SENTOSA ISLAND, SINGAPORE
Emily Jones-Rodriguez, the officer designated as “Sentosa One” who was monitoring the suite next door by video, realized just after 2:00 a.m. that something was wrong. Dr. Ma Yubo had risen from bed and ruffled underneath the mattress, looking for his secret notebook. Through the audio feed, she’d heard a sound like a sharp wail, then silence. Earlier that evening, she had asked for guidance in case he discovered the mijian was gone, and she had been told to do nothing. Let him stew. That was direct from the station chief.
And it seemed okay at first. Dr. Ma had returned to bed for five minutes and then gone to the bathroom. But he hadn’t come back.
Jones-Rodriguez was blind. The Office of Technical Services hadn’t had time to rig a video camera in the bathroom that evening, before Ma’s return. What worried Jones-Rodriguez wasn’t just that the surveillance target was taking so long in the john, but that she’d heard a loud noise on the audio feed, a sharp crack and a brief sound like a muffled human voice.
“Did you hear that?” she asked her colleague, the tech who had rigged the bugs. He had flown in with Flanagan from the regional S&T base in Japan.
“Roger that,” said the tech. “Sounded like someone fell off a chair.”
“Shit,” said Jones-Rodriguez. She grabbed for her phone and called the special number for the ops watch officer at the station.
“This is Sentosa One. Request permission to enter subject’s room,” she said. “Urgent.”
“What’s up?” asked a sleepy voice.
“Code Blue,” she said.
“You sure?” responded the ops officer.
“No. That’s why I want to check. He went into the bathroom and I can’t see him. Our video is shit. I heard something I didn’t like. I want to check it out.”
“Go,” said the station representative. He paused while he looked for written guidance, then came back. “ROE says no firearms.”
Jones-Rodriguez took her gun anyway. She slipped out her door and inserted the master key card into the lock for Dr. Ma’s suite. The lights were dimmed. Mozart was playing softly on the sound system.
She entered the bathroom, gun raised, and then lowered it.
Dr. Ma’s body was hanging from a noose he had crafted from a power cord.
“Shit, shit, shit,” she muttered, staring at the body. She cut him down and felt his pulse, but it was gone.
Jones-Rodriguez called the ops hotline again.
“We have a major flap situation here. We have a dead body, I think. He tried to hang himself. Succeeded, it looks like. We need to extract him or something.”
The watch officer made a quick call and then came back on the line.
“Get the tech in from next door. It says in the ops profile that he has medic training. Let him work on the body. Otherwise do not touch a goddamn thing. Got it?”
“Copy,” said Jones-Rodriguez. Thirty seconds later, the tech was pounding Dr. Ma’s chest and breathing into his mouth. He kept at it for nearly five minutes, until the phone buzzed with a call from the ops center at Headquarters.
“Target is gone,” said Jones-Rodriguez into the phone. “Like dead. We’ve been working him since the last call. Nada. What do you want us to do with him?”
“Nothing. Listen to me very carefully. Clean up the room so there’s not a trace of anyone but the target. Nobody else has been in the room. Wipe it down good, and then wipe it again. Copy?”
“Yes, sir. What else?”
“Clear out of both the adjoining villas. Everything. No trace. Wipe it all down, and wipe the wipes. If you all were too dumb to wear latex gloves, put them on now. Copy?”
“Roger that. We have the gloves on. Or at least I do. What about the body?”
“Leave it just like you found it. Noose, chair, whatever else he used. The guy killed himself. That’s the way it should read. Just like it happened.”
“Roger that. There are abrasion marks on his skin and lacerations on his face, and probably his neck is broken.”
“Good. Just put him back the way you found him and then get the fuck out. Station is sending officers in Singapore police uniforms to get your team out the back way, by Palawan Beach Road. Copy all that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is there any note?”
Jones-Rodriguez took a quick tour of the suite.
“Nothing that I can see. There’s a bunch of torn-up shit in the trash, but it’s not a suicide note.”
“Okay, one last thing. You see anything that says ‘Luxembourg Asset Management’ lying around the room?”
“Wait one, Singapore Ops.”
Jones-Rodriguez went back to the trash basket and double checked.
“Sentosa One back. That Luxembourg thing was what was ripped up in the trash. There are six or eight pages, with a bunch of numbers. He tore them up, but not very well. What should I do with the scraps?”
“Nothing. Leave it just like you found it, torn up, in the trash. Don’t touch a thing. And for god’s sake don’t leave any DNA.”
“I think I have that part, Singapore Ops. Anything else?”
“No. Out now. No tracks. Bring everyone and everything with you. No more fuck-ups, please.”
“Roger that, Sentosa out,” said Jones-Rodriguez. In that instant, considering the possibility that her CIA career was effectively over, she wondered if it was too late to go to law school.
“He’s dead. The fucker,” muttered Warren Winkle when he put down the phone after getting the urgent, disastrous call from the ops chief at Singapore station. He and Chang were still sitting at their computers in Safe House Orange, typing out their cables. Winkle cursed again, loudly, and then pointed his finger at Chang.
“Did you do this?” Winkle demanded.
“Do what? What happened?” Chang was just taking off his earphones. He looked at Winkle quizzically.
“The SOB just killed himself. That’s what. The late Dr. Ma. He made a noose out of a power cord. The watchers, evidently, were not watching. What the hell did you tell him at the end of your meeting? I thought this guy was solid. How the fuck could this have happened? I mean, seriously: Tell me, goddammit.”
Chang was numbly shaking his head. He was dazed. His new agent was dead six hours after he’d been recruited? He had no idea how that had happened. Was he that stupid, that he had missed the signs?
“I don’t know, Warren. When he left the Holiday Inn, he seemed okay. Resigned. Not happy, but not on a suicide watch. Maybe he flipped when he saw that his mijian was missing. All his secrets gone. Who knows?”
“Did he say anything? Like: I’m going to kill myself when you bastards take me back to the hotel. Something like that?”
“Fuck off,” said Chang angrily. The last thing he needed was the station chief’s obnoxious needling.
“Sorry,” said Winkle. “I know you’re upset. This is your guy. Or was. Talk to me.”
Chang searched his memory, trying to find stitches of fact that would explain this catastrophic outcome.
“He was depressed, for sure. He said I was a troublemaker. Something like that. He said he had lost face and now he had nothing. He said some Chinese words, like he was ‘looking for death.’ Or ‘looking for trouble.’ I wasn’t sure which he meant. I thought he was exaggerating. He was pissed at me for betraying him.”
“Betraying him how?” Winkle had his hand cupped to his ear.
“Because I’m Chinese. He thought we were on the same team. I told him that was bullshit. I was an American. Obviously.”
“Obviously.” Winkle pondered a second too long. “He thought you were on the same side. That’s typical Chinese bullshit.”
“Exactly.” Chang waved his hand dismissively. He had three generations of American-ness in his bank account. But it was never enough.
“Ma was ashamed,” said Chang. “He said he had lost face. He had no face. Something like that. He was afraid of what would happen to his family. Everything he said is on the tapes. But I don’t think you’ll find what you’re looking for.”
Another call came in for Winkle. It was the ops chief again, passing along a clarification from the officer at the hotel. The target had rummaged around in his bed, looking for something, probably his notebook, before he went into the bathroom to kill himself.
“Un-huh,” said Winkle into the phone. “Tossed the bed. No book. Cries out. Then sayonara. Sad case. What a waste.”
Winkle closed the phone and turned to Chang. He stuck out his hand to the shaken case officer. It was a soft handshake, there-there, which made Chang feel even worse.
“You’ll excuse me, Harris. I have to clean shit up. You finish writing your cable. It will be shorter now, without the future agent-handling stuff. But they need to know about the penetration now. I’ll write up the mijian so Vandel has it by close of business. And I’ll call him personally, in a minute, and tell him we shot the pooch.”
“Maybe Vandel knew this would happen,” said Chang quietly.
“Maybe. But probably he doesn’t care, one way or another. He plays a long game. He’s got everything he wants. In any event, it’s not your problem, Harris. You should take the rest of the night off.”
Winkle walked away leaving Chang alone at the desk, his cursor twinkling on an unfinished operations report about a newly recruited asset who was now dead. What had he done wrong?
Chang would ask himself the question a hundred times in the hours and days to come. But the answer would remain the same: Nothing. It had been a perfect operation except for one thing: Some people cannot live with betrayal and ambiguity. They don’t feel the exhilaration of a double life, only the shame. They escape the only way they can.