By now blood surrounded Su. She couldn’t move her legs, and the boots of the guards were thumping closer. Agony flooded her, more at being caught than at her injuries. In a savage movement of her free arm she pulled out the hem of her tunic, and with it, two tiny white pills she had carried with her since her arrival at Loyang. She bit both of them and swallowed, an almond bitterness filling her mouth.
By the time the guardsmen arrived to drag her up by her arms, Su Lee was dead.
Director Robert M. Kent frowned as he put the coffee mug down on his desk. The brew had gone cold and bitter. He looked up at Steve Jaspers, the Deputy Director of Operations, and accepted the briefing folders Jaspers handed over.
“The China penetration operation has derailed, sir,” Jaspers said without preamble, sinking into a couch in front of Kent’s large desk.
“Six penetration agents were sent in. Two were lost on insertion, the other four reported they were set up and in position, but as of now the final four are compromised.”
“Details,” Kent said, opening the folder to the first page, showing a passport photo of an attractive young oriental woman and beneath it a summary of her background.
“The first was a contractor, operational name, Su Lee. She was dropped into Loyang in the Province of Honan south of the Yellow River. The territory is still in Communist hands, but only miles from forces of the White Army, which we believed were massing for an attack. Su was given identity papers as a relocating Beijing resident. The relocation was for political reasons — she was listed as a convicted prostitute, sent out to a farm co-op as ‘rehabilitation.” We got her initial report on the KL-87 that she had picked up on rumors of White Army forces preparing for an attack from the west with the People’s Liberation Army forces waiting for a counterattack to the east. She intended taking the digital imaging camera to the P.L.A troop encampment first. Apparently she was successful. The images had just started to come in on her second KL87 transmission, which ended suddenly. Nothing more was heard from her.
“The second was another contractor, operational name, Chu Cheng. Chu parachuted into the village of Ganyu near the seacoast in northern Kiangsu province, again very near the border of White Army occupation, but still on territory controlled by the People’s Republic. For the last two weeks his identity was working. He was set up as a teacher in a vocational school, with political relocation orders from Beijing. His cover story cast him as a former manufacturing engineer being rehabilitated for falsification of factory production statistics. We got his initial report that he was in place and intended to scout out the P.L.A positions in the vicinity, perhaps make a weekend trip over the line to the frontier. We haven’t heard from him since. He’s missed four scheduled reports. I have to presume he’s captured or dead.”
“The third?” Director Kent asked, a sour look crossing his face as he shut Chu’s file and opened the next in the stack.
“Third was Sung Yu-shu.” Jaspers continued.
“He was dropped into the village of Kangba, about one hundred and eighty miles north of Beijing. We had suspected this to be an area of future attacks by the White forces to the north. A week after Sung was inserted, we got his set-up transmission, but he reported that there was no White or P.L.A activity as we had suspected from the satellite photographs.”
“Damned satellites,” Kent grumbled.
“We’re getting less information from them than I’d have ever guessed. And they cost a half a billion each …”
“They only show things, sir, not intentions or trends. Anyway, Sung intended to head further north and find out if he could sniff out any activity. We never heard from him again.”
“The fourth?”
“Operational name, Hu To-pin. We set him up in Beijing after bringing him in by ship from the port of Tianjin and from there by rail to the capital. He took a job as a stock boy in a state-run store for party officials, which was conveniently located on Chang’An Avenue, not far from the Great Hall of the People. In addition to the KL-87, he was given some sophisticated eavesdropping gear for reception of UHF communications and microwave transmissions. The former to listen to orders from Beijing to P.L.A unit commanders, the latter for possible phone intercepts. He wasn’t going to listen or interpret, just record the intercepts for compressed burst relay to the COMMSAT using the KL-87. The western Pacific COMMSAT yesterday afternoon logged that it was being addressed by Hu’s KL-87, but after just a few seconds the transmission stopped. We haven’t heard anything more. Hu has missed three checkin transmissions since. I’m listing him as compromised.”
Kent glanced at the map of China that now occupied an entire wall of his office across from his desk.
The Chinese Civil War remained the main priority of the CIA as well as Kent’s chief personal frustration.
The map showed the Japanese-supported insurgents of the White Army occupying a wide swath of the mainland from the southern coast to the north central region, cutting Communist China in half. The Communist Chinese still held the far west and the northeast, including the vicinity within three hundred miles of Beijing. The White Army was rumored to be preparing a massive assault on Beijing, but the rumors also held that Beijing was planning a counterattack that could wipe out the White Army and take back central China.
This bloody war had the potential to torch all of Asia, Kent thought, perhaps even spread further.
There was still the question of China’s old nuclear weapons, supposedly destroyed over the last five years, but perhaps only stockpiled in a P.L.A weapons depot. If China could sever the link between the White Army of the New Kuomintang and Japan by attacking Japan itself, this struggle, a mere Shanghai rebellion just the year before, could break out into world war, which was never supposed to happen again after the end of the Cold War. With the linking of the world’s economic markets, a single air raid on Tokyo might well wipe out the computers of the world banking system, and with them start the worst depression of the century. If the Communists won, China would be sent back fifty years to the Mao era, perhaps starting another cold war, this time with the Chinese. If the democratic forces of the White Army won, China would likely be a future ally and trading partner.
America had to act, but Congress and the President had ruled out direct military intervention. The best Kent could hope to do was keep an eye on the war and make sure the White Army at least had the benefit of knowing what Beijing was doing. But how could he do that? Since diplomatic relations had been severed with Communist China, the CIA no longer had embassies or consulates to allow the operations of the station chiefs, which meant they had no way to collect intelligence from Chinese local agents. The progress of the Civil War was a complete mystery to the CIA and the administration. With Jaspers telling him that the penetration agents had failed, intelligence on the Civil War would be solely by satellite photographs, which were nearly useless without human reports from the ground. Without hard intelligence, the White Army would not have the benefit of intelligence and U.S. foreign policy would have to be made in the dark.
And the President wanted answers. Now.
Kent shut the last of the four files and looked up at Jaspers.