Red Cell

CHAPTER 10

The airport was in the Chaoyang district, northeast of the city in a suburb no longer considered remote. The ’08 Olympics had fixed that. If the government had spared any expense to ready the city for visitors that year, it had not been here. Beijing’s largest airport left no question that the host country had become a deserving member of the first world. Terminal 2 was all painted girders and steel rising to a low hangar ceiling, well lit and devoid of any obvious Chinese influence. The size was impressive and the architecture was not, which was a disappointment to Kyra. Growing up in Charlottesville had given her an appreciation for the architectural influences of Mr. Jefferson. She wanted a country with such a unique heritage to make a unique first impression. The building was a justifiable source of pride for a nation whose citizens had starved to death by the millions under Mao, but Kyra hoped they weren’t losing their own culture in bits and pieces in a bid to prove their national standing.

The views of Beijing seen from the taxi window as they traveled the Shoudou Jichang Airport Expressway southwest into the city did not change that impression. It was as modern a city as any she had visited, better than most, with construction that was threatening to crush out the buildings that still matched the Beijing that Kyra had pictured in her mind. Rental cars were not available to foreigners, so they had settled for a simple taxi. It was the most random option available, and random behavior was a counterintelligence officer’s worst enemy and therefore Jonathan and Kyra’s second-best defense. The first was to say nothing during the drive and do nothing openly illegal for the rest of their stay.

The expressway terminated in an exit onto the Dong Sanhuan Beilu Freeway near the northern embassy district, one of the four major roadways that circled the city center. From there, the driver took them on a tour of the small side streets that left Kyra grasping for a sense of direction. Despite her boast on the plane, she had spent a good chunk of the flight staring at maps and guidebooks that she’d pilfered from the CIA Library’s map office. The case officer — she still couldn’t think of herself as an analyst — had been trying to memorize the major street names. She couldn’t feel comfortable entering a hostile territory without arming herself with a detailed knowledge of the terrain, but she had finally given up on that dream. The endless dajies and zhonglus labeling the streets had all run together within minutes, and so she had settled for a general overview of Beijing’s asphalt geography. The city center was an elongated box with Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City at its center and Nanhai, Zhonghai, and Beihai Lakes to its immediate west. Most of the major streets ran north-south and east-west. It was only the smaller side streets that were laid out in haphazard fashion. Seen from above, it made more sense to Kyra than Washington DC’s design; she had cursed Pierre L’Enfant’s name more than once and not because he was French.

Despite being American-owned, she knew that the Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza was not a safe harbor. The staff was almost entirely Chinese and the security briefings detailing the MSS counterintelligence presence in Chinese hotels had been near-terrifying. They were on enemy soil and the locals had all the advantages. There was no guarantee that their rooms had been assigned at random. They were assigned adjoining rooms, which seemed overly convenient. Searching for surveillance equipment would be an obvious giveaway. She had no doubt at all that her bag would be searched the first time she stepped out.

Jonathan went straight for the television. The channel was irrelevant; he increased the volume until it was far louder than necessary. “Under the circumstances, I would have preferred housing at the embassy.”

“No room at the inn, I guess,” Kyra answered. “State Department will have a brigade of Foreign Service officers in country trying to talk Tian down.”

“I doubt the PLA is going to allow diplomats to stop them now,” Jonathan said. “Our friends do know we’re coming?” Cables from headquarters to field stations were not always read on schedule, regardless of how they were marked.

“They should,” Kyra hedged.

“Call the concierge and get another taxi to take us over in an hour.”

“See you then,” she told him, moving to the shared door that led to her room. “And clean up. You need the shower.”

“Don’t lie down,” he warned. “I don’t want to have to wake you up.”

“This is not a good time,” Mitchell said. Stryker was a case officer, or had been, which nominally put her on Mitchell’s side of the CIA divide. But she wasn’t one of his officers and she was keeping company with a DI analyst. Those two facts alone made her suspect.

“When would be a good time?” Kyra asked, impatient.

“After the war.”

“We can’t wait that long,” Jonathan informed him. He’d dealt with enough NCS officers to know that Mitchell might be serious.

“Beijing is not a safe operational environment at the moment.”

“Is it ever?” Kyra asked.

“No,” Mitchell conceded. “But the locals are on a bender. They’re harassing everyone who leaves the embassy short of the ambassador. My case officers are getting manhandled in the street. It takes a major operation just to pass a message to any of our local assets, much less get a meeting with them. And now I get this”—the COS waved a headquarters cable in the air—“ordering me to get you in the same room with Pioneer, who you’re not supposed to even know about. Kathy Cooke says you get to talk to him, fine, I know how to take orders. But I’d love to know how you found out about him.”

“That’s hardly relevant at the moment,” Jonathan said.

“What is relevant is that I don’t know if I can put you in the same room with him.”

“Surveillance is that tight?” Kyra asked.

Mitchell dropped the headquarters cable on his desk and slumped back into his chair. “He’s been burned,” he admitted.

Kyra stared at the chief of station. The security measures in place to protect Pioneer had been in the file and they were impressive. Losing an asset through bad luck and random chance was bad enough, but it happened. Someone’s career would die if the breach had come from operational error. “How?”

“We don’t know,” Mitchell admitted. “We pulled off a sign of life but that’s the only direct contact we’ve managed for two weeks. We’ve lost a dead drop. I don’t know if the MSS intercepted it or some third party just randomly picked it up. That could happen, but that’s an awful lot of bad luck given everything else that’s going on.”

Jonathan frowned. “This started at the same time as the surveillance crackdown?”

“They started around the same time, yes. Whether they’re connected, I don’t know, and at the moment I don’t particularly care. I’ll leave that for you analysts to figure out. What I do care about is getting him out of the country without burning my officers. I’ve got headquarters screaming for intel that I can’t provide, we’ve lost our best asset, and the MSS could wrap him up at any time. If they do, they’ll put it on the front page of the People’s Daily and our other assets will decide we can’t protect them and they’ll go dry. So, no offense, but I have bigger worries than arranging a meeting that could get Pioneer killed and you arrested. I’d be doing you a favor if I just turned down the request, orders or not.”

“But you won’t,” Kyra said.

“Don’t test me,” Mitchell said. There was a difference between being bold and being brash, and Stryker was leaning toward the latter. “Getting Pioneer out is my priority, and once we start an exfiltration, I’m sure not going to put it on hold for a few hours so you can have a chat while the MSS is tearing Beijing apart to find him. If we can get him out of the country, you can talk to him then. Until then, I don’t want to hear it. And you go over my head and I’ll kick you out of the country. You understand me?”

Jonathan opened his mouth to answer, but Kyra cut him off. “Understood.”