Covert One 4 - The Altman Code (2 page)

An outraged China denied the accusations. Prominent world leaders
jawboned. Allies made charges and countercharges. And media around the
globe covered the standoff with banner headlines. The stalemate went on
for an interminable twenty days. Finally, when China began to noisily
rattle its sabers, the U.S. Navy forced the ship to stop on the high
seas, and inspectors boarded the Yinhe. To America’s great
embarrassment, they uncovered only agricultural equipment—plows,
shovels, and small tractors. The intelligence had been faulty.

With a grimace, Klein recalled it all too well. The episode made America
look like a thug. Its relations with China, and even its allies, were
strained for years.

He puffed gloomily, fanning the smoke away from the president. “Do we
have another Yinhe?” he repeated. “Maybe.”

“There’s ” remotely, and ” probably. You better tell me all of it.
Chapter and verse.”

Klein tamped down the ash in his pipe. “One of our operatives is a
professional Sinologist who’s been working in Shanghai the past ten
years for a consortium of American firms that are trying to get a
foothold there. His name’s Avery Mondragon. He’s alerted us to
information he’s uncovered that The Dowager Empress is carrying tens of
tons of thiodiglycol, used in blister weapons, and thionyl chloride,
used in both blister and nerve weapons. The freighter was loaded in
Shanghai, is already at sea, and is destined for Iraq. Both chemicals
have legitimate agricultural uses, of course, but not in such large
quantities for a nation the size of Iraq.”

“How good is the information this time, Fred? One hundred percent?
Ninety?”

“I haven’t seen it,” Klein said evenly, puffing a cloud of smoke and
forgetting to wave it away this time. “But Mondragon says it’s
documentary. He has the ship’s true invoice manifest.”

“Great God.” Castilla’s thick shoulders and heavy torso seemed to go
rigid against his chair. “I don’t know whether you realize it, but China
is one of the signatories of the international agreement that prohibits
development, production, stockpiling, or use of chemical weapons. They
won’t let themselves be revealed as breaking that treaty, because it
could slow their march to acquiring a bigger and bigger slice of the
global economy.”

“It’s a damned delicate situation.”

“The price of another mistake on our part could be particularly high for
us, too, now that they’re close to signing our human-rights treaty.” In
exchange for financial and trade concessions from the U. S., for which
the president had cajoled and arm-twisted a reluctant Congress, China
had all but committed to signing a bilateral human-rights agreement that
would open its prisons and criminal courts to U.N. and U.S. inspectors,
bring its criminal and civil courts closer to Western and international
principles, and release longtime political prisoners. Such a treaty had
been a high-priority goal for American presidents since Dick Nixon. Sam
Castilla wanted nothing to stop it. In fact, it was a longstanding dream
of his, too, for personal as well as human-rights reasons. “It’s also a
damned dangerous situation. We can’t allow this ship … what was it,
The Dowager Empress?” Klein nodded. “We can’t allow The Dowager Empress
to sail into Basra with weapons-making chemicals. That’s the bottom
line. Period.” Castilla stood and paced. “If your intelligence turns out
to be good, and we go after this Dowager Empress, how are the Chinese
going to react?” He shook his head and waved away his own words. “No,
that’s not the question, is it? We know how they’ll react. They’ll shake
their swords, denounce, and posture.

The question is what will they actually do?” He looked at Klein.

“Especially if we’re wrong again?”

“No one can know or predict that, Mr. President. On the other hand, no
nation can maintain massive armies and nuclear weapons without using
them somewhere, sometime, if for no other reason than to justify the
costs.”

“I disagree. If a country’s economy is good, and its people are happy, a
leader can maintain an army without using it.”

“Of course, if China wants to use the incident as an excuse that they’re
being threatened, they might invade Taiwan,” Fred Klein continued.
“They’ve wanted to do that for decades.”

“If they feel we won’t retaliate, yes. There’s Central Asia, too, now
that Russia is less of a regional threat.” The Covert-One chief said the
words neither wanted to think: “With their long-range nuclear weapons,
we’re as much a target as any country.” Castilla shook off a shudder.
Klein removed his glasses and massaged his temples. They were silent. At
last, the president sighed. He had made a decision. “All right, I’ll
have Admiral Brose order the navy to follow and monitor The Dowager
Empress. We’ll label it routine at-sea surveillance with no revelation
of the actual situation to anyone but Brose.”

“The Chinese will find out we’re shadowing their ship.”

“We’ll stall. The problem is, I don’t know how long we’ll be able to get
away with it.” The president went to the door and stopped. When he
turned, his face was long and somber, his jowls pronounced. “I need
proof, Fred. I need it now. Get me that manifest.”

“You’ll have it, Sam.” His big shoulders hunched with worry, President
Castilla nodded, opened the door, and walked away. One of the secret
service agents closed it. Alone again, Klein frowned, contemplating his
next step. As he heard the engine of the president’s car hum to life, he
made a decision. He swiveled to the small table behind his chair, on
which two phones sat. One was red–a single, direct, scrambled line to
the president. The other was blue. It was also scrambled. He picked up
the blue phone and dialed.

Wednesday, September 13.

Kaohsiung, Taiwan.

After a medium-rare hamburger and a bottle of Taiwanese lager at Smokey
Joe’s on Chunghsiao-1 Road, Jon Smith decided to take a taxi to
Kaohsiung Harbor. He still had an hour before his afternoon meetings
resumed at the Grand Hi-Lai Hotel, when his old friend, Mike Kerns from
the Pasteur Institute in Paris, would meet him there. Smith had been in
Kaohsiung–Taiwan’s second-largest city–nearly a week, but today was
the first chance he’d had to explore. That kind of intensity was what
usually happened at scientific conferences, at least in his experience.
Assigned to the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious
Diseases–USAMRIID–he was a medical doctor and biomolecular scientist
as well as an army lieutenant colonel. He had left his work on defenses
against anthrax to attend this one–the Pacific Rim International
Assembly on Developments in Molecular and Cell Biology. But scientific
conferences, like fish and guests, got stale after three or four days.
Hatless, in civilian clothes, he strode along the waterfront, marveling
at the magnificent harbor, the third-largest container port in the
world, after Hong Kong and Singapore. He had visited here years ago,
before a tunnel was built to the mainland and the paradisaical island
became just another congested part of the container port. The day was
postcard clear, so he was able to easily spot Hsiao Liuchiu Island, low
on the southern horizon. He walked another fifteen minutes through the
sun-hazed day as seagulls circled overhead and the clatter of a harbor
at work filled his ears. There was no sign here of the strife over
Taiwan’s future, whether it would remain independent or be conquered or
somehow traded off to mainland China, which still claimed it as its own.
At last, he hailed a cab to take him back to the hotel. He had hardly
settled into the backseat when his cell phone vibrated inside his sport
jacket. It was not his regular phone, but the special one in the hidden
pocket. The phone that was scrambled. He answered quietly, “Smith.” Fred
Klein asked, “How’s the conference, Colonel?” “Getting dull,” he
admitted.

“Then a small diversion won’t be too amiss.” Smith smiled inwardly. He
was not only a scientist, but an undercover agent. Balancing the two
parts of his life was seldom easy. He was ready for a “small diversion,”
but nothing too big or too engrossing. He really did want to get back to
the conference. “What do we have this time, Fred?” From his distant
office on the bank of the Anacostia River, Klein described the
situation. Smith felt a chill that was both apprehension and
anticipation. “What do I do?”

“Go to Liuchiu Island tonight. You should have plenty of time. Rent or
bribe a boat out of Linyuan, and be on the island by nine. At precisely
ten, you’ll be at a small cove on the western shore. The exact location,
landmarks, and local designation have been faxed to a Covert-One asset
at the American Institute in Taiwan. They’ll be hand-delivered to you.”

“What happens at the cove?”

“You meet another Covert-One, Avery Mondragon. The recognition word is
‘orchid.’ He’ll deliver an envelope with The Dowager Empress’s actual
manifest, the one that’s the basis for the bill to Iraq. After that, go
directly to the airport in Kaohsiung. You’ll meet a chopper there from
one of our cruisers lying offshore. Give the pilot the invoice manifest.

Its final destination is the Oval Office. Understood?”

“Same recognition word?”

“Right.”

“Then what?” Smith could hear the chief of Covert-One puffing on his
pipe. “Then you can go back to your conference.” The phone went dead.
Smith grinned to himself. A straightforward, uncomplicated assignment.
Moments later, the taxi pulled up in front of the Hi-Lai Hotel. He paid
the driver and walked into the lobby, heading for the car rental desk.
Once the courier had arrived from Taipei, he would drive down the coast
to Lin-yuan and find a fishing boat to take him quietly to Liuchiu. If
he could not find one, he would rent one and pilot it himself. As he
crossed the lobby, a short, brisk Chinese man jumped up from an armchair
to block his way. “Ah, Dr. Smith, I have been waiting for you. I am
honored to meet you personally. Your paper on the late Dr. Chambord’s
theoretical work with the molecular computer was excellent. Much food
for thought.” Smith smiled in acknowledgment of both greeting and
compliment. “You flatter me, Dr. Liang.”

“Not at all. I wonder whether you could possibly join me and some of my
colleagues from the Shanghai Biomedical Institute for dinner tonight. We
are keenly interested in the work of both USAMRIID and the CDC on
emerging viral agents that threaten all of us.”

“I’d very much like that,” Smith said smoothly, giving his voice a tinge
of regret, “but tonight I have another engagement. Perhaps you are free
some other time?”

“With your permission, I will contact you.” “Of course, Dr. Liang.” Jon
Smith continued on to the desk, his mind already on Liuchiu Island and
tonight.

Washington, D.C.

Wide and physically impressive, Admiral Stevens Brose filled his chair
at the foot of the long conference table in the White House underground
situation room. He took off his cap and ran his hand over his gray
military buzz cut, amazed–and worried–by what he saw.

President Castilla, as always, occupied the chair at the head. But they
were the only two in the large room, drinking their morning cups of
coffee. The rows of seats at the long table around them were ominous in
their emptiness. “What chemicals, Mr. President?” Admiral Brose asked.

He was also the chairman of the joint chiefs. “Thiodiglycol–”

“Blister weapons.”

“–and thionyl chloride.”

“Blister and nerve gases. Damn painful and lethal, all of them. A
wretched way to die.” The admiral’s thin mouth and big chin tightened.
“How much is there?”

“Tens of tons.”

President Castilla’s grim gaze was fixed on the admiral. “Unacceptable.

When–” Brose stopped abruptly, and his pale eyes narrowed. He took in
all the empty chairs at the long table. “I see. We’re not going to stop
The Dowager Empress en route and search her. You want to keep our
intelligence about the situation secret.”

“For now, yes. We don’t have concrete proof, any more than we did with
the Yinhe. We can’t afford another international incident like that,
especially with our allies less ready to back us in military actions,
and the Chinese close to signing our human-rights accord.” Brose nodded.
“Then what do you want me to do, sir? Besides keeping a lid on it?”

“Send one ship to keep tabs on the Empress. Close enough to move in, but
out of sight.”

“Out of sight maybe, but they’ll know she’s there. Their radar will pick
her up.

If they’re carrying contraband, their captain at least should know.

He’ll be keeping his crew hyperalert.”

“Can’t be helped. That’s the situation until I have absolute proof. If
things turn rocky, I expect you and your people to not let them escalate
into a confrontation.”

“We have someone getting confirmation?”

“I hope so.” Brose pondered. “She loaded up the night of the first,
late?”

“That’s my information.” Brose was calculating in his mind. “If I know
the Chinese and Shanghai, she didn’t sail until early on the second.” He
reached for the phone at his elbow, glanced at the president. “May I,
sir?” Samuel Castilla nodded.

Brose dialed and spoke into the phone. “I don’t care how early it is,
Captain. Get me what I need.” He waited, hand again running back over
his short hair. “Right, Hong Kong registry. A bulk carrier. Fifteen
knots. You’re certain? Very well.” He hung up. “At fifteen knots, that’s
eighteen days, give or take, to Basra with a stop in Singapore, which is
the usual course. If she left around midnight on the first, she should
arrive early in the morning on the nineteenth, Chinese time, at the
Strait of Hormuz. Three hours earlier Persian Gulf time, and evening of
the eighteenth our time. It’s the thirteenth now, so in five-plus days
she should reach the Hormuz Strait, which is the last place we can
legally board her.” His voice rose with concern. “Just five days, sir.