“How do you know that?”
“I’ve seen Russian special operations forces in the field before. GRU Spetsnaz, FSB Spetsnaz, and SVR Zaslon. This looked like the way they did things. I can’t really say why, but I’m sure they were Russian. It wouldn’t make sense for GRU to be involved because this isn’t a military operation, and the FSB mostly works closer to Russia’s borders. I’m guessing this was a Zaslon team.”
“That’s pretty thin,” Brewer chastised.
“Yes,” Gentry admitted. “Unless you put some credence in the intuition of a guy who’s been working in this field for twenty years.”
“Fair enough.”
“Oh, and there was a woman with them.”
“A woman?”
“In an operational role. She wasn’t stacking up with the Zaslon guys, but she breached the target location alone at the same time they did.”
Brewer spoke with authority. “Zaslon doesn’t have females. None of the Spetsnaz groups do.”
“I’m just telling you what I saw. My guess is she was not on the team even though she was jocked up like the boys. She might have had operational command on the scene.”
“Could she have been an SVR case officer?”
“Maybe,” admitted Court. “But she didn’t come out of an embassy. She had a definite edge to her. A non-official cover operative of some sort, but one with a lot more direct-action training than they normally give Russian NOCs.”
“Could you identify her from images we have of Russian female SVR operatives?”
“No. No way. Saw just part of her face for less than a second through NVGs.”
Brewer changed course. “Okay, enough about the attackers. Tell me about Fan Jiang.”
Court relayed everything Fan had told him about why he ran, the family collateral he lost, and his strong desire to be done with all this.
When he stopped talking, she said, “Okay… well, as I told you several times, your job was not to make contact with Fan. It was to get positive ID and then notify me so I could send in others.”
Court said, “And now I know why you didn’t want me in contact with Fan myself.”
“Meaning?” she asked, though she knew the answer.
“Meaning I’ve been lied to from the beginning. I was not told that Major Song Julong, the man watching Fan’s parents, was an agent for the West. I wasn’t told that Fan only got out of the mainland with the help of a service friendly and intimate with the CIA. Why is that?”
Brewer said, “I did not have authorization to tell you. That’s really all you need to know.”
Court asked, “Was this a Taiwanese op that we jumped in to save, or was this a joint op, where we were involved with the fuckup from the start?”
Brewer remained silent.
“You have to tell me.”
Now she spoke. “Yes… Major Song contacted someone at Taiwanese intelligence and told him Fan Jiang would try to cross the border with no papers. They threw something together, didn’t reach out to us for help. Didn’t reach out to anyone. They got him over the border, but Fan was followed over by some of Colonel Dai’s men. The Taiwanese intelligence agents waiting for him had to call off the pickup, leaving Fan all alone. He panicked and left, and the Taiwanese weren’t able to reconnect with him. They came to us, finally, and when Fitzroy was pulled into the operation on the Chinese side, we saw an opportunity to help find Fan Jiang by having you make contact with Fitzroy.”
“And why wasn’t I told all this from the beginning?”
“It wasn’t relevant.”
“Usually when someone withholds information from me, it’s because they are hiding something bigger. What am I missing?”
“You aren’t missing anything. We couldn’t expose Taiwanese intelligence if you were captured when you went in to see Fitzroy. The knowledge that Taiwan helped with the defection could have started a shooting war between the two Chinas.”
Court sighed, but he seemed to let the matter drop. “Look, Fan definitely does not want to go to the USA. He wants to go to Taiwan.”
Brewer sniffed now. “You sound like you give a shit. It’s not your job to give a shit. It was your job to find him so SAD can pick him up.”
“It makes things tougher that he is unwilling. If this is a joint operation, he needs to go to Taipei. It shouldn’t be that big a deal.”
“No promises,” Brewer said, and then she began railing at Violator about losing his means of communication during the op. “We could have picked Fan up hours before he was kidnapped by the Thais if you’d had your phone.”
“I know that. Shit happens in the field, Brewer.”
“That is what people say when they screw up. It becomes an excuse for their incompetence.”
Court let it go. She was his handler and she was right. He’d fucked up, and he’d let her criticize him about it even though she was probably sitting there in a nice office with a cranberry muffin and a cup of coffee in front of her.
He said, “I’m going to Bangkok; I’ll talk to Colonel Dai and get help from the Chinese. If you’ve got somebody better than me to nab Fan Jiang, you go ahead and get them on it.”
“How can you go to Bangkok? The Thai gangsters who took Fan Jiang have seen you.”
“The guys who saw me in Cambodia were smugglers. River rats. Fan will be handed over three more times before he makes it into Bangkok. Fan will be in Bangkok with senior management. I’m not worried about being compromised.”
Brewer blew out a long sigh. “Violator, you probably don’t need me telling you this, but this operation is not going well. I’m talking to Hanley as soon as he gets to the office.”
“To tell him what?”
Brewer did not respond.
“To tell him what?”
“To tell him that we need to rethink our next steps.”
“You can sit there and think about whatever the hell you want. I’m going after Fan Jiang.”
“If you are told to stand down, you will stand down.”
“Matt won’t pull me off this. The stakes are too high.”
“Exactly. They are too high to have one operator, one who is possibly exposed to the opposition, running around on a solo mission to grab this high-value target. Your initial job was to find out what the Chinese and Fitzroy knew about the location of Fan Jiang. That intel is a week old and half a continent removed from where you are now. At this point, I consider your continued pursuit of the target an unnecessary compromise.”
“I got damn close, Brewer. Hell, I had my hands on that kid’s neck.”
“And yet here we are.” She let the comment hang in the air, the crackling phone line the only noise in Court’s ear for a moment. Then she said, “Do you think it is a simple thing to order a Marine Corps helicopter to fly an in extremis exfiltration op into a nation like Cambodia? You think that was what I and the rest of the Agency needed to be focusing on last night?”
And with that, Violator hung up the phone.
Brewer looked across her desk at a sheet of paper lying there. On it was the direct line to the XO of the USS Boxer. With one call to him she could have a dozen Marines with M16s pull Violator off his bunk and throw him in the brig till the ship docked. The CIA SAD team in the area could then bring him back to the States and watch over him till the operation was concluded.
But she did not make the call. To do that she’d need the backing of Director Hanley, and she was not going to disturb him at home. It would make her appear weak and indecisive.
She grabbed her crutches and headed back to her sofa. She’d allow herself a few hours of sleep before she got back up, and as soon as Hanley came to work she’d talk to him and shut this entire operation down. With a little luck she’d be permanently free of Violator by midmorning, and her career would be back on track.