All of it was good stuff — get-imprisoned-for-espionage stuff — but Dot pressed him hard for one thing above all else. She wanted to know the identity of the case officer who had called Leigh Murphy in the first place, the person who had asked her to interview the Uyghur. According to Rask, she must have known him well. They’d probably worked together on a past op. Murphy had been stationed in Africa before, Meyer had that much. Maybe they’d been stationed there together. He’d do some checking, ginning up some connection to a CI case he was helping with. Hell, maybe he’d just call Murphy, tell her he was running something down and needed her help. Rask said she seemed like a ladder-climber. She’d probably be happy to help out someone from HQ. He’d play her a little and get some leads. The thought occurred to him that the Chinese might talk to her first, but he put that out of his mind.
With the mole hunters poking under every stone, Meyer needed to work quickly so he could get out of here before they started casting wider nets. So far, nobody expected he would know anything about the China desk. In fact, no one expected him to know much about anything at all.
He’d find out what Dot wanted. Rask had told him about Murphy’s after-action report, how she was vague to the point of insubordination. She’d identified her friend only by a cryptonym, an NOC, or officer with no official diplomatic cover. This guy wouldn’t get booted out of the country and declared persona non grata if he was caught. He’d be imprisoned or killed. If the Chinese were smart, they would watch him for a while, learn who his assets were, and then scoop everyone up at the same time.
Meyer had heard the cryptonym before, and it gave him a place to start.
CROSSTIE.
34
Fu Bohai woke to the hum of his mobile phone on the nightstand next to his hotel bed. He peeled back the Egyptian cotton sheet, sodden with sweat, and rolled away from the naked Russian woman who lay draped across his chest and thigh.
She stirred, smacking her lips in sleep. “Tell them to crawl away and die,” she said, her Russian thick with the aftereffects of too much blini and Ossetra caviar, and precisely the right amount of vodka and sex.
Her name was Talia Nvotova. They’d met that evening at a Chinese embassy function in Moscow where Fu had been tasked to look into a Chinese diplomat suspected of selling secrets to the Russians. They were “strategic partners,” Russia and China, tenuous allies. But, as the adage went, there were friendly countries, but not friendly intelligence services.
Fu Bohai was known by his superiors to be particularly unfriendly, and it was this quality for which he was sent to Moscow. His direct supervisor, Admiral Zheng, who commanded PLAN intelligence, operated by what he called the fifty-fifty rule. If Fu was fifty percent convinced that the diplomat had turned traitor, he was to take care of the matter then and there, sparing the Motherland the bother of a trial. Beijing had suspected for over a year that someone within the Ministry of State Security or PRC military intelligence was leaking classified information to both the Russians and the Americans. They hadn’t narrowed the field very far as of yet, and could not very well approach the SVR and say, “One of your spies who has betrayed China is also betraying you to the Americans,” though Fu Bohai suspected it would come to that eventually if the traitor could not be found, in order to plug the leak. He smiled at the idea of the mushroom cloud that would cause in both countries.
Officially, Talia was a Russian/Mandarin translator for Moscow state television. Her surname was Czech, but she was a Russian citizen. Fu made certain of that. Well-known in diplomatic circles, Talia had been invited to the function because of her beauty and ability to keep the conversation going. Fu Bohai felt she was probably a case officer with SVR, the Russian foreign intelligence service akin to MSS and the American CIA. He was a newcomer to the embassy, so the alluring Miss Nvotova had naturally done her job and cozied up to him at the party. It did not hurt that he was over two meters tall, had a boyish face but the experience of forty-two years, and could bench-press over a hundred and fifty kilos. He happily went along with the getting-to-know-you charade, inviting her to stroll with him around the park across Druzhby Street from the embassy. Moscow springs are notoriously chilly and Talia looked ravishingly Russian in her silver fox coat and sable ushanka. She’d complimented his fedora; he’d complimented her cold pink cheeks. They’d ended up together at his hotel, where she looked ravishingly Russian with nothing on at all.
She tried to roll back to him, but he pushed her away again, harder this time, giving himself distance.
She snorted, collapsing onto her back in a huff, not bothering with the sheet while he lifted his fedora to retrieve the phone under it.
Fu spoke in Chinese, knowing Talia understood every word. He shifted in bed so his thigh ran alongside hers as he talked, skin to skin. He kept the volume of the phone low, so she could hear only his side of the conversation.
It was Admiral Zheng.
SURVEYOR had information that someone from the CIA office in Albania had spoken with a Uyghur refugee who had links to separatist groups in China, possibly the Wuming. It was weak, as far as intelligence product went, but it had caused some movement from the Americans. The admiral wanted Fu to speak to the Uyghur and the woman from CIA — find out what they knew that might help lead him to Medina Tohti, and then do with them what he did best. Fu did not know the entirety of the situation with Tohti. He did not need to. What he did know was that it was a sensitive matter that the admiral did not trust the Ministry of State Security to handle. What’s more, the admiral cared little about finding anyone associated with the terrorist organization known as Wuming. Locating them would provide a method to capture Medina Tohti. She had to be brought in alive and able to think and communicate. The last was an important detail. A prisoner could be very much alive, but unable to do much beyond a blink or grunt. Anyone else should be terminated if possible, but Fu was not to go out of his way for that. Wuming was a problem for law enforcement. The admiral wanted Medina Tohti in custody sooner rather than later — and the fewer people who knew about it, the better.
Fu picked up his watch, a Tissot, also on the nightstand by his hat. “I will check the flights,” he said. “But it will take all day to get there via commercial airline.”
Talia’s beautiful thigh tensed — possibly because he spoke about leaving…
“Stand by,” Fu said, muting the phone and holding it away from his ear to check the distance between Moscow and Tirana, Albania, on the Internet. He turned the phone away so Talia could not observe his search.
The movement brought a whiff of Talia’s shampoo and he had to rub a hand across his face to stay focused.
“If I take a company plane I can be there in under four hours,” he said.
Her leg tensed again. Relaxed. A delicate foot tick-tocked back and forth at the end of the mattress, red toenails bright and stark against the white sheet. Her brain was working through some problem. Was it how to get Fu to stay with her, or was she instead envisioning a large map, as he would have done had he heard her having this same conversation? Was she trying to work out what important destinations a corporate jet might reach in less than four hours?