Wu so loved the Shanghai Hi-Tech Expo.
Todd was still naked, though through the use of persistent hand gestures he’d persuaded one of the cops to bring him a towel that he could actually wear without pinching it together with one of his hands.
Wu entered the room and Todd looked to him hopefully, but Wu just shook his head sorrowfully and then said something to one of the younger officers.
Handcuffs appeared, and Todd was lifted off the bed.
“I have spoken to my superiors, and they would like me to bring you in.”
“Oh, Christ. Look, I can’t—”
“The local jail is awful, Todd. I am personally and professionally humiliated to take an educated foreigner there. It is not up to the standards of your country, I can assure you.”
“I’m begging you, Mr. Wu. Don’t take me to jail. My family can’t know about this. I’ll lose everything. I fucked up. I know I fucked up, but I am begging you to let me go.”
Wu seemed to hesitate for a moment. After a tired shrug that conveyed noncommitment, he spoke softly to the five others in the room, and they quickly filed out, leaving Wu and Todd alone.
“Todd, I see by your travel papers that you are to leave China in three days’ time.”
“That’s right.”
“I may be able to prevent you spending time in jail, but it will require some help on your part.”
“I swear to you! Anything at all and I will do it.”
Wu still seemed to be vacillating, as if he could not decide. Finally he stepped closer, then said softly, “Go back to your room. Tomorrow, return to your normal routine here at the trade fair. Speak to no one about this.”
“Of course! Of course. Oh my God, I can’t thank you enough!”
“You will be contacted, but perhaps not until you return to your country.”
Todd stopped his proclamations of thanks. “Oh. Okay. That’s… whatever you say.”
“Let me give you a warning as a friend, Todd. The people that will ask a favor of you will expect you to repay them. They will retain all the evidence against you about what happened here.”
“I understand,” he said, and it was true, he did understand. No, Todd Wicks was not particularly worldly, but at this point he had the distinct impression that he’d been set up.
Damn it! So fucking stupid.
But set up or not, they had him. He would do anything to keep that video from getting to his family.
He would do whatever Chinese intelligence asked him to do.
ELEVEN
Jack Ryan, Jr., got the senior staff meeting scheduled for eleven a.m., and now he was back at his desk, looking over some more analysis that he would present today. His coworkers were focusing on material they had intercepted from CIA discussing the death of the five Libyans in Turkey two months ago. It was no surprise that CIA was more than a little curious about who the killers were, and Jack found it at once creepy and exciting to read the Langley spooks’ theories about the well-orchestrated hit.
The smart ones knew good and well the new Libyan government’s spies had not orchestrated this as a revenge operation against the Turkish cell, but beyond that there was little consensus.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence had worked the equation for a few days, and even Jack’s girlfriend, Melanie Kraft, had been tasked with going over the evidence about the assassinations. Five different killings in the same night, all in different manners and all against a cell with a decent level of communication between its members. Melanie was impressed, and in the report she had written for her boss, Mary Pat Foley, director of national intelligence, she had raved about the skill of the perpetrators.
Jack would love to tell her some night over a bottle of wine that he was one of the hit men.
No. Never. Jack pushed that out of his mind immediately.
Melanie had concluded that whoever the actors were in the assassinations, there was nothing to indicate they were any threat to the United States. The targets were enemies of the United States, after a fashion, and the perpetrators were talented killers who took some serious chances but managed to pull it off with skill and guile, so the ODNI did not linger over the event for long.
Even though the U.S. government’s understanding of the events of the night in question was limited, its knowledge of the Libyan cell itself was interesting to Jack. NSA had managed to pull text messages off the five men’s mobile devices. Jack read the translated transcripts from NSA — short, cryptic dialogue that made it clear that these men did not know any more about the identity or overall mission of this Center character than did Ryan himself.
Odd, Jack thought. Who works for someone so shadowy they do not have a clue who they are working for?
Either the Libyans were utter fools or their new employer was incredibly competent at his own security.
Jack did not think the Libyans were fools. Lazy in their PERSEC, perhaps, but that was a result of the fact that they felt the only group after them was the new Libyan intelligence agency, and the JSO men did not think much of their successors’ capabilities.
Jack almost smiled at this as he scanned files on his monitor, looking for anything else from CIA with which to update the senior staff in his meeting.
Just then Jack felt a presence behind him. He looked over his shoulder to see his cousin, Dom Caruso, sitting down on the edge of Jack’s wraparound desk. Standing behind Dom were Sam Driscoll and Domingo Chavez.
“Hey guys,” he said. “I’ll be ready to head up in about five minutes.”
They all had serious looks on their faces.
“What’s wrong?” Jack asked.
Chavez answered, “Clark quit.”
“Quit what?”
“He turned his resignation in to Gerry and Sam. He’ll spend a day or two getting his stuff cleaned up, but he’ll be out of here by midweek.”
“Oh, shit.” Ryan felt an immediate sense of foreboding. They needed Clark. “Why?”
Dom said, “His hand is still messed up. And he’s worried all his shine time on TV last year might compromise The Campus. He’s made his mind up. He’s done.”
“Can he really stay away?”
Chavez nodded. “John doesn’t do things in half-measures. He’s going to work on being a granddad and a husband.”
“And a country gentleman.” Dom said it with a smile.
Ding chuckled. “Something like that, I guess. Jeez, who’d’a thunk it?”
The meeting started a few minutes late. John was not in attendance. He had an appointment with his orthopedic surgeon in Baltimore, and he was not one for dramatic good-byes, so he slipped out quietly as everyone was heading up to the ninth-floor conference room.
The early conversation was about John and John’s decision to leave, but Hendley very quickly brought everyone’s attention back to the problem at hand.
“Okay. We’ve spent a lot of time scratching our heads and looking over our shoulders. Jack warns me he doesn’t have much in the way of answers for us today, but we’re going to get an update from him and Gavin about the forensic investigation of the drive.”
Both Ryan and Gavin spoke to the others for fifteen minutes about everything they had learned from the hard drive as well as from CIA sources. They discussed the hacking of Emad Kartal’s computer by Center, the work Center gave the Libyans in Istanbul, and the fact that Center seemed to be setting the Libyans up to penetrate a network in the future, though he apparently changed his mind.