Hostile Contact. Gordon Kent

at his watch, looking for Qiu. One of Ho’s team found him and gave him a Walkabout, which he had altogether forgotten. It seemed like one more terrible thing, one more burden—if the Chinese saw him with the handheld radio, they’d kill him. Or drag him off to the embassy, which would in the long run be much worse. He walked around the back of the toilets and smashed the radio under his foot and threw it into a tangle of weeds, then threw Ho’s camera after it. The less baggage, the better.

      

      Washington.

      Dukas and Sally Baranowski sat in Rose’s living room. It was going to be a long night.

      A woman with a young voice and a thick Asian accent at Alan’s hotel had assured Dukas that she had tried the room three times, and, yes, she had the right room, and, no, Mist’ Cra-ik not answer. Dukas had looked at his watch for the tenth time since Sally had told him; it was by then eight-thirty-five in Jakarta, and Al Craik was already out of his hotel room. No, no, no, Dukas was saying. Don’t go this early—! He had left a message for Craik to call him at once; then he had tried Triffler, but Triffler still hadn’t checked in. The duty officer at NCIS told him that the last word they had was that Triffler was still in Manila.

      Sally Baranowski now understood exactly what was going on. “How bad is it?” she said.

      “Maybe pretty bad. I don’t know.”

      She was an experienced operations officer. “If you don’t know,” she said, “then it’s pretty bad.”

      “If you’re right about Chinese Checkers—”

      She was contemptuous. “There is no ‘if.’ I’m right. So what is part of Chinese Checkers doing in a file about radio intercepts in Seattle?”

      Dukas shook his head. Sally had his attaché open on her lap, and she took a sheet of memo paper from the Jakarta folder, smoothing the creases. It looked like the other papers, a little old, a little weary. It had a yellow fold-down FBI tab. “This is an FBI cover sheet,” she said.

      “Yeah.” His voice was empty. “It’s supposed to date from the time when the Bureau had the case.”

      “No way. The Bureau never had Chinese Checkers.”

      She held it up to the light. There were columns for dates and times and signatures—a record of who had seen the pages and when. “Not much,” she said. “Only three names. Seven years ago, supposedly.” She brought her arm down. “Bullshit.”

      “Check the document history.”

      “‘Acquired 24/9/94 via Long Shot from E75P3211. Unverified. Authenticity 3, Reliability 3.’” She looked at Dukas. “What the hell is this shit?”

      “What’s Long Shot?”

      “Long Shot was a big buy from some very questionable sources after the Soviet Union went belly-up. Mostly in the ‘Stans,’ mostly KGB stuff, but there was some Chinese and Indian material in there, too. We never trusted it, never were able to use most of it. But no way is this comm plan from Long Shot.”

      Dukas simply looked at the pale wall, waiting. She was sitting there now with her eyes slitted, staring at someplace he wasn’t allowed to go. “George Shreed would never have knowingly given Chinese Checkers to anybody,” she said. “The only way it could have shown up in the Long Shot buy was if the other side had got it somehow, and then after the end of communism, they sold it back to us.” She shook her head. “But it won’t wash. George would never have let it get out of his hands.”

      “Yeah, but if he secretly used Chinese Checkers to meet his Chinese control, then the control had to have a copy, too. It could have got into the Long Shot buy that way.” Dukas was eager to authenticate the Jakarta comm plan, to tell himself that, after all, Al Craik was safe.

      “You know that’s not the way intelligence works! It’s not the way George worked. If China had a top spy in the Agency—as they did, in him—then, by God, they wouldn’t have his comm plan someplace where it could be sold off to the highest bidder.”

      Dukas stared at a rain-spotted window. “So how did it get into this file?”

      She had no answer.

      “If you’re right,” he said, “then the cover sheet and the document history and all that about Long Shot are forgeries.” He rubbed his eyes. “Somebody’s planted this stuff on me. And I’ve sent my best friend off to check it out.”

      

      Fantasy Island Park, Jakarta.

      To Alan, the park seemed empty. The night’s rain had left a faint gleam over the stones in the early morning light, but the only people in the park with him were the grounds crew and a few Chinese tourists and a school group of local girls in white shirts and ties and plaid skirts. Alan smiled, thin-lipped and tense, and moved on, heading for the first performance of the park’s Javanese dancers.

      The dancers performed in a kiosk across from the looming concrete and glass of the Orchid House. Alan tried to see inside, but the fog of condensation on the walls of the greenhouse was impenetrable. It was hot already, with the heavy air of full humidity complicated by massive smog, but the lithe girls danced smoothly despite the early hour. The performance didn’t last long, and Alan was one of five members of the audience. All the rest were Asian, and Alan wondered if any of them was his target.

      

      Bobby Li lingered where he could watch the front entrance to the Orchid House, knowing the American would go in there. Andy had said so. He was trying to cut down the variables in this horror, even though seeing the man, being able to recognize him, wouldn’t help matters much unless Bobby could get inside and get to him before Qiu did. It wouldn’t work. Nothing would work. He leaned back in the shadow of a pillar and gave a murmured whimper. A hand closed over his arm.

      “Aaah—!” He spun, eyes wide, found himself inches from the face of Loyalty Man.

      “Very nervous,” Loyalty Man said. “No reason to be.”

      “Th-this Qiu makes me n-nervous.”

      Loyalty Man spat and lit a fresh cigarette. “Your job here has nothing to do with Qiu. Qiu knows nothing. Qiu is like the wooden duck you put on the water to bring in the real ducks.” He pulled something from his lower lip, spat tobacco flakes. “You are to find if the person who makes the meeting with Qiu is either the American Shreed or Colonel Chen. You know both. That is all.” He inhaled smoke and looked at Bobby. “Orders from very high up.”

      “But—” He started to say, But Shreed is dead, and remembered in time that he had learned that only from Andy and so wasn’t supposed to know it. “But,” he said instead, “it has been so long since I saw either.”

      “I am told you knew both well. Do your job. Call me to report.” He walked away.

      Bobby’s face screwed up as if he was going to weep.

      

      Jerry had brought a piece of nylon parachute cord, which he tied across the rickety stairs to Treetops. He didn’t want any early tourists stumbling over him. Up on the viewing platform, he drew on a pair of gloves and located the gun and dragged it out, unrolling the mat to lie on. It was nice up there, a feeling of airiness and light, that tantalizing mixture of greenhouse odors in the nostrils. He looked through the scope of the SKS, unloaded it, checked the trigger pull, decided that it would do well enough. He reloaded it and laid the weapon next to him and looked down into the green and flowery target area.

      “Report,” he said into his handheld. “One here. Report.” Bobby was Two. He should have said “Two,” but he didn’t. “Two?” Jerry said. After a silence, he said, “Three?” Three reported—that was the big ox, Ho—then Four, Five, and Six. “Two?” Jerry said again. Was Bobby out of range somehow?

      It was eight forty-eight. Dukas should be in the park. “Anybody see our target?” He said it again in dialect, or as much dialect