The Beixinqiao subway station entrance was behind him. Mitchell didn’t stop to pay the fare. His ticket was in his pocket, courtesy of another of his officers who had “decided” to take a midday walk around the city. The two MSS officers wouldn’t bother with tickets, but Mitchell’s prepaid voucher kept the race on even terms. He was down the stairs and approaching the platform when the two finally crossed the street at a dead run. The trains were on time — something in which Communist governments always took pride — and Mitchell was aboard by the time his pursuers reached the top of the stairwell. They pushed their way down the stairs, knocking aside any number of commuters in their rush, and they arrived at the platform just in time to watch the train pull away. They would likely call their superiors to request coverage of all the stations down the line where Mitchell might exit, but the possible number of stops was large, and getting men into position at the closer ones before the train hit them in sequence would be impossible.
In any city of twelve million residents with traffic to match, the subway was always the fastest way to move away from any given point. Mitchell’s immediate need was simply to put distance between himself and the Beixinqiao station and a subway train moved faster than any car could follow or any officer on foot could run.
The crowd roared for the first time. Tian turned his head slowly, taking in the wave from one side of the room to the other. It was a subtle thing, but Cooke saw it from seven thousand miles away. Tian was feeding off the energy of the crowd. The president of the People’s Republic of China exuded the air of a god on earth soaking in the adoration of worshipers. To the foreign observers in the room, it made twisted sense. Communist doctrine made atheism the official religion, replacing the worship of a supreme being with complete obedience to the state. The state was God and Tian Kai was the state.
Tian held up his hand and the crowd fell silent. “Our position on the issue of reunification has never wavered. We have made our policy clear through our words, through our laws, and through our actions. Any moves toward secession threatens China’s state sovereignty and territorial integrity. We have offered the leadership of Taiwan countless opportunities to negotiate the peaceful way forward. We have offered the open hand of forgiveness and fellowship. We have shown the fist of our determination only when no other choices were left. And now the nationalist leader of Taiwan has made his intentions clear. We will make ours equally clear. We will not allow the misguided and selfish politicians of this province to separate from the mainland, or to separate its people from their destiny as citizens of the People’s Republic of China!”
The volume control on the television kept the audience’s eruption to a tolerable level. Inside the Great Hall it must have been deafening. The camera cut to the crowd, which, to a man, surged to its feet.
“It’s like Hitler at Nuremberg,” Cooke said. She hadn’t been born when the Führer had given that speech, but she was a History Channel addict. They’ll turn this into a documentary in a few years, she thought. Sometimes it was hard to recognize when history was being made. Other times it was as plain as a slow-motion trainwreck, and just as easy to stop.
Mitchell detrained at the Dongsi station two stops later and kept his head down. In thirty seconds he was aboveground again. He walked east. The Capital Theater was only a short distance in that direction and a bit south on the Wangfujing road. The Beijing People’s Art Theater Company routinely played to a full house, offering a balance between foreign works and Chinese dramas, and they drew a large number of foreign patrons on any given night, which offered Mitchell a sizable non-Asian element in which to merge.
He already had his ticket for that evening’s performance, a well-reviewed adaptation of The Monkey King. He entered the theater, early as planned, and walked to the men’s restroom on the main floor. The smell was appalling by Western standards. The Chinese tossed their used paper into a special bin instead of flushing it into a sewer system that was not always robust enough to handle large loads. Mitchell breathed through his mouth while washing his hands four times until the French patron occupying the second stall from the end finished his business and left as quickly as dignity would allow. Public restrooms in most any country were not a place to linger, which made them a boon to espionage. The stall door closed and locked, Mitchell pulled out a centimeter-square piece of white duct tape from his pocket. It was innocuous, a piece of pocket litter easily discarded or explained away. He affixed it to the rear base of the toilet, which was more of a trough with a hood at one end over which the individual squatted. The tape matched the porcelain color. It would be almost impossible for any patron to see even if looking down for it. The tiny patch would be more easily found by touch than by sight, and there was only one patron who would be feeling around behind the stall anytime soon, given the communal restroom’s odor.
All that trouble just to set up a signal for Pioneer to perform a sign of life.
Mitchell vacated the stall, washed his hands again for real, and left the room. He was a patron of the arts for the rest of the night. Three years in Beijing and he’d never seen The Monkey King. Theater hadn’t been an interest of his before his current tour, but he’d learned to appreciate it at the urging of his wife. She was waiting for him in the twelfth row and would be keeping a better poker face than he had ever mastered. Laura Mitchell had been a drama major in college and was hoping her husband’s final tour would be in London as a liaison so she could spend time in the West End near Leicester Square attending experimental productions.
She deserves it, Mitchell thought. Laura had been a faithful soldier for the last twenty years, helping her husband build his cover in third-world rat holes, and praying quietly during the nights when he came home late. She had never trained at the Farm or performed an operational act, but Laura had spent her life in the clandestine service every bit as much as he had. He owed that woman, the Agency owed her more, and he intended to spend every day of retirement finding ways to overpay on the debt.
Tian let the cries go on for more than two minutes before raising his hand. “There is one China! China’s sovereignty belongs to the entire Chinese people! Retreat from this act of rebellion. Come together with us to unite all descendants of the Chinese nation who love the motherland!” The Chinese leader was holding nothing back now. “We insist on reunification by peaceful means, but do not challenge our will to block all ‘Taiwan independence’ movements. Our determination to preserve our country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity is absolute! Taiwan’s future rejoined with the mainland as one China must not be delayed. I say to President Liang, accept the commencement of final negotiations to reunify our nation!”
Cooke ran her hands through her hair. “He used the word ‘rebellion.’”
“And ‘secession’ and ‘independence,’” Jonathan said.
“I guess a bad translation is too much to hope for,” Kyra offered.
“No, they got it right,” Cooke said.
“How do you know?” Kyra asked. She had watched the CIA director during the speech and was sure that the older woman didn’t speak Mandarin.