Second step, develop scenarios and assign probabilities. She could eliminate the eateries. They didn’t call customers to solicit business. A telemarketer? She’d submitted her number to the National Do-Not-Call Registry within an hour of the phone’s activation, but some telemarketers ignored the registry. So that probability was very low, though not zero.
Her parents? A strong possibility, but not one equally split between her mother and father. Her mother might have called, but not her father. Their differences had sparked too many arguments. The professor was too proud of his intellect to tolerate a daughter who could see politics in a different way, particularly one who didn’t hate either the butchering military or corrupt intelligence agencies. But her mother was the diplomat of the family, always trying to save the father-daughter bridge that was perpetually burning under Kyra’s feet.
The Agency was a lesser possibility. As required, Kyra had given her phone number to the Agency, though only two days ago. It would be in the locator database but she had no close friends at headquarters who could dredge it up. There was a possibility that someone from the director’s office might have called. That had happened yesterday, the secretary calling to summon Kyra to the director’s office, where she had met Kathy Cooke this morning. So it was unlikely Cooke would be the caller.
Burke was a possibility, but she had been with him less than an hour before. He’d been the one who told her to leave. Barring some emergency, and she couldn’t fathom what would constitute an analytic emergency, he had no obvious motivation.
Her mother, the director’s office, Burke, and a telemarketer. The probabilities stacked up in that order.
Third step, test the hypothesis, she thought.
Kyra pushed the voice mail button.
“Kyra, this is Reverend Janet Harris, assistant to the rector at Saint James Episcopal Church here in Leesburg. Your father called earlier this morning and asked—”
“Thanks so much, Dad,” she said to no one, least of all her father. Kyra lifted the handset, dropped it back onto the cradle, then flung it onto the living room carpet.
Maybe the old man really did care? Not likely. He would be more worried about his public standing than her soul. One of his two doctorates was in theology and he was a senior warden in the vestry at the Saint Anne’s Parish in Scottsville, where her parents lived. Having a daughter living outside the church was probably an embarrassment. She doubted he even talked about her to the other parishioners.
Kyra went for the near-empty refrigerator and pulled out leftover gumbo from some Cajun place she’d found off Market Street. She also took out a beer, not lite, and a Styrofoam box of sticky rice and mango. She ate the leftovers, drained the can, left the garbage on the table, then fell into bed.
CHAPTER 3
The surveillance team following Carl Mitchell was neither silent nor subtle. The CIA station chief had seen many during his two years in Beijing, more in Moscow, Kiev, and Hanoi before that. Communist governments were paranoid of Westerners by nature and the Chinese were no exception. The MSS and her sister security agencies could cobble together a surveillance team of a hundred men to follow a single target. Mitchell should never have seen the same face on two different nights unless they wanted to send a message, and the faces tonight were all looking familiar.
His companions made themselves known early when a Chinese man wearing a British-cut suit, probably custom-tailored in Hong Kong, had put a body check on the American case officer, almost knocking him into the street. Mitchell had labeled that man Alpha. The clothing and the fact that he’d stayed ten feet behind Mitchell for six blocks had made him impossible to miss. Mitchell had responded with a passive-aggressive approach, walking slowly so the crowd had to maneuver around them both. Alpha had begun bumping him every block, but Mitchell refused to respond. If Alpha and his partners were trying to provoke him into assaulting the local security to give them an excuse to detain him, they would be disappointed. After a half hour of Mitchell’s slow gait and window-shopping, Alpha finally grew self-conscious and bored and dropped back through the crowd.
Maybe Alpha wasn’t MSS? A criminal? Chinese prisons were nasty places, hard on the life span, so the criminal life in Beijing was fairly Darwinian and only the quick learners stayed around long enough to bother the tourists. Mitchell discounted the possibility after a second’s thought. Alpha was too well dressed for that profession. There was an outside chance the man was Ministry of Public Security, the Gong An Bu, China’s equivalent of the FBI, or even People’s Armed Police. Mitchell didn’t care for any of the possibilities. They all collaborated and a Chinese jail was a Chinese jail regardless of who held the key.
Mitchell made a hard stop at the street crossing. Alpha was far enough behind that he could have kept his distance, but he closed in. The timing was perfect. The stoplight turned green and Alpha took a hard step forward and made contact as he passed. It was a hard hit, no apology, and Mitchell stumbled into a stopped car in the street. The driver honked and cursed in Mandarin at the American. Mitchell swallowed his anger, but both his ability and desire to do it were nearly gone.
Time to go home, he thought. Mitchell didn’t like taking a beating for no good reason and he knew the exact limits of his patience. He would have preferred to lead Alpha into a filthy alley and give the man some bruises of his own, but anger was a poor substitute for disciplined tradecraft.
Mitchell rounded the block and worked his way six blocks back to the Laitai Shopping Mall north of the US embassy with Alpha never more than a body length behind. The Chinese officer finally gave up the slow chase when it became apparent where Mitchell was heading. The US Marines standing guard at the gate wouldn’t hesitate to throw a non-American to the sidewalk if he tried to break through into the massive complex. Managing embassy security was tedious and getting physical with a native determined to be stupid would be a rare treat for the soldiers. Some rules of the game were never broken. The penalties were immediate and painful.
The Marine corporal checked Mitchell’s ID and waved him through, and the CIA officer put his feet down on United States soil. The Marine stared Alpha down until the Chinese officer turned and walked into the dark. Mitchell didn’t bother to look back.
Chief of Station was a job that didn’t allow for bankers’ hours and Mitchell had made peace with that unpleasant fact early on. Espionage relies on schedules but has none fixed and is often plied in the dark. Mitchell was past his prime, and time and his job were catching up with his body. A life in the National Clandestine Service had taught him enough self-discipline to make up for the growing weakness thus far, but soon it wouldn’t matter. The chief of station posting in Beijing was a job reserved for the most senior NCS officers. Like a Navy promotion to captain of a carrier, it was an assignment that required so much experience that those who qualified were already nearing the end of their time in the field. A desk job at Langley or the Farm would be his next billet, and Mitchell had not quite made peace with that.
Mitchell closed his door, secured it, and fell into his chair. His back protested and he knew Alpha had left him a healthy bruise on his left side, but there was no help for it at the moment. He took up the secure phone and dialed the States. The time zone differential worked in his favor for once. Clark Barron was just starting his day. “Hey, boss,” Mitchell said.