“You are certain?”
Biery was not certain. But he was confident. “Yeah.”
A line of Cryptogram text appeared. “What is this?”
Kovalenko did not respond.
“This is an application? This is not what was requested.”
Kovalenko looked at the camera.
Slowly he lifted his hand in front of his face in a fist and extended his middle finger.
Clark, Kraft, and Biery all stood to the side, mouths agape.
It took only seconds for a new line of text to appear on Cryptogram.
“You are dead.”
The connection terminated instantly.
“He’s off,” Kovalenko said.
Biery smiled. “Wait for it.”
Clark, Kovalenko, and Kraft all looked at him.
“Wait for what?” asked Valentin.
“Wait for it,” he repeated very slowly.
Melanie said, “He logged off. He can’t send any—”
A file popped up in the Cryptogram window. Kovalenko, still sitting in front of the machine, looked up to Gavin Biery. “Should I…”
“Please do.”
Kovalenko clicked on the file, and a single picture expanded on the monitor. All four people in the dark apartment leaned forward to get a better look at it.
A young woman, with Asian features, eyeglasses, and short black hair, sat in front of the camera, her fingers resting on a computer keyboard. Over her left shoulder, an older Asian man in a white shirt and loose necktie leaned close, peering to a point just below the camera.
Valentin was confused. “Who is…”
Gavin Biery touched the girl with his fingertip. “I don’t know who that is, but
Melanie and Valentin just looked at him.
Biery said, “Dr. Tong Kwok Kwan, code name Center.”
John Clark smiled and said, “The Motherfucker in Charge.”
SEVENTY-TWO
Adam Yao had documents to get him into mainland China, so he could come and go on the train or through the automobile border crossing.
Jack Junior, on the other hand, was not nearly so fortunate. Adam had a way across the border for him, but it necessitated some risk and discomfort.
Adam went first, driving through the crossing at Lok Ma Chau at five p.m. local time. He wanted to be in place on the other side for when Ryan made it over so Jack wasn’t wandering mainland China as a
Ryan took a cab to San Tin and then walked a few blocks to a hardware store parking lot, where he met the men who would take him across.
They were “friends” of Adam’s, meaning he had run across them working in his “white side” job with SinoShield. They were smugglers, which made Ryan nervous when he was told they would be his access to China, but when he met them, he relaxed.
The smugglers were three small young men who seemed a hell of a lot more harmless than Ryan had spent the last sixteen hours imagining them to be.
Adam told him to not offer the men any money because he had taken care of them already, and although Jack had no idea what that meant, he trusted Adam enough to comply.
He sized them up as they stood there in the rapidly waning light. They clearly had no firearms on them. Jack had been trained to spot hidden pistols, and these guys weren’t packing — not on their hips, under their arms, or on their ankles. He could not say for sure they did not have knives secreted somewhere on their person, but even if all three of these little guys came at him at once, Jack figured, he could bang their heads together and head for the border on his own.
That would not be the preferred outcome, however.
None of the men spoke a word of English, and this made things confusing for Jack as they stood next to their motorbikes and gestured toward his legs and feet. He thought they were admiring his Cole Haan loafers, but he could not be sure. The matter passed soon enough with a few chuckles from the men.
They had Ryan climb on the back of one of the bikes, which was not a great plan, considering Jack was six- two and he found himself riding tandem with a chubby young man who might have been five-four. He had to concentrate on his balance to keep upright as the little Chinese man fishtailed and lurched his straining, poorly tuned bike on the bad back roads.
After twenty minutes on the road Jack saw why the Chinese men were concerned about his leather shoes. They were surrounded by rice paddies that went all the way to a river, across which was the mainland. They would have to slosh in knee-deep water for a half-mile before even getting to the levee by the river. There was no way in hell his loafers would stay on his feet.
They parked their bikes and got out, and then one of the young men miraculously discovered an ability to speak English. “You pay. You pay now.”
Ryan had no problem reaching into his money belt and thumbing off a few hundred bucks for the service these men provided, but Yao had been adamant that he not pay them. Jack shook his head. “Adam Yao to pay,” he said, hoping his nonconjugated verb might make comprehension easier.
Oddly, the men seemed not to understand this. “Adam pay you,” Jack tried next.
The men just shook their heads like they did not understand, and said, “You pay now.”
Jack reached into his pocket and pulled out a mobile phone he’d purchased that afternoon at the airport, and he dialed a number.
“Yeah?”
“It’s Jack. They want money.”
Yao growled like an angry bear, which surprised Ryan. “Put the smartest-looking of those three dumb shits on the fucking phone.”
Jack smiled. He liked Adam Yao’s style. “It’s for you.” He handed the phone to one of the smugglers.
There was a quick conversation. Jack did not understand the words, but the facial expressions from the kid left no uncertainty as to who had the upper hand in the argument. The kid winced with Yao’s words and fought to get his responses in.
After thirty seconds he passed the phone back to Ryan.
Jack held the phone up to his ear. Before he could speak, Yao said, “That ought to be the end of that. We’re back on, but don’t show those bastards a dime.”
“Okay.”
They sloshed through the rice paddies as the sun set and the moon rose. Jack lost his shoes almost immediately. There was a little conversation at first, but as they neared the water all the talking stopped. At eight p.m. they arrived on the levee, and one of the men pulled a raft made of milk cartons and particle board out of tall grasses. Ryan and the smuggler climbed aboard, and the other two pushed them off.
It was only five minutes across the cold water to China. They landed in a warehouse district of Shenzhen, and they hid the raft in rocks and river grasses. The smuggler went with Ryan up to the street in the dark, they sprinted across just after a bus passed, and then Jack was told to wait in a tin storage shed.
The smuggler disappeared, and Jack dialed Yao again.
