The lieutenant read further. “No,” he said. “Not across the border, but approaching it at a high rate of speed, as if they intend to do so. Two remotely piloted aircraft believed to be MQ-9 Reapers passed near our joint Tajik base near the Afghan border eight minutes ago. Radar is also picking up two ghost readings moving west to east in the Wakhan Corridor. They show up only periodically, but estimating their speed and altitude, they are believed to be helicopters.”
“Remotely piloted aircraft…” Ren mused. “Moving toward the Wakhjir Pass?”
“It looks that way, Major.”
“I have read that the Americans have devised a rescue pod that can be attached to the hard points on these drones, the same place where missiles are usually affixed. Let us suppose that the person who killed my brother, Mr. Suo… and this man, is attempting to take Hala Tohti to America. The elevation of Wakhjir Pass is extremely high. It would not be easy to get across with a child. But if one was simply able to climb into one of these escape pods and then back to a U.S. military base in Afghanistan…”
“Forgive me, Major,” the lieutenant said. “But do you not believe this is a bit far-fetched?”
“The Americans love such plans,” Ren said. “They believe life is a movie and they are the stars. Contact the checkpoint in Tashkurgan at once. Have them stop everything that moves — trucks, taxis…” He jabbed the air with his finger. “I do not want so much as a donkey cart to get past without a thoroughly invasive search. And alert the border guards to increase patrols leading up toward the pass.”
“Of course, Major,” the lieutenant said. “It seems foolish for the Americans to place these pods where their weapons customarily go. Their aircraft will be completely defenseless.”
“Ah,” Ren said. “Do not forget the ‘ghost readings’—helicopters flying in and out of radar contact. They are surely there for defensive purposes. But we will be prepared for that as well… Speaking of helicopters, find me one immediately. I wish to be there when this killer is apprehended and Hala Tohti is retrieved.”
Secretive and compartmentalized as the Central Intelligence Agency was, it took a grand total of two hours from the time Monica Hendricks and her team began their first interviews for the buzz of the mole hunt to reach virtually everyone at Langley — and a good portion of the CIA stations around the world. Savvy officers already knew something was up. Overnight, silos had dropped down over certain information, making it next to impossible for some to do their jobs. In the Great Game of spy vs. spy, it was often enough to make one’s opponent believe they had a traitor in their midst, forcing them to waste precious time and resources chasing shadows. Viable intelligence operations against the Soviet Union had very nearly ground to a halt during Angleton’s tenure in CIA.
Director Foley’s mandate for ELISE had been clear: Catch the rat, but don’t set the entire ship on fire to do it.
Hendricks knew word would get out as soon as she began. She kept a weather eye for rats looking for a way off the boat. People, being what they were, almost all had something they wanted to hide. A spate of surprise dates on the flutter — the polygraph — put everyone on edge.
Monica asked the same questions at each pre-polygraph interview, first and foremost: “If you were going to spy for China, how would you go about it?” The answers displayed two antipodal schools of thought.
Her last interview for the day was with a redheaded grandmother Hendricks had worked with on and off for almost two decades and who was now the chief over Near East. She’d smiled politely, batted her ginger lashes, and said, “I’d shove this question up your ass, Monica.”
Oddly, there were few moderates. One analyst, a guy named J.T., had his spy game all plotted, pointing out myriad security weaknesses and how he’d get the Chinese to use cryptocurrency to pay him instead of dead drops or brush-pass handoffs. Hendricks and Li both concluded that this guy was either such a brilliant criminal mastermind that he was able to line out his entire conspiracy without batting an eyelash or he had no guile at all and simply answered the question as directly as they had posed it to him.
Hendricks put J.T. in the “maybe” box, with a few of the other supercompliant “helpers.”
