In two other suites on the same floor, Dominic Caruso and Sam Driscoll were doing their own hidden countersurveillance of their rooms. All three Americans came to the same easy conclusion: they would all have to be careful to do nothing, to say nothing, and to act in no way different from the average hotel guest, lest they compromise their operation.
All three men had been in the field in hostile environments many times before. The Chinese were hard-core in their spying tactics, but all three men knew they could play their roles and do nothing to alert the bored men and women monitoring them that they were up to something here in Beijing.
Ding had just settled in to bed to catch a few hours’ sleep when his satellite phone rang. It was encrypted, so he wasn’t worried about anyone listening in electronically, although there were no doubt microphones in the room.
He turned on the TV, walked out to the balcony, and then closed the glass door behind him.
“Bueno?”
“Uh… Ding?”
“Adam?” Chavez said, his voice barely more than a whisper.
“Yeah.”
“I’m glad you called. People are wondering what happened to you.”
“Yeah. Just went off-grid for a while.”
“I get it.”
Yao said, “I’ve found where Center is operating from.”
“By yourself?”
“Yep.”
“Where?”
“It’s in Guangzhou, about two hours north of Hong Kong. I don’t have an address, but I’ve narrowed it down. It’s near the TRB, the Technical Recon Bureau. He’s in mainland China, Ding. He was working for the Chicoms the entire time.”
Chavez looked around nervously. It occurred to him that Beijing was a really bad place to take this phone call.
“Yes. We put that together ourselves. You have to find a way to let your employer know.”
“Look, Ding. I’m done sending cables back to Langley. They’ve got a leak, and that leak is getting back to the PRC. I tell Langley and it’s a good bet Center just moves again.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to work without a net.”
Chavez said, “I like your style, Adam, but that’s not going to be good for your career.”
“Getting killed isn’t good for my career, either.”
“Can’t argue with that.”
“I could use some help.”
Chavez thought it over. There was no way he could spare either Driscoll or Caruso right now, and no way they could just take off without having the Chinese minders become very suspicious.
“I’m in the middle of something I can’t leave right now, but I can get Ryan on the way to help you.” Chavez knew sending Jack into mainland China was questionable, at best. But he knew Tong was at the center of the entire conflict with China, and Guangzhou was close to the Hong Kong border, anyway, unlike Beijing.
At least, Ding told himself, he wasn’t sending Jack to Beijing.
“Ryan?” Yao said, no attempt to hide his disappointment.
“What’s wrong with Jack?”
“I’ve got too much to do to have to watch out for the Junior Pres.”
“Jack’s an asset, Yao. Take my word for it.”
“I don’t know.”
“Take it or leave it.”
Yao sighed. “I’ll take him. At least he knows people who can make things happen. Have him go to HK, and I can meet him at the airport and get him over the border.”
“Okay. Call me back in ninety minutes and I’ll put the two of you together.”
SIXTY-THREE
Jack Ryan, Jr., drove across the Francis Scott Key Bridge, his eyes fixed on a taxi in the traffic one hundred yards ahead.
It was just after seven in the morning, and Jack had tailed the cab since it left Melanie’s Alexandria carriage-house apartment twenty minutes earlier.
Today was the third day in a row he had shown up at her place before dawn, parking his car several blocks over from Princess Street and then finding a secluded spot in a tiny garden across the street. Each day he watched her windows with his binoculars as soon as there was enough light in the sky to do so, and he stayed there until she left for work, walking up the street to catch the Metro.
Then, for the past two days anyhow, he’d checked her mailbox and her trash, but he’d not found anything of value. He’d left within minutes of her departure for work, and he’d spent the rest of the day trying to figure out how he was going to confront her about Center.
Today his plan had been to break into her flat once she left; he knew he could pick her door lock with ease, but his plan had been derailed when a cab pulled up to her door at six-forty and she’d rushed out, already dressed for work.
Jack hurried back to his car, and then caught up to the taxi on the Jefferson Davis Memorial Highway. He’d recognized early on that she wasn’t going to her job in McLean, but instead was heading into D.C.
Now, as he followed her off the bridge and into Georgetown, he thought about the murder of all the CIA officers two weeks earlier, and it sickened him to think she might have somehow been involved.
“Unwittingly, Jack,” he said, telling himself aloud she would not be working either against him or for the Chinese without being seriously duped.
He wanted to believe it, anyway.
His phone chirped in the console. He touched the hands-free button on the steering wheel.
“Ryan.”
“Jack, it’s Ding.”
“Hey. Are you in Beijing?”
“Yes. Sorry, no time to talk. I just called the Gulfstream. You need to be at BWI in an hour.”
Shit. He was almost an hour away from Baltimore as it was. He’d have to break off his tail of Melanie’s car and haul ass. But then something else occurred to him. “I’m on suspension, remember?”
“Granger rescinded it.”
“Okay. Roger that. I’m in D.C., en route to BWI. Where am I heading?”
“Hong Kong.”
Jack knew it was unlikely Ding’s satellite call was being monitored, and Gavin and his team had spent hours searching his car for trackers or listening devices, but he also knew there was no point in saying anything more that could give away operational intel, so he asked no more questions.
“Okay,” he said, and he hung up. He was thick in the streets of Georgetown now, and the best way north to Baltimore was up ahead, so he continued following Melanie’s cab until he could turn off.
He could not see the taxi at the moment because a dry-cleaning van had pulled out of a drive on P Street directly behind it.
As Jack drove he thought about just calling Melanie and talking to her. If he was going to Hong Kong he would not get any answers about what was going on for days, at least, and that worried him greatly. But he also worried that if he did talk to her, she might pick up on the fact he was leaving town, and this could be dangerous to his mission.
Because Center would know.
As they crossed over the Rock Creek Parkway, Jack resigned himself to the fact that he would get no answers, but then he saw the taxi turn onto the on-ramp for the parkway. Jack realized she would be heading north, too, which was odd, because he could not imagine why she had the cab run her into Georgetown just to leave D.C.
He accelerated as he crossed the overpass to make the turn on the ramp, but ahead of him he saw the dry-cleaning van pull up alongside Melanie’s cab, as if it was trying to pass her on the steeply graded one-lane looping on-ramp.
“Idiot,” he said as he watched from some seventy-five yards back.
Just then, as the van pulled directly next to the taxi, its side door opened. It was such an odd sight that Ryan did not know what was happening at first, and he was slow to recognize danger.