Power and Empire

45

Yukiko’s apartment was on the fourth floor of a tidy but older brick building a block and a half to the northeast of the Palacio Duhau Hyatt, where the Chinese foreign minister was staying. Buenos Aires city police and members of Foreign Minister Li’s protective detail had barricaded both ends of Avenida Alvear in front of the hotel and Posadas behind, forcing the Campus operators to approach the Kōanchōsa-chō operative’s room from Libertador. On the other side of Libertador was the train yard. Five hundred meters beyond that were the slums of Villa 31 and, presumably, Vincent Chen’s little band of terrorists.

Chavez placed a call to John Clark as they walked, asking him to check with his contacts in the Japanese intelligence community to see if any of them could verify a Monzaki Yukiko. He was still waiting to hear back when they arrived in front of the building.

The single apartment elevator was Old World — style, with a wooden door and an accordion gate that had to be shut manually before the car would operate. There was only enough room inside for four at a time, so Chavez, Ryan, and Adara squeezed in with the Japanese woman, leaving Midas to bound up the stairs.

The car chugged upward slowly with the weight of four passengers, and the former Delta commander was leaning against a plaster-covered wall when Jack pushed open the door.

“You’re staying alone,” Chavez asked again.

Yukiko held up her little finger, bending it at the knuckle. “Yubikiri,” she said. “I promise.”

Midas and Adara went through the door first, clearing the room before allowing Yukiko inside.

“I guess you really weren’t expecting company,” Midas said when he came back to the door. “You’re as messy as my young friend.”

Chavez’s phone buzzed. He answered it, nodded a few times, and then motioned for Yukiko to hold up her right hand, thumb extended. She did, revealing a crescent scar on the web.

“Looks like it’s her,” Chavez said. “Thanks, Mr. C.”

Yukiko smiled. “Mr. C? My father knew a man named John who was sometimes called that.”

Chavez winked at the others in the group. “That’s what Mr. C said.”

It took more than a phone call to be completely accepted, but the fact that John Clark apparently knew her father put Monzaki Yukiko well on the road. The IC world was often a multigenerational affair, with children following parents into the business. Clearances could be somewhat easier to obtain when a relative had already been scrutinized to the nth degree during a security background check.

Free now to move as she pleased without getting shot, Yukiko wasted no time in retrieving a spare mobile phone from a bag on her dresser and dialing up what was presumably a GSM bug like the ones Campus operators often deployed.

All of them were accustomed to the boredom of monitoring a bug and took up comfortable positions around the small efficiency apartment. Yukiko sat on a cramped loveseat beside Adara, elbows on her knees. Midas and Ding took up positions in the two wood slat chairs covered with quilted pillows, while Jack sat on the edge of the hastily made bed.

The device was active, picking up the periodic clang of pots or the sound of someone belching.

“Kitchen?” Adara asked.

Yukiko nodded. “The microphone is directly against the window. Cheap glass is very good at conducting sound. There is a large table approximately five feet from the wall. If Chen holds a meeting, there is a good chance it will be at that table.”

Jack rubbed a hand over the top of his head. “I don’t get it, Yukiko. What’s the Japanese connection?”

“Please call me Yuki,” she said. “That is a very good question. Have you heard of Chongryon?”

“Sounds Korean,” Jack said.

Chavez nodded. “Isn’t that the political arm of the DPRK in Japan?”

“Precisely that,” Yuki said. “My organization has linked members of Chongryon to acts of espionage in Japan. Kim Soo, a Korean woman with strong ties to this group, is one of Vincent Chen’s many paramours. My research leads me to believe Chen has many female contacts around the world — Amanda Salazar as a case in point. He is quite charming, but mixing work with pleasure will be his eventual downfall. I would not have been aware of Vincent Chen if he’d had better taste in women.”

Midas took a deep breath. “This is a cruddy thing to bring up, but it impacts operational security. If we’re working together now, we need to know about the blonde who was shot.”

Yuki tilted her head to the side, her face passive. “Beatriz Campos was also from Paraguay. She is… was a known assassin and a terrorist, already convicted in absentia for the murder of two Japanese businessmen during a visit to Peru. My organization believes Kim Soo is complicit in a plot to disrupt the upcoming G20 Summit. I was sent here to follow her and glean any useful intelligence. Suspicions against Kim are just that, suspicions, but the evidence against Beatriz Campos is irrefutable. I had no idea she would be here, but when I found out, I simply seized the opportunity…”

Midas pressed the issue. “So you carry the suppressed .22-caliber rifle around, just in case?”

“Another fair question,” the Japanese woman said. “There must be trust if we are to work together. Were the intelligence on Kim to reach a high enough standard, I would contact my superiors with the information, and then proceed as ordered. Such orders may include the use of a rifle.” She shrugged. “Your country has been known to put the faces of certain… high-value targets on playing cards.”

The group nodded.

Midas said, “Targets, indeed.”

“High value, indeed,” Yuki said. “Beatriz Campos was not our ace of spades. She was, however, an ace.”

Less than six hundred meters away, at the Palacio Duhau Hyatt, Chinese foreign minister Li reclined barefoot and shirtless on a blue velvet duchesse brisée, his legs propped on a thick pillow on the elongated footstool. The room had a distinct French neoclassical style with claw-foot furniture, wing-backed chairs, and the “broken duchess” style of chaise longue, where Li was undergoing a thorough examination from his physician. The bespectacled Dr. Ren used a pair of tweezers to pick bits of wood and gypsum wallboard from Li’s shoulder.

He would not have been injured at all had the idiot Paraguayan woman not been so slow to detonate the device. Her stupidity would have infuriated him, but the minor shrapnel wounds would only enhance the story of the cowardly attempt on his life. The death of one of the members of his security detail and the injury of another should have been enough, but you played the hand you were dealt.

Li’s mobile phone began to buzz across the ornate glass-topped table at the foot of the duchesse brisée. He shot a glance at Long Yun, who looked down at the number and then picked it up without answering.

“Madame Li,” Long said.

The foreign minister nodded and held out his hand, causing the doctor to stab him with the tweezers. Li cursed at the idiot and shoved him away, ordering him out of the room before taking the phone.

“Wei, xingan baobei,” he said. Hello, sweetheart. “No, I am fine. Minor scratches, that is all. No, no, really. I am well… Please tell our son not to worry. He must be brave and take care of his mother…”

Journalists from Xinhua — reporting directly to Secretary Deng’s propaganda department — would speak with Madame Li shortly. The foreign minister knew his wife well enough to be sure that she would quote her selfless husband, who, though wounded in a foreign land, exhorted their son to “be brave and take care of his mother.” He felt a pang of guilt at using his family so cruelly, but quickly disabused himself of the feelings. Drastic actions were necessary for the survival of the party, perhaps even for China itself.

“Yes, my dear,” he continued to console his wife, “they are taking good care of me. I will be home very soon. Yes, my love. I must hang up now.”

He did not actually end the call first. Such an act would have proven disastrous. Even a man as powerful as the foreign minister of China knew to let his wife be the one to end the call. She finally did, and Li handed the phone off to Long Yun.

The CSB officer set it back on the table.

“Will we go forward, Mr. Foreign Minister?”

“Of course,” Li said. “Why would we not? I am fine. We have come too far to turn back now.”

Colonel Long nodded toward a flat-screen television across the room. The sound was off, but the photos showed the whirling white vortex of a typhoon on a large map that included Taiwan, Japan, and the East China Sea.

“The typhoon has turned northward,” Long said. “It may prove problematic if it reaches Japan.”

“Nonsense,” Li said. “The summit is still days away. Many things will occur between now and then. Now get that egg of a doctor back in here.”

Li knew all too well that there were countless things that could go wrong with his scheme — this typhoon, the unknown person who had shot Amanda’s blond compatriot, even idiot servants who were dilatory in their duties. President Zhao might suddenly realize that Li was not actually his best friend. No, the man was much too dense for that. And even if Zhao did come to that conclusion, he would have to grow a pair of testicles in order to do anything about it. Perhaps by then the President of the United States would have used his famous Ryan Doctrine to put an end to Zhao and his witch hunt for anyone in the party who had exhibited a shred of financial success. And if President Ryan was himself too dense, then there was always another way.

In truth, Li had begun to think of their cause as a noble one. Just as Chairman Mao must have seen the task that had been before him. A work of the gods — or, in a world absent any gods, at least the work of destiny.

Maybe they turned in for the night,” Chavez said.

“Perhaps,” Yuki said. “More likely they are upset about the death of Beatriz Campos.”

Jack rubbed a hand across his beard. Talk of the sewers had left him feeling like he needed another shower. “How long will the battery last on your device?”

“The microphone is voice-activated,” she said. “That will conserve some power, but I am afraid we have no more than thirty-six hours.”

“We’ll listen in shifts, then,” Chavez said. “Jack, you’re voluntold to take the first rotation.”

“Excellent,” Ryan said through a feigned smile.

“I will listen with him,” Yuki said. “To make certain he does not drift off to sleep.”

Midas stood and raised his arms high overhead in a long, shuddering stretch. “I call dibs on half the bed.”

Adara stuck out her bottom lip in a mock pout. “What happened to guys taking the couch?”

“I only called half the bed,” Midas said. “You can fight Ding for the other half.”

“I’m good on the floor,” Chavez said, dragging the cushions off his chair.

Midas fell back on the mattress, bouncing once before curling up in the sheet, apparently unfazed that Yuki had slept in it the night before. He’d surely slept in much, much worse. “Don’t try anything,” he said without opening his eyes as Adara got in beside him.

“I’ll do my best to contain myself,” she said.

Chavez was already breathing deeply.

“I like your friends,” Yuki said, looking at Jack, who now sat beside her on the loveseat.

“Me too,” Ryan said. He wanted to ask her about the scratches on her face but decided against it. He was surrounded by people he trusted, and was alive after a particularly bloody day. A little mystery was a good thing.