featuring Chinese cities and a painting above the worn couch in the living room depicting two American Indians, a father and son, hunting deer. There were no posters of Chairman Mao in the den, no Communist Manifesto on the bedroom nightstand. The house was remarkably unremarkable. Which was exactly what the home of a deep-cover operative working in a foreign nation should be. But there were interesting touches that spoke to Ho the man.
The kitchen, while drab and out of date, had gourmet cookbooks and expensive small appliances, like a high-end KitchenAid mixer and a top-of-the-line Cuisinart food processor. His spices were from Dean & DeLuca and he appeared very fond of expensive Bordeaux wines. In the living room, he had an impressive collection of French jazz and Brazilian bossa nova records. Ho appeared to be a man of taste.
He also appeared to be a family man who loved his son very much. There were many pictures of him throughout the house, several taken right at the ranch. Some of the photos were from vacations he had taken with the young man over the years. There were photos of them at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, the Space Needle in Seattle, the Willis Tower in Chicago, the Empire State Building in New York City, and the Alamo in San Antonio. Ho could be seen with his arm around his son or the two high-fiving and laughing. It was a completely different face from the one the man had shown outside to the two hikers who had stumbled upon his private property.
It was also the only leverage Harvath would need. He radioed for the Agency’s China expert, Stephanie Esposito, to be sent into the house.
After explaining what he wanted Esposito to do, he set up the video camera and radioed Sloane and Chase to bring Ho inside.
They sat him on the couch and removed his hood as well as the duct tape from across his mouth.
“What’s going on here?” Ho demanded. “I’m an American citizen. Who are you? What do you think you’re doing?”
Harvath introduced himself by one of his aliases. “Mr. Ho, my name is Tim Rudd. I represent the United States government. I am going to save us both a lot of time. As a spy, you were taught to deny everything and launch counteraccusations. But I expect your immediate and full cooperation. You will answer all of my questions honestly and you will answer them the first time I ask. If you do not follow these rules to the letter, let me show you what’s going to happen.”
Harvath snapped his fingers and Esposito stepped out of the kitchen with her cell phone. She dialed a number in China and put the call on speaker. When a man answered, Esposito spoke to him in fluent Mandarin.
“You have the boy in your sights?” she asked.
“Yes,” the man replied.
“Describe him.”
Using her camera phone, Esposito had taken pictures of the photographs Ho had around the house of his son. She had then emailed them to a colleague in Beijing.
The man not only gave a detailed description of what the boy looked like, but invented what he was wearing and described that as well. He then asked for permission to “take the shot.”
Esposito looked at Harvath and translated.
Harvath shook his head.
Esposito relayed the message, told the man she would call back, and disconnected the call.
“Mr. Ho,” said Harvath. “I’m only going to make this offer once, so please listen very carefully. We have everything. We have the storage units. We have the devices. We have the weather balloons. We have the engineering students recruited by Khuram Hanjour from the UAE. We have the Somalis, too. Of course, we need to discount what happened in Nashville, but you know all of that. We have all the locations you used to monitor the cell members’ Facebook accounts. We even have the Xerox machine in Boise you used to photocopy your fake IDs. So here’s my offer. Are you listening?”
Ho nodded.
“Good. We want you to come to work for us.”
“And if I say no to you, will you kill my son?”
“Yes, but that’s only the beginning.”
“Then you’ll kill me?”
Harvath shook his head.
“Of course not,” Ho replied. “This is America. I’ll get a trial first and then you’ll execute me.”
“I won’t lie to you, Mr. Ho. There are those in my government who want to see you executed. In fact, there are those who would pin a medal on me if I shot you right