Wednesday afternoon—the last day of their formal classes which had tested Danny Huang’s patience; his blood had boiled with frustration as the days not spent directly working on the project dragged for him. He knew he had to keep up the farce, but his mind was working through the job. Nevertheless, he remained calm on the outside—he was a disciplined man. It was difficult not to automatically speak English or fall into defence maneuvers during combat classes; to remember they were only as skilled as the Armed Police Force of their country and not the elite team they actually were.
He looked at the clock and went through the plan: in one hour Hai and Froggy will leave for Cape Hatteras and stay the weekend, while tonight I will catch up with William and the VIP. Tomorrow, young Ru and I will head to Cape Hatteras, meet up with William there and check all is OK. There’s a lot to do in the four day break. He looked to the clock again with impatience.
He returned his concentration to the classroom; Froggy was attempting to repeat some difficult English words after the instructor—the real difficulty was pretending not to know the words; Danny nodded at him encouragingly. The teacher was delighted with progress, claiming them all fast learners. They accepted the teacher’s praise with great enthusiasm and a smirk meant only for one another.
Danny Huang caught the teacher’s attention.
“Yes, Danny?” The middle-aged teacher nodded towards him.
Danny stumbled on the words. “We question how many languages speak?”
“You were wondering how many languages I speak?” the teacher asked, correcting him.
Ru, Froggy and Hai nodded their interest and the teacher smiled in delight. He sat on the edge of his desk and counted them off.
“Mm, I speak English.” He held up one finger and the men laughed after an appropriate delay to pretend to translate the joke in their own heads. The teacher nodded and laughed too. He held up a second finger. “German, I speak German. A little French,” he waved his hand side to side and then moved his hands together and said, “just a little Mandarin.”
Danny nodded and said in rapid Mandarin, “you are a clever and kind man, but how good is your understanding of our native tongue?”
The teacher shook his head and held up his hands in protest. “No, no, too fast, too advanced for me. I know simple greetings like ‘hello, would you like tea?’ Perhaps we can learn from each other,” he said kindly.
Danny nodded and smiled. Safe, he thought.
The class continued and Danny’s phone buzzed. He tried to move his phone into his line of vision without the teacher seeing him. With fifteen minutes remaining he was struggling to stay alert; easier to stand still on parade for hours than this, he thought. Danny looked to the front on hearing his western name, contributed an answer in a stumbling manner and glanced subtly at the phone again. It was his cousin in Beijing. He read the message:
Had call. US Govt rep asking for you. I said you were here but in meeting. Call ASAP.
Danny felt a cold wave pass over him. Too soon. How could they know I’m here? This puts the timeline under pressure.
He looked up impatiently. The teacher was wrapping up the lesson. Let’s get going here. Work to do. He ran his hand over his mouth nervously and then began to text back.
Got to cover for me. Get Tai to be me, tell him to call me after. I must be there!
Minutes later, when the class finished for the day Danny stormed to the dormitory and gathered the three men around him. “We’ve got to get moving. They have found out I am in the country.”
“How?” Hai asked.
Danny shook his head. “I don’t know how. But now the clock is on. There is a lot to do to get the VIP out of the country and we don’t have the luxury of an extension. It must go to plan on the third weekend. I don’t need to remind you there is a lot riding on this.”
The men nodded. Danny’s chest swelled as he thought about his party, in the shadows for so long; now the light was at the end of the tunnel. And I will be the leader of the change. Nothing is going to stop that.
“He’s not staying here… not in this hotel anyway,” Samantha told Mitch down the phone line. She ordered another cup of tea from the waiter as she sat in the cafe, watching the beach and the hotel, both in her line of vision.
“Have you seen him today?” Mitch asked.
“Nope, and if we don’t see him soon I’m going to explode. How much tea and coffee can any one agent drink?”
“The things you do for the job,” Mitch agreed. “So the last time you saw him was when?”
“Around eleven a.m. yesterday. Do you think he’s gone?” Samantha asked.
“I don’t know, strange he’s disappeared from sight though,” Mitch said. “What did you find out from local operators?”
“The desk clerk said he had no remaining Asian guests at all, and the porter confirmed it. The lady at the corner store said a charming Asian man came in yesterday morning and bought tea and milk,” Samantha said.
“Which he wouldn’t need if he was staying in the hotel. So why was he in there?”
“Who knows, maybe having lunch like Nick suggested or meeting someone,” Samantha said.
Mitch continued. “Any luck with the tour operators?”
“That’s where Nick is now,” Samantha said.
“OK, so we can’t get any bugs in. Can you try and lift something with a print on it?”
“If I see him, I’ll do just that.”
“Thanks, Sam,” Mitch said.
Samantha was about to ask what they had found when she realized he had hung up. “Right then, talk later.” She put the phone down. She saw Nick pull the hire car into the driveway of the hotel and disappear below into the parking lot. Minutes later he walked across the road and joined her at the cafe.
“I’ve got something,” he said, his voice laced with excitement. “I’ll just phone it through to Mitch. Anything?”
“Yes, I can’t drink any more tea or coffee.”
“Noted,” Nick said, and looked at his watch. “In a few hours, it’ll be cocktail hour and we can move onto beer for me and sparkling wine for you.”
Samantha looked at him and brightened. “Marvelous,” she said in her best posh accent. She turned to watch the sidewalk and studied the façade of nearby buildings as Nick called Mitch. They were old hotels that had been given a facelift a few times over the years, which explained the odd décor from the seventies, nineties and now.
“It’s gone to message bank, not like Mitch. He must be on the phone.” Nick sat back. He nodded to the hotel. “The place is doing a reasonable trade considering it is the off-season. I’m going in.”
“Going in where?” Samantha sat upright.
“I’m going in to the hotel. I’m going to follow some of the guests in and ride the lift a bit. See if I can see anything.”
“But he’s not registered there as a guest, no Asian men are,” Samantha said.
“He might be staying with another guest,” Nick suggested.
“Maybe.” Samantha shrugged. “I’ll head down to do a final patrol of the beach for the day. If he is not staying at the hotel, he’s got to be staying somewhere and if I see him I can follow. Plus the light will be fading soon.”
“Not much else to do,” Nick agreed. “Unless he’s gone walking in the national park, in which case he’s a tourist and we’ve got the wrong end of the stick completely.”
Nick tried Mitch again and got him.
“Mitch, got something. Yesterday an Asian guy—could be our guy—booked a dive for two people with one of the dive groups here. He told the bookings clerk it wasn’t for him but his two friends who were experienced divers. The dive booking is for Saturday and…” Nick reached in his jacket for a piece of paper he had scribbled on. “He’s booked in one name, that of Ba Hao-cun.”
“Excellent,” Mitch said, checking the spelling. “Thanks Nick, leave it with me. Call you later tonight.”
“Right,” Nick said. He pocketed his phone and turned to Samantha. “I’m off to play in the lifts. Ciao.”
Samantha sighed as she watched him depart. She rose, paid the bill and headed off to the beach. She turned back to glance towards the hotel and down the tourist strip. Nothing.
Mitch hung up from Nick and looked at his phone. He dreaded the call, but knew it had to be made. Charlotte answered, and sounded pleased to hear from him.
“I was just thinking of you,” she said.
“And here I am!” Mitch answered. “How’s tricks?”
“All good. I’ve got one appointment left and then I’m heading home. Want to head out for dinner tonight?”
“Um, that’s why I’m calling.” Mitch heard her groan. “Sorry, I’ve got to do a bit of surveillance, but I won’t be late, probably eight or so.”
“So last night you were a no-show at drinks because you had to do surveillance, and tonight you’re on surveillance again. Are you sure you’re not having an affair?”
Parker scoffed. “Hardly. We can go out when I come home. I’ll call you when I’m almost there and we can go out then,” Mitch offered.
“Whatever.”
“Charlie …” He looked at his phone, and she was gone. “Well that went well,” he muttered. “No wonder most agents are single or divorced.”
“This Danny Huang is a public menace.” John Windsor waved a piece of paper as he walked into Mitch’s office and dropped down into the seat opposite him. He stopped on seeing Mitch’s annoyed look. “You all right?”
“What? Oh yeah, fine.” Mitch put the phone down.
John continued. “Danny Huang … he’s a founding member of a subversive political agency, the New Red Guard, not to mention he’s been associated with a string of illegal and unrecognized political parties in the People’s Republic of China over the past decade. He’s been arrested on fraud, theft, violence, starting riots, starting new parties, starting a religion, you name it.”
“The New Red Guard … I vaguely remember Mao’s Red Army and the Russian Red Army from my history days at school, but the Red Guard—old or new—is new to me,” Mitch said.
John read from the sheet. “The New Red Guard strives to provide an enlightened way forward: a selfless community selecting production for use and profit; health and education for all with consolidation of the ruling status of the Party and—here’s a twist—opportunities for capitalist advancement in designated industries.”
Mitch exhaled. “So are they capitalists or socialists?”
John frowned. “It’s anyone’s guess … they’re leaning to elements of both. So Ying’s widow didn’t know Danny Huang?”
“She denied knowing him but I can’t tell if she was telling the truth, she didn’t give much away.” Mitch rose and moved to the window. “She definitely had a male in the house at some time, whether it was her missing husband, a new love or the gardener, we don’t know. No-one showed last night at her house, that we could see, but I’m just going to do a quick stakeout again tonight.”
“By yourself?”
“Just for a few hours,” Mitch said, “I don’t need back up.”
Mitch reached out his hand for Danny Huang’s history and when he finished reading, he looked up at John. “I can’t work out why his prints are on the binoculars.”
“And what is his connection to William Ying,” John added.
“Mrs. Ying said William did own some binoculars and they were a gift from William’s old company. I wonder if Danny worked for the same company.”
John nodded. “Worth investigating.”
Mitch began to pace. “Socialism … social organization,” he thought aloud, “like in Marxist theory—a transition state between capitalism and communism.” Mitch continued to pace, as John watched and waited. Mitch turned to him. “If you were going to form a socialist party which combined the best of socialism and capitalism, how would you go about it?”
John crossed his arms over his chest. “I’d get the most powerful, respected or successful representatives of both parties as figureheads for starters.”
“Yes,” Mitch said. “So is that why Danny Huang is here? Is that why William Ying disappeared? Are they targeting people here? The capitalist?”
John exhaled. “So given the circles that William Ying moved in as Chinese Ambassador to the US, are you thinking that his disappearance is linked to the fact that he might have tried to target the wrong person? Someone in power?”
Mitch shrugged slightly. “William would have made some very powerful allies while he was in the role of ambassador. He needed to stay in the country longer but if he didn’t want to become a citizen … or if he was earmarked for something bigger or wanted to work below the radar …” Mitch continued to think out loud.
“He’d have to disappear,” John confirmed.
“Drastic though. Whatever it was, it must have been important enough to kill all three witnesses who saw him leave the exhibition that night. Plus if William was working on getting someone to be an ally or leader in this New Red Guard party, what would he have to offer them? What protection?”
“And how radical are we talking here? Why couldn’t they just ‘walk’?” John asked.
“I guess it depends on how high up the person is; if it was a cabinet member, chief of staff or advisor who walked out of government and went to take up a role in a subversive Asian political party that could command millions of people and be privy to secrets of American security, I’d be pretty anxious about that.”
John swore under his breath.
“I’m just theorizing,” Mitch assured him. “This could be all pipe dream stuff. I need to think it through.”
John rose to go. “Mitch, we are talking about a former ambassador who is back on the radar. If there is any credibility in your thought process, this case has just become a huge international security issue and I need to move it up the chain urgently.”
Mitch nodded. “Leave it with me just a little longer. We’d wear egg on our face if we created this drama and missed the mark.”
John frowned.
“Seriously,” Mitch said, “just give me until tomorrow morning. Nick and Sam are making progress—Nick got a name of one of them, assuming it is his real name, so that might help. I’ve got surveillance tonight, and I’m running facial recognition checks from the international airport of everyone who has entered in the last six months … hopefully Danny Huang is there because at the moment, he’s still not officially in the country.”
John looked across the office. “Let’s try for William Ying too. See if he has come or gone under some other name. Get young Matt onto it.” He nodded towards the officer-in-training. “It’ll give him something useful to do while he’s spending the month here.”
“Great, thanks.” Mitch glanced at the young man who was currently filing. He rose and went out to introduce himself to Matt Bennett. The young man, all of twenty, stood a head shorter than Mitch and had the customary short, back and sides haircut of a rookie. He obviously lifted weights; his business shirt bulged at the arms. He shook Mitch’s hand with great enthusiasm.
“I need some help,” Mitch stated.
“Anything, please,” Matt indicated the filing.
Mitch smiled. “Yeah, been there.” He sat beside Matt and called up a photo of William Ying.
“This is William Ying,” Mitch began. “Former Chinese Ambassador to the US. He’s missing, but I need to be sure he’s not coming or going from the country under an alias. Run this image through the facial recognition software and then go back one year on the airport customs footage. The photo is not big on distinguishing marks, but give it a shot and don’t sweat it if he is not on there or if you find twenty who could be him, that’s all fine.”
“No problem,” Matt said.
“If I’m not in and you find something, just call my office number; it’ll go to my phone. Thanks, Matt,” Mitch said.
“Pleasure, really,” he said, and smiled, turning to start.