went in.
The General was sitting at a desk of a sleek, pale wood, certainly not government issue, the edges of its top slightly rounded, its proportions balanced and delicate. The door closed behind Lao; he braced, his eyes on the bent, bald head of the man behind the desk. Still, Lao’s first glance had registered an elegant bookcase, a scroll painting that was either old or well-faked, a silk carpet. All where they were not seen from outside the door.
And, to the right of the desk and slightly behind it, a pale second man in civilian clothes who was smoking.
The General looked up.
“Colonel Lao tse-Ku, sir,” Lao managed to say.
The old man smiled. “I know,” he said softly. He raised the fingers of one hand off the desk. “Sit.” The fingers seemed to indicate a chair to his left. Lao sat. The General looked at him for several seconds and then looked down at an open file on his desk, which he seemed to find more interesting than Lao. After several seconds more, the General glanced over his shoulder at the third man, but he made no move to introduce him.
“You have been called very suddenly from Africa,” the General said to Lao.
Lao was confused, uncertain whether he should say something banal about the soldier’s life or something enthusiastic about serving the nation, or—by that time, it was too late to say anything, and the General was going on. “You were ordered to Africa only a year ago.”
This time, saying “Yes, sir,” seemed best.
“You like it?”
What on earth could he mean? The old fox knew perfectly well that at his age and rank, a senior figure in intelligence, Lao wanted to be in a major capital or Beijing, not an African backwater. “The post has interesting aspects,” he managed to say.
The General glanced at his file and then at the third man and then said, “You were sent there because you lost a battle with your rival, Colonel Chen. Isn’t that so?”
This plain speaking caught him off guard. Although, when he thought about it, the General must know all about the savage struggles for supremacy within the service. He and Chen were on the same course toward the top, two of six or seven who might one day run all of Chinese military intelligence. And, yes, Chen had bested him this time and arranged to have him sent into darkness. Still, Lao said, “I did not question my orders, sir.”
He heard the third man flick a cigarette lighter and in his peripheral vision saw a new plume of smoke from that direction. He didn’t want to look directly at the man. Clear enough what he was.
The General had a round face made puffy with fat, so that his eyes seemed to have difficulty keeping from being squeezed shut by cheeks and brows. When he chuckled, as he did now, a thousand wrinkles came to life. Smiling, he said to Lao, “Chicks that picked their way out of the same egg will fight for the dunghill when they have combs and spurs. Rivalry between you and Chen is quite natural. Necessary, in fact. Working together is often required; going where you are ordered is required; rivalry, too, has its uses. You lost the last battle. Now it is your turn.” He leaned forward. “Colonel Chen has disappeared.”
Lao made his face, he hoped, impassive; in fact, it looked wooden.
“Chen has disappeared,” the General said again. “I want you to find him.” Lao sensed the third man’s movement, perhaps a gesture of a hand. The General frowned bitterly. “Finding him is of the highest priority.”
The air of tension, then, the stories of rolling heads and ended careers, might have the loss of a senior intelligence officer as its cause. Even before he had received the orders to come to Beijing, Lao had got ripples of it in Dar es Salaam—somebody’s inability to make a decision, the absence of a senior official from his office.
The civilian moved into the space by the General’s desk and began to speak in a low, guttural voice.
“Three weeks ago, Colonel Chen went to northern Pakistan to meet with an American agent. He has not been seen since.”
The man was tall, rather European in face—from one of the western provinces, Lao thought, feeling the dislike he couldn’t avoid for those people, not “real” Chinese. He had rather long and unkempt hair, sallow skin; there was something uncouth about his rapid gestures and his rumpled clothes. His voice was hoarse and heavily accented. An odd type to be a power in military intelligence. Lao thought he must be a party hack.
“The meeting place was a peasant village,” he went on. “At night. Chen took twelve special forces soldiers. Nine were killed outright; two have died since; one is not expected to live. We interviewed the people of the village. Typically narrow-minded and fearful, hard to get anything out of.” He blew out smoke, made a chopping motion with the hand that held the cigarette. “Still. A few talked. There was shooting, they said. Then an aircraft came in and landed on the road below the village, then took off again.” He took two strides toward the door, his big feet making thudding sounds right through the carpet, spun and started back, waving out of his path the smoke that hung there. “One fellow who runs some sort of hostel said he had a ‘Western’ customer, who rented a bed and then disappeared. Caucasian, he said, didn’t speak the language but had a computer that gave him some phrases. We found cartridge cases from Spanish and Pakistani ammunition, plus our own, of course.” He blew out smoke and stood by the window, staring out. “Seven local civilians killed—we think by a shaped charge that Chen had brought with him. He blew a hole in an old tower, no idea why. Enemy inside, maybe. Doesn’t matter.” He turned back to the room and said, seeing some look on Lao’s face, “No, hold your questions until I’m done.
“The aircraft. Karachi had had an emergency declared by an American naval aircraft the day before, but the aircraft never appeared. Went into the sea, maybe, they thought. Then, several hours later, an aircraft landed and took off from the village where Chen had been, and then an American naval aircraft exited Pakistani airspace while two American F-18s flew cover. Two of ours tried to engage and were shot down. The American carrier USS Thomas Jefferson was within recovery distance in the Indian Ocean.
“Probable scenario: the Americans flew a combat team in under Pakistani radar, using the fake emergency for cover if they were caught, landed the aircraft somewhere up near the village, and later picked up the combat team after they had killed Chen’s men—and either killed or captured Chen and the American agent he had gone to meet.
“That is one scenario. Knowing American military doctrine, we did not find evidence in the village of American special forces. Ammunition casings were relatively few for so many men, and limited to shotgun, 9 mm, .41 magnum, and—peculiar—.38 special. The .41 magnum came from a Desert Eagle that was left behind. Scenario: the American agent brought his own shooters, either as a backup team because the zone was hot or because he feared Chen.
“The agent—now I am telling you facts so tightly held that you will be only the fourteenth person in China to know them—the agent was an American CIA official named George Shreed. He had been giving Chen good material for years. Vetted, checked, proven. He was supposed to have met Chen in Belgrade a day earlier, but he cancelled that meeting and set up the one in Pakistan. Which fell apart into a lot of shooting. Only today are we beginning to learn that this Shreed had apparently fled the US two days before, not using the escape plan we had given him, not using our considerable resources, not informing Chen. And he may have offered his services to the Israelis before he finally did contact Chen.
“Scenario: Shreed faked flight from the US, with the connivance of his CIA superiors, lured Chen
