Turning silently, he hid the camera inside his jacket and crab-walked away from the brilliant lights until he was wrapped again in darkness. He arose and padded across the wood planks from storage box to shed, seeking whatever protection he could find as he headed back toward the road that would return him to the city. A chill night wind whistled above his head, carrying the heavy scent of the muddy river. He did not notice. He was exultant, because he would be returning with important information, but also nervous. These were people not to be taken lightly.
By the time he heard footsteps, he was nearing the end of the wharf, where it met the land. Almost safe.
The large man with the unusual red-and-white hair had been quietly closing in on the spy, taking a parallel path among the various supply and work sheds. Calm and deliberate, he saw his target tense, almost pause, and suddenly hurry.
The man glanced quickly around. To his left was the lost part of the dock, where storage and seagulls found their haven, while on the right was a pathway kept open for trucks and other vehicles to go back and forth to the loading areas. The last truck was behind him, heading this way, toward land. Its headlights swept the night. It would pass soon. As his prey darted behind a tall pile of ropes on the far left, the man pulled out his garotte and sprinted. Before the prey could turn, the man dropped the thin cord around his neck, yanked, and tightened.
For a long minute, the victim’s hands clawed at the cord that strangled him. His shoulders twisted with agony. His body thrashed. At last, his arms fell limp, and his head lolled forward.
As the truck passed on the right, the wood dock shuddered. Hidden behind the mountain of ropes, the killer lowered the corpse to the planks. He released the garotte and searched the body until he found the camera. With alternating feet, he rolled the body off into the dark water. It made a quiet splash. With luck, it would drift under the dock where it would be trapped for the fish to do their work quickly.
He stepped out onto the clear part of the dock and saw the truck’s red tail lights ahead. The vehicle had paused as ordered, waiting for him. He trotted toward it.
Five minutes later, The Dowager Empress hauled up her gangway and let go all of her lines. A tug hauled her out into the Huangpu, where she turned downriver for the short journey to the Yangtze and, finally, the open sea.
Chapter One
Tuesday, September 12th Washington, D.C.
There was a saying in Washington that lawyers ran the government, but spies ran the lawyers. The city was cobwebbed with intelligence agencies, everything from the legendary CIA and FBI and the little-known NRO to alphabet groups in all branches of the military and government, even in the illustrious departments of State and Justice. Too many, in the opinion of President Samuel Adams Castilla. And too public. Rivalries were notoriously a problem. Sharing information that inadvertently included misinformation was a bigger problem. Then there was the dangerous sluggishness of so many bureaucracies.
The president was worrying about this and a brewing international crisis as his black Lincoln Towncar cruised along a narrow back road on the northern bank of the Anacostia River. Its motor was a quiet hum, and its tinted windows opaque. The car rolled past tangled woods and the usual lighted marinas until it finally rattled over the rusted tracks of a rail spur, where it turned right into a busy marina. The sign read:
ANACOSTIA SEAGOING YACHT CLUB PRIVATE. MEMBERS ONLY.
The yacht club appeared identical to all the others that lined the river east of the Washington Navy Yard. It was an hour before midnight.
Only a few miles above the confluence with the broad Potomac, the marina moored big, open-water power cruisers and long-distance sailing boats, as well as the usual weekend pleasure craft. President Castilla gazed out his window at the piers, which jutted out into the dusky water. At several, a number of battered, salt-encrusted oceangoing yachts were just docking. Their crews still wore foul-weather gear. He saw that there were also five frame buildings of varying sizes in the yacht club’s fenced grounds. The layout was exactly what had been described to him.
The Lincoln glided to a halt behind the largest of the lighted buildings, out of sight of the piers and hidden from the road by the thick woods. Four of the men riding in the Lincoln with him, all wearing business suits and carrying mini-submachine guns, swiftly stepped out and formed a perimeter around the car. They adjusted their night-vision goggles as they scanned the darkness. Finally, one of the four turned back toward the Lincoln and gave a sharp nod.
The fifth man, who had been sitting beside the president, also wore a dark business suit, but he carried a 9mm Sig Sauer. In response to the signal, the president handed him a key, and he hurried from the car to a barely visible side door in the building. He inserted the key into a hidden lock and swung open the door. He turned and spread his feet, weapon poised.
At that point, the car door that was closest to the building swung open. The night air was cool and crisp, tainted with the stench of diesel. The president emerged into it—a tall, heavyset man wearing chino slacks and a casual sport jacket. For such a big man, he moved swiftly as he entered the building’s side door.
The fifth guard gave a final glance around at the dark night and peeled away into the building, too, followed by two of the other four. The remaining two took stations, protecting the Lincoln and the side door.
Nathaniel Frederick (“Fred”) Klein, the rumpled chief of Covert-One, sat behind a cluttered metal desk in his compact office inside the marina building. This was the new Covert-One nerve center. In the beginning, just four years ago, Covert-One had no formal organization or bureaucracy, no real headquarters, and no official operatives. It had been loosely composed of professional experts in many fields, all with clandestine experience, most with military backgrounds, and all essentially unencumbered—without family, home ties, or obligations, either temporary or permanent.
But now that three major international crises had stretched the resources of the elite cadre to the limits, the president had decided his ultrasecret agency needed more personnel and a permanent base far from the radar screens of Pennsylvania Avenue, the Hill, or the Pentagon. The result was this “private yacht club.”
It had the right elements for clandestine work: It was open and active twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, with intermittent but steady traffic from both land and water that was without pattern. Near the road and the rail spur but still on the grounds was a helipad that looked more like a weed-infested field. The latest electronic communications had been installed throughout the base, and the security was nearly invisible but of cutting-edge quality. Not even a dragonfly could cross the periphery without one of the sensors picking it up.
Alone in his office, the sounds of his small nighttime staff muted beyond his door, Klein closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his longish nose. His wire-rimmed glasses rested on the desk. Tonight he looked every one of his sixty years. Since he had accepted the job of heading Covert-One, he had aged. His enigmatic face was riven with new creases, and his hairline had receded another inch. Tonight, there was another huge problem about to break.
As his headache lessened, he sat back, opened his eyes, put his glasses back on, and resumed puffing on his ever-present pipe. The room filled with billows of smoke that disappeared almost as soon as he produced them, sucked out by a powerful ventilating system installed specifically for the purpose.
A file folder lay open on his desk, but he did not look at it. Instead, he smoked, tapped his foot, and glanced at the ship’s clock on his wall every few seconds. At last, a door to his left, beneath the clock, opened, and a man with a Sig Sauer strode across the office to the outer door, locked it, and turned to stand with his back against it.
Seconds later, the president entered. He sat in a high-backed leather chair across the desk from Klein.
“Thanks, Jack,” he told the guard. “I’ll let you know if I need you.”
“But Mr. President—”
“You can go,”
he ordered firmly. “Wait outside. This is a private conversation between two old friends.” That was partly true. He and Fred Klein had known each other since college days.
The guard slowly recrossed the office and left, each step radiating his reluctance.
As the door closed, Klein blew a stream of smoke. “I would’ve come to you as usual, Mr. President.”
“No.” Sam Castilla shook his head. His titanium glasses reflected the overhead light with a sharp flash. “Until you tell me exactly what we’re facing with this Chinese freighter—The Dowager Empress, right?—this one stays between us and those of your people you need to work on it.”
“The leaks are that bad?”
“Worse,” the president said. “The White House has turned into a sieve. I’ve never seen anything like it. Until my people can find the source of the leaks, I’ll meet you here.” His rangy face was deeply worried. “You think we have another Yinhe?”
Klein’s mind was instantly transported back: It was 1993, and a nasty international incident was about to erupt, with America the big loser. A Chinese cargo ship, the Yinhe, had sailed from China for Iran. U.S. intelligence received reports the ship was carrying chemicals that could be used to make weapons. After trying the usual diplomatic channels and failing, President Bill Clinton ordered the U.S. Navy to chase the ship, refusing to let it land anywhere, until some sort of resolution could be found.
An outraged China denied the accusations. Prominent world leaders jawboned. Allies made charges and countercharges. And media around the globe covered the standoff with banner headlines. The stalemate went on for an interminable twenty days. When China finally began to noisily rattle its sabers, the U.S. Navy forced the ship to stop on the high seas, and inspectors boarded the Yinhe. To America’s great embarrassment, they uncovered only agricultural equipment—plows, shovels, and small tractors. The intelligence had been faulty.
With a grimace, Klein recalled it all too well. The episode made America look like a thug. Its relations with China, and even its allies, were strained for years.
He puffed gloomily, fanning the smoke away from the president. “Do we have another Yinhe?” he repeated. “Maybe.”
“There’s ‘maybe’ remotely, and ‘maybe’ probably. You better tell me all of it. Chapter and verse.”
Klein tamped down the ash in his pipe. “One of our operatives is a professional Sinologist who’s been working ten years in Shanghai for a consortium of American firms that are trying to get a foothold there. His name’s Avery Mondragon. He’s alerted us to information that The Dowager Empress is carrying tens of tons of thiodiglycol, used in blister weapons, and thionyl chloride, used in both blister and nerve weapons. The freighter was loaded in Shanghai, is already at sea, and is destined for Iraq. Both chemicals have legitimate agricultural uses, of course, but not in such large quantities for a nation the size of Iraq.”
“How good is the information this time, Fred? One hundred percent? Ninety?”
“I haven’t seen it,” Klein said evenly, puffing a cloud of smoke and forgetting to wave it away this time. “But Mondragon says it’s documentary. He has the ship’s true manifest.”
“Great God.” Castilla’s thick shoulders and heavy torso seemed to go rigid against his chair. “I don’t know whether you realize it, but China is one of the one hundred and thirty-three signatories of the agreement that prohibits development, production, stockpiling, or use of chemical weapons. They won’t let themselves be revealed as breaking that treaty, because it could slow their march to acquiring a bigger and bigger slice of the global economy.”
“It’s a damned delicate situation.”
“The price of another mistake on our part could be particularly high for us, too, now that they’re close to signing our human rights agreement.”
In exchange for financial and trade concessions from the U.S., for which the president had cajoled and arm-twisted a reluctant congress, China had all but committed to signing a bilateral human-rights agreement that would open its prisons and criminal courts to U.N. and U.S. inspectors, bring its criminal and civil courts closer to Western and international principles, and release long-time political prisoners, some rumored to have been held since the 1948 Communist-Nationalist war. Such a treaty had been a high-priority goal for American presidents since Dick Nixon.
Sam Castilla wanted nothing to stop it. In fact, it was a long-time personal dream of his, too. “It’s also a damned dangerous situation, Fred. We can’t allow this ship…what was it, The Dowager Empress?”
Klein nodded.
“We can’t allow The Dowager Empress to sail into Basra with weapons-making chemicals. That’s the bottom line. Period.” Castilla stood and paced. “If your intelligence turns out to be good, and we go after this Dowager Empress, how are the Chinese going to react?” He shook his head and waved away his own words. “No, that’s not the question, is it? We know how they’ll react. They’ll shake their swords, denounce, and posture. The question is what will they actually do?” He looked at Klein. “Especially if we’re wrong again?”
“No one can know or predict that, Mr. President. On the other hand, no nation can maintain massive armies and nuclear weapons without using them somewhere, sometime, if for no other reason than to justify the costs.”
“I disagree. If a country’s economy is good, and its people are happy, a leader can maintain an army without using it.”
“Of course, if China wants to use the incident as an excuse that they’re being threatened, they might invade Taiwan,” Fred Klein continued. “They’ve wanted to do that for decades.”
“If they feel we won’t retaliate, yes. There’s Central Asia, too, now that Russia is less of a regional threat.”
The Covert-One chief said the words neither wanted to think about: “With their long-range nuclear weapons, we’re as much a target as any country.”
Castilla shook off a shudder. Klein removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose again. They were silent.
At last, the president sighed. He had made a decision. “All right, I’ll have Admiral Brose order the navy to follow and monitor The Dowager Empress. We’ll label it routine, at-sea surveillance, with no revelation of the actual situation to anyone but Brose.”
“The Chinese will find out we’re shadowing their ship.”
“Our ambassador will stall. The problem is, I don’t know how long we’ll be able to get away with it.” The president went to the door and stopped. When he turned, his face was long and somber, his jowls pronounced. “I need proof, Fred. I need it now. Get me that manifest. The real manifest.”
“You’ll have it, Sam.”
His big shoulders hunched with worry, President Castilla nodded, opened the door, and walked away. One of the guards closed it.
Alone again, Klein frowned, contemplating his next step. As he heard the engine of the president’s car hum to life, he made a decision. He swivelled to the small table behind his chair, on which two phones sat. One was red—a single, direct, scrambled line to the president. The other was blue. It was also scrambled. He picked up the blue phone and dialed.
Wednesday, September 13th
Kaohsiung, Taiwan
After a medium-rare hamburger and a bottle of Taiwanese lager at Smokey Joe’s on Chunghsiao-1 Road, Jon Smith decided to take a taxi to Kaohsiung Harbor. He still had an hour before his afternoon meetings resumed at the Grand Hi-Lai Hotel, when his old friend, Tom Sheringham from England’s Porton Down bioresearch installation, would meet him there.
Smith had been in Kaohsiung—Taiwan’s second-largest city—nearly a week, but today was the first chance he’d had to explore. That kind of intensity was what usually happened at scientific conferences, at least in his experience as a medical doctor and biomolecular scientist. Assigned to the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases—USAMRIID, he was also an army lieutenant colonel. He had left his work on defenses against anthrax to attend this one—the Pacific Rim Intern
ational Assembly on Developments in Molecular and Cell Biology.
But scientific conferences, like fish and guests, got stale after three or four days. Hatless, in civilian clothes, he was tall and athletic, as he strode along the waterfront, marveling at the magnificent harbor—the third largest container port in the world, after Hong Kong and Singapore—and how much longer Chichin Island had become. He had visited here years ago, before a tunnel was built to the mainland and the paradisaical island became just another congested part of the container port. The day was postcard clear, so he was able to easily spot Hsiao Liuchiu Island, low on the southern horizon. Industrialization appeared not to have spoiled its clear waters and coral.
He walked another fifteen minutes through the sunhazed day as seagulls circled overhead and the clatter of a harbor at work filled his ears. At last, he hailed a cab to take him back to the hotel. He had hardly settled into the back seat, when his cell phone vibrated inside his lightweight sport jacket. It was not his regular phone, but the special one in the hidden pocket. The phone that was scrambled.
He answered quietly, “Smith.”
Fred Klein asked, “How’s the conference, Colonel?”
“Getting dull,” he admitted.
“Then a small diversion won’t be too amiss.”
Smith smiled inwardly. He was not only a scientist, but an undercover agent. Balancing the two parts of his life was seldom easy. He was ready for a “small diversion,” but nothing too big or too engrossing. He really did want to get back to the conference. “What do we have this time, Fred?”
From his distant office on the bank of the Anacostia River, Klein described the situation.
“The Yinhe again?” Smith did not like the sound of it.
“Not if we can prevent it, and it appears to me we can. Or, to be precise, you can.”
Smith felt a chill up his spine that was both apprehension and anticipation. “What do I do?”