The Case Officer (10 page)

The taxi dropped him between the
Star Ferry wharf and the entrance of the enormous Ocean Terminal shopping mall.
He headed toward the mall.

Scanning the harbor area behind
him as he rode up the long escalator leading to the upper level shops of the
mall, he spotted Dopey on one of the two motorbikes, positioned to watch the
main entrance of the terminal building. He knew that Grumpy would be biking his
way to the Hong Kong Hotel entrance at the far end of the terminal, and Gimpy
would be limping along behind him. They always gave poor Gimpy the footwork.

He knew Gimpy would hang back a
good distance for fear of burning himself, but Mac would make things easy for
him. He moved at an easy pace and stopped twice, once to purchase a greeting
card and once a magazine, during his stroll through the mall on his way to
lunch. The purchases were proof of the “rabbit’s” reason for being in the
building, and would serve as later justification for the team to write in their
report that Mac was really there to shop, not to detect or shake surveillance.    

When MacMurphy eventually disappeared
from sight in one of the larger shops, Gimpy would not be concerned. Who could
blame him, what with so many entrances and exits; and his instructions were
clear—discreet, repeat
discreet,
surveillance. Anyway, the rabbit was
definitely not tail-conscious and would surely reappear at one of the main
exits where one of the others would pick him up again. Gimpy would head back
out to the Star Ferry entrance to join Dopey.

MacMurphy passed through the
upper level tunnel, which connected the Ocean Terminal and the Hong Kong Hotel,
and walked down through the hotel to the street. There, as expected, he spotted
Grumpy standing casually next to his motorbike about 40 meters up the road. He
was in a good position to view the exit. Neither MacMurphy nor Grumpy gave any
indication one had seen the other.

MacMurphy glanced at his watch.
It was noon. He had spent nearly an hour on his SDR and he now knew exactly the
extent of his surveillance. His meeting was in less than twenty-five minutes,
and his agent had been trained to wait only five minutes before aborting. If
they missed this meeting they both would have to go through the whole
surveillance detection drill again before making the prearranged alternate
meeting later that evening. He wanted to avoid that if at all possible. It was
a
necessary
waste of time, but a waste nonetheless.

He turned into the crowd on
Peking Road and headed up toward Nathan Road. He strode more rapidly now,
gliding around and past slower-moving pedestrians in his desire to complete his
planned path in time, yet trying not to look like he was in a hurry to get
anywhere special.

He knew Grumpy could afford to
hang back because MacMurphy’s prematurely gray head of hair would be clearly
visible above the shorter black heads of the Chinese masses who swirled around
him. As he walked, he hummed to himself a fragment of a haunting popular tune
from a decade earlier—one he knew well and could hum without thinking about it.
In fact, he was only vaguely aware of the song going through his head at all.
His mind was otherwise occupied, focused on his being seen at all the right
moments—till it was time to escape his followers’ view—and then getting to his
meeting in a timely manner, but still undetected.

Still humming to himself,
MacMurphy turned into a familiar shopping arcade. He knew he would be out of
Grumpy’s sight for a few moments. The arcade contained a number of shops on the
ground floor and several restaurants, including the popular Lindy’s, a
knock-off from the original New York Lindy’s, on the second level. Lindy’s was
well known to the team as a regular lunch stop for MacMurphy. He favored the
food there as well as the service and admired several of the cute waitresses as
well…though his admiration had never gone beyond innocent flirting. But the
staff of Lindy’s knew him as a regular, and so did his trio of surveillants.

Figuring Mac was going to lunch,
Grumpy waited outside the arcade and positioned himself so he could observe the
entrance. Watching the entrance outside in the Hong Kong heat while MacMurphy
enjoyed his lunch in air-conditioned comfort in his favorite restaurant was a
regular occurrence for Grumpy. This naturally contributed to the demeanor that
had given rise to Mac’s nickname for him. MacMurphy felt a tad sorry for the
poor dude, but not at all guilty.

Once in the arcade and out of
Grumpy’s sight, MacMurphy darted into a stairwell, took the stairs two at a
time to the next level, jogged down the shop-lined hall, circled back down
another staircase, and exited out a side door onto busy Nathan Road. He looked
around to make sure he wasn’t being spotted or tailed, then quickly crossed the
street and descended into the subway.

When he emerged in Mongkok ten
minutes later, he was certain he was clean. He also knew the surveillance team
would be reassembled, patiently waiting on the street outside of Lindy’s for
MacMurphy to reappear after lunch.

They would never risk burning
themselves by going into a fancy European restaurant after a “rabbit,” and they
knew—or
thought
they knew—exactly where he was and what he was doing.
And that’s how the surveillance report would read at the end of the day. They
would never know they had missed an hour of activities that needed surveillance
and reporting. Precisely how MacMurphy wanted it.

Chapter Twenty-Five

M
acMurphy and his agent, Chou
Hsing, made eye contact at the pickup point in front of the Hung Fat noodle
shop on U Chau Street. Chou was sensibly dressed in a white, short sleeve shirt
and blue linen slacks. There was a phalanx of pens jammed into the pocket of
his shirt, an advertisement for himself as a busy and dedicated journalist. His
shiny black hair was styled in a somewhat incongruous arrangement that made him
look like a Chinese version of one of the Beetles in the 1960s. His girlfriend,
Ling, thought it was cute. Mac found it amusingly adolescent.

After they’d silently
acknowledged each other, Chou followed MacMurphy at a discreet distance to a
small park nestled among several high-rise apartment buildings. He sat on a
bench in the park while MacMurphy entered one of the buildings, still very
aware of the people around him and the possibility that he might be being
tailed. Exactly five minutes later, Chou followed and proceeded directly to the
familiar safehouse apartment on the fourth floor.

The safehouse had been rented in
alias by a Chinese/American former Naval officer whose retirement included
working as a support asset for the CIA’s Hong Kong station. The door to the
pied-á-terre apartment was open a crack—the final signal that all was clear—and
Chou slipped quietly inside and closed the door behind him.

They shook hands and hugged
warmly, the case officer knowing his agent wanted to feel personally
appreciated. MacMurphy led his agent to a small Formica table with a chair on
either side, placed in the middle of the sparsely furnished efficiency
apartment. There were just enough furnishings to allay suspicions should anyone
unexpected enter the apartment.

It needed to look like someone
could conceivably be living here, at least from time to time, not like the
single-purpose meeting place it actually was. But it certainly lacked any homey
touches. No pictures graced the walls, no books were anywhere in evidence –
although a few old magazines were piled on a coffee table – and the kitchenette
showed no signs that anyone had ever cooked a meal here, or ever planned to.

The two men sat across from one
another and exchanged pleasantries in English, the most comfortable language
for both of them to communicate in. MacMurphy positioned a yellow legal pad in
front of him and prepared to take notes.

MacMurphy looked expectant; his
agent looked eager. Both case officer and agent were now ready to get down to
business.

Chapter Twenty-Six

C
hou Hsing’s business card read:
Junior Editor, New China News Agency. But in reality he was much more important
than that. This fact had not been revealed by Chou – although MacMurphy and the
CIA were well aware of it – until he was subjected to the intense questioning
of the polygraph examination after recruitment.

Old habits are hard to break for
case officers living under deep, non-official cover. However, Chou Hsing
finally admitted that he was actually an MSS case officer assigned to the Hong
Kong branch of the NCNA. The admission was a required part of the CIA’s agent
vetting process.

Like many non-official case
officers working for intelligence agencies all over the world, Chou spent his
evenings meeting agents and preparing reports for the MSS while carrying a full
cover workload as a journalist for the NCNA during the day. The expanded access
that went with the intelligence affiliation greatly enhanced Chou’s value to
MacMurphy’s station in Hong Kong, and the CIA had rewarded this potential by
setting aside a neat $100,000 per year salary, deposited in monthly increments
into a stateside interest-bearing escrow account.

Chou saw himself as one of those
millions of Chinese who had a flair for business. He regarded his prospects for
advancement in his present career as less than brilliant. His brother, Chiang,
had emigrated from China and set up a business in the Philippines, using cheap
labor and equally cheap raw materials to make patio furniture for export. The
quality was uneven, the designs were less than inspiring, but the price was
right. Older brother Chou wanted to show that he too could be an entrepreneur.

MacMurphy had encouraged Chou to view
himself as a “capitalist roader” but had his doubts about Chou’s potential to
become a mini-mogul. Still, you kept an asset happy; you shared his dreams and
encouraged him to dream big.

The money could be used only
after Chou’s clandestine work for the CIA was over, however; only after he had
been safely exfiltrated to the United States and resettled comfortably somewhere
in the hinterland with a new name and identity. Access to that much money for
an individual in Chou’s position would have brought the MSS counterintelligence
goons down on him immediately.

By now Chou was used to his
clandestine relationship with the man he knew as Barry LeMen, and he handled
himself professionally during the monthly meetings with his case officer. He
came to the meetings prepared and wasted no time at all. He knew that the
biggest risk he took as a CIA agent was in delivering his information to LeMen.
Collecting it was the easy part, normal, but if he were caught delivering it to
an intelligence operative...China’s justice system was swift and efficient when
it came to handling traitors.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

M
acMurphy already had retrieved
two frosty cans of San Miguel beer from the apartment’s compact fridge and had
placed these and a plate of assorted salted nuts on the table. The two men toasted
each other with a synchronous “kam-bei” and got down to routine business.

“Any trouble getting here?”
MacMurphy asked crisply.

“No, everything okay. But must to
be back in less than one hour today.”

“No problem. Let’s set up our
next meet right away in case we have to leave quickly. Then we can go through
your material.”

MacMurphy and Chou agreed on the
date and time for their next—and final—meeting. It would be in two weeks at the
safehouse. Chou had been well prepared for his introduction to an American case
officer. LeMen, Chou believed, would be returning to Europe.

Chou would miss LeMen and was
more than a little concerned about meeting directly with an American official,
but he kept his feelings to himself and displayed little emotion despite the
welter of concerns that tumbled through his mind. He knew that as long as his
relationship with the American CIA was kept out of sight, he would be safe, and
the rewards down the road would make everything worth the risk.

Opening his leather portfolio,
Chou removed six pages of photocopied order blanks from a popular Hong Kong
mail order house. He pushed them across the table to MacMurphy.

MacMurphy selected one of the
pages and examined the reverse side under the glancing sunlight coming in
through the window. “Your technique has really improved. No evidence of any
impressions on these pages at all. You must be using the #4 pencil I gave you.”

“Yes, and do not press too hard
like you say. It really good system. I can not see nothing on them order
blanks.”

“So you like the system? You like
using the SW?”

“It damn better than relying on
joss to get reports to you, ayah?”

“That’s what I kept telling you.
I couldn’t understand why you were so reluctant to use SW for your reports. If
you lose these in the street you have only lost blank order forms. If you lost
these reports the way you used to prepare them, in clear text, well...I don’t
want to think about that.”

“Me too. I stupid before. Worry
too much about using ‘spy gear,’ you know.... Now everything okay, ayah?”