Death Wave

3

William Rubens walked past Desk Three’s innermost security checkpoint and back into the Art Room. The huge high-definition monitor covering much of one wall of the chamber above the ranks of workstations and NSA personnel showed a live image blown up to movie-screen proportions, a cluster of sidewalk tables in front of a Starbucks

Kaffeehaus — a cluster of white tables under gaudily striped, open umbrellas. The scene swooped and jerked with Lia’s movements. The image was being transmitted real-time from a tiny camera imbedded in a clump of feathers attached to the front of her stylish broad-brimmed hat. It shifted wildly with each step she took and swung dizzyingly each time she turned her head.

A heavyset Chinese man sat at the nearest table, studying Lia with obvious pleasure. There was nothing inscrutable about that stare as he looked her up and down.

“Is her backup in place?” Rubens asked.

Marie Telach gestured toward a second monitor, a smaller one hanging from a different wall. It showed a still photograph of the Pariser Platz from directly overhead, with each street and building labeled.

“Alabaster is there, on the street,” she said, indicating a red flag on the plaza perhaps thirty yards from Lia’s position. “Onyx One and Onyx Two are here — northwest corner of the Aldon Hotel, fifth floor. All three are keyed in and online.”

“Good.” Alabaster, Rubens knew, was CJ Howorth, currently in training as a field operator with Desk Three. Until recently, she’d been an employee of GCHQ, the British Government Communications Headquarters, and working out of the station at Menwith Hill, in North Yorkshire. GCHQ was closely linked with the American NSA, and with the far-flung Echelon SIGINT system. She was a linguist, a good one, but her sharp thinking and quick action during the

Atlantis Queen hijacking the previous year had earned her a shot at Desk Three.

Onyx One was James Castelano, former Navy SEAL and an expert marksman. He was on the seventh floor of the Adlon with an M-110 SASS, or semiautomatic sniper system. One of the Art Room wall monitors was showing the image being transmitted live from Castelano’s electronic sight — a close-up of Feng’s leering face, the crosshairs centered on his forehead. Onyx Two was Harry Daimler, Castelano’s spotter.

“Ah! Miss Lau,” Feng said, standing awkwardly, bowing slightly and extending his hand. The camera peering down over the brim of her hat showed Lia’s hand reach out to be engulfed in Feng’s paw.

Lia’s cover for this op was that of a Chinese American businesswoman named Diane Lau. This meeting had been set up weeks ago, beginning with exploratory inquiries halfway around the world, in Hawaii. Feng was a big player in an international arms-smuggling operation quite possibly orchestrated by the government of the People’s Republic of China itself. Rubens hoped that Feng would offer Lia an advisory position on his staff, a job that would give her a shot at tapping Feng’s personal business empire. He was a senior vice president for COSCO, the China Ocean Shipping Company, and that fact by itself meant that Feng was of great interest to the NSA.

“It’s good to meet you at last, Mr. Feng,” Lia’s voice said from the wall speakers.

“Please … have a seat. Though I must confess I still don’t know why you insisted on such a public meeting place! The street is such an unlikely place to discuss business!”

“Because it is public, Mr. Feng,” Lia replied, taking the chair next to Feng’s. “Your phone calls and your e-mails have been most informative. But …” The image jiggled slightly as she shrugged. “I don’t know you yet, not personally. You could be anybody.”

“And a girl can’t be too careful,” Feng said, his dark eyes twinkling. “I do understand completely.”

His English was excellent. According to his dossier, he’d been educated at Oxford.

“Smooth operator,” Marie said.

“The word is ‘smarmy,’” Rubens replied. “Have Alabaster move in a bit tighter.”

These next few minutes — Feng’s first impressions of Lia — would be critical.

Lia smiled pleasantly at Feng as he signaled a waiter and ordered two cappuccinos. She’d taken the chair next to the man because the seat opposite him, which would have been her first choice, might have put her ridiculous hat into Onyx’s line of sight from the hotel, blocking his shot. She glanced casually up at the window where she knew Castelano and Daimler were watching. The left half was open, but she couldn’t see them. Thoroughgoing professionals, they would be set up well back from the window, hidden in shadow, their rifle invisible from the street.

Glancing right, she did see CJ — Siege to her friends — dressed in a green T-shirt and blue jeans, carrying a shopping bag from Peek & Cloppenburg. Siege was studying a tourist’s street map while edging unobtrusively closer, probably at Rubens’ order.

She was glad for the backup. Feng was a thoroughly nasty character. Formerly a major in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army with fifteen years’ experience in Chinese military intelligence, he was now a high-ranking executive for COSCO, which meant his former connections would still be very much intact. He was known to have underworld connections as well, a working arrangement with one of the more powerful tongs operating out of Hong Kong, and he had a rap sheet that included smuggling, drugs, and gunrunning. His dossier suggested that his weakness was attractive women, with a string of mistresses from Hong Kong to Honolulu to Vancouver to Berlin. He seemed to collect women, though Lia wasn’t sure what it was about the man that would attract them.

Perhaps it was just a combination of those most powerful of aphrodisiacs, money and power.

She was dressed this afternoon to entice. The red heels, the short red skirt with the slit up to here, the generous V of exposed cleavage, the smart-looking designer sunglasses, the hat canted across her head at a jaunty angle — all part of the alluring package. Her handlers had designed her look based on careful analyses of six of Feng’s recent girlfriends. He liked Americans but seemed to prefer the dark and exotic beauty of Asian Americans, which was why Rubens had asked Lia to volunteer for this op in the first place.

Despite the way Feng kept staring at her chest, however, she knew it was her brain that would make or break the deal. According to the employment listing that had first caught Desk Three’s attention last month, Feng was looking for an advisor in cultural affairs and public relations, and that was how she intended to sell herself.

Feng glanced up from her chest, and their gazes locked. “So, Ms. Lau. Is this your first time in Berlin?”

“Not at all,” she replied truthfully. She’d passed through the German capital several times in the past five years on various missions. “I love this city.”

“We have something in common, then.” He nodded toward the monument against the western skyline. “The Brandenburg Gate. Magnificent. Though … I have to admit that my favorite piece of history connected with it is your President Kennedy giving a speech right over there on the far side of the monument … was it 1962? After the Berlin Wall went up, anyway.” He laughed. “ ‘I am a jelly doughnut’!”

“Ich bin ein Berliner,” Lia said, nodding. “That was 1963. But you do know that the whole jelly-filled doughnut thing is an urban legend, right?”

“Lia, what are you doing?” the voice of Thomas Blake said in her ear. Blake was one of the Desk Three handlers and would be running her during this mission. “That Kennedy story is well attested—”

“What do you mean, Ms. Lau?” Feng said at the same time.

“Kennedy was identifying himself with the German people,” Lia said patiently. “The story went around — I think it was even in the

New York Times — about how his use of the indefinite article, ein, made it seem like he was calling himself a pastry. In fact, in German the indefinite article is left out when you’re talking about someone’s profession or place of residence, but it’s absolutely necessary when you’re speaking figuratively, as Kennedy was. He wasn’t literally from Berlin. He was only declaring his solidarity with the city’s citizens, in a city divided and barricaded by the Soviets. So ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ was completely correct.”

“I’ve heard that people in Berlin don’t call themselves Berliners,” Feng said. “They reserve that name for jelly-filled doughnuts.”

“Not true,” Lia told him. “The things are called Berliners elsewhere in Germany, but here they’re called Pfannkuchen — pancakes, for some odd reason.”

“I hope you’re sure of your facts, Lia,” Blake told her over the communications link. “That’s not what it says here.” Blake and the other Art Room personnel had access to various guidebooks and reference works, as well as the entire Internet to call upon. If Feng asked her something she didn’t know, they would be able to provide the answer in seconds.

But Blake, Lia knew, was wrong. She was relying on a different source, one she trusted.

“So … you speak German?” Feng asked her.

“Some,” she admitted.

“You seem unusually well versed in the language for an American.”

“Danke. I’m interested in people, Mr. Feng, and in their stories. Urban legends like that Kennedy story fascinate me, because of what they tell us about people.”

“Oh? And what does I-am-a-doughnut tell you about people, Ms. Lau?”

“That too often they jump to conclusions or generalizations, or rely on outright bad information, without checking the source. One of the biggest challenges I face working in PR is cleaning up the mess after someone important puts his foot in it — usually because that someone spoke first and checked his sources later.”

The waiter appeared with the cappuccinos Feng had ordered. After he paid the man, Feng’s gaze dropped to her chest again, and she leaned forward just a bit, “accidentally” giving him a better view. The idiot could look all he wanted — and if he cared more about that than her experience and her brains, so much the better. It just gave her another weapon in her arsenal.

“Diane … may I call you Diane?”

“It’s Ms. Lau,” she told him. “At least for now.”

“Don’t alienate him, Lia,” Blake said in her ear. “You’re supposed to be swooning all over the guy.”

She ignored the advice. Sometimes it was better to play hard to get, and her legend, the fictitious background created for her by Desk Three, emphasized that she was a hard-nosed professional.

“Of course, Ms. Lau,” Feng said, and he smiled. “For now.”

Lia glanced down into her cup, then looked up, bemused. The barista had expertly poured the steamed milk to create an incredibly delicate image of two intertwined hearts surrounded by lace. Had that been Feng’s idea? Or a misinterpretation of the meeting by the barista? She wondered if Feng had the same picture in his cup, but she wasn’t going to lean closer for a look. Instead, she stirred the picture away, then took a cautious sip. The cappuccino was strong and slightly bitter.

“I very much liked your résumé, Ms. Lau,” Feng said after a moment. “A double major in public relations and communications from Berkeley,

and a minor in anthropology. I like smart women.”

She said nothing, and he pushed ahead. “It says you live in San Francisco. You would be willing to relocate?”

“Yes. Where did you have in mind?”

He sidestepped the question. “The position would require a great deal of travel.”

“I’m aware of that. Your interviewer in Honolulu told me as much.”

He nodded, smiling. “And you were willing to meet me here in Berlin this afternoon. I appreciate that.”

“I travel a lot in the job I have now,” she told him. It was the precise truth. “I’m here on business in any case. It seemed like a good opportunity to meet you … personally.”

Again, the truth. When Feng’s agents checked up on her, as she knew they would, they would find a solid background for her. Phone calls to any of several numbers she’d provided, including that of her supposed company’s HR department, would be answered by people who would swear she worked in the PR firm of Farnum, Pfizer, and Smith.

“Indeed.” He took a sip of his cappuccino. “Well, my people in Honolulu would have told you I need a good public relations specialist. But there’s considerably more to this position than that. How much do you know about COSCO, Ms. Lau?”

She was well prepared for this one. “I know it’s the second-largest dry cargo shipping company in the world. You have a hundred and thirty vessels of over three hundred and twenty thousand TEUs, and over six hundred merchant vessels with a total cargo capacity of thirty-five million metric tonnes, DWT. The COSCO group includes six listed companies and over three hundred subsidiaries, with facilities in over a hundred ports worldwide.”

“Nicely memorized, Ms. Lau. Do you know what ‘TEU’ stands for?”

“Twenty-foot equivalent unit,” she told him. “It refers to the standard twenty-foot intermodal containers carried by container ships, by rail, and by truck.”

“And DWT?”

“Deadweight tonnage. That’s the total weight a ship can carry, including its cargo, fuel, ballast water, fresh water, provisions, passengers, and crew.”

“Its displacement, yes.”

“No, displacement is something else entirely. That refers to a ship’s total mass, how much water it displaces when it’s fully loaded, which equals the deadweight tonnage plus the weight of the ship’s structure itself.”

Feng nodded. “Very good. You’ve obviously done your homework.”

“Of course,” she told him. She decided to give his ego a tweak, a small one. “After all, it was important that I impress you.”

He smiled again. “And you have been quite successful.” He sipped his cappuccino, leaning back in his chair. “Ms. Lau, to be quite frank, I need someone beautiful, charming, smart, and extremely, ah, well informed, someone like you, in fact, to travel with me as a kind of personal, ah, secretary. I want someone who can inform me of local customs, idiosyncrasies, background culture, language, that sort of thing.” The smile faded, and he looked at her intently — looking into her eyes this time. “For instance, if I did this …” He held up his hand, thumb and forefinger touching in an “okay” gesture. “What would you tell me about it?”

“That you’re fine if you use it in the United States or England. It just means ‘okay.’ But do not use it here in Germany — or in Brazil, or much of Africa, or in parts of Spain or the Mediterranean either, I think. There, it means you’re calling someone an asshole.” She chuckled. “I read once about a U.S. businessman who’d gone to Rio de Janeiro to work out a business deal down there. Everything was going great, everyone was friendly and happy … and then just as they were about to conclude the deal he said, ‘Well, okay, then!’ And he made the okay sign with his hand like that. The room went cold, and the deal fell through.”

He nodded, as if satisfied. “Excellent, Ms. Lau. I think you will work out very well for me. Very well indeed.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” The okay sign had obviously been a test, as had been the questions about shipping. She wondered if the same had been true with the Kennedy story. Feng might be a sexist pig with a smooth line and a lot of girlfriends, but he had some depth to him, at least. It was possible that some of the testosterone was out there just for show, a means of getting others to underestimate him.

“You are staying over there at the Adlon?”

“Yes, sir.” Now that she’d agreed to work for him, he was her boss and she would use the appropriate honorific.

He didn’t seem to notice. “I will send a contract over later this afternoon.” He considered her a moment longer. “When would you be willing to begin in my employ?”

“Whenever you say, sir. I’m free now.”

“No, Diane, I would say you are very, very expensive.” He chuckled at his own pun. “And your employers at Farnum, Pfizer, and Smith?”

“This project in Berlin was my last trip for them, sir. I gave them two weeks’ notice three weeks ago.”

“Ah.”

“They know I was going to interview with you today. You can call them and check, if you like.”

“I’m sure that’s not necessary.” He appeared to think about it a moment. “I’ll tell you what. I am flying to Spain tomorrow to meet a … client. An important client. He’s Arab, from Pakistan, and it would be most useful for me if you could be there to tell me what I need to know about his people.”

“Well, I can tell you right now that he’s probably not Arab,” Lia told him. “Not if he really is from Pakistan. He’s almost certainly Muslim, of course — but linguistically he’ll be Indo-Iranic, and ethnically he’ll belong to one of several groups. Punjabi, Sindhi, Pathan. The Arabs are Semites.”

“Well, there … you see? You’ve begun earning your salary already.”

“Where will you be going in Spain, sir?”

“To Alicante, and possibly on to the Canary Islands later. I have … business interests there.”

“Palm trees. Sand. Sun. Bikinis.” She nodded. “Such a tough job.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I meant that it sounds like fun.”

“Excellent. I’ll send a car for you tomorrow.” He swallowed the last of his cappuccino. “Until tomorrow, then?”

“Yes, Mr. Feng.”

He stood, shook her hand, and walked off, swallowed in a moment by the swirling crowds on the Pariser Platz.

Lia glanced at CJ and saw she’d taken a seat at another table close by. She was still reading her tourist brochure, but Lia heard her voice in her ear as she murmured, “Nice job, Lia.”

“Mm-hm,” she murmured, then finished her cup, stood, and walked away. It was important to clear the area of operation immediately, especially before she began discussing things with CJ or with Desk Three. There was a distinct possibility, no, a probability that, just as Desk Three had been covering the meeting from several angles, one or more members of Feng’s operation were watching as well — possibly with long-range shotgun mikes or a tiny listening device stuck to the bottom of the Starbucks table.

You couldn’t stay in this job for a week without becoming hopelessly paranoid.

“Where the hell did you get that stuff about Kennedy and the jelly doughnuts?” Blake asked her as she walked back toward her hotel. “We have an archived copy of the

New York Times here — dateline April 30, 1988—that claims Kennedy screwed up!”

“Check some of your other sources,” Lia told him quietly. “Actually, CJ and I were talking about it when we got in yesterday. She knows German, and we happened to be talking about the Kennedy story. So we can thank her.”

“Thank you, CJ,” Blake said. His voice was touched by just a hint of sarcasm. Lia didn’t know Blake well, but she knew he didn’t like being shown up in front of others. Too bad.

“Any time, luv,” CJ’s voice replied.

“Although I sometimes wonder why we’re online for you guys when you obviously already know all the answers.”

“Just check out the urban legends better, Tom,” Lia told him. “Anyway — did anyone listening in get the idea that Feng was putting on a major show for my benefit?”

“What do you mean, Lia?”

That voice was William Rubens.

“The guy is smart. Speaks perfect English. Educated in Oxford, according to his bio data. The thing about the okay gesture was clearly a test. So were the questions about deadweight tonnage and all. And … I don’t know. Maybe he didn’t have a reason to know about Kennedy and the doughnuts. But his slip about Pakistanis being Arabs was kind of … obvious, don’t you think? The guy is a high-ranking officer in one of the largest shipping corporations in the world,

and a major in Chinese intelligence. He should already know stuff like that.”

“I think he was surprised Lia knew so much,” CJ put in. “Okay, I have two security types sitting at other tables. They just got up and followed Feng. No one’s following Lia.”

“Good,” Rubens said, “but don’t relax. There may be others in the area.”

“The job offer seems genuine,” Rubens said, “although given what we’ve uncovered about Feng already, we suspect he primarily wants Lia for eye candy.”

Lia snorted. “A pretty girl on his arm to impress his customers?”

“Exactly.”

“The job offer is for eighty K a year. That’s expensive candy.”

“He can afford it. COSCO can afford it. Why, Lia? Are you worried?”

“As a matter of fact I am.”

“You can still change your mind about this, Lia,” Rubens told her. “This op was always volunteers only.”

“No,” she said, walking past several maroon-jacketed bellhops and through the tall doors of the Adlon Hotel, entering into the magnificently appointed lobby. “Hell, this is exactly the sort of break we were looking for. The guy has me flying to Spain tomorrow, to meet someone he says is from Pakistan. Depending on who this business associate is, it might be our link between COSCO and al-Qaeda.”

“Yes, and it also might be a bit too neat,” CJ put in.

“CJ’s right,” Rubens said. “Feng’s contact in Spain could be perfectly legitimate.”

“Well, we’ll know tomorrow,” Lia said brightly. “Won’t we?”

Nevertheless, she wondered just exactly what it was that she was getting herself into.

Dushanbe was a teeming, sprawling, bustling place.

The name of the city, Charlie Dean had been told, meant Monday — literally “two-Saturday,” meaning the second day after Saturday. Originally, the place had been a Monday market village, and there were still extensive bazaars and countless street vendors and stalls that continued the commercial spirit of the place.

Despite the bustle, Dushanbe was a surprisingly green city. So much of the Tajikistan countryside was sere and brown beneath barren and rugged mountains, but the center of the country’s capital was thickly planted with trees, boasting broad, tree-lined boulevards and numerous parks. The building serving as a military hospital was located on the far side of Rudaki Park, across from the sprawling National Palace and not far from the towering statue of King Ismail Somoni in front of his high, golden-crown-capped arch.

The hospital was a dour, concrete structure painted dull red and surrounded by trees, a relic of the Stalinist era. The Russian 201st Motorized Rifle Division was permanently based at Dushanbe. The unit, totaling some five thousand men, had been stationed in the country since before the fall of the Soviet Union, but the main base itself had only been opened in 2004, close by the newly renovated Dushanbe Airport to the southeast. The building near Rudaki Park was actually a much older military base, a satellite medical facility still serving the region until the much newer hospital facilities on the base itself were completed.

Dean and Akulinin had no trouble following the small convoy from the Ayni Airfield, keeping well back in order to remain inconspicuous. They drove the vehicle they’d checked out from the motor pool the day before, a relatively new Ulyanov Hunter jeep, and dropped onto the convoy’s tail on the main drag past the airfield, heading toward the city. Seven miles later, they turned right onto the M41, a modern highway called King Ismail Somoli Boulevard, crossed the bridge over the wide but shallow Varzob River, and entered the city proper just north of the grounds of the National Palace. By that time, they knew they were heading toward the old Soviet hospital and not the newer base on the far side of the city; they found a place to park on Tolstoy Street and navigated the rest of the way on foot. Their military IDs got them past the security desk in the echoing tile-floored lobby. A bored Russian corporal at the information desk pointed out the stairs leading to the basement — and the morgue.

“The place is going to be busy,” Akulinin pointed out. “We’re right behind them. Maybe we should wait and come back later.”

“I’m counting on a crowd,” Dean told him. “More confusion, fewer questions.”

“… are break … up,” Rockman’s voice told them, the words blasted by static in Dean’s ear. “Do … copy?”

Then the connection was lost. Desk Three’s personal communications links operated well outdoors, but the basement of a concrete building was something else.

They could hear echoing conversation up ahead. The truck with the body bags had pulled up at the rear of the hospital.

“Vasilyev will be the OIC,” Dean told Akulinin. “He’ll wonder about me, this uniform, so I’ll be the decoy.”

“In this part of the world, they shoot spies,” Akulinin replied dourly. He was joking, but not by much.

“Won’t happen,” Dean quipped. “I’m in uniform.”

“The wrong one.”

Through a set of double doors in a cold and narrow passageway with concrete-block walls, they reached the morgue desk where the duty-watch stander, a junior sergeant, looked up from an ancient, dog-eared Playboy magazine.

“Sudar’!” the man snapped, suddenly sitting upright and slipping the magazine underneath an open logbook. “Pajalusta! Pakajiti vahshi bumahgee!” Dean’s Russian was good enough to know the man was asking to see identification.

“We’re with them,” Akulinin replied in the same language, nodding toward the doors beyond the desk as he pulled out his Russian Army ID and flashed it.

“Da, Meior,” the man said, glancing first at Akulinin’s ID card, then at Dean’s. If he was curious about what an Indian Air Force wing commander was doing in a Russian military morgue, he gave no sign. “Veeryod!”

Pocketing their IDs, Dean and Akulinin walked up to the pair of swinging doors, marked KEEP OUT in Russian, and pushed through—

— and were immediately stopped by a Russian senior sergeant with Vympel patches on his uniform and an AK-74 assault rifle. “Stoy!”