Cameron, Marc - Tom Clancy's Shadow of the Dragon

“Or a bullet behind the ear,” Hendricks said.

Foley shrugged. “There is that.”

“I’ll buy your logic,” Hendricks said. “But what if I suddenly grew a conscience and couldn’t live with myself anymore. Or maybe I’m just afraid the CI weenies are onto me, so I’ve decided to cut and run. Have you considered that?”

“Cut and run to teach high school?”

“Penance?”

Foley slumped. “No sin is that grievous, my dear.”

“I am not this SURVEYOR character.”

“I know that,” Foley said.

“Only eight people,” Hendricks said.

“Plenty more will know as soon as you start to rattle cages.”

“Who’s my boss?” Hendricks asked. “Who’s running the show?”

“Your boss is me,” Foley said. “But you are running ELISE. David Wallace from the Bureau will be working with you, but POTUS wants CIA taking the lead in the investigation. FBI will handle prosecution when we get to that point.”

“Jack Ryan doesn’t know me from Adam,” Hendricks said.

“He trusts me .” Foley slid the folder across the table. “Here’s a brief on all we know so far. As you can see from the list on the cover page, of the ten who know about this, almost all are in the President’s inner circle or agency heads—the directors of both the FBI and the CIA, the White House chief of staff. There is a field officer who runs the asset who gave us the information.”

“Adam Yao?” Hendricks said, without opening the folder.

Foley grinned. “See there. If you were SURVEYOR, Yao would have already been compromised.”

“Are we sure this isn’t disinformation?” Hendricks asked again.

“We’ve certainly thought about that,” Foley said. “The President is clear, and I agree, we don’t want another Angleton witch hunt.”

Both women were all too familiar with the hunt for the infamous Soviet mole “Sasha” by the enigmatic CIA counterintelligence head James Jesus Angleton. Virtually anyone whose name started with the letter K and ended with -ski or -sky became a suspect—a hard blow to any CIA officers with Polish or Eastern European heritage. Careers were derailed, lives were ruined.

Mary Pat bounced a fist on the table. “That’s not happening again. Not on my watch. It would be all too easy to brand every Asian CIA employee a suspect and then bully our way down the list, letting the chips fall where they may—but you know me better than that.”

“I wouldn’t be sitting here if I thought otherwise, ma’am.”

Foley raised her index finger. “That said, this mole is still a problem, our sensibilities toward prejudice notwithstanding. There are too many instances where the Chinese have gotten a leg up on something of ours that they could not have known without inside help. People’s lives are at stake. A lot of people.”

“Understood,” Hendricks said. “But I had to ask. Anyway, Adam Yao’s a solid guy. I’m glad to have him on the team.”

“He’s not exactly on the team,” Foley said. “His mission at the moment is tangentially related, but it’s out in the field. He does, however, have contact with his asset, VICAR, who has access to the Russian asset.”

“Like that kids’ game, telephone.”

“Not optimum, I know,” Foley said. “But Yao’s bullshit detector has proven to be solid. He’ll work to get you answers for any questions you have as they arise.”

“Great,” Hendricks said, sounding anything but. She thumbed through the folder. There wasn’t much there. Yao’s report. Recent cases of two blown CIA operations, one in Australia, the other in Indonesia, where the Chinese did end runs as if they had the local operational playbook. The worst incident was a Chinese Christian asset in Indonesia who’d been compromised by leaked intelligence. He’d last been seen being dragged into a dark van, a white hood over his head. Boots on the ground said he’d been tied to a rubber tree outside of Jakarta and shot—after a lengthy and painful interrogation. The MSS officers who’d done it had left plenty of marks on the body—a warning to anyone else who might decide to cooperate with the West. It was enough to convince Hendricks to stay as long as it took to catch SURVEYOR.

“I’m going to need a much larger team than the President and a bunch of agency heads,” Hendricks said, still reading.

“Of course.”

“I can pick whomever I want?”

“As long as they pass the vetting process.”

“And I run the vetting process?”

Foley seemed to consider this for a moment, then nodded. “It’s your show. Why do you ask? Who are you thinking?”

“I understand David Wallace is over from the Bureau, but he will always tend to think in terms of making a criminal case for eventual prosecution. I’d much rather run it like a CIA operation. Prosecution if we can, but discovering the threat so we can stanch the flow of leaked intel has to be our first priority.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Foley said.

“There’s a guy I’d like to be my deputy,” Hendricks said. “Retired from the Navy. He helped me get out of Somalia years ago on his destroyer. You and I crossed paths with many good folks over the course of our careers. Most, you simply thank them and move on. But this guy and I clicked. Became good friends.” She looked at Foley. “I’m sure there’s someone like that in your past.”

“Yeah,” Foley said. “My guy’s the President.”

“Then you know what I’m talking about. Honestly, my husband was always a little jealous of my ‘Navy friend.’”

“That’s not going to be a problem? Nothing that will—”

“Hey, I passed my polygraph,” Hendricks said. “Seriously, it wasn’t like that. And anyway, look at me. I’m pretty certain the days of my husband thinking some dude’s gonna ravish me while I’m out on assignment are long gone.”

“Those days never end, my friend,” Foley said. “Believe me.”

Hendricks laughed and waved away the thought. “Anyway, he’s just a really good person. Someone we can trust—and he’s of Chinese descent.”

“A retired admiral?”

Hendricks nodded.

Foley tapped a finger against her temple and gave Hendricks a conspiratorial wink. “We’re probably thinking about the same guy …”

Back in her car in the Liberty Crossing visitor parking lot, Monica Hendricks sent a text via Signal. The messaging app was end-to-end encrypted, but habit made her careful with her words unless she was talking on an STU or some other dedicated secure device.

Her friend was cordial, if a little terse, but that could have been the fact that they were thumb-typing. He gave her a quick rundown on his life like he was giving a bottom-line-up-front briefing to the Joint Chiefs. She did the same. Three sentences to encapsulate the status of her life.

He cut to the chase. What’s up?

Something I need to run by you.

Shoot.

Hendricks thought for a moment, then typed. It needs to be in person. She was of the generation that texted in complete sentences and checked her spelling and grammar before hitting send.

Okay. It must be important, then.

Something important enough to keep me from walking out the door. She sent that, then added, I’d come to you, but things are crazy busy. Can you come to D.C.?

Pulsing dots … but only for a moment.

I’ll break the news to Sophie.

I’m sorry it’s last-minute. Today would be best, if at all possible.

Admiral Peter Li’s answer came back almost immediately, as she knew it would.

I’ll be there.

18

“This is exactly the kind of problem you’re good at,” Cathy Ryan said, slouching across the study in an overstuffed leather chair.