and that she had heard. He ran for the telephone.
Fantasy Island Park, Jakarta.
Jerry Piat was up early and feeling good—rested, strong, wired just enough to stay alert. He got a paper cup of coffee and walked to the park. He took his time; it was only a little after seven, the streets already hideous with traffic, sidewalks still puddled from a rain that now steamed in early sunshine.
The Glorious Mornings. Title of some book. Nice phrase.
He looked around like a tourist, checked out a couple of ethnic displays, tossed his coffee cup at an overflowing trash bin, and went into the Orchid House.
Bobby Li hitched a ride on the back of a scooter to within five streets of the park gate. He’d shoved the gun down into his pants, with a loop of string holding it to his belt, a trick that George had taught him and that he said his side had used in World War II. The Economist and the envelope full of newspaper that was supposed to be money were inside his shirt. He kept the camera in view, like a tourist.
His heartbeat was way up. He thought a heart attack might be a good way to get out of this fix. His wife would get the business and a little insurance, and Andy and Qiu would forget him. But his heart wouldn’t cooperate.
A woman in a headscarf was sweeping the area in front of the park gate. He went around her and sidled in, looking for Ho, anxious not to miss him. Ho was lazy and would more likely be late than early. Bobby walked around, feeling his bowels get queasy. He couldn’t do it, he thought. He couldn’t walk in there behind Qiu and risk Andy’s seeing him. He was in a vise, being squeezed.
Ho grunted behind him, and Bobby whirled. His breath came too fast, and he had to breathe through his mouth or faint. “Give me the camera,” he managed to say. He had just seen, beyond Ho, a Chinese who looked professional and dangerous. But every Chinese he saw today would look as if he belonged to Qiu. “Don’t give it to me here; walk down to the toilets and meet me in the men’s.”
Ho walked away. He was eating an Indian sweet, slender coils of orange jelly. The smell of it made Bobby sick.
In the men’s room, he stood next to Ho and tried to piss. Ho was making water like a fire hose. Bobby strained; nothing came out. The vise was squeezing even his piss.
He put his own camera, the one with the grease on the lens, on the metal urinal. Below it was a wall of metal over which water ran, splashing their shoes. “Take this camera. Put yours there so I can take it.”
“Why?”
“It’s a better camera.”
They switched. Bobby said, “Take the pictures, and the moment the meeting is over, get out. Get your people out. You meet me by the east door and hand me the camera, and we’re done.”
“Not until you hand me the rest of the money.” Ho zipped up as if he was tightening a garrote.
“Right. You hand me the camera and I hand you the money.”
“Wrong. You hand me the money, and I hand you the camera.”
Bobby went out and walked up and down, keeping an eye out for Chinese men, glancing every half-minute at his watch, looking for Qiu. One of Ho’s team found him and gave him a Walkabout, which he had altogether forgotten. It seemed like one more terrible thing, one more burden—if the Chinese saw him with the handheld radio, they’d kill him. Or drag him off to the embassy, which would in the long run be much worse. He walked around the back of the toilets and smashed the radio under his foot and threw it into a tangle of weeds, then threw Ho’s camera after it. The less baggage, the better.
Washington.
Dukas and Sally Baranowski sat in Rose’s living room. It was going to be a long night.
A woman with a young voice and a thick Asian accent at Alan’s hotel had assured Dukas that she had tried the room three times, and, yes, she had the right room, and, no, Mist’ Cra-ik not answer. Dukas had looked at his watch for the tenth time since Sally had told him; it was by then eight-thirty-five in Jakarta, and Al Craik was already out of his hotel room. No, no, no, Dukas was saying. Don’t go this early—! He had left a message for Craik to call him at once; then he had tried Triffler, but Triffler still hadn’t checked in. The duty officer at NCIS told him that the last word they had was that Triffler was still in Manila.
Sally Baranowski now understood exactly what was going on. “How bad is it?” she said.
“Maybe pretty bad. I don’t know.”
She was an experienced operations officer. “If you don’t know,” she said, “then it’s pretty bad.”
“If you’re right about Chinese Checkers—”
She was contemptuous. “There is no ‘if.’ I’m right. So what is part of Chinese Checkers doing in a file about radio intercepts in Seattle?”
Dukas shook his head. Sally had his attaché open on her lap, and she took a sheet of memo paper from the Jakarta folder, smoothing the creases. It looked like the other papers, a little old, a little weary. It had a yellow fold-down FBI tab. “This is an FBI cover sheet,” she said.
“Yeah.” His voice was empty. “It’s supposed to date from the time when the Bureau had the case.”
“No way. The Bureau never had Chinese Checkers.”
She held it up to the light. There were columns for dates and times and signatures—a record of who had seen the pages and when. “Not much,” she said. “Only three names. Seven years ago, supposedly.” She brought her arm down. “Bullshit.”
“Check the document history.”
“‘Acquired 24/9/94 via Long Shot from E75P3211. Unverified. Authenticity 3, Reliability 3.’” She looked at Dukas. “What the hell is this shit?”
“What’s Long Shot?”
“Long Shot was a big buy from some very questionable sources after the Soviet Union went belly-up. Mostly in the ‘Stans,’ mostly KGB stuff, but there was some Chinese and Indian material in there, too. We never trusted it, never were able to use most of it. But no way is this comm plan from Long Shot.”
Dukas simply looked at the pale wall, waiting. She was sitting there now with her eyes slitted, staring at someplace he wasn’t allowed to go. “George Shreed would never have knowingly given Chinese Checkers to anybody,” she said. “The only way it could have shown up in the Long Shot buy was if the other side had got it somehow, and then after the end of communism, they sold it back to us.” She shook her head. “But it won’t wash. George would never have let it get out of his hands.”
“Yeah, but if he secretly used Chinese Checkers to meet his Chinese control, then the control had to have a copy, too. It could have got into the Long Shot buy that way.” Dukas was eager to authenticate the Jakarta comm plan, to tell himself that, after all, Al Craik was safe.
“You
