They found a badly wounded fellow who has since been identified as Hui-ling Wong, a suspected slaver. He died on the way to the hospital, but they found his boat in the harbor.”
“Did they get any phone records, computers?”
“Nada,” Herbert said. “The guy never used any of those. He had a nickname, Lo Tek. All his deals were conducted in person or arranged via ship-to-ship or ship-toshore communications.”
“Sensible.”
“The harbor police did get his radio operator, though. They’re hoping he’ll be able to tell them something.”
“Do you think Hui-ling was the target?” Hood asked.
“No,” Herbert said. “It would have been just as easy to take out his ketch. He was probably just a bystander who happened to deserve what he got.”
“So the business was the target,” Hood said.
“Yes, but Ron and General Carrie both think there might be a proxy war being fought here. I’m inclined to agree.”
Those words were not a slap. They were worse. Hearing Herbert mention Ron Plummer and General Carrie in the same sentence was like hearing his former wife talk about her new boyfriend. It reminded Hood, painfully, that forces beyond his control had wrested him from people and events that had defined his life. It was an effort to speak, let alone to speak unemotionally.
“Why do you think that?” Hood asked flatly.
“The PRC has an enormously high rate of illegal emigration,” Herbert said. “In terms of sheer numbers, it’s higher than that of any other nation. Those refugees were the people Wong reportedly hunted. He would not have been able to pluck people from offshore vessels without the tacit approval of the People’s Liberation Navy. Not in a ketch that size, in those waters, in a perpetual state of silent running. That alone would have caught the attention of every radar station along the coast. Wong had to be paying people off.”
“Do you have any idea who?”
“Not yet,” Herbert said. “But we may have a back door to that information. The attacks in Charleston and Taipei bookended the bombing of sugar silos in South Africa. According to public records in Durban, one of the investors in that refinery is the Tonkin Investment Corporation, a group of Vietnamese shipping entrepreneurs who have close ties with members of the Chinese government. Specifically, they handle official government investments managed by Chou Shin, who is the vice chairman of the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Relief Fund. The Chicom UFRF manages funds for the survivors of soldiers who died in the struggle to put the Communists into power and keep them there. Chou is a hard-liner, an acolyte of Mao who also happens to be the director of the 8341 Unit of the Central Security Regiment.”
“I’ve heard of them,” Hood said. “They’re extremely low profile.”
“Very. Their job is to spy on political and philosophical enemies of Chicom at home and abroad. Chou has deep files on students, radicals, black marketeers, and plutocrats.”
“A kind of anti — J. Edgar Hoover,” Hood suggested.
“Exactly,” Herbert said. “Chou also has the resources to attack the trade in illegal emigres.”
“For what reason?” Hood asked.
“Defense. Spite. The profits could be used to finance rival factions in Beijing, or maybe he has a grudge against some minister or general. What’s interesting is the timing of the events. The first two, the blasts in Charleston and Durban, happened relatively close together.”
“You mean someone might have had the silo scenario primed in the event of an attack on the emigres.”
“Right. But the blast in Taipei came significantly later — possibly a response to the bombing in Durban.”
“That isn’t a proxy war,” Hood said. “It’s gods hurling thunderbolts at one another.”
“Not giving a damn about collateral damage, I know,” Herbert said. “In any case, Maria has Interpol connections who deal regularly with the National Security Bureau in Taipei. They’ve got people inside Beijing. We’re trying to find out who is on the top of Chou’s hit list, someone who might have the resources to have the counterstrike in Durban ready and waiting.”
Maria Corneja McCaskey was the Spanish-born wife of Op-Center’s FBI liaison Darrell McCaskey. She had retired from Interpol to come to the United States with her new husband. She had not settled comfortably into domesticity and was retained by Op-Center to interface with the global police agency and its affiliates.
“So who are we rooting for?” Hood asked. “The slavercapitalist or the repressive spy who’s watching out for war widows?”
It was a rhetorical question, and Herbert took it as such. “The sad thing is, people end up suffering either way,” the intelligence chief remarked.
“I hope there’s something you can do to minimize that,” Hood said.
There was a short silence as Hood worked through another painful moment. In the past that would be the start of a discussion between Hood and one of his senior staff, not the end.
“Are there any resources you can bring to bear?” Herbert asked.
“I’ll find out,” Hood said. “Hell, Bob, I’m still learning how to work the telephones.”
“Didn’t they give you an assistant?”
“I get to hire two,” Hood said.
“Hey. That’s a step up from Op-Center.”
“Not really,” Hood said. “I have no idea where to find them.”
There was another short silence. It grew into a long one. Herbert was not one for small talk, and Hood felt as if the intelligence chief had been extending the conversation unnaturally.
“I guess I’d better let you go,” Hood said.
“Sorry,” Herbert said. “I was just checking my caller ID. There’s an incoming call I’d better take.”
“Sure,” Hood told him. “I’ll have a look into this Chinese situation and get back to you.”
“Thanks,” Herbert said. “Hey, Paul, have you heard from Mike lately?”
“I haven’t spoken to him since he left Op-Center,” Hood told him. “Why?”
“Because that’s who is calling me,” Herbert replied.
THIRTEEN
“Hello, Mike Rodgers,” Herbert declared as he took the call. “How are things deep in the heart of Unexus?”
“The company is doing well, and so am I,” Rodgers replied.
The firm for which Rodgers worked was located in Arlington, Virginia, not far from the Pentagon. The two men had last spoken a month before, when they met for dinner at the Watergate. The 600 Restaurant was one of Herbert’s favorites, as much for where it was located as for what they served. The hotel was a monument to presidential arrogance, to the notion that the nation was still a democracy. That thought gave Herbert a warm feeling. It reminded him of the values he himself had paid such a high price to uphold.
“Is there something quick and dirty I can help you with, or can I give you a shout in about an hour?”
“Both,” Rodgers said. “What are you hearing about China?”
Herbert had been playing with a loose thread on his cuff. He stopped. “Why do you ask?”
“We’ve got a very important project about to launch with Beijing,” Rodgers told him. “I was wondering if the explosion in Taipei is an isolated event.”
“Do you have any reason to think it wasn’t?” Herbert asked.
There was a brief silence.
Herbert smiled. Rodgers knew the drill. Herbert’s first obligation was to Op-Center. Their job was to put puzzles together, not provide the pieces for others. Not even for an old friend, a
“All right. I’ll go first,” Rodgers said. “Unexus has designed a Chinese telecommunications satellite that is going to be launched on Thursday. The prime minister has asked the head of the Xichang space center to provide
