by Sam Powers
It had to be dealt with. ‘Xiao, old friend, don’t worry: I can explain it all easily. Let’s meet. Say, the Double Ox bar, on the south side?’
‘That’s a long way from downtown. Why not just somewhere near...’
‘I like to drink in peace. Besides, that way we can talk... you know, privately, and too many people at the bars near the office know my face...’
‘Well, it is a very nice face,’ Mah said. ‘And you are gaining more authority by the month, it seems. Good looking and powerful is an enticing combination.’
‘As ever, flattery will get you everywhere,’ Fan said.
The Double Ox bar was in an ornate concrete building on a block where most of its neighbors dated back as long as one hundred years. It had a painted glass window advertising food and beer specials, and four tables on the sidewalk outside serving as a patio. All of the tables were taken, old men playing chess and mahjong, smoking cigarettes and drinking baijiu from whiskey tumblers.
They’d found the most private booth at the very back of the old bar, which had been around since the days of the British, and Fan spent ninety minutes getting Mah drunk and listening to him prattle. One beer had turned to two, then four, then six. Or, Fan had made it appear so. They’d talked briefly about the file, though nothing specific, just enough for him to learn that Mah had the only copy in his vehicle.
Now the younger man was whispering to him. ‘Just one kiss? We could go back to my place...’
Fan looked him deeply in the eyes. ‘Is that what you really want?’
Mah nodded solemnly, his intoxicated gaze glistening with affection and wonder.
Fan gestured toward the nearby back door to the club. ‘Come into the alley with me.’
Mah’s eyes widened. ‘Right here?’
Fan smiled. ‘You have a better idea?’
They got up and Fan looked around to ensure no one in the front of the bar was paying attention. They were alone.
Outside, the night air was sticky and humid, the temperatures hardly cooled from the heat of day.
Mah played the aggressor, confidently looping an arm around Fan’s neck. ‘You’re making me so happy right now, I can’t even remember why I called you.’ He leaned in to kiss the soft tissue around Fan’s ear.
‘Legacy,’ Fan said. He extended the stiletto with a button push, then drove the blade forcefully into the base of the younger man’s neck, severing the connection between his spinal cord and brain stem. The man fell backwards, every bodily function instantly paralyzed, his eyes wide as the air slipped slowly from his lungs.
13/
TODAY
MACAU
‘And that is as much as I can tell you,’ Lawson concluded. ‘They believe Fan met with Jiang Qing to set the groundwork for something big. They believe Fan was responsible for killing a senior government bureaucrat to cover this up. And then...’
‘And then?’ Lee repeated.
‘And then he just disappeared,’ Lawson said. ‘At the time, word got out pretty quickly in the intelligence community that a high-ranking party member had vanished and the Chinese were looking for a bunch of money. The opportunity to turn him was too tempting for the British or the Americans to turn down, and they put considerable time and money into finding him.’
‘And?’
‘Nothing,’ Lawson said. ‘Fan disappeared off the face of the Earth. I know from some of my Chinese colleagues that in the years following, his government tried to establish the terms of the meeting between Fan and Jiang Qing, but the closest they ever came was that it was an intelligence project named ‘Legacy.’ Last week, according to my sources, new information came to light.’
The generic nature of Lawson’s data wasn’t helping, Brennan thought. ‘What kind of information? Are we talking operational intelligence?’
‘From the anxiety levels in Beijing, I’d say this was definitely a mission in progress,’ Lawson cautioned. ‘But my source wasn’t that specific.’
‘We need a name,’ Lee said. ‘Give us the source and you’ll walk out of here in one piece.’
Lawson took umbrage to that. ‘From what the police tell me, local jurisdiction means I’m walking out of here no matter what I tell the two of you...’
‘The question you should ask yourself,’ Lee retorted, ‘is how much you want to annoy the government of China, considering that the Macau police will not always be there for you.’
That made Brennan smile a little. ‘Stanley, I’ve known you a long time. You’ve never been what anyone would characterize as a morally upstanding individual, and as good as you have it with this teaching gig, your past can catch up to you. It almost did tonight. But if you help us...’
‘What? You’ll look out for me? Don’t make me laugh,’ Lawson replied.
‘However much you fear this individual, professor,’ Lee said, ‘I suspect they are not as thorough in their approach as my employers.’
Stanley’s expression said he knew he was between a rock and a hard place. ‘Fine. But it didn’t come from me.’
‘The name, Mr. Lawson,’ Lee insisted.
‘It’s Raymond Pon. Professor Raymond Pon.’
The name wasn’t familiar to Brennan. If it was to Lee, she didn’t show it.
They separated, and Brennan returned to his hotel room with more questions than answers. The room was untouched save for the open suitcase on one bed.
He used a secure channel to contact Langley but was still surprised when Jonah Tarrant took the call personally. ‘Joe. This is a quicker turnaround than we anticipated, or are things getting complicated?
‘Not complicated, just vague,’ he replied. ‘Stanley gave us a name...’
‘Us?’
‘Chinese intelligence decided to send a representative over to Macau to keep me company.’
‘How did they know…?’
‘They didn’t. They were following Lawson and we stumbled into one another. Or, more to the point, Lawson stumbled into a local hitter named Tommy Wong.’
‘I assume it’s been dealt with?’
‘To a degree. There was a confrontation, some egos were bruised. I think he’s gone to ground, at least for now.’
‘And the name?’
‘Someone named Raymond Pon, another academic. Lawson said he was...’
‘We’re familiar with him. He had some shady dealings and fell out with the government. He’s been working in Mexico for a few years, something to do with graphene technology.’
‘We have another complication,’ Brennan added.
‘Yes, you said the Chinese are involved...’
‘As you’d expected. They’ve got a deep cover agent named Daisy Lee causing me problems. Can you find out whatever you can about her? It might come in handy if she pops up again.’
‘Will do. Check in once you’re on the ground.’
‘Roger. Jonah... you know you owe me for this, right? I expect you to honor that when I get back, and I expect you to talk to Carolyn about how important this was, and about how I didn’t have a whole lot of choice.’
‘I’m not a marriage counsellor, Joe...’
‘Really? Because you’re pretty good at splitting them up, as far as I can tell. The situation in New York State wasn’t my cross to bear, but I dragged you out of it. Look, you owe me for this, you owe me for Walter, you owe me for a lot of things.’
‘I know, Joe, I know. Just... leave it with me, okay? I’ll talk to her. We have to brief them anyway...’
‘NSA is in the loop on this?’
‘Whatever ‘Legacy’ is, it’s a threat to national security. Everyone is in on this, if we need them. I should tell you that our Australian friends are monitoring a ton of traffic from the Chinese. I’ll pass them the agent’s name.
‘And Raymond Pon?’
‘Do whatever you need to do. Just... don’t kill him, okay? He has some interesting friends. If you could avoid an international incident for even one week, that would be good.’
�
��And the woman? The Chinese agent?’
‘She’ll likely show up again. Don’t kill her either, whatever you do. The last thing we need is for the Chinese to have an excuse, an international provocation a few weeks before their premier visits D.C.’
LOS ANGELES
Zoey felt ill at ease the moment she walked into the city morgue building, and the sensation hadn’t let up. The two detectives, Drabek and Pace, were both there as well and offered some comforting words. But inevitably, she knew, she would either see what was left of Ben, or go back to wondering what the hell had happened to him.
The fluorescent tube lighting and the extremely low temperature accentuated the room’s sterility. Along the wall to their right sat a series of sinks and workstations. To their left, the wall was covered with a bank of refrigeration drawers. One was already open toward the back of the room, its slab extended, the body on it covered with a sheet.
‘You okay?’ Drabek asked.
She nodded curtly. ‘Let’s just get it over with.’
Drabek gave the assistant medical examiner the okay, and she pulled back the sheet, just as far as the man’s chest. The lye had dissolved half of his chest cavity. The slash across his throat was open but dry, like some plastic anatomical model in a biology class.
She shook her head. ‘It’s not him. It’s not Ben. They look sort of similar, but it’s definitely not my Ben.’ Then it seemed to click in, and she realized what she was looking at. Both hands came up to her mouth, as if they might help her catch her breath.
The examiner covered the man up again and Drabek put an arm on her shoulder, guiding her away. ‘That’s it. We had to know for sure; since it’s not Ben, we’re left with one other pretty solid option on who this man is.’
Pace had been talking to the assistant medical examiner, and he caught up with them as they walked the corridor toward the elevators. ‘Of course, if that’s Paul Joseph back there, then we know who probably...’
Drabek cut him off abruptly. ‘Not now.’
‘What?’ Zoey asked, looking over her shoulder at the younger cop. ‘Solid idea of what?’
Drabek punched the elevator button. ‘Don’t worry about it. We should get back to station and see if there’s a birth certificate on Ben yet. Maybe we can figure out this whole Ohio nonsense...’
She got into the elevator behind him, followed by Pace. ‘Don’t change the subject,’ Zoey said. ‘He said we know who probably... Probably what? Are you suggesting that Ben killed that man? Because that’s a bunch of...’
‘With respect, ma’am...’ Pace said, ‘...he’s using the man’s credit daily, they look just like one another...’
‘It’s not the issue at hand,’ Drabek said. ‘Not for us.’ It was true; homicide would be all over Ben as a suspect, but in the immediate, their job was just to find him. They didn’t need to complicate things for the girl anymore than already was the case. ‘We just need to reunite this young couple so that they can get their lives back together.’
‘And Ben isn’t like that,’ Zoey interjected as the elevator rose toward the ground floor. ‘He’s a gentle person. At Rosh Hashana last fall, he volunteered to serve the elderly from his Temple at the big dinner they have. He fundraises for heart and stroke...’
Pace was about to say something, but he caught Drabek’s glare out of the corner of his eye.
‘We’ll get it all sorted,’ Drabek said casually. ‘We’ll get it all sorted.’ He could feel Pace glaring back. The second they told homicide, he knew, they’d be officially off the case and the kid would be back to square one. There was zero chance of Ben Levitt getting a pass as a suspect. Zero. And that meant the girl was a material witness.
His shift was technically over, so Drabek took Zoey back to his favorite bar to break the news to her over a free bite to eat. He wanted her to understand he wasn’t going to give up, but that her life was probably about to get a whole lot more difficult.
After the shock of seeing Joseph’s body had worn off, she’d realized that meant Ben was still alive, and a sense of optimism had set in.
He was going to ruin that, Drabek knew, which was par for the course in Vice.
They grabbed a two-person table near the back and each looked over the one-page vinyl-wrapped menu.
‘Thank you for buying me dinner,’ Zoey said. ‘You didn’t have to. I have money.’
‘Yeah...’ They’d freeze Levitt’s assets the next day, he knew. And he couldn’t tell her. Technically. ‘You might want to take out any money you think you’re going to need for a while. You know... just in case.’
‘I don’t like to carry around extra.’
‘Yeah... listen, what Detective Pace said at the morgue...’
‘Uh huh.’ Her head dropped. ‘I’d been thinking about that.’
‘You said yourself, he wasn’t acting anything like normal. If he could shoot at you...’
‘Yeah...’ She couldn’t hide her fear that it was true.
‘Look, the boys in homicide will be looking to pick him up for this. And they’re going to have a lot of questions for both of you.’
She looked puzzled. ‘Me? I haven’t done anything...’
‘You’re a material witness to his state of mind and his behavior.’
‘When...?’
‘They’ll have assigned two detectives to work it already; when I go home tonight, I’ll turn my phone back on, and there will be a bunch of messages from them about why Pacey and I were at Paul Joseph’s house in the first place. And I’ll be obligated to tell them.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘I want you to know what’s coming. It won’t be easy. They aren’t going to express a whole lot of concern for Ben’s health or your relationship. Whenever this happens, there’s a lot of stress, a lot of pressure. You might hear or learn things about Ben you didn’t know, things that are hard to hear...’
‘Things I didn’t know?’ Zoey took a swallow from her drink. ‘Right now, I’m not sure I knew him at all. I mean, it was always a whirlwind romance kind of thing...but Ben isn’t exactly Mr. Excitement. It’s one of the things I love about him...’
‘Anyway,’ he said, getting her back to the present, ‘I’ll be taken off the case, almost certainly. I don’t have a lot of champions inside the department anymore, and they won’t see this as a missing persons case.’
The woman hardly knew him, Drabek told himself. She didn’t need his help. She needed a lawyer and a sympathetic girlfriend. But the look on her face said different; it said she trusted him, and it felt as if he was about to break that trust.
‘So... you can’t help me anymore?’
‘Not officially, no.’ He heard the words come out and cursed inwardly. He should’ve just said no, Drabek knew.
‘Officially?’
‘I can’t work it as a file, but there are still leads to follow...’ He didn’t know why he was offering. Maybe the kid reminded him of his daughter, Nicole. Maybe he’d met too many vulnerable people to just let her walk out alone.
Her face brightened somewhat. She grabbed his empty bottle and her glass and stood up. ‘I’m going to go over and get us each another,’ she said. ‘Okay?’
He nodded. ‘Sure.’
Drabek watched Zoey walk back up to the bar. If he had any sense, he told himself, he’d just walk away from this before hackles were raised and noses put out of joint. She’s really just another street kid. There are a million of them who need help, former and current. You can’t bring Nicole back by helping this girl. And you can’t help enough people to change anything.
That was the little voice inside. Drabek smiled as he watched her get them drinks. He’d made a habit out of ignoring that little voice.
14/
WASHINGTON, DC
Jonah Tarrant was playing a waiting game. The CIA deputy director was meeting with his new number two, Adrianne Hayes, who’d come over from the NSA with a reputation for getting things done. In a month, she’d managed bo
th to establish a half-dozen solid ideas and to thoroughly undermine him at every turn.
He’d called her into his office to discuss the China situation, and just how much should be shared with the National Security Council given the fluid nature of Joe Brennan’s investigation. The White House had reached out to the Chinese, and to discuss North Korea; once the initial contacts were concluded, they would pursue broader talks; if the NSC’s political players felt Brennan risked tipping the apple cart by offending the Chinese, they might demand he be pulled before they had a solid sense of what "Legacy" was, or its objective.
Instead, he was having her sit quietly in front of his desk while he finished ‘reviewing a file’, which really just meant making her wait; the purpose was simple: establish that she had a complete absence of control in his presence. Leave her wanting more. The best tool to accomplish both ends, Tarrant had found over the few years prior, was to just be silent and let her fill that void contemplating as many theories about his purpose as possible. Adrianne had been nothing but ambitious; but if left to her devices, she’d avoid any necessary risk that might hurt her politically. That could include curtailing Brennan’s assignment.
After about five minutes, he expected, she would interject, and....
‘Excuse me, Jonah,’ she said. ‘I know you need to...’
He raised a finger without looking up from the document and shushed her. ‘Just a second.’
Then he went back to silently ‘reviewing’ the document while she seethed and squirmed slightly in her chair. When five full minutes had passed and she looked about to climb out of her skin, he put the folder down and arched his fingertips on the desktop.
‘Now.... China.’
‘Yes! China. There’s...’
‘There’s a real risk,’ Jonah said, cutting her off. ‘There’s a real risk that Brennan won’t find out what’s going on before they agree to sit down. With the way things are headed, we expect those talks to be led by POTUS. What I need from you is this: a complete dossier on what we know to date about both Legacy and existing security protocols for diplomatic visits as laid down by Homeland Security and the Secret Service. Also, we need to talk to the bureau and D.C. police. We need to fill them in that we’re working on something without letting their feet in the door.’
