The Good Traitor (29 page)

C
APITOL
H
ILL
—T
WO
W
EEKS
L
ATER

Before this moment, Angela Vasser had never set foot inside room 219 of the Hart Senate Office Building. Sh
e’d
been in other Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities before, of course. The embassy in Beijing had no fewer than three. But no SCIF—outside of the White House’s situation room and those at the CIA’s headquarters in Langley—had hosted as many discussions about the United States’ most closely held intelligence secrets as Hart 219. Upon entering through a vault-like door, she was immediately struck by the simplicity of the room—all beige-paneled walls and utilitarian furniture. The room didn’t pretend to be anything other than what it was: a soundproof box full of men and women with very high security clearances.

The twenty-four members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence were present, arranged according to seniority in a horseshoe formation on a platform from which they peered down at the speaker. Not one of them made a sound as Vasser took her seat. Whatever else was on their minds, whatever else their busy schedules had in store for them that day—they seemed to forget it when she entered. The tension in the room climaxed as Vasser took a sip of water from the glass on the table before her and then set it down.

“Good morning, Ms. Vasser,” said Larry Wrightmont, the intelligence committee’s chairman. “Thank you for being here today. I know you have not found many champions on Capitol Hill, but
I’d
like to be the first here to commend you, in an unqualified, nonpartisan manner, for your continued service to this country. As I’m sure you’re about to highlight, our diplomatic relationship with China has never been so delicate. We’re relieved to have you back in Beijing.”

“Thank you, Chairman,” Vasser said, adjusting the microphone in front of her. She felt the room exhale, as if there was universal relief that this exchange would remain civil. The previous weeks had provided good reason to doubt that.

Following the discovery of China’s espionage plot, along with evidence that exonerated Vasser from any wrongdoing, the secretary of state had lobbied the president to nominate Vasser to replace the late Ambassador Rodgers. He made a strong case that her presence at the embassy in Beijing was invaluable. But while many of the adults in Congress had voiced support for the Vasser nomination, they were immediately drowned out by waves of vitriol from their political opponents. The past revelations of Vasser’s sex life, her associations with Kera Mersal—it was all too much for the politicians to defend to their constituents. Vasser herself had ended the controversy by asking the president to withdraw her from consideration.

“What do you
want
to do?” the president had asked her during a fifteen-minute meeting in the Oval Office after a classified ceremony at which she had been honored by the State Department and the CIA.

“
I’d
like to go back to China. But I don’t want to go through a confirmation hearing, and I don’t want a position that’s merely ceremonial. The new ambassador, whomever you choose, will need me on the ground there, doing real work to repair this damage. And I’m told the CIA has an interest in having me there too.”

With a new ambassador yet to be nominated, Vasser was the only person qualified to brief the Senate’s intelligence committee on the diplomatic challenges the United States faced in China. Besides the CIA and FBI, only the men and women gathered in Hart 219 knew the full scope of the tensions with China, including the discovery and careful dismantling of OPERATION MAYFLOWER.

“I understand you’ve been briefed by the FBI on the foiled Chinese espionage plot,” Senator Wrightmont said, tacking straight to business.

“Yes, I just came from there,” Vasser said, locking eyes with Wrightmont. “And by foiled you mean foiled except for the assassinations of Ambassador Rodgers, Conrad Smith, Charlie—”

“Yes, of course, Ms. Vasser. No one is forgetting that,” Wrightmont said. His voice was clipped, resentful of her approach. “But surely you appreciate the incomprehensible damage that was avoided because our intelligence community discovered OPERATION MAYFLOWER before it could be used against us.”

“Let’s not sugarcoat the intelligence community’s role here, Mr. Chairman. An ex-CIA operative, Kera Mersal—working on her own—led us to that intelligence, and she gave her life in the process.” Vasser studied the senators; she didn’t owe them anything.

Since her nomination, Vasser had been briefed three times by the FBI and twice by the CIA. Each time, she pleaded to know more about what Kera Mersal had been doing in China and why she hadn’t come back. She was told that Kera had been killed during a mission to apprehend her and bring her into US custody for questioning. This was more than what the general public knew, but the information was still vague. When she pressed for details, she was told the case was classified. She had begun to doubt whether anyone actually knew what had happened to Kera after all. Surely it must have been on the minds of the senators before her. If it couldn’t be discussed by them in
this
room, it meant the senators had nothing to discuss.

The briefings she received had been much more enlightening about everything else that had happened. The missing link, which neither Vasser nor Kera had been aware of at the time they were on the run together, was OPERATION MAYFLOWER. When a powerful faction of spooks inside the MSS began to sense that their secret operation was slipping from their control just as it was becoming big enough to do real damage, they panicked. In a desperate attempt to keep evidence of the plot from surfacing, they tried to eliminate the potential sources of such evidence. These included people such as Ambassador Rodgers, Conrad Smith, and even Vasser herself, among others, who were unaware of the operation but happened to have close associations with assets involved with OPERATION MAYFLOWER.

The young man wh
o’d
been contracted to carry out the assassinations, a Russian hacker called a11Egr0, who ultimately turned against his Chinese handlers, was himself killed on the same day as Kera. Whatever had happened in the final hours of their lives, Kera had somehow stolen classified Chinese intelligence files from the hacker and passed them on to the CIA. Those files led the FBI to systematically question nearly twelve hundred people who lived in the United States and remained in contact with operatives of China’s Ministry of State Security. A few dozen of those people had been arrested, and dozens more had been deported, but the vast majority had pleaded complete ignorance of the plot and were happy to cooperate with the FBI. Details they turned over led intelligence officials to identify the network of MSS handlers responsible for orchestrating the plot.

A senator three seats over from Wrightmont jumped in with a question intended to get the conversation back on track. “Are you back in communication with your Chinese counterparts?”

“I am. The willingness of both sides to continue diplomatic relations has, I believe, saved us from entering a much larger conflict.”

“What is your interpretation of China’s response to all this? What are they admitting to? And how much do they know about the intelligence that we—or, Ms. Mersal was able to recover?”

“There remains plenty of uncertainty about who in the Chinese government knew what—at least with respect to the MSS’s lethal attempts to keep OPERATION MAYFLOWER secret. But in just the last few days, the Chinese government has arrested several MSS officials who had been linked to the assassinations or who assisted the Russian hacker. Such a crackdown on spies within their own intelligence service is an unprecedented step for Beijing. I interpret it as a conciliatory and profound gesture of their desire to restore workable levels of trust with the United States.”

“Excuse me,” one senator said when Vasser finished her statement. “Are you not recommending any sanctions or military action against China?”

“At this time, no.”

“Are you not concerned that doing nothing makes the United States look weak?”

“With respect, Senator, we are not doing nothing. We are doing what is in America’s best interest. Our strength comes from recognizing that our priority is to work with other world powers to build a healthy global economy and encourage more transparency. How we act now will determine whether the global technology race benefits humanity or precipitates its destruction. We demonstrate that strength by engaging in frank diplomacy with Beijing, not by continuing a tit-for-tat confrontation that, in any event, will not bring back Ambassador Rodgers.”

The hearing was adjourned at the conclusion of Vasser’s testimony. Several senators approached her to thank her personally for her service and to offer condolences for the loss of Ambassador Rodgers. A few others had remained in the room, huddled in their own private conversations. And a few had left in a hurry to make their next appointments. Once outside the soundproof vault, Vasser waited for her turn to collect her phone from the security guard. When she had that in hand, she pushed through the outer door and into the hallway.

She froze. Standing in the center of the hall with an attentive eye on the door were five men in blue FBI windbreakers. She felt a tightening in her chest, a mix of alarm and anger.

“It’s OK, babe,” a voice said from her left. It was Ben. H
e’d
planned to meet her and take her to lunch. It was the last meal the
y’d
have together before she left for Beijing. Sensing her distress, he added, “They’re here for someone else.”

Had she grown so accustomed to being pursued by law enforcement that just the sight of a few Feds made her heart race? Vasser looked back over her shoulder, but the door to Hart 219 had already closed behind her. “Who are they here for?”

Ben didn’t know the answer to that. H
e’d
been waiting for her, he said, when the Feds approached one of the security guards. They said they needed to see one of the senators who was inside. They weren’t happy to be told to wait, but the guard assured them that they didn’t have a security clearance high enough to enter the room while a closed hearing was in progress. If it was any consolation, there was only one way out of the room, and no communication could get in. Their senator wasn’t a flight risk.

A few moments later, the question was answered. The outer door opened and Senator Larry Wrightmont emerged, powering up his newly reclaimed phone. He took two steps before he looked up and stopped in his tracks.

“Senator Wrightmont?” the lead agent said, moving with his colleagues toward the senator. “You are under the arrest for abuse of power. Specifically, conspiracy to steal and distribute private, classified information about a private US citizen.”

“What is this about?” Senator Wrightmont said, his instinct to fight kicking in. “Hold on. You can’t do this. Not here.” He brushed away the agent’s first attempt to cuff him, but when the four other agents took a step closer, he seemed to concede that he was not going to win a physical altercation. As he was being cuffed, his eyes darted around the hallway. When they found Vasser’s, they hesitated. And then they looked quickly back to the agents. “This is a big mistake, gentlemen. I want to speak to my lawyer before you take me anywhere—”

“It was
you
?” Ben said. His voice boomed. “
You
were behind all this?” He took a few steps toward the senator before Vasser could put a hand on his shoulder to stop him. She looked him in the eye.

“It’s OK. It’s over now,” she said. And for the first time since all this had begun, she really believed that it was.

T
HE
V
ALLEY

Kera crested the pass and put the rental car in park just in front of the gate. She got out and stood for a minute, looking up at the peaks and down at the lake while a breeze blew hair across her face. After a minute she heard a click, and the gate swung slowly open. She was smiling as she climbed back behind the wheel.

It was Jones who greeted her with a hug when she found him in the driveway outside Bolívar’s cabin. His pickup was parked nearby, its engine clicking as it cooled. He must have hauled ass to get here from the mine.

“We thought yo
u’d
—” Jones stuttered. “Gnos.is was never able to confirm it, but everyone else was reporting that yo
u’d
been killed. In China? We didn’t know what to think.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I couldn’t risk being in touch.”

“What happened?”

Kera didn’t know how to answer that. She shrugged. “Most of the pieces are all out there in the world now. Don’t you have a little toy that can put them all together?”

“Who knows you’re alive?”

“Lionel. And one of his guys in Beijing, plus the small flight crew who transported me back. And now you.”

“Lionel let you go?”

“It was his idea. I brought him something very valuable.” Jones looked at her, wanting more. But she just shook her head. “That part is something Gnos.is is not going to get its hands on.”

“I see,” he said. And then, after a pause, his tone took on an air of regret. “I’m sorry for dragging you into all this.”

“It wasn’t your fault. And look, I came out of it OK.” She paused. “I’m sorry too. About Charlie.”

He nodded. “I keep wondering if we should have seen it coming. If we should have gotten him more protection. We’re still not entirely sure what happened. Near as we can tell, his last conscious act was to save Gnos.is from a major security breach.” Jones exhaled. “Rafa took that hard. Almost as hard as he took not knowing what had become of you.”

Kera nodded. “Is he here?”

“Yes. He must be swimming. He didn’t answer his phone.” Jones nodded in the direction of the path that led around the cabin and down to the lake. He let Kera go on her own.

Rafael Bolívar was standing on the dock, drying his hair with a towel. He wore khaki shorts and an unbuttoned white shirt that billowed around his torso in the light breeze. He was facing away from the shore, looking out over the water, and so he didn’t hear her approach until she stepped on the dock. When he turned and saw her, his arms fell to his sides.

“I was just passing through,” she said. “Thought
I’d
stop by.” The last word caught unexpectedly in her throat. She felt her guard crashing down—either because she was too tired to keep it up any longer, or because she didn’t care if he saw.

“Come here,” he said, walking toward her.

She gripped his back tightly when he hugged her, at first clenching her jaw tight against a surge of emotion.

“You’re all right?” he asked.

She nodded into his shoulder. She was afraid to speak, afraid that if she tried, sh
e’d
lose her composure.

“What happened?” he asked, pulling back to look at her. “After they got Canyon, you were angry. I understand that. We thought you were with Angela Vasser. But then they found her and there was no sign of you. Until . . . they said you were killed.”

“I was in China. They got that part right. But I found a way out.” She leaned into him and closed her eyes. One side of her face was against his, the other felt the warmth of the sun. “I wanted to see you.”

After a moment she heard him ask, “Are you really just passing through?”

She shrugged without opening her eyes. In her mind, the reason sh
e’d
come to the valley was to let them know she was all right. Sh
e’d
intended to go after that. But standing there on the dock with him, she felt something new. There was no urgency; there was nothing in the world she had to do. She had nowhere to go, and there was nowhere she had to be.

“Stay awhile,” she heard him say.

She opened her eyes.

“Yeah,” she said. “OK.”