The Altman Code - Covert One 04 Read online

  Recognition words: ‘ latte.’ “

  “One more thing.” Smith told him about the old man in the Chinese prison farm who claimed his name was David Thayer. He repeated the details Mondragon had passed on.

  “Thayer? I’ve never heard of a connection by someone named Thayer to the president. Sounds like a dodge of some kind.” “Mondragon’s asset said the old man is definitely American.”

  “Is the asset reliable?”

  “As much as any,” Smith said. “At least, according to Mondragon.”

  “I’ll tell the president. If the man’s an American, no matter who he really is, Castilla will want to know.”

  “Then I’ll start working on finding the invoice manifest in Shanghai.

  What about the other copies?”

  “I’ll take care of the one that should be in Baghdad. With luck, we won’t care where the third is.” He paused. “You should know, Colonel, that the time frame’s tight. According to the navy, we’ve got only five days, maybe less, until the Empress reaches the Persian Gulf.”

  Wednesday, September 13.

  Washington, D.C.

  In the Oval Office, President Castilla ate lunch at the heavy pine table he had brought with him from the governor’s residence in Santa Fe. It had served as his desk there as it did here. With a sense of nostalgia, he put down his chile-and-cheese sandwich and swiveled in his new chair to stare out his window at the lush green grounds and distant monuments he had grown to love. Still, another view blotted it from his mind—the wide red sunsets and vast, empty, yet perpetually alive desert of his ranch far down on the borderlands of his native New Mexico, where even a wild jaguar might still be found roaming. He was feeling suddenly old and tired. He wanted to go home.

  His reverie was interrupted by the entry of his personal assistant, Jeremy. “Mr. Klein is here. He’d like to speak with you, sir.”

  The president glanced at his desk clock. What time would it be in China?

  “No calls or visitors until I tell you otherwise.”

  “Yes, sir.” The assistant held open the door.

  Fred Klein hurried in, his pipe stem sticking up from the handkerchief pocket of his Harris tweed jacket.

  As Jeremy closed the door, Castilla waved Klein to the London club chair that had been a gift from the queen. “I’d have come to the yacht club tonight.”

  “This can’t wait. With the leaks, I didn’t want to trust even the red phone.”

  The president nodded. “Do we have the manifest?”

  Klein heaved a sigh. “No, sir, we do not.” He repeated Smith’s report.

  The president grimaced and shook his head. “Terrible. Has your agent’s family been notified?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “They’ll be taken care of?”

  “They will.”

  The president glanced out his high window again. “Do you think they’d like to visit the Oval Office, Fred?”

  “You can’t do that, Mr. President. Covert-One doesn’t exist. Mondragon was in private business, nothing more.”

  “Sometimes this job is particularly hard.” He paused. “All right, we don’t have what I have to have. When will we have it?”

  “Smith has a lead in Shanghai. He’s working on a way there now, as a guest of the Chinese government. He’ll be talking to microbiologists from China’s research establishments. Meanwhile, I have people in Beijing, Hong Kong, Guangzhou, and some of the new manufacturing cities that have sprung up there over the last few years. They’re looking for any sign Beijing orchestrated this, as well as information about The Dowager Empress, even rumors. And there’s a possibility we can find a second copy in Baghdad. I’m assigning an agent to it.”

  “Good. I have the navy sending a frigate. Brose says at the most we’ll have ten hours before the Empress tumbles to what we’re doing. After that, China knows, and probably the world.”

  “If the Chinese want them to.” Klein hesitated.

  Klein was not a man who hesitated.

  “What is it, Fred? If it involves those chemicals, I’d better know it.”

  “It doesn’t, Mr. President.” Klein paused again, choosing his words.

  This time the president didn’t prompt him, but he frowned, puzzled by what could be unsettling the iron chief of Covert-One.

  At last Klein continued: “There’s an old man being held in a prison farm in China who claims to be an American. He says he’s been a prisoner since Chiang’s defeat in 1949.”

  President Castilla nodded, his face sober. “Things like that did happen to our people after World War Two. Probably to many more than we actually knew about or suspected. Nevertheless, it’s outrageous and totally unacceptable, as well as unconscionable, that he’s still being held today. It’s one of the reasons I insisted the human-rights treaty include outside inspectors to investigate foreign prisoners of war. In any case, if it’s true and we have firm intel, we’ll have to do something about him immediately. Does this American have a name?”

  Klein watched the president’s face. “David Thayer.”

  The president showed no reaction. No reaction at all. As if he had not heard. As if he still waited for Klein to say a name. Then he blinked.

  He swiveled in his chair. Abruptly he stood up, strode to the window behind his desk, and stared out, hands clasped in a white knot behind his back.

  “Sir?”

  Samuel Castilla’s back was rigid, as if he had just received a beating.

  “After all these years? How is it possible? There was no way he was

  still alive—“

  “What happened--?” Klein began but did not finish. With a sinking stomach, he knew the answer to the question.

  The president turned, sat down again, leaned back, his eyes seeing somewhere faraway in both space and time. “He disappeared in China when I was in diapers. The State Department, the military, and Truman’s own staff people tried to find him, but we were heavily opposed to Mao’s Communists, as you know, and they had no love for us. But we did manage to get some clandestine information from the Soviets and some American and British sources in China, and all of it indicated Thayer was dead.

  Either he’d died fighting, had been captured and executed by the Communists, or killed by Chiang’s own people for trying to talk to the Reds. He’d told my mother he was going to try to do that before he left.”

  He inhaled deeply and gave Klein a small smile. “Serge Castilla was another State Department man, a close friend of Thayer’s. He led State’s efforts to locate him, which threw him into almost weekly contact with my mother. Because I was so small, there was no way she could explain what was happening. By the time I was four, everyone finally accepted Thayer was dead. With Serge and my mother, one thing led to another, and they married that year, and he adopted me. By then, as far as I was concerned, Serge was my father, and David Thayer was just a name. When I was in my late teens, she filled me in on everything they’d learned about his time in China, which was damn little. I didn’t see any purpose in telling the world, because Serge was my dad. He’d raised me, had been there for me through chicken pox and spelling tests, and I loved him.

  Since we had the same last name, people never bothered to ask whether he was my biological father.”

  The president shook his head, bringing himself back to the present. He met Klein’s worried gaze steadily. “David Thayer is part of my history, but at the same time, I have no memory of him.”

  “It’s a thousand to one this man is simply an opportunist, possibly a common criminal, probably not even American. He could’ve met Thayer back before he vanished. So now he’s on a low-security farm, has heard about you and your efforts to make China give more respect to human rights, and he sees an opportunity to get out of there.”

  “If that were true, how could he have guessed Thayer had a son who’d grow up to be an American president, especially one with the last name of Castilla?”

  Klein frowned. “For that matter, sir,
how would the real David Thayer know about you? He knew he had a son, but he couldn’t know his widow would marry Serge Castilla.”

  “That’s simple enough. If this man really is David Thayer, he could’ve simply put two and two together. He knew he had a son named Samuel Adams, and a close friend named Castilla. Spelled the way our family does, Castilla is hardly common. My age would fit exactly.”

  “Of course, you’re right,” Klein admitted. “But what about the leaks?

  Maybe we have a spy in the White House who told Beijing and this is one of their convoluted setups.”

  The president shook his head. “I never tried to hide that Serge adopted me, but it wasn’t something that tended to come up in conversation. No one beyond my immediate family, not even Charlie Ouray, knows exactly who and what my birth father was and what happened to him. Not even you knew that. I didn’t want to trade on sympathy or embarrass my mother.”

  “Someone always knows, and remembers, and has a price.”

  “And you’re always the cynic.”

  “It’s part of the territory.” Klein smiled thinly.

  “I suppose it is.”

  Klein hesitated again. “All right. Say we can’t be sure he’s not real.

  He could be your father. If he is, what do you want to do?”

  The president leaned back in his chair again, took off his glasses, and ran his big hands over his face. He sighed heavily. “I want to meet him, of course. I can’t think of anything right now that would make my jaded old heart sing the way that would. Imagine, my real father is alive.

  Imagine that. Incredible. When I was a little boy, despite all my love for Serge, I used to dream about David Thayer.” He paused, his face filled with melancholy and long-ago loss.

  He shrugged and waved a hand in dismissal. “All right. So that’s the dream. Realistically, what does the president of the United States want?

  I want him out of China, of course. He’s an American. Therefore, he deserves the complete support of his country. As I would with any American who has been through the ordeal that he has, I want to meet him, thank him for his courage, and shake his hand. But that said, there are international consequences to consider. There’s The Dowager Empress, and there’s the potential of deadly cargo that it’s ferrying to a country that would like to destroy us.”

  “Yessir, there is.”

  “If we find the ship is carrying the chemicals and we have to board it, I can’t imagine the treaty will be signed. Certainly not this year, probably not until a new administration takes over. There’ll be more delays as the Chinese feel out the new Oval Office China policy. Thayer, given his age, will probably never get out.”

  “Probably not, Sam.”

  The president grimaced, but his voice was hard, unyielding as he continued, “And that can’t matter. Not for a second. If she’s carrying chemicals for weapons, the Empress must be stopped, or sunk if necessary. For the moment, we do nothing about this old man in China. Is that clear?”

  “Absolutely, Mr. President.”

  Chapter Four.

  Thursday, September 14.

  Shanghai, China.

  The Air China jet from Tokyo flew in over the East China Sea and arced across the vast delta of the Yangtze River. Through his window, Jon Smith studied the green land, the dense buildings, and the haze that had settled like wisps of cotton in the low areas of what was one of Asia’s most powerful cities.

  His gaze swept from the congested Yangtze River north to Chongming Island, as he silently grappled with the problem of the missing manifest and the alarming cost of its loss. When the jet landed at Pudong International Airport at exactly 1322 hours, he had come to no conclusion except that if the human-rights treaty were imperative, keeping more chemical weapons out of Saddam Hussein’s hands was probably even more so.

  With their colleagues smiling around them, Dr. Liang Tianning escorted Dr. Jon Smith from the jet. Not large by Western standards, the terminal was ultramodern, with potted plants and a high blue ceiling. The ticket counters were packed with men in business suits, both European and Chinese, a symptom of Shanghai’s drive to become the New York City of Asia.

  A few glanced at Smith and his companions, but the looks showed idle curiosity, nothing more.

  Outdoors, a black limousine was waiting among the eager taxis. The instant they were seated in the rear, the driver pulled into traffic. He managed to dodge three taxis and two pedestrians, who leaped for their lives. Smith turned to see whether they were safe, while no one else paid the slightest attention, which said a lot about local driving customs. Also it gave him a clear view of a small, dark-blue car that appeared to be a Volkswagen Jetta. It had been parked among the taxis but was now directly behind the limo.

  Was someone else expecting him—someone who had nothing to do with biomolecular science and was unsure whether he was who and what Dr. Liang said? The Jetta driver might simply be an ordinary Shanghainese, who had mistakenly parked among the taxis instead of inside the garage while waiting to pick up a returning friend or relative. Still, it was remarkable that the driver had chosen the identical moment to leave the terminal.

  Smith said nothing about it to Dr. Liang. As the men discussed viral agents, the limo glided onto an express highway, heading west through the soggy delta, which was barely above sea level for the entire nineteen miles. Shanghai’s toothy skyline came into view—a new city, almost entirely the work of the last decade. First came the sprawling Pudong New District, with the needle-sharp point of the Oriental Pearl Tower and the squarer but also soaring eighty-eight-story Jin Mao Building. Expensive architecture with all the accouterments of luxury and high technology. Only a dozen years ago, this land had been a flat marsh that supplied the city with vegetables.

  The conversation turned to plans for Smith’s visit as the limo continued through Pudong, under the Huangpu River, and into Puxi and the Bund, which until 1990 had been the heart of old Shanghai. Now a phalanx of glistening skyscrapers towered above the neoclassical business offices of the city’s colonial period.

  At People’s Park, Smith had a close view of the cars, bicycles, and individuals who mobbed the streets, a sea of life on the move. For a few seconds, he paused to contemplate it all: The massive new construction.

  The evidence of outrageous wealth. The tooth-to-jowl humanity. Shanghai was China’s most populous city, larger even than Hong Kong or Beijing.

  But Shanghai wanted more. It wanted a prominent place on the world’s economic stage. It gave nodding obeisance to the past, but its interest was focused on the future.

  As the limo made a right turn toward the river, Dr. Liang came close to wringing his hands. “You are sure, Dr. Smith, that you do not wish a room at the Grand Hyatt in Jin Mao Tower? It is a modern hotel, magnificent. The restaurants and amenities are beyond compare. You would be most comfortable there, I assure you. In addition, it is far more convenient to our Biomedical Research Institute in Zhangjiang, where we will go when you are settled. The Peace Hotel is historic, yes—but it is scarcely four star.”

  Covert-One’s research people had informed him that there were only three Starbucks coffee shops in Shanghai at the moment, and all were on the Puxi side of the river, two not far from the Bund.

  He smiled and said, “I’ve always wanted to stay at the old Peace Hotel, Dr. Liang. Call it the whim of a history buff.” The scientist sighed. “Then of course. Naturally.”

  The limousine turned south onto the scenic street that skirted the river, with the Bund’s colonial buildings on one side and the Huangpu broad and flowing on the other. Smith gazed out at the row of stately businesses and houses that overlooked the river. Here was the heart of the old British Concession, which had established itself in 1842 and held convulsively to power for nearly a century, until the Japanese finally captured the city during World War II.

  Dr. Liang leaned forward and pointed. “There is your Peace Hotel.”

  “I see it. Thanks.”

  Crow
ned by a green pyramid, it was twelve stories of Gothic architecture by way of the Chicago School. A notorious Shanghai millionaire, Victor Sas-soon, had built it in 1929, after making a fortune trading in opium and weapons.

  As the limousine pulled to a stop before the arched entrance, Dr. Liang informed Smith, “I will register you in the name of the Biomedical Institute.” He climbed out.

  Smith followed, casually making a 360-degree survey. He saw no sign of the dark-blue car that had left Pudong International with them. But as he stepped into the revolving doors, he noted their driver had also left the limo, raised the hood, and seemed to be examining the engine, which had been operating with the perfection of a Swiss timepiece, at least to Smith’s ear.

  The lobby was Art Deco, little changed since the Roaring Twenties, which had roared especially loudly in Shanghai. Dr. Liang steered Smith left, across the white Italian-marble floor, to the registration desk. The haughty desk clerk looked down his nose at Dr. Liang as he registered and then over at Smith. He made little effort to conceal his arrogance. Dr. Liang spoke to him in low, harsh Chinese, and Smith heard what sounded like the name of the research institute. Fear flashed in the clerk’s eyes.

  Instantly he became almost obsequious toward the Western guest. Despite the aura of freewheeling capitalism that had enlarged the city, Shanghai was in China, China was still a Communist country, and Dr. Liang appeared to be a great deal more influential than he had let anyone at the Taiwan conference see. As the clerk summoned a bellman, Dr. Liang presented Smith with his room key. “I regret a suite could not be authorized, but your room will be most spacious and comfortable. Do you wish to freshen up before we continue to the institute?”

  “Today?” Smith acted surprised. “I’m afraid I wouldn’t be at my best, Dr. Liang. I was in meetings and consultations until the small hours last night. A day of rest, and I’ll be able to do justice to our colleagues in the morning.”

  Dr. Liang was startled. “Well, of course, that will be fine. I will alert my staff to rearrange our schedule. But surely you will join us for dinner. It would give all of us a great pleasure to reveal to you the beauty of Shanghai after dark.” Smith resisted an urge to bow; it was not a Chinese custom. “I’d be delighted, thank you. But perhaps we can have a late start? Would nine o’clock do?” “That is agreeable. We will be here.” Liang smiled and nodded understandingly. But there was an edge to his voice as he added, “We will not keep you up too late, Dr. Smith. That is a promise.” Was there suspicion behind the words and the smile? Or was Dr. Liang simply losing patience? For a simple scientist, he seemed to inspire a little too much fear in the desk clerk. Smith was acutely aware he might have raised his colleague’s doubts by putting him off in Taiwan, then seeking him out a few hours later, and, finally—no matter how subtly he had tried to make the invitation seem to come from Liang—hinting he would not turn down an immediate invitation. But with the time pressure, he’d had to take the risk. Suspicious or not, the scientist was at least smiling when he left. Smith watched through the glass doors as he stopped at the limo. The driver appeared from somewhere and spoke swiftly and urgently. Both got in, and the limo sped away.