American traitor, p.36
American Traitor, page 36
part #15 of Pike Logan Series
—I told you I had nothing to do with them. Why are you working with the US Gov?
—Because they are bringing the heat. No offense, but this company is bigger than just you. We have shareholders and a board and you are putting it all in jeopardy.
And Jerry realized that in coming to China he had relinquished his power as CEO. He was losing control.
—What is the next step?
—They want our evaluation. We haven’t given it yet, but they’re going to ask again. And they aren’t going to ask nicely. They have the ability to put us out of business for good. Nobody will work with us if they give us a blacklist.
Jerry thought for a second, then typed:
—Hold off on that. Give them some technical reason to stall. I’m working on something here.
—What?
—I’m honestly not sure, but it might be something that makes the videos moot. If it works, the US Gov won’t be worrying about our company.
—You better be right. Don’t dig a deeper hole. I’ll do what I can.
And that was the crux of his dilemma, but Jerry Tribble had no other choice. Han’s money no longer mattered, and if it was a deeper hole, it wouldn’t matter when those videos were analyzed. Jerry was now working to ensure Han’s success for his own survival.
Chapter 79
Chen Ju-Long took a sip of his tea inside the Huaxi Street market, the workers getting ready for another night. It was only noon, but the place was starting to bustle with people preparing. He watched them passing back and forth, bringing in propane, crates of drinks, and other goods, all of them desperately attempting to regain the glory of the market’s past. But that was long gone, leaving in its place a sad reminder of what the snake market had once been.
The alley was littered with refuse and homeless people looking for a place to sleep outside the glare of the police. Chen spent most of his time waving off one or another asking for money while keeping watch on one specific door to a “massage” parlor at the end of the lane. The one that was owned by the Snow Leopard.
He kept his eye on it, waiting for his partner to return—or call for assistance—and saw neither. His phone on the table vibrated, breaking him out of his focus. He picked it up, thinking he would see something from Zhi inside, and saw a blocked number. He knew who was calling.
He picked it up and said, “This is Tiger.”
“This is Control. We have a change of mission. The Triads are still on the threat to Ocelot. They missed him last night, but he checked into a hotel with a personal credit card. They’re on him now, so delay the mission against the Snow Leopard until that target is complete.”
Incredulous, Chen said, “I know where he is. I directed the team you sent me from Tainan against the target this morning. What are you telling me? What do you mean, the Triads are still on him? I’m about to execute that target, and I’m now going to be fighting with other assets? You gave me the mission and I’m executing. Who’s running the other side of this?”
He heard a cold voice come back. “The Snow Leopard, which is why you can’t execute the mission against him. Let it play out, and then complete the mission.”
“You’re too late on that. I’m already executing.”
“What?”
“I have the team against the Ocelot threat, and I have Zhi against the Leopard.”
“Pull her out.”
“I can’t. I have no comms with her. She was searched when she went in. She’s in there now.”
He heard muffled shouting on the phone, his control giving orders to someone in the room, then the voice returned. “Get in there and turn her off.”
Chen saw the door to the massage parlor fly open, then a man stumble out, his shirt red from a wound to his neck. Zhi appeared behind him, grabbed him by the collar, and jerked him back inside.
Chen knew how that would end. He said, “It’s too late. Too late.”
“Why is it too late? Call her off.”
Zhi exited the doorway of the massage parlor, sucking her middle finger like it was a Popsicle, a thin trace of blood running down her cheek.
Chen sighed and said, “It’s done. Leopard is dead.”
He heard nothing from the phone. Zhi approached him, a look of pride on her face. He pointed to a chair, and she sat, expectantly waiting.
Control said, “Are you sure?”
Chen glanced at Zhi and saw the trickle of blood on her cheek. He pointed at his cheek, and she wiped her own clean. He didn’t even bother to ask her. “Yes. He’s dead.”
There was a pause while Control determined the damage. He said, “Then nothing remains now but to protect Ocelot. MANTIS must go tomorrow.”
Chen heard the phone disconnect and put his own away, saying to Zhi, “Any complications?”
Zhi gave him a smile full of teeth, the ring of her upper gums red from her makeshift Popsicle. She said, “No. They’re all dead.”
He closed his eyes, wondering about her mental state.
He said, “We have another target.”
Chapter 80
I opened the door to see Paul Kao glancing nervously to the left and right. I stood aside and said, “Come on in.”
He entered and I said, “You look like you’re still afraid of the boogeyman.”
He grimaced. “You didn’t really pick an inconspicuous place to stay. In the past, this hotel was ground zero for spies here in Taiwan.”
I flicked my eyes to Jennifer and saw her return to the computer, her face turning a slight shade of red. I’d always left it up to her to pick our place to stay, and because she’s a die-hard history buff, she’d settled on the Grand Hotel in Taipei.
Built like a temple palace, it was once the centerpiece for Chiang Kai-Shek’s new government in the fifties, after he was forced to flee mainland China, and was originally used solely to house diplomats and distinguished visitors from abroad. Created as part of Chiang Kai-Shek’s bid to win the information war against Mao Tse-Tung as to who made up the rightful government of China, in the fifties and sixties it had housed multiple world leaders, from President Eisenhower to the king of Saudi Arabia.
In the modern day, the hotel was bordering on a little shabby. Like an old crown jewel of Vegas that was now competing with the fancy new enterprises, it was struggling to maintain its status as the hotel—and losing. It held a sheen of the trappings of the past that was slowly fading, succumbing to the new world order of hotels built around the internet and USB ports, but was still pretty cool, given its history. Which is why Jennifer had picked it.
Spread over multiple acres, it offered tennis courts, swimming pools, saunas, and several restaurants. Situated on the Keelung River, and having been built in a time when the terrain of Taiwan was worth nothing more than the soil it sat on, it tried mightily to survive in the modern world—and succeeded in one respect.
While the new, modern hotels downtown could compete with the amenities they built inside the rooms, the Grand Hotel had a significant footprint. Unlike the half square block those establishments owned within the concrete jungle of Taipei, the Grand Hotel encompassed a large chunk of terrain, with sprawling grounds and an entrance that looked like something from a Disney movie, complete with a drive that circled around a staircase that spilled down the slope of a hill for a hundred meters. Built in a time before the internet, it still held a regal heritage.
I would give Jennifer a ribbing later, but it was pretty cool.
I closed the door and said, “Don’t blame me. Jennifer likes a little history, and this place is full of it. We don’t do Holiday Inns.”
She glanced at me to see if I was serious, and I smiled. He misinterpreted my mirth and said, “You couldn’t have picked a worse place for getting spied on. This room is probably rigged.”
I pointed to our back balcony. “Then let’s leave the room for the discussion, but from what you said last night, you’d have known who we were from the beginning, because it would have been the NSB doing the rigging.”
After Knuckles and Brett had crushed the men chasing him, we’d hustled him into our vehicles and beat feet back to the hotel, with him giving us a limited history of who he was. He’d checked in under his own name with his own credit card—I mean, I’d save his life, but I wasn’t going to pay his way—and he’d been given a room right next to ours.
He’d told us he was some supposed badass in the National Security Bureau who was now considered a “Ronin” because he’d been put out in the cold to run a super-secret mission, but on the drive back he wouldn’t say what that was. He’d just thanked us, and then clammed up.
On the one hand, it sounded like complete bullshit, but on the other, I felt the words at a visceral level. Honestly, his story meant more to me than he knew, because I’d lived them once before—when I was what he called a Ronin. Either way, last night I didn’t push it, because we had time and I needed to find out any updates from the Taskforce, getting them to locate links between the man we were hunting and the man Paul had followed.
It was always better for the interrogator to know more than the man being questioned, and the truth of the matter was we were all about to fall asleep on our feet, so I’d just called a pause. I’d told everyone to get some rest, then given Paul a time to show up at our room for a more detailed discussion.
And here he was.
He started walking to the balcony and then snapped his head to the television, a Taiwanese station showing the protests from the night before.
I said, “Yeah, it’s getting bad out there.”
He went to it, reading the scrolling banner at the bottom of the screen—which meant nothing to me, as it was in Chinese.
He said, “Holy Shit. The Snow Leopard is dead. Someone killed him.”
I said, “Who?”
“He’s the leader of the men who tried to assassinate me.”
I pointed again to the balcony, and we walked out the sliding glass door, taking seats in hotel chairs. He said, “So, who are you?”
I said, “Not so fast. You go first.”
“I told you who I am.”
“That’s not my question. Why were you in Taipei 101? Who were you following?”
He looked over the balcony at a large stone courtyard surrounded by concrete ceremonial lions, saying, “I appreciate what you did for me last night, but I can’t say anything more.”
“Why not? So saving your life isn’t enough?”
He smiled and said, “No. China and the Triads work very hard to subvert our government. No offense, but I’m not blabbing to you just because you may have pretended to save my life.”
I sat back in my chair, relieved. Honestly, up until this point, I wasn’t sure he wasn’t working for China and Chen Ju-Long.
Last night, after everyone had gone to bed, I’d contacted the Taskforce, and they’d proven about as useful as tits on a boar hog. They had no information about Paul Kao whatsoever, which wasn’t that big of a surprise, since we spent all of our time hunting terrorists and not focusing on state systems, but it did leave me flying blind.
I was on my own—but, like Paul Kao himself, I’d been there before, in Australia. I was sort of growing used to it.
I said, “Okay, you just mentioned the Snow Leopard. Who were those men who attacked you? I assumed they were MSS, but from what my boys told me, they weren’t that professional.”
“They were Bamboo Triad. The MSS uses them here to penetrate our society. Basically, thugs and criminals. The Snow Leopard was their leader, and also the leader of a Chinese reunification political party.”
I nodded and said, “So why on earth would you think I was working for China?”
He gave me a small grin, saying, “There is more than one way to compromise an individual, and it would be in the realm of the possible for China to set up last night precisely to co-opt me. No offense. I’m on my own in the wilderness of mirrors here.”
I took that in, then decided to just lay it all bare. I believed him, and now I had to get him to believe me. “Yeah, well, I’m not working for China, trust me. The man inside Taipei 101 killed a friend of mine in Australia. A friend who has saved a lot of lives on the world stage, including mine, and for some reason, they decided to kill him.”
I locked eyes with him and said, “I don’t know what’s going on here in Taiwan, but that man’s going to pay for it.”
His mouth parted at my words. He said, “The man who owns that company in Taipei 101 did this?”
I said, “Yes. He did.”
“That’s still just words. I have no proof of anything you’ve told me. I have nobody to trust, and certainly no reason to trust you.”
He sat in the chair, waiting on me to speak, so I did, not in a way to brag, but just to let him know where I was coming from.
I leaned forward and said, “Look, you don’t want to talk because you don’t trust me, and I don’t want to talk because I can’t trust you, but make no mistake, that fucker is dead. I’m going to kill him.”
Paul took that in, then leaned back and said, “You don’t know what you’re up against here. You Americans always assume you can win because you’re Americans. This is a different world. You’re fighting the entire Chinese government here. That man is probably the highest-ranking member of the Fifth Bureau for external operations. The head of a killing machine. You won’t get a chance to eliminate him, and when you miss, he’ll kill everyone you’ve ever talked to, and then kill the families of those men. I’ve seen it in real life. He is the devil. He is a killing machine.”
I heard the words and felt a spasm of anger, thinking about Dunkin bleeding out in a cable car in Australia. Thinking about how some people believed they were above the law of combat because they were in a system of government that others feared. Thinking about how those assholes did what they did because they believed they were above it all. But they weren’t.
At the end of the day, we are all flesh and blood. And I could carve that flesh and release the blood, no matter who they called a master.
I leaned forward and grabbed his collar, jerking him to my face and snarling, “I am the killing machine. I am the man you fear in the darkness late at night. I am worse than anything China can envision. And I’m going to kill Chen Ju-Long. With or without you.”
Inside the room, Jennifer leapt up at my rage, running to the patio, but Paul showed no resistance. I released his collar and he sat back.
He considered my anger for a moment, then said, “So you think you stand a chance?”
I smiled. “Yes, I ‘stand a chance,’ trust me. So tell me what’s going on with the guy who met Chen?”
He saw my eyes and made a decision. “The man I followed there is trying to subvert Taiwan’s government. His name is Colonel Rae Ryan Won, of the Republic of China Air Force. He is a liaison to a plethora of different organizations, the linkage between the civilian world and the military. His father was a general and well regarded before he died, but I’m convinced Ryan produced some artificially altered videos which are causing my country to tear itself apart for no reason. I think he’s working with the man in Taipei 101. And that man is working for the PRC.”
I said, “You think those videos that are causing the riots are fake?”
He leaned forward and said, “I know they’re fake. People have been trying to kill me for days, and they did kill my boss. This is the PRC trying to do the same thing they’re doing to Hong Kong, and I’m a threat to them. They’re going to generate unrest until the place is an inferno, and then come in here under the guise of ‘just helping out.’ Ryan is a bad man. Now, why are you on him? Why does the United States care about Taiwan? You’ve been slowly deserting us for decades.”
I said, “Don’t tie me to some diplomatic row over our two countries. I don’t know enough about it. I have no idea about Taiwan.”
I thought about his words and what I knew, saying, “But I believe you’re right, only it’s not just the videos. They’re trying to cause massive unrest here to deflect the national defense of the country. I wasn’t following Ryan. I was tracking Chen Ju-Long because he’s the handler for an American traitor called Jake Shu. That’s who I’m looking for. I followed both of them here from Australia.”
“What do you mean, deflect?”
“My friend who was killed by Chen Ju-Long was working in a company in Australia that has a contract with Taiwan for artificial intelligence. Before he died, he told me his thoughts, which at the time I thought was crazy. Now, not so much. I think this Jake Shu has a program of malware that he’s going to insert into your defense systems. I think he’s going to manipulate your ability to defend yourself. I hadn’t figured out how he would be able to do it, since he’s a nobody computer geek from America, but you just made the link. He’s going to use Colonel Ryan for the penetration.”
Astounded, Paul said, “You think that Colonel Ryan is going to leverage your traitor to debilitate our defenses? You think this isn’t just Hong Kong disinformation for political gain?”
“I honestly don’t know, but I do know the guy is heavily protected by Chinese assets, and they took an incredibly long, roundabout way to get here. They’re protecting him for a reason, and I honestly don’t know why. I do know that your Colonel Ryan is now my only link. Can we work together on this?”
Paul stood up, moving to the edge of the balcony. He finally said, “Yes, we can. I have a GPS tracker on Ryan’s car. If he’s going to link up with your Jake Shu, we’ll know it.”
He glanced over the edge of the balcony, then jumped back, saying, “Shit. The Triads have found me.”
Chapter 81
Confused by his fear, I stood up, saying, “What? Who’s found you?”
“The men who were chasing me last night have found me. They’re in the car down below in the parking lot. Which means they’re also in the hotel.”
He backed up from the rail and said, “I didn’t think they knew who I was. I thought they were just protecting Ryan and chasing me because I was on him.”
