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Checks his watch.
Time for the signal, and after that, five minutes to the exfil.
He goes to the near window, overlooking the main avenue. He lowers and raises a window shade halfway.
Signal sent.
He and the defector are ready for pickup.
Just five minutes and this op would be on its way to conclusion, months in planning, from when word came to him at Langley,Chin Lin wants to come back to the States and have a tequila with you.
What a stunner that had been, her making a private joke about the first time she drank tequila and threw up on his shoes back at school. His and everyone else’s first response was that this was a trap somehow, something to embarrass the Agency and the country, but after slow negotiations and an agreement to make it happen in a neutral country like South Africa, the slow wheels of planning commenced, the communications going through a complicated email cutout process using systems in the internet cloud.
He looks at Chin Lin and thinks, she’s the one who got away, and the Stanford student in him thinks—Do we have a chance to make it work this time?—but no, back to the job at hand.Stop thinking about the past, stop wondering what she’s been doing these last six years, get your focus back, buddy.
“You have luggage?” he asks. “A carry-on?”
With disappointment in her voice, she says, “Benjamin … what kind of tradecraft did they teach you in Virginia? You think I could leave my apartment in Pretoria with a bit of luggage in hand? My minders would have picked me up in seconds.”
She pats the hem of her jacket.
“Thumb drives sewn in,” she says. “With enough photos and documents to keep your analysts busy for months.”
In the old building, a floorboard creaks.
Why,is what he wants to ask, for he knows from his briefings back at Langley that Chin Lin’s father is a senior official at the Chinese Ministry of State Security. What is driving her to make this ultimate betrayal, not only against her country, but her father?
With her defection, her father will bear the brunt of Beijing’s anger, and will probably end his days in a miserable prison cell after months of severe torture and interrogation.
Benjamin looks one last time at his watch and there’s a sudden loudcrashas a large Chinese man leads with his shoulder to break through the thin wooden door. Another Chinese man rushes in through the broken door, carrying a pistol, aiming it straight at Benjamin.
CHAPTER 6
BENJAMIN’S TRAINING KICKS in and he lifts his arms up in surrender, saying, “Hey, hey, hey, what the hell is going on?,” desperately trying to exit his CIA persona and get back to Benjamin the innocent travel writer.
One armed Chinese man pushes Chin Lin against a cracked plaster wall, and the closer man says, “You! Don’t move!”
Benjamin puts a tremble in his legs and fear in his voice. “I mean it, what is this?”
The man who told him to stop puts a pistol to Benjamin’s forehead—a 9mm QSZ-92, he coolly observes—and roughly searches him, pulling his fanny pack off and tossing it to the floor. When he is done, he speaks rapidly in Chinese to a third man who has come in.
The third man is older, better dressed, and he gingerly closes the broken door into place. He turns to look at Benjamin, but ignores Chin Lin, who is standing quiet and still against the wall.
“Who are you?” he asks, in precise, barely accented English.
His training kicks in again, as hard and logical as it must be. In situations like this one, you have one responsibility: you.
Your asset, agent, defector … they are to be cut loose. Get yourself away, best you can.
But thinking about Chin Lin … he’s both angry and sad.
It’s clear now.
She’s betrayed him.
But why? For what purpose? To capture a regular field operative in a neutral nation? Doesn’t make sense.
He says, “Benjamin Litchfield. I’m from San Francisco, in California. I’m a travel writer … who the hell are you?”