a prop. And the idea was only made worse by the fact that he wouldn’t be allowed to be there when everything happened. But considering there was no other option, he’d given in.
Special Agent Roe had forwarded all of the information the Bureau had compiled on Ren Ho to Harvath in-flight. They had his naturalization information, his tax returns, and a limited amount about his business dealings. According to the FBI, he was a manufacturer’s rep who paired American companies with factories in China. He had been married at one point, but divorced and the wife had moved back to China. They had a college-age son, who held dual citizenship and appeared to be living with the mother back in Shenzhen.
Roe had included a State Department travel history in the file and told Harvath that the NSA was working to gather any intelligence it could from Ho’s phone, email, and credit card histories. The CIA had come up completely empty. There was nothing in their files on anyone named Ren Ho.
Shortly before landing, Roe called the plane back and gave Harvath a full rundown on what had happened in Boston. An FBI agent had been following one of the princelings, a girl named Daiyu Jinping. She had eaten dinner alone, which was unusual for her, but what was even stranger was that she had been talking and texting nonstop on an Apple iPhone, but after going to the restroom at the restaurant, the behavior not only stopped, but she had returned with a completely different phone.
Because of the heightened alert, the agent following her reported the suspicious behavior to his superior. The superior then reached out to the other surveillance teams. All of them had been convinced that their subjects were in for the night. A check on the princelings’ cell phone locations had confirmed their assumption. Finally, someone at the FBI called for physical confirmation and one by one, the surveillance teams began to report that the subjects were missing. The phones were plugged in and turned on, but no one was home. Panic quickly spread.
Extra agents were immediately sent to back up the man following Daiyu Jinping. When she entered Boston’s Hyatt Regency Hotel, some agents gave chase, while others went to the security office to monitor the CCTV cameras. Rolling back the footage, they wanted to see if anyone had gotten on the elevator with Daiyu or passed anything to her in the lobby.
They didn’t see anyone, but they did see a man who entered one of the stairwells shortly after the FBI appeared in the lobby. Rolling back the footage a little further, they pinpointed when the man had entered the hotel and were able to piece together everything he had done. He had avoided all of the cameras—all except one near the cash register in the bar. Within minutes of transmitting the image back to the Bureau, the agents had a confirmation. It was Bao Deng.
But no sooner had the man’s identity been confirmed than the fire alarm had been activated. It was an obvious ruse, but it complicated things tremendously for the FBI. They had called for additional backup, including Boston PD, but none of it had arrived in time.
One agent remained in the security office to monitor the CCTV feeds, while the others tried to locate Deng and the princeling. With all of the guests trying to evacuate the hotel, it was like fighting against a wave of salmon swimming upstream.
Then, Bao Deng had been spotted on CCTV with another figure in a service corridor on the lower level. The agent in the security office rightly pegged figure number two as Daiyu Jinping and fed out a description of what she was wearing and where the pair was headed.
As they came up the garage ramp and exited the hotel, they were accosted by the first FBI agent able to get to them. There was a gunfight. The agent was killed and Deng and the princeling disappeared.
It was bad news on many levels. Not only had a federal agent lost his life, but all of the princelings had now successfully slipped their surveillance. Harvath was willing to bet Bao Deng hadn’t been sent to Boston just to pick up Daiyu Jinping. He very likely had something to do with the other four Chinese students’ falling off the grid.
Leaving the cell phones plugged in and turned on meant that they didn’t want anyone to notice they were gone. That was the most troubling part about