Chapter Fourteen #2
She nodded. “Like Tunis. And like Addis Ababa. And Madrid. And the others.” She glanced down at her watch. “Except the Americans didn’t send a CIA officer on this job, likely because of what happened in the other places. They sent a contractor so they won’t be tied to this publicly.”
J.W. nodded at this. “Well, as long as the action is in the Third World, I guess it’s going to stay quiet.”
Gracie turned all her attention to Westwood now. “We have some concerns about that.”
Scardino came closer, indicating to her that she needed to be addressing them both.
She rose, J.W. rose, and they stood close together in the darkness.
She said, “The American last night might have gotten close enough to the dead snipers to identify them as Chinese. Taking this into account, we have to move forward under the assumption that America will know my country is operating against them.”
J.W. said, “What does that have to do with us?”
“A decision has been made in Beijing. You will need to speed up your schedule here. Significantly. Operation Marigold must begin in the next forty-eight hours.”
Westwood kept his cool, but Big Mike said, “You’ve got to be kidding.”
The woman hidden behind the neck gaiter stared him down, then said, “Kinetic operations. Coordinated assassinations of all the targets already given to you with their corresponding dossiers. Further targets to be added, if the situation warrants it.”
J.W. looked worried, and the woman seemed to take note of this.
“You won’t be connected to the American operations, just like you won’t be connected to the operations that already happened internationally.”
To this, he said, “So far, we’ve just passed on intelligence to you. But what you need us to do now…this is something else.”
“It is something else. And you have already agreed to Marigold. We thought we had more time to prepare, to bring in resources, but what happened in Nicaragua, on top of the investigations underway in the U.S. intelligence community about the recent compromises, dictates that we act now. Don’t forget, James,” she said a little patronizingly, “our mission here, your mission here”—she turned to Scardino—“Gauntlet Group’s mission here.
It is all in furtherance of the same goal. ”
James Westwood looked off into the darkness, listening to the trickle of the little creek nearby. The same goal? His goal was winning that Senate seat; this woman’s goal was something else entirely. He imagined Scardino was fuming inside right now, as well.
Still, this plan had been in place for weeks. The Chinese had over twenty people they needed permanently removed from the U.S. intelligence apparatus, and the two Americans in this clandestine meeting with Chinese intelligence had their own reasons for helping.
Scardino said, “We’ve been seeking tier-one assets across Europe for the operations. We have three in-country now and ready to go.”
“The Belarusian known as Spiral? He is here, in the District, now?”
“Yes. Spiral is his Russian code name. American intelligence calls him Deep Space. They don’t know who he is, but they will tie him to Russia quickly if he’s captured or killed.
And as far as he knows, he’s working for American contractors tied to Russia.
He’s already working with his support team.
Surveillance on his first target can begin as soon as you give us the green light. ”
“Then consider this meeting the green light.”
Scardino nodded reluctantly.
Gracie said, “You have the Jordanian and the Italian here, as well? They can be operational within two days?”
“Yes,” Big Mike said. “Their support teams have been established. But we still need two more assets. We won’t be full strength and ready to go in two days.”
“We can provide you with one.”
“Who are you offering us?”
Gracie answered quickly. “The Havana negotiations have been successful. I only need you to send an aircraft, and you can retrieve the asset in Cuba.”
Westwood looked to Scardino and said, “Excellent. That leaves one.”
The smaller woman said, “Make it happen.”
J.W. leaned forward. “I can’t just make—”
Her dark eyes glowed at him, obvious even in the low light. “James, I would hate for you to be under the impression that you and Michael are in charge here.”
Westwood bristled at this. This young Chinese woman was just a field agent of her service; she wasn’t calling the shots, even though she was his point of contact here in America. He thought about reminding her of this, because clearly she was trying to assert dominance that did not really exist.
But he’d been in and around government a long time. He knew when to posture, and he knew when to kneel. He said, “I am in service of the cause, Gracie.”
“Good. Most important is that you obtain the final asset and have him here in D.C. ready for immediate assignment. He will need to be fast and efficient.”
Scardino began to say something, but J.W. held up his hand. “We’ll find someone. Don’t worry.”
“Good,” Gracie said, and with a nod, the two Americans’ phones were returned to them. Without another word, Gracie turned away and ran off to the east, her team of security officers flanking her as she did so.
J.W. watched her until she disappeared on the darkened path, and then Scardino stepped up next to him.
“Call Hasan,” Westwood said. “Have him pick us up over on Foxhall Road and take us directly to the office.”
“What’s the plan?”
“I am going to work on getting one more top-tier foreign agent into the country, and you are going down to Cuba.”
The two men began jogging off to the west.
—
The woman running in the group to the east out of the Wesley Heights Trail had lived in America for nine years, and in all that time, she had worked tirelessly on her accent.
Originally from Hong Kong, she had grown up speaking both English and Mandarin, but there was something about the American accent that made it exceptionally difficult to master, and she often felt as if she were playing a character in a movie when she tried to pull it off.
Her identity to the American James Westwood and his chief of operations Michael Scardino was Gracie Wu, and her cover here in the United States was that she was a research assistant professor of economics at American University, living and working at the sprawling ninety-acre campus just a half mile from where she now ran.
But her real name was Gao YuanYuan, and Gao had been an agent of the Chinese Ministry of State Security for eleven years, joining just weeks after her twenty-first birthday.
All the others running along with her on the Wesley Heights Trail were students at universities here in the city: George Washington, American, Gallaudet, and Georgetown. They were also all MSS operatives.
Gracie herself worked out of a safe house in Bethesda, Maryland; she was protected by as many as ten of these agents who lived with or close to her, and she communicated nightly with Yidongyuan, the Ministry of State Security building in Beijing, using a proprietary commo app developed by the Chinese and then infiltrated into the United States for their operatives via computers that, even upon close inspection at the border or by the FBI, appeared to be completely off-the-shelf Alienware gaming laptops.
Gracie ran a human intelligence or HUMINT mission for the MSS by necessity, because someone had to communicate with assets such as J.W. Westwood, and there weren’t one twentieth of the Chinese-born spies like her in America that there had been a decade ago.
Chinese intelligence had changed its business model in the past several years, after a multitude of high-profile roll-ups here in the United States.
So many of their human intelligence operations in America had been shut down by the FBI, their agents arrested, imprisoned, or deported, that the MSS had taken to developing a new strategy.
Yes, they were the best in the world when it came to cyber intelligence.
And yes, their network of Chinese citizens and permanent residents in the United States provided a steady stream of intelligence about a great many things back to Beijing.
But for the most difficult operations on American soil, the Chinese had learned to employ Americans or other Westerners.
These were the Chinese “cleanskins” in America. People working for China who had no known ties to the nation.
And J.W. Westwood was one of their best and brightest.
They’d gotten to him originally in Singapore, when he was an ambassador there, bitter because he felt the posting was miles beneath his talents and status.
He’d wanted to be CIA director, director of national security, or even secretary of state at the time, but instead, the president, an old family friend, had shipped him off to Asia for a mostly ceremonial role.
The Chinese got wind of J.W.’s resentment at the time and identified him as someone who was highly motivated by a personal desire for advancement, status, and power.
And they decided to make their move. The approach by the Chinese security services had been mild at first, deniable by both parties. But then, over time, Ambassador Westwood had shown himself to be receptive to their courting.
The president he considered his best hope of positioning him for a great leap upwards had turned his back on him; the new president barely knew his name, and Westwood recognized that China was now his best hope.
He met with trade delegations from Beijing, was wined and dined by them, even had them over to his ambassador’s residence to discuss the opening of a cultural center in Singapore that would highlight the confluence of Western and Eastern art, and then, when he had key people in portions of the residence where he knew no one was listening, the Chinese began making their pitch.