“No. Just investigate and report contacts.”
“How long is the target registered at the hotel?”
Wang hesitated, knowing his answer was going to send Colonel Dai into orbit. “Eight days, sir.”
As Wang fully expected, Dai screamed at him. “You aren’t sitting in a fucking hotel for eight days!”
“Sir, if you would like to speak with MSS I am sure they can send in another team from Beijing and—”
“They already have more assets here in Hong Kong than they are comfortable with! They won’t send anyone else!”
Wang had no answer to this so he just sat there, his phone to his ear.
“You will confront the target. Immediately.”
“I’m sorry, sir, I don’t understand.”
“I am ordering you to end this wasted journey and take him. I’m not telling you to terminate the subject. You have drugs to obtain information, do you not?”
“You issued them to each of us the day we arrived.”
“Use them. Find out who he is, what he wants. Those drugs will render his memory foggy, so he won’t have any idea you questioned him. Then throw him in his bathtub, turn the shower on, and break his leg with the heel of your shoe. When he wakes he’ll be too fucked-up to know what happened and too injured to continue his mission here.”
Wang spoke the truth now, but his heart wasn’t in it. He knew he would lose. “Colonel, you have no authority to order me to circumvent my orders from my divisional director.”
“My op here is a national priority mission! I will pull rank on you and change your orders. Call your masters at MSS in exactly fifteen minutes and you will see that your mandate and rules of engagement have been updated. But after that, return to Beijing, don’t come back to me. I’ll have no use for you or your partner after you challenge my authority. I have thirty-four other men here who would not dare this insubordination that you seem so comfortable with.”
Wang knew this was bullshit. Dai was just being petulant.
But Wang also knew Dai had the capacity to make his life hell if he disobeyed him.
Wang said, “No need to contact Beijing, sir. We will comply immediately.” Wang didn’t need enemies at MOD, especially not someone who could make or break everyone in his family. And on top of this, Wang wouldn’t mind roughing up the CIA officer. He’d never done that before.
“Very well,” Dai said.
“I will do as you say and report back to you with what we found out.”
Dai snapped back. “No. You can tell MSS all about your American; I don’t care about him. I only care about my target here in HK. I want you back on my job first thing in the morning.”
“Shi de, xian sheng.” Yes, sir.
Wang hung up and called Tao.
Tao answered with, “Target has asked for the check.”
“Our plans have changed.” Wang explained Dai’s orders.
When Wang finished, Tao asked, “Rules of engagement?”
“We force compliance. We meet resistance with escalating resistance.”
“Up to?”
A pause. “Up to everything.”
“Told you.”
“You told me this would be an assassination. It’s not that. We take him as he returns to his room. Overpower him, tie him up, drug him, get the intel, and bust him up. Dai wants us back with him in the morning.”
“I hope this guy is a fighter.” Tao chuckled. “I’ll get my check and head down.”
Court didn’t really want the third beer; he’d barely sipped it, spending most of his time fiddling with his wedding band and pretending to surf the Internet on his phone. He only wore the band for the op; he wasn’t married, but the Agency had put it in his backpack on the plane, and he’d recognized it for what it was, so he slipped it on, along with a set of designer eyeglasses that did nothing for his vision but used a special refracted glass to break up the outline of his face to hamper facial recognition software.
Court took his time lounging here at the bar, for the simple reason that he wanted the lookout seated behind him to report to whoever was in his room right now that the coast was clear.
He’d ID’d the watcher minutes after sitting down, pegged him as likely to be one of the men who’d followed him from the airport, because this still felt like a small op. If he was right about that, then there would just be a few other men involved, and they would be conducting a site exploration in Court’s room three floors below right now. If this was, indeed, the case, Court wanted to give them plenty of time to do their work.
It wasn’t that Court was afraid to confront a couple of guys in his room. The fact was he didn’t need the aggravation. He wanted to give the Chinese the time they needed to go through his belongings so he could convince them he was no one worth following, or at least that they didn’t need to call in any backup.
He’d decided to simply check out of his hotel tomorrow morning and lose his tail then, but for now he just wanted to look as sedentary, nonthreatening, and downright boring as possible to the men watching him.
Finally he paid his bill, then went to the bathroom here at the Felix to take a leak, giving the men downstairs even more time to clear out of his room. He stood at a space-age-looking urinal in front of floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out and down twenty-eight floors, which Court found bizarre and a little silly, but it was a decent distraction for a man taking his time while taking a piss, and as far as bathrooms went, this one was indeed memorable.
He headed for the elevator. The watcher was gone from his seat by the windows, which Court hoped meant his surveillance team had pulled the plug for the night.
Court fiddled with his key card outside his door for a moment, then slid it into the lock, all the while hoping like hell the sweep had been completed and the man performing it had done a decent job hiding evidence of his search. If it was obvious his belongings had been disturbed he’d need to report it to hotel management, just to continue along with his ruse that he was like any other Western businessman here. It would be in keeping with his cover that he’d freak out if someone went through his stuff while he was at dinner, so if the goons who searched his room couldn’t be bothered to refold his clothes and zip his luggage back up, then Court would have to make a scene.
As soon as Court entered his room, his shoulders sank. Down the little entry hall, past the bathroom ahead on his left, he could just see the front edge of his king-sized bed. His laptop was lying open there; cords, chargers, and socks were strewn about, hanging down to the floor.
Shit, his room had been tossed. He’d have to call the front desk and throw a fit, to pretend he thought housekeeping had rummaged through his belongings.
As he moved forward into the room, he knew the bathroom on his left was a blind spot, and there was a chance a member of the site exploration team was still in there, either working or hiding. The chance was small considering the lookout in the bar had been given ten minutes to warn anyone in his room, but if these guys sucked so bad at their job they didn’t even try to clean up after themselves, it was also possible their comms were down.
But even though he thought it possible he might be about to disturb someone in the act, he knew he had to remain in cover. He couldn’t just fly into the room and waylay anyone standing there. That wasn’t the normal behavior of a businessman who had just downed a steak dinner at a swanky bar.
If it turned out there was someone in there squeezing out Court’s toothpaste into a rubber glove, Court would just feign shock and confusion, then adopt a posture of nervous anger.
He passed the bathroom and looked in matter-of-factly, and suddenly his already thumping heart began to pound harder. An Asian man in a black tracksuit and dark wraparound sunglasses sat on the toilet seat, and he held a pistol with a suppressor on the end, leveled at Court’s chest.