Private Beijing, page 22
“How much longer do you think you’ll need us?” I asked.
“You’re free to go,” she said. “I heard the name he gave you, so I imagine you have a plane to catch.”
I nodded.
Behind me, Zhang Daiyu relayed instructions to the charter firm.
“The People’s Republic cannot condone intervention in another sovereign country, but given what has happened here, I would like to wish you every success in your endeavors.”
I was surprised she was expressing support and it must have showed on my face
“Fang Wenyan and the fools working with him didn’t realize they were being made tools of Russia, importing ideology and methods that have no place in China,” Fen explained. “If they had been successful, they could have caused division and instability that threatened China’s security. We were aware of a power play by this cabal, but until you arrived had no idea how well developed it was or that it involved a foreign state. Your investigation exposed these things, and for that reason your agency will always be welcome in China. As will you.”
She offered me her hand and I shook it. She said something in Mandarin to Hua and Zhang Daiyu and they replied in grateful tones.
“Your flight leaves in ninety minutes,” Zhang Daiyu said to me. “Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?”
“You need to stay here and help Shang Li rebuild,” I responded. “Can you let Dinara Orlova know what time the plane will arrive in Moscow?”
She nodded.
“I would never have been able to do this without you, Zhang Daiyu. Thank you.” I turned to Huang Hua then. “And you, Hua. I appreciate everything you’ve done.”
He nodded. “Delun, Kang, and Jinhai were my friends too, Mr. Morgan. I had to help avenge their deaths.”
My phone rang and I saw Justine’s name flash on-screen.
“Hey, Jus,” I said when I answered.
“Jack?” I was on edge immediately. I sensed fear in her voice. “I’ve been trying to reach Dinara like you asked, but I can’t get hold of her. Or Feodor Arapov. I can’t reach anyone at Private Moscow. It’s as though they have all disappeared.”
CHAPTER 78
MY HEART SANK. There could only be one explanation for this. I took a moment to digest the news and collect my thoughts.
“Jack?”
“It’s Alekseyev,” I responded. “He must know what’s happened here in Beijing and has taken them for leverage.”
“Oh, Jack, you can’t go there,” Justine protested. “Not after last time.”
Under any other circumstances I would have said she was right, but I owed my life to Dinara and Feo, and if Alekseyev had taken them, they needed me more than ever. None of us would ever be safe again with a man like him targeting us.
“I have to,” I replied. “I want you to call Erin Sebold. She is the Agency head of section at the embassy in Moscow. See what kind of help they can give us.”
“Jack …”
“I have to go, Justine. I can’t leave them.”
It sounded as though she was crying.
“I know, Jack. I know you can’t leave them, but you are taking a piece of my heart with you.”
“I love you, Jus.”
“Love you too,” she replied before hanging up.
“What’s up?” Zhang Daiyu asked as I slid my phone into my pocket.
“The entire staff at Private Moscow are missing,” I replied.
“Alekseyev?”
I nodded grimly.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Morgan,” said Fen.
“Can you see if your people have heard anything useful in Moscow?” I asked.
“We don’t have operatives in Moscow,” she said firmly. “But I’ll see what I can do,” she added with a conspiratorial smile.
“You ready?” I asked Hua. He nodded.
We said goodbye to Fen, who thanked us again before allowing us to take the van out of the underground parking garage and cross the police cordon.
Hua took us to the workers’ hostel where I collected my stuff before we headed for Beijing Nanyuan airport to the south of the city, a military base that also offered commercial facilities. I could see a fleet of executive aircraft on the stands surrounding the large terminal.
I don’t know whether it was Zhang Daiyu’s doing or if Fen had pulled some strings, but we were waved through the gate at the edge of the airfield and told to proceed directly to stand 47, where we found a Gulfstream G650 waiting. The pilot stood by the aircraft, not far from a customs officer behind a collapsible table. When we pulled up and stepped out of the van, the officer called me over, checked my passport, and performed a fingertip search of my holdall. When she was satisfied, she waved me on.
The pilot, a cheerful man in his late forties, had an air of easy confidence, the calm of someone who’d been flying for decades. He greeted me warmly before climbing the airstairs to complete his pre-flight checks. I turned to face Zhang Daiyu and Hua, who had waited a short distance away.
“You sure you don’t want me to come?” she asked.
“I’m sure. You’re needed here. I have friends in Moscow who will look after me.”
“Not as well as us,” Hua countered.
“Maybe not.” I smiled. “Thank you for everything you’ve done. Both of you. I’ll call you when I’ve found Alekseyev.”
“Say hello to him from me,” Zhang Daiyu said.
“And our three friends,” Hua added.
I nodded and headed for the jet. I climbed the airstairs as the pilot ran through his engine checks and found the co-pilot waiting for me in the cabin. She was a quiet woman in her early thirties, who like the pilot gave off an aura of competence.
“Mr. Morgan, welcome aboard,” she said. “We were told you didn’t require service tonight, so it’s just you, me, and Captain Tengfei for our flight to Moscow.”
Nervous acid flushed through my stomach as she named the city. My last trip to Moscow had almost killed me.
I stowed my bag and took my seat in a plush armchair halfway along the cabin. The co-pilot went into the cockpit, and the pilot broadcast a short welcome and safety announcement, but I wasn’t really listening. I was thinking about what I’d face in Moscow and rehearsing various scenarios.
Worry for my Russian friends and colleagues, compulsive visualization of how I’d handle each scenario, and unwanted flashbacks to the trials I’d previously faced there kept me on edge throughout take-off, but about an hour after leaving Beijing the adrenaline ebbed away and fatigue got the better of me.
With nothing but the low drone of the engines and the stars outside my window keeping me company, I finally drifted off to sleep.
CHAPTER 79
JUSTINE FELT ANGRY and she couldn’t understand why. It was an internalized anger that clawed at her, a grim sense of frustration with no outlet. She knew from professional experience that such feelings were neither healthy nor productive, so tried to understand where they had come from.
Was it delayed anger and grief for fallen colleagues? Was she tired of being thrust into danger by malevolent people? Was she angry at Jack for the cavalier way he hurled himself into these perilous situations, regardless of the odds? All these issues came to mind, so Justine suspected they played a part in the fire that seemed to start in her chest and spread up her spine to the very top of her skull.
She sat back in the executive chair and stretched. She was alone in the small meeting room in the Private office overlooking Madison Square Park. Mo-bot and Sci had been elusive ever since Angel had been released. She had told them about her experiences with Tate Johnson and the team spying on the Consulate and related what Jack had said about helping the DoD contractor find a way to bring Angel to justice.
She was happy to hear Shang Li was alive and relieved for his wife and children, but the good news had been followed by bad. Now Dinara, Feo, and the rest of the Private Moscow team were missing.
There had been a time when Justine had been jealous of Dinara, while she and Jack had been working closely together in Moscow, but Justine’s feelings had been grounded in a fear of losing him that proved to be unfounded. She had since come to know Dinara as an extremely competent investigator, and was genuinely concerned about what had happened to her and her team.
There was a knock at the door and Mo-bot entered. She was in blue jeans and a green T-shirt emblazoned with a screen print of bolting ponies.
“Any word from Moscow?” she asked.
Justine shook her head. “No. Jack’s on his way there now.”
Mo-bot whistled softly. “Does he know what he might be walking into?”
“Yes. That’s why he’s going,” Justine said. “He wants to put an end to this and get his team back.”
“I’m sorry, Justine,” Mo-bot responded. “This can’t be easy for you.”
“It’s the job,” she replied.
They both fell silent for a moment.
“You didn’t come in here for a gloom session with me,” Justine remarked at length. “What have you got?”
“Am I that transparent?”
Justine recognized Mo-bot’s knowing smile; some scheme was brewing. She nodded.
“Well, we do have something as it happens,” Mo-bot said. “Let me show you.”
Justine got to her feet and followed her along the corridor to the large conference room where she and Sci had set up a couple of workstations. Sci was at his, sipping from a paper cup.
“Morning,” he said cheerfully.
Mo-bot shut the door behind them and took a seat at her workstation. Outside, the midday sun was making the city shine, but the conference room was just the right side of chilly.
“What’s going on?” Justine asked, taking the seat next to Mo-bot’s.
She saw them exchange a look.
“Didn’t sit well with us that Angel gets shipped back to China,” Sci revealed. “Jack was right to want to bring him to justice.”
“I agree,” Justine said.
“The set-up Tate and his people had at the Consulate inspired us,” Mo-bot said. “We bugged the place with devices even the Chinese won’t find.”
“More advanced than the Pentagon’s?” Justine asked.
“No,” Mo-bot replied. “Just more creatively deployed.”
She indicated her screen, which brought up an image of an office ceiling. Justine could see strip lighting and the very top of a whiteboard.
“We hacked the phones of a number of embassy staffers, turning them into surveillance devices,” Mo-bot revealed.
“How?” Justine asked.
“Well, once you know who they are, it isn’t that complicated,” Sci replied. “That’s what she says anyway.” He nodded at Mo.
“I built a device that hijacks the Bluetooth connection to install my software patch. It’s more complicated than he’s making out,” Mo-bot said.
“Really?” Sci scoffed.
“Anyway, they are moving him tonight,” Mo-bot went on. “He’s booked on a private jet from Newark. We can tell Tate Johnson the license plate and the time of departure.”
“Do you think they’ll be able to hold him this time?” Sci asked.
“I hope so,” Justine replied. “We now have proof he was spying. We didn’t have that before. Liu Bao’s recorded confession changes things. Angel has clearly been engaged in espionage activity against the United States. Carver’s people must be able to hold him for that.”
Mo-bot nodded. “Sounds good to me.”
“Okay,” Justine said, hoping she was right. She would really like to see Lewis’s killer face justice. “I’ll make the call.”
CHAPTER 80
TATE JOHNSON HAD been very interested in the new evidence Justine had presented. Normally the State Department would have begun proceedings to secure Angel from the Chinese authorities so he could face prosecution, but with the information Sci and Mo-bot had obtained about Angel’s imminent departure, Tate said he wouldn’t involve State, but would instead take a discreet, more direct approach to get Angel in front of a judge.
Justine was unclear of Tate’s exact role as a contractor with the Department of Defense, but he seemed to have a great deal of authority. Within a couple of hours he had established an ad-hoc command center on the third floor of the FBI building in Federal Plaza in the south of Manhattan. Justine, Mo-bot, and Sci had been invited to attend as observers, but they were more than that—at least Mo-bot was. She gave Tate’s technical team access to the feeds she was picking up from the embassy staffers’ phones. There was no talk of warrants or illegality, and Justine couldn’t figure out whether that was because Tate’s team were independent contractors or if they had already taken care of the necessary legal procedures.
The FBI building was located on the corner of Worth Street and Broadway, towering above the neighboring structures. It was set behind concrete barriers to prevent vehicle assault and security was tight. They were scanned and searched on entry, and each floor and every room was assigned a security rating from sensitive to top secret. Only people with the relevant clearance were allowed in those areas. The large windowless conference room that was Tate’s base of operations was rated secret.
There were thirty-four people in the room. Justine knew because she had counted them all once she had managed to get hold of Erin Sebold to tell her Jack was on his way to Moscow. There wasn’t much else for Justine to do, so she watched Tate and his team preparing for the task that lay ahead.
There were fifteen field operators, distinguishable by their body armor and weapons: six women and nine men. Fifteen analysts and support personnel staffed computer and communications terminals, and then there was Tate plus the three observers from Private.
The plane had filed a flight plan to Beijing with a 5 p.m. departure time, and it was a fifty-minute journey from the embassy, so Angel had to be leaving at any moment. The room was quiet in anticipation, as though thirty-four people were simultaneously holding their breath.
“I’ve got him,” someone said, and Justine turned to see one of the analysts pointing at her screen. “Micro-drone camera in the underground garage.”
Tate’s people had bolstered Mo-bot’s surveillance with some gadgets of their own. Justine saw the hitman walking through a garage with a couple of handlers. He was taken to a large SUV.
“He’s getting into a silver Escalade, license DCM0089,” the analyst announced.
“Okay, people,” Tate said. “We’ve got our target. Move.”
The field operators hurried from the room, Tate following.
“We’ll let you know when we have him,” he said to Justine before he left.
The room fell quiet again as the analysts turned their attention to the surveillance and pursuit operation that was now underway.
Justine noticed Mo-bot and Sci get to their feet.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“We’ve never been good spectators,” Mo-bot replied.
Sci nodded. “After what this guy did to us, to Jessie and to Lewis, I want to see the whites of his eyes when they put him in irons.”
CHAPTER 81
THEY HAD PARKED a blue Nissan Rogue Private staff vehicle in a garage on Leonard Street, a block from the FBI building, and Justine hurried to keep up as Sci and Mo-bot headed there.
“How are we going to find them?” she asked.
“I slipped a tracker in Tate’s body armor,” Mo-bot replied. “And I put a camera and mic in the operation center.”
Justine was impressed but not surprised. Mo-bot was known as the detective agency’s mom partly because, like all good mothers, she made sure things got done.
Justine was sweating by the time they picked their way through the crowded city and reached Leonard Street. They hurried into the parking garage, found the Nissan Rogue, and Justine got behind the wheel. Sci rode shotgun and Mo-bot sat in the back.
“Where to?” Justine asked, starting the engine.
“Newark,” Mo-bot suggested, firing up her laptop. “Tate said they wouldn’t take him in the city. Too many opportunities to escape. They’ll get him close to the airport.”
They headed through Manhattan and took the Holland Tunnel west, following a stream of late-afternoon traffic that clogged the confined space with pungent fumes. When they emerged from the tunnel, they continued for a while before turning south through the Ironbound, a suburban neighborhood that lay north of the airport.
“Tate is about three hundred yards ahead,” Mo-bot said, checking the signal being displayed on her laptop.
Justine peered over the tops of the vehicles in front of her and saw three black SUVs going south. She recognized one of them as the vehicle that had been used to collect her from the hotel. She stepped on the accelerator, pulled into the outside lane, and closed the gap. When she got to within fifty yards, she caught sight of the silver Escalade they’d seen from the operations room.
“There’s Angel,” Justine said, and Sci and Mo-bot craned forward to catch a glimpse of the vehicle through the heavy traffic.
Justine kept her distance and followed the three SUVs as they tailed their target.
They took the next turn-off, leaving the Expressway for Port Road, a quiet service route that offered access to the freight and private terminals.
When the Escalade was two hundred yards from the Port Road perimeter security gate, and there was nowhere for it to go other than into the airport, the convoy of black SUVs accelerated and caught up with the Chinese Embassy vehicle.
Two of the SUVs got in front of it and blocked the road, forcing the Escalade to a halt. The third of Tate’s vehicles moved to within inches of the Escalade’s rear bumper, thwarting any escape. The squad of heavily armed field operators emerged from the trio of SUVs, guns trained on the windows of Angel’s vehicle.
“Get out of the vehicle!” Tate yelled, raising an AR-15. “Step out now!”
Justine pulled over and she, Mo-bot, and Sci watched the tense scene unfold.
