Death Wave (5 page)

The National Reconnaissance Office, which ran the technical end of spy satellite surveillance, provided imaging data to both the CIA and the NSA, among others. This morning, it seemed, while the NSA was trying to get observing time on
any
of the available satellites—Intruder or Crystal Fire—the CIA obviously was running a sweep over the same area and keeping the results to themselves. Presumably, that sweep was part of the same mission, Operation Haystack, searching for the missing suitcase nukes. Rubens wasn’t aware of any other situation of particular interest to U.S. intelligence in Tajikistan at the moment.

He decided he would need to talk to Collins about this.

“Mr. Rubens?” Marie’s voice said from behind the image of the Russian helicopter.

“Yes, Marie.”

“You wanted me to remind you when Ms. DeFrancesca reached her AO.”

Automatically, he glanced at his watch, then up at the line of clocks on the wall, each showing a different time zone. It was just past two in Berlin.

“Right, thank you.” Yes, there was still plenty of time before his appointment at the White House. “I’ll be right down.”

STARBUCKS
PARISER PLATZ
CENTRAL BERLIN, GERMANY
WEDNESDAY, 1419 HOURS LOCAL TIME

Lia DeFrancesca always felt a special thrill when she came here. She could feel the pulse of history in this place.

Her bright red fuck-me heels click-clacked across the brick pavement as she walked quickly across the Unter den Linden from the Hotel Adlon. To her left, across the broad, open expanse of the crowded Pariser Platz, rose the Brandenburg Gate, twelve monumental columns topped by a colossal quadriga, the Roman goddess Victoria’s chariot drawn by four horses abreast.

Once one of twelve gates through which visitors had entered the city of Berlin, the Brandenburg alone survived. It had been a symbol of the Nazi Party when they’d first come to power, and been one of the few structures still standing in the devastation of the Pariser Platz after the war. In 1961, when the Berlin Wall had gone up, the Brandenburg Gate had been just east of the line, in Soviet-controlled territory. The so-called Baby Wall had blocked East Berliners from the Gate, and the west end of the Pariser Platz itself had become part of the infamous death strip between the East and West sectors of the city. When President John F. Kennedy had visited the city in 1963, the Soviets had hung long red banners from the monument, symbolically preventing him from looking into East Berlin.

But the Berlin Wall had come down in 1989 as cheering crowds filled the Unter den Linden on both sides and met at the top. The Brandenburg Gate had reopened on December 22 of that year, when West German chancellor Helmut Kohl had walked through to be greeted by East German prime minister Hans Modrow. The reunification of Germany,
die Wende
, or the turning point, had swiftly followed.

Today, the Brandenburg Gate was a symbol not merely of Germany but of
Deutsche Einheit
, German unity. In a very real sense, the long and bitter Cold War between East and West had ended
here
.

Lia’s meeting this afternoon was a tangible symbol of the capitalist West’s victory over the communist East. There, at the southwest corner of an office building overlooking the Pariser Platz, well within the boundaries of what had once been communist East Berlin, was a Starbucks coffeehouse.

Her contact, she saw, was already there, waiting for her beneath an umbrella at a sidewalk table.

The Cold War was over, but now a new and far deadlier war had begun—and the enemy, at least in this battle, was a certain sexist pig named Feng Jiu Zhu.

She took a deep breath. Lia was
not
looking forward to this.

3

NSA HEADQUARTERS
FORT MEADE, MARYLAND
WEDNESDAY, 0821 HOURS EDT

William Rubens walked past Desk Three’s innermost security checkpoint and back into the Art Room. The huge high-definition monitor covering much of one wall of the chamber above the ranks of workstations and NSA personnel showed a live image blown up to movie-screen proportions, a cluster of sidewalk tables in front of a Starbucks
Kaffeehaus
—a cluster of white tables under gaudily striped, open umbrellas. The scene swooped and jerked with Lia’s movements. The image was being transmitted real-time from a tiny camera imbedded in a clump of feathers attached to the front of her stylish broad-brimmed hat. It shifted wildly with each step she took and swung dizzyingly each time she turned her head.

A heavyset Chinese man sat at the nearest table, studying Lia with obvious pleasure. There was nothing inscrutable about that stare as he looked her up and down.

“Is her backup in place?” Rubens asked.

Marie Telach gestured toward a second monitor, a smaller one hanging from a different wall. It showed a still photograph of the Pariser Platz from directly overhead, with each street and building labeled.

“Alabaster is there, on the street,” she said, indicating a red flag on the plaza perhaps thirty yards from Lia’s position. “Onyx One and Onyx Two are here—northwest corner of the Aldon Hotel, fifth floor. All three are keyed in and online.”

“Good.” Alabaster, Rubens knew, was CJ Howorth, currently in training as a field operator with Desk Three. Until recently, she’d been an employee of GCHQ, the British Government Communications Headquarters, and working out of the station at Menwith Hill, in North Yorkshire. GCHQ was closely linked with the American NSA, and with the far-flung Echelon SIGINT system. She was a linguist, a good one, but her sharp thinking and quick action during the
Atlantis Queen
hijacking the previous year had earned her a shot at Desk Three.

Onyx One was James Castelano, former Navy SEAL and an expert marksman. He was on the seventh floor of the Adlon with an M-110 SASS, or semiautomatic sniper system. One of the Art Room wall monitors was showing the image being transmitted live from Castelano’s electronic sight—a close-up of Feng’s leering face, the crosshairs centered on his forehead. Onyx Two was Harry Daimler, Castelano’s spotter.

“Ah! Miss Lau,” Feng said, standing awkwardly, bowing slightly and extending his hand. The camera peering down over the brim of her hat showed Lia’s hand reach out to be engulfed in Feng’s paw.

Lia’s cover for this op was that of a Chinese American businesswoman named Diane Lau. This meeting had been set up weeks ago, beginning with exploratory inquiries halfway around the world, in Hawaii. Feng was a big player in an international arms-smuggling operation quite possibly orchestrated by the government of the People’s Republic of China itself. Rubens hoped that Feng would offer Lia an advisory position on his staff, a job that would give her a shot at tapping Feng’s personal business empire. He was a senior vice president for COSCO, the China Ocean Shipping Company, and that fact by itself meant that Feng was of
great
interest to the NSA.

“It’s good to meet you at last, Mr. Feng,” Lia’s voice said from the wall speakers.

“Please … have a seat. Though I must confess I still don’t know why you insisted on such a
public
meeting place! The street is such an unlikely place to discuss business!”

“Because it
is
public, Mr. Feng,” Lia replied, taking the chair next to Feng’s. “Your phone calls and your e-mails have been most informative. But …” The image jiggled slightly as she shrugged. “I don’t know you yet, not personally. You could be
anybody
.”

“And a girl can’t be too careful,” Feng said, his dark eyes twinkling. “I
do
understand completely.”

His English was excellent. According to his dossier, he’d been educated at Oxford.

“Smooth operator,” Marie said.

“The word is ‘smarmy,’” Rubens replied. “Have Alabaster move in a bit tighter.”

These next few minutes—Feng’s first impressions of Lia—would be critical.

STARBUCKS
PARISER PLATZ
CENTRAL BERLIN, GERMANY
WEDNESDAY, 1422 HOURS LOCAL TIME

Lia smiled pleasantly at Feng as he signaled a waiter and ordered two cappuccinos. She’d taken the chair next to the man because the seat opposite him, which would have been her first choice, might have put her ridiculous hat into Onyx’s line of sight from the hotel, blocking his shot. She glanced casually up at the window where she knew Castelano and Daimler were watching. The left half was open, but she couldn’t see them. Thoroughgoing professionals, they would be set up well back from the window, hidden in shadow, their rifle invisible from the street.

Glancing right, she
did
see CJ—Siege to her friends—dressed in a green T-shirt and blue jeans, carrying a shopping bag from Peek & Cloppenburg. Siege was studying a tourist’s street map while edging unobtrusively closer, probably at Rubens’ order.

She was glad for the backup. Feng was a thoroughly nasty character. Formerly a major in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army with fifteen years’ experience in Chinese military intelligence, he was now a high-ranking executive for COSCO, which meant his former connections would still be very much intact. He was known to have underworld connections as well, a working arrangement with one of the more powerful tongs operating out of Hong Kong, and he had a rap sheet that included smuggling, drugs, and gunrunning. His dossier suggested that his weakness was attractive women, with a string of mistresses from Hong Kong to Honolulu to Vancouver to Berlin. He seemed to collect women, though Lia wasn’t sure what it was about the man that would attract them.

Perhaps it was just a combination of those most powerful of aphrodisiacs, money and power.

She was dressed this afternoon to entice. The red heels, the short red skirt with the slit up to here, the generous V of exposed cleavage, the smart-looking designer sunglasses, the hat canted across her head at a jaunty angle—all part of the alluring package. Her handlers had designed her look based on careful analyses of six of Feng’s recent girlfriends. He liked Americans but seemed to prefer the dark and exotic beauty of Asian Americans, which was why Rubens had asked Lia to volunteer for this op in the first place.

Despite the way Feng kept staring at her chest, however, she knew it was her
brain
that would make or break the deal. According to the employment listing that had first caught Desk Three’s attention last month, Feng was looking for an advisor in cultural affairs and public relations, and that was how she intended to sell herself.

Feng glanced up from her chest, and their gazes locked. “So, Ms. Lau. Is this your first time in Berlin?”

“Not at all,” she replied truthfully. She’d passed through the German capital several times in the past five years on various missions. “I love this city.”

“We have something in common, then.” He nodded toward the monument against the western skyline. “The Brandenburg Gate. Magnificent. Though … I have to admit that my favorite piece of history connected with it is your President Kennedy giving a speech right over there on the far side of the monument … was it 1962? After the Berlin Wall went up, anyway.” He laughed. “ ‘I am a jelly doughnut’!”

“
Ich bin ein Berliner
,” Lia said, nodding. “That was 1963. But you
do
know that the whole jelly-filled doughnut thing is an urban legend, right?”

“Lia, what are you doing?” the voice of Thomas Blake said in her ear. Blake was one of the Desk Three handlers and would be running her during this mission. “That Kennedy story is well attested—”

“What do you mean, Ms. Lau?” Feng said at the same time.

“Kennedy was identifying himself with the German people,” Lia said patiently. “The story went around—I think it was even in the
New York Times
—about how his use of the indefinite article,
ein
, made it seem like he was calling himself a pastry. In fact, in German the indefinite article is left out when you’re talking about someone’s profession or place of residence, but it’s absolutely necessary when you’re speaking figuratively, as Kennedy was. He wasn’t literally from Berlin. He was only declaring his solidarity with the city’s citizens, in a city divided and barricaded by the Soviets. So
‘Ich bin
ein
Berliner’
was completely correct.”

“I’ve heard that people in Berlin don’t call themselves Berliners,” Feng said. “They reserve that name for jelly-filled doughnuts.”

“Not true,” Lia told him. “The things are called Berliners elsewhere in Germany, but here they’re called
Pfannkuchen
—pancakes, for some odd reason.”

“I hope you’re sure of your facts, Lia,” Blake told her over the communications link. “That’s not what it says here.” Blake and the other Art Room personnel had access to various guidebooks and reference works, as well as the entire Internet to call upon. If Feng asked her something she didn’t know, they would be able to provide the answer in seconds.

But Blake, Lia knew, was wrong. She was relying on a different source, one she trusted.