Jeffery Deaver - Watchlist

“Where are we?” Middleton asked him.

“Where we need to be. Where the world needs us.” Chernayev stopped and smiled almost sadly at him. “You wanted answers, comrade, and now you’re going to get them. Though I suspect you may regret ever posing the questions.”

The cold assaulted them as soon as they emerged from the jet. It seemed to push out from the mountains now visible again off to the west, their snow-capped peaks poking through the clouds and stretching for the sky. Middleton had known far more frigid colds than this, but the one he felt now was different, deeper somehow which he passed off to the anxiety and expectation racing through him.

As they approached a set of landing stairs set before the 767’s bulkhead, the door opened to reveal a pair of armed Chinese soldiers beyond it. Chernayev led the way up the stairs into the plane. The soldiers stiffened to attention and saluted, seeming to recognize him while ignoring Middleton altogether. Chernayev return their salutes and then led the way through a curtain and into a majestic library, complete with wood paneling and leather furniture, its smell rich in the air. The sight further disoriented Middleton, casting an opaque, dream-like translucence over his vision. He tried to remind himself he was on a plane, but the thought wouldn’t hold.

Then he saw the figure of a Chinese man wearing a general’s uniform rise from a high-backed leather chair and stride past ornate shelves lined with a neat array of leather-bound books. He was tall and thin, his hair raven black except for a matching swatch of white over both temples. The man grinned, approaching Chernayev with arms extended. They hugged briefly, then separated and bowed to each other before the Chinese man’s gaze fell on Middleton.

“And this must be the American.” He extended his hand outward. “I have heard much about you, Mr. Middleton, most of it well before today.”

“Who-”

“-am I? I have many names. Today I am General Zang.”

“My opposite number in the Chinese government,” said Chernayev.

“You mean, military.”

“Same thing,” said Zang. “Retired as well.”

“Somewhat anyway,” the Russian added.

Zang turned again toward Middleton. “We are protectors.”

“Protectors of what?”

Zang shrugged. “Fill in the blank with whatever you choose. Our countries have become much less insular and mutually dependent. You know what the Butterfly Effect is, of course?”

“A butterfly flaps its wings in Boston-”

“And a monsoon sprouts in China,” Zang interrupted, again completing his thought. “Especially appropriate in this case, of course. My Russian friend and I like to think of ourselves as protectors of that mutual dependence. There was a time when we looked on the Western world, rooting for the inevitable fall that would lead to a chaos capable of consuming it. Now we find ourselves dreading that chaos above all else and working to prevent it.”

“Because of that mutual dependence.”

Chernayev said, “Colonel, yes, I have a financial interest in the dam. But this is about far more than money.” He took a pair of cigars from his jacket pocket and handed one to Zang. “Cuban,” he proclaimed. “At least our Communist comrades there are still good for something.”

“Mr. Middleton,” Zang said, still admiring his cigar, “you have spent your career, especially with the Volunteers, fighting the same enemies and battles as we find ourselves fighting now.”

“You just didn’t realize it,” Chernayev added.

“You have fought to preserve order; perhaps not in those words, but that has been the ultimate effect. And you have watched the world change into a much more dangerous place.”

“Because of the butterfly,” Middleton interjected.

“Exactly. We all grew up in an era of clarity where the enemy announced himself by the uniform he wore. Now we wear the same uniform, a business suit, which makes it all the more difficult to spot the enemies among us and all the more easy for them to disturb the delicate balance we’re fighting to preserve.”

“What does this have to do with-”

“-you, your quest, your daughter… ”

“My daughter ?”

“Our new enemies don’t play by the same rules we used to. In fact, they play by no rules at all. Family members are considered fair game now. The tactics are brutal, revolting. They turn my stomach,” Zang said, lighting his cigar and savoring the first puffs. “You are standing in my home, Mr. Middleton. It is too dangerous for men like myself and Comrade Chernayev to stay anywhere long enough for them to find us. There are fifty airfields like this scattered across China and I never spend more than a single night at a time in any one of them.”

Middleton studied Zang closer, matching the face to a different era, a different man. Same brilliant, confident smile draped in the shadow of hair not yet touched by white. Shorter, slighter, more effusive, but with the same eyes.

“I think I know you,” he started, “from the-”

“-Chinese secret po-”

“The Te-Wu,” Middleton said before Zang could finish.

Zang held his cigar at arm’s distance, frozen. “I’m impressed. Perhaps our paths have crossed somehow.”

“Not yours, your father’s. He was one of the Te-Wu charged with infiltrating the United States after the Korean War.”

“Not just one of. It was his operation!”

“You sound proud.”

“Of his efforts, of our heritage, yes. The Te-Wu dates back to 550 B.C.”

“I’ve heard the group even has its own clandestine dialect that makes infiltrating it impossible.”

Zang spat off some words in Chinese that made no sense to either Chernayev or Middleton. “But now,” he resumed, switching back to English, “we find ourselves with a different enemy, a different mission.”

“Sikari?”

“Chaos in general, of which Sikari represented only a small part, small but very dangerous because of its capacity to inflict incalculable harm on our precariously mutually dependent world.”

“The butterfly… ”

Zang nodded as he blew huge plumes of cigar smoke. “And in this case that butterfly is going to land on the Baglihar dam just hours from now. And if we do not force it to take flight again, the price will be the end of the new world stitched together by the precarious threads of euros and dollars.”

“War between India and Pakistan.”

“Exactly.”

“No,” Middleton disagreed. “We know the explosives Sikari’s people have can’t destroy the dam, and even if they manage to assassinate the secretary of state… ”

Middleton let his voice trail off, something in Zang’s suddenly tentative expression telling him he had it all wrong, that he was missing a crucial piece of the puzzle.

“It’s not the secretary of state who’s coming,” the head of the Te-Wu told him.

Tesla was seated next to Charley Middleton on the last leg of a series of exhausting flights that would ultimately end in Kashmir. The coach compartment was crowded, adding ample camouflage to the clever subterfuge they’d enacted inside Orly Airport. Aware French authorities would be looking for them, as well as Archer Sikari’s people alerted by the suspicious communications over Jana’s salvaged cell phone, Tesla had disguised Charley as an old woman. The ruse was accomplished with a combination of make-up, hair product and clothing, all culled from shops inside the terminal, the transformation handled inside a handicapped restroom stall. Obtaining a wheelchair from the airline proved a simple matter and Tesla had booked the tickets by phone so as not to arouse suspicion spurred by a walk-up sale.

Harried authorities on the alert for two women meeting Charley and Tesla’s descriptions would have no reason to pay heed to an old woman slumped in a wheelchair, chin resting near her frail chest and snoozing while her daughter eased her through the terminal. Sikari’s people would be more astute and discerning, but Tesla doubted even their ability to marshal significant forces in so short a period of time. To throw them further off the track, she had tucked Jana’s phone into the carry-on of a passenger bound for New York, leaving them to chase their GPS tails around the world.