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He puts a thick finger on the photo. “Yeah. White woman, early thirties, working quickly to retrieve the envelope, her hair up in a baseball cap so we can’t capture a photo of her face. So no facial recognition. But Noa …”
She picks up the photos and stares at them.
“Donna Otterson wasn’t leaking information to the Chinese,” Noa says. “We were set up.”
“Big-time,” Aldo says. “And I hate to point out something that seems pretty obvious, Noa, but it was the president who set us up.”
“Shit,” she says.
“Yeah,” he says.
CHAPTER 52
SOMEWHERE IN SOUTH AFRICA
IT’S THE CHANGE in the lighting that first awakens Benjamin Lucas. As he rolls over on his bed in his cell, the door is unlocked and a Chinese man walks in, carrying a tall paper sack with twin handles, from which a smooth wooden handle sticks out.
Behind him another, younger Chinese man brings in a comfortable chair, and after a brief exchange of murmured sentences, the second man leaves and the first man sits down. He’s about Benjamin’s age, wearing blue jeans, black sneakers, and a white, button-front shirt, top button undone.
“Benjamin Lucas,” he says, in good English.
“That’s right.”
He doesn’t offer a hand but the man says, “Chang Wanquan. I’m the deputy agricultural attaché to South Africa. Officially, that is. You wouldn’t believe the amount of time I waste going out and pretending to be interested in wheat and corn, along with citrus fruits. Then I have to go back to our embassy and do my real job, looking into South Africa’s most important exports. We all know what the most important exports of South Africa are, don’t we? Diamonds and rare minerals. That’s what I work on, when I canscrape enough time together. It can be a real … drag. Yeah, that’s it. A drag. You ever feel that, Benjamin Lucas?”
He stays quiet.
“Still trying to be the stoic CIA officer, right?”
The man’s smile grows wider. “First time I’ve ever gone face-to-face with a CIA agent. Knowingly, that is. I’m sure I’ve run into some of your chaps at embassy parties and other random events. All working under some sort of diplomatic or industrial cover.”
Benjamin says, “I like your accent. British, it sounds.”
Wanquan nods. “Not bad,” he says. “You have a good ear for language. I suppose growing up in San Francisco helped, with all the different Chinese from Taiwan to the mainland and Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia … but for me, it was Hong Kong. I spent my formative years there, thanks to my father, a wealthy banker in Shanghai.”
Wanquan puts his hands on his knees. “And Hong Kong is where I grew to hate you, Benjamin Lucas.”
“Why me?” he asks, confused. “I’m not even British.”
A laugh. “Sorry, old habit. No, that’s where I learned to hate the West, for how they had humiliated us and had stolen Hong Kong and the New Territories.”
“Britain returned it to your control nearly thirty years ago,” Benjamin says, wondering just what in hell is going on with this slim man from the Ministry of State Security. “Still carrying a grudge?”
He says, “Many of us in positions of authority and power have been holding grudges for what the West did to us, even when it was centuries ago. Now, after all these years of oppression, we’re taking our rightful position in the world. We started with Hong Kong, and soon, we will have Taiwan back, and the rest of the Pacific will belong to us, either overtly or covertly.”
Wanquan pauses. “Hong Kong … my father thought they would teach me manners, grace, and how to fit into a culture that prizes business and profits above all else. And you know what I learned?I learned they hated us from the Mainland. Thought we were barbarians. Not waiting in queues like ladies and gentlemen. Spitting on the sidewalk. Pissing in alleyways.”
He rustles around in the paper bag.
Benjamin says, “I didn’t realize captivity includes a history seminar.”
“Oh, it doesn’t,” he says. “But you remind me of Hong Kong. Arrogant, above it all, part of the West. They thought they could remain alone and aloof, with their own laws and way of life, while under our governance and protection. They were wrong.”
Benjamin sees now what’s attached to the polished wooden handle sticking out of Chang’s paper bag.
It’s a cricket bat, flat and heavy-looking.
“One of the sports I was forced to learn in Hong Kong was cricket. Can you imagine that? Me, a child of a wealthy member of the Party, learning to play the game of our enemy? And nobody plays cricket in the Middle Kingdom. Nobody.”