The Devil's Playground

by Michael Reagan

  "By that statement, is it fair to assume you're not entirely happy with the President's decision to focus on Korea?" injected Hank.

  Young looked at the Texan for a moment. The experienced intelligence operative in him sensed this was the moment he had been waiting for. He smiled.

  "As a civil servant, I serve at the President's request," he answered. "As a Republican the answer to that question is yes, you see," Young started, setting up his play, "I believe the Russians despite your firm handing of the retailing via the Litchfield pipeline are going to have way too much influence on Japan and Korea."

  Young then continued cautiously because he knew TLH and CORETEXAS were effectively married into two key areas of the world. He dangled his carrot. "Near term though they aren't our biggest problem!"

  "No! What is?" enquired Hank taking the bait as he placed the napkin on his lap.

  Young picked up his iced tea and took a sip of the refreshing drink before continuing with his lecture.

  "The Chinese," he answered with blunt authority.

  "How so?" queried Hank.

  "Because they are following a policy of seeking to take a bigger part in the development of a multi-polar world while proposing a greater role for the United Nations in developing countries and international law and diplomacy, by using their GDP (i.e. purchasing power parity), that is already bigger than that of the U.S; and even at its current, slower rate of growth is going to more than double over the next decade. Because of this they are going to surpass the United States in Latin America and drive a wedge between America and Europe." Young paused for effect. It was one of his worst character traits, yet he didn't care.

  "And then," He continued, "Eventually through developing a 'new silk road' with Central Asia, a maritime "silk route" with South East Asia, and finally an economic corridor through India, Myanmar, and Bangladesh ensures, by the end of the twenty-first century, ensure they are dominant power in the world."

  It was Hank's turn to smile this time.

  "Well David, we can't have that can we!" he said just as their steaks arrived.

  The moment Angus Mackintosh had seen David Young's face appear on the screen of the television naming him as the potential candidate for the post of Secretary of State in President-elect's Parker's new Administration as he sat in his study he thought he had seen a ghost.

  "Could it be?" he had thought at the time, now he was about to find out before he did anything else.

  He had set this meeting up via Jack Fielding, his counterpart Chairman of TLH American operations, because he wanted to be sure before he told Tommy that he was the man that had ordered him to leave behind his friend and his men on a mission long forgotten in the First Gulf War when he was the Colonel in charge of the SAS.

  "Please follow me Brigadier Mackintosh," said the young woman's voice, bringing him back to the present.

  "Darling, would you please take Bradley for a walk before you head off to meet Tommy?" Angus's wife asked from the top of the stairs of their London Townhouse just off Hampstead Heath.

  "Yes, darling, on my way now," answered the straight-backed former Guardsman. Picking up the Red Setter's leash, he quickly fastened it to the dog's collar. Then as he did every morning, closed the door behind him and walked the dog up the tree-lined streets towards the park.

  Five minutes later he let the dog off the leash and allowed him to roam free.

  His mind pondered the troubled knowledge he had discovered in Washington because he knew how Tommy would react.

  The sound of a young girl interpreted his thoughts. He turned and smiled at her.

  "Sorry to bother you sir," she started as a jogger ran past them.

  Angus was about to answer the girl when his brain registered a loud thunderclap on his ears at the same time. A sharp pain penetrated Angus's ear, and in spite of him being his in sixties as he was a former Special Forces Officer, his brain immediately reacted. In doing so he attempted to turn around ready to attack his assailant, only to be stopped dead in his tracks.

  He felt a sudden numbness on his face then his arm, quickly followed by his left leg. Confusion attacked him. He tried to speak but nothing came out, then he lost his balance and fell to the ground in heap. It was then he realized his brain was shutting down.

  What Angus didn't know as little licks from Bradley on his face and a tear trickled down the side of his cheek was that the vibration from the simultaneous claps had burst both his eardrums and had caused massive haemorrhaging within his brain. He was being murdered by a technique called "boxing the ears" and there was nothing he could do about it.

  TWO YEARS LATER

  17

  Beijing

  Intelligent, able to speak fluently in English, Japanese, and Russian alongside the national language of Mandarin and the local dialect of the Hebei Province, where she had been born, twenty-eight-year-old Zhang Nu held three notable distinctions in her homeland. First that she was a world-renowned Chinese model who had once represented China in the Miss Universe competition, second she was the famous graduate of the University of Science and Technology Beijing (USTB) and thereby a poster child for the Party; and third she was an intelligence officer within the International Cooperation Department of the MPS. Stunningly beautiful with long jet-black hair, green eyes, and creamy skin, she was a woman that the media often described as the natural heir to the mythical four historical beauties of Chinese culture known as Xi-Shi, Way-Zhaojin, Diaochen, and Yang Guifei.

  She had been dating her current "boyfriend," the Japanese Chairman of a firm that was bidding on a multi-billion pound contract to build one of China's high-speed train routes, for only three months when the model-cum-spy had come across a piece of information that she knew the instant she finished reading its contents was going to be of immediate interest to her masters at the MPS.

  The sudden noise of loud pig sounding snores erupting from her sleeping lover caused Zhang to glance away from the BlackBerry in her hands and in the direction of the man.

  "Pig," she thought with contemptuous smile, it taken her just a matter of moments to get his passwords for the device and computer because he, as did most people,?continually underestimated?her.

  When she been a child growing up, her mother, a former ballet teacher, had brutally instilled in her that the only way a girl could get ahead in life was to foster "Guanxi" meaning "personal relationships" with the people that mattered. In her mother's version that meant allowing powerful men to use her small body just like the sleeping man on the bed had done.

  She may have grown up hating men and was honor bound to look after the mother whom she rarely saw anymore but Zhang loved her country, for without the system the young girl from the province would have never as progressed as far as she had done.

  Talent spotted at University by the MPS where her recruiter had quickly spotted her natural talent for manipulating men and women in equal measure, it was her instructors during her training that taught her to believe that her natural beauty should be used as a weapon and her instrument.

  Her country gave her an anchor for her mind to grab hold of in her life so to banish away the trauma of her childhood and it was this belief that Zhang would turn to for solace or justification whenever she found herself, as she regularly did in the service of her country, in the sleazier side of life.

  Taught to believe that because she operated?in this territory it would enable her beloved country to protect and feed its people, Zhang never questioned her orders even if it meant she was ordered to kill by her masters. She would do it. Luckily for the sleeping man those was not her orders for the moment.

  She looked at her clock on the bedside table. It read 3:00 a.m. Knowing that man was going to be out for the count for at least a few more hours, as she had dropped him a touch of SP-117, the powerful sedative originally developed by the Russians in the 1980s but now used by MPS in covert integrations because it enabled an agent to question a target at will before completely k
nocking them out with the added bonus of the target never remembering what had happened, Zhang dismissed the latest pervert in a long line of perverts from her mind and instead refocused her gaze on his BlackBerry in her hands.

  She watched as the red light turned blue on the specially adapted Malware infected Kingston 1TGB DataTraveler HyperX Predator USB, telling her that the stick had completed its work of downloading the communication device's contents and had placed a hidden tracking and a piece of monitoring software onto the phone's hard drive.

  The beautiful agent removed the USB from the device and then promptly placed it into the man's Sony laptop so the stick could complete its work on that machine. Once finished, Zhang quickly removed the drive, opened her distinctive Hermes Orange Kelly handbag's hidden compartment and promptly placed the USB into it. Her tasks completed, the young supermodel decided it was time for a shower.

  Steaming hot water was always something Zhang used as a way to lessen the shame she often felt in her mind after a session with one the many animals of the world she had slept with in the service of her country. Tonight, China's darling felt that she needed it more than ever after what she had read on his BlackBerry.

  Fifteen minutes later feeling clean and refreshed Zhang returned to the bedroom. Ever the model she elegantly tiptoed across the floor even though it wasn't needed because her lover was dead to the