"What's this all about, Ivan?"

"Just get the woman to the location."

Lipton eyed Kovalenko for a moment while he drove. "You don't know what's going on, do you?"

Kovalenko saw that Lipton could see right through him. He said, "I do not. I have my orders. You have yours."

Lipton smiled. "I get it, Ivan. I see it now. Center has something on you, same as me. You aren't his man. You are his agent."

Kovalenko spoke in a tired voice: "We are all cogs in a system. A system we do not fully understand. But we understand our own mission, and that is what I need you to focus on."

Lipton pulled over to the side of the road. "Tell Center I want more money."

"Why don't you tell him yourself?"

"You're Russian. He is obviously Russian. Even though you are his errand boy, just like me, he's more likely to listen to you."

Kovalenko smiled wearily. "You know how it is. If an intelligence organization pays its agent a lot of money, then the agent won't need money anymore, and he will be less incentivized to help."

Lipton shook his head. "You and I both know what my incentive is to work for Center. It's not money. It's blackmail. But I am damn well worth more money."

Kovalenko knew this was not true. He had read the man's file. Yes, blackmail had been the short-term impetus to get him to begin spying. He had images on his computer that Center had found that could get him thrown in prison.

But he now was very much in it for the money.

The quantity and quality of his whores had gone through the roof in the year that he had been working for the mysterious employer who gave him simple instructions every week or two.

His wife and kids had not seen a dime of the money he'd made; he'd opened a private account, and almost every penny of it had gone to Carmen and Barbie and Britney and the other girls who worked the hotels in Crystal City and Rosslyn.

Kovalenko had no respect for the man, but he did not need to respect an agent to run him.

He opened the door and got out. "Have your agent arrive at that location at nine a.m. I will talk to Center about your compensation in the meantime."

- The Chinese government's State Security Law compels China's citizens to comply and cooperate with all government security employees, mandating that hotels and other businesses give unrestricted access to all operations.

This meant, in short, that most business-class hotels in China were bugged with audiovisual equipment that was piped to Ministry of State Security employees who monitored it for intelligence value.

There were many commercial secrets the Chinese could learn just by flipping a switch and posting a translator with a notepad at a radio receiver.

Chavez, Caruso, and Driscoll knew their Beijing hotel would be bugged, and they agreed on their game plan while still in the States. During their time in their suites they would stay in character, their cover-for-status would remain in place.

As soon as they checked in after their interminably long commercial flight from the U.S., Ding turned the shower on its hottest setting and then stepped out of the bathroom, closing the door behind him. He flipped on the TV and then began undressing, just a tired businessman, worn-out from a brutal flight, looking to grab a quick shower before crawling into bed. He walked around while he took off his shirt, stood in front of the TV, doing his best to act naturally, although in truth he was scanning carefully for cameras around the room. He checked the television set itself, and then the wall opposite his bed. He laid his shirt and undershirt on the desk next to his carry-on bag, and while doing this he peered carefully at the lampshade.

Ding was familiar with at least two dozen of the most common miniature cameras and audio receivers; he knew what to look for, but so far he had found nothing.

He noticed the overhead lights were recessed in the ceiling. To him this looked like a great place to secrete a camera. He stood directly under the lights, but he did not climb onto a bed or a chair to check for them.

They were here, he was sure enough. If he went out of his way to look for them, the MSS goons watching him would notice, and this would ensure even more attention on his room.

When he was undressed he stepped back into the bathroom. By now it was completely fogged, and it took a minute for the fog to clear enough for him to get a good look around. The first place he checked was the large bathroom mirror, and he found what he was looking for immediately: a foot-square portion where the glass had not fogged up.

That, Ding knew, was because there was a recess on the other side of the glass where a camera was positioned. There was probably a Wi-Fi radio there, too, which sent the camera's signal and the signal for the audio equipment hidden somewhere in the suite back to wherever it was the MSS guys were.

Ding smiled inwardly. Standing there naked, he wanted to wave at the camera. He suspected ninety-nine percent of the businessmen and -women who stayed in this hotel and dozens more like it in Beijing had absolutely no idea they were on candid camera every time they took a shower.

In two other suites on the same floor, Dominic Caruso and Sam Driscoll were doing their own hidden countersurveillance of their rooms. All three Americans came to the same easy conclusion: they would all have to be careful to do nothing, to say nothing, and to act in no way different from the average hotel guest, lest they compromise their operation.

All three men had been in the field in hostile environments many times before. The Chinese were hard-core in their spying tactics, but all three men knew they could play their roles and do nothing to alert the bored men and women monitoring them that they were up to something here in Beijing.

Ding had just settled in to bed to catch a few hours' sleep when his satellite phone rang. It was encrypted, so he wasn't worried about anyone listening in electronically, although there were no doubt microphones in the room.

He turned on the TV, walked out to the balcony, and then closed the glass door behind him.

"Bueno?"

"Uh . . . Ding?"

"Adam?" Chavez said, his voice barely more than a whisper.

"Yeah."

"I'm glad you called. People are wondering what happened to you."

"Yeah. Just went off-grid for a while."

"I get it."

Yao said, "I've found where Center is operating from."

"By yourself?"

"Yep."

"Where?"

"It's in Guangzhou, about two hours north of Hong Kong. I don't have an address, but I've narrowed it down. It's near the TRB, the Technical Recon Bureau. He's in mainland China, Ding. He was working for the Chicoms the entire time."

Chavez looked around nervously. It occurred to him that Beijing was a really bad place to take this phone call.

"Yes. We put that together ourselves. You have to find a way to let your employer know."

"Look, Ding. I'm done sending cables back to Langley. They've got a leak, and that leak is getting back to the PRC. I tell Langley and it's a good bet Center just moves again."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to work without a net."

Chavez said, "I like your style, Adam, but that's not going to be good for your career."

"Getting killed isn't good for my career, either."

"Can't argue with that."

"I could use some help."

Chavez thought it over. There was no way he could spare either Driscoll or Caruso right now, and no way they could just take off without having the Chinese minders become very suspicious.

"I'm in the middle of something I can't leave right now, but I can get Ryan on the way to help you." Chavez knew sending Jack into mainland China was questionable, at best. But he knew Tong was at the center of the entire conflict with China, and Guangzhou was close to the Hong Kong border, anyway, unlike Beijing.

At least, Ding told himself, he wasn't sending Jack to Beijing.

"Ryan?" Yao said, no attempt to hide his disappointment.

"What's wrong with Jack?"

"I've got too much to do to have to watch out for the Junior Pres."

"Jack's an asset, Yao. Take my word for it."

"I don't know."

"Take it or leave it."

Yao sighed. "I'll take him. At least he knows people who can make things happen. Have him go to HK, and I can meet him at the airport and get him over the border."

"Okay. Call me back in ninety minutes and I'll put the two of you together."

SIXTY-THREE.

Jack Ryan, Jr., drove across the Francis Scott Key Bridge, his eyes fixed on a taxi in the traffic one hundred yards ahead.

It was just after seven in the morning, and Jack had tailed the cab since it left Melanie's Alexandria carriage-house apartment twenty minutes earlier.

Today was the third day in a row he had shown up at her place before dawn, parking his car several blocks over from Princess Street and then finding a secluded spot in a tiny garden across the street. Each day he watched her windows with his binoculars as soon as there was enough light in the sky to do so, and he stayed there until she left for work, walking up the street to catch the Metro.

Then, for the past two days anyhow, he'd checked her mailbox and her trash, but he'd not found anything of value. He'd left within minutes of her departure for work, and he'd spent the rest of the day trying to figure out how he was going to confront her about Center.

Today his plan had been to break into her flat once she left; he knew he could pick her door lock with ease, but his plan had been derailed when a cab pulled up to her door at six-forty and she'd rushed out, already dressed for work.

Jack hurried back to his car, and then caught up to the taxi on the Jefferson Davis Memorial Highway. He'd recognized early on that she wasn't going to her job in McLean, but instead was heading into D.C.

Now, as he followed her off the bridge and into Georgetown, he thought about the murder of all the CIA officers two weeks earlier, and it sickened him to think she might have somehow been involved.

"Unwittingly, Jack," he said, telling himself aloud she would not be working either against him or for the Chinese without being seriously duped.

He wanted to believe it, anyway.

His phone chirped in the console. He touched the hands-free button on the steering wheel.

"Ryan."

"Jack, it's Ding."

"Hey. Are you in Beijing?"

"Yes. Sorry, no time to talk. I just called the Gulfstream. You need to be at BWI in an hour."

Shit. He was almost an hour away from Baltimore as it was. He'd have to break off his tail of Melanie's car and haul ass. But then something else occurred to him. "I'm on suspension, remember?"

"Granger rescinded it."

"Okay. Roger that. I'm in D.C., en route to BWI. Where am I heading?"

"Hong Kong."

Jack knew it was unlikely Ding's satellite call was being monitored, and Gavin and his team had spent hours searching his car for trackers or listening devices, but he also knew there was no point in saying anything more that could give away operational intel, so he asked no more questions.

"Okay," he said, and he hung up. He was thick in the streets of Georgetown now, and the best way north to Baltimore was up ahead, so he continued following Melanie's cab until he could turn off.

He could not see the taxi at the moment because a dry-cleaning van had pulled out of a drive on P Street directly behind it.

As Jack drove he thought about just calling Melanie and talking to her. If he was going to Hong Kong he would not get any answers about what was going on for days, at least, and that worried him greatly. But he also worried that if he did talk to her, she might pick up on the fact he was leaving town, and this could be dangerous to his mission.

Because Center would know.

As they crossed over the Rock Creek Parkway, Jack resigned himself to the fact that he would get no answers, but then he saw the taxi turn onto the on-ramp for the parkway. Jack realized she would be heading north, too, which was odd, because he could not imagine why she had the cab run her into Georgetown just to leave D.C.

He accelerated as he crossed the overpass to make the turn on the ramp, but ahead of him he saw the dry-cleaning van pull up alongside Melanie's cab, as if it was trying to pass her on the steeply graded one-lane looping on-ramp.

"Idiot," he said as he watched from some seventy-five yards back.

Just then, as the van pulled directly next to the taxi, its side door opened. It was such an odd sight that Ryan did not know what was happening at first, and he was slow to recognize danger.

Until he saw the barrel of a submachine gun appear from the dark interior of the van.

Before his eyes, the gun fired a long automatic burst, flame and smoke blew from the barrel, and the front passenger-side window of the cab exploded in a cloud of glass dust.

Jack screamed inside his BMW as Melanie's cab veered hard to the left, drove off the ramp on the inside of the turn, and then flipped and rolled down the hill, coming to rest on its roof.

The dry-cleaning van stopped lower on the ramp, and two armed men leapt out of the back.

Jack was armed with his Glock 23, but he was too far back to stop his car here and engage the men at the bottom of the ramp. Instead, acting more on impulse than anything else, he drove the BMW 335i off the ramp at speed, launched through the air, hit the grassy hill, and then skidded sideways as he lost control, careening down to the bottom of the hill toward the upside-down taxi.