Zoya Zakharova woke to a shake on her bare arm. She thought it was Court but was surprised to feel that he was wearing gloves. She sat up, rubbed her eyes, and felt the continued effects of the Vicodin in her blood, along with the pain in her shoulder that was even stronger than the narcotic.
When she opened her eyes she saw them. Four men in the room with guns, more men in the hall outside. They were obviously Americans.
The man in front said, “Ma’am, we’re friends.” And then, “Do you have any weapons on you?”
“Nyet… No.” She rubbed her eyes again and looked around. “Where is… where is Court?”
“He sent us to help you, ma’am. We’ve got transport outside. I understand you’re hurt. We have a litter if you can’t walk.”
“What’s your name?” she asked the man.
He hesitated a moment, then said, “I’m Chris. I’m a friend of Court’s.”
She didn’t know if she believed him. “When do we see him?”
The man gave a little smile. “You know Court. You see him when he wants to be seen.”
She looked around the room and saw that Fan Jiang was gone. Slowly she understood what had happened. Court had taken off with Fan, and he’d told the CIA where they could pick her up.
And he hadn’t even said good-bye.
She was so mad she fought a scream.
She wanted to kill him and she wanted to cry.
Matthew Hanley hated mornings at work: the inevitable new crisis, the never-ending procession of things to sign, people to talk to, fires to put out. Today was the same as the others, other than the fact that the scale was a little larger than usual.
In front of him now was Suzanne Brewer, not his favorite person in the building by a long shot, and not someone he wanted to see waiting in the anteroom of his office when he walked in first thing, a still-warm bagel in a bag in his hand. She had her ubiquitous crutches with her, but her leg had improved enough to where she was putting some weight on it.
Twenty-five minutes later Hanley sat at his desk. The bagel was in the trash can, uneaten, and Hanley was looking at his phone, waiting for it to begin blinking.
Brewer sat in front of him with her ubiquitous tablet computer with which she maintained real-time contact with the communications team in charge of moving Court Gentry’s call from her phone to Hanley’s office. They’d also be checking that the encryption was maintained throughout the call, as usual, but Gentry was a pro, and he never screwed up.
Hanley’s phone finally lit up and Brewer looked down at her pad. “Okay, that’s going to be him.”
Hanley nodded, watched it ring several times, then snatched it up. “Hey, Court. You okay?”
The pause was brief. “I didn’t know if you’d talk to me or not.”
“You got me,” he said. “Remember, I told you you’d always have a direct feed if you needed it.”
“How could I forget? It was just a month ago. Bet you didn’t think I’d need it so quickly.”
Hanley paused. “Well… I had half a guess you might have some concerns on this one.”
Court said, “Let’s get to it. First concern… Zoya Zakharova.”
Hanley nodded as he spoke into the phone. “Yep, we got her. Travers and some of the guys picked her up this morning; right now she’s in the infirmary at our embassy in Singapore. Doing fine, is what I hear, but I’d be holding out on you if I didn’t mention she’s pissed about you running out on her.”
“Yeah,” Court said softly.
Hanley added, “Honestly, dude. I know how she feels. You ran out on us on this one, too.”
“Matt… tell me we did not sanction the murder of Fan Jiang’s parents.”
There was a silence while Hanley looked for the words. When he found them he knew how they’d be received. “Depends on your definition of the word ‘we.’”
“Dammit! You are becoming one of them, aren’t you? One of the paper pushers who parse every word like a Supreme Court justice. Have you even been in the job a whole month yet?”
“When I came into this office, I found a lot of balls in the air, and they were all coming down. I didn’t throw them, but it’s my job to catch them. If it weren’t me sitting here it would be another guy. And, I remind you, most other guys around here still want you dead.”
Court said, “This mission that I came in on the tail end of. This mission I was sent into that I knew nothing about. What is it called?”
Brewer had an earpiece in where she could hear Violator’s side of the conversation. She looked at her boss, obviously wondering how he would answer.
She displayed the shock on her face when her boss answered with the truth.
“It was called Aces High. We had an agent in the PLA, mid-level security guy. His name was—”
Court said, “His name was Song Julong.”
Another pause. Then, “Right… He wasn’t very productive, just an army officer in a dead-end billet. Still… he thought the walls were closing in on him. We don’t know why; he could never give us anything solid that led us to believe he was in danger. Perhaps there was some security review that shook him, some comment made by a colleague he interpreted to suggest he was in some trouble… he never told us.”
Court interrupted. “I’ll tell you. MI6 hired Donald Fitzroy to send men into Shanghai after Song. Those men scared Song into enacting his escape plan. His escape plan was earning his way out of China by coming up with a big score for the CIA. It was the only way you would pull him out. He did that by killing Fan’s parents so Fan would run into the hands of the West.”
Hanley did not respond to this.
Court said, “That’s right, don’t say anything. I’d rather you didn’t lie and tell me you didn’t know.”
“I didn’t know. I… don’t know if that is the case. Maybe MI6 was trying to whack Song before he did anything stupid.”
“Well, that didn’t work.”
“Look, Court… this op was begun by my predecessor. Not me. Shit… you think I could have cooked all this up in the time I’ve been in here?”
Court softened. “No… I don’t think you thought it up. This smells like Denny Carmichael, working with MI6. Still… you’re the new guy. This is your watch.”
Hanley said, “Right. Pulling a PLA officer out of mainland China isn’t easy, as we’ve all seen in the past couple of weeks. Long ago Song made a deal with Carmichael. If he ever needed to run, he could get us something big, earn the resources we’d put into him over the years. Denny agreed that if that happened, we’d get him out.”
“And then?”
“And then a few weeks ago he contacts us, tells us he killed Fan’s parents, told Fan he had to run before he was executed, and told him how. We used the Taiwanese already in Hong Kong to go pick Fan up. Unfortunately, Colonel Dai got to the crossing, had men on both sides, and the whole thing went south. The Taiwanese missed Fan when he came over the border, and Fan didn’t know what to do. He joined up with Wo Shing Wo. Fan did that on his own; Song didn’t know that would happen.”
“Okay. Then what?”
“The British were aiding us in Hong Kong while we looked for Fan, and they caught a lucky break when known Chinese intelligence cutouts contacted Sir Donald Fitzroy. Fitzroy was already there, as you just mentioned. Frankly, I did not know why he was there. Not sure I ever thought to ask.”
Court said, “And Song? Did you get him out?”
Hanley paused. “We tried… Three days after Fan came over, Song went to the same crossing to make his run. We were ready and waiting for him, but he was strangled to death in the men’s room on the mainland side of the border. One of Dai’s men did it. We ID’d the assassin the other day. He was one of the two you killed in the Peninsula hotel in Hong Kong.”