Blowback

BUT THE HALF smile of a curious tourist remains as he continues his job.

It’s hard to explain but after years of doing overseas operations, you develop a sixth sense that you’re being watched, nothing you could learn in class or during field training while at the famed CIA Farm. The old-time lecturers would tell amusing tales of how their predecessors stationed in Moscow during the height of the Cold War had a hell of a time meeting up with agents. The KGB had everything wired in Moscow, from taxicab drivers to spa attendants, but one funny way of determining that the KGB was after you was taking a few seconds to look at the surrounding cars and their windshield wipers.

Cars without windshield wipers, innocent. Because every driver in that worker’s paradise Moscow knew that windshield wipers were kept in the car and were taken out only when it rained or snowed. Parking a car with the windshield wipers attached meant they would be stolen within seconds.

But cars with windshield wipers, they belonged to the KGB, as well as cars with the best tires. No Moscow thieves would dare go after those vehicles.

Smart tradecraft, back in the good old days when the intelligence world was black and white.

Here, in the Chinatown section of Johannesburg, it was all shades of cold grays and blood red.

Benjamin keeps on walking, not breaking stride, looking at the reflections in shop windows and car windshields, and he can sense it. There is a rhythm in the movement and swirls of crowds, but in running surveillance, sometimes you have to stop and see what you are following, and in doing so, risk standing out like barely hidden rocks in a smooth-flowing stream.

Up ahead are a series of food stalls with bright large umbrellas shading them from the June sun. A thought comes to him. Benjamin stops and smiles, chats to the shopkeepers in English, takes photos, and then buys a skewer of disgusting-looking fried food.

He takes it in hand, starts munching on it, and, approaching a municipal wastebasket, suddenly stops and spits out whatever spicy piece of meat was in his mouth, doing his best to upchuck what was left in his stomach from breakfast, and in doing so, sweeps the area around him with his sunglasses-hidden eyes.

There. Young Chinese man suddenly stopping while crossing the street.

There. Young Chinese woman, smartly dressed, carrying a briefcase and talking on her phone, taking just a few seconds to turn her head away from the phone to look at him.

Benjamin has been made.

He’s being surveilled by Chinese intelligence.

Depending on what orders his Ministry of State Security counterparts have received from Beijing, he might not be alive by the time noon arrives.

BENJAMIN DROPS THE skewer into the trash and resumes his walk, wiping at his face with a paper napkin that he drops onto the street.

There’s a brief temptation to cancel this highly dangerous op, but he won’t do that because of all that is at stake for Langley.

More than a decade ago, in a horrific series of still highly classified events, nearly every CIA agent and asset in China was identified, rolled up, and disappeared, most likely executed with a bullet to the back of the head. To Langley, it was like being comfortable at home, with a worldwide internet connection, and having it suddenly go dark, with calls to customer service going unanswered, the constant unplugging and plugging of the modem leading to a black screen.

No news, no knowledge, nothing.

Which is a dangerous way of living in today’s world, no hint of what your leading global rival is thinking, planning, and preparing to do.

Then there’s something else about this mission, something deeply personal hidden away for years, but that has surprised him by coming back so raw and open.

A cherished memory of a beautiful woman sitting next to him in a college class, a decade ago, and—

All right, he thinks. Put that away. He’s sure he’s been made but there’s always a chance that those two Chinese pedestrians are truly innocent, just reacting in shock at seeing a tourist vomit in the street.

Is he overreacting?

Time for evasion, Benjamin thinks, as he again resists the urge to check his watch.

Benjamin comes to a busy street, and then slips through a narrow space left by two dull-green taxicabs that have abruptly stopped. Here the crowds are just a bit more thick, and he increases his pace and ducks into the lobby of the Fong De restaurant, whose layout he memorized a month ago.

Just moving, seconds in play, he goes into the men’s room, luckily finding an empty stall.

Move, move, move.

The bright-yellow baseball cap is gone, and he takes a small squeeze tube and sprays the edges of his dark-brown hair, making it instantly gray. A floppy tan rain hat goes on his head. The white plastic earbuds are tossed. The tan jacket, turned inside out, is now blue. A wet wad of toilet paper is swept across his white sneakers, turning them black. The sunglasses join the baseball cap into an overflowing trash bin and are replaced by clear reading glasses. From his travel bag he takes out a black flashlight and after some pulling and twisting, it becomes a black cane.

After some folding and zippering, his shoulder bag is now a fanny pack, fastened around his waist. He flushes the toilet and starts limping out of the bathroom, through the crowded lobby, and now outside.

Time elapsed, about sixty seconds.

HARD TO EXPLAIN again, but Benjamin knows that his change-up back there has thrown off his surveillance, as he takes his time, limping along, the map of this part of Chinatown still vivid in his mind, and now he’s close.

Down a narrow alley, overflowing trash bins on both sides. A dog barking somewhere, a car with a bad muffler rattling nearby.

The alley comes out to a narrow road lined with low-slung brick and stone shops and apartment buildings, lengths of clothesline hung with clothes drying in the breeze.

At the corner he comes to a front door bracketed by a pair of fat, smiling tiger sculptures, their stone faces chipped, the bright paint nearly faded away. Breathing hard, Benjamin leans his cane against the doorway, bends down to tie his right shoe, his fingers slipping for a moment to the rear of the two-foot-tall tiger, pulling away a key fastened by a drop of putty.

Key concealed in his hand, he retrieves the cane and enters the ill-lit apartment building.

He trots up the three flights of stairs to the top floor. The place smells of old diapers and cooking oil. There are two doors at the top landing, 3-A and 3-B.

He unlocks the door to apartment 3-B, steps in, closes the door behind him.

The dark apartment seems small and cluttered, and a shape erupts from behind the couch, coming at him hard.

BENJAMIN’S TRAINING KICKS in and he lifts his arms up in surrender, saying, “Hey, hey, hey, what the hell is going on?,” desperately trying to exit his CIA persona and get back to Benjamin the innocent travel writer.

One armed Chinese man pushes Chin Lin against a cracked plaster wall, and the closer man says, “You! Don’t move!”

Benjamin puts a tremble in his legs and fear in his voice. “I mean it, what is this?”

The man who told him to stop puts a pistol to Benjamin’s forehead—a 9mm QSZ-92, he coolly observes—and roughly searches him, pulling his fanny pack off and tossing it to the floor. When he is done, he speaks rapidly in Chinese to a third man who has come in.

The third man is older, better dressed, and he gingerly closes the broken door into place. He turns to look at Benjamin, but ignores Chin Lin, who is standing quiet and still against the wall.

“Who are you?” he asks, in precise, barely accented English.

His training kicks in again, as hard and logical as it must be. In situations like this one, you have one responsibility: you.

Your asset, agent, defector…they are to be cut loose. Get yourself away, best you can.

But thinking about Chin Lin…he’s both angry and sad.

It’s clear now.

She’s betrayed him.

But why? For what purpose? To capture a regular field operative in a neutral nation? Doesn’t make sense.

He says, “Benjamin Litchfield. I’m from San Francisco, in California. I’m a travel writer…who the hell are you?”

The older man stares at Benjamin. “And this…woman?”

Benjamin tries an embarrassed laugh. “Jeez, I don’t know. I was here, walking around, checking out these hot Chinese babes…and I was getting…Well, you know. A hankering for one of those famous Chinese massages you hear about. I never dared to get one back home. Always was concerned I might see someone I know, either going in or coming out. Know what I mean?”

Another embarrassed laugh, though part of his soul is dying at seeing the look on Chin Lin’s face. Even in this moment of great betrayal, there is still an old love there that won’t be extinguished.

But he remembers his training at the Farm: get off the X, meaning, if you’re trapped or in an ambush, don’t freeze, don’t hesitate, make a move to get off the X.

Right now he’s in the middle of the X, and save for trying to dive through that window—only doable in TV shows and movies with their special effects—the only way out is through that door. Benjamin isn’t armed, because he’s not in downtown Lahore but Johannesburg—not particularly dangerous—and because these men are pros. A three-to-one gunfight tends to end quickly with victory for those with the best odds.

“I do know what you mean,” the older Chinese man says.

“Here, I’ll show you,” Benjamin says. “Just…hey, relax, okay?”

From his left pants pocket he removes a folded-over newspaper clipping from a local weekly alternative newspaper, passes it over the near gunman, who gives it a glance. Benjamin says, “See? Lotus Blossom Massage Parlour. I made a call and I was told to come here and—”

The older Chinese man drops the clipping to the floor. “Your name is Benjamin Lucas. You were adopted by the Lucas family of San Francisco when you were eleven months old. You went to Stanford and Boston University, and for the past six years, you have been an operative for the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States.”

Benjamin refuses to let his emotions come to the surface. He is no longer in control, no longer in charge. He is in survival mode.

That is all.

The older man turns and speaks rapidly in Chinese to Chin Lin, who is standing quietly and bravely against the far wall. He goes back to Benjamin and says, “In order to be polite among professionals, I will tell you what I’ve just told Chin Lin.”

With horror growing now, Benjamin says, “No, please, it was my fault. I—”

The man says, “I told her, Chin Lin, you are a traitor to your Party and your country, and you must pay the price.”

He quickly removes a pistol from a waist holster and fires off three shots into Chin Lin’s chest. The sounds of the gunfire are ear-splittingly loud in the small apartment. Chin Lin cries out, the front of her blouse torn and bloody, and she collapses and slides down the wall.

So many memories of their time together—their first lovemaking, the strolls along El Palo Alto Park and her gentle and laughing critiques of Chinese food at Stanford flash through him as he sees a woman he’s loved for years slowly die before his eyes.