Hostile Contact. Gordon Kent

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      He had called Mike Dukas from the west coast and invited him for dinner, something he broke to Rose only as they were nearing their rented house. “I’ve got to talk to him about the case,” Alan said.

      “You’ve got orders to Miramar.”

      “I let him down in Jakarta. I want to make it up to him.”

      “Alan, the Navy’s given you a new job—you’re not an NCIS agent!”

      “Mike’s my friend.”

      “Mike should have his ass kicked.”

      He kissed her cheek. She steered into their weedy driveway and turned the car off. “I wish you’d told me that you’d invited him,” she said.

      “You’re right; I should have. I didn’t think. I was stupid.” They were in the house by then. He kissed her again, and she smiled and stood back from him. “Well—if working for Mike is this good for you—”

      He embraced her. “I’ll get a shower.” He grinned. “And I know I’m still in the Navy.” As he headed up the stairs, he hugged the orders against his chest with his good hand.

      Twenty minutes later, Dukas’s battered car pulled up behind theirs in the too-short driveway, and there he was, worried and guilty.

      “Hey, babe.” He kissed her as he came through the door. Rose held herself stiffly, and he felt it and got the message. “Where’s the great man?” He dumped his attaché in one of the ugly chairs. “Rose, what’s wrong?”

      “If you don’t know, there’s no point in telling you!”

      Dukas blew out his breath and headed upstairs to see Mikey, his godson. Coming down again, he tested the atmosphere—Rose slamming things down in the kitchen, a smell of onions and garlic frying. Dukas positioned himself in front of Alan, who was sitting on the sofa and wincing with each slam of a pan lid in the kitchen. “Al, it was all my fault. I feel like shit about it.”

      “No.” Alan looked up at him. Something thumped in the kitchen, maybe a piece of meat being thrown down on the cutting board. “Let’s get on with the case.”

      Dukas flinched as a cupboard door slammed. “Rosie, can I help?” he shouted.

      Rose appeared, no smile, a chef’s knife in her hands. “You’re unbelievable, Mike. You almost got my husband killed!”

      “What can I say?” he muttered.

      “Try ‘I’m sorry!’”

      “Okay—Rosie, I’m sorry.”

      Rose folded her arms. The chef’s knife stood straight up by her right shoulder like some kind of emblem in a statue of one of the more severe saints. “Saying you’re sorry isn’t enough!”

      Dukas tried to grin, and Rose, uncharmed, walked out. “I should have never let you go,” Dukas sighed to Alan. “I’ve already had my ass chewed by two experts at ONI. CIA, Embassy Jakarta, and State all want a piece of me. Rose has to stand in line.”

      “And I should have told her I’d asked you to dinner. We’ll get over it; Rose’ll get over it. What’s going on with Sleeping Dog?” Alan stood up, restless, wanting to move, but the room was too small. “The way I see it, that comm plan wasn’t dead; it was active as hell, so what about everything else in the file? Let’s go through it piece by piece and figure out—”

      Dukas tried to raise a hand to Alan’s shoulder, winced, and settled for putting a hand on his arm. “I’ve been through the file—several times. I can tell you this: we thought the Jakarta comm plan was the only action item there. We were wrong. Maybe we were supposed to think the comm plan was the action item, but there’s also action in Seattle.” They sat down, their knees almost touching, their voices low because the small woman in the kitchen was still slamming things around. Dukas leaned forward, his face only inches from Alan’s. “After I talked to you in Jakarta, I began to check Sleeping Dog out. I got a retired FBI guy who’d been the case officer in ninety-two. He wouldn’t say much, but he’d at least admit that he remembered it—it was a real case, meaning that the whole thing isn’t a crock of shit. Some of it, at least, is real. Sally Baranowski insists that the Jakarta comm plan wasn’t in Sleeping Dog, but—news from town, kid, here comes a big one—” He bent even closer to Alan’s ear. “The Jakarta comm plan was part of Chinese Checkers—George Shreed’s personal map for meeting with his control.”

      Alan stared at him. He was processing it—Jakarta, Shreed, Chinese Checkers. “The Chinese?” he said.

      “I think, yeah. Who else has Chinese Checkers?”

      “Well—the Agency—”

      “Yeah, but the Agency isn’t going to lay a Shreed comm plan on us and then use it to try to kill you!”

      “Well,” Alan said grudgingly, “I’m not sure anybody tried to kill me.” He was frowning, looking away from Dukas.

      Dukas leaned in close again. “It’s the Chinese, stupid. Get it?”

      

      Dar es Salaam.

      By midnight, Colonel Lao knew enough about what had happened in Jakarta to make him start using obscenities in his conversation—always a sign of frustration in him. Inwardly, he cursed: he cursed the distance between Dar and Jakarta; he cursed the surveillance people there and the fact that he couldn’t debrief them himself. Had they been so incompetent that they had got themselves shot at? Had they frightened off Chen and Shreed? Had there been some other failure?

      “Unlikely,” he said aloud. He believed in likelihoods, probabilities: when you must choose, choose the probable.

      Start with the certain, he thought.

      Nothing was certain.

      Start with the probable, then.

      What was probable was that the American in the Orchid House had been sent by the CIA. If Shreed was dead, then it was probable that the CIA had his files, including the comm plan; it was probable that they had tested the plan by planting the mark. Therefore, the man who had appeared at the meeting place with a magazine under his arm had been a CIA agent—unless Shreed was not in fact dead. If Shreed was not dead, then what was probable was that the American in the Orchid House had been sent by him.

      What was utterly uncertain was why and how the meeting in the Orchid House had degenerated into a shootout. Such things were remarkably rare—so rare that most operations officers hardly ever even carried guns, much less used them.

      James Bond, Lao thought with a sneer.

      What went wrong?

      A fuller report had landed on his computer. The American (if he was) had had no gun and had not fired. Others in the Orchid House, apparently locals, had been armed and had fired. And his people had returned the fire. All this suggested not two sides, but three, with the American seemingly at a different level of involvement—almost, in a sense, a bystander.

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