The Altman Code

  She had stumbled into more than she or Langley had expected. Whatever Jon was working on this time, clearly Ralph McDermid was part of it. Experience had taught her that when her almost brother-in-law showed up, something significant was likely involved.

  Langley was rarely in the loop of whatever exactly Jon was doing. His employer must operate at the highest levels of the federal government, no matter how much he denied it. That meant the leaks McDermid had somehow orchestrated might be only the tip of some political or military iceberg. If she were right, her assignment took on a new dimension she would, for the moment, keep to herself.

  Meanwhile, she had to hope her local team had realized by now she had been taken while staking out Ralph McDermid and his latest girl novelty, and that they were already mounting a rescue. On the other hand, she could not count on it.

  She crumpled back against the floor as if overcome by fear. What she had to figure out was some way to escape so she could contact them. At the same time, she could not let them realize she and Jon knew each other or that she was a Langley spy, no matter what they did to Jon or to her.

  As if hearing her thoughts, the door to the L-shaped room opened, and Ralph McDermid entered. The Altman CEO was followed by Feng Dun, but it was McDermid who stood over her.

  He asked harshly in English, “Why are you following me? Spying on me? You’d better talk, if you don’t want to rot in one of your government prisons.”

  She forced her body to do nothing. She lay on the floor in her peasant disguise without moving a muscle, as if she understood no English and had no idea what he said or even that he was speaking to her.

  Feng Dun kicked her in the ribs. She howled in protesting Mandarin and twisted to look up at the two men, an innocent peon cringing with fear.

  “She’s not from this area,” Feng Dun told McDermid in English. “She’s speaking Mandarin from around Beijing or farther north.” He casually kicked her again and switched back to Mandarin to demand, “What are you doing so far from home, peasant? Why are you in Hong Kong?”

  Randi howled once more, a small, aggrieved nobody being picked on by the powerful. “There is no work on the land of my father!” she screamed. Then, weeping: “So I left for Guangzhou, but the money is better here.”

  “What the hell is she saying?” McDermid said.

  Feng repeated it. “It’s a common story. Millions leave the country to look for any kind of job in the cities.”

  “Millions don’t end up following me. Why was she spying? For whom?”

  Feng translated the question with a few twists of his own: “You were following Mr. McDermid most of the day. Did you think we didn’t see you? Mr. McDermid is a very important man. Unless you want to be given to the police, who will put you in prison for the rest of your life, you’ll tell us who paid you and what he wanted you to find out.”

  Ever since Feng and the two other men had surprised her, listening at the bedroom window in the garden of Ralph McDermid’s mansion, Randi had been thinking of what she could say that they would believe. A lot would depend on their level of paranoia. On how much McDermid had to hide, on how many enemies he had, and on how well he and Feng Dun knew those enemies.

  She decided to try to evade a little longer. She would continue to act like a frightened, unsophisticated country woman, then give them the “mystery man” story. “I was only looking for money,” she whimpered. “The gate to the garden was open. I heard voices, and I went in to ask the rich foreigner for help.”

  Feng Dun’s foot kicked so fast she did not see it move until it exploded in pain against her ribs.

  She shrieked like a pig being dragged to slaughter. As she writhed on the floor, she managed to gasp, “My family must have money. I don’t earn enough in the factories to send to the village. I have to have more. And . . . and sometimes I have to steal. It was such a fine house . . . there’d be much money in such a house. There’d be beautiful things to take and sell. . . .”

  “Stupid peasant!” Feng’s pale face flushed pink and contorted in rage. “You followed him all day. You were spying on him. Probably for far longer!”

  Randi gave her best cunning, groveling, pleading, terrified-nobody performance. She grabbed at McDermid’s ankles and blubbered up into his repulsed face.

  Feng cursed in Mandarin, grabbed her by her pajama top, and dragged her away from McDermid. “Peasants! They pretend they’re being skinned alive if you bump into them. I’ll give her something real to howl about.” He spun around. In his soft voice, he spoke rapidly to the other two men. “Get the electrodes and the blowtorch.”

  His words were in Shanghainese, but Randi understood the dialect. Her mind reeled. She could stand torture as well as most, but resistance would almost certainly end up incapacitating her even if she were rescued or managed to escape. Still, there was one story they might believe completely: She would give them Jon.

  He was already hurt. For all she knew, it could be serious. She steeled herself as she glanced at him. He sagged against his bindings, unconscious, not even moaning. She could do nothing for either of them if she, too, were badly injured. And she could do nothing for the Company and certainly nothing for America.

  She would let them get their blowtorch, their electric devices, or whatever other horrors Feng Dun had in his torture arsenal. If they chose the electrodes, they would apply a nasty stun to her first, which she knew would leave no serious damage. She would not break and give them Jon until the second or third jolt. The longer she held out, the more they would believe what she told them. If they started with the blowtorch, she would have to gamble and give him up sooner. Blowtorches frightened her.

  The two grinning men returned with their persecution tools. Reflex was a physical reaction beyond control of the mind. Only a split second after she had reacted did Randi realize Feng Dun had been watching.

  He smiled again. “Light the blowtorch,” he told one of the men. To the other, he ordered, “Bring another chair. Take off her sandals.”

  Ralph McDermid swallowed hard. “Is that really necessary—”

  “Yes, Taipan,” Feng Dun’s voice had a harsh, irritated edge. “In matters of this importance, hands must get dirty. Even bloody.”

  The second man grabbed a chair from a corner. Feng Dun picked her up by the shoulders. She sagged, but he lifted her as easily as if she were a straw doll. He dumped her onto the chair. The first man lit the blowtorch, while the second pulled off her sandals.

  She shrieked again in Mandarin. “No! No! I’ll tell you. He hired me.” She pointed at Jon, who still did not move against his ropes. “I was afraid to say it. You would hurt me as you’ve hurt him. But . . . that’s the man who did it. He paid me, told me to follow the gentleman there, and remember where he went, what he did, and who he talked to. Everything the foreign gentleman did. I needed the money. My father and mother are old. They need medicine and food. Their house is old. It must be repaired. Please! Don’t hurt me!”

  She chattered on as if terror had unleashed a flood of words. McDermid and the other men turned to study Jon as Feng translated. A look of understanding came over McDermid’s face. Randi could see belief in his eyes, saying to himself, Yes, of course. Why didn’t I guess that from the start?

  Feng was not looking at McDermid. He was staring at Randi’s feet. He stepped closer, grabbed her hands, and turned them over to peer at the palms.

  Distracted by Feng’s movements, and relieved that the blowtorch was not going to be necessary, McDermid said, “Feng? What is it?”

  Feng dropped Randi’s hands, grabbed her chin, and tilted it up. He stared at her face, her eyes, her hair. His long fingers felt like steel nails against her forehead and scalp, and her stomach plunged.

  She pulled back. “Owww! You’re hurting me!”

  “Stay still.”

  Abruptly, the fingers dug into her forehead below the hairline. Her flesh-colored scalp and black wig peeled off in his hand, revealing the tight skullcap that held down her o
wn hair.

  “Feng!” McDermid’s broad face looked stunned.

  Feng pulled off the skullcap, and her blond hair tumbled out.

  His two musclemen gaped as if they had seen a miracle.

  McDermid announced stupidly, “She’s not Chinese!”

  “No,” Feng said, without taking his gaze from Randi’s face, “she’s not Chinese.”

  “But how did you—?”

  “Her feet,” Feng said. “Rural people wear sandals most of their lives. She doesn’t have the gap between her large toe and the others.” He studied her with a kind of admiration. “Her hands have been artificially coarsened and aged, probably with latex skin. The same kind of product gave her eyes an Oriental fold and shape. She’s probably wearing contact lenses, and there’s a subtle pigmentation on her skin from some kind of long-lasting skin dye. It’s a remarkable piece of intelligence tradecraft, the work of experts.”

  Everyone in the room, except the unconscious Jon, stared at Randi the way they would at an exotic zoo animal.

  Fear rushed through her. She thought fast. They would no longer believe her story that Jon had hired her. Feng had deduced that she worked for an intelligence agency. Nothing would change his mind about that now. Whatever new lie she told must contain that admission. Sweating, she considered possibilities . . . what Feng and McDermid might believe . . . what legend she had the skills to make credible.

  “So,” Feng said in that ghostly voice that seldom varied, which made it all the more intimidating. “You aren’t Chinese, but you speak Mandarin as well or better than I do, and I’d guess Cantonese and Shanghainese, too, yes? Certainly English. You’ve understood every word we’ve said. You’ve been ahead of us from the start. You’re highly trained by a large organization with global interests and the need for operatives who can speak foreign languages. Even our American friend there can’t speak Chinese. But he isn’t CIA, is he? A special person, perhaps, recruited for a special mission, but with a real Langley agent to work with him, yes? And, of course, that Langley agent would be you.”

  Randi made a decision. She curled her lip and said in disgusted Russian, “Don’t insult me.”

  Ralph McDermid took a half step back, his eyes wide as if he had been slapped across the face.

  Feng Dun blinked.

  “And you’re right about Colonel Smith,” she continued in perfect Russian. “He’s not CIA. What or who he is precisely, I know as little as you.” Give them a small confirmation. It could distract them. “But I’d like to know, too. It could prove useful to us later.”

  McDermid demanded, “What did she say?” When Feng translated, McDermid frowned angrily. “Why is a Russian agent following me?”

  Randi switched to Russian-accented English. “The Altman Group isn’t the only arms dealer.”

  “Russian intelligence is interested in doing business?” McDermid sensed profit. “Does the Kremlin want to work with us?” He had done good deals with Russia in the past, but recently Moscow had grown greedy, demanding a larger cut.

  “In Russia today, life is good for few.”

  McDermid studied Randi. He decided, “You’re not working for the government. You’re moonlighting for yourself or others. For one of your capitalist oligarchs, perhaps. Someone who wants to know what the Altman Group is doing for reasons of business utility.”

  Randi gave a slow nod, as if reluctant to admit it. “We do what we must. My father was GRU. One becomes accustomed to living well.”

  GRU was the old Soviet military intelligence. Feng said, “Does this oligarch have a name?”

  “Possibly.” She cocked an eyebrow and looked at McDermid.

  Feng turned his head toward McDermid, too. Then he glared at her. “I don’t believe you. What weapons deal is Mr. McDermid making in Hong Kong that brought you here?”

  “Stop, Feng.” McDermid saw dollar signs. Russia still had weapons many people wanted, particularly in the Third World. Although those dictators and self-appointed kings cried poverty, they managed to come up with the cash when it came to guns and ammunition. If this woman had access to a private store, which had probably been looted from the government’s dwindling supplies . . . “We need to talk.”

  Feng remained focused on Randi’s face, searching it for something he could not quite pinpoint but seemed sure was there. Then he looked at Jon Smith. He had still not moved. Feng again considered Randi.

  “Feng,” McDermid repeated.

  The enforcer glanced at him, turned, and walked toward the door.

  McDermid followed, after a reassuring smile at the moonlighting Russian agent with the business connections.

  Chapter

  Thirty

  In an inner office, Ralph McDermid’s cell phone rang. He took it from his pocket. “This is McDermid.”

  The polished voice said, “We need to talk.”

  McDermid covered the mouthpiece. “I’d better take this,” he told Feng Dun.

  “Very well. My people must eat anyway.”

  McDermid nodded. “It’s been a long night. Get something downstairs. I want white toast and coffee. Cream and sugar. A Danish, if you can find one. Then we’ll talk more about the Russian.”

  The footsteps of Feng and his men thumped down the wood stairs, while McDermid found a seat on a packing box that held adult toys for a sex shop on the street floor.

  He returned to the phone. “I have good news for you.”

  “What news?”

  McDermid related the capture of Smith and the Russian agent. “This is the end of our major problem. All of the copies of the manifest are destroyed.”

  The voice on the other end said with relief, “Excellent. And did you give my information about the SEAL operation to Feng Dun to pass on?”

  “Yes, it’s over. He made the connection to one of his people, who got the information to the sub’s captain. You hadn’t heard?”

  “Not yet. It will be a pleasure to act surprised. The White House won’t try again, now that they know the Chinese will be watching for more attempts. Tell me about the Russian woman. You say she was spying on you? I don’t like the sound of that.”

  McDermid filled him in. “We can make use of her perhaps. I’ll know more soon.”

  “It’s interesting, but let’s keep our focus. I’m out on a limb on this. We’d better bring it home.”

  “You’re out on a limb? Consider my position. If I’m not worried, you don’t have to be.”

  “What will you do with Smith?”

  “Whatever we need to. That’s Feng’s province. But first, I want to find out for whom he works.”

  “If anything happens, I know nothing about this.”

  “Naturally. Neither do I.”

  Cheered by their progress, McDermid hung up and remained sitting on the packing box, thinking about the new good fortune the Russian woman might have brought. Depending on what she was offering, it could be another billion in the long run.

  As soon as she heard the door close, Randi bent to put on her sandals. Her whisper was so low, so directed only toward Jon, that it would be inaudible from the door around the corner.

  “Jon? Jon? I’m going to get you out of this. Can you hear me? Jon?”

  “Of course, I can hear you. I’m not deaf, you know. At least not yet.” His speech was thick through his swollen lips. A hint of pain in the cheerful whisper. “Terrific work. I’m impressed.”

  Relief rushed through her, mixed with annoyance. “You’ve been awake the whole time, damn you.”

  “Now, now.” He tried to raise his head. “Only most of the time. I—”

  Randi put a finger to her lips, shook her head, and signaled him to slump again. She stood up and walked around the bare room. She examined the floor, walls, and ceiling, as if searching for another way out. What she expected to find were listening devices and closed-circuit cameras, but there were no cameras and no recent changes in the walls that could conceal bugs. Nothing hung on the walls, and there were no wall fixtur
es and no furniture other than the two straight chairs. She could not be completely certain there were no listening devices, but she did know there were no cameras.

  She returned to her chair and said in a low voice, “Okay, they can’t see us, and I can’t find any mikes, but let’s keep it down, just in case. How much did you hear?”

  “Most of it. Giving me to them was masterly, probably the only story they would’ve believed. The Russian bit was positively brilliant. The peasant howling and crawling wasn’t bad either. I had no idea you had so much talent as a groveler.”

  “Your approval warms my heart. But we’re still trapped here. Unless you want your feet fried to a cinder on your way to a shallow grave, we’d better figure out what to do when they come back.”

  “I’m ahead of you. You were doing fine, so I had plenty of time to think. What do you know about the big guy with the crazy hair?”

  “Feng Dun?”

  “Yes, that’s the name I have for him, too.”

  “He’s from Shanghai. A former soldier, guerrilla, and adventurer. Very undercover. Now he’s an enforcer for high-level businessmen.”

  “Where’d he get that hair?”

  “There are plenty of redheaded Han, probably from some long-ago minority they assimilated. I’d guess the white’s just an odd sign of his aging. Now it’s your turn. While I was crawling around on the dirty floor, saving your bacon, what did you come up with to get us loose?”

  “We jump ’em and split.”

  She was speechless at the inadequacy of that. “You’re kidding.”

  “Think about it,” he said, the pain in the voice intensifying the more he spoke through his sore lips. “What else do we have? Are there more of them out there on the other side of that door?”

  “They blindfolded me. Probably, but we don’t even know where we are.”