Red Cell

CHAPTER 3

The surveillance team following Carl Mitchell was neither silent nor subtle. The CIA station chief had seen many during his two years in Beijing, more in Moscow, Kiev, and Hanoi before that. Communist governments were paranoid of Westerners by nature and the Chinese were no exception. The MSS and her sister security agencies could cobble together a surveillance team of a hundred men to follow a single target. Mitchell should never have seen the same face on two different nights unless they wanted to send a message, and the faces tonight were all looking familiar.

His companions made themselves known early when a Chinese man wearing a British-cut suit, probably custom-tailored in Hong Kong, had put a body check on the American case officer, almost knocking him into the street. Mitchell had labeled that man Alpha. The clothing and the fact that he’d stayed ten feet behind Mitchell for six blocks had made him impossible to miss. Mitchell had responded with a passive-aggressive approach, walking slowly so the crowd had to maneuver around them both. Alpha had begun bumping him every block, but Mitchell refused to respond. If Alpha and his partners were trying to provoke him into assaulting the local security to give them an excuse to detain him, they would be disappointed. After a half hour of Mitchell’s slow gait and window-shopping, Alpha finally grew self-conscious and bored and dropped back through the crowd.

Maybe Alpha wasn’t MSS? A criminal? Chinese prisons were nasty places, hard on the life span, so the criminal life in Beijing was fairly Darwinian and only the quick learners stayed around long enough to bother the tourists. Mitchell discounted the possibility after a second’s thought. Alpha was too well dressed for that profession. There was an outside chance the man was Ministry of Public Security, the Gong An Bu, China’s equivalent of the FBI, or even People’s Armed Police. Mitchell didn’t care for any of the possibilities. They all collaborated and a Chinese jail was a Chinese jail regardless of who held the key.

Mitchell made a hard stop at the street crossing. Alpha was far enough behind that he could have kept his distance, but he closed in. The timing was perfect. The stoplight turned green and Alpha took a hard step forward and made contact as he passed. It was a hard hit, no apology, and Mitchell stumbled into a stopped car in the street. The driver honked and cursed in Mandarin at the American. Mitchell swallowed his anger, but both his ability and desire to do it were nearly gone.

Time to go home, he thought. Mitchell didn’t like taking a beating for no good reason and he knew the exact limits of his patience. He would have preferred to lead Alpha into a filthy alley and give the man some bruises of his own, but anger was a poor substitute for disciplined tradecraft.

Mitchell rounded the block and worked his way six blocks back to the Laitai Shopping Mall north of the US embassy with Alpha never more than a body length behind. The Chinese officer finally gave up the slow chase when it became apparent where Mitchell was heading. The US Marines standing guard at the gate wouldn’t hesitate to throw a non-American to the sidewalk if he tried to break through into the massive complex. Managing embassy security was tedious and getting physical with a native determined to be stupid would be a rare treat for the soldiers. Some rules of the game were never broken. The penalties were immediate and painful.

The Marine corporal checked Mitchell’s ID and waved him through, and the CIA officer put his feet down on United States soil. The Marine stared Alpha down until the Chinese officer turned and walked into the dark. Mitchell didn’t bother to look back.

Chief of Station was a job that didn’t allow for bankers’ hours and Mitchell had made peace with that unpleasant fact early on. Espionage relies on schedules but has none fixed and is often plied in the dark. Mitchell was past his prime, and time and his job were catching up with his body. A life in the National Clandestine Service had taught him enough self-discipline to make up for the growing weakness thus far, but soon it wouldn’t matter. The chief of station posting in Beijing was a job reserved for the most senior NCS officers. Like a Navy promotion to captain of a carrier, it was an assignment that required so much experience that those who qualified were already nearing the end of their time in the field. A desk job at Langley or the Farm would be his next billet, and Mitchell had not quite made peace with that.

Mitchell closed his door, secured it, and fell into his chair. His back protested and he knew Alpha had left him a healthy bruise on his left side, but there was no help for it at the moment. He took up the secure phone and dialed the States. The time zone differential worked in his favor for once. Clark Barron was just starting his day. “Hey, boss,” Mitchell said.

The voice delay between Beijing and Langley was slight but perceptible. At CIA headquarters, Barron checked the world clock on his wall and realized what time it was on the other side of the globe. “You’re up late.”

“Going home just got dangerous,” Mitchell said. “I had a meet scheduled with Pioneer, but our hosts were on me the minute I walked out the door. No subtlety at all.”

“You’ve been burned?” Barron asked. Losing a station chief in Beijing at any time would be more than a minor inconvenience, but losing one at this particular moment would be a significant problem.

“I don’t think so,” Mitchell said. “From what I’m hearing, they’re roughing up everyone. Same thing with the State officers. They’re following everybody going out the front gate.”

Barron grunted. “I talked to Sir Lawrence at Vauxhall Cross last night. He says his boys are getting the same treatment. The Aussies too. ‘Very uncivilized’ was how he described it. How close did they ride you?”

“Close. I’ve got bruises.” Mitchell could feel another on his right arm where Alpha had pushed him into a wall. He would need aspirin and an ice pack for it after the call.

“Did you give any back?” Barron asked.

“Nope. I’ll find other ways to hurt ’em,” Mitchell said. He’d learned that lesson in Moscow when an SVR officer had almost pushed him into a moving bus. Mitchell had a short scar between two knuckles born from the Russian’s tooth. The man’s friends had given Mitchell three broken ribs and trashed his apartment before he returned from the hospital.

“Is this a response to Taiwan?” Barron asked.

“I don’t think so. People started getting roughed up before Liang staged his little raid party. Today was the first time I got touched up, but I haven’t really been out on the street much lately.”

“Did any of your people give them a reason to set this off?” Barron asked. Such physical harassment was rare except in Moscow, and confrontation had never been China’s style.

“If they did, no one’s told me. I’ll get everyone together in the morning and put the question to them, but I don’t think we started this,” Mitchell said.

“Well, somebody’s chapped their hide. That’s a lot of manpower to throw around,” Barron said. “And if they’re not just unhappy about Liang’s stupidity, then something else is going on. The Chinese aren’t the Russians. They don’t do this kind of thing just for jollies.”

“No doubt,” Mitchell agreed. “Our hosts out there have a bug up their pants and they want operational activity stopped until they’ve shaken it out. Or at least they want us to work harder. My bet is they’ve got a line on somebody’s asset but they don’t know who he’s working for. So they rough up everyone and then throw up a tight net around their target to see who’s desperate enough to come through it. If that’s right and I were them, I’d cover anyone from a NATO country, and the Koreans and Japanese for good measure. Maybe the Russians too, just on general principles.”

“You think it’s Pioneer?” Barron asked.

Mitchell frowned. “No way to know without making contact. Catch-twenty-two. The times when you need to meet an asset the most are the times when you’re the least free to do it. We’ll see if he responds to the next dead drop. If not, we’ll go for a sign of life.”

“Approved,” Barron said. “Just make sure that you’re taking smart risks, not dumb ones.”

“Always. Call you in the morning.” Mitchell replaced the handset on the cradle and settled into his leather chair to think tactics. They want to smother us, he thought. His people had done nothing to provoke the local security services. The streets were quiet. The population was restless because of the Taiwan events, but they weren’t taking their anger out on Westerners. Beijing was always a dangerous environment, more so in recent years, but not unworkable by any stretch. Still, the MSS had changed tactics and Mitchell would have to reevaluate. The security services had started getting physical with his people before the Taiwanese had launched their raids. Maybe the MSS knew that was coming? he thought. If so, why not extract their officers in Taipei before the arrests? If so, why rough up Westerners in Beijing? He shook his head to clear the nonsensical thoughts from his mind. It was a puzzle without an obvious answer and he knew he lacked the information to solve it.

But digging up information is what you do for a living, isn’t it? he thought.

A dead drop attempt with Pioneer was not optional but he might have to suspend other, less critical operations. The MSS wouldn’t hesitate to arrest a US case officer. They had jailed two for almost twenty years during the Cold War. A handsome young American man in custody, or, even better, a pretty young woman, would make a fine diplomatic bargaining chip, and the Chinese knew how to drag out negotiations.

The story was different for the assets, natives working for a foreign power. Chinese citizens arrested for espionage were to be shot, of course, and it was no urban myth that the family would get a bill for the bullet. The trials were always short and private, and there would be no negotiations.