Sea of Lies: An Espionage Thriller (33 page)

“And there’s nothing you or I can do about it, at least not until Friday. Burns and Llewellyn spoke earlier today, and Llewellyn is livid. If you have anything on Matthews, bring it to Tokyo. If Matthews is dirty, Llewellyn will go all the way to Director of National Intelligence Morris to get him removed. Burns feels the same way about you. In the meantime, get those servicemen out of Rangoon before we end up with an international incident or give the CIA even more ammunition against you. That’s an order.”

The call dropped, saving Hecker’s job in light of what he was about to say next. The driver pulled into the A-OK Clinic’s driveway abutting Inya Lake, midway between the Dubern Park annex and the US embassy proper. Hecker hopped out and stalked up the steps into reception. Chit was there with one of the local DEA clerical staff. Two perplexed nurses manned a counter, but the area was otherwise empty.

Nodding to his secretary, he turned to the DEA clerk and with a measured intensity that made the underling recoil, commanded, “Tell me again what you just said over the phone.”

“Dr. Yap is part owner of A-OK and works here afternoons. Yesterday Dr. Yap see old American around two. I have medicines list: two antibiotics, anti-nausea drug, and pint of blood. The old man pay one thousand US dollars cash. Dr. Yap not in clinic today. Yesterday he leave normal time at five. He say today he is at Aung Yadana Hospital. I call hospital one hour ago. They say he cancel all surgeries Monday. On leave. I ask here but nobody know where.”

Hecker pulled out a grainy enlargement of Teller’s Golden Elephant security headshot. He showed it to the women at reception. “Is this the person who came in yesterday afternoon?” One of the nurses slowly shook her head yes while the other continued to stare at the photo, silent and unmoving.

“This is unbelievable! Yap sees Teller for radiation exposure and eight hours later he’s working on Ryder. And Yap never mentions that he’s treated a patient with similar symptoms earlier in the same day? And now he’s gone?” Hecker ran his right hand through his thick brown mop while making chopping motions with the photo folder still clenched in his left. He looked like Tom Cruise’s angry big brother. “Where does Yap live?”

Chit silently handed over a piece of paper. Hecker looked at it and exploded, “Victoria Apartments? The same condo complex as half the embassy!

“You stay here to make certain the nurses don’t contact Yap. Chit, come with me. We’ll visit Victoria Apartments and try to find out where Yap’s gone on such short notice. See if you can get Zaw on the phone while we’re on the way.”

*  *  *  *  *

“So glad to meet you at long last.” Damien Barling was pumping Nolan’s hand like he expected three cherries followed by a cascade of quarters. After hiding the extra cash, Nolan had taken a cab from the tourist belt back to the embassy. Nolan was giving basement levels three and four a wide berth in case Constantine, Flynn, Melissa or anyone else came looking for him. A personal introduction to the Singapore DEA’s top man Barling was long overdue. Nolan had wandered through a maze of desks and partitions on basement two until he found his office in the corner.

“Really, the pleasure’s all mine after what you did a couple of days ago. Whatever happened to those two Russians?”

“ISD still has them in custody. The Russian goons were due to be expelled this morning for conduct incompatible with their diplomatic statuses, but I received an email from my contact that Constantine sent over a CIA interrogator to take a last crack.”

“Any idea when that request went out?”

“Hmm, looks like 8:35 a.m. Why?”

“Just curious,” Nolan said. “Speaking of curiosity, any reason given as to why the SVR wanted to snatch me?”

“From what the ISD’s Inspector Lum said, it was a rush job. Early Monday morning the head of the
rezidentura
, a lush by the name of Novikov, issued an emergency summons and gave them your photo, a York Hotel address, and said you were a CIA code breaker and enemy of Russia. Novikov told them to snatch you out of the hotel room, but if you weren’t there to make it look like a microchip burglary. Then they staked out the embassy until you left around lunchtime. They were to bring you in, cable Moscow and hold for further instructions. Other than that, they either don’t know squat or they’re not talking. The Singaporeans have had the SVR men awake since Monday afternoon, and they keep passing out on their feet so they’re not making a lot of sense at this point.”

“That’s the damnedest thing. My Agency work doesn’t have anything to do with Russia, and barely brushes up against the SVR.” 

“You’re not the only one who’s puzzled. Lum would like you to drop by ISD for a chat. Nothing official, just a courtesy call since they rescued you.”

“Not a problem. Hey, I need to put in a call to Burma. Travis Ryder should be at the airport now. Before he flies I want to speak with him about what he saw on the docks.”

“Yeah, Travis’s quite a character. Tell him I said get well soon. I’m surprised he even borrowed an exposure suit. He’s about as eager as they come. I’ll sneak some beers into the Sembawang infirmary when I see him tonight.”

“Sounds like a plan. Great meeting you. If you could forward Lum’s contact details, I’ll make an appointment to see him on Friday or early next week.”

“Will do.” Nolan headed to his cubicle wondering if Constantine had had embassy security tailing him at the time, and if so why they’d done nothing to stop the kidnap attempt.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CRATERED

WEDNESDAY MARCH 12, BEIJING, SINGAPORE

This was only Yi Xiubao’s second Politburo Standing Committee meeting since President Gao had elevated him to one of the nine seats. It was a tough crowd. Gao Xiang only controlled six of the nine positions, which meant every meeting was played for keeps. What made Yi even more nervous was that Monday’s sacking of MSS Head Liu Zhenchang had more than just the recalcitrant Politburo members up in arms. Two of the president’s loyalists expressed concern. After the Iran ambassador’s bombshell on Tuesday—Yi winced at his own mental poor choice of words—the president ordered the PSC to clear their calendars for this eleven o’clock gathering. Several flew back to Beijing and most appeared in ill humor, having had far less time to scheme than normal.

The first hour was boisterous. MSS Head Liu had exited fighting, speaking to at least two PSC delegates and hinting darkly that Yi (and by implication Gao) was on the verge of making catastrophic misjudgments. Liu’s life of secrecy left him unwilling to articulate his precise concerns, but the loyal opposition was probing on several fronts. China’s actual military capabilities were under the microscope, with the resolve of the United States to respond if attacked receiving the bulk of the remaining discussion.

As many PSC members didn’t know Operation Polar Bear’s specifics, the president talked them through the various permutations. Yi noticed that Comrade Gao omitted mention of the
Dolphin
C2 double-cross and misinformation campaign. The president only brought Operation Menander into the picture when General Yao Chanming, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, alluded to the NGA’s pending loss of satellite imaging processing capabilities. Details of Operation Menander’s planned outcomes converted the skeptics. With a solid majority behind the president, Liu Zhenchang’s forced retirement became a matter of record.

However, there was a second, yet equally delicate topic before them. Yi took the lead in explaining the outline of China’s latest joint venture with an outlaw state, this time Iran. There were gasps when he described how six of the PLA’s officers from Unit #61398 had been detained in Beirut last week.

“That’s outrageous! Send troops to their embassy and take the ambassador and five senior diplomats to prison until our team is safely back in China. Then bomb those smelly devils back to where they’re tending camels and living in tents again.” General Yao was no fan of President Gao, but he absolutely loathed the Arabs (as he referred to all Muslims, irrespective of Iran’s Persian population), despite being allied against an even greater evil of world Jewry as exemplified by Israel.

Yi explained that, as of yesterday’s meeting with Ambassador Ghorbani, the Iranians would repatriate their colleagues immediately. He returned to his narrative, “But I’m afraid our story gets worse, Comrades. It seems that Iran now has well beyond the fifteen kilograms of twenty-five percent pure U-235 it needs for its first bomb. Their bottleneck seems to be a nuclear trigger small enough to fit into a missile warhead casing. Officially, the Iranians say they’re self-designed. As of yesterday, Ghorbani confirmed that their triggers are based on North Korea’s designs that, of course, were sourced from China.”

Ren Biao, the most astute business mind on the PSC, spoke next. “The defective trigger diagrams we foisted on them two years ago for fifteen million dollars?”

“Precisely. Apparently, the North Koreans sold their designs and the Iranians have figured out that they don’t work well, if at all. Since the design was sourced from China, the Iranians are looking to us for the fix.”

“And if we repair the Iranians’ defective triggers, not only will Iran have a usable bomb for the first time, but also—”

“They are likely to share the perfected design with North Korea,” Yi finished Ren Biao’s sentence.

“So that crazy thug Kim Jong-un then would have nuclear missiles that
worked
?” asked General Yao.

Yi was eager to demonstrate he was now in the intelligence inner sanctum. “Presumably so. Maybe twelve warheads would be operational if they upgraded their triggers to correct the error we inserted in the measurement to determine the cross-section of tritium—”

“Yes, yes, we get the point,” Yao interjected to keep Yi from spilling more classified information. “Which means the US will preemptively strike North Korea’s launch sites and research facilities, including the use of tactical nuclear weapons. They’ve promised us this for years if China failed to rein in Jong-il. Now we are left to deal with his imbecilic, violent son.”

Gao spoke, “I met General Webb, Army Chief of Staff, in Washington in November last year. He was a rude man and waved his finger at me as if I were a misbehaving child.
Stop those puppets of yours or we will do it for you
, was what he said. At the time, our MSS colleagues assured them that three-quarters of North Korea’s nukes would never work. We guaranteed that the North would not resort to nuclear weapons unless attacked. Webb said the US would hold us to those promises. I was both shamed and angered that the United States could speak to China’s leader in such a manner. I remained silent, and the meeting ended shortly thereafter.”

Now it was Yao’s turn to be annoyed. “How dare the US dictate to us what happens in our own sphere of influence? No longer will China be humiliated by the US. As soon as
Polar Bear
plays out we’ll see who is the one great military power in Asia.”

Yi trod delicately. “Comrades, there is another complication I became aware of only yesterday when I went to see Iran’s ambassador. It seems we were unaware that the missing Malaysia Airlines flight carried two important persons. Most significant among them was Rear Admiral Zhao, Head of Unit #61398. The rear admiral was our senior liaison to
Menander
. Zhao was in Beirut and Tehran last week. While in Tehran, he persuaded a Dr. Farrokhzad, Iran’s leading nuclear weapons research scientist, to accompany him back to Beijing. The Iranian brought with him two defective nuclear triggers and one of the centrifuges sabotaged by the Zionist-US Stuxnet worm. Apparently, Zhao said China would help Iran repair these devices provided Iran supplied irrefutable proof that it was already a nuclear power. We suspect this was a ruse by the rear admiral to give China a hostage in Dr. Farrokhzad to gain the leverage needed to ensure that our own six staff were promptly repatriated. Unfortunately, we may never find out with the plane vanished and all on board presumed dead.

“The Iran ambassador told me his country was no longer interested in learning how to repair those damaged centrifuges or even retrieve the missing U-235. He was most displeased at what he claimed was the quasi-abduction of the head of their nuclear weapons program. While he didn’t blame China for the plane’s disappearance, he does expect us to repair their faulty nuclear triggers.”

“Even so, we can’t help Iran with the triggers. China is a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaties for starters.” Professor Lai Huating was the moderate on a decidedly hawkish PSC. The professor had clashed with the president before on military policy matters. “No one in this room, even Comrade Gao”—he nodded toward the head of the table—“has the authority to create another nuclear state. That these nations would be Iran and North Korea makes even contemplating such action reckless.”

“Comrade Professor,” President Gao replied, “that North Korea is already a nuclear power is not in dispute. I convened this emergency meeting of the PSC, rather than the Joint Chiefs, precisely to deliberate such matters in a full and forthright manner. But if you don’t let Comrade Secretary Yi conclude his briefing, you’ll just keep blathering without being in command of the facts.”

Chou flushed crimson. He and the rest of the old men turned toward Yi. Gao Xiang’s protégé suffered stage fright. He felt the sweat run down his armpits, further wetting his already damp dress shirt. “Gentlemen, there was one other item in the cargo hold. In anticipation of such deliberations, the Iranians included a shielded crate containing the centrifuge and a kilogram of weapons-grade U-235. In their eyes, helping North Korea is legally no different from helping them. Furthermore, if we don’t assist them with the trigger designs, they’ve threatened to denounce us at the next United Nations Security Council meeting.”

The room exploded in shouts and waving arms. Even the president was taken aback. Yi lost his train of thought. Where were his notes? He fumbled for another thirty seconds. The hubbub diminished, but his brain was still empty. His patron let him twist for a few seconds longer and then stepped in. “Gentlemen, the situation is straightforward. Operation Polar Bear cannot succeed unless the NRO’s imaging satellites are offline,
and
this act is not attributable to China. For that we need the Iranians to execute Operation Menander to perfection. Well, as close to perfection as these sorts of people ever get.