Charged with protecting the highest political leaders in China, the duties of the Central Security Bureau were akin to those of the U.S. Secret Service. Operatives in the CSB, however, put much more emphasis on the word secret, particularly those operatives under the command of General Xu.
Xu stood motionless, eye to the camera, studying the scene with rapt concentration. The dark suit the fifty-six-year-old man customarily wore allowed him to blend in among the hordes of similarly dressed businessmen and government officials around his offices in central Beijing. But Beijing was four hundred sixty kilometers away and a suit would have drawn unwanted attention as he stood on the side of the roadway on the coast of the Yellow Sea. He dressed instead in light khaki slacks and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up against the unseasonably hot and muggy September. A beige photographer’s vest of lightweight nylon hid the Taurus semiautomatic pistol tucked inside the waist of the khakis. The men with him were similarly dressed. But the young CSB operative named Tan wore dark glasses to cover a severely bloodshot eye. All three men were tall and fit, as those tasked with the protection of other men needed to be.
Both the general and his protégé, a man named Long Yun, had come up through the officers’ corps of the People’s Liberation Army, Long following Xu by a decade. Another ten years younger than Long, Tan began his professional life in the People’s Armed Police. He’d shown great promise until the blood vessels around the pupil of his right eye began to burst every time he sneezed. Rigorous testing revealed his vision was still fine, but Xu found the thing hideous and looked for assignments that would keep the man out of his line of sight. It was the general who had suggested Tan wear dark glasses, even on cloudy days or indoors. It would not do to have the general secretary or some other party dignitary thinking one of the men who protected him was half blind or, worse yet, half drunk.
Xu used a handkerchief to wipe the sweat from a high forehead. He spoke without looking up from the camera. “Comrade Tan, do you trust this cripple dockworker of yours?”
Tan’s shoes crunched in the gravel as he took a half-step forward. “I do, General,” he said. “I have conducted three transactions in all, one week apart. In the first two, I chose a container at random, each from a lot heading to the United States. Over this three-week span, Gao Tian has mentioned our arrangement to no one, not even his wife.”
“Astounding,” Xu said, and gasped, mockingly, though he doubted that Tan had caught the inflection. What man in his right mind would confide a sudden windfall of money to his wife, of all people?
General Xu stood up from the tripod, arching his back, feeling it pop and snap. In retrospect, it was a mistake to use someone from his own staff for the negotiations, but he would never admit it out loud. The matter of the container ship Orion had been conceived and decided prior to his arrangement with the man known as Coronet. Other operations would be far more tidy — and less likely to connect to Xu or his organization.
“The gods gave men mouths,” the general said. “And in my experience, men have a difficult time knowing when to keep those mouths shut. This endeavor must be handled with the utmost discretion and secrecy. We cannot afford for your man to speak of this… ever.” He looked at Tan. “Do you understand?”
“Of course,” the younger man said, but Xu doubted this was true.
“You must kill him,” the general clarified.
Tan blanched at the order, proving Xu’s suspicions correct.
“Of course,” the young man said again.
“Today,” Xu added. It was tedious how everything had to be spelled out for this one.
Tan braced to attention and gave a curt nod. “Of… course,” he said again, stammering, as if any more appropriate words had flown from his brain.
The general sighed, exhausted by the conversation. He tipped his head toward the tripod. “Retrieve the lens and gear,” he said. “But be certain you are careful as you put it away. The people’s money should not be wasted by shoddy handling of equipment.”
Before Tan had a chance to repeat himself yet again, Xu turned to Long Yun and gave a knowing glance toward the car.
Long Yun settled in behind the wheel as the general took his customary spot in the backseat, on the right side, so the two men could more easily communicate. Outside, Tan blustered on the gravel pad as he packed the camera equipment, no doubt made more nervous by his boss’s watchful eye through the tinted window.
“Follow this witless egg,” Xu instructed Long Yun. “When he has killed the cripple, silence him as well. I am afraid your man Tan lacks the constitution for matters of delicacy and discretion. If the fool on the docks has not yet bragged to his friends, then someone will most certainly have witnessed him meeting a man with such a hideous eye. That ship will reach the United States in two weeks. I’m confident there will not be much left after… the incident, but the Americans are known to be extremely thorough. There can be absolutely nothing to link Orion to this office. Do I make myself clear?”
Long Yun turned and grinned at the general.
“Of course,” he said.
1
Jack Ryan, Jr., sat behind the wheel of a dusty Ford Taurus and rubbed a hand through his dark brown beard, trying not to think about his growing need to pee. The car sat parked for the fourth time in seven hours, and Ryan rested both hands on the steering wheel, staring into the darkness. Dallas, Texas, had a reputation for being muggy, even in fall, but this September night had turned out cool, allowing the two men in the Taurus to keep their windows rolled up most of the way and the AC turned off.
Just two years old, the dented Ford looked to be in much worse shape than it actually was. The Taurus was one of the few models that could be a police car, or, with a quick coat of rattle-can black and some judiciously applied dents to the doors and fenders, become a ratty beater that those same police would see as a meth fleet vehicle. Despite being in dependable shape mechanically, this particular car stank like bad cheese and dirty gym socks — blending well into this seedy South Dallas neighborhood.
A quick Internet search had revealed that the intersection not three blocks away was among the top five most likely spots in Dallas to get stabbed. There’d been no stabbings tonight as far as Ryan knew, but the night was still young. The sound of bottles breaking on pavement not too far down the street signaled that a cutting, at the very least, was a distinct possibility.
Ryan tapped the steering wheel with his thumbs and looked at his watch. His need for relief was going to reach critical mass in the next few minutes. He had a Gatorade bottle in the backseat, stashed there for surveillance emergencies, but he really hoped to get out and stretch his legs for a minute — even if it was behind a stinking dumpster that overflowed with pizza boxes in an alley littered with broken syringes and used condoms.
During the forty-two minutes they’d been parked between the back door of a Mexican grocery and a store that sold sewing machines — of all things — Jack had seen a half-dozen guys — all Asian — go into the Casita Roja strip club across the street. Over the course of those same forty-two minutes, he’d watched a homeless dude stagger by and vomit all over himself, a graffiti artist tag the back of the sewing-machine shop, and two hookers entertain clients as they stood against the rough brick wall beside the dumpster, accompanied by a halo of moths fluttering under the sad glow of a feeble streetlamp.
“If you could see me now, Mother dear,” Ryan mumbled to himself, tapping the Taurus’s armrest.