“What are you going to do to me?” Wicks asked.
Chavez looked to the broken man. “Don’t ever say another word about this to anyone as long as you live. I doubt the Chinese will contact you again, but if they do, it might just be to kill you, so you might want to think about grabbing the family and running like hell.”
“Kill me?”
Ding nodded. “You saw what happened in Georgetown?”
Wicks’s eyes widened. “Yeah?”
“Same guys that you’ve been working for, Todd. What happened in Georgetown is just an example of how they go about tying up loose ends. Might want to keep that in mind.”
“Oh my God.”
Chavez looked out the window at Wicks’s wife. She was pushing the children on the swings and looking back into the kitchen window, no doubt wondering who the two men were that her husband did not want her to meet. Chavez gave her a nod and then turned around to Todd Wicks. “You don’t deserve her, Wicks. Maybe you want to spend the rest of your life trying to rectify that obvious fact.”
Chavez and Biery left through the garage door without another word.
SIXTY
Gavin Biery and Domingo Chavez arrived at Jack Ryan, Jr.’s apartment just after ten o’clock in the evening. Jack was still under suspension, but Gavin and Ding wanted to fill him in on the day’s events.
Chavez was surprised when Ryan said he did not want to talk in his house. Jack handed each man a Corona, then led them back downstairs to the parking lot, and then across the street to a golf course. The three of them sat in the dark at a picnic table and sipped beer along a fairway shrouded in mist.
After Biery told Ryan about the visit to Wicks’s house and the revelation that Chinese intelligence agents had a hand in putting the virus on the Hendley Associates computer network, Jack searched for some explanation. “Is there any way at all that these guys weren’t working for the MSS? Could they have been foot soldiers for Tong that slipped into mainland China to compromise this computer guy?”
Ding shook his head. “This happened in Shanghai. Center couldn’t bug a hotel room, bring a big crew of cops, uniformed and plain-clothed, and pull this off without the knowledge of the MSS. Hotels in China, especially luxury and business-class hotels, are all ordered by law to do the bidding of the MSS. They are bugged, surveilled, staffed with agents working for state security. It just is not possible this was anything other than an MSS operation.”
“But the virus is Zha’s RAT. The same one on the Istanbul Drive. The same one on the UAV hack. The only explanation is that Zha and Tong were working for China in Hong Kong when they were under the protection of the Triads.”
Chavez nodded. “And this also means that the Chinese government knows about Hendley Associates. Just think about what’s on our network that they infiltrated. Names and home addresses of our employees, data that we’ve pulled from CIA and NSA and ODNI chatter. Obvious linkages to anyone with half a brain that we are an off-the-books spy shop.”
Jack said, “The good news, on the other hand, is what is not on the network.”
“Explain,” said Chavez.
“We don’t record our activities. There’s nothing on there that talks about any of the hits we’ve done, the operations we’ve been engaged in. Yes, there is more than enough there to target us or to prove we’re getting access to classified data, but nothing to tie us to any particular operation.”
Ding gulped his Corona and shivered. “Still, anybody in China picks up a phone and calls The Washington Post, and we’re toast.”
“Why hasn’t that already happened?” Jack asked.
“No idea. I don’t get it.”
Ryan gave up trying to figure that one out. He asked, “Has there been any more talk about sending operatives over to Beijing to meet with Red Hand?”
Chavez said, “Granger is working on getting us into the country. As soon as we have a way in, me and Driscoll are wheels up.”
Jack felt incredibly isolated. He wasn’t working, he wasn’t talking to Melanie, and now he did not even want to communicate with his mom and dad, because he felt, at any moment, the Chinese would reveal information about him that could bring down his father’s presidency.
Gavin Biery had been silent this whole time, but suddenly he stood up from the picnic table and said, “I see it.”
“You see what?” asked Ding.
“I can see the big picture now. And it’s not pretty.”
“What are you talking about?”
Gavin said, “Tong’s organization is a group that works in the interests of its host nation, uses the assets of its host nation to some degree, but it is a sub rosa outfit that is self-directing. I’d also bet they are self-funding, since they can generate so much cash from cybercrime. Moreover, Center’s organization has the incredible technological means that he uses to get intelligence to fulfill his mission.”
Jack saw it now, too. “Holy shit. They are us! They are almost the same as The Campus. A deniable proxy operation. The Chinese could not let the cyberattacks lead back to them. They set Center up with his own operation, like my dad did with The Campus, to free them up to be more aggressive.”
Chavez added, “And they have been watching us since Istanbul.”
“No, Ding,” Jack said, his voice suddenly grave. “Not since Istanbul. Before Istanbul. Way before.”
“What does that mean?”
Jack put his head in his hands. “Melanie Kraft is a Center asset.”
Chavez looked at Biery and saw that he already knew. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“She bugged my phone. That’s how Center knew Dom and I were in Miami investigating the command server.”
Chavez could not believe it. “She bugged your phone? Are you sure?”
Jack just nodded and looked off into the mist.
“That’s why we are sitting out here in the cold?”
Jack shrugged. “I’ve got to figure she’s planted bugs all over my house. I don’t know, I haven’t swept for them yet.”
“Have you talked to her? Confronted her?”
“No.”
Ding said, “She’s CIA, Ryan. She’s passed a hell of a lot more background checks than you have. I don’t believe she’s working for the fucking Chicoms.”
Ryan slammed his hand on the table. “Did you hear what I just said? She bugged my phone. And not just some off-the-shelf spy shit. Gavin found Zha’s RAT, or a version of it, on the device, along with a GPS tracker.”
“But how do you know she wasn’t duped somehow? Tricked into planting it.”
“Ding, she’s been acting suspiciously for a long time. Ever since I got back from Pakistan in January. There have been signs; I was just too whipped to see them.” He paused. “I was a damn idiot.”
“’Mano, there are reasons to be suspicious of you. A girl as smart as her has a bullshit meter cranked up to eleven. As for the bug on your phone…” Chavez shook his head. “She’s being played. Somebody socially engineered that. I find it hard to believe she is a spy for China.”
Biery said, “I agree.”
Jack said, “I don’t know why she did it. I only know that she did it. And I know I am the one who compromised our entire operation letting her do it.”
Ding said, “Everybody at The Campus has got loved ones on the outside who don’t know what we do. We’re at risk every time we let someone new into our life. The question is, what are you going to do about it?”