The Ghost War

by Alex Berenson

Let China sleep, for when she wakes,

she will shake the world.

—NAPOLEON

Be subtle. Use your spies for every

kind of business.

—SUN TZU, The Art of War

INCHEON, SOUTH KOREA

TED BECK WALKED WEST DOWN THE ROTTING PIER, squinting through his wrap-around sunglasses into the late-afternoon haze. He was alone, and he moved without haste. He'd arrived early, and the boat he'd come to meet was nowhere

in sight.

Finally he reached the end of the dock. Trash from three countries—

China and the two Koreas—bobbed in the dank water, the eastern edge of

the Yellow Sea. The air was heavy with smoke from the ships that docked at

Incheon every day to load up on cars and televisions for the United States.

The sun had baked the fumes into a brown smog that burned Beck's throat

and made him want a cigarette.

He fished a packet of Camel Lights from his pocket and lit up. He'd tried to

quit over the years. But if he was going to sign up for missions like this one, what

was the point? He smoked slowly and when he was done flicked the butt away.

* spun into the harbor, joining the empty beer cans and condom wrappers.

Then he heard the low rumble of a boat engine.

incheon was an industrial port fifty miles west of Seoul and a few miles

south of the Demilitarized Zone, the strip that separated North and South

Korea. During the Korean War, General Douglas MacArthur had landed

here, cutting behind North Korean lines to stop the Communist advance.

A statue of him stood atop a hill not far from this pier. Binoculars in

hand, the general looked out to the Yellow Sea, which separated China and

the Korean Peninsula. This afternoon, Beck would head into those waters

on a mission smaller than MacArthur's assault but just as dangerous.

The rumble of the distant boat grew louder. Beck pulled his wallet out

of his pocket, a battered piece of cowhide that had seen him through thirty-

two countries and three counterinsurgencies. He wasn't carrying any iden-

tification or a passport, just money. About $3,000 in all. And three pictures:

his wife and their two sons. He took out the pictures and kissed them.

Then he flicked his lighter to them and watched them burn, holding

them as long as he could, until the flames singed his fingers and he had to

let them go. Their remnants sank into the water and drifted away.

Beck carried out the same ritual before every mission, for reasons both

practical and superstitious. If he was caught, the photographs would give

his captors a psychological edge. More important, burning the pictures was

his way of accepting the danger of the mission. When he came back, he'd

put fresh copies in his wallet. Until the next time.

THE MESSAGE HAD COME IN twelve days before, to a signals-intelligence sta-

tion at Camp Bonifas, on the edge of the Demilitarized Zone. The six hun-

dred Americans and South Koreans who lived at Bonifas stayed on alert

twenty-four hours a day, knowing they would be the world's tripwire if the

North Korean army came over the DMZ. As they waited, they monitored

the North's airwaves, listening for messages from American spies across the

border.

To the officers at the Bonifas station, the transmission was gibberish, a

twenty-two-second series of Is and 0s. But they knew it meant something, for

it came in on a shortwave frequency reserved for the highest-priority messages.

They forwarded it around the world to Fort Meade, Maryland, the headquar-

ters of the National Security Agency. From Fort Meade, the message, now

decoded, took a shorter trip, across the Potomac to a seventh-floor office at

CIA headquarters.

There it caused Vinny Duto, the director of the CIA, to unleash a few

uncoded curses of his own. For the message was short, simple—and unwel-

come. The Drafter wanted out of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea,

the country-sized prison commonly called North Korea. Immediately if not

sooner.

The Drafter's real name was Sung Kwan. Dr. Sung Kwan. He was a scientist

in North Korea's nuclear program, and by far the most important asset the

United States had in North Korea. “Asset” was a rather clinical way to describe

Sung, who was after all a person, not a spy satellite or a well-placed bug. But

the term was fitting. For Sung had told the United States exactly where the

North Koreans held their nuclear weapons—information that was priceless.

Most analysts outside the CIA thought that North Korea hid its nukes

in caves, hoping to keep them safe from an American airstrike. They were

wrong. In fact, the nukes were kept in a warehouse in Pyongyang, North

Korea's capital. The Dear Leader, Kim Jong II, wanted them close by, protected

by the same army regiment that provided his personal security.

Now the USS Lake Champlain, a guided missile cruiser in the Sea of Japan,

had a dozen Tomahawk missiles targeted on the building. If the order came,

the Tomahawks could turn the warehouse into rubble in minutes. All thanks

to Sung. And now he wanted an emergency exfiltration. No wonder Vinny

Duto was upset.

SUNG WAS A CAREFUL SPY. He had met American agents only three times,

each time in Pakistan, outside the Orwellian gaze of the North Korean

secret police. But now something had gone wrong. In his message, Sung

said he was concerned for his safety and believed he needed to get out of

North Korea. He didn't explain more.

At Langley, the officers on the North Korea desk struggled to make sense of

Sung's message. How did he know he was about to be taken in? Had he been

torogated? Or had he been arrested already, strung up and left to rot? In that

case, the pickup request was nothing more than bait, an SOS from a man who

had already drowned, meant to lure would-be rescuers into an ambush.

The CIA responded to Sung with its own shortwave broadcasts, asking

him for more detail. But as the days ticked by, the listening station at Bonifas

remained quiet.

Finally Duto decided that the agency had to send in a team. Without proof

that the message was a trap, Langley couldn't ignore Sung's plea. The agency

always promised its moles to respond if they asked for help. The vow was

both a moral obligation and a recruiting tool. Moles needed to believe that

their agency handlers shared the risks they took.

Three men were going in. Beck, the leader, was a former Navy Seal, now a

senior officer in the agency's Special Operations Group. He was accompa-

nied by Seth Kang, a Korean-American operative who'd infiltrated North

Korea before, and Choe Gu, a lieutenant in the South Korean navy. All knew

the risks of this mission. But they couldn't say no, not once they understood

the stakes.

THE PHANTOM LOOKED FAST even when it wasn't moving. The boat was matte

black, narrow and long, with an arrow-shaped hull that came to a razor-

sharp tip. It was a cigarette boat, the kind favored by drug runners for quick

trips in calm seas. But in place of an open deck, like most cigarette boats, the

Phantom had a cabin covering its cockpit, topped by a small forest of micro-

wave dishes. Its windows were two-inch-thick bullet-resistant glass. For extra

range the Phantom carried three gas tanks that held six hundred gallons in

all. For extra protection its hull was coated with Kevlar. And for extra speed

it had twin Mercury engines that threw out 650 horsepower apiece. At full

throttle, it ran at seventy knots.

Langley had given Beck carte blanche to decide how to pull off Sung's

extraction. A helicopter was out. The North Koreans operated radar stations

every few miles on the coast. Beck had considered using a fishing trawler

before deciding on the Phantom. The boat was practically invisible on ra-

dar, and surprisingly quiet, thanks to the oversized mufflers on the Mer-

curys. Plus, if the North Koreans were waiting for them, a speedboat would

give them a chance of getting away.

The Phantom was based in Miami, where the CIA and Drug Enforcement

Administration used it to chase drug traffickers around the Caribbean. Three

days before, the agency had chartered a cargo jet and flown the boat in, landing

it at Osan Air Base outside Seoul to avoid pesky Korean customs agents.

Beck and his men had spent two nights jetting around the Yellow Sea to

learn the Phantom's quirks. The boat seemed to want to fly. Jam the throt-

tles and its nose lifted from the water as the engines opened up.

Beck hoped that tonight they wouldn't have to take it anywhere near its

limits.

RIGHT ON TIME, 5:00 p.m., the Phantom curled up to the dock. Beck hopped

on and stepped into the pilothouse, feeling the slight sway of the boat be-

neath his feet. Inside, the air was crisp, and the tinted windows provided

relief from the sun. Beck slipped his sunglasses into his jacket pocket. As he

did, his fingers brushed across the plastic bag he had picked up that morning

from the chief of Seoul station.

Before they left this dock he would have to tell Choe and Kang about

what he was carrying in the bag. They deserved to know. They deserved the

choice.

Kang sat in the navigator's chair, scrolling through satellite photographs

of Point D, the pickup site. North of the DMZ, the Korean Peninsula wid-

ened, jutting west into the Yellow Sea toward China. Point D was located

on a sliver of land a hundred miles northwest of Incheon. The satellite photos

showed unbroken forests on the hills around the inlet. Haeju, the nearest

city of any size, was fifty miles east.

Beck and his men would arrive at the landing spot at 2330 and wait

thirty minutes. If Sung didn't show, they would assume he had changed his

mind—or been killed—and wait for a new message.

“Simple enough,” Kang had said two days before, when Beck explained.

"What could go wrong:

Beck hardly needed to answer. For starters, North Korea claimed control

of the Yellow Sea well past the twelve-mile limit of international law. The

North Korean navy had been known to fire on fishing trawlers unlucky

enough to cross their path. The Phantom would have to dodge them. Then

there were the shore artillery batteries along the coast. And the minefields,

some new, others left over from the Korean War.

Not to mention the possibility that the North Koreans already had

arrested Sung and set them up. With the help of the NSA, Langley had done

what it could to make sure that the Phantom wasn't heading into an am-

bush. For the last week, spy satellites had watched the waters around the

pickup spot, looking for overflights by the North Korean air force or unusual

activity by the navy. So far the satellites hadn't picked anything up.

Meanwhile, Chinook rescue helicopters and F-16 jets were on standby

at Osan and the Navy had moved the USS Decatur, a destroyer, into the

Yellow Sea.

But the helicopters had strict orders against violating North Korean

territory. Pyongyang would view an American incursion into its airspace as

an act of war. And now that the North had nuclear weapons, Washington

couldn't antagonize it needlessly.

But the Phantom was expendable. It didn't carry American markings, or

any markings at all. If North Korea captured it, the United States and South

Korea would disavow knowledge of its existence. Beck and his men would

have to be well outside the twelve-mile limit, fifty or more miles from the North

Korean coast, to expect a rescue. Any closer, and they were on their own.

THE GOOD NEWS WAS THAT they weren't going in blind. The Phantom carried

the newest military and civilian mapping equipment, including a Global

Positioning System receiver capable of pinpointing its location to one meter.

The receiver was synched to software that plotted the topography of every

major body of water in the world. The combination allowed Kang, the

navigator, to track their course in real time.

Meanwhile, a satellite transceiver connected the boat to an encrypted

radar feed from an E-2 Hawkeye circling above the Yellow Sea. Thanks to the

Hawkeye, the Phantom could dodge enemy boats without risking detection

by using its own radar. Beck wanted to do everything possible to stay out

of sight. If they got caught in a firefight, they'd already lost. They couldn't

outshoot the North Korean navy.

And so Beck had dumped the .50-caliber machine gun the Phantom had

carried when it arrived at Osan. In its place, he had added a Zodiac, an in-

flatable flat-bottomed boat with a small outboard motor. The Zodiac was

loaded with fresh water, a first-aid kit, even a spear gun, and hooked to the

hull of the Phantom.

Aside from the raft, Beck, Kang, and Choe hadn't brought much sur-

vival gear. They each had a change of clothes, in case they wound up in the

water. They had personal transceivers, a more powerful version of the ones

used by backcountry skiers, which sent a signal that the Chinooks could

track. But they hadn't bothered with body armor or even helmets. Instead

Kang, who'd grown up in South Florida, was wearing a Miami Dolphins

hat—for luck, he said. They weren't being nonchalant or cynical, Beck

thought. They knew they would get out quickly or not at all.

BECK SAT BESIDE KANG, who was tracking the radar link from the Hawkeye on

a titanium-hulled laptop attached to the Phantom's dash.

“How's it look around the LZ?” The landing zone.

“Quiet.” Kang was thirty-eight, though he looked younger. A tattoo of

the ace of spades covered his right forearm, near the elbow. Beck had won-

dered about the tat for weeks, but he hadn't wanted to ask.

Kang tapped on the laptop's keyboard and the screen lit up with white

blips. “That's Incheon. What a real port looks like.” He clicked on the key-

board again and the screen returned to the dark area farther west. "And

that's North Korea. Dead as a whatever."

"The good citizens of the Democratic People's Republic don't need the

corruptions of the outside world."

“Yeah. Like food.”

“Well, they managed to come up with a nuke,” Beck said. "How's the

boat running?"

“Choe says it looks great,” Kang said. He said something in Korean to

Choe, who nodded vigorously. Beck's Korean was weak, and Choe's English

was worse, so Kang played translator. Choe tapped the throttles forward.

The engines rumbled and the Phantom's cabin began to vibrate.

Beck looked at his watch. 1725. He wanted to reach the landing zone at

exactly 2330. No reason to spend more time in North Korean waters than

necessary. The Yellow Sea was flat in the summer. If they wanted, they could

run safely at sixty knots. But Beck preferred to keep them in the high teens.

The slower pace would save fuel and keep noise to a minimum. They would

leave here in five minutes, give themselves plenty of time.

But before they went... Beck touched the plastic bag in his pocket. He

didn't want to have this conversation, but he saw no other choice. He

motioned to Choe to cut the engine. The Phantom sat beside the dock, bob-

bing on the low waves.

“Before we go—” Beck pulled out the bag. Inside were three glass cap-

sules. “L pills.”

“L pills?” Choe shook his head in confusion.

“L for lethal. Cyanide.” Choe still wasn't getting it, Beck saw. "Poison. If

they catch us. You bite down on the glass." He took a capsule out of the bag

and pretended to put it in his mouth.

Choe slammed a hand against the dash of the boat and stammered angrily

in Korean. Kang put a hand on Choe's arm, but Choe shook him off.

“He says you're crazy,” Kang said. “He says—”

“Never, never,” Choe said in English.

“He says it's a sin.”

“Yes, sin.”

“Fine,” Beck said. "But tell him he knows as well as we do, if we get caught,

no one's coming for us. No prisoner exchange. And the North Koreans, they'll

make it hell. These pills, they're quick, and they work."

Kang translated, rapid-fire.

“One more thing,” Beck said. "Tell him, he should at least carry it. So he

has the choice."

Choe shook his head, fired back in Korean, and turned away.

“He says no,” Kang said. “He says even talking about it is bad luck.”

Beck ran his tongue over his teeth. His mouth felt dirty and he knew he'd

smoked too many Camels this day. “More for me, then. You want yours?”

Kang reached out. Beck shook the little capsule, hardly an inch long,

into his palm.

“Remember to give it back to me when we're done,” Beck said. "You

don't want these lying around the house."

“Roger that.”

Beck stuffed the baggie with the other two pills into his jacket. He

checked the disposable cell phone he'd bought the day before. His station

chief had the number. If Langley had decided to abort the mission, the call

would have come to this phone. But Beck hadn't been expecting a call, and

sure enough, none had come. He looked once more at his watch. 1730.

“Let's go,” he said. “Go west, young man.” Koreans called the Yellow Sea

the West Sea.

“Yes, skipper,” Kang said. “A three-hour tour, right?”

“Something like that.” Beck hummed the famous theme song, hoping to

clear the cabin of the bad karma the pills had brought. "Just sit right back

and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip."

“Think Ginger and Mary Ann will be waiting for us in Pyongyang?”

"Let's hope we never find out. Sing it with me now. 'If not for the cour-

age of the fearless crew, the Minnow would be lost.'"

“'The Minnow would be lost.'”

If Choe got the joke, he didn't smile. He looked away, out the front win-

dow. He pushed forward on the throttle and the Phantom slid away.

DRIHK THIS AND YOU'LL BROW WINES ON YOUR FEET.

John Wells wound down the throttle with his gloved right hand. Be-

neath him the engine groaned and the tachometer rolled toward 8,000 rpm

and the big black bike jumped forward. Wells leaned close to the bike's

angular gas tank to lower his profile against the wind. Still he had to fight to

keep upright. The Honda was a meaty motorcycle, heavier and wider than

a true racing bike.

Wells lifted his head and peeked at the speedometer. Ninety. He'd imagined

faster. Beside him the highway was a blur, the trees beside the road blending

into a single leafy cipher. He was halfway between Washington and Baltimore,

hardly a rural oasis, but at 3:00 a.m. even the interstate was empty. At this speed

the road's curves disappeared in the dark. Interstates were built for bad drivers,

Wells knew, grandmothers heading to the mall, truckers high on meth and

anxious to get home. They were built with soft curves to forgive mistakes.

Even so, Wells was pushing the limits of this highway. Anything could

take him out. A raccoon prospecting for garbage. A car changing lanes and

forgetting to signal. A broken bottle blowing out his front tire, sending him

over the handlebars and into eternity. A stupid, pointless way to go. Yet here

he was in the dark, as he'd been the week before, and the week before that,

on the nights when midnight and 1:00 a.m. came and went and sleep re-

mained foreign territory.

Here the rich, smooth pavement soothed him. The speed made his mind

vanish, leaving him with snatches of half-remembered songs, some old,

some new. The words blended into a strange poetry he could never remem-

ber when the rides were done.

Wells relaxed the throttle and the tach and the speedometer dropped in

unison. At seventy-five the wind dropped slightly and the Springsteen in his

head faded.

From his earlier rides he knew he was approaching the sweet spot.

He slowed to sixty as the road lifted him gently over a low hill. The trees

disappeared. To his right, a shopping center parking lot glowed under over-

sized lights. Behind a blue dumpster, two police cars nuzzled beside each

other, windows down, the cops inside telling each other stories to make the

night pass. Just a few hours to go. It was close to 5:00 a.m., and the sun would

be up soon enough. Wells thought of Exley, alone now in their bed, wonder-

ing when he'd be back, and in how many pieces.

Jennifer Exley, his girlfriend. His boss at the Central Intelligence Agency,

where he worked as a—as a what? Hard to say. Last year he and Exley had

stopped a terrorist attack that would have dwarfed September 11. Now he

was back in Washington, and—how to put this politely?—at loose ends.

Osama bin Laden wasn't happy with him, that much was certain. In an

hourlong communique that even Wells hadn't bothered to sit through, bin

Laden had promised eternal glory to anyone who killed him. "Allah will

smile on the martyr who sends this infidel to hell...." Yadda yadda yadda.

But as a practical matter, Qaeda couldn't touch him, at least in the United

States. So Wells was waiting for a new mission. In truth, though, he couldn't

imagine what that might be. He wasn't built for desk work.

Meanwhile, he burned his days with three-hour-long workouts, and his

nights with these joyless joyrides. Exley hated them, and a week earlier,

Wells had promised her they would end. He'd thought he was telling the

truth. But this morning he hadn't been able to stop himself. Exley hadn't

argued when he rolled out of bed and pulled on his jeans and grabbed his

helmet. No, Exley hadn't argued, hadn't said a word, and Wells supposed he

loved her for her silence.

But not enough to stay.

Now Wells flexed his shoulders and stared down the perfect three-lane void

ahead. This time when he twisted the throttle he didn't hesitate but instead

pulled back as far as he could. The bike surged, and suddenly Wells heard

Just don't play with me 'cause you're playing with fire....

Not the confident strut of Mick Jagger but the bleak, reedy tones of

Johnny Thunder.

The engine roared and the speedometer needle jumped from fifty-five

to eighty-five and kept going. When it topped one hundred, Wells flattened

himself on the gas tank and hung on. For dear life, he thought. Though

anyone watching might wonder exactly what those words meant to him.

And then everything faded but the wind and the road, the bike jolting off

every crease, its wheels caressing the highway, and Springsteen's unmistak-

able voice in his ears:

Drink this and you'll grow wings on your feet.

Wells glimpsed the speedometer, its white needle past 120, its tip quiver-

ing. It maxed out at 125, with the tach in the red zone at 9,000 revolutions

per minute. He had never pushed the bike so far. He laid off the throttle and

watched himself come back to earth.

A few seconds later, he heard the siren screaming. The lights pulsed red-

blue-red-blue in his mirrors, half a mile behind but gaining fast.

He flexed his hand around the throttle. Part of him wanted to wind it

down and take off again. He doubted the trooper could match his speed. He

could probably get to the next exit and disappear.

But Wells didn't want to tangle this cop in whatever game he was playing

with God, or himself, or the patron saints of the interstate. Instead of taking

off, he flicked on his turn signal—see, Officer, I'm careful—and eased the

Honda to a stop in the breakdown lane. As he waited, he patted the bike's

gas tank as if it were a horse that had just won the Kentucky Derby. Despite

tue trouble he was facing, an absurd pride filled him at the speed the

machine had achieved.

The Crown Victoria screeched to a stop behind him, its headlights

glaring-

“Turn off your vehicle, sir. Now!” Underneath the cruiser's scratchy

sneakers, Wells picked up a trace of nervousness. This trooper was probably

iust out of the academy, stuck on the overnight shift, jumpy about pulling

over a triple-digit speeder with no backup. Wells pulled the little black key

from the ignition and dropped it on the cracked pavement.

“Off the bike. Now.”

Wells wondered if Exley would appreciate the irony of his being shot in

a traffic stop after getting the bike to 125 without a scratch. Probably not.

The statie crouched behind the door of his cruiser, hand on the butt of his

pistol. He was young, Wells saw. Maybe twenty. He had a thick, square face,

but even so he hadn't lost all his baby fat. "Don't look at me, sir! Look

straight ahead!"

Wells looked straight ahead, wondering why he always got sideways with

the cops.

“Helmet on the ground.”

Wells pulled off his helmet. His eyes burned from the wind. Next time

he'd wear goggles under the face plate. Next time?

“You have a wallet? Identification?”

“Yes, Officer.”

“In your pants or your jacket?”

“Pants.”

Take it out. Slowly." Wells pulled off his gloves and fished at his wallet.

Put it on the ground and kick it to me with your foot."

“Kick it with my foot? Not my hand?”

You're talking back, asshole?" The trooper no longer sounded scared,

just pissed. “I have you on the gun at one eighteen.”

Wells dropped his wallet on the ground, and kicked it toward the trooper.

ie kid was about to get the surprise of his life, he thought.

Lean forward and put your hands on the bike."

The metal of the gas tank was cool under his fingers.

“Do not, don't, move.” The statie grabbed the wallet, flipped it open.

“Mr. Wick? James Wick? That your name?”

“Not exactly, no, Officer.” Might as well tell the kid. When he got brought

in, the truth would come out anyway.

“You're telling me your license is fake ?”

“There's an ID card inside.”

A few seconds later: “Is this real? Is that you?”

“I'd be awful dumb to lie about it.”

“Turn towards me. Slowly.” The officer looked at the CIA identification

card in his hand—the one with Wells's real name on it—then at Wells. "You

expect me to believe this crap?"

Then Wells heard the faint thump of a helicopter's blades. A few seconds

later, the trooper heard it too. Together they looked up as the helicopter

closed on them, dropping through the night, landing on the side of the

highway, a black two-man bird with a long narrow cockpit. The passenger

door opened and a man Wells had never seen before stepped out.

The trooper's mouth dropped open. Wells was just as shocked. The agency

had been watching him? Watching these rides? Did he have no privacy left?

“Officer,” the man shouted over the whirr of the rotors, "do you know

who this man is?"

The trooper holstered his pistol. "Well, he said—I mean, he said—but I

wasn't sure—"

"You believe him now? Or do I have to get somebody with stars on his

collar to talk to you?"

“Yes. I mean no. I mean yes, I believe him.”

Without another word, the man walked back to the helicopter. As it rose

off the side of the highway, the trooper rubbed his eyes like a kid waking up

from a dream.

“Damn.” The statie shoved the identification card into the wallet and

tossed it back to Wells. “I'm sorry, Mr. Wells.”

"You don't have to apologize. Pulling rank on you like that was a real

jerk move."

"No, no. If I'd known it was you, I never would have pulled you over.

That's the absolute truth." The officer stepped over to him and extended his

hand. He didn't seem bothered at all by what had just happened.

Can't even get arrested, Wells thought. When did I turn into such a saint?

But he knew exactly when. The moment he shot Omar Khadri in Times

Square. Wells wasn't sorry for what he'd done. If he had a hundred more

chances to kill Khadri, he'd take them all. But he was sick of being a hero.

He shook the officer's hand, feeling the sweat on the young man's palm.

“Won't you get in trouble, letting me go?”

"Radar gun's been on the fritz all week. Says one eighteen when it means

fifty-eight.“ The trooper turned back to his car, then stopped. ”Be careful

out there, Mr. Wells. We need you safe."

“You too, Officer. Lot of crazy drivers out there.” Wells meant it ironically—

crazy like me—but the trooper didn't laugh. Wells thought sometimes that

no one except Exley would ever laugh at him to his face again, no matter

how much he deserved it. No one laughed at heroes. How could he trust a

world that took him so seriously?

The trooper returned to his sedan. Wells got back on his bike. At the next

exit he turned back to Washington. He kept the Honda at an even sixty-five

the whole way home.

WHEN HE GOT BACK to Logan Circle the black Lincoln sedans with tinted

windows were waiting, one on Thirteenth and the other on N. Two men in

each, their engines running. As always. Security guards from Langley, there

to watch out for him. And watch him, evidently. Wells hadn't liked having

them around before tonight. He liked them even less now. But Vinny Duto

had insisted. If nothing else, they would keep the other residents in the

building safe, Duto said. He promised that the guards wouldn't follow Wells

or Exley without their permission. Until tonight, they seemed to have kept

their side of the bargain.

Wells parked his bike in the building's garage and went upstairs. As quietly

as he could, he opened the door to Exley's apartment. Their apartment, he

supposed, though he had trouble thinking of it that way. Down the narrow

hall filled with black-and-white pictures of Exley's kids, past the little open

kitchen. His boots smelled of grit and oil and the highway. He tugged them

off. Exley's looked child-sized next to them.

“Jennifer?” he murmured. No answer. She was asleep, or more likely too

angry with him to answer.

Exley's old Persian rug scratched his toes as he walked toward the bed-

room. She'd picked up the carpet during her posting in Pakistan. It was one

of the few possessions she really cared about, its reds faded but the weave

still tight. The apartment had only three rooms—this living room, their

bedroom, and a spare bedroom where Jessica, Exley's daughter, slept when

the kids stayed over.

Exley and Wells had talked about finding something bigger, maybe a row

house on Capitol Hill so her kids could have their own bedrooms. David,

Exley's son, was ten, too old to sleep on the lumpy couch in the living room.

Maybe someplace with a garden for Wells to weed and plant. Someplace

they could keep a Lab, a big happy mutt that would slobber all over the

house. They had even called a broker, gone to a few open houses. But every-

thing they saw was too expensive, or too run-down, or too big, or small,

or ... The truth was that the house-hunting filled Wells with dread. He had

run so long that he could hardly imagine being penned in by four walls and

a roof.

Left unsaid was the possibility that the new house might be a place for

him and Exley to have a baby of their own. Wells didn't know how he felt

about becoming a father, though somehow it seemed less scary than buying

a house. He didn't even know if Exley could get pregnant. She was on the

wrong side of forty, but women that age had babies these days. Didn't

they?

He stepped into her—their—bedroom. The lights were out, but an info-

mercial for an all-in-one barbecue grill played silently on the little television

on her desk. Outside, the sky was just starting to lighten.

“Jenny? You awake? You won't believe what happened tonight.” Even as

he said the words, he wondered if he should tell her. He didn't want to admit

how fast he was going. Maybe he'd just have to take this up with Duto himself,

though he hated visiting the seventh floor of the headquarters building,

where Duto had his offices.

Exley stayed silent as he turned off the television, kissed her forehead,

smelling the lemon scent of her face wash. He could tell from her uneven

breathing that she was awake, but if she didn't want to talk he didn't plan to

push. He put the helmet on the nightstand and pulled off his jacket.

In one quick move she rolled over, grabbed the helmet, and threw it at

him. But Wells had played linebacker in college and still had a football play-

er's reflexes. He caught it easily and put it on her desk.

“Jenny, I'm sorry. I know I said I wouldn't, but I really needed it tonight.”

“Where'd you go?”

“Up 95, towards Baltimore.”

“How fast?”

"I don't know, Seventy, seventy-five miles an hour. Nothing I can't

handle."

“John. Please. Shafer's had a helicopter on you the last couple weeks.”

Ellis Shafer, their boss at the agency.

“Shafer what?” So that's who'd been watching him tonight. "Did Duto

put him up to it?"

"Haven't you figured out yet that Vinny Duto couldn't care less about

you, John? Shafer did it because J asked him to. He said they clocked you at a

hundred ten. I wasn't going to tell you, but that's why I asked you to stop."

“Jenny—” He guessed he wouldn't be talking to Duto after all. A small

consolation.

“I swear, John, I wish you were out drinking, screwing somebody else.”

Her voice broke. "Anything but this. Every time you leave I think you're not

coming back." He sat beside her on the bed and put his hand on her hip, but

she pulled away. “Do you even care if you live or die, John?”

“Of course.” Wells tried to ignore the fact that he'd asked himself the

same question a few minutes before, with a less certain answer.

“Then why don't you act like it?” She searched his face with her fierce

blue eyes. He looked away first, down to her breasts, their tops striated with

tiny white stretch marks. Her milky white thighs. And the scar above the

knee where the bullet had hit.

“Sometimes I forget how beautiful you are,” he said.

He heard a police siren whistling to the northeast, one of the precincts

of Washington that hadn't gentrified. The siren wasn't as close as it sounded,

he knew. Wells had spent a decade away from America, living undercover as

an al Qaeda guerrilla, slowly ingratiating himself with the group. He'd picked

up more than a few survival tricks along the way, including the knowledge

that gunshots and sirens carried much farther at night than during the day.

Just another bit of wisdom that no longer did him much good.

“Your hand,” she said. He looked down. His left hand was trembling on

his jeans. She caressed it in hers until the shaking stopped.

“I don't know what I'm doing anymore,” he said. For a while they were

silent. She squeezed his hand and he found his voice again. "You know, I

thought when I woke up in the hospital and saw you there that it would all

be okay. That I was out on the other side. And now ..." In the distance a

second siren rang out, then a third. Trouble in the night.

“Even Utah isn't Utah,” Exley said. He looked at her questioningly.

"When I was a kid, I used to love to ski. Before everything went bad with my

family.“ She slipped a hand around his shoulder. ”Nothing scared me.

Bumps, steeps, any of it. I didn't want to hit puberty because I thought having

a chest would mess up my balance. And it did."

She arched her back, jokingly thrusting out her breasts, and despite his

gloom Wells felt himself stir. He imagined her, a narrow boyish body cut-

ting down the mountain, her ponytail tucked away. "They must have been

surprised when they saw you were a girl."

"Mainly we went to Tahoe. We did it on the cheap, stayed in motels,

brought sandwiches to the mountain. The most fun I remember having as

a kid. But I always wanted to go to Utah.“ She ran a hand down his arm. ”My

dad didn't want to. Said we didn't have the money. But I pestered him and

finally, when I was twelve, we flew to Salt Lake City. Me, my brother, my

mom and dad. The whole happy family. My mom didn't ski much, but she

always came."

“She was afraid to leave him alone,” Wells said. “Poor Exley.” He kissed

her neck softly.

“Lots of people have alcoholic dads.”

Yeah, but you're the one I love, he thought. And didn't say, though he

didn't know quite why.

Outside the sirens faded. Wells walked to the window, looked at the

agency's guards in the Crown Victorias. He turned back to the bed. Exley

had her legs folded under herself kittenishly now.

“You listening, John?”

He laid a hand on her knee.

"Anyway. It's snowing when we get to Utah. Snows all night. The next

morning we drive up to Alta. I'm so excited. The best skiing in the world.

And we get there, we buy our tickets. We get on the lift ..."

He tried to slide his hand between her legs, but she squeezed them tight.

“We get to the top. And we ski down.”

“So you ski down? That's the story? How was it?”

"Great. But, you know. It was skiing, like Tahoe. Just skiing. And I kept

thinking that it was costing money we didn't have, and I should have loved

it, not just liked it. So somehow I was disappointed, even though I knew I

shouldn't be. I didn't say anything. But my dad, he figured it out. Because at

the end of the day, he said to me, 'Even Utah isn't Utah, huh?'" She paused,

then continued. "There's no magic bullet. Nobody in the world will blame

you for feeling like hell, needing time to put yourself back together. But

this—you're not being fair to yourself. Or me."

He knew she was right. But he wanted to ask her, how long until I don't

dream about tearing men apart, gutting them like fish? How long until I

sleep eight hours at a stretch? Six? Four? Until I can talk about what I've

seen without wanting to tear up a room?

“You're not crazy, John,” she said. "You don't have to talk to me if you

don't want to. People specialize in this stuff."

“A shrink?”

“They're professionals.” The desperation in her voice disturbed Wells more

than anything she'd said, gave him a clue how hard he'd made her life.

“I'll be okay. I just need to figure out what's next. I promise.” He felt

himself close up again. Good.

“Or me. You can talk to me if you want.”

“I will. But not now.” Instead he reached for her. She pushed him away,

but just for a moment. And for a little while they thought only of each

other.

THE NORTH KOREAN SHORELINE WAS JUST A MILE AWAY, but Beck hardly would

have known if not for the blue line on the laptop screen that marked the

coast. Thick clouds blotted out the stars, and even through his night-vision

binoculars Beck saw no buildings, roads, or cars. No signs of life at all. Just

an inky darkness stretching to eternity.

The Phantom crept in at ten knots an hour, its twin engines rumbling

quietly Beck, Choe, and Kang had traveled 120 miles west, past the tip

of the North Korean coast. Now they were swinging back east-northeast

toward Point D. With any luck the Drafter, and not the North Korean army,

would be waiting.

Beck's Timex glowed in the night, its blue numbers telling him they were

nght on time: 2320. The trip had been quiet so far, their biggest excitement

coming in Incheon harbor a few minutes after they left. Choe cut too close

to a containership, and the Phantom hit the boat's giant wake. It sprang out

of the water like a forty-five-foot-long Jet-Ski and thudded down, sending

Beck sprawling. He wasn't sure, but he thought Choe had hit the wave on

Purpose, revenge for Beck's offer of the cyanide pills.

They'd run at twenty knots most of the way, using the radar feed from

the Hawkeye overhead to dodge the handful of ships along the coast. The

dark sky had helped too. Beck had seen only two boats in the last hour, and

neither had spotted the Phantom.

They closed on the coast, barely five hundred yards away now. Through

his binoculars Beck saw a broken rock wall, its stones crumbling and scat-

tered. But still no signs of life.

“Stop,” he said. The engines quieted and the boat rocked gently on the

sea's dull waves. The lights mounted in the pilothouse filled the cabin with

a dim blue-black glow.

“Depth?” Beck said to Kang.

“Twenty-four feet. Lucky we ride high. This thing's just a big lake.” In-

deed, the Yellow Sea was exceptionally shallow. It got its name from China's

Yellow River, which filled it with mountains of silt. Its average depth was

less than 150 feet.

“Anything in our way?”

“Smooth the whole way in.”

From here, the Phantom could reach shore in thirty seconds, but Beck

didn't want to move until he knew what awaited them. A couple of miles

east, a cluster of lights, seemingly placed at random, glowed weakly. Through

his night-vision binoculars, Beck looked west and east as far as he could,

then tried again with his thermal scope. He saw nothing but the lights and

the dying stone wall.

“Cut the engines,” he said.

The twin Mercurys stopped. In the hush that followed Beck heard only

the breathing of the men around him, the listless slap of the waves, the faint

beeping of the Phantom's radar. There were birds and animals and people

too in the hills up ahead. Had to be. But they were silent as ghosts.

“Must be what the moon is like,” Kang said.

“Imagine living here.”

A whistle sounded to the north, eerie and distant. Choe said something

in Korean.

“He says it's a steam train,” Kang said. "The North Koreans still run coal

locomotives."

The whistle faded. Beck signaled to Choe to turn the engines back on

and a moment later heard their reassuring rumble.

“Bet you can pick up waterfront property cheap around here.”

“Seth, was it this dark when you came over here before?”

“Once yes, once no. You're figuring—”

“Not figuring anything yet.”

An alarm on Kang's laptop beeped. He tapped a few keys and the moni-

tor opened up. “Well, this isn't good. Two boats, coming around Kudol”—

a spit of land about ten miles southeast. "They were hanging close to the

coast before, so the Hawkeye didn't pick them up."

“How fast?”

“Twenty, maybe twenty-five knots.”

“Aiming for us.”

“Looks that way.” The laptop beeped again. “More bad news.” Kang

pointed to the screen. Another white blip was moving toward the Phantom,

this one from the southwest. "He was stopped in open water, maybe twenty-

five miles out. I had him figured for a fishing trawler. Now he's moving our

way.“ The screen beeped again. ”This one too, straight in from the west."

“They're setting up a cordon?”

“Looks that way.”

“Can we outrun it?”

“Shouldn't be a problem. For a few minutes.”

Beck checked his watch. 2330. No way was he waiting a half-hour. He

would give the Drafter ten minutes, no more. He had been in tight spots

before. During the first Gulf War, his SEAL team had landed in Kuwait City

to sabotage a Republican Guard tank brigade. In the Philippines, he'd

helped fight an ugly counterinsurgency against the Muslim guerrillas of the

Jemaah Islamiyah.

But this mission felt different, not like a fight at all, more like they were

°ait dangled before a hungry animal. He was sure they'd been set up. Though

all this activity could still be a coincidence, North Koreans out on pleasure

cruises in the middle of the night.

Yeah, right.

POINT D WAS A SMALL INLET formed by a creek that flowed into the Yellow Sea

from the northeast. A good spot for a pickup, easy to find in satellite photo-

graphs. And with the tide high, the Phantom could ride in nearly all the way

to the beach.

“Ted,” Kang said urgently, “these just popped.” He pointed at two yellow

blips on the radar screen. “Jets,” Kang said. "At three thousand feet. Just

under the cloud cover. Running at three hundred fifty knots."

“How far?”

“Sixty kilometers. Six, seven minutes, give or take.”

Choe sputtered in Korean and pointed at the shore. A man in a baggy

nylon jacket had stepped out of the woods, walking strangely, almost limp-

ing. He raised a pair of binoculars and slowly scanned the water. As he spot-

ted the Phantom, he waved slowly, metronomically. A backpack was slung

across his shoulders.

“Well, hello, soldier,” Kang said.

Beck stared at the man through his own binoculars, trying to decide if

he was looking at Sung Kwan, the Drafter. The CIA had secretly taken long-

lens photographs of Sung at its meetings with him. Twelve hours before, in

a secure room in the American embassy in Seoul, Beck had stared at those

pictures, trying to memorize Sung's face.

But Sung had few distinguishing characteristics. He was short and squat,

like many Koreans, and wore the oversized glasses that Korean and Chinese

men favored. His most notable feature was a birthmark on his left cheek.

Beck peered through his own binoculars, looking for the birthmark. He

thought he saw a smudge on the man's cheek, but couldn't be sure. Too bad

Sung wasn't seven feet tall or missing an arm.

“Bring us in,” Beck said to Choe. “But slow. And be ready to take off.”

“Slow,” Choe said. He eased the throttle forward. They were two hun-

dred yards from shore, then one hundred, and through his binoculars Beck

could clearly see the birthmark.

“That's him,” Beck said. He waited for the trap to spring, for North

Korean soldiers to pour out of the trees. But the woods stayed silent. Sixty

yards out, the depth finder beeped.

“Any closer and we beach,” Kang said.

Choe was already swinging the Phantom around. Beck stepped out the

back of the pilothouse and waved for Sung to swim out to the boat.

The North Korean limped into the sea. Halfway out, with the water at

his shoulders, he began to yell.

“He can't swim,” Kang said.

"He can't swim? Maybe he should have thought of that before he chose

this godforsaken beach for his pickup." Beck took one more look at the

shore. Still silent. “I guess this is why I get the big bucks.”

Beck pulled off his clothes and his pistol and put them in a pile and dove

off the Phantom into the cool salty water. He swam underwater as long as

he could, coming up for air a few feet from Sung. He reached Sung and

wrapped his arms under Sung's shoulders, the grip lifeguards used to save

drowning swimmers. Sung's body was flabby in his hands.

Panic filled Sung's face and he struggled, from fear or surprise or both,

his arms swinging wildly. But Beck overcame his thrashing and dragged

him back to the Phantom, where Kang pulled him up.

“60,” BECKYELLED as soon as he'd hoisted himself out.

Choe pushed the throttle forward and the boat took off, swinging hard

right, throwing Beck against the pilothouse wall.

“Dammit, Choe.”

Choe let up on the throttle and the Phantom straightened out. They

headed southwest, skimming the waves at fifty-five knots.

“You all right?” Kang said.

“Fine.” Beck's forehead was throbbing, but he counted himself lucky.

They were halfway home. Sung chittered at them in Korean.

“He says he's sorry he doesn't know how to swim,” Kang said.

“Me too.” Beck flipped on the pilothouse lights. The birthmark was

unmistakable.

“Calm down,” he said to Sung in Korean. “You're safe.” He pushed Sung

onto a bench at the back of the cabin. “Just sit.”

Beck grabbed dry clothes from his bag, pulled them on, tucked his pistol

into his pants. He had a lot of questions for Sung, but they would have to

wait until the Phantom got into international waters. “Run a simulation,”

he said to Kang.

Kang tapped on his keyboard, projecting the Phantom's position and

those of the enemy boats for the next half-hour, assuming both sides stayed

on their current tracks.

“On this heading, the boat to the west is our biggest problem,” he said.

“We'll make contact in roughly five minutes.”

“How about the jets?”

"One's heading straight for us. The other west in case we run for the

open sea. And there's this." Kang pointed at two more yellow blips moving

toward them. "Those are airborne, less than a thousand feet, a hundred fifty

knots."

“Helicopters,” Beck said. “They're pulling out all the stops.”

“Anxious to make our acquaintance.”

Beck examined the screen. None of the enemy boats or planes were headed

directly for the Phantom. “Doesn't look like they have a fix on us, though.”

“They need visual contact. Radar's their big weakness.”

“So we hope,” Beck said. The helicopters were the real problem, he

thought. The boats couldn't catch them, and the jets couldn't fly low or slow

enough to spot them. But helicopters could. Which meant that—

“Tell Choe not to follow the coast,” Beck said. "I want him to run south-

west. Two hundred fifteen degrees." Into the open water of the Yellow Sea.

They'd still have to get by at least one boat, but at least they'd be separating

from the helicopters.

The North Koreans had obviously chased Sung toward the pickup

point. But they hadn't expected a speedboat, Beck thought. Without a ra-

dar fix, they were tightening the net methodically, coming from all direc-

tions, hoping to get a visual fix on the Phantom and blast it out of the

water.

But the North Koreans didn't know how fast the Phantom could run.

The speedboat had geometry on its side. Only one enemy cutter stood

between it and the open sea. And with each mile the Phantom ran, the

search area widened, making it harder to find. In forty-five minutes they'd

be in international waters, with F- 16s, the world's best babysitters, watching

over them.

“And tell him to stay straight, max us out,” Beck said to Kang. Best to get

out of danger as fast as possible. Their speed would save them. Kang said

something to Choe, and suddenly the Phantom was flying across the flat sea

at seventy-five knots, kicking up long, low waves of foam. Despite the dan-

ger, Beck couldn't help but be amazed by the boat. Under other circum-

stances he would have liked to sit beside Choe and watch the ocean roll by,

Corona in hand.

But not tonight. Even before it reached the enemy cutter, the Phantom

had to run another obstacle: two small islands five miles off the coast,

separated by a three-mile-wide channel. Both islands had naval stations,

according to the satellite photos.

Overhead, the clouds were lifting slightly and the night sky was bright-

ening, showing a sliver of moon, not what Beck wanted. He scanned the

islands. Changnin, to the east, was silent, and for a moment he wondered if

the satellites were wrong. Then, to the west, a stream of red tracers lit the

night. The bullets landed far short of the Phantom, but they meant trouble

nonetheless. Whoever was on that island had seen the boat pass.

As Changnin disappeared behind them, Beck heard the faint whine of

jet engines. “How close?” he said to Kang.

At least five minutes out."

“And the cutter?”

“We'll cross him in three minutes.”

“Range?”

“A thousand meters, give or take.”

Beck could have adjusted their heading to give them more room around

the enemy boat. But running straight ahead meant that the two boats would

cross each other for only a few seconds, giving the enemy ship little chance

to fix its guns on the Phantom.

In the corner, Sung huddled in his chair, arms folded, clothes soaked,

thin black hair matted against his skull. Beck wondered what was wrong

with him. He didn't look like a man who had just escaped the world's most

repressive regime. Maybe he was afraid of what would happen to his family.

According to his dossier, he was married and had two teenage sons.

“You're safe now,” Beck said in his halting Korean.

Sung just groaned and shook his head. Beck turned to Kang. "We've got

to find out what's wrong with him."

“Right now we've got bigger problems,” Kang said. "That fighter's

closing."

Through the cabin's tinted windows Beck saw the North Korean jet,

its running lights blinking in the night. The fighter was moving south-

southwest, a couple of miles behind them but closing, the screech of its

engines intensifying by the second.

"Either he's got X-ray vision or they bought new radar when we weren't

looking," Beck said. The jet banked steeply, looking for an angle to fire.

“He's under two thousand meters,” Kang said. "Fifteen hundred ... one

thousand..."

The fighter had stubby wings high on its fuselage and eight rocket pods

under its wings. A Russian-made Su-25, a single-seat jet introduced in the

1980s. Obsolete by Western standards but still plenty lethal.

The Phantom shook as the Su-25 screamed by and unleashed a pair of

rockets. The surfboard-sized missiles crashed into the water behind the

boat, the force of their explosions sending five-foot-high waves across the

sea. The Phantom jumped out of the water and crashed down, jumped and

crashed, slap-slap-slap, until the waves finally subsided. Beck put a hand

against the cabin wall and stayed upright this time.

The noise of the jet faded as the fighter prepared to swing around for

ther pass. Then the North Korean cutter appeared out of the darkness,

10 v black boat with heavy machine guns mounted behind the cabin. The

iter's twin spotlights swung left and right, searching for the Phantom,

nding it and for a moment filling the pilothouse with a white light,

° Lcable and all-knowing. As if God himself were watching.

"PIn the sudden brightness, Beck saw Sung trembling in his chair. The

cutter>s machine guns opened up, their rounds thunking into the Phantom's

tall and the glass of the pilothouse. The windows shook and began to crack,

Jng white scars cutting through the clear plastic. So much for running

straight at the enemy, Beck thought. Time for Plan B.

“Choe! Hard right! Heading two-seventy! Now!”

Beck threw Sung down and lay on top of him and waited for the Phantom's

twin engines to get them out of trouble. Choe swung the boat west, eas-

ing off the throttle as he did, just enough that the boat wouldn't tip. Beck

closed his eyes and heard windows shatter as shards of fiberglass cut into

his neck.

THE GUNS FADED as the Phantom pulled away. Beck stood and shook plastic

shards off his clothes. The windows at the back of the cabin had been partly

shot through. Even supposedly bulletproof glass couldn't hold up to close-

in machine-gun fire. The roar of the engines filled the pilothouse.

Boom! Sparks flew from the engines. The cabin shook and the boat's

nose lifted out of the water. The Phantom slowed and dragged right. Choe

laid off the throttle. “Engine! Engine!” he yelled in English, before switching

to Korean.

“He says we lost one of the Mercurys and the other one is light on oil,”

Kang told Beck a few seconds later. "We can't do better than thirty-three

knots and we'll be better off at twenty-five."

Under other circumstances, thirty-three knots, or even twenty-five,

would have been fine. Not tonight, Beck thought.

How come they're finding us so easily?" Kang looked at Sung.

“I was wondering that too.” Beck grabbed Sung's backpack. Sung tried to

stop him, but Beck lashed him, a hard flat chop that snapped the North

Korean's head sideways and sent him sprawling. Beck flipped over the pack.

A pair of threadbare nylon pants, a thin cotton shirt, cheap black shoes, all

drenched—

And, inside a waterproof bag, a plastic box, twelve inches by eight by

four, three lights blinking red and green on its top. A transponder, broad-

casting the Phantom's location to every North Korean ship and jet within

twenty miles. The man they'd come to rescue had betrayed them.

TYSONS CORNER, VIRGINIA

THE ELEVATOR'S DINGY STEEL DOORS GROANED OPEN. Exley stepped onto a

threadbare brown carpet that probably hadn't been vacuumed since Sad-

dam Hussein was alive. At the end of the corridor a discreet brass nameplate

reading “Okay Enterprises” marked a black door. Exley touched her thumb

to a security reader, and a deadbolt lock slid back with a heavy thunk.

The welcome scent of fresh coffee filled her nostrils as the door closed

behind her. The office that greeted her was as absurdly ordinary as a den-

tist's waiting room. Motivational posters and Thomas Kinkade lithographs

covered the walls. Narrow wooden chairs sat next to a table of old maga-

zines for visitors to thumb through. But no one ever read the magazines. No

one ever visited Okay Enterprises.

“Mornin', Ms. Exley.”

“Mornin', Tim.” Tim was a solidly built man in his late forties. Today, as

every day, he wore pressed khakis and a sport coat to hide his shoulder hol-

ster. He rarely spoke. Shafer, Exley's boss, swore by him. Beside his desk, the

coffeemaker burbled happily.

“Guess I got here just in time.”

“Brewed it figuring you were coming.” Tim's accent was unplaceable, some-

times vaguely Southern, sometimes flatter, more Midwestern. He was already

tipping steaming coffee into a plastic mug, camouflage print with "Operation

Iraqi Freedom" stamped in white on the side. Shafer had bought the mugs

at an Army-Navy surplus store. They'd originally cost $9.99 each but were

marked down to a dollar. “Pretty good deal,” Shafer had said. "I wanted some

with Rumsfeld's face on the side, but I guess those got pulped a long time ago."

Exley took the mug gratefully. “Thanks. Have a nice weekend?”

“Mmm-hmm.” He turned back to the Post on his desk.

I'll take that as a yes, Exley thought. She and Wells had wondered about

Tim's personal life ever since Shafer brought him in. Was he married, di-

vorced, a bigamist, gay? Did he live near the office? Did he spend weekends

on Jupiter and come to Earth via warp drive every Monday morning? She'd

never know. She wasn't even sure that “Tim” was Tim's real name. Shafer,

who did, wasn't telling.

“Tim's a very private person,” Shafer said when she asked. "I'm sure you

and John can respect that." And he'd smiled his Cheshire Cat smile. But

Shafer had given her one crumb. Tim had never worked for the agency.

TIM'S PEDIGREE, OR LACK THEREOF, was no accident. These scruffy offices

reflected the unique and uneasy position that Wells, Exley, and Shafer

occupied at the CIA. They still spent about half their time at the Langley

campus, a few miles down the road. But Shafer intentionally kept this space

as far outside the agency's orbit as he could.

The agency paid for the suite, and CIA electronics countermeasures

teams swept it for bugs every month. What Shafer didn't tell them was that

he had his own contractors sweeping the place as well, looking for devices

that the agency might have missed—or planted. And instead of having the

agency's guards provide security, Shafer depended on Tim.

Naturally, Vinny Duto hated the arrangement. He had every right to

be unhappy, Exley thought. Shafer was breaking agency regulations, and a

dozen laws besides. But after what had happened in New York the year

before, Wells, Exley, and Shafer were untouchable.

Of course, the aftermath of the mayhem in Times Square had been

messy. Both Wells and Exley had been shot along the way and needed

months to recover. And Wells faced another burden. The agency had never

disclosed Exley's identity, but Wells's name had come out, though not his

picture or biographical details. The agency had offered to announce to the

world that Wells had died, and even give him a fake funeral. But Wells had

rejected that idea, telling Exley that he didn't want to have to explain to

Evan, his son from his first marriage, that he was alive but pretending to be

dead. Anyway the plan wouldn't work, he said. Too many people, both in-

side and outside the agency, knew he'd survived. Instead he had to cope

with moments like the one with the trooper.

For everyday life, the agency had given Wells a new identity, complete

with driver's license, passport, and credit cards. To confuse anyone who was

looking for him, Langley had created fake websites that claimed to have the

truth about him but were filled with disinformation. A few said Wells had

died and was buried under a fake name at Arlington. Others claimed that

“John Wells” didn't exist at all and that the attack he'd stopped was a CIA

plot to make the War on Terror seem relevant. Still others said he'd retired

from the agency and was living under a CIA protection program.

Fortunately, Wells couldn't be easily traced. Thousands of men shared

his name, and the only pictures of him in circulation were twenty years old.

But he couldn't be completely disguised either. Too many officers at Langley

knew him. So did his buddies from the Army and friends from high school

and college. Enough fragments about his life were floating around the In-

ternet that a steady stream of tourists now visited his childhood home in

Montana.

Meanwhile, Duto and Wells circled each other warily. They'd never got-

ten along, and even the fact that Wells had stopped the New York attack

didn't end that hostility. Wells was uncontrollable, the antibureaucrat. What

he'd done in Times Square made the rest of the agency look incompetent,

almost irrelevant. But Duto, no fool, knew that he couldn't attack Wells

directly. So he'd gone the other way, giving Wells, Exley, and Shafer free rein.

They had Top Secret/SCI/All Access clearances, the same as Duto's own.

They could crash any meeting, read any analysis, get the details of any

operation they wanted.

At the same time, Duto had put them outside the agency's usual chain of

command. They reported directly to him, and he'd made clear that he didn't

plan to take responsibility for their mistakes. In a way, they'd become an

agency within an agency, a mini-CIA. Exley and Shafer had been in a some-

what similar position years earlier, but now they were a lot more powerful.

Exley wasn't sure how to use the carte blanche they'd been given, and she

didn't think Shafer did either. As for Wells ... Wells spent his time these days

working out, riding his motorcycle, and watching westerns. He was in great

shape physically, if not mentally. Exley wished she could figure out how to

get him out of his funk—a polite word for clinical depression. But she knew

better than anyone that pushing on him would only backfire.

She tapped on Shafer's door.

“Enter.” Shafer was stretched on his couch, poking at his laptop. He was

legendary among longtime CIA employees for his fashion sense, and not in

a good way. At various times Exley had seen him in red pants, a brown

suit—something only Ronald Reagan could pull off—and her personal

favorite, black leather boots more appropriate for a transvestite hooker.

Shafer had worn those on one of Washington's rare snowy days. When she

asked Shafer where he'd found them, he told her that he couldn't find his

winter boots and had stopped at Nordstrom's for replacements.

“These were on sale,” he said.

“I'll bet.”

Sometimes Exley thought Shafer intentionally dressed badly to buttress

his reputation as an absentminded genius. Then he'd show up in something

like today's ensemble—a canary-yellow polo shirt coupled with jeans that

ended two inches above his skinny ankles—and she'd reconsider. No one

would knowingly look so ridiculous.

“Flood at home?” she asked him. He looked blankly at her. She decided

not to explain.

“Check this out.” Shafer pointed at his computer, its browser set to a

page from eBay. "A Dartmouth yearbook, Wells's year. It's being advertised

having a picture of'The Real John Wells.' A headshot."

Exley looked, then looked again to be sure. "Someone's bidding eight

hundred dollars? For a yearbook? Got to be a joke."

“You should take some candids.”

“Funny,” Exley said.

“Where is your better half, by the way?”

“He was up late riding. As you know.”

“Someone needs to steal that bike.” Shafer closed the laptop. "How is our

problem child?"

“Please don't call him that.” Shafer was infuriating, but she trusted him

more than anyone else at the agency, including Wells. She sat beside the

window, which was coated with a layer of Teflon that damped the vibra-

tions of the glass, making eavesdropping from outside impossible.

“It's easier for me,” she said. "I still have David and Jess to take care of. I

have my friends. He doesn't have friends, Ellis. The people he knows die at

an unusually high rate."

“He ought to stop killing them.” Shafer vigorously rubbed his nose. She

looked away in case he decided to poke a pinky inside, as she'd caught him

doing over the years. "He could write a book. A memoir. At least it would

give him something to do."

She couldn't help but laugh. "A memoir? 'How I got shot saving the

world.' By John Wells. Then he could go on Oprah and talk about it. Jump

on her couch."

"Good. Let him quit, then. He wants to be someplace nobody cares who

he is, let him run an orphanage in Africa. You too. The agency'll make sure

you never have to worry about money. Duto will write the check himself

just to be rid of you."

She had considered something similar herself. And yet she couldn't

uriagine it working, not now. “I don't think he's ready for that.” She paused,

trying to find the words. "Ellis, nobody else in the world could have stopped

Khadri."

“You don't believe that.”

"I do. And you do too. Without him Manhattan would be a toxic waste

dump. Nobody's paying for your college yearbook. Or mine."

“I wish you were my girlfriend,” Shafer said. "You're good for the ego. Saving

a few kids in Africa would be a waste of his talents, you're saying."

“Don't pretend you don't agree.”

"I agree he's earned the right to do what makes him happy. You too. If

the two of you can figure out what on God's green earth that might be."

"It's not just that. I think he has posttraumatic stress disorder. He doesn't

sleep. Sometimes he's not there at all. I wake up in the morning, he's on my

laptop, playing solitaire, like he's been there all night."

"It would be the least surprising thing in the world if he had PTSD. Have

you ever talked to him about what it was like over there?"

Exley felt her eyes well up. She turned away so Shafer couldn't see. She'd

failed. By failing to challenge Wells, she'd failed him. "He needs an op, Ellis.

We need to get him an op."

“Killing more guys isn't gonna get him over PTSD.”

"It'll get him off that damned bike. If he's going to take these chances, let

it be for a good cause."

“You think what we do is for a good cause?”

“Please stop proving how smart you are, Ellis.” She was tired of this con-

versation. "There's something else I wanted to ask you about. Unrelated. I

think." She walked out.

IN A FEW MINUTES she was back, carrying a sheaf of papers from her safe.

"After-action reports from Afghanistan, ours and the Army's, raw field

files. The Pentagon didn't want to send them, but I gave them my clearance

and told them they didn't have a choice."

“Membership has its privileges,” Shafer said. Exley handed Shafer some

papers. “This is a summary of reports from SF units”—Special Forces. "Ba-

sically, the Taliban tactics are steadily improving. Their body counts are

down, ours are up."

“So we took out the dumb ones.”

"It's more than that. This report mentions 'company-level coordination

ically Seen among professionally trained armies.' And this one." She

nened another file. "'Enemy command-and-control has improved-----A

combination of suppressing fire and point-to-point movement not seen

before.' It's all over the place."

"Fine. The Talibs are learning how to fight. Good for them, bad for

us. So?"

Exley pulled out another report. “Two months ago, in Kandahar”—the

city in southern Afghanistan where the Taliban had been headquartered.

"A Colonel Hamar in the Afghan army tells us that the Taliban are getting

'professional training'—his words—from 'foreign fighters.'"

"The only foreign fighters in Afghanistan are bin Laden's boys. They're

hardly professionals. Unless you think blowing yourself to bits is a hallmark

of professionalism."

"Let me finish, Ellis. By the way, the good lieutenant colonel died shortly

after passing this rumor along."

“I'm going to guess it wasn't natural causes.”

“Throat cut in half.”

“In Kandahar that's practically natural.”

Exley passed Shafer a photograph of a blood-drenched corpse rolled up

in a rug. “His body was left in front of the local police HQ.”

“I guess that's what's known as sending a message.”

"Anyway. So the Special Forces say the Talibs are fighting better. Kandahar

reports foreign fighters. Then this from the Tenth Mountain Division." She

handed him another file.

“More foreign fighters?”

'In eastern Afghanistan near the Pak border."

“Nowhere near Kandahar,” Shafer said.

I looked for more reports from the Tenth Mountain, but there weren't

anY- They just rotated in. So I checked back to the old reports from the

10lst"The 101st Airborne Division.

“More foreigners.”

"Gold star, Ellis. Two reports. But no one linked them to the new ones.

You know once a division leaves, its intel goes with it. These were also in

eastern Afghanistan."

“Okay. I'll play.” Shafer began to read again, not skimming this time.

Exley waited. One of Shafer's strengths was his willingness to reconsider his

preconceptions when he got new evidence. She wished more people at the

agency—and across the river in the White House—shared that trait.

Finally Shafer looked up. "Are you saying what I think you're saying? The

Taliban is getting outside help? Some foreign power is sending its own sol-

diers to give the Talibs tactical support?"

“I seem to remember we did something similar.” During the 1980s

America had aided Afghan guerrillas against the Soviet Army. Some of those

same guerrillas had now turned against the United States.

"Supporting the Talibs would be an act of war against the United States

All of NATO too."

“Proxy war.”

"Let's say you're right. Who's doing it? The Russians would never help

the Talibs. No matter how badly they wanted to hurt us. They haven't for-

gotten they lost a hundred thousand soldiers fighting in Afghanistan."

“Someone else, then.”

"Who? Nobody in NATO. They're on our side. Iran and Pakistan woulc

hardly count as foreign. North Korea? China? Anyone say anything about

Asians?"

"No. The fighters are specifically identified as white. Mercenaries

maybe?"

“Maybe. But it's a seller's market these days for mercenaries.”

Shafer was right, Exley knew. Former Special Forces soldiers could m ake

$5,000 a week providing security in Iraq. South African and Russian soldiers

made less, but even so they could take home $10,000 a month. They would

want even more money to help the Taliban against the United States. Not

for moral reasons either. Simply because of the risk.

“The Talibs couldn't afford these guys,” Shafer said. "Who would pay

them?"

“I think it's time to find out.” She handed him the last report in her file.

"Also from the Tenth Mountain Division. Two days ago. A fairly big camp

jn eastern Afghanistan, at least fifty Talibs. And several white fighters."

“And they're going after it?”

"Not at the moment. They have other priorities. And it's in a very diffi-

cult location. Way up in the mountains. I think we should get a satellite up

to take a look at it."

“Sounds reasonable. And then?”

"I don't know. Depends on what we see. Maybe we can convince the SF

to go after it."

“Okay. Talk to Greg Levine at NSA.” Shafer scribbled a number for her

and handed back the files. "If he gives you any lip, tell him to call me. And

Jennifer—do you want me to say anything to John?"

She walked out without answering. Let somebody else deal with Wells

for once.

THREE HOURS LATER, Exley walked into Shafer's office at Langley. Wells was

already there. A nice surprise. She'd called and asked him to show up, but

she hadn't been sure he would.

“We got them already?” Shafer said. “This must be a record.”

"Levine said they had a satellite right there and it would be no problem

as long as I had a cost center for him,“ Exley said. ”I told him to put it on

your tab." As part of the government's internal accounting procedures, the

National Security Agency dunned the CIA whenever Langley asked for

photographs that required the NSA to alter the orbit of its satellites. The

agencies had teams of auditors to squabble over the accounts, though in the

end the American taxpayer footed the bill for everything. The system was

either a necessary check on spending or a cosmic joke, depending on who

was explaining it.

“There it is. Your tax dollars at work.” Shafer clicked on a folder on

the workstation in the corner, which was linked to a fiber-optic network

tnat transferred encrypted images between Langley, the Pentagon, and NSA

headquarters. The agency refused to extend the network to the offices afl

Tysons Corner, so they had to come to Langley to see photographs like these

The folder popped open, revealing dozens of graphical files. Shafer

clicked one and turned to the fifty-inch flat-panel screen that hung on one]

wall of his office. But the screen stayed dark.

“Wow, the Eiffel Tow er,” Exley said.

“No, it's the rain forest,” Wells said. He was lounging on the couch, his

long legs stretched on Shafer's coffee table. He showed no ill effects from his

ride the night before. Exley noticed that he'd even shaved.

“Everybody's a critic,” Shafer said. He fiddled with the back of his work-1

station and clicked again. This time a remarkably clear image of the Afghan

mountains filled the flat panel. At the end of the Cold War, American spi

satellites had been celebrated for their ability to read license plates from

space. Now they could read not just license plates but newspaper headlines.!

Shafer focused on a patch of flat ground several hundred yards long, the

most likely spot for a camp. Wells lifted himself off the couch and staredl

The mountains had woken him up, Exley thought. She hadn't seen him sol

alert in months.

“It's a camp for sure,” Wells said. “A big one.”

“Then where is everybody?” Exley said. Only two men were visible in the

photograph. They sat against the side of the mountain, rifles slung over

their shoulders. "These were taken a couple of hours ago. Near dusk over

there. Dinnertime. Shouldn't they be lining up?"

"They'll be back soon. Look, there's two campfires going. You don't do

that unless you've got a lot of guys to feed. And over here—" Wells stepped

close to the screen and pointed to the southern part of the camp, where

holes were dug behind a makeshift rock wall. "Those are privies. At leastj

five of them. Another sign they've been there awhile, and they're decently

organized."

“The report says forty to fifty men.”

“At least that. Ellis, pull it back. Give me the widest view you can.” Wells

ran his finger over the screen, tracing a line from the ridge, south, into the

valley. “See this?”

Shafer got it first. “A trail, down the side of the mountain.”

“Follow it south, south—” Shafer scrolled down the screen, leaving the

plateau and moving into the valley.

"No wonder the evil American infidels always knew where we were, back

. the day,“ Wells said. ”If we'd had one of these, it would have been a fairer

fieht.“ He grinned at Shafer. His confusion of ”we“ and ”they" was no acci-

dent, as Shafer and Exley well knew.

“Want to switch sides again?” Shafer said.

“I'm not so sure they'd have me, Ellis.”

“Anyway, where would you ride your bike?” Exley said.

“Children,” Shafer said. “Focus, please.”

“Fair enough,” Wells said. He stepped closer to the screen. "Can you

scroll farther down?"

“This set doesn't run any farther south. We get another pass tomorrow.”

“Magnify it. The southern edge.” Wells looked at Exley. "See what they

did at the base of the valley? Just left of where the trail ends."

“Those branches?”

"See how they're arranged? They look like they're part of the forest, but

they're not. They're thicker."

Slowly, Exley recognized the hidden shapes under the branches.

“Trucks?”

"Pickups, at least four. Toyotas most likely. All with fifty-cals. When I

was with them, they never would have bothered to hide them."

“Which means—”

“It doesn't prove anything,” Wells said. "But yeah, it's evidence they're

getting lessons.“ He looked at Exley. ”Well done, Jenny. Though I have to

admit I don't get it. Who would be crazy enough to help the Taliban

“ght now?”

What do you think we should tell Bagram?" Bagram Air Base, north of

Kabul, the headquarters of the American military command in Afghanistan.

They've got to hit it,“ Wells said. ”Find out if it's real. Though it's gonna

* tough. Whoever's up there can enfilade anyone coming up that trail

something vicious. And I'll bet they've got heavy stuff in those caves. Mor-

tars, RPGs, some SAMs"—rocket-propelled grenades and surface-to-airl

missiles.

"You want to go? Summer vacation in Afghanistan? For old time*

sake?"

Shafer had asked the question, but Wells looked at Exley instead. She I

hated to see the eagerness in Wells's face. He looked like a hound that hadl

just sniffed out a fox. Did killing thrill him so much? She wasn't sure she!

wanted to know the answer. Anyway this mission was what she'd told Shafer I

she wanted for Wells. Something that would test him, get him out of his

funk.

“Go for it, John.” Anything beats the bike, she thought.

“If the guys at Bagram will have me, I'll think about it.”

“It may take a few days to put together, but you're right,” Shafer saidfl

“We have to hit it. And they'll have you.”

Shafer's phone trilled. Shafer held a finger to his lips, warning Exley and

Wells to stay quiet, and picked up. “Hello, Mr. Tyson.” George Tyson was

deputy director for counterintelligence, the man in charge of making sure!

that foreign intelligence services didn't infiltrate the CIA.

"When? Where? Tomorrow would be better... No ... if it's urgeiM

okay. We'll see you there. Yes. We. Me and the two musketeers."

He cradled the phone. "Strange. Tyson wants to talk to us tonight. Not I

here. Says something's happening in Korea."

BETRAYED. THE WORD RANG IN BECK'S MIND as he opened the Phantom's

hatch and hurled the transponder as far as he could into the foaming water.

Betrayed. He threw Sung against the side of the cabin. Betrayed. He drove

his right fist into Sung's soft belly until the North Korean's mouth flopped

open and his legs went flaccid. Sung slid to the floor, gasping, wordlessly

begging for oxygen.

“Ask him,” Beck said to Kang. “Ask him why he's killing us.” Beck was

even more furious with himself than with Sung. He should have checked

the bag as soon as Sung got on board. But he simply hadn't imagined that

Sung would destroy his own chance for escape.

“If he doesn't start talking, I'll put a bullet in him.” Beck drew his pistol.

“I will, too. Tell him.”

Kang finished translating. The cabin was silent. Then Sung spoke, the

Words coming in broken spurts.

He says the security services have his family. Wife, parents, children,

c°usins. They'll all die if he doesn't follow orders."

“How did he blow his cover?” When Sung heard Kang's translation, he

shook his head before muttering a response.

"He didn't. He's sure. It must have been someone on our side. One day

the police came. Nothing he said mattered. They knew."

“Why didn't they just arrest us, sink the boat, when we landed?”

This time Sung said nothing at all. Beck put aside his pistol and kneeled

on Sung's chest and hit him in the face, twice. He got his shoulder behind

the second punch and felt Sung's flat nose break under his fist. "There's no

time for this."

Sung spoke, the words so quiet that Kang had to lean in to hear. "He

doesn't know. He thinks they wanted to see where we were going, who

would meet us."

“Why didn't you warn us?” Beck asked Sung directly in Korean. The

North Koreans had forced Sung to ask CIA for the pickup, of course. But

he could have flashed a different code, one that told them that he'd been

compromised.

“No choice.”

“Of course you had a choice,” Beck said.

Sung murmured to Kang. "He wants to show us something. Says you

have to get up," Kang said.

Beck stood. The North Korean shrugged off his nylon sweatpants. He

wasn't wearing underwear, just some surgical gauze over his crotch, stained

black-red with blood.

Sung lifted the patch.

“Jesus,” Beck said.

Sung's penis and testicles had been removed, leaving a raw hole in his

crotch that had been pulled together with crude black stitches. A plastic

catheter poked from the wound, spilling drops of reddish-tinted urine.

“Fuck. Animals.”

Tears ran down Sung's cheeks, mixing with the blood still streaming

from his nose, the combination a ghastly purple under the cabin's blue

running lights. More than ever, Beck was glad for the little glass capsules in

nocket. He pulled up Sung's sweatpants as gently as he could. Sung was

• Iking again, his shoulders shaking.

“He says, he says they told him he would die no matter what,” Kang said.

«c r betraying Kim Jong II. But they said if he warned us, they'd hurt his

ns and his father also, the same way they hurt him."

"Tell him he's not gonna die. We're not letting him die. Even if he

wants to."

NOW THAT BECK HAD DUMPED the transceiver, the North Koreans had lost

them, at least temporarily. The radar feed from the Hawkeye showed that

the Su-25 and the helicopters had made two loops around the transceiver.

Soon enough they'd realize their mistake and widen the search.

Meanwhile, Choe had changed the Phantom's course, turning the boat

to 165 degrees, south-southeast, angling slightly toward South Korea. If

they had both engines running, they could have gotten to international

waters in twenty minutes. Instead they had an hourlong ride. Still, Beck

wanted to believe the worst was over. With every minute that passed, they

were closer to getting out.

Sung lay curled against the wall, a hand covering his crotch, his body

shaking. Beck wanted to ask more questions, but this obviously wasn't the

time. Beck reached for his emergency first-aid kit. He grabbed a bottle of

forty-milligram OxyContin and shook one and then another of the yellow

pills into Sung's hand. The North Korean popped them into his mouth with

a hopeless shrug and choked them down. Whatever you're giving me, his

eyes said, whatever it does, I'll take it.

VE MINUTES PASSED, and another five. Sung sighed and closed his eyes,

nd Beck hoped the Oxy had knocked him out, or at least dulled his pain.

e feed from the Hawkeye showed that the helicopters and the Su-25

split up, circling south and west as they searched for the Phantom.

Through the blown-out windows at the back of the cabin, Beck saw one 0f

the helicopters making long diagonals to the north, its spotlight shining

down on the empty black waves. We might get out of this, Beck thought]

Busted engine and all. We really might.

Then—

Ping! Ping! Ping!

The pilothouse vibrated as the sonar waves bounced off the PhantoiJ

hull, three in a row in quick succession. Beck had never felt sonar so stronj

The boat's sonar-detection system began to sound its automatic alarm, the

whine of its horn filling the cabin, telling them what they already knew: al

submarine had targeted them. From very, very close. Just like that, they

were in worse trouble than ever.

“Where is he?” Beck said.

“Six hundred yards east. Periscope depth. Want me to ping him back?”!

“No.” What was the point? They had no torpedoes or depth charges, and

on the one-in-a-million chance that the sub had missed them, they mighl

as well stay quiet.

“Choe,” Beck said. “Heading two-one-five.” Southwest again.

“Two-one-five.” Choe began to turn the helm.

“Tell him to push that engine as fast as he can,” Beck said to Kang.

“I think he figured that out all on his own.” But Kang said something™

Korean to Choe nonetheless. Without looking up, Choe said in EnglishI

“Thirty-three knots.” He spat a stream of Korean, a language that had neve«

sounded uglier to Beck than at this moment. Beck knew enough of whaJ

Choe was saying to understand that Choe was cursing him for leading them

on a mission doomed to failure even before it began. Nonetheless, ChoM

pushed the throttle forward and the Phantom picked up speed.

Ping!

Again the cabin rattled. The sub was double-checking its range. Its skip!

per couldn't believe how close he was either. But Beck didn't think the sull

would fire without being certain it wasn't accidentally targeting a fishing!

j4e looked east but couldn't see the periscope. He wondered if the sub

d tracked them all the way from the rendezvous point. Probably not. The

North Koreans had ordered it here in case the Phantom somehow escaped

their cordon. Running across the sub was nothing more than bad luck. The

kind of bad luck that would kill them all.

Still, as long as it could move, the Phantom had a chance, Beck knew.

North Korean subs were badly made copies of Russian Romeo-class subs,

whose basic design was fifty years old. Thus the telltale active sonar pings.

Unlike modern subs, the Romeos needed active sonar to lock on their

targets, even at close range.

The North Korean torpedoes were equally dated, copies of old Russian

53-61 Alligators, with a top speed of forty knots and a range under ten

miles. With both engines, the Phantom could easily have outrun the tor-

pedo. Instead, the boat's fate would depend on how quickly the North

Koreans could load and fire, how badly the years of famine had degraded

their readiness.

Beck's watch read 00:00:30. A new day. He hoped he'd see the end of it.

Thirty seconds later, Kang looked up from his screen. “They've launched,”

he said.

“Range?”

“Twelve hundred yards.”

Now it's just math, Beck thought. Either that Alligator runs out of juice

before it gets to us, or it tears us up. The torpedo was running 1,200 yards a

minute, give or take. With its blown engine, the Phantom was limited to

about 1,000 yards a minute. The torpedo had started 1,200 yards behind,

but it was picking up roughly 200 yards a minute, maybe a little less. Unless

it ran out of fuel, it would be making their acquaintance in six minutes,

seven at most.

For a moment, Beck thought about ordering Choe to stop the Phantom

0 they could try to launch the Zodiac raft. But they probably couldn't

et to lt before the torpedo hit, and even if they could, they'd have to leave

Ung behind. Beck wasn't willing to abandon the North Korean, even

though his treachery had put them in this jam. He'd suffered more than any

of them.

The seconds ticked by miserably. 00:03:40 ... 00:03:41 ... “Range?”

“Seven hundred fifty yards and closing.”

Beck wished they could do something more. Take evasive action. Drop

chaff. Fire their own torpedo. Call in air support to blast that damned sub

out of the water. But they could only run, and hope.

00:05:56 ... “Range?”

“Three hundred fifty yards. Still on us.”

“Is he slowing?” The torpedo wouldn't stop all at once. It would sputter

to a halt as it exhausted its stores of kerosene and hydrogen peroxide.

“Not yet.” Kang turned the Dolphins hat around. “Time for a rally cap.”

00:07:03 ... “Range?”

“Under two hundred ... a hundred fifty now.” Kang's tone was steady

“Wait... he's slowing.” Hope crept into his voice. "He's at thirty-eight knots.

Thirty-seven.“ The hope faded. ”He's still coming. A hundred yards now."

Even so, the torpedo was now hardly gaining ground on the Phantom—

and it was near the end of its effective range. If they could just stay ahead for

a minute longer, they might get free.

"Sixty-five yards ... Sixty ... but he's lost another two knots. Down to

thirty-four. He's hardly catching us now. Fifty yards."

And now Beck could see the wake of the torpedo, cutting through the

flat waves, chasing them, trying to destroy them. It was just a mindless piece

of steel, but Beck hated it more than he'd ever hated anything.

“Only forty yards,” Kang said. Then his voice lifted. "He's down to thirty-

three." At thirty-three knots the torpedo wasn't closing anymore.

“That's right,” Beck said to the thing behind them. “Die. Get lost and die.”

“Thirty-two.” Kang didn't try to hide his joy. “We're outrunning him!”

In their excitement neither Beck nor Kang noticed that a red warning

light had flared on the dashboard. “Oil!” Choe yelled. “Oil!”

“What?”

Choe pointed at the light, the engine oil-pressure warning light. They'd

run the damaged Mercury too hot for too long. Minute by minute, the oil

1 ak had worsened. They'd dripped oil like blood across the sea. Now the

engine had no oil left at all, and—

With a loud thunk, it seized up, leaving the Phantom without power.

And no power meant the Phantom was a floating paperweight.

With only its momentum to carry it along.

But the torpedo hadn't forgotten them.

And even as Beck put all this together, the Alligator slammed into the

phantom's keel. The torpedo's firing pin smashed backward. Electricity

flowed into the firing cap, setting off the charge. A fraction of a second later,

the Alligator's warhead exploded, blasting the boat with 670 pounds of

explosive.

The Russians had designed the Alligator to sink destroyers and cruisers,

big ships with thick steel hulls. The Phantom didn't stand a chance.

The explosion threw the speedboat twenty feet in the air. The blast wave

tore through the cabin in a fraction of a second, splitting the four men in-

side into unrecognizable bits. They had no time for last words or even last

thoughts, just a bright flash of pain followed by the unknown and unknow-

able. By the time the blasted hull of the Phantom crashed into the sea, they

were dead.

The boat itself lasted longer. It burned for ninety seconds, a floating

funeral pyre visible in the night for miles. Then water filled its hull and it

sank, taking its crew of corpses to the bottom of the sea.

EVEN BEFORE THE PHANTOM DISAPPEARED BENEATH THE WAVES, word of its

destruction was spreading.

The North Koreans knew first, of course. The sonar operators on the

Nampo, the submarine that had launched the torpedo, picked up the ex-i

plosion immediately. After radioing its commanders, the Nampo chugged

toward the wreckage, seeking survivors. It found no life, just an oil slick and

pieces of the Phantom's hull.

The torpedo had blown apart the Phantom at 12:08 a.m. By 12:2ffl

word of its sinking had reached North Korea's military headquarters inl

Pyongyang, a crumbling concrete building ringed with antiaircraft guna

and missile batteries. Five minutes later, Kim Jong II, the chubby gnome

who ruled North Korea, received a report of the Phantom's sinking at hisj

palace in Pyongyang. He celebrated with a glass of Johnnie Walker Blue, hisj

favorite scotch. He had taken the Drafter's betrayal personally. He knewj

only too well that his survival depended on the nuclear arsenal he had so

carefully assembled. Kim had personally ordered Sung's arrest and castra-

tion, an object lesson to anyone else who might betray him. Kim had noj

regrets about what he'd done. Regret had no place in his vocabulary. Loy-

alty, on the other hand, was a word he understood. The fact that a boat had

come for Sung proved the man's treachery beyond any doubt. His death

was fitting punishment.

Now Kim had a call to make—to the man who had informed him of the

Drafter's treachery. He didn't like depending on the Chinese. They used

him and his people as pawns against the United States. But he couldn't deny

that this time, they'd proven valuable.

WASHINGTON LEARNED OF THE PHANTOM'S sinking not long afterward. At

00:08:02 local time, the boat disappeared from the screens of the E-2 Hawkeye.

The plane immediately passed a message to the sonar operators on the USS

Decatur—the destroyer in the Yellow Sea—advising them to listen for shock

waves that might signal an explosion.

The Decatur didn't have long to wait. The blast from the Alligator created

a pressure wave that passed through the water at a mile a second, reaching

the destroyer in under a minute. The sonar operators aboard the Decatur

were used to tracking quiet Soviet submarines. To their trained ears, the

blast wave sounded like a scream.

The Decatur reported the explosion to the combat information center at

the USS Ronald Reagan, an aircraft carrier steaming in the Korea Strait. The

Reagan sent the news to Osan Air Base. From there it went to CIA station in

Seoul. A few minutes later, the South Korean coast guard station at Incheon

passed word that two containerships were reporting a fire in the Yellow Sea.

At this point, Bob Harbarg, the chief of Seoul station, decided he had to

tell Langley. He fired off a Critic-coded message, the highest priority, report-

•ng that the Phantom was missing and presumed lost. The agency hadn't

saved the Phantom, but it had done a fine job watching the boat sink.

The only question left was whether Ted Beck and his men had somehow

Scaped the boat. Four Chinooks scrambled from Osan Air Base to search

0r signals from the transponders that Beck, Kang, and Choe carried. A

fedator drone was launched to photograph the site of the explosion. But

the Chinooks and Predator found nothing. As the hours ticked by, the I

sailors on the Decatur, the crews on the Chinooks, and the spies in Virginia I

had to accept the truth. The men aboard the Phantom were lost.

On the Decatur and at Osan, the mission ended there. But at Langley, the I

Phantom's sinking brought new urgency to a different set of questions.

THAT NIGHT, WELLS AND EXLEY walked down the Mall under a cloudless skyl

The moon hung behind them, the Washington Monument rising toward it I

like a needle poised to pop a balloon. Aside from the joggers and Frisbeel

players sweating in the night air, they had the open green field to them- I

selves. The hard-packed Mall path crunched under their feet, a sound ExleyH

found oddly satisfying. She reached for Wells's hand, squeezed it. Hefl

squeezed back.

“Jenny.” His voice was hardly above a whisper. "I won't go if you don't I

want me to." She knew what he meant. Afghanistan.

“Shh.” She put her arm over his broad back, rubbing the scar tissue left

over from his run-in with the police in Times Square. “Does it still hurt?”

“It's fine.”

Would you tell me if it did, she wondered. Not a chance.

About thirty yards away a fat man in a gray suit sat reading the Post. He I

waved to them and pushed himself up, grunting like a loaded semi headingB

up a mountain pass. He was at least three hundred pounds, a coronaryB

waiting to happen. He pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket andB

mopped his head.

“George Tyson. You must be the famous John Wells.” He put the hand-1

kerchief away and extended his hand. Wells let it dangle.

"Right. You don't like being called famous, Mr. Wells. And you don't like

counterintelligence." Tyson's accent was humid and southern.

“Any reason I should?”

"I want to tell you that Vinny Duto didn't ask my opinion of you. Back

in the day, I mean. He had strong ideas about you. Still does."

“And if he had asked? What would you have said?”

"A fair question, Mr. Wells. But try to remember how you looked to us

back then. With your Quran and your disappearing act. Accept my apolo-

gies, then, and shake an old man's hand."

Wells reached out for Tyson's big paw—and found himself gripping a

joy buzzer. He grunted, more from surprise than pain, as the electricity

rattled his palm. Tyson smirked. Wells vaguely remembered hearing about

his practical jokes, his way of keeping alive the CIA's traditions from the

1950s, before the agency turned into a bureaucratic monster.

“Cute, Mr. Tyson.”

“So now you're wondering if I'm a fool, or merely pretending,” Tyson

said. “Hard to say, I reckon. Maybe both.”

"Actually I was wondering how many punches I would need to break

your jaw."

"I'd rather we didn't find out. It's interesting, though, the way you re-

sponded to an unanswerable question with one that has a definite answer."

“Double as a shrink in your spare time?”

“I'll bet you don't like them either, Mr. Wells.” Tyson turned to Exley.

“And you must be Jennifer Exley. Where's Ellis?”

“Waiting in the car, like you asked,” Wells said. To Exley: "Whatever you

do, don't shake his hand."

“I'd never mistreat a lady.”

They walked on, heading toward the Capitol. Then Tyson turned back

toward the Monument, craning his neck like a curious tourist. "Mr. Wells?

Would you say there's anyone on us at the moment?"

I d say no. Why? You have some genius tracker following us? Somebody

who can smell bear scat at fifty paces?"

'As a matter of fact, I don't. As far as I'm concerned, the fewer people

Who know about this meeting, the better."

So we're on the Mall? I see why you're a master of counterintel."

Come now, Mr. Wells. You know there's nothing better than a nice open

ace where we can see anybody who wants to see us. I'm not concerned

about these joggers."

Yeah, you don't strike me as the type to care much about exercise."

“John,” Exley said. She turned to Tyson. "Ignore him, George. He's been

acting out recently."

“So I hear.”

“So you hear?” Wells said.

“Mr. Wells. I heard only from Ellis. He's concerned about you.”

“Is that why you're here? An intervention? To convince me to behave?”

“Mr. Wells. Believe it or not, I've got a few other problems.” Tyson's syrupy

accent faded notably. He stuffed the joy buzzer into his pocket and leaned in

close to Wells, putting his hands on Wells's shoulders. "I said that Mr. Shafer

is concerned about you. Not that I am. Others across the river may think that

you're some kind of superspy. You may think so, for all I know."

“No, I don't—”

"Please let me finish. Me, I'm not a fan of the great-man theory of his-

tory. The Confederacy had all the best generals and we still lost the war. I

think you got lucky in Times Square. We all got lucky. You are here tonight

because Mr. Shafer wants you to be. Not me. Are we clear?"

Wells's face tensed and he stood rigid under Tyson's heavy hands. He

stepped back, shook Tyson's hands off his shoulders. For a moment Exley

thought Wells might actually hit Tyson. Then Wells's face softened.

“We're clear. Thank you.” He stuck out his hand, and after a moment

Tyson put out his own. They shook for a long time before Wells finally

let go.

“Thank me?”

"Somebody needed to say it. Thank you for not treating me like I'm

something special. Or some wounded animal. Even if I am."

BASEBALL PRACTICE HAD ENDED HOURS earlier, but fluorescent lights still

shined over the field at Cardozo High School, just up Thirteenth from

Exley's apartment. In fact the lights never went dark, possibly because of

Washington's legendary municipal incompetence, possibly to make the

stands by the field less inviting for midnight trysts. Now Exley, Shafer, and

Tyson sat in the stands, waiting for Wells. They'd driven around Washington

for fifteen minutes, confirming that no one was following them, before

Wells dropped them off and promised to find parking.

Wells trotted up, holding a plastic bag and handing out paper bags.

“Beer?” Tyson peered into the bag distastefully.

“For our cover,” Wells said. "Picked them up at that package store on

U Street."

“For our cover?” Exley couldn't help but laugh. Wells's mood had cer-

tainly improved, with the promise of a mission and his dressing-down from

Tyson, she thought. Even if he hadn't said a word she would have known.

He was watching the world in a way that he hadn't in months.

Wells popped open his beer and took a swig. Tyson looked at him. "What

kind of Muslim are you, anyway, John?"

“Don't spend much time at the mosque these days,” Wells said.

"I might feel the same if my co-religionists spent their days thinking of new

and exciting ways to kill me.“ Tyson poked the can out of the bag. ”Bud-

weiser?"

“Budweiser, George. Put hair on your chest.”

“Is she going to drink one too, then?” Tyson looked at Exley. "I've never

had a Budweiser in my life. It's Yankee beer."

“Budweiser's from St. Louis,” Exley said.

“All beer is Yankee beer,” Tyson said. “Real Southerners drink whiskey.”

“George, why can I picture you overseeing a plantation, whip in hand?”

"That's your overactive imagination. Now, this is turning into a real fun

evening, but I'd like to tell you why we're here." Over the next half-hour,

Tyson filled them in on the Phantom's mission, and its failure.

"And we had no hint of trouble before our guy, the Drafter, asked for the

extraction?" Exley said when Tyson was finished.

"No. We saw him eight months ago in Pakistan, offered to get him out

then. He refused. They'd just promoted him. Which is another reason I think

it was from our side. Kim Jong II doesn't have enough good scientists to turn

°n them for no reason."

“And counterintelligence investigations always leave a trail,” Shafer said.

"No matter how hard you try, you can't watch the suspect without him

knowing."

“He sees someone's been poking in his office,” Tyson said. "Or we dangle

something and he wonders why all of a sudden he's got new access. Moles

have this spooky sense of when we're watching."

“Tell me about it,” Wells said, remembering the years he'd spent in the

mountains. Every day he had wondered if al Qaeda and the Taliban would

recognize him as an American agent.

“So I suspect Sung would have known if they were after him,” Tyson

said. "Instead he was as snug as a termite in a lumberyard until the day he

told us to get him."

“Could you repeat that last bit?” Wells said. “In English?”

“Ignore the Dixie twang and you have the facts,” Shafer said. "Odds are

the North Koreans were tipped from the outside."

“Maybe they caught him holding something classified,” Exley said.

“He was too careful for that,” Tyson said. "His stuff all came shortwave

or face-to-face."

“How important was he, this guy?” Wells said.

“Our most important human source.”

“In North Korea?”

Tyson sighed. “Anywhere. He told us where they hid their nukes.”

“Then maybe it wasn't the North Koreans.” Wells raised the Budweiser

to his lips, filling his mouth with the cool tart liquid.

“How do you mean?”

"Maybe they got tipped by some other hostile service, somebody who

wanted to hurt us bad and knew this would do it."

“Makes perfect sense,” Shafer said. "Somebody gets this, banks it, takes it

out now, gives it to the North Koreans when it can really mess us up."

“I understand, Ellis,” Tyson said irritably. Tyson raised the beer to his

mouth, took a tiny sip.

“Not bad, is it, Mr. Tyson?” Wells said.

“I wish I could say yes. Please give it a good home.” Tyson handed the

bag to Wells.

“So why are you telling us this?” Exley said.

“For the moment I'm taking the usual steps,” Tyson said. "My staff is

examining who had access to the Drafter's identity or the information he

provided. Looking for unusual travel patterns for the officers in the North

Korean unit."

“You're going to have a lot of people to look at,” Shafer said.

"And it's no secret that our record in these investigations has been less

than stellar."

“Counterintel doesn't get the cream of the crop,” Wells said. "Present

company excepted."

"I can't disagree. It's far more exciting to be chief of station in Tokyo

than stuck in Langley poring over bank records. And anyone with half a

brain knows that questioning the loyalty of one's fellow employees won't

win friends when it comes time for the promotion boards to meet. But

you—

“Have no friends anyway,” Exley said.

"I was going to say that you have shown the ability to work outside the

agency's institutional confines."

“In other words, no friends,” Wells said.

"I was hoping you might run your own informal inquiry. You'll have

access to everything that the official investigation turns up. If you need sub-

poenas or extra eyes, I'll get them for you. In return I ask only that you let

me know what you find."

“Like who got our boat blown to bits twelve hours ago. More black stars.”

Every time a CIA employee died on a mission, the agency added a black star

to the north wall of the lobby at its original headquarters building. There

were now more than eighty stars.

“Exactly, Mr. Wells.”

“You never told us—who was on that boat?”

“Lead agent was named Ted Beck.”

Wells pounded a fist into his open palm. “Dammit.”

“You knew him?” Tyson said.

“He was one of the good guys.” Beck had been one of Wells's instructors

at the Farm—officially called Camp Peary, the CIA's training center for new

recruits—back in the mid-1990s. Beck wasn't much past thirty, but even

then he was bald as a cue ball, tough and strong. He and Wells had shared a

love for Pierce's Pitt Bar-B-Que, a restaurant off Highway 64 where a full

rack of ribs cost just $9.95.

Suddenly Wells was irritated at himself for the self-pity he'd indulged in

over the last months. He'd sacrificed some, for sure. But Ted Beck—and lots

of others—had sacrificed far more.

“You're the only one who will know what we're doing?” Exley said.

"Yes. I can give you something in writing. If you feel you need that

protection."

“Not necessary,” Shafer said.

“I'm in,” Exley said.

“Mr. Wells?”

"I'd love to. Especially now that I know who got hit. But I've got my own

business to take care of. In Afghanistan."

“Well.” The stands creaked as Tyson stood up. “Good luck with that.”

FEHRAN, IRAN

THE TARMAC AT MEHRABAD AIRPORT, OUTSIDE TEHRAN, was a living graveyard

of aviation. Baggage carts and tanker trucks jostled for space with planes

that had long ago become extinct at more modern airports: 727s, DC-10s,

even Russian Tu-154s cast off by Aeroflot. At the end of the terminal sat

a four-engine 707, the original Boeing passenger jet, introduced in 1954

and a favorite of aviation buffs. In America, the plane would have been a

museum piece. Here it was transportation.

In the midst of this muddle, three Iranian Army jeeps and two Mercedes

limousines sped along, horns honking, headlights flashing. The convoy was

led by a black Toyota Land Cruiser with tinted windows, a distinctive rising

siren, and a single red light on its roof, like a 1960s police cruiser.

The light and siren identified the Toyota as belonging to Vevak, Iran's

earsome secret police force. As the Toyota approached, baggage handlers

mPed back and the Tata tanker trucks made way, their drivers ducking

;lr neads. Avoiding Vevak's attention was critical to a long and healthy life

ifi Iran.

The Land Cruiser pulled up beside an Airbus A340 painted in the dis-

tinctive white-and-gold of Air China, the state-owned Chinese national]

airline. Four Chinese men stepped out of the first limo and positioned them-

selves around the second. Only then did the doors of the second Mercedes]

open. Five men emerged, two bodyguards in suits and three older men wear J

ing the uniforms of the People's Liberation Army.

The last man to step out was taller than the rest, broad-shouldered, dee

into middle age, with short black hair and shining golden sideboards on his;

green uniform. He was General Li Ping, chief of the People's Liberation

Army and one of the nine members of China's Politburo Standing CorrJ

mittee, the group that ruled the world's most populous nation.

Li and his bodyguards strode up the jetway as the Land Cruiser and

limousines rolled away. A few minutes later, the Airbus accelerated dowi

the runway, its engines purring, and lifted into the cloudless night.

From the outside, this Airbus looked like the usual Air China A340;

widebody that flew the 5,000-mile route from Beijing to Tehran three times

a week, down to the stylized red phoenix painted on its tail. But inside, this]

jet was very different. In place of the usual complement of three hundred]

seats, it held twenty lie-flat recliners. Near the front of the plane were two

staterooms, with king-sized beds, bathrooms, and showers. The jet alsffl

came equipped with its own full-time crew from the Chinese air force, a

well as three armed guards who lived in a suite at the back and never left th(l

plane unattended.

For despite its markings, this Airbus was far from an ordinary commer-

cial jet. Only the nine men on the Standing Committee had the right td

use it. Naturally, China had official state aircraft as well, painted with tha

country's five-starred red-and-yellow flag. But the A340 offered advantages

for those times when Politburo members wanted to keep their travel plana

secret. American spy satellites watched over all the major airports in IranJ

But they weren't looking for an Air China widebody. The jet gave GeneraM

Li a way to travel invisibly to his meetings in Tehran, meetings he'd been!

having more and more often.

IN SOME WAYS, China and Iran had every reason to get close. Both nations

had long and proud histories. Both had suffered during the twentieth

entury from invasions and internal strife. Both were now powerful once

gain, though for different reasons. China's strength was built on two

decades of spectacular economic growth. Iran's gains were based on oil and

the failure of American policy in the Middle East. The Islamic Republic

now dominated the Persian Gulf and had the ability to choke off half the

world's oil.

Any serious threat of war between Iran and the United States would take

the price of crude to $ 100 a barrel. An actual American attack on Iran would

move oil closer to $200 and put the world into recession. If Iran retaliated

by destroying the giant fields to its west in Saudi Arabia, the world would

have to ration oil for the first time since the original wells had been drilled

in Pennsylvania 140 years before.

And despite what environmentalists liked to pretend, the modern world

could hardly exist without oil. Airplanes would be grounded. Electricity

and fertilizer would double or triple in price. Middle-class Americans

and Europeans would be squeezed, and the lives of the poor everywhere

would grow more desperate. So Iran was not just another third-world coun-

try that got the world's attention only for plane crashes and earthquakes.

When its leaders spoke, London and Washington had to listen. But Amer-

ica didn't enjoy being at Iran's mercy, a fact that the leaders of the Islamic

Republic knew only too well. To make sure that the United States never

tried “regime change” in Iran as it had in Iraq, they wanted a nuclear

arsenal.

Li understood the Iranian desire for nukes. It was no coincidence that

the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council—

n'na, America, Russia, Britain, and France—were the five countries with

>e largest nuclear stockpiles. Because of their unique destructive power,

ukes guaranteed national security like no other weapon. No country that

openly possessed a nuclear stockpile had ever been invaded. With nuclear

weapons to give it cover, Iran could push its neighbors around even more

aggressively.

For that reason, Washington and Jerusalem had vowed to stop Tehran

from getting even one bomb. In response, Iran had turned to China for

support.

And China? China had reasons to help Iran. Li had reasons too, his own

reasons, ones that not even his fellow ministers on the Politburo Standing

Committee could imagine.

THUS LI HAD MADE the trip to Tehran three times in the last year, each time in

secret on this Airbus 340, for talks with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the

Iranian president.

The trips hadn't been easy. China and Iran might need each other, but

they didn't necessarily trust each other. Li found the atmosphere in Tehran

as suffocating as the long black robes the women wore, and the national

obsession with Islam as bewildering as the calls to prayer that rang through

the presidential palace.

Before Li's first visit to Iran, his staff had prepared a thick book

for him about Islam. He had skimmed a few pages and then tossed

the binder aside. Prophets, angels, devils, an all-knowing God ... Islam

was just like Judaism and Christianity. Li didn't believe in any of them.

Like many Chinese, he wasn't very religious, though every so often he

burned fake money to honor his father and mother, both long dead.

He wanted to make his mark in this world, not wait for another life.

Meanwhile he had a question for his hosts, one he didn't plan to ask: If

the Iranians had such faith in Allah, why were they so desperate for nuclear

bombs?

The A340 reached 38,000 feet and leveled off. Li touched a button on

his leather recliner. Sun Wei, the Airbus's steward, appeared in seconds.

“General.”

“Please ask the pilots if we can expect a smooth flight.” Chinese men his

age rarely exercised—at most they contented themselves with tai chi—but

Li took his workout regimen very seriously. He always brought an elliptical

trainer with him on the Airbus.

Wei disappeared. A minute later he was back, holding a gym bag

packed with Li's exercise clothes. "The winds are with us, General. A smooth

flight."

In the main stateroom, Li changed in silence and alone. Some other

members of the Standing Committee had valets to help them dress. Li

hadn't fallen so far into bourgeois decadence, not yet anyway. Though he

had to admit that he'd grown used to great luxury. He had chauffeurs,

guards, housekeepers. Still, he always tried to remember that he served the

people, not the other way around. Unlike other leaders, he hadn't used his

position to make a fortune from bribes or corrupt business deals. He had

no hidden bank accounts, no villas in Hong Kong.

For the next hour Li forgot himself on the trainer. When he was finished,

he stretched and showered and returned to his chair. A glass of freshly

squeezed orange juice awaited him. Sun Wei knew the favorite drinks of

everyone lucky enough to be a regular passenger on this plane.

Li sipped his juice and tried to relax. As always, he was glad to be free

of Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, a scrawny man with hard black eyes.

At their first meeting, a year earlier, Ahmadinejad had begun by haranguing

Li about the United States and Israel, the eternal enemies of Muslims every-

where. The words spilled from Ahmadinejad's mouth so quickly that Li's

translator could hardly keep up. Though the Iranians kept the presidential

palace frigid, sweat rolled down Ahmadinejad's face as his voice rose.

For half an hour, Li had sat across from Ahmadinejad, hands folded

patiently in his lap, waiting for the man to exhaust himself. He was used to

sitting through boring speeches, though usually they came in his own lan-

guage. The Iranian poured out words, a river of nonsense. He seemed to be

Preaching at an audience of thousands, an audience that only he could see.

finally Li broke in.

“Mr. President,” he'd said, first in Chinese, then in English. "Mr.

President.

"The Chinese people appreciate your grievances with the global hege-

mon, the United States. We agree that every state has the right to rule

itself."

“Yes, yes. But the problem is deeper. The Zionists—”

Li had no intention of sitting through another rant. "And I thank you for

your hospitality. But I must return to Beijing tomorrow, and we have much

to discuss."

Ahmadinejad seemed to have forgotten that Li was an emissary from a

country more powerful than his own, not a rival to be bullied. "General,

before we can continue, you must understand—" But Li never found out

what he had to understand. Before Ahmadinejad could go on, the clean-

shaven man beside him whispered into his ear.

The man was Said Mousavi, the head of Iran's secret police, and what-

ever he had said, his words were effective. Ahmadinejad ran his hand

through his coarse black beard and whispered back to the security minister.

From then on, his conversations with Li had been mostly businesslike,

though Ahmadinejad still blustered occasionally about Zionist conspira-

cies. Yet by the end of their second meeting, Li realized that the Iranian was

more subtle than he appeared. As much as anything, his windy speeches

were intended to distract, to hide Iran's real ambitions.

If outsiders had known of these meetings, they would have assumed

China had the upper hand. Yet it was Li who flew to Tehran, not Ahmadinejad

to Beijing. The men who ran Iran took such eagerness as a sign of China's

weakness. Li didn't try to change their minds. He had his own reason for

wanting these meetings in Tehran instead of Beijing. This way, only he and

his closest aides knew exactly what he was telling Ahmadinejad. Of course,

he reported back to his fellow ministers on the Standing Committee after

each meeting. But he didn't report everything.

As they tried to build a bomb, the Iranians needed engineering help, lots

of it. Even for a sovereign country with a multibillion-dollar budget, build-

ing a nuclear weapon was harder than it looked.

Nuclear weapons are both complicated and very simple. Conventional

explosives get energy from breaking chemical bonds between atoms.

Nuclear bombs release the energy bound up inside individual atoms, a far

bigger source of power. The difference in power is staggering. Fat Man, the

homb that the United States dropped on Nagasaki in 1945, used fourteen

pounds of plutonium to produce a blast with the energy produced by

42 million pounds of conventional explosive. The bomb killed 70,000

people immediately and tens of thousands more over the next genera-

tion. Yet by modern standards, the Fat Man bomb is puny.

Fortunately for humanity's survival, most types of atoms can't be used

in nuclear weapons. The exceptions are plutonium and a certain kind of

uranium, called U-235, so-called fissile materials. The United States and

other major nuclear powers prefer plutonium for their bombs, because

plutonium is even more potent than uranium. But plutonium is also harder

to handle, and it doesn't exist naturally. Making it requires nuclear reactors,

big buildings that are prime targets for guided missiles or bombs. So ura-

nium is the nuclear material of choice for countries like Iran, which need to

make bombs in secret.

Still, uranium can't simply be pulled out of the ground and plugged into

a nuclear weapon. In its natural state, uranium ore consists of two different

isotopes, U-235 and U-238. They look the same, a heavy dull yellow metal.

But they have different atomic structures. U-235 can be used to make a

bomb. U-238 can't.

In its natural state, uranium is made up of 97 percent U-238, the useless

kind, with just 3 percent U-235 mixed in. When the United States began the

Manhattan Project to develop nuclear weapons, its scientists had to find a

way to separate the valuable U-235 from U-238. They found the answer in

centrifuges, enclosed chambers that spin very fast, and enabled them to pull

*e lighter U-235 out of the U-238.

In theory, the centrifuge procedure is relatively straightforward. But as

the Iranians had found out, bridging the gap between theory and reality

could be difficult. Even under the best of circumstances, it required a small

army of well-trained engineers and physicists. The Iranians had an added

challenge. Because of the threat of the Israeli air force, they were working in

labs buried seventy feet underground.

UNTIL THIS MEETING, Ahmadinejad hadn't told Li exactly what problems the

Iranians were having. In part, his reticence was a matter of national pride.

The Iranians hated to admit that they had failed where North Korea had

succeeded. At the same time, Tehran worried that Beijing might be cozying

up to them just to betray them to the United States.

To overcome that suspicion, Li had gone to great lengths. Not even

the other members of the Politburo Standing Committee knew the steps

he had taken. Now, finally, his efforts were paying off. This time around,

Ahmadinejad and his scientific advisers had made very specific requests,

asking if China could lend Iran electrical engineers, metallurgists, and

physicists—a hiveful of highly trained worker bees to build a very large

stinger. In return, Ahmadinejad offered to name China as Iran's preferred

partner for oil and natural gas development, and to give China first call on

Iranian crude in case of a worldwide shortage.

Li hadn't tried to hide his excitement at the offer. An alliance between

China and Iran would be a giant shift in world politics. For the first time

since the end of the Cold War, major nations would align in open defiance

of America.

Naturally, Li agreed. The approval of the Standing Committee would

be a formality, he said. And why would the Iranians doubt him? He'd

given them reason to believe that China hated the United States as much as

they did.

Li knew this alliance was risky. He didn't fully trust the Iranians. But he

needed their help, needed it now. He was setting China on a collision course

with the United States. Without Iran's support, his plan couldn't succeed.

And despite what he'd told the Iranians, the plan was his, his alone. The

other eight members on the Politburo Committee didn't know what he was

doing. They would never have supported him.

Li believed he had sound reasons for taking this path. The others on the

committee were cowards and thieves. He needed to act, and quickly. One

day, the full truth would came out, and the world would judge his actions.

By then he'd be dead, though not forgotten. Never forgotten. In the mean-

time, though, he needed to keep his scheme secret. For if the Standing Com-

mittee learned exactly what he'd done, his future would be short and bleak.

LI TURNED HIS CHAIR to face Cao Se. Technically, Cao was only the seventh-

ranking officer in the PLA, but in reality he was closer to Li than anyone

else. Li and Cao had served together in China's three-week war in Vietnam

in 1979- Li had come out unscathed, but not Cao. A mine had taken off his

left leg below the knee. Sometimes Li wondered whether Cao was marked

to take the misfortune for both of them. Perhaps in a previous life he had

served Cao. Now the roles were reversed. Where Li was tall and handsome,

Cao was small, his face pockmarked. His wife had died in childbirth in 1986

at a Shanghai hospital, and he had never remarried.

A few years before, Li had caught Cao staring at him. The look wasn't

sexual, more like the devotion that a child lavished on a distant father.

Sometimes Li wondered if a more independent adviser would have served

him better. Yet loyalty like Cao's was rare, and Li needed at least one man he

could trust completely.

Cao knew more about Li's plan than anyone else. Even so, Li hadn't told

Cao exactly what he was doing. As much as he trusted Cao, he couldn't take

that chance. Not yet.

“General.” Cao was drawing intently in a spiral notebook, his lips pursed

tight, his face rapt. At the sound of Li's voice, Cao snapped the notebook shut.

“Keeping secrets, Cao?”

“You know I have no secrets.”

“Let's see.” Li reached out for the notebook.

“It's nothing to do with anything, General.” Nonetheless, Cao handed

it over.

The book's pages were filled with sketches of buildings in thick black

ink, skyscrapers and highways and apartment complexes. Long flowing

strokes that caught the motion and vitality of city life. Li recognized the

giant Jin Mao Tower in Shanghai, the Empire State Building. Other build-

ings seemed to be of Cao's own creation, narrow towers that stretched to

the sky, stadiums with cantilevered roofs.

“Cao. These are excellent.”

“A way to pass the time.”

“No. Truly. You could have been an architect. You have a talent.” At this,

Cao smiled. “Why didn't you tell me?”

“I didn't think you'd be interested, General.”

Li handed back the book. And wondered, What other secrets have you

been keeping from me all these years, little Cao?

“So what did you think of Ahmadinejad today?” This conversation would

necessarily be limited. Li and Cao knew that the A340 had a dozen bugs

scattered through its cabin. As defense minister, Li controlled most of them.

But not all.

“These Iranians are strange people,” Cao said. "In a way, they're like

the Red Guards"—the young revolutionaries who had tormented China

in the late 1960s. "They don't mind tearing everything down. They take

a certain pleasure in it. If they got the special weapon, they might actually

use it."

“They think the world could end tomorrow. It gives them freedom.”

"At first I didn't think we could trust them. But now ... Our interests are

aligned. We help them, they help us. We're in different beds but we have the

same dream."

Li smiled. Cao had reversed the Chinese proverb of "different dreams in

the same bed." The implication of the saying was that no two people could

fully trust each other. Even a husband and wife who'd slept beside each

other for fifty years had different dreams.

In this case, though, Li and Ahmadinejad knew that they were in a mar-

riage of convenience. Their opposition to the United States had brought

them together. They didn't need to trust each other, as long as their interests

Were aligned.

“Different beds, same dream,” Li said. “It's enough for a partnership.”

“For now.”

“It won't have to be forever, Cao.”

ANNANDALE, VIRGINIA

THE GOLDEN RETRIEVER LUNGED AFTER A FAT GRAY SQUIRREL, dragging the

man in the green windbreaker forward. He fell on the muddy ground, bang-

ing his knee against a bulbous stone, his curses echoing through the empty

woods. The dog ran off, chasing the squirrel until it darted up a birch tree

and disappeared.

“Lenny! You moron! Come here.”

The dog stared stupidly at him, then trotted back, his leash trailing on

the muddy ground. The man could only shake his head. For months Janice

had told him to get that dog-training video with the Mexican guy. He would

have bought it already if she hadn't nagged him so much. Even when she

was right, she was wrong.

“Lenny. You dope.”

He patted the dog's flank. Lenny licked his hand by way of apology

before flopping onto the ground. Rain had fallen all night, leaving the earth

soaked. The dog rolled from side to side on his back, ecstatic at the chance

to cover himself in dirt.

No wonder this stupid animal was his favorite creature in the world, the

man thought. This simple sense of joy that he had lost long ago. If he'd ever

had it. Certainly he preferred Lenny to his wife. If their house were burning

and he could save only one, he'd probably grab the dog.

“Enough. You're making a mess.”

He took Lenny's leash and stood, trying not to lean too hard on his knee.

The rain had let up before dawn, but a drizzle continued, spotting his forehead.

He breathed in deeply, hoping the cool damp air would soothe his lungs.

The man looked around the leafy woods to be sure he was alone. Wake-

field Park lay in suburban Virginia, just west of the Beltway. But it seemed

to belong somewhere more rural. Sparrows darted through beech trees, and

foxes regularly made their way to the creek in the center of the park. In the

early mornings, the place was deserted aside from a few mountain bikers—

and the man in the green windbreaker.

It was the perfect spot for dead drops.

The man checked the gold Rolex he wore only outside the office: 6:07.

Time to move, before the bikers showed up. He tugged on Lenny's leash and

off they went, Lenny's head twisting from side to side as the idiot dog looked

for more squirrels to chase.

TEN MINUTES LATER THE MAN stopped near a granite outcropping beside a

burned-out tree stump. He was alone, though he could hear the morning's

first biker yodeling gleefully over a rise to the east.

From his jeans the man pulled a little black plastic case that looked like

the control for a car alarm. The case had two buttons, one black, one red.

He pushed the black button.

To the west, up a slight hill, he heard two chirps. Maybe 150 feet away. He

walked up the hill and pushed the black button again. This time the beeps

were closer, thirty feet. He paced closer, one careful step at a time. He looked

Wound, making sure he was still alone. He was. Once more he pushed the

button. The beeps came again—

There. It lay by a tree, a broken oak branch like any other. Only it wasn't.

It was the dead drop to end all dead drops. The branch was genuine, and

originally from this park. But at a lab outside Beijing it had been hollowed

out, its center replaced with a waterproof plastic compartment big enough

to hold two thin sheets of paper—or a flash memory drive. Big enough to

betray the CIA's most important secrets.

The Chinese had installed a receiver in the branch that responded to a I

signal in the plastic case the man held. The technology was simple, basically '

a car alarm with better encryption, but foolproof. He and his handlers could J

make drops just about anywhere. For the last three years, they had used Wake-

field, a perfect spot, a fifteen-minute walk from his house.

He reached down for the branch—

And a squirrel ran by and Lenny tugged on his leash. Stupid dog.

“Go. You deserve each other.” He dropped the leash. The retriever

took off.

“Alone at last,” the man said. He picked up the branch, rubbing his fingers

over its bark, feeling for the hidden pressure points at each end. If they were

pressed simultaneously—and only if they were pressed simultaneously—

they would release an electromagnetic lock and pop open the center com-

partment.

There. He found the first pressure point. Now where was the other? He

probed the bark. There. No, there—

“Hey! Buddy!”

Dammit. He turned to see a mountain biker pedaling toward him. The

guy was wearing the ridiculous gear they loved, a neon-yellow reflective

jacket and tight Lycra shorts.

“This your dog?” Lenny trailed after the bike.

The man in the green windbreaker felt his heart thump crazily. "Yeah.

His name's Lenny. He thinks one day he's gonna catch himself a squirrel.

Thanks for bringing him back—" Stop talking, he thought. You're just a guy

out walking your dog.

He snapped his mouth closed. He dropped the branch and reached for

Lenny. “You dummy,” he said to the retriever. “You're gonna get lost.”

“Ought to keep an eye on him. I almost hit him.”

“You're right. My mistake.”

The biker rolled closer. The man felt oddly light-headed. He knows.

I'm not sure how, but he knows. Why had he left his Smith & Wesson in his

basement?

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“Shouldn't you put him back on the leash?”

“Sure. Of course.” He reattached the leash. "Thanks for bringing him

back."

“No prob, man.” The biker nodded victoriously and turned down the

hill. The man in the windbreaker sat down and waited for his pulse to return

to normal. After all his years of tradecraft, he couldn't believe that a jackass

on a souped-up twelve-speed had almost busted him.

“Lenny. You almost caused me big trouble.”

Instead of answering, the dog squatted to relieve himself. Or maybe that

was his answer, the man in the green windbreaker thought. He let Lenny

take his time, waiting until he could no longer see the biker, until he could

no longer feel his heart thumping sideways in his chest. When he was sure

he was alone, he turned back to retrieve the branch—and the instructions

inside.

WELLS WALKED DOWN A WHITE SAND BEACH, dipping his feet into the waved

lapping along the shore. The water was the clearest blue imaginable, so

bright it almost seemed neon. Exley lay on the beach under an umbrella,

wearing a modest bikini that changed color as he looked at it, now red, now

yellow, now green with camouflage stripes. That's wrong, he told her. War

isn't sex. But she didn't hear.

He turned back to the ocean. Instead of sand, the water covered a ban

of fluorescent lights. Off, he said to Exley. Turn them off. She ignored him

and when he looked for her, she was gone. He tried to run for her, but th

waves ripped him away from the beach, away from her—

“Mr. Brown.”

Wells woke, muzzy-headed, to a hand shaking his shoulder. Instead o

a beach, he was on a C-17. The cabin stank of sweat and stale unwashed

bodies. They'd been airborne for twenty hours.

“You okay, sir? Look a little green.”

“Fine, Lieutenant.” Wells rolled his head, futilely trying to unlock the

scar tissue in his back. Instead of standard seats, the military plane ha<

I stic benches screwed to its walls. They seemed designed to torture the

spine.

“Lieutenant, how long was I out for?”

“Five hours, give or take,” the lieutenant said. "We'll be down in forty-

five. PilQt just turned on the lights."

The lights. That accounted for his dream, Wells thought. All around

him men in fatigues were slapping themselves awake, swigging mouth-

wash, stretching, anything to shake off the boredom of an 11,000-mile

journey. Wells had hitched a ride to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan with

the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne, which

was being sent overseas for the third time in five years. Macho chatter

filled the cabin, soldiers psyching themselves up for the grueling days to

come:

“Ready to land?”

“Heck no, Sergeant. Let's spend another day in this tin can.”

“Ramirez, is that my toothbrush?”

“Nuh-uh, moron. Check your ass—it's probably stuck there.”

"Think this is what it's like to be an astronaut? When I was a kid, I always

wanted to be an astronaut."

“You can't even find Uranus, Roberts—get it? Uranus. Like—”

“I get it.”

“All right, who farted?”

“Who didn't?”

Then, from the back of the cabin, the all-purpose Army cheer: “Hoo-ah!”

“Hoo-ah!”

Those Talibs ain't gonna know what hit 'em! They going down like

Chinatown!"

“Hoo-ah!”

Like your sister on prom night!"

“Hoo-a/z/”

“We're sending Osama straight to hell!”

Hoo-ah! Hoo-ah!" At first out of sync, but then melding into one giant

“HOO-AH!” so loud the cabin rattled.

Hoo-ah: short for “Heard, Understood, Acknowledged.” “I get it,” “yes sir,”

and “rock on,” all in one. Not just following an order but being proud to foj

low it. Nothing like hoo-ah, the word or the spirit, existed in civilian life. Wells

couldn't help but smile. He felt privileged to be with these guys. After all these

years of war in the desert and the mountains, the United States Army was still

the world's finest fighting force. Though the Marines might disagree.

Now, the men in charge, they were another story. They—their kids, at I

least—ought to do some time over here, and not on the guided two-day I

tours the Army gave them so they could tell the talk shows how they'd beenl

to the front lines. Let them spend months dodging mortars and roadsidJ

bombs, feel for themselves how a base could turn into a prison after J

while.

Enough, Wells thought. No more thinking. He'd volunteered to come

back here. He had a job to do. “Hoo-ah!” he said to himself. He chuggej

half a bottle of water in one gulp, soothing his raspy throat, then poureJ

the rest over his head, smiling in satisfaction as the lukewarm liquid ran

down his face. He pulled a towel from the pack under his feet and wiped

himself dry.

“Love those whores' showers,” Lieutenant Gower said with a smirk. He

was a sturdily built black man, twenty-six or so. Wells liked him, mainm

because Gower, despite his obvious curiosity, hadn't asked Wells anything

about who he was. For twenty hours they'd talked about sports, played

chess—Gower had beaten him handily—and otherwise ignored the quesfl

tion of how Wells had found his way onto this particular plane.

“Got that right,” Wells said. He decided to pull Gower's chain. "Reminds

me of 'Nam."

Gower's eyes widened. “You served in Vietnam? For real?”

"Tet, Khe Sanh, all of it. I got a wall full of ears at home. Now, that was j

a war."

“Serious?” Gower looked at Wells. “You're messing with me.”

“Yeah, I am. Do I really look that old? I'd be sixty.”

"We all look sixty right about now. Tell you what, though. You got some

juice. Not just anyone can get on a fully loaded C-17 on two hours' notice. I

“I thought this was a Hooters charter to Bangkok.”

“Understood, sir,” Gower said. “Figured I'd give it a shot.”

THE CABIN'S SPEAKERS CLICKED ON. "From the cockpit. We know you love it

here, but it's my duty to inform you we'll be on the ground in Bagram in

about thirty minutes."

The inevitable “Hoo-ah!” passed through the cabin.

"Those of you who have visited fabulous Afghanistan before know that

we like you to saddle up at this point in your trip. This is not optional."

Throughout the cabin, soldiers pulled on their body armor and hel-

mets. Wells reached down for his bulletproof vest, standard police-issue

protective gear, far thinner than the flak jackets everyone else wore.

“That all you got?” Gower said, looking at the vest. "It'll hardly stop a

nine." A pistol-fired, low-velocity 9-millimeter round. The plates in the

Army's flak jackets were designed to handle high-velocity 5.56-millimeter

AK-47 rounds, which would shred Wells's vest.

“I like to travel light.” Wells pulled on his helmet.

The intercom clicked on again: "For your safety, this will also be a red-

light landing. We know you Army boys get friendly in the dark, but please

try to keep your hands to yourself."

The overhead lights flicked off, replaced by the eerie glow of red lights

mounted in the cabin walls. "We will be coming in tactically, so strap in

tight and enjoy the ride."

Around the cabin, men buckled themselves into the harnesses attached

•0 the walls of the C-17. “Anyway, we hope you've enjoyed your trip,” the

Pl'ot said. "Thanks for flying this Globemaster III. We know you have a

choice of airlines, and we appreciate— Oh, no you don't. Forget it."

“Funny man,” Gower said.

“Wishes he was flying an F-16.” Wells tightened his harness around his

toulders. The C-17 swung hard right and tipped forward into a dive.

'He best not go all JFK Jr. on us," Gower said. He laughed, but Wells

^d hear the tension in his voice.

“Don't like flying, Lieutenant?”

"I know what you're thinking. Why'd I sign up for the Airborne? Wife

says the same thing."

“And you tell her a man's got to face his fears.”

“That's right. So what are you afraid of, Mr. Brown?”

The question stopped Wells. “I'm not sure.”

“Gotta be something. Everybody's afraid of something.”

“Failure, maybe.”

“Good answer. Gives nothing away.” Gower sounded disappointed.

But Wells knew there was another answer, one he would never share

with Gower: Myself. I'm afraid of myself.

POP! POP! CHAFF FLARES EXPLODED off the C-17's stubby wings. Then the jet

swung into a corkscrew. Gower's fists were clenched in his lap. The plane

leveled out suddenly. Seconds later it touched the ground, bounced, then

touched down again, rocketing along the 10,000-foot runway.

And then they were done. The brakes and thrust reversers kicked in, and

the C-17 stopped in one long, smooth motion. "Welcome to Bagram Air

Force Base, thirty miles north of beautiful Kabul, Afghanistan. Local time is

0200 hours," the pilot said. No cheer this time. The abrupt landing had

reminded the soldiers of the danger they were about to face, Wells thought.

He scanned the tense faces around him. Many of the men in this cabin had

never seen combat. Their commanders would have to help them channel

their adrenaline, turning it from fear into the vigilance that might save their

lives.

The Pentagon liked to think of training soldiers as a science. It was really

alchemy, an unquantifiable process. Some of these men would freeze under

pressure, make bad decisions, get themselves or their buddies killed. Others

would find calm in the heat of battle, outthink the enemy, save themselves

in seemingly impossible situations. And no test could tell them apart. Only

live ammunition could.

Of course, even the best-equipped, most able soldiers didn't always sur-

vive. Sometimes every choice was wrong. Wells had never seen Ted Beck in

action, but he knew Beck's skills. If I'd been on that boat, would I have sur-

vived? Would I have seen something he missed? Wells couldn't say for sure,

but the odds were against it.

“Ever been in combat, Lieutenant?” he said to Gower.

“Not yet, sir,” Gower said. “Anything I should know?”

“Just stay calm. You'll be good. I can tell.” Wells hoped he was right.

The overhead lights flicked on, replacing the spectral red glow of the

landing lights. Wells blinked against the white glare, remembering his

dream.

“Good luck, Lieutenant.” He offered Gower his hand.

“Luck, Mr. Brown. If the 504th can be of service, lemme know.”

Wells looked at the portable chess set in Gower's pack. "Next time, you

have to teach me some openings so I can give you a game." He felt oddly

disappointed as he turned away from Gower. Another good soldier he would

never see again.

BUT WHEN HE STEPPED ONTO the tarmac, a pleasant surprise awaited him.

Glen Holmes stood outside the C-17, a bit thicker than he'd been when

Wells had met him in 2001, but otherwise instantly recognizable.

"Mr. Wells. It's been a long time. The Special Forces welcomes you to

Bagram."

Wells looked at the eagle on Brown's shoulderboards. "Colonel Holmes.

You've moved up in the world."

Yeah, I'm a real trailer queen these days. Hardly leave the base."

“Trailer queen?” Wells had to smile. “Never heard that before.”

You've done all right yourself since we last met, John." Holmes grinned.

That might be the biggest understatement of my life. You need a nap, or

can I interest you in a cup of coffee?"

Coffee sounds great."

A few minutes later they sat in Holmes's B-hut as a lieutenant carried in

two oversized plastic tankards. “Starbucks,” Holmes said. "My wife sends it

every month.“ The lieutenant lingered by the door. ”Thank you, Carlo,"

Holmes said. “Dismissed.”

“Yes, sir.” He saluted smartly and was gone.

“Funny,” Holmes said. “He never hangs around when it's just me.”

“Everybody here know who I am?”

"Not the regular units. But SF is too small to keep secrets. Only a few

hundred of us in the whole country. Anyway, you must be used to it by

now." Holmes grinned at Wells.

“Langley seems to wish I would disappear.”

“Well, you're among friends here.”

“You sure? Vinny Duto never shot me. More than I can say for you.”

Wells tugged up his sleeve to show Holmes the scar on his biceps, left over

from the night in 2001 when he'd first met Holmes.

“If I recall, you asked me to. The most surreal night of my life,” Holmes

said. “I sure didn't expect to see you again.”

“All these years—”

“And look how far we've come.”

Wells smiled. “Yeah, about thirty miles. So how is it these days?”

“Had to spoil the trip down memory lane,” Holmes said. "Still mostly

okay. Afghanistan isn't Iraq. Not yet, anyway. But the Talibs are getting

tougher. They've got new tactics this year. Their snipers are more accurate.

And there are these rumors they've got professional help."

“Why I'm here.” Plus I'm driving the woman I love crazy, Wells didn't say.

"If we had another division, even a couple brigades, things would be

different."

“But we don't.”

“No, we don't. They're busy you know where.”

“They'd do a lot more good here.”

“We just do what we're told.” From a file cabinet, Holmes pulled out a

silver flask and two smudged glasses stamped with the Army's "Black Knight'

football logo.

“Would you be offended if I offered you a drink?”

“Not at all.”

“Glad to hear it.” Holmes poured them both a healthy shot. "Macallan,

eighteen-year-old. Been saving it for the right visitor."

“To the men you lead,” Wells said, thinking of the soldiers on the C-17.

They raised their glasses. The scotch hit Wells immediately. He wanted

nothing more than to lie on the wooden floor of Holmes's hut and sleep.

“You must be beat, John,” Holmes said. "Carlo will find you a rack. Check

it before you bunk down. A scorpion stung one of my guys last week. On

the ass."

“Ouch.”

"Yeah. Got his share of shit for it too. Swing by at 1300. I'll fill you in on

what we're planning. Your office did great work on these foreign guys.

Caught something we should have figured out a while ago. It's time for us

to hit them where they live."

“Sounds like a plan to me.”

“EDDIE! DINNER!”

Even in the basement, through the locked door, her voice grated onl

his ears.

“In a minute,” he mumbled. He tapped a Marlboro from the box on the I

cluttered coffee table, touched lighter to cigarette with practiced hand. Hel

closed his eyes in satisfaction as smoke filled his lungs. A nasty habit, but sol

what? Everybody died sometime. He exhaled through his nose, feeling his I

nostrils tingle.

He was stocky but solidly built. A touch under six feet, with thinning

gray hair and a forgettable face, jowly and middle-aged. The face of a man-1

ager who'd never make vice president. The smoking and the Dewar's didnW

help. His eyes were his only memorable feature: the right brown, the lefll

green, with a striking black stripe that cut through the iris. The flaw was!

purely cosmetic and didn't affect his vision.

He was a mole, a double agent. For seven years, he had sold secrets tol

China. An act of treason. Punishable by life in prison. Or death.

He looked around the windowless room. A dirty white shag rug covered I

the floor. The walls were paneled with cheap imitation wood and decorated!

•th framed pictures he'd taken in Hong Kong decades before. His only

rseas assignment. A softball trophy from the Reston summer league sat

on his desk.

He kept the trophy as an ironic joke. But what good was a joke that no

got? Everyone he knew—coworkers, neighbors, even the Mexicans who

1 aned his Acura—pegged him as a capital-L loser. On pain of death, he had

hide the only interesting part of his life. Tragic. He was tragic. He puffed

n the cigarette, and a kind of pride filled him with the smoke. Tragic, but

heroic. He broke society's rules, lived apart from the common mass of men.

He knew the chances he took, and he—

“Eddie!”

Where had his wife learned to howl like that? He ignored her and reached

for the envelope inside his green windbreaker, the letter he had picked up

that morning. The paper inside was neatly folded, a single sheet printed in

the oversized Arial font the Chinese always used.

“Dear Mr. T.”—he always smiled at that, a cultural reference his handlers

probably didn't get—"As always, we most appreciate your work. You are truly

our most valued asset. A bonus pay of three months has been received in your

account for your service. Also please accept this gift."

The English wasn't perfect, but he got the point. They were happy. A

gold Krugerrand had been taped to the paper. Nice touch, the mole thought.

They'd never given him gold before. He flicked open his Swiss Army knife

and cut the coin off the letter. The springbok stamped across its back

gleamed even in the smoky basement air. It felt dense enough to stop a bul-

let. He flipped the coin in the air and caught it neatly. And a three-month

bonus? That was an extra seventy-five grand.

“Eddie! The roast will be cold!”

Janice. Always spoiling his rush.

For the love of God, shut up!" he yelled upstairs.

He slipped the coin into his pocket and returned to the letter. The rest

ls routine, until the end: "In light of the most recent events prudence dic-

s that we Discontinue"—he wasn't sure why they'd capitalized the

0rd—“Marco Trap immediately.”

Marco Trap was a mailbox on Moncure Avenue, just off the Columbia

Pike, that he and the Chinese used as a signaling station. A vertical chalk

stripe meant he'd left documents or a flash drive at the dead drop in Wake-

field. Two horizontal stripes meant they'd picked up the papers. A diagonal

yellow stripe meant he or they needed an urgent face-to-face meeting. A red

stripe meant an emergency, a same-day meeting.

“Please begin use Tango Trap,” the letter continued. "All other procedures

remain. We regret any inconvenience but you are too worthy to take chances.

Most gratefully, your friend, George."

George, aka Colonel Gao Xi. Officially, George was a cultural liaison

at the Chinese embassy, responsible for bringing pandas and acrobats to

America. In reality, he ran the Washington branch of the Second Depart-

ment of the Chinese army—the main intelligence service of the People's

Republic. Put another way, George was China's top spy in America. For

three years, he had served as Eddie's personal handler. There was no greater

proof of the value of the secrets Eddie delivered.

The mole skimmed the letter again, wondering why the Chinese had

changed the mailbox. He couldn't imagine their signals had been noticed.

Maybe they were nervous because of what had happened in the Yellow Sea.

The North Koreans hadn't exactly been subtle. But the mole didn't think

anyone had connected the Drafter with him.

Anyway, the CIA lost sources all the time. It was part of the game. Sure,

the Drafter was more valuable than most, and the fact that the agency had

lost its own men trying to rescue him guaranteed that the incident would

get attention. But the CIA had been in perpetual crisis in the years since

September 11. The mole didn't figure the loss of one agent would be at the top

of anyone's agenda. The East Asia desk would wind up issuing a report about

the dangers of emergency exfiltrations that no one would read. By the time

anyone put together what had happened in North Korea with the agency's

continuing problems recruiting in China, the mole would have retired.

The Chinese were just being paranoid, the mole decided. They'd used

Marco for eighteen months. Time for someplace new. Fine with him. He

got the information. George kept him safe. They were partners.

The mole took a final drag of the Marlboro, then touched its burning

ember to the letter until flames swallowed up the paper and smoke filled the

basement.

“Eddie! Is something burning?”

The mole picked up the .357 Smith & Wesson snubnose on the coffee

table and pointed the gun at the ceiling. The thought of killing his wife was

oddly comforting, but he knew he would never follow through.

He popped open the revolver's cylinder and dropped five of the six

rounds into the ashtray on the table. He pushed the cylinder shut and gave

it a long spin, watching life and death click through the revolver. Life—

Iife—life—life—life—death. Life—life—life—life—life—death. Smooth as

traffic light turning green to red and back again.

“Round and round she goes, where she stops, nobody knows,” he said.

The cylinder stopped. The mole pointed the gun at his eye and looked

down the barrel at infinity. Or, more likely, at an empty chamber. He didn't

plan to kill himself anyway. Why give the world the satisfaction? He slipped

the bullets back into the cylinder, unlocked a file cabinet, and dropped the

Smith & Wesson and the Krugerrand inside. He poured a healthy shot from

the bottle of Dewar's that was a fixture on the coffee table and downed the

scotch in one burning swallow.

“Be right up, dear,” he yelled up the stairs.

THE KITCHEN SMELLEO of pot roast and string beans. Janice might be the only

woman alive who still cooked pot roast. The room was dark, lit only by a

brass lamp in the corner. Janice didn't like bright lights. They hurt her eyes,

she said. She sat at the table, chewing steadily, eyes down. Lenny lay under

the table, tongue hanging wetly out of his mouth as he waited for scraps.

The world was in the twenty-first century and this house was stuck in 1958,

down to the fresh-cut daisies on the kitchen table.

But the mole couldn't deny that he'd built his own prison. He'd met Janice

Playing softball on the Mall in 1996, back from Hong Kong after his humilia-

0n there. She was an Alabama girl, a kindergarten teacher in Reston who

hung out with the Langley admins. She was the prettiest woman he'd ever

dated. But even at the beginning she'd been high-strung, a thoroughbred

prone to anger and depression. And drinking, though he hadn't realized how

much until after they married. Of course, he drank more these days too.

Still, they would probably have been okay if not for their son. Janice had

had a difficult pregnancy. They had needed two years, and four cycles of in

vitro, before they finally conceived, and Janice had spent most of her last

trimester in bed. But Mark, their baby, came out of her healthy and strong.

He stayed that way for almost two years. Then one day he had a stomach-

ache and diarrhea and a touch of fever. Dr. Ramsey, their pediatrician, took

his temperature and sent them home. The second night his fever spiked to

103. Ramsey told them to put a cool towel on Mark's head, put the boy to

bed, and bring him in first thing in the morning.

At 3:00 a.m. Mark woke up, screaming, a thin red gruel dripping out of

his mouth. Janice held him in her arms as they drove to the hospital, the

mole running red lights on Arlington Boulevard, using his emergency driv-

ing training from the Farm for the first and only time. Even now he could

remember the fear in the young emergency room doctor who examined his

son. Janice wouldn't agree, but for him that moment was the worst of all.

He'd never seen a doctor look frightened before.

The rest came as inevitably as an avalanche rolling downhill: intravenous

antibiotics, oxygen mask, organ failure, last rites. He would always believe

that Mark knew he was dying. Even at the end, even after the boy had stopped

moving, his eyes never closed, trying to grab as much of this lousy world

as he could. He was dead four days after that first stomachache. A freak

bacterial infection, the doctors said. Nothing anyone could have done.

Sometimes the mole thought Janice had died along with their son. She

wouldn't even try to get pregnant again. After a few months, he asked her to

stop taking her birth control. She said she would. But a new tray of twenty-

eight foil-wrapped pills kept appearing in their bathroom each month. Even-

tually the mole stopped asking.

She stopped working too. Teaching kindergarten was too stressful. All

those little ones running around. Instead she stayed home. To catch up on

her reading, she said. Two years later, they moved. She said she didn't care,

but he insisted, figuring a new house would be a new start. He pushed her

to find a new job, work at the mall in Tysons Corner, anything to get her out

0f the house. And she did, part-time. But something in her was broken.

About then he approached the Chinese.

Janice wasn't quite an alcoholic, but when her moods turned black she

sat on the couch, watching soaps and sipping the afternoon away. The mole

knew he ought to divorce her, but he felt bound to her. She was the price

he paid for letting his son die, the price he paid for spying. And she could

be sweet. Every so often she reminded him of the woman she'd been, the

beautiful girl who took him to the National Gallery and showed him her

favorite paintings. But his loyalty didn't stop him from spending nights at

the Gold Club. And his narcissism was so complete that he never wondered

if she might be happier without him.

He poured himself a glass of wine from the half-empty bottle and re-

garded his wife. She gave him a sweet, cockeyed smile. This was sloshed,

happy Janice, infinitely preferable to drunk, sad Janice. He sipped his wine,

feeling its mellow glo$ smooth the burn of the Dewar's, and sliced off a

piece of the roast, slipping it under the table for Lenny. He was suddenly

ashamed of his joke downstairs with the Smith & Wesson.

“This is great.” He chewed the meat heartily and sucked down his wine,

then retopped her glass and his until the bottle was empty. Why not? They

had cases more in the basement. Jan didn't like the idea of running short,

and he supposed he didn't either.

“Not overcooked?”

“Not a bit. And you look great today, honey.” He tried not to think about

the fact that she'd look even better if she lost the forty pounds she'd gained

since Mark died. Her stomach had turned as soft as her mind. They still had

sex every so often, mainly for old times' sake.

How was work?"

“Great,” he said sincerely, thinking of the $75,000 the Chinese had

thrown him. There was more where that came from, for sure. The Chinks

had money to burn from selling all those toys and computer chips. The

Chinese were the future. The good ol' U.S.A. was over. Always best to bet on

the come. In his own way he was helping the trade deficit.

Anyway, he'd played them just right, not giving up too much at once,

always leaving them wanting more. Doling out secrets slowly wasn't jUst

greed—it was self-protection. In the mid-1980s, Aldrich Ames, the worst

traitor in the CIA's history, had almost overnight given nearly all of trJ

agency's top Soviet spies to the KGB. Then he'd watched in agony as the]

Soviets arrested them all.

“You're going to get me arrested!” Ames had complained to his han-

dlers. "Why not just put up a big neon sign over the agency with the worj

mole written on it?" Eddie hadn't made the same mistake, and he didn'n

intend to.

He sipped his wine and smiled at his wife. “Yeah, Gleeson”—his khaki-

wearing, infinitely stupid boss—“hinted I might be up for a promotion.”

Unlike much of what he told Janice, this was true.

“Well... that's great. I don't suppose you can tell me the details.” She

smiled like a girl hoping against hope for a pony on her birthday.

"It would be a transfer within East Asia. More responsibility, more coun-

terintelligence work."

In fact Joe Gleeson probably just wanted to get rid of him. But the mole

didn't care. If the move went through, he'd be the senior counterintel officer

for all of East Asia, with access to every operation from Tokyo to Tibet

More details for the Chinese, more bonuses for him.

“Counterintelligence.”

"You know, Spy versus Spy, all that stuff. Find their guys before they

find yours."

“Would we be traveling?” Janice clung to the ridiculous hope that he

would get another foreign post. Ridiculous both because she could barely

function even in suburban Virginia and because the agency would sen*

him to Mars before it gave him another front-line job.

“Maybe a little, but it would be based at Langley.”

“Well, that sounds nice.” She finished her wine and poured hersel

another glass from a new bottle.

..plow about you?"

“It was such a busy day.”

He tried not to smile.

"I took the car in this morning. You know how the brakes have been

eaking" Janice brought in her Volvo to be serviced about once a week.

The mole sometimes wondered if she was screwing a mechanic at the deal-

. ship. He hoped so. "Then this afternoon there was a sale at Macy's—I

tbund this great dress I want you to see."

“Just buy it, honey.”

“Really? It's not on sale.”

“Do I ever say no?”

“Umm .. •” He'd meant the question rhetorically. Janice's requests were

usually modest, and his second career meant that he never had to turn her

down. He even surprised her with the occasional diamond bracelet, though

nothing too extravagant. He didn't want her showing off to the Knausses or

their other so-called friends in the neighborhood.

Her face cleared as she arrived at an answer. "No, sugarplum. I don't

guess you do." She stood, tottered over to him, leaned down to give him a

sloppy kiss, running her tongue down his cheek until she found his mouth.

“You're the best.”

LYING BESIDE JANICE THAT NIGHT, the mole wondered what to do with his

bonus. Maybe he should give Evie a present, that diamond tennis bracelet

she wanted. But he was sick of Evie. When he'd met her at the club, she'd

entranced him. Those fine long legs. And she'd seemed smart, at least com-

pared with the other girls. He'd spent months tipping her extravagantly for

"erlame lap dances, until finally she agreed to have dinner.

5>ix months later they were still seeing each other. But her charm had

w°moff.She never shut up, and she was no genius, though she sure thought

; was. Like she was the only stripper ever to go to college. If he had

Usten to her talk about Occupied Palestine, as she called it, one more

le •   • And the yoga. He didn't mind that she liked it. It kept her flexible,

that was for sure. But she took it so seriously. For a year she'd been train,-

to be an instructor. A year? How much preparation could a yoga instructn

possibly need? It was stretching, with a little bit of chanting, for God's sak»

He'd thought she was joking when she told him the classes cost $ 1,50a

a month. He'd laughed out loud and she'd stamped off. He hadn't evei

gotten laid that night.

Okay, forget the tennis bracelet. Forget Evie. Time for a new stripPer

one who didn't have any illusions about being a rocket scientist.

Somewhere in the night a dog barked. The mole folded his hands

hind his head, feeling the rough skin of his scalp. He imagined Cod looking

down on all the honest souls asleep in their beds. And him, awake, his house

a tumor glowing red in the night. Could the neighbors feel it? The mole

made sure his lawn was mowed, his gutters cleaned. He and Janice brought

apple pie and beer to the neighborhood barbecues. But the neighbors knew,

he was sure. They knew something was wrong, though they would nevei

guess what.

Damn. He'd felt so good a minute before, thinking about the bond

Now the glow was gone. People thought they understood him when thej

didn't understand anything at all. Until the Chinese, no one had respecta

his talents. The agency had always pigeonholed him as a back-office loser.

IT HAD STARTED WITH DICK ABRAMS, the old Hong Kong station chief. 11

snotty Yalie, with his fake half-British accent. "We think you belong back!

Langley,“ Abrams had said. ”You're too cerebral to be in operations. Take

as a compliment."

Too cerebral. The words were almost twenty years old, but the mq

heard them so clearly that he half-expected to see Abrams beside him to

night instead of Janice. He flushed at the memory. They'd been in Abrams

immaculate office, sitting on the couch that Abrams used for his qu°l<

unquote informal chats. No matter where the mole looked, he could0

avoid the photograph of Abrams and Bill Casey, the old director, a lege0

in the Directorate of Operations. Abrams hadn't bothered with a pict°l

r William Webster, Casey's replacement—his way of letting visitors know

11^ would be around long after Webster was gone.

The mole sneaked a peek at his watch: 3:15. He was suddenly thirsty.

, ovving that this meeting was coming, he had skipped his usual lunchtime

Kjotch-and-soda. Now he wished he'd had a double instead.

“Is this about the incident?” the mole said.

“The incident?” Abrams had said, icy and smooth. The mole focused on

meeting Abrams's eyes. As a kid, he'd found eye contact difficult. Over and

aver, his mother had told him, “Look me in the eye. Don't be weak.” Her

words only made the task harder. But he knew she was right. He practiced,

staring at teachers, his friends, even strangers at bars. He pretended they

weren't real, that he was watching television. Now he could look the devil

himself in the eye. He raised his head and stared at Abrams.

“The incident?” Abrams said. "You mean when you got drunk and prop-

ositioned the Italian ambassador's wife?"

“His daughter, you mean.” Even as the mole blurted out the words, he

realized that Abrams had intentionally misspoken to trap him.

“Right,” Abrams said, drawing out the word. "His daughter. She was

sixteen, right?" She didn't look sixteen, the mole thought. Not in that dress.

And maybe I'd had a few too many Dewar's, but so what? The CIA, es-

>ecially the Directorate of Operations, was filled with hard drinkers. In

stations like Rome or Hong Kong, where not a lot was happening, getting

sloshed at lunch was practically a necessity.

But trying to justify what had happened would only make matters worse,

K mole knew. Abrams didn't care. He was enjoying himself, enjoying the

nance to make sure the mole knew what a flop he'd been. The mole wished

c°uld lean over and lock his fingers around Abrams's neck.

Anyway, we think you'd be better off back at Langley," Abrams said in

lt maddening voice of his. “Not in a front-line operational role.”

K HE'D GONE to Langley, where he could never outrun what had

Pened in Hong Kong. Other officers padded their expense accounts,

stole petty cash, screwed secretaries. But the comic value of what he'd don J

ensured it would never be forgotten. He'd become a walking punch line, an

object lesson for a generation of case officers. Whatever you do, don't put fj,

moves on the ambassador's daughter. He'd made matters worse by refosinJ

to bend to drones like Joe Gleeson. He'd never learned how to kiss the riehti

asses. How to play golf. Silly him. He'd figured that intelligence counted f0J

something at the Central Intelligence Agency.

The mole felt his mood changing again. So what? Forget golf. Without

wasting a single Sunday chasing a little white ball around, he'd beaten them

all. Today alone, he'd made $75,000. That was a year's pay, after taxes, for Joel

Gleeson. For him it was walking-around money.

Suddenly he knew how he would spend his bonus. The Corvette. He

smiled in the dark. A '67 Sting Ray convertible, silver. The eBay listing saidl

the car was in Tampa. He could pick it up there, drive it to Miami, garage it

with his M5, another beautiful piece of steel. Too bad nobody at Langlew

would ever see it. The mole could imagine jaws dropping as he cruised]

through the parking lot with the top down.

Of course he wouldn't keep the 'Vette in his name. Ditto the M5, or the

condo in Miami he'd bought a few years back. A Florida company, London!

Two, owned everything. In turn, London Two's shares were held by a sheul

company based in the Caymans.

From there the trail went to Rycol Ltd, a shell corporation in Singapore

that got $25,000 every month from the Fung Long Jack Co. Fung Long was

a real business, a shipping company owned by a Chinese businessman in

Singapore. If anyone asked, and no one ever would, the monthly payment!

were commissions that Fung Long paid Rycol for buying fuel for its fleeu

Even Fung Long's owner didn't know what the money was really for. He jusa

knew that his cousin, a senior Chinese general, had asked him to make the

payments, and that $25,000 a month was a small price to keep his cousin

happy.

Originally, the mole's handlers had paid him the old-fashioned way*

leaving cash at dead drops. But the mole quickly learned that using cash m

transactions was risky. Strange but true: banks hated handling cash.

- ecially after September 11, they strictly enforced the rules requiring

to report deposits of more than $10,000 to the Treasury Department.

• he'd set up this system, which so far had been foolproof.

The mole had decided even before he approached the Chinese that he

uldn't spy unless he could enjoy his money, and that meant finding ways

use it legally. He had no interest in stashing a million bucks in his base-

ment. Of course, the paper trail would provide ironclad confirmation of his

spying if he was ever caught.

But he didn't expect to get caught. The agency had a dismal record

of finding double agents. Both Ames and Robert Hanssen, an FBI agent

who became a mole in the mid-1980s, worked with impunity until their

Soviet handlers betrayed them—and Ames and Hanssen had been far less

cautious than he was.

Over the years, the mole had realized that stealing secrets was easier

than it looked. Case officers in China, and everywhere else, sent in torrents

of reports to justify their existence. They filed everything: contacts with

Communist officials, requests for authorization to approach potential agents,

gossip about new programs the government was considering. The briefings

piled up on his desk. The mole read them all, one reason his superiors val-

ued him, despite his occasional outbursts of temper. His biggest problem

was deciding which documents were important enough to steal. For the

mole had realized something else since he'd switched sides: The most vital

information was the simplest—the names of the agency's operatives in

China and Taiwan, and the spies they'd recruited. If actual names were un-

available, specific information about where the agents worked. The loca-

'ons of drop points. The objectives of active operations. The agency's

assessment of China's military capabilities.

No, the hardest part of being a double agent wasn't the actual spying. It

as resisting the temptation to brag. Destroying the letters George sent him

ead of saving them. Never encouraging Janice to wonder why he spent

50 much time in the basement.

All these years, he'd kept his mouth shut. It wasn't always easy, especially

at the Gold Club after he'd had too many scotches. He comforted him-

self with the knowledge that the strippers wouldn't believe him anyway.

The scene was only too easy to imagine: “Want another dance?” Candy,

or whoever was working him that night, would ask, after slipping his

twenty dollars into her garter. She'd go through the motions of dancing,

not even pretending to be interested, as some horrendously predictable

song ticked away: Don't you wish your girlfriend was a freak like me? Doritcha,

dontcha?

“Hey, Candy, ever wonder where I work?”

“Not really.” Pause, as she figured out he wanted her to ask. “Where?”

“Over at Langley.”

A genuinely puzzled look from Candy. “Langley? That a hospital?”

He'd be flattered. “Do I look like a doctor?”

“Not exactly, no.” By now she would have used the conversation as an

excuse to stop dancing.

“Langley. You know, the CIA.”

“You work for the CIA. Kidding, right?” She'd be leaning in, looking at

his eyes, drunk herself, unable to see him as anything more than a middle-

aged groper.                    <r

“Uh-uh. Dead serious.”

“Serious, huh?” A big stripper smile, then a finger pointed at him in

imitation of a pistol. She'd put her hand on his leg. "Well, let's see your gun,

big boy."

“Wanna know something else? I'm a double agent.”

"You go both ways? I thought you might. That's cool. I got a couple

friends—"

“No!”

“Sorry, baby. Didn't mean to hurt your feelings.”

“I mean, not like that. I spy for the Chinese government. Treason.”

“Treason? What's that?”

And the song would end.

Ugh. Forget it. One day, after he'd retired and Janice had died of cirrho-

sis and he was living someplace with no extradition treaty, he'd write his

memoirs and name every name he could remember. Until then, he would

keep his mouth shut. He closed his eyes and imagined Corvettes, a flotilla

of shiny convertibles, until sleep took him.

THE BLACK HAWK'S ROTORS BEGAN TO SPIN, first slowly, then faster and fatfl

At rest, the twenty-six-foot blades drooped under their own bulk. But theJ

stiffened as they accelerated. In seconds they disappeared into a relentlesJ

blur. Wells felt himself instinctively pull his head back, though he stood fifti

feet from the helicopter. Those rotors could liquefy a skull.

Wells checked his watch. 1655. Five minutes to takeoff. Then the roftfl

slowed. Inside the cockpit, the pilots hunched over the Black Hawk's instfl

ment panel.

The blades dribbled to a stop, and the helicopter's crew chief hoppe

onto the tarmac. With his green flight helmet and black goggles, he looke

like the love child of a palmetto bug and a Green Bay Packers punter. "Warn

ing light on the hydraulics,“ he yelled. ”Take a few minutes to check." H

scrambled back inside the cabin.

Any delay was bad news, Wells thought. They needed to be in the air sod

to hit the campsite at dusk. Sweat prickled his chest, though he wore only

faded green T-shirt under his bulletproof vest. He reached for a bottle'

water from the cooler at his feet and sucked it down in one long gulp.

Arnund him, men in Kevlar vests squatted over topo maps and double-

ked their radios. A and B Companies of the 3rd Battalion. Twenty Special

- es soldiers in all. Two squads of the best-trained fighting men anywhere,

bout to head into the Hindu Kush.

Wells unholstered his pistol, checking that its slide was smooth and

,n;,7ine full. As he finished, he noticed Greg Hackett staring at the

its magati"^                                                         ^

illimeter Makarov. Hackett was the youngest member of B Company, a

rt man whose head seemed to rise directly out of his massive shoulders.

u > had a heavy brow and a thick nose, the face of a half-finished marble

bust that a sculptor had decided not to finish.

“Mr. Wells, sir. Permission to ask a question.”

“If you promise to stop calling me sir, Hackett.”

“Yes, sir—I mean John.” Hackett looked at the pistol. "Is that the one you

used?"

Wells didn't know what Hackett meant, and then he did. "On Khadri,

you mean."

Hackett nodded. He couldn't keep his eyes off the weapon.

“Since you ask. Yeah.” Wells handed the Makarov to Hackett. The ser-

geant cradled the pistol like a newborn.

“No need to fetishize it, Sergeant. It's just a gun.”

Hackett handed the pistol back. "Can I ask one more question, sir? How

does it feel to be back here?"

“Sergeant, don't you have something to do?”

WEUS HAD COME TO AFGHANISTAN years before September 11, when most

Americans had never heard of Osama bin Laden. He'd fought alongside

vaeda and Taliban guerrillas for almost a decade. He had even become a

Muslim during those years. Eventually, the guerrillas had accepted him as a

believer.

out Wells was happy to hunt his former allies today. He didn't count

^If as Muslim anymore. He couldn't honestly say whether he believed

°d after everything he'd seen. And even during the years when he had

accepted Islam as the one true faith and prostrated himself to AH . I

five times daily, he had hated bin Laden's nihilistic vision of the relim0J

The Taliban and Qaeda gloried in encouraging teenagers to become suiciH 1

bombers. They were unworthy of Islam.

And they were unworthy of Afghanistan. Afghans were tribal to a faJ

splintered into narrow sects whose hatreds dated back centuries. The TalibaJ

had taken advantage of Afghanistan's internal fractures to impose a vici<B

dictatorship in the 1990s. Seemingly out of spite, they had undone what little

progress Afghanistan had made during the twentieth century, destroying the

country's hospitals and schools. During the American invasion after Septenvl

ber 11, the planners at the Pentagon joked that the United States would bomb

Afghanistan up to the Stone Age.

The American attack had forced the Talibs out of power. Now AfghaiM

stan was stumbling toward modernity and democracy. But the Taliban!

hadn't gone away. The guerrillas were trying to turn tribal leaders against the!

United States and its allies. They had a real chance of succeeding, because in

any crisis Afghans turned inward. Wells understood why they depended on

themselves. For hundreds of years, outsiders had come and gone, most often

leaving the country in worse shape than they found it in. But—

A hand on his shoulder interrupted his thoughts.

“Goggles!” Captain Steve Hughley, the commander of B Company!

yelled.

Wells had been so busy figuring out Afghanistan's future that he'd misseB

the Black Hawk starting up again. He tucked in his earplugs and pulleoj

down his goggles as the helicopter's rotors reached full speed, kicking upl

dust and pebbles from the tarmac.

“Ready?” Hughley yelled.

“Yeah!” Wells screamed back. His enthusiasm was real. He hadn't flo«

in a Black Hawk since his days as a Ranger in the mid-nineties. He'd forg I

ten how magnificent these helicopters were up close. And how loud. Ev I

with his earplugs in, he was nearly overwhelmed by the screech of the B« I

Hawk's 1,800-horsepower turbines.

The ten-ton helicopter bounced slightly off the runway in its eagerness

, flight. The crew chief waved B Company forward. Down the tarmac,

I mpany was boarding its own bird. Wells pulled a windbreaker over his

„ a orabbed his pack. Inside the cabin, he settled into his seat—designed

yg$t an" b

llapse to the floor of the cabin if the Black Hawk crashed—and clicked

on his harness.

“Comfy?” The crew chief tugged the six-point harness tight and offered

iis headphones. Wells took them gratefully. Insulation was wasted weight

combat helicopters, so the Black Hawk wasn't soundproofed. Inside the

bin, the roar of the turbines was overwhelming, a scrum of white noise

that made conversation or even thinking nearly impossible.

The crew chief hooked in. When he and the gunner on the other side

were set, the helicopter's frame began to rattle as the turbines spun at peak

power for takeoff. The Black Hawk burned three gallons of fuel a minute, so

pilots didn't waste time once the crew strapped in.

The copilot pulled back the Black Hawk's yoke and the helicopter rose

effortlessly off the tarmac. Wells knew that the Black Hawk had the aero-

dynamics of a brick and would plummet if its engines failed. Yet the copter

seemed to belong in the air. As soon as it took off, its frame stopped shaking

and the scream of the turbines lessened. It banked right and kept climbing,

leaving Bagram's stubby huts behind.

WELLS LOOKED AROUND the Black Hawk's cabin at B Company, an impressive

;roup, even by Special Forces standards. Three of the soldiers spoke Pashto,

fourth Dari. Their sniper team had finished third in the Army's shooting

'^petition two years back. Hughley, the company captain, was one of the

' black commanders in the Special Forces. He was six-three, with arms

seemed to be carved from oak. At West Point, he'd played defensive

e- And somewhere along the way, he had picked up fluent Arabic. A

audis still lingered in the mountains, fighting alongside the Taliban,

Qmner the night before, Brett Gaffan, the company radioman and

unofficial comedian, had told Wells how one Saudi they'd captured \M

refused to believe that Hughley spoke his language:

"So Abdullah—he's sitting on the ground, see—he's peeking over \m

shoulder, looking all scared. Captain's like, 'Calm down, dude. You're n|

getting whacked.' How do you say 'whack' in Arabic, Cap?"

“You don't.” Hughley's tone was deadpan.

“How 'bout 'dude'? They gotta have a word for 'dude,' right?”

“You believe the crap I have to listen to every day?” Hughley said to WenJ

"Anyway, this camel jockey, 'scuse my French, starts looking arounJ

harder than Jeff Gordon on turn four, trying to see who's really talkingH

him." Mere, Gaffan craned his neck from side to side, imitating the Saul

before jamming a forkful of mashed potatoes into his mouth. "So Cap given

him some more mumbo-jumbo."

“Finish your dinner, Gaffan.” Hughley turned to Wells. "I told him it wail

no trick, I was the one talking."

Caftan dribbed a glass of lemonade into his mouth and swallow™

mightily. "Then Abdullah says something back, and Cap nods at himaM

tells us to stand him up. Then it gets weird, 'cause Abdullah gets real do I

to the captain, like he's getting ready to give him a kiss."

“He wasn't that close.”

“All due respect, sir, he was. Wasn't he?”

Nods around the table.

"And we're all confused, wondering if we're gonna be whacking Abdullali

after all. And you know we try not to kill our captures, even though daflfl

sure the other side ain't showing us the same courtesy."

More nods.

"But then we're thinking, maybe Cap wants a kiss. Since he hasn't see*

his wife in six months, and the dude was kinda cute."

“Now you're scaring me,” Hughley said.

“Nah, he was cute. Wasn't he?” Gaffan looked around the silent tablM

know y'all thought so too, so don't deny it ... anybody?“ Pause. ”Okayth*

A tVtdt"

“Too late” said Danny Gonzalez, the company's medic.

“Moving on. Then Cap starts singing—”

“praying” Hughley looked at Wells. “The first sura.”

"And Abdullah leans in close, making sure Cap's really the one talking—

HoW was his breath, by the way, sir?"

"I emme put it this way, Sergeant. I wouldn't have kissed him even if I

did play on your team"

"Sir Uncalled for and untrue. I believe that's harassment, sir. Anyway, he

in real close." Gaffan stood up and leaned so close that Wells could

unt his pores. “Looking up, because Cap's maybe a foot taller than he is.”

“Sergeant, did you put Tabasco on your burger?” Wells said, getting a

laugh from the table.“ 'Cause it sure smells that way.”

Gaffan sat down. “Guess I'll be brushing my teeth when dinner's done,”

he said sheepishly. "Anyway. Abdullah gets this scared look on his face, like,

'Damn. It's no joke. This black dude talks my language. Not only that, he

talks it better than me.' Looked like somebody stole his pet camel." Gaffan

stuck out his lower lip in an exaggerated expression of sadness. Everyone at

the table laughed now, Wells too, harder and harder, some pent-up emotion

in him pouring out.

"The kicker is, 'bout ten minutes later, old Abdullah starts blabbing to

Cap and won't shut up. True?"

Hughley nodded. “He was our best source last year.”

'"'NED BY TWO APACHE ATTACK HELICOPTERS, the Black Hawks turned east,

diving as they left the base. When they leveled off, they were just two hun-

ted feet above the ground, low enough that Wells could see the dust kicked

°Y a rusty jalopy as it rolled down the two-lane road that angled away

m the base. Staying low made them harder to hit with rocket-propelled

Shades or surface-to-air missiles.

ne south, a road dead-ended at a massive garbage pile, a hundred-

foot-tall

aiI monument to Afghanistan's poverty. No fires were visible on the

pile, but a haze of black smoke drifted from the trash. The stench of se J

filled the cabin as the Black Hawk flew through the smoke's inky tendr'j

Women and children trudged over the smoldering debris, looking for TM

or scrap metal, anything they might trade for dinner.

In a field nearby, scrawny boys played soccer with a makeshift t>J

Wells could see a breakaway develop even before the players did. AI

in a raggedy blue T-shirt cut past his defender, awaiting a pass froriM

midfield—

But before Wells could see what happened next, the game faded behfl

him. These Black Hawks cruised at 150 miles an hour. Wells decided

imagine that the kid had scored, in keeping with his newly optimJ

outlook. Maybe he should write a self-help book. The power of posiM

thinking. And shooting first.

The fearsome mountains of the Hindu Kush jutted ahead of the hea

copter. The peaks, capped with snow even in summer, stretched hundJ

of miles to the northeast. Near Afghanistan's border with China, theyi«

above 20,000 feet. Around here they were closer to 15,000 feet, still higfl

than any in the continental United States. The CIA and the PentaS

believed that bin Laden was hiding in the Kush or just south, in Pakistani

Peshawar Province. But without solid intelligence, finding anyone in I

Kush was impossible. The range was an endless maze of valleys and caw

among the most difficult places on earth to search. Snow fell by OctolH

By December the dirt tracks that the Afghans optimistically called roads,

were impassable. The guerrillas holed up in tiny villages and waitedH

spring, knowing that even the best-equipped American units could no!

touch them. In the summer, the Talibs moved between the mountaB

and Kabul, planting bombs, hijacking supply trucks, and generally wrtH

ing havoc.

And they were getting more dangerous. A month before, fifty TaliH

had attacked a police station east of Kabul. When a rapid-reaction teB

from Bagram responded, a second band of guerrillas ambushed it. E«J

American soldiers died.

, mortar fire hit the 10th Mountain Division at Camp Blessing, an

t near the Pakistani border. Six men died. Mortar attacks weren't

rtlltP

mrnon in Afghanistan, but attacks this accurate were. So two squads

,-amD had hiked into the mountains to talk to the villagers who lived

Irani can 4-

h of the base. Everywhere they went, the soldiers offered gifts: medical

les pens and paper, and candy—Afghans loved Tic Tacs, for reasons no

ould figure. The idea was to keep the locals friendly, or at least neutral,

a set information about the source of the mortars. In most villages, the

ads were met with tea, suspicious looks, and little else.

But in a nameless village twenty miles north of Camp Blessing, the

oldiers got a surprise. Bashir Jan, the village's headman, told them about

a guerrilla outpost to the west. Besides fifty Taliban, the camp contained

several “white fighters,” he said. And why had he given up this precious

information? The guerrillas were stealing the village's goats and refusing to

pay, he said.

“The guys said he was furious,” Holmes told Wells. "Couldn't have been

madder if they'd taken one of his wives."

“Never look a gift goat in the mouth,” Wells said.

Bashir's report was the one that had spurred Exley to get the satellite

photographs. Now the mercenaries, whoever they were, were about get a

call from Companies A and B. Two companies from the 10th Mountain

Division, including the unit that had first discovered the camp, would pro-

vide tactical support. The plan didn't make the 10th Mountain happy. Their

guys were the ones who'd died in the mortar attack, and they had developed

; original intel. As far as they were concerned, they deserved the kill,

out the terrain demanded an air attack, as Wells had realized immedi-

y when he'd seen the satellite photographs. Armored vehicles couldn't

ttough, and an assault on foot was impossible. The campground was

reds °f feet above the valley. Guerrilla snipers would devastate attack-

nfantry. Plus the mountains in this part of the Kush were riddled with

networks. If they got advance warning, the guerrillas would disap-

0 their underground labyrinth before they could be destroyed.

Thus the 10th Mountain had been pulled back like a rottweiler 0n|

choke chain, and the Special Forces ordered in. The helicopters would stri

at dusk, destroying the camp before the Talibs could respond. Speed woj

be key. If the operation worked as planned, the guerrillas would naJ

The Special Forces would cut off the caves. With that route blocked J

guerrillas would flee down the mountain, into the unfriendly arms of J

10th Mountain, whose men would wait at the base of the valley.

A high-risk operation, Wells thought. But the soldiers in these helij

ters had the best chance in the world of pulling it off. And they had a sec

weapon.

THE SUN WAS LOW as the four-helicopter convoy reached Jalalabad, J

hundred miles east of Kabul. From here, they would fly northeast along!

Pech River and into the mountains. One of the Apaches had briefly floJ

over the valley two days before, the only live visual recon of the camps!

More overflights might have spooked the guerrillas.

Wells looked at his watch. 1840. They should be at Chonesh in less tha

an hour, assuming nothing went wrong. An hour after that, they'd kno«

where they stood. If they hadn't broken the camp by then, they would pro

ably be stuck in a firefight, with little chance for reinforcements until t

morning.

Afghanistan was eight and a half hours ahead of Washington, so En

was probably at work right now, Wells thought. He pictured her in thj

suite in Tysons Corner, sipping coffee from the ridiculous mugs that Sha|

had bought. She knew this mission was happening tonight, and thoq

she hadn't asked for details, she had to know it wouldn't be easy. Yet shl

given him her blessing to go, encouraged him even. Because she'd known

needed the action, needed to feel useful.

In truth, the Special Forces were doing him a favor by letting him Pj

ticipate in this mission. Technically, Wells was replacing B Company's 1

ond medic, who had been shot in the leg two weeks earlier and 1

recovering in a military hospital in Germany. But Special Forces units V|

short a soldier or two. Initially, Wells had worried he might distract

ther men in the unit, who'd fought together long enough that they

one another's moves instinctively.

The night before, he'd told Holmes he'd sit out the attack if Holmes thought

H'dn't belong. “No hard feelings if you don't want me, Glen,” Wells said.

-You kidding?"

“What do you mean?”

"You gonna make me say it out loud? These guys love you. You're better

for morale than the Cowboys cheerleaders."

“Really?” Despite himself Wells had felt a flush of pride.

"John, look, we've got some history. I don't pretend to know you all that

well, but it's obvious, what happened in New York is all twisted in your

head. Put aside the politics for a minute and think on what you did. The

people you saved. That's what these guys see. Believe me. Hughley wants

you out there tomorrow. I do too."

1910. THE PECH RIVER FLOWED shallow and fast beneath the Black Hawk, its

clear water reflecting the gold of the sun's dying rays. Two children stood

beside the river, waving their thin brown arms metronomically as the heli-

copter roared by.

The Black Hawk banked left, turning north into a narrow valley, hidden

from the sun by a crumbling rock ridge. In the sudden darkness, the heli-

copter's gunners hunched intently over their .50-caliber machine guns.

In these valleys, the ride got dangerous. Fly too high, you opened your-

;Kto a lucky shot with an RPG or a SAM. Fly too low, especially at night,

could get taken out by a canyon wall. The topo charts for these valleys

re notoriously sketchy. The pilots usually stayed low, figuring they could

ge a mountain more easily than a missile.

le nelicopter pulled up steeply as the valley tightened. Ahead, a trickle

1 er coursed down a near-vertical rock face. The Black Hawk banked

nd cut through a gap in the rocks, its skids skimming the tops of the

y oak trees that speckled the mountain. The helo topped the ridge-

line, and a new valley opened beneath. The Black Hawk followed thJ

contours of the mountain downward, changing pitch and direction IjJ

a supercharged roller coaster.

“In my next life I want to be a helicopter pilot,” Wells yelled to HughuB

“I know what you mean.”

Suddenly, Wells was cold. A few minutes before, they'd been in the suJ

at 6,000 feet. Now they were in shadows at 10,000, and the temperature had

fallen twenty degrees. He was glad he'd followed Hughley's advice anil

thrown thermals in his pack. Even if the mission went perfectly, they'd I

out all night.

1930. THE BLACK HAWKS SLOWED while the Apaches raced ahead. Part offhJ

plan. The Apaches didn't carry soldiers, but without them the operation I

had little chance of success. The Apaches—AH-64 helicopters, each carnB

ing a crew of two—were the secret weapon that would enable twenty-rwj

American soldiers to take on fifty guerrillas. In the Army's dry jargon, the!

Apaches would “prepare the battlespace for the insertion.”

In the cabin of Wells's Black Hawk, the crew chief held up rive fingersi

silently signaling that the helicopter would reach the landing zone in fivel

minutes. The soldiers nodded, their faces expressionless. The silence wail

anticipation, not fear, Wells thought. These men wanted to get on the field!

and play.

1933. THE BLACK HAWKS SWUNG over a ridge and hovered at the southfiM

end of the Chonesh Valley. Two hundred yards ahead, the Apaches w^H

preparing the battlespace. Their preparation consisted of firing AGM-114lfl

Hellfire missiles at the guerrilla camp.

The Army had developed Hellfires at the height of the Cold War to I

defeat the armor of Soviet T-80s. A generation later, the missiles were rfl

engineered to take out an enemy that preferred caves to tanks. In place

j charges to cut through steel, these Hellfires held a fine aluminum

, r wrapped around high explosive. The twenty-pound warheads

ed molten shrapnel in every direction, killing anyone in a twenty-five-

foot radius.

. yje\\s watched, the forward Apache fired two missiles. The Hellfires

ed in the dusk, trailing brilliant white exhaust as they screamed toward

nlateau and exploded in orange fireballs. Seconds later the sounds of

• inlpact reached the Black Hawks, echoing off the valley's rock walls

and into the night.

Whoomp! Whoomp! The trailing Apache fired two more missiles. For

the first time, the guerrillas responded. A small white burst flared toward

the helicopters, a rocket-propelled grenade fired blindly into the night.

At this distance, the RPG was as harmless as a baby's fist. It ran out of

propellant short of the Apaches and crashed to the valley floor.

The Apaches fired their last Hellfires, then pulled up to make way for

the Black Hawks. Time to go in. Wait too long, and the guerrillas would

regroup, or just disappear into the caves. The Black Hawks accelerated

toward the plateau. Wells pulled on his night-vision goggles for a closer

look. Already the guerrillas were reorganizing. Two men ran out of a cave

holding an RPG launcher. They twisted toward the Black Hawk and fired.

Again they missed, but not as badly as before.

“No white flag,” Wells yelled to Hughley.

“You were expecting one?”

“Surrender's not part of their playbook. They'd rather die.”

“Let's help 'em, then.”

1935- THE BLACK HAWKS REACHED the landing zone. The men in the cabin

ne" forward, poised to unhook their harnesses and rappel down. Side by

e> the Black Hawks descended—a hundred feet, ninety, eighty—

Whoosh! An RPG sailed between the helicopters, exploding against the

e °f the mountain. On the plateau below, guerrillas fired AK-47s, the

rounds clattering off the Kevlar floor mats that protected the Black Hawk's

cabin. The Black Hawk's gunners perched over the .50-calibers, firing back

in controlled bursts. The brass jackets from spent machine-gun rounds

poured out of the guns and into the night. The helicopter lurched down-

ward, leveling out fifty feet above the ground. The lead gunner raised his

left fist, the signal to drop.

“Now!” Hughley screamed above the turbines. “Now!”

BEIJING, CHINA

THE BANQUET HAD BEGUN HOURS BEFORE, but the tables remained spotless,

the linens pressed, the buckets of champagne chilled just so. Tuxedoed wait-

ers changed plates and filled glasses with perfect efficiency.

From the outside, the banquet hall looked as drab as every other build-

ing in Zhongnanhai, the walled compound in Beijing where China's leaders

lived and worked. But inside, the hall—officially called Huairentang, the

Palace Steeped in Compassion—seemed to have been transported directly

from Versailles. Mirrors gilded with twenty-four-karat gold lined the walls.

Orchids and lilies flowed out of a red ceramic pot, a priceless fourteenth-

century treasure. Behind a screen a pianist played Chopin on a Steinway

grand. Oversized crystal chandeliers dangled from the ceiling, beaming soft

light on the hard faces of the men who sat at the table.

The food, too, was superb: moist dumplings of sweet potatoes and gin-

ger; fresh steamed lobsters, their meat basted with a sweet-spicy chili; the

choicest cuts of lamb, sizzled in a slightly bitter soy sauce; shark-fin soup, a

Chinese delicacy, the fins succulent and chewy.

Yet the nine men at the table, China's supreme leaders, had mannS

more suited to an all-you-can-eat buffet. They ate greedily, lifting slabs J

foie gras into their mouths, sucking loudly on giant Alaskan king crab U,

At first glance, the nine could hardly be distinguished. Oversized wire-r; J

glasses and helmets of black hair framed their faces. They wore black suitJ

and white shirts and red ties knotted tightly around their throats. All Kj

one smoked, sucking deeply on Marlboros and Hongtashans, stubbing oij

their cigarettes on the sterling silver ashtrays around the table.

They could have been a family of undertakers, very successful undertake J

They were the nine members of the Politburo Standing Committee. And only

history could explain their frenzied eating. Even the youngest of them remem-l

bered the Cultural Revolution, the decade beginning in 1966 when Mao and1

the Red Guards upended China. Four of these men had spent their twenties in

reeducation camps, brutal places where they spent their days dragging hoei

through rocky soil and their nights confessing their sins at "struggle sessions.1

All nine had known family members and friends who didn't escape the camps,'

who died from pneumonia or famine or beatings by the Red Guards.

No one in this room ever talked openly about those years. But thqj

remembered. And all nine had learned the same lesson that the Cultural

Revolution taught everyone in China—though the lesson wasn't the one

that Mao had hoped to teach. Or maybe it was. Take what you can, while

you can. Because no matter how secure you think you are, you'll lose evem

thing if the Party turns on you.

AMONG THE LOOK-ALIKES at the table, Li Ping, the defense minister, stood out!

Unlike the rest, he didn't smoke. He couldn't avoid drinking. To have,

skipped the toasts would have been impolite. But he sipped his wine whu*

the others guzzled.

And where the other eight were paunchy, Li was trim, thanks to

workouts. Li wasn't modest about his physique. He challenged a

officers half his age to work out beside him and smirked when he left th

behind. “It's the fat pig that feels the butcher's knife,” he told them.

f he others on the committee called him “The Old Bull,” emphasizing

<v»1d" not-so-subtly implying that he ought to act his age. Li didn't care.

the 0l

. rise kept him strong. He wanted to distinguish himself from the men

nd him, whose bodies and minds were equally corrupt.

To the world outside Zhongnanhai, Li was a “conservative,” a "hard-

r" He knew his reputation. He couldn't read English, but each morning

deputies gave him translations of CNN and foreign newspapers. The

eigners didn't understand him or China, he thought. He wasn't conserva-

• e He didn't want to undo the progress of the last two decades. But un-

l'ke the “liberals” who ran the Party, he didn't care about getting rich. His

ambitions ran deeper.

China's elite was composed mainly of technocrats, engineers, and econ-

omists who spent their lives doing the Party's bidding. They rose slowly,

running villages, cities, then provinces. Along the way they proved their

loyalty to their bosses while building power bases of their own. Li had fol-

lowed a different path. He'd come up through the Army, the only real sol-

dier in the Party's top ranks.

Li had served with distinction in China's last major war, its invasion of

Vietnam in February 1979. As a young captain, he'd commanded a com-

pany that was among the first units over the border. The war was not even

an asterisk in the twentieth century's bloody history, but Li had never for-

gotten it.

The Vietnamese had known the Chinese were coming. Their soldiers

and militiamen were battle-hardened from a decade of war with the United

States. China sent in a huge army, hundreds of thousands of soldiers. But its

nen were underequipped and unready, peasants who'd received only a few

'eeks of training before being sent to the border. Some could barely load

their rifles.

*J s company was in the vanguard of a division attacking Lao Cai, a

Wn just south of the border. His unit came under constant fire from

Vietnamese militias. The ground was soft and spongy and the mines

everywhere. The Vietnamese especially liked simple explosives that

Americans called “toe poppers,” pressure mines with just enough power

to blow off a man's foot. Making matters worse, Li's only medic was killA

by a sniper in the battle's first hours. After that he'd had to leave injUreJ

men where they lay. Taking care of the wounded was a luxury the Chine<J

army couldn't afford.

In the first two days of fighting, he'd lost fifty men, a third of his soldier J

But somehow he and Cao Se, his first lieutenant, kept his company iogeth

even as the units around them collapsed. Finally, facing the prospect ofl

devastating defeat, the People's Liberation Army brought up heavy artillervI

The big guns surprised the Vietnamese and turned towns near the border

into rubble. By the time Li's unit limped into Lao Cai, only dogs and ampu.

tees were left.

Three weeks later the Chinese pulled back across the horder, proclai™

ing the invasion successful. They'd taught Vietnam a lesson, they said. Li|

had learned a few lessons himself. At first the suffering ot his men had I

stunned him. But over the years, he reconsidered. Strategically, the war had I

put the Vietnamese in their place. Afterward they treated China with morel

respect. War ought to be avoided, but sometimes it was necessary, M

thought.

For him, too, the war had been a success. The near-disaster in Vietnam

frightened the People's Liberation Army into professionalizing its officer

corps. For the first time in decades, fighting skill, not ideological purity,!

became the most important factor behind promotions. The change helped

Li. His abilities had been obvious from the first days of the Vietnam inva-l

sion. He intuitively knew how to position his soldiers, when to concentrate I

fire and when to disperse. He thumped other commanders in the war games I

at the National Defense University. He rose quickly. By 2004, he'd becomel

chief of staff. Two years later, he was named defense minister and com-l

mander of the army.

Of course, skill only went so far. Li would never have become a ministej

if the others on the Standing Committee had doubted his loyalty. But the™

didn't. To them, Li was the ultimate soldier, always following orders. In truM

as long as Li mouthed the right words, the Party's leaders didn't care if

believed in “socialism with a human face.” They certainly didn't. Being O^

I Werful in China meant being part of the Party. So the Party's leaders

hfully recited the “Eight Dos and Don'ts”—"Know plain living and hard

le, do not wallow in luxuries"—and then rode limousines home to

58 ansions. The sayings were the equivalent of a fraternity's secret hand-

By themselves, they meant nothing. But knowing them got you in.

PREFERRED TO BE UNDERESTIMATED. Even when he joined the Standing

r mmittee, the others didn't view him as a political threat. After all, he

hadn't even succeeded in getting rich from his position. Besides “Old Bull,”

the liberals—those members of the elite who had profited the most from the

new China—had another name for Li. They called him “Guard Dog,” though

never to his face.

But the liberals misunderstood Li. He was greedier than any of them,

though not for money. Li wanted to prove himself the greatest of leaders,

the savior of the Chinese nation, remembered eternally for his courage. In

his dreams, he lay beside Mao in the massive crypt in Tiananmen Square.

Every day thousands of Chinese lined up to glimpse his body. They shuffled

by in awe, wishing they could bring him back. The lines grew until the

crowds filled Tiananmen and poured into the streets of Beijing. But the

people were so eager to see him that no one complained.

When he woke, Li never remembered his dreams. He never consciously

realized how deeply he thirsted for glory. He didn't understand his motives,

and that made him dangerous indeed.

SITTING IN HIS USUAL SPOT, two seats from the head of the table, Li lifted his

crystal wineglass and studied the burgundy liquid inside. A Chateau Lafitte

92.10,000 yuan a bottle, $ 1,300 US. The men around him had gone through

a half-case of the stuff tonight. They surely believed they'd earned it.

In May 1989, hundreds of thousands of students had filled Tiananmen—

le great open square less than a mile from here, the spiritual heart of

a" China—to demand democracy. The Western reporters who covered the

protests called that time the Beijing Spring. For a few weeks it seemed th

China might move from dictatorship to freedom. After all, on the other M

of the world, Communist regimes were falling peacefully.

But China wasn't East Germany or Poland. China had gone throuJ

a century of upheaval so terrible that even World War II seemed miul

An invasion by Japan. A long, bloody civil war. The disastrous Great Lea]

Forward, which led to a famine that killed tens of millions of Chinese Th I

Cultural Revolution. The Chinese weren't ready for more turmoil, noil

soon. They hardly protested on June 4,1989, when the men of Zhongnanhai

brought in tanks to clear Tiananmen. Hundreds of protesters were killed I

that day in Beijing. The People's Liberation Army? On June 4, only the last!

word was true.

The leaders of the Chinese Communist Party never admitted what!

they'd done in Tiananmen. Instead they offered their people an unspoken

bargain. Don't challenge us. In return we'll let you drop the farce of social-l

ism. “To get rich is glorious,” Deng Xiaoping, at the time China's paramount!

leader, famously said. "It doesn't matter if the cat is black or white as longasl

it catches mice." Some people said now that those words had never actually 1

crossed Deng's lips. But the sentiment was real enough.

For two decades, rulers and ruled had stuck to the deal, and China had

produced the greatest economic miracle in history. In the 1980s, China was

a third-world country, poorer than India. Now it had the third-largestI

economy in the world, behind only the United States and Japan.

And yet... and yet. Under its glittery surface China's economy ha<B

reached a dangerous tipping point, Li thought. The boom had given hun-l

dreds of millions of Chinese a decent standard of living. But it had left I

hundreds of millions more in the dust.

Li sipped his wine, the smoothest he'd ever tasted—10,000 yuan a bottle!

His father Hu had worked at a tire factory until his heart gave out on hisl

fifty-second birthday. Hu hadn't made 10,000 yuan in his entire life. H«

never owned a television or refrigerator or even a telephone. He'd saved H

years to buy his most prized possession, a Flying Pigeon bicycle, a sinf«

geared steel beast that weighed almost fifty pounds.

Yet Li never remembered his parents complaining. They'd never felt

since no one they knew was any better off. And they hardly needed

The tire factory gave them a two-room apartment with a commu-

jjioney'

bathroom. They didn't have much, but their lives were secure. They

r had to worry that Hu would be fired or the factory would close. Such

things simply didn't happen.

Now, though, factories closed all the time. Real estate developers tore

me cluttered Beijing neighborhoods called hutongs, to build apart-

ent buildings across the giant city. The apartment towers were cleaner

than the hutongs. But the hutong families didn't get to live in the new build-

. Tney were shipped to hovels on the outskirts of the city, beyond

the Fifth Ring Road, where the capital's wealthy wouldn't see them.

Today, men like Li's father knew they were poor. They couldn't imagine

the opulence of this room, or the private clubs in Beijing where the wealthy

gathered. But they knew China had left them behind. Fewer and fewer of

them were willing to accept their fate. All over China the pot was boiling up.

In southwest China, farmers had attacked police stations over land seizures.

In north China, coal miners had rioted to demand safety equipment after

an explosion at a mine in Hebei killed 180 men.

Even worse, the economy wasn't booming anymore. So far, the govern-

ment had hidden the slowdown from the outside world. But Li knew the

real numbers. Growth had slowed month after month, from ten percent to

eight to five and now to three. And no one, not the economic minister or

the governor of the Central Bank, could explain what was happening, not

in words that made sense to Li. They said the economy needed more re-

form, not less.

But Li spent more time outside Zhongnanhai than the other senior lead-

rs c°mbined. He might not be an economist, but he had eyes. He saw old

vomen with bowed heads begging for help, their clothes dirty, empty bowls

>etWeen their hands. He saw the peasants lined up in Tiananmen to plead

r work, even though the police beat them just for being there.

The poet Du Fu had written, 1,250 years earlier, "Within red gates,

le ar,d meat rot, while on the street outside people starve." Dynasties

crumbled when emperors forgot their subjects. Inside Zhongnanhai, IjfJ

was sweeter than ever. The men around him imagined they could call in tK

tanks again if they needed to. But this time the rebels wouldn't be student

They would be miners and peasants and factory workers. They would h

men, not boys, and this time they would fight.

Li wouldn't let that happen. He wouldn't use the People's Liberation Arrnvl

his army, against civilians. He would take control of the situation, not for hiJ

own glory, of course, but to save the nation from the greed of its rulers.

BUT TAKING CONTROL WOULDN'T BE EASY. Li couldn't openly challenge Zhang

Fenshang, the economic minister and the most powerful man on the

Standing Committee. Zhang was supposedly second-in-command, ranking'

behind the general secretary, Xu Xilan. In reality, Zhang was the most

powerful man in China. Xu was eighty-two and feeble, a figurehead who

“consulted” Zhang before any important decision.

Together, Zhang and the other liberals—Li gritted his teeth to think of

the word—held six seats on the nine-member committee. To defeat them

Li needed to outmaneuver them. If he could take control of the committee

the people would rally around him. The rich businessmen might protest

But eventually even they would understand that Li didn't want to destroy

them, just make them share some of their wealth.

Li knew he would have only one chance to take power. If he failed, he

wouldn't just lose his spot on the Standing Committee. At best, he would

spend the rest of his years under house arrest. At worst, he would suffer

a tragic accident, and his death would be announced to the people inl

somber tones.

No, he couldn't fail. And he needed to move quickly, before the peopMl

grew so angry that even he couldn't calm them. In the last few months, hew

put a plan together. And now, after his visit to Iran, he believed he'd founfl

the key to making it work.

“All warfare is based on deception,” Sun Tzu, China's most famous mill*

tary strategist, had written 2,500 years earlier. Under normal circumstances.

ng could easily defeat Li. But what if Zhang suddenly faced a threat

„A his control, a threat not from inside China but from outside?

i knew his plan was dangerous. But not acting would be even more

danger0US-

n'SSERT—A RICH PEAR CAKE with ginger ice cream—was served, and the

lates cleared. The waiters poured cognac. Then they disappeared, leaving

the nine men at the table to the country's business.

Zhang, sitting beside Xu, the general secretary, raised his glass. "To the

glory of the new China."

“And to the people,” Xu said. “To the wisdom of the Chinese people.”

“Of course, Comrade Xu,” Zhang said. "We must always serve the

people."

Li sipped from his snifter, feeling the glow of the golden liquid in his

mouth. Cognac was one of his indulgences. A glass before bed made his

sleep pleasant.

The Standing Committee met for the banquets once a month. The din-

ners always followed the same script. Only when the waiters had left the

hall did business begin. Of course, the committee met in regular sessions

several times a week, but the truly important decisions were made at this

table—with no aides to overhear or record the sessions. Even in here, even

speaking only to one another, committee members chose their words as

carefully as Mafia dons on a phone line tapped by the FBI. Speaking too

clearly signaled weakness, not strength.

“Comrade Zhang,” Xu said. “Please begin.”

The economic situation has not changed,“ Zhang said. ”The transition

period“—what the liberals called the economy's slowdown—”is continu-

,ng- But there s no reason for concern. The will of the people is excellent.

Business conditions are good."

Zhang had said the same thing the month before, and the month before

at- How much had Zhang stolen from the national treasury and hidden

banks in Singapore? Li wondered. How many bribes had he taken? Five

hundred million yuan—$60 million? A billion yuan? Two billion? ifl

money you are a dragon, with no money, a worm.

“Then what is the problem?” Xu said.

“General Secretary,” Zhang said, "just as a farmer must let a field lie f ij

low from time to time, the economy must slow occasionally before it groiuJ

again." Though he'd lived most of his life in Shanghai, Zhang liked to »J

farming metaphors with Xu, whose parents had been peasants. "\ye'

pruning the deadwood so saplings can prosper. If the young trees aren't

rising fast enough, we must prune more vigorously."

To the men at the table, Zhang's meaning was clear. The government

should close more state-owned factories, like the tire plant where lis father

had worked. Li couldn't believe that Zhang had the audacity to propose

rpore layoffs with so many people already jobless. But arguing openly with

Zhang would be futile.

“Yes,” Xu said. “I see.”

“I'll propose a plan for the Congress next month”—the annual CoraJ

munist Party Congress, which would officially ratify the decisions these'

nine men made.

“Does anyone else have thoughts on Comrade Zhang's view?” Xu saidJ

Li held his tongue. Then Xu turned toward him.

“Comrade General Li. How was your visit to Tehran?”

Now or never, Li thought. “Very productive, General Secretary.” He out-1

lined the oil-for-nuclear-help deal he'd discussed with the Iranian president j

Li could see that he'd caught Zhang by surprise, as he'd intended.

“Zhang, what do you think?” Xu asked.

Zhang sipped his cognac, trying to buy time. Li could imagine his calcU-|

lation. An open alliance against the United States would have enormous!

risks. On the other hand, a confrontation with America would buy time™

right the economy. And Zhang didn't want to appear as though he fea^B

the United States.

Zhang looked at Li. “What's your view, Comrade General?”

Zhang was hoping to force the responsibility for the decision back on V

In doing so, Zhang had slipped into Li's trap. Zhang had never before gi*S

! ^ntrol on an important issue. He would find retaking it more difficult

upc

tnaii he expected, Li thought.

“My v'ew' Comrade Zhang?” he said. "Let's seize this opportunity. The

nians can give us leverage against the hegemonists"—the Americans.

"Our industries will benefit from a guaranteed supply of oil. And the Per-

.• nS will be a new market for us. They see all that we've done. They can help

through the transition period. Anyway, why should we let the Americans

/Wide what nations have certain weapons?“—nuclear bombs. ”The Persians

don't threaten us."

“And the Americans? What will they say?”

“Let them talk,” Li said. “Talk does not cook rice.”

“It isn't their talk that concerns me,” Zhang said. "What if they mis-

understand our peaceful intent?"

Li had to admit that Zhang could turn a phrase. Of course the United

States would “misunderstand” if China allied with Iran, America's biggest

enemy.

“The hegemonists aren't interested in any more wars.”

“You're certain.”

"Nothing is certain, Comrade Zhang. But they are distracted now, and

our army and navy are valiant."

The table was silent when Li finished speaking, and he knew he'd won.

They'd send him back to Tehran to finalize an agreement with Iran. For the

first time since the end of the Cold War, the United States would face a

challenge to its global dominance.

The Americans would want to respond. But they had their own prob-

lems, Li knew. The death of their North Korean spy had cost them their best

itelligence on Pyongyang. The war in Iraq had sapped their army. They

ere on the defensive—and the public announcement of the Chinese/

ra'iian alliance would irritate them further. Like a wounded bear, they would

°ut but with words, not actions. The American president would speak

ainst tr>e agreement, and that would irritate the men around him. No one

ms room wanted advice from the United States on how China should

induct its affairs.

But neither Washington nor Beijing would expect the war of words

go any further. What no one at this table realized was that Li intended

the agreement with Iran to be only the start of China's confrontation!

with America.

“It's agreed, then?” Li said. “We'll accept the Iranian proposal?”

Nods around the table. By springing the deal on them this way, Li had

given them little choice. Turning down the offer would have made them look

weak, and none of these men wanted to look weak, least of all Zhang. ]a

they'd known what he planned next, they would have been more cautious,

but they didn't.

Li raised his glass to his lips. Another step toward the power he'd beej

chasing for so long. He took a deep sip of cognac, filling his mouth with its

sweetness.

-HOW!“ HUGHLEY YELLED. ”HOW!"

Holding the frame of the juddering Black Hawk, Wells tugged on his

pack: sixty-three pounds of ammunition, grenades, energy bars, water, ban-

dages, and the other essentials of close combat.

A Kevlar cable was coiled on the floor, its end knotted to the helicopter's

frame. Wells threw it out the side. He shimmied down, hand over hand,

feeling the cable's rough fibers under his gloved fingers. AK-47 rounds

whistled by, and he wondered if he should have chosen heavier armor. Five

feet from the ground, he jumped, landing lightly despite his gear.

The sun was gone now. But the quarter-moon and stars shined on the

°Pen plateau, making Wells's night-vision goggles a distraction. Wells pulled

UP the goggles and took stock. The plateau was a half-mile long and five

'undred feet wide. Boulders and stunted trees littered the ground, offering

de<*nt cover.

Around the drop zone, the Hellfire missiles had done their job. Burned

Were strewn across the plateau like trees tossed by a category 5 hurri-

cane, the stench of their barbecued flesh heavy in the air. A guerrilla iJ

long white robe twitched and moaned beside a rock seventy-five feet awavB

As planned, the attack had caught the guerrillas building campfires Jl

dinner. Sheep and goats were tethered near the caves, maybe the samJ

animals that had provoked Bashir Jan, the village headman, to reveal thl

existence of the camp. Somehow, the animals had survived the missile.)

Their desperate bleats cut through the night over the crackle of the auto

matic rifles and the roar of the Black Hawks. The goats, the fires, the dead

men: the scene was a waking dream, a twenty-first-century Goya painting

Wells thought.

The satellite- photos had shown three encampments across the plateau

The Apaches had targeted most of their Hellfires at the northern and centerl

camps, trying to drive the guerrillas south, toward the 10th Mountain. But

either the southern camp had been the biggest, or the plateau as a whole'

had held more men than they'd been told. Thirty or more men were scat-J

tered behind rocks and trees to the south. A smaller group was half-hidden]

behind boulders that obstructed the entrance to a cave west of the loading}

point.

Wells unstrapped his carbine and dropped to the ground. The plateau

was cold, more stone than dirt; a rock poked at his groin. The men by th«j

cave were the immediate threat, he thought. They had already almost taken

out a Black Hawk with their RPGs. He opened up at them with ihree-shod

bursts, hoping to distract them from the helicopter.

Thump! Thump! Hughley landed beside him, followed by the rest ofl

B Company, as A Company hit the plateau two hundred feet to the south-

east. When the last soldier touched the ground, the Black Hawks pulled

away.

“We're in it now,” Wells yelled to Hughley.

“Yeah, and we ain't getting out till the sun comes up.”

THE MEN OF B COMPANY fanned out in a two-hundred-foot arc. Wells anl

Hughley lay nearest the caves. A Company had set itself similarly. I" j

tion looked more solid than it was, Wells thought. Already the Talibs to

south were spreading out, enlarging the battlefield, giving themselves

angles to fire on the SF soldiers. Guerrillas—like civilians—usually

stered when they came under fire, hoping for safety in numbers. The fact

these men had done the opposite offered more evidence that they were

^ing professional help.

“Shit!”

Even without looking, Wells recognized Hackett's voice. The stocky ser-

vant hopped on his right leg toward Hughley and Wells. Ten yards away,

fell. Wells ran for him, picked him up, and threw his shoulder under

Hackett's arm. Together they struggled toward Hughley like kids in a three-

legged race.

“Sir, I took one.” Hackett spoke evenly—he could have been talking

about someone else—but the pain in his voice was unmistakable. "Left leg.

Bad, I think."

Wells put Hackett down and shined a penlight on his leg. The bullet had

hit low on the thigh, just above the knee. Blood pumped steadily out from

the wound, shining under the light. The popliteal artery. Hackett grunted as

Wells palpated the area around the wound. Hughley put a flashlight to the

sergeant's face. He was pale, his massive jaw gritted against the pain.

Get a tourniquet on him. Wells thought. Cutting off the artery might cost

Hackett his leg, but the alternative was worse. A trauma surgeon could sew

up the wound, but the nearest surgeon was in Bagram, so the tourniquet

would have to do.

Take off your pack, Sergeant. I'm gonna wrap it tight."

“A tourniquet?” Hackett's voice lifted slightly.

Hackett knew what a tourniquet meant, Wells thought. He wanted to

"e Hackett a hit of Demerol, but the sergeant had already lost too much

°°d. An opiate would put him in shock. "It's gonna sting a little. Bite on

ls- Wells found a mouthguard in his pack and pressed it into Hackett's

Beside them Hughley fired short bursts at the cave.

“How we doing?” Wells said to Hughley.

“Worry about my soldier.”

Wells grabbed a combat tourniquet—a black plastic band big enough to

fit over a man's leg, with a sturdy plastic handle attached. He pulled on latex

gloves and tugged the band above the spurting wound. The sergeant

groaned and bit hard on the mouthguard. Wells pulled the loop of plastic

tight around Hackett's thigh.

“Just a few seconds more.”

“Down!” Hughley yelled as a guerrilla popped up from behind a boulder

beside the cave to fire an RPG. It exploded behind them, lighting the night.

“That the best you can do?” Hughley said. He fired a burst at a guerrilla

who'd foolishly stood to watch the RPG. The Talib screamed, his hands

rising to his throat. He fell hard and didn't move.

“Hold tight, Sergeant,” Wells said. He turned the handle of the tourni-

quet, tightening it around the meat of Hackett's thigh. Hackett's shoulders

trembled. He moaned softly, a low sound hardly recognizable as human.

The blood slowed to a trickle but didn't stop. Wells wiped down the

wound and taped a thick, clean bandage around the sergeant's leg. He pulled

off his gloves, slick with blood. "Sergeant. It's over. You're gonna be okay.

Just get comfortable. Keep your leg up."

“Yessir. I'm cold, sir.”

Wells pulled an aluminum blanket from his pack and wrapped it over

Hackett's shoulders, then grabbed a water bottle and dumped in a pouch of

Gatorade powder. “Drink this.”

“He gonna make it?” Hughley whispered.

“If I knew, I'd say.”

“All right.” Hughley nodded at the boulders where the men with the RPGs

were hiding. "Gotta take them out, protect our flank. Can you handle it with

Gaffan? Gonzalez can give you some support while he watches Hackett."

Two guys against five, maybe more, Wells thought. Not great odds. But he

saw Hughley's problem. B Company was already down two men, since Gon-

zalez, the medic, would have to take care of Hackett. That left the squad at

nine soldiers, including Wells. A Company had ten more. Facing at least

thirty guerrillas to the south, Hughley couldn't spare a third guy on the flank.

“Sure,” Wells said. Through his tactical radio, Hughley ordered Gaffan

and Gonzalez to their position. As the men reached Hughley and Wells,

another RPG flared out from the boulders.

“Shit!” Gaffan and Gonzalez threw themselves down as the grenade

exploded behind them.

Hughley pointed toward the rocks. "Gaffan, you and Wells are taking

out that position. Danny, you're staying with Hackett. I'll link the rest of the

squad up with Alpha."

“Yessir.”

Hughley sprinted off. They had a long night ahead, Wells thought.

Instead of fifty guerrillas, the camp had held a hundred or more before the

attack. Even now the bad guys outnumbered the Special Forces two to one.

They should have had at least one more squad to even up the odds. But

second-guessing the plan now would be a waste of time, and they couldn't

afford to waste time. They had to move fast, get control of the battlespace.

The Talibs surely knew of trails that led up the mountain and would give

them angles to shoot down on the plateau. If they put snipers above the

battlefield, the SF soldiers would be exposed, sitting ducks. Before that hap-

pened, Hughley had to drive the guerrillas off the southern end of the

plateau and into the valley.

Meanwhile Wells had his own problems to solve. Hackett lay on his back,

breathing in fluttery bursts. He would be lucky to get through the night,

Wells thought. “Gaffan.” Wells pointed to the rock seventy-five feet away

where the guerrilla in the white robe lay. “Let's move.”

Wells laid out a covering burst as Gaffan sprinted for the rock and slid

in. Five seconds later they switched roles, Gaffan firing as Wells ran to the

rock. Up close, Wells saw that the wounded guerrilla was in terrible shape,

the left side of his face gone. His right eye opened wide as he registered their

presence. He twisted away, his hands scratching at the dirt.

“I'll do it,” Wells said. “Watch the cave.”

“But—”

'Watch the cave, Sergeant."

Wells leaned close to the man and said in Arabic, "Dear Lord, pour

Patience upon us and make us die as Muslims." The Quran, verse 7, line 126.

He unholstered his Makarov, shoved it into the man's mouth, and pufl

the trigger. The single shot echoed into the darkness. The guerrilla's $M

exploded, spewing a devil's volcano of blood and brains. Another thouJ

sleepless nights, Wells thought. He pushed the corpse away, furious thatfl

man hadn't had the decency to die on his own. The body flopped over,^B

askew. No one who died tonight would get a proper burial.

“Maybe I'm just projecting, but I swear he looked relieved,” Caftan said

You're just projecting, Wells didn't say. Warned you not to watch. He nut

the man's cracked skull out of his mind. He'd save the nightmares for later'

“Let's do this, get aiose enough to lay a forty in that cave.” A high-explospJ

40-millimeter grenade, fired from the M203 launchers attached to the J

bines he and Gaffan carried.

Wells pulled open the barrel of his 203, popped in the grenade—a cylirJ

der that looked like a shotgun shell—and cocked the barrel. He pointed to

a stunted tree a hundred feet to their right. “Ready?”

Gaffan nodded.

Wells popped up, fired, and dropped down. His grenade blasted into the

mountainside, a red-white explosion that faded fast. He'd missed, but not]

by much. Now let them fire back. The Talibs were loose with their ammoJ

Let them shoot until their magazines ran dry. Then Wells and Gaffan would

break for the tree, where they'd be close enough to do some damage.

But the Talibs refused to play along. Instead of random AK-47 fire, the!

fired only a few well-aimed shots. Two rounds hit the dead Talib, making

the corpse lump, a caricature of resurrection. Gaffan had no chance to moB

from the shelter of the rock.

“Somebody's been teaching these guys to shoot,” Wells said.

“I'm thinking that too, sir.”

Now Wells and Gaffan were pinned. The guerrillas had them target**

and would cut them down the next time they poked their heads up. Tnm

watched helplessly as two guerrillas emerged from the boulders by the cB

and ran left, diving behind a mound of dirt kicked up by a Hellfire missBJ

From their new position, the Talibs had an angle on Gonzalez and HacMJ

re stuck because of Hackett's leg. Sure enough, rounds began smash-

*h° W£ the low flat rocks that sheltered Gonzalez and Hackett.

^ Tnned here, sir," Gonzalez yelled through the night. Then: ^Maric6nl

LfBitch got my Kevlar." He fired back ineffectually.

tfot good.

-NOW WHAT. SIR?"

Wells thought for a few seconds. Could he aim a grenade well enough to

drop it over the boulders that hid the guerrillas? Doubtful. But—

“Load up with CS.” CS was a powerful chemical irritant that left its vic-

tims temporarily blind and gasping for breath. All SF soldiers carried CS

grenades in addition to the traditional high-explosive variety. Wells popped

a gray-and-green aluminum CS grenade in the 203.

“But sir—” Gaffan said.

"Sergeant. Stop calling me sir. Call me John, Wells, dogface, whatever.

Not sir. Makes me feel like I'm two hundred years old."

“Yes, Mr. Wells.”

“Mr. Wells? All right, it'll do. Now stop arguing and load up.” Lying on

his stomach, Wells crooked his arms at the elbow so that the barrel of his

carbine pointed up like a mortar. He imagined the gas grenade arcing out

of the M4 and landing behind the rocks like a perfectly thrown football. He

squeezed the trigger. The carbine jerked back as the grenade soared out.

A few seconds later, white smoke drifted down the side of the mountain,

a hundred yards above the entrance to the cave. Not close enough. Wells

stayed on his stomach, keeping his arms still.

Gimme your M4 and reload mine," Wells said. Gaffan put his own car-

le in Wells's hands. Wells tilted his arms back slightly, calculating, again

nagining the gas canister landing behind the boulders. He fired. The gre-

e ^nded thirty yards short. Better, but not good enough.

AK fire rattled at Wells and Gaffan as the white CS smoke dispersed

ss tne plateau. A rocket-propelled grenade flared out from a gap in the

boulders, sailing over their heads. Good. The men behind the boulder were

getting anxious.

“Again,” Wells said. Again Gaffan traded carbines with him. Wells low-

ered the barrel slightly and squeezed the trigger. Pop! This time the canister

landed on the rocks where the guerrillas had hidden. Smoke poured out in

all directions, as Wells had hoped. He had chosen to use the CS grenades

instead of standard high-explosive grenades because with the CS he didn't

have to have perfect aim. If he could get reasonably close, the gas would

disperse over the boulders, doing his work for him.

Men yelled in Arlfcic. Seconds later the coughing began, a vicious

hacking as if the men behind the boulder were trying to spit up their

poisoned lungs.

“Again.” Again Gaffan handed him a reloaded carbine. Wells adjusted his

aim infinitesimally and fired again. This time the shot went slightly long,

landing on the mountainside a few yards above the cave. But the smoke

seeped down into the area where the guerrillas were hiding. The coughing

grew louder.

“Get your mask on,” Wells said. “One more, then we go in.”

Wells fired the fifth canister, then pulled on a gas mask. The mask made

breathing a conscious decision rather than an automatic fact. Inhale. Fill

your lungs. Exhale. Hear air rattle through the activated charcoal filters. In-

hale again.

Wells pulled his helmet back on and popped a fresh grenade—standard

high-explosive, not CS—into the 203. Two men in brown robes crawled

from behind the boulders, their bodies shaking, clots of white phlegm drip-

ping down their faces.

Gaffan took aim. “Wait,” Wells said. But no more men joined the two.

“Okay. Drop 'em.”

Gaffan squeezed the trigger of his carbine. The first guerrilla twitched

spasmodically and collapsed face-first. The second man stood and turned

toward them, raising his arms blindly, in defiance, or surrender. Gaffan

didn't wait to find out. He fired again. The man pressed a hand to his robe,

twisted, and fell.

“Looks like we got the dumb ones,” Gaffan said. Behind the boulder,

the desperate coughing continued. At least two men left back there, Wells

thought. No point in waiting any longer. CS was nasty, but its effects wore

off fast. “Cover me,” he said to Gaffan. “On three.”

“I'll go, John.” Gaffan started to stand.

Wells shoved him down. “You cover.” Wells crouched in the shadow of

the rock. It was 250 feet to the boulders in a straight line, though he would

be zigzagging to keep the guerrillas from getting a clean shot. He wasn't as

fast as he'd once been, but he was fast enough. He held up three fingers to

Gaffan, two, one. He took off.

And as his legs pumped over the plateau's broken rocks, the mania of

hand-to-hand combat filled him. He knew he would survive. God, Allah—

whatever He was called, whatever He was—wouldn't let him die out here.

He was invincible. Indestructible.

Wells sprinted, the M4 cradled across his chest, hurdling a low rock,

always moving, cutting over the field like a running back who'd made the

safety miss and knew the end zone wasn't far off. When he was a hundred

feet away, a man stepped from the shadows of the boulders, white, holding

an AK in both hands, wearing a jean jacket—

And a gas mask like Wells.

A gas mask. Choose now or never choose anything again. No point in

trying to shoot. He was running too fast to have a chance of hitting the guy.

Instead Wells pulled the second trigger on the carbine, launching his high-

explosive grenade. Maybe he'd be close enough at least to rattle the man in

the mask—

Thata-thata-thata. The guerrilla's AK exploded with a staccato burst.

Wells dove to his right. He landed hard on his shoulder and rolled,

reaching for his carbine.

The grenade blew in an enormous white flash. Wells ducked his head

as shrapnel rained around him. When he looked up, the man in the jean

Jacket no longer existed.

Wells sat up. He didn't think he'd been hit, but his right arm hung out of

rts socket and his shoulder felt as though it were on fire. Wells reached across

his body and cradled the shoulder in his left hand. He grabbed his right

biceps and tugged his arm forward, trying to pop the joint into place. The

pain was the worst he'd ever felt. A river of agony flooded through his chest.

Tears flooded his eyes and filled his gas mask. Wells dropped his arm.

He caught his breath and again wrapped his left hand around the top of

his right biceps. In one convulsive movement he jerked his arm forward

The world spun. He pulled even harder. He could feel the joint give. The

stars merged and the sky glowed a chunky white. Wells didn't stop pulling

Then the joint popped back into place and the pain lessened. Wells tried to

lift his arm and was amazed to find he could. Then he picked himself up

and ran for the rocks, to see if anyone else was still back there.

BUT WHEN WELLS FINALLY ENDED his 250-foot marathon and reached the

mouth of the cave, he didn't find anyone. Anyone alive, anyway. The gre-

nade had slammed into the chest of the man in the jean jacket, a one-in-

a-million shot that had blown him apart. His headless torso lay in a thick

pool of blood. The head, still covered with the gas mask, lay ten feet from

his body. Through the clear plastic mask its eyes watched Wells, promising

to visit him while he slept. “Asshole,” Wells said aloud, unsure if he was talk-

ing to himself or the man he had killed.

And he wasn't finished yet. There was another one. Somewhere in that

cave, there was another one.

SHAFER WALKED INTO EXLEY'S OFFICE IN LANGLEY, folder in hand. "Mis-ter

Mole. Oh Mis-ter Mole. Where are you?"

Exley looked up from the papers she was pretending to read. “Cute, Ellis.”

“How's the hunt? We any closer to whack-whack-whacking this mole?”

Shafer stood in front of Exley's desk and battered imaginary moles with an

imaginary mallet. “Never was any good at that game.”

"Ellis, are you stupid? Did you forget what's happening right now7. While

you stand in my office with your tongue hanging out like an escapee from

Sesame Street7"

"Of course I know. He's gonna be fine, Jennifer. You said it yourself. He

was born for this."

“He's in trouble. I know it.” She did, too. She didn't believe in extrasen-

sory perception or astrology or any of that voodoo. But she knew Wells was

in trouble, bad trouble, at this moment.

'You're just nervous."

And you're just a bureaucrat whose idea of living on the edge is

e*tra-spicy taco sauce. You don't get what it's like, having a gun in your

hand, killing them before they kill you." And I do, Exley didn't say. I've oti\T

done it once, but once was enough.

“Jennifer—”

"So don't patronize me, Ellis. Yeah I'm nervous. Until I hear from him

that's not going to change. Now, can we do some work?"

Without another word, Shafer pulled up a chair. Together they looked at

the list Exley had been trying to focus on all morning:

TOP SECRET/SCI/EPSILON

RED—ACCESS Work Group—Update 2B

Abellin, Paul

Balmour, Victoria

Baluchi, Hala

Bright, Jerry

The list consisted of everyone who knew the Drafter's name or enough j

details about his identity to compromise him. Already it was fifty-three

names long, and despite its length, it still wasn't finished. Tyson had told;

Exley and Shafer to expect several more names before the updates stopped.

The length of the list testified to Langley's screwed-up priorities, Exleyj

thought. The agency jealously guarded the information the Drafter pro-J

vided, while treating his name with a carelessness bordering on negligenceJ

The data was valuable, the source worthless.

After just a couple of weeks working this case, Exley had gained new re-1

spect for Tyson's job. Even under ideal circumstances, when the agency had!

been tipped to the exact identity of a spy in its ranks, counterespionage was!

tough. Just showing that a CIA employee had hidden income or had failed a

polygraph wasn't enough. To build ironclad cases, Tyson's teams needed to

catch moles in the act of turning over classified information to their handlers.'

Meanwhile, as they investigated, they had to be sure they weren't follow-

ing false leads from foreign spy agencies. During the Cold War, the KGB had j

more than once sent Langley down dead-end paths. The sad truth was that

without a tip, discovering who had betrayed the Drafter would be incredi-

bly difficult, Exley thought. At this point they had no suspects. And the

North Koreans had made sure that the Drafter wouldn't be able to help.

For now, Tyson's work group had put together basic bureaucratic details

for each of the fifty-three people on the list: Date of Hire, Pay, Career History/

Evaluations, Marital and Family Status, and—maybe most important—Date

of Last Polygraph.

No bank records. They would need subpoenas for those. Tyson's group

had run the names through the FBI's criminal records database, checked for

felony arrests or convictions. No one had any, though Virginia and D.C.

police records showed two misdemeanors. Edmund Cerys, a case officer

who'd spent time in Hong Kong in the 1990s, had been caught urinating in

public after a Redskins game. And Herb Dubroff, deputy director for the

East Asia Division, had gotten himself busted for setting off fireworks on

the Fourth of July. Neither arrest exactly screamed double agent.

SHAFER EXTRACTED HIS OWN COPY of the list from his file folder. The names

were covered with doodles, evidence of his untidy mind. "Anything

jump out?"

“Way too many people had his name. Especially on the DI side.” The

DO, or Directorate of Operations, was home to the case officers who man-

aged spies like the Drafter. The DI, or Directorate of Intelligence, had the

analysts responsible for thrashing out the reports that the agency sent to

the White House. "There's no excuse for it. Those guys should all get code

words only."

When you're an asset that long, your name leaks. It's inevitable. Both

sides of the house, the analysts and the case officers, they all think they

deserve to know details about the assets. They say it's crucial for judging the

^formation."

But they're really just trying to prove what big swinging dicks they

have."

“Now, why would you say something like that?”

"Anyway. There are five on this list who haven't taken their polys on

schedule. Two others showed signs of quote-unquote minor deception 01J

their last test but haven't been reexamined. All seven now have tests sched-

uled for next month."

Any CIA employee with access to sensitive information was supposed to

take a polygraph every five years as a routine precaution. In practice the

agency was short on polygraph testers. Some mid-level officers went J

decade between tests.

“Next month. Glad to see they're taking this so seriously,” Shafer said.

“I'll call Tyson, ask them to move it up.” He dropped the sheet of names on

her desk, stood up, and started to pace. She recognized the signs. He was

about to have a “Shafer moment.” In half an hour they'd have a new way on

looking for the mole. Maybe it would make sense, maybe not. But at least

they'd have some leads to chase.

“Forget the list for a second,” Shafer said. "Who are we looking for?

Who is this guy? What kind of man betrays his country?"

“Betrays his country? Isn't that a little theatrical, Ellis?”

“What would you call it, then?”

“Fine. Betraying his country it is.”                                                        L

"But in a way you're right. He's not betraying his country. He's betrayint

us. The agency. He's been passed over for promotions. His career hasn't |

gone how he wanted."

“That fits half of Langley,” Exley said.

“He's on his second marriage, or his third.”

“Hanssen was on his first marriage.” Robert Hanssen, the FBI double

agent.

"That's the exception, but okay. Strike the second marriage. He's a lonerj

for sure. Not many friends at the agency. Middle-aged, forty to fifty-five*]

Scores well on tests but terrible interpersonal skills. Always sure he's thel

smartest guy in the room."

“I didn't know you were spying for North Korea, Ellis.”

“I'll remind you I'm on my first wife.”

“Like Hanssen. Why are you so sure it's a he?”

“It's a he, Jennifer. Women aren't double agents.”

“Because we're such nurturing souls. Like Paris Hilton.”

“Because women don't have the stomach for this kind of risk.”

“That's crap and you're an MCP.”

“A what?”

“A male chauvinist pig.”

"Wow. Haven't heard that since Gloria Steinem stopped burning bras.

Anyway, I'm right."

“What about Mata Hari?”

“An exception.”

Exley didn't bother to argue. “So does he have kids?”

“Possibly. Ames didn't, but Hanssen did.”

“Go on. What else?”

“I don't know, but there's something. Some sexual tic, maybe.”

“He's in the closet, cruising Dupont.” Dupont Circle, the center of Wash-

ington's gay population, a few blocks west of Exley's apartment. "Could you

be any more predictable, Ellis?" Exley was enjoying this back-and-forth

now. "Maybe he's just a happy suburban dad, likes it missionary once a

week."

“You don't do this if you're happy.”

“Right you are. Does he do drugs?”

“More likely he gets his kicks legally. Gambling. Drinking, maybe.”

“We can track that,” Exley said. “A DUI.”

"With a good lawyer he could get a DUI knocked down to a misde-

meanor speeding ticket. And traffic records are a nightmare. Even if we just

do Maryland and Virginia, it'll take weeks. But we can try."

"And we can send NSLs to Vegas, ask the casinos if anyone on the list is

a major player." NSLs were national security letters. The agency sent them

to companies when it was looking for information to aid espionage or

terrorism investigations.

“Thought you believed in the Bill of Rights,” Shafer said.

'They're voluntary. Nobody has to answer."

“Of course,” Shafer said. With very limited exceptions, the CIA couldn't

operate on American soil, so compliance with the letters was voluntary

They were requests, not warrants. But in the post-9/11 era, big companies

didn't want to get sideways with Langley, so they usually found ways to give

the agency the information it asked for.

“Anyway, this is a totally legitimate use,” Exley said. Shafer's comment

stung. She didn't usually think of herself as the type to trample the Fourth

Amendment.

"We're fishing, Jennifer. We have zero evidence on any of these people.

No judge on earth would give us a warrant.“ Shafer pointed at the list. ”Even

if it turns out that Jerry Bright, whoever he is, loses ten grand a week inl

Vegas, it proves nothing."

“So you don't think we should send the letters?”

"I didn't say that. If Jerry Bright is losing ten grand a week, I want to

know where the money's coming from. When you have no clues, you've got

to fish."

"But maybe you're wrong. Maybe our mole's not a gambler or drinker or'

any of it. Maybe he's a true believer."

"In the cult of Kim Jong II? He wants to move North Korea toward its

glorious future?"

“Point taken,” Exley said. "He's not doing it for love. But what if he's in

Seoul? In that case, none of this will get us anywhere."

"You know what, Jennifer? You're right. Let's forget the whole thing, take

the afternoon off."

“That's not what I mean—”

"Seoul's been a well-run station for a long time. I think he's here, not

there. And I think that John had it right that night we met Tyson. I think

our mole is working for somebody else, not North Korea."

Exley flinched as Shafer mentioned Wells. For a few minutes, she'd let

herself forget the raid. Now she thought of him, wearing the bulletproof

vest he insisted on in lieu of the Kevlar plates he said were too heavy.

“So this mole is in it for the money? You think he needs money, Ellis?”

“Not exactly. The money's how he keeps score.”

_

“If he's spending it, it'll leave a trail.”

"He can hide it. He can put it in his wife's name, his parents, set up a

trust"

"Whatever name he puts it in, if he's spending, then we can see it. He'll

have something. A vacation house on the Chesapeake."

“If you say so.” Shafer sighed, the sound he made when he thought Exley

had missed an obvious point. Exley hated that sigh. "Suppose he got a mil-

lion bucks over the last decade. That would be a big haul, as much as Ames.

But over ten years, it's only a hundred grand a year."

"Maybe you don't think so, but a hundred grand a year is a lot of money,

Ellis. Especially tax-free."

"If wifey's a lobbyist, say, she's making more than that. A lot more. And

he'll have the nice car and the house on the Chesapeake anyway."

“What if his wife doesn't work?”

“Then it would be more obvious, sure.”

“She doesn't, Ellis. I'm sure of it. He's divorced or his wife doesn't work.”

"Or maybe she works eighty hours a week and the marriage is dead and

he's blowing the money on hookers. He feels emasculated, so he's getting

her back."

“I don't think so. The marriage is broken, but they're not divorced.”

“A completely unfounded, wild-ass guess.”

“As opposed to everything you've just said?” Exley looked at her list.

Okay. We're looking for a man forty to fifty-five, maybe divorced, maybe

in an unhappy marriage. He may have a DUI or a public intoxication on

his record, but that's not a requirement. Money that he can't explain is a

bonus."

Also a high IQ, but at least one spotty personnel evaluation. That's the

Pattern. Doesn't mean it's right in this case, but it's worked in the past. And

Put in the two guys who failed their polys. That's an automatic red flag."

Minor deception doesn't mean you failed."

“It does to me.”

Exley checked off names. "I'm going to count peeing in public as in-

toxication—"

“Good call.”

"Looks like at least ten guys make the cut. Edmund Cerys, Laurence

Condon—"

“I know Condon,” Shafer said. “It's not him.”

“Now we're not even sticking with our own made-up rules?”

“Fine. Leave Condon on. But it's not him.”

"Edmund Cerys. Laurence Condon. Tobias Eyen. Robert Ford. Joe Leon-

hardt. Danny Minaya. Keith Robinson. James Russo. Phil Waterton. Brad!

Zonick. Besides Condon, anybody ring a bell?"

Shafer shook his head.

“So I guess ...” Exley fell silent. "Now what? Let me guess. Continuing thisl

highly scientific process, we throw darts to decide which of our suspects did it." J

Try again.

"Property records, financial disclosure forms, divorce records. We askl

around, try to figure out who has a bad marriage, who's a closet drinker. We I

get Tyson to authorize the national security letters for them and everyone I

else on the list."

“Correct. Toodle-oo.” Shafer grabbed his file and walked out, looking

altogether too pleased with himself for Exley's taste.

“Toodle-oo yourself, you ass.”

“And say hi to John for me,” Shafer called from the corridor. "He's fine,]

you know."

She decided not to rise to the bait. In his own childish way, Shafer wan

trying to make her feel better. She looked down again at the names. Shej

wasn't sure Shafer's theories made sense. Maybe the mole was highly suc-j

cessful, a genius who spied just for the thrill. But at least they were moving.!

And almost certainly they were coming at the search from a different angle

than Tyson's people.

She picked up the phone and dialed Tyson's office.

"George? It's Jennifer Exley. I need help with some names___Yes. Ten

in all."

THE CAVE ENTRANCE WAS A BLACK MOUTH in the side of the mountain, seven

feet wide, nearly as tall. Handmade bricks lined the opening, evidence that

guerrillas had turned the space inside into a semipermanent refuge. Wells

wondered when the bricks had been laid. The Afghans had been defending

these mountains for a long, long time. Some of their underground net-

works had been built not after the Soviet occupation in 1979 but the British

invasion of 1838.

Until he went in, Wells couldn't know if the cave was a cul-de-sac used

for weapons storage or a deeper link to a tunnel network. Either way he'd be

blindly chasing an armed and desperate guerrilla. Prudence dictated that

Wells lob in a couple canisters of CS and hope that whoever was inside

came out on his own.

Then Wells thought of Greg Hackett, his life dribbling away through the

tourniquet on his leg. The soldier in the cave might be the one who'd taken

Hackett down. Prudence was another word for fear.

Wells set his M4 neatly against a rock. Inside the cave's narrow passages,

the rifle would be a hindrance. He would depend instead on his Makarov

and his knives. He grabbed his headlamp from his belt, clicked it to be sure

it was working, strapped it to his helmet. He stepped toward the cave—.

then stopped as he heard someone yelling his name. Gaffan.

“John! You all right?” Gaffan said. “Looked like you went down hard.”

As if in answer, Wells's right shoulder began to ache, a dull pain that

Wells knew would worsen. But he could still use the arm, and that was

enough.

"Keep watch here. Clean up anyone who sticks his head out. I'm go-

ing in."

“I'm coming with you.”

"We'll be in each other's way. You cover me on the way in. Then stayj

here."

“You're the boss, sir.”

Wells didn't bother to wonder if Gaffan was being sarcastic. He darted

across the mouth of the cave and flattened himself against the jagged rocks

beside it. As Gaffan positioned himself on the other side of the entrance,

Wells peeked inside. He reached for his headlamp, then reconsidered. Not

yet. Light would give away his position. Instead he stared into the darkness, j

Slowly his eyes adjusted enough for him to understand what he was

seeing.

The guerrillas had shaped the cave into a tunnel that sloped into the]

mountain. Rough brick covered parts of its walls, but the ceiling was un-1

touched stone. Wells half-expected to see flint-tipped arrows on the ground,

charcoal drawings of men hunting woolly mammoths on the walls.

But this cave had no drawings, and no arrows. A thousand generations of!

human cleverness had replaced them with deadlier tools. AK-47 rifles lay be-

side used RPG launch tubes. Aside from the weapons, the space was empty as

far as Wells could see. The darkness took over about thirty yards in.

An acrid whiff of the CS gas Wells had fired floated out of the cave, faint

but enough to make his nostrils burn. Wells had never thought he'd wish

for a faceful of CS. But now he did. The fact that the gas had dispersed so

quickly meant that the passage ran deep into the mountain. Not what he

wanted.

Across the entrance, Gaffan stood ready. Wells held up three fingers,

two, one—

And stepped inside. If someone was watching the entrance Wells was

most vulnerable at this moment, his silhouette visible against the sky. He

took two steps forward, dove behind an empty crate, and waited. But no

shots came. He pushed the crate aside and crawled into the mountain.

INCH BY INCH the rock womb darkened. Soon Wells couldn't tell if his eyes

were open or closed. He straightened up slowly. Before he could stand, his

helmet bumped the ceiling, sending a jolt down his neck and into his dam-

aged shoulder. The passageway had shrunk. The ceiling here was lower, no

more than five feet. Wells wondered how much smaller it would get.

He leaned back against the wall and tried to orient himself. When he

looked back the way he'd come, he could see a pinprick of light—or more

accurately, a slightly paler shade of black. The outside world was at most a

hundred yards off, but it seemed much farther away. Wells's pulse quick-

ened. Twice in college he'd gone spelunking. But those had been afternoon

trips into the White Mountains with a half-dozen friends and a guide, not

excursions into the heart of darkness.

Don't be dramatic, Wells told himself. If he needed light, he had his

headlamp, and a flashlight too, a tiny Maglite hooked to his belt. He closed

his eyes and thought back to his days playing linebacker in college, watch-

ing the quarterback's eyes, knowing where the ball was going even before

the receivers did, stepping in front of the errant pass and in a few seconds

turning the game inside out, the big men on the other team trying to re-

verse course, all that momentum heading the wrong way as Wells cruised

down the sideline to the end zone. Six times in four years he'd returned

nterceptions for touchdowns. Wells opened his eyes and found that his

heart had slowed to its usual pace, forty-eight beats a minute. His fear was

Bone and he knew he'd be calm for as long as he needed.

The good news was this cave ought to be easy to navigate. The men who

Used it wanted shelter, not excitement. Its most dangerous passages should

be walled off. And knowing that he might have to fight underground, VVells I

had come prepared with two special pens. One marked rocks with a f|Uo. I

rescence visible in the dark from hundreds of feet. The other gave off a glo^ I

visible under a special ultraviolet light he carried. If the tunnel got cornplj. I

cated, Wells would use the pens to mark his return path.

Besides the pens, Wells carried glowsticks and two high-intensity flash-8

bang grenades, concussive bombs designed to stun rather than kill. The!

flash-bangs, a more powerful version of the ones that police carried, had

two big advantages over standard high-explosive grenades. They kicked up

less shrapnel, and they wouldn't collapse the roof of the tunnel and trap I

Wells inside the mountain.

Wells also carried an expandable rubber-coated titanium baton, the cavfl

er's equivalent of a blind man's cane. But he hadn't bothered with more tra-1

ditional spelunking equipment, like climbing gear or rope. He had already I

decided he would turn back if he reached a passage he couldn't navigate |

with his hands.

The air in the cave was cool, almost clammy, but surprisingly fresh. Thfl

tear gas was gone. Ventilation shafts must connect the cave to the surface, I

Wells thought. In the distance, water trickled faintly, an underground

spring. Air, water ... if they had food down here, guerrillas could hide in I

these tunnels indefinitely. As long as they didn't go crazy.

Then, somewhere in the distance, Wells heard a hacking cough thafl

started and stopped like a sputtering engine. The sound of a man who was!

torn between the need for silence and the even more powerful instinct to

force out every molecule of tear gas inside him. The coughing went on a few!

seconds more, then stopped for good. But Wells had heard enough to know

he was on the right track.

Baton in hand, Wells edged forward, deeper into the darkness. Rushii™

would only hurt him now. Either this passage led to a much larger network!

of tunnels, in which case he couldn't possibly catch the man ahead of him>|

or it dead-ended and his enemy was waiting. In that case, silence, not speed.!

was his most important ally.

Meanwhile, Wells would keep his headlamp dark and hope to sense

changes in the layout of the tunnel without seeing them. He would trust his

balance, try to handle the curves of the tunnel the same way he felt 1-95

under his bike at 125 miles an hour. Of course, he might wind up crawling

into a crevasse. But if the man ahead of him was preparing a trap, silence

and darkness would be Wells's best hope.

The passage twisted right. Wells touched the baton against its walls and

ceiling to be sure it hadn't forked somehow, then edged forward again. A

few yards farther on, the tunnel tightened and dropped steeply. Wells tucked

his knife sideways into his mouth, his teeth clenched around the rubber

handle, and crawled forward inch by inch. He was glad he'd chosen the thin

bulletproof vest. A flak jacket would have been uncomfortably tight. The

passage here was four feet wide, not quite as high, just big enough to give

him space to turn around and crawl back out if he needed to. But if it be-

came much tighter, he would no longer have that option. Had he missed a

fork somehow? Was he lost already?

Wells reached for his headlamp—and again pulled his hand away. The ceil-

ing and walls here were still smooth, proof they'd been bored out over the

years. He had to trust he was on course. He began to crawl again. He'd never

been anywhere so dark. Unmoored from light, his eyes made their own world.

White flashes and red streaks darted through the blackness like fish. Wells

took a chance and lit up his watch, cupping his hand over the glowing dial.

2130. He'd been in here barely twenty minutes. He would have guessed hours.

Already the T-shirt under his bulletproof vest was damp with sweat. A

I maddening rivulet of sweat trickled down his nose. He wiped it off twice

and then gave up. The burn in his right shoulder worsened steadily. Wells

wondered whether the injury would betray him in close combat.

Every couple of minutes, Wells stopped to listen. But he heard only a

distant trickle of water. Then he lost even that comfort. Silence and dark-

ness entombed him.

Crawl. Wait. Listen. Nothing.

Crawl. Wait. Listen. Nothing.

Crawl. Wait. Listen. Something.

A scraping in the distance, the sound of a man moving. After a few mo-

ments, the noise stopped. Wells crawled on, faster now, but doubly careful

to move in silence. At last the tunnel flattened. When Wells stopped again

he felt that the air had changed, freshened somehow. Which meant that

ahead of him this tunnel opened up into some kind of cave. And there he'd

find his quarry.

Wells moved forward, confident now. His adrenaline surged, a natural

high stronger than any drug, strengthening and focusing him. The burn in

his shoulder faded. Far better to be the hunter than the hunted.

Yard by yard, the tunnel widened out. Again Wells heard scraping. He

unholstered his Makarov.

Then he saw the light—a hundred yards ahead, maybe less. Wells raised

a hand to shield his eyes, which had grown used to the darkness. A flash-

light, shining down the tunnel toward him, though the beam didn't reach

him directly because of the curve of the tunnel. Wells flattened himself

against the rocks and waited. If he'd been seen, the shooting would start

soon enough.

But instead of shots, he heard a voice. No, voices. Two men, speaking

a language Wells didn't immediately recognize. Not Arabic or Pashto. Cer-

tainly not English. The words were muffled, but the men seemed to be ar-

guing. The light snapped off, on again, off again. Then a word rang clearly

through the darkness. “Pogibshiy.” Russian for “lost.”

Wells realized he'd caught an incredible break. These men weren't Tal-

iban guerrillas. They were Russian, hard as that was to believe. And they

were confused. They'd reached a junction, and they didn't know which path

to take. One probably wanted to give up, crawl out and take his chances

with the Special Forces. The other wanted to push on and risk getting lost

forever. Or maybe just sit tight, wait, and come out in a day or two. But the

first man feared that the SF would dynamite the cave entrance and again

they'd be stuck.

Because they couldn't agree, they'd given away their position with their

fighting. A stupid mistake, born of fear.

flow that he knew that he faced two men, prudence—that word again—

dictated that Wells turn around, crawl out, and wait. In a space as confined

this, they could easily overpower him even if he surprised them. But what

•f they didn't come out? What if they went deeper into the cave? They would

ither find another path out or die in here. Either way Wells would lose the

chance to interrogate them.

And Wells wasn't willing to lose that chance. He needed to know who'd

sent them. The Talibs, brutal as they were, were fighting for their God and

their country. These Russians were nothing more than mercenaries, killing

American soldiers for money.

Forget prudence.

WELLS CRAWLED FORWARD, Makarov in his hand, flash-bang grenades on his

hip. He'd left the baton behind. It was useless to him. He moved fast now,

as fast as he could. Which wasn't all that fast. The tightness of the tunnel

restricted him to a crablike scuttle. But he figured he'd reach the end of the

passage in less than a minute, and then—

Then he tripped.

He banged down hard. Hard and loud. Wells heard the Russians scram-

bling. A flashlight beamed at him, no more than twenty yards away.

Seconds later, the shooting started.

GUANGZHOU,CHINA

THE THREE ELEVATED HIGHWAYS CAME TOGETHER in a jumble of ramps that

soared above the warehouses of northern Guangzhou. Once called Canton,

the city had been a commercial center in China for centuries. Now Guang-

zhou was a metropolis of eight million people, the manufacturing heart of

southeastern China. The trucks and buses on its highways never stopped,

even on damp nights like this one, when rain pounded down and the airj

seemed too humid to breathe.

Beneath the highway junction lay a darker world. The concrete pillara

that supported the roads formed a kind of room, noisy with the thrum

of big engines in low gear. The space had no lights, but it was illuminatedl

secondhand by cars passing on the nearby surface roads. Their headlights!

gave the space the unsteady glow of an after-hours club, offering glimpses

of the rats that dodged through the pylons. The place wasn't exactly a five-1

star hotel.

But it was dry, Jordan Weiging thought. He had walked for hours, look-j

ing for a place to escape the rain, ever since those cops had chased him from

Huangshi Boulevard. Damned cops. Jordan had learned to hate the policel

since he came to Guangzhou six months before. They seemed to be every-

where, and they were quick to use their sticks.

Jordan hadn't been looking for trouble on Huangshi, only a doorway

where he could sleep in the shadows of the street's skyscrapers. He hadn't

thought anyone would care. Huangshi was Guangzhou's version of the Las

Vegas Strip, giant hotels beside low-rent two-story bars. Even in the rain,

whores walked the avenue, smiling and blowing kisses at the men who

surveyed them. They wore thigh-high skirts and tight tank tops and were

barely in their teens. Even the ugliest ignored Jordan, though. In their own

way, they were showing him mercy. He was so obviously broke that tempting

him would have been unkind.

But the police hadn't been so polite. Tonight they had pulled up as he

rested in the shadow of the Guangdong International Hotel and told him to

move on. He pleaded with them for mercy, told them he meant no harm,

and one seemed ready to let him stay. But the other, a skinny man with dirty

yellow teeth, spat at his feet.

“Damned migrant,” the cop said. "We have too many of you rats al-

ready."

“What about them?” Jordan pointed to four streetwalkers. The girls

cocked their hips and cooed like pigeons at the cops.

“The hotels don't mind them. Anyway, they pay us in ways you can't.”

The cop tapped his wooden nightstick against his hand. “Now move.”

SO JORDAN MOVED. The rain cut through his jacket and sweatpants and

soaked his feet until he couldn't feel them. He wanted to lie down on the

cracked sidewalk and let the water wash him away. Let the cops find him

and do their worst. Then he stumbled onto the space under the junction,

where the North Ring Highway met the Airport Toll Road.

The McDonald's wrappers and dirty blankets showed him he wasn't the

"rst to find the space. Jordan wondered why anyone who could afford the

lu*Ury of eating at McDonald's would sleep here. Probably the wrapper had

come from the road above.

At least he was out of the rain. He pulled off his jacket and folded

it neatly, then slumped against a pylon on the cleanest patch of groundl

he could find. Whoever had been here before had a taste for Red Star!

Erguotou—cheap, strong sorghum liquor. Empty bottles of the stuff ljt j

tered the place. Jordan reached for one, hoping for a few drops. He was

amazed when he heard liquid sloshing inside, almost half a bottle. He took I

a tiny sip, coughed as the liquor burned his mouth.

He waited a moment to be sure the bottle wasn't contaminated, then I

took a longer swig. His stomach was empty—he hadn't eaten all dayi

and the liquor hit him quickly. He rubbed his eyes. He wanted to believe!

that this bottle proved that his fate had changed. One day, when he was rich I

he'd hold it up and explain to his children how he'd come to Guangzhoul

and built a fortune from nothing.

He looked at the Red Star bottle, still a quarter full. He ought to save it,l

he knew, but he couldn't help himself. Tonight he would drink like a rich!

man. He tipped up the bottle and gave himself another slug.

JORDAN'S REAL NAME WAS JIANG. Jiang Weiging, in the traditional Chinese!

style, family name first and given name last. But he thought of himself as

Jordan, hoping that some of the luck of Michael Jordan's name would rubl

off. In his pack, he carried a dirty Chicago Bulls cap, black with a snorting,!

red-faced bull over the brim. His most prized possession.

He had loved basketball as long as he could remember. During the good!

years, before his father got sick, his family had enough money for a televH

sion and a VCD player—a cheap Chinese version of a DVD. Jordan's father!

liked basketball too. Together they'd watch highlights from the NBA that!

had been copied onto video disks and sold for two yuan, barely a quarter,«

the market in Hanyuan.

In his heart, liang knew he wasn't much of a player. He was strong buB

small, barely five feet. When he was seven, he'd lost his left pinkie and ring I

fingers to the spokes of his father's bicycle. So he'd never play in the NBAJ

the National Basketball Association—he felt a chill at the mere thought oil

he words, and he wondered whether the rain and the Red Star were making

him sick—but he loved the game anyway.

Americans thought the Chinese liked basketball because China was

• alous of America, Jordan thought. But he didn't want to be American.

He couldn't even imagine what it would be like to be American. He didn't

about other American sports. But the flow of basketball, the mix of

grace and power in the game, felt natural to him.

Jordan reached into his pack and pulled out his Bulls cap. He rubbed

its logo and a genuine smile creased his face. Even now he could see his

namesake jumping high, slamming home a dunk.

Jordan had come to Guangzhou from Chenhe, a village in Sichuan Prov-

ince. Ziyang, his father, had died of AIDS three years before, after getting

HIV from a contaminated needle. He'd been infected while selling plasma

to raise money for Jordan's school fees. To save money, the plasma collec-

tion stations reused needles, a horribly efficient way to spread the virus.

Whole villages were infected before Beijing outlawed the practice.

After Ziyang got sick, Jordan took his father's place in the fields. He

couldn't afford more school anyway. "Without money you can't expect a

miracle," his mother told him. Jordan had gotten seven years of school, and

he figured that was enough. He could add, subtract, multiply, and divide.

He read well enough to get by, though the complicated characters con-

fused him. For two years, he and his mother muddled along.

Then she took sick, losing weight, coughing furiously, clots of phlegm

and blood. Jordan brought her to the hospital in Hanyuan. The doctors

looked her over and said they couldn't do anything, even if she could have

afforded treatment. She died a few months later, leaving Jordan alone. His

nearest relatives were his second cousins, who lived in a village a few miles

away and could hardly feed their own children.

He collected a few yuan by selling off his mother's clothes and the little

television, and set off for Guangzhou, the heart of the Chinese manufactur-

lng miracle. He'd just turned sixteen. Everyone knew there was work to be

nad in Guangzhou and Shenzen, the twin boomtowns of Guangdong Prov-

lnce. Boys not much older than Jordan had come back from Guangzhou

with motorcycles and computers. Some had even built houses for the«

families. He would find a job too.

But he didn't.

What Jordan didn't know, what he couldn't be expected to understand

was that China was a victim of its own success. The factories that made toys and I

shoes and cheap furniture, the low-skill products that had provided jobs

for tens of millions of migrants like Jordan, were themselves migrating

to other Asian countries. In Indonesia and Vietnam, land was cheaper, con-

struction costs lower, the workers equally diligent. In higher-end manj

facturing for laptops and televisions and cars, China was still growing. But

no chip company would hire a sixteen-year-old boy with eight fingers and a I

seventh-grade education. For the low-end jobs that were left, in construction

and basic laboring, Jordan was competing with men who were older and

stronger than he. The cop who'd rousted him was right. Guangzhou had tool

many migrants.

So Jordan joined the endless stream of workers who trudged between!

construction sites and run-down factories, offering their labor for a fewl

yuan a day. Some days he found work, and on those nights he slept with I

his belly full. But even in the last few weeks the jobs had gotten scarcer, I

the crowds outside the factories bigger. He'd worked only three times in

the last week. He'd spent his money as carefully as he could. He hadn't]

permitted himself a bottle of Coke, his favorite treat, in months. Even so,

he was down to his last twenty yuan—less than three dollars—hidden in the J

brim of his Bulls hat. He didn't want to spend those two crumpled ten-yuan |

bills, didn't want to be left with nothing. So he was holding on to them, even

though he felt faint with hunger and had begun to hear the voice ot his

father in his head telling him to eat.

Maybe tomorrow he could convince a restaurant to let him wash dishes

in return for some spoiled vegetables or day-old fish. Yes, tomorrow he'd try

the restaurants. He closed his eyes and thought of steaming hot soup, thick

with dumplings, as his mother had made during the good years. He took

another sip of the Red Star and drifted off to sleep.

•IE OPENED HIS EYES to see two men looking curiously at him. He scrambled

up, keeping his back to the pylon. He had a knife in his bag, a cheap switch-

blade that had once been his dad's.

But the men didn't seem threatening. They were much older than he

was, and their faces were weary. One was the thinnest man Jordan had ever

seen. The other was fat and held a bottle of Red Star. As Jordan looked at

him, he sat down slowly. Jordan couldn't tell if he had meant to sit or just

given up on standing.

“So you've found the Hotel Guangzhou,” the thin man said. He laughed,

a rasping laugh that became a hacking cough that shook his body. Jordan's

mother had coughed that way a few months before she died. When the

cough stopped, the man pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his

pocket. He put one in his mouth. “Want a cigarette, boy?”

“I don't smoke.”

“May as well start. You'll die faster. Less time to suffer.” The man laughed

and tossed him the pack and the lighter. Jordan looked at the cigarettes.

Basketball players didn't smoke, he was sure.

“Try one,” the man said. “You'll feel less hungry.”

At that, Jordan put the cigarette to his lips. His hand trembled as he lit it.

The sour smoke filled his mouth and he coughed.

“Easy, boy. A little at a time to start.”

Jordan took a small puff and choked the smoke into his lungs. His brain

seemed to come alive. The feeling wasn't entirely pleasant, but he hadn't felt

so awake in weeks. He took a longer drag.

“Not so much, boy, or you'll regret it.”

Too late. Nausea filled him. He slumped against the pylon. But he held

on to the cigarette, and when the feeling passed he took another, more ten-

tative puff. This time he felt better. And the man was right. His hunger was

gone. “It works.”

The thin man rubbed his hands together. "Yu, I've gotten him hooked.

My good deed for the day." He laughed his awful hacking laugh. A moment

later, Yu giggled drunkenly back, a high-pitched sound that didn't fit his

heavy body.

The thin man sat beside Jordan, who flinched. “Don't worry,” he said.

“I'm not one of those. My name's Song. What's yours?”

“Jiang,” Jordan said.

“Where do you come from, Jiang?”

“Sichuan Province. I came here to work.”

"Of course you did. If only you'd come last year, or the year before

that— Well, anyway." Song braced a hand on the ground and stood, slowly

unfolding his skinny limbs. Watching him made Jordan smile. Song moved

like a puppet whose strings had gotten tangled.

“Do you like basketball?” Jordan said. He suddenly very much wante(

Song to stay and talk. The skinny old man was the first person who'd treatec

him with any kindness in months.

“Sure. Why?”

“I don't know.”

“If you like, we can look for work together tomorrow,” Song said. "We

may not find any, but at least Yu and I can show you the city. You see what

a success we've made here." He kicked ineffectually at Yu, who lay on his

side with his eyes closed. “Don't you want your blanket, fat pig?” But Yu

simply rolled away.

“Good night, Jiang.”

“Good night, Master Song.”

And Song laughed again, so hard that he had to lean against a concretej

pylon to stay upright. “Master ... master ...”

Jordan closed his eyes and listened to Song's hacking. Life had to get bet-

ter, he thought. It could hardly get worse. He sipped his bottle of Red Star

until sleep took him. And as he finally drifted off, he had no way of imagin-

ing that soon enough he would provoke a crisis whose repercussions would

echo around the world.

THE FLASHLIGHT FLICKED OFF and in the dark the shots ricocheted past Wells

like a jackhammer gone mad. Wells pressed his head down, brushing his

lips against the stone and dirt, as shards of rock rained down on him.

The pace of firing slowed and Wells lifted his head. “Stop!” he yelled in

his perfect Arabic. “Stop! It's Mohammed! Don't shoot!”

Silence. Then another fusillade of shots. For now the darkness and the

tunnel were protecting him, making it hard for the Russians to get a bead

on him. Only his head and shoulders were visible, making him a very nar-

row target. They would need a perfect lucky shot to get him. But if they kept

snooting from twenty yards out, they'd get that shot eventually. Or they

might roll a grenade his way—though blowing up the tunnel would block

their only sure escape route.

The shooting stopped. “Mohammed?” a man shouted.

“Mohammed, brother of Ahmed.”

'Brother of Ahmed?" The Arabic was rusty, Russian-accented.

'Brother of Ahmed!" Wells yelled. He only needed to distract them for a

tew seconds. “I know these tunnels. I can save us.” Wells braced his right

hand, the one holding his Makarov, against the tunnel. A surge of painl

ripped through his damaged shoulder and he gritted his teeth.

With his left hand, Wells reached for his flash-bang grenades. He still

intended to take at least one of these men alive. He unhooked the flash-

bangs and wriggled his left arm forward until the grenades were in front ofj

him. He braced his right hand, the one holding the Makarov, against the

side of the tunnel.

"Yes, my Russian brothers. I know these tunnels. The path to the lefil

leads—"

“Wait—speak slowly—” the man at the other end called in his broken!

Arabic.

“Topko ubeyte ego!” the second man yelled.

Wells had heard enough Russian during his days in Chechnya to kno\w

what that meant. Just kill him. “Grenade,” the man added, a word that I

needed no translation.

“Nyet,” the other man said. Wells relaxed a little. Nyet on the grenade, da

on the flashlight, which would make an excellent target.

He chattered in Arabic down the tunnel. "You must know Ahmed. He

wears his robe loose but his shorts tight. Men love him, though sheep fear

him—" For the second time in an hour, the thrill of combat filled Wells.'

Crackheads must feel this elation when they put flame to pipe. Zeus.}

I am Zeus.

“Topko ubeyte ego,” the man said again. The unmistakable click of a mag-

azine being jammed into an AK-47 echoed down the tunnel.

At the end of the tunnel, the flashlight clicked on. This time the Russians

wouldn't fire blindly. They started shooting in short bursts. A rock frag-

ment cut Wells's cheek, under his eye, and blood flowed warm down his

face.

But now Wells could aim too. He squeezed off two shots from thfl

Makarov. He heard a yelp in Russian and the flashlight dropped to the

ground. Now they might be desperate enough to send a grenade at him-

Before they could, he tumbled the flash-bangs down the tunnel. As the

m-enades rolled away, he buried his head in his hands, closed his eyes,

and counted to himself like a kid playing touch football at recess: "One

Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Missi—"

the NAME FLASH-BANG DIDN'T begin to do justice to these grenades. Through

his squeezed-tight eyelids, Wells saw a pure white light. The noise from the

explosions was louder than anything he had ever heard, something more

than sound. A shock wave pummeled his ears. He knew he wasn't moving,

couldn't be inside the narrow tunnel, yet he seemed to be spinning in two

directions at once. The men howled in Russian, their voices barely audible

over the noise in Wells's head.

Wells opened his eyes and breathed in deeply. The heavy thermite smell

of the grenades brought him back to reality. He needed to move fast, before

the Russians regained their bearings. On hands and knees, Wells crawled

forward in the dark. The tunnel spun around him. He concentrated on the

blood flowing down his cheek and didn't stop moving. His stomach tight-

ened and a surge of nausea overcame him. Before he could hold back,

Gatorade and soda crackers burned his throat and poured out of his mouth.

He ate lightly before missions and this was why.

Wells grabbed the side of the tunnel. Somehow he kept moving, pump-

ing his legs forward. Hours passed, or seconds, and then the walls opened up

around him. He lost his balance and fell, landing on one of the Russians. The

man was twisting sideways, moaning, hands wrapped around his ears. The

grenades had blown out his eardrums, Wells thought. The man grabbed fee-

bly at him, but Wells jammed the Makarov into his mouth and pulled the

trigger. The Russian's arm trembled and fell, a last hopeless flutter.

Wells rolled off the corpse and waited, listening in the dark. He was

guessing that the man he'd killed had taken the worst of the flash-bangs.

The second one might be able to move, or at least to crawl. He waited, lis-

ted, and—

There.

IN THE BLACKNESS, Wells heard the Russians breath, as close and quiet as a

seashell in his ear, no more than ten feet away. Where? Wells couldn't turn

on his flashlight without giving away his own position. The Russian must

have the same dilemma. Wells crab-scuttled left, silently, silently, his back to

the wall of the cave, holding the Makarov in his right hand.

Step. Step.

Then a burst of AK fire.

But Wells was untouched. The Russian was hitting only the corpse of his

partner. Wells threw himself off the cavern wall. The Russian spun toward

him, but Wells knocked the barrel of his rifle up and away. With a low arcing

kick, he swept the other man's legs out. The Russian fell back, landing hard.

Wells jumped him, and with a knee astride his chest landed a clean left to his

chin and another to his nose. The fight went out of the Russian fast. As Wells

punched him a third and fourth and fifth time, he hardly resisted. Wells didn't

know if he was disoriented or just resigned to his fate.

Wells flipped the Russian onto his stomach and looped flexcuffs—thd

temporary plastic handcuffs that police sometimes used in place of regular

metal cuffs—tight around the man's wrists and ankles. Then he snapped

open a yellow glowstick.

The cavern was small, no more eight feet high and twenty-five feed

around. On one wall, a guerrilla had spray-painted the Arabic phrase "AM

lahu akbar"—God is great—in black on the grayish-green stone. Small sta-

lactites hung from the ceiling. The walls and floor bulged as if the mountain

were laced with tumors.

Three rusty oil drums sat near the far wall, next to a child-sized BMX

bicycle. Bizarre. Maybe the guerrillas had been practicing a circus act in]

their downtime. Aside from those odd relics, the cavern seemed empty. Be-

side the oil drums two passages led deeper into the mountain. They were

just three feet high, narrower than the tunnel that connected the cave with

the surface. Wells understood why the Russians had hesitated to take them-

If they dead-ended, they'd be little more than traps.

Wells tossed the glowstick aside. “Speak English?” he said to the Russian.

“Sure.”

“Is anyone else here?”

The man spat on the ground. “See anyone?”

“If I do, I'll kill you first. Understand?”

“I understand. No, we are alone.”

Wells drew his knife. The Russian's eyes widened. He rolled onto his back

and tried to squirm away. “I just want to be sure you're not hiding anything,”

Wfells said. He put a knee on the Russian's chest and slashed at the man's

sweater and T-shirt, pulling them off. Then he hacked away the man's cam-

ouflage pants until the Russian was naked except for ill-fitting cotton briefs.

But the guy didn't seem to have any extra weapons. A surprise. Every decent

commando carried an extra knife, just in case.

“Now the boots.” Wells sliced at the man's boots. The Russian kicked

wildly.

“Boots? Nyet. My feet.”

“Nyet?” Wells turned the Russian onto his stomach, grabbed the man's

little fingers, and pulled them sideways until he could feel the tendons about

to snap. "Nyet nyet, Vladimir. If I didn't need you, I'd leave you down here

for the spiders. Got it?"

“Okay, okay.”

Wells wondered if he'd meant his threat. He'd killed many men, but

never an unarmed prisoner. In New York, he'd spared the life of a Saudi ter-

rorist he'd captured. Treating captives with decency was one way the United

States separated itself from its enemies. At least it had been once. Now

America seemed to have lost its moorings. Wells wondered if he had too.

Wells flipped the Russian on his back and sliced into the black leather of

nis boots. He tore them off. The stench of the Russian's feet filled the cavern.

“Time for a bath, Vladimir.”

I told you leave them on."

wells peeled down the man's socks. As he did, a sharp metal point, warm

w'th body heat, pricked his left palm. A knife was taped to the back of the

man's right leg.

Wells stepped on the Russian's chest, leaned in with his steel-toej

boots until he felt the man's sternum compress. A slow groan escaped the

prisoner's lips. Wells lifted the Russian's leg and ripped off the knife. The

tape tore, taking a chunk of skin with it. "Now you're ready for beach sea.

son.Vlad."

“Name is Sergei.”

“Congratulations.” Wells tossed the knife into the darkness. He ran his

flashlight over the Russian, looking for other hidden knives or guns, but

saw nothing.

“Any other surprises?”

The Russian said nothing.

“I'll take that as a no.” Wells cut open the flexcuffs binding the Russian's

feet but left his hands tight. “Now. You're going in there.” Wells pointed to

the tunnel that led to the surface. "When you're in, I'll cut your hands free!

so you can drag your ass out of this cave. Understand?"

“What about you?”

"I'll be right behind you. Please be smart. I'm guessing getting shot in

the colon is an unpleasant way to die."

“Colon? I don't understand.”

Wells grabbed the Russian's arms and dragged him toward the entrancJ

to the tunnel. Allowing the prisoner to lead was dangerous, Wells knew. If]

he had to kill the man in the narrowest part of the tunnel, he might end up

stuck behind the corpse. But if he led, he risked the Russian's jumping him

from behind. This way he could easily watch the man. Anyway, he didn'M

think this guy wanted to die underground.

At the entrance to the passage, Wells flicked on his headlamp and pushed|

the Russian to the floor of the cavern. "Lift your arms behind your back. !

The Russian obeyed.

Wells put a knee on the man's back. With his left hand, Wells pressedl

the man's head down. With his right, he cut the cuffs. This was the moment]

of maximum danger, the last chance for the prisoner to lock him up 'n

hand-to-hand combat. When the Russian's hands were free, Wells stepped

back.

“Now crawl.”

“Naked?” His accent lengthened the word—naaaked—so it sounded

vaguely pornographic.

Wells kicked him in the ribs. "Not my problem. Anyway, you're not na-

ked. Crawl."

TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Wells saw the dim light of the entrance. The Russian

hadn't tried anything. As the tunnel widened out, Wells flexcuffed his hands

and legs again and dragged him out.

A flashlight stunned his eyes.

“Halt!” Gaffan yelled.

“It's Wells. Got a hostile with me.”

“Yessir. Step slowly, now.” Wells stepped forward. "You okay? You've got

blood all over you."

Wells had forgotten the cut on his cheek. "Nothing, Sergeant. Looks

worse than it is."

The ground shook with the rumble of a fighter jet. Gaffan quickly filled

Wells in. While he was underground, the Special Forces had gotten air sup-

port in the form of a pair of F-16s from Bagram. "Those Air Force boys don't

like flying in the mountains at night, but once we told 'em we could lose two

squads if they didn't get off their asses, they came through all right."

Because of the tightness of the terrain and the fact that the Special

Forces were so close to the Talibs, the jets hadn't eliminated all the enemy

positions. But their presence had given the Americans a chance to regroup.

Now the SF had killed at least a dozen Talibs. The rest were trying to escape

into the caves or down the mountain. Still, this fight had been anything

out a cakewalk. The Special Forces had taken three dead and three more

seriously wounded, including Hackett, who probably wouldn't last the

night.

'We shoulda come in with another squad," Gaffan said. He looked at

*he prisoner, who sat hog-tied against the side of the mountain. "So

who's he?"

“Good question.” Wells nudged the Russian. “Who are you?” The pris-1

oner strained against the flexcuffs.

“Take these off and I will show you who I am.”

“He went soft in the cave and it looks like he's not too happy about it,”

Wells said. "All I know is his name isn't Vladimir. It's Sergei. Who are you,

Sergei? Tell us about yourself."

THESTEWPOT BUBBLED AND BURPED ABOVE A LOW FIRE, filling the hut with the

rich aroma of chicken and carrots and potatoes melting together. Jordan

reached for the pot, but his mother swiped his arm away. No, she said. First

your father eats. She sat above him on a wooden throne, reaching an impos-

sibly long arm down to stir the pot. Saliva filled Jordan's mouth and the

hole in his stomach swelled to the size of a basketball. He looked around

but didn't see his father.

A scoop, its thin aluminum handle twisted from years of use, lay by the

>ot. Jordan grabbed it. Wait, his mother said. He's come back. He's right

hind you. Jordan turned and saw his father, a blush of purple tumors

•rawling across his face. The old man reached out with a skeletal hand. And

ugh he knew he shouldn't, Jordan wanted to keep this wrecked, dying

from dirtying the stew. He blocked his father from the pot and reached

n me scoop. But the pot was empty, aside from a tiny chicken wing.

)r<lan watched, the wing fluttered out of the pot, a final insult.

No>" he said aloud.

Jordan opened his eyes and looked around. The stew—along with hjs

poor dead parents—vanished as he woke. Nothing had changed. On the

concrete highway above him, trucks rumbled. The morning air was hot and

humid. Song and Yu slept under a thin woolen blanket, Yu clutching iQ

empty bottle of Red Star.

The stew was gone, but Jordan's hunger stayed with him as he pushed!

himself to his feet. Nothing metaphorical about this feeling. Jordan didn't

want love or hugs or a pony. He wanted food. All day, every day, his stomach

ached.

In the mornings, if he managed to earn a half-loaf of stale bread and a

cup of tea sweeping the sidewalk for a friendly storekeeper, his cravingsi

faded to a low growl, background noise. But in the afternoons, the empti-

ness in his belly overwhelmed him. He drank water then, ate vegetables that

were more brown than green, anything to fill his stomach. The cigarettes

helped too, though he knew he couldn't afford them. A pack of cigarettes

cost as much as a bag of potatoes.

Worst of all were the hours before bed. Then his belly ached so badly

that he wanted to cry, though he never did. To keep him smiling, Song and1

Yu told tales about girls they'd known, peasant girls who sneaked off in the

dark to lie with them.

“Once this missus and I, you know, we were ready to—” Song leered, his

mouth opening in a gap-toothed smile. "I pulled up her dress and put her

on the ground and she yelped." Song moaned, a passable imitation of J

teenage girl. "Turned out her bum had ended up in a chunk of horse dung.]

I would have gone ahead straightaway—she was none too clean even before

that—but she made me take her home. Silly girl. We could have had a bit

of pleasure, and that's too rare in this world."

Song and Yu howled with laughter and even Jordan found himself smil-

ing. He didn't know if the stories were true, and he didn't care. The words!

distracted him. Song and Yu gave him food too, when they had any. If not

for them he didn't know what he would have done. Yet he wasn't even sure

why they liked him. Maybe because neither had a son, or even a daughter,

and they saw him as a substitute.

Each morning, Jordan fought through his daily routine of a hundred

•t.ups and push-ups. Even with his belly empty, he never skipped his

rkout__and it never failed to amuse Song and Yu. “Arnud Schwarzenga,”

, called him. More seriously, they told him to conserve his strength, that

he exercises wasted energy he couldn't spare.

He knew they were right, but he refused to quit. He had once heard his

hero Michael Jordan say that he worked out even if he could hardly move.

“Every day,” Michael had said, with that famous grin. So Jordan stuck to his

xercises. Despite his troubles, he had somehow managed to stay optimis-

tic He never stopped to think about why. Unlike most sixteen-year-olds in

America or Europe, he had seen enough death to know that just being alive

was a privilege, one everyone lost eventually. While he had it, he would do

his best to honor his father and mother.

“Ninety-nine ... a hundred.” Jordan finished his last push-up and

stood.

“Arnud ... Arnud ...” Song smirked. "One day you have big muscles

too, Jiang." They didn't call him Jordan. He'd kept that name to himself,

for himself.

“Come on, Master Song,” Jordan said. “Let's go.”

Song dragged himself up and pulled the blanket off Yu. "Up, fatty. No

work means no Red Star tonight."

Yu grumbled and tossed the blanket aside. He was filthy, his sweatshirt

stained and his pants frayed. Jordan tried not to imagine what his mother

would think of the way he lived. Poor as they'd been, she'd always kept

their home clean. She swept every day and made him wash himself every

morning, even in the winter when the cold water stung him and made his

Privates shrivel so he could hardly see them. Jordan brushed the dirt off his

clothes as best he could. If he found work today, he would buy soap, even a

"ttle bottle of shampoo. He couldn't believe he wanted anything more than

f°od, but he did. He wanted to be clean.

In the meantime he pulled his lucky Bulls hat over his greasy black hair

and away they went. Song had heard of a new job site, an apartment build-

ln8 being demolished downtown, with plenty of work.

THE SUN WAS JUST VISIBLE when they reached the entrance to the GUan J

subway. With no money for the fare, they skipped over the electronic!

stiles instead of buying a ticket. In theory the cops could arrest them h

reality they'd just be shoved off the train at the next stop if they were ca3

the police didn't want anything to do with them.

Fifteen minutes later they reached their stop. Jordan felt himself sa

he walked up the steps to the street. The world went gray and he stumhJ

backward. Song wrapped an arm around him and gently set him down.1

“Jiang?”

“I just need a cigarette.”

“A roast pig too, by the looks of it,” Yu said. He dug into his pocket fori

coin. “Come on, Song, let's get the boy some bread at least.”

They found a vendor and bought Jordan a small ripe orange. He wanted

to force the whole sphere into his mouth at once. Instead he peeled it ^H

offering slices to Song and Yu. Though he knew he ought to share—they'd

bought it for him, after all—he felt a pang with each piece he gave up. The

vendor watched him eat and when he was finished handed him another

orange and a pear too. He waved aside Song's fumbling effort to paJ^H

ally Jordan didn't like taking charity, but today he didn't mind. TheM

filled his belly and gave him a jolt of energy.

“Feeling better?”

Jordan nodded.

“Now let's win this job.” They cut through a narrow pedestrian nw

hemmed in on both sides by concrete apartment buildings. Some st|

were already open. Inside a butcher shop, men in dirty aprons shooed*

away from slabs of meat strung from ceiling hooks. Next door, in H

filled with glass jars that brimmed with crumbly green tea, two old 1

haggled over a plastic bag of leaves. Farther down, the aroma of hoj

filled dumplings wafted from a pastry store. Jordan forced himself to

away from the pastries before he spent the last of his money, the enietSrl

money in his Bulls hat.

blocks down, they turned left onto a crowded avenue. Song looked

signs. “This way,” he said. A dozen or so equally dirty men were

jn the same direction. They made a right, and after a short block,

a onto a street blocked by police sawhorses.

“Dammit,” Song said. Scores of men, a hundred or more in all, milled

und. So much for rinding easy work.

•You woke me for this?" Yu spat onto the pavement. On their right, the

I skeleton of a half-finished skyscraper rose, the construction site

ked by barbed wire, its gates locked. The other side of the street held

apartment building slated for demolition. Two giant cranes stood be-

... jt> wrecking balls poised to tuck into the eight-story brick building like

hungry men slicing up a steak.

But the building wasn't empty, Jordan saw. On the fifth floor an old

woman leaned out, shouting to the street. "Don't do the capitalist reader's

work! We poor people must stay together!"

Yu laughed. "Capitalist roader? That old missus probably thinks Mao's

still alive. Didn't anyone tell her we're all on our own these days?"

“See, Jiang?” Song asked. "They want us to clean everyone out so the

es can knock down the building. It's dirty work, but we'll eat tonight."

“Dirty work,” Yu said. “Yes, it is.”

A Mercedes sedan and two police cars rolled past the sawhorses and

nto the street, forcing the men to make way. A stocky young man in a black

T-shirt and slacks stepped out of the Mercedes and raised a bullhorn.

Ten yuan“—hardly more than a dollar—”for every man who rids the

building of these squatters," he yelled.

ten yuan?“ Song said. ”He must think we're desperate."

“He's right,” Yu said.

*°u snake!“ the old woman yelled down. ”We're not squatters. I've lived

longer than you've been alive."

A“d now it's time for vou to go.”

Th

w°man disappeared. When she came back, she held a metal pot.

»vine!" she yelled. She lobbed the pot at the Mercedes. The men

'red as the pot shattered the sedan's windshield.

“Crazy old bitch!” the man yelled. Another pot flew out of the wi J

and smacked the hood of the Mercedes, denting the shiny black metal t

police officers stepped out of their cars and ran into the building.

A low rumble passed through the crowd. “Dirty work,” a couple of nJ

said. “Dirty work.” More faces appeared in the building's windows^

can't throw us out," voices shouted. Sirens screeched, at first distantly 1

growing louder,

“Twenty yuan!” the man in the black T-shirt yelled. "I'll pay twentil

“It's blood money,” Song said. Jordan felt light-headed at his word

Blood money. His father had died for blood money. “Don't be afraid ”h'

father's spirit said to him, not in his head but for real on the street H

looked around, but the spirit was gone.

“Are you all right?” Song said to him.

“Fine, Master Song.”

“You should leave. You don't need to be involved in this.”

“Not unless you come too.”

"Then let's all stay and see what happens. We've been pushed around too

long.“ Song's eyes were hard and shiny as pebbles. ”Dirty work!" he yellecM

the Mercedes.

“It's honest work,” the man yelled back. "If you don't like it, starve.™

FOR A FEW MINUTES, not much happened. The man in the black T-shirt raised

his offer to thirty yuan, and a couple of the laborers stepped toward the

building. But the other men on the street blocked them from going inside

and they gave up. Then three more police cars appeared, sirens screaming-A

dozen cops stepped out, tapping nightsticks against their thighs. A pafl

wagon blocked off the street from the other direction. More migrants

shown up, and the street was thick with men now, milling around theM

lice cars.

From the fifth floor the old woman yelled, "Leave me! Leave me! 1

I

..LeaVe her!" a laborer yelled.

lding bricks and rebar rods, trash from the construction site, the

. cursed toward the police. A police officer grabbed the bullhorn

miSran

the man in the black T-shirt.

out now or we'll arrest all of you roaches."

, pepped forward. “We've done nothing wrong.”

. t another word from you." The officer raised his truncheon.

Let him alone," Jordan said.

The officer smirked. “And who are you? Skinny little migrant.” The cop

vea Jordan and grabbed his Bulls cap. All I have, Jordan thought. The

was everything, his money, his luck, his connection to his father—

“Officer__” Song put a hand on the cop's shoulder. Without a word, the

uop swung his nightstick, catching Song in the ribs. As Song doubled over,

he cop brought the stick down on Song's skull. Song's eyes rolled up and

he dropped like a sack of potatoes.

“Murderer!” an old man shouted from the apartment building. "You

killed him!" A clay pot flew out of the building and smashed on the roof of

a police car.

“Murderers! Murderers!” The chant rumbled through the crowd, waver-

ing like a fire trying to catch. For five seconds, then ten, the police and the

migrants stared at each other, no one quite ready for more violence.

“Order!” the officer with the bullhorn said, and the crowd took a half-

step back. “Go on now.” On the ground, Song groaned.

Jordan reached down and at his feet, as if his father had put it there, he

)und a beer bottle, a big one, broken in half, its glass edges sharp as a steak

wife. In one motion, he picked it up and stepped forward and swung at the

C0P's neck.

Even before the blood began to spurt, the cops were on Jordan. He

ught as hard as he could, though after the first dozen blows he stopped

r,n8- Yu stepped up and the police jumped him too. “Murderers!” the

borers shouted. “Murderers!”

An<l then nothing could stop the riot.

SWINGING CROWBARS AND BRICKS, the migrants overwhelmed the police and

smashed stores and cars across Guangzhou's city center. Someone—the

police never discovered who—set fire to the apartment building that had

been the flash point for the riot. With firefighters unable to get to the build,!

ing, twenty-four people inside died.

By mid-afternoon, the fighting had spread to the giant factories on!

the outskirts of Guangzhou, where migrants worked for wages that barely

covered their meals and rent. More riots broke out in Shenzen, a city off

8 million between Guangzhou and Hong Kong, and Shaoguan, to the north.

In all, 142 rioters, 139 civilians, and twenty-three police officers died during

two days of fighting, which ended only after the People's Liberation Army

rolled through Guangdong to enforce a province-wide curfew.

The government tried to impose a news blackout on Guangdong, arrest-1

ing reporters who wrote about the riot. But word spread quickly, carried byl

cell-phone cameras and Internet postings that popped up as quickly as the

censors could pull them down. Beijing downplayed the violence, but the I

videos were ugly: factories burning, police firing tear gas and rubber bul-

lets, tanks rumbling through Guangzhou's crowded streets.

As news of the violence spread, China's other metropolises saw scattered!

riots. The police in Shanghai arrested 125 people. In Beijing, the party]

declared a nighttime curfew and closed Tiananmen Square for a week.]

China hadn't seen such widespread unrest since the Tiananmen shootings I

in 1989.

Jordan never knew what he and Song and Yu had begun. He died thi

first day, his body battered beyond recognition by nightstick blows, not that

he had anyone to claim him anyway. He was cremated in the city morgue!

—

AS THE RIOTS ENTERED their second day, the Standing Committee called an

emergency meeting in Beijing. Li expected that the liberals on the commits I

oUld at least be willing to discuss whether their economic policies had

, jeC; the violence. He was wrong.

“These troublemakers, can the Army deal with them?” Zhang asked him.

“Of course the PLA can overcome the rioters,” Li said. "But shouldn't we

nsider the reasons for the violence? The economic slowdown?"

“The slowdown is over, Minister Li. Our economy is growing again.” In-

A ed, Zhang had just presented new statistics that seemed to say that the

onomy had finally begun to turn. Li didn't know what to make of the

umbers. If the economy was getting better, why was Guangzhou burning?

“Don't the protests concern you?”

"There are always troublemakers. That's why we have your men. As

long as you do your job, I haven't any concerns." Zhang shuffled through

his papers. "Do you remember when the Americans had their riots? In

California?"

“Of course, Minister.”

"Then you remember that the Americans didn't change their policies

after those criminals tried to burn down Los Angeles. They sent in their

army, and in a few weeks everyone had forgotten."

Whatever doubts Li had about his plan disappeared that day. Zhang and

the liberals would never see reason. He needed to take control, and soon,

whatever the risks.

Fortunately, his next step was already in place.

I

ON THE BIG FLAT-PANEL TELEVISION, the man rubbed his short black hair. His

face showed no emotion but his hands betrayed his nervousness, moving

constantly, drumming aimless patterns on the table in front of him. A^

cigarette smoldered in an ashtray before him. He picked it up and dragged

deeply, then looked up as an unseen door opened.

“I'm sorry for the delay. We're ready to begin if you are.”

I m ready.

“The questions may seem obvious, but please answer all of them.”

“Of course.”

“Let's begin with your name.” The woman asking the questions had a|

smooth English accent, a voice that reminded Exley of a life she wouldi

never have, with hunting dogs, and high tea on a silver caddy. Of course, iH|

reality the woman probably had a farting husband and screaming twins.

She probably lived in an undersized two-bedroom apartment in the wrong

part of London and rode the Tube to work. Still, she had...

“My name is Wen Shubai,” the man said.

“Age and nationality?”

«pifty-two." The man stubbed out his cigarette. The butt joined a half-

. en others in the ashtray. "I'm Chinese. Born in Hubei Province. The

people's Republic."

“Where do you live now, Mr. Wen?”

“London.” He spoke English carefully, the words proper but heavily

ccented, the voice of a concierge at a five-star Beijing hotel.

“And where do you work?”

“Until today, the Chinese embassy.”

“What's your title?”

“Officially, director for trade between China and the United Kingdom.”

“What did you actually do at the embassy?”

“Head of Chinese intelligence service for Western Europe.”

“You were a spy.”

The man extracted a fresh cigarette from a flat red Dunhill box. A man-

icured woman's hand, as elegant as the voice asking the questions, held out

a silver lighter.

“Senior officer. I oversaw operations all over Europe.”

TYSON PAUSED THE INTERVIEW THERE, catching Wen with a Dunhill between

his lips. "This was filmed about thirty-six hours ago at a safe house just west

of London. And yes, Mr. Wen Shubai is who he says he is. He shucked his

bodyguards late Saturday night at a rest stop on the Ml. The Brits were

happy to have him."

“A rest stop on the Ml?” This from Shafer.

"Defecting during a state dinner at Buckingham Palace would have

°een more elegant, but so be it. Anyway, he has a lot to tell us, which is why

ve asked you to my happy home. I'm sure you'll agree it's worth your

while."

Exley, Shafer, and Tyson were in a windowless conference room on the

eventh floor of the New Headquarters Building at Langley, next to Tyson's

ft^e and just a few doors down from Duto's. Wells—who'd gotten back from

A%hanistan a few days before, his shoulder banged up but otherwise basically

intact—had begged off Tyson's invitiation, telling Exley only that the miss-™!

1 'Oil

had been a success, that they'd caught a Russian commando, and that tl

had to go to New York to “take care of something.” Exley found his coynJ

irritating, but she was trying to give him the benefit of the doubt. He was nJ

used

to operating alone, after all.

“So this guy Wen came over the day before yesterday?” Shafer said.

"Correct. The Brits have been debriefing him more or less nonstop eyJ

since. You know the drill, check what he says against the available evidencJ

Treat him with respect but not too much, make sure he knows we're doint I

him a favor and not the other way around. Get everything out of him while

he's still fresh off the boat, so to speak."

“We have anyone in the room?”

"Not yet. Wen's been making noise about wanting to talk to us, but the

Brits say he's on their soil. Their country, their case. Et cetera. We'll get a

crack at him eventually, under their watchful eyes, of course. But I've asked

Duto not to press the Brits too hard on this. It may actually be to our advan-

tage to leave Shubai with them."

“Why?” Exley said.

"I promise all will become clear. Let's get to more of Mr. Wen's great-

est hits."

Tyson last-forwarded the DVD. Exley watched, fascinated, as cigaretH

magically appeared in Wen's hands, shrank to nothing, and then reappeared

fresh. She hadn't wanted to smoke this much in months.

“WHY DID YOU DEFECT?” the interviewer was saying.

For the first time, Wen appeared flummoxed. "When I came from V

jing two weeks ago, I decided." He took a drag on his cigarette and saw

nothing more.

“But why now? After all these many years.”

“I wanted to speak freely. In China, that's impossible.”

"Come now, Mr. Wen. We're not making a publicity video for Taiwan. You

't expect us to believe that you defected so you could hold up placards in

streets. You're a fifty-two-year-old man, not a college student. How much

^edomdoyouneed?"

Wen squeezed his hands together. “You already know, so must I answer?”

“Please.”

"I am due to return to China. I don't want to go. I love a lady here. And

0w I find out my wife, who lives in Beijing, has relations with my superior

officer there."

“Relations?”

Wen shook his head tiredly. “Sexual relations.”

TYSON PAUSED THE DVD AGAIN. "'How much freedom do you need?' I love

that. The Brits."

“Best friends to your Confederate forebears,” Shafer said.

"True enough. Neither we nor the Brits can confirm the bit about his

wife. But he has been sleeping with a woman here, a lawyer at a British

export-import company. Monica Cheng's her name. He met her a few

months back at a trade show to promote Chinese exporters. The Brits found

her yesterday, asked her, and she confirmed. She's under twenty-four-hour

watch." Tyson passed around pictures of the woman. She was Chinese, in

her early thirties and pretty.

“Is it possible she's fake?”

'Possible, sure. But she was born in London. She looks genuine and she

says they were serious. He was, at least. And there's something else."

Tyson pressed play and the DVD spun.

UARE THERE ANY OTHER REASONS you decided to defect?"

Wen reached for another Dunhill. Only after accepting a light did he

speak.

“There are no penalties to me for what I say?”

"Mr. Wen. You are a guest of the British government. An invited 01J

How you treated your former employer is of no concern to us. Hone^H

the best policy."

“May I speak to a solicitor?”

A pause. “I'm afraid that wouldn't be practical at this time.”

Wen appeared unsurprised. "Let me say, then, that the PLA checksJ

Wen broke off. Looking left, offscreen, he said a word in Chinese. "Audits*

a voice replied in English. Wen nodded. "The Army audits my spendino

One of the people, the auditors, raised a question."

“You were accused of theft?”

"There was a certain account in my name. For operational purposeJB

TYSON STOPPED THE DVD AGAIN.

"This part he absolutely refused to put on camera. Mr. Wen Shubal

seems to have been stealing from the PLA with both hands. He's got an

account with two million dollars at UBS. Says it was to fund covert opera!

tions inside Europe."

"Sounds like it was funding Operation Move My Girlfriend Monica to

Barcelona," Shafer said.

"He says the PLA's auditors refused to accept his perfectly legitim^

answers about the account. So he did what any of us would do."

“He fled into the arms of a foreign power.”

“Precisely, Mr. Shafer.”

“Did you two practice this routine?” Exley said. "You could take it on urn

road. Big bucks. Shafer and Tyson, CIA vaudeville."

Shafer and Tyson looked at each other in mock befuddlement. "I dont

know what she's talking about, Ellis,“ Tyson said. ”Anyway, it would have tl

be Tyson and Shafer."

“So do we believe Mr. Wen?”

Tyson folded his hands together, raised his index fingers to his lips, "fl

Here's the thing. We do."

«We think he's the genuine article, not a fish thrown our way by the

e t0 confuse us, as our old friends at the KGB used to do."

«vve and the Brits both. Reasons—" Tyson counted them out on his

ftngers'

"One: If he's a fish, he's a very big fish. He's extremely senior. That's a lot

. uo and we don't know why they would. Two: Monica's real. Three:

10 g've   '

money in his UBS account is real and he's been putting it there for a

uie Four: The Chinese government is conducting, shall we say, urgent

uiries as to his whereabouts. And five: The Chinese have never liked

those KGB-style counterespionage ops."

“They love to spy.”

"Not the chess match kind of spying. The simple kind. The pay-

the-engineer-get-the-blueprints-for-the-fighter-jet kind."

“The kind that works,” Shafer said.

Again Tyson fast-forwarded through the DVD. "And then there's

this,“ Tyson said. ”You can watch the whole tape if you like, of course, but I

promise these are the highlights." He clicked the DVD.

•DOES CHINA HAVE AGENTS WITHIN the Central Intelligence Agency?"

“Yes. Until last year, two. Then one was dismissed.”

“What happened to him?”

“I don't know precisely. He hardly showed up on my”—again Wen said

something in Chinese and the unseen voice translated—"on my radar

'een. He was in what the Americans call the division of intelligence."

“The Directorate of Intelligence.”

Yes. The analysts. He translated Chinese newspapers and similar things.

He was not very senior."

“What about the other agent?”

He was in the other division—directorate. Operations."

“Was he also low-level?”

Not at all." Wen sat up in his chair as he said this, Exley noticed. Though

as now betraying China, he was still unconsciously proud that his

service had infiltrated Langley. "He had access to many operations. Nf0J

in China. All over Asia."

“How long did he work for you?”

“Several years.”

“And did you recruit him?”

“I never met him.”

"Let me ask it another way. Did the Second Directorate recruit himi

did he approach you?"

"Ahh. No, he approached us. He was white. We prefer ethnic Chinese*

Exley was transfixed. Soon there'd be arrests, a criminal case, an J

counting of the secrets this mole had betrayed, the lives he'd destroyed. But

for now there was only this video, the first flake in the blizzard. Histort

unspooling in this office.

“Do you know how he approached you?”

“Unfortunately, no. But I am sure we didn't trust him at first.”

“Because he was white?”

“Also because he had come to us. We didn't understand that.”

“But you learned?”

Wen smiled. “He wanted money. Lots of money.”

“And you gave it to him.”

“His information was valuable.”

“Very valuable?”

“He could have asked for ten times as much.”

AGAIN TYSON PAUSED THE DVD.

"Based on what Wen says next, it seems safe to say that our entire Chw

network is blown. Has been for years. We've lost five agents there since 20M

This explains why. The ones who are left have probably been doubled by u>

Chinese and are feeding us disinformation."

“It's as bad as Ames,” Exley said.

“Worse,” Shafer said. "The Soviets were on the way out when Ames

A us He got some people killed, but he didn't change the Cold War.

trayeu

got this—"

Shafer broke off. He didn't need to say anything more, Exley thought.

struggle for dominance between the United States and China had only

.Kpoun Now this CIA mole, whoever he was, had given China an enor-

just DC&" '                                                                                       ,

advantage. His treachery had opened a window on Americas most

ret intelligence programs and military capabilities while giving China

the chance to conceal its own.

“How many agents do we have in China?” Exley said.

"Even before this, we were incredibly thin over there. A half-dozen PLA

officers, a couple of mid-level politicians. But no one really senior. With

one exception. Maybe."

“Maybe?” Shafer said. “Mind if I ask what you're talking about?”

Tyson looked at Shafer. He seemed to consider his next words carefully,

though perhaps the hesitation was as much an act as everything else he did,

Exley thought.

“I've said too much already. The ramblings of an old man.”

Exley saw the pit bull hiding in Tyson's basset hound face and de-

cided to drop the subject. Still, what he'd said didn't make much sense. Why

would one agent have escaped if the mole had given up everyone else?

“George,” Shafer said, "I have to ask again. How do we know that this

fine gentleman isn't just messing with us?"

“Watch and learn, Ellis.” Tyson clicked the DVD one more time.

“HOW MUCH DID YOU PAY THIS SPY?” the English woman said.

'I don't know exactly, but millions."

“What did he give you?”

"Everything the Americans did in China. If they recruited someone,

P'anned an operation, everything."

"Were you worried that the CIA had planted him? That he was a source

of ^information?"

“Disinformation?” The off-screen translator said something in Chin J

Wen nodded vigorously, almost angrily. "Yes. Of course, we considereJ

he might be trying to fool us. You think we don't understand these sitnj

tions?"

“Of course, of course,” the woman said soothingly.

"At first we test him, use him only to check information we alreadJ

know. But everything he gives us is correct. Very specific, and alwawl

correct. So we know he must be real."

"Mr. Wen, what was the most valuable information this agent provided'!

“Easy,” Wen said. "He told us the Americans had an agent in NorJ

Korea. A nuclear scientist. The Americans called him Drafter."

Exley heard a gasp. She needed a moment to realize she'd made the

sound. The Chinese had given the Drafter to the North Koreans?

“When was that?”

“Two years ago, maybe.”

“When did you tell the North Koreans what you'd learned?”

“Not until this year. A few weeks ago.”

“Why did you wait?”

“I don't know. How do the Americans say it? Above my pay grade.'”

“Do you have any idea?”

"I think some people think China should stand up to America. United

States has many problems right now. Time for China to show its power. II

America doesn't answer, then China knows it is winning."

“People in Zhongnanhai, you mean?”

“Yes. Ministers. The Standing Committee. But not everyone.”

"We'll return to that later. Let's focus on this scientist—the Drafter,

as you call him. What did you tell the North Koreans about him? HM

name?"

"We didn't know his real name. But enough so that they could idelJ

tify him."

"And how did you find out about this? It wasn't to do with Europe.'

“Of course I find out.” Wen looked irritated. "I was home in Beijinl

when the North Koreans sank the boat that the Americans sent to rescul

I am eighth-ranking officer in the Second Directorate. Of course

I hear"

Tyson paused the DVD.

T THE SEVENTH-RANKING, and not the ninth-ranking. The eighth-ranking.

Ellis, you believe him now?"

Shafer nodded. "Obviously he's telling the truth. The Chinese have

mebody inside. Otherwise they wouldn't have known the Drafter's code

name."

“And Chinese wouldn't give up the mole,” Tyson said. "He's too valuable.

So Wen's defection is real. He did it on his own, not on orders from Beijing.

Maybe for Ms. Monica Cheng. Maybe because of those pesky audits."

Shafer looked at Exley. “You agree?”

Exley considered. "I'm not sure. We already knew we had a mole. Even

if we haven't made much progress finding him." The traffic and property

records they'd searched hadn't offered any clues, and they were still wait-

ing for new polygraph results. "The real test is whether he helps us find

the mole."

Tyson grinned. "Ms. Exley. You are the brains of the operation, I

see now."

Exley was tired of playing the good student to the two masters. "And

you're a smug, patronizing jerk."

Tyson's smile didn't disappear. "You sound just like my wife. The strange

part is that I really was trying to pay you a compliment....

dred proof spot-on."

He clicked the DVD.

“CAN WE STOP FOR TONIGHT?” Wen's suit jacket was off, sweat stains widen-

•ng under his arms.

"A few more questions. And then I promise you can rest. Now. This mole

Within the CIA. Did you know his name?"

“No.”

“Department?”

“Told you already, he was in the Division of Operations.”

“Where in the Directorate of Operations? On the China desk?”

"Not sure. Asia, but maybe not China. Also he spent time in what the

Americans call counterintelligence. Don't know where he is now."

“Can you tell us anything else about him?”

Wen closed his eyes. "Something happened to him. Something bad.

Personal. A few years ago."

“Like he was in an accident?”

Wen shook his head. "Not exactly. Something else. A big problem. He

didn't tell us. We found it ourselves when we were checking him."

“Anything else? I promise, this is the last question tonight.”

“He served in Asia. A long time ago.”

“Do you know where?”

“No. And you said last question.” At that Wen stubbed out his cigarette,

folded his hands on the table, and closed his eyes.

TYSON CLICKED OFF THE DVD, leaving the screen black.

"So, Ms. Exley, you see I wasn't trying to be smug and patronizing,

though perhaps I can't help myself. You asked the right question."

“And the answer is yes,” Exley said. She felt slightly mollified. "Wen gave

us enough to find our mole. He's spent most of his career on the Asia deskJ

He's worked in counterintelligence. He was in Asia briefly and had 'a family

problem.'"

“I'm guessing it wasn't an argument with his mother-in-law,” Shafer

said. "There can't be too many case officers who match all those criteria.)

If we check that against your seventy names, we should get him, or get

very close."

“Soon, please,” Tyson said. "Because the Brits told our China desk about

Wen's defection yesterday. The mole will be wondering if Wen has tipped us

to him already."

“That's why you'd rather have the Brits hold on to Wen?”

"Exactly. Until we know who the mole is, we're better off with Wen as far

from Langley as possible. Meanwhile, based on what he said about the mole

having some connection to counterintel, I have to assume that we don't

have much time before he runs. If this guy's been around as long as Wen

says, he'll know he's in trouble."

“Not just from us,” Shafer said. "The Chinese might try to clean this up

themselves."

Exley needed a second to understand what Shafer meant. Would the

Chinese be cold-blooded enough to kill their own mole if they believed the

agency was about to arrest him?

“Doubtful,” Tyson said. “It wouldn't help their recruiting any.”

“I agree,” Exley said.

“You two have an optimistic view of human nature,” Shafer said. He

stood to go. “Anyway, we have some work to do.”

VIENNA, VIRGINIA

THE GLINT OF EXLEY'S WEDDING BAND CAUGHT HER by surprise as she drove.

She'd pulled it out of storage for today's job.

After meeting with Tyson, Exley and Shafer had spent the rest of the day

going over the list of agency employees who'd known enough about the

Drafter to betray him. Of the eighty-two names on the final list, twelve

matched at least the broad outlines that Wen had given for the mole's career]

history, or had suffered a serious accident or illness five to ten years ago.;

Unfortunately, none of the twelve men fit in both categories. That would

have been too easy, Exley thought.

“The dirty dozen,” Shafer said. Separately, thirteen men now matched

the soft criteria that she and Shafer had devised earlier. Five employees were

on both lists.

“So now what? Do we talk to them?” Exley said.

"Not yet, I think. Tyson will have his people looking for hard eVB

dence on the twelve who meet the criteria that Wen mentioned. Suspil

cious travel patterns, hidden accounts, the usual. Let's be a little le^

( rrnal- I'm going to poke around Langley, play doctor, see what I can

pickup"

“And me?”

“Why don't you talk to the wives?”

• NO SO THIS MORNING EXLEY had pulled on her wedding band and prepared

to make a tour of suburban Virginia and Maryland. She was aiming first at

the five names on both lists. She didn't know how many wives would be

home, but she figured at least a couple. And she knew claiming she was on

a house-hunt would get her inside their houses. Amazing how freely bored

women would talk to a friendly stranger.

No one had been home at her first stop, in Fairfax. But this time she'd

scored, if the Jetta in the driveway was any indication. She parked her green

Caravan by the edge of the road and hopped out.

A flagstone path cut through the neatly manicured lawn. Rosebushes

added a touch of color to the front of the yellow house. She stepped over a

battered Big Wheel and pressed the doorbell. Inside the house she heard a

toddler crying.

“Coming.” A woman opened the door a notch and peeked out. She was

pretty, late thirties, carrying a baby on her hip. “Mom mom mom!” a boy

squalled from upstairs.

“Hi,” she said, friendly but wary, the classic suburban combination,

trying to figure out if Exley was a Jehovah's Witness or an Avon saleswoman

°r just a neighbor. People moved to Vienna so they wouldn't have to worry

about strangers knocking on their doors.

Sorry to bother you,“ Exley said. ”My name's Joanne." She was going

with an alias, in case the woman mentioned this visit to her husband. "I was

ooking at the Colonial up the block and I'm hoping to find out about the

neighborhood and I saw your car in the driveway."

The woman looked uncertain. “I thought they'd accepted an offer.”

'They're still showing it."

“Mommy, come here!” the invisible boy yelled.

"Well... if you don't mind watching me change a diaper, I'll gjVe 1

the rundown. My name's Kellie, by the way." She extended a hand. She w

glad to have some company, Exley thought.

“Nice to meet you.”

“HE'S BEAUTIFUL,” Exley said of the blue-eyed, red-faced little boy holdW

on to the safety gate that blocked the stairs.

“Isn't he? Name's Jonah. But he's got a temper.” She picked him uj

“Come on, J. No more crying. We'll get you fixed up.”

“They all cry at that age,” Exley said. "I've got two of my own. Trust J

they grow out of it."

In Jonah's bedroom, Exley watched as Kellie changed the diaper with

one hand while soothing the baby with the other. Already, Exley knew that

this woman had mastered the chores of parenting in a way Exley never had

She couldn't explain why she needed ten minutes to change a diaper, bin

she did. She never doubted that she would take a bullet for her kids. But she

had to admit that she hadn't been cut out for the daily grind of chasing

them around, wiping up their snot, making them paper bag lunches for!

school.

Lots of women loved that part of being moms, or at least said they

did. Maybe they were right. Maybe those chores were essential to build-

ing a lifelong relationship with kids. But Exley couldn't lie to herselfci

She'd been desperate to get back to work after four months of maternity

leave.

Now as she watched Kellie wipe off Jonah's butt and pull on a clean

diaper, she wondered: If she had another chance, could she be different? SI

and Wells? She didn't know if she could imagine Wells as a father, though ol

course he was one already. He'd had a son with Heather, his ex-wife, Ji"l

before he went to Afghanistan to infiltrate al Qaeda. But Wells saw tM

boy—Evan—only a couple of times a year. Not that he had much say m "\

tter. Heather, who had sole custody of Evan, was remarried and lived in

ntana. She said that Evan had accepted his stepfather as his real dad and

didn't want to confuse the boy by giving him too much time with

VVells-

Maybe having another child would settle Wells, Exley thought. Or

vbe not. He had so many days when he didn't get along with the world,

hen he reminded Exley of a barely domesticated guard dog, half German

hepherd, half wolf. But even at his angriest, Wells was sweet to her kids,

et t0 kids in general. And kids loved him for his size and strength. What

kind of father would he be with a boy of his own? Somehow Exley knew

that she and Wells would have a boy. Though the truth was that the odds

were against her getting pregnant at all.

Kellie finished putting on Jonah's clean white diaper and ran a sooth-

ing hand over his face. "Pretty soon you'll be a big boy and no more

diapers."

“No diapers!” Jonah yelled happily.

Kellie looked sidelong at Exley. “So what do you do, Joanne?”

“Me? I'm a consultant.” The word consultanfwas vague enough to mean

anything, and boring enough that no one cared anyway.

“I used to be a lawyer,” Kellie said. "Then one day I woke up and I

was this."

“You're great at it, though.”

"When the little one gets to preschool, I'm going back to work. Of course,

Eddie—that's my husband—wants one more, but I told him unless he

figures out a way to get himself pregnant, that's not happening. Come on

downstairs and let's have coffee."

I wish I could have stayed at home for a while,“ Exley lied. ”We couldn't

kgure out a way to afford it, though. Is your husband a lawyer too?"

No. He works for the government. But we saved up when I was working

and we're pretty careful. How about yours?"

My husband? He works for the government too. Not too far from here.

aybe they're in the same business."

“Sounds that way.” CIA wives liked to hint that their husbands WorkJ

at Langley. Proof that the agency hadn't completely lost its mystique, Ey1«J

supposed.

Kellie pulled up Jonah's pants. Now that he didn't have a full diaper h

was pretty well behaved, Exley thought. Cute too. “You sweetie,” she said tJ

him. “What's your favorite thing to do in the world?”

“Hockey! Play hockey!” Jonah grabbed a miniature hockey stick anl

swiped the floor. “Play hockey.”

“Eddie's got him on skates already.”

“He can skate?” Exley's surprise was genuine.

“Play hockey play hockey—”

“You'd be amazed.” Kellie grabbed the boy's hand. "lonah, come on

downstairs to the kitchen with us. You can play down there."

“Can I have juice?”

“Of course, sweetie.”

They walked back to the downstairs, which was festooned with pictures

of Kellie and Edmund on their honeymoon in Hawaii, Kellie and Edmund

and Jonah at the rink, the kid cute as anything with his helmet and stidj

and skates ... Edmund Cerys wasn't the mole, Exley thought. Not even an

Oscar-winning actor could fake the way he looked at his wife in these

pictures. He'd gotten drunk at a Redskins game and picked up a misH

demeanor for pissing in the parking lot, but he wasn't spying for the Chines*

or anyone else. Zero for one.

SHE SETTLED INTO THE KITCHEN and prepared to let Kellie tell her about tM

neighborhood. Then her cell phone trilled in her purse. Wells.

“Hi,” he said. "I have a favor to ask. Can you come up to New York?

Today?"

fAST HAMPTON, NEW YORK

EVEN AT 2:50 a.m. ON A WEDNESDAY MORNING, East Hampton glowed with

wealth. Wall Street skyscrapers, Hollywood back lots, Siberian oil fields—

wherever the money came from, it ended up here, waves of cash crashing in

like the Atlantic Ocean's low breakers. Under the streetlamps, the town's

long main street shined empty and clean. The mannequins in the Polo

store cradled their tennis racquets, poised to play in their $300 nylon

windbreakers. To the north, toward the bay, the houses cost a mere seven

figures. South, in the golden half-mile strip between the main street and

the ocean, the mansions ran $10 million and up.

Wells and Exley were heading south.

Wells cruised at twenty-five miles an hour on his big black bike, its en-

8'ne running smooth and quiet. Before him, the traffic light at the corner of

flam Street and Newtown Lane turned red. He eased to a stop and patted

le CBlOOO's metal flank. The bike was his, but the license plate wasn't.

e d liberated it from a Vespa scooter a few hours earlier. He'd also removed

he identifying decals on the bike, making it as anonymous as a motor-

^'e could be.

Exley stopped beside him at the wheel of a gray Toyota Sienna minivan

that Wells had hot-wired from a parking lot at a bar in Southampton nirietv

minutes before. The minivan's owner—the “World's Hottest Single Aum”

at least according to the sticker on the van's back bumper—was presumably

still getting liquored up inside. By the time she discovered the Sienna was

gone, it would have served its purpose. Wells hoped she had insurance.

The light dropped green. Wells eased past the forty-foot-high wooden

windmill that marked the end of the town center. A half-mile later, he

turned off Route 27 and onto Amity Lane. Besides his standard riding gear

of black leather jacket, black helmet, black gloves, and black boots, Wells

had on black jeans and a black long-sleeve cotton shirt. He wished he had a1

pair of black skivvies to complete the package. Tucked in a shoulder holster

he carried a pistol, a Glock this time instead of the Makarov. It was black, I

naturally, with a silencer threaded to the barrel. He hoped he wouldn't even

have to draw it. His black backpack held two other weapons, the ones he]

planned to use.

THE AFTERNOON BEFORE, Wells had for the first time found a way to take

advantage of the fame he didn't want. He walked into the East Hampton

village police station, an unassuming brick building on Cedar Street, just!

behind the center of town.

“Can I help you?” the cop behind the counter said.

“I'd like to speak to the chief.”

“He's busy. What can I do for you?”

Wells extracted his CIA identification card, the one with his real name, 1

and passed it across the counter.

“Hold on.” The officer disappeared behind a steel door, popping out a

minute later to wave Wells in.

The chief was a trim man in his early fifties with tight no-nonsense eyes. I

Even in East Hampton the cops looked like cops. “Ed Graften,” he said,!

extending his hand. “It's an honor, Mr. Wells. Please sit.”

“Please call me John.” Wells was beginning to feel foolish. Did he really

expect this man to help him?

"What can I do you for? Don't suppose you locked your keys in your

Ferrari or the brats in the mansion next door are making too much noise.

The usual nonsense."

“Chief—I have a favor to ask. The name Pierre Kowalski ring a bell?”

"Course. His daughter Anna set a record this year for a summer rental.

If the papers were right, it was a million and a half bucks for the house."

Wells had seen the same stories. Anna had spent $1.5 million on a seven-

bedroom mansion on Two Mile Hollow Road, just off the ocean. Not to

buy the place. To rent it. For three months.

“Nice to have the world's biggest arms dealer for your dad,” Wells said. "I

have it on good authority"—in fact, Wells had seen the report in two gossip

columns—“that he is in town this week. I'd like to talk to him. Alone.”

Graften was no longer smiling. "Mr. Wells. Are you sure you are who you

say you are? If not, now would be a good time to leave."

“I am, and I can prove it.”

"Then ... I guess I could put a patrol car out front of his gate. I'm

sure his driver speeds. They all do. We could stop him, bring him in here.

But his lawyers would be on us in two minutes and we'd have to cut

him loose—"

“I don't want to get you in trouble. All I need is—” Wells paused, then

plunged on. "If you pick up an alarm from his house tonight, take your

time getting there. I won't hurt him, I promise. Or take anything." Except

information, Wells didn't say.

“What about his guards?”

“I can take care of them. But I'd rather keep your men out of it.” Wells

didn't mention Exley's role in his plan.

“Don't suppose you can tell me what you want from him.”

"Let's just say I don't expect him to file a complaint with you about

% visit."

“You can't do this officially, Mr. Wells?”

“I wish I could.” The CIA couldn't legally operate in the United States

Wells would have to ask the FBI to try to get a warrant for Kowalski

And Wells doubted that any federal judge would sign a warrant based on

the secret testimony of a single Russian special forces commando now in

prison in Afghanistan. Even if they could find a friendly judge, Kowalski s

lawyers would fight them for months. They'd never even get him in for an

interview.

Trying to move against Kowalski in Monte Carlo or Zurich, where he

spent most of his time, would be equally impossible. His homes there were

fortresses, much better protected than this vacation house, and the local

police would hardly look kindly on a request like this from Wells. No,

tonight was his best shot. Maybe his only shot. In any case, Wells didn't care

about arresting Kowalski. He just wanted to know where the trail led.

Graften sighed. “How long do you need?”

“Half an hour maybe.”

“You won't hurt him.”

“I'll do my best.”

Graften looked at the ceiling. "All right. If you can prove you are who

you say you are, I'll get you a half-hour. No more. At three a.m., let's say."

“Then let me do that.”

IT WAS 2:55 a.m. Wells rolled down Further Lane, Exley following. Heavy

green hedges hemmed in the road on both sides. The hedges weren't orna-

mental. Twenty feet tall and too thick for anyone to see past, much less walk

through, they served as walls protecting the mansions behind them. Every,

couple of hundred feet, the hedges parted for gated driveways. The homed

behind the gates were lit up in the night like cathedrals in the Church ol

Wealth.

Wells had reconnoitered the Kowalski house four times, once the

previous night on his motorcycle and three times during the day on I

mountain bike he'd bought at a garage sale in Sag Harbor. He had alsoj

examined town maps and satellite photos, so he knew the mansion's exte-

rior layout and the land around it. Beyond that he would have to rely on

instinct.

He hadn't wanted to involve Exley. But unlike most of his neighbors,

Kowalski had his property protected with more than hedges and alarms.

Instead of a gate, his driveway was permanently blocked by a black Cadillac

Escalade, lights on and engine running. Two unsmiling men watched the

road from its front seats. When Anna or her friends came or went, the men

rolled the Escalade back to unblock the entrance to the property. As soon

as the driveway was clear, they moved back into place. They couldn't be

avoided.

The good news was that Wells hadn't seen closed-circuit cameras around

the property. Cameras were rare in the Hamptons. Billionaires didn't like

being watched, even by their own guards. But cameras or not, unless Wells

could get the men out of the Escalade, he'd have to shoot them where they

sat. He wanted to avoid killing anyone, for both practical and personal rea-

sons. Kowalski was a powerful man with powerful friends. Shooting his

men would cause inquiries that Wells would rather avoid. And though

Kowalski was in a worse-than-ugly business, Wells didn't want to play judge,

jury, and executioner tonight.

Wells figured if he could solve the problem of the front gate he'd be okay.

This late in the night, only a couple of guards would be awake inside the

mansion. They'd be bored, drinking coffee, trying to keep their eyes open.

No matter how much they tried to stay alert, they would hardly be able to

avoid slacking off. East Hampton wasn't exactly Baghdad. And if anything

really went wrong, they could normally expect backup from the village

Police. But Wells had taken the cops out of the picture.

JU$T BEFORE THE CORNER of Further Lane and Two Mile Hollow, Wells pulled

0ver and dropped the CBlOOO's kickstand, placing a flattened Coke can under

"^ base so the stand wouldn't sink into the earth and tip the Honda over.

From the minivan, he pulled out the mountain bike he'd bought tw0

days before. Next to the CB1000, the bicycle looked almost toylike. But the

bike had one great advantage over the motorcycle. It was silent. Wells took

off his helmet and pulled a black mask over his face.

“You still want to do this?” he said. “Because we don't have to—”

"Please. It's easy for the world's hottest single aunt to get lost in East

Hampton after she's had a few."

Exley popped open a peach wine cooler and took a swallow, then poured

a couple drops onto her blouse, which was open two buttons, enough t«

reveal a black lace bra that left little about her breasts to the imagination. '

“That ought to distract them,” she said. "Just another overaged drunk

chick looking for love."

"Jennifer. Be careful. If something goes wrong, I want you to go,

ditch me—"

But she'd already rolled off.

He didn't fully understand Exley. He supposed he never would. She

loved her kids terribly, he was sure. Yet here she was again, risking her life to

help him. Was she doing this for him? For the adventure? Both? Wells

wished he could ask.

EXLEY TURNED RIGHT, down Two Mile Hollow, toward the ocean. On thJ

train from Washington the afternoon before, she'd wondered if she should'

have said no to Wells. Then she remembered the day Wells had attacked the!

Taliban camp. The afternoon came and went with no word. She felt sure

that something terrible had happened, a sniper's bullet, a helicopter crashJ

Then she started to believe that her premonition had actually caused Wells'!

death, that he would have been fine if only she'd shown more faith.

That night she'd found herself at the multiplex at Union Station, sneak-|

ing between theaters, not even pretending to watch the movies, willing the!

minutes to pass, waiting for her cell to ring. Finally, at 2:00 a.m., it did. Shej

expected the caller would be Shafer, asking her to come down to Langley so|

he could give her the news in person.

Instead the voice on the other end belonged to Wells, cool as ever, telling

her that she'd been right about the foreign fighters and that he'd be back

soon. After they hung up, she'd promised herself she wouldn't doubt him

again. So when he'd asked for her help for this mission, she couldn't say no.

She knew her thinking was illogical, but so be it. Everyone was entitled to a

bit of magical thinking.

She approached Kowalski's mansion, swerving a bit from side to side. In

her rearview mirror, she saw Wells at the corner, a couple of hundred feet

behind her. Then he was gone and she was alone.

AS HE WAITED, Wells unzipped his backpack and pulled out the gun he'd

picked up at Langley, a Telinject Vario air pistol. The Telinject was loaded

with a syringe filled with ketamine—the drug that club kids and other

fun-seekers called Special K—and Versed, a liquid sedative closely related to

Valium. Veterinarians and ranchers used these guns to sedate unruly animals.

The CIA kept a handful for its own purposes. Wells had borrowed two, after

getting an afternoon's training from a specialist in nonlethal weapons in

the agency's Directorate of Science and Technology, the unit that handled

fake passports, wiretaps, special weapons, and the rest of the trickery that

accounted for one percent of the agency's work but ninety-nine percent of

its mystique.

“Planning to break into the D.C. Zoo, liberate the chimps?” the

specialist—an attractive forty-something redhead with the thoroughly

Irish name of Winnie O'Kelly—asked him. “You know they bite.” Wells

merely smiled. She handed over the pistols. "Try not to lose them. They're

not particularly traceable, but you never know."

Clubgoers took ketamine because at low doses the drug produced what

doctors called a “dissociative reaction,” almost an out-of-body experience,

giving users the feeling they were in two places at once, watching them-

selves from a distance. At higher doses, ketamine caused unconsciousness

1,1 seconds. Further, ketamine wasn't an opiate derivative, so it wouldn't suf-

focate the guards if Wells accidentally overdosed them. At worst they would

wake up stiff and headachy. The Versed in the mix would put the guards to

sleep even faster.

Of course, the syringes couldn't work their magic unless Exley got the

guards out of the Escalade.

EXLEY DROVE PAST the mansion's driveway. The Escalade was on the left

three tons of steel deliberately designed to be ugly. Its hood stared out at the

street, a gas-guzzling fake tank driven by rich men who liked acting tough

while knowing that other, poorer men would do the real fighting for them.

Exley passed by slowly, making sure the men in the Escalade saw she was

alone.

A hundred yards farther on, the road dead-ended at the empty parking

lot for Two Mile Hollow Beach. Signs warned that any car without a town

beach pass would be towed. “So much for free public beach access,” Exley

said to herself. But of course anyone paying ten million bucks for a house

didn't want to share the sand.

She turned the Sienna around, double-checked the syringe in her purse.

The reality of what she was about to do filled her. Then she turned the radio

up, loud, and drove back down Two Mile Road toward the Escalade, now on

her right. Just outside the driveway of the mansion, she stopped and parked

in the road, making sure the Sienna was angled toward the Escalade. She

stumbled out of the van and walked to the open gate.

The Escalade's windows stayed shut as she approached. She rapped hard

on the driver's-side window. In the background the van's radio blared.

Finally the window slid down. “Can I help you?” The man inside sounded

distinctly unhelpful. He was big and muscular, and his T-shirt didnt

hide the holster on his hip. Exley noticed a dog in the back seat, a big

German shepherd that looked up eagerly at her, its red tongue lapping its

teeth.

"I'm so lost. This guy I met, he told me about this party in Amagansett.

This is Amagansett, right?"

"Lady. If you're looking for Amagansett, go back to that road up there

and make a right. Good luck. This is private property."

Exley turned away. “Drunk skank,” one of the men in the Escalade said,

deliberately loud enough for her to hear, and the other laughed. "Headed

for the drunk tank." The window slid up.

Exley got back in the Sienna, buckled her seat belt. Don't think too much,

she told herself. She put the van in gear, floored the gas, and—

The crash with the Escalade whipped her toward the steering wheel. Her

belt tightened and the exploding air bag caught her, knocking her back.

Even though she'd known the collision was coming, its force surprised her,

and she heard herself scream.

She gathered herself. She'd wrenched her neck and had a cut on her arm,

but she hadn't broken any bones. The Sienna had taken the brunt of the

impact, its hood crumpled, radiator leaking, windshield starred. The Esca-

lade, taller and heavier, had little visible damage, though Exley saw its air

bags had inflated. The bottle of wine cooler had broken and the minivan

stank of peach. She reached into her bag and grabbed the syringe.

She unbuckled herself as the doors of the Escalade opened and the men

inside stepped out. They didn't look happy.

FROM HIS SPOT ON THE CORNER, Wells watched Exley park. When she stepped

out of the van to talk to the men, he began to pedal the mountain bike

beside the hedge on the east side of the road, the same side the Escalade was

on. He stayed hidden in the shadow of the hedge. Unless the men looked

directly his way, they wouldn't see him.

Wells took his time, not wanting to get close too soon. The grass under

his wheels was wet with dew, and this close to the ocean Wells could smell

we clean salt air. Under other circumstances, Two Mile Hollow would make

'Perfect lovers'lane.

Now Exley turned around, walked back to the Sienna, her shoulders

slumped, her little ass wobbling slightly as she walked. She surely had the

undivided attention of the men in the Escalade, Wells thought. Which wa$j

exactly what he needed. He was about fifty yards away, close enough that

the men would see him if they looked his way.

They didn't.

Bang! The Sienna smashed into the Escalade so hard that the bigger

vehicle rocked back and its front end lifted before thunking back down

Wells took advantage of the distraction to throw himself and the bike

onto the grass. He was less than twenty-five yards from the Escalade now

on its passenger side. Exley had rammed the Sienna into the left front o

the SUV, the driver's side.

The Escalade's doors opened and the men stepped out. Inside the

Cadillac, a dog barked madly, its rapid-fire woofing echoing through th

night.

“My door won't open,” Exley yelled through the night. “Help me.”

“Dumb cootch,” the Escalade driver's said. "Fred, radio Hank, tell him

what happened.“ He yelled to the minivan. ”You know whose car you

just hit?"

Fred the guard turned back to the Escalade. Wells aimed the air pistol,

bracing it in both hands. He squeezed the trigger. Propelled by compressed

carbon dioxide, the inch-long dart took off with a soft hiss and hit the guard

in the center of his back. He yelped, then sighed dully as the syringe pumped

anesthetic into him. He raised a hand to the sill of the Escalade to stead*

himself and slumped into the front passenger seat.

“YOU ARE ONE DUMB DRUNK SLUT,” the driver ofthe Escalade said as he reached

into it for Exley. She slumped across the passenger seat.

“I'm sorry, I'm so stupid, please help me,” she said. He grabbed her

harshly and tugged her out, making sure to grope her breasts. As he pullefl

at her, she jabbed the syringe hidden in her hand through his khakis an<l

into his thigh.

“Goddamn,” he said. “Wha—” But even as he cursed, Exley felt his grip

loosen. He crumpled, the deadweight of his arms dragging her down. She

freed herself and looked at him, fighting the urge to kick him in the balls.

j4js breathing was slow, but he seemed fine otherwise.

“Sweet dreams,” she said.

“You all right?” Wells said from across the Escalade.

“Never better. Do what you have to do.”

IT WAS 3:05 a.m. WEDNESDAY. The radio's bright green LCD lights told the

mole what he already knew. He was awake.

For the last few weeks, he'd found sleep harder and harder to come

by. He lay in bed, eyes blinking slowly as a toad's, twisting the thin cotton

sheets Janice liked. Two bottles of wine at dinner and a hefty snort ol

whiskey afterward hadn't been enough to knock him out. Worse, he didn't

seem to sleep even when he was asleep. He had the odd sensation of his mind

nudging itself toward consciousness. Sometimes he couldn't tell if M

was awake or asleep, if his eyes were open or closed, until he tapped ol

the radio and heard a late-night commercial: "We need truckers. Best rates

per mile!"

So he made his way to the spare bedroom to watch reruns of SoflditoB

and Laguna Beach as Janice snored away obliviously in their bedroom. H"

mole had a weakness for the bikinied bodies that filled MTV's version

reality, though he had to mute the sound to spare himself the nonsense!

poured from the mouths of the kids on screen.

Something was wrong. They were after him. Not the indefinable impos-

... tney who plagued the suckers who heard voices in their heads.

t aliens or Jesus. A very real they, probably in the form of a joint agency-

cRl task force. He couldn't say how he knew, but he did. He'd never been

rvous like this before. And he was damn sure he wasn't having an attack

f conscience over what had happened to the Drafter. He'd traded in his

nscience when his baby boy died. As far as the mole was concerned, God

had no conscience, and if God didn't need one, he didn't either. No, this

-burning in his stomach wasn't guilt. It was fear, fear that he might be

caught.

Yet when the mole stopped to consider the facts, as he did a hundred

rnnes a day, he had no evidence to support his fears. Almost no evidence.

Except for the polygraph. A couple weeks before the North Koreans blew up

the Phantom, he'd failed a poly. Not even failed, really. He hadn't muffed

the big questions, the ones that he knew were coming. They were no secret,

part of a routine as established as the Lord's Prayer. Have...

approached by a foreign intelligence service? Have you ever accepted money

from a foreign intelligence service? And the granddaddy of 'em all, the Rose

Bowl of polygraph questions: Have you ever committed an act of espionage

against the United States?

The mole's exam had been scheduled months in advance, standard

operating procedure. He'd hardly worried about it. In his basement lair,

ie practiced his answers until they bored him. When he walked into the

musty offices in the basement of the Old Headquarters Building where the

polygraph examiners worked their magic, he'd been relaxed and confident.

In retrospect, maybe too confident.

The session was supposed to last an hour. For forty-five minutes, he

eezed through. When the trouble hit, he was already looking forward to

:ing done. Maybe he'd cut out of work early, head over to the Gold Club,

rate getting this chore out of the way for the next five years. They had

"tor-one drink specials before 7:00 p.m, and sometimes the girls went

"tor-one on dances too, just to stay loose.

Then, apropos of nothing, the damned examiner had asked him if he

had any hidden bank accounts. For some reason, the question had surprised I

him. He tensed up, actually felt his heart skip, and knew he was in trouble ]

“Of course not,” he said. "I have a brokerage account where I day-trade

sometimes. Blow my retirement money. At Fidelity. That kind of thing, y0ll I

mean?"

The tester, a chubby middle-aged man with a heavy English accent I

looked curiously at the computer screen where the mole's blood pres-B

sure, heart and breathing rate, and perspiration levels were displayed in |

real time.

"I mean accounts you haven't reported to the Internal Revenue Service I

or on your financial disclosure forms. Might you have any accounts like I

that?" For the first time all session, the examiner looked directly at the mole I

while asking his question.

“Of course not.”

“What about offshore accounts?”

The mole pretended to consider. “Can't say I do.”

“How about other valuable assets?”

“I don't get what you're going on about.”

"Cars, boats, houses? Collectible automobiles, for example. A second I

home?"

Collectible automobiles? Was that a shot in the dark or did this guy I

somehow know about the M5? “Nothing like that.”

The tester looked at the computer screen, then at the mole.

"Are you certain? Because I'm showing evidence of deception in your I

last several answers. I don't mean to imply you're doing anything illegaM

People have many reasons to keep offshore bank accounts, as an example*

This prissy English asshole with his singsong voice. As an example. Trw

mole wanted to gouge out his eyes, as an example.

"I don't know what you think you're seeing, but I don't have any hiddeB

assets. I wish."

“All right. Let us move on, then.”

AND THEY HAD MOVED ON. But three weeks later, not long after the North

Koreans sank the Drafter, the mole had gotten a call from Gleeson, his boss,

asking him to schedule a second polygraph.

"Nothing serious. They have a few questions. Seem to think you have a

bank account in the Caymans or something." Gleeson had snickered a bit,

as if nothing could be more ludicrous. “Do me a favor and call them.”

The same day he'd received the official request in his in-box, sounding

considerably less friendly. Failure to comply with this notice may result in loss

of security clearance, termination from the Central Intelligence Agency, and

other penalties, including criminal prosecution....

By the time the mole finished reading the letter, his hand was trembling.

Until this moment he had never truly considered what would happen if the

agency caught him. Of course, he'd known before he started spying that he

could go to prison. But jail had always seemed like a vague abstraction. He

was a white guy from Michigan. He didn't know anyone in prison. Prison

was a building he drove by on the interstate with razor-wire fences and

signs warning “Do Not Pick Up Hitchhikers.”

Now he found himself thinking about prison as something more than

theoretical. The vision was not comforting. At best, he would spend decades

locked up. More likely the rest of his life, at someplace like the Supermax Pen-

itentiary in Colorado, where the government housed Theodore Kaczynski,

the Unabomber.

He'd be held in solitary confinement, caged twenty-three hours a day in

a concrete cell with a window too narrow to see the sun. He'd get an hour of

exercise in a steel mesh box, watched by guards who would never talk, no

matter how much he begged them for the simple kindness of conversation,

^d he would beg. He was sure of it. Maybe the Unabomber liked his pri-

vacy. But the mole knew he couldn't spend that much time alone, without a

computer or a television or even a radio for company. He would go insane,

^t himself just for something to do. His mind would gnaw itself up until

nothing was left. Even the thought of being locked up that way made , J

heart flutter like he'd just run a marathon, made him want to go down h^B

basement and put his .357 in his mouth with a round in every chambe

that no matter how many times he spun the cylinder the result would be tu

same—

He breathed deep and pulled himself together. He was freaking out j

over what? Over a form letter. The agency didn't think he was spying for I

Chinese or anybody else. They thought maybe he had a bank account K

hadn't told them about. This letter was the Langley bureaucracy in action,

nothing more. He'd call them back, practice harder for the poly, and be

done with it. One day, when he was writing his memoirs, he'd be sure to

include this incident, letter and all. That way everyone would see that the

agency had muffed its big chance to stop him.

Sure enough, when he called the polygraph office, a tired-sounding

secretary told him that the examiners were backed up and that they couldn't

schedule him for a month at the earliest. She sounded like she thought she

was doing him a favor, like she handled reservations for some fancy restau*

rant in New York. “So Thursday the seventeenth at noon?”

“That's the earliest availability. Do you want it or not?”

“Sure.”

“See you then.” Click.

WITH THAT HE'D PUT the incident out of his mind, or at least to the side, a fly

buzzing in another room. Even after the Drafter died, the mole figured he

was safe. Then the rumors started.

“Did you hear?” Gleeson asked him one morning. "They're running

a full-scale review of how the DPRK“—North Korea—”discovereB

Drafter. Looking for leaks."

"I thought the working theory was that it had nothing to do with usl

“Maybe,” Gleeson said. "Or maybe we have another Ames. Anyvwj

need that report on my desk by two."

“No problem,” the mole said as Gleeson walked off.

For a week, he heard nothing more. Then he got a call from the same

etary in the polygraph office who had been so blase earlier. "We need to

up your appointment. Are you free next Friday?"

The mole's heart twisted. “Friday? I don't know, lemme check—”

"Well, get back to me as soon as possible, please. If not Friday, it can't be

ny later than the following week."

“What's the rush? I mean, I'm very busy—”

“You'll have to take that up with the examiner. I'm just a scheduler.”

Click-

The mole stared blankly at the receiver in his hand, wondering what he'd

done to deserve this treatment. He wanted badly to know if they actively

suspected him. But asking too many questions about a leak investigation

was a very good way to attract the attention of the people running it.

MEANWHILE, THE TEMPO in the East Asia unit was picking up. Since Septem-

ber 11, Langley and the White House had paid relatively little attention to

China. The agency had focused first on Afghanistan, then Iraq, and now

Iran. Along the way, China and the United States had reached a quiet un-

derstanding. As long as Beijing helped the United States on terrorism, the

White House would stay quiet on economic issues, such as China's trade

surplus.

Even China's rapid military buildup, its new submarines and fighter jets

tnd satellites, had gone unchallenged. Some analysts within the agency

'ought that the United States should confront China aggressively now,

"e America still had a clear upper hand. But those discussions were

brgely theoretical. Langley knew that the White House had no appetite for

'gnt with Beijing at the moment, not with Iraq collapsing.

ut ln the last few weeks, the unspoken bargain had broken down, and

because of anything Washington had done. Both publicly and privately,

the Ch'

^mnese seemed to want to force America's hand. The Chinese had

submarines into the Taiwan Strait, the narrow sea that separated

n from mainland China, and declared that U.S. carriers there would

not be welcome without Chinese approval. Washington had simply ignored!

this provocation, saying that American carriers would travel in any internaJ

tional waters they wanted.

Beijing had also announced the successful test of a missile capable ofl

destroying satellites and said that it didn't intend to allow any nation to havj

“hegemony over space.” The words were clearly intended for the Unitedj

States. Then, a week before, the French intelligence agency had passed alonJ

a rumor that China and Iran had struck some kind of grand bargain. Nm

details. Langley had told the White House and State Department, and nod

the U.S. ambassador to China was trying to get an answer from the Chinese:

foreign ministry. But the ministry so far had stayed quiet.

An alliance between China and Iran would present the United States

with a huge problem. Even if America wanted to avoid quarreling with

China, it would have to respond to a deal between Beijing and its sworn

enemies in Tehran. What no one understood was why the Chinese had]

picked this moment to take on Washington.

The mole could see now how effectively he'd betrayed the agency.

Over the last five years, his spying had cost the CIA all its top Chinese op-

eratives. As a result, the agency had no access to what was happening at

the top levels of the Chinese government. The mole had left the agenql

blind and deaf. Still, the mole didn't think that either side would push thia

confrontation too far. Both the United States and China had too mucH

to lose.

IT WAS 3:06 ».m. AS JANICE sighed softly beside him, the mole felt his minJ

speeding like a truck whose brakes had failed. He remembered Insomnia, al

old Stephen King novel. Halfway through, the hero was greeted by demon!

and devils crawling out of the wall. The mole was expecting to see sornei

thing similar soon enough. The worst part was that he would actually "^

relieved to know the monsters were real.

At least now the mole had a good excuse for his inability to sleep. '^

mornings before, he'd gotten yet another dose of bad news. He was sitti"i

jji his office, wondering if he could find an excuse to push off the poly, when

Gleeson called.

“Come by,” Gleeson said. “Big news.”

When he arrived, Gleeson told him that a Chinese agent had defected in

Britain. Wen Shubai. The mole had never met him, but he knew the name.

ue would bet that Wen knew him too, or at least of him. The mole couldn't

imagine what had happened. No senior officer had ever defected from the

Second Directorate. The Chinese weren't like Russians or Americans. They

stuck together. They always had before, anyway.

“That's fantastic,” he said. “When did it happen?” How much time do I

have?

“Don't know,” Joe said. "I think a couple days ago. But they're keeping it

close to the vest."

“We're sure it's real, it's not bait?”

“He's given up some very solid leads.”

“On what?”

“Wish I could say,” Gleeson said breezily. The mole wondered if Gleeson

actually knew what Wen had said. Could Wen have given them enough to

find him? Could the agency be tracking his offshore accounts right now?

The mole felt his whole body dissolve, as if Gleeson could see through him.

He looked down at his hands to be sure he was still real.

"I need you to pull together a report, everything we know about

Mr. Wen,“ Gleeson said. ”End of day at the latest."

“Sure. I was thinking the same thing.” The mole wondered if George

Tyson and his counterintel boys were trying to set a trap. This assignment

might be intended to provoke him into running, betraying himself.

Well, if that was their goal, they'd failed. The mole went back to his office

and called up the thin dossier the agency had on Shubai, putting together

le report for Gleeson. On his way home that night, he searched out a pay

'"one and punched in a Virginia cell-phone number. The call went straight

t0voicemail.

You've reached George,“ the message said. ”The car is still for sale. If

uo like to buy, please leave your number and the best time to reach you."

All the English lessons that the colonel had taken over the years had paij

off, the mole thought. He hardly even sounded Chinese.

“George,” he said, "that yellow Pinto of yours is just what I've been

looking for. I'd like to pick it up as soon as possible. Call me before six a.m."

The code was simple. Yellow meant he needed an urgent meeting. Pinto

meant Wakefield Park, at 6:00 a.m.

While he waited for George to respond, the mole found a TGI Friday's

where he could have a beer and watch the idiots on ESPN jaw at each other.

He didn't even feel like drinking, but he ordered a beer anyway. When he

looked down at his mug, it was empty. He signaled the bartender for

another.

“No problem, buddy.”

“What kind of word is 'sportscaster,' anyway?” the mole said, eyeing the

screen. "I mean, 'newscaster' is bad enough, but 'sportscaster' makes no

sense at all."

“Got me. That was a Bud Light, right?”

An hour crawled by before the mole slapped a twenty-dollar bill on the

bar and walked out. A half-mile down, he found another pay phone. Again

the call went to voicemail. “You've reached George,” the message said

"Thanks for your inquiry. The yellow Pinto will be ready for pickup odJ

Thursday."

The mole had to restrain himself from tearing the receiver off the pay

phone. Thursday? This was Monday. Why were they making him wait two

and a half days? He should have demanded a meeting immediately. Buo

now it was too late. Asking for something sooner would make George

wonder if he was panicking, and he didn't want to seem panicked. He'd justj

have to wait.

„.,.„„.„,„........_J

But the meeting was still more than a day away. Now, as his clock turne<

to 3:07 a.m., the mole shuffled out of bed and made his way to the spart

bedroom, the room that he had once hoped would become a nursery. "e

settled in before an episode of The Hills, watching the bubbleheads on

screen struggle to make it in the high-pressure world of Teen Vogue. He'd

seen this episode before, but even if he hadn't, nothing in it would have

surprised him. These shows were all exactly the same, whispered confi-

dences, manufactured emotion, the tiniest of struggles.

As he watched, the mole wondered what he would do if George warned

him that the agency was on him. The sad truth was that he didn't even like

China all that much. He certainly didn't want to spend the rest of his life

there. And what about Janice? Would George let her come? Would she want

to go? He could tell her this was the big foreign adventure she'd always

wanted.

Maybe he should just disappear, head for Mexico and points south, with

or without Janice. He had enough money hidden away to make a go of it,

especially if he wound up someplace like Thailand, where twenty bucks got

you a blow job instead of a three-minute dance. But he didn't speak Thai.

And wherever he went, he'd spend the rest of his life waiting for the knock

on his door that meant the agency—or maybe the Chinese—had found

him. He wasn't sure which side scared him more.

Anyway, aside from the polygraph he had no reason to worry. He needed

to relax. He'd never even met Wen Shubai. The mole reached into his briefs

and massaged himself, watching the lithe California goddesses on MTV,

knowing that the whiskey and the wine would keep him from what the Thai

bar girls called full release, but feeling halfway decent for the first time in a

month. Soon enough, he'd know where he stood. And finally he felt his

eyes droop closed.

“YOU ALL RIGHT?” Wells said across the Escalade to Exley.

“Fine. Just do what you have to do.”

"Pull the van forward so it's less visible. Then wipe it down. Anything

you've touched. The wine cooler bottle too. No DNA."

“I got it. Now go.”

Now the next step. Wells looked at his watch: 3:07 a.m. Twenty-three

minutes left. He would need every one. He dumped Fred the guard onto the!

driveway and stepped into the Escalade. The German shepherd lay dead in

the back, the dog's skull torn in half by two rounds from Wells's Glock, hisl

blood pooling over the floor mats. Wells hadn't wanted to kill the dog, butl

he had had no choice.

Wells tucked himself in the driver's seat, slipped the Escalade into revertB

eased down on the gas. The big SUV tugged apart from the Sienna with tr»

groan of metal scraping metal. A piece of the Toyota's hood hung from the I

Cadillac's grille like a battered Christmas ornament. Wells wheeled around.!

swung up the curving gravel driveway toward the mansion. The Escalade^

tinted glass would work in his favor now.

The mansion, a gargantuan version of a rustic Cape Cod beach house,

complete with weathered shingles, stood two hundred feet from the gate. As

^Tells drove toward it, a man ran at the Escalade.

“Jimmy—what the heck—”

Wells twisted the Escalade toward the guard and gunned the gas. The

guard's mouth dropped open. He reached into his waistband for his pistol,

then gave up on the gun and dove awkwardly out of the way. He landed

face-first on the lawn as Wells skidded the Escalade to a stop beside him

and jumped out, pistol in hand.

“Down,” Wells said, not too loud. “Hands behind your back.”

The guard hesitated. Wells fired the silenced Glock, aiming a couple of

feet left of the man's head. The round dug into the turf and the guard

clasped his hands behind his back. Wells cuffed the man and dragged him

up, standing behind him. “What's your name?”

“Ty.”

“Who else is awake?”

“Nobody.”

Wells jabbed the Glock in his back. "You already got your warning shot,

Ty. Where's Hank?"

Ty hesitated, then: “Second floor, watching the bedrooms.”

“Any others?”

“They're out with Anna. Takes five guys to watch her.”

A Nextel push-to-talk phone on Ty's waist buzzed. “Ty?” a man said.

Wells grabbed it. "Tell him a drunk driver hit the Escalade but nobody

got hurt, cops are coming, you'll be right in. Yes?"

Ty nodded. Wells held the Nextel to Ty's mouth and pushed the talk

button.

"Hank. Some drunk hit Jimmy, but everyone's okay. Cops are on the

way. I'll be back in five."

“Got it. Keep me posted.”

“Will do.”

Wells tossed the phone away. "Good boy. One more question. Where's

he sleep? Kowalski?"

Ty hesitated. "Anna's got the master bedroom. He's second floor, left

side, in the front."

Wells pulled a syringe from his pocket and jabbed it in the guard's neck

His eyes widened and he pulled against his cuffs, twisting toward Wells

Then his breathing slackened and he fell like a penitent at Wells's feet.

One to go, Wells thought. He looked at his watch: 3:11.

WELLS JOGGED TOWARD THE BACK of the house, the direction Ty had come

from, past an Olympic-sized slate-tiled pool with three diving boards__

low, medium, and high. He took the granite back steps of the house two at

a time. The patio doors were open. He stepped in and found himself in a

gleaming kitchen. Burnished copper pots hung from the ceiling; a Viking

stove stood beside a pizza oven. The house was silent. Wells stepped through

a corridor lined with hundreds of bottles of wine and up the long back!

staircase.

Halfway up Wells slowed, pulled the second air pistol from his backpack.

He'd brought two, both loaded, so he wouldn't waste precious time on re-1

loading the syringes. He stopped just shy of the top step. The stairs formed

the stem of a T with a long corridor that ran left and right along the spine

of the mansion. Wells poked his head above the top step. Sure enough,

twenty feet down the hall, a man stood before a closed door, a pistol in his

waistband.

“Ty,” he said urgently into his phone. "Come in, Ty... Jimmy? Dammiti

He strode toward the staircase. Wells shifted to get a clear shot with the air

pistol and fired at the man, ten feet away. Psst. The dart smacked into his

stomach. The man sighed softly. The phone slipped from his hand as his I

knees buckled. Wells jumped to catch him before he hit the carpet and laid

him down softly.

Wells stepped over him to the white wooden door at the end of the

corridor. Locked. He pulled his pistol and took aim at the lock. He fired]

twice, hearing the grunt of metal as the rounds smashed the lock, and I

popped the door with his shoulder.

Wells stepped through and down the hall. To his left an open door

revealed an empty bedroom. On the other side, a closed door. Wells put an

ear to it. Silence. At the end of the hall, another door. Wells heard a steady,

heavy snore as he approached.

He opened the door and flipped on the lights. An antique silk rug, its

yellows and blues dazzling, reached to the corners of the oversized bedroom.

Kowalski, a fat man with little pig eyes, slept alone in the oversized four-

poster bed, white silk sheets draped around him like icing on a lumpy cake.

He grumbled in his sleep at the lights.

“Pierre,” Wells said.

The snoring stopped mid-breath. Kowalski jerked up his head. His

eyes snapped open. With surprising quickness, he rolled toward a little

nightstand—

But Wells, even quicker, stepped toward the bed and covered him with

the pistol. Kowalski looked at the gun and stopped.

“Hands up,” Wells said. Kowalski raised his hands tentatively. "Reach out

your arms, grab the posts with each hand.“ The fat man hesitated. ”Now."

Wells squeezed the dock's trigger, put a round in the wall beside the bed.

“Please stay calm,” Kowalski said. He lifted his arms. Wells cuffed him to

the bed, one wrist to each post. The sheets sagged off Kowalski, exposing

his flabby belly and oversized silk boxers. Still, his face showed no tension.

He seemed vaguely bemused, as if he couldn't believe anyone had the au-

dacity to break into his house.

“You must know you're making a terrible mistake.” Kowalski spoke flaw-

less English, with a vaguely British accent. He'd learned it in a Swiss board-

ing school, according to his dossier. He was half French, half Polish. He'd

followed his father into the arms business. “You must know who I am.”

“Too bad you can't say the same about me,” Wells said. "For a million

and a half, you should have splurged for some security cameras. Answer me

five questions and I'll leave."

“Is this a joke?”

Wells put a hand over Kowalski's mouth, pulled a stun gun from his

Pack, and jabbed it into Kowalski's neck. The fat man's head jerked sideways

and his tongue shuddered obscenely against Wells's gloved palm. Wells

counted five before he pulled the gun away. "Why did you send Spetsnaz to

Afghanistan?"

Kowalski didn't hesitate. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Wrong answer.” This time Wells counted ten before he pulled the stun

gun from Kowalski's neck. He didn't have time to be subtle and he knew

Kowalski was lying.

IN THE END, Sergei the Russian special forces officer had told Wells his story

without much prompting. He had been working security in Moscow for

Gazprom, the Russian natural gas company, when the call came. The colonel

who had commanded his unit in Chechnya told him he could get $500,000

for six months' work with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

"I said this money seemed to be too good to be true. He promised me it

was real, that they needed a hundred of us to go, the best Spetsnaz, and they

would pay. He said it was coming from Pierre Kowalski. And then I knew it

must be true."

“You trusted your commander?”

“In Chechnya he saved my life many times. He wouldn't lie about this.”

They arranged for special precautions so the money couldn't be traced, he

said. Each man got a hundred thousand dollars in cash as a signing bonus.

Every month, fifty thousand was wired to a bank account of a family mem-

ber, with a final hundred-thousand-dollar bonus to be paid at the end of

the six months.

“We knew the risks going in,” Sergei said. "But the money was too good.

Everyone agreed."

“What if the Afghans turned on you?”

"We talked about that. But we knew we'd be here together. We could

protect one another. Anyway, we made them better fighters, so they had no

reason to hurt us. We were worried about your side."

“Did you know who Kowalski was working for?”

"No. That was part of the arrangement. When we arrived, the Talibs told

us that it wasn't their money. No surprise."

“Could Kowalski have been doing it himself?”

"Our commander said no, that he was working for someone else. And

taking a rich fee.“ Sergei spat. ”That was all we knew. All we wanted to

know."

“And where is your commander? How can I find him?”

“You found him already. In there.” He pointed at the cave.

“WRONG ANSWER,” WELLS SAID NOW, in the bedroom in the Hamptons. "Try

again. Why were you helping the Talibs?"

“What business is it of yours?”

Wells again covered Kowalski's mouth. Kowalski twisted his head

helplessly. “No one's coming for you, Pierre. It's you and me now.”

Kowalski's pig eyes squinted at Wells. “Yes. I hired them. The Spetsnaz.”

“To fight the United States?”

“Of course.” His voice betrayed no emotion. "A man called me. A North

Korean I'd worked with. He asked me to arrange it. He knew I had contacts

with the Talibs and the Russians. He wanted the best fighters, ones who

would make a difference."

“How much did he pay?”

“Five million. No big deal.”

Wells punched Kowalski in the stomach, twice, a quick left-right combi-

nation, his fists disappearing into the big man's belly. "You spent fifty

million just on the men."

Kowalski's mouth flopped open as he struggled for breath.

“How much?” Wells said again.

“Calm, my friend.” Kowalski's cultured voice had turned into a thin

wheeze. "It was twenty million a month for six months. For the men and

some weapons, SA-7s, RPGs. A good deal, lots of profit. My contact said his

side might extend the offer when the six months was over." A hundred

twenty million, Wells thought. No wonder Kowalski had been able to p J

$500,000 a man.

“Where was the money from?”

"I didn't ask. My contact was North Korean. I don't know who was be!

hind him. Perhaps the North Koreans, but I don't think so."

“Why not?”

"Too expensive for them. Anyway, what do they care about AfghaH

“The Saudis? The Iranians?”

Kowalski looked at the stun gun. “I don't know. Really.”

“You never asked? Considering the risks?”

"I'm paid not to ask. I make the arrangements and I don't ask. LikeyouM

“It was safer not to know.”

Kowalski didn't try to hide his contempt. “What have I been saying?”

“Where did the money come from?”

“Wire transfers from a Macao bank account.”

“Macao? Why there?”

“I didn't ask.”

“Which bank?”

“Banco Delta Asia.”

Wells recognized the name. The bank had gotten into trouble befool

accused of laundering dirty money for the North Korean governmefiB

“Account number.”

"I don't have it here. Come to Zurich and I'll look it up for you. I pronM

ise the same hospitality you're showing me." This time Wells didn't bother

with the stun gun but simply locked a hand around Kowalski's neck and

squeezed through the fat. To Kowalski's credit, he didn't beg, even as his J

face grew red and his arms shook against the wooden bedposts. "I tell yoH

I don't have it here," he repeated.

Wells choked him long enough to be sure he was telling the truth atiH

then let him go. Kowalski coughed—short, dry puffs.

“Where can I find your contact?”

"His name was Moon. But he won't be talking to you. He died last

nth. Nothing to do with this. He had a sideline in the heroin business.

ue ran across some very bad men."

“But you're still getting paid.”

\ “Of course.” Kowalski's face was dark pink, the color of medium-rare

steak, and his arms hung heavily from the posts, but still he sounded

confident. "Let me teu vou something. Whoever you are. Even if you're

US. government, CIA, Special Forces, whatever. You'll pay for this, what

vou've done tonight. Even if you think you're safe. I'll break the rules

for you."

More than anyone he'd ever come across, even Omar Khadri, Wells

wished he could kill this man. But he couldn't take the chance. And anyway

he didn't kill prisoners. He grabbed a roll of duct tape from his backpack

and plastered a piece over Kowalski's mouth.

Then, for no reason he could name, Wells began wrapping the silver

tape around Kowalski's skull. The fat man tried to twist away, but Wells held

him steady. He draped the tape over Kowalski's eyes, over his forehead and

his cheeks, loop after loop, until the big man looked like a modern-day

mummy, Tuten-Duct, the Egyptian god of electrical tape. He made sure to

leave Kowalski's nostrils open so he wouldn't suffocate. Then Wells clapped

a hand over Kowalski's nostrils and squeezed them shut. He counted aloud

to ten, nice and slow, before letting go.

“Don't forget to breathe.” And with that, Wells ran.

IT WAS 3:29. Exley was sitting in the minivan. “Got your helmet?”

Exley grabbed her motorcycle helmet from the van and they ran for

the bike. Three minutes later, they were at the corner of Newton Lane

and Main Street, the Honda purring smoothly beneath them. A police

Car turned past, its emergency lights flashing, but no siren and not speed-

ln8- The chief had kept his word, even given Wells a couple of extra

minutes.

Route 27 was empty and quiet, and once he'd picked through the traffic

lights of the Hamptons and reached the highway, Wells wound down the

throttle of the CB1000 and watched the speedometer creep up and the

highway unspool before him. Exley wrapped her arms around him and

gripped him tight, from fear or joy or both, and he was as happy as he knewl

how to be. Everything dies, baby, that's a fact, but maybe everything that dies

someday comes back, he sang as loudly as he could, knowing that no one.

not even Exley, could hear him.

Only when he saw the red-and-blue lights of a police cruiser ahead

in the distance did he slow. An hour later, they were on the outskirts of

Queens, the traffic on the Long Island Expressway just starting to pick up

with the morning's earliest commuters. Wells pulled the Honda off the

highway and they found the Paris Hotel, not particularly clean but happy to

take cash.

ROOM 223 OF THE PARIS had a faded gray carpet and a soft moist smell.

“Nice,” Exley said. She poked at the rabbit ears atop the television. M

haven't seen these in a while."

“We'll always have Paris,” Wells said.

“We did it. Am I allowed to say it was fun, John? Because it was.”

“Sure it was.”

Exley settled onto the mattress, ignoring the spring poking at her butt.

“I can't believe we're already back in New York City.”

“Told you the moto comes in handy sometimes.”

“You have to slow down, John. Didn't you feel me hitting you?”

“Thought you wanted me to go faster.”

Exley couldn't believe they were fighting about this, after what they'd

just pulled off, but they were. "Such a child. If you're gonna get us killed*

do it for a halfway decent reason. You don't have to prove to me you have a

big dick."

“Well, that's comforting.” Wells lay next to Exley, his face almost toucbf

ing hers. The bed sank under him. "Think this is one mattress or a bunch

stitched together?"

Exley had to laugh. Wells could be impossible, and more than once lately

she'd thought that he planned to push his luck until he wound up in a

wooden box. But she couldn't pretend she didn't love him. "So what did he

say? Kowalski?"

“Not much.” Wells recounted the conversation. "But there was one thing.

He said he was getting paid out of a bank in Macao. Which doesn't really

make sense. Of course, the money could have been coming into that bank

from anywhere."

“Think he was telling the truth?”

Wells propped himself up on an elbow and stroked Exley's hair. Finally,

he nodded. "Yeah. He didn't know who I was, but he knew no matter what,

I couldn't use it in court. He wanted me out of there and he didn't know

how much I knew. Honesty was his best bet."

"He's going to come after you. Us. In a way, he was flaunting what he'd

done."

"If he's smart, he'll let it go, be happy I didn't shoot him. He can't track

us anyway. And if he does figure out it was us ..."

Exley understood. They were untouchable. Or so Wells thought.

"Why did you tape him up that way at the end, John? He was angry

already."

“Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

She waited, but Wells was silent, his breathing steady, and she knew he

wouldn't say anything more. “Roll over,” she said.

He turned his big body and Exley snuggled up and ran her hands around

him. She pushed up his shirt and touched the raised red scar high on his

back. He sighed softly, happily, and reached back for her. She closed her eyes

and kissed his back.

“So who do you think was paying for those guys?” he said.

She lifted her mouth from his skin. "Don't know. And that's real money.

A hundred and twenty million."

"But think on it. We spend a couple billion bucks a month in Afghani. I

stan. For a fraction of that, somebody's making it a lot harder for us. Not ai

bad investment."

“Syria. Libya.”

“Iran?”

“Maybe.”

Wells sat up and leaned against the bed's battered headboard. Exley I

traced her hand over his chest, the muscles solid as iron.

“You close on the mole?” he said.

"We'd be closer if I hadn't come up here. But we'll get him soon. Shubai

gave us enough. In a way it doesn't matter, though. He's already done the

damage. We don't have one Chinese agent we can trust."

“Not a good time for it either,” Wells said.

"No. Any day now, China and Iran are about to announce something

big. They aren't even denying it. There's all this trouble in Taiwan. And I

Shubai says there's a power struggle in Beijing. Says the hard-liners want to I

prove how tough they are, that we have to stand up to them, that showing I

any weakness will just make them push us harder." Exley closed her eyes I

and felt weariness overtake her.

"You think Beijing might have been supporting the Talibs through

Kowalski?"

“I wondered too when you said Macao. But why risk a war with us?”

“None of it makes sense,” Wells said. "The Chinese make this deal with

Iran. They betray the Drafter. It's like they want a fight."

"Yes and no. They're coming at us sideways. They're hoping we overreact.

"But that's not what Shubai says, right? He says they want us to back I

down so that the whole world will see how much more powerful they're I

getting."

"What would you do, John? If you were running the show? Push back J

hard on the Chinese or let things simmer?"

He considered. "I don't know. We can't let them push us around, and it I

sounds like this guy Shubai knows what he's talking about. But there si

something we can't see. Hate to go to war by accident."

Wells didn't bother to ask what she thought. Without another word, he

rolled onto her, his size surprising her, as it always did. He enveloped her,

[lis mouth on hers, wet open-mouthed kisses. He never asked permission,

she thought. He never needed to. His big hands gripped her waist, then one

was unbuttoning her jeans, the other pulling them off her hips. And as

quickly as that, she forgot she was tired.

LARRY YOUNG, THE WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY, felt the buzz in the press-1

room as he strode to the podium. These afternoon briefings were usually

inside baseball, watched by a few thousand political junkies. Not today.

Today Young would be live from Los Angeles to Boston, Tokyo to Moscow.

The Chinese and the Iranians had certainly gotten the world's attention

that morning.

Young waited for the cameras to stop clicking before he read the state-

ment, approved forty-five minutes before by the president himself.

"The United States denounces the action by the People's Republic of

China in the strongest possible terms. If China wants the world's respect, it

should condemn Iran's nuclear program, not support it. Most important

China must understand that the United States will hold it accountable il

Iran deploys a nuclear weapon."

The statement was short and to the point, as Young had recommended.

“That's all. I'm sure you have questions.” A dozen hands went up. "Jackson?

My hometown favorite."

Jackson Smith, from The Washington Post, stood. "Any sanctions

planned against China? A trade embargo? Will we be recalling our ambas-

sador?"

An easy one, Young thought. Smith was smart but predictable. "That's

three questions, but they all have the same answer. At this time, we're

reviewing our options, both economic and diplomatic."

“But nothing planned at this time?”

“We're not going to be hasty, Jackson. Next.” He pointed to Lia Michaels,

from NBC. They'd had a brief fling a few years back, when he was a

congressional aide and she was at CNN. They were both married now and

never mentioned their history, but he always made sure to call on her and

she always smiled at him when he did.

"The Pentagon has announced that the United States is deploying three

aircraft carriers to the South China Sea. Why? Do we plan any military

action?"

Young took a moment to get the answer exactly right. He'd worked this

phrasing out with the president's chief of staff and he didn't want to miss a

word. "The announcement today is only the most recent in a series of

provocative actions by the People's Republic. China must be aware that its

actions have consequences. Next?"

But Lia wasn't finished yet. "You said the United States will hold China

accountable if Iran uses a nuclear weapon. Does that threat include a nu-

clear strike against China?"

“It's not a threat. And we never discuss military contingencies. Next?”

Anne Ryuchi, the new CNN correspondent, caught his eye. "There have

been rumors about this agreement for a couple of weeks. Did you try to

warn China off?"

"We did attempt to express our concerns. Obviously the Chinese weren't

interested in hearing them. Next."

Dan Spiegel, from The New York Times, practically jumped out of his

seat. Young didn't much like him. A typical Times reporter, smart but not as

Sfnart as he thought. “Mr. Spiegel.”

"You mentioned a series of provocative actions. Does the United Stated

have a theory as to why China is being so aggressive?"

“You'd better ask them.” Young enjoyed snapping Spiegel off.

"To follow up. Aside from their deal with Iran, what other actions have

the Chinese taken that the United States classifies as provocative?"

"Their recent missile tests, and their saber-rattling toward Taiwan

Taiwan is a democracy and an ally of the United States."

"But didn't the Taiwanese start this controversy with their discussion of

a possible independence vote?"

Spiegel loved to hear his own voice. Like so many reporters, he believed

mistakenly that he was as important as the people he wrote about.

"The people of Taiwan must be allowed to express their opinions without

fear of Chinese reprisal," Young said. Time to give them something new to

chew on. "Also, while I can't provide specifics, we have learned that the

Chinese government has damaged a classified program critical to the

national security of the United States."

“Can you tell us more?”

“Unfortunately not.”

THE CONFERENCE WENT ON forty-five minutes more, until almost 3:00 p.m.

Eastern. In Beijing, twelve hours ahead, Li Ping watched in his office, sip-

ping tea as a colonel on his staff translated. Cao Se watched alongside him, j

filling a pad with notes. When the conference ended, Li flicked off the tele- j

vision and dismissed the colonel.

“What did you think?”

Cao flipped through his pad. “They're very angry, General.”

Li wasn't disturbed. “Furious words, but no action. As I expected.”

Cao clasped his hands together. He seemed uncomfortable, Li thought.

“I respect you greatly, Li. You're a great leader.”

Li found himself unexpectedly irritated. He was used to having junior

officers suck up this way, but he expected more from Cao.

“General,” Li said, emphasizing the word, reminding Cao of his senior-

ity, “don't waste your breath flattering me. It's very late. Now go on.”

“Sir—” Cao stopped, twisted his hands. "Fate is a strange beast. Even the

most perfect plan can fail."

Now Li understood. Cao feared the United States. "The Americans won't

jjght us, Cao." Li had studied the flash points of the Cold War—the Cuban

Missile Crisis, the Berlin Blockade, the Soviet destruction of KAL 007, a

Korean passenger jet that strayed over Russian territory in 1983. Each time,

after threats of war, the two sides found a way to defuse the crisis. Nuclear-

armed powers didn't fight each other. China and the United States would

find a way out too—but only after Li had taken power.

“But what if the Americans miscalculate?”

“There's no reason to worry. We control the situation.” Even Cao didn't

know all the levers Li had at his disposal. He hadn't only negotiated the

agreement with Iran and given up the Drafter. He was behind the indepen-

dence crisis in Taiwan as well.

Over the years, the People's Liberation Army had built a huge network

of agents in Taiwan, including one of its most senior politicians, Her-

bert Sen. Now, on Li's orders, Sen had called for the island to declare its

independence from China. In doing so, Sen had put the United States

in a miserable position. Since 1949, when the Nationalists fled Mainland

China and established their new headquarters on Taiwan, the People's Re-

public had viewed Taiwan as a renegade province. In fact, the island was

effectively independent from China, with its own government, currency,

and military. America helped guarantee that security. In turn, Taiwan wasn't

supposed to rattle China's cage by officially declaring its independence.

A Taiwanese move to break that bargain would give China an excuse to

invade—and leave the United States with two bad options. Let China attack

Taiwan, its democratic ally, or go to war over a crisis that the Taiwanese

themselves had started.

Of course, Li didn't want to invade Taiwan. An attack would be worse

than messy, even if the United States didn't get involved. Taiwan was

extremely well defended. But Li knew better than anyone else that the in.

dependence movement wouldn't get far. Soon enough—on his orders-^.

Herbert Sen would have a change of heart. In the meantime, Sen's demand

had increased the pressure on the Americans.

"Think of it this way, Cao. We've created a storm the Americans didn't

expect. Now they'll try to frighten us. They'll bring up their navy. They'll

reach too far. Then all of China will unite against them"—behind me, Li

thought—"and they'll see they have no choice but to ask for peace. When

they do, we'll give them what they want. The skies will clear. And America

will have a new respect for China."

"And with your new power, you'll make sure that the peasants are

treated fairly."

"No more riots like the one in Guangzhou. No more stealing at the top

of the Party. A new China, where everyone shares in the blessings of the

economy. The people have waited too long for honest rulers."

Li had never before spoken his plan aloud, not even when he was alone.

His heart quickened. In a few weeks, the world would see him as he was,

Mao's rightful heir.

“The people will thank us, Cao,” he said. “I'm certain of it.”

THE MEETING OF THE STANDING COMMITTEE began precisely at 2:00 p.m. th«

next afternoon. The foreign minister discussed the world's reaction to the

deal with Iran. Aside from the United States, most countries had hardly

blinked. Some had even quietly told Beijing that they supported the Chinese

and Iranian efforts to counter American power.

Then Li reviewed America's military maneuvers. As it had promised, the

United States was moving three carrier battle groups toward the Chinese

coast—a formidable fleet, with hundreds of jets and several dozen ships. In

response, China had moved forward its newest submarines and had in*]

creased fighter patrols. Already the Chinese pilots were reporting increased

contacts with American and Taiwanese jets.

“Our pilots are aware of the delicacy of the situation,” Li said. "We don't

expect any offensive contact, but if the Americans attack we'll respond,

poes anyone have questions?"

For a moment, the room was silent. Then Zhang spoke. "Defense Min-

ister, the American reaction to our announcement concerns me. Didn't you

promise that the United States wouldn't act against us?"

“So far they've done nothing but talk,” Li said, as he had that morning

to Cao.

"But what if that changes? The Americans have discovered that we

betrayed them to North Korea. They said so at their meeting with the re-

porters." Zhang was almost shouting across the table at Li, a bit of theater to

show his anger. "You told us they wouldn't find out about that. Obviously

they have, thanks to that traitor Wen Shubai. One of your men, Minister Li."

In turn, Li spoke quietly, without raising his voice. Let Zhang yell, he

thought.

"Minister Zhang, I fear you're correct. I curse Wen. He's a treacherous

snake. But the Americans can't prove anything. Anyway, they aren't chil-

dren. They know we've used North Korea against them for many years.

They won't go to war over this."

"Not this alone, but in combination with what we've announced with

Iran—"

Li turned to Xu, the committee's nominal leader, subtly cutting Zhang

out of the discussion. “General Secretary, what do you think?”

Li knew that in asking Xu, he was taking a chance. Xu might cut him

down, say that he too was worried by the American response. But Xu had

smiled and nodded throughout his presentation. Li thought the old man

wanted a little excitement. And maybe Xu was tired of having Zhang order

him around.

Now Xu nodded. "I think ... Comrade Li is correct. So far the American

hegemonists have done nothing but talk. And I think it's time we taught the

Americans a lesson. It's no longer up to them to control who has the special

Weapons."

“Are you certain, General Secretary?” Zhang said. "At our breakfast this

morning, you expressed concerns about whether a fight with the Ameri-

cans might hurt our economy."

Zhang had just blundered, Li thought. Like all old lions, Xu hated to be

embarrassed publicly. Sure enough, Xu swiped Zhang down.

"I've expressed my opinion. Comrade Li has done a fine job. And trade

isn't the only measure of national pride, Comrade Zhang."

“Thank you, General Secretary,” Li said. "Now, there's something else.

Besides help with the special weapons, the Iranians have asked us to provide

delivery systems."

“Missiles? No.” Zhang sat up in his chair. "This is madness. We have too

many problems at home to invite more anger from America. Our economy

is too uncertain."

“How strange, Minister Zhang,” Li said. "All these months you've told us

our economy is a glorious and strong wall. Did the wall fall down while

none of us were looking?"

“Of course not. But—” Zhang stopped, trying to figure out how to

explain the contradiction in a way that wouldn't sound foolish.

"We don't have to do anything. It's enough that the Americans know

that we're considering the request, that they haven't frightened us."

Xu stepped in. "Minister Li, please continue your discussions with the

Iranians. Let's make sure the American hegemonists know that their ships

won't stop us from acting in the interest of the Chinese people."

“Thank you, General Secretary.” Li smiled. Across the table, Zhang's

black eyes flashed with anger, and something else. He knew he was losing

control, Li thought. Of course, desperation could make Zhang more

dangerous. But it might also lead him to make mistakes, like his effort to

browbeat Xu. Either way, the fear in Zhang's eyes told Li that he was on the

verge of success.

THE MOLE SET HIS ALARM FOR 5:15, wanting to be sure he'd make his meeting

with George in plenty of time. But when he opened his eyes in the black-

ness, Janice snoring lightly beside him, the radio's display told him it was

3:47 a.m. Insomnia had its advantages. Tonight he'd woken like a spring

uncoiling, immediately clearheaded, though he'd been asleep three hours

at most.

He ran his hand down Janice's back, resting his fingers on her soft, fleshy

ass. She turned sideways, shifted one leg forward and the other back, an un-

conscious invitation. Before he could wake her, he pulled his hand away. His

marital duties would have to wait. She grumbled softly but didn't wake.

In the basement he collected his Smith & Wesson, slipping the revolver

into a little shoulder holster. Fortunately the morning was cool, so he could

Wear a windbreaker without attracting attention. He'd never fully trusted

the Chinese, and part of him worried that they would shuck him now that

the heat was on.

He shaved in the basement bathroom, nicking himself under his chin.

The cut didn't hurt, but blood covered his neck, matching his bloodshot

eyes. He dabbed at the cut with toilet paper until finally the blood stoppe(j

flowing. Then he lifted the bathroom mirror off the wall and spun the dials

on the black safe behind it until the heavy steel door clicked open.

For the last couple of weeks, he'd pulled cash out of his bank accounts

$2,000 or so a day. Now he had $45,000 in the safe, neatly organized into

blocks of hundreds and twenties, along with two Rolex watches and loose

diamonds in a little Tupperware box. He rifted through the cash, then

stacked it in two plastic Priority Mail envelopes.

In another envelope were two passports, one American, one Canadian

both very good quality. He'd picked them up in Panama a couple of years

ago. Ten thousand dollars went a long way down there. Now he flipped

through them carefully, checking the laminated photographs, examining the

tiny hexagonal holographs on the American passport. For the Canadian,

he'd dyed his hair black and worn glasses. The dye and glasses were in the

safe too.

Real as they looked, the passports wouldn't get him into the United

States, not anymore, not with the new scanners that the Department of

Homeland Security was using. But they'd be good enough to get him out,

to Mexico or Jamaica or some other third-world hothouse with soft borders

and no visa rules. And getting out was what counted. If he left, he wouldn't

be back anytime soon.

THE MOON WAS STILL GLOWING in the sky when the mole reached Wakefield

Park. As far as he could tell, he was the only creature moving. Even the deer

and the raccoons were asleep. It was 4:45 a.m. The sun wouldn't rise fori

another hour. Under his windbreaker, his .357 itched in its holster and he

had a mad urge to pop off a couple of rounds in the dark.

He sat on a stump by the granite outcropping where he would meet

George. Then he reconsidered and walked up the hill behind the rock to a

stand of beech trees. He pushed between the trees and settled himself be-

hind a low hummock of dirt. From here he could glimpse the outcropping

without being seen by anyone below. If everything looked fine when George

showed up, he would brush himself off, stroll down the hill, and say hi. If

n0t... well, they'd have to find him.

As he waited, his consciousness drifted. Suddenly he was in the

Washington Hilton with Evie, the stripper. She smirked at him as she

propped herself upside down against the hotel room's door, naked, spreading

her legs-

He bit his lip to stay awake. 5:25. Dammit. He'd been snoozing for half

an hour. Ironic that after these months of insomnia he was overwhelmingly

tired, just when he most needed to be awake. He heard birds waking, the

first faint chirps of the morning.

Then something else. Footsteps moving north from the park's main

entrance. He waited. The footsteps crackled closer. Then he spotted the

men. Two, both Chinese. He'd never seen either one. The first was small,

wearing binoculars around his neck, like some kind of birdwatcher. The

second man was tall and thick, a bodyguard type, wearing a sweatshirt and

jeans. The mole was suddenly conscious of his pulse thumping through his

head, whoosh-whoosh, whoosh-whoosh. Who were these men? Where was

George?

The men reached the big granite outcropping. The first man raised

his hands to his eyes—the park was still too dark for the binoculars to be

useful—and slowly scanned the hill where the mole was hidden. He seemed

to be talking to the other man, though from this distance the mole couldn't

make out what he was saying. Then he pointed up the hill.

Step by step, the big Chinese closed in on the beech stand where the

mole was hiding. The mole wished he could burrow into the dirt. Then the

big man turned right, cutting over the hill, disappearing. The mole waited

to be sure he was gone, then reached across his body to draw his S&W out

of his shoulder holster. With the gun free, he lay down again and waited.

The man below leaned against a rock, pulled a pack of cigarettes from

"is breast pocket, and lit one up. He smoked quietly, the tip of his cigarette

glowing in the darkness. When he was done, he stubbed the cigarette onto

the sole of his shoe and dropped the burned-out butt back into the pack he

carried. Trying not to leave evidence of his presence, the mole thought.

The minutes ticked by. As 6:00 a.m. approached, the man stood up

“Mr. T?” he said. He whistled into the darkness. “Mr. T?”

From his spot in the trees, the mole wondered if the Chinese planned to |

shoot him this morning. They had to know that if they killed him theyl

would never be able to recruit anyone else. The CIA would broadcast th J

story to the world, so that any potential agent would know how the Chines«B

treated their spies. But then where was George this morning? And why!

bring two men? Nothing made sense.

At 6:10, the temperature was rising, the black sky turning blue. The mole I

covered the S&W with his hand so its metal glint wouldn't give him away.l

In a few minutes more the sun would be fully up, exposing his position. Still

he waited. At this point he had no choice. Under his windbreaker, sweatB

pricked down his back.

Crunch-crunch-crunch. The mole held his head steady but twisted his 1

eyes right. The big Chink was coming back over the hill, looking towar^B

the beeches where the mole lay. The mole's fingers tightened around his I

gun. Then the man's narrow eyes slid past and he walked down the hill. I

When he reached the granite outcropping, he said something the mole I

couldn't hear. The little guy shook his head. He tapped out two cigarettdH

The men stood there silently until they were finished smoking. Then the I

little guy tapped his watch and they walked back to the main entrance. Thel

mole waited ten minutes more, tucked his S&W away, and headed homeoM

shaky legs.

THREE HOURS LATER HE SAT in his Acura in the parking lot of a 7-Eleve

fumbling with the clamshell packaging that surrounded a disposable

phone he'd bought at a Radio Shack. The thick plastic cut his fingers, and i

his frustration grew he felt like throwing the phone into the traffic. Fina

he managed to rip the phone from its packaging. He breathed deep, tried I

relax, powered up the phone, and punched in a 718 number, to be us

only in absolute emergencies. He let the phone ring three times and hi

up. He stared at his watch, allowing three minutes to pass, then repeate

the drill. Three minutes later, he called for a third time. This time the phone

was answered on the first ring.

“Washington Zoo. George here.”

“Do you still have the giant pandas?” An idiotic but necessary code.

Pause. “Has something happened? Where were you today?”

“Where were you? Who were those guys?”

“It was for security. They would have brought you to me.” Pause. "Since

what happened in England, we are concerned."

“You're concerned? Worst case, they give you a one-way ticket home.”

“It isn't smart to talk anymore on this phone.”

“Okay. Let's meet in person. Somewhere nice and public, George.”

“Public?”

“Like Union Station. I'll figure it out, let you know.”

“Please don't panic. We've worked together a long time. I'm your partner.”

“Then you should have come this morning.” Click.

TWIN FLOWER BEDS LINED the driveway, an explosion of roses, daffodils,

and tulips in red and yellow. The house itself was brick, big but non-

descript. A two-car garage and white painted shutters. Exley walked up the

driveway without much hope. It was the last of the five on her original list.

Of the others she'd visited, one had been empty when she arrived, which

proved only that both parents worked. The other three had been typical

suburban homes, with typical suburban moms. Exley worried that she was

wasting her time. What had she expected to find? A Post-it on the refrigera-

tor that said, “Meeting w/ Chinese handler Tuesday night—don't be late!”

On the other hand, Tyson's team hadn't nailed anything down either. Even

with only a few suspects to check, this kind of work was seriously time-

intensive.

This place looked like another bust. The driveway was empty and the cur-

tains shut. Exley mounted the front steps, and to her surprise heard a soap

°Pera blaring from a television inside. A dog barked madly as Exley pushed

fre bell. She'd heard a couch creak as she rang. Then nothing. Whoever it

was seemed to be hoping she'd go away. She rang again, feeling vaguely nauJ

seated and headachy. Too much coffee and too little sleep.

“Coming,” a woman said irritably. Janice Robinson, wife of Keith

according to the agency's dossier. Janice pulled open the door and peered'

heavy-lidded into the afternoon Virginia sun. The house behind her was

dark, though a television flickered in a room off the front hall. A fat golden

retriever poked its snout at the door, barking angrily while wagging its tail

to prove it wasn't serious.

“Can I help you?” Janice said, in a solid southern drawl. She wore a faded

red T-shirt with “Roll Tide” printed in white across the chest. Her face was:

pretty but chubby, her hair a dirty-blond mess, her eyeliner thick and

sloppy. The scent of white wine radiated off her, decaying and sweet as a

bouquet of week-old flowers.

"I'm looking at that ranch on the corner and I was hoping you maybe

could tell me about the neighborhood,“ Exley said. ”My husband and I have

an apartment in the District, but we're looking to move. My name's Joanne,

by the way."

Confusion flicked across Janice's face, as if Exley had tried to explain the

theory of relativity and not her house-buying plans. "You want to hear

about the neighborhood?"

“Nobody knows it like the neighbors, right?” Exley smiled.

“Hard to argue with that,” Janice said. Exley couldn't tell if she was being

sarcastic. Maybe she wasn't as ditzy as she seemed. "I have to take my carl

into the shop, but I guess I can spare a minute." Janice opened the door and

waved Exley inside.

“Do you do those?” Exley indicated the flower bed. "They're so beautiful.

“My babies.” She patted the retriever's head. "Lenny tries to eat them,

but I don't let him. My name's Janice. Come in."

Janice led Exley through the dark house to the kitchen, where more

flowers awaited, fresh-cut this time. A ceiling fan mopped the air. Exley

couldn't remember the last time she'd been in a room so stifling. Probably

twenty years ago, some airless fraternity basement in college, getting drunk

and looking for what she thought was a good time.

“I don't like air-conditioning,” Janice said. “It breeds colds.” Lenny plopped

down heavily, his tongue flopping out. Even with the flowers and dog, the

bouse seemed sterile to Exley. The darkness. The television blaring. The bottles

lined up by the sink. If this were a movie, a serial killer would be hiding in the

basement. Or Janice would have her grandmother chained to a bed upstairs.

“Would you like a glass of water? You seem peaked.”

“That'd be great,” Exley said.

“Maybe some wine. I find a glass in the afternoon keeps away the colds.”

“Just water, thanks.” Exley worried she seemed snappish. "I'd love a

drink, but I have to get back to the office."

“Of course.” Janice poured a glass of water from a pitcher in the refrig-

erator and set it on the table. Exley had a brief paranoid fantasy that the

water was laced with something. She'd take a sip. The world would go black.

When she came to, she'd be locked in the basement next to a fat guy in a

leather mask. No. That was Pulp Fiction. She ought to stop this nonsense.

She, not Janice, was the one in here under false pretenses. She did feel light-

headed, though. She dabbed a few drops of water on her face. Janice sipped

from her wine.

“Your place is nice,” Exley said.

“So you wanted to hear about the neighborhood? It's all right, I guess.”

“Have you lived here awhile?”

Janice paused. “Seven years or so, I guess. We're thinking about moving.”

“Oh.”

"But it's nothing to do with the neighbors. My husband might be getting

moved overseas. It's something we've wanted to do for a while."

Keith Robinson was in line for an overseas assignment? Exley hadn't

seen that possibility in his file. But then, he wouldn't be the first man to fib

to his wife about his job prospects.

“Seems like a real nice place, though.”

“The neighbors are friendly enough. We kind of keep to ourselves.” She

indicated a flyer stuck to the refrigerator. "There's a block barbecue next

Week."

“How about the schools? We've got two little ones.”

Janice flinched and Exley saw that she'd touched the source of the strange

melancholy in the house.

“Can't help you there. We don't have kids.”

“Oh.” Exley never knew how to respond when a woman said she was

childless, especially in the tone that Janice had used, equal parts anger and

disbelief. “Sorry?” “There's always adoption?” “They're overrated?” Every

answer sounded patronizing and futile. “My mistake,” she finally said.

Janice ostentatiously looked at her watch. "Sorry to rush you, but I have

to get to the dealership. I'm probably not the right person to talk to anyway.

What with having no kids." She pulled back her lips in an ugly smile, like a

viper about to unleash a mouthful of venom.

“No problem. Thanks for your time.” Exley sipped her water and stood

“By the way, what did you say you did, Jill?”

"Joanne. I'm a consultant. Market research. Guess that's why I'm always

trying to find out about neighborhoods and stuff."

“Do you have a card?”

“Sure.” Exley poked into her purse for a card as Janice finished off

her wine.

“Never understood what you consultants do anyway.” Janice looked at

Exley's card fishily.

Exley hadn't felt so disliked in a long time. "Thanks for all your

help, Mrs.—"

“Robinson.”

“Robinson. I'm embarrassed to ask, but can I use your toilet?” Exley was

hoping for an excuse to get a quick look around the first floor.

“Right through the living room. I'll show you.”

The bathroom and the living room were unexceptional, though both

hinted at hidden wealth—an expensive Persian rug in the living room and

fancy granite fixtures in the bath. In five minutes, Exley was back in hef

car. Maybe Keith Robinson wasn't the mole, but he was something, Exteyj

thought, as she put the Caravan in gear and drove off, mopping sweat from

her forehead. His house stank of secrets.

EXLEY WENT BACK TO THE OFFICE in Tysons Corner and spent the rest of the

afternoon poring over Robinson's work history. She already knew that his

biographical details fit what Wen Shubai had given them. She was looking

for smaller, subtler signs. Sure enough, she found one. Beginning eight years

earlier—the time when the mole had approached the Chinese, according

to Wen—Robinson's performance evaluations had steadily improved. After

being lazy and unmotivated for years, he'd shown new interest in his work,

his bosses said. As a result, he'd wound up with new responsibilities—and

new access to information.

When she was sure she'd seen every scrap of information they had on

Robinson, she poked her head into Shafer's office. He'd spent the last sev-

eral days casting a wide net, asking vague questions about possible suspects

to officers in and around the East Asia Division. Exley thought he was being

too cautious. Legwork wasn't his strong suit; he was much better thinking

through threads that other people had gathered. All his jujitsu wasted time,

and time was suddenly in short supply.

Since Shubai's defection five days earlier, Langley's top two agents in the

People's Republic had gone dark. One spy, the logistics chief at the giant

naval base at Lushun, had simply disappeared. He'd requested an urgent

meeting with his case officer, then hadn't shown up. Now his cell phone was

turned off and his e-mail shut down.

The other agent, a deputy mayor in Beijing, was the highest-ranking

political source the agency had inside Zhongnanhai. At least he had been

until Tuesday, when he'd been arrested on what China's official news agency

referred to as “corruption charges.”

Of course, the arrest and disappearance might have been coincidences.

But no one at Langley believed that. The odds were higher that Osama

bin Laden would quit al Qaeda to become a pro surfer. Chinese counterin-

telligence officers had surely tracked both men for years, allowing them to

remain free to provide false information to the CIA. Effectively, the men

had been tripled up—used by China against the United States, even as the

United States believed that it had doubled them back against China.

But Wen's defection had ended that game, and so the spymasters in

Beijing had arrested the men. And now the United States was flying blind at

the worst possible time. Did the PRC want open war with Taiwan and

the United States, or was it bluffing? Was its leadership unified, or was its

belligerence the product of an invisible power struggle inside Zhongnan-

hai? The president, the Pentagon, and the National Security Council were

desperate for answers. Too bad the CIA had none to give.

“I think I have something.” She recounted her meeting with Janice

Robinson, as well as Keith Robinson's strange personnel evaluations. When

she was done, Shafer looked down at his notes.

“She didn't specifically mention children, then?”

“I'm telling you the whole house was off.”

"Jennifer. I don't doubt it. I'm only trying to figure out where to go next.

Remember, Robinson's only on the list because he failed a poly. He doesn't

meet Shubai's criteria for a personal problem. He hasn't had a heart attack,

gotten divorced, sued, anything like that—"

And then Exley knew. "We should have figured it from the beginning,

Ellis. What's the worst personal crisis you can have? Not getting sick, not an

accident—"

“You think he lost a kid.”

Exley nodded.

“Well, that we can find out. If you're right, it'll be time to tell Tyson.”

THE MOLE WAS SURPRISED by the silence that greeted him when he opened

his front door. Janice always left the downstairs television on while she

made dinner. And where was Lenny? “Janice? Jan?”

No answer. Then he heard her in the kitchen, crying softly.

She sat at the kitchen table, fat tears rolling down her cheeks. Lenny lay

at her feet, looking up hopelessly. An empty pan sat on the stove. A shrink-

wrapped plastic tray of chicken breasts sat unopened in the sink, alongside

uncut tomatoes and peppers.

Janice looked up as he walked into the dark room. For a moment she

didn't seem to know who he was. Then she covered her face in her hands

and offered a high-pitched moan, Ooooooooooooo, a soft dirge that sounded

like a distant tornado. He went to her and rubbed her neck. More than

anything, he wanted the moan to stop.

“I'm a failure, Eddie.” The words emerged in a damp, stuttery blubber.

“Such a failure.”

The mole—Keith Edward Robinson, known as Eddie only to his wife—

pulled up a chair. “Sweetie. Did something happen?”

"This woman, she and her husband are looking at the Healy place, on

the corner, and she asked me about the neighborhood and the schools and

I just, I just snapped—"

The cabinet where the mole kept his whiskey was within arm's reach. He

grabbed a bottle of Dewar's and took a long slug, not bothering with a

glass.

“Woman? What woman?”

"She came by the house. She wanted to know about the schools, Eddie.

Look at us. What's happened to us?"

The mole put the bottle on the table. No more whiskey. He needed to

think clearly now, and quickly. The strange part was that he really did want

to comfort Janice. But first he had to figure how close they were. "This

woman, honey, who did she say she was?"

Janice lowered her hands. She seemed perplexed at the turn the conver-

sation had taken. “Said her name was Joanne.” She pulled a crumpled

business card out of a dish on the table and handed it to him. "Said she was

a consultant."

The mole examined it as though it were a tarot card holding the secret to

his future. Which in a way it was. Ender Consulting, a Professional Corpora-

tion. Joanne Ender, MBA. Beneath the name a phone number and an e-mail

address. The mole wanted to call, but whether or not Ender Consulting was

real, the number would go to a professional-sounding voicemail. And if it wg.

a trap, they'd have a pen register on the line and they'd know he called. pfe

tucked the card into his shirt pocket. He'd check later. "Did she ask anything

about me, Jan?"

“What? No.”

“Please. I know it seems like a strange question, but think on it.”

Janice twisted her hands. "I told you we didn't talk long. She mentioned

her kids and I started to get upset, so I made her go."

“Did she look around the house? The basement?”

“Of course not. Why?”

“Did you ask the Healys about her? If she actually went to their house?”

"She was just some lady asking about the neighborhood. What are you

so worried about? Is she your girlfriend?"

“What are you talking about?”

“I'm not stupid, Eddie. Don't make things worse than they already are.”

“Sweetie. I promise I'm not having an affair with this woman.”

“Swear.”

“I swear on Mark's grave.” He'd never said anything like that before.

“Do you love me?”

“Do I love you? What kind of question is that? Yes. Of course I do.” The

mole surprised himself with the words. But as he said them, he knew they

were true. For too long he'd forgotten that Janice was a real person. "Do you

love me?"

As an answer, she put her arms around him and sobbed into his shoulder.

“Can we just start again, Eddie? Can't we?”

Strange to hear the question asked so baldly, the mole thought. Like they

could dunk themselves in a river and wash away not just their sins but their

whole messy lives. Stranger still that the answer was yes. He had the means

and the motive to leave all this behind. Because maybe he was panicking,

but he didn't think so.

The polygraph. Wen's defection. George not showing up this morn-

ing. Now this woman visiting. Too many coincidences too soon. Nothing

definitive, but if he waited for definitive he'd wind up in a cell or a

w0oden box. Both Ames and Hanssen had known the walls were closing in.

fney just hadn't had the guts to run. Now they were spending their lives in

prison.

“Jan. What if I said yes? What if we could start again?”

“I think I'd like that.”

“We'd have to change our names. Leave the country.” He couldn't believe

what he was saying.

She didn't freak out. She giggled.

“I'm not kidding. We'd have to do it now.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Do you want a new life or not?” Sailing around the Caribbean, fishing,

hanging out. Maybe buying a cabin somewhere, trying again to have a baby.

It would be a long shot, but what wasn't?

“Yes, but—” She stopped, stood up, looked around the kitchen. "Could

we take Lenny? And where would you work? Your job is so important."

The mole's visions of beachfront paradise faded. This wouldn't work, he

saw. When she said start over, she meant that they should take a vacation,

be sweeter to each other. The things normal people meant. Not dropping

everything and moving to Indonesia. Anyway, he didn't have a fake pass-

port for her, or any way to get one. And what would she think when she saw

his face on TV? The FBI has named Keith Edward Robinson, a veteran CIA

employee, as a person of interest in an ongoing espionage investigation... .

Keith Robinson, who disappeared two weeks ago, is suspected of the greatest

intelligence breach in more than twenty years... . Authorities now say they

believe fugitives Keith and Janice Robinson have fled the country....

“Got that right, sweetie.” He made himself laugh. "And we can't leave

Lenny. Guess we'll make do here."

That night he lay beside her, listening to the suburban night, sprinklers

rattling on and off to keep the lawns green. He was afraid, he couldn't pretend

"e wasn't, but excited too. His last night in this bed, this house, this life. He

suPposed he'd known all along that the path he'd taken would end this way.

He'd had sex that night with Janice, not once but twice, the first time in

years. Ironic. But not surprising. Part of her knew he wasn't joking about

leaving. Part of her wouldn't be surprised when she woke up and found

him gone.

He rolled out of bed, quietly, sure not to wake her. He padded out of the

bedroom, down the stairs, into the basement. And there he unlocked his

safe and filled a canvas bag with everything he needed.

, EAST CHINA SEA, NEAR SHANGHAI

EVERY DAY HENRY WILLIAMS THANKED GOD he'd been given the chance to com-

mand the USS Decatur. He knew it sounded like a cliche, but it was true.

Nothing was better than controlling a five-hundred-foot-long destroyer

armed with enough cruise missiles to level a city, or steaming into Bangkok

or Sydney beside a carrier loaded with F-18s. The oceans were the world's

last frontier, and the United States Navy ruled them, full stop.

Plus Williams found life aboard the Decatur satisfying in a way he would

never have imagined growing up as a landlubber in Dallas. He didn't come

from a Navy family. He'd chosen Annapolis mainly because the academy's

basketball coach had offered him the chance to start his freshman year. But

after twenty-two years in the service, Henry Williams had fallen in love with

the ocean—or more precisely, with the ships that plied its waves.

The sea was unpredictable, but the Decatur's rhythm was steady as a

heartbeat. Its floors were scrubbed each day. Its bells chimed every half-

hour. In the wardroom, the tablecloths were spotless, the silverware pol-

•shed. Williams could no longer accept the chaos of real life, life on land. So

"is wife, Esther, had told him three years ago, when she filed for divorce.

She still loved him, but she no longer understood him, she said. WilliarnJ

didn't try to change her mind. In his heart he knew she was right.

Within the Decatur, Williams's word was law. He could call a general-

quarters drill at noon or midnight. Demand that the laundry room M

scrubbed until it shined—then scrubbed again for good measure. The 330

sailors and officers aboard the Decatur obeyed his orders without question

Nowhere in the world was the chain of command followed more closely

than aboard ship.

And that discipline was vitally important now, with the Decatur in

hostile waters, at the forward edge of the Ronald Reagan carrier strike group]

almost in sight of the Chinese coast. Even the dimmest of the Decatur's

crew knew that the United States was close to war with China. The tension1

aboard the ship was palpable from the engine room to the bridge, an<§

nowhere more than among the sonar operators, who had the job of listen-

ing to the ship's SQR-19 towed array. The biggest threat to the Decatur came

from the Chinese submarines that lurked in the shallow waters off the

coast.

Now Williams sat in his stateroom, poring over the classified report that

contained the Navy's new estimate of the capabilities of China's subs. Thej

Chinese had made progress, but their fish still couldn't hope to compete

with the Navy's nuclear attack subs, it seemed.

A knock on his cabin door interrupted him. “Yes?”

“Captain. Lieutenant Frederick requests permission to enter.”

“Come in, Lieutenant.”

Frederick stepped in and saluted Williams crisply. "I'm sorry to bother

you, sir. It's about the reporter."

“What's she gotten into now?”

As a rule, the Navy was the most publicity-friendly of the services. With

the War on Terror having become the focus of U.S. foreign policy, the admi-

rals in the Pentagon felt constant pressure to demonstrate the Navy's rele-

vance—and protect its $150 billion annual budget. After all, al Qaeda didn<

exactly present a major naval threat. The clash with China had given the sen

vice its chance for a close-up, and the Navy didn't intend to miss the oppor-

tunity. Reporters and camera crews were thick as roaches aboard the Reagan,

the Abraham Lincoln, and the John C. Stennis, the giant nuclear-powered flat-

tops steaming toward the China coast. The Decatur had a reporter of its own,

Jackie Wheeler. With her long dark hair and deep brown eyes, Wheeler could

have been a TV babe, though she actually worked for the Los Angeles Times.

Williams generally disdained the media, but he didn't mind Wheeler.

Pretty women were good for the crew's morale, and the Decatur was con-

trolled too rigorously for her to get into much trouble. And Williams knew

that being chosen to host a reporter from a national paper was something

of an honor. He also knew that he hadn't been picked to host Wheeler solely

because of the Decatur's spotless record. He was one of only a handful of

black captains in the service. But he didn't mind being trotted out this way.

Like his commanders, Henry Williams knew the value of good press.

“She's been asking again about the CIC.” The Combat Information

Center was the windowless room deep in the Decatur's hull that functioned

as the destroyer's brain. "Says she can't write a proper profile without

spending a few hours inside."

Williams sighed. He'd already given Wheeler a tour of the CIC a few

days before, and he didn't want her in there with the Decatur on combat

footing. But he supposed he'd have to compromise to get the glowing pro-

file he wanted.

“Okay, Lieutenant. Tell her to come over here at 2100.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Dismissed.”

AN HOUR LATER, a knock roused him. “Captain?”

2058. Wheeler had learned something about naval etiquette during her

week on board. “Ms. Wheeler? Come in.”

She stepped in tentatively. Until now Williams had been polite to

wheeler, but nothing more. He'd been busy. He'd also figured that keeping

her at a distance, then slowly opening up, would make for the best profile

Up close she was younger than he had expected, barely thirty. Prettier too

“Sit.” He indicated the couch. “So you want another look at the CIC.”

“I won't describe anything classified, Captain. I know the rules.”

“You bored with this skimmer?”

She laughed nervously. “Skimmer?”

“Some of us oldsters use that term to refer to any boat that floats.”

“Don't they all float?”

“Not the submarines.”

“Oh, right.” She smiled, and Williams wished for a half-second that he

were twenty years younger and meeting her in a bar instead of this cabin, j

“Be honest. Wish you were over on the Reagan with the flyboys?”

“No, the crew's treating me great.”

"Not the question I asked, but okay. Has Lieutenant Frederick told you

about the man the Decatur is named for?" He flicked a thumb at the painting

behind his desk, of a dark-haired dandy in a crimson jacket and fringed

white shirt.

“No.”

Williams smiled with real pleasure. Telling this story reminded him that

the Navy was different from the other services, more connected to its past.

The men who had crewed the first ships in the fleet would recognize the

way the Decatur was run—though they might not enjoy having a black mailj

give them orders.

"You're fortunate to be aboard a ship named for a famous American

captain."

“Aren't they all?”

"I wish I could say yes, but we don't have enough famous captains to go

around. Some destroyers are christened after real second-raters. Or worseJ

Marines."

“Tragic,” Wheeler said, playing along.

"Behind me is Commodore Stephen Decatur. During the War of 1812»

he destroyed two British vessels. We won't mention the third battle, the one*

he lost. After the war, he sailed to North Africa and shook down the Libyans

Along the way, he got famous for a line Machiavelli would have appreciated.

'In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right;

but our country, right or wrong!' Sort of a 'Better dead than red' for the

nineteenth century."

"I hope you don't throw me overboard, but I'd say that kind of thinking

has gotten us in a lot of trouble the last few years. We need more question-

ing of authority, not less."

"You reporters have that luxury. Not us. Once the order comes, we

follow it."

“So what happened to Decatur?”

“He died in 1820. A duel.”

“I can't say I'm surprised. Who was on the other side?”

"A retired captain named James Barron. Thing is, Barron couldn't see all

that well—the contemporary accounts say that Decatur could have killed

him easily. But the good commodore wanted to be sporting. He limited the

duel to eight paces and said he wouldn't shoot to kill. So Barron blew out

Decatur's stomach, and he died a few hours later. You know the lesson I take

from that story?"

“Duels are dumb. And dangerous.”

"War's no game. Ships like this are deceiving. We're so big that maybe we

seem unsinkable. But put a deep enough hole in the hull and we'll go down

fast. I don't intend to let that happen to my crew."

“Can I quote you on that?”

“Of course. And be at the CIC at 1100 tomorrow. You can stay all day.”

“Thanks, Captain.”

Just then Williams's phone rang. “Yes?”

“Skipper, you might want to get down here.” The Decatur's TAO, tac-

tical action officer, was calling from the Combat Information Center. "We

have a situation."

“Be there in five.” Williams cradled the receiver.

“What was that?” Jackie said.

“Looks like we may get some action sooner than I thought.”

“Can I—”

Williams shook his head. “Sorry, Ms. Wheeler. No tour tonight.”

IF THE DECATUR'S FOUR GIANT TURBINE ENGINES, capable of 100,000 horse-

power at full throttle, were its heart, the Combat Information Center was its

brain. The CIC was a well-lit room, fifty feet long, forty wide, in the center

of the ship, equally protected from missiles and torpedoes. The window-

less space looked like an air traffic control center at rush hour. Dozens on

pasty-faced men and women huddled over blinking consoles that pulled in

information from the Decatur's radar and sonar systems, as well as the E-m

Hawkeye overhead. Williams sat near the front of the room, facing away from

the chaos and toward the big, bright blue flat-panel screens that offered an

integrated view of the threats facing the Decatur from sea, air, and land.

As an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, the Decatur came equipped with

an Aegis combat system, which linked the ship's radar and sonar systems

with its missile batteries. The Aegis could simultaneously track scores or]

planes and ships, labeling each as hostile, friendly, or unknown. In case

of open war, the system could be put on full automatic mode, taking con-

trol of all the ship's weapons. Besides its cruise missiles, the Decatur carried

surface-to-air missiles, antiship missiles, antisubmarine rockets and torpe-

does, an artillery launcher, and a pair of 20-millimeter heavy machine

guns for close-in defense, should all else fail. With the Aegis on full auto-

matic, the Decatur could probably blockade Shanghai all by itself.

But the Aegis wasn't on full automatic. This wasn't open war. And

Williams didn't want to overreact to provocations and bluffs aimed at trick-

ing him into firing the first shot. Under the rules of engagement governing

this mission, Willams didn't have to wait until he'd been acted upon before

firing. He could launch first if he believed the Chinese were about to attack.

"The commanding officer is responsible for defending his ship from attack|

or the imminent threat of attack," the rules read.

Williams almost wished the orders were stricter. Under these rules, if the

Chinese hit the Decatur with a first strike, he'd face terrible second-guessing

about his decision not to launch first. And the Chinese had turned increas-

ingly aggressive as the Decatur closed on their coast.

For a day, two Chinese frigates had shadowed the ship. Now, with the

Decatur barely thirty miles from Shanghai, two more frigates had moved

in. They were Jianwei-class, among the more modern ships in the Chinese

fleet. Still, they were only one-quarter the size of the Decatur. Williams

could destroy them easily, especially with the help of the F/A-18s from the

Reagan circling overhead, as the Chinese surely knew.

In other words, the frigates weren't there to fight. Still, Williams didn't

want to give them an excuse. Over the last few hours, he had turned south

and slowed to fifteen knots. The Decatur was now heading roughly parallel

to the coast, not closing on it. Still, the Chinese boats had ignored repeated

warnings from the Decatur to back off.

Making matters worse, the Decatur was close to the Shanghai shipping

lanes, forcing it to navigate around freighters and oil tankers. And in the last

few hours, civilian Chinese boats had shown up. Motorboats, fishing ves-

sels, even a couple of sailboats, all flying the Chinese flag and carrying signs

in Chinese and English: “Hegemonists out of East China Sea!” "Taiwan and

China! One people, one nation!“ ”US Navy go home!"

Williams thought that being ordered this close to the coast was unneces-

sarily provocative. But provocation seemed to be the point. Two days before,

Rear Admiral Jason Lee, the commander of the Reagan, had told Williams

and the other captains in the carrier's battle group that the White House

wanted to send the Chinese government a stern message about the risks a

deal with Iran would bring.

"We're not backing down this time. Up close and personal, that's what

the big man wants. Make them blink. Our intel says that's the right move.

And if that's what the big man wants, that's what he gets. Now, I don't want

you to do anything rash, but if you need to protect your ships, no one's

going to second-guess you. We've got three flattops out here, we can turn

their navy into scrap in about twenty minutes, and we're not backing down

Understood?"

No one said anything when Lee was finished.

BUT THERE WERE GOOD TACTICAL reasons to stay farther offshore, Williams

thought. Carrier battle groups were lethal on the open ocean, so-called

blue-water combat. The Reagan's jets could destroy enemy aircraft and

ships long before the hostile boats got close, and the nuclear attack subs

that served as its escorts were faster and had sonar superior to that of the

diesel subs most other fleets used.

But this close to shore, the carrier group's advantages shrank. First off,

the Reagan's jets no longer completely controlled the air. Land-based air-

craft could take off from Chinese bases and be on top of the Decatur in

minutes. Making matters worse, with hundreds of civilian planes taking off

from Shanghai's airports every day, even the Aegis system had a hard time

tracking all the traffic in the air.

China's submarines were also a serious threat in these shallow waters.

The diesel-electric subs that made up the Chinese fleet could operate

almost silently, and they didn't have to worry about being outrun by the

faster U.S. subs so close to shore. They hardly needed to move at all—the

American fleet was coming to them.

Add the tactical problems to the strategic uncertainty, and Williams

knew he'd been given a difficult job. Now the Chinese seemed to want td

bring matters to a head, much sooner than Williams had expected.

Williams took his seat at the center console, beside Lieutenant (j.g.) Stan

Umsle, his tactical action officer, a bespectacled man with a Ph.D. in

engineering from Purdue. “Lieutenant, talk to me.”

"Didn't want to bother you, sir, but we have two issues. First off, there s

one fishing boat aft and three starboard running steadily closer to us. Look*

like they're coordinating their movements with the frigates. In the lasH

half-hour they've gone from two thousand yards to eleven hundred"—iuS

over a half-mile away.

“Any weapons?”

"None we can see. We've signaled and radioed them to leave, sir.

fold them they're subject to imminent defensive action if they come any

closer."

“In English.”

“Yes, sir.” Umsle didn't have to tell Williams that no one on the Decatur

spoke Chinese. Another reason the destroyer ought to back off a little,

Williams thought.

"All right. If they get to five hundred yards, splash them with the

Phalanx for five seconds. Warning shots only. No contact. And let's don't hit

the frigates by mistake." Williams hoped the Decatur could scare off the

fishing boats with its machine guns, which fired depleted-uranium shells

that could cut the trawlers apart.

“Yes, sir.”

"Also let's throttle up to thirty knots, get some distance from those

frigates."

“That's the second problem, sir. There's a red”—enemy—"destroyer in

our path." Umsle pointed to the Aegis display, where a red blip was mov-

ing toward the Decatur. “Twenty NMs”—nautical miles—"to our south,

closing at twenty-five knots. It's painted us twice already." Meaning that the

enemy destroyer had hit the Decatur with radar, possibly in preparation for

a missile launch.

“Do we have positive identification?”

"Believe it's one of their Luhas, sir. And the Hawkeye just picked up

emissions from another hostile. Seventy NMs south." The radar plane over-

head could track a far larger area than the Decatur's radar. "The Hawkeye

believes it may be a Sovremenny-class boat."

“We need visual confirmation on that ASAP. Tell the Reagan.”

“Yes, sir.”

Since the late 1990s, China had bought four Sovremenny-class destroyers

from Russia. The Sovremennys were the only surface ship in China's fleet

that posed a serious threat to the Decatur. They carried supersonic antiship

missiles with a range of a hundred miles and a nasty radar guidance system.

Though the missiles could be detected by infrared sensors because of the

massive heat they generated, they were nearly impossible to intercept, be-

cause of their speed and the fact that they flew less than fifty feet above the

water's surface. Worse, they carried a 660-pound warhead, big enough to

cripple the Decatur.

Williams turned to his communications officer. “Get me Admiral Lee.”

If he was going to war, he wanted his boss to know. Meanwhile, backing

off seemed prudent. He looked at Umsle. "Take us to twenty knots and a

heading of one-fifty"—a southeast heading, away from the Chinese coast.

“What about the trawlers? We'll be on top of them.”

“Then they better get out of our way.” Williams preferred to pick a fight

with an unarmed trawler rather than a Chinese destroyer. "Get ready to

splash them with the Phalanxes. I want them to know we're serious."

“Captain,” his corns officer said, “I have the Reagan.” Williams picked up.

“Captain Williams.” The admiral spoke softly but with absolute author-

ity, as befitted the commander of a 102,000-ton aircraft carrier. "Looks like

the Chinese don't want to grant you shore leave."

“I could use more air support, Admiral.”

“It's already happening.”

“Sir, request permission to pull back to the Lake Champlain.” The Lake ]

Champlain, a guided-missile cruiser, was fifty miles northeast, seventy-five I

miles offshore.

"Understand your concerns, but that would send the wrong signal, |

Captain. Our intel's clear on this."

Easy for you to say in your floating castle, Williams thought. “Yes, sir,” he I

said aloud. "In that case, I'm going to lose these boats on top of me, opeflB

up some space, come back around for another look."

“Sir, Captain, we've just fired warning shots at the trawlers—” This was I

Umsle, his voice rising. Williams waved a hand. Not now.

“Affirmative, Captain,” the admiral said in his ear. "We'll have four more

eighteens“—F/A-18 Super Hornet attack jets—”in the air for you by 2130."

“Thank you, sir.” Click. At least he'd gotten approval, in a backhanded

way, to pull back a few miles, buy some time.

“Lieutenant, I want us at twenty-five knots, heading of sixty.” A sixty-

degree heading was northeast, a hard left turn from the Decatur's cur-

rent path.

“Sir, the trawlers—”

Williams didn't want to hear about the fishing boats anymore. He had

bigger worries.

"We've warned them, Lieutenant. Every way we know how. It's time for

them to make way. Now! Hard over."

THE COLLISION CAME THIRTY SECONDS LATER.

In the Combat Information Center, men skidded sideways. Manuals and

pens and anything else not nailed down spilled to the floor. On the bridge,

Wheeler, the Los Angeles Times reporter, banged her knee hard enough to

leave it black-and-blue, but she hardly cared. She'd have the lead story in

tomorrow's paper, she knew.

The sailors and officers on the bridge of the Decatur insisted afterward

that the trawler refused to move out of the Decatur's way, as if daring the

destroyer to run it down. The Chinese disagreed vehemently, saying that

the Decatur had deliberately hit the little trawler, which weighed eighty

tons, compared with the Decatur's eight thousand. Jackie, who was as close

to a neutral observer as anyone who saw the collision, wasn't entirely sure

what had happened. Both boats seemed to expect the other to turn away.

But neither did, and so the destroyer's prow tore the little fishing boat

nearly in half, slicing neatly through a banner that read "China Will Not

Bow to America!" Besides its usual crew often, the boat contained another

twenty-four passengers, mostly college students who had come out to

protest—and snap some souvenir photographs of the destroyer. Only five

people died in the collision, but most of the students couldn't swim. Seven-

teen drowned afterward.

The Decatur slowed down after the collison, but before it could put any

rescue boats in the water, one of the Chinese frigates fired warning shots at

tt. After consulting with Admiral Lee, Williams decided to sail away. The

Chinese boats were moving quickly to the trawler, and staying around

might inflame the situation. Later, the Decatur's decision not to stop would

add to the controversy.

Aside from a few bumps and bruises, no one aboard the Decatur was

hurt. But in the days that followed, no one would say the United States

escaped the collision unscathed.

EVEN WITH TYSON'S HELP AND THE WRITTEN APPROVAL of the agency's general

counsel, Exley needed almost a full day to get the agency's health insurance

records for Keith Robinson. Those showed that Robinson's wife, Janice, had

given birth to a boy, Mark, a decade before. Cross-checking Mark's date of

birth against Social Security death records revealed the boy had died eight

years earlier, about the time the mole first contacted the Chinese, according

to Wen Shubai's timetable.

And so Exley and Shafer decided it was time to talk to Robinson.

“We don't have to ask about the dead kid,” Shafer said. "He might get

upset."

"Mr. Tact. Thank God you're here to help. Of course we're not mention-

ing his son. That failed poly gives us plenty of reason to interview him."

But when Exley called Robinson's office early Friday evening, he didn't

answer. His voicemail said he was out sick. With a couple of calls, Exley

tracked down an admin on the China desk who told Exley that Robinson

had seemed fine the day before.

IN THE NEXT OFFICE OVER, Wells was catching up on the mole investigation

poring over the transcripts of Shubai's interview. He had put aside for now

his efforts to find out who was paying Pierre Kowalski to support the

Taliban. Without account numbers, the Treasury Department couldn't trace

the payments from Macao that Kowalski had admitted getting. And the

CIA's dossier on Kowalski offered no clues to the mysterious North Korean

that Kowalski had mentioned—though the file had enough detail about

Kowalski to infuriate Wells.

Kowalski has brokered weapons sales of $100 million or more for

dozens of sovereign nations and paramilitary organizations, includ-

ing Angola, Armenia, China, Congo, FARC (Revolutionary Armed

Forces of Colombia), Indonesia, Libya, Nigeria, Poland, Russia, Saudi

Arabia, and Yemen.

This list should not be considered conclusive. Kowalski often

operates through intermediaries in cases where he hopes to sell weap-

ons to both sides in a conflict (i.e., Chad and Sudan). His commission

ranges from 2 percent, in cases where he is merely negotiating a price J

and package of weapons, to 25 percent when he acts as a third-party

dealer. Kowalski has earned about $1 billion since 2000, although the j

exact amount is unknown.

One billion. A thousand million. Maybe on Wall Street or in Congress

that number was just another day at the office. But Wells couldn't get his

head around it. In Pakistan, he'd seen kids die from cholera because their;

parents couldn't afford antibiotics that cost a few bucks.

The rest of the dossier detailed Kowalski's personal history. Not surpris-

ingly, he had never served in the military. As far as Wells could tell, he ha<t

never been near a battlefield, never seen what his mines and AK-47s andj

mortars did to the human body. He preferred the bodies in his vicinity to bfl

young and blonde, and he could afford what he liked. Twice divorced, he<^

acquired a taste for second-tier Russian models, who cost more up front than

a wife but didn't rate alimony on their way out. More than ever, Wells regret-

ted not having put a bullet between Kowalski's eyes back in the Hamptons.

After reading the dossier, Wells had paid a visit to the analyst who'd

written it, Sam Tarks, a career officer in the agency's arms control/nonpro-

liferation unit.

“Pierre Kowalski? Nasty man.”

"I'm looking for anything that might have been too juicy to make it into

the dossier,“ Wells said. ”Personal or business."

"His personal life is about what you'd expect. He's got a yacht called the

Ares. Lots of coke, lots of Eurotrash. Good times had by all."

“Ares like the Greek god of war?”

"The one and only. But he doesn't have any serious glitches as far as we

know. I mean he's not a pedophile or a sadist or anything. He likes to party

is all."

"How about the business side? Is there any country he's especially close

to? The Russians, say?" Wells still didn't think the Russians would have

helped the Taliban, but anything was possible.

"Not particularly. He sells mostly Russian stuff, but he keeps them at

arm's length. Smart man. And he makes sure to keep his business far from

Zurich. Also smart. Pays enough in taxes to keep the Swiss happy and keeps

his money in local banks, mainly UBS."

“Did he ever work for U.S. companies?”

Tarks nodded. "Lots of folks wish he still would. The Indian Air Force is

looking at a huge order, close to a hundred thirty planes, and the French

have hired him to convince the Indians to go with the Mirage"—a French-

made fighter jet—"and not the F-16. That would be a very big sale. North

of five billion. If we don't get it, some Lockheed lobbyists"—Lockheed

Martin manufactured the F-16—"will tell the Armed Services Committee

tt's because we don't have guys like Kowalski on our team. They'll say it

quietly, but they'll say it."

“Wonderful world,” Wells said. "Could you see him selling weapons to

lhe Taliban?"

"That'd be pushing it, even for him. He'd know we wouldn't be happy jf

we found out. To put it mildly."

“But if the money was right, and he thought he could get away with it?”

“Under those circumstances? I'd say there's nothing he wouldn't do.”

WELLS'S LAST CONVERSATION with Ed Graften, the East Hampton police

chief, had been more gratifying. After the East Hampton police freed

Kowalski, he refused to answer any questions. He had no idea who had

attacked him and his guards, he said.

“Boys will be boys. Why don't you ask them? I was in my bedroom.”

“What about the tape, the handcuffs?” the lead cop on the scene said.

"A new weight-loss method recommended by my physician. With my

mouth taped shut, I cannot eat."

“Sounds like you need a new doctor.”

“I have already lost five pounds,” Kowalski said, sucking in his gut in a;

show of dignity. "Now, I appreciate your leaving my property so I can

return to bed."

The unconscious guards were taken to Southampton Hospital. By

morning, they were stirring. All four claimed they had no memory of what

had happened. They refused to answer questions and demanded to speak

to Kowalski's lawyers. Since they appeared to be victims, not perpetrators,

the cops had no choice but to let them go. They were asked to return for

interviews later.

But they never showed up. And when the police went to Two Mile

Hollow Road to find them, they discovered the mansion was empty. Flight

records showed that Kowalski's Gulfstream had flown out of the Eastj

Hampton airport less than eight hours after Wells's courtesy call. Accord-

ing to the flight plan they'd filed before takeoff, the jet was bound for

Miami—which probably meant it had wound up in the Dominican Repub-

lic or Barbados or Venezuela. In any case, Kowalski and his men were

gone.

"Just thought you might like to know he'd flown the coop. My guys said

he was a very cool customer,“ the chief said. ”Hardly complained when that

tape came off him."

“He is smooth.”

"A weight-loss program. Have to give him credit for coming up with

that.“ Graften chuckled. ”Did you get what you needed?"

“Thanks for the help, chief. If you hear anything more, let me know.”

“Will do.” Click.

WELLS HOPED HE WAS ONLY temporarily stalled on Kowalski, although in

truth he wasn't sure where to look next. The trail seemed to have dead-

ended. So he'd decided to catch up on the mole investigation. But as he read

over the personnel reports that Exley and Shafer had put together, Wells

wasn't convinced that Exley's hunch about Keith Robinson made sense.

Then again, he hadn't seen the guy's house or his wife.

A rap on his door startled him. Exley. “Want to go for a drive?”

WHEN THEY GOT TO the Robinson house, Exley was glad she'd asked Wells to

come. The lights in the house were off, but through the windows Exley saw

the television in the den flashing.

“Sure she's home?” Wells said. He was standing beside the door, hidden

against the wall of the house.

“She's home.” Exley knocked again. Finally she heard footsteps. Janice

pulled open the door, glassy-eyed, a steak knife wavering in her hand.

“You,” she said. She jabbed the knife in Exley's direction. She seemed

more likely to drop it on her foot than do any serious damage, Exley

thought. Janice took a tiny step forward, and Wells reached out his big right

arm and twisted her wrist until the knife clattered down. Janice's mouth

opened and closed in wordless drunken confusion as Wells tossed the knife

aside.

Exley knew Wells was just making sure they wouldn't get hurt, but some- i

how she was angry at the almost robotic ease with which he'd disarmed this !

pathetic woman. Forget breaking a sweat. Wells hadn't even blinked. She

realized something about him then, something she should have known all i

along. For all the emotional weight Wells carried, the thought of death

hardly scared him. On some unconscious level he must feel immortal, Exley I

thought. He probably couldn't imagine losing a fight, couldn't imagine any-1

one was stronger or faster than he was. Exley had seen firsthand what he I

could do in close combat. She wondered what it would be like to have such

physical confidence. She'd never know. Women never got to feel that way. I

No wonder Wells was addicted to action.

Janice staggered forward, tripping over her feet. Wells put a hand on ]

her arm and held her up. Her eyes flicked helplessly between Wells and

Exley.

“You can't—” she said softly.

“Ma'am,” Wells said. “We're sorry, but can we talk to you inside? Please.”

Janice's face crumpled on itself like a leaky balloon. She didn't answer, I

just stepped into the yard and stared at the sky. The golden retriever stood

behind her in the doorway, tail down.

Finally she waved them inside. “What difference does it make anyway?”

she said. “Wait in the kitchen.” She wandered upstairs as Wells watched, afl

hand near the Makarov he had tucked into his shoulder holster before they

left the office. But they had nothing to worry about, Exley thought. JanioB

was harmless now. Sure enough, her hands were empty when she reM

appeared. She seemed to have gone upstairs mainly to fix herself up. Shed

pulled her hair back into a ponytail and fixed her makeup.

"I thought maybe when you showed up again that you were his gl^H

friend. But you're not."

“Your husband's girlfriend? No, I'm not.”

"Because I know he's got a girlfriend, and he got all nervous when I told I

him you came by. He wanted to know what you wanted. Then when I wol>

up this morning, he was gone."

“You know where?”

"Haven't seen him or that Acura of his since last night. He hasn't called

neither, and his phone's turned off." Janice focused her wobbly attention on

Exley. "But anyway I see you're not his girlfriend. He likes 'em younger than

you. And prettier. You from the agency?"

“Yes, ma'am,” Wells said. “We are.” He passed her his identification card,

the one with his real name. Janice held it close to her face, her eyes flicking

between the identification and Wells.

“I don't believe it, but I guess I do,” she said. “Is Keith in trouble?”

“We're trying to find out,” Exley said. “He tell you where he was going?”

“As I just recounted”—Janice sat up straight as she used the half-dollar

word—"he didn't even say he was leaving, much less where. He was just

gone when I woke up, and his favorite clothes too."

“Did he take anything else?”

"I don't rightly know. Maybe some stuff from the basement. He

spends a lot of time down there. Last night he was saying strange stuff,

like what would I think if we left the country and started over some-

where else."

“Do you mind if we take a look?” Wells said. “In the basement?”

"I guess not. It's locked, though. And I can't find the key. I don't know if

he took it or what."

“I can take care of that.” Wells reached into his jacket for his pistol.

JANICE FOLLOWED THEM DOWNSTAIRS, CHATTERING. She'd turned from self-

pitying to wheedling, actively seeking their approval, an alcohol-fueled

mood swing. Exley was not surprised to see that she was devoting her

attention to Wells. For his part, Wells was hardly listening as he looked

around the basement. The place was littered with bottles of bourbon

and empty cigarette packs and stank like the morning after a weeklong

Party. Wells popped open the DVD player and extracted a disk titled

G>rl-n-Girl 3: The Experiment.

Janice wiggled her eyebrows at Wells when she saw the disk. "He never

tried that with me."

Exley wanted to slap this drunk woman and tell her to stop embarrass-

ing herself. Instead, she smiled. "Before he left, did Keith say where the two

of you might end up?"

Janice plumped down on the couch and put a finger in her mouth like a

misbehaving four-year-old. “Not that I recall. No.”

“Anything about Asia? China?”

"He didn't like the Chinese much. Called them slant-eyes and Chinky-

dinks and said they couldn't be trusted."

"Did he ever bring anyone over to the house? I mean, anyone unusual,

somebody he didn't identify?"

Janice reached for an open bottle of wine on the table. She poured the

contents into a dirty glass and took a long swallow. "No. We don't have too

many friends, not since we moved here, not since our son died."

“Your son—”

But then Wells called out from the bathroom. "Jenny. You need to

see this."

Janice followed, and they crowded into the bathroom, staring at the

black safe.

“Any idea of the combination?” Wells said to Janice.

“I didn't even know it was there,” Janice said. “I swear.”

“We can call Tyson, get someone over here to get it open,” Wells said.

“Not that it matters, because it's gonna be empty.”

Janice pursed her lips, a look Exley recognized. She'd be crying again

soon. All this was too much for her.

“Come on, let's go in the other room.” Exley led Janice back to the couch.

"Did Keith keep money around? Did it seem like you were spending mora

than his salary?"

"He never said much about our finances. Gave me a couple thousand a

month for expenses. If I ever wanted a dress or something, he was generous.

We had an old-fashioned marriage, I guess you'd say. He made the money.

I kept the house."

"Did you ever see any mail from banks you didn't recognize? Anything

from outside the United States?"

"Once or twice. A few years ago. Then it stopped. I think he had a post

office box. He was so secretive." Janice tipped the wine bottle to her mouth.

"I just attributed it to his having a girlfriend. He liked strippers. I pretended

I didn't know, but of course I did."

“Men are pigs.” Exley patted her hand. A mistake. Janice flinched.

"What would you know about it? You lied to me yesterday. You're not

even married." She began to cry, her tears cutting through the mascara she'd

just applied, sending black streaks down her cheeks. She grabbed a dirty

paper towel and dabbed at her face.

“I was. Married.” Exley didn't know why she felt the need to defend

herself.

“Divorced, huh? Just like I'm gonna be.” Janice stood. "God. Look at this

place. Look at my life.“ She stumbled toward the stairs. ”You do what you

have to do. You're going to anyway. But leave me alone."

As Janice pulled herself up the stairs, Exley put her head in her hands. They

had to get moving, get the word out to the FBI and Homeland Security, add

Robinson's Acura to police watch lists, check his name against passenger man-

ifests, review airport security cameras to see if they could match his face with

whatever name he was using these days, maybe even get the media involved.

But it wouldn't matter. With an eighteen-hour head start and a few thousand

bucks, Keith Robinson could be anywhere. He could have driven to Atlanta

and then flown to Panama City, New York, and then Istanbul, Chicago, and

then Bangkok. They'd find him eventually, but eventually would be too late.

She felt Wells's hand on her shoulder. “What's wrong, Jenny?”

“It's my fault. I flushed him.”

Wells pulled her up. "That's crap and you know it. He was all set to run.

You're the reason we might find him. Let's get Janice to give us something

in writing—"

“She doesn't want to talk anymore.”

"A couple sentences, so no one can say later we didn't have permission

to be here. And then let's start making calls."

SEVEN HOURS LATER, Exley, Shafer, Tyson, and Wells sat in the library of Ty-

son's house in Falls Church, a windowless square room that Tyson had as-

sured them was as secure as any at Langley. Books about spying, fiction and

non-, filled the shelves, from classics like The Secret Agent and The Thirty,

nine Steps to Tom Clancy's massive hardcovers. Wells and Exley shared a

love seat, and Exley allowed her hand to rest companionably on Wells's leg.

Two silky Persian cats slept in the corner. Tyson just needed a cigar and a

glass of whiskey to complete the picture of the gentleman at ease, Wells

thought. But the calm in the room was deceptive.

A few miles east, in Langley, an FBI/CIA task force was tearing up Keith

Robinson's office, trying to figure out exactly what he'd stolen over the

years, what databases he'd accessed, what files he'd copied, what operations

and spies he'd destroyed. Of course, if Robinson showed up the next morn-

ing, the agents in his office would have some explaining to do. But everyone

agreed the chances of that happening were approximately zero.

“Guess we found our mole,” Tyson said. “Or rather, he found us.” He

didn't smile. "This is as bad as it gets. He had almost total access to our

East Asian ops. Everyone in China is blown. North Korea too, and maybe

even Japan and India. The only place that's really insulated is the GWOT"—i

the global War on Terror, the U.S. fight against al Qaeda. "China's pe-|

ripheral to that, so people might have wondered if he asked too many

questions."

"Anyway, I don't think that his friends in Beijing care much about Osama

bin Laden," Shafer said.

“We don't know what they care about,” Tyson said. We've got no sources

left. Aside from our friend Wen Shubai, whose advice has been less than

perfect. Anyway what happened yesterday"—the collision between the

Decatur and the fishing trawler—"has changed things so much that I'm not

sure anyone on the other side of the river“—in the White House—”cares

anymore what Wen thinks. Confrontation hasn't worked so far."

“So what now?” Wells said.

Tyson tapped on his desk, disturbing the cats. They blinked sleepily,

rearranged themselves, and then lay back down. "What do the Chinese

vvant? Why did they sign that deal with Iran? Why provoke us? It's never

made sense from the beginning. That's what we have to know."

Wells slumped in a love seat. He was sick of Tyson's grandstanding. "And

how do you propose that we four get the answer, George? Last I checked,

our collective experience in China added up to a big fat zero."

"And now I need to come clean with you. I believe, I hope, we have one

live source left in the People's Republic."

In the silence that followed, Wells glanced at Exley and Shafer. They

looked as surprised as he felt.

"A couple years after Tiananmen, a PLA colonel reached out to us. He

was an evangelical Christian, a silent convert. They're some of our best

sources. He gave us good stuff during the nineties. But he went dark when

Robinson approached the Chinese. Completely dark. At the time, we

couldn't understand why. Now it seems obvious. He was keeping his head

down so Robinson couldn't out him."

“Any idea why he didn't just tell us about Robinson?”

"Maybe he didn't know enough about Robinson's identity to give him

up. Or maybe it was the other way. Maybe so few people knew about

Robinson that our guy figured he'd compromise himself if he gave Robin-

son up. Anyway, one day he missed a meeting. After that, we never saw

him again. Didn't respond to any of our signals."

“But he wasn't arrested,” Exley said.

"No. He's still around. In fact, he's senior enough that he gets into the

papers over there every so often. His name's Cao Se."

"Still. He could be doubled. Robinson could have given him up along

the way."

"We ran him out of Australia rather than China. Not for any great

reason. Just that he initially found us at a military conference in Sydney.

Then later he wouldn't do business with any other office."

“You really think he's protected himself?” Shafer said.

“It's possible. By luck or design.” Tyson huffed and settled back down in I

his chair. "I think if they'd doubled him he would have reached out a few I

years back. He would have been another thread in the web they spun for us

Instead he just disappeared."

“So he's been gone ten years?”

"Until last week. A visa applicant in Beijing dropped off a letter with I

the right codes. Amazing but true, the consular officers recognized it and I

passed it to our head of station. Cao wants a meeting. He says that lie would,

quote, 'prefer an officer who has never worked in East Asia.' Hard to argueB

with that."

SHAFER JUMPED TO HIS FEET. "I know where you're going with this, George.

And I want to say for the record it stinks."

“Where's he going?” Wells said.

“He wants you to go over there, make contact with this general.”

Tyson nodded.

"Why don't you send somebody two years out of school, somebody 1

who's not in their files?" Wells said.

“At this point we have no idea who's in their files,” Tyson said. "Like El-1

lis said, the Chinese don't care about bin Laden. What you did in TimeM

Square was a sideshow as far as they're concerned. And Cao needs to knowB

we care enough to send somebody important. Like it or not, you're in thatB

category."

“Let me add another reason,” Shafer said. "Vinny Duto can't stand yo™

and wouldn't mind you spending the rest of your life in a Chinese jail.

This is his big chance to get rid of you. If it works, great. If not, bye-bye. 1

Shafer looked to Tyson. "Et tu, Georgie? Still embarrassed you were otim

the wrong side last year? Or just looking for new and exciting ways to kiss

Vinny's ass?"

"That's nonsense, Ellis. This is up to John. If he doesn't want to go. J

there'll be no hard feelings—"

I

“I'm not finished, George.” Shafer turned toward Wells. "He knows

you're too hardheaded to turn this down, even though we can't save you if

this is a trap. You know that, John. They may not even lock you up. Consid-

ering the way things are right now, they may just shoot you."

Tyson pushed himself to his feet. "Ellis, the PLA has no reason to set up

such an elaborate sting at this moment. They're more worried whether we're

going to bomb Shanghai. I think this approach is genuine, and I want John to

go because he gives us the best chance of reaching Cao. No other reason."

“Yeah, he's a great choice, considering he doesn't even speak Chinese.”

Shafer stepped toward the desk and leaned over Tyson. He looked like a

terrier about to launch himself at a bulldog. "What exactly do you think

Cao's going to tell us? You think he's gonna give us their launch codes so we

can nuke Shanghai and not worry about them retaliating? What we ought

to do is pull the Navy back to Hawaii and let things settle down."

"Maybe. And maybe then the PLA will think they have carte blanche to

invade Taiwan. The point is we don't know what they want, what they're

thinking. Now somebody on their side, somebody who knows, wants to

tell us."

“Let him defect, then, if he's so damn important.”

"He's making the rules, Ellis, not us. And what he wants is a meeting, his

terms, his turf. If John doesn't want to go, that's fine. I'll find someone else."

“One last question, George. Did you and Duto discuss this little plan?”

“Why wouldn't we?”

“I rest my case.”

“I'd like to say something,” Wells said.

Exley folded her hands together in an unconscious prayer.

“I'll go.”

Exley and Shafer spoke simultaneously.

Shafer: “Don't do this—”

Exley: “No, John—”

“I'll go.”

EVERY MORNING MORE PROTESTERS SHOWED UP in Tiananmen Square: peas-

ants stooped by age and work, university students, factory hands, even

office workers. They came on bicycles and buses that dropped them by the

McDonald's at the south end of the square. They carried bags of fruit and

dumplings so they could stay all day. Each evening they emptied out, as

thousands of police officers watched. And all day, under the hazy sky, they

sang and chanted and waved banners:

(“The will of the people is strong!”

“One people, one China!”

“Hegemonists apologize! No more American war crimes!”

"U.S. out of China Sea! China will never forget the twenty-two mur-

dered martyrs!"

A few of the sloganeers even showed sly humor:

“1.5 billion Chinese can't be wrong.”

“The American century is over! The Chinese millennium begins today!”

The first morning after the Decatur sank the fishing trawler, 50,000

People came to Tiananmen. Two days later, the Beijing police estimated

the crowd at 150,000. Similar crowds filled People's Park in ShangkJ

Yuexiu Park in Guangzhou, and the central squares in the rest of ChirJ

metropolises.

On the fifth day, with the Beijing police estimating the crowd in TiajJ

men at a quarter-million, Li Ping took a helicopter over the square a

looked down on the people, his people. They weren't yet close to filling thJ

square—Tiananmen could hold a million or more—but even so Li's head

swelled at the sight.

What a change from 1989, the last time Tiananmen had been so full

Li thought. Then the people had been angry at their leaders. Not this

time. The peasants were glad to have an officially sanctioned outlet for

their fury at being left behind. The middle class wanted to show the

world that China could no longer be cowed. The sinking of the trawler

had brought them together. Li had brought them together. This outpouring

was the living emblem of his will. Soon he would replace Zhang as the

unofficial leader of the Standing Committee. Two of the liberals on the

committee had already reached out to him, hinting they would support.

him if he promised not to push them off the committee when he tool

charge.

Then, at the next Party Congress, he'd take over from Xu as the party!

general secretary. It was time for the old man to retire. Li would be the head]

of the army and the party, the most powerful leader since Mao. He would

remake China, making sure ordinary people shared in its prosperity, while

building up the armed forces. No longer would the United States be the

world's only superpower. This was China's destiny, and his own. Around

him the great city rose in every direction, Beijing's apartment buildings and

office towers stretching through the haze, traffic thick on the ring roadj

and boulevards, and Li thought: Mine. All this. Mine.

But first he needed to press his advantage. The people filling the squii

beneath him were crucial to his next step toward power. Zhang, thatt^H

ling, wouldn't like his new proposal. But Li believed that old man Xu M

the situation the same way that he did, though the general secretary was

canny to promise his support explicitly. Li waved to the crowds below-"

, t they could recognize him—and checked his watch. 11:18. Good.

wky time. He tapped his pilot on the shoulder and they swung back to

, ianding pad inside Zhongnanhai.

THE MEETING BEGAN TWO HOURS LATER, in the banquet hall in Huairentang,

he Palace Steeped in Compassion. The foreign minister spoke first, dis-

ussing the international reaction to the sinking. The world had sided with

China. The United Nations had voted to condemn the United States for its

“unprovoked aggression against a civilian boat.” Even America's closest al-

lies, like Britain and Poland, agreed that the United States had overstepped

its bounds and provoked the confrontation.

"We must remember, if a Chinese warship rammed an American boat

near New York, the American anger would be unsurpassed," the French

prime minister said. The United States had refused to apologize for the col-

lision, arguing that it had happened in international waters and the Decatur

had warned the trawlers away. In the days since the accident, the Deca-

tur had pulled back two hundred miles off the coast, but other American

warships had taken its place.

“The world has seen the violence of the Americans,” the foreign minis-

ter said. "Our position is secure. Of course, if we act rashly, we may lose

support."

“Thank you, Foreign Minister,” Xu said. “Now, Minister Li.”

"The People's Liberation Army is prepared to carry out the will of the

Standing Committee, General Secretary. Whatever we decide."

And what is your view of the correct action?"

We must punish the hegemonist aggression."

But what about the risks?" This from Zhang. Li looked around the

r°om, as if the interruption were hardly worth answering.

Do you know why the Mongols burst through our walls eight hundred

\^TS ago, Comrade Zhang?"

I m not a general, Comrade Li. I imagine their troops were strong, like

Fe Americans."

"Wrong. They defeated us because we let them. And then we blanj

them for being stronger than we were. The people want us to show

strength. They remember what the Americans did in Yugoslavia." ]n iqQ

American jets had bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing th

Chinese. The United States had always insisted the bombing was accident'

but many Chinese didn't accept that explanation. "The people are tired J

excuses from the hegemonists. They want us to act."

"And when the Americans counterattack, when they destroy our naw

what will the people say then?"

"The Americans won't attack us, Comrade Zhang. The world won't

allow it."

“Perhaps the world won't stop it.”

"We will push them once more, just once, and then give them a

way out."

“What do you mean, push them? Speak clearly now.”

The moment he'd been working toward for all these months had arrived,

Li knew. He explained his plan. When he was finished, the room watt

silent.

“And you think the Americans won't respond.”

"As long as they understand that we don't intend to invade Taiwan

they'll accept our response as justified. They know they've overstepped their

bounds even if they won't admit it. Besides, our action will give them a nevrl

respect for our capabilities."

Zhang pounded a fist against the table. "Comrade Li, go back to youi

tanks and leave strategy to wiser men. We've gone up the mountain twico

now, first with the agreement with Iran and then with our missile tesl|

Now you want us to go up a third time. We will surely encounter the tiger.

"The Americans aren't the tiger. Our people are the tiger, Minis!

Zhang. If we don't defend the honor of the Chinese nation, they «

forgive us."

“The honor of the Chinese nation?”

“Perhaps you've forgotten what those words mean.”

“Because I'm not a warmonger?”

vu pushed himself to his feet. "Ministers. We are all servants of the

nle There is no need for this. Now. I have decided."

uYou have decided?" Zhang couldn't hide his astonishment at the old

man'*tone-

“I have, Economics Minister. Am I not the general secretary?”

i Xu paused. And Li realized that the old lion was enjoying himself. For

«ears, Zhang had usurped Xu's power, leaving Xu as a figurehead. Now Li's

hallc*nge to Zhang had given Xu a taste of his lost power. So Xu's next

words didn't surprise Li.

"General Li. Please use our forces to carry out the plan you've out-

lined."

“Thank you, General Secretary.” This time, Li didn't even bother to look

at Zhang as he walked out of the room.

Outside the hall, Li's limousine waited to ferry him to his offices. As he

trotted toward it, another limousine pulled up. General Baije Chen, head of

the PLA's intelligence directorate, jumped out.

"Minister. I'm sorry to disturb you. There's something you need to see.

May we speak alone?"

“As you wish.” Li followed Baije into the parking lot beside the hall.

Whatever Baije wanted, it must be important. He lived on pots of green tea

and rarely left his office. When they were well away from the entrance, Baije

handed Li two sheets of paper, one in English, the other in Chinese.

“As you can see, it's from our contact at the American embassy—”

1 Li raised a finger to his lips. He'd read the note for himself. When he

was done, he had to call on all his discipline to keep from shouting curses

W the sky. All his work, all his planning, and now this? A traitor among

them?

“When did this come in?”

This morning."

“And it's reliable?”

“Yes, General.”

Nearly a year before, Matt Kahn, a Marine guard at the American em-

SV> had fallen hard for Hua, a waitress in Sanlitun, a northeast Beijing

neighborhood where expats gathered to drink cheap beer and vvat k

day-old football and soccer. Only after they had been together for thrJ

months did the unfortunate Marine discover that his girl Hua was actual!

a boy named Hu. By the time the Beijing police arrived at Hu's apartment!

Kahn had gouged out one of Hu's eyes and both of his testicles. The officer*!

called in their captain, who saw the situation's potential as soon as h

learned where Kahn worked. Within an hour, the police had sent the cased

the Second Directorate, who offered Kahn a choice. He could face a courj

martial and public humiliation on two continents. Or he could give the

Chinese a peek at the embassy's intelligence files, whatever he could get in a

quick one-time sweep.

“It will take only a few minutes,” the Second Directorate colonel told

Kahn. “And then all this”—he gestured to the slim, hairless man in the

bloody dress in the corner—“will be over.” For Kahn, the choice was noJ

choice at all.

But Kahn realized too late that spying was easier to get into than out of.

The colonel came back to him a month later, and a month after that, eaca

time demanding more information. Now Kahn wished he'd taken his pun-]

ishment at the beginning instead of stepping into this pit. Three times, he

put his pistol into his mouth and wished he had the guts to pull the trigger.

But he didn't. Meanwhile, he needed to keep the Chinese happy. And so

twice a month he filled a flash drive with all the files he could get and passed

them to the Second Directorate.

This time, the files included Cao Se's note to the agency asking tor a

meeting. Of course, hadn't used his name in the note. Still, its importance

was obvious as soon as it was translated. It reached Baije in hours.

Li reread the note, to be sure he understood. A Chinese spy, code-

named Ghost, was asking for an immediate meeting with a CIA operas

tive, someone who had never worked in China. “How?” Li said, under nil

breath, more to himself than to Baije. He had been sure that his American

mole had rooted out all of the CIA's spies inside China. But he'd been

wrong.

Yet this spy, whoever he was, obviously didn't know that the Second

directorate's had penetrated the embassy. The note explicitly set out the

tj,ne and place of the meeting.

“Of course, the Americans may not respond,” Baije said. "They know we've

penetrated them. They may think this Ghost of theirs has been doubled too."

“General Baije.” Li put a finger into the smaller man's chest. "Don't tell

me what the Americans may or may not do. Tell me that our men are track-

ing every American who comes into Beijing this week. Tell me that we are

going to catch this agent, and the traitor who's helping him. Those are the

only words I want to hear."

EVEN BEFORE HE REACHED THE CENTER OF BEIJING, Wells felt the electricity

of approaching war on the avenues of the giant city. Enormous banners

in Chinese and English dangled from overpasses: “China stands as one!”

“America will be sorry!” A torn American flag fluttered off the skeleton of a

half-finished office tower, while the flag of the People's Republic, five yellow

stars against a blood-red background, waved off every car and truck.

As his cab swung from the airport expressway onto the third of the

ring roads that surrounded Beijing, Wells saw a dozen mobile antiaircraft!

missile batteries, their green-painted rockets pointing in every direction.

Hundreds of Chinese surrounded the launchers, taking pictures, saluting!

the PLA soldiers in their crisp uniforms. Their excitement was palpable.]

They were standing up to the United States, and the show was about toj

start. The First Battle of Bull Run must have felt this way, Wells thought, the

crowds turning up to watch the Rebs and the Union boys fight, shocked

when the pageantry ended and blood began to flow.

Indeed, aside from the flags and banners, life in Beijing seemed to be

proceeding fairly smoothly. The immigration officers at Beijing airport

hadn't been overly hostile to Wells or the other Americans who'd come in

from San Francisco. The cabbie outside the terminal had shown no irrita-

tion when Wells told him to head to the St. Regis, a five-star hotel close to

the United States embassy and favored by Americans. Workers were ham-

mering away everywhere on new buildings. And the traffic was the worst

Wells had ever seen, making Washington's supposedly busy roadways look

like racetracks in comparison.

As the cab again stopped dead, the driver glanced at Wells in his rearview

' mirror.

“Where from?”

“California.” So his passport said, anyway. Wells waited for the driver to

explode in anti- American slurs, or throw him out of the cab and make him

walk the rest of the way. Instead the driver turned to Wells and smiled,

revealing a mouthful of broken yellow teeth.

“Ca-li-fornia. My cousin—Los Angeles.”

“I'm from Palo Alto,” Wells said. His cover story. "Northern California.

Near San Francisco."

But the cabbie wasn't interested in Palo Alto. “Los Angeles,” he said again.

“Hollywood. Hungry.” The cabbie offered a thumbs-up.

“Hungry?”

“Gong-ri.” The cabbie held up a glossy magazine, a Chinese tabloid that

featured a beautiful woman on the cover. Amid the Chinese characters were

the English words “Gong Li.”

“Gong Li. She's an actress, right? I don't see too many movies.”

“Gong-ri. Holly-wood.”

"Got it. I guess we'll save the serious discussion for next time. You have

no idea what I'm saying, do you? I mean, I could be offering to sell you my

sister for all you know. If I had a sister." Wells felt a pang of guilt. He hadn't

talked to Evan, his son, in weeks. When he got back, he was taking the boy

fishing in the Bitterroots—the mountain range on the Montana-Idaho

border, just outside his hometown of Hamilton. Maybe hunting too,

I tf Heather, his ex, would let him. But fishing for sure. When he got back.

Not if.

The cabbie grinned and gave Wells another big thumbs-up, then reached I

back through the cab's plastic barrier with a crumpled pack of 555gB

Japanese-brand cigarettes. “You like cigarette?”

“No, thanks.”

“You like China?”

“Sure.”

And with that, the cabbie seemed to have exhausted his English. He I

popped a 555 in his mouth and smoked silently until they reached the hotel

a half-hour later.

BUT OUTSIDE THE ST. REGIS, the mood turned grim. Four jeeps and a dozen I

soldiers formed a makeshift barricade that blocked the driveway. As the taxi I

stopped, a young officer rapped on Wells's window.

“Passport,” he said. The passport, sent by courier to the Chinese consul- I

ate in San Francisco for an expedited visa application, identified Wells I

as James Wilson, a thirty-seven-year-old from Palo Alto. If anyone asked, I

Wilson was the founder ofPrunetime.com, an Internet start-up that special<H

ized in small-business software. The business was real, at least on paper—

one of the dozens of ghost companies that the agency had created over I

the years. Prunetime had a bank account, a Dun & Bradstreet credit report, I

a record of incorporation with the California secretary of state, even an

office in San Francisco. Wilson was real too. Besides his passport, he had a I

California driver's license, a working Social Security number, and a wallet j

full of credit cards.

Of course, none of those records could answer the red-flag question: I

Why was James Wilson so anxious to get to Beijing at this moment, with 1

China and America close to war? Why had he applied for a visa on such I

short notice? But Wells had a plausible cover, a three-day trade fair for soft-J

ware and Internet companies. And despite the rising tensions, he was hardly

the only American in China. His 747 from San Francisco had been half fuU>

mostly Chinese but a couple of dozen Americans too, joking nervously that

they hoped the bombs would wait until they got home.

“Passport,” the Chinese officer said again. Wells reached into his bag and

handed it over. The officer flipped through it nonchalantly. “Out.” As Wells

unfolded himself from the cab, the officer walked off, passport in hand,

disappearing into a windowiess black van behind the jeeps. Wells leaned

against the cab and waited. A few minutes later, an older officer in a pressed

ereen uniform stepped out of the van and waved him over.

“You speak Chinese?” He looked up at Wells, his chin jutting out, his

face square and unfriendly.

“No, sir.”

“Of course not. First trip to China?”

“Yes.”

“Why you come now?”

"There's a computer conference starting tomorrow. I'm looking to hire

some programmers—"

The officer held up his hand. Enough. “How long you staying?”

“Five days.”

“You doing anything for United States this trip?”

“I don't understand.”

"You don't understand? I'm asking you if anyone in America told you to

report back on what you see here,“ the officer said. ”Military preparations."

Wells raised his hands defensively. “No, no. I'm a businessman.”

"If someone did, it's better to tell now. We put you on a plane, send you

home."

“Nothing like that.”

“This bad time for Americans in China,” the colonel said to him. "Be

careful. If we catch you by military base—" He left the threat unfinished,

handed Wells back his passport, and waved the cab through.

* MINUTE LATER WELLS WALKED through the hotel's big glass doors and felt

whipsawed again. A giant pot of fresh-cut orchids and tulips sat on a

marble table near the front door, filling the lobby with fragrance. The air

was cool and calm, the doormen brisk and efficient. At the front desk, a

smiling concierge upgraded him to a suite, telling him that cancellations

had left the hotel empty.

And finally, Wells lay on his bed, hands folded behind his head, watching

CNN International play silently on the flat-panel television, constant up-

dates on “The China Crisis” scrolling across the bottom of the screen, ac-l

companied by stock footage of F-14s soaring off an aircraft carrier. The

correspondents were doing their best to manufacture news, though not:

much had changed since Wells took off from San Francisco.

Following the sinking of the fishing boat by the Decatur, China had

ordered the United States to pull all its vessels at least 1,000 kilometers__

620 miles—from the Chinese coast. The Chinese had also threatened to

blockade Taiwan, and even made noise about dumping their trillion-dollar

foreign reserve, a move that would send the dollar's value plunging and put

the United States into recession. In response, the United States insisted that

China needed to end its support for Iran and stop threatening Taiwan

before it would even consider pulling back. America also warned China not

to “play games with the world economy.” The sinking was an accident and

shouldn't impact the broader crisis, the White House said.

Wells closed his eyes and heard the hotel's thick windows rattle as

fighter jets rumbled in the distance. He supposed Exley and Shafer were

right. He shouldn't have come. He was meeting a man he'd never seen or,

even spoken with, a man who might already have been doubled. He was

here on a contingency plan that was a decade old and that no one had ever

expected to use. At best, this trip was the equivalent of heading out for a

three-day backcountry hike in March without a backpack or even a com-]

pass. If nothing went wrong, he might get home with a touch of frostbite

and an empty stomach. But he had no margin for error. And, of course, in

Cao Se had been doubled and the Chinese knew he was coming, he was as

good as dead already.

His actual instructions for the meeting were simple. Since Cao dicin t

know how to recognize or reach him, he was using what the agency called a

2-F protocol. Fixed location, fixed time. Essentially, Wells would show up at

the meeting point and follow the instructions of whoever met him. Ideally,

Cao Se would be waiting. More likely he would be greeted by a courier, by

the police, or no one at all. If nobody showed up, Wells had no backup spot.

He was simply supposed to return to the meeting point an hour later, then

once more the following day. If Cao didn't show by the third meeting, Wells

would leave—assuming the flights between China and the United States

were still running. The embassy and station chief had no idea he was here,

of course. The agency assumed that the mole had compromised all its net-

works in China. Wells had to come in alone to have any chance of staying

clandestine.

Wells flicked off the television and lay on the floor. The opulence of the

suite made him uncomfortable. He didn't like having his bags carried, or

fancy soap and shampoo in the marble bathroom. Strange but true: he'd

rather be on a cot in Afghanistan. The room's luxury made the danger of

the mission seem less real. What could possibly go wrong inside a five-star

hotel? Would he choke to death on an undercooked steak?

Wells supposed his uneasiness here proved he was a less than perfect spy.

A true master could fit in everywhere, from a Siberian prison camp to a Des

Moines mall to a Brazilian beach. That was the theory, anyway. Wells had

his doubts such an animal existed in real life. A spy who could infiltrate an

Iraqi insurgent network probably didn't have much in common with one

who could talk his way into a private casino in Moscow.

Wells shucked his clothes, padded into the bathroom, turned on the

shower. No low-flow showerheads here, and no waiting for the water to

heat up. He had to admit that staying at a five-star hotel had some

advantages.

AT THE HEIGHT OF CHINA'S tensions with the Soviet Union in the 1960s, Mao

had ordered the building of a bunker under Zhongnanhai capable of sur-

viving a direct hit from a nuclear warhead. The vault had been expanded

over the years. It was now a miniature background city, sprawling across

six acres, with its own electrical supply, food stocks, even a seven-room

hospital.

But the bunker's newest and most technically advanced room was the

strategic-operations center that the People's Liberation Army had opened

just six months before. A room 150 feet square, the operations center was

more advanced than the White House Situation Room or the Air Force's

NORAD facility inside Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado. Video feeds al-

lowed the PLA's generals to watch takeoffs and landings at China's air bases

in real time. Secure fiber-optic links connected them with the silos that

housed China's nuclear arsenal. One wall was devoted to a giant digital map

of the eastern Pacific that offered an integrated view of the positions of the

Chinese and enemy fleets.

The room was crowded but not claustrophobic, thanks to its twenty-

foot-high ceilings, and surprisingly quiet. Its humming hard drives and

clicking keyboards provided background music that was as soothing in its

own way as ocean waves, and as unceasing. All the while, information

moved up the chain of command, orders back down. They met at a raised

platform in the center of the room, where Li stood, reading a message from

the Xian.

When he was done, Li turned to the wall-sized map of the Pacific.

“Highlight the Xian and the target,” he said to Captain Juo, the com-

mander of the center's Eastern Pacific Defense Unit.

“Yes, sir.” Juo tapped his keyboard, and suddenly two lights began to

blink on the screen, a red circle indicating the Xian, and a green square for

the target.

“How accurate are these positions?”

"For the Xian, we're estimating based on its last known position

forty-five minutes ago. For the target, we're accurate to fifty meters. We're

watching it in real time with the Yao 2"—a new recon satellite that the PLA

had named after the Houston Rockets center.

“So we know the enemy's location better than our own ship.”

“That's correct, General.”

The paradox of submarine warfare. The Xian could communicate only

irregularly with its commanders, lest it betray itself to the Americans. But

China's satellites could track enemy ships with ease.

“And when does the Xian next report?”

“At 0100, sir.”

“How confident are you in your identification of the target?”

“I've looked at the photographs personally, General.”

“And you're certain.” Li wanted to hear the captain say the words.

“I'm certain, sir.”

Li put a hand on Cao's elbow and guided him out of the captain's ear-

shot. “What do you think, Cao?”

Cao's lips barely moved. He spoke so quietly that Li had to bend in to

hear him. "I think we should wait. I also think that what I think doesn't

matter. You've decided."

“And you're right.” Li turned to Juo. "Captain, I won't be here when the

Xian reports in next. But here's the message that I'd like you to send."

THE PEN SPUN OVER the sketch pad, leaving behind a tiny blurred city of

palaces and cathedrals. Cao had never visited Paris, but he'd seen pictures.

Sketching cleared his mind, helped him think. He threw in a couple of gar-

goyles atop a cathedral that might have been Notre Dame and eyed what

he'd done. Not his best work.

He shoved the pad aside and stared out at the Beijing sky, tapping his

pen on the plastic stump of his lower left leg. Midnight had come and

gone, but the sky was more white than black, the lights of the city reflecting

off clouds and smog, turning night into a perpetual half-dawn.

Cao lived in a four-room apartment in an Army compound near Zhong-

nanhai. His place was simple and spare, decorated in traditional Chinese

style. Scrolls hung from the walls, long rice paper sheets covered with

stylized characters in thick black ink. As a senior officer, Cao could have had

a much bigger apartment if he'd wanted. But he preferred this space. With

no family, he'd be lonely in anything bigger. Besides, he spent most of

his time visiting bases and traveling with Li.

Normally, the apartment was calm and quiet, protected by the com-

pound's high walls, an oasis in the center of Beijing's tumult. But today Cao

heard the rumbling of helicopters over Tiananmen. The last time the square

had been this crowded had been 1989. Back then, Cao wondered if the

Party's leaders would survive. But he'd underestimated their ability to hold

power. This time the masses had filled Tiananmen to challenge America.

But what would they do if they discovered they were being used in a power

struggle?

“The choice of heaven is shown in the conduct of men.” The proverb

dated from the fourth century B.C., from Mencius, a follower of Confucius.

But what was heaven's choice now? Cao clasped his hands, closed his eyes

and asked God to help him understand. In 1991, on a trip to Singapore fo

a regional defense conference, Cao had overheard singing from a block

concrete building that turned out to be a church.

He'd never even seen the inside of a church before, but the joy in th

voices he heard drew him in. Cao was hooked immediately. To this day h

couldn't explain why, not even to himself. On his next trip to the church

he secretly converted, dunking himself in a bathtub and accepting that he'c

been born again. His Christian name was Luke.

Cao was hardly alone in his faith. Protestant and Catholic missionarie

had been active in China since the nineteenth century, and millions of Chris-

tians were scattered across China. They were tolerated, but not encouraged.

The government saw Christianity as a source of trouble, a possible rival to

its power. As far as the men of Zhongnanhai were concerned, Communism

and nationalism were the only acceptable faiths in the People's Republic.

Cao could never have become a senior PLA officer if he'd declared his faith

openly. Even Li wouldn't have stood by him.

So Cao had hidden his faith. Every couple of months, he found his way

to a restaurant in southeast Beijing owned by Wei Po, a heavyset man in

his late fifties. Wei had been a Christian even longer than Cao, since the

mid-1980s. But most of the time, Cao prayed at home. As a senior officer,

he didn't have to worry that his quarters would be searched. Even so, he

locked his cross and Bible in a drawer in his desk. He took them out now,

running his fingers around the cross, trying to think his way out of the

dilemma he faced.

Cao had been stunned when Li told him that the Second Directorate

had discovered a traitor's message to the embassy. He hadn't imagined the

Americans could be so corrupt. The meeting he'd asked for was supposed

to take place in just a few hours, not far from here. And he knew that Li's

men would be watching. The army's internal security force was tracking

every American who'd come to Beijing in the last week, especially anyone

traveling alone who had requested an expedited visa. Only about forty-five

people fit that profile in all of Beijing, Cao knew. Of course, the CIA could

have turned instead to a foreign service, but Cao thought that the Ameri-

cans wouldn't take that chance on a mission this sensitive. No, whoever

showed up at the meeting would be an American, and he'd be under sur-

veillance.

But if Cao didn't show, he'd miss his only chance for contact. The Amer-

icans couldn't reach him. And with the embassy compromised, he effectively

had no way to reach them either. After a decade underground, he no longer

had active dead drops or signal sites, which was the reason that he'd been

forced to send his coded message directly to the embassy.

Cao could also try to get inside the American embassy and ask for asy-

lum. But Li had anticipated that possibility. Chinese police had surrounded

the embassy grounds, claiming their cordon was necessary to protect the

Americans inside “from the passions of the Chinese people.”

Even if Cao did get inside, he'd have forfeited his chance to stop Li. There

had to be a way to break Li's hold on the Standing Committee, but Cao

hadn't figured it out yet.

Since the war in Vietnam, Cao had considered Li his closest friend. He

knew the relationship had been one-sided. Li was tall, handsome, smart.

The picture of an officer. Cao was short, his leg a stump, a plodder rather

than a philosopher. As they'd risen through the ranks together, other

officers had called Li and Cao the “Big and Little Brothers,” as well as other

less friendly names.

But Cao had never cared. He'd been proud to call Li his friend. "A man

should choose a friend who is better than himself," the proverb went. Cao

had never forgotten how Li saved his life in Vietnam. And Li didn't steal or

take bribes, unlike so many officers.

Yet the Devil knew every man's weakness, Cao thought. Li lusted for

power the way lesser men chased money. Now that hunger had eaten

him up. Perhaps Cao should have tried to stop him sooner. But at first he

hadn't understood what Li planned. Later he'd figured that Li couldn't

possibly succeed, that the others on the Standing Committee would

block him.

But Li had proven them all wrong. He'd manipulated the Iranians, the

Americans, even the protesters who filled Beijing's wide avenues. The con-

frontation between Beijing and Washington was nearly out of control.

The liberals inside Zhongnanhai wanted to back off, but they couldn't,

not without seeming weak, not after the way the American destroyer had

sunk the Chinese trawler. China needed revenge. But whatever Li had told

the committee, the Chinese retaliation wouldn't end the confrontation,

Cao thought. The Americans would want their own retribution. At best,

tit-for-tat provocations would go on for months. The Americans would

blockade Shanghai. China would dump its dollar reserves or fire missiles

over Taiwan. Finally both sides would tire of the phony war and turn to the

United Nations as cover for a deal.

And at worst? At worst, the two sides would miscalculate each other's

seriousness. The attacks would get more and more deadly, until nuclear-j

tipped missiles went soaring over the Pacific. "A sea of glass mingled with fire,

John had written in Revelation 15. Nuclear war. The ultimate sin, Cao thought

Man choosing to bring the end of days, a choice that was God's alone.

Even assassinating Li—something Cao knew he could never do anyway—

wouldn't defuse the crisis. Others within the government would take up the

fight, seeing, as Li had, that confrontation with the United States was a path

to power. Only by finding a way to discredit Li totally could Cao turn back the

clock.

And so, in desperation, Cao had reached out to his old allies at the CIA.

He didn't expect they would have any answers. But at least he wanted them

to understand that not everyone in Zhongnanhai wanted confrontation.

And he thought they should understand exactly what had happened with

the mole and with Wen Shubai, the defector.

YET HE WONDERED if he would be able to betray Li when the moment came,

or if in the end his nerve would fail and he'd stay silent. In the last two

weeks, he had suffered the same nightmare a dozen times. He marched next

to Li on a muddy Vietnamese road as snipers decimated their company. The

screams of the wounded raced inside his head. Step by step he neared the

mine that he knew would tear off his leg. He tried to turn away but couldn't.

But when the explosion came, he felt no pain. He looked down and saw his

body was undamaged. Instead it was Li who writhed helplessly on the dirt

beside him, his leg torn in half. Li opened his mouth to speak. And though

Cao always woke before Li said a word, he knew that Li meant to call him

Judas, to accuse him of the ultimate betrayal.

He was actually relieved each night when he touched his withered leg

and found that nothing had changed.

But he couldn't allow his friendship with Li to stop him from doing

what he had to do. He wasn't Judas, and Li... Li wasn't Jesus. He needed

to focus, to figure out how to meet the American agent without betraying

himself. He flipped open his Bible, then shut it irritably. The answer wouldn't

be found in there.

Then he looked at the book again.

Unless it would.

As the plan filled his mind, Cao slid the Bible back into his desk.

The idea was a long shot, and he would have to trust in the endurance

of this American, this American he'd never met. But he had no other

options.

Ten minutes later Cao was in his jeep, navigating through the night

heading east. Armored jeeps and paddy wagons blocked the entrance to

Tiananmen, but when the soldiers manning the blockade saw the stars

on Cao's uniform, their scowls turned to salutes and they waved him

through.

To the east of Tiananmen, the traffic picked up again, and the city turned

bright and shiny. This stretch of road was Beijing's answer to Fifth Avenue,

chockablock with stores that sold thousand-dollar handbags to China's

elite. Cao passed a Ferrari dealership, low-slung yellow cars glowing under

the lights. A Ferrari dealership. Less than a mile from Tiananmen. While all

over China farmers and factory workers scrambled to eat. Perhaps Li was

right after all. Perhaps China needed him in charge.

No. Even if Li was right, he couldn't be allowed to take such insane risks.

Cao pushed the pedal to the floor. He didn't have much time.

WELLS DIALED A NUMBER he'd never called before, a 415 area code. Exley an-

swered on the first ring. “Hello?”

“Jennifer?”

“Jim.” His cover name sounded strange in her mouth. She kept her voice

steady, but still he could hear the tension. “Was your flight okay?” In the

background he heard CNN.

“Everything's fine. The hotel's great. Might as well be Paris.” Wells

wanted to keep this conversation as banal as possible. No doubt the Chi-

nese were monitoring every phone call into and out of the St. Regis tonight.

“What time is it there?”

"Two a.m. But I'm wide awake. Jet lag. Is anything happening? Anything

I should know about?" This would be her only chance to tell him if his cover

was blown.

“No. The kids are fine. Everyone misses you.” An all-clear, or as close as

he would get.

“Tell them I miss them too. How's my niece?”

“Still hasn't called. Your brother's worried sick.” So the mole was still gone.

"Well, tell him not to worry. Listen, honey, this call's costing a fortune,

so ... I just wanted to check in, say I love you."

“I love you too, honey. Stay safe, huh? You're on your own this time.” A

reference to the way she'd saved him in New York. Her voice cracked, and

before he could say anything else, she hung up.

“SIR.” THE CONCIERGE, A SMALL MAN in a three-button suit, waved frantically

as Wells strode toward the St. Regis's front door. "Good morning, sir.

A moment, please. We are asked to give this to our American guests."

The concierge handed Wells a paper embossed with the State Depart-

ment's logo and headlined “Notice to Americans.”

"Last night the U.S. consulate in Guangzhou was informed that an Ameri-

can couple visiting China for an adoption had been attacked. The incident was

apparently motivated by anger at deteriorating American-Chinese relations.

Bureaucrats and diplomats loved the word incident, Wells thought. It avoided

touchy issues, like what had really happened and who was to blame.

"So far this incident appears isolated. However, U.S. citizens should keep

a low profile and avoid anti-American demonstrations“—good call—”and'

large groups of Chinese." With 1.5 billion people in the country, that might

be tough. "The situation is fluid and updates will be issued as conditions

warrant."

“Maybe you stay in the hotel today, sir,” the concierge said.

“And miss my chance to see Beijing?”

“WHERE TO, SIR?”

“Tiananmen Square.”

The St. Regis doorman looked unhappy. "No cars in Tiananmen to-

day, sir."

“Just have him get as close as he can. I want to see the Forbidden City”—

the former Chinese imperial palace, north of Tiananmen. "Forbidden City

is open, right?" It better be, Wells thought. He was supposed to meet Cao Se

there.

“Yes.” The doorman waved a taxi forward, but his frown didn't disap-

pear, not even after he palmed Wells's tip.

Wells wasn't surprised to see that the cabbie had a soldier's close-cropped

hair. Everyone who left the St. Regis today would be watched. He'd have to

assume that Cao had planned for the surveillance. Trying too hard to ditch

his watchers would only draw more attention. Though if he could lose them

without seeming to work at it, he would.

“So what do you think about this mess?” Wells said to the cabbie. "I

think we'll work it out. In two years it'll be like it never happened." Jim

Wilson was an optimist. Wells wasn't so sure.

“No English.”

"Oh. Not that many Chinese speak English, I'm noticing. Course, I don't

speak any Chinese, so there it is. The language of the future, everyone says."

The driver just shrugged.

As they moved west toward Tiananmen, the traffic slowed to a standstill.

Ahead the road was blocked and police were diverting cars off the avenue.

Around them a steady flow of Chinese walked west. Wells saw his chance.

He handed a hundred-yuan note to the driver and popped out, ignoring the

cabbie's sputtering.

Wells picked his way through the soot-belching trucks, packed mini-

buses, and shiny black Mercedes limousines jammed together on the wide

avenue. The sweet smell of benzene mixed with the stink of unburned

diesel. He joined the Chinese heading west on the sidewalk, following the

human current toward Tiananmen, and peeked back at the cab. The driver

had a radio to his mouth, no doubt warning other agents to watch for

Wells. Which wouldn't be easy in this crowd. Mostly men, they had the

same buoyant mood he'd sensed the day before. They waved Chinese flags

and didn't seem to mind having Wells among them. Two men traded a

camera back and forth, snapping pictures, holding their hands high in a

V-for-victory salute. Though Wells knew from his years in Afghanistan that

under the wrong circumstances a crowd like this could become a mob in

seconds.

He felt a tug on his elbow. “American?” A tall man in a fraying blue

sweatshirt pointed an angry finger at him.

“Canada,” Wells said. No need to start a riot. He was taking enough risks

today. His questioner pushed by and was swallowed in the crowd. After the

next intersection the road was clear. Men surged onto the pavement. Police

clustered around cruisers and paddy wagons, watching for trouble but not

interfering with the flow.

Farther on, a herd of television trucks sat close together, Chinese

channels that Wells didn't recognize, along with CNN, Fox, BBC, NHK,

The whole world is watching. A company-sized detachment of soldiers

massed near the trucks, to protect the reporters, or maybe to intimidate

them.

For ordinary Chinese—and their rulers—this moment had to be thrill-

ing and frightening, Wells thought. Every person in this crowd was both

a spectator and a participant in the action. They wanted to remind the

world, and themselves, of that most easily forgotten fact: that they existed.

Wells half expected to see Gadsden flags—the yellow banners flown by

colonists during the Revolutionary War, emblazoned with a coiled rattle-

snake and the words “Don't Tread on Me.” The crowd was delivering that

message to America. But their rulers in Zhongnanhai would have to hear

it too.

And yet... after the Tiananmen massacre of 1989, ordinary Chinese

had given up politics and focused on the economy. Maybe this demonstra-

tion, big as it was, would be forgotten in a few weeks. Or maybe—

“Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about,” Wells murmured. He'd

been in China not even twenty-four hours, didn't speak the language, and

now was forecasting the country's future. Classic American arrogance. He

ought to spend less time making predictions, more time figuring out if

anyone was watching him.

PAST THE TELEVISION TRUCKS, the crowd quickened. They were close now.

Just ahead the avenue opened into Tiananmen like a river pouring into a

lake, and Wells saw the astonishing breadth of the square. He'd expected

something like the Washington Mall. A manicured space, carefully main-

tained. Instead Tiananmen was a fixer-upper, a hole in the middle of a giant

city, all the more powerful for its rawness.

From its northeast corner, where Wells had walked in, Tiananmen

stretched south a half-mile, west a quarter-mile. The thick red walls of the

Forbidden City marked its north side. The hall housing Mao's body sat in

the southern half of the square, behind a tall granite obelisk, a smaller

version of the Washington Monument.

As Wells oriented himself, protesters flooded by, joining the hundreds of

thousands of people already huddled in the center of Tiananmen. Shouts

came in bursts from the loudspeakers around the square. Warnings or

exhortations to the crowd? Wells didn't know. There was so much he didn't

know today. All his life he'd felt privileged, and sometimes cursed, by what

he'd been allowed to see. But he had never, not even on his first day in

Afghanistan, been so much of an outsider. He was in the eye of a human

hurricane, watching a maelstrom whose physics were beyond his under-

standing, a force of nature uninterested in him, yet with the power to tear

him apart.

THE SECURITY FORCES HAD LEFT the center of Tiananmen to the protesters.

But at the northwest corner, where an avenue led toward the Zhongnanhai

leadership compound, a green wall of soldiers stood shoulder to shoulder

before a phalanx of armored personnel carriers. Hundreds more soldiers

blocked the entrance to the Forbidden City, where a giant banner of Mao

hung from the outer wall of the palace.

Wells turned right, toward the banner, where the police had opened a

path for any tourists brave or dumb enough to come to the Forbidden City

today. An archway cut through the outer palace wall, directly under the

portrait of Mao. This was the Gate of Heavenly Peace, the southern entrance

to the palace complex.

And as Wells walked through the gate, it lived up to its name. The crackle

of the Tiananmen loudspeakers faded away. “Open?” Wells asked the sweet-

faced girl inside the ticket booth. He still couldn't quite believe it. But she

nodded.

As she handed him a ticket, a man grabbed his elbow. "You American? I

student. Beijing University. Name is Sun."

“Sure you are,” Wells said. Cops looked the same everywhere. This guy

could have been the brother of the cabbie Wells had ditched two hours

before. His shoes—black lace-up boots—were polished. Had any student

anywhere ever polished his shoes?

“I take you,” Sun said. “Practice my English. Free.”

“I'll pass. I'm kind of antisocial.” Wells held up the audio guide, which,

weirdly, was narrated by Roger Moore. "Besides, I got the tour and every-

thing."

Wells handed over his ticket to the guard and walked through the front

entrance. When he looked back, he wasn't surprised to see Sun about a

hundred feet behind, conspicuously tailing him. What would Jim Wilson

do? Wells turned around.

"This is my only day sightseeing and I don't know why you're bother-

ing me."

“Not bothering,” Sun said. "Just watching out. Not good day for Ameri-

can here."

“So I'm told.”

But Wells decided not to argue further. It was only 9:45 a.m., and the

meet was supposed to be at noon, so he had two hours to lose this guy-

He wandered through the palace, doing his best impression of a half-

bored, half-awed American tourist. Which wasn't difficult. The Forbidden

City wasn't a European-style palace like Versailles, a mansion filled with

decorated rooms. Instead, the complex consisted of empty courtyards

divided by ceremonial halls. The Hall of Complete Harmony. The Hall

of Preserving Harmony. The Hall of Supreme Harmony. The emperors

had been big on harmony. They wouldn't have been happy today, Wells

thought.

To the north, the inner palace held the emperor's living quarters,

elaborately carved wooden pavilions, painted deep red to symbolize the

emperor's power. The average Chinese had been barred from the complex

on pain of death—hence the palace's name. But over the years, the palace

had been ransacked so many times that today its buildings were mostly

empty. Without Roger Moore to guide him, Wells wouldn't have known

what he was seeing.

Besides the audio tour, he'd brought his own pocket-sized guide to the

Forbidden City. He thumbed through it as Sun trailed behind, the world's

slowest chase. Wells shooed him off a couple times, to no effect. The com-

plex got slightly busier as the morning went on. At 11:00, a dozen nervous-

looking American tourists walked past, watched by two bored police officers.

Wells guessed they'd come through the palace's northern gate, not the

Tiananmen entrance. He wondered what they were making of this. Joe and

Phyllis from Sacramento probably hadn't expected war when they signed

up for seven nights in China.

Finally, at 11:45, in the northwestern corner of the palace complex,

where narrow cobblestone corridors connected irregularly shaped court-

yards, Wells found a way to lose Sun. He reminded himself not to run.

Wells ducked through a group of Japanese sightseers and into a wooden

pavilion housing a display of court costumes. As the Japanese clustered at

the entrance, blocking Sun for a precious few seconds, Wells jogged through

the pavilion and hopped over a railing into an alley, then sprinted along the

side of the building. Thirty yards down, the building ended and the alley

formed a T-intersection with another pathway. Wells swung right, ran a few

feet along the pavilion, then hopped over another railing and back inside

the building.

He flattened himself against a display case and peeked out. Sun reached

the intersection, panting. He twisted left and right, looking for Wells. Fi-

nally he trotted left, toward the center of the complex. Perfect. Wells waited

a few seconds more, then walked out the pavilion's front entrance. He felt

as though he'd rid himself of a piece of gum stuck to his shoe. Losing Sun

wouldn't matter if the cops were watching the meeting site, but Wells was

glad to be rid of the guy anyway.

He made his way into the palace's northeast corner, a quiet area filled

with narrow pavilions and gardens. Over the years, emperors had competed

to build the most beautiful spaces, adding narrow cypress trees whose

bodies twisted like flames and the Buddhist rock gardens more common

in Japan. The meeting with Cao was supposed to happen in a garden

famous for a sculpted piece of rock known as "The Stone That Looks Like

Wood." All morning Wells had wondered if he'd recognize it. But when he i

stepped into the garden where the stone stood, he knew he was in the right

place.

Unfortunately, the stone wasn't the reason.

Until now, Wells had seen no Chinese tourists in the palace today.

Understandable, considering the protests in Tiananmen. But this garden

was the exception. Five Chinese had decided it was a perfect place to relax. I

A young couple sat side by side on a bench, holding hands. Three men in

their early twenties sketched a cypress tree, their hands flying over their

pads.

Why here? Why now? Wells knew. The agents were good, nonchalant,

and yet their nonchalance was a tip-off as obvious as Sun's polished shoes.

Two hours before, when he'd walked through the Gate of Heavenly Peace,

he'd stepped into the open maw of the People's Republic, and yard by yard

he'd slipped into its gullet. The game he'd played with Sun seemed absurdly

childish now.

Maybe Cao had been set up too. Or maybe Shafer and Exley had been

right all along, and Cao was part of the trap. But the bad guys knew about

the meeting for sure. Somewhere nearby a squad of secret police was wait-

ing to arrest him.

Wells kept walking. Turning and running wouldn't help. He had no-

where to go. He might as well see who showed up. He stopped beside

the stone that looked like wood. It did, too, like a piece of flotsam sculpted

smooth by waves. Wells checked his watch—12:00. In a minute, or two, he

would walk on, casually, leave the garden. Then—

“Hey, mister!” A kid scuffled into the garden, waving at him. A kid?

Per Cao's instructions, Wells was wearing a green T-shirt, the contact

signal. The kid, also wearing a green shirt, walked over. “Mr. Green,”

he said.

“Is this a joke?” Wells couldn't help himself. Was this part of the setup?

Why didn't they just arrest him?

“You Mr. Green, right? I meet you at stone like wood.” The kid seemed

to be enjoying himself. “I know code word,” he said.

Somewhere over the walls of the courtyard, a man shouted in Chinese.

The students dropped their sketch pads and walked toward him.

“Tell me,” Wells said.

“Ghost.”

“You're crazy, kid.”

“For you.” The kid reached into his pocket for a package hardly bigger

than a pack of Juicy Fruit. A flash drive. He handed it to Wells and ran away.

He didn't get far. The students grabbed him roughly. Then footsteps

clattered behind Wells.

He turned to see two men, the biggest Chinese he'd ever seen, as tall and

muscular as NBA power forwards. They reached for him, wrapped their

meaty hands around him. He didn't try to fight. Another man followed.

And as the power forwards twisted Wells's arms behind his back, the third

man reached into his pocket for a black canvas hood.

“Wait—” Wells said. But the world went black, and around his neck the

string drew tight.

THE DARK BLUE BUOY, ABOUT THE SIZE OF A BASKETBALL, popped to the sur-

face of the East China Sea and fired an electronic burst into the atmosphere.

A fraction of a second later, the Bei, a satellite 22,000 miles overhead, regis-

tered the buoy's electronic signature and responded with an encrypted

transmission of its own.

Just that quickly, the Xian, the newest submarine in China's fleet, was in

contact with its masters onshore—all the while remaining five hundred feet

below the surface of the ocean, connected to the buoy by a fiber-optic cable.

The technology was the most advanced in the world, a generation ahead

of similar systems on American submarines. The Xian could even get

real-time video imagery of ships all over the western Pacific, thanks to a

network of Chinese satellites in low earth orbit that were connected to the

Bei through a control center near Beijing.

Of course, the Xian had to be careful not to stay connected for too long.

The United States monitored Chinese satellites, and after a few seconds,

American signals-intelligence equipment on Guam, Okinawa, and Alaska

could begin to target the buoy's location. To protect itself, the Xian made

contact with the Bei only twice a day.

Still, the satellite link had proven extraordinarily useful, Captain Tong

Pei thought. Especially now, with American ships searching for Chinese

subs. Thanks to the link, the Xian could get orders while staying hidden at

the bottom of the thermocline—a layer of water where the ocean's tem-

perature dropped quickly, distorting sound waves and making the Xian

much harder to find.

Before taking over the Xian, Tong had commanded attack submarines

for almost two decades. He was the most experienced commander in China's

fleet. But he had never commanded a boat remotely like the Xian. And he

had never been on a mission like this one.

Twelve hours before, at 0100, Tong had received his initial orders for this

operation. He expected that the transmission they'd just received would

include the final confirmation. He was glad to have the fail-safe of two

separate orders. He wasn't nervous, not exactly, but what he was about to do

would echo around the world, and he wanted to be sure he wasn't making

a mistake.

THE XIAN WAS THE THIRD of China's new Shanghai-class subs, by far the

most advanced submarines that China had ever built. Until a few years

before, China's armed forces had relied on leaky ships, rusting submarines,

and fighter jets whose design dated from the Korean War. China had

refused to show its weapons to visiting American generals, for fear that they

would sneer at the country's weakness.

These days, China still kept its ships and jets secret. But now the country

wanted to hide its strength. Chinese students studied engineering and soft-

ware and fluid dynamics at the top universities in the United States. Some

stayed in America and made fortunes in Silicon Valley. But most came

home, and more than a few were working for China's navy—whose top

priority was building a submarine that could challenge the American fleet.

China's focus on undersea warfare was pragmatic. Building surface ships

capable of challenging the United States would cost hundreds of billions

of dollars, more than China could afford, at least for now. Even a single

nuclear-powered aircraft carrier was a massively expensive proposition.

No country, not even the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War, had

tried to compete with the United States in aircraft carriers.

But submarines were much cheaper, billions of dollars instead of hun-

dreds of billions. And a lone sub could wreak havoc on an opposing fleet. In

World War II, a single German submarine had sunk forty-seven boats in

less than two years. Of course, the Xian wouldn't sink forty-seven American

ships, but if it scuttled even one it would change the balance of power in the

western Pacific, forcing the Americans to back off China's coast.

Taking out an American boat wouldn't be easy. The American navy had

not been seriously challenged since the Battle of Midway in World War II,

when it decimated the Japanese fleet and started the United States on the

path to victory in the Pacific. The collapse of the Soviet Union had only

lengthened its lead. Its aircraft carriers, destroyers, and nuclear attack sub-

marines were the best in the world.

But if any submarine could successfully break through the American

defenses, it was the Xian. Put into the water just last fall, the Xian was the

most advanced diesel-electric submarine ever built—in China or anywhere

else. Noise-reducing anechoic tiles coated its hull. A seven-blade skewed

propeller enabled it to slice through the water almost silently. Advanced

electric batteries powered it, allowing it to stay underwater for weeks.

Further, the PLA's engineers had greatly improved the Xian's secondary

power source. Besides its batteries, the sub had an "air-independent propul-

sion" system of hydrogen fuel cells. When the batteries and fuel cells ran

together, they could push the Xian to thirty knots in short bursts, almost as

fast as American nuclear subs.

The Chinese had also nearly closed the gap with the electronics and sonar

systems that the U.S. Navy used. The Xian's computers ran noise-filtering i

and noise-recognition software that made the Xian's sonar operators, for

the first time, competitive with those on American submarines. And the

Xian's satellite link meant that it could get regular updates on ships far out-

side its sonar range. The combination meant that the Xian could avoid

the submarines and frigates that formed the outer cordon of American

battle groups and get within torpedo range of the big prizes, the destroy-

ers and cruisers and carriers that were the heart of the United States

fleet.

And at that point the Xian had an even more unpleasant surprise for the

American navy.

INSIDE THE XIAN, Tong read over the order one final time and tucked it

into his pocket. “Retract the buoy,” he murmured to his communica-

tions officer. Then, to his operations officer, "Any change in the target's

direction?"

“No, sir. Still one-eighty at twenty knots”—directly south, toward the

Xian, which was cruising north—"at fifteen knots. Range now seventy

kilometers"—about forty miles.

“Take us to sixty meters”—two hundred feet, in the middle of the

thermocline.

“Yes, sir.” The ops officer tapped the touch screen in front of him a few

times and the Xian began to ascend, so gracefully that Tong could hardly

feel it rise.

“Set us on combat status.”

“Yes, sir.” The officer tapped his screen three more times. All over the

submarine, LCD panels turned from a steady green to a flashing yellow,

warning the Xian's crew that an attack might be imminent and that

silence—always important on a submarine—was more crucial than ever.

“And ready the Typhoons for launch.”

Tong felt the surprise in the room as he spoke. The ops officer paused,

only for a second, before he answered.

“The Typhoons. Yes, sir.”

The control room was nearly silent now. On his control monitor Tong

saw the Xian slowly rise toward the surface: 150 meters ... 140 ... 130 ...

The officers and crew moved precisely, no wasted motion, not even wasted

breath, yet the anticipation in the cramped room was palpable. These men

all knew now what they were about to do. And they were ready.

TWENTY MINUTES LATER TONGS MONITOR briefly flashed red, alerting him that

they were now twenty kilometers—about twelve miles—from the target,

within range of the Typhoons. The Xian carried two of them, Chinese

versions of the Russian VA-111 Shkval.

Though they were called torpedoes, Shkvals were basically short-range

cruise missiles that targeted ships, and the Russians had never been able

to make them work properly. They often outran their guidance systems

and badly missed their targets. They also had an unnerving habit of

swinging back on the subs that launched them. When the Kursk, a Russian

nuclear sub, sank in the Barents Sea in 2000, there were rumors, never

proven, that a malfunctioning Shkval had caused the accident. For what-

ever reason, after the Kursk went down, the Russians stopped trying to

build Shkvals.

Despite those problems, China's admirals had seen the Shkval's poten-

tial as they searched for a weapon that might overcome the American fleet.

At a secret lab outside Shanghai, their naval scientists had spent five years

redesigning the missile's guidance systems and engine. And they'd suc-

ceeded. In tests off Hong Kong in the last two years, the Typhoon had

proven capable of successful launches from as far as twenty-five kilometers

out—about fifteen miles.

But those targets were obsolete oil tankers, not American destroyers

with the most advanced countertorpedo systems in the world. No one in

the Chinese navy really knew how the Typhoon would perform in combat.

They were about to find out, Tong thought.

“Reduce speed to ten knots,” he said.

Yes, sir.

“Do we have final visual confirmation?”

The operations officer tapped his screen again, and there it was, a recon

photo straight from the satellite overhead, time-stamped 12:55, the big gray

boat cutting sturdily through the waves, the photograph's resolution good

enough to reveal the big “73” painted in white on its side.

The DDG-73. The USS Decatur.

Tong admired the precision with which his commanders had calcu-

lated this mission. Despite all China's progress, America still thought

that China was a poor backward nation unworthy of respect. The Deca-

tur had killed twenty-two Chinese, and the United States had not even

apologized.

Today China would have its revenge. The Xian would fire one Typhoon,

enough to cripple the destroyer but not sink it. An eye for an eye, as the

Americans said. And the Americans would learn what they should have

already known, that they needed to treat the People's Republic as an equal.

“Reduce speed to three knots.” The Typhoons had one great weakness.

They could be launched only when the Xian was nearly stopped. But since

the Decatur had no idea that the Xian was in the vicinity, the submarine's

speed hardly mattered.

“Yes, sir.” The Xian slowed perceptibly.

“Prepare to dive to two hundred meters on my command.” Hit or miss,

Tong didn't plan to hang around once he launched. The Americans would

expect him to flee west, to the Chinese coast. Instead he planned to take the

Xian southeast, into the open ocean, and depend on the sub's ability to stay

silent.

The combat center was hushed now, every man looking at Lieutenant

Han, the sub's weapons control officer. Tong nodded to Han. “Fire.”

“Away,” Han said quietly.

The Xian shifted slightly as the Typhoon left its hull. Tong heard—or

maybe just felt—the hum as the underwater missile accelerated away. A

couple of his men gave each other tentative thumbs-up signals, but Tong

didn't even smile. “Now dive,” he said. They would have time later to savor

what they'd done. If they survived.

TWO HUNDRED FEET ABOVE THE XIAN, and ten miles north, Captain Henry

Williams sat in the Decatur's combat information center. He was glad to be

well off the coast, out of range of Chinese captains who might want to

avenge the previous week's accident by trying to ram his ship.

The Navy had finished its preliminary inquiry into the crash. As Williams

had expected, it had found he'd done nothing wrong. Still, the days since

the accident had been difficult. Willams couldn't understand why a bunch

of college students had thought that playing games with an American de-

stroyer would be a good idea.

So now the Decatur was cruising loops in the East China Sea, and Williams

was splitting his time between his ship and the Reagan, where he'd met three

times with the Navy's internal investigators. He'd even lost the pretty LA.

Times reporter, Jackie, who'd gotten bored after a couple days sailing laps and

headed back to the Reagan. Probably for the best, Williams thought glumly.

Neither he nor his men believed they had caused the accident, but killing

twenty-two civilians didn't do wonders for morale. Even in the combat center,

his officers seemed to be moving at three-quarters speed. Maybe he ought to

call a meeting, make sure his men knew they'd done nothing wrong.

The torpedo alarm blared, jolting Williams to full attention. Had to be

false, he thought. No way could a Chinese sub get close enough to launch

on them without being picked up by his sonar operators.

Next to Williams, Lieutenant Umsle, the Decatur's tactical action officer,

was already on his phone. “Sonar's confirming a launch, sir.”

In an instant, the ship's morale became the least of Williams's problems.

“General quarters!” he said. “Immediately!”

A siren rang across the ship. "General quarters! All hands to battle

stations! This is not a drill!"

Umsle listened for a few seconds more before hanging up. "The good news

is we should have plenty of time. It's way out. Twenty thousand meters."

Even a fast torpedo covered only forty-five knots an hour, about 1,300

meters a minute. The Decatur would have at least fifteen minutes for evasive

action, and the fish would probably run out of fuel before it reached the

Decatur. Obviously, the Chinese captain had been so worried that he would

be spotted that he had been afraid to launch from close in.

“Full power to the turbines and hard left,” Williams said. Preserving his

ship was the first priority. Then the Navy could bring its attack subs into the

area and take out the Chinese sub that had been foolish enough to make

this hopeless swipe.

“Yes, sir.” A jolt of power ran through the ship as the engines began to

produce peak power.

Umsle's phone rang again. He listened, then handed Williams the black

handset. “You need to hear this, sir.”

“Sir.” It was Terry Cyrus, the Decatur's sonar chief. "We're getting an

unusual read. The bogey looks like it's running at two hundred fifty knots."

“That can't be right.”

“I know. But it is.”

A Shkval? Those were Russian, and anyway they didn't work.

“You're certain?”

“Certain, sir. The arrays are running perfectly. It's unmistakable.”

“Is it on us?”

“Unclear. It may be a two-stager.” In other words, the missile would slow

once it got close to the Decatur and become a conventional acoustic wake-

homing torpedo.

“Okay. Assuming it's on us, how many minutes to impact?”

“Three.”

Three minutes. “Thank you, chief.” Williams turned to Umsle. "Hail the

XO"—the executive officer, the Decatur's second-in-command, currently

on the bridge—"and tell him to get the damage teams ready for impact in

three minutes. We're not outrunning this thing."

THE NEXT MINUTES SEEMED to pass in a single breath. The torpedo-missile,

whatever it was, closed steadily. It seemed to be running blind, not chang-

ing course to track the Decatur, but that didn't comfort Williams. It surely

would deploy a second guidance system once it got close. Indeed, two miles

from the Decatur, the torpedo surfaced briefly and corrected its course

turning toward the destroyer.

What Williams didn't know was that the Typhoon had a GPS system and

a satellite transceiver that linked it to the Bei overhead, enabling it to home

in on the Decatur effortlessly. The Decatur s towed array, which created a

noisy “wake” capable of confusing a conventional acoustic homing torpedo,

had no chance of stopping the Typhoon.

Once the torpedo corrected its course, Williams accepted the inevita-

ble. Time to focus on saving his men. “Clear the turbine room,” he said to

Umsle. The engine rooms were close to the waterline and filled with heavy

equipment—among the most vulnerable spaces on the ship. "And tell every-

one else to buckle down for impact."

For just a second, Williams let himself pray. Please, God, make it a dud.

It wasn't.

The explosion cut through the destroyer's half-inch-thick steel hull,

tearing a twelve-foot hole just above the waterline. For a few moments,

chaos ruled. The 8,000-ton warship shuddered with the impact, then began

to list. Water roared through the hole in the armored plates, flooding the

turbine room. Eleven sailors died in the explosion, and six others were

swept into the ocean, their bodies never recovered. Fuel poured out of a line

burst by the explosion, setting off two small fires.

Still, Williams was proud of the way his crew and his ship responded

after the explosion. The years of emergency training had paid off. Within

three minutes, the Decatur's firefighting squads had put out the fires, the

most serious threat to the integrity of the ship. Within seven minutes, the

bulkheads were sealed and Williams had his first damage report. And five

minutes after that, the most seriously injured sailors had been evacuated

and were receiving medical attention in the infirmary, awaiting helicopter

transfer to the Reagan.

At that point Williams allowed himself to think for the first time of what

the Chinese had done. The sub was gone. The explosion had damaged the

Decatur's sonar gear, and even if he could find the sub, Williams was in no

position to chase it. Not with his boat crippled, not facing this silent

submarine and mysterious supertorpedo. Already the Navy had begun to

search for the sub, moving a half-dozen surface ships and three attack

submarines toward its last known location. Williams wondered if they'd

find it. It had sure sneaked up on his sonar operators, and they graded

above average every time the Navy tested them. The Chinese had obviously

improved their technology in the last couple of years. The fleet was going

to have to be much more careful out here, Williams knew that much.

He knew something else too. New torpedoes, new sub, new whatever,

the Chinese had made a big mistake today. Did they really think that the

United States wouldn't punish them for what they'd done?

WELLS SNAPPED AWAKE.

And wished he hadn't. Lava burned through his right shoulder, the one

he'd dislocated in Afghanistan. He twisted his head, looking around, trying

to get his bearings. He seemed to be ... he was ... hanging off the ground,

trussed like a pig in a slaughterhouse. His wrists were handcuffed over his

head, dangling from a steel chain attached to the wall behind him. His

ankles were pulled up behind so they were at waist height and attached to

shackles mounted directly to the wall. His knees and shoulders bore all his

weight, and his body tilted forward, over the cement floor. If his arms were

cut loose, he'd slam his head on it before he could get his hands down to

break his fall. He tried to hold himself still; the slightest twitch caused the

pain in his shoulder to spike, tendons catching fire one by one.

Wells looked around the room. His pants, shirt, and shoes and socks sat

neatly in a corner. But they hadn't taken off his black, Halloween-themed

boxers. Exley had tried to switch him to boxer-briefs, promising that they'd

flatter him, her only effort to upgrade his wardrobe. Now he was glad

he'd refused. Though even formfitting shorts might be less ridiculous than

smiling jack-o'-lanterns. Trick or treat indeed. What underwear went best

with torture, anyway? Wells supposed the question was unanswerable. Black

might be good choice. Hide the blood.

A tiny part of him admired the precision of the setup. His captors

could get at his face, his legs, his neck, his everything, without reposition-

ing him. Escape was a fantasy. The shackles were so tight he could hardly feel

his hands and feet. He would be up here until they let him out. Or he died.

THE CELL AROUND HIM wasn't reassuring. Twenty feet square, with only a

couple of battered wooden chairs for furniture. Windowless, of course.

White-tiled walls. The floor stained with dark whorls, remembrance of ago-

nies past. A drain set in the middle of the floor, to ease the disposal of blood

and vomit. A sour smell, half locker room, half slaughterhouse. The only

comforting item was the security camera mounted in a corner, its black-

rimmed lens making slow circuits of the room.

At the end of the cell, a wide steel door with a tiny peephole. But Wells

couldn't hear anything of the world outside. The walls were soundproofed,

he supposed. He had no idea where he was, or even if it was day or night,

though he didn't feel as though much time had passed since his arrest. As

soon as they'd gotten him out of the courtyard, they'd knocked him out

with some kind fast-acting anesthetic. Maybe the same stuff he'd used on

Kowalski's men.

Wells's stomach tightened. Shafer had been right. Cao Se was a treacher-

ous bastard. Or maybe the mole had given Wells up somehow. Either way

the Chinese had known he was coming. Now he would just have to take his

punishment, and stick to his story.

James Wilson. Thirty-seven. His first trip to China. Prunetime.com.

Here to recruit engineers. A three-bedroom split level. Palo Alto. A wife.

Jennifer, a doctor. Two kids, in grade school. Amanda and Jim Jr. Button-

down blue shirts and pressed khakis. Marathons in his spare time. A comp

sci degree from the University of Illinois. The biggest mistake of his life:

passing on a job offer from Google in 2001. Until now, anyway. He didn't

know what he'd done, but this was all a misunderstanding. They had to let

him go.

Would they believe him? No chance, Wells thought. But maybe he could

make them doubt themselves, slow them down. At least notify the embassy

get the diplomats involved.

Wells knew he didn't deserve what was about to happen. And yet he won-

dered if he did. Primordial justice for the killing he'd done over the years. Or

maybe for something more: For the way his country had walked away from

the Geneva Conventions. For Abu Ghraib and the ghost prisoners whose

names the CIA had never given to the Red Cross. For waterboarding and

stun guns and the torture that the lawyers had decided wasn't torture at all.

For the madness that had descended on Iraq since the invasion, the un-

counted men and women and children who'd died because the fools in the

White House told themselves the mission was accomplished back in May

2003. And the soldiers who'd been blown to bits because armchair generals

in the Pentagon thought armored Humvees were a luxury, not a necessity.

For everything that had happened in the lost days since 9/11.

Judge not, lest ye be judged. A stupid, stupid way to think. He wasn't

America, and the agony he was about to face would be real, not metaphori-

cal. And yet Wells clung to the idea that he was due for this, for whatever

happened next.

He didn't know how else to endure it.

THEDOORATTHEFARENOofthe cell slid open, and the two power forwards

who'd grabbed him at Tiananmen walked in. They were dressed for a work-

out, wearing T-shirts and sweatpants. They wore latex gloves and cheap

rubber galoshes and carried identical zippered canvas bags. Metal batons

dangled from belts on their hips.

Three more men followed. Wells recognized them all. The first was the

man who'd put the black hood over his head. He'd seen the other two only

in photographs. They wore PLA uniforms with stars on their collars.

Cao Se. And Li Ping.

Li and Cao stood at the back of the room silently as the third man rum-

maged through a bag he held. Wells tried to understand why Cao was here.

Did he want to see the fool he'd duped? Was his presence intended to signal

Wells that he ought to confess, that the Chinese already knew everything

and it would be pointless not to? But then why not just say that? Why play

this brutal game? Or did Cao want to let Wells know that he wasn't alone,

that Cao was still on the American side and had come to save him?

Maybe, though the odds were long. Anyway, he couldn't possibly find

out unless Li and the others left him and Cao alone. Meanwhile, Wells had

to keep playing the role of terrified American tourist, an act that shouldn't

be too difficult.

“I don't know who you guys think I am, but you're making a mistake,”

Wells said.

No one responded. The third man pulled a black box, slightly bigger

than an eyeglass case, from his bag. He stepped toward Wells and held the

box open so Wells could see what was inside.

A small set of pliers, and three scalpels. The steel blades gleamed under

the lights. Wells's stomach clenched. Use the fear, he thought. Any civilian

in your position would be terrified. “Please don't do this.”

Again the man reached inside his bag. This time he pulled out a

red-painted metal canister that looked like an oversized beer can with a

nozzle attached to the top. He pushed a button on the side of the can. A blue

flame spurted out with a tiny whoosh. A miniature acetylene torch, the kind

welders used for close-in work. The man twisted the nozzle until the flame

glowed a bright blue, three inches long. He clicked off the canister and put

it and the scalpel case on the folding chair.

“I'm telling you. This is a mistake.”

The man reached into the bag once more. This time he held up the flash

drive that the boy had given Wells in Tiananmen. Li Ping stepped quickly

across the cell and in a single fluid motion hit Wells under the ribs, in the

solar plexus once, twice, three times—and then three times more.

Considering his age, Li hit hard, Wells thought. Wells had a boxer's abs, flat

and tough, and the punches themselves didn't hurt all that much. But every

one rolled him side to side in his shackles, sending shots of pain through his

damaged shoulder. Li and the men around him watched him without a word.

They were on another planet, in another universe, one where pain didn't exist.

Li took the flash drive from the man who'd been holding it. "Who gave

this?" he said in broken English.

"A boy. In Tiananmen. This is all a mistake. Please, sir, I don't know who

you are, but you have to help me."

Li spoke in Chinese. “He says, you know very well who he is,” the man

who'd been holding the flash drive said to Wells in English. He spoke with a

heavy Russian accent. "He is head of the People's Liberation Army. He wants

you to know, he doesn't speak much English. So he's going to leave you now.

But he wanted to see you for himself. The American spy who was so foolish

as to come to the Forbidden City on this day."

Li said something more. "And he says it is nothing to him if you live or

die. This is your last chance to tell the truth. If you do, maybe the Chinese

people will show some mercy. If not—" The interrogator shook his head.

“Tell him, I promise, he's making a mistake—”

The interrogator said a few words to Li. “Okay,” Li said in English. "Your

choice." He stepped away. At the door, he turned to Wells and made a throat-

cutting motion. Then he walked out. Cao followed wordlessly.

AS SOON AS THE DOOR CLOSED, the power forward stepped up, but the inter-

rogator waved him back and reached into the bag. Despite himself, despite

everything he'd seen and done, Wells was afraid. He pulled himself back.

Think. Stay calm. They want you to imagine your tortures, to hurt yourself

before they hurt you.

The interrogator lifted a piece of paper from the bag.

“What is your name?”

“Jim Wilson. James Wilson—”

The man shook his head. “Your real name. Please.” The interrogator held

up the paper for Wells. "The reason you're here. The letter your embassy

received last week. The instructions are quite specific. You are to come to

the Forbidden City today. As you did. To wait at the stone that looks like

wood at noon. As you did. And finally, you are to wear a green shirt." The

man pointed at the corner where Wells's shirt lay.

“Coincidence. I swear.”

"Coincidences don't exist in our world. Listen to me. Please. You will

save yourself much torment. You must know we examined the Forbid-

den City very“—with his Russian accent, the word sounded like ”wery"—

"thoroughly today, Mr. Wilson. Twenty-two other Americans. None with

green shirts.“ He held up two fingers. ”Only two visited the stone. Gerry and

Tim Metz. From New York." He held up a Polaroid of a smiling couple, both

in their sixties. “Do they look like spies to you?”

“I don't know what spies look like.”

“Do you know who I am?”

“No, sir.”

"My name is Feng Jianguo. I specialize in these ... discussions. I wish we

could talk like men, solve bit by bit this puzzle of who you are. But General

Li told me I don't have time."

Feng walked to Wells, leaned in, locked his eyes onto Wells.

"Do you understand? I don't have time. And I must know three things.

First, your name. Second, what you were expecting to receive. Third, most

important, the name of the man who you meant to meet."

“I wish I could help.” Again Wells wondered. Was it possible they didn't

know he was here to meet Cao Se? Or were they setting up some larger trap,

something he couldn't see?

"If you are honest. I cannot promise you'll live. Only Li can do that. But

I won't hurt you unnecessarily." He paused. He seemed to sense that he was

losing Wells. "This way, once we start... even after you beg us to stop. As

you will. We won't stop. Once we start, we must be sure we've broken you.

Do you understand, Mr. Wilson?"

“Your English is very good. You give this speech a lot?” Wells said

nothing more.

Feng's face never changed. The silence stretched on. Wells focused on

the heat in his shoulder. He had an insane impulse to twist in his shackles,

amp up the agony for himself before these men did it for him. He restrained

himself. Plenty of pain coming. No need to rush.

Feng shook his head, walked away, shuffled the papers back in the bag.

“A quiet American,” he said. “One of the few. And all the worse for you.”

Feng pulled a black towel from his bag and stepped onto a chair. He

reached up, draped the towel over the closed-circuit camera, making sure

the lens was covered.

The power forwards reached into their pockets and slipped on brass

knuckles, the kind that bridged four fingers at once. They stepped forward

and set themselves on either side of Wells. Feng sat down, pulled a Coke

from his bag. He sipped quietly as he waited for the show to start.

“Ave, Caesar, morituri te salutant,” Wells said under his breath. A bit of

Latin said by the gladiators before they entered the ring: Hail, Caesar, we

who are about to die salute you.

And the torture began.

THE POWER FORWARDS TOOK TURNS. The one on the left began, punching

quickly, hard jabs, right-left-right-left. When he tired, the other took over,'

swinging more slowly but more powerfully, long hooks that crashed into

Wells's stomach and ribs. They stayed off his face.

Wells had a tiny advantage at first from the adrenaline he'd musterec

when Feng was talking. He kept his stomach tight as long as he could, sneak-

ing in breaths when they weren't hitting him. But then his body twisted in

the shackles, and his shoulder popped out. He lost focus for just a seconc

and a jab caught him unready and his abs loosened and the punches crashec

through and then he couldn't breathe—

Black spots filled the room and the demon-men kept punching and he

couldn't breathe God he had never hurt like this too bad he wasn't going to

tell them anything—

Then the severed head of the guerrilla he'd blown apart in Afghanistan

showed up, rolling around like a soccer ball with a face, smirking and

chattering nonsense—

And just as the darkness closed in to give his oxygen-starved brain relief

from its delusions, they stopped hitting him. Cruelty in the guise of kind-

ness. They stepped back and watched him flail, their flat square faces

impassive, like they were watching a lab experiment.

Wells couldn't breathe, couldn't get his diaphragm steady, and then fi-

nally he remembered. The trick was to relax, let the voluntary muscles

go soft and the diaphragm work on its own. He sucked in the room's

stale air and pushed suffocation away. But the agony in his shoulder intensi-

fied as he returned to full consciousness. Wells wondered how long they'd

been hitting him. Five minutes? At most. Five minutes down, an eternity

to go.

They reached side by side into their canvas bags, pulled out water bot-

tles, took a couple of sips each. Bert and Ernie, Wells thought. Or maybe

Ernie and Bert. Just as his breath evened out, Bert nodded at Ernie and they

stepped toward him.

“Round two,” Wells said aloud. "The beatings will continue until morale

improves."

ROUND THREE FOLLOWED, AND ROUND FOUR. The beatings didn't get harder to

take, but they didn't get easier either. The brass knuckles shredded his skin,

exposing his twitching abdominal muscles. Blood dripped from his stom-

ach, blackening the concrete beneath him.

By round five, Bert and Ernie had tired and were cheating. One of Bert's

punches slipped low, catching Wells full in the testicles. Wells screamed, an

inhuman howl, and thrashed against the shackles. Bert and Ernie stepped

back as a pure white light filled Wells's mind—

Bismillah rahmani rahim al hamdulillah—

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us—

English and Arabic, the Quran and the Bible, mixing inside him—

And tears dripping from his eyes, joining the blood on the floor.

STILL THEY DIDN'T STOP.

AFTER THE FIFTH ROUND they stepped back, wringing their hands, giving

Wells a momentary, pointless flash of pleasure. He'd made them work a

little, at least. They'd cracked two, maybe three, of his ribs somewhere along

the way, he wasn't sure when.

They stowed the brass knuckles in their canvas bag, dabbed at their fore-

heads with a little towel that Ernie had brought—an oddly dainty gesture—

and took a long drink of water.

“Snack break, gentlemen?” Wells nearly delirious now. "Like Rodney

King said, can't we all just get along?" They ignored him. He wasn't even

sure they could hear him, wasn't sure he was speaking aloud. "Can I ask

you boys something? Are you partners? Not like Starsky and Hutch, but

partners. Okay, Starsky and Hutch is a bad example, but you see what I'm

saying."

As an answer, Bert and Ernie pulled out their batons.

The change of weapon seemed to suit them. They worked his legs for a

while, mainly his thighs, bringing the steel batons down with gusto. Then

Ernie slammed the baton on Wells's damaged left shoulder, a quick chop.

Wells couldn't help himself. He moaned. Ernie said something in Chinese

to Bert and started to work the shoulder hard. The pain doubled and re-

doubled and redoubled again, all the way to infinity.

Drink this and you 11 grow wings on your feet.

“God,” Wells mumbled. “Please.” He sagged against the shackles. The

worst part was that they probably knew already. Most likely Cao Se had set

him up. He was enduring all this for nothing.

Then the door slid open and Cao walked in.

AS CAO CLOSED THE DOOR, ERNIE TOOK ONE LAST SHOT, bringing his baton

down so hard that Wells's shoulder popped out again and didn't slide back

in. A whole new level of hell. Don't scream. The room whirled, faster and

faster. The severed head of the guerrilla stared at him, not on the floor this

time but directly in front of him. Wells felt his stomach clench and the

room-service eggs he'd eaten that morning at the St. Regis spill out of his

mouth and land in a stinking pile at his feet.

The vomit tasted sour and acrid in his throat, but it brought him back

to reality. Feng moved behind him and unshackled his legs so he could

stand, though his arms remained locked over his head. Ernie and Bert

popped his shoulder back in. The pain eased. A little.

Feng turned to him.

“You see now, Mr. Wilson?” He looked at his watch. "You've been here

three-quarters of an hour. Imagine weeks. Months."

But Wells was no longer listening. He was looking at Cao, trying to

understand if this was the final act in his betrayal. Was Cao working with Li,

or against him?

Cao trotted forward, hobbling a bit on his artificial left leg. He looked

impassively at Wells's flayed stomach and bruised legs.

“Name?” he said in English, heavily accented but recognizable.

Wells closed his eyes. He could hardly stay upright, but if he sagged the

pressure on his shoulder became unbearable.

A finger poked at his abs. “Name?”

“Wilson. Jim Wilson.” Wells coughed, twisted his head, spat a clot of

phlegm, thick and streaked with blood, onto the cell's concrete floor beside

Cao Se's shiny black boots.

“My name Cao Se.” Cao paused. “You understand?”

Wells felt a glimmer of hope. “Yes,” he said. “Maybe.”

“What you tell them?”

“That I'm here on business—” The effort of speaking left Wells ex-

hausted.

“Nothing. You tell nothing.”

“That's right. Nothing.” Cao and Wells speaking their own language

now, one that Feng the interrogator couldn't understand no matter

how closely he listened. So Wells wanted to believe. Feng said some-

thing to Cao, but Cao cut him off and turned back to Wells. A thick scar

ran down the left side of his neck, an old jagged wound. Shrapnel, Wells

thought.

“You American spy. Arrested in Forbidden City.”

“I'm not a spy.”

Cao twisted Wells's head in his strong little hands. Wells met his stare.

“Who? Who you meet there?”

“Nobody.” Wells snapped his head out of Cao's hands, looked at the men

standing behind him. Time to jump. Time to find out which side Cao was

on. "What do you want me to say? I came to meet Chairman Mao. Only he's |

dead. I came to meet you. You. Cao Se. Happy?"

Cao pulled a pistol from his bag, a long black silencer already screwed

onto the barrel. “You confess? You spy?”

“Sure. I confess.”

Cao stepped forward and put the silencer barrel to Wells's temple. Wells

wasn't even afraid, just angry at himself for miscalculating, letting Cao trap

him a second time. They'd played him so perfectly. He'd thought—

But what he thought no longer mattered. He closed his eyes, saw his

head exploding, brains splattering the floor. Exley came to him then, and

Evan—

And Cao fired, three times, the silencer muffling the shots, three quick

quiet pops, pfft pfft pfft, a surprised yelp, then two more shots. Wells heard

it all and knew he was still alive. Again.

HE OPENED HIS EYES. Three men lay on the floor, Bert and Ernie dead, shot

pinpoint between the eyes, Feng still alive, a hole in his face and two in his

chest. He'd gotten a hand up. He moaned, low and tired. But even as Cao

raised the pistol to finish him, a soft death rattle fluttered from his mouth,

the hopeless sound of a balloon deflating, and his chest stilled.

Cao dropped the gun into his bag. He knelt down, careful to keep his

boots clear of the blood pooling on the floor, grabbed a set of keys from

Feng's jacket, unlocked Wells's arms. Wells could hardly stand. He leaned

against a wall, fighting for balance.

“You my prisoner now,” Cao said. “Stay quiet. Understand?”

Wells nodded. Already he was pulling on his pants. Even the light-

est touch of the cloth set his bruised and swollen legs afire. He tried to

put on the green T-shirt but couldn't get his arms over his head. Cours-

ing under the sharp pain of his broken ribs was a deep throbbing bruising

that was getting worse by the minute. He wondered if he was bleeding

internally.

Cao gently pulled Wells's T-shirt over his head. Then he cuffed Wells's

hands behind his back and nudged him forward. They picked their way

through the blood and brains on the floor as carefully as children stepping

over sidewalk cracks. And not for the first time Wells wondered why he'd

been allowed to live, and what price he would pay.

CAO SLID THE CELL DOOR OPEN. Behind it a short corridor ended in another

steel door. Cao punched numbers on a digital keypad until the second door

snapped open. They walked down a concrete hallway to a double set of

gates where a guard sat in civilian clothes. Cao said a few words. The guard

nodded and the gates slid open. As they walked through, Cao pointed to

the cell where Wells had been held, pointed at his watch, said something

sharp. Wells imagined he was warning the guard against entering the cell.

He probably didn't need to explain much. Generals rarely did.

And then they were out, into the Beijing haze. Wells had the strange

sense of being on a movie studio back lot, rounding a corner and traveling

from New York to Paris in a second. He'd figured they were in the belly of a

military base outside the city. Instead they were in the middle of Beijing,

and the nondescript building behind them could have been a cheaply built

elementary school, two stories high and concrete. In fact Wells could hear

children shouting not far away. Only the guardhouse at the front gate and

the razor wire atop the property's outer walls offered a clue to the building's

real purpose.

Cao helped Wells into a jeep. They rolled up to the thick black gate at the

front entrance, and a uniformed soldier jumped out of the guardhouse and

trotted over. He pointed at Wells, but before he could say a word Cao began

to shout. Without understanding a word, Wells knew that Cao was reaming

out the soldier for daring to question him. The soldier turned tail and

pulled the gate open with almost comic speed.

FIVE MINUTES LATER CAO TURNED into an alley and unlocked Wells's cuffs.

“What about the kid who gave me the flash drive?” Before anything else

happened, Wells needed to hear the kid was okay.

“The kid?”

“The boy. In the Forbidden City.”

"Nothing happen. He not know. I give him fifty yuan, tell him he playing

game," Cao said.

Wells bowed his head. He wanted to rest but feared what he would see if

he closed his eyes.

“No other way,” Cao said. "We have spy in your embassy. Know you

coming."

Wells understood. Cao had known that the PLA had intercepted his

message to the embassy. He'd known that whoever the CIA sent would be

arrested at the meeting point. He had no way to warn his contact off or

change the meeting place. But no one would question his presence at the

prison afterward with Li.

Still, Wells couldn't see how he and Cao could possibly escape. As soon

as someone found the bodies in the interrogation room, all of China would

be searching for them. “Why didn't you just defect?” Wells thinking out

loud. He figured his broken ribs gave him the right to ask.

“Didn't know about spy in embassy. Wanted to stay in China.”

“When will they find the men you shot?”

“Two, three hours. I warned the guards, don't go to the room.” Smart.

Cao had bought them some time, Wells thought. But soon enough another

officer would come along with different orders.

“Anyway, things very bad now with America,” Cao said. "We torpedo

Decatur''

“You really must want war.”

“America not understand what happening,” Cao said.

“So tell me.”

In his strained English, Cao explained to Wells what Li had done. How

he'd betrayed the Drafter to the North Koreans, made the deal with the

Iranians, and maneuvered the United States and China closer to war. When

Cao was finished, Wells felt like a treasure hunter who'd drilled through a

mountain to find an empty tomb. But not quite empty. In a corner, a single,

tiny gold figurine. One man? One man had brought the world's two most

powerful nations to the brink of war?

“Why doesn't anyone stop him?” Wells said when Cao was done. "On the

Standing Committee."

"They afraid they look weak. And also, they don't like America telling

China what to do. America should be quiet when China make agreement

with Iran."

“But the defector, Wen Shubai, he said—”

For the first time, Cao raised his voice. "Wen Shubai not real defector! Li

Ping send Wen Shubai to fool you."

“But the mole—Wen gave us enough to catch our mole—” Wells sput-

tered silent. Of course. Keith Robinson had been the bait that Wen had used

to prove his bona fides. Li had known that Robinson's most useful days as a

mole were behind him. He'd told Wen to sacrifice Robinson. That way,

Wen's defection would seem credible.

Then, after Wen had proven his reliability by giving up Keith, he'd

encouraged the United States to confront China—exactly the wrong strat-

egy, one that gave Li Ping the leverage he needed internally to take control.

Give up a pawn to position your forces for a wider attack. The gambit had

worked perfectly. No wonder the agency and the White House hadn't been

able to understand why confronting China had backfired so badly. Li's foes

on the Standing Committee were probably equally bewildered that the

situation had deteriorated so fast. Li had played the United States against

his internal enemies, and vice versa. For the biggest prize in history, the

chance to rule the most populous nation in the world.

“Li want to be Mao,” Cao said.

“To save China.”

“Yes. But China not need saving.” Cao gestured at the prosperous street

behind them. “Li good man, but he not see all this.”

Good man? Wells wasn't so sure, not after the casual way in which Li had

waved a hand across his throat and ordered Wells dead. He says it is nothing

to him whether you live or die. The casual cruelty of a man who had risked

billions of lives in his quest to rule. But they could save that discussion for

later.

“Then what?” he said to Cao. “When he takes over? Does he want war?”

“No war. He think once he take over, he make everything okay.”

“Nice of him.” Wells laughed. A mistake. The agony in his ribs surged

and he bit his tongue to keep from filling the jeep with vomit. He closed

his eyes and tried to be still. Cao squeezed his shoulder until the pain

faded.

“So ... General ...” Wells fought to stay focused, keep the fog away.

“How do we stop him? Can you tell the Standing Committee?”

“Say what to committee? That Li wants power? That I spy for America?”

Wells saw Cao's point. "Then why did you bring me here if you didn't

have anything?"

Cao was silent. Then: “I don't know. I thought—”

Wells fought down his anger. He couldn't spare the energy. He rested a

hand against his wounded ribs and tried to think things through. "The

committee wants to stop Li. Some of them, anyway."

“Yes. Minister Zhang hate him. But he afraid.”

“I understand.” Cao might have stars on his collar, but he wasn't meant

to lead, Wells saw already. He was a born subordinate. Smart and tough. But

unimaginative. "We need proof he's planned this all along. Something they

can see. What did he hide from the committee?"

“Never told them about Wen.”

Wells felt a flash of hope, but it faded. The agency would need time

to prove Wen's defection was fake, and time was just what they didn't have.

“What else?”

The jeep was silent. Wells waited, meanwhile wondering if Cao had an

escape route planned or if they'd be reduced to making a desperate break

for the embassy.

"What else. Li had one other operation. Top secret. Started last year. I set

up the money."

“The funding.”

"Yes. Funding. Said United States would be angry if it knew. Was in

Afghanistan."

Just like that, Wells knew. “You were helping the Taliban.”

“He never told me, but I think so. But no Chinese soldiers.”

“No. Russian special forces.” Wells wondered if Pierre Kowalski had

known all along where his money had come from.

“The account was in Banco Delta Asia” Wells said. “In Macao. Yes?”

Cao didn't hide his surprise. “How you know this?”

“Did he tell you what this was for, Cao?”

“For Iran. All he said.”

Of course. Wells saw the logic of the scheme. The Iranians had worried

that China might walk away from the nukes-for-oil deal. By supporting

the Taliban, Li had convinced Iran he was serious about standing up to

America.

"Cao, those records prove Li has been planning war against America

since last year. And he never told the Standing Committee. If you get them,

we can stop him."

If we live long enough to get them out of China, Wells didn't say. If my

guess is right, and they prove the money went to Kowalski. If the White

House can get them back to Beijing, and to Zhang. And if Zhang can use

them to get control of the committee back from Li.

But first they had to get the records, and get out.

“No war?” Cao said.

“No war.” Maybe.

“Then I get them.”

Cao reversed the jeep onto the road, looking sidelong at Wells as he did.

“What your name? Real name.”

Crazy but true. Cao had saved his life, killed three of his own country-

men to do so, and didn't even know his name. Wells wiped his hand against

his mouth and came away with a pungent coating of dried blood and

vomit. “John Wells.”

“Time Square Wells?”

“Time Square Wells.” Wells wondered if Cao was ready to move to

Florida, live in a witness protection program. No matter what happened

next, this would be his last day in China. "But if we get out, you can call me

Tiananmen Square Wells. When we go to Disney World."

“Disney World? Don't understand.” The jeep hit a bump and Wells

moaned a little.

“Me neither, Cao.”

FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER CAO HONKED his way across four lanes of traffic and

swung into an alley cluttered with wooden crates. A cloud of flies hovered

around a pile of rotten vegetables. Normally the trash would hardly have

bothered Wells, but the beating had left him weak and queasy. His green

T-shirt was black with his blood. His heart was randomly speeding and

slowing—thump, pause, thump, pause, thump-thump-thump-thump. He

figured he was coming down off the adrenaline rush that had carried him

through the immediate aftermath of the beating. Or maybe they'd done

more damage to him than he first thought.

Cao stopped behind a low concrete building with a heavy steel door. The

words “Dumping Home” were painted, in black and in English, on a splin-

tered wooden sign. Dumping Home? Wells wondered if he was delirious,

but when he looked again, the sign hadn't changed.

Cao pointed at the building. “Friends inside. Christians.”

Wells wondered if he should mention his own confused beliefs. Proba-

bly not the time.

Cao honked. The back door creaked open and a man in a dirty chef's

apron jogged over. He and Cao spoke briefly before he nodded and ran

back inside. Cao tapped his watch. Four p.m.

“One hour. If I not back, you go with them. To Yantai—”

“Yantai?” Wells was struck again by how little he knew about this

country.

“Port. Five hundred kilometers from here. Shandong Province.”

Now Wells understood, or thought he did. Shandong Province—the

name literally meant “east of the mountains”—extended into the Yellow

Sea toward the Korean peninsula. They were going to make a run for South

Korea.

“They take you to boat.”

“To Korea?”

“Yes. Korea.” Cao's lips twisted in what could have been a smile. "Make

sure not North Korea." Cao reached into his bag and handed Wells a little

pistol, a .22 snub.

Wells pulled back the slide. It was loaded all right. It was too small and

inaccurate to be useful at more than thirty feet. Still, better than nothing.

Two men emerged from the Dumping Home and trotted to the jeep.

“Rest,” Cao said.

“Good luck, Cao. Way a con Dios.” Wells extended a hand and Cao shook

it awkwardly. Cao reached across Wells and opened his door. The men

helped lift him out, staggering under his weight. Wells could hardly feel the

ground under his feet, as if his legs were encased in ski boots that ran from

ankle to hip. The men guided him to the door, as Cao put the jeep in reverse

and rolled out of the alley.

INSIDE, WELLS FOUND HIMSELF in a busy kitchen. Two women and two teen-j

age boys were making dumplings, their hands flickering over the balls of

dough, shaping and smoothing each one before moving to the next. Wells

understood now. The Dumping Home was a dumpling restaurant.

The men started to let Wells go, but as they did his legs buckled. One of

the women squawked and the men grabbed him and guided him to a store-

room off the kitchen. They sat him down and left. Wells tried to rest, but ii

he closed his eyes for too long the dizziness took him. He focused on the

room around him, looking from shelf to shelf, examining the baskets of

vegetables and spices, the glass jars of green tea.

A couple of minutes later, he wasn't sure how long, the women came in,

carrying a pot of bubbling water, a soup bowl, and a big shopping bag.

Wells watched mutely as they extracted the tools for minor surgery from

the bag: two quart-sized brown plastic bottles, a water bottle, scissors, a

knife, a tube of something that looked like antibacterial cream, a roll of

surgical tape, and a half-dozen clean white cloths. One of the women, tall

and thin, her hair streaked with gray, put a soft hand on his shoulder.

Meanwhile, the other woman, the shorter and stockier of the two,

lifted the bowl of soup to Wells's mouth. He sipped, a few drops at a time.

Chicken stock, with a few mushy carrots. Liquid kindness. His stomach

clenched, but he held it down. He drank as much as he could, maybe

a half-cup, and then shook his head. She nodded and set the bowl aside.

Now the gray-haired woman was cutting off his shirt, careful not to touch

the flayed skin underneath. When she was done, she gasped, one quick

breath. Wells looked down and wished he hadn't. His chest and abs were

skinned raw, and blood was oozing from the wounds. No wonder he

couldn't close his eyes without getting the spins. He had to make sure he

stayed hydrated. If he wasn't careful, the blood loss would put him into

shock.

The gray-haired woman dipped a cloth into the pot of boiling water.

Then she unscrewed the plastic bottles and poured their contents over the

cloth. She held the cloth to his face, giving him a whiff of rubbing alcohol

and hydrogen peroxide. Wells understood. She wanted him to know what

she was about to do. He nodded. She pressed the cloth to his chest.

After the beating he'd endured, the burn of alcohol and peroxide was

barely a pinprick. Wells nodded. The woman seemed to understand. She

pulled away the cloth and poured the rubbing alcohol directly onto his

chest. She wiped him down with a fresh cloth, then rubbed the antibacte-

rial ointment across his chest. She said something to the other woman.

They leaned him forward and slowly they wrapped a long white bandage

around his torso, compressing it tightly. Apparently the gray-haired woman

had decided Wells had a high pain tolerance.

When they were done, his chest and abs were bound in white. Despite

the pressure of the cloth against his broken ribs, Wells felt stronger than he

had just a few minutes before. He reached for the soup and slowly sipped it

until the bowl was empty.

“Good as new,” he said.

FOR THE FIRST TIME since the beatings started, Wells could think clearly

enough to see his next move. He reached into his pockets. There it was. His

new phone, bought five days before and registered to Jim Wilson of Palo

Alto. Still in his pants. He'd debated carrying it today before deciding that

there was no reason an American businessman wouldn't have a phone with

him. Now he was glad he had. Extremely.

He removed the slim Motorola from his pocket, turned it on, saw he

had full service. Thank God for technology. Wells wondered whether the

Chinese had put a bug in the phone, before deciding they probably hadn't.

They'd had no reason to imagine that he would escape.

Anyway, he had to reach Exley now, before the Chinese cut off all com-

munication to the United States. He'd be as quick as he could. Wells called

her cell phone, not the 415 number but her real one, the one she always

carried. Three rings. And then—

“Hello. Hello?” Washington was twelve hours behind, Wells remem-

bered. She must have been asleep, or wishing she were.

“Jennifer.”

“Yes. John.” She'd blown his cover, but he didn't much care. In his name,

he heard all her questions: Where are you? Are you okay?

“Remember where Ted Beck went down, Jenny?” In the Yellow Sea,

southwest of Incheon.

Sure.

“I need a pickup. In that vicinity. Or west. As far west as possible.” Even

if the Chinese were monitoring this call, Wells didn't think they would

understand what he meant.

“When?”

Five hundred kilometers to Yantai, then a boat ride. "Eight to twenty-

four hours. Any longer, I'm in trouble."

“Can you help us find you?” Exley was wondering if he had a transpon-

der or any other equipment to aid the search.

“No. But Red Team”—the standard American military description of

the enemy—“will be looking. Hard.”

“Figured.”

"One more thing. Whatever they're planning, make them wait. No

counterattacks. I know why it happened, all of it. And we can stop it."

“I'll tell them.”

“I love you, Jenny.”

“Love you too, John.” Exley sighed. Even from 6,000 miles away, Wells

knew her tone, sad and prideful at once. “Try not to die.”

Wells hung up and turned off the phone. Now it was up to Exley to find

a way to make the White House and the Pentagon back off for a day or two,

long enough for him and Cao to get out.

The clock on the wall of the storeroom said 4:45. Cao didn't have long.

The guards at the interrogation center would soon defy his orders and break

into the room where Wells had been held. Then he and Cao would be the

most wanted men in China. Before that happened, he and Cao had better

be on their way to Yantai. Though Wells still didn't know how Cao planned

to get them there.

Wells flexed his legs and tried to stand. Nope. He sat down heavily and

the jolt set his ribs on fire. His gray-haired nurse shook a finger at him and

clucked in Chinese. Wells could guess her meaning: Rest. Then the two

women left him, turning off the lights and shutting the door. In the warm

darkness the tang of potatoes and onions surrounded him.

He closed his eyes. His head drooped. But before he slept, he made sure

the .22 was curled in his hand. If Li's men came through the door, he

planned to take as many of them with him as he could.

TWELVE TIME ZONES BEHIND WELLS, Exley pulled on sweatpants and a mostly

clean blouse and walked downstairs to Thirteenth Street, where her security

guards waited in their black Lincolns under the dark predawn sky. The doors

of the front Lincoln opened as she approached, and the guards stepped out.

“Ms. Exley.”

“I need a ride.”

The Lincolns screamed off, a two-car convoy with sirens and flashing

lights. Fifteen minutes later she was knocking on Shafer's door. She hoped

he had some ideas. On the ride over, the reality of the odds that they faced

had hit her. Wells had no transponder, no way to reach them. He hadn't

even told her what kind of ship he'd be on, much less its name. The Yellow

Sea was practically Chinese territory, especially under these circumstances.

How would they possibly find him and get him out?

SHAFER OPENED THE DOOR, BLEARY-EYED. He motioned her inside, down to

his basement, into the laundry room. “Ellis—”

“Wait. I get the house swept every other month but just in case.” He

flicked on the washer and dryer. “Now,” Shafer said.

“John called.”

“Where from?”

“Beijing.” She explained what Wells had told her.

When she was done, Shafer shook his head. “No hint of what he's got?”

“No. Just that he could stop it. We have to talk to Duto.”

"And tell him we need to pull out the stops to save John Wells. This'll be

fun.“ He motioned her upstairs. ”Go home, get dressed. I'll see you in two

hours at Langley."

“Two hours.”

"Nothing we can do before then. He won't get off the coast for several

hours. Besides, no one's going to take us seriously dressed like this." He was

wearing Redskins pajamas, a fact she'd chosen to ignore until now.

“Point taken.”

EXLEY AND SHAFER SAT in a windowless, soundproofed conference room at

Langley, across from Tyson and Vinny Duto. The stress of being director

seemed to be getting to Duto. He was fatter than she remembered, and his

hair—always his pride—had receded, offering hints of scalp. But his eyes

were as hard as ever.

He listened silently as Exley told him and Tyson what Wells had said. No

one spoke when she finished, and for a few seconds the only sound in the

room was the drumming of Duto's fingers against the wooden table.

"So you understand: In the last hour, our satellites have picked up a

major mobilization of Chinese forces. Regular army and paramilitary.

Increasing by the minute. The White House knows." Duto opened a black-

bordered folder. "They're putting roadblocks on the highways and main

secondary roads in and out of Beijing. Military units at the entrances to

every civilian airport. The Friendship Bridge, between China and North

Korea, has been shut."

“Sounds like they haven't found him yet.”

“Unfortunately, we haven't found him either,” Tyson said. "And unless

you and he are connected telepathically, I'm not sure how we're going to.

Since he has no transponder and didn't see fit to give us coordinates. Perhaps

he should have asked for an airlift out of Tiananmen. It might have been

easier."

Exley's ears burned. Wells might be dead and Tyson was cracking jokes? j

Her face must have shown her anger, because Tyson quickly backed off. "I

am only saying that the attack on the Decatur proves the Chinese are acting

recklessly, Ms. Exley. If we move our ships deep into the Yellow Sea, they I

may think that we're intentionally provoking them."

“They've got ten thousand miles of coast. They can't watch it all,” Shafer ]

said. "He gets twelve miles offshore, he's not in territorial waters anymore. I

And there's still heavy traffic in the Yellow Sea. I checked." He held up a j

two-page printout filled with ship names and registry numbers. "All due at I

Incheon today."

“Let me point out something you may not wish to hear,” Tyson said. ]

“Mr. Wells told you we should wait, not do anything stupid.”

“Right, he said he had something—”

Tyson knocked her down. “But he didn't say what.”

“It was an unsecured line.”

"At the same time, he wants us to take an incredibly aggressive action. I

Bit of a contradiction there, wouldn't you say?"

“He wants us to save his life,” Exley said.

“Or perhaps the call was a setup arranged by the Chinese.”

“It was him. I know his voice.”

"What if he's been turned and they're using him to get at us? To move

our ships into a vulnerable position."

“He wouldn't. He'd die first.”

“People do strange things when they're in pain.”

This couldn't be happening, Exley thought. They weren't seriously ar-

guing about whether to let Wells die out there. "Then why are they mobil- ]

izing their army and all the rest?"

“Part of the setup.”

“You don't really think that,” she said. "Save me the mirrors within

mirrors nonsense." Her voice rose, and she reminded herself to stay in con-

trol, not to give them any excuse to marginalize her. "This was your idea,

George. If not for you he wouldn't be in this mess."

“Jennifer,” Duto said. "I don't think we can risk putting our assets

that far forward. Let Wells get to Incheon. At least into Korean territorial

waters."

Shafer laughed, a thin angry laugh.

“Something to say, Ellis?”

Shafer waited until they were all looking at him. Normally, he was a

jumble of tics and wasted motion. Not now. Exley had never seen him

so still.

"Never thought I'd have to play this card, Vinny. I underestimated you.

You sent him there and you'd rather let him die than lift a finger. The craziest

part is, he might actually get us out of this mess."

"We don't know what he has, Ellis, that's the point. I'm not going to

recommend that we put thousands of sailors in harm's way. Maybe push the

Chinese over the edge. To save one man."

“To stop a war.”

“What if he's been turned?”

"Where have I heard this song before? It's not his fault he saved New

York while you tried to arrest him. Get over it.“ Shafer stood. ”Jenny, come

on. Over the river and through the woods. To the president's house we go."

“Ellis—” Duto said.

"Herr Director. This is so simple, even you can understand it. You tell

the president we have a chance to stop this war. You tell him we're going to

go get Wells. Or I will."

"And what do we tell the Chinese when they ask why half our fleet is

twenty miles off their coast?"

“We'll burn that bridge when we come to it.”

“You've forgotten the biggest problem, Ellis,” Tyson said. "We have no

idea how to find Mr. Wells. Are you suggesting we sail in circles and hope he

paddles up on his wooden raft or whatever he'll be on? I assure you the

Navy will dislike that plan, especially with that Chinese supersub still on the

loose."

“I have an idea,” Exley said.

“Do share,” Tyson said.

"You're right. We can't find him. So we're going to have to make it easy

for him to find us."

Exley outlined her plan. Duto was shaking his head before she was half

done. “No way,” he said. “The Air Force will never—”

“They will if the big man tells them to,” Shafer said.

"How do you know Wells is even going to understand what we're

doing?"

“He'll understand,” Exley said.

And suddenly Duto smiled at her, the easy smile of a poker player watch-

ing his opponent make a bluff that was doomed to fail. "You, me, Ellis. We'll

ride over there together. You and Ellis can tell the big man whatever you

like. I don't mind. As long as he knows it's from you."

ASLEEP—

Then awake—

And Wells had the .22 up before he knew where he was. The store-

room. Cao stood in the doorway. He raised his hands as Wells lowered the

pistol.

“You okay, Time Square Wells?”

“Perfect.” Wells coughed. His bandage was still white, at least on the

outside.

Cao tossed Wells a blue zip-up sweatsuit, and Wells tugged it on. His

shoulder was loose in its socket, maybe permanently damaged from the tor-

ture. He took a long drink of lukewarm water to soothe his parched throat.

“Ready?”

Wells tucked the pistol in his waistband and struggled up. He took a few

steps and sagged. Cao's men helped him out of the restaurant. A dirty white

panel truck waited, its engine running. Wooden crates and furniture were

stacked high inside the twenty-five-foot-long cargo compartment.

“You need piss?” Cao waved a fist in front of his crotch. “Go now.”

“I'm okay.”

“Then we go.” Cao stepped into the truck and offered a hand to Wells. At

the forward end of the cargo compartment, behind a big wooden book-

case, was a space maybe three feet wide. Just big enough for two men to sit,

if they didn't mind a little incidental contact. A blanket covered the com-

partment's wooden floor, along with provisions: water bottles, a flashlight,

blankets. A handful of airholes ensured they wouldn't suffocate.

Wells and Cao settled themselves, close enough for Wells to smell the green

tea on Cao's breath. As Cao's men rearranged boxes and furniture to hide the

space, Cao reached into his jacket and handed Wells a manila envelope.

Wells opened it. Three pages of Banco Delta Asia bank records, showing

transfers to UBS accounts in Zurich and Monte Carlo, $20 million a month.

A fourth page covered with Chinese characters and topped with an official-

looking letterhead. Wells wondered if these four pieces of paper could really

stop a war.

Cao pointed to the fourth page. “This from Army.”

“Authorizing the transfers?”

“Authorizing, yes. Says money for special operation.” Cao pointed to a

raised emblem near the bottom. “Li's stamp.”

“I'll take your word for it.”

Wells didn't plan to ask how Cao had gotten the papers. Presumably

he'd just made his final trip inside Zhongnanhai. If Wells hadn't just

seen Cao shoot three of his own soldiers, he might have wondered whether

this was all some superelaborate sting operation designed to prove Wells

was a spy. But the Chinese had no need for an operation that elaborate.

The torture had been working well enough on its own. Cao was a genuine

defector.

Wells tried to give Cao back the papers, but Cao shook his head.

One of Cao's men shouted something. The back panel came down and

they were locked in the dark. Wells hardly minded. After the cave, this truck

was easy. At least they were above ground.

The truck grumbled into gear and reversed down the alley. A few sec-

onds later horns honked, and they were in Beijing's traffic.

“Now we run.” In the dark Cao laughed humorlessly.

“Yeah, tramps like us,” Wells said. He liked Cao very much. Probably

because the man had saved his life. “What about roadblocks?”

“Roadblock?”

Wells couldn't figure out how to explain. “Are they looking for us?”

“Very soon.” Cao lit his watch—6:10. "Maybe twenty minutes. New

officer come, open door. See bodies."

Wells thought he understood. There would be a shift change at the

interrogation center where Wells had been held. The new commander

would insist on seeing the torture room. And once he discovered the bodies,

the hunt would be on.

“But isn't Li Ping wondering where you are?”

"When we leave, I say to Li, let me take care of spy. He trust me. Anyway,

he busy. Special meeting with Standing Committee."

“Must be hard fighting two wars at once.” Wells closed his eyes and tried

to settle himself in the darkness. But he had too many questions. "Cao, who

are these people helping us?"

Cao said nothing for a minute. Then, finally: “Don't know.”

Don't know? Wells waited.

"I tell my pastor last night. About you. He send me these people from his

church. They help when Christians get in trouble, need hiding."

A Christian underground railroad, Wells thought. "Do they know who

we are, the risk they're taking?"

“Yes.”

“But you trust them?”

Again Cao laughed, low and hard. “You have other idea?”

MINUTES LATER THE TRUCK TURNED, accelerated. “Third Ring Road now,”

Cao said.

“We're making good time.”

“Many people stay home now. Scared what America will do.”

And without warning—

The truck scissored down into a pothole. Wells's broken ribs jumped under

the bandage, stabbing from the inside out. The pain in his lungs and stomach

was enormous and didn't fade. Wells bit his lip to keep from screaming.

Thump! Thump! More potholes. Wells braced himself against the side of

the truck, feeling his ribs rattle like pencils in a coffee cup. If he wasn't

bleeding internally already, he would be soon.

To distract himself, he thought of Exley, and their little apartment on

Thirteenth Street, NW. In the utility closet in the front hall, Wells had hung

the letters the president had sent them after they'd stopped the attack on

New York. “You have earned the respect and gratitude of an entire nation ...”

et cetera, et cetera. No one had ever understood him like Exley, Wells

thought. He never had to tell her why the flowery words embarrassed

him. Yes, he was proud of what they had done. But he hated being called

a hero, especially by men who had never shed blood. Let the president

save his soupy words and send his own children off to a battle zone for even

one day.

Wells wondered if he could claim to understand Exley nearly as well

as she understood him. She rarely talked to him about marriage or having

kids. Did she think that having more children would be selfish when she

hardly saw the two she already had? Or was it that she couldn't imagine a

future with him?. Maybe she decided that as much as they loved each other,

they weren't going to get over the finish line.

When he got home, he would ask her to marry him.

If it wasn't too late.

THUMP! The truck bounced again, the hardest jolt yet. Wells couldn't

help himself. He screamed. The blackness around him merged with the

void in his head and down he went.

LATER—HE HAD NO IDEA how long it was—his eyes opened. His stomach was

throbbing and uncomfortably tight. He was bleeding internally now, he was

sure. He raised the water bottle to his lips and sipped, trying to force the

liquid down.

The truck had stopped, its engine silent. Wells heard voices and foot-

steps on gravel. The compartment was totally dark, no light coming through

the airholes. Night had fallen. How long had he been out?

The footsteps crunched to the back of the truck and—

The back panel opened. Cao gripped Wells's leg, a warning to stay silent.

A flashlight shined in, making slow loops around the compartment.

A man's harsh voice, shouting questions.

The replies, soft and deferential.

Then the truck's springs creaked as someone stepped onto the back

bumper.

Wells pulled his snubnose pistol from his waistband, silently dropped

the safety.

The light shined around, closer now.

But not finding their compartment.

And the truck came up on its springs as the man stepped down.

The back panel closed. The doors to the truck's cab opened, slammed

shut. The engine groaned and they were off, slowly at first, then more

quickly.

Only after they reached highway speed did Cao finally speak. “Close.”

“No kidding,” Wells said. “What time is it?”

Cao flicked on his little digital watch and showed it to Wells—9:15. He'd

been asleep at least two hours.

“How much longer?”

Cao shined his flashlight over Wells. “Five hours, maybe. Okay?”

“I'll get by.” Wells coughed a little black clot of blood and phlegm into

his hand. “General, what made you—” Wells stopped, wondering if he was

overreaching. He settled on a more neutral formulation. "Why did you

decide to leave? After all these years."

Cao turned the flashlight to his own face, as if interrogating himself. "Why

I betray General Li, you mean?“ Wells was silent. ”I tried to say once."

“What you thought.”

“What I thought. He never listen.” Cao tapped the flashlight against the

stump of his leg. “Li forget what war is like. I don't forget.”

“Some wars you have to fight,” Wells said.

“Not this one.”

“Not this one.”

THE TRUCK ROLLED ON. The road turned smooth, a blessing, and the com-

partment cooled as the night air rushed in. They were probably taking a

chance on an expressway now, Cao said. The danger had lessened now that

they'd reached Shandong Province.

“But why doesn't Li just shut everything down?” Wells asked. "Put in a

countrywide curfew."

Cao's explanation stretched the limits of his English, but eventually

Wells understood: Li was afraid to tell the Standing Committee that Cao

had defected. Cao was Li's closest aide, so Cao's treachery would reflect

badly on him. Li's opponents might use it to undo Li's grip on power, which

was still tenuous.

But without the approval of the Standing Committee, Li couldn't simply

shut all of China down. So the roads were still open. Li was depending on

roadblocks to catch them, and the Navy if they somehow got to the Yel-

low Sea.

“So there's a window.”

“Yes. Window.”

And with that, Wells closed his eyes uneasily. He tried to imagine what

would happen after he handed the papers over and explained what they

meant. Treasury would connect the Banco Delta Asia accounts with Kowal-

ski's accounts in Zurich and Monte Carlo. The Pentagon would give the

State Department the confession from Sergei, the Russian Spetsnaz that

Wells had captured in the cave.

Then the American ambassador would ask Li's enemies on the Standing

Committee for a secret meeting. There he'd give Minister Zhang the proof

of what Li had done.

Zhang and the rest of the committee would know they had to act. They'd

know that if the United States publicized China's support for the Taliban,

world opinion would turn in America's favor. After all, American soldiers

weren't the only ones fighting the Talibs in Afghanistan. By supporting the

guerrillas, China had committed an act of war against all of NATO.

Zhang wouldn't need much convincing, anyway. He and Li's other ene-

mies on the committee were looking for any excuse to stop Li. This was a

good one. They wouldn't care that it had come from the United States.

For the first time, Wells allowed himself to believe that they might

actually get out of this mess. He pressed his hands together in front of his

face. Here's the church and here's the steeple. Open the door and there's the peo-

ple. He and Exley wouldn't have a church wedding, though. Not a mosque

wedding either. They'd go down to city hall and do it quick and dirty. Ex-

ley liked it quick and dirty....

He knew he was drifting and didn't mind. Drifting made the shooting

pains in his belly easier to take. And so he drifted, dozed, woke, drifted again.

All the while, the truck rolled on. Eventually they left the highway and passed

along a series of narrow switchbacks, rising and falling, not mountains exactly

but certainly good-sized hills. Wells snapped awake as the truck took a turn

too hard, its left rear wheels briefly leaving the pavement.

“Shandong,” Cao said. “Back roads.”

“How long?”

Cao lit his watch—12:45. “One hour, maybe two. No more.”

It was 12:45 p.m. in Washington, Wells thought. The attack on the Deca-

tur had happened about twelve hours before. He wondered whether Exley

had persuaded Duto and the White House to hold off. Surely the presi-

dent would be speaking to the country tonight, and politicians on both

sides would be pushing for action. God. Until now he hadn't even consid-

ered the possibility that they'd make it to South Korea and still be too late.

THEN THE TRUCK SLOWED, HARD, pushing forward on its shocks—

And stopped.

Again the engine went quiet. Again voices shouting in Chinese. Again

the back panel slid up.

But this time two men stepped into the truck. This time the flashlight

searched the compartment much more thoroughly than it had before.

This time the cops smelled something wrong, Wells thought. Maybe the

fact that the truck had two drivers. Maybe the route they were taking,

running back roads in the middle of nowhere at 1:00 a.m. Maybe the cops

were just having a little fun, looking for a television or something to steal.

Whatever it was, these guys weren't giving up until they turned the com-

partment inside out.

Wells wondered how many there were. How many he'd have to kill. A

country roadblock in the middle of the night. Two cops, maybe? Two in the

truck, two out? Four at most.

Now the cops were shouting and throwing furniture out of the back of

the truck as the drivers yelled. Cao leaned forward and whispered to Wells.

“They say, 'You four have no right.' Four. Understand?”

“Four.”

Crash! A couch landed on the ground. The flashlight closed in. Wells

drew his .22, dropped the safety, pulled himself to a squat, braced himself

against the side wall. The empty bookcase scraped sideways and started to

tip. The compartment echoed with shouts in Chinese. Not so long ago,

Wells had told Exley the secret to surviving these moments: Shoot first.

Don't wait. He was about to follow his own advice.

He pushed himself up, ignoring the agony in his stomach. As the book-

case tipped, Wells saw the cops, five feet away, tugging at the case. They

reached for their guns as they saw him. Too late. He squeezed the pistol's

trigger, twice.

And then they were dead.

The bookcase fell. Wells dropped behind it. The other two cops stood

at the back of the truck. They should have gone for cover. Instead, they

were shooting, but wildly, high. A mistake, the last they would ever make.

Wells focused and fired, hearing the pfft of Cao's silenced pistol beside

him. One of the cops twisted, his head turned at an unnatural angle, and

dropped. The other doubled over, his hand on his stomach, beginning to

yell. Wells moved his pistol a fraction of an inch and fired again. This time

the shot caught the cop in the shoulder. He dropped his gun and fell, still

yelling.

Wells staggered out of the cargo compartment. He took aim at the

moaning cop at his feet and then lowered his .22 without firing. Let Cao

do it. Let someone else. Anyone.

Then he raised his gun again, took aim. He was what he was. No point

in pretending otherwise. No point in making someone else do his dirty

work. He fired. The cop's body twitched and went still.

The roadblock had been in front of a bridge over a narrow canal. A

police car and a jeep sat at the edge of the road, their emergency lights still

flashing. Wells leaned against the truck, looked around. The hills behind

them were forested and seemed empty, but a couple of miles ahead Wells

saw the beginnings of a town, red smokestack lights blinking in the night.

Fortunately, the two-lane road was silent. For now.

Cao jumped down from the truck, yelling at the men who'd driven them.

Wells understood his frustration, but there wasn't time. They couldn't hide

this. They had only one choice.

“Cao.” Wells grabbed the smaller man's shoulder. "Tell them, put the

cops in the truck. Leave everything else. Let's go. Now."

Cao looked around, nodded. He said something to the men and they

threw the bodies in the truck as casually as if they were slinging sacks of

rice. Wells stumbled over one of the corpses as he stepped back into the

truck. The body was still warm. Practically still alive. Except it wasn't.

The truck rolled off. Wells slumped against the floor of the cargo

compartment and tried to think through what would happen next. Assum-

ing the Chinese had any command-and-control at all, they'd discover the

missing police well before daybreak. Two hours, say.

Li wouldn't know exactly what had happened, but he would be able to

make a very good guess. He would assume that Cao and Wells were trying

to escape by boat. He would blanket the eastern half of the province, and

the sea around it, with every soldier and ship he could muster. He'd declare

a state of emergency covering the province and the coast, order all civilian

boats to stay docked for the day. All China would be hunting them. They

had to get off the mainland as soon as possible. Even if they could stay

hidden somehow, Wells didn't think he could last another day unless he got

to a hospital. He felt flushed and weak, and his stomach was dangerously

tender from the blood he'd leaked. A surgeon could fix him easily, he had

no doubt. But with no surgeon he'd bleed to death, or die of an internal

infection when the bacteria in his gut crossed into his bloodstream.

“Cao.”

“Time Square Wells.” Cao flicked on a lighter and touched the dim

yellow flame to a stubby cigarette clenched in his teeth. He held out the

pack. Wells shook his head, realizing that Cao hadn't smoked before because

he hadn't wanted to give away their presence in the compartment. But now

being discreet was pointless. Their hiding place had become a slaughter-

house.

“How far?”

Cao flicked on his watch. “One hour maybe. Hundred ten kilometers”—

seventy miles. “No more back road.”

As if to prove his words, the truck accelerated, throwing Wells against

the side of the cargo compartment. He groaned and caught his breath. "The

highway goes all the way to Yantai?"

“Yes. Then east, twenty kilometers, Chucun. Boat there.”

“And the boat, what kind is it?”

The tip of Cao's cigarette glowed brightly. “We see.”

Wells laughed. It was all he could do.

IT WAS 2:20 ft.m. They'd made good time. The cove was a pleasant surprise, a

narrow semicircular strip of white sand protected by thick trees. The boat

was another story, not much more than an oversized rowboat, maybe

twenty feet long, with a big outboard engine. It sat low in the water, its black

paint peeling, fishing nets hanging off its hull, four red plastic canisters of

gasoline tucked under the wide wooden slats that served as seats. A Chin-

ese man, sixty-five or so, sat on its side.

Wells knew the Yellow Sea was flat, but still he couldn't believe this

bathtub with an engine could reach Incheon, three hundred miles away

across open water. And even if it could, they would need twelve hours or

more, with the Chinese navy chasing them. Suddenly their odds seemed

worse than hopeless.

“No way,” Wells said.

“No choice.” Cao hugged the men who'd driven them, spoke a few

words in Chinese to the old man beside the boat. Wells wondered what

their helpers would do next. Probably ditch the truck as best they could and

disappear.

Cao stepped inside, his plastic leg thunking on the side of the boat. Wells

followed, nearly falling over as he did. Cao was right. They didn't have

a choice. In the distance he heard a helicopter. He sat down heavily on the

wooden bench and rubbed the bandage that covered his broken chest. He

felt light-headed and feverish despite the cool night air. He wondered if he

could last even twelve hours.

The drivers and the fisherman stepped forward and pushed the boat off

the sand. It slid forward easily, lolling on the flat waves. Cao jabbed at a red

button on the side of the outboard and the engine grumbled to life. He

turned the tiller sideways and they cruised into the cove. The men on shore

waved.

“Cao, do we even have a compass?”

Cao handed Wells a compass. “Straight east. Easy.”

“Incheon or bust.”

OSAN AIR BASE, SOUTH KOREA

THE C-130J HERCULES LUMBERED DOWN THE RUNWAY, slowly accelerating as it

bounced over the tarmac. Not far from the grass overrun at the end of the

9,000-foot strip, its nose finally lifted. Inside the cockpit Lieutenant Colonel

Paul Bosarelli exhaled. The C-130 was a sturdy beast, but he wouldn't have

wanted to skid off in this particular plane.

Nobody joined the Air Force to fly C-130s. But during eighteen years

as a Here pilot, Bosarelli had grown fond of the ugly old birds, the

four-propeller workhorses of the Air Force. They weren't as sexy as F-22s or

B-2s, but they were far more useful most of the time. They could endure

massive damage and still take off or land just about anywhere. Besides haul-

ing cargo and airdropping special-ops units, they worked as fuel tankers,

firefighters, even gunships.

But Bosarelli guessed that in the five decades since the first C-130 joined

the Air Force fleet, none had ever carried a load like this one.

And that was probably for the best.

THE TACTICAL OPERATIONS CENTER AT OSAN had received the first reports of

the attack on the Decatur three minutes after the Chinese torpedo smashed

the destroyer's hull. With no way to know whether the attack was a one-off

or part of a larger Chinese assault, the center's director, Brigadier General

Tom Rygel, had put the base on Force Protection Condition Charlie-Plus,

the second-highest alert level—just short of Delta, which signaled immi-

nent attack. Rygel's decision was understandable, for Osan was the closest

American base to China. The PRC's border with North Korea was just three

hundred miles to the north, a distance that China's newest J-10 fighters

could cover in fifteen minutes on afterburner.

Within an hour of the Decatur attack, Osan's 51st Fighter Wing had

put six F-16s in the air to join the two already on patrol. Eight more jets

waited on standby. Of course, the sixteen fighters were vastly outnumbered

by the hundreds of Chinese jets waiting over the border. But the Ameri-

can planes were so much more capable than even the most advanced

J-10s that the Chinese would be insane to challenge them. Though the

skipper of the Decatur had probably made the same assumption, Bosarelli

thought.

While the fighters soared off, Bosarelli had nothing to do except drink

coffee in the ready room and try to ignore the acid biting at his stom-

ach. Ninety percent of the time—heck, ninety-five—he had more to

do than the fancy boys. But at moments like this, he felt like a fraud.

Against a fighter jet, any fighter jet, his C-130 was nothing but a flying

bull's-eye.

Then the door to the ready room opened. A lieutenant looked around

and headed straight for the table where Bosarelli sat. “Colonel Bosarelli.”

“Yes.” Bosarelli knew the guy's face, though not his name. He was one of

Hansell's runners. Lieutenant General Peter Hansell, the commander of the

7th Air Force, the top officer at Osan.

“Colonel, General Hansell would like to see you.”

HANSELL'S OFFICE WAS in the Theater Air Control Center, a squat build-

ing that everyone at Osan called Cheyenne Mountain East because of its

ten-foot-thick concrete walls. As he trotted through the center's narrow

corridors, Bosarelli wondered what he'd done wrong. Or right.

Before Bosarelli could figure it out, they reached Hansell's office. "This

is where I get off,“ the lieutenant said. ”Go right in. He's expecting you."

Bosarelli wished he had a minute or two to shine his shoes and make

sure his uniform was squared away. But he wasn't about to keep Hansell

waiting. He threw back his shoulders, stepped inside, and gave the general

the crispest salute that he'd offered anyone since his first year as a cadet in

Colorado Springs.

“Sir.”

"Colonel. Please sit. You've been flying the Here for eighteen years, is

that right?“ It wasn't a question. Bosarelli nodded. ”Your record's spotless.

Two years ago, you landed in Bagram on one engine."

Bosarelli was thoroughly nervous now. Three-stars didn't butter up

lieutenant colonels this way unless they wanted something.

“And you requalified on the chutes just last year.”

“That's correct, sir.”

"I have a mission to discuss with you, Colonel. An unusual mission.

You're the first Here pilot I'm offering it to. But I want you to understand.

This is a request. Not an order. No hard feelings if you say no."

“Yes, sir. I accept, sir.”

“Thank you,” Hansell said. “But first I need to know if it's even possible.”

For the next five minutes, Bosarelli sat silent as Hansell outlined what he

wanted.

“So? Can we do it?” Hansell said when he was done. "I'd rather use a

Predator“—a lightweight unmanned drone—”but they just don't have the

payload to make it work."

Bosarelli wished he could ask who'd okayed this insane idea, and why.

On second thought, he didn't even want to know. Somebody up the chain,

that was for sure. Way high up. Maybe all the way. He looked at the ceiling,

avoiding Hansell's ice-blue eyes, visualizing the steps he'd take.

“And we'd be doing this—”

“Tonight. The goal is four a.m.”

“No time like the present.” Craziest thing I've ever heard, Bosarelli didn't

say. He'd always wanted to be in the middle of the action. Now he was. Be

careful what you wish for. "I think it's possible, sir. In a way it's a throwback,

a big dumb bomb. I'll need one other officer. Jim Keough ought to be game."

Bosarelli paused. "So assuming he's in, obviously we'll want altitude fuses.

The JPFs, the new programmable ones. And, ah—" Bosarelli stopped, not

sure how much the general wanted to hear.

“Go on, Colonel.”

“I assume we've got the smart boys at JPL and AFRL”—the engineers at

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and the Air Force Research

Laboratory in Ohio—"running sims to figure our trajectory after we flip

the switches."

“We'll have projections within an hour.”

"Then, yeah, if they sign off. We can do it. And you'll damn sure be able

to see it a long way off."

“So. Now you know. Are you still game? Take a minute, think it over.”

Bosarelli couldn't pretend he wasn't nervous. Any sane man would be.

The risks were off the charts. But in Iraq and Afghanistan, soldiers and

Marines took chances just as big every day. No way was he turning this

down. He got the words out fast, before he could change his mind. "I'd be

honored. As long as you promise to come get us quick."

“Understood. You have my word on that.” This time Hansell was the first

to salute. “Thank you, Colonel.”

FOUR HOURS LATER, and Bosarelli and Major Jim Keough, his flight engineer,

were at 22,000 feet, flying slowly east-southeast over the Pacific, giving

Keough time to arm the fuses that would turn the C-130 into a sixty-five-ton

bomb.

What they were planning wasn't so different from what Mohamed Atta

had done on September 11, Bosarelli thought. Though there was one very

big difference.

Instead of its usual load of Humvees, Bosarelli's C-130 carried twenty

GBU-29 bombs, upgraded versions of the old MK-82. Each of the bombs

held its standard load, 150 pounds of high explosive. They were scattered

among forty-gallon drums that held roughly equal amounts of gasoline,

benzene, and polystyrene plastic—the basic ingredients of napalm.

Officially, the United States had destroyed all its napalm bombs by 2001.

The increasing lethality of conventional bombs eliminated the need for

napalm, a jellied gasoline that burned as hot as 5,000 degrees. The stuff had

been a public relations nightmare since Vietnam, when an Associated Press

photographer had caught on camera the agony of a nine-year-old girl over-

taken by a napalm bomb.

But though the premixed bombs were gone, the Air Force still stockpiled

the raw ingredients necessary to make napalm. Despite napalm's terrible

reputation, there was nothing magical about it. The polystyrene simply

made it a lot stickier than ordinary gasoline, so it was hard to scrape off.

Once it touched something—an enemy soldier's uniform, a little girl's

face—it burned until it was gone. Even more important for this mission, it

burned much more slowly than gasoline.

KEOUGH STEPPED INTO THE COCKPIT. “Good to go.”

Bosarelli swung the C-130 to the right, tracing a long slow semicircle

over the Pacific until they were heading west, back toward South Korea. It

was just after 3:00 a.m. locally—3:00 p.m. in Washington—and the civilian

flights into Seoul had ended for the night. The only other planes within

thirty miles were friendlies. Without being too obvious about it, the Air

Force had put Bosarelli's plane inside a bubble of fighter jets. Four F-16s

were running interference along the North Korean border, with four more

to the west, over the Yellow Sea, though they were being careful to give

plenty of room to the Chinese jets patrolling to their west.

Meanwhile, the South Korean navy had been asked to send every ship

it had into the Yellow Sea. A flotilla of cutters and frigates had fanned out

from Incheon, heading west toward the Shandong Peninsula. Every boat

was carrying loudspeakers, and at least one American military observer.

But the boats had been absolutely prohibited from coming within eighty

miles of the peninsula's tip. At the same time, every available rescue heli-

copter, both South Korean and American, had been prepped for takeoff,

though none was in the air as yet.

Back in the C-130, Bosarelli permitted himself a brief look through the

wispy clouds at the sleeping countries below. The difference was literally

white and black. South Korea glowed prosperously; North Korea lay in

darkness. Somehow the view reassured Bosarelli. He might never know the

point of this mission. But he believed, had to believe, that he was fighting

for the right side.

AT LANGLEY, EXLEY AND SHAFER were getting hourly updates. So far, the mis-

sion was on track—though so far, nothing had really happened. Exley still

couldn't quite believe the president had agreed to her proposal.

After the confrontation with Duto, the meeting in the White House had

been oddly anticlimactic. They'd helicoptered onto the White House lawn

and been ushered straight into the Oval Office, where the president and the

national security adviser were waiting. Exley had again recounted her con-

versation with Wells, and told them of her plan to rescue him.

Then Duto had made plain what he thought.

"Not to sugarcoat this, sir. There's almost no chance of success. If it

weren't for what Ms. Exley and Mr. Wells did in New York, I wouldn't even

have bothered you with it."

The president murmured something to his national security adviser, who

nodded. Exley didn't like either of them, but she had to admire their compo-

sure. She couldn't tell what they thought of the idea.

The president turned to Duto. "If it doesn't work? What's our down-

side?"

"Well, sir, given the current tensions, the ultimate downside is that the

Chinese could view it as an act of war."

“That's possible,” Shafer said. “But it won't be on Chinese territory.”

“Sir,” Duto said.

“It won't be on Chinese territory, sir” Shafer said. "We don't know what

Wells has, sir. But I trust him. If he says it's important, it is."

"Because tonight I'm going to have to stand up and tell the American

people"—Exley winced privately as she heard the words; she hated when

politicians talked about the American people—"I'm going to tell the people

what we're going to do about this attack. And you all know the pressure

we're under to come back hard."

"Sir. Nothing about this locks you into further action. All your options are

still open. I agree it's a long shot, but if the odds are even one percent—"

At that, the president nodded. “All right. Get me a finding”—the official

written authorization needed for this kind of black operation. “I'll sign it.”

“Sir—” Duto said.

"Director Duto. Your objections are noted. For the record. But let's try not

to go to war if we can help it. We've all learned a few things since 2003."

NOW EVERYTHING WAS IN PLACE, or so they'd been told. They didn't have

much time. The sun would rise over the Yellow Sea in barely three hours,

and Exley and Shafer knew that if Wells wasn't in friendly hands by then,

he probably wouldn't make it. The Chinese didn't have great night-vision

equipment—it was one area where they were still a couple of generations

behind the United States—but by tomorrow morning, they would have cov-

ered the Yellow Sea with their navy. Any civilian boat still on the water would

be searched from stem to stern, or simply blown to bits.

Left unsaid was the fact that the plan depended on Wells getting off the

mainland in time. If he was still stuck in Beijing, then all they were doing

was wasting a planeful of gasoline—and putting a couple of brave pilots

at risk.

Shafer's phone rang. He picked up, listened for a moment. “Good,” he

said, and hung up. "Still on track. Our boats are nearing the exclusion zone.

They're projecting another hour or so."

“I wish the sun would just stop,” Exley said. "Let it stay afternoon here,

night over there, until we find him."

“Do you—” Shafer stopped, cleared his throat. Exley waited.

Finally she couldn't wait anymore. “What?”

"You wish you were there, Jennifer? With him? I mean, knowing the odds

right now ...“ Shafer trailed off. ”I didn't mean that the way it sounded."

Exley smiled, a thin, sad smile. Let Shafer wonder. She didn't plan to

satisfy his curiosity. But she knew the answer: Yes. In an instant.

THE WAVES WERE LOW AND FLAT and the boat skimmed over them without

too much trouble. Still, Wells felt his ribs rattle every time the sea caught the

boat sideways. He sat on the front bench gripping the wood so hard that his

hands felt welded to it. There was probably a better way to hold on, but he

didn't know it.

They'd run along the coast for more than an hour, maybe a half-mile

from land, Cao handling the tiller. Wells didn't have much to do. They'd

heard helicopters overhead and seen the lights of a boat in the distance,

but so far no one had been within hailing distance. They were running the

engine full-out, and despite its peeling paint and rusty engine, the boat

seemed seaworthy. It wasn't leaking, anyway, which was the only way Wells

could judge. His naval experience was limited to the occasional bath with

Exley.

To the south, the coast grew rockier. During the day, the development

was probably obvious. But tonight, under the weak light of a quarter-moon,

the land looked surprisingly unspoiled. Wells supposed that even China

had a few places that hadn't been overrun.

The lights of the coast grew sparser and sparser, then faded entirely.

“Tianjintou,” Cao said. He pointed south. In the distance, the land

ended in a rocky spit, waves kicking up narrow white flumes around it.

“Tianjintou?”

"Means 'end of the world.' Farthest east place in Shandong. Only wa-

ter now."

“Let's hope we don't have to swim.”

A HALF-HOUR LATER, Wells's line looked more like a prophecy than a joke.

Two helicopters shined their spotlights along the coast behind them.

And in the distance to the west, Wells saw the lights of three boats. At least

one was a destroyer or a frigate, something big. The boats were heading

east, into the open water. Chasing Wells and Cao, even if they didn't know

it yet.

Then, to the south. Two boats. Small and fast. Wells couldn't hear them,

not yet, but he could see their spotlights. He tapped Cao's shoulder, pointed.

Cao just shrugged.

They weren't going to make it, Wells thought. With the cloud cover

helping them, they would last until sunrise. But once the sun came up, they

wouldn't be able to hide. They'd be caught far before Incheon.

Wells focused on the rolling dark water ahead of them, stale and brack-

ish. In college, he had been a decent swimmer. Not his favorite sport, but

he'd liked it in the winter, as a way to rebuild his muscles after the pounding

of football. But even if he hadn't had a chestful of broken ribs, swimming

two hundred miles to Korea would have been a hopeless fantasy. Like the

rest of this mission, Wells thought. But he didn't regret taking the chance.

He knew the secret now, the reason for this war. If only he and Cao could

survive, they could stop it.

Anyway, he'd been playing with house money ever since Exley had saved

him in New York. He didn't want to die, not like this, but some part of him

had accepted the fact that he would. If not today, soon enough. He would

push his luck until it snapped. He could excuse himself for risking this

mission, because it meant so much. But what was his excuse for screaming

down 1-95 at 125 miles an hour? How could he ask Exley to trust him?

He remembered an old joke from an intro philosophy class in college:

I'm an optimist, not a fatalist. Anyway, if I were a fatalist, what could I do

about it? Or in the words of that great philosopher Bruce Springsteen,

Everything dies, baby, that's a fact. Wells was drifting again. Tianjintou. End

of the world. He sagged down and the curtains closed on him.

AT 22,000 FEET THE NIGHT AIR was smooth, though the clouds were thicken-

ing quickly beneath the C-130. Bosarelli eased back on the engines, slowing

the plane to 180 knots. Osan had asked him to slow down, give the flotilla

on the water beneath him a chance to get a few miles farther west.

“Ninety-five hundred rpm,” Keough said. "One hundred eighty knots,

heading two-seventy." Straight west.

“Taking us down to sixteen thousand.” Bosarelli extended the wing flaps

to fifty percent to begin the descent. As he did, an alarm briefly sounded

and the flat-panel display before Bosarelli flashed red before returning to its

normal black background. The Chinese J-10s were now within a hundred

nautical miles—five minutes on afterburner.

For now Bosarelli wasn't too worried about them. He was over interna-

tional waters and flying slow and straight—hardly signs of hostile intent.

He looked down through the cockpit's glazed windows, and through the

clouds he saw the lights of a ship beneath him, heading west. A friendly, he

hoped. “Everything set back there?”

“Sure hope so,” Keough said.

Bosarelli leveled them out when they got to 16,000 feet, and for another

fifteen minutes the plane cruised steadily. Bosarelli and Keough hardly

spoke. After thousands of hours in these C-130s, Bosarelli could fly them,

almost literally, in his sleep. And there wasn't much to say anyway. Beneath

them the clouds became an unbroken white mass, glowing under the moon

and the stars like a little girl's dream. Under other circumstances, Bosarelli

would have considered the clouds beautiful. Tonight he would rather have

seen the water. A crosswind kicked up, lightly rocking the plane.

“One hundred NM west of Incheon,” Keough said. "Two minutes to

centerline." Incheon was about 210 nautical miles west of the tip of the

Shandong Peninsula. In two minutes, the plane would be closer to China

than Korea, a fact that would set off alarms for the Chinese jets.

“Two minutes to centerline, twelve minutes to Z point.” Bosarelli throt-

tled back again, to 150 knots, not much above the plane's stall speed.

Their last F-16 escorts peeled off, one turning north, the other south,

looping back toward Osan. Now Bosarelli and Keough had no cover at all,

though for the moment the sky ahead was clear. For some reason—maybe

the same reason that they were on this mission—the Chinese J-10s had

swung back west, toward the Shandong coastline, and dropped to about

4,000 feet.

But Bosarelli knew the Chinese fighters could easily reverse course

again and tag the C-130, which wouldn't have a chance, especially with

this payload. Here pilots liked to joke that the plane's antimissile system

consisted mainly of an alarm to let them know that their ride was about to

explode.

Bosarelli hadn't been this scared since his first roller-coaster ride, at the

Six Flags in Arlington, Texas. He was seven. His older brother had spent a

whole week telling him how great it was. Bosarelli had pleaded to go until

his dad finally took him. But when the coaster had clanked slowly up over

the flat Texas plains, getting ready for that first drop, Bosarelli had wanted

to puke his guts out. He hadn't, though. And once they'd finally gotten over

the hill, he'd had a blast—though that probably wasn't the best choice of

words right now.

“FIVE MINUTES,” KEOUGH SAID.

“Five minutes.” Again Bosarelli extended the flaps. "Taking us to twelve

thousand."

At 12,000 feet, Bosarelli again leveled out. “Chutes and helmets on.”

Bosarelli reached for his parachute and pulled it onto his shoulders.

Keough did the same. They'd packed their chutes themselves at Osan,

watched over by a Special Forces major who had completed 250 jumps.

Now Bosarelli had to stand over the control panel, since he couldn't fit in

his seat anymore. The designers of the C-130 hadn't expected that the

plane's pilots would be wearing parachutes.

“Check your transponder.” They were both carrying emergency bea-

cons, black plastic boxes attached to their waists.

“Check.”

“One twenty-five NM from Incheon,” Bosarelli said. "Twenty NM west

of the centerline."

“Two minutes,” Keough said. His screen flashed red and an alarm beeped

loud and fast in his headset. Just in the last fifteen minutes the Chinese had

a half-dozen more fighters in the air. Two of them had now decided to check

out the C-130.

Now another alarm went off, higher-pitched and more urgent than the

first. One of the Chinese fighters had painted the Here with its targeting

radar, a wordless warning that if it broke into Chinese airspace it could

expect to be hit with an air-to-air missile.

“One minute to Z point,” Keough said.

“One minute.” Bosarelli flicked the Here's transponder to 7700, the

signal for an aircraft emergency.

“Ready, Jim?”

“Ready.”

The radar warning alarm sounded again, for a full fifteen seconds this

time. “I'll get it,” Bosarelli said. He flipped the Here's radio to the Military

Air Distress band, 243.0 MHz. The warning, in heavily accented English,

was what he expected: "You are approaching Chinese airspace. Turn back or

face immediate action.“ Pause. ”You are approaching Chinese airspace. Turn

back..."

“I'll take that under advisement,” Bosarelli murmured. He flipped off

the radio.

“Thirty seconds to Z.”

“Thirty seconds. Flaps fifty.” Again, Bosarelli extended the plane wing's

flaps. “Now, Jim. Go.”

Keough stepped out of the cockpit. Bosarelli heard a loud whoosh as he

popped open the crew entry door a few feet behind the cockpit. The plane

began to shake. Again the radar alarm rang in his headset.

Now. Bosarelli pushed the power levers past flight idle to turn off the

engines. Then he reached over to Keough's station and flipped off the fuel

pumps.

Just like that, the C-130 turned into a sixty-five-ton glider. Alarms

began screaming, both in his headset and in the cabin, as the engines lost

power. The propellers still had some leftover momentum, so the plane

didn't dive immediately, but Bosarelli knew he didn't have long. Time to get

out. He stepped out of the cockpit. Keough was standing in the open door

of the plane, waiting. When he saw Bosarelli, he nodded and stepped out of

the plane, hands at his sides. In an instant, he was gone.

Bosarelli flipped on his goggles and stepped to the open hatch. Instead

of the normal noise of the turboprops, he heard only the klaxons in the

cockpit and the rush of the wind. He looked into the night sky, and for a

moment his nerve failed him. He thought of running back to the cockpit

and trying to restart the engines. But he knew better. Down was the only

way out.

And before he could change his mind again, he pushed himself forward

and stepped into the cool night air.

WITH ARMS AND LEGS EXTENDED, the human body falls at a maximum speed

of about 125 miles an hour—a thousand feet every five seconds. Bosarelli

was holding his arms tight to his chest and extending his legs straight down,

hoping to top out closer to two hundred. He wanted to separate from the

Here quickly to lessen the chances he'd be caught in the plane's blast wave.

Then a wind gust ripped Bosarelli sideways, twisting his back and

throwing his shoulders outward. He raised his arms for balance and instead

began to spin, bouncing through the air like a pebble caught in a wave.

Suddenly he was in no position to pull his chute. He breathed deeply and

tried to remember his training as the seconds ticked by. And then he reached

the cloud layer and the air around him turned white and suffocating.

Relax. He extended his arms and legs as far as he could and arched his

back to create maximum drag. He emerged from the clouds. He was no

longer spinning, but the sea was close beneath him, a couple of thousand

feet at most, the water dark and featureless. He could already see two boats

chugging west. They'd find him. If he could just get to his chute. Bosarelli

reached across his body and grabbed the cord, praying it would open

smoothly. He wasn't sure he had time to get to the reserve.

Then—

His body jerked upward as the chute snatched him from gravity's grasp.

He looked up to see an open canopy, spreading above him like an angel's

wings.

A MILE AHEAD, THE EMPTY C-130 plunged toward the Yellow Sea, its nose

tipped nearly straight down, klaxons sounding uselessly in its cockpit. Four

thousand feet. The bombs and barrels of gasoline strained against the net-

ting, securing them to the floor of the cargo bay, but the thick nylon held.

Three thousand feet. The C-130 was approaching the speed of sound,

six hundred miles an hour, a thousand feet a second. As the plane acceler-

ated, the massive g-forces generated by the dive began to shear the left wing

from the hull—

Two thousand feet—

The ghost plane began to break apart, but by then its structural failure

no longer mattered. The Here had done its job.

One thousand feet—

Five hundred—

The altitude fuses on the GBU-29s blew, setting off 3,000 pounds of

high explosive. In a fraction of a second, the cargo compartment turned

into an inferno, and the jellied gasoline in the oil barrels blew up.

BOSARELLI SAW THE EXPLOSION BEFORE he felt it. The night came alive with a

second sun, a yellow-gold cloud that exploded up and out, forming a classic

mushroom cloud, like a miniature nuclear bomb. So bright, so beautiful. A

couple of seconds later the blast wave hit him, hotter than he'd expected,

rich with gasoline and benzene vapor, but by then he was close enough to

the water that he knew he'd survive.

He only hoped the bomb had done its job.

WELLS THOUGHT HE WAS DREAMING WHEN THE SKY turned white. Then he heard

Cao shouting and knew he wasn't. He started counting, one one-thousand,

two one-thousand, three one-thousand, waiting for the sound of the explo-

sion to reach them, trying to calculate how far off they were. On his twelfth

“Mississippi,” the blast filled his ears. Maybe fifteen seconds—fifteen to

twenty miles, give or take.

In the last hour the Chinese had put more and more helicopters in the

air, and he'd had a bad moment a few minutes before when a helicopter

swung by them, its searchlight missing them by no more than a few hun-

dred yards. Now this explosion, which couldn't possibly be a coincidence.

Had a Chinese jet or copter exploded? No, this fire was far too large. It

looked to be slightly southeast of them, burning in the night like a beacon.

Like a beacon.

Cao was steering the boat north, away from the blast. Wells tapped his

shoulder. He pointed to the white fireball, already losing its shape, melding

into the clouds, but still burning brightly. “Go toward it.”

“Toward?”

“It's for us.”

UNFORTUNATELY, THE CHINESE SEEMED TO have come to the same conclusion.

Helicopters were buzzing toward the crash site, their spotlights shining over

the waves. Jets too. Wells couldn't see them, but he could hear the whine of

their engines. As they made their way west, the sky lightened, the giant fire

producing a muddy yellow glare. No way could a helicopter cause such a big

explosion. Maybe a 747 had been shot down by accident. Or maybe it wasn't

a plane at all. Maybe it was some kind of oil tanker.

The good news was that the Chinese didn't seem to have any boats in

front of them. And the heat of the blast would make it hard for the helos to

get too close.

Not that Wells wanted to get too close either. As they moved toward the

site of the explosion, the air grew heavy with the stench of burning gasoline

and something else too, some kind of plastic, though Wells couldn't figure

out exactly what. Farther on, the air was alive with burning embers that

looked like sparks from a backyard barbecue. The strange part was that they

kept burning when they landed on the water. As Wells shielded his eyes and

looked toward the fireball, he saw patches where the sea itself seemed to

have caught fire.

“Napalm,” he said aloud.

Cao swung the boat hard left, north. Wells braced himself against the

side of the hull and gritted his teeth as his ribs reminded him they were still

broken.

Then a huge secondary explosion, maybe a fuel tank, lit the night. The

boat rocked in the blast wave and Wells covered his mouth against the

fumes. In the sudden glow Wells knew they were obscenely visible. Even as

the firelight faded, a jet swooped toward them, hard and low, its running

lights blinking red, the wash from its engines kicking up waves and rattling

the boat.

“Close,” Cao said.

The fighter screamed off.

Three minutes later it came back for another pass. This time red flares

popped off the wings, not directly on top of them but close, too close,

dimly visible through the thick black smoke that was flooding the air. Two

helicopters—one from the north, the other from the south—began to con-

verge on the flares, closing like scissor blades.

And then Wells saw the lights of a ship, barely visible through the smoke.

Toward the east, not the west. Toward South Korea.

“Cao.” Wells pointed at the lights.

“Could be Chinese.” Nonetheless, Cao swung the tiller, turning the boat

east, into the depths of the filthy black soot. The helicopters closed, but they

couldn't fly blind. Wells closed his eyes and tried not to breathe. Then the

wind shifted. The smoke lightened and the helicopters closed again. The

spotlights swung at them, and one caught the hull of the boat in its glare.

Behind them, a heavy machine gun opened up, kicking up flumes on the

right side of the boat and then on the left. Cao swung the boat hard right,

toward the center of the inferno, the heaviest smoke, and Wells ducked

down, all he could do.

The spotlights swung over them and again the machine gun raked the

waves around them, an angry hard rattle that blocked out every other sound,

until Cao screamed, a short sharp cry. He collapsed, his body slumped

over the outboard.

The engine lifted out of the water and the boat slowed to a creep. A

lucky break, since the helos were now ahead of the boat and the wind was

shifting direction again, catching the helicopters in the smoke. Wells crawled

across the boat to Cao. The general was dead, his neck and chest torn open.

“Damn you,” Wells said to nothing and no one, knowing that he'd be

joining Cao soon enough, as soon as the wind turned enough to give the

helos a clear shot. He pushed Cao aside and dropped the engine into the

water. He couldn't see where he was headed and he supposed it no longer

mattered.

THEN, FROM ABOVE, THE GRINDING SOUND of metal on metal. Followed almost

instantly by an enormous explosion, two hundred yards ahead, and a sec-

ond even closer. Wells bowed his head as sizzling bits of metal crashed

around him.

They'd collided. The wind shift had left the helicopters blind. In their

eagerness to get the kill, they'd come too close. They had crashed into each

other in the dark and gone down, both of them. This filthy cloud had saved

his life. Wells lifted the engine out of the water and looked around, trying to

orient himself in the dark, thick air. Distant helicopters behind him. Some-

where overhead, a jet.

And ahead, a voice. Amplified. American.

Calling his name.

He closed his eyes and lowered the engine into the water and steered

for it.

ONE MONTH LATER

“CERVEZA, POR FAVOR. NO, MAKE IT TWO. DOS.” Keith Robinson held up two

fingers, watching them float in the bar's murky air as if they weren't con-

nected to his body. Keith Edward Robinson, late of the Central Intelligence

Agency. Now at liberty and seeking other employment.

“Anybody need an expert in counter-counterintelligence?” he murmured

to the empty room. A soccer match played on a television high in one corner,

two local teams kicking the ball around halfheartedly.

The bartender, heavy and dark-skinned with a long white scar down

his right arm, plunked down two Polars. They joined the half-dozen other

bottles—all empty now—in front of Robinson. “Ten dollars,” he said in

English.

“Ten dollars? Last time it was two bolivars”—a bit less than one dollar.

“Ten dollars.”

“Okay, okay. I'm a lover, not a fighter.” More than anything, Robinson

wanted to relieve the pressure on his bladder. Drain the main vein, as they

said in the trade. What trade? The room swam as he extracted a crumpled

twenty-dollar bill from the dollars and pesos stuffed in his wallet. Robinson

wished he hadn't brought so much money. The sight of the cash had un-

doubtedly provoked the sudden price increase. The bartender plucked the

bill out of Robinson's wavering fingers and turned away.

“Don't forget my change.” Robinson tapped the bar. “Hey, I'm serious.”

But the little brown man was gone. “I don't like your attitude,” he mumbled.

“Don't cry for me, Venezuela.”

He tipped the beer to his mouth and took a long swallow. Better. He was

drunk, drunk as the drunkest skunk. At this point he didn't even know why

he was drinking. More alcohol wouldn't make him any more intoxicated.

Intoxicated. A good word, from the Latin for wasted. But he was awake, and

these days, consciousness seemed to be reason enough.

He wasn't even having fun anymore. Getting this drunk was work. Every

morning he felt as though someone had taken a hammer to his skull. Soon

enough the feeling would be more than metaphorical, he knew. He'd pick

the wrong bar, the wrong whore, the wrong hotel. Wind up with a knife

between the ribs. Like he cared. He was a wanted man. Even down here he'd

been in the papers. A few days ago, he'd felt the shock of seeing his picture

on television. A celebrity at last. He'd rather die in a hotel room in Caracas

than rot in solitary in the Supermax.

Of course, somewhere in his mind he had a plan. Not so much a plan as

a single word: Cuba. The Cubans would love him. Anything to piss off

the American government. Heck, even the Venezuelans might refuse to

extradite him. They hated America too. But making his presence officially

known would turn him into a bargaining chip, to be traded in the moment

his hosts wanted better relations with Washington. For now he'd decided to

lie low.

And with that thought, he lost his balance and toppled sideways,

knocking his beers over in the process. A golden river of beer ran down

the bar.

“iPuta!” the bartender said. “Out!”

“Show a little mercy, hombre,” Robinson said. “I just wanted a cocktail.”

But the bartender said nothing more, only pointed at Robinson, then

the door, like God evicting Adam from Eden. Robinson shuffled onto the

narrow street. He checked his watch—9:40. How could it be only 9:40? He

had hours to drink away before he'd be exhausted enough to pass out.

A hand touched his shoulder. To his right stood a brown woman in a

denim miniskirt. She had legs like a linebacker's. A fading shiner poked

through the makeup under her tired eyes. The girl of his dreams.

“Date, mister?” Her breath stank of pisco, a grape brandy that burned

like turpentine. Even Robinson avoided it.

“You had me at hello.” He took her arm and away they went.

THE STYLIST BRUSHED A HAND over Pierre Kowalski's head. "You see, Mon-

sieur Kowalski,“ he said. ”I promised the blemish was only temporary. Et

voila. Use the ointment and all will be well."

Indeed, Kowalski's hair was growing back, sparsely and cautiously, like

grass after a long winter. As a boy, he'd been handsome. He still thought of

himself that way, despite his triple chin, C-cup breasts, and size 50 waist.

But no one could convince him his skull looked good at the moment. When

the duct tape had come off, it had taken most of his hair with it. He looked

like a chemotherapy patient, only fatter and less sympathetic.

“Fine, J.P.,” Kowalski said. He waved a hand. The stylist flounced out of

Kowalski's office, a square wood-paneled room decorated with famous

weapons. Rommel's personal Luger. A saber that Napoleon had carried.

Alone now, Kowalski stared out at Lake Zurich and the mountains

behind it. Peace at last.

But not for long. Steps outside his office. Fast young steps in high heels.

Natalia, his current favorite. “Not now,” he said, not bothering to turn

around, as she walked in.

“Pierre—”

“Not now. If you need a check, tell Jacques.”

She walked off.

Kowalski had nearly gone into hiding after the Chinese announced that

they'd arrested Li Ping for unspecified “crimes against the state.” He'd

guessed, correctly, that the United States had discovered how Li had used

him to help the Taliban and passed the evidence to Li's enemies on the

Standing Committee.

For two anxious days Kowalski wondered whether the United States

would come after him too. Then he heard from friends at Langley and

the Pentagon that he was safe. Both America and China wanted to pre-

tend that their confrontation had never happened. China apologized for

torpedoing the Decatur—Beijing called the attack a "tragic and unneces-

sary accident"—and agreed to pay $1 billion in reparations to the United

States and sailors on the ship. The Chinese also ended their nuclear aid to

Iran, and—in a move that offered ironic proof of China's new military

prowess—gave the American navy a fully functioning Typhoon torpedo to

reverse-engineer. In turn, the United States was paying millions of dollars

to the families of the students who had drowned when the Decatur rammed

the fishing trawler. Neither side wanted to dredge up Kowalski's involve-

ment and admit that Li had funded the Taliban. After all, Li had manipu-

lated the United States as badly as his own government. More disclosure

would only mean more embarrassment for both sides.

KOWALSKI KNEWHEOUGHTtoletthe matter rest there. He'd escaped retribu-

tion. As a rule, he prided himself on staying above the fray. His vainglorious

clients fought the wars. He sold tools, nothing more. But this time reason

failed him. Presidents and generals begged him for the weapons they needed.

He was no one's servant, no one's whore. No one touched him without his

permission.

Yet when he closed his eyes each night he felt thick silver tape across

his face, hands squeezing his neck tight. Insolence. Beyond insolence. A

stone in his shoe, irritating him with every step. He couldn't allow it. He

needed to know the name of the man and the woman who'd done this

to him.

Of course, they worked for the United States. The arrest of Li Ping

proved it. But even his best sources, two former CIA agents who now ran

a boutique lobbying firm in Reston, hadn't been able to crack the secrecy

surrounding the China case. Every morning the question gnawed at Kowal-

ski. Then Anatoly Tarasov, a former KGB agent who ran his security, found

the answer.

"We want to know who attacked you in East Hampton. Why are we

asking in Washington? Let us ask the police in East Hampton."

Kowalski knew Tarasov was right. They should have realized before. Of

course the police had known all along. That was why they'd taken so long to

get to the mansion that night. Why they hadn't pushed harder to keep him

and his men inside the country.

“I don't mean ask them directly—”

“I understand, Anatoly.”

And after two days of drinking beers with off-duty East Hampton cops,

a Long Island private detective found the answer that had eluded Kowalski's

expensive informants in Washington.

The detective passed the name to the lawyer in Queens who'd hired him.

From Queens it jumped over the East River to a white-shoe law firm in

Manhattan, made a U-turn, and crossed the Atlantic, landing at the offices

of an investigator in Geneva. Only then, properly washed, did John Wells's

name arrive at Kowalski's Zurich chateau.

KOWALSKI HEARD SOFT STEPS APPROACHING. He turned as Tarasov walked in.

The Russian was under six feet, close to two hundred pounds, with a cruiser-

weight's broken nose and solid chest, which he showed off under tightly

tailored white shirts. He had a nasty temper, especially when he was drunk.

Kowalski had seen him beat a bouncer in a Moscow club nearly to death

after the bouncer stared too long at his girlfriend. He was a very good head

of security, and Kowalski paid him enough to assure his loyalty.

“John Wells,” Tarasov said. “I'm very sorry I didn't get to meet him.”

Tarasov had stayed in Zurich to mind the estate when Kowalski went to the

Hamptons.

“As am I, Anatoly.”

“So what would you like me to do?”

Kowalski shook his head. He couldn't possibly go after John Wells. And

yet. No. It was madness.

Tarasov stood next to Kowalski. Side by side they looked at the placid

lake. Tarasov tilted his head forward and wrinkled his smashed-up nose like

a pit bull that wanted off his leash. “John Wells,” he said again.

“And the woman? Who was she?”

“I don't know yet. Another from the agency, no doubt. We'll find out.”

“Would you say I'm a man of my word, Anatoly?”

“Of course,” Tarasov said.

Kowalski opened the drawer desk where he kept his personal pistol, a

Glock 19. Simple, effective, not too expensive, nothing like the fancy toys he

sold the Africans. He hefted the gun, pointed it out over the lake, then

slipped it away.

"I told the man who attacked me that I would make him pay. No matter

who he was. And I think ... I must keep my promise."

AT THE SOUND OF FOOTSTEPS in the corridor, Li Ping dragged himself off his

cot and stood before the heavy steel door that covered his cell. A panel slid

open and a plastic tray popped into Li's hands.

“Thank you.”

As an answer the little slot clanged shut. Li looked at his lunch. A cup of

lukewarm tea, an overripe orange, a bowl of rice soup. And the pills, of

course.

Li was in isolation in a concrete cell in a maximum-security military

prison just outside Beijing. The jailers had laughed when he'd asked to see

his wife. But for the last few days, they'd given him copies of China Daily,

the official Party paper, as well as a couple of the semi-independent Beijing

dailies.

Showing him the papers wasn't an act of charity. Zhang and the Standing

Committee wanted him to know his position was hopeless. They had united

to portray him as a rogue general who had brought China to the brink of

war for his own benefit. During the last days of the crisis Li had illegally

ordered the attack on the Decatur, they said. They had even hinted that Li

might have acted on behalf of Russia to weaken China. Of course, they were

lying. They'd approved the Decatur attack, and they knew he wasn't working

for Russia or anyone else.

But no matter. Zhang had won. Li would never forget the moment when

Zhang showed the Standing Committee the papers that proved Li had used

army money to help the Taliban. Zhang's triumphant look. The anger of the

committee members, the shock on the faces of men who hated being sur-

prised more than anything. Soon enough they found their voices. They

ranted and raved, accusing him of treason, telling him he'd nearly destroyed

all China's progress. Zhang merely smiled as they denounced him. Li didn't

bother to deny what he'd done. He'd been trying to save China. If these

cowards wanted to punish him, so be it.

ZHANG HAD COME TO HIS CELL a few days earlier, just after the newspapers

started to arrive. With Li's lunch that day were three oversized pills, two

white and the third blue. They were unmarked, but Li understood their pur-

pose. He left them untouched, finished his lunch, and handed back the tray.

A few minutes later his cell door opened. Zhang stepped inside. “General.”

“Minister. Did you come for the pills? You're welcome to them.”

“You've always been generous.”

“And you've always been a thief.”

"If you weren't such a fool you'd be dangerous, Li. Don't you see you

almost caused a war? Bones turned to ashes for your fame."

"The Americans would have backed off. Now, thanks to you, they've

humiliated the Chinese nation."

"Do you really think so? Has anything changed? Every day they buy our

steel and televisions and computers. Every day they send us more money.

Every day our economy grows faster than theirs."

"And every day you steal more from the people. Every day peasants

die from hunger because of your crimes. Don't judge a hero by victory or

defeat."

“Hero?” Zhang laughed. "You're a deluded old ox we should have ground

up years ago. Why do you think the people didn't riot when we announced

your arrest? Why do you think they went home from Tiananmen quietly

when we told them to?"

“Because they were afraid.”

“Because they're satisfied with their lives. With the economy.”

“The economy is shrinking.”

Zhang shook his head. "Growth is rising again, Li. The people are smarter

than you. They respect the Party. They know that soon enough China will

be even more powerful than America. We'll sell them cars, airplanes, every-

thing. And then we'll rule. There was no need for what you did."

“One day the people will storm the gates of Zhongnanhai and you'll see.”

Zhang smiled, the tolerant smile of a man who'd heard a crazy uncle's

crazy arguments and wasn't listening anymore. "General. The world won't

end if a few migrants go hungry. Not everyone can be rich. Now. If you don't

want to take the pills, don't. The choice is yours. But don't forget your

family. For now, the party doesn't believe Jiafeng“—Li's wife—”knew of

your treasonous acts. But if this situation persists, we may reach another

conclusion."

Zhang stepped out of the cell, into the concrete corridor. Li was silent. He

wouldn't plead for his life. He wouldn't give Zhang the satisfaction. He should

have known these cowardly bastards would use his family against him.

“Be sure to take the blue pill first, General.” Zhang walked away as the

cell door slammed shut.

ZHANG HADN'T BEEN BACK SINCE. But today's China Daily proved that he

hadn't been bluffing. A front-page story explained that the Standing Com-

mittee had opened a “wider corruption investigation” into Li's affairs. They

wanted him gone, without a messy public trial, and they would destroy his

family if he resisted.

Li finished his tepid tea, drank the last of his watery soup. He'd been so

close to success. Even now he was sure that the Americans would have

backed off, pulled their ships out of the East China Sea. He would have

ruled China.

How could Cao have betrayed him? Bitterness upon bitterness.

Li wanted to talk to his wife and sons again, explain what he'd done. He

wanted to see Tiananmen one last time, go for one more run along the lakes

of Zhongnanhai. But he'd lost the chance to choose his fate. None of his

wishes would come true. Only the pills were true. He gathered them off the

tray. They were almost weightless. Hard to believe they could destroy the

body that he had spent so many years building, this body that had survived

war unscathed.

The blue pill first. Li popped it into his mouth and took it down in one

clean swallow. He closed his eyes and counted to thirty, seeing Mao in his

tomb in Tiananmen. When he opened his eyes again, the concrete walls of

the cell seemed to be melting. Now, before his brain melted too. He slipped

the other two pills into his mouth and choked them down. And then he

could do nothing except wait.

THE BLACK CB1000 ROLLED UP Memorial Drive, its engine burbling, and

stopped beside three Harleys festooned with POW/MIA stickers. Two riders

hopped off. Wells and Exley. They picked up a map at the visitors' center

and made their way to Section 60, among the newest parts of Arlington

National Cemetery.

Inside the gates the green, rolling hills glowed in the sunlight with an

unearthly beauty. Clean white headstones rose from the earth like dragon's

teeth. Oak trees offered pockets of shade. The sweet smell of fresh-cut grass

filled the air. A city of the dead, 300,000 graves in all. The ugliness of war

turned splendid, as politicians—and civilians in general—preferred, Wells

thought.

Every day, fifteen to thirty funerals were held at Arlington, mostly veter-

ans of World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, but some soldiers killed in action

in Iraq as well. Wells and Exley walked over a rise and came on mourners

waiting for a ceremony to begin. Six people sat under a canopy, five women

and one man, all in their eighties, the man painfully thin, his forearms nar-

row as chewed-up corncobs. World War II, Wells assumed.

Over a rise, they came upon another tent. This time the crowd over-

flowed the canopy. In the front row, two children clung to a woman in a

long black dress. The woman stared at the coffin before her, her body rigid

with grief. Iraq? Afghanistan? How many children would come to Arlington

this year? Wells wondered. And the next? And the next? And how would

history judge the leaders who'd sent their parents to die?

FINALLY THEY FOUND THE PLOT. Greg Hackett. The young sergeant who'd

bled to death in Afghanistan. Gregory Adam Hackett. He had died honestly,

doing his duty. More than most men could say.

More than Pierre Kowalski could say, Wells thought. As his ribs had

knitted together these last four weeks, he'd found himself thinking about

the arms dealer. Part of him hoped that one day he'd have a chance to see

Kowalski again, end the man's dirty business once and for all. Though

there'd just be another Kowalski, and another, as long as men wanted land

or money or power.

Forever.

Anyway, he hadn't come here to think about Kowalski. He wanted to

remember Hackett. Instead his mind slid sideways, to the Talib whose brains

he'd blasted on the night that Hackett died. He could see, actually see, the

man's skull shattering, as if he were in Afghanistan instead of Virginia, as if

he were living the night over again. He closed his eyes and sagged down.

He had destroyed that Talib as easily as the average person swatted a fly.

He'd killed so much that killing had become automatic, a reflex. Only after

the action ended could he realize the horror of what he'd done. Only now.

Wells wished he could cry. But he never cried. Instead he put his head to

the soft turf and closed his eyes and watched a movie of the men he'd killed

playing on the screen in his mind. Forgive us, for we know not what we do.

“John.” He felt Exley's thin arms around him. He lifted his head and

forced his eyes open.

“I don't know if I can do it anymore.”

“You don't have to, John. You can always quit.”

But even before Exley's words rose out of the cemetery and floated south

over the Pentagon and into the past, even before they joined everything

that had ever happened and everyone who'd ever lived in the place that

never was—

Wells knew she was wrong.

He would never quit.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

While in Boston on book tour for The Faithful Spy, the predecessor to this

novel, I was fortunate enough to meet the lovely and talented Dr. Jacqueline

Basha, a wonderful woman and a wonderful reader. Without Jackie, John

Wells—and his creator—would be a lot more tortured.

Thanks also to:

David, my brother, who was present at the creation.

Neil Nyren, whose suggestions are always on point.

Heather Schroder, who is never afraid to fight for her writers.

Deirdre Silver, a careful and thoughtful reader.

Doug Ollivant, who knows the difference between an LZ and a DZ.

Mark Tavani and Jon Karp, who knew John Wells when he had a differ-

ent name.

Larry Ingrassia and Tim Race, my editors at The New York Times, who

gave me more days off than I deserved.

And last but certainly not least, to all the readers who e-mailed me

(alexberenson@gmail.com) to say how much they liked (or in a few cases

didn't) The Faithful Spy. Writing a book isn't easy, but knowing that people

are actually reading it—and care enough to respond—makes the work

worthwhile.

Table of Contents

part of London and rode the Tube to work. Still, she had...

part is that I really was trying to pay you a compliment....

part of a routine as established as the Lord's Prayer. Have...

part is, he might actually get us out of this mess."