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

He’d just said okay and walked away smiling, to figure out how to sink her. It wouldn’t be hard. Blue-flamers were easy to shoot down.

The best way was probably to find something good himself that she’d missed.

When he’d been approached by the Chinese woman, it had been a no-brainer. China butted up to most of the countries in his division, so there was always crossover. The woman, she said her name was Dot, short for Dorothy, was pretty, she smiled a lot and touched his arm when she talked, like they were old friends, and she was happy to be around an American man instead of the Chinese guys she worked with who didn’t treat her so good. He’d answered a few questions at first, always telling himself that he would reel her in just a little further and then turn her with his enigmatic personality.

There had been no big reveal, no traumatic moment when she’d said, “Sorry, Tim, you’ve gone too far with us. We have you now.” He’d just known it. In truth, he’d enjoyed the work, the feeling of superiority he got from sitting at his desk and knowing when everyone else did not. Clandestine CIA officers felt that a little bit when they just went to the store, or to a family reunion, but pulling the wool over everyone at Langley—and getting paid for it—that had to be the most satisfying feeling in the world. And if he got to topple the imperious Odette Miller off her lofty career ladder when he popped smoke and left right under her nose, that was just gravy.

Rask had unwittingly passed on intel the Chinese had been salivating to get for years. Oh, the stuff about the Albanian op was interesting, and Meyer’s handler had paid him a bonus for it. Meyer had done a little digging, tangentially, so he didn’t get his hands dirty, and it turned out that the same officer who Leigh Murphy mentioned in her report was planning something big. Meyer could only glean bits and pieces. Requests for some unspecified activity in Novosibirsk, Russia, and a safe house in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

All of it was good stuff—get-imprisoned-for-espionage stuff—but Dot pressed him hard for one thing above all else. She wanted to know the identity of the case officer who had called Leigh Murphy in the first place, the person who had asked her to interview the Uyghur. According to Rask, she must have known him well. They’d probably worked together on a past op. Murphy had been stationed in Africa before, Meyer had that much. Maybe they’d been stationed there together. He’d do some checking, ginning up some connection to a CI case he was helping with. Hell, maybe he’d just call Murphy, tell her he was running something down and needed her help. Rask said she seemed like a ladder-climber. She’d probably be happy to help out someone from HQ. He’d play her a little and get some leads. The thought occurred to him that the Chinese might talk to her first, but he put that out of his mind.

With the mole hunters poking under every stone, Meyer needed to work quickly so he could get out of here before they started casting wider nets. So far, nobody expected he would know anything about the China desk. In fact, no one expected him to know much about anything at all.

He’d find out what Dot wanted. Rask had told him about Murphy’s after-action report, how she was vague to the point of insubordination. She’d identified her friend only by a cryptonym, an NOC, or officer with no official diplomatic cover. This guy wouldn’t get booted out of the country and declared persona non grata if he was caught. He’d be imprisoned or killed. If the Chinese were smart, they would watch him for a while, learn who his assets were, and then scoop everyone up at the same time.

Meyer had heard the cryptonym before, and it gave him a place to start.

CROSSTIE.

34

Fu Bohai woke to the hum of his mobile phone on the nightstand next to his hotel bed. He peeled back the Egyptian cotton sheet, sodden with sweat, and rolled away from the naked Russian woman who lay draped across his chest and thigh.

She stirred, smacking her lips in sleep. “Tell them to crawl away and die,” she said, her Russian thick with the aftereffects of too much blini and Ossetra caviar, and precisely the right amount of vodka and sex.

Her name was Talia Nvotova. They’d met that evening at a Chinese embassy function in Moscow where Fu had been tasked to look into a Chinese diplomat suspected of selling secrets to the Russians. They were “strategic partners,” Russia and China, tenuous allies. But, as the adage went, there were friendly countries, but not friendly intelligence services.

Fu Bohai was known by his superiors to be particularly unfriendly, and it was this quality for which he was sent to Moscow. His direct supervisor, Admiral Zheng, who commanded PLAN intelligence, operated by what he called the fifty-fifty rule. If Fu was fifty percent convinced that the diplomat had turned traitor, he was to take care of the matter then and there, sparing the Motherland the bother of a trial. Beijing had suspected for over a year that someone within the Ministry of State Security or PRC military intelligence was leaking classified information to both the Russians and the Americans. They hadn’t narrowed the field very far as of yet, and could not very well approach the SVR and say, “One of your spies who has betrayed China is also betraying you to the Americans,” though Fu Bohai suspected it would come to that eventually if the traitor could not be found, in order to plug the leak. He smiled at the idea of the mushroom cloud that would cause in both countries.

Officially, Talia was a Russian/Mandarin translator for Moscow state television. Her surname was Czech, but she was a Russian citizen. Fu made certain of that. Well-known in diplomatic circles, Talia had been invited to the function because of her beauty and ability to keep the conversation going. Fu Bohai felt she was probably a case officer with SVR, the Russian foreign intelligence service akin to MSS and the American CIA. He was a newcomer to the embassy, so the alluring Miss Nvotova had naturally done her job and cozied up to him at the party. It did not hurt that he was over two meters tall, had a boyish face but the experience of forty-two years, and could bench-press over a hundred and fifty kilos. He happily went along with the getting-to-know-you charade, inviting her to stroll with him around the park across Druzhby Street from the embassy. Moscow springs are notoriously chilly and Talia looked ravishingly Russian in her silver fox coat and sable ushanka . She’d complimented his fedora; he’d complimented her cold pink cheeks. They’d ended up together at his hotel, where she looked ravishingly Russian with nothing on at all.

She tried to roll back to him, but he pushed her away again, harder this time, giving himself distance.

She snorted, collapsing onto her back in a huff, not bothering with the sheet while he lifted his fedora to retrieve the phone under it.

Fu spoke in Chinese, knowing Talia understood every word. He shifted in bed so his thigh ran alongside hers as he talked, skin to skin. He kept the volume of the phone low, so she could hear only his side of the conversation.

It was Admiral Zheng.

SURVEYOR had information that someone from the CIA office in Albania had spoken with a Uyghur refugee who had links to separatist groups in China, possibly the Wuming. It was weak, as far as intelligence product went, but it had caused some movement from the Americans. The admiral wanted Fu to speak to the Uyghur and the woman from CIA—find out what they knew that might help lead him to Medina Tohti, and then do with them what he did best. Fu did not know the entirety of the situation with Tohti. He did not need to. What he did know was that it was a sensitive matter that the admiral did not trust the Ministry of State Security to handle. What’s more, the admiral cared little about finding anyone associated with the terrorist organization known as Wuming. Locating them would provide a method to capture Medina Tohti. She had to be brought in alive and able to think and communicate. The last was an important detail. A prisoner could be very much alive, but unable to do much beyond a blink or grunt. Anyone else should be terminated if possible, but Fu was not to go out of his way for that. Wuming was a problem for law enforcement. The admiral wanted Medina Tohti in custody sooner rather than later—and the fewer people who knew about it, the better.