The clerk seemed to believe the cover, though he was hardly impressed. He barely looked up from his television.
Yao said, “The day after your company picked up the Commercial Services Limited equipment from our building, two pallets of tablet computers that had been delayed in customs arrived for them. The shipment is in our warehouse right now. I checked the packing list and it was listed as a complete shipment, but someone screwed up and didn’t realize these two pallets had not yet been delivered. Someone is going to be very unhappy if those goods don’t sail with the rest of the shipment.”
The clerk could not possibly have looked less interested. “That’s not my problem.”
Yao was undaunted. “No, it will be my problem, except for the fact you guys signed off on the incorrect manifest. If they come to me looking for the three hundred sixty units that you signed for, I could just tell them the shipper must have lost them.”
The clerk eyed Yao with annoyance.
Adam smiled. “Look, man, I just want to do what’s right.”
“Leave the pallets here. We’ll get them to the client as soon as they note the discrepancy.”
“I hope I don’t look that stupid. I’m not giving you one million HK dollars’ worth of product that’s already been legally imported from China. You could just sell it yourselves on the street and then tell the customer I never delivered it.
“I want to keep our client happy, and you should, too. We made a little screwup, these things happen, and I am just trying to rectify it quietly. If you can do me the personal favor of telling me the port of disembarkation and the name of the person who signed for the goods, I can go directly to them without involving the customer in this at all.”
Adam most often got what he wanted with the incredible social-engineering skills that most good spies possessed. He presented himself professionally, he was polite, and he carried himself with a calm air of self- assuredness. It was hard for anyone to tell him no. But occasionally Adam achieved success in social engineering more from the fact that he could be annoyingly persistent.
This was such a time. The shipping clerk determined, after several minutes of “No,” that his own laziness and strict adherence to company policy was not going to be enough to get rid of the bothersome young man in the nice suit.
The clerk slid over to his computer, making a show of how much trouble it was to do so. He clicked through a few screens, then settled on one, used his pen to look down at the data. “Okay. It sailed on the eighteenth. Right now it is one day out of Tokyo.” The man kept looking at the computer.
“Where is it heading?”
“USA next, then Mexico.”
“The cargo. Where will the fourteen pallets disembark?”
The man cocked his head to the side. “It’s already off the vessel. It was offloaded on the nineteenth, in Guangzhou.”
“Guangzhou?”
“Yeah. That makes no sense. You said this stuff was imported from the mainland, which means all the duties, taxes, tariffs, were paid. And then they turn it around and send it back to China? Who the hell does that?”
No one does that, Adam knew. But it told him where Center had moved his organization.
Center was in China. There was no other explanation. And there was no way in hell he could run such a huge operation on the mainland without the Chicoms knowing about it.
Things fell into place quickly in Yao’s mind while he stood at the shipping desk. Center was working for China. Zha had been working for Center. Zha orchestrated the UAV attacks.
Was the Center group some sort of false flag operation set up by the Chinese?
The prospect was chilling, but Yao was having a hard time coming up with alternative explanations.
Yao only wished he could tell someone at CIA what he had just learned, and what he was about to do. But Adam Yao wanted to stay alive even more than he wanted a pat on the back or a helping hand.
He’d make his way over the border. He would find Center and his operation. And then he would figure out what to do.
Valentin Kovalenko was up early this morning. He took the Metro from D.C. across the river to Arlington, did a brief surveillance detection run, and then entered the Ballston Public Parking Garage at seven-fifteen a.m.
Today’s instructions were clear, though unusual. For the first time since he’d arrived in D.C. he would be running an agent himself. This would be, it had been explained to him by Center, his priority assignment here in the United States, so he should take it seriously and see it through.
Today was set up as just a brief meet-and-greet, but there was a subtext to it, which Center had conveyed via Cryptogram the evening before. This agent was a government employee and a willing accomplice of Center’s, though he did not know Center’s identity, and he himself was running an unwitting agent.
Kovalenko’s job was to get the man to turn up the heat on his agent and get some results.
All this seemed to be child’s play when Center relayed the mission the evening before; at least it certainly did not seem to be anything along the lines of being involved with the killing of five CIA officers.
But Kovalenko could not really say how sensitive this operation would be, for the simple reason that he was not allowed to know who the ultimate target was. As usual, Center kept things so damn compartmentalized that Valentin knew only that he was to lean on his agent to be harder on his agent, who, in turn, was responsible for compromising the ultimate target.
“No way to run an effective intelligence operation,” Kovalenko had said aloud the night before.
Still, the SVR wanted Valentin to go along and get along, so he was here in a chilly parking garage early this morning, waiting to meet with his agent.
A Toyota minivan pulled into the lot and parked next to Kovalenko, and he heard the snap of the doors being unlocked. He climbed into the passenger seat and found himself sitting next to a large man with a ridiculous flop of gray-blond hair dangling into his eyes.
The man reached out a hand. “Darren Lipton. FBI. How the hell are you?”
FIFTY-EIGHT
Kovalenko shook the man’s hand, but he did not identify himself. He only said, “Center has asked me to work with you directly. To help you find access to resources you may need in the furtherance of your objective.”
This wasn’t really true. Valentin knew this man was an FBI agent in the Bureau’s National Security Branch. He would have access to a hell of a lot more resources than Valentin would. No, Kovalenko was here to pressure him for results, but there was no sense in starting out the conversation or the relationship, short-lived though Kovalenko expected it to be, with threats.
The American just stared at him for a long time without speaking.
Kovalenko cleared his throat. “That said, we expect results immediately. Your objective is crucial to the —”
The big man interrupted with a booming shout: “Are you
Kovalenko recoiled in surprise. “I beg your pardon?”
“Really? I mean…
“Mr. Lipton, I do not know what—”
“The goddamned
Kovalenko recovered from his shock. Actually he empathized with his agent. He knew what it felt like to have no idea whose flag it was you risked your life and liberty for.
“Things are not as they appear, Special Agent Lipton.”
“Is that right?” Lipton said, and then he slammed his hand on the steering wheel. “I sure as hell hope not, because you
Kovalenko just looked down at his fingernails for a moment. He continued. “Be that as it may, I know your
