“What are they doing?” Feng explained the call from Li Kuonyi to Ralph Mcdermid and the deal they made. “I’ll have Yu, Li, and the manifest in less than forty-eight hours.”
“You’re positive?”
“It’s hardly to our benefit for me to be unrealistic.” Feng’s voice had returned to its normal, whispery timbre.
This turn of events had shaken him, but already he was showing renewed confidence. In all the years Wei had employed Feng, he had never known him to lack self-assurance. If anything, the former soldier of fortune had an overabundance of it. But this was no small problem, and the political complexity of it would be beyond the grasp of most security experts. Feng had always been loyal to him, even when sent off to work for others so he could bring back information. But then, Wei had taken Feng with him as he had risen in government. Yu Yongfu would never have been able to do for Feng what Wei could. Likewise, neither could an American, even Ralph Mcdermid. For a former mercenary like Feng, it was an honor to work so intimately for a member of the Standing Committee, and the income was more than generous, especially when others paid him as well.
When Wei became general secretary, Feng’s future would be secure, too.
They were locked together, two ambitious talents who each had need of the other. “Do you want help in Dazu?” Wei asked. “Now isn’t the time to go off like a solitary desert wolf.” Feng hesitated. “If you have a trusted army commander in the area, his presence with a unit of troops could prove useful, if by some accident we’re detained by the local authorities.”
“I’ll arrange it. And Feng? Remember, Li Kuonyi is cunning. A dangerous adversary.”
“There’s no need to insult me, master.”
Those were apparently harsh words from an underling, but Wei accepted them with a smile of understanding as he hung up. Feng had definitely returned to normal. Like the wolf, hunger drove him, and he was ravenous for the two people who had made him look like an amateur. Now he was even more determined to bring home the wayward manifest. Wei gazed out his window at his garden again. The premonition of bad news persisted.
He had begun to suspect that Major Pan’s investigation into Colonel Smith and the family of Li Aorong had turned up more about the Empress than the major had written in his report to General Chu or that Niu Jianxing had communicated to the general secretary or the Standing Committee. At the same time, Wei was quietly lining up support on the Politburo and the Central Committee. It was an unfortunate possibility that he would have to eliminate Feng Dun and Ralph Mcdermid, as well as Li Aorong and his daughter and son-in-law to cover all trace of hard-line involvement in the Empress scheme. When Feng initially alerted him to Mcdermid’s plan, it had seemed a stroke of good fortune. But now he sensed danger. For a lifetime, he had survived and prospered by acting quickly and ruthlessly on what he sensed.
At the top of a ladder set against a courtyard wall inside Zhongnanhai, a maintenance mechanic completed his repair of one of the floodlights that illuminated Wei Gaofan’s garden. As he worked, he muttered under his breath at Wei Gaofan’s paranoia. Wei’s fear of assassination meant he would allow no shadows in his garden.
His impatience with the eminent member of the Standing Committee was at a higher level than usual, because he was not only a maintenance worker, he was a spy. He had used the directional microphone hidden in his toolbox to record the recent phone conversation inside Wei’s office and was now anxious to deliver the tape to his superior in the counterintelligence section of the Public Security Bureau. Besides, his replacement had arrived and was already raking dirt near Wei’s office.
His listening device was in his toolbox, too, which was sitting on a granite boulder, aimed at the office window.
The spy climbed down and carried his ladder and toolbox to a shed hidden by dense shrubbery so as not to detract from the manicured park. Once inside, he opened a compartment in the bottom of the toolbox and removed the miniature audiotape.
He put everything away and dialed his cell phone. “I have a recording.”
He listened. “Ten minutes, yes. I’ll be there.”
He switched off the cell, locked the shed, and hurried through the lush lakeside grounds to a guarded side door in the outer wall. It was used only by service workers.
The guard, who passed him out every night at the end of his shift, still insisted on seeing his ID. “You’re leaving late.”
“Command-performance repair for Master Wei. One of his damned lights went out, and he nearly had a stroke. Couldn’t possibly wait for morning.” It was only a partial lie. He himself had knocked out the floodlight so he would have a reason to sit up there for a couple of hours, recording conversations. There was a lot of political turmoil right now, according to his handler, and every phone call to and from Wei must be recorded. His job was to find excuses to be in a position to make the recordings.
The guard rolled his eyes. Wei Gaofan’s demands were well known. The guard stepped aside, and the worker walked into the street, turning away from Tiananmen Square. He pushed through tourists still strolling around the Forbidden City. Finally, he entered an old-fashioned tea shop, where he paused in the doorway. There was his handler. He was reading a newspaper at a table in the middle of the shop.
The maintenance man ordered a pot of low-grade Wu Yi and a packet of English biscuits. With them in hand, he walked to a table toward the rear. As he passed the man, he dropped his biscuits, bent, and picked them up. He continued on and sat.
Major Pan Aitu was in a hurry. Still, he finished his tea first and folded his newspaper before he left. The spycatcher walked two blocks to his car.
Once in the car, he picked the tiny cassette from inside his shoe and inserted it into a mini tape player. He listened to the entire conversation, stopping at points to rewind and listen again.
Then he leaned back against the headrest, frowning. The meaning was clear: Li Kuonyi and Yu Yongfu were not only alive, they had the invoice manifest of the Empress’s cargo that Colonel Jon Smith had come to China to find. The Shanghai couple were probably already on their way to Dazu, preparing to sell the document to Feng Dun on behalf of Ralph Mcdermid.
But in truth, Feng would take back the document and kill the couple for Wei Gaofan.
The implications of Feng’s report to Wei Gaofan were also clear.
Implications the Owl would be most interested to know. Wei Gaofan was personally involved in the Empress and its cargo.
Events had progressed to the point that he must come to a decision as to where his best interests lay. On one hand, Wei Gaofan already employed Feng Dun, had clearly been involved in the Empress and its cargo from the start, and would not likely welcome a counterintelligence agent such as himself, who knew too much.
On the other hand, the Owl — Niu Jianxing — who was obviously opposed to Wei Gaofan and his hard-line stance, knew nothing of these developments.
He would be most grateful.
Now Pan must go to Dazu, which was a considerable distance. When he got there, he would have to make the decision. He had done well in the new China, had no desire to return to the old, and all in all his best interests might indeed lie with the Owl.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Jon sat against the bulkhead of a high-flying Navy E-2C Hawkeye AWACS jet, his head resting back. It was nearly eleven p.m. The vibration of the aircraft’s engines hummed into his ears. The plane was totally blacked out, as it always was on a reconnaissance mission. But this was no ordinary recon.
Edgy with nerves, he wore his usual black working clothes, with his Beretta bolstered at the small of his back. A black insulated jumpsuit lay ready beside him. Since he would leave the plane at thirty thousand feet, he would need it. He had made hundreds of jumps, but never from such a height, and the truth was … it had been a long time since his last one. The navy personnel on the carrier had gone over the basics with him and thrown in a couple of tips.
He had oxygen equipment because he would free-fall to ten thousand feet before opening the chute. There
