From a manufacturing perspective, Jagged was a dream come true. Its component chemicals were found in everything from food additives and pesticides to over-the-counter allergy medicines and household cleaning products — all cheap, legal, and nearly impossible to regulate. In the eight years it had been in circulation, Jagged’s chemical makeup had resisted all replication, which left Kuan-Yin Zhao not only its sole producer, but also one of the wealthiest men on the face of the earth.
In the first three years of its existence, Jagged had spread like the plague it was from China to Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, and India, before finally leaving Asia and jumping into Russia and the former Soviet Republics, Eastern and Western Europe, and finally America. Everywhere Jagged went, rates of addiction and crime skyrocketed. It spread through high schools and colleges and into suburbia, addicting both the curious and recreational users as well as hard-core users.
The justice systems of affected countries were overwhelmed. State and federal legislators couldn’t allocate money fast enough to find a place to house those convicted not only of possesion of Jagged, but also of the crimes that inevitably trailed in its wake: prostitution, theft, murder, assault, rape.
Fisher had read the stats and he’d seen the results on city streets. In the five years since it hit the United States, Jagged’s rate of use — and thereby addiction — had outstripped its every competitior, having risen to 9.2 percent of the population, or almost 27 million people. For every ten people in the United States, one of them was a hard-core Jagged addict who would slit your throat for the spare change in your pocket.
That answered the who part of Fisher’s puzzle. Kuan-Yin Zhao had enough wealth to buy anything and anyone he needed, but the question of why he’d launched the Trego and Slipstone attacks and why he seemed to be trying to orchestrate a war between Iran and the U.S. was still a mystery. Fisher hoped Heng might answer that question.
“What do you do for Zhao?” Fisher asked.
“Intelligence,” Heng answered. “I was Second Bureau, Guoanbu.”
“Foreign Directorate,” Fisher said.
“Yes. One of Zhao’s people recruited me. I lost a sister and a cousin to Jagged. I thought I’d get inside Zhao’s organization and…” Heng stopped, threw up his hands. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I knew could not go to my superiors; Zhao’s influence is everywhere. He has so much money… ”
“So you offered yourself up to the CIA.”
Heng nodded. “I knew there was an undeclared station in Taipei, so I arranged to go on vacation there and I made contact.”
“What have you given them?”
“Not much, I’m afraid. I don’t think I’m Zhao’s only recruit. He’s got an operation going, but it’s compartmentalized. I handle a piece of it, someone else handles another piece… I’m sure you know how it works.”
Fisher decided Heng deserved to know what was at stake here. “You know about Slipstone?”
“I saw it on news, yes.”
“We think Zhao’s behind that. He got his hands on some nuclear waste from Chernobyl.”
Heng closed his eyes and sighed. “I had a chance to kill him once, you know. I should have.”
“Maybe you’ll get another shot,” Fisher said. “But for now, I need your eyes and ears here. When did you last make contact with your handler?”
“A month, month and a half ago. About that time Zhao cracked down on security and we started moving. Communication was impossible.”
Four to six weeks, Fisher thought. About the time Zhao would have put the Trego and Slipstone operations into motion. The fact that Heng was still incognito here suggested there was more of Zhao’s plan yet to unfold.
“What’s the last thing you did for him?”
“Two weeks ago, I went with two of his bodyguards to Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, to meet a man — an Iranian.”
The two men the FBI had in custody from Slipstone had been ultimately bound for Ashgabat.
Connecting dots.
“And? Did you know him? Did you get a name?”
Heng shook his head. “I gave him a package and went over an operation with him — a raid of some kind. All I had was a map. No legend. It’s somewhere along a coastline, but nothing looked familiar to me. I could tell it was some kind of military installation, but that’s it. My guess is that someone else had already given the man the other parts of the operation. As I said—”
“Compartmentilization, I know. Draw it for me.”
Heng drew the map from memory, but with no peripheral features it meant nothing to Fisher.
He continued questioning Heng, going backward and forward through his time with Zhao, but there was little else to glean. Heng’s role had largely been that of a courier.
“I do have something that might be useful,” he said. “In Ashgabat, I met the Iranian at a private home. I know where it is, and I remember a name: Marjani. Ailar Marjani.”
“I’ll look into it. What’s in the room, the one with the vault door?”
“Zhao’s nerve center. Communications, computers, satellite uplinks — he’s got it all.”
“How many in there?”
“Three or four.”
“Is Zhao here?”
“No, but I think he’s coming. I don’t know when.”
Fisher considered his options. Hunker down, wait for Zhao, and either snatch him or kill him? Or take what he had and get out? He chose the latter. Whatever was left to play out in Zhao’s scheme, Fisher knew there was no guarantee the man’s death or disappearance would stop it. Besides, while getting his hands on Zhao might be easy enough, getting off the island alive — with or without him — would be another matter altogether. “You know I can’t take you out,” Fisher said to Heng.
“I know.”
“Lay low and keep you eyes open. Make contact if you can.”
Heng nodded.
“One last question: How do I get into Zhao’s nerve center?”
Heng’s answer was to take Fisher down the hall to the first door on the left. Fisher picked the lock and they slipped inside. It was a utility room with an air-conditioning unit, a few supply closets filled with sundry items, and an open circular pit in the floor surrounded by a fringe of steel plates secured to the floor by a padlocked chain.
Fisher sent Heng back to his room, then picked the padlock and pried up one of the plates, revealing a two-foot-deep crawl space. Cool air rushed up to meet him; it smelled of earth. Years ago, Heng had explained, when Shek had ordered his pagoda built, the foundation had struck a seasonal water table, so the fallout shelter’s pilings had been raised to compensate for moonsoon flooding. Two months earlier, had Fisher pried back the well’s plates, he would have found a small lake instead of dirt. The pit was a runoff sump for excess water.
Fisher shut off the overhead light, then dropped through the opening and pulled the plate closed behind him.
With a hum, his NV goggles powered up, revealing an expanse of dirt and concrete pilings. To his right, a pair of eyes flashed red; with a screech, the rat scurried away and disappeared.
He started crawling, angling to his left and counting feet until he was centered under the hallway. He adjusted course and kept crawling. He reached a horizontal steel plate that extended from the floor above to the dirt below. This would be the outer vault door. He crawled around the plate. After another ten feet, he came to a second one, the inner vault door. On the other side of this he saw a dozen squares of blue light cast on the dirt floor.