Daniel Suarez - Freedom (TM)

It suddenly occurred to The Major that he was afraid.

Jon Ross sat reading Izvestia on a handheld device while sipping espresso. He was in the coffee bar of his hotel in the Shekou District of Shenzhen. It was mid-afternoon, and he was dressed in a pressed, four-button black pin-striped suit with a light blue silk tie and a pastel shirt—all handmade in nearby Hong Kong. With his stylish HUD glasses he looked every bit the successful businessman catching up with affairs back home.

Ross preferred Shekou because it allowed him to blend in. It was a pleasant neighborhood popular with expats. It had a small-town feel, but was packed with restaurants and night life.

Here there were dozens of languages being spoken in the cafes and bars, and he was just one more foreign face among many. But none of that mattered now—not for the one piece of unfinished business remaining on this trip.

He downed the last of his espresso as two Chinese men in rumpled suits approached his table. From their hard stares and air of impunity, Ross immediately knew they were policemen—probably Ministry of State Security.

The first nodded and spoke in Russian. “Comrade Morozov. Good afternoon.” He smiled, revealing stained teeth.

Ross lowered his handheld and replied in Russian as well. “Good afternoon. To what do I owe the pleasure, gentlemen?”

“There seems to be a problem with your travel documents.”

“My travel documents?”

The man nodded.

“I don’t see how that’s possible, but . . .” Ross removed his billfold from his jacket. “May I take care of it here?”

“Attempting to bribe a government official is a serious crime in China.”

“ Attempting , perhaps. What about succeeding ?”

“This is no laughing matter, Mr. Morozov.” He switched suddenly to English. “Or should I say, Mr. Ross?”

Ross remained calm. He placed money on the table to pay his check and put away his billfold. He switched to English as well. “Your English and Russian are both excellent.”

“Thank you. Please mention that to my commander when you see him. Now, if you would please come with us . . .”

“May I ask to see your credentials?”

The man opened his coat to reveal a pistol in a shoulder holster.

“That’s the one that counts, isn’t it?”

The man gestured for Ross to follow them.

Ross sighed then grabbed his handheld and laptop case and complied.

They brought him outside to a waiting car. It was an unmarked Jeep Cherokee knockoff—what some of the expat Americans had taken to calling “Cheeps.” They opened the door for him, and Ross got in. He noticed that there were no door handles on the inside, and a wire mesh stood between him and the front seat. He was now their prisoner.

The officers got in front and drove off in dense traffic without a word either to each other or to Ross. They drove for only a few minutes before pulling to the curb on a highly fashionable restaurant block. The place was bustling with shoppers and young professionals.

The men got out and opened the door for Ross, who stepped onto the sidewalk and met the gaze of his captor. “I’m confused. Am I bribing you or not?”

The man just grabbed Ross’s arm and along with his partner they moved toward an upscale martini bar done in clean Scandinavian glass and hardwoods with a minimalist logo that was so hip it would be indecipherable to Chinese and Scandinavians alike. The place was packed with cigarette smoke and young, mostly Chinese white-collar professionals who quickly parted to let the grim-faced plainclothes policemen through.

Soon they approached a booth in the rear of the bar—the only quiet corner. The tables all around it were conspicuously empty. There, a young Chinese man in a well-cut suit waited with a frosted martini glass in front of him. He smiled as he saw Ross approaching.

Ross couldn’t help but return the smile. It was Shen Liang. Shen was an old friend from Ross’s dot-com days in Portland—back in the late nineties. Before everything went to hell. Shen had been a kid just out of Stanford back then—barely familiar with America and Western culture. He was a brilliant young mind who’d taken in everything the Chinese universities had to offer at the time and was hungry for more.

Ross and Shen had worked together at a start-up Web company named Stiletto Design—“Cutting through the noise” was their motto. It was the quintessential Web commerce shop with high ceilings, exposed brick, Aeron chairs, ping-pong tables, and soon-to-be-worthless stock options. They were expanding like mad in those days, designing merchant solutions for banks, insurance companies, and half-assed Web start-ups. Young men and women working long hours and late nights—it was a great place to be a young single person. The memory was just a haze of work, alcohol, and sex.

As Ross sat down, Shen extended his hand and spoke in perfect American English. “Jon Ames. Or I guess it’s Jon Ross , nowadays. What’d you get married or something?”

“It’s complicated, Liang. You look like you’re doing well.”

Shen motioned to the nearby plainclothesmen and said something in Mandarin.

The lead officer nodded, and both men departed.

Ross watched them go, then turned back to Shen, who was nodding. “I am doing well. I wish I could say the same for you.”

Ross gave him a quizzical look.

“Jon, you’re in a lot of trouble.”

“Then this isn’t a social call?”

Shen grimaced and motioned to a beautiful young woman in a miniskirt. She came to the table immediately, and he pointed her to Ross.

“I’ll have a Stoli, straight up with a twist, please.”

“Of course, sir.” She hurried off.

“Russian vodka. How telling.” He focused an appraising look at Ross as he lit a tiny cigar. “So . . .” He put his gold lighter away. “After all these years I find out that your name isn’t really Jon Ames.”

“Liang—”

“And that Interpol has a global red notice out on you. That you’re the FBI’s Most Wanted Man. Imagine my shock.”

“Like I said, it’s complicated.”

“We were buds , Jon. And now it turns out you were an identity thief and a stock swindler?”

“Well, you didn’t tell me you were a spy for the Ministry of State Services back in the old days, either.”

He gave Ross a disbelieving look. “Who was a spy? They paid for my education. I was supposed to come back with ‘mad skillz.’ How is that spying? It’s not like I pretended I wasn’t Chinese.”

“I seem to remember someone wasn’t planning on coming back to China. I seem to remember someone talking about a Web video start-up—”

Shen held up his hand and looked around. “All right, all right. Would you cool it with that shit? And by the way, you were my witness. That was before YouTube. I had that idea before YouTube.”

“We were on dial-up back then, Liang.”

“That’s not the point. I nailed that.”

“And yet, here you are, working for the government.”

Shen rolled his eyes. “I don’t work for the government, or at least I didn’t work for the government until some asshole started fucking with our networks and they reactivated me.” He saluted. “Now it’s Captain Shen, thank you very much.”

“A PLA Cyber warfare battalion? That seems alarmingly conformist for the Shen Liang I knew.”

Shen nodded grimly and took a big sip of his martini. “Yeah, well, I really screwed up in America, Jon. I had to come back here after that, and I had gone way off reservation. I had to get powerful friends fast to dig out from that mess. I had to be stellar.”