What the mark was meant to signal was a desire for a meeting, the meeting place a playland called Fantasy Island Park, something left over from the boom of the nineties and now gasping, he supposed, since the bubble had burst. Such matters had no reality for Lao; economics was somebody else’s concern. What mattered to him here was that a meeting had been signaled, and he, as the new master of the plan called American Go, must find out what the meeting was for and who had asked for it.
He sent a message to the intelligence chief at the Chinese embassy in Jakarta, requiring that a surveillance team monitor the meeting site for the next three days; the times, according to the comm plan, were to be ten minutes after nine, two, and six. Parties meeting according to the plan would identify themselves by carrying a magazine under the left arm. The surveillance team was to watch the site without being seen, note all persons who appeared at any of the appointed times, photograph them if possible, and follow them if they were sure no countersurveillance was present (an unlikely possibility). No, he would have to give them more instructions than that, and they’d have to have a senior officer in charge — if Chen actually appeared, there were major decisions to be made very quickly.
Then he sat late, trying to see how it would go and what he could do if the meeting really happened as early as tomorrow. Jakarta was an hour behind Beijing, where an officer would have to be found to fly to Jakarta to oversee the surveillance. Early evening here in Dar es Salaam was the middle of the night in Beijing. They’d be lucky to find anybody at all, much less the veteran officer Lao wanted; then the officer would have to find air transport to Jakarta — he’d be on the run every moment and still be fortunate to get there for the first meeting time. Lao couldn’t send anyone from his own office; Dar was an impossible distance by air, and Tsung, in Pakistan, already had an operational meeting for tomorrow. Bad, bad — the last thing he wanted, a tired man arriving late with no time to prepare the surveillance team. Lao smoked and made notes and sent messages. At nine his own time, he got confirmation that an officer was on the way to Jakarta. Lao started to prepare further instructions for him, to be handed to him when he got off the plane. An hour later, he shook his head and threw down the ballpoint pen with which he had been trying to write. The papers were a mess of crossed-out sentences and scribblings over scribblings.
The gist of it all was that he needed somebody on the spot who could tell him if either Shreed or Chen made the meeting. Somebody who would know at once and somebody who was loyal — not one who would hurry the information to Beijing, and not one who would babble to the officer running the operation.
He dug into Chen’s personal file. He knew it fairly well by then, knew that there was something in there— And found it.
“Jiang!”
A captain hurried in.
Lao held out a piece of paper. “This is still active. I want him. Most urgent!”
“Sir!” Jiang vanished, in his fingers the piece of paper on which Lao had written, “Code name Running Boy, name Li, Bobby, agent for Chen 1983.”
Jiang was back in ten minutes. “Still in Jakarta, still active, but not used in three years. Control code-named Loyalty Man.”
“Get him.”
4
Alan lay in his dark hotel room and watched Jakarta through the window. It was cool in the room, almost cold. Outside, Jakarta was hot and busy, and Alan watched it for a while, the constant bustle of taxicabs, rickshaws, and vast limousines pulling up to the front of his great hotel, twenty stories below. NCIS seemed to have paid for a really good room in a really good hotel, and it was all wasted; Alan felt as if the huge windows were force fields walling him off from the reality of Jakarta. He wanted to go out and explore, but his instructions were explicit. So he repeated today’s operation until he had it to his satisfaction and then reviewed tomorrow’s until it bored him.
Buy a copy of The Economist. Go to the theme park and go to Anjungan Bali. Sit in the dance kiosk and watch the dancers. When they finish, walk across the Anjungan Sumatra to the Orchid House, carrying The Economist. When you are inside, walk along the path. If a man approaches you with a copy of The Economist and asks if he met you at the AGIP Christmas party, respond that you were there with a Dutch girl. It won’t happen, cowboy. It’s a fake. There won’t be anybody there. Just go and fill the bill, okay?
He got up and headed toward the door. He needed to walk.
Just stay in your room, Al. Just sit tight and don’t get robbed, don’t leave your briefcase, don’t have any adventures, okay?
Alan walked back and forth in front of the window for the thirtieth time, bored, angry, all keyed up and wanting to discuss the problems of the morning, talk about the tactics for tomorrow, anything. He had been a spy for about thirty hours; so far, it was really dull.
It beat the crap out of flying a Microsoft product in his living room and having rages at his wife, though.
He paced back again. He wanted to go down to the giant lobby; there had to be a kiosk there to buy a paper. Triffler wouldn’t mind if he just went and bought a copy of The Economist.
He got as far as the door, with his electronic key in his hand, before his conscience stopped him.
Just stay in your room, Al. Just sit tight and don’t get robbed, don’t leave your briefcase, don’t have any adventures, okay?
Triffler wasn’t Mike Dukas; he was a thorough, professional man who seemed unimpressed with Alan’s reputation and impatience. He hadn’t grinned when he spoke about any adventures, either. He meant what he said. Alan walked back to his enormous bed and threw himself on it, the expensive pillow-top mattress swallowing him whole.
Too damn soft.
Lying sideways on the bed, Alan stretched out an arm to rifle through his belongings in the carry-on on the floor. Underwear; a linen jacket that Rose had given him a year ago and thought would be perfect in Jakarta; probably would, at that. She’d ordered him to hang it up as soon as he got to a room, and he smiled at the pang of guilt and unfolded it from the bottom of the case.
Something heavy slipped out from its folds and fell on the bed. Alan leaped back for a moment, and laughed aloud. A book. The cover said Blue at the Mizzen. Inside, a feminine hand had written:
All I want you to take to bed while you’re away. Love, R.
His grin threatened to crack his face, and he kissed her writing. Deep inside him, more ice cracked.
And he started reading.
Qiu was very young, as his code name — “young dragon with new horns” — announced. The name irritated him, as it indicated a lack of respect from his superiors. He had, after all, graduated from all the schools; he knew exactly how to perform his tasks. Why such a disrespectful code name?
He knew what he was about to do, to perfection: He would meet with the Jakarta embassy black team in a warehouse near the Jakarta waterfront only two hours before the meeting was to take place, and he would outline to them his surveillance plan as based on a map of the Fantasy Island Park that he had downloaded from the Internet. If, as he anticipated, the local chief watcher was rude, Qiu would step on him hard to make sure that the fellow knew his place. In fact, he planned to step on everybody hard.
This was his first independent assignment.
The local station had reported a certain signal placed on a certain old cannon. They had no idea what the signal meant. Qiu, however, knew, because he had been told in Beijing: It was an old signal from an old comm plan between his service and an American double agent. Qiu was to follow the comm plan and meet whoever had left the mark. No reason had been given for doing so: there was no context, no background, no time for analysis or research. His head swam with questions, but no answers came. He knew enough to do only one thing: follow orders. And, by implication, a second thing: be ruthless, meaning that he wanted an armed team, as if for a hostile meeting, and he wanted absolute discipline.