accompanied by stock footage of F-14s soaring off an aircraft carrier. The correspondents were doing their best to manufacture news, though not much had changed since Wells took off from San Francisco.
Following the sinking of the fishing boat by the
Wells closed his eyes and heard the hotel’s thick windows rattle as fighter jets rumbled in the distance. He supposed Exley and Shafer were right. He shouldn’t have come. He was meeting a man he’d never seen or even spoken with, a man who might already have been doubled. He was here on a contingency plan that was a decade old and that no one had ever expected to use. At best, this trip was the equivalent of heading out for a three-day backcountry hike in March without a backpack or even a compass. If nothing went wrong, he might get home with a touch of frostbite and an empty stomach. But he had no margin for error. And, of course, if Cao Se had been doubled and the Chinese knew he was coming, he was as good as dead already.
His actual instructions for the meeting were simple. Since Cao didn’t know how to recognize or reach him, he was using what the agency called a 2-F protocol. Fixedlocation, fixed time. Essentially, Wells would show up at the meeting point and follow the instructions of whoever met him. Ideally, Cao Se would be waiting. More likely he would be greeted by a courier, by the police, or no one at all. If nobody showed up, Wells had no backup spot. He was simply supposed to return to the meeting point an hour later, then once more the following day. If Cao didn’t show by the third meeting, Wells would leave — assuming the flights between China and the United States were still running. The embassy and station chief had no idea he was here, of course. The agency assumed that the mole had compromised all its networks in China. Wells had to come in alone to have any chance of staying clandestine.
Wells flicked off the television and lay on the floor. The opulence of the suite made him uncomfortable. He didn’t like having his bags carried, or fancy soap and shampoo in the marble bathroom. Strange but true: he’d rather be on a cot in Afghanistan. The room’s luxury made the danger of the mission seem less real. What could possibly go wrong inside a five-star hotel? Would he choke to death on an undercooked steak?
Wells supposed his uneasiness here proved he was a less than perfect spy. A true master could fit in everywhere, from a Siberian prison camp to a Des Moines mall to a Brazilian beach. That was the theory, anyway. Wells had his doubts such an animal existed in real life. A spy who could infiltrate an Iraqi insurgent network probably didn’t have much in common with one who could talk his way into a private casino in Moscow.
Wells shucked his clothes, padded into the bathroom, turned on the shower. No low-flow shower-heads here, and no waiting for the water to heat up. He had to admit that staying at a five-star hotel had some advantages.
AT THE HEIGHT OF CHINA’S tensions with the Soviet Union in the 1960s, Mao had ordered the building of a bunker under Zhongnanhai capable of surviving a direct hit from a nuclear warhead. The vault had been expanded over the years. It was now a miniature underground city, sprawling across six acres, with its own electrical supply, food stocks, even a seven-room hospital.
But the bunker’s newest and most technically advanced room was the strategic-operations center that the People’s Liberation Army had opened just six months before. A room 150 feet square, the operations center was more advanced than the White House Situation Room or the Air Force’s NORAD facility inside Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado. Video feeds allowed the PLA’s generals to watch takeoffs and landings at China’s air bases in real time. Secure fiber-optic links connected them with the silos that housed China’s nuclear arsenal. One wall was devoted to a giant digital map of the eastern Pacific that of fered an integrated view of the positions of the Chinese and enemy fleets.
The room was crowded but not claustrophobic, thanks to its twenty-foot-high ceilings, and surprisingly quiet. Its humming hard drives and clicking keyboards provided background music that was as soothing in its own way as ocean waves, and as unceasing. All the while, information moved up the chain of command, orders back down. They met at a raised platform in the center of the room, where Li stood, reading a message from the Xian.
When he was done, Li turned to the wall-sized map of the Pacific.
“Highlight the
“Yes, sir.” Juo tapped his keyboard, and suddenly two lights began to blink on the screen, a red circle indicating the
“How accurate are these positions?”
“For the
“So we know the enemy’s location better than our own ship.”
“That’s correct, General.”
The paradox of submarine warfare. The Xian could communicate only irregularly with its commanders, lest it betray itself to the Americans. But China’s satellites could track enemy ships with ease.
“And when does the
“At 0100, sir.”
“How confident are you in your identification of the target?”
“I’ve looked at the photographs personally, General.”
“And you’re certain.” Li wanted to hear the captain say the words.
“I’m certain, sir.”
Li put a hand on Cao’s elbow and guided him out of the captain’s earshot. “What do you think, Cao?”
Cao’s lips barely moved. He spoke so quietly that Li had to bend in to hear him. “I think we should wait. I also think that what I think doesn’t matter. You’ve decided.”
“And you’re right.” Li turned to Juo. “Captain, I won’t be here when the
THE PEN SPUN OVER the sketch pad, leaving behind a tiny blurred city of palaces and cathedrals. Cao had never visited Paris, but he’d seen pictures. Sketching cleared his mind, helped him think. He threw in a couple of gargoyles atop a cathedral that might have been Notre Dame and eyed what he’d done. Not his best work.
He shoved the pad aside and stared out at the Beijing sky, tapping his pen on the plastic stump of his lower left leg. Midnight had come and gone, but the sky was more white than black, the lights of the city reflecting off clouds and smog, turning night into a perpetual half dawn.
Cao lived in a four-room apartment in an Army compound near Zhongnanhai. His place was simple and spare, decorated in traditional Chinese style. Scrolls hung from the walls, long rice paper sheets covered with stylized characters in thick black ink. As a senior officer, Cao could have had a much bigger apartment if he’d wanted. But he preferred this space. With no family, he’d be lonely in anything bigger. Besides, he spent most of his time visiting bases and traveling with Li.
Normally, the apartment was calm and quiet, protected by the compound’s high walls, an oasis in the center of Beijing’s tumult. But today Cao heard the rumbling of helicopters over Tiananmen. The last time the square had been this crowded had been 1989. Back then, Cao wondered if the Party’s leaders would survive. But he’d underestimated their ability to hold power. This time the masses had filled Tiananmen to challenge America. But what would they do if they discovered they were being used in a power struggle?
“The choice of heaven is shown in the conduct of men.” The proverb dated from the fourth century B.C., from Mencius, a follower of Confucius. But what was heaven’s choice now? Cao clasped his hands, closed his eyes, and asked God to help him understand. In 1991, on a trip to Singapore for a regional defense conference, Cao had overheard singing from a blocky concrete building that turned out to be a church.
