True Faith and Allegiance

73

Alexandru Dalca had remained handcuffed on the long flight, and he was pretty sure he’d been given something that made him sleep, because when he woke on touchdown he felt especially groggy. But he shook it off as the plane taxied and finally jolted to a stop.

A man sat down in front of him; in the past few weeks, Dalca had gotten good at telling what was happening on the other side of his blindfold.

The man spoke with derision in his voice. “Okay, buddy. This is your stop. The President promised you would be released as soon as you gave us everything we asked for. You did your part, so now we are doing ours. You are free to go.”

His blindfold was removed, and he blinked several times to see the inside of the same airplane he’d first seen over a month earlier, the day he’d been shanghaied in Romania by American intelligence, and brought to the United States. Since then he’d been kept locked in safe houses, interviewed and questioned at length, often in marathon eighteen-hour sessions.

But now, to their credit, the Americans were fulfilling their side of the bargain. He checked his pockets and saw he had only some euros, his passport, and a few other things, and he wore the same clothes he wore when he’d been kidnapped, but none of this mattered. He just had to get to a computer or a bank, because he still had $11 million in offshore accounts.

Without a word he stood up from the chair on unsteady legs, walked past the bearded men in the cabin toward the open hatch, and went down the jet stairs to the hot tarmac. He looked around. He had no idea where in the world he was, but he didn’t figure it mattered much. He was out of the USA. He was free.

The stairs closed up behind him and the jet began to roll.

Dalca started walking to a terminal a hundred meters away.

Inside the aircraft Midas looked at Dom Caruso. “How long you give it till he figures out how fucked he is?”

Caruso smiled. “Not long at all, man. He’s a smart cookie. Once he finds out where we dropped him, he’ll know he’s screwed.”

Captain Helen Reid pushed the throttle forward and the Hendley Associates jet took off from Hong Kong International just fifteen minutes after landing.

At the same time a Gulfstream 550 took off from an airport a few miles to the west, a CIA employee sat in a dim sum restaurant in the Tsim Sha Tsui neighborhood of Hong Kong. Across from him at the little table was a high-ranking member of China’s Ministry of State Security. It was an odd meal, but each man knew the identity of the other, so there was no real mystery between the two.

The American’s name was Spicer, and he sipped his Tsingtao beer and looked across at his tablemate. “We wanted to let you know that we are currently hunting very hard for a Romanian national by the name of Alexandru Dalca.”

The name meant nothing to the Chinese intelligence officer, and a cock of his head confirmed it.

Spicer added, “We’re pulling out all the stops. We haven’t found him yet, but believe me, Fang, we’ll get this guy.”

Fang had been delivered intelligence before by other agencies, and he realized that was going on right now. “Very well. But… why are you telling me this?”

“Because we think your organization might be looking for him, too. We want to be careful we don’t accidentally bump into each other and cause an… an incident.”

“I see,” said Fang, but he did not.

“What we are prepared to do is back off, for a week, and allow your organization to look for him… if that is something you are interested in doing. Purely for the safety and security of both of our nations.”

Fang nodded thoughtfully, though the truth was he couldn’t fathom what was going on. But it didn’t matter. He had been in the job long enough to know he was being passed something that he was simply supposed to pass on to his higher-ups. The Americans had a hidden agenda here, and if he had to make an educated guess, it had to do with America wanting this guy taken out of action, without America having to do it themselves.

He had no idea why the Ministry of State Security should care about any of this, but he smiled at Spicer and said, “I will convey your interesting proposal to officials in my organization. I assume you would like some sort of informal reply?”

Spicer said, “Not necessary. In fact, we request that we know nothing else of your actions on the matter. As I said, we will wait one week, and then we will pursue this man with the full force of our capabilities.”

Fang sipped his own beer. “Would you have any idea where this man you are looking so hard for might be found?”

Spicer shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know, but if I just had to take a wild guess, I’d say he’s walking through Terminal One of Hong Kong International Airport right now, wearing a white shirt, khaki pants, and a black jacket. He’ll probably be sweating heavily, looking for a place to do some banking. After that he’ll spend as little time in HK as possible, before booking a flight out of the country.” Spicer downed the rest of his beer and said, “Only speculation on my part, you understand.”

Fang nodded slowly. “Of course.”

Spicer walked out of the restaurant a minute later with all the confidence in the world that Alexandru Dalca would be picked up in minutes. Other than the United States, no nation on earth had more against Alex Dalca than China. The danger that he could reveal something to the Americans about their operation to out American agents inside China would be bad for them, for the simple reason the operation was ultimately hijacked by ISIS and led to the death of many Americans.

Yes, China was after Dalca just as the United States had been after Dalca. But China had made no pledge to the man, and had nothing to gain by letting him live.

Spicer hailed a cab. The American CIA officer figured the Romanian would be dead by the end of the day.