nobody had ever expected anything to come of it. CIA had never gotten any kind of agent into the PRC government. At least not above the rank of captain in the People’s Liberation Army. The problems were the usual ones. First, they had to recruit an ethnic Chinese, and CIA hadn’t had much success at that; next, the officer in question had to have perfect language skills, and the ability to disappear into the culture. For a variety of reasons, none of that had ever happened. Then Mary Pat had suggested trying Nomuri. His corporation did a lot of business in China, after all, and the kid did have good instincts. And so, Ed Foley had signed off on it, not really expecting much to result. But again his wife’s field instincts had proven superior to his. It was widely believed that Mary Pat Foley was the best field officer the Agency had had in twenty years, and it looked as if she was determined to prove that. “How exposed is Chet?”
His wife had to nod her concern at that one. “He’s hanging out there, but he knows how to be careful, and his communications gear is the best we have. Unless they brute-force him, you know, just pick him up because they don’t like his haircut, he ought to be pretty safe. Anyway—” She handed over the communication from Beijing.
The DCI read it three times before handing it back. “Well, if he wants to get laid—it’s not good fieldcraft, honey. Not good to get that involved with your agent—”
“I know that, Ed, but you play the cards you’re dealt, remember? And if we get her a computer like the one Chet’s using, her security won’t be all that bad either, will it?”
“Unless they have somebody pick it apart,” Ed Foley thought aloud.
“Oh, Jesus, Ed, our best people would have a cast-iron motherfucker of a time figuring it all out. I ran that project myself, remember? It’s safe!”
“Easy, honey.” The DCI held up his hand. When Mary used that sort of language, she was really into the matter at hand. “Yeah, I know, it’s secure, but I’m the worrier and you’re the cowgirl, remember?”
“Okay, honey-bunny.” The usual sweet smile that went with seduction and getting her way.
“You’ve already told him to proceed?”
“He’s my officer, Eddie.”
A resigned nod. It wasn’t fair that he had to work with his wife here. He rarely won any arguments at the office, either. “Okay, baby. It’s your operation, run with it, but—”
“But what?”
“But we change GENGHIS to something else. If this one pans out, then we go to a monthly name cycle. This one has some serious implications, and we’ve got to go max-security on it.”
She had to agree with that. As case officers, the two of them had run an agent known in CIA legend as CARDINAL, Colonel Mikhail Semyonovich Filitov, who’d worked inside the Kremlin for more than thirty years, feeding gold-plated information on every aspect of the Soviet military, plus some hugely valuable political intelligence. For bureaucratic reasons lost in the mists of time, CARDINAL had not been handled as a regular agent-in-place, and that had saved him from Aldrich Ames and his treacherous betrayal of a dozen Soviet citizens who’d worked for America. For Ames it had worked out to roughly $100,000 per life given away. Both of the Foleys regretted the fact that Ames was allowed to live, but they weren’t in the law-enforcement business.
“Okay, Eddie, monthly change-cycle. You’re always so careful, honey. You call or me?”
“We’ll wait until she gives us something useful before going to all the trouble, but let’s change GENGHIS to something else. It’s too obviously a reference to China.”
“Okay.” An impish smile. “How about SORGE for the moment?” she suggested. The name was that of Richard Sorge, one of the greatest spies who’d ever lived, a German national who’d worked for the Soviets, and just possibly the man who’d kept Hitler from winning his Eastern Front war with Stalin. The Soviet dictator, knowing this, hadn’t lifted a hand to save him from execution. “Gratitude,” Iosif Vissarionovich had once said, “is a disease of dogs.”
The DCI nodded. His wife had a lively sense of humor, especially as applied to business matters. “When do you suppose we’ll know if she’ll play ball with us?”
“About as soon as Chet gets his rocks off, I suppose.”
“Mary, did you ever ... ?”
“In the field? Ed, that’s a guy thing, not a girl thing,” she told her husband with a sparkling