Her husband?
9
Punky closed the door and sat in one of the two chairs across from Dr. Tan Lily. The CIA officer sat with his legs crossed in the other, and he watched her with veiled amusement. His eyes sparkled as she took her seat, then turned to face the doctor, who leaned forward and rested her forearms on the desk between them.
“I know why he’s here,” she said with a nod at Jax. “Now, why are you here?”
Jax turned and studied Punky, and she couldn’t help but notice how handsome he was. His Asian features made him seem somewhat exotic, but she focused on the doctor instead. She was more certain than ever that the doctor was whom SUBLIME had referred to in the intercepted messages. But she wasn’t sure how Jax Woods or the CIA factored in.
“I’m curious about that too,” Jax said.
Punky ignored him and struggled with how to explain her presence, knowing full well she still didn’t understand how the doctor was connected to SUBLIME. There was a small chance that Tan Lily was somehow complicit in a Chinese conspiracy and that anything she said might unintentionally give the enemy an advantage. And she wasn’t okay with that.
She turned to Jax. “You said you believe her husband is somehow connected to the disappearance of one of your operations officers?”
He nodded but remained silent.
She understood his reluctance to read her in on more details, but it still aggravated her. “My name is Special Agent Emmy King, but everybody calls me Punky. I work counterintelligence for NCIS and have been investigating a network of individuals from China’s Ministry of State Security operating on the West Coast.”
She gave them just enough information so they would know that Tan Lily was somehow connected to her investigation, but not enough to give away her means or methods. Still, Jax remained silent.
“Before I can comment on an active investigation, I need to know how you think her husband is connected.”
Jax looked away and made eye contact with the doctor, but Punky saw hesitation cross his face. She understood why he was unwilling to share more details, but without them, she was afraid they were at an impasse. At last, he nodded. “You understand that I can’t tell you everything, but I want us to trust one another.”
She wondered if it was even possible to trust someone who worked for an organization built on a foundation of lies. Trickery and deception were the bread and butter of the nation’s civilian foreign intelligence service. But she had to try.
“Okay.”
Jax leaned back in his chair. “Yesterday, at approximately zero nine hundred hours Zulu time, we received a coded message from our operative stating that they were bringing back intelligence of the highest priority.”
“Back from where?” Punky asked.
“Shanghai, China.”
Punky saw Tan Lily frown, but neither woman interrupted.
“Our operative was working an asset who was a respected biochemist at the Hunan Institute of Science and Technology.”
“My husband,” Tan Lily said, her tone confirming that she either already knew or had suspected as much.
Jax nodded. “But our officer did not make the return flight, and all attempts to make contact have been unsuccessful.”
“You’re saying you think your officer was abducted,” Punky said.
He nodded.
“Do you believe her husband is a suspect?” She was unable to keep the law enforcement side of her brain from approaching the case of the missing operations officer like any other investigation. If Tan Lily’s husband was the last person known to have associated with the CIA officer, then he was the most likely suspect.
Jax glanced at Tan Lily, then dropped his eyes and shook his head.
Punky was afraid she knew what that meant, so she tried redirecting the conversation back to something she could hopefully tie back to her investigation into SUBLIME. “What kind of information was her husband providing?”
Jax kept his eyes averted. “I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to say.”
“I am,” Tan Lily said. “Like me, my husband is an expert in genetic engineering. We were asked to develop synthetic bioweapons for the People’s Liberation Army. I declined and fled with our daughter here to the United States. He stayed behind.”
“Why?” Punky asked.
“He knew he couldn’t stop them from the outside.”
Punky turned to Jax. “What was your officer’s objective in going to Shanghai?”
“I don’t know,” he said, then held up his hands to forestall her objections. “I really don’t. All I know is that her husband reached out through emergency channels and requested the meeting. We believed it warranted the face-to-face meeting, given the veracity of the intelligence he had previously provided.”
“What happened to my husband, Mr. Woods?” Tan Lily asked, her voice surprisingly calm given the circumstances.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know. We have been unable to reach your husband through our normal protocols.”
Punky studied Tan Lily’s reaction, but it seemed the doctor had already come to terms with the idea she might never see her husband again. For all Punky knew, she had come to terms with that before even fleeing Communist China.
“Recovering the information our officer collected from her husband is the National Command Authority’s top priority,” Jax said, making it clear that the president of the United States himself wanted whatever it was the officer had intended to bring back.
“But not your officer?”
Jax stared directly at her, not shying away from her accusation that the president cared more for the intelligence than the person who had sacrificed everything to collect it. “We are making every effort to locate our missing officer and bring them home safely. But the classification that was used to describe the information is only used for an imminent threat of weapons of mass destruction.”
“What was the message?”
Jax stared over Punky’s head as he recalled the message from memory. “It said, ‘Wish you were here. Jenn and I have been touring the city. The cherry blossoms are so beautiful, and I can’t wait to show you my pictures when I return. Miss you.’ End quote.”
Punky shook her head. “Yeah, sounds real ominous.”
“The code word ‘cherry blossoms’ indicates information pertaining to an imminent threat.”
“Aren’t there cherry blossoms in Shanghai?”
“Not in October.”
She bit the inside of her lip. “Who’s Jenn?”
“I’m afraid I can’t say.”
Punky’s analytical brain was shuffling the tiny morsels of information around, trying to connect them with other clues and piece together a rational explanation for the operative’s disappearance. But beyond that, she was still stumped as to why the university had come up in SUBLIME’s communication. She knew they were somehow connected, but she still couldn’t see the whole picture.
“Your turn,” Jax said.
Punky had been thinking how best to explain what had led her to the University of California San Diego, and she concluded that there would be no way of sugarcoating it. If SUBLIME had pointed her to Dr. Tan Lily, it could only mean one of two things — either she was a willing participant in a larger conspiracy, or she was a target.
Based on what Jax had told her, she feared it was the latter.
“As I said, I’ve been investigating a network of individuals from China’s Ministry of State Security. Last year, I came upon an operative who had recruited a sailor aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln and convinced him to turn over classified material pertaining to the F-35C Joint Strike Fighter.”