The Gotland Deception

Chapter Fifteen: Enemy Within

The rooftop lot was empty, except for a single Toyota sedan with a black duffel in the trunk and a view of the city lights below. Cuī Zemin stood with his back to the rail, face half lit by the orange glow from a flickering lamp overhead. As always, he was still… watchful. The wind tugged at his long coat.

“You’re looking well,” he said, eyes scanning Hao Lei’s face.

Hao nodded stiffly. “They kept me seventy-two hours. No formal charges. Just questions.”

“No bruises,” Cuī observed.

“Not on the outside.”

Gao Rong stepped forward, shifting his weight. “We heard your diplomatic channels worked fast.”

Cuī didn’t confirm or deny it. “The arrests were unfortunate. But instructive. Taipei blinked. International media turned your footage into a feature. Hong Kong diaspora pages picked it up. BBC called it a ‘soft uprising.’”

He pulled a folder from inside his coat and laid it on the car’s hood. “Time to scale the model,” he said.

Gao flipped it open. Inside were maps — National Taiwan University, Kaohsiung Medical University, Tamkang, Shih Hsin. Target-rich environments, annotated with red markings for entry points, dormitory zones, and student union buildings.

“The youth are already restless,” Cuī stated. “Your job is to give them a purpose.”

Hao raised an eyebrow. “Taipei and Kaohsiung are different beasts. You don’t flip a capital city with slogans and live streams.”

Cuī looked at him. “We’re not flipping cities. We’re lighting brushfires. Unrest doesn’t have to win. It just has to exhaust.”

He tapped the folder. “You’ll focus on the universities. Use the Kinmen footage. Push it through underground forums and diasporic networks. Emphasize betrayal, division. Frame it as ‘Kinmen was just the start.’”

“There’s already chatter,” Gao interjected, voice low. “After Kinmen, a few campus chapters of that old Reunification Society tried organizing. The turnouts were small. They got no traction.”

“Then seed new leaders,” Cuī said simply. “You’ve done it before. Use local faces, sympathetic faculty, dorm reps with activist streaks… anyone who wants to be seen as the next voice of the movement.”

He opened his palm and revealed a small slip of paper — six digits, two letters. “These are Telegram wallet codes. Consider these ‘emergency funds.’ Track expenditures. Remember, bribes are crude — credibility is better.”

Then Cuī’s tone shifted. “You’ll also expand your media front. Push content from the West. Show how American campuses are ‘awakening’ to the injustice.”

Gao frowned. “You mean the Berkeley protests?”

Cuī nodded. “UC Berkeley and San Diego. Small groups. Mostly international students — some ours, some not. But the optics are valuable. Showing American youth echoing Chinese grievances adds legitimacy.”

Hao scoffed. “They’re waving signs about colonial overreach and Asian identity. None of them could find Kinmen on a map.”

Cuī didn’t smile. “They don’t need to,” he countered. “They just need to be loud.”

The Ghost stepped closer to the car, lowering his voice further. “America has its own house fire. Your job is to connect the embers. When someone in Taipei sees a protest in Kaohsiung, then a crowd at UCSD, then a live stream from Berkeley — they start to believe there’s a movement. They see Taiwan as out of sync. They think something bigger is coming.”

Gao folded the folder shut. “And when do we pull back?” he asked.

“You don’t,” Cuī replied flatly. “While you’re at it, I want you to make sure you’re incorporating anger at this new synthetic drug, ‘Vortex.’ Make sure to gin up as much outrage as possible about its import from the West. ‘Taiwan isn’t protecting us’ should be a common theme.”

“We can do that,” Gao agreed.

He dropped a new burner phone beside the envelope. “Next check-in is March fourteenth. Use the same Signal channel. If you’re compromised, burn everything. Do not engage Taipei’s National Security Bureau. They’re watching the foreigners now.”

Hao looked up, eyes narrowing. “We’re not foreigners.”

Cuī held his gaze. “No. But some of your neighbors are.”

He turned without another word and disappeared down the stairwell. He offered no farewell.

All that was left was the hum of Kaohsiung’s lights, and a quiet sense that the matchbox had been opened once again.