Yet this spy, whoever he was, obviously didn’t know that the Second Directorate’s had penetrated the embassy. The note explicitly set out the time and place of the meeting.
“Of course, the Americans may not respond,” Baije said. “They know we’ve penetrated them. They may think this Ghost of theirs has been doubled too.”
“General Baije.” Li put a finger into the smaller man’s chest. “Don’t tell me what the Americans may or may not do. Tell me that our men are tracking every American who comes into Beijing this week. Tell me that we are going to catch this agent, and the traitor who’s helping him. Those are the only words I want to hear.”
29
EVEN BEFORE HE REACHED THE CENTER OF BEIJING, Wells felt the electricity of approaching war on the avenues of the giant city. Enormous banners in Chinese and English dangled from overpasses: “China stands as one!” “America will be sorry!” A torn American flag fluttered off the skeleton of a half-finished office tower, while the flag of the People’s Republic, five yellow stars against a blood-red background, waved off every car and truck.
As his cab swung from the airport expressway onto the third of the ring roads that surrounded Beijing, Wells saw a dozen mobile antiaircraft missile batteries, their green-painted rockets pointing in every direction. Hundreds of Chinese surrounded the launchers, taking pictures, saluting the PLA soldiers in their crisp uniforms. Their excitement was palpable. They were standing up to the United States, and the show was about to start. The First Battle of Bull Run must have felt this way, Wells thought, the crowds turning up to watch the Rebs and the Union boys fight, shocked when the pageantry ended and blood began to flow.
Indeed, aside from the flags and banners, life in Beijing seemed to be proceeding fairly smoothly. The immigration officers at Beijing airport hadn’t been overly hostile to Wells or the other Americans who’d come in from San Francisco. The cabbie outside the terminal had shown no irritation when Wells told him to head to the St. Regis, a five-star hotel close to the United States embassy and favored by Americans. Workers were hammering away everywhere on new buildings. And the traffic was the worst Wells had ever seen, making Washington’s supposedly busy roadways look like racetracks in comparison.
As the cab again stopped dead, the driver glanced at Wells in his rearview mirror.
“Where from?”
“California.” So his passport said, anyway. Wells waited for the driver to explode in anti-American slurs, or throw him out of the cab and make him walk the rest of the way. Instead the driver turned to Wells and smiled, revealing a mouthful of broken yellow teeth.
“Ca-li-fornia. My cousin — Los Angeles.”
“I’m from Palo Alto,” Wells said. His cover story. “Northern California. Near San Francisco.”
But the cabbie wasn’t interested in Palo Alto. “Los Angeles,” he said again. “Hollywood. Hungry.” The cabbie offered a thumbs-up.
“Hungry?”
“Gong-ri.” The cabbie held up a glossy magazine, a Chinese tabloid that featured a beautiful woman on the cover. Amid the Chinese characters were the English words “Gong Li.”
“Gong Li. She’s an actress, right? I don’t see too many movies.”
“Gong-ri. Holly-wood.”
“Got it. I guess we’ll save the serious discussion for next time. You have no idea what I’m saying, do you? I mean, I could be offering to sell you my sister for all you know. If I had a sister.” Wells felt a pang of guilt. He hadn’t talked to Evan, his son, in weeks. When he got back, he was taking the boy fishing in the Bitterroots — the mountain range on the Montana-Idaho border, just outside his hometown of Hamilton. Maybe hunting too, if Heather, his ex, would let him. But fishing for sure.
The cabbie grinned and gave Wells another big thumbs-up, then reached back through the cab’s plastic barrier with a crumpled pack of 555s. “You like cigarette?”
“No, thanks.”
“You like China?”
“Sure.”
And with that, the cabbie seemed to have exhausted his English. He popped a 555 in his mouth and smoked silently until they reached the hotel a half-hour later.
BUT OUTSIDE THE ST.REGIS, the mood turned grim. Four jeeps and a dozen soldiers formed a makeshift barricade that blocked the driveway. As the taxi stopped, a young officer rapped on Wells’s window.
“Passport,” he said. The passport, sent by courier to the Chinese consulate in San Francisco for an expedited visa application, identified Wells as James Wilson, a thirty-seven-year-old from Palo Alto. If anyone asked, Wilson was the founder of Prunetime. com, an Internet start-up that specialized in small-business software. The business was real, at least on paper — one of the dozens of ghost companies that the agency had created over the years. Prunetime had a bank account, a Dun & Bradstreet credit report, a record of incorporation with the California secretary of state, even an office in San Francisco. Wilson was real too. Besides his passport, he had a California driver’s license, a working Social Security number, and a wallet full of credit cards.
Of course, none of those records could answer the red-flag question: Why was James Wilson so anxious to get to Beijing at this moment, with China and America close to war? Why had he applied for a visa on such short notice? But Wells had a plausible cover, a three-day trade fair for software and Internet companies. And despite the rising tensions, he was hardly the only American in China. His 747 from San Francisco had been half full, mostly Chinese but a couple of dozen Americans too, joking nervously that they hoped the bombs would wait until they got home.
“Passport,” the Chinese officer said again. Wells reached into his bag and handed it over. The officer flipped through it nonchalantly. “Out.” As Wells unfolded himself from the cab, the officer walked off, passport in hand, disappearing into a windowless black van behind the jeeps. Wells leaned against the cab and waited. A few minutes later, an older officer in a pressed green uniform stepped out of the van and waved him over.
“You speak Chinese?” He looked up at Wells, his chin jutting out, his face square and unfriendly.
“No, sir.”
“Of course not. First trip to China?”
“Yes.”
“Why you come now?”
“There’s a computer conference starting tomorrow. I’m looking to hire some programmers—”
The officer held up his hand.
“Five days.”
“You doing anything for United States this trip?”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t understand? I’m asking you if anyone in America told you to report back on what you see here,” the officer said. “Military preparations.”
Wells raised his hands defensively. “No, no. I’m a businessman.”
“If someone did, it’s better to tell now. We put you on a plane, send you home.”
“Nothing like that.”
“This bad time for Americans in China,” the colonel said to him. “Be careful. If we catch you by military base—” He left the threat unfinished, handed Wells back his passport, and waved the cab through.
A MINUTE LATER WELLS WALKED through the hotel’s big glass doors and felt whipsawed again. A giant pot of fresh-cut orchids and tulips sat on a marble table near the front door, filling the lobby with fragrance. The air was cool and calm, the doormen brisk and efficient. At the front desk, a smiling concierge upgraded him to a suite, telling him that cancellations had left the hotel empty.
And finally, Wells lay on his bed, hands folded behind his head, watching CNN International play silently on the flat-panel television, constant updates on “The China Crisis” scrolling across the bottom of the screen,
