by Marc Cameron
Wan rolled onto his back. An unbearable sadness washed over him as he stared up at the incredible blue. The men on the stricken 880, his men, five hundred feet below, would all perish without another look at the sky.
* * *
—
Two hours after Wan Xiuying collapsed, a strange rumble carried across the ice. He felt it before he heard it. The shivering had passed now and he was warm. In fact, the suit worked much too well, and he thought of taking it off to cool himself. He’d watched movies in his mind as he drifted in and out. Crimson Tide, Run Silent, Run Deep—the book was better. He’d found a copy in Mandarin, but he learned more from the one in English. U-571 . . . What was the Russian movie? China needed something . . . Wolf Warrior should make a good submarine movie . . .
The rumbling grew louder, shaking the ice under his head. A surge of adrenaline coursed through Wan’s body. A bear! Head lolling. He pushed himself onto his side with great effort.
“Come here!” he shouted. “Come and get me, you—”
But when he lifted his head, it was no bear he saw, but a large red ship in the distance, eating its way through the ice—and an orange bird hovering directly above him.
36
Captain Jay Rapoza, commanding officer of the USCGC icebreaker Healy, met the medical officer outside sick bay. Rapoza was a big man, burly, fit, barrel-chested, with a slight squint in his left eye that made him look as though he should be clenching a pipe in his teeth. He was a sailor’s sailor, fibbing just a little to his wife when he told her how heartbroken he was every time he went to sea.
“How’s he doing?” Rapoza asked.
Fortunately for the guy they’d scooped off the ice, the Healy was the only cutter in the Coast Guard to have a licensed physician’s assistant and an HS—health services technician (called a corpsman in the Navy). Lieutenant Shirley Anderson peeled off a set of blue nitrile gloves and shook her head.
“Pupils are still dilated and his heartbeat is irregular. Core temperature is eighty-seven—about a degree from gonersville in most people. We’re warming him up slowly. Have to be careful the cold blood from his extremities doesn’t rush back to his core and give him a heart attack.”
“Hope that guy plays the lottery,” Rapoza said, “because he is one lucky young man.”
“Roger that, sir,” Lieutenant Anderson said. “If I may ask, sir. No sign of a boat or snow machine?”
“None,” Rapoza said. “The 65 made two more passes after they dropped him off. Just a big hole in the ice. The SEIE suit suggests he escaped a submarine.”
Anderson shivered.
“I don’t like thinking about subs underneath us, sir. Creeps me out. But it does make sense. This guy is extremely talkative—mostly about submarine movies.”
“Odd,” Rapoza said. “Sonar shows the seabed at over a thousand meters. There are some underwater mountains, maybe . . .” He glanced at the door, then at the lieutenant. “What exactly is he saying?”
“He was talking about Lipizzaner stallions when I left.”
Rapoza saw a junior officer from engineering at the end of the passageway and called him by name. “Find Chief Cho and have him come see me.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” the ensign said. “Right away. I just passed him.”
Rex Cho came through the hatch a half minute later, cover in hand.
“Captain,” he said, presenting himself.
The whole ship knew they were heading toward an unknown radio signal, possibly a Chinese submarine. And, of course, they knew about the lone Asian man in the exposure suit they’d picked up off the ice, but they’d not all been told the details.
“I’m sorry, Captain,” Cho said. “I haven’t spoken Chinese since grade school, since my nainai passed away.”
“Understood,” Rapoza said. “But I’d like you in the interview with me, just in case you pick something up. He’s kind of out of his head. He might see you as a friendly face and be a little more forthcoming.”
“Aye, sir,” Cho said.
It took all of ten seconds for the man to tell Chief Petty Officer Cho that he was “Commander Wan Xiuying, executive officer of 880.” He drifted off twice, rambling about enigma machines and Nazi U-boats when he awoke. Some of it was in English, and Rapoza recognized them as lines from Hollywood movies. He first answered Chief Petty Officer Cho in Chinese, but when Cho repeated the question in English, Commander Wan threw his head against the pillow and rolled his eyes as if to say, Oh, you want to play that game? Okay . . . and then answering in English. Most of it seemed like nonsense, but many recent events over the past few days fell squarely in the unbelievable column.
Coded signals, strange noises from the bottom of the Chukchi, and now a Chinese submariner coughed up on the ice like some Jonah—Captain Rapoza grabbed a piece of paper from Lieutenant Anderson’s desk and took notes.
Though the Chinese submariner seemed fluent in English, his physical and mental state slurred his rambling words, rendering them difficult to understand. There had been a fire on a submarine . . . a professor Liu was dead or near death. Rapoza got that much.
Commander Wan lifted his head, tugging against his IV line, attempting to get out of the bed.
“Must call,” he said. “Crew . . . destroy . . .”
Anderson and Cho each took a shoulder and guided him gently back to the pillow.
“Burned,” he said, thrashing his head back and forth. “Save crew! Hai shi shen lou . . . no good. Destroyed . . . Fire. Hai shi shen lou . . . Gone! Hai shi shen lou . . .”
Chief Cho gave an excited nod. “Wait, wait . . . I think I know this one . . . I always thought it was funny . . . Hai shi shen lou—towers and cities built by clams—it means mirage.”
Commander Wan’s heart rate rose and he began to thrash harder.
“Captain . . .” Anderson said.
“Right.” Rapoza took his notes and walked toward the door. “I need to make a call. This is a little above my pay grade.”
“Sir,” Lieutenant Anderson whispered before he made it into the passageway. “Are we still heading toward the distress signal?”
Rapoza thought for a moment, and then shook his head.
“I think this guy is our distress signal. We’ll see what Higher says, but unless otherwise directed, we’ll stand by at this location for a bit.”
“Do you think there are people alive down there?” Anderson shivered again. “On a submarine?”
“Down there, yes,” Rapoza said. “Alive . . . I don’t know. But I think we’re going to find out.”
37
CIA case officers Leigh Murphy and Vlora Cafaro habitually kept an eye open for surveillance. Being aware of one’s surroundings was part and parcel of PERSEC—personal security—for spies, and for anyone else, for that matter.
They’d done no full-blown surveillance-detection run on the way to the bar. They had no need to arrive in the black—that is, without a tail. Everyone at the embassy, and likely everyone on Elbasanit Street, knew they went to the Illyrian Saloon at least three nights a week after dinner. Sure, it was predictable, but there were only so many good bars within walking distance of the embassy. The Illyrian was only four blocks away, on the other side of the Air Albania stadium. They were just two women going to unwind after work, not spies doing spooky spy shit.
And they were young and invincible.
Murphy saw the tall man in the gray fedora when she left the Serendipity restaurant on her way to meet Vlora at the bar, around the corner at the southern edge of the upscale Blloku district. Eating alone was a natural depressant, and there was nothing about the man to make him stand out on a dark street where most everyone wore some kind of hat against the cold spring evening.
He’d been out front, loitering by a newsstand on the corner. Vlora had seen him, too. Both women were trained observers, and both had noted he was tall, g
ood-looking, and probably Chinese. Neither woman mentioned him to the other, and both promptly forgot about him when they entered the warm bosom of the bar.
Vlora hadn’t eaten, and ordered kebabs. She sat across the small wooden table in a dark corner of the bar and bobbed her head to the live band while she ate, her long black hair piled high on her head with a yellow pencil. Murphy drank her Korca Bjonde and listened to the music.
Wood-planked walls and parquet flooring dampened the chatter and clink of voices and bottles, but conversation was difficult to hear over the music, so both women were content to sit and take in the vibe of the place for the first hour, unwinding from a long, and in Murphy’s case, excruciating, day. It took a couple of drinks for them to become lubricated enough that they didn’t mind that they’d be stricken with bar-voice the next day from shouting over the din at each other all night just to carry on a conversation.
The band tonight was playing a damn good cover of “Welcome Home (Sanitarium)” by Metallica, and the guy on lead guitar looked the part of an ancient warrior with his massive, coal-black beard that reached the middle of his chest and a crested bronze helmet that should have been guarding the hot gates of Thermopylae. The waitress, who was always giving patrons some little tidbit of Albanian history, had pointed out when she brought Leigh Murphy’s fourth bottle of Korca that the Illyrian tribe of Albani had been mentioned in the works of Ptolemy. Albanians took great pride in their Illyrian warrior heritage, as did many Balkan peoples—and the walls of the saloon showed it. Murphy had been here so many times she knew all the trivia by heart. She liked the bellicose motif—bronze helmets, short swords, broad-chested men with spears. When she was growing up in Boston, her middle school PE teacher had called her pugnacious. She’d gone home and looked the word up on Encarta on her dad’s new home computer, and decided that, yes, she was indeed pugnacious, and happy to be so. Maybe that was why she liked Albania so much—and why she put up with an asshole chief of station like Fredrick Rask.
Vlora finished her kebabs and twirled her glass of plum rakia while she stared transfixed at the band.
“He’s cute,” Leigh said, toasting the swarthy drummer with her bottle of Korca.
Vlora bobbed to the music. “You know what they call a drummer in a suit?”
Murphy shook her head.
“The defendant,” Vlora said, buzzed, chuckling at her own joke. She turned to face Murphy. “Anyway, I’m not looking to start a romance—too much paperwork. I’d have to file an Outside Activity report with Rask, and I don’t want that son of a bitch knowing any more about me than he has to—especially when it comes to my love life.”
Murphy tipped her beer and toasted in Albanian. “Gezuar to that.” She looked at the bottle and groaned, feeling exhausted and more than a little buzzed.
“Speaking of Freddie Rask,” Vlora said. “You okay? It looked like he was ripping you a new one today.”
“Yeah, well,” Murphy said. “I probably deserved it. I should have told him what my friend wanted me to do. I was just afraid he’d say no.”
“That’s exactly what he would have done,” Vlora said. “No is the default answer for a boss like Rask. Makes life easier on them.” She took a drink of her rakia and then leaned across the table, licking her lips. “So, tell me about this mystery guy. He’s one of us. Would I know him?”
“How’d you know my friend was a guy?” Murphy said.
“Leigh . . .” Vlora said. “What is it again that you think I do for a living?”
“Whatever,” Murphy said. “Anyway, we’re just friends. Life’s too complicated to have it any other way. For now.” She drank the last of her Korca, thought about another, but then decided against it. Her apartment was only five blocks away, but she wanted to go running in the morning. She looked at her watch. “Shit! It’s almost two a.m.”
Vlora shrugged. “Let me get this straight, this mystery guy, whatever his name is, sends you on a secret mission to interview a Uyghur guerilla fighter and gets your ass on the chopping block. Sounds like a real peach sending you out on something that radioactive without telling your boss.”
“Most of the shit we do is radioactive,” Leigh said. “Besides, he needed help.”
“All men need help, sweetie.” Vlora polished off her drink and waved at the waitress, asking for another. The waitress shook her head, which in Albania meant “yes.”
“I’ve gotta call it a night,” Murphy said. “You’re staying?”
“For a minute.” Vlora gave a long sigh, staring at the drummer again. “I’m rethinking my aversion to writing that Outside Activity report.” She looked up suddenly, bending to her philosophical side now that she had a few glasses of rakia in her. “Don’t get too mad at Rask. I mean, yeah, he’s a dick, but don’t you carry that burden of him being what he is. No matter where you go or what you do, there will always be a Freddie Rask—they just have different faces and names.”
“I know,” Murphy said. “I just didn’t appreciate him keeping the blinds to his office open so everyone could witness my beheading. I mean, I’m not some junior case officer straight out of training. He knows that.”
“Dans ce pays-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres. In this country, it is good to kill an admiral from time to time”—Vlora tapped her empty glass on the table, making sure the waitress didn’t forget her—“for the encouragement of others.”
The street was dark and cold and quiet when Murphy stepped out of the Illyrian Saloon. A young couple came out of the bar behind her, giggling and cooing at each other and making her feel more alone than she already did. Vlora was a good drinking bud, but not someone Murphy would have hung out with had they not been in the same office and shared a mutual hatred of Rask.
A scooter putted by, heading east toward the stadium. A dog barked somewhere down the street. She was thinking about how you didn’t hear many dogs in the city during the day, when the unmistakable sound of a boot scraped the pavement behind her. Continuing down the sidewalk, she shot a nonchalant glance over her shoulder. An Asian man in a skintight leather jacket, going the same direction she was. He was short, maybe not even as tall as Murphy, but looked broad in the shoulders, a weightlifter, maybe. His short stature and sudden appearance made her think of a Pukwudgie—the creepy little swamp goblins her dad used to tell her about to keep her from venturing away too far in the dark.
She’d been too tipsy to notice him. Amateur. Not that the guy was a threat, but Murphy shouldn’t have let anyone get that close without noticing him. Then she remembered the Asian man in the hat who had been loitering on the corner. A coincidence? Not likely. Adam had just sent her to have a heart-to-heart with a Uyghur separatist who might have information on the whereabouts of the Wuming.
Murphy quickened her pace, suddenly grateful for the weight of the little Glock 43 resting under her jacket in the small of her back. Normally, she would have continued west, to the T, before turning left on Sami Frasheri. Her apartment was two long blocks down, with a view of the Tirana Grand Park. If Pukwudgie was a state actor, the last thing she wanted to do was let him know where she lived. Protocol said she should have gone straight back to the bar where Vlora was, but this was probably nothing.
Murphy looked behind her again. He was still there, smoking a cigarette now, making no effort to hide, but was slowly closing the distance between them. She cut left down Janos Hunyadi, behind University of Tirana. It was a wider street and didn’t lead directly to where she lived.
She fished her phone out of her pocket and voice-dialed Vlora. It rang three times and then went to voicemail.
Shit!
Behind her, she heard footfalls on the pavement as Pukwudgie made the turn as well.
She thought of dialing 112—Albania’s 911 equivalent—but if something was about to go down, it would all be over before the police could get here. She stuffed the p
hone back into her jacket, wanting to keep her hands free.
Twenty, maybe just fifteen, steps back, Pukwudgie coughed. Loud, fake, the way you cough when you want someone to know the toilet stall is occupied. She didn’t even have time to check before a second man, also Asian, stepped around the corner at the intersection ahead and started walking toward her. This one was taller, with glasses and a puffy gray ski jacket. There was a street to her left, an alley, really, flanked by a scabby vacant lot and a run-down four-story apartment building. There were no streetlights, but she figured she could use that to her advantage. Tirana was her turf. Pukwudgie and his friend were trying to pinch her on her streets, the very route where she ran virtually every morning. She could cut down the alley, and then squirt out the end by the market, and then hang a left and run straight back north to the Illyrian, where Vlora was probably still making time with the drummer.
She made the turn, skirting a parked sedan, picking up her pace, running through the darkness.
She felt the man in the hat before she saw him, her gut registering some clue nanoseconds before the conscious part of her brain picked up on it. He stepped out of a little alcove to her right, midway down the block, less than ten yards away. She slowed, trying to make sense of the situation. Her hand flew to the gun at the same instant the man lit a cigarette. His motions were slow, methodical. The match lit his face under the low brim of the fedora. Then he held the flame sideways, so it illuminated the alcove beside him—and the lifeless body of Joey Shoop.
Murphy’s breath caught like a stone in her throat. She stutter-stepped, slowing her draw of the pistol when she should have sped up. These men had known she would take an alternate route if pressed when she left the bar. They had driven her to this exact spot.
Something heavy impacted her right knee at the same moment her hand touched the Glock. White lights of pain exploded through her body. Instinctively, her left leg propelled her away from the impact. She hopped sideways, trying to regain her balance as she brought the weapon up toward the man who’d hit her. He hit her again, with a metal bar—probably a collapsible baton, but it was too dark to see for sure. The second blow caught her across the top of the arm, impacting her radial nerves. The gun flew from her hand. At the same moment, a powerful hand struck her hard between the shoulder blades. Her right knee destroyed, her arm still aching from the blow, she threw her left hand out front to arrest her fall. Her wrist snapped on impact.
