“So by running a search on whoever was tracking that phone . . .”
“We may get lucky and get a name. However, to me the real clue lies in the fact that she knew about our meeting, who I was, and that I ‘noticed things,’ as she put it. You were their main target, Diane, but whoever was behind this was counting on me noticing her and finding the bomb in the trashcan, which meant you would be rushed from the restaurant and into your SUV, where the real kill was set to take place.”
“So the first bomb was a decoy?” asked Gustaves.
“Unless they got lucky, but, yes.”
“This implies meticulous planning.”
“Indeed it does,” agreed Talanov. “How many people knew about our meeting?”
“Only a handful,” Gustaves replied.
“Look into who those people were. But there’s one more thing. Turquoise Girl said her contact asked if she was from China and if she still had family in China, which she thought was strange.”
Gustaves and Wilcox exchanged uneasy glances.
“Does that mean something?” asked Talanov.
“Who do you know in China?” Gustaves asked in return.
“No one,” answered Talanov. “Why?”
“Do any of your former colleagues live there? Any old contacts? Any enemies?”
“None that I know of.”
“Have you ever been to China?”
“I was trained there in martial arts as a boy, but nothing since. Mind telling me what this is about?”
“Someone in China has been trying to find you and we need to know who it is, and why.”
“They also ran searches on Diane and me,” added Wilcox, “with those searches daisy-chained and phantom-replicated through a series of anonymizers and proxy servers that made it impossible for us to trace or identify the source. And that same source tried hacking our server. They got nowhere, of course, but they tried.”
“I don’t know what any of that that means.”
Wilcox worked the screen of his phone until a recorded video began to play, which he held up for Talanov to see. The screen showed a pretty Chinese woman in her forties, with friendly eyes, clear skin, and long black hair pulled back in low ponytail at the base of her neck. Dressed in a light blue uniform with dark blue epaulets on the shoulders, she was seated at a desk in an office, with file cabinets in the background.
“Hi Bill, this is Alice,” the woman in the video began.
Wilcox paused the video to explain, “Alice is Alice Ti, who is with the Hong Kong CIB, which is their Criminal Intelligence Bureau, which is part of the Crime and Security Division of the Hong Kong Police Force. Alice is a longtime friend that I met back in the day . . . not long after I met you, in fact, when she was on vacation in Italy and we quite literally ran into one another outside this magnificent little winery.”
Gustaves discreetly cleared her throat.
“Sorry,” Wilcox said, touching his cell phone screen again, which recommenced the video.
“As you know,” Alice continued, “we, like you, have a monitoring agency that catches certain keywords used in internet searches and communications. Our software vocabulary includes the names of important people from around the world, including our own political leaders, as well as yours. Your name is on that list, Bill, as is the name of Congresswoman Diane Gustaves. Obviously, this is not because you’re a threat, but because we would want to know if you’re in any potential danger. Your names came up several times in connection with a focused search for a man named Aleksandr Talanov. We do not know who Mr. Talanov is, or why someone would be looking for him, but the search was intense and the connection with you and Congresswoman Gustaves was unmistakably clear. We attempted to trace the search, but the signal had been daisy-chained and phantom-replicated through a series of anonymizers and proxy servers that made it impossible to identify the source, although we know it originated in China.”
Hearing the same computer jargon again, Talanov glanced at Wilcox, who grinned sheepishly and shrugged.
“Bottom line,” said Alice, “we were not able to determine who was looking for Mr. Talanov, or why, or what his connection is with you and Congresswoman Gustaves. In any case, I thought you should know. In the meantime, we will keep looking, and if I hear anything further, I’ll let you know.”
Wilcox stopped the video and he and Gustaves both looked at Talanov expectantly, waiting for him to comment.
Talanov looked back and forth between them before saying, “I wish I could add to what Officer Ti just said, but I have no idea why someone in China would be looking for me. I don’t know anyone who lives there.”
“Isn’t Turquoise Girl, as you’ve been calling her, Chinese?” asked Gustaves.
“What’s one got to do with the other?” asked Talanov.
“After what you just heard about someone in China conducting a search on you, don’t you think that’s relevant?”
“Maybe.”
“I think it’s more than a maybe. After what happened today, I think someone in China is behind the assassination attempt and was trying to get to me through you or Bill. This is supported by what you just told us, that I was their primary target, so, again, we need to find out who that person is and why they want me killed.”
“Correlation does not necessitate causation.”
“What do you mean?” asked Gustaves.
“Whistling drives elephants away.”
Gustaves responded with a reprimanding scowl.
“I whistle all the time,” said Talanov. “See any elephants around?” He looked out the window of the limousine as it sped along. “Correct me if I’m wrong,” he said, “but I don’t see any of them running around out there.” He sat back and looked at Gustaves. “Okay, yes, I just used an absurd example to make a point, which is, the correlation of no elephants running around does not mean my whistling drove them away. Correlation does not necessitate causation. Which means, we can’t assume a single point origin of someone in China looking for me and a Chinese girl trying to kill you. There is obviously a correlation, but it may be nothing more than that. There may be causation, but there may not be. At this point, we simply don’t know.”
“I don’t believe in coincidence,” said Gustaves.
“Which is a great line for a TV cop show, where scriptwriters have to link everything together because it’s part of the formula. But if you assume a single point of origin, then you blind yourself to the fact that we may have two separate, coincidental, points of origin. Unless, of course, there’s something you’re not telling me, such as why you brought me to DC in the first place. You told me it was to furnish testimony about an individual whose name you couldn’t reveal. I thought that individual might have been Bill, that maybe he was being awarded some kind of a medal. But the individual in question was actually me, and it required me to sit through some of the most intense interrogation I’ve ever experienced. So, again, why am I here?”
Gustaves thought carefully about her words. “A lot of people want you gone from the intelligence community,” she said. “They think we’ve allowed a Trojan Horse into our ranks. That you’re colluding with the Russians, and, now, the Chinese. In short, they think you’re a spy.”
“Me? After all I’ve done for this country?”
“Easy, Tiger,” said Wilcox. “That’s why we made you sit through that subcommittee hearing. It gave us an official record – and documentation – of your outstanding service to this nation. For the record, no one on the committee could find any evidence against you, and believe me, they tried.”
“Do you honestly think that matters? If they can’t find evidence, they fabricate it. It’s how they work.”
“Which is why we need to find out who in China was conducting that search and what their connection is to the people who tried killing Diane.”
“And I’m telling you there may not be a connection.”
“Except there is a connection,” said Gustaves.
Talanov scr
utinized Gustaves for a long moment before realizing what she was saying.
“Me,” he said before looking out the window bitterly. “They’re blaming this on me, aren’t they?”
“Without a shred of evidence,” Gustaves was quick to respond. “While you were chasing down Turquoise Girl, my assistant, Amber, phoned to say Levin was already asking suggestive questions to the press about your Chinese connections, saying that you had trained there as a boy. How he got a copy of your KGB records, I have no idea, but he did, and, now, with someone in China trying to locate you, and with someone from China trying to kill me . . . well, you can guess the innuendos he’s making.”
“They’ll say I was part of the operation,” said Talanov, “that the trashcan bomb was simply a diversion so that you would be rushed out of the Monocle and into your SUV, where the actual kill would take place. And that I knew it all along.”
“I’ve already told Amber to issue a statement that you chased down the assailant and stopped her from detonating a second bomb. If you’d been complicit, you would have allowed it to go off, then shot Turquoise Girl to keep her from talking. Instead, you prevented her from setting off that bomb and turned her over to the police. Your actions speak louder than Levin’s words.”
“Unless it was to ingratiate myself in order to prove my loyalty so that I would be accepted more deeply into your ranks.” Talanov shook his head. “I just don’t know if it’s worth it anymore. I honestly don’t need the grief. I don’t need any of this.”
“Maybe not, but I need you,” Gustaves replied. “I need you working behind the scenes to identify our nation’s opponents and verify the accuracy of intelligence data coming my way. I need you watching my back and helping me see what I don’t see. What happened today is a perfect example. You neutralized a threat that no one else noticed. Please. I’m asking you to weather this storm and stay on to work with me in a closer capacity. I need people around me I can trust, and I hope you believe me when I say, I trust you, Alex. Help me find out who’s behind this. Who in China wants me dead.”
“If I do, and I’m not saying that I will, you may not like what I find. Because I don’t think the Chinese are behind what happened today. Why someone over there is looking for me, I have no idea, but what happened today has the smell of something closer to home. Someone closer to home.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because whoever tried killing you knew about our meeting at the Monocle, and there is no way someone in China would be able to plan an assassination attempt on something as last-minute as that. Look, I’m not saying you don’t have enemies abroad, or that some radical faction in a far-flung corner of the world doesn’t want your head on a stick. But other countries are not your worst enemies. For the most part, they respect you because you’re strong and forthright. Your enemies, and I’m talking about the real ones, are those who hate you because you are strong and forthright, and those people are right here in your own backyard, smiling at you each and every day in the corridor.”
“But everything points to China.”
“If that were the case, why would Alice have contacted Bill? China is not your enemy.”
“But Turquoise Girl is Chinese.”
“And she may have been chosen for that fact, to get you looking in the wrong direction, especially if whoever’s behind this knows someone in China is looking for me, which means they planned to blame me for the assassination and get rid of two birds with one stone. Except they failed, and I’m going to find them, and when I do—”
“We’re here, Madam Congresswoman,” Grady announced, stopping the limousine outside the departure concourse of the airport. He lowered the dividing window briefly to make the announcement, then closed it again.
“We’ll talk more when I get back,” Talanov said. “For now, I need to get away.”
“Where’re you headed?” asked Wilcox.
“San Francisco. To see an old friend.”
“Anyone I know?”
“Actually, I’ll be visiting Zak.”
Wilcox lurched forward in his seat. “Babikov? You’re going to see him? I didn’t know he was even alive.”
“He is,” said Talanov, “and that information goes no further than the back seat of this car. I mention it now only because you and Diane are the only people I trust. So the fact that Zak is alive and living here in the United States remains totally confidential. Understood?”
“Alex, we’re talking Babikov.”
“I mean it, Bill. Otherwise, it’s goodbye on me telling you anything ever again.”
“Who’s Babikov?” asked Gustaves, looking back and forth between the two men.
“A longtime friend,” answered Talanov.
“As innocuous as that sounds,” explained Wilcox, “at one time, Zakhar Babikov was one of the most feared agents in the KGB . . . a Spetsnaz major who became the drill instructor and mentor of Alex when he joined the Soviet military as a teenager. Later, as a team, Alex and Zak gave us fits when they were running around Europe on the loose.”
“Ancient history,” said Talanov. “These days, Zak runs a community center in San Francisco.”
Wilcox’s mouth fell open. “Babikov runs a community center? You’ve got to be joking.”
“Nope. Zak found God, or should I say, God found him. Zak’s a lot older, wiser, and a lot different than he was in the old days. I’ve been driving up to see him for the last few months. He’s been helping me work through some things.”
“What kind of things?”
“Things.”
“As in?”
“Personal things.”
“How come you never said anything?”
Talanov checked his watch. “I need to go.”
“And you can take another two minutes to tell me what’s going on. Alex, we’re talking Babikov. You saw what it was like in that hearing. If word gets out that Babikov is here and you two have been hanging out . . . how did he get into the country, anyway? Is he here illegally?”
“Who cares? He’s doing a good thing among the Chinese community in San Francisco.”
“The Chinese community? Are you flippin’ kidding me?”
“His wife is Chinese.”
“No one will care about that! If word gets out—”
“Quit worrying, he’s been here for years. If word was going to get out, it would have gotten out already.”
“Quit worrying? Worrying is part of my job description, especially when it comes to you. Now, how did Babikov get into the country? When did he arrive? What kinds of things have you two been talking about?”
“Let it go, Bill,” said Gustaves. “We’ll discuss this if and when Alex is ready. In fact, I think you need a vacation more than Alex does, and if you worked for me, I’d order you to take one, which I’ve a mind to do anyway or your funding may get cut.”
Wilcox grumbled and looked away.
“I know you’ve got a plane to catch,” said Gustaves, “so, go, enjoy yourself. I’ll give you a call tomorrow.”
“Can’t. I’ll be keeping my phone switched off.”
“You’re not serious?”
“I need a break, Diane. A break from all of this.”
“What if I need to reach you?”
“Isn’t the purpose of vacation to get away from people trying to reach you?”
“And if the same people who tried killing us decide to try again? I need to be able to warn you. At least give me the name of the community center.”
“If Bill didn’t know about Babikov, the bad guys don’t, either. No one can try to kill me if they don’t know where I am or who I’m with. I’d like to keep it that way.”
“And I respect that,” Gustaves said. “But I really do need to know where you’ll be. If something does happen, or if we get updated information that affects you, I need to be able to reach you. Those details will remain strictly confidential.”
“Since when has anything in this town remained confidential?”
/> “Eyes only. Mine and Bill’s. Emergencies only.”
Talanov assessed Gustaves for a moment. “The Quiet Waters Community Center. But I meant it when I said my phone will be switched off. I’m even removing the battery. I don’t want anyone tracking my location. When I’m back online, I’ll call.”
“Isn’t that a little excessive?”
“Not after what happened today. I’ll see you in a few weeks.”
CHAPTER 12
Dragon Head’s Gulfstream began its early morning descent into Washington, DC. Aside from the pilot, copilot, and a flight attendant, the only passengers were Xin Li, Straw Sandal, and twelve Shí bèi fighters. The fighters, all male, did not look dangerous. In their twenties, they were dressed in T-shirts and jeans, and were playing games on their cell phones, or watching movies. A trained observer, however, could tell these young men were anything but young travelers. Their knuckles were calloused from countless pushups on their fists. The pads of skin on the outer edges of their palms were also callused from untold hours of rigid hand chops into sacks of rice. Their arms were likewise lean and sinewy, in particular their forearms, which had been toughened and desensitized from years of sparring. All of them were extremely fit, with body fat percentages in the single digits, as evidenced by what they ate: protein and fat, with a few vegetables and small portions of rice.
Across the aisle from Straw Sandal, Xin Li was glaring at a photo of Talanov in his KGB uniform. The photo had been taken when he was in his late twenties. He had a firm jaw, like an actor, with dark hair and deep brown eyes. In the photo, he was wearing an ushanka, which was a Russian winter hat made of sable fur, with the ear flaps turned up and a gold-and-red Soviet star pinned to the front.
“You seem . . . angry,” Straw Sandal remarked.
Xin Li tensed but said nothing.
“May I?” Straw Sandal asked.
Xin Li slapped the photo on top of an envelope of photos and handed them to Straw Sandal. She then got up and walked to the rear of the plane.
Dragon Head Page 6
