Gordon Kent - Hostile Contact

The captain gave a forward jerk that suggested a bow. Both were in civilian clothes; military etiquette did not seem quite right.

“I am going home for lunch,” Lao said. It was, in fact, only nine in the morning. The captain’s face was impassive.

Lao drove to his rented house in a suburb where most of the diplomatic community lived (not so with most of his Chinese colleagues, who huddled around the embassy), kissed his wife, American-style, and responded to her questions about his day, then put his finger to his lips as he led her to the bedroom. The house was bugged; the phone was bugged; she had years ago given up trying to know how his days really were. Yet they had great affection for each other, despite their arranged marriage and his profession and its conditions. Sometimes, she knew, he came to her like this to make love when he wanted to make his mind a blank.

Lao wished he could talk about his problems to her. Or perhaps not. She might say, as she had once when they were test-driving a new car in Beijing and nobody could possibly have been listening, “Don’t you ever dream of living like other people?”

Washington.

Rose met her husband at Dulles airport. His embrace was hard, quick, eager. He looked worn out. “Jakarta was a bust,” he said as he settled in the car.

“I thought it was supposed to be a walk in the park.”

He folded his arms and sank lower in the passenger seat. “The case isn’t what we thought.”

“Mike should have his ass hauled for sending you.” Rose accelerated to get into the traffic heading toward Washington.

He looked out the window. A deer was standing by the side of the six-lane highway. He frowned. “I wasn’t very good out there.” He flexed his bad hand. “I’ll tell you the worst of it up front: there was shooting; a guy was killed; I got out by the skin of my teeth.”

She gasped, bit back some comment. “I’m just glad you’re home.” She put her hand on his.

“Everything went wrong,” he said. “Triffler never got there, one goddam thing after another.”

“What happened ?”

“Everything.” He turned his hand over—the bad one—and squeezed her fingers. “‘This time, Amelican Fryboy, you make big mistake!’”

It had started to rain. He stared out the side window again, dimly seeing his own reflection, hers. He put his hand, the bad one, on her thigh, and she covered it with her own. “It was great to be doing something, though,” he said.

To his astonishment, she laughed. “You’re going to be doing a lot.” She reached across him and opened the door of the glove compartment and pulled an envelope into his lap. He saw the naval return address and his own name, and he opened the envelope and began to read, his heart swelling as he did so. “‘You are ordered to proceed to Naval Air Station, Miramar, California, for a period of…’

“Sonofabitch,” he said. He was frowning.

“I thought you’d be beside yourself!”

“I am, I am—but—There’s the case, you know—Sleeping Dog—I’ve got some ideas I want to share with Mike—” He looked again at the orders. “My God, another MARI det—a week ago I’d have killed for this—”

He had called Mike Dukas from the west coast and invited him for dinner, something he broke to Rose only as they were nearing their rented house. “I’ve got to talk to him about the case,” Alan said.

“You’ve got orders to Miramar.”

“I let him down in Jakarta. I want to make it up to him.”

“Alan, the Navy’s given you a new job—you’re not an NCIS agent!”

“Mike’s my friend.”

“Mike should have his ass kicked.”

He kissed her cheek. She steered into their weedy driveway and turned the car off. “I wish you’d told me that you’d invited him,” she said.

“You’re right; I should have. I didn’t think. I was stupid.” They were in the house by then. He kissed her again, and she smiled and stood back from him. “Well—if working for Mike is this good for you—”

He embraced her. “I’ll get a shower.” He grinned. “And I know I’m still in the Navy.” As he headed up the stairs, he hugged the orders against his chest with his good hand.

Twenty minutes later, Dukas’s battered car pulled up behind theirs in the too-short driveway, and there he was, worried and guilty.

“Hey, babe.” He kissed her as he came through the door. Rose held herself stiffly, and he felt it and got the message. “Where’s the great man?” He dumped his attaché in one of the ugly chairs. “Rose, what’s wrong?”

“If you don’t know, there’s no point in telling you!”

Dukas blew out his breath and headed upstairs to see Mikey, his godson. Coming down again, he tested the atmosphere—Rose slamming things down in the kitchen, a smell of onions and garlic frying. Dukas positioned himself in front of Alan, who was sitting on the sofa and wincing with each slam of a pan lid in the kitchen. “Al, it was all my fault. I feel like shit about it.”

“No.” Alan looked up at him. Something thumped in the kitchen, maybe a piece of meat being thrown down on the cutting board. “Let’s get on with the case.”

Dukas flinched as a cupboard door slammed. “Rosie, can I help?” he shouted.

Rose appeared, no smile, a chef’s knife in her hands. “You’re unbelievable, Mike. You almost got my husband killed!”

“What can I say?” he muttered.

“Try ‘I’m sorry!’”

“Okay—Rosie, I’m sorry.”

Rose folded her arms. The chef’s knife stood straight up by her right shoulder like some kind of emblem in a statue of one of the more severe saints. “Saying you’re sorry isn’t enough!”

Dukas tried to grin, and Rose, uncharmed, walked out. “I should have never let you go,” Dukas sighed to Alan. “I’ve already had my ass chewed by two experts at ONI. CIA, Embassy Jakarta, and State all want a piece of me. Rose has to stand in line.”

“And I should have told her I’d asked you to dinner. We’ll get over it; Rose’ll get over it. What’s going on with Sleeping Dog?” Alan stood up, restless, wanting to move, but the room was too small. “The way I see it, that comm plan wasn’t dead; it was active as hell, so what about everything else in the file? Let’s go through it piece by piece and figure out—”

Dukas tried to raise a hand to Alan’s shoulder, winced, and settled for putting a hand on his arm. “I’ve been through the file—several times. I can tell you this: we thought the Jakarta comm plan was the only action item there. We were wrong. Maybe we were supposed to think the comm plan was the action item, but there’s also action in Seattle.” They sat down, their knees almost touching, their voices low because the small woman in the kitchen was still slamming things around. Dukas leaned forward, his face only inches from Alan’s. “After I talked to you in Jakarta, I began to check Sleeping Dog out. I got a retired FBI guy who’d been the case officer in ninety-two. He wouldn’t say much, but he’d at least admit that he remembered it—it was a real case, meaning that the whole thing isn’t a crock of shit. Some of it, at least, is real. Sally Baranowski insists that the Jakarta comm plan wasn’t in Sleeping Dog, but—news from town, kid, here comes a big one—” He bent even closer to Alan’s ear. “The Jakarta comm plan was part of Chinese Checkers—George Shreed’s personal map for meeting with his control.”

Alan stared at him. He was processing it—Jakarta, Shreed, Chinese Checkers. “The Chinese?” he said.

“I think, yeah. Who else has Chinese Checkers?”

“Well—the Agency—”

“Yeah, but the Agency isn’t going to lay a Shreed comm plan on us and then use it to try to kill you!”