The Joe Brennan Spy Thrillers

by Sam Powers

  ‘What are you suggesting?’

  ‘Tell us what you know about Legacy and we’ll see if we can unravel it before any talks begin. The last thing we want is to see our respective countries debating the peninsula with a potentially explosive disruption in the offing.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘Just like that.’

  ‘You wish our help...’

  ‘We want to help you to help yourselves,’ Tarrant said.

  ‘And?’

  ‘And if we share resources we have a far better chance of uncovering what Legacy was all about. Our man needs to follow a lead in China...’

  ‘Absolutely out of the question,’ Chan said. ‘It is one thing to share intelligence with you, it is quite another to allow an American agent onto Chinese soil.’

  ‘That’s not very helpful, chairman...’

  ‘Oh come now, Mr. Tarrant, surely you don’t expect me to believe you would allow Chinese agents...’

  ‘We already do, tacitly. They’re all over the country, because we already let people in and out more easily than you do. We just keep a good watch on them, that’s all.’

  ‘I would never get it past the committee,’ Chan said. ‘The best I can offer is to have our field agent on this matter pursue whatever lead it is you think is so important...’

  ‘There’s a man rumored to be in Harbin, a former intelligence academy instructor named Yip Po...’

  ‘The venerable grandmaster. He was declared missing many years ago.’

  ‘We understand he was a captive at the time.’

  ‘Under house arrest; due to his stature with high-ranking party members he was afforded leeway.’

  ‘Smooth move.’

  ‘Deputy director...’

  ‘Oh… don’t sweat it, David. We’ve done dumber things; Snowden didn’t exactly make us look like a tight ship; and look at the Brits with Philby and Blunt.’

  ‘Your reassurance aside, we have had no luck locating Master Yip in many years and I’m not sure why you think that would change because of a decades-old rumor.’

  ‘Nonetheless...’

  ‘Certainly, we will try.’

  ‘What else can you tell us about his role?’

  Chan knew the question would come. He knew he needed to sound as helpful as possible. ‘Yip was a trainer at our recruit school in the Nineteen Seventies and Eighties. A master of multiple fighting styles, a former intelligence agent during the Korean crisis. He fell out of favor during the purge of the Gang of Four and their supporters, due to his loyalty to the Chairman’s widow.’

  ‘Jiang Qing. Madame Mao.’

  ‘He was a staunch protector, a former teacher of hers; and his sense of honor prevented him from abandoning that political perspective even after her death. If he is even still alive, he would be ninety-six years old, according to his file.’

  ‘And his connection to Legacy?’

  ‘We are...still uncovering the fullness of his function,’ Chan said.

  Tarrant suppressed a chuckle and remained stoic. Experience told him that mocking Chan for a politically correct ‘we don’t know’ gained them nothing.

  ‘And when you’re certain...’

  ‘We will take whatever steps best suit resolution of the problem. My hope is that I will be able to openly share with you whatever I can.’

  Tarrant wasn’t sure he’d get much of a better offer. It was almost co-operative; almost. ‘And the agent who has twice interfered with our efforts?’

  ‘That is none of your concern, deputy director, and an internal matter for the People’s Republic of China. But... for your edification, I shall note that she has been recalled. Two failures suggest she is not suited to this portion of the assignment.’

  Tarrant didn’t really care. He just wanted to be able to tell Brennan whether she’d be an issue for a third time. The Chinese wanted to appear open, co-operative. But Chan had revealed absolutely nothing of any real value, and the CIA had no existing assets in Heilonjiang province.

  ‘And what about Dorian Fan?’ he asked.

  ‘What about him?’ Chan replied. ‘He disappeared nearly three decades ago. Surely you don’t think he’s involved in this in any respect? It’s a myth. A legend. The man is long dead.’

  Tarrant doubted the Chinese had given up the notion so easily. ‘Yeah, but you don’t know for certain. And I have to believe a man with a reputation for meticulous care such as yourself would have that at the back of his mind.’

  ‘True. And in the meantime?’

  ‘We have more to investigate. Our source...’

  ‘The professor.’

  ‘Yes. He told us Legacy involved American sleepers, potentially recruited from a small town in Montana. But the story is problematic.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Well for one,’ Tarrant said, ‘the town of Plenty, Montana doesn’t exist. And it never has.’

  PART THREE

  22/

  DAY 10

  DETROIT, MICHIGAN

  The light wasn’t good, but it was sufficient to keep watch, and Paul Gessler was certain that his neighbor was up to trouble. He peeked through the front hallway window from behind the curtains, his eyes wide, his breath shallower than normal. A tall, balding man with a crown of red hair, Gessler’s nostrils flared with contempt as the man climbed out of the aging grey Honda Civic. He had a couple of grocery bags in his right hand, as if he’d retrieved them from the passenger side.

  It was dark out, but the light above the neighbor’s garage door cast just enough of a glow to cut through the gloom.

  What was he up to? He’s an A-rab, that’s for goddamn sure. Probably one of the Muslims. Probably going down to his basement to work on his suicide vest.

  Gessler hated how foreigners had taken over his town. They were everywhere, speaking languages they knew nobody American could understand. This one had shown up two months earlier, renting the house from the son of Mr. Laughlin, who’d passed six months earlier. Every so often, another raghead or sand monkey would show up and stay for a few hours. The guy had some sort of routine, leaving every morning at the same early hour, before Gessler was normally out of bed, but consistent enough for his neighbor to eventually spot it. He got back late as well, after dark sometimes, especially in winter.

  What are you up to, Mister Muslim? You come to blow up my town, kill God-fearing Americans? You go out in the day and train with your crazy, shitbag brothers, pray to Mo-hammed to destroy us? Is that what you’re about?

  The neighbor reached his front door and retrieved his house keys from his left pocket, before opening the door and disappearing inside. For a few quiet moments, Gessler just stared at the front door in apprehension, fearful something terrible and tragic might occur at any moment, his hatred for the man swelling. Gessler’s father had been a brutal man, a lifelong John Birch Society member who believed in beating the sin out of his wife and son. In his father’s America, Gessler believed, a clear danger to the public like this man and his religion of death could have been shot on sight, and no one would have complained.

  He turned back to the hallway and walked the few feet to the living room doors. His wife of twenty-one years, Mary, was sitting on a fading striped sofa, knitting and watching television. ‘It’s a fucking travesty,’ he said roughly.

  She didn’t raise her head.

  ‘Do you even fucking listen to what I’m telling you?’ he barked at her. His face was contorted with contempt. ‘God, you’re pathetic. Our country is being slowly taken over and it’s because of people like you, sheep who can’t think for themselves.’

  She wanted to talk back to him, to yell in his fat, ugly, angry face. But she knew what Gessler was really like, and what he was capable of; and she was afraid.

  ‘What’s for dinner?’ he demanded.

  ‘Liver and onions,’ Mary replied quietly. Gessler had lost his job at the construction company a month earlier and they were on a tight budget, although he still seemed to find enoug
h money to buy booze and rifle cartridges. He should’ve been out looking for work; instead, he was collecting unemployment insurance and stewing, standing at that front window and judging everyone he saw pass by. At least on the weekends, when he was training with his militia, he was out of the house.

  He squinted at her with revulsion. ‘Liver again? What is wrong with you, exactly? I come home after looking for work, trying to find a way to keep us fed, and this is the shit you serve me? You can’t even cook it good, you useless piece of shit. Fuck this noise: I’m going to Eddie’s.’

  Eddie’s was Gessler’s regular bar, where he’d had the same stool for two decades.

  He grabbed the car keys off the adjacent telephone table. She knew he’d already had a few, and would have a lot more before he came home, and that he shouldn’t drive. But she didn’t say anything; behind her tired eyes and pale skin there was much anger, and she secretly hoped he would crash and die, and rid her life of his toxic, painful presence.

  Cliff and Ronnie and Dave were all at Eddie’s, each with a pony jug or two already put away by the time Gessler showed. The place was old and familiar, with faded salmon pink walls and carpet that smelled of old cigarette butts. The counters were all cheap vinyl, the tables equally so. The Michelob clock had a chunk of glass that had been missing since the late seventies, but the mirror behind the bar -- fronted by rows of bottles no one ever requested -- was whole and intact.

  He nodded to Jerry, the bartender. ‘Boilermaker and a pony of Bud,’ he said. He pulled out his cigarettes and lit one, ignoring the local bylaw and Jerry’s signs. Jerry had known Gessler for twenty years and he also feared the red-headed demolitions expert. The other patrons probably didn’t like it, but Gessler had never much given a damn what other people thought of him.

  He took his bar stool. ‘Fucking ragheads,’ he muttered.

  ‘What’s that, Paulie?’ Ronnie asked.

  ‘Fucking ragheads, Ron. They’re everywhere in this town now. You know that old place next to mine? I’ve got one renting it. Like he fucking belongs right under my nose. Fucking travesty.’

  He dropped the shot glass into the beer and knocked back the boilermaker in four long swallows. Then he wiped the profusion of beer from around his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘And you know what? I think this fucker might actually be up to something.’

  Cliff snorted slightly. ‘Come on, Paulie, what are the odds...’

  ‘Shut the fuck up, Cliffy. I’m telling you, boys, there’s something up with this little Muslim guy. He’s up to something. He gets up and leaves in the earliest hours, when no one else is up yet, he doesn’t get back until nightfall...’

  ‘I got it!’ Cliff said. ‘Maybe he has...’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘... A job? You know...’

  Gessler wagged a finger in his face. ‘You think you’re funny, but you’re about to get a slap...’

  ‘Seriously, Paulie, what the fuck are you yammering about?’ Ronnie asked.

  ‘Just that this guy freaks me out. He’s young, Muslim, lives on his own, has visitors at odd hours, usually other young Muslim guys...’

  ‘Yeah, well, if you ask me, Paul’s got it right,’ Dave interjected. ‘You can’t trust none of the ragheads. We learned that real quick in Kandahar. We’re building fucking schools and roads for these people and they’re trying to blow us up with IEDs.’

  ‘Am I right or am I right?’ Gessler said. ‘One of these days, I’m telling you boys, I’m going to follow that fucker in through that front door, and when I find out what he’s up to...’

  ‘You do what you gotta do,’ Dave suggested, tipping his drink in Gessler’s direction like a toast. ‘More fucking power to you, if it’ll make things back the way they used to be.’ Dave’s father had worked on an auto line for most of his life but it had been twenty years since his last regular job that paid anything. Dave was on disability and an army pension, after taking shrapnel in his thigh from a grenade.

  ‘You’re a crazy man, Paulie,’ Cliff suggested.

  ‘Shut the fuck up, Cliffy,’ Gessler barked. He didn’t need advice from the smaller man, or any of those guys, Gessler told himself. Ever since he was a boy, in the orphanage in Baltimore, he’d known he hated Arabs, and niggers, and spics. The older boys, the black ones, had beaten him regularly, taken his things.

  Then he’d been taken out of there and thought things would get better, only to find himself in Detroit, cold and alone. The orphanage was barely a memory now; it had been nothing compared to the lickings he’d taken from his foster father, Mr. Gessler, any one of which should have disqualified him from raising children. When he was still working, a decade earlier, the union had paid for a head scan. He couldn’t remember what it was called, some set of initials, something stupid. They said his headaches were caused by the blows he’d taken as a child, and he’d lied and told them he’d ridden motocross, ashamed at what he’d let his father do.

  But it had forged his hatred, and for forty years, it had grown until it was sometimes damn near overwhelming, ready to break out at just the wrong moment. Maybe, he told himself... just maybe, when he got home, he’d go looking for the sand flea, and then squash him like the bug he was.

  23/

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  The view from the fifth-floor corner office window was panoramic, a sweeping vista of city lights at night, double dots of locomotion filling the roads, the night too cloudy for stars. Brennan held the vertical blinds slightly apart to take it in. For all of his time with the Agency, he’d spent very little of it in either Langley or D.C. Or, at least, not enough. He liked D.C. and had close friends there with whom he hadn’t recently spoken. When he wasn’t working, he lived less than an hour away.

  But every time he was in town, it was for work. And the longer he stayed on, the more unpleasant it felt.

  ‘Surely you’ve thought the logistics of this through,’ he said, turning back to the room, where Jonah Tarrant sat behind his desk, pensively waiting for a reaction. In front of the desk, Adrianne Hayes sat quietly next to an analyst whose name Brennan couldn’t recall. ‘You must have a half-dozen assets on the mainland, all of whom have better language skills than me and look a lot more local.’

  Tarrant shook the notion off. ‘Not at all. We have some regular sources, yes, but no one who can run an operation. And even our sources are, in general, known to the opposite side, or suspected. As Chinese nationals, most of them take a heavy risk in passing information to us. Asking them to handle field work is out of the question.’

  ‘But you have no problem asking me, even though you know I’m trying to get the hell out of this business, right?’

  ‘I have no real choice,’ Tarrant said. ‘We have no one with your combination of skillset and deniability. This has to be completely off the books.’

  ‘I got you Raymond Pon...’

  ‘And that was a fine start. But you know full well that we don’t have enough from what he told us to find Master Yip Po. We’ve got some tacit understanding with the Chinese that if they can locate him and figure this thing out...’

  ‘So they don’t know what Legacy is either...’

  ‘Not beyond what we know, that it’s a sleeper cell and that it used Americans. Problematically, Pon’s story begins to fall apart right around that point.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the town in which they were allegedly recruited and trained, Plenty, Montana? It doesn’t exist. The description is as American as apple pie, but the place is fiction.’

  ‘You think Pon was fed misinformation?’

  Tarrant shook his head. ‘No, the Chinese had heard a similar story but had always taken it to be literal. They’re only just slightly ahead of us on getting an actual location name, so my guess is that right now, they’re as puzzled as we are.’

  ‘Maybe it’s apocryphal,’ Brennan suggested, ‘just some old spook’s tale, kicking around intelligence agencies until someone was ready to believe it. It certai
nly wouldn’t be the first time.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Tarrant said. ‘But I’d think we’d see more variance between the version we heard and the version known by Chinese State Security if that were the case. No, we need to go to the source. As far as they can tell, the story started circulating after Master Yip Po’s escape. Either he’s still out there and can tell us more, or someone who knew him in his final years is. We need you to go to Harbin, Joe.’

  Brennan waited outside the elevator bank for a ride down to the lobby. He’d managed to keep his temper with Jonah. It wasn’t due to pragmatism; he just knew from experience that the deputy director was telling him the truth. If they had an asset who was both deniable and easy to work with, as well as speaking Mandarin, they would have gone to him in the first place.

  And whether he liked it or not, he still worked for the Agency until they signed off on his departure. As a covert asset, no sign-off meant no reversion to normal employee status, which meant no pension. That left Jonah Tarrant in total control of his future, and Brennan didn’t like that one bit.

  The elevator doors opened. Carolyn wore a tan suit and white blouse. They looked shocked to see one another.

  ‘Joe! What are you doing here? I thought they sent you overseas...’

  ‘Yeah… I just got back this morning. I meant to call you.’

  She looked hurt, and he knew it was precisely because of that. ‘I understand, I suppose. I mean... you could have called, made time for us to have lunch with the kids at least...’ She let the sentence drag, unsure of herself. So little of his life was his own. But he hadn’t even made an effort.

  ‘They’ve had me in debriefs and analyst interviews since this morning. You know how much I miss you all when I’m gone,’ he said. ‘It’s the worst.’

  ‘We miss you too. Josh made shortstop.’ Their son had just started Little League baseball.