“Hungry?”
“Gong-ri.” The cabbie held up a glossy magazine, a Chinese tabloid that featured a beautiful woman on the cover. Amid the Chinese characters were the English words “Gong Li.”
“Gong Li. She’s an actress, right? I don’t see too many movies.”
“Gong-ri. Holly-wood.”
“Got it. I guess we’ll save the serious discussion for next time. You have no idea what I’m saying, do you? I mean, I could be offering to sell you my sister for all you know. If I had a sister.” Wells felt a pang of guilt. He hadn’t talked to Evan, his son, in weeks. When he got back, he was taking the boy fishing in the Bitterroots—the mountain range on the Montana-Idaho border, just outside his hometown of Hamilton. Maybe hunting too, if Heather, his ex, would let him. But fishing for sure.
When
he got back. Not if.
The cabbie grinned and gave Wells another big thumbs-up, then reached back through the cab’s plastic barrier with a crumpled pack of 555s. “You like cigarette?”
“No, thanks.”
“You like China?”
“Sure.”
And with that, the cabbie seemed to have exhausted his English. He popped a 555 in his mouth and smoked silently until they reached the hotel a half-hour later.
BUT OUTSIDE THE ST. REGIS
, the mood turned grim. Four jeeps and a dozen soldiers formed a makeshift barricade that blocked the driveway. As the taxi stopped, a young officer rapped on Wells’s window.
“Passport,” he said. The passport, sent by courier to the Chinese consulate in San Francisco for an expedited visa application, identified Wells as James Wilson, a thirty-seven-year-old from Palo Alto. If anyone asked, Wilson was the founder of
Prunetime.com
, an Internet start-up that specialized in small-business software. The business was real, at least on paper—one of the dozens of ghost companies that the agency had created over the years. Prunetime had a bank account, a Dun & Bradstreet credit report, a record of incorporation with the California secretary of state, even an office in San Francisco. Wilson was real too. Besides his passport, he had a California driver’s license, a working Social Security number, and a wallet full of credit cards.
Of course, none of those records could answer the red-flag question: Why was James Wilson so anxious to get to Beijing at this moment, with China and America close to war? Why had he applied for a visa on such short notice? But Wells had a plausible cover, a three-day trade fair for software and Internet companies. And despite the rising tensions, he was hardly the only American in China. His 747 from San Francisco had been half full, mostly Chinese but a couple of dozen Americans too, joking nervously that they hoped the bombs would wait until they got home.
“Passport,” the Chinese officer said again. Wells reached into his bag and handed it over. The officer flipped through it nonchalantly. “Out.” As Wells unfolded himself from the cab, the officer walked off, passport in hand, disappearing into a windowless black van behind the jeeps. Wells leaned against the cab and waited. A few minutes later, an older officer in a pressed green uniform stepped out of the van and waved him over.
“You speak Chinese?” He looked up at Wells, his chin jutting out, his face square and unfriendly.
“No, sir.”
“Of course not. First trip to China?”
“Yes.”
“Why you come now?”
“There’s a computer conference starting tomorrow. I’m looking to hire some programmers—”
The officer held up his hand.
Enough.
“How long you staying?”
“Five days.”
“You doing anything for United States this trip?”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t understand? I’m asking you if anyone in America told you to report back on what you see here,” the officer said. “Military preparations.”
Wells raised his hands defensively. “No, no. I’m a businessman.”
“If someone did, it’s better to tell now. We put you on a plane, send you home.”
“Nothing like that.”
“This bad time for Americans in China,” the colonel said to him. “Be careful. If we catch you by military base—” He left the threat unfinished, handed Wells back his passport, and waved the cab through.
A MINUTE LATER WELLS WALKED
through the hotel’s big glass doors and felt whipsawed again. A giant pot of fresh-cut orchids and tulips sat on a marble table near the front door, filling the lobby with fragrance. The air was cool and calm, the doormen brisk and efficient. At the front desk, a smiling concierge upgraded him to a suite, telling him that cancellations had left the hotel empty.
And finally, Wells lay on his bed, hands folded behind his head, watching CNN International play silently on the flat-panel television, constant updates on “The China Crisis” scrolling across the bottom of the screen, accompanied by stock footage of F-14s soaring off an aircraft carrier. The correspondents were doing their best to manufacture news, though not much had changed since Wells took off from San Francisco.
Following the sinking of the fishing boat by the
Decatur,
China had ordered the United States to pull all its vessels at least 1,000 kilometers—620 miles—from the Chinese coast. The Chinese had also threatened to blockade Taiwan, and even made noise about dumping their trillion-dollar foreign reserve, a move that would send the dollar’s value plunging and put the United States into recession. In response, the United States insisted that China needed to end its support for Iran and stop threatening Taiwan before it would even consider pulling back. America also warned China not to “play games with the world economy.” The sinking was an accident and shouldn’t impact the broader crisis, the White House said.
Wells closed his eyes and heard the hotel’s thick windows rattle as fighter jets rumbled in the distance. He supposed Exley and Shafer were right. He shouldn’t have come. He was meeting a man he’d never seen or even spoken with, a man who might already have been doubled. He was here on a contingency plan that was a decade old and that no one had ever expected to use. At best, this trip was the equivalent of heading out for a three-day backcountry hike in March without a backpack or even a compass. If nothing went wrong, he might get home with a touch of frostbite and an empty stomach. But he had no margin for error. And, of course, if Cao Se had been doubled and the Chinese knew he was coming, he was as good as dead already.
His actual instructions for the meeting were simple. Since Cao didn’t know how to recognize or reach him, he was using what the agency called a 2-F protocol. Fixed location, fixed time. Essentially, Wells would show up at the meeting point and follow the instructions of whoever met him. Ideally, Cao Se would be waiting. More likely he would be greeted by a courier, by the police, or no one at all. If nobody showed up, Wells had no backup spot. He was simply supposed to return to the meeting point an hour later, then once more the following day. If Cao didn’t show by the third meeting, Wells would leave—assuming the flights between China and the United States were still running. The embassy and station chief had no idea he was here, of course. The agency assumed that the mole had compromised all its networks in China. Wells had to come in alone to have any chance of staying clandestine.
Wells flicked off the television and lay on the floor. The opulence of the suite made him uncomfortable. He didn’t like having his bags carried, or fancy soap and shampoo in the marble bathroom. Strange but true: he’d rather be on a cot in Afghanistan. The room’s luxury made the danger of the mission seem less real. What could possibly go wrong inside a five-star hotel? Would he choke to death on an undercooked steak?
Wells supposed his uneasiness here proved he was a less than perfect spy. A true master could fit in everywhere, from a Siberian prison camp to a Des Moines mall to a Brazilian beach. That was the theory, anyway. Wells had his doubts such an animal existed in real life. A spy who could infiltrate an Iraqi insurgent network probably didn’t have much in common with one who could talk his way into a private casino in Moscow.
Wells shucked his clothes, padded into the bathroom, turned on the shower. No low-flow shower-heads here, and no waiting for the water to heat up. He had to admit that staying at a five-star hotel had some advantages.
AT THE HEIGHT OF CHINA’S
tensions with the Soviet Union in the 1960s, Mao had ordered the building of a bunker under Zhongnanhai capable of surviving a direct hit from a nuclear warhead. The vault had been expanded over the years. It was now a miniature underground city, sprawling across six acres, with its own electrical supply, food stocks, even a seven-room hospital.
But the bunker’s newest and most technically advanced room was the strategic-operations center that the People’s Liberation Army had opened just six months before. A room 150 feet square, the operations center was more advanced than the White House Situation Room or the Air Force’s NORAD facility inside Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado. Video feeds allowed the PLA’s generals to watch takeoffs and landings at China’s air bases in real time. Secure fiber-optic links connected them with the silos that housed China’s nuclear arsenal. One wall was devoted to a giant digital map of the eastern Pacific that of fered an integrated view of the positions of the Chinese and enemy fleets.
The room was crowded but not claustrophobic, thanks to its twenty-foot-high ceilings, and surprisingly quiet. Its humming hard drives and clicking keyboards provided background music that was as soothing in its own way as ocean waves, and as unceasing. All the while, information moved up the chain of command, orders back down. They met at a raised platform in the center of the room, where Li stood, reading a message from the
Xian
.
When he was done, Li turned to the wall-sized map of the Pacific.
“Highlight the
Xian
and the target,” he said to Captain Juo, the commander of the center’s Eastern Pacific Defense Unit.
“Yes, sir.” Juo tapped his keyboard, and suddenly two lights began to blink on the screen, a red circle indicating the
Xian,
and a green square for the target.
“How accurate are these positions?”
“For the
Xian,
we’re estimating based on its last known position forty-five minutes ago. For the target, we’re accurate to fifty meters. We’re watching it in real time with the
Yao
2”—a new recon satellite that the PLA had named after the Houston Rockets center.
“So we know the enemy’s location better than our own ship.”
“That’s correct, General.”
The paradox of submarine warfare. The
Xian
could communicate only irregularly with its commanders, lest it betray itself to the Americans. But China’s satellites could track enemy ships with ease.
“And when does the
Xian
next report?”
“At 0100, sir.”
“How confident are you in your identification of the target?”
“I’ve looked at the photographs personally, General.”
“And you’re certain.” Li wanted to hear the captain say the words.
“I’m certain, sir.”
Li put a hand on Cao’s elbow and guided him out of the captain’s earshot. “What do you think, Cao?”
Cao’s lips barely moved. He spoke so quietly that Li had to bend in to hear him. “I think we should wait. I also think that what I think doesn’t matter. You’ve decided.”
“And you’re right.” Li turned to Juo. “Captain, I won’t be here when the
Xian
reports in next. But here’s the message that I’d like you to send.”
THE PEN SPUN OVER
the sketch pad, leaving behind a tiny blurred city of palaces and cathedrals. Cao had never visited Paris, but he’d seen pictures. Sketching cleared his mind, helped him think. He threw in a couple of gargoyles atop a cathedral that might have been Notre Dame and eyed what he’d done. Not his best work.
He shoved the pad aside and stared out at the Beijing sky, tapping his pen on the plastic stump of his lower left leg. Midnight had come and gone, but the sky was more white than black, the lights of the city reflecting off clouds and smog, turning night into a perpetual half dawn.
Cao lived in a four-room apartment in an Army compound near Zhongnanhai. His place was simple and spare, decorated in traditional Chinese style. Scrolls hung from the walls, long rice paper sheets covered with stylized characters in thick black ink. As a senior officer, Cao could have had a much bigger apartment if he’d wanted. But he preferred this space. With no family, he’d be lonely in anything bigger. Besides, he spent most of his time visiting bases and traveling with Li.
Normally, the apartment was calm and quiet, protected by the compound’s high walls, an oasis in the center of Beijing’s tumult. But today Cao heard the rumbling of helicopters over Tiananmen. The last time the square had been this crowded had been 1989. Back then, Cao wondered if the Party’s leaders would survive. But he’d underestimated their ability to hold power. This time the masses had filled Tiananmen to challenge America. But what would they do if they discovered they were being used in a power struggle?