The crew van was waiting as Slaton and Captain Lyle came down the boarding stairs. Slaton was hauling a big roller bag that contained all of his clothes, as well as a few of First Officer Raymond’s. It had been Lyle’s idea. She’d explained that the bag Slaton was carrying was far smaller than what any pilot would travel with internationally. It was a fair point, and Raymond had offered to switch with Slaton, leaving a few of his things inside to make it appear full should any immigration officer actually perform an inspection. It made Slaton think the pilots had done this kind of thing before, and again he was silently thankful for Sorensen’s networks.
“We’re going to split with you here,” Lyle said. “We’ve got a few postflight duties, and our instructions were to cut you loose.”
“Okay, thanks for the help. Maybe I’ll see you on the way out.”
“Always here to help,” she said.
He walked to the van and took a seat in back with two other crews. Slaton glanced at their ID lanyards and saw that one worked for Asiana, the other KLM. South Koreans and Dutch. He nodded to everyone cordially, but had no interest in striking up a conversation. Anything beyond the basics, and he could quickly be caught out as not being a legitimate crewmember. As it turned out, it wasn’t a problem. Everyone looked spent, dead tired from what were probably very long flights.
As the van pulled away, the massive jet that had brought him here faded into the darkness.
Slaton followed the other crews into the immigration building, a charmless warren of concrete walls and linoleum flooring. There were a dozen uniformed agents inside, all of whom looked as weary as the crewmembers they were scrutinizing. Air freight was a round-the-clock operation, and he guessed this group of inspectors was nearing the end of its shift. Had Slaton been planning the op, he would have chosen precisely this hour to arrive.
He kept to the back of the line and watched the routine closely as the other crews queued up to the passport desk. The art of forged identities had been transitioning in recent years. In an era of facial recognition and digital accuracy, disguises were a quaint memory, carbon-dated relics of another era. The goal today was not to defeat a sharp-eyed inspector trying to match a face to a passport photo, but to control the primary database and implant a perfectly convincing image.
When it was his turn, Slaton handed over his passport and a declaration form Raymond had helped him complete. He took a few questions, in broken English, that he’d been told to expect. The agent scanned his passport, saw the image the CIA had generated, and no red flags appeared.
It all took no more than a minute.
Formalities complete, Slaton stepped outside into a deepening night. The access road outside the cargo terminal was quiet; there was only one other aircrew waiting along the curb. In the distance, a disinterested policeman chatted with a female parking attendant.
Slaton quickly spotted the license plate he’d memorized: a hundred feet away, an idling minivan. In the window of the van he noticed a sign that said, Lucky Transportation, Aircrew Shuttle. The rear hatch popped open as he approached, which he took as a cue to meet the driver at the rear bumper. It turned out to be an Asian man, early thirties, wearing a standard chauffeur’s livery: black coat and cap, slightly scuffed oxfords. His hair was neatly trimmed and he wore a pair of glasses with clear round lenses.
The driver took his bag without greeting and loaded it into the cargo well next to another suitcase, slightly larger, that had a luggage tag with his fictitious name already filled in.
They really do think of everything, Slaton thought.
Without comment, the driver closed the tailgate, ushered Slaton toward the sliding side door, and said in a hushed voice, “It will look better if you ride in back.” His English came with a mild British lilt, as was typical in the territories formerly administered by The Crown. Slaton decided he could only be a NOC—not a registered consulate employee, but a deep cover asset. One more by-product of Sorensen’s labyrinthine connections.
Slaton took a seat in the middle of three rows.
“Welcome to Hong Kong,” said the driver after sliding behind the wheel.
“Glad to be here … I think.”
“My name is Thomas,” the man said, no indication as to whether this was his first or last name. Slaton decided it didn’t matter because neither would be true. “Miss Sorensen sends her regards.”
“She always does,” he replied, meeting Thomas’s eyes in the rearview mirror.
“I’ve booked a room for you at the Altira in Macau. It’s the usual crew hotel for the airline you flew in on. The drive should take roughly thirty minutes.”
Slaton had discussed with Sorensen the option of using a safe house instead of a hotel. Each carried risks and rewards, but in the end, because his stay would be brief, and hoping to keep his cover intact as a cargo pilot on a short layover, they had settled on a hotel.
“You should check in as soon as we arrive,” Thomas continued. “While we’re driving please transfer anything you need out of your luggage to the roller bag in back—a pilot wouldn’t carry two bags, and everything you requested is in the one I’ve provided. If there is anything missing, you must tell me soon—time is running short.”
Slaton set to work. He maneuvered into the back-row seat, half of which had been folded forward, to access the new bag. He unzipped the cover, took a careful inventory, and saw everything from the list he’d given Sorensen. He added his own clothing and shaving gear, then zipped both bags closed.
“It looks like everything is here.”
“I will be your only local contact. Miss Sorensen insisted we keep your mission as tightly held as possible.”
“What’s the transportation plan in the morning?”
“I’ll pick you up at the hotel, outside the main entrance. Be in uniform and have your bag packed. The plan is to head straight to the airport once your mission is complete.”
“Did you get the tactical map I drew up?”
“Yes. I checked the insertion point, and it looks ideal. The access road you selected will also work. But I would recommend a different egress route—construction south of the bridge has been backing up traffic near the university. There’s a map in the bag on which I’ve highlighted an alternate route.”
Slaton appreciated Thomas’s acumen. All the same, he would verify the route later. “I’ll look it over. What about the timing?”
“The driving time from the lobby to your drop-off point is fourteen minutes—I’ve run the route four times. Traffic won’t be an issue at that time of day. The exact schedule, of course, is up to you.”
Slaton had been building his timetable all the way across the Pacific. “Be on the curb at 6:15.”
“6:15 it is.”
Thomas covered a few more points, then went silent—perhaps because he was done, or more likely to give Slaton time to process it all.
Slaton’s attention went outside as they began traversing the Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macau connector, thirty miles of bridges and tunnels that both soared above and sank beneath the Pearl River estuary. The first bridge graded down toward a man-made island, and then the road dropped into a long tunnel. When they again emerged into the night, minutes later, Macau lay before them.
The city glowed against the darkness, brassy and bold, its reflection shimmering off the calm water. A twelve-square-mile postage stamp of urban verticality, Macau was the most densely populated place on earth. Like Hong Kong, the city was designated by China as a “special administrative region.” Also like Hong Kong, it was inexorably being consumed by its giant neighbor. Freedom and rule of law, hallmarks established under Portuguese rule, were systematically being eroded, capitalist breakwaters failing against the unyielding tide of authoritarianism.
Slaton had been here once before, years ago to help Mossad track down a terrorist financier. That mission, like so many others, had turned into a tail-chase, two weeks lost pursuing ghosts across the city. From a distance he saw the familiar skyline, vibrant and alive with light. Up close, however, the changes wrought by China were metastasizing. He saw countless billboards with nationalist slogans, and patriotic murals impressing the glorious history of the revolution. The president’s image was everywhere, on shop windows, bus benches, and municipal buildings. Every delivery truck seemed to display his image in the windshield, like a de facto registration certificate.
The real changes, of course, were far more insidious. Going to bed wondering whether your neighbor would report you for having dinner with foreigners. Knowing that your phone was being monitored. Watching newscasts that gave only the Party line. Such was life under autocracy, blind trust and fear replacing liberty and enterprise.
“You will need this,” Thomas said, handing over the ersatz iPhone Sorensen had promised. Trying to bring it through customs, they’d agreed, could have caused complications. The handset looked like a billion others, but most certainly was different. Langley had issued Slaton a similar model on his previous mission, although he was sure this one had the latest upgrades, courtesy of the agency’s Directorate of Science and Technology.
“You’ll find it preloaded with contact information,” Thomas added. “Most of the numbers are from the U.S. and verifiable, but there are only two you will need. You can reach me at Lucky Transportation, and Miss Sorensen is listed under A-1 Cleaners.”
Slaton smiled and pocketed the phone.
Soon the Altira came into view, forty-odd stories of glass and blinking neon. Like every other hotel in Macau, the world’s highest-grossing gambling mecca, it included a casino. Good thing I took Lucky Transportation, he mused.
Thomas wheeled the van through a grand portico and came to a stop along a vacant segment of curb. Slaton noticed that he ended the maneuver by canting the wheels toward the open road. He also left the engine running, and checked both sideview mirrors before getting out. Every bit of it was instinctive, baked in by some distant training program. Slaton decided not to dwell on where that might have been, simply taking the win that he had competent support.
Moments later, Thomas was setting the new and heavier roller bag on the sidewalk. Slaton tipped him twenty bucks.
“Very kind of you, sir,” Thomas said with a grateful smile and a tip of his chauffeur’s cap. “Enjoy your stay. I will see you in the morning.”
“See you then.”