“Of course.”
Hanley watched Suzanne roll out of his office on her leg scooter, then stop, turn, and struggle to shut the door behind her. He almost called out for her to leave it open, but he knew she was a proud woman, and she wanted to show her boss that her broken leg wasn’t slowing her down one damn bit.
It was silly, but he just sat there and watched her struggle, until finally the door shut and he was alone again in his office.
Hanley found himself questioning his decision to put Suzanne Brewer in charge of the mission in Hong Kong. He realized from her comments that she would pull the plug on Gentry to save her own ass. As far as she was concerned, Gentry was a liability to her, even though he was an asset to Hanley. Still, she had a mind for this work, and while he didn’t trust her, he knew that folding her into this operation would make her a better case officer, and it allied her that much closer to Hanley himself.
And while he didn’t trust her, neither did he want her out of his control.
He saw Suzanne as the future of this agency. He had no doubt in his mind she might one day rule the entire building; shit, she had the moxie to be DNI, the Director of National Intelligence, the head of all sixteen U.S. intelligence agencies. If Matt Hanley was still around when that happened — through some luck or some curse, he didn’t know which to bet on — then he’d need Brewer. And he’d need something to hold over her head. The Court Gentry operational relationship or, as she seemed set on calling it, the Violator operational relationship, was off book and highly irregular. It was rife with opportunities for Brewer to get her hands dirty along the way, and Matt Hanley would know about it if she did. He wanted her as a friend, but he was hoping to solidify his place here by having a “special relationship” with a future top dog.
Hanley had been a field man, but he knew how to work this building, how to manage these halls and conference rooms. Langley wasn’t as far removed from the sullied third-world streets in which he’d operated as it might look at first glance, and though you could pull Matt Hanley out of the field, you could never really pull the field out of Matt Hanley.
Brewer was the right person to run Gentry, of this Hanley was certain. But he did have to acknowledge he’d put Gentry in incredible danger on this operation, and Suzanne Brewer was the man’s only lifeline.
He knew the opportunity awaiting the CIA in Hong Kong was huge; the potential benefit to the United States if Court succeeded was real and it was massive, and Hanley knew it was his job to risk an asset like Gentry. One of China’s top government computer network experts was in the city and in the wind, everybody was after him, and Court was one of only a few with a real shot at laying hands on him. The risk to Gentry’s life was worth it for a chance to gain the knowledge in Fan Jiang’s head. Even if Gentry died in the process on this, winning in Hong Kong would be worth the sacrifice.
Hell, Hanley said to himself, if we get Fan back to America and use him against the Chinese, this could damn well be one of the biggest intel coups of all time.
But it was even bigger than that, because Hanley knew elements of the larger operation of which Gentry was just a part.
This whole op was a foul fucking mess; Brewer did not know the big picture, and Gentry sure as shit did not know the big picture.
Hanley thought he might bring Brewer into the fold at some point.
But Gentry? Hell no, Gentry would never find out the full scope of this, because if he had any clue what he was really in the middle of, he’d fucking run from it as fast as he could.
CHAPTER
SIX
Court walked the streets for hours on a surveillance detection route, which in most any other city in the world would have been a breeze at this time of night, because it’s no great trick to detect surveillance when there are few people out and about. In Hong Kong, however, Court found himself constantly double-checking the faces of those around him, so thick were the sidewalks with pedestrians, even in the early-morning hours.
He stopped for a snack in a street stall, then wandered through a maze of kiosks selling cheap housewares and knock-off jewelry, still open at two a.m. He kept his eyes out for anyone who could have possibly followed him from the Peninsula hotel, but he saw no hint of a tail, and two hours before first light he found himself in the gritty Kowloon district of Mongkok, well north of Tsim Sha Tsui.
He stepped into an all-night market and pharmacy — it seemed just about every business down at street level stayed open twenty-four hours a day — and he bought two bags full of supplies, all of which he managed to cram into his backpack and roll-aboard.
Now that Court had picked up the items he needed and put some distance between himself and the crime scene he’d left to the south, he set off on the hunt for an out-of-the-way guesthouse. He realized Mongkok was the right neighborhood to find one, because there were, without exaggeration, tens of thousands of rooms for rent in the endless streets lined with skyscrapers.
The main drags here in Mongkok were still awash with the glow of neon, but this part of the city was nothing like down near the harbor where, even on the side streets and in the alleyways, the lights shone bright twenty-four hours a day. Once he got a couple of blocks off the major streets, he found less commercial glitz and more poverty-level residential buildings. Many of these structures were thirty, forty, even sixty stories tall, but still they had grungy unkempt facades and simple signs out front declaring what sorts of commercial and residential properties could be found inside.
On Ki Lung Street he found himself drawn to a gaudy glow of pink neon around a side door of an otherwise gray and poorly lit building. He stood in the dark across the quiet street and looked at the facade, noticing a small hand-painted sign under the neon promoting the “Pleasant Southeast Orchid Guesthouse.” From the sign he learned the establishment occupied the first and third floors of the building, with a connecting business that offered “All-day, all-night foot massage” on the second floor. Even at this hour it was open and active, with an all-male clientele. He stood in the alcove of a building across the street and watched the place for a while longer, trying to decide if the guesthouse would suit his needs. Court didn’t know if the foot massage locale was a legitimate business or if more was on offer, but from the steady flotsam and jetsam of men entering and exiting the front door of the building, he guessed there was something going on other than foot rubs.
This was about as far removed as one could possibly get from the five-star hotel he’d checked into the day before. The guesthouse wasn’t low profile or secure, but he thought this place to be as off grid as he could possibly manage in the middle of an urban sprawl where he had no friends or contacts to draw from.
He assumed the rooms of the guesthouse would be seedy and nasty, but the low-rent nature of the place meant they wouldn’t care about seeing a passport or doing anything to alert authorities to his presence, and above all he had a good deal of confidence that anyone looking for a man who had disappeared out of the Peninsula would not look here first.
He figured he might end up with contact dermatitis staying at the Pleasant Southeast Orchid, but he probably wouldn’t get a bullet to the head by an MSS hitter, so he decided this looked like it had the potential to be his new home.
Court crossed the dark street, anxious for a few hours’ sleep but ready to turn away if he saw anything he didn’t like.
The check-in process to the guesthouse was a little more complicated than he’d anticipated, but only because the old guy behind the counter couldn’t understand why the foreigner wanted a room here in the first place, why he was booking for two whole days, and why he hadn’t brought a prostitute with him. There was suspicion in the man’s eyes, disbelief that this guy was actually here seeking accommodations.