Red Cell (16 page)

He already had his ticket for that evening’s performance, a well-reviewed adaptation of
The Monkey King
. He entered the theater, early as planned, and walked to the men’s restroom on the main floor. The smell was appalling by Western standards. The Chinese tossed their used paper into a special bin instead of flushing it into a sewer system that was not always robust enough to handle large loads. Mitchell breathed through his mouth while washing his hands four times until the French patron occupying the second stall from the end finished his business and left as quickly as dignity would allow. Public restrooms in most any country were not a place to linger, which made them a boon to espionage. The stall door closed and locked, Mitchell pulled out a centimeter-square piece of white duct tape from his pocket. It was innocuous, a piece of pocket litter easily discarded or explained away. He affixed it to the rear base of the toilet, which was more of a trough with a hood at one end over which the individual squatted. The tape matched the porcelain color. It would be almost impossible for any patron to see even if looking down for it. The tiny patch would be more easily found by touch than by sight, and there was only one patron who would be feeling around behind the stall anytime soon, given the communal restroom’s odor.

All that trouble just to set up a signal for Pioneer to perform a sign of life.

Mitchell vacated the stall, washed his hands again for real, and left the room. He was a patron of the arts for the rest of the night. Three years in Beijing and he’d never seen
The Monkey King
. Theater hadn’t been an interest of his before his current tour, but he’d learned to appreciate it at the urging of his wife. She was waiting for him in the twelfth row and would be keeping a better poker face than he had ever mastered. Laura Mitchell had been a drama major in college and was hoping her husband’s final tour would be in London as a liaison so she could spend time in the West End near Leicester Square attending experimental productions.

She deserves it
, Mitchell thought. Laura had been a faithful soldier for the last twenty years, helping her husband build his cover in third-world
rat holes, and praying quietly during the nights when he came home late. She had never trained at the Farm or performed an operational act, but Laura had spent her life in the clandestine service every bit as much as he had. He owed that woman, the Agency owed her more, and he intended to spend every day of retirement finding ways to overpay on the debt.

THE GREAT HALL OF THE PEOPLE
BEIJING

Tian let the cries go on for more than two minutes before raising his hand. “There is one China! China’s sovereignty belongs to the entire Chinese people! Retreat from this act of rebellion. Come together with us to unite all descendants of the Chinese nation who love the motherland!” The Chinese leader was holding nothing back now. “We insist on reunification by peaceful means, but do not challenge our will to block all ‘Taiwan independence’ movements. Our determination to preserve our country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity is absolute! Taiwan’s future rejoined with the mainland as one China must not be delayed. I say to President Liang, accept the commencement of final negotiations to reunify our nation!”

CIA DIRECTOR’S OFFICE

Cooke ran her hands through her hair. “He used the word ‘rebellion.’”

“And ‘secession’ and ‘independence,’” Jonathan said.

“I guess a bad translation is too much to hope for,” Kyra offered.

“No, they got it right,” Cooke said.

“How do you know?” Kyra asked. She had watched the CIA director during the speech and was sure that the older woman didn’t speak Mandarin.

“Because that crowd reacted like Romans watching a lion eat Christians.” Cooke fell back in her chair, suddenly tired. “One aircraft carrier might not be enough.”

BEIJING

By her count, Laura Mitchell had been waiting for her husband for fifteen minutes when the chief of station finally settled into his seat. Her husband looked over and took a moment to appreciate his wife before he reached for her hand. Laura wasn’t a model but she was still very pretty, a fact that was lost on their Chinese hosts.

He didn’t get to see her dressed up like this nearly enough. She was a teaching specialist for autistic children at the English-speaking school near the embassy where so many diplomats’ children went, including their own son. It was a job that didn’t lend itself to dresses and heels, though she looked good to him in the polo shirts and khaki pants she usually wore. When she did wear her finest, there was no other woman as far as he was concerned, but it also left him full of regret that he’d dragged her away from the States for so many years. He didn’t deserve her patience.

“Done for the night?” she asked quietly. The nearest person was three seats away and there was a low buzz of conversation throughout the theater that would have made eavesdropping difficult, but she still knew to be careful with her words.

“I think so.”

“Any of your friends try to come?”

“A few,” Mitchell told her. “I had to disappoint them.”

“They’ll get over it,” Laura assured him. More than once, she’d come to their Moscow home and found that the Russians’ security services had vandalized it as payback for some humiliation her husband had inflicted on them. The Chinese seemed more civilized, for which she was grateful. It saved on the cleaning bills.

“I hope so,” Mitchell replied. “Given how they’ve been treating me the last few days, I’d hate to see how they behave when they’ve got their dander up.”

“Maybe they’d go easy on you if you were walking around with one of those pretty girls in your office,” Laura said. He couldn’t quite tell if she was making a joke.

“You know I don’t like to do that. Better to avoid temptation,” he said, serious. Case officers who spent their careers overseas had an appalling divorce rate. Mitchell was determined not to push the percentage up.

“You’ve got the perfect job for someone who wants to have an affair.
Late nights. Long hours,” she observed. “Uncleared spouse not allowed to ask what you’ve been doing.”

“I wouldn’t do that to you,” Mitchell declared. He squeezed her hand again. “You know that, right?”

“I’m still here,” she answered.

“Sometimes I wonder why,” he said. He thought Laura didn’t sound quite convinced.

“Pure compassion,” Laura said. “No other woman could live with you.”

“I appreciate the pity you take on me.”

“It’s not for you. It’s for the rest of my gender,” she told her husband. “I didn’t say some other woman wouldn’t give you a go. I’m saving her from you.”

Mitchell laughed, let go of his wife’s hand, and put his arm around her. “You should work for us.”

“I already do, love,” Laura said. She kissed him on the cheek. “They just don’t give me a paycheck.”

CIA DIRECTOR’S OFFICE

“You called?” Jonathan stood in the doorway. Morning sunlight was pouring in through the blinds, Cooke was sitting on the leather couch opposite the door, and it was obvious to Jon that the woman hadn’t slept much the night before. She had to force her eyes to focus on him, he saw, and he knew that she could turn brusque when she was wearing down. He suspected she was running on coffee or something stronger, but it wasn’t his place to say anything.

The CIA director looked at the analyst and realized that, in her tired state, she’d forgotten to tell her secretaries out front that Jon would be coming. How he’d gotten past them was something she’d have to drag out of him later when she had the patience. She also realized that he hadn’t knocked.

She ignored that fact and waved him in. “How’s Kyra?” she asked.

“Hard couple of days, I think. She’ll adjust.”

Cooke nodded. “She survived Caracas, she’ll survive you.”

“One can hope,” he said wryly. “Though I’m the least of her problems. And yours, I suspect.”

You underestimate yourself,
Cooke thought, but it wasn’t time for that discussion. She held up the Red Cell report that Jonathan had delivered to her a few days previous. “I’ve been reading this.
Inside Strait—How the PLA Could Invade Taiwan
,” she read off the front page. “That’s terrible. How did you get this published with a title like that?”

“I presume you’re not reading for the literary merit,” Jonathan answered, sidestepping the question.

“No,” Cooke conceded. Jon was still on his feet, she realized. “Sit down please.” He obeyed. Cooke, relieved, held out the Red Cell paper over the low table in front of the couch and let it drop. “Do you think the Chinese are going to do it?”

Jonathan shrugged. “I’m sure APLAA would tell you that the smart money isn’t on invasion.”

“I’ve heard their side. They caveated everything so much I couldn’t tell what they really thought. That’s why I’m asking you.”

“Invasion, probably not,” Jonathan said. “But if the PLA took out the Tashan Power Plant, then yeah, I think they’re going to move.”

KINMEN, TAIWAN
2 KILOMETERS FROM THE CHINESE MAINLAND COAST

The People’s Liberation Army invasion of Jinmen Dao, known to the West as the archipelago of Kinmen, began at 0200 hours local time with the faint sounds of boots in wet sand.

The PLA put commandos ashore near Kuningtou for the second time, as their fathers had before on October 25, 1949. That battle had been fought over fifty-six hours along Kinmen’s northern coast. The PLA had landed several battalions on the beaches and suffered immediate counterattacks by the Nationalist “Kinmen Bears” riding in American M5 A1 tanks for which the Communists had no counter. Fifteen thousand men had died in less than three days. The victory left Kinmen itself a hallowed ground in the minds of the Taiwanese.

That had been almost seventy years ago. Now, the Taiwanese Army troops stationed on Kinmen had enough firepower to attack the Chinese mainland ports of Xiamen and Fuzhou—artillery range is a measure that works both ways—so the PLA could not ignore them. When the invasion of Taiwan finally began, it was thought, Kinmen’s Defense Command would be overwhelmed by superior numbers in short order. They would fight to make Kinmen a bloody win for the PLA and maybe create enough gore to make Beijing reconsider the larger endeavor. The defense would start on the beaches, then fall back into the townships, most of which had stone buildings capable of withstanding heavy fire. The Taiwanese troops would then fall back to the tunnel and bunker complexes at Tai-Wu and Lonpun Mountains, Yangchai, Tingpao, and Lan Lake. The PLA would have to spill blood for weeks assaulting narrow concrete tunnel passages, where they would close up the hallways with their dead.

When the invasion of Taiwan itself was repulsed—the Americans would surely come—reinforcements would arrive or a peace treaty would be signed, the PLA would pull back, and the defenders who had survived the siege of Kinmen would emerge from the ground and take up their watch again. It was a strategy that relied on a number of assumptions, not the least of which was that the will of Taiwan’s political
leaders would be as strong as that of the soldiers deployed to Kinmen itself. Several of those assumptions would prove wrong this night.

At the same time as their brethren were landing their hovercraft at Kuningtou, a second company of PLA Special Operations Forces rode their own air-cushioned landing craft through the surf of Liaoluo Bay onto solid ground near Shangyi township and unloaded their gear by moonlight. Their mission was to cut off the three major roads that ran through the island’s narrow central neck, effectively splitting the island into halves that could not reinforce each other. A third company came ashore on the northwestern coast near the Mashan Observation Station. They all carried light explosives and small arms, nothing larger than a 7.62 mm machine gun. The fifth column forces the Chinese had placed on Kinmen years before had the supplies needed to cripple any targets larger than individual men, and PLA infantry would be standing on this beach by noon with far heavier arms. The soldiers shouldered their weapons, slung their light packs, and dispersed across the islands to their waypoints.

CIA OPERATIONS CENTER

“Sir?” The APLAA analyst didn’t take her eyes off her monitor. Drescher read the woman’s face, bit off the first snarky remark that passed through his head, and made his way to the woman’s desk.

“What?” he asked.

The live feed on APLAA’s monitor was thermal, shades of reds, yellows, and grays over a black field, and Drescher needed a few seconds to realize he was looking at a beach at night. He’d never been an imagery analyst, but he could figure that much. “This is Kinmen, east coast,” APLAA told him, and then she pointed at a pair of objects sitting on the sand just past the water’s edge. “I’m not an imagery analyst, but I’m pretty sure those are Jingsah Two–class hovercraft. You can tell by the double fans on the aft ends. Engines are still warm.”

“Taiwanese?” Drescher asked.

“I don’t think so. The only people who own Jingsahs in the neighborhood are PLA. Probably the First Group Army, First Amphibious Mechanized Division staging out of Hangzhou. I zoomed out and went looking around the rest of the coastline. I found this.” She worked her
mouse around on the desk and pulled up several still images. Drescher checked the time codes: the imagery was less than a half hour old. It was clear that the hovercrafts had come onto the beach at a frightening rate of speed and stopped hard enough that anyone inside must have been strapped in to keep from getting thrown around. The final photo showed the hovercrafts had dropped doors by the bows and the bright silhouettes of men were running for the trees. Drescher couldn’t see the weapons, but he was sure they were carrying carbines or rifles, given how they held their hands. What kind and caliber they might be, Drescher couldn’t tell, but he didn’t need that particular bit of information to make his next decision.

CIA DIRECTOR’S OFFICE

Cooke set the phone back on the handset. “That was the Ops Center,” she told Jon. “It looks like the Chinese are moving on Kinmen. I have to go.” She stood, hesitated, then turned back. “Want to come?”