“Heroin?” Chadwick said, finding her voice. “You do realize Indonesia has the death penalty for drug smugglers.”
“I am afraid they do,” Huang said, his mind obviously thinking through the logistics of the plan to incite Jack Ryan to action rather than the consequences of that plan to West. “I’ll have someone playing the part of your constituent leave a message on your office voicemail. That way the FBI will have something to find. The number will be untraceable.”
“This is worse than blackmail,” Chadwick said. “You would murder an innocent priest to further China’s agenda?”
“
Huang stared at her with hard, gimlet eyes, leaving no doubt in Chadwick’s mind that he would be the one to murder her if she crossed him — or even if she didn’t.
His gaze softened, as if he knew he’d let his true intentions slip. “You have done well.” He turned west toward the vehicles and began to jog again. “I need to get back so I can make some more calls.”
Chadwick fell in beside him, wrestling over what to say next.
“Was there something else?” he asked, as if reading her mind.
“A couple of things,” she said.
“See”—Huang gave her a smiling nod, slowing just enough to hold a conversation in relative ease—“this is how it should work. You pass along bits of intelligence as you get them, and I interpret them. The information you glean in the White House is of vital importance, Michelle. You know as well as I do that the world will be a much safer place without Jack Ryan.”
“I can’t say that I disagree,” Chadwick said, mulling over the Espionage Act, the statute the Department of Justice used to indict spies. An unseen fist grabbed her gut and twisted. She stared down at her feet as they hit the paved path. “I understand,” she said. “And I’ll do what I need to do — but I’m doing it for me, not for China.”
“Laudable,” Huang said. “Now, let’s have that other information…”
Lucky Optical occupied the western half of a low whitewashed block building that contained only two businesses. Tucked back from the street less than half a mile from the airport, it was relatively modern, with a tile roof instead of tin like many of the other businesses in the area. The sign for a specialty meat shop that had once occupied the space next door said it sold everything from fruit bat to “fine-hair” meat — meaning dog. Dusty windows and an empty showroom said it had been vacant for a while.
Lucky Optical closed at five-thirty, according to its website, giving Clark and the team very little time to get in place beforehand.
Jack Junior and Midas jimmied a window in the vacant meat shop and sat down to wait for everyone from Lucky Optical to go home. Clark went inside for a little recon. He asked for a tiny screw for his reading glasses. A nice lady at the reception desk put the screw in for him while he scanned the interior for motion sensors, contact strips, and control panels — and anything else that might indicate an alarm system or booby trap. The single CCTV camera was tilted toward the ceiling and would get a shot of nothing but light fixtures, if it worked at all. It had likely been installed by the previous tenants and never removed.
Caruso parked at the end of the street, behind the thick sawblade leaves of some pandanus trees that ran beside the scooter dealership. Clark drove a block away in the other direction.
The team had their earpieces in again, relying on radios now instead of cell phones so they could all be on the same page.
The chubby eye doctor left first, followed by two female assistants who looked half his age. The woman who’d helped Clark with his glasses — probably the office manager — was the last to leave. She locked the door and then rode away on a scooter, paying no attention at all to the strange bunch of Toyotas lurking in her neighborhood.
“You are clear to go,” Clark said. “I’ll get Gavin on the line so he can talk you through what you need to do.”
You have any idea what’s going on?” Special Agent Mo Richardson said when she met Gary Montgomery at the Secret Service post inside the north door to the West Wing, between the front portico and the press briefing room. She gave a polite nod to the Uniformed Division officer, a slender African American woman she sometimes worked out with in the dojo.
