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

Chief Cho gave an excited nod. “Wait, wait … I think I know this one … I always thought it was funny … Hai shi shen lou —towers and cities built by clams—it means mirage .”

Commander Wan’s heart rate rose and he began to thrash harder.

“Captain …” Anderson said.

“Right.” Rapoza took his notes and walked toward the door. “I need to make a call. This is a little above my pay grade.”

“Sir,” Lieutenant Anderson whispered before he made it into the passageway. “Are we still heading toward the distress signal?”

Rapoza thought for a moment, and then shook his head.

“I think this guy is our distress signal. We’ll see what Higher says, but unless otherwise directed, we’ll stand by at this location for a bit.”

“Do you think there are people alive down there?” Anderson shivered again. “On a submarine?”

“Down there, yes,” Rapoza said. “Alive … I don’t know. But I think we’re going to find out.”

37

CIA case officers Leigh Murphy and Vlora Cafaro habitually kept an eye open for surveillance. Being aware of one’s surroundings was part and parcel of PERSEC—personal security—for spies, and for anyone else, for that matter.

They’d done no full-blown surveillance-detection run on the way to the bar. They had no need to arrive in the black—that is, without a tail. Everyone at the embassy, and likely everyone on Elbasanit Street, knew they went to the Illyrian Saloon at least three nights a week after dinner. Sure, it was predictable, but there were only so many good bars within walking distance of the embassy. The Illyrian was only four blocks away, on the other side of the Air Albania stadium. They were just two women going to unwind after work, not spies doing spooky spy shit.

And they were young and invincible.

Murphy saw the tall man in the gray fedora when she left the Serendipity restaurant on her way to meet Vlora at the bar, around the corner at the southern edge of the upscale Blloku district. Eating alone was a natural depressant, and there was nothing about the man to make him stand out on a dark street where most everyone wore some kind of hat against the cold spring evening.

He’d been out front, loitering by a newsstand on the corner. Vlora had seen him, too. Both women were trained observers, and both had noted he was tall, good-looking, and probably Chinese. Neither woman mentioned him to the other, and both promptly forgot about him when they entered the warm bosom of the bar.

Vlora hadn’t eaten, and ordered kebabs. She sat across the small wooden table in a dark corner of the bar and bobbed her head to the live band while she ate, her long black hair piled high on her head with a yellow pencil. Murphy drank her Korca Bjonde and listened to the music.

Wood-planked walls and parquet flooring dampened the chatter and clink of voices and bottles, but conversation was difficult to hear over the music, so both women were content to sit and take in the vibe of the place for the first hour, unwinding from a long, and in Murphy’s case, excruciating, day. It took a couple of drinks for them to become lubricated enough that they didn’t mind that they’d be stricken with bar-voice the next day from shouting over the din at each other all night just to carry on a conversation.

The band tonight was playing a damn good cover of “Welcome Home (Sanitarium)” by Metallica, and the guy on lead guitar looked the part of an ancient warrior with his massive, coal-black beard that reached the middle of his chest and a crested bronze helmet that should have been guarding the hot gates of Thermopylae. The waitress, who was always giving patrons some little tidbit of Albanian history, had pointed out when she brought Leigh Murphy’s fourth bottle of Korca that the Illyrian tribe of Albani had been mentioned in the works of Ptolemy. Albanians took great pride in their Illyrian warrior heritage, as did many Balkan peoples—and the walls of the saloon showed it. Murphy had been here so many times she knew all the trivia by heart. She liked the bellicose motif—bronze helmets, short swords, broad-chested men with spears. When she was growing up in Boston, her middle school PE teacher had called her pugnacious. She’d gone home and looked the word up on Encarta on her dad’s new home computer, and decided that, yes, she was indeed pugnacious, and happy to be so. Maybe that was why she liked Albania so much—and why she put up with an asshole chief of station like Fredrick Rask.

Vlora finished her kebabs and twirled her glass of plum rakia while she stared transfixed at the band.

“He’s cute,” Leigh said, toasting the swarthy drummer with her bottle of Korca.

Vlora bobbed to the music. “You know what they call a drummer in a suit?”

Murphy shook her head.

“The defendant,” Vlora said, buzzed, chuckling at her own joke. She turned to face Murphy. “Anyway, I’m not looking to start a romance—too much paperwork. I’d have to file an Outside Activity report with Rask, and I don’t want that son of a bitch knowing any more about me than he has to—especially when it comes to my love life.”

Murphy tipped her beer and toasted in Albanian. “ Gezuar to that.” She looked at the bottle and groaned, feeling exhausted and more than a little buzzed.

“Speaking of Freddie Rask,” Vlora said. “You okay? It looked like he was ripping you a new one today.”

“Yeah, well,” Murphy said. “I probably deserved it. I should have told him what my friend wanted me to do. I was just afraid he’d say no.”

“That’s exactly what he would have done,” Vlora said. “ No is the default answer for a boss like Rask. Makes life easier on them.” She took a drink of her rakia and then leaned across the table, licking her lips. “So, tell me about this mystery guy. He’s one of us. Would I know him?”

“How’d you know my friend was a guy?” Murphy said.

“Leigh …” Vlora said. “What is it again that you think I do for a living?”

“Whatever,” Murphy said. “Anyway, we’re just friends. Life’s too complicated to have it any other way. For now.” She drank the last of her Korca, thought about another, but then decided against it. Her apartment was only five blocks away, but she wanted to go running in the morning. She looked at her watch. “Shit! It’s almost two a.m.”

Vlora shrugged. “Let me get this straight, this mystery guy, whatever his name is, sends you on a secret mission to interview a Uyghur guerilla fighter and gets your ass on the chopping block. Sounds like a real peach sending you out on something that radioactive without telling your boss.”

“Most of the shit we do is radioactive,” Leigh said. “Besides, he needed help.”

“All men need help, sweetie.” Vlora polished off her drink and waved at the waitress, asking for another. The waitress shook her head, which in Albania meant “yes.”

“I’ve gotta call it a night,” Murphy said. “You’re staying?”

“For a minute.” Vlora gave a long sigh, staring at the drummer again. “I’m rethinking my aversion to writing that Outside Activity report.” She looked up suddenly, bending to her philosophical side now that she had a few glasses of rakia in her. “Don’t get too mad at Rask. I mean, yeah, he’s a dick, but don’t you carry that burden of him being what he is. No matter where you go or what you do, there will always be a Freddie Rask—they just have different faces and names.”

“I know,” Murphy said. “I just didn’t appreciate him keeping the blinds to his office open so everyone could witness my beheading. I mean, I’m not some junior case officer straight out of training. He knows that.”

“ Dans ce pays-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres. In this country, it is good to kill an admiral from time to time”—Vlora tapped her empty glass on the table, making sure the waitress didn’t forget her—“for the encouragement of others.”