt as though he’d been beaten with a hammer as pockets in his sinuses struggled to deal with the rapid ascent. And the cold. It was very cold, even in the suit. He imagined for a moment that he was falling, not rising, plummeting from a fifty-story building. If he hit overhead ice, the results would be close.
He’d been terrified through the entire journey, from the moment he’d dogged the hatch on the lockout trunk, but a minute in he began to fight true panic. The kind of panic that makes a submariner hold his breath or rip away some important piece of gear. The kind of panic that would kill him. He kept breathing out. Why was it still so dark? He had to be near the surface. Had they gotten the time wrong? Was it night? Did polar bears hunt at night? He should be nearing the surface by now. Ah . . . He’d been closing his eyes. Light. Gray at first. Then blue. Something pale passed in front of his eyes, scraping the hood, spinning him as he bounced away.
Ice.
His hands struck the base of the ice sheet first, his arms folding in on themselves as the speed of his body carried him up. The air in the bubble hood protected his skull from the worst of the impact—rattling him, but not breaking his neck as he’d feared. He followed the light, rebreathing what little air he had left in the hood as he crawled along the bottom of the ice, pulling himself toward what he hoped was the edge.
At some point, he’d have nothing but carbon dioxide.
Blue-white chunks of ice as big as cars bobbed and rolled in a slurry of smaller slush, basketballs, soccer balls, baseballs, all jagged and sharp, tearing at his suit. A sudden shock hit the small of his back as freezing water began to seep in. Floundering, he kicked toward what looked like the edge. One of the crew had made him a set of spikes out of two pieces of a mop handle and sharpened bolts. Fighting the swaying current, terrified of being sucked under, he popped the protective corks off the sharpened ends and used them to pull himself upward. Kicking was difficult within the cumbersome suit, but he powered himself up—only to be rolled off the other side as what he thought was a shelf turned out to be a small, tippy berg. Water began to seep into his suit again. If it filled, he would, at the very least, freeze to death. If he lost the flotation, he would return to the sub, very slowly and very dead.
He found the edge, a two-foot-thick shelf. It was much too high for him to get a correct angle with the ice spikes without taking the suit off. That was not going to happen.
He swam along the edge, searching, pushing away every time a swell threatened to drag him under. His nose bled profusely, spattering the clear face of the hood with every breath. Overwhelmed with cold and fatigue, he found himself wondering what would come
first, complete exhaustion or the inability to see what he was doing. A bergy bit the size of his father’s car nudged him from behind, at first startling him, then giving him an idea.
The first one had held him for a time, before tipping him off. If he could clamber up on this one, he might be able to use it as a stepping stone . . .
“We did not talk about this,” Wan muttered inside his bubble hood as he worked. “Drowning. Yes. Kidneys torn out by bears. Yes. But there was no mention of the insurmountable wall . . .”
Using all his reserves, he finally dragged and kicked himself out of the water to collapse on the ice shelf. He rolled onto his side and unzipped the hood with trembling fingers. The sudden slap of cold air took what was left of his breath away. A white moonscape of ice dazzled by the sun stretched forever around him in all directions.
The thought of it made him laugh out loud. He’d struggled so hard, only to drag himself to a different place to die.
* * *
—
Commander Wan’s suit had begun to freeze to the ice by the time he remembered he had something else to do.
The satellite phone. Yes. That was it. Call in the report . . . and then, whatever happened happened . . .
He fumbled with the bag containing the phone, teeth chattering, shivering badly, his hands like unworkable claws. The simple squeeze buckles seemed impossible, and he had to put his hands under his armpits for several minutes just to warm them. He finally opened the bag—only to dump a steady stream of seawater onto the ice. He could not see any rip, but it had flooded nonetheless. The phone was useless. A plastic brick.
The bag with the shotgun was still around his neck. He could use that if he needed to. If freezing to death wasn’t as painless as they said. Or if a bear came for him. He looked at the plastic buckles, then at his blue unworkable fingers and shook his head. The neoprene bag might as well have been a bank vault. However he died, the shotgun would not be a part of it.
