Blowback, p.1
Blowback, page 1
Copyright © 2022 by James Patterson
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ISBN 9780316499651
E3-20220603-NF-DA-ORI
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
CHAPTER 55
CHAPTER 56
CHAPTER 57
CHAPTER 58
CHAPTER 59
CHAPTER 60
CHAPTER 61
CHAPTER 62
CHAPTER 63
CHAPTER 64
CHAPTER 65
CHAPTER 66
CHAPTER 67
CHAPTER 68
CHAPTER 69
CHAPTER 70
CHAPTER 71
CHAPTER 72
CHAPTER 73
CHAPTER 74
CHAPTER 75
CHAPTER 76
CHAPTER 77
CHAPTER 78
CHAPTER 79
CHAPTER 80
CHAPTER 81
CHAPTER 82
CHAPTER 83
CHAPTER 84
CHAPTER 85
CHAPTER 86
CHAPTER 87
CHAPTER 88
CHAPTER 89
CHAPTER 90
CHAPTER 91
CHAPTER 92
CHAPTER 93
CHAPTER 94
CHAPTER 95
CHAPTER 96
CHAPTER 97
CHAPTER 98
CHAPTER 99
CHAPTER 100
CHAPTER 101
CHAPTER 102
CHAPTER 103
CHAPTER 104
CHAPTER 105
CHAPTER 106
CHAPTER 107
CHAPTER 108
CHAPTER 109
CHAPTER 110
CHAPTER 111
CHAPTER 112
CHAPTER 113
CHAPTER 114
CHAPTER 115
CHAPTER 116
CHAPTER 117
CHAPTER 118
CHAPTER 119
CHAPTER 120
CHAPTER 121
CHAPTER 122
CHAPTER 123
CHAPTER 124
CHAPTER 125
CHAPTER 126
CHAPTER 127
CHAPTER 128
CHAPTER 129
CHAPTER 130
CHAPTER 131
CHAPTER 132
CHAPTER 133
CHAPTER 134
CHAPTER 135
CHAPTER 136
CHAPTER 137
CHAPTER 138
CHAPTER 139
CHAPTER 140
CHAPTER 141
CHAPTER 142
CHAPTER 143
CHAPTER 144
CHAPTER 145
CHAPTER 146
CHAPTER 147
CHAPTER 148
CHAPTER 149
CHAPTER 150
CHAPTER 151
CHAPTER 152
CHAPTER 153
Discover More
About the Authors
“If you want to test a man’s character,
give him power.”
–traditionally attributed to
President Abraham Lincoln
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CHAPTER 1
Johannesburg, South Africa
IT’S A BRISK autumn day in June in one of South Africa’s largest cities, and thirty-year-old Benjamin Lucas is enjoying an off day from his South African Diamond Tour. He stands just under six feet, with close-trimmed dark-brown hair, and has a muscular physique from hours in the gym he likes to keep hidden by wearing baggy clothes. On the all-inclusive, ten-day excursion package, he and the other eleven members of his group had walked Pretoria, visited Soweto, the famed site of the decades-long simmer, eruption, and fight against apartheid, and spent a day and night up north at the Madikwe Game Reserve, ooohing and aahing at the sight of elephants, hippopotamuses, and zebras from the comfort of their air-conditioned Land Rovers.
Alone now in Johannesburg, Benjamin keeps up his appearance as a travel writer on an off day, while knowing deep down that if this day ends in failure, the best outcome would be an arrest and expulsion after some torturous days in the custody of South Africa’s State Security Agency, and the worst outcome would be a slit throat in some back alley.
Yet Benjamin keeps an open and happy look on his face as he saunters into the popular section of Johannesburg known as Cyrildene, the city’s Chinatown. At the entrance to the neighborhood on Friedland Avenue, he stops and takes a photo of an impressive arch ornately styled to resemble a pagoda.
There are close to a half million Chinese living in South Africa, most of them in and around Johannesburg. A few blocks in, he feels like he’s in his hometown of San Francisco. The Chinatown residents, the tourists, the outdoor stalls, the blinking neon signs in Chinese characters marking shops and bookstores, restaurants, and tearooms, the scents of all the cooking bringing him back to his childhood, before he went to Stanford, before he got his master’s degree in Asian Studies at Boston University, and before he joined the Central Intelligence Agency.
Benjamin makes it a point not to check the time because he doesn’t want any watchers out there to think he’s heading for a meeting, which happens to be the truth. But his legend as a freelance writer is airtight, with real articles written under his cover name searchable on the internet, and because everything he’s carrying in his shoulder bag marks him as what he pretends to be: a travel writer.
His wallet contains his identification in his cover name of Benjamin Litchfield: California driver’s license, a San Francisco Public Library card, credit cards from MasterCard, Visa, and American Express, as well as loyalty cards for Walgreens and Chevron, and other bits and pieces of what’s known as wallet litter.
He’s wearing white sneakers, tan jacket, plain khaki pants, and a bright-yellow baseball cap from South Africa’s football team, nicknamed “Bafana Bafana.”
If examined, his Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark III digital camera would reveal lots of photos of his tourist activities. There are only a few pieces of technical equipment in his possession, including a tracer in the camera’s electronics, so the CIA station at the Johannesburg consulate knows his location.
And then there are his Apple earbuds. If they were taken from his ears without his approval, they would continue to play tunes from his iPhone, contained in his travel bag.
But now, securely in place, they are playing a double role: thanks to overhead, highly classified Agency HUMMINGBIRD drones, the bud on the left will send out a high-pitched tone if it detects surveillance radio frequencies used by officers of the State Security Service, and the one on the right would send out a low-pitched tone if it detects surveillance radio frequencies used by officers of his real oppo nent today, China’s Ministry of State Security.
Benjamin casually checks a clock in the window of a store selling medicinal herbs and powders.
It’s 10:45 a.m., and in fifteen minutes, he’s to meet an officer from the Ministry of State Security—their equivalent of the CIA—who wants to defect to the United States, and both earbuds are silent, meaning everything seems to be going well. A countersurveillance team from the Agency ghosted his route earlier, and if they had spotted anything amiss, he would have been instantly contacted through the same enhanced earbuds.
So far, the earbuds have been quiet.
But it’s not going well.
He can’t spot them, but he feels he’s under surveillance.
Being undercover overseas is always one delicate balancing act, constantly evaluating the people and scenery around you, juggling the external legend of who you are and what you’ve done, while keeping the training and discipline of being a clandestine operative inside.
Studious Dr. Jekyll and murderous Mr. Hyde, their sharpest instincts combined and enhanced with state-of-the-art technology.
The exterior Benjamin is still happily wandering—apparently aimlessly—through these Chinese markets, while the interior Benjamin becomes more assured that he’s been spotted.
He feels like his balancing act is one fatal step away from collapsing this vital op, potentially the most important he’s ever been on, into a bloody failure.
CHAPTER 2
BUT THE HALF smile of a curious tourist remains as he continues his job.
It’s hard to explain but after years of doing overseas operations, you develop a sixth sense that you’re being watched, nothing you could learn in class or during field training while at the famed CIA Farm. The old-time lecturers would tell amusing tales of how their predecessors stationed in Moscow during the height of the Cold War had a hell of a time meeting up with agents. The KGB had everything wired in Moscow, from taxicab drivers to spa attendants, but one funny way of determining that the KGB was after you was taking a few seconds to look at the surrounding cars and their windshield wipers.
Cars without windshield wipers, innocent. Because every driver in that worker’s paradise Moscow knew that windshield wipers were kept in the car and were taken out only when it rained or snowed. Parking a car with the windshield wipers attached meant they would be stolen within seconds.
But cars with windshield wipers, they belonged to the KGB, as well as cars with the best tires. No Moscow thieves would dare go after those vehicles.
Smart tradecraft, back in the good old days when the intelligence world was black and white.
Here, in the Chinatown section of Johannesburg, it was all shades of cold grays and blood red.
Benjamin keeps on walking, not breaking stride, looking at the reflections in shop windows and car windshields, and he can sense it. There is a rhythm in the movement and swirls of crowds, but in running surveillance, sometimes you have to stop and see what you are following, and in doing so, risk standing out like barely hidden rocks in a smooth-flowing stream.
Up ahead are a series of food stalls with bright large umbrellas shading them from the June sun. A thought comes to him. Benjamin stops and smiles, chats to the shopkeepers in English, takes photos, and then buys a skewer of disgusting-looking fried food.
He takes it in hand, starts munching on it, and, approaching a municipal wastebasket, suddenly stops and spits out whatever spicy piece of meat was in his mouth, doing his best to upchuck what was left in his stomach from breakfast, and in doing so, sweeps the area around him with his sunglasses-hidden eyes.
There. Young Chinese man suddenly stopping while crossing the street.
There. Young Chinese woman, smartly dressed, carrying a briefcase and talking on her phone, taking just a few seconds to turn her head away from the phone to look at him.
Benjamin has been made.
He’s being surveilled by Chinese intelligence.
Depending on what orders his Ministry of State Security counterparts have received from Beijing, he might not be alive by the time noon arrives.
CHAPTER 3
BENJAMIN DROPS THE skewer into the trash and resumes his walk, wiping at his face with a paper napkin that he drops onto the street.
There’s a brief temptation to cancel this highly dangerous op, but he won’t do that because of all that is at stake for Langley.
More than a decade ago, in a horrific series of still highly classified events, nearly every CIA agent and asset in China was identified, rolled up, and disappeared, most likely executed with a bullet to the back of the head. To Langley, it was like being comfortable at home, with a worldwide internet connection, and having it suddenly go dark, with calls to customer service going unanswered, the constant unplugging and plugging of the modem leading to a black screen.
No news, no knowledge, nothing.
Which is a dangerous way of living in today’s world, no hint of what your leading global rival is thinking, planning, and preparing to do.
Then there’s something else about this mission, something deeply personal hidden away for years, but that has surprised him by coming back so raw and open.
A cherished memory of a beautiful woman sitting next to him in a college class, a decade ago, and—
All right, he thinks. Put that away. He’s sure he’s been made but there’s always a chance that those two Chinese pedestrians are truly innocent, just reacting in shock at seeing a tourist vomit in the street.
Is he overreacting?
Time for evasion, Benjamin thinks, as he again resists the urge to check his watch.
Benjamin comes to a busy street, and then slips through a narrow space left by two dull-green taxicabs that have abruptly stopped. Here the crowds are just a bit more thick, and he increases his pace and ducks into the lobby of the Fong De restaurant, whose layout he memorized a month ago.
Just moving, seconds in play, he goes into the men’s room, luckily finding an empty stall.
Move, move, move.
The bright-yellow baseball cap is gone, and he takes a small squeeze tube and sprays the edges of his dark-brown hair, making it instantly gray. A floppy tan rain hat goes on his head. The white plastic earbuds are tossed. The tan jacket, turned inside out, is now blue. A wet wad of toilet paper is swept across his white sneakers, turning them black. The sunglasses join the baseball cap into an overflowing trash bin and are replaced by clear reading glasses. From his travel bag he takes out a black flashlight and after some pulling and twisting, it becomes a black cane.
After some folding and zippering, his shoulder bag is now a fanny pack, fastened around his waist. He flushes the toilet and starts limping out of the bathroom, through the crowded lobby, and now outside.
Time elapsed, about sixty seconds.
CHAPTER 4
HARD TO EXPLAIN again, but Benjamin knows that his change-up back there has thrown off his surveillance, as he takes his time, limping along, the map of this part of Chinatown still vivid in his mind, and now he’s close.
Down a narrow alley, overflowing trash bins on both sides. A dog barking somewhere, a car with a bad muffler rattling nearby.
The alley comes out to a narrow road lined with low-slung brick and stone shops and apartment buildings, lengths of clothesline hung with clothes drying in the breeze.
At the corner he comes to a front door bracketed by a pair of fat, smiling tiger sculptures, their stone faces chipped, the bright paint nearly faded away. Breathing hard, Benjamin leans his cane against the doorway, bends down to tie his right shoe, his fingers slipping for a moment to the rear of the two-foot-tall tiger, pulling away a key fastened by a drop of putty.
Key concealed in his hand, he retrieves the cane and enters the ill-lit apartment building.
He trots up the three flights of stairs to the top floor. The place smells of old diapers and cooking oil. There are two doors at the top landing, 3-A and 3-B.
He unlocks the door to apartment 3-B, steps in, closes the door behind him.
The dark apartment seems small and cluttered, and a shape erupts from behind the couch, coming at him hard.
CHAPTER 5
HE TAKES THE cane, thrusts it between the person’s legs, causing a trip and tumble, and then he’s on top, twisting arms behind, breathing hard. He says, “Hell of a day, don’t you think.”
“You go to hell, right now,” comes the woman’s voice.
“Dante won’t approve,” he replies, and he gets up, the recognition phrase he used, and the reply, and his reply to the reply, all checking out.
