“Good. Stick to the truth and it’ll be okay.”
The kid opened the door, took one look back, and left, walking toward the bridge spanning the river by the Shifen Falls. Paul watched him go and prayed he’d make it back. Not just because of the case he was building, but because he honestly felt a little twinge of guilt for sending him in. There were no other operatives in the park. If something went wrong, the kid was on his own.
Feng Main was, in fact, a university student. A stupidly naïve Taiwanese native who had been approached by the People’s Republic of China to foment insurrection inside Taiwan. The tradecraft had been sloppy and the payouts easy to find, so much so that it scared Paul. If the masters in Beijing from the Guoanbu—the Ministry of State Security—were this sloppy with Feng, it meant they just didn’t care what he did. Which meant he was an afterthought, and Paul was missing the real penetration.
The PRC’s MSS intelligence service was the largest in the world by far. It had tentacles that reached throughout the globe, and a history of successfully hiding what it did because it blended traditional trained operatives with people from the Chinese diaspora. It was impossible to tell whether someone was a real Chinese agent or just some immigrant with ties to the homeland whom they’d co-opted. And the MSS was very good at its mission.
Russia eliminating double agents with nuclear poison in London? Amateur stuff. North Korea killing the half brother of the leader with a nerve agent in Malaysia? Ridiculously overt. The MSS would never even have been mentioned. They were a controlled beast, without emotion, like a wall of water directed at a rock. They had no fear, no pity, and no sense of failure. Eventually, Paul knew, the rock would lose. His job was to turn off the water.
After the unrest in Hong Kong and the explicit indications that the MSS had been operating inside the city since before the riots, Paul had been directed to ferret out Taiwan’s own hidden threat. In short order, he’d found Feng. And it hadn’t been hard. Which made him question what he was missing. Clearly, the MSS hadn’t put a lot of stock in the success of Feng. But they had recruited him to interface with the Bamboo Triad, and that would be enough to help.
The Bamboo Triad was a criminal gang not unlike the Cosa Nostra, an organized crime ring solely concerned with profit, running everything from prostitution to drugs in Taiwan—with one exception: They also worked for the MSS to destabilize Taiwan.
Paul watched the kid disappear on the path and felt a pang of guilt. Maybe the MSS had been sloppy for a reason. Maybe they were trying to ferret out his own security service’s reach. If that was the case, the kid was dead, but that alone would provide some help for Paul. He wouldn’t be able to penetrate whatever plan the Triad had in play, but at least Feng’s death would prove that the MSS had penetrated his own organization somehow.
It would be a small consolation to Feng, but sometimes bad things had to happen to protect the nation.
The kid reached the pedestrian bridge crossing the river and took one look back. Paul saw it, but ignored the fear spilling out. Feng disappeared, and Paul settled in to wait.
He would be waiting a long time.
Chapter 4
Feng hesitantly walked across the footbridge, getting run over by kids and grandparents all marching to the falls. A light drizzle began to fall, coating him in a dusting of water. The other tourists began breaking out umbrellas, forcing him to dodge the spines. He slipped past one, hit another pedestrian with his back, apologized, and then was yelled at for stepping into a selfie picture attempt on the bridge. The encounters frazzled him.
He continued walking in a daze, wondering how his life had gone so wrong. He wasn’t the only university student who had been approached by the PRC for help. They were brazen in their attempts, just as they were with the state-run television stations and every other aspect of Taiwanese life. The PRC was everywhere, and he still didn’t understand how he’d been picked up when everyone else was doing it, and none of it was harmful as far as he could tell. Just small things, really.
He’d gotten money to spread stories accusing the incumbent government of corruption, or talking about how China had only helped Taiwan. Nothing but social media posts, and he was paid good money to do them. Then the PRC had asked him to do something more, and he’d agreed. More good money. It wasn’t like it affected anything in Taiwan. He still heard his parents and grandparents bitching about Beijing, so it wasn’t as if he were altering the balance of power, even with the presidential elections happening in January, three short months away.
And then he’d been put in touch with a man called the Snow Leopard. A leader inside the infamous Bamboo Triad. A completely criminal organization that was continually tracked by the police for drugs, prostitution, extortion, you name it. Only now they’d formed a political party, giving them protection for their political actions under the constitution of Taiwan while also giving them cover as being “persecuted” for their “political” beliefs. Called the Chinese Unification Promotion Party, it took all its direction from Beijing, and was a small but growing presence inside Taiwan, with a stated goal of allowing the PRC to absorb Taiwan.
Feng had put no thought into the Triad’s control of CUPP because, honestly, politics bored him. Unlike his parents, who had had to practice air-raid drills as children, or his grandparents, who were convinced that every day was their last, he’d grown up in a democracy. It was unfathomable to him that a giant country like China would do anything against his little island. Which is why he took the money. It was all harmless.
Until it wasn’t.
When Paul had first knocked on his door, a file of evidence on his misdeeds in hand, Feng’s heart had dropped to his stomach. He was no master spy, and he’d immediately admitted everything he’d done, professing it was harmless. All he’d wanted was a little money, and nothing he’d done was that bad. It wasn’t like he was selling state secrets. Just some social media stuff, which was allowed in Taiwan. What had he done that was criminal?
And then he’d been shown the last exchange, where he’d actually transported money and dropped it off in a trash can. He’d protested, saying he had no idea where the money had come from or why he was delivering it. It was just another avenue for cash, and he’d done it. Paul had shown him how the money had ended up financing propaganda at a state-run television station, and Feng had become queasy, finally asking what Paul wanted him to do. He couldn’t bring shame on his family, and he most certainly couldn’t be outed as a Chinese spy. And now he was going to meet a member of the most brutal Triad on the island, ostensibly to get the man to commit to treason so Paul could rip the Triad apart.
It was a far cry from posting a couple of social media posts.
He reached the other side of the bridge, walked through the crowds surrounding various food stands. The rain began to pick up, but the children were still tromping about, riding metal horses and bench swings, running about through a mix of locals and foreign tourists.
He kept going, reaching the stairway to the lower viewing level, his breath starting to come in small gasps. He descended for what seemed like an hour, one switchback of stairs after another, all of them built into the rock face leading to the viewing platform. He reached the bottom and saw the giant granite wall to his front, the water spilling out like a miniature Niagara Falls. He glanced around and found that the metal stairs he had been using were grafted onto the old, ancient ones carved out of the stone, back when the miners came here for relaxation. They went right, behind the rocks to the river, but the new path led to the left, toward the viewing area.