Battlefield 4: Countdown to War Read online

  Kovic told him about what he had in mind to begin with.

  ‘There will be more once we’ve achieved stage one.’

  Zhou shrugged. ‘Sounds good to me.’

  ‘Beyond that it may turn ugly. I think the people I’m going up against may make life very hard for us. You going to be okay with that?’

  The Beavis and Butt-Head laugh suggested he was.

  24

  Vaughan’s eyes fluttered open, closed, then opened again – wide. He jerked his head to the left, but there was no sign of – what was his name? A blond anyhow. He was supposed to stay the whole night, that was what he had paid for. But the boy appeared to have untied himself and gone. Something wasn’t right. He could hear music drifting from the ambient entertainment module under the window. ‘Strangers in the Night’, it sounded like. Sinatra? This wasn’t on his playlist. He felt for his glasses: not there. He reached further for the remote that controlled the light and pressed it, but nothing happened. Something gripped him by the wrist.

  ‘Allow me,’ said a disembodied voice.

  The lights in the room glowed and brightened. Vaughan twisted his head round to glimpse a blurred face inches from his. Another hand brought his glasses on to his nose and Zhou’s face came into sharp focus. How could this be happening? His security system was state of the art. Then he saw another face – one he recognised instantly but hadn’t expected to see ever again.

  ‘Jesus Christ.’

  ‘Not quite, though we are both risen from the dead.’

  ‘Steig!’

  His voice was hoarse. He had been sleeping with his mouth open again.

  ‘Steig’s taking a nap,’ Kovic explained from the sofa.

  The improbably named Steig, a Thai boxer, was curled up in a foetal position by the bathroom door. Wren and Sparrow, the other two members of Vaughan’s security detail, were conscious, trussed together by Wu with thin wire round their necks. Very painful, even just to swallow, he had warned them, before stuffing their mouths with some of Vaughan’s socks. Vaughan tried to raise his head but Kovic pressed it down.

  ‘What have you done with the boy?’

  ‘How touching to see your chivalry hasn’t deserted you. He’s on her way to his next appointment. I gave him an extra fifty for the nasty marks your chains made. You really are a nasty little pervert, Victor.’

  Vaughan’s indignation suddenly rose to the surface.

  ‘You’ve got a bloody nerve, you know.’ His jowls shook when he spoke.

  Kovic smiled.

  ‘Yes, I know. So! Let’s pick up where we left off in your office, before we were inconveniently interrupted by – let’s see, a car chase, arson and murder.’

  Vaughan’s face was now a deep red.

  ‘Look here, I haven’t the foggiest idea—’

  Behind the bluster, Kovic could read his fear.

  ‘Your people forgot to look under the bedclothes. That was my girlfriend you murdered and torched.’

  Vaughan’s voice rose half an octave.

  ‘I can assure you I had nothing to do with it. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.’

  Kovic got up and sat on the edge of the bed, closer. Vaughan saw something shiny catch the light, something shiny and pointed. Zhou and Wu held him while Kovic laid the knife against Vaughan’s upper lip, the blade resting on the inner edge of his left nostril.

  ‘Who hired you?’

  Vaughan blinked several times but did not reply.

  ‘Perhaps you didn’t hear me.’ Kovic bent closer. ‘Who hired you, you upper-class paedo cunt?’

  ‘Look, I don’t know anything. I’m not – I’m not important, you know that.’

  ‘It’s a pretty good job they did, excellent reconstruction.’ He glanced at Zhou. ‘Silicon septum wrapped in skin from the thigh or upper arm; sorts out the ravages of early cocaine use. He was a bit of a wild boy in his youth, weren’t you, Victor?’

  Kovic pressed the blade a little; a millimetre more and the septum would come away from its moorings.

  There was a girlish scream from the bed, followed by the honeyed tones of Ol’ Blue Eyes.

  ‘Think we’ve exhausted the Sinatra, now we’ve all got to know each other. Take your pick, Wu.’

  Wu found a remote and skimmed through the selection before settling on a robust house beat.

  ‘Please! I beg you!’ Vaughan was hyperventilating now, in danger of passing out. Kovic moved back.

  ‘Please, there must be something – we could help each other!’

  The words tumbled out in an undignified babble, the urbane imperiousness of their previous meeting long gone.

  ‘I mean I didn’t really want the job; it’s not what I do, you know that. Though it wasn’t really a job – it was more a favour than anything. You know how it is here, you get into these situations, they run rings round us Westerners. Before you know what’s going on, you’ve agreed . . . they’re so tricky.’

  Kovic glanced at Zhou, his expression showing a flicker of amusement at the Englishman’s frantic explanation. He glanced at his watch.

  ‘We really need to get moving. Got to cut this short, I’m afraid.’

  Two things Kovic had learned about torture. If you’re going to use it, get on with it. Spin it out and they start making stuff up. Databases in Langley groaned with interminable, improvised confessions, admissions and denunciations, the product of long drawn out ‘enhanced interrogations’.

  He pressed the blade down again. Blood spurted from Vaughan’s nose. He tried to move his hands but Wu had tethered them with wire.

  ‘Shall we try a name?’

  Vaughan tried to swallow.

  ‘It, well, it’s not that easy to say. It’s all done through intermediaries; you know how it is. You never know who’s behind who. Chinese whispers, and all that.’

  Kovic looked wearily at Zhou, who rolled his eyes theatrically. Kovic turned away.

  ‘Guy’s a time waster. Unzip him from the nose down.’

  ‘No, no! Please!’ Vaughan’s eyes bulged and his whole body shook violently, his protests slurred by the blood running into his mouth.

  ‘Oh God, no. Please. If we . . . if . . . could your government guarantee my safe passage? In return for my cooperation?’

  You had to hand it to the guy. Even in his darkest hour, his chutzpah never failed him.

  ‘I think, let’s see – oh yeah, the murdered Marines might somewhat count against you.’

  ‘Look, all we did was prepare the artwork and arrange the protest. The rest – that was—’

  ‘I’m about to take apart your face. What name can you be so scared of coming up with?’

  His mouth was open, trembling.

  ‘Tsu Yuntao.’

  Kovic repeated the name, and looked at Zhou and then Wu. It meant nothing to them.

  He moved the knife from under Vaughan’s nose and placed the point just under his bulging left eye. It would have given him some grim satisfaction to continue, but he knew he’d be wasting it on the wrong man.

  ‘There, that wasn’t so hard.’

  Kovic lifted the knife away, wiped the blade on the pillow and slipped it into Vaughan’s pyjama pocket.

  ‘In case you want to slash your wrists after we’re gone. Where will I find Tsu?’

  ‘Please believe me when I say I don’t know. Where Tsu’s concerned the less one knows the better.’

  Kovic reached over and switched off his recorder.

  ‘When I find him, which I will, I’ll make sure he gets a copy of this.’

  Vaughan’s voice was practically soprano. ‘Please! I gave you what you came for. Have some mercy, for God’s sake.’

  ‘I’m all out of mercy. We need a location.’

  Kovic nodded to Zhou who pulled off the quilt. In the king-sized bed Vaughan looked diminished, deflated by fear and the loss of his prime characteristic, his hubris. He sat up in the patch of his own urine and tried to dab his nose with his sleeve.

  ‘Ca
n you at least take off the wire? Please?’

  China’s a big country. Where is your client?’

  Kovic led Vaughan towards the open window. He undid the wire and put a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Where?’ he whispered.

  ‘Look – there’s no point. You’ll never get to him. He’s up in the mountains somewhere.’

  ‘China has a lot of mountains. Which ones?’

  I don’t know! He operates remotely – never appears.’

  A wisp of breeze rippled the curtains.

  ‘We’ll see you out,’ said Kovic.

  Vaughan looked from one to the other.

  ‘What? What d’you mean?’

  Kovic nodded at the open window.

  ‘They say most people black out before they hit the ground.’

  25

  Huangpu, Shanghai

  Qi Linbau’s operations room was concealed behind his father’s stationery store. Access was via the kitchen and through a narrow door that looked as though it led to a latrine but opened on to a very steep and lopsided wooden stairway. At the top was what looked like a dead end – a slab of metal. Kovic mounted the stairs as far as they went and gave a half wave. Qi’s voice floated out of an unseen speaker.

  ‘You’re supposed to be dead.’

  ‘So I heard.’

  The metal door slid back and revealed a cross between a TV studio gallery and an electrician’s workshop. Qi was facing a bank of screens, some of which were filled with numbers, others that played soundless newsfeeds. He twirled round and grinned.

  ‘In trouble again.’

  ‘No more than you.’

  ‘Is this the day?’

  ‘What day?’

  ‘The one you turn me over.’

  Kovic laughed.

  ‘Oh no, we’re not done. How dead am I exactly?’

  Qi gestured at his screens.

  ‘MSS internal communiqué; the same message was conveyed via police to the US Consulate but not listing you as CIA, just US public servant. Someone covering your tracks?’

  Hannah had come good. At least no one would be on his tail – for now.

  ‘What do you need from me?’

  There was a wary look in Qi’s eye. Kovic guessed he was fretting that his CIA handler’s sudden change of status – from alive to dead – could mean the same for him, only for real. It wasn’t the Chinese authorities that were after Qi, it was the Americans.

  ‘How about you make us some coffee and I’ll tell you what I need.’

  Qi slid off his revolving stool and moved towards a brand new coffee maker and began spooning beans into it.

  To the intelligence community in the US Qi was only known as Armistead, the notorious international cyber terrorist who had harvested vast quantities of US Government data for Chinese Intelligence, yet couldn’t be traced. It wasn’t even confirmed that he was operating out of China. What particularly got to Washington was that he had also hacked into the White House’s electrical system, causing lights to go on and off at unscheduled times, creating not only chaos but widespread embarrassment. The magnitude of Washington’s indignation at this breach was out of all proportion to the crime. When Kovic narrowed Armistead’s location down to ‘somewhere in Shanghai’, Langley granted Kovic leave to have him ‘neutralised’ if and when he tracked him down.

  Qi had covered his tracks so well that finding him would have been impossible but for the carelessness of his MSS handler. Kovic traced the harvested material to a middle ranking MSS operative who had failed to appreciate the quality of his work and simply filed it on a database where another of Kovic’s assets inside the MSS found it, and therefore was able to identify who put it there. After that it was simply a matter of keeping the handler under surveillance until he hooked up with Qi.

  This could have been the coup that made Kovic’s career. But the more Kovic looked into Qi the more he realised that it would be far better to leave him in place, but turn him and put him to his own use. Kovic laid on a discreet ‘bust’ that wouldn’t come up on the MSS radar, but was heavy enough to convince Qi that he was toast if he didn’t cooperate. Langley should have appreciated this opportunity, but such was the ill feeling towards Armistead in Washington that Kovic decided to keep him under the radar and made out that he was still on the loose.

  ‘This is the deal; I cut you loose – for good after this one last job. But it’s a big one, likely to be dangerous, and may involve some travel.’

  Qi came towards him with a coffee. He was painfully thin, his chest concave, the tips of his collarbone poking up in his too-big Family Guy T-shirt. A wisp of beard hung from his chin like an unswept cobweb, and his upper lip had sprouted the beginnings of an adolescent moustache. His high cheekbones and heavy lidded eyes betrayed his Mongolian heritage.

  ‘The prison diet’s not done you any favours.’

  Luckily, a recent spell in jail had not blown his cover. Kovic took a sip of his coffee. It was unexpectedly good.

  ‘I thought you people hated the stuff.’

  ‘I’ve been shorting coffee futures; thought I should sample the product.’

  ‘Enjoying your freedom?’

  ‘I made some good contacts in jail. They put me with a bond fraudster from the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. Very interesting. While we were inside we bought and sold five million acres in Wyoming. I like to keep my hand in. Plus it kept the boredom at bay.’

  ‘Did you do well?’

  Qi shrugged.

  ‘Go on, how much did you lose?’

  ‘It wasn’t my money.’

  ‘Because you don’t have any.’

  Theoretically Qi’s online expertise should have made him a yuan trillionaire, except that it was the chase that interested him, rather than the money.

  ‘Honestly. Did you make a single buck?’

  ‘Not really, but it was a good challenge – we did it all from a guard’s mobile phone.’

  It was on a job for Kovic that Qi got busted. He hired him to help peel open the inner workings of an arms dealer’s online transactions with a terror group based in Bali. Qi had hacked deep into their business, posing as a customer and then making a payment with a worm embedded in the code that burrowed deep inside their offshore bank accounts and sucked out all their assets. But the arms dealer’s network spread into the procurement section of the Chinese Ministry of Defence, and in order to save face the MoD’s investigators needed a scapegoat. Qi was pressured to take the rap. To soften the blow, Kovic arranged for a large sum of the seized assets to be channelled into Qi’s family’s stationery business. The CIA didn’t know it but it was technically the proud owner of Wanjoo Paper and Card Supplies of Shanghai.

  The coffee grinder shattered the eerie soundproofed silence. For his work the structure had to be both bombproof and surveillance proof.

  ‘Okay, so where do I start?’

  ‘Yesterday I left one of your chewing gum receivers in an office in the Jin Mao Tower. It’ll have picked up all kinds of crap but I want anything that locates a guy named Tsu Yuntao.’

  He jotted down Parnham Vaughan’s address and then sketched out the trident-flaming fist tattoo.

  ‘What’s that?

  ‘I want to know what the significance of this tattoo is and how it connects with Tsu.’

  Qi shrugged, as if he’d just been asked to pick up some dry cleaning.

  ‘That it?’

  ‘I want to know everything about him, where he operates, who his associates are, what his assets are, where they are – and how I find him. And when you’ve located him, I’ll need all the security data on getting under his radar, how he opens his doors, who gets in and when.’

  ‘No problem. And then what you going to do?’

  ‘I’m going to go and meet him, and then probably I’ll kill him. Okay?’

  Qi stared at him.

  ‘You okay?’

  ‘Sure, why not?’

  Kovic dictated his new phone number then got to his feet.

>   ‘One more thing; I need this guy’s private cell number. You should find it somewhere in the Pentagon’s HR database.’

  He picked up a pad and wrote down: Commander Garrison, USS Valkyrie.

  26

  Huang Shuyi, Hannah to her friends but not her family, waved to her father, stepped out of her family home off Fudan Road and walked towards her Mercedes.

  ‘Be careful, it’s not good out there.’

  The old man had a sixth sense about trouble. He had been glued to the TV watching reports of the protests. ‘Just keep it down today.’

  She knew what he meant. Ever since she had come back from America he had worried about her manner, her new-found tendency to argue back, to forget her place.

  ‘Just for your own good,’ he told her. ‘There are times and places where cosmopolitan behaviour is inadvisable.’

  The only result of this advice was to turn her into a grumpy teenager all over again. ‘Cosmopolitan behaviour’ was his euphemism for assertiveness, for treating men as equals, doing all the things she’d gotten used to in America, things that came naturally to her now. She had changed. She wasn’t going back.

  But she could also tell by the way he looked at her that he knew something else was wrong. Part of her wished she had confided in him about her encounter last night but she didn’t dare. Her disobedience would have frightened him.

  What had she been thinking? How had this rough edged, beaten up, probably alcoholic, seemingly failed CIA agent with a gift for Mandarin persuaded her to disobey her masters? She must go and explain to the director, take responsibility for her actions before he found out. She had turned him, she would explain, he’s my asset now. Surely he would be impressed.