Domingo Chavez or one of the other operators. Having the President’s son captured in Beijing working with rebels there will make all of our problems exponentially worse.”
“I get it,” Jack said.
Mary Pat gave Jack a hug and started to get up.
Ryan said, “There is one more thing. I don’t know if I am stepping out of my lane on this, but…”
Mary Pat sat back down. “Speak up.”
“Okay. The Campus was involved with the Zha arrest in Hong Kong a couple of weeks ago.”
Mary Pat looked genuinely surprised. “Involved?”
“Yes. We were over there, working with Adam Yao, CIA’s NOC who identified him in Hong Kong.”
“Okay.”
“Yao did not know us as The Campus. We sold ourselves as a business trying to track Zha down because he hacked our network. His white-side cover is as a business-intelligence investigator.”
“I have read CIA’s reports about Adam Yao and the Zha incident in Hong Kong. The SEALs said they had CIA support. We suspected Yao had two local assets helping him.”
“Anyway, I just wanted to say this: I suppose you know hundreds of great officers in the U.S. intelligence community, but Adam seemed very well dialed-in over there. An extremely sharp guy. He knew about the CIA leak, and he was working his ass off, staying low-profile to avoid getting caught up in the leak while still getting the job done at the same time.
“It’s not my place to say, but I really think he is the type of guy who needs your full support, especially at a time like this.”
Mary Pat said nothing.
After an uncomfortable moment, Ryan said, “I apologize. I know you have more irons in the fire right now than you know what to do with. I just thought—”
“Jack. Adam Yao disappeared two weeks ago, after someone tried to blow him up in his car but instead killed his next-door neighbor.”
Ryan reeled with this news. “Oh my God.”
Foley said, “It’s possible he just took himself off-grid for his own PERSEC. Hell, I couldn’t blame him if he was running from us because of the leak. But our people over there at the consulate in HK think the Fourteen-K Triads got him.” She stood up to leave. “Their best guess is that he’s at the bottom of Victoria Harbour.
“I’m sorry. We failed Adam, too.”
She went back inside the house, while Jack sat there in the cold, sitting on the patio chair with his head in his hands.
FIFTY-SEVEN
Adam Yao had spent the first two weeks after the shootout in Wan Chai on Lamma Island, part of Hong Kong territory a forty-minute ferry ride from his home. It was quiet and peaceful here, which was just what he needed. He did not know a soul, and the locals thought he was just some tourist here to enjoy the beach and the bars.
He had made no contact with anyone. Not CIA, not SinoShield clients or colleagues, not relatives in the States or friends in Soho. He’d lived in a tiny monthly vacation rental off the beach, he paid cash, and he took all his meals in the attached restaurant.
His life had changed drastically in the past couple of weeks. He had not used his credit cards, and he had thrown his cell phone in a dumpster in Kowloon. He’d sold a few personal items for cash on the street, and he spent a few days with no cash, but he was not too worried about money. Adam’s “day job,” his SinoShield cover company, had put him in contact with all sorts of local crooks, smugglers, counterfeiters, and other profiteers, and he had cordial dealings with many of them. Occasionally he had to make friends in low places in order to do his job, and he had called in a few markers with some of these friends. He knew he could find temporary work on a dock or in a counterfeit basement handbag shop or any number of other shitty jobs, that, even though they were shitty jobs, were a hell of a lot better than getting burned to a crisp like his poor friend Robert Kam.
He waited two weeks; he wanted the people after him to think someone else had gotten him or that he’d gotten away, and he wanted anyone from the CIA to stop looking for him as well. Adam knew it would be a big deal at Langley that a NOC had disappeared, especially under the circumstances following the SEAL mission, but he knew CIA assets in the area were just about nonexistent, and, anyway, Langley had bigger fish to fry these days.
Once two weeks had passed, Adam returned to Kowloon, now wearing a full beard and mustache. Within twenty-four hours he owned new dark sunglasses, a new mobile phone, and a new suit and accessories. His suit was impeccable; everyone in Hong Kong who so desired wore a great suit, as Hong Kong tailors had a reputation that rivaled Savile Row, and were known for making beautifully bespoke suits for one-fourth the cost of their London counterparts.
Adam knew he could have left Hong Kong and returned to the States. It would be safe there, certainly from the Triads and almost certainly from the PRC.
But he was not leaving HK until he found out more about the shadowy hacker group that he’d stumbled onto, leading to the deaths of God knows how many. The Americans had Zha, this was true, but this Center character Gavin Biery had spoken of must surely still be in operation.
Adam wasn’t going anywhere till he found Center.
The MFIC.
With a few deep breaths and some whispered self-affirmations, Adam then walked into the Mong Kok Computer Centre like he owned the place, asked to speak to the leasing manager of the building, and told the woman he was looking to rent a large space to house a new call center for a Singapore-based bank.
He handed her his business card, and that was all the ID he needed to convince her of his cover for action.
The leasing manager told him, much to her delight, that two floors had just been vacated two weeks earlier, and he asked to take a look. She led him through the carpeted rooms and hallways, and he inspected them carefully, taking pictures and asking questions.
He also asked her questions about herself, which was not his original plan, but going out to dinner with the woman and getting information on the company that just left was to Adam Yao much preferable to his original plan, which was dumpster-diving, hoping against hope to find a scrap of paper that might be a clue about the big group Zha had been a part of.
That evening at dinner the woman spoke freely about Commercial Services Ltd., the large computer company that had just left, mostly about how they were a 14K-owned business and they used an insane amount of electrical power and installed an alarming number of very unattractive antennas on the roof of the building, some of which they did not have the decency to remove when they left in the middle of the night, led away in trucks by armed men who seemed to be security police.
Adam took in all the information, and it made his head spin.
“That was very nice of the Fourteen-K to move all their equipment for them.”
She shook her head. “No. The people who worked in the offices packed up their own things, and then a shipping service came and took it away.”
“Interesting. I’ll need someone who can work quickly to deliver my computers from Singapore. Would you remember the name of the shipping service?”
She did, and Adam committed it to memory and then spent the rest of the evening enjoying his time with the leasing agent.
The next morning he walked through the doors of Service Cargo Freight Forwarders, at the Kwai Tak Industrial Centre in Kwai Chung, in the New Territories north of Hong Kong. It was a small outfit, only one clerk was present, and Adam Yao presented the man with a beautifully professional business card claiming him to be the leasing manager of the Mong Kok Computer Centre building.
