Kovalenko looked at the screen for a moment before typing, “No. I do not want to go to America.”
“You will go.” That was all. Just a demand.
Valentin typed “no,” but he did not press the enter key. He just looked at it.
After several seconds he removed the “no” and typed, “How long an assignment?”
“Unknown. Likely less than two months, but all depends on your skill. We feel you will do well.”
Kovalenko spoke aloud in his flat. “Yes. Threats and flattery. Kick an agent in the ass and then give him a blow job.” He knew nothing about Center, but he could easily deduce that the man was a seasoned spymaster.
The Russian typed, “And if I refuse?”
“You will see what will happen to you if you refuse. We suggest you do not refuse.”
FORTY-THREE
The life of a CIA officer in the field had its moments of raw adrenaline and pure excitement, but there existed many more moments like this.
Adam Yao had spent the night in the small waiting room of an auto body shop in Sai Wan on Hong Kong Island, just a few kilometers from his flat. He’d brought his neighbor’s Mitsubishi minivan here the previous evening, and he’d paid the shop owner and his assistant handsomely to work through the night to clean blood off the upholstery, to fill in and buff out the bullet holes, to repaint the vehicle, and to replace the broken windows.
It was seven a.m. now, and they were wrapping up, which meant Adam would, he hoped, just be able to get the minivan back in time to park it in its place in the parking garage before his neighbor came down from his flat to head for work.
None of this was a thrilling postscript to the excitement of the past few days, but these things happened, and Yao could not very well just give the Mitsubishi back to his friend as it was.
His neighbor, a man Adam’s age named Robert Kam, had three kids and owned the minivan out of necessity. He had been driving Adam’s Mercedes for the past two days, and he had not complained one bit. Though Adam’s car was a dozen years old, it was in fine condition, and a hell of a lot better ride than the Mitsubishi Grandis minivan.
The body shop owner tossed Yao the keys, and they inspected it together. Adam was impressed — he could see no evidence of the damage to the car’s body, and they had replaced the side windows with tint that perfectly matched the tint on the windshield and back glass.
Adam followed the manager to the counter and paid his bill. He made sure to get an itemized receipt. It had cost an arm and a leg to get the vehicle repairs expedited, and he’d paid with his own money. He had every intention of sending the invoice to Langley, and to pitch a white-hot fit if he wasn’t reimbursed for this expense.
But he was not going to be sending that invoice in anytime soon. He was still over here, in the field, operating under a strong suspicion that there was a leak in the pipeline of information between Asian-based CIA officers and Langley.
The last thing he wanted to do was send a cable that revealed the fact he had been involved in the shoot-out the night before last.
Adam raced home in the minivan now, checking his watch every minute, hoping he could get the Mitsubishi back in time for his neighbor to find it in his parking place.
Adam’s place was in Soho, a trendy and pricey area of Central on Hong Kong Island built into a steep hillside. Yao could never afford his small but modern flat on his CIA salary, but his place fit his cover as president and owner of a business investigation firm, so he justified it to Langley.
His neighbor Robert, on the other hand, was a banker with HSBC, and he probably raked in four times Adam’s salary, though Adam could imagine that the expense of having three boys would cut into Robert’s discretionary income.
Adam made it back to his building and pulled up the ramp into his parking garage just after seven-thirty a.m., and he made the turn to go find the Mitsubishi’s numbered parking space.
Up ahead of him, at the end of the lane of cars, Adam saw Robert stepping up to Yao’s black Mercedes with his briefcase in his hand and his suit coat over his arm.
He saw Robert open the door of the Mercedes, then sit down, just as Adam pulled Robert’s Mitsubishi into its parking space facing him across the lane.
The CIA officer put the minivan in park as Robert looked up and noticed him. Adam smiled and waved sheepishly, an apologetic grimace for not having the minivan back until now.
Robert smiled.
And then Robert Kam disappeared in a flash of light.
The Mercedes exploded right in front of Adam Yao’s eyes, fire and shrapnel and a shock wave visible as a wall of dust rocked the parking garage, the new windows of the Mitsubishi shattered, and Adam’s head was slammed back against the headrest with the violent blast.
A hundred car alarms of luxury vehicles began whining and screaming and chirping, and pieces of car and concrete from the ceiling of the lot rained down on the minivan, cracking the windshield further and tearing holes in the hood and roof. Adam felt the trickle of blood on his face where auto glass cut into him, and the choking smoke of the explosion in the enclosed parking lot threatened to suffocate him.
Somehow he forced his way out of the damaged Mitsubishi and stumbled toward his Mercedes.
“Robert!” he screamed, and he tripped over an I-beam that had fallen from the ceiling. On his hands and knees he pushed and kicked through the twisted metal of other cars, his head pounding from the concussion he just received and his face dripping blood freely now. “Robert!”
He climbed on the hood of the Mercedes, looked into the burning interior, and he saw the charred remains of Robert Kam in the driver’s seat.
Adam Yao turned away with his hands on his head.
He’d seen Robert with his wife and his three young boys in the elevator or climbing into or out of their minivan a hundred times in the past year. The image of the kids in their soccer uniforms laughing and playing with their father rolled over and over in Yao’s mind as he stumbled and fell away from the burning wreckage of his car, back over the broken concrete and shattered Audis, BMWs, Land Rovers, and other twisted wrecks of hot metal that had been, seconds before, rows of luxury automobiles.
“Robert.” Adam said it this time, he did not shout it. He fell to the ground dazed and bloodied, but he fought his way back to his feet, then wandered through the dust and smoke for a minute, his ringing ears assaulted by the car alarms. Finally he found a clear lane to the exit through the smoke and dust, and he walked to it.
Men and women from the street ran up to him on the drive and tried to help him, but he pushed them away, pointing toward the scene of the blast, and they ran on to look for more survivors.
Adam was on the street a moment later. It felt cool here this morning high on the hill, above the congested streets of Central and the air thick with humidity down by Victoria Harbour. He walked away from his building, down a steep decline; he wiped blood from his face as emergency vehicles raced past him, up the winding roads toward the black smoke now two blocks behind him.
He had no destination, he just walked.
His thoughts were on Robert, his friend, a man just about Adam’s own age who had sat down in Adam’s own car and taken the full brunt of the bomb that had clearly been meant not for Robert Kam but for Adam Yao.
When he was five blocks from home, the ringing in his ears lessened and the pounding from the concussion abated just enough for him to start to put salient thoughts together about his own situation.
The Triads? How the fuck would the Triads know who he was, where he lived? What car he drove? The only people who knew his identity and who knew he was CIA, other than CIA, were the Hendley Associates men and
