Neither van Damm nor Foley spoke. This was not their decision to make. Truthfully, if Jack wanted happiness at home, it wasn’t his decision, either. Cathy Ryan was a big girl, extremely competent and intelligent. She didn’t have the training for this sort of thing, but, Ryan recalled, he hadn’t, either, when he started. If she’d known half the things he’d gotten himself into as an analyst, she would have killed him herself. And she’d sure as hell call him out for hypocrisy now. She had an inkling about what Jack Junior did for a living — the kid could come back from only so many overseas trips with horrific injuries and blame them on sports. He’d most recently had his ear torn half off in western Afghanistan. She was a mother, possessed of all the intuition that went along with it. Oh, she knew, all right, though the truth of it remained unspoken, as if not saying the words out loud somehow made their son just a little safer.
Ryan groaned within himself, the kind of deep, resigned death-rattle groan when you come to grips with something you’ve known all along. The Ryans had never been a play-it-safe kind of family — and they never would be.
“Adam Yao will do his job,” Ryan said. “Mo will do hers. If there’s any intelligence to be gleaned from General Song, Cathy will get it. When she’s determined, she gets it done — whatever it is, God love her.”
General Song hadn’t been able to stomach Tsai Zhan when they’d met the first time, five years earlier at a retreat for senior officers at Mount Mogan near Hangzhou. Tsai was a senior operative with Department Two, the intelligence service within the military. Sometimes called a political officer, he was, in actuality, a mole hunter. He had the fertile mind of a trashy crime novelist, perceiving everyone around him to be a spy until they proved him wrong. When Song met the nasty little man, Tsai had been sent to lecture the generals about the due diligence of patriotism. His presentation turned out to be a half-day of slides depicting all the subversives he had “uncovered”—along with grisly photographs of their interrogations and eventual executions.
General Song did not countenance spies against his government, but he saw no reason to revel in their pain. One man’s spy was another man’s patriot. Some of them were incredibly brave, however misguided they happened to be. Certainly, a quick bullet behind the ear would be enough. There was no need to make a man suffer for his beliefs. And still, Song knew better than to display even a hint of his disgust.
Song could not help but picture the man flinging spittle when he spoke.
Men like Tsai flourished during war. In economic booms and times of relative peace, it was a little harder for them to find a niche. Fortunately for Tsai, China was a large country, with many enemies, and many people to mistrust. General Bai and he had naturally struck up a fast kinship during that first meeting. Birds of the same flock, after all.
Travel by high-ranking officials to the United States always drew scrutiny from the intelligence services. But Song knew that General Bai was behind this. Tsai was his attack dog, on loan from the ministry.
Song’s trip with his granddaughter was last-minute, which added more mystery. The fact that he and his wife had elected to have her illness treated in the United States was at once viewed as great fortune and a slap in the face of Chinese medicine. The medical establishment in Beijing complained bitterly, but no doctor wanted to be blamed for the loss of a child’s eye, especially when that child belonged to a PLA general. Even generals as out of favor as Song could make a lot of stink for a physician. They had to appear upset, but they were surely relieved the delicate operation would take place well clear of their scalpels.
Tsai Zhan showed up at the Song household unannounced, waiting at the door with the gray golf jacket he always wore instead of a suit coat hanging over his arm. He shoved the jacket toward the maid without looking at her, barking when she did not take it quickly enough for him.
The poor thing cringed, shooting a horrified look at the general, who smiled softly and gestured for her to go into the other room.
Tsai was half a head shorter than Song, with oddly long arms and slender fingers that reminded the general of a spindly shrub that had lost its leaves. His flat nose did a poor job of keeping his glasses in place, forcing him to constantly push them up with the tip of one of those stick fingers. He smiled a leathery smile when Song came to greet him in the foyer, complimenting a Ming dynasty vase like he’d read in a manners book one should always smile and compliment vases upon arrival at another person’s home.
