The Case Officer (8 page)

Mac had spent hours reading the
detailed, thick file on Huang. It had obviously been carefully and laboriously
compiled by the Agency over a considerable period of time. Of particular
interest was Huang’s six-year long posting to the NCNA office in Houston, Texas.
Huang had been identified as a high-value target early in his career, and had
been assessed by a number of intelligence officers during his time in the U.S.

Chapter Eighteen

H
uang Tsung-yao was born in
Beijing in 1962, the son of a wealthy (by Chinese standards) and privileged
professor of economics at Beijing University. His father was a respected
economic advisor to Deng Xiaoping, who was at the time a ranking member of the
National People’s Congress of the Chinese Communist Party.

The file noted that Deng and
Huang and his family had been victims of the revolution. In fact, when Huang
was only four years old, Mao had unleashed the chaos and violence of the Great
Cultural Revolution. Huang and his family lived out the years of their exile in
a squalid two-room bungalow in a small village north of Beijing.

They worked as sharecroppers on a
communal cabbage farm. His father died of overwork and despair in the last year
of their exile. His mother survived but her health was gravely impaired. Deng,
of course, had also survived and returned eventually to the pinnacle of power
in China after Mao’s death.

The Agency had been able to
identify Huang as a protégée of Deng and the file offered some slender
information about how this connection led to Huang’s highly successful career
as an intelligence officer. Even the meager details represented an excellent
job of penetrating the opacity of China’s leadership and its intelligence
service.

Like Mac, Huang had demonstrated
the ability to learn foreign languages while he was majoring in political
science at his father’s beloved Beijing University and was fluent in French and
English. And, like Mac’s father, Huang had a somewhat flattened nose with a
crease across its bridge. Mac was convinced that Huang had done some boxing in
his youth––or engaged in some other form of orchestrated violence that could
produce a nose that had been broken, probably more than once.

The file gave no indication
whatsoever that Huang was anything other than a staunch patriot, and assuredly
not a man who would be open to recruitment. To the contrary, Mac was sure that
Huang believed China’s full potential would be realized under the leadership of
people like Deng Xiaoping and his own father––and wanted to become a part of
that leadership.  Huang was now well along his way to achieving that goal.
Throwing all that away would be unthinkable…

But Headquarters had ordered it.
Huang would be pitched tonight.

Chapter Nineteen

T
he situation reminded Mac too
much of the story, recounted to him and a small group of other students by
Edwin Rothmann, the Deputy Director of Operations, the DDO.

Rothmann enjoyed legendary status
among the students at The Farm. He was a frequent visitor because he viewed the
new officers as the future of the Agency. He made it a point to take a personal
interest in their careers.

He was a huge man in all
respects. He stood six feet five and weighed over three hundred pounds.
Intellectually he was even larger. Friendly and outgoing, he possessed an
extraordinary memory, especially when it came to people, names, and anecdotes
about them.

He was one of those case officers
who bridged the gap between the heroic OSS veterans who formed the Agency, and
the new Agency of the twenty-first century. His career began during the Vietnam
era and took him through the jungles of Southeast Asia and sophisticated
European posts to executive assignments at Headquarters and finally to the
ultimate post of DDO, a position he attained while Mac was in training in 1992,
and would hold for many more years to come.

Rothmann had recounted the story
over drinks at the bar of the officers club during the graduation ceremony down
at The Farm. The incident had taken place during Rothmann’s first overseas tour
in Saigon at the height of the Vietnam conflict.

Chapter Twenty

H
e had recruited a young South
Vietnamese army captain who was a genuine war hero, with three decorations for valor.
His cryptonym was TURAP/1.

Rothmann had met TURAP for the
first time at the Third Field hospital in Saigon, where TURAP was recovering
from his eighth war injury, and there he recruited TURAP to undertake a
clandestine mission to North Vietnam. The mission required TURAP to appear to
desert from the South Vietnamese Army, the ARVN, hire a body smuggler to reach
Cambodia, defect to the North Vietnamese at their embassy in Phnom Penh, and
then to make his way into North Vietnam, where he was to organize a clandestine
resistance force of his countrymen and communicate information out of the
country to a letter drop in Hong Kong.

The first part of the operation
went according to plan. TURAP disappeared, was listed as a deserter, spent two
months in a Saigon safehouse learning clandestine communications skills, and
reached Cambodia.

After that the operation began to
unravel.

The Hong Kong-based clandestine
support mechanism set up to fund agents like TURAP broke down due to a personal
squabble between the chiefs of the Saigon and Hong Kong stations. TURAP, having
run out of money, was arrested for vagrancy in the Cambodian capital.

Rothmann presented an alternate
plan of funding to the Saigon station chief, a plan the COS endorsed. The Chief
of Station forwarded it for approval. But Headquarters turned the plan down
cold. They felt that TURAP’s appearing penniless only made his cover story more
believable.

Rothmann was livid but could do
nothing to change it.

Three weeks after Rothmann had
broadcast a coded message to TURAP telling him that more money would not be
forthcoming, he received a letter with a coded message from TURAP. The message
said that he was going to cache his commo equipment and try to infiltrate a
Viet Cong unit to get to North Vietnam and fulfill his mission.

The hapless agent had no way of
knowing that swarms of giant B-52 fortresses would soon be running saturation
bombing missions all along the Cambodian border on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The
CIA never heard from TURAP again, and Rothmann never got over the guilt he
felt.  “I lost my cherry on that one,” Rothmann had commented.

And MacMurphy was soon going to
experience the same emotions. Headquarters was about to ruin Huang just as they
had callously cast off TURAP. He knew this with a certainty that bordered on
premonition.

Chapter Twenty-One

M
acMurphy stood alone at the
balcony railing, deep in thoughts that were far from pleasant – TURAP, and what
Rothmann had inadvertently done to him. Huang, and what Mac was unwillingly
about to do to him. Collateral damage in the ongoing machinations that were an
inevitable part of a case officer’s life, whether in war or in peacetime.

Now the unnaturally bright moon
felt like a sharply focused spotlight, singling him out, making him the focal
point of an unseen audience’s attention. It was a decidedly uncomfortable
feeling. Mac, deep in thought, didn’t hear Huang come up behind him. He was
unaware of his friend till Huang poked him in the ribs with an index finger,
saying, “You’re under arrest!”

Mac only partially controlled his
reaction. His body tensed noticeably as the finger and the words found their
mark. “Damn, you scared me! How are you, Tsung-yao?”

“Not too bad for an old man,”
responded the tall Chinese. His near flawless idiomatic English had been
polished to near perfection during his first overseas tour in Houston where he
had immersed himself in the American way of life. “And you?”

“Can’t complain…nobody listens if
I do.” Mac smiled warmly at his friend.

“I cannot imagine you as a complainer,
Mac,” Huang laughed.

“I hear you’ve been pretty active
on our embassy tennis courts lately.”

Huang played tennis the way he
played badminton and ping-pong, sports he had excelled at during his college
years at Beijing University, with chips and spin and touch and intelligent
strategy. Mac, on the other hand, played from the baseline with power and heavy
topspin. Unfortunately for Mac, Huang’s finesse usually prevailed when they
played, frustrating MacMurphy to no end. He knew how to lose gracefully, but
that didn’t make him enjoy losing any the better. In sports as in his work, Mac
was a man who always preferred to win and did his damnedest to see that he did.

“I, as you would say, cleaned
your Ambassador’s clock yesterday.”

“That’s not much of an
accomplishment. He plays pitty-pat tennis like you do. You know, like an old
lady.”

“Whenever you’re ready for
another lesson, just name the date and time.”       “You’re on. I’ll see if I
can fit you in this weekend.”

“Fit me in? Coward! Are you starting
to backpedal already?”

Mac replied with an upraised chin
followed by a dismissive wave.

The two friends, both experienced
in the arcane art of meaningless cocktail party babble, chatted on for several
more minutes. Then the perceptive Huang noticed that Mac’s mind seemed to be
wandering.

“Something wrong, Mac?  You seem preoccupied.”

MacMurphy started to speak, then
hesitated. After a moment he said, “Yeah, I…I need to talk to you…”

“So talk! Tell me what is wrong.
Anything I can help with?”

MacMurphy knew there was no
delicate way to broach the subject. Huang was too perceptive for games. He
launched into the pitch in a straightforward manner, hoping Huang would
appreciate his honesty and not get too defensive or insulted.

“My people want to help you. They
figure you’re a good guy with a future in your service, and they think you can
help create an atmosphere of better understanding between our two governments.”

Huang looked puzzled. This was so
out of the blue, and so out of character for Mac, that at first he didn’t
understand the implicit message. “What are you saying, Mac? You seem ill at
ease, not at all like you.”

“I’m okay,” Mac hesitated. “It’s
just that…well…it’s important that the U.S. government has friends who can…you
know…advise its leaders about the real intentions of other countries....”

“You mean China?” said Huang
skeptically. “You need someone to tell you what China’s leaders are thinking
and planning?” He stared directly into Mac’s dark eyes.

“That’s it…” Mac tried to avoid
Huang’s unwavering gaze. “You know… When countries understand each other
better, there is better communication and less chance that misunderstandings
can occur between them.” MacMurphy was on auto-pilot; he had delivered the same
general spiel many times before. “Better understanding brings better relations,
and both of us want that, don’t we?”

“Sure we do Mac. Both our
countries are already moving in that direction now that the old guard like Mao
and Chou En-lai are gone…” The full realization began to dawn on him. Belatedly
comprehending Mac’s intent, Huang suddenly stiffened and backed away from
MacMurphy. The smile was gone. “Do you want me to tell you what China’s leaders
are planning? Do you want me to tell you what is said in our classified cable
traffic and pouches from Beijing?”

MacMurphy started to speak,
dropping his gaze, but Huang held up his hand to cut him off. “I haven’t
finished...”

“Look, let’s just drop it, okay?
It was a bad idea. Washington wanted me to ask....” Mac’s voice tapered off. He
wasn’t sure where to go with this next. Surely Huang deserved better than this.

“So you asked.”  Huang’s voice was
flat.

“Yes, I asked... Now let’s just
drop it and get a refill. Your glass is empty.” Mac tried to divert Huang’s
attention toward the bar.

“Sure, I need another drink. But
first let me ask you something.” The Chinese grasped Mac’s arm tightly. He
wasn’t letting Mac off the hook that easily.

“Ask me anything you like,” said
Mac contritely.

“Why me? I know how these things
work. What did I do or say that would give you the impression that I would be a
recruitment prospect? You guys are not like the Russians, who go around
pitching everyone in sight on the off chance someone will say yes. You guys
don’t play the percentages like they do. You plan, you focus. At least that’s
what they tell us back home.”

“You’re right, Tsung-yao, you’re
absolutely right. You know that sometimes Washington, and I imagine Beijing as
well, works in a vacuum. They don’t know what is really happening out here.
Let’s just drop it, okay?”

“No, wait… First tell me why you
thought I would agree to betray my country for...for...what? Money? What? What
could you possibly offer me to do that?”