Shadow of the Dragon

17

The director of national intelligence was afforded not only an office for herself, but an entire suite of offices that housed her chief of staff and many advisers and assistants. Most were tucked away in other offices or small cubbies off a larger, top-floor lobby. None of these people were more imposing than the woman who greeted Monica Hendricks from behind the immaculately clean desk outside Mary Pat Foley’s closed office door. She was tall, even when seated, nearing sixty years old, with broad shoulders, naturally silver hair, and the hint of a perpetual squint, as if she did not quite believe what was going on before her eyes. Hendricks had made a life out of reading people and felt sure this woman had been a police officer of some sort in an earlier life, perhaps in the military. Or maybe she’d just raised a couple of teenage sons.

Secretaries might be called administrative assistants in the modern era, but at a certain level, there was an unwritten rule that they had to act as a sort of guard dog as well — the last line of defense outside the inner sanctum.

The woman glanced at the visitor’s badge clipped to the lapel of Monica’s navy-blue summer-wool suit. Similar to the ones issued at the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building, the badge had a bleed-through strip affixed to the front that would read EXPIRED twelve hours after it had been applied and issued.

“Mrs. Hendricks?”

Monica shot her a smile. “That’s right.”

“The director is just finishing up on a call,” the woman said. “I’ll let her know you’re—”

The oak door yawned open and Mary Pat Foley stepped out. “Thank you, Gladys. I’m good now.”

Foley took Monica’s hand in both hers, patted the back in a way that might seem condescending from someone else, but felt genuine coming from Mary Pat.

As usual, Foley was dressed as if she might have to rush off to the White House at any moment. Black pearl earrings accented the white silk blouse, open at the neck, and a gray gabardine A-line skirt. She was barefoot, but a pair of sensible black shoes sat akimbo beside a polished mahogany desk that held little more than a computer screen and a single file folder. She caught Monica looking and chuckled.

“The sign of an insane mind. Right?”

“It is an awfully clean desk, ma’am.”

Foley grabbed the file and then smoothed her skirt behind her with both hands as she sat down across from Hendricks at a small meeting table.

“All the clutter is on those desks out front,” she said.

“You do have a nice office,” Hendricks said.

It was large, though, Hendricks had to admit, certainly smaller than the seventh-floor sanctum of the D/CIA at Langley. And it was much less imposing than she would have imagined for the person in charge of the sixteen other intelligence agencies falling under the purview of the National Counterintelligence Center at the Liberty Crossing complex — a large X-shaped building located across the freeway from Tysons Corner, Virginia. White walls were detailed in mahogany and oak, with crisp blue carpet and a Persian rug. It was de rigueur for those in lofty government positions to display framed autographed 8x10s of them standing on the tarmac beside famous dignitaries during historical moments, presidents, world leaders, Supreme Court justices, even movie stars. Notoriously wary of the camera, Foley had only two photographs of herself that Hendricks could see. One with her family, the other with Jack Ryan, when they were younger, somewhere in Russia. There were, however, plenty of photographs of her boys over the years, playing hockey with a red Soviet flag in the background, graduating from high school, weddings, grandchildren — the vestiges of normal life that people who lived in the shadows clutched tightly in an effort to keep their heads above water.

Foley rested both hands flat on the table, on either side of the closed folder that presumably held Hendricks’s polygraph results. “I speak for the President as well,” she said, “when I say how grateful we are to you for doing this. Virtually begging you to stay, but then asking you to take a polygraph as a prerequisite.”

“It must be important, then,” Hendricks said.

Foley patted the folder without opening it. “You passed, by the way.”

Hendricks closed her eyes and gave a tired smile. “I know I passed, ma’am—”

Foley kept her hands on the table but raised her brow. “Mary Pat.”

“Right,” Hendricks said. “Mary Pat. Anyway, I hate polygraphs. They are embarrassing and dehumanizing even if you have nothing to hide. I mean, a pimple-faced kid half my age asking me if I have any deviant sexual tendencies that could embarrass me if they were made known. Can you imagine? For Pete’s sake, Mary Pat, I’m Southern Baptist. Talking to that kid about sex at all embarrasses me. I did confess to sometimes peeing a dribble or two when I sneeze. I think that tidbit put the little shit off-kilter.”

Foley smiled. “Putting people off-kilter is your superpower, Monica. Anyway, the flutter was a formality to ease the President’s mind.”

“You talked to President Ryan about me specifically?”

“Of course,” Foley said. “Apart from me and the President, only eight people know of the existence of this operation we’re calling ELISE. This mole has no idea we’re hunting him… or her.”

“So ELISE is a mole hunt?” Hendricks mused, half to herself.

“Exactly,” Foley said. “A traitor within the intelligence community, likely in the CIA. The Chi-Comms refer to him as SURVEYOR. Our computer spit out BITTER ARROW for a code name, but that sounds too much like what it is. The Chinese are wily, and since we’re looking for someone inside our intelligence community whom they’ve turned, we thought it better to choose something a little less on the nose.”

“I’m assuming you’ve snooped through my bank accounts.”

Foley gave a tired nod. “Among other things. I can compartmentalize a background check without the checkers knowing why you’re being vetted.”

“Surely the fact that there are leaks doesn’t come as a surprise to you,” Hendricks said. “We’re taught from the get-go to assume there is always someone leaking information, even without meaning to.”

“True enough,” Foley said. “But this particular leak is devastating, and intentional.”

“And we’re sure the Chinese aren’t running a disinformation campaign? Sowing mistrust in the ranks and making us chase our own tails?”

Foley gave her a thumbnail sketch of what they knew so far — including the fact that there was a Russian asset in Chinese intelligence.

Hendricks leaned back in her chair, mulling over what little information she had. “I’ve got to say, you have all kinds of aggressive young counterintelligence weenies who would love to run this kind of investigation. Why pick on a chubby woman about to retire? This kind of operation could make a career.”

“Or break them,” Foley said. “That’s one of the main reasons we tapped you. Think about it, Monica. Untold amounts of information come across your desk every day — information that the Chinese would love to get their hands on. You know as well as I do that if you were indeed one of their assets, Beijing would throw a royal fit if you decided to walk away now. And you’d be stupid for abandoning a seat at the table that assures you a golden parachute when you do leave.”

“Or a bullet behind the ear,” Hendricks said.

Foley shrugged. “There is that.”

“I’ll buy your logic,” Hendricks said. “But what if I suddenly grew a conscience and couldn’t live with myself anymore. Or maybe I’m just afraid the CI weenies are onto me, so I’ve decided to cut and run. Have you considered that?”

“Cut and run to teach high school?”

“Penance?”

Foley slumped. “No sin is that grievous, my dear.”

“I am not this SURVEYOR character.”

“I know that,” Foley said.

“Only eight people,” Hendricks said.

“Plenty more will know as soon as you start to rattle cages.”

“Who’s my boss?” Hendricks asked. “Who’s running the show?”

“Your boss is me,” Foley said. “But you are running ELISE. David Wallace from the Bureau will be working with you, but POTUS wants CIA taking the lead in the investigation. FBI will handle prosecution when we get to that point.”

“Jack Ryan doesn’t know me from Adam,” Hendricks said.

“He trusts me.” Foley slid the folder across the table. “Here’s a brief on all we know so far. As you can see from the list on the cover page, of the ten who know about this, almost all are in the President’s inner circle or agency heads — the directors of both the FBI and the CIA, the White House chief of staff. There is a field officer who runs the asset who gave us the information.”

“Adam Yao?” Hendricks said, without opening the folder.

Foley grinned. “See there. If you were SURVEYOR, Yao would have already been compromised.”

“Are we sure this isn’t disinformation?” Hendricks asked again.

“We’ve certainly thought about that,” Foley said. “The President is clear, and I agree, we don’t want another Angleton witch hunt.”

Both women were all too familiar with the hunt for the infamous Soviet mole “Sasha” by the enigmatic CIA counterintelligence head James Jesus Angleton. Virtually anyone whose name started with the letter K and ended with — ski or — sky became a suspect — a hard blow to any CIA officers with Polish or Eastern European heritage. Careers were derailed, lives were ruined.

Mary Pat bounced a fist on the table. “That’s not happening again. Not on my watch. It would be all too easy to brand every Asian CIA employee a suspect and then bully our way down the list, letting the chips fall where they may — but you know me better than that.”

“I wouldn’t be sitting here if I thought otherwise, ma’am.”

Foley raised her index finger. “That said, this mole is still a problem, our sensibilities toward prejudice notwithstanding. There are too many instances where the Chinese have gotten a leg up on something of ours that they could not have known without inside help. People’s lives are at stake. A lot of people.”

“Understood,” Hendricks said. “But I had to ask. Anyway, Adam Yao’s a solid guy. I’m glad to have him on the team.”

“He’s not exactly on the team,” Foley said. “His mission at the moment is tangentially related, but it’s out in the field. He does, however, have contact with his asset, VICAR, who has access to the Russian asset.”

“Like that kids’ game, telephone.”

“Not optimum, I know,” Foley said. “But Yao’s bullshit detector has proven to be solid. He’ll work to get you answers for any questions you have as they arise.”

“Great,” Hendricks said, sounding anything but. She thumbed through the folder. There wasn’t much there. Yao’s report. Recent cases of two blown CIA operations, one in Australia, the other in Indonesia, where the Chinese did end runs as if they had the local operational playbook. The worst incident was a Chinese Christian asset in Indonesia who’d been compromised by leaked intelligence. He’d last been seen being dragged into a dark van, a white hood over his head. Boots on the ground said he’d been tied to a rubber tree outside of Jakarta and shot — after a lengthy and painful interrogation. The MSS officers who’d done it had left plenty of marks on the body — a warning to anyone else who might decide to cooperate with the West. It was enough to convince Hendricks to stay as long as it took to catch SURVEYOR.

“I’m going to need a much larger team than the President and a bunch of agency heads,” Hendricks said, still reading.

“Of course.”

“I can pick whomever I want?”

“As long as they pass the vetting process.”

“And I run the vetting process?”

Foley seemed to consider this for a moment, then nodded. “It’s your show. Why do you ask? Who are you thinking?”

“I understand David Wallace is over from the Bureau, but he will always tend to think in terms of making a criminal case for eventual prosecution. I’d much rather run it like a CIA operation. Prosecution if we can, but discovering the threat so we can stanch the flow of leaked intel has to be our first priority.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Foley said.

“There’s a guy I’d like to be my deputy,” Hendricks said. “Retired from the Navy. He helped me get out of Somalia years ago on his destroyer. You and I crossed paths with many good folks over the course of our careers. Most, you simply thank them and move on. But this guy and I clicked. Became good friends.” She looked at Foley. “I’m sure there’s someone like that in your past.”

“Yeah,” Foley said. “My guy’s the President.”

“Then you know what I’m talking about. Honestly, my husband was always a little jealous of my ‘Navy friend.’”

“That’s not going to be a problem? Nothing that will—”

“Hey, I passed my polygraph,” Hendricks said. “Seriously, it wasn’t like that. And anyway, look at me. I’m pretty certain the days of my husband thinking some dude’s gonna ravish me while I’m out on assignment are long gone.”

“Those days never end, my friend,” Foley said. “Believe me.”

Hendricks laughed and waved away the thought. “Anyway, he’s just a really good person. Someone we can trust — and he’s of Chinese descent.”

“A retired admiral?”

Hendricks nodded.

Foley tapped a finger against her temple and gave Hendricks a conspiratorial wink. “We’re probably thinking about the same guy…”

Back in her car in the Liberty Crossing visitor parking lot, Monica Hendricks sent a text via Signal. The messaging app was end-to-end encrypted, but habit made her careful with her words unless she was talking on an STU or some other dedicated secure device.

Her friend was cordial, if a little terse, but that could have been the fact that they were thumb-typing. He gave her a quick rundown on his life like he was giving a bottom-line-up-front briefing to the Joint Chiefs. She did the same. Three sentences to encapsulate the status of her life.

He cut to the chase. What’s up?

Hendricks thought for a moment, then typed. It needs to be in person. She was of the generation that texted in complete sentences and checked her spelling and grammar before hitting send.

Something important enough to keep me from walking out the door. She sent that, then added, I’d come to you, but things are crazy busy. Can you come to D.C.?

Pulsing dots… but only for a moment.

Admiral Peter Li’s answer came back almost immediately, as she knew it would.