Wall of Night

33

Dutcher was waiting when Tanner stepped off the jetway. “Welcome home.”

“Good to be home,” Briggs replied, meaning it. “I almost had him, Leland.”

“I know. We’ll talk in the car.”

“Where’s Bear?”

“Got back from Asheville last night. I told him to get some sleep and meet us in a couple hours. You and I have an appointment at Langley.”

Once in the car, Tanner asked, “How much does Dick know?”

“Not much. I told him the op fell apart. How’d Soong look?”

Had the question come from any other man, Tanner may have read between the lines: Have you figured out whether he’s on the level? But this wasn’t any other man. Dutcher’s question meant what it meant. “Old, tired. He was … frail. It broke my heart.”

“I’m sorry, Briggs. I’ve got to ask: Is he on the level?”

“I think he is.” He told Dutcher about Soong’s sleeping habits.

“ ‘Sleep betrays all affectation,’” Dutcher said.

“What’s that?”

“A quote from Jonas Barnaby — a British spymaster from World War One. He said sleep is the one thing even the best-trained men can’t entirely control.”

Tanner wondered how that theory would play with Mason. The CIA was already skeptical of Soong, and what had happened in Jakarta wasn’t likely to improve that — unless, of course, Soong’s message meant something to them.

They arrived at Langley and were escorted to Mason’s conference room. Mason, DDI Sylvia Albrecht, and DDO George Coates were waiting. The exchange of pleasantries was brief.

“Let’s hear it,” Mason said.

“One of my contacts got greedy.” Tanner told them the story, starting with his arrival in Jakarta and ending with Arroya picking him up the morning after the incident aboard the Tija. “Segung decided to switch sides; he thought playing the hero for the Chinese would be worth more.”

“You killed him?” Albrecht asked. Her tone was neutral: just a question.

“Yes. Extra money or not, he was going to kill me, maybe even shop Soong to the Chinese.”

“What did you do with the body?”

“I took it out the hatch, weighted it, and dropped it.”

Hearing the words come out of his mouth, Tanner felt a pang of guilt. The fact that he’d had no choice in the matter was cold comfort.

He’d dragged Segung’s body back to the rocks, where he’d placed it in the raft, towed it past the continental shelf, and dumped it. He spent the rest of the night on a nearby island waiting for dawn. When Arroya arrived to pick him up, he asked the inevitable question.

“What happened, Briggs? Where’s your friend?”

Tanner told him the whole story. “I’m sorry, Arroya.”

Arroya frowned. “I should be the one apologizing. I should have seen this coming. Segung has always been greedy — even as a child. That he would betray a friend of mine is something I would have never imagined.” With tearful eyes, Arroya clapped Tanner on the shoulder. “You had no choice, Briggs. I’m glad you’re safe.”

After reaching Jakarta’s marina, Arroya had driven him to the airport, where they parted ways. Tanner had given him the rest of the money. “For the Save Java Fund.” he explained.

As Tanner finished the story, Coates said, “Segung’s disappearance had to worry the Chinese.”

“There was no helping it,” Tanner replied. “I stripped the body and left the clothes in his stateroom along with a half-empty bottle of gin. It’s a leap, but they might’ve assumed he went for a swim and drowned. With nothing else to go on, and with Soong safe in his bed, it might fly.”

Mason nodded. “It might at that. What about Soong’s reason for not leaving — do you buy it?”

“His wife is dead; all he has left is his daughter. Plus, there’s something else.” He repeated the story about Soong’s sleeping habits.

“Interesting,” Coates said. “It tends to support the laogi angle, but it’s not proof.”

“I don’t like it,” Albrecht said. “If Soong had come along, we could’ve leveraged her free.”

Dutcher said, “Soong knows his captors better than we do. Unless this was all theater for our benefit, we have to give some weight to what he says.”

“You’re begging the question, Leland. If Soong has been locked up for the last twelve years, it would take an extraordinary act of willpower to say no to freedom.”

“Han Soong is an extraordinary man,” Tanner replied.

“You’re biased.”

“You’re right, I am. I know him. I know his character. Look at it from his perspective: He’s the prize, not his daughter. Would you entrust the life of your child to strangers you’ve never met?”

“Good point,” said Mason. “Okay, we’ve got some thinking to do. Anything else, Briggs?”

“One thing: Before I left, Soong gave me a message to bring back.”

“What is it?”

“Ming-Yau Ang and Night Wall.”

“That’s it?”

Tanner nodded.

“It doesn’t mean anything to me. George, Sylvia?”

Both deputies shook their heads. Coates muttered, “Christ, the man’s baiting us.”

“I agree,” said Albrecht. “He’s got us hooked, and he’s playing—”

Mason held up a hand, silencing them. “Briggs, what—”

“That’s all he gave me. His last words to me were, ‘They will figure it out. When they do, they’ll understand.’”

“Then I guess we better figure it out,” Mason said. “But I’ll tell you this: if he’s playing a game, the good General Soong is on his own.”

When they walked into the office an hour later, Latham was in the kitchenette watching Cahil make a batch of his famous dill-tuna salad on rye. Bear saw Tanner, grinned broadly, and gave him a bear hug. “Glad to see you’re in one piece.”

“You, too. How was Dixieland?”

“Interesting.”

“Charlie, how’s Samantha?”

“Getting addicted to soap operas.”

Dutcher asked, “Ian, where’s Walt?”

“In his office. He had that far-off look on his face.”

“Caught in the throes of the paper chase,” Tanner said.

They gathered around the conference table. Cahil passed out sandwiches and iced tea, then sat down. Oaken arrived a few minutes later carrying a stack of manila folders in one arm, a shoe box in the other. He greeted Tanner, then began sorting paper. “Sorry, there’s something I’ve gotta check.”

Dutcher started the meeting by having Latham bring them up to speed. For Tanner’s benefit, Charlie started with his visit to Hong Cho and Tsang’s placing of the ad in the Post. He ended with the incident at the Rock Creek drop. “We’re working on the passenger list. The one thing we still don’t know — the million-dollar question — is, What’s so important that the Chinese would risk all this?”

Dutcher said, “Once we answer that, the rest will follow.”

Out of nowhere, a question popped into Tanner’s head: And what’s so important that Han Soong had to make contact now, after all these years? And why is he in such a hurry?

Aside from the China connection, there was nothing to suggest a link between Soong’s defection and the Baker murders. So why was his subconscious shouting at him?

Latham continued: “Who knows, maybe we’ll get lucky with the bus.”

Dutcher turned to Cahil. “Bear?”

Cahil recounted his hunt for Skeldon, starting with Blanton Crossing and ending with his discovery of Lamar Sampson and Stan Kycek. “I’ve got Kycek stashed at a motel,” he said. “Once I told him who he was mixed up with, he turned about seven different shades of queasy and thanked me for rescuing him.”

“What about Sampson?”

“He doesn’t think much beyond his next bottle. Plus, he’s terrified of Skeldon.”

“What about the shoe box Sampson gave you — the stuff from Siberia.”

Cahil nodded toward Oaken. “It’s being fed into the hopper as we speak.”

“Walt, anything interesting?”

Oaken gave a vague wave, muttered something, then went back to jotting notes.

Latham said to Cahil, “Both Sampson and Kycek were with the Geological Survey?”

“Yep. Lamar was a rock picker; Kycek a demolition guy. Kycek claims he and Skeldon never met face to face; everything was done by phone.”

“Skeldon’s no dummy,” Tanner said. “Kycek can’t ID him and he can’t lead anybody to him.”

“Okay, let’s try to put the puzzle together,” Dutcher said. “Last year Skeleton and Sampson are in Siberia, digging around for … God knows what—”

“Presumably funded by Baker, who in turn is funded by the Chinese,” Latham added.

“And now Skeldon is traveling again — destination unknown, but probably still under contract by Baker—”

“Who Skeldon may or may not know is dead …” Tanner added.

“Right again. Now he’s getting ready to meet up with a demolition expert. The safe money is that Skeldon is heading back to, or already in, Siberia.”

“Which brings us back to why.”

From the end of the table, Oaken cleared his throat and said, “I think I can answer that.”

Everyone turned to face him. There was ten seconds of silence as Oaken gathered his thoughts. “I spent most of last night reading every scrap of paper in Sampson’s box. Most of it was far above my head—”

Cahil broke in. “I find that hard to believe.”

“Believe it. Lamar’s specialty wasn’t just ordinary rocks. Time and again I came across some pretty specific terminology: kerogen, cylcofeeders, diluent, coking desulpherization … Anyway, a couple hours ago it hit me: I’d seen a lot of those words before. Care to guess where?”

There were no takers.

“In Baker’s case files,” Oaken said. “I went back and found at least two-dozen terms shared by both Sampson’s field notes and one of Baker’s cases.”

Dutcher leaned forward. “Which case?”

“Something called TASSOL. It dealt with a device called a ‘recycling feed pump.’ Guessing there was a link between TASSOL and Sampson’s survey, I gave myself a crash course in geology. I’m still not positive what this pump does, but I can tell you what they were doing in Siberia.”

“What?” said Cahil.

“Mapping shale oil deposits. Big ones.”

“How big?” said Dutcher.

“Half of Siberia, give or take.”

Tanner said, “If that’s true, it means—”

“It means that, by proxy, China has been secretly hunting for oil in the middle of Russia.”