Tong pulled a frame capture, and in seconds he had sharpened it up greatly with software on his machine.
“This man was in Club Stylish at the beginning of the sequence, before the attack. He was not part of the attacking force.”
“Yes, I think you are correct.”
Together Tong and the security manager went through raw feed of Club Stylish, both before and after the kidnapping. They saw the unknown man sitting at the bar before the attack; he was all alone. But after the kidnapping, he was met by two other men. Together the three left through the front entrance. One was tall, with a common paper mask on his face.
And the other man was Adam Yao.
Tong found a good image of the short, slightly dark man as he entered the club for the first time, passing directly in front of a security camera at the entrance. He cleaned the image up even more, and zoomed in on the man’s face.
“I know who this man is,” said K. K. Tong.
He pressed buttons on his computer and brought up a videoconference. A woman with a headset on was sitting at her desk, somewhere on the operations floor of the Ghost Ship.
She was surprised to find herself on camera. She sat up straighter and bowed in her seat. “Desk forty-one.”
“Come in my office.”
“Yes, Center.”
A few moments later the controller entered Tong’s dark office, stood next to the security manager, and gave a quick bow before standing at attention with her eyes straight ahead.
“Look at this image capture.”
She peered past Center at the screen for several seconds, and then returned to standing erectly once again. She said, “That appears to be subject Domingo Chavez of the Maryland, America, company Hendley Associates. Wife, Patsy Chavez. One son, John Patrick Chavez. Domingo Chavez served in the U.S. Army and then in the CIA’s Special Activities Division. After leaving—”
“I know who it is,” Tong interrupted. “Hendley Associates is a target of interest, is it not?”
“Yes, Center.”
“They assassinated Kartal and his band of Libyan misfits in Istanbul a few months ago, did they not?”
“Yes, Center.”
“You seem to know all about Chavez and Hendley Associates.”
“Yes, Center.”
“Did you also know Mr. Chavez and at least one colleague of his were here in Hong Kong last night, helping the CIA and the U.S. military capture Zha Shu Hai, chief of our coders department, and killing a large number of our Fourteen-K hosts in the process?”
The young woman’s eyes moved to Center, and her white skin seemed to turn gray as blood left her face. Softly she said, “No, Center.”
“Do we have deep persistent access into the Hendley Associates network yet?”
“No, Center.”
“I ordered this months ago.”
The woman said, “With help from MSS assets in Shanghai and in Washington we have placed a RAT on a drive that was delivered to Hendley Associates last week. The Trojan has not reported in as of yet.”
“Perhaps the Hendley Associates people discovered the RAT and did not install the device?”
The woman blinked hard. “It is possible, sir.”
With the tip of his pen, Tong flipped to a different photograph. It was Adam Yao, Domingo Chavez, and a tall man with dark hair wearing a paper mask. “Is this Jack Ryan, son of the President of the United States? He works at Hendley, you know.”
The woman looked at the image. “I… I do not know, Center. I cannot see his face.”
“If we had access into their network, we would know exactly who that was, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Yes, Center.”
Tong thought for a few moments. Finally he said, “You will be reassigned. You are dismissed.” The woman bowed and left the room. Tong initiated another videoconference before she was out the door, this time with the director of the Ghost Ship’s controller department.
“Replace desk forty-one with your best English-speaking controller, and instruct them to immediately take control of your best English-speaking field operative, whoever that is and wherever in the world they are working, and send him or her to Washington, D.C. Come to my office in thirty minutes with this done, and I will give you further instructions.”
Without waiting for a response he disconnected the videoconference and then swiveled in his chair to the director of his security staff. “Where has the U.S. military taken Zha?”
The man looked down at a notebook in his hand. “We are working on getting this information. Surely to the United States, likely to Andrews Air Force Base. From there he will probably be turned over to the CIA for debriefing. They will use a safe house, since they will want to debrief him before placing him in official U.S. custody.”
Tong nodded. “I want an address.”
“I will get it for you.”
Valentin Kovalenko had been working full days and many nights for Center in the past few weeks. He’d planted bugs in corporate offices, pilfered wireless communications from tech companies, stolen RFID credit card information, and performed a number of other tasks.
Tonight, however, he was not working for Center. He had spent the day here in Barcelona getting pictures of a British politician who was on vacation in sunny Spain with a girlfriend while his wife was back in gray London with four kids.
But that was today. Tonight he was on a mission of his own. He’d purchased a prepaid cell phone from a convenience store several kilometers away from his Boulevard Rosa flat, then he went to an Internet café to look up a phone number he did not know from memory. After he wrote it down on a sheet of paper, he stopped in a bar and drank two quick glasses of Rioja to settle his nerves, then returned to his flat, locked the door, and sat down to make his call.
He looked at his laptop on his desk. Cryptogram was open and flashing.
Shit.
He headed to the little desk. He would check in with Center first, then he would be free to call his father, Oleg Kovalenko, in Moscow.
His father did not own a computer; he did not own a cell phone. He was, effectively, off the grid and out of the reach of the Center organization.
Valentin planned on telling his father as little as possible about his predicament, then sending the old man to the SVR in Moscow to talk to his old friends and explain the situation. His arrest for the John Clark episode. His escape from prison and his coerced recruitment into the Center organization.
His dad and his old friends would help him out of this.
He decided on this course of action after going to the Russian embassy in Barcelona, passing by a couple of times on foot, and then deciding it was not safe for him to make contact with anyone directly there. His father could do it for him, in Moscow, where Valentin knew many people and could direct his father to any one of a dozen friends who could help him.
But first he clicked on Cryptogram. Typed, “I’m here.” He pulled the card out of his camera and slid it into the side of the laptop. Typed, “Uploading images now.”
He initiated the upload on Cryptogram, and Center accepted the file.
But Center’s reply, when it came, was incongruous to Kovalenko’s message. The words “Everyone makes a mistake” appeared on the screen.
Kovalenko cocked his head. He typed, “What does that mean?”
“You made a mistake by deciding to contact your father.”
Instantly sweat formed on the back of Kovalenko’s neck. His fingers began to type some sort of denial, but he stopped himself.
How the fuck did Center know?