Sea of Lies: An Espionage Thriller (47 page)

“I saw on the plane that you have two disks. I’d like them both.”

Hell, she hadn’t been prepping food after all. She had been spying on him. Imagine that. “If I give you the disks, it’s treason.”

“Not at all. It’s my intention for you to destroy them in front of me after you and I use your laptop to match the contents of the disks to my master index. I’ll obtain another disk from my embassy later today. On Friday you’ll trade the disk I give you to the FSB for Watermen’s release.” Overnight she’d received these more detailed instructions from someone on the Politburo Standing Committee. She concluded it was Yi’s doing, and suspected that Liu would have given a very different set of orders had he been able.

Now Nolan was on the back foot. “If I let you copy those two—”

“I’m not
copying
anything. I have a file on my phone that will compare the contents of those two against the master index of what the MSS took off Watermen before he left Hong Kong.” Gesturing with her new phone, she said, “I can show you the one hundred fifty thousand file names. It’s a simple checking algorithm to ensure that one disk matches the other in the case of your original. The second disk you altered obviously won’t match.” She hid a smile as she thought of the genius of this plan hatched by her colleagues overnight. The new program on her phone would extract a copy of every file name and document size on Nolan’s disks, and he’d never know it.

“I have a second problem. I need to control what goes to the FSB, because if Chumakov doesn’t accept the contents, then Watermen and I are both dead. I can’t just hand over whatever you give me. I’ll need to check it first. And if I don’t like the way it looks, then I’ll want to give them my doctored version instead.”

 “Let’s say my superiors agree to your proposal. Right now, we run the checking routine over your two disks. One will match and one won’t match what’s on the master index. You destroy your uncorrupted disk in my presence. Next, drive me to town to the China embassy to pick up the version of the doctored files you will pass to the Russians. You inspect it, and if you can find any error that you can’t repair, we will consider allowing you to give the FSB your own disk. We’ll need to add a few files to it first, however. Let’s leave the mechanics until later. If you don’t want to hand over your version, then destroy it in my presence and we’re done.”

“When does my family go free?”

“As soon as you destroy both disks, or pass your doctored copy to the FSB.”

“And what happens if the exchange fails, and I’m killed or captured?”

“We will still count the disk as destroyed as long as the Russians get it. Your daughter and wife will go free, but the Russians must take secure possession.”
She gave Nolan an imploring look while she thought about what they had agreed to last night via encrypted calls and texts, long after he was asleep. The MSS was counting on the Americans to end up with China’s doctored version. Nolan was a support player in a much bigger scheme.

His facial features registered resignation, but he needed a concession to save face. She waited for it. “One final requirement. I don’t want us out of each other’s sight until tomorrow. So if you have to pick up a disk, have it brought to the lobby of Satya Gems on Galle Road at noon today, and we’ll collect it together.”

“Fine, but are you sure you want to be seen in a jewelry store?”

Nolan smiled. “Actually, you’ll be meeting in the showroom of G-Wis, an office equipment store next to Satya Gems. There’s no CCTV in there.”

“I accept. So let’s compare file names on those two disks.”

“Alright. Let me see that file on your phone. If it’s already on your SIM card, it will be easy to upload to my laptop.”

Nolan disabled the Wi-Fi radio and ran the program, knowing he was injecting China’s latest malware to do battle with his own, non-Agency sanctioned encryption routines which guarded his recently-uploaded personal files and programs. Given that the CIA banned Lenovos for their MSS-readable architectures, he could never have used the machine for any work-related tasks anyway. He would dissect the Lenovo’s mishmash of spy software in his retirement if he ever made it to that day.

“First, compare the true master file. That’s the one we’re most interested in.” Kaili’s voice was the tiniest bit insistent. You didn’t turn fifty-five in the Company without living on your instincts as well as your intellect. Nolan inserted the doctored Russian disk and initiated the compare sequence. Thirty seconds later, the result came back a match.

“That’s a relief,” she said.

That’s a crock of bullshit
, he thought.

“Now do the other one.” To no one’s surprise, the second file came up a mismatch.

Nolan held up his doctored Russian memory card and said, “I will destroy the original master Watermen disk in front of you. Are you in agreement?”

“Yes.”

Nolan used the small tweezers to hold it. He lit one of the candles in the floral arrangement on the coffee table. The microSD memory card melted in the flame, taking with it two hundred hours of his best work. He flushed it away while she watched over his shoulder, manipulating her phone to enable the activation and transmission sequence. The malware turned on the Wi-Fi radio in Nolan’s new PC, transmitted to her phone the file names and sizes from the two microSD cards, before it shut down. The malware then self-erased to leave no trace. It was PLA Unit #61398 at its finest.

Returning to the laptop, he removed the card and its adapter and held it up. “This is the doctored disk. I’ll hang on to it for now until I can see what your team wants me to give to the FSB instead. However, if I decide to use China’s version, we’ll destroy this second disk, and you’ll turn my family loose?” She nodded in assent, though she knew this would not happen, short of Nolan’s passing a polygraph in Beijing and writing a multivolume history of the Stuxnet project in between interrogation sessions. That could take years, especially if he wasn’t a willing participant.

Nolan accepted that he was handing the Russians whatever Kaili sourced. He sure as hell wouldn’t give them the real NSA master files, but she couldn’t find that out.

Balendra knocked on the door. “Good morning. You’re checked out. If you could pack your belongings, my vehicle’s outside.”

Kaili looked at Nolan. “Are we not staying another night?”

“Oh, no. That would be too rich for my budget. We’re going to move into town.” All this time, Nolan’s head was filled with the implications of that phony file comparison he’d just run. Obviously, the MSS was trying to steal data. Presumably they actually had a copy of Watermen’s NSA files, or else they would have come for his disk already. But why let him know this? Because they didn’t expect him to be around to share the information with his Agency brethren.

On the way to the SUV, Balendra casually said, “It’s a good time to be leaving, before anyone finds the body around back.”

Maintaining a façade, Nolan asked, “One of ours?”

“Oh, no. One of yours,” Balendra said.

Nolan turned, expecting him to be pointing at Kaili. A dead ethnic Chinese would confirm the alternative hypothesis. Instead, Balendra was smiling at Nolan. “Some American embassy man with burglar tools and nifty microphones. The contents of his wallet and pockets are in the SUV.”

*  *  *  *  *

Gretchen Doyle, chief of Colombo station, was agitated. “I don’t know where the hell he is. Pat Long is our best snoop. We sent him in without backup because
you
told me Burns said that Nolan was hands-off. Well, we made it as low-key as possible. He entered the hotel grounds just before 4 a.m. local time, confirmed by our surveillance team. We haven’t heard anything since, and it’s now 9:40. He’s either captive or dead. What do you propose?”

“Why are you calling me? Shouldn’t you be onto Burns?” Constantine wanted no part of what was looking like a career-ender.

“Because you called me last night when I reported that Nolan and the Chinese woman had checked into the Jetwing Blue’s honeymoon bungalow. You said it would be a feather in our caps if we had ears on Nolan.”

“Yes, I remember what I said. Now what I propose—”

“Hold on, Dick. It’s the surveillance team.” Doyle took the other call while Constantine contemplated his next posting: probably washing Agency vehicles in Sierra Leone.

“Long’s dead. Found in the bushes outside the bungalow by my people. It seems Nolan and the woman just drove off toward town, so they took a look rather than follow.”

“Nolan murdered him?”

“Not according to my men: professional job with a slit throat. Left hand over the mouth and a right-handed cut that severed the trachea and carotid artery. Lots of blood. Body searched and everything taken.”

“God in heaven! What do we do now?”

“I don’t know what you propose, but I’m going to turn this city inside out until I find Nolan,” she said.

“No, you’re not! That’s exactly what Burns said
not
to do. For the time being, you do
nothing
. We may have already ruined whatever the play was here. It all depends on who did the killing. For all we know, it could be a Russia or even a China hit. We’ll figure it out, but right now you tell your team to stand down, or else we’ll both be shining shoes outside Grand Central Terminal!”

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

CHANGES IN ATTITUDES

THURSDAY MARCH 13, BEIJING, RANGOON, COLOMBO

Yi Xiubao’s palms were already damp and he wasn’t even in the president’s office. He nodded to new head of MSS, Ding Taiping, who also looked nervous. A member of the president’s security entourage showed them from the anteroom to a small meeting room off Gao’s office. The two men waited in silence another fifteen minutes and shot to their feet when the president burst into the room. Gao impatiently waved them back to their seats. Fixing Yi with a stare, the president said, “I named you secretary of the Central Commission for Intelligence and elevated you to the Politburo Standing Committee to solve problems, not create them.” Gesturing toward the MSS vice minister, Gao continued, “Ding’s been in office barely two days and already his head is on the block as well.”

“I . . . I . . . I don’t know what you mean,” Yi stammered. He was simultaneously confused, humiliated and insulted by the president’s unfair statement in front of a junior Politburo member.

“We’re on the verge of launching a major military operation,
Polar Bear,
supported by two interlocking intelligence initiatives,
Dolphin
and
Menander
. You jeopardized everything by sending the deputy of Liu Zhenchang, the man Vice Minister Ding replaced on Tuesday, to Sri Lanka in the company of a rogue CIA officer.”

“I don’t see how this has to do with—”

“If you don’t see very quickly, at tomorrow’s PSC meeting there will be eight chairs filled instead of nine. Now listen very carefully: that woman was Liu’s protégé. She may be prepared to sacrifice her career out of loyalty. A trait I admire, but one you must anticipate and thwart.”

“Liu? He’s out of action. I . . . I have him under house arrest at his country home,” Yi stammered.

“Yes, and this morning, according to Ding’s report, which I received an hour ago, he had two visitors: Joint Chiefs of Staff General Yao and Professor Lai. They spent seventy-five minutes with him in a room you didn’t bug. And if you think they were discussing anything other than a division of power should I be ousted, then you should be running a pig farm in Kunming.”

“I . . . I didn’t receive that report,” Yi said, glancing to his right at Ding. Ding averted his eyes. I’ll be damned, thought Yi. That shifty bastard has been in office two days and he’s already going around me.

“What you see or don’t see isn’t important right now. What you
hear
and what you
do
are vital. At yesterday’s PSC meeting, you said the Iranians promised to release the six Unit #61398 programmers from Beirut. Has that happened?”

“The word last evening was that secure travel arrangements were taking the Iranians longer than anticipated, and—”

“So they’re still in that Beirut basement?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Leave them there. Under normal circumstances, we’d use those nuclear weapons triggers as collateral against the return of our people, but now I’m alerted to the information passed along last night from Yu in Singapore. Counter to what you
told the PSC yesterday, MH370 didn’t crash with complete loss of life. The CIA hijacked the plane—if the fugitive agent Nolan is to be believed—with two or three passengers offloaded before it took off again and disappeared. Nolan claimed a uranium purification centrifuge was also offloaded. This meshes with what Iran’s ambassador told us. If true, then Rear Admiral Zhao and Iran’s scientist are under interrogation by the Americans. That would mean that Operation Menander will fail. Depending on what Zhao knows, he could also imperil the
Dolphin
misinformation campaign. While he doesn’t know about
Polar Bear
, without the DDOS, we cannot execute the masterstroke. Nothing less than the country’s top military and foreign policy objectives are at stake.

“Meanwhile, you and Ding agreed that Yu—who was reassigned to run Singapore station—could be entrusted with the most delicate of assignments. She is to convince the CIA officer to destroy his copy of Watermen’s NSA files in return for the release of his family?”

Ding and Yi looked at one another. Finally, Yi spoke. “Yes. To protect
Dolphin
, we do not want the CIA thinking we have any doubts as to the authenticity of the NSA files we took from Watermen in Hong Kong last year. As long as the CIA thinks we were fooled by their fakes, the more apt they are to accept as genuine the false information we feed them through the compromised coastal national defense network. This in turn supports
Polar Bear—
”

“Don’t lecture me! This was always high risk, but with MH370 hijacked it’s now untenable. If the Americans capture Nolan, he will tell them China didn’t want the NSA files. Instead, he will say we wanted them
destroyed.
If they don’t capture Nolan, but realize he has been traveling with the head of Singapore MSS, they’ll conclude that China has a second copy of Watermen’s NSA files. And if the provenances of the two sets differ, China would naturally conclude that those mismatched files were either fraudulent or had been altered. That should be enough to induce us to switch from the backup defense network to the primary coastal tracking system.