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“What are you doing here?” asked Irish when I opened the door to Saint’s apartment.
“Why are you still here?” I replied.
“HQ for this op.”
He was baiting me, and I was in no mood nor did I have time to engage. I walked down the hallway to retrieve my bag and saw Decker Ashford set up in Saint’s office.
“Are they off?” I asked, confirming my instructions that Rile, Grinder, and my brother return to England until further notice. Decker and I would follow in two days’ time. If we needed to deploy, we would be twelve thousand kilometers closer from there than here.
“Affirmative.”
When I returned, Irish was waiting for me. “You headed back down the Cape?”
It wasn’t any of his bloody business, and I resented the hell out of him for asking. I was about through the door when I heard him speak again.
“Where’s Emme?”
I pulled the door closed behind me.
—:—
“Thanks for seeing us, Ambassador. This is Lennox Edgemon, aka Lynx, MI6.”
“What’s this ambassador shit? How the hell are you, Matrix?” I watched as the U.S. Ambassador to China stood, embraced Emerson’s father, and patted him on the back.
“I’m Terry Stevens. My friends call me Buster.” I shook the ambassador’s outstretched hand. He walked over to a cabinet, opened the doors, and slid out what looked like a well-outfitted bar. He removed the stopper from one of the decanters and poured three glasses.
“Thank you, sir,” I said when he handed one to me and one to Emerson’s father.
The ambassador raised his glass. “Here’s to nukin’ those fuckers, or to be more politically correct—may the bold, the true, the gallant prevail.” The man downed the contents in one shot and slammed the glass on his desk.
“Have a seat, and let’s get down to business. When Matrix here called me last night about this, I had my people reach out to some of our assets.”
“I appreciate that, sir.”
“I’m afraid the news isn’t good. Our sources have confirmed that two British citizens matching the description of your missing agent and his asset were arrested in Hong Kong. They weren’t alone. Two of our people were with them. I haven’t been able to confirm if they’re still there or if they’ve been transported to Beijing.”
My mind raced as I processed the ambassador’s words. Other than knowing Saint and Dr. Benjamin had been arrested, we were no closer to knowing where they actually were. And now, instead of two, we’d be going in after four.
“You’ve heard of Operation Fox Hunt?” the ambassador asked me with scrunched eyes.
“Yes, sir.”
He went on. “Their aim is to pursue Chinese citizens who have fled here afterallegedlycommitting crimes. There’s no extradition treaty between our country or yours with China, and neither of us has been in the mood to cooperate with Beijing.”
I knew that the Chinese government had deployed undercover agents not just to the U.K. and the States, but to other countries within the EU as well as Canada. One of their tactics was to harass family members living outside of China, in order to coerce targets to return.
“You know what they’re gonna do to ’em if we extradite ’em, don’t ya?”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
The longer Ambassador Stevens spoke, the angrier I got with Dr. Benjamin. Assuming he was the one who set this in motion, he’d played right into Beijing’s hands, and the price the U.S. and the U.K. would have to pay was a steep one. So steep, I doubted they’d do it.
“I expect that I’ll be hearing from Beijing sometime in the next forty-eight hours as will my counterpart in the U.K. They’ll tell us there’s an investigation pending on whatever charge they’ve trumped up, and then they’ll tell us what will make their investigation go away.”
I already knew. There were three highly sought-after dissidents who had been given asylum in the U.K., and four in the U.S., all of whom China had been after for several years on espionage charges.
“What can I do, Buster?” Rick asked.
