Holder pointed at him. “That’s where you come in. Benford volunteered you,” he said.
“We ran traces based on ASIS info,” said Holder. “General Tan was a military attaché in Moscow in the nineties,” said Holder. “He speaks some Russian and likes Russians—there’s a faction in the PLA that still buys into the Sino-Russian friendship bullshit, and he’s one of them.”
“What am I hearing?” said Nate. “A false flag?”
“That’s right,” said Holder. “You pitch Tan in Macao as a friendly SVR officer offering to discreetly help out an ally in exchange for PLARF secrets. The Aussies don’t have a fluent Russian speaker who could pull this off. Benford tells me you speak like a native.” Nate flashed back to when he had played a Russian reports officer with Dominika—it had been her idea—with an Iranian scientist in Vienna. A million years ago.
“I speak it pretty well,” said Nate.
“You gotta speak it better than pretty fucking well,” said Holder. “General Tan smells CIA and he’s out the window. MSS calls it
“I’ll try my best,” said Nate. “Is ASIS cool with me making the pitch?”
“COS floated the idea to ASIS of using you as a Russian and they liked it,” said Holder, smiling. “We hide the Western hand, Tan saves face, and we bag a sensitive source inside the PLARF. Epic once-in-a-decade recruitment.”
“There’s the small matter of pitching a Chinese lieutenant general in Chinese-controlled Macao,” said Westfall, the innately practical analyst in him showing.
“The Aussies have an access agent in the casino who’s been buttering the general,” said Holder. “They can get him to a quiet restaurant on the beach, out of town. It’s not that tight, operationally. Macao is nothing but casinos, a Special Administrative Region under the control of the Guangzhou MSS, and they thumb their nose at Beijing. They don’t do anything too squirrely to upset the tourist industry—they all make money on the side.”
“As long as they’re not watching the general already, we probably can swing it,” said Nate. “If he says yes, how do we handle him?”
“Just get him into harness and we’ll do the rest,” said Holder, obliquely, which suggested to Nash that Holder already had inside handlers in Beijing. They didn’t have a need to know. “An ASIS case officer in Hong Kong will watch your fanny.” Westfall stirred in his seat.
“I know I’m new to this and all, but I have a question,” Westfall said. “Nash would be on temporary duty in Hong Kong. There’s no diplomatic immunity for TDY personnel if there’s a flap, is there?” Nate winced slightly. Westfall didn’t know better.
“Nothing’s perfect,” said Holder. “This is too big not to try.” Westfall blinked at him. Holder pointed to a framed scroll with Chinese characters on the wall behind him.
“Know what that says? ‘If I offend you, I’ll help you pack.’ Old Confucian proverb.”
Eighty-four hundred kilometers east from Elwood Holder’s Headquarters office, Gelendzhik Airport in Russia’s Krasnodar Southern Federal District was bounded on the west by a low range of tree-covered maritime mountains, and on the east by the broad horseshoe-shaped Gelendzhilskaya Bay, which emptied out into the Black Sea, a deep-blue sheet of motionless glass this time of year. Dominika was met at the bottom of the stairs of the Sukhoi 100 by a blond courtesy hostess who looked sideways at the stunning dark-haired woman who walked with a barely perceptible limp, and who was dressed in what the hostess identified as the European style. She was going to “the cape”—no one called it Putin’s Palace out loud—which meant she was someone important. But the tailored jacket, the shoes, the expensive sunglasses meant that she was neither from some clunky ministry in Moscow, nor one of the pneumatic “hospitality greeters” brought in for long weekend parties, the majority of whose clothing involved sequins or feathers. In Russia, people who do not fit into familiar categories are usually dangerous and best left alone, so the hostess said nothing as she made sure this unsmiling beauty was securely belted into her plush seat in the AW139 VIP helicopter, closed the door, dogged down the handle, and stood with heels together and waved until the twin engines began a low growl and the rotors began turning, at which point she held on to her pillbox hat and ran.
