soon after I passed responsibility to him.
“The third vehicle I took was on the American mainland, for the obvious effect of causing them great concern.”
Zha was proud of himself for all three hacks. He wanted more appreciation from Center than he was getting.
“We should have had more pilots,” Center said.
“Sir. I felt it necessary to be personally involved with each hijack. I could have captured the signal and given control to different pilots, but there were many technical nuances with each operation. The pilot was not trained to maintain the signal.”
Tong looked over a report Zha had sent him with details of each operation. He looked like he was going to comment further, but instead he laid the paper down.
“I am satisfied.”
Zha breathed a long inward sigh. He knew that was Center’s highest compliment.
The older man then said, “I’d hoped for five, or even more, but the three UAVs you took were well chosen for maximum impact.”
“Thank you, Center.”
“And the Trojan in their network?”
“It remains. I have provided them with the false trail, they will find this within the week, but the actual Trojan is ready to go to war again as soon as they fly their drones.”
“The false trail should focus their attention on Iran?”
“Yes, Center.”
“Good. The PLA has hopes the Americans will attack Iran over this. That is their ultimate goal. I, however, think they are underestimating the abilities of the NSA to recognize the misdirection. Still, every day Washington’s understanding of China’s involvement in Earth Shadow remains unclear is another day closer our forces are to achieving their goals.”
“Yes, Center.”
“Very well,” said Center, and Zha bowed, then turned to leave the office.
“There is one other item.”
The young man snapped back to attention, facing Dr. Tong. “Sir?”
The older man picked another sheet of paper up off his desk and looked it over for a moment. “It seems, Zha, that you have been under surveillance by the Central Intelligence Agency. There is a spy from their organization here in Hong Kong, and he is watching you. No, don’t worry. You aren’t in trouble. Even with your disguise we knew it was possible that someday you would be recognized. He has your name, and he has your computer handle. Do not use the name FastByte Twenty-two again.”
Zha said, “Yes, Center.”
“But the local CIA man does not seem to have any other concrete details about our operation. CIA leadership has told him you are not a concern of theirs at the moment, although they may notify police to try and bring you back to America.”
The young man with the spiked black hair did not speak now.
After a moment Center waved a hand in the air. “This is something I will bring up with our hosts. They should be taking better care of us. They are making a lot of money from our banking operations, after all.”
“Yes, Center.”
“You should limit your activities around town, and I will insist your guard is doubled.”
Now Zha asked, “What will we do about the Americans?”
It was clear Center had already given this consideration. “For now? Nothing other than warn Fourteen-K to be on the lookout. This is a critical time in Operation Earth Shadow; we can’t do anything overly”—he searched for the word—“kinetic to this operative without receiving too much scrutiny from the Americans.”
Zha nodded.
“We will wait for now. Later, when there is no longer any reason for us to remain in the shadows, we will leave Hong Kong and we will have our friends here take care of Mr. Adam Yao of the CIA.”
THIRTY-ONE
Jack Ryan, Jr., dropped into the chair in his cubicle at eight-thirty a.m., as he did each workday.
He had fallen into a predictable morning routine. Up at five-fifteen, coffee with Melanie, a jog or a workout, a kiss good-bye, and the fifteen-minute drive to work.
Once in the office, normally he would start his day by picking through overnight traffic sent from the CIA down in Langley up to NSA in Fort Meade. But that had changed since the cyberhijacking of three American drones. Now he spent more time watching traffic flow in the opposite direction. The cybersleuths at NSA were delivering daily updates to CIA about their investigation into the attack.
Jack read the information from NSA each morning, hoping the folks over there would get to the bottom of the affair quickly, but the drone hijackings were not something The Campus was working on officially. No, Jack and the other analysts were still digging into the investigation of the Istanbul Drive, but he read every bit of data he could understand from NSA to see where they were with the investigation.
He’d even had a long conversation with his girlfriend about the events. He’d become something of an expert on keeping his tone light and only semi-interested when he discussed Melanie’s work, although in truth he wanted to pick her brain like the highly skilled intelligence analyst he was. She was working on the matter for Mary Pat Foley, but at this point the computer forensic people at NSA were running lead in the investigation.
There was a new development this morning. Hard evidence, as far as Ryan could tell from the data, that Iran was involved in the UAV attack.
“Damn,” said Ryan as he took notes down on a legal pad for his morning meeting. “Dad is going to have a coronary.” Jack’s father had fought it out with the United Islamic Republic several years ago, kicked Tehran’s ass and assassinated its leader. Even though Iraq and Iran were once again two separate nations, Ryan wasn’t surprised to see that the Iranians were still causing trouble.
Ryan figured his dad would take this news out of NSA and start preparing his retaliation.
Jack spent much of the morning reading NSA-to-CIA traffic, but when he’d finished going through all the new data from Fort Meade he quickly thumbed through CIA internal communication. He did not see much here regarding the UAV matter, but he noticed that one of his data-mining targets had received a flag.
Jack clicked on the program to launch it.
Ryan used data-mining software to hunt through CIA traffic for key terms, and daily he got anywhere from ten to one hundred hits on terms such as “Libya JSO operatives,” “computer hacking,” and “assassination,” and as he waited to see what flagged term had just appeared in CIA traffic, he hoped it was something that would help him get the operational stand-down lifted on The Campus.
When the software launched, he blinked his eyes several times in surprise.
The flagged term was “FastByte22.”
“I’ll be damned,” Jack said. The hacker of the Istanbul Drive had shown up in a CIA cable.
Quickly Ryan read the cable. A CIA nonofficial cover operative named Adam Yao, based in Hong Kong, had found an American computer hacker of Chinese descent named Zha Shu Hai living and working in a Hong Kong neighborhood. Zha, Yao explained, may also be using the computer handle FastByte22 in cyberspace, and he is definitely a fugitive from American justice.
Yao pointed out in his cable that the hacker had been a penetration tester for defense contractor General Atomics, and had been imprisoned for offering to sell secrets about drone hacking and classified network penetration to the Chinese.
Jack said it again: “I’ll be damned.”
Adam Yao suggested that CIA send a team to Hong Kong to follow Zha to learn more about his actions, associations, and affiliations in HK to determine if he may have been involved in the recent computer penetration of the Department of Defense’s secure information network.
