Chapter 13
Penetration Agent
Well, he left the prurient parts out this time, Mary Pat saw when she lit up her computer in the morning. Operation SORGE was moving right along. Whoever this Ming girl was, she talked a little too much. Odd. Hadn’t the MSS briefed all the executive secretaries about this sort of thing? Probably—it would have been a remarkable oversight if they hadn’t—but it also seemed likely that of the well-known reasons for committing treason and espionage (known as MICE: Money, Ideology, Conscience, and Ego), this one was Ego. Young Miss Ming was being used sexually by her Minister Fang, and she didn’t much like it, and that made perfect sense to Mary Patricia Foley. A woman only had so much to give, and to have it taken coercively by a man of power wasn’t something calculated to make a woman happy—though ironically the powerful man in question probably thought he was honoring her with his biological attention. After all, was he not a great man, and was she not a peasant? The thought was good for a snort as she took a sip of morning seventh-floor coffee. It didn’t matter what culture or race, men were all the same, weren’t they? So many of them thought from the dick instead of the brain. Well, it was going to cost this one dearly, the Deputy Director (Operations) concluded.
Ryan saw and heard the PDB, the President’s Daily Brief, every day. It covered intelligence information developed by CIA, was prepared late every night and printed early every morning, and there were less than a hundred copies, almost all of which were shredded and burned later in the day of delivery. A few copies, maybe three or four, were kept as archives, in case the electronic files somehow got corrupted, but even President Ryan didn’t know where the secure-storage site was. He hoped it was carefully guarded, preferably by Marines.
The PDB didn’t contain everything, of course. Some things were so secret that even the President couldn’t be trusted. That was something Ryan accepted with remarkable equanimity. Sources’ names had to remain secret, even from him, and methods were often so narrowly technical that he’d have trouble understanding the technology used anyway. But even some of the “take,” the information obtained by the CIA through nameless sources and overly intricate methods, was occasionally hidden from the Chief Executive, because some information had to come from a certain limited number of sources. The intelligence business was one in which the slightest mistake could end the life of a priceless asset, and while such things had happened, nobody had ever felt good about it—though to some politicians, it had been a matter of infuriating indifference. A good field spook viewed his agents as his own children, whose lives were to be protected against all hazards. Such a point of view was necessary. If you didn’t care that much, then people died—and with their lost lives went lost information, which was the whole point of having a clandestine service in the first place.
“Okay, Ben,” Ryan said, leaning back in his chair and flipping through the PDB pages. “What’s interesting?”
“Mary Pat has something happening in China. Not sure what it is, though. She’s keeping these cards pretty close. The rest of today’s document you can get on CNN.”
Which was, depressingly, not infrequently the case. On the other hand, the world was fairly sedate, and penetrating information wasn’t all that necessary ... or apparently so, Ryan corrected himself. You could never tell. He’d learned that one at Langley, too.
“Maybe I’ll call her about it,” POTUS said, flipping the page. “Whoa!”
“The Russian oil and gold?”
“Are these numbers for real?”
“It appears so. They track with what TRADER’S been feeding us from his sources, step for step.”
“Ummhmm,” Ryan breathed, looking over the resulting forecasts for the Russian economy. Then he frowned with some disappointment. “George’s people did a better evaluation of results.”
“Think so? CIA’s economics troops have a pretty decent track record.”
“George lives in that business. That’s better than being an academic observer of events, Ben. Academia is fine, but the real world is the real world, remember.”
Goodley nodded. “Duly noted, sir.”
“Throughout the ’80s, CIA overestimated the Soviet economy. Know why?”
“No, I don’t. What went wrong?”
Jack smiled wryly. “It wasn’t what was wrong. It was what was right. We had an agent back then who fed us the same information the Soviet Politburo got. It just never occurred to us that the system was lying to itself. The Politburo based its decisions on a chimera. Their numbers were almost never right because the underlings were covering their own asses. Oops.”
“Same thing in China, you suppose?” Goodley asked. “They’re the last really Marxist country, after all.”
“Good question. Call Langley and ask. You’ll get an answer from the same sort of bureaucrat the Chinese have in Beijing, but to the best of my knowledge we don’t have a penetration agent in Beijing who can give us the numbers we want.” Ryan paused and looked at the fireplace opposite his desk. He’d have to have the Secret Service put a real fire in it someday ... “No, I expect the Chinese have better numbers. They can afford to. Their economy is working, after a fashion. They probably deceive themselves in other ways. But they do deceive themselves. It’s a universal human characteristic, and Marxism doesn’t ameliorate it very much.” Even in America, with its free press and other safeguards, reality often slapped political figures in the face hard enough to loosen some teeth. Everywhere, people had theoretical models based on ideology rather than facts, and those people usually found their way into academia or politics, because real-world professions punished that sort of dreamer more than politics ever did.
“Morning, Jack,” a voice said from the corridor door.
“Hey, Robby.” POTUS pointed to the coffee tray. Vice President Jackson got himself a cup, but passed on the croissants. His waistline looked a little tight. Well, Robby had never looked like a marathoner. So many fighter pilots tended to have thick waists. Maybe it was good for fighting g-forces, Jack speculated.
“Read the PDB this morning. Jack, this Russian oil and gold thing. Is it really that big?”
“George says it’s even bigger. You ever sit down with him to learn economics?”
“End of the week, we’re going to play a round at Burning Tree, and I’m reading Milton Friedman and two other books to bone up for it. You know, George comes across as pretty smart.”
“Smart enough to make a ton of money on The Street—and I mean if you put his money in hundred-dollar bills and weigh them, it is a f*cking ton of money.”
“Must be nice,” breathed a man who’d never made more than $130,000 in a year before taking on his current job.
“Has its moments, but the coffee here’s still pretty good.”
“It was better on Big John, once upon a time.”
“Where?”
“John F. Kennedy, back when I was an O-3, and doing fun work, like driving Tomcats off the boat.”
“Robby, hate to tell you, my friend, but you’re not twenty-six anymore.”
“Jack, you have such a way of brightening up my days for me. I’ve walked past death’s door before, but it’s safer and a hell of a lot more fun to do it with a fighter plane strapped to your back.”
“What’s your day look like?”
“Believe it or not, I have to drive down to the Hill and preside at the Senate for a few hours, just to show I know what the Constitution says I’m supposed to do. Then a dinner speech in Baltimore about who makes the best brassieres,” he added with a smile.
“What?” Jack asked, looking up from the PDB. The thing about Robby’s sense of humor was that you never really knew when he was kidding.
“National meeting of artificial fiber manufacturers. They also make bulletproof vests, but bras get most of their fibers, or so my research staff tells me. They’re trying to make a few jokes for the speech.”
“Work on your delivery,” the President advised the Vice President.
“You thought I was funny enough way back when,” Jackson reminded his old friend.
“Rob, I thought I was funny enough way back when, but Arnie tells me I’m not sensitive enough.”
“I know, no Polish jokes. Some Polacks learned to turn on their TVs last year, and there’s six or seven who know how to read. That doesn’t count the Polish gal who doesn’t use a vibrator because it chips her teeth.”
“Jesus, Robby!” Ryan almost spilled his coffee laughing. “We’re not even allowed to think things like that anymore.”
“Jack, I’m not a politician. I’m a fighter jock. I got the flight suit, the hackwatch, and the dick to go along with the job title, y’dig?” the Vice President asked with a grin. “And I am allowed to tell a joke once in a while.”
“Fine, just remember this isn’t the ready room on the Kennedy. The media lacks the sense of humor enjoyed by naval aviators.”
“Yeah, unless they catch us in something. Then it’s funnier ’n hell,” the retired Vice Admiral observed.
“Rob, you’re finally catching on. Glad to see it.” Ryan’s last sight of the departing subordinate was the back of a nicely tailored suit, accompanied by a muttered vulgarity.
So, Mishka, any thoughts? ”Provalov asked.
Reilly took a sip of his vodka. It was awfully smooth here. “Oleg, you just have to shake the tree and see what falls out. It could be damned near anything, but ‘don’t know’ means ‘don’t know’. And at the moment, we don’t know.” Another sip. “Does it strike you that two former Spetsnaz guys are a lot of firepower to go after a pimp?”
The Russian nodded. “Yes, of course, I’ve thought of that, but he was a very prosperous pimp, wasn’t he, Mishka? He had a great deal of money, and very many contacts inside the criminal establishment. He had power of his own. Perhaps he’d had people killed as well. We never had his name come up in a serious way in any murder investigations, but that doesn’t mean that Avseyenko was not a dangerous man in his own right, and therefore worthy of such high-level attention.”
“Any luck with this Suvorov guy?”
Provalov shook his head. “No. We have a KGB file for him and a photograph, but even if that is for the right person, we haven’t found him yet.”
“Well, Oleg Gregoriyevich, it looks as though you have a real head-scratcher on your hands.” Reilly lifted his hand to order another round.
“You are supposed to be the expert on organized crime,” the Russian lieutenant reminded his FBI guest.
“That’s true, Oleg, but I ain’t no gypsy fortune-teller, and I ain’t the Oracle of Delphi either. You don’t know who the real target was yet, and until you learn that, you don’t know jack shit. Problem is, to find out who the target was, you have to find somebody who knows something about the crime. The two things are wrapped up together, bro. Get one, get both. Get neither, get nothing.” The drinks arrived. Reilly paid and took another hit.
“My captain is not pleased.”
The FBI agent nodded. “Yeah, bosses are like that in the Bureau, too, but he’s supposed to know what the problems are, right? If he does, he knows he has to give you the time and the resources to play it out. How many men you have on it now?”
“Six here, and three more in St. Petersburg.”
“May want to get some more, bro.” In the FBI’s New York OC office, a case like this could have as many as twenty agents working it, half of them on a full-time basis. But the Moscow Militia was stretched notoriously thin. For as much crime as there was now in Moscow, the local cops were still sucking hind tit when it came to government support. But it could have been worse. Unlike much of Russian society, the militiamen were getting paid.
You tire me out, ”Nomuri protested.
“There is always Minister Fang,” Ming replied with a playful look.
“Ah!” was the enraged reply. “You compare me with an old man?”
“Well, both of you are men, but better a sausage than a string bean,” she answered, grasping the former in her soft left hand.
“Patience, girl, allow me to recover from the first race.” With that he lifted her body over his and let it down. She must really like me, Nomuri reflected. Three nights in a row. I suppose Fang isn’t the man he thinks he is. Well, can’t win ’em all, Charlie. Plus the advantage of being forty years younger. There was probably something to that, the CIA officer admitted to himself.
“But you run so fast!” Ming protested, rubbing her body on his.
“There is something I want you to do.”
A very playful smile. “What might that be?” she asked while her hand wandered a little.
“Not that!”
“Oh ...” The disappointment in her voice was noteworthy.
“Something for work,” Nomuri explained on. Just as well she couldn’t feel the shaking inside his body, which, remarkably enough, didn’t show.
“For work? I can’t bring you into the office for this!” she said with a laugh, followed by a warm, affectionate kiss.
“Yes, something to upload onto your computer.” Nomuri reached into the night-table drawer and pulled out a CD-ROM. “Here, you just load this into your machine, click INSTALL, and then dispose of it when you’re done.”
“And what will it do?” she asked.
“Do you care?”
“Well ...” Hesitation. She didn’t understand. “I must care.”
“It will allow me to look at your computer from time to time.”
“But why?”
“Because of Nippon Electric—we make your computer, don’t you see?” He allowed his body to relax. “It is useful for my company to know how economic decisions are made in the People’s Republic,” Nomuri explained, with a well-rehearsed lie. “This will allow us to understand that process a little better, so that we can do business more effectively. And the better I do for them, the more they will pay me—and the more I can spend on my darling Ming.”
“I see,” she thought, wrongly.
He bent down to kiss a particularly nice spot. Her body shuddered in just the right way. Good, she wasn’t resisting the idea, or at least wasn’t letting it get in the way of this activity, which was good for Nomuri in more than one way. The intelligence officer wondered if someday his conscience would attack him for using this girl in such a way. But business, he told himself, was business.
“No one will know?”
“No, that is not possible.”
“And it will not get me into trouble?”
With that question he rolled over, finding himself on top. He held her face in both hands. “Would I ever do something to get Ming-chan in trouble? Never!” he announced, with a deep and passionate kiss.
Afterward there was no talk about the CD-ROM, which she tucked into her purse before leaving. It was a nice-looking purse, a knockoff of something Italian that you could buy on the street here, rather like the genuine ones in New York that “fell off the back of the truck,” as the euphemism went.
Every time they parted, it was a little hard. She didn’t want to leave, and truly he didn’t want her to depart, but it was necessary. For them to share an apartment would be commented upon. Even in her dreams, Ming couldn’t think of that, actually sleeping at the apartment of a foreigner, because she did have a security clearance, and she had been given her security brief by a bored MSS officer, along with all the other senior secretaries, and she hadn’t reported this contact to her superiors or the office security chief as she ought to have done—why? Partly because she’d forgotten the rules, because she’d never broken them or known someone who had done so, and partly because like many people she drew a line between her private life and her professional one. That the two were not allowed to be separate in her case was something that the MSS briefing had covered, but in so clumsy a way as to have been disregarded even upon its delivery. And so here she was, not even knowing where and what here was. With luck, she’d never have to find out, Nomuri thought, watching her turn the corner and disappear from view. Luck would help. What the MSS interrogators did to young women in the Beijing version of the Lubyanka didn’t really bear much contemplation, certainly not when one had just made love to her twice in two hours.
“Good luck, honey,” Nomuri whispered, as he closed the door and headed to the bathroom for a shower.