Dance with the Dragon by David Hagberg Page B

could get to the U.S.,” McGarvey said sharply, not sure why he was baiting her, except that he still wasn’t sure if she was genuine, or an MOIS double.
    She ignored the gibe. “Sometimes we would talk, mostly about little things. You know, about baseball, about Ghirardelli Square, about South Beach, places I wanted to visit.”
    “But not that night,” McGarvey prompted.
    She shook her head. “No,” she said. She looked up as if she were coming out of a daze. “Not that night. He said that he wanted me to help him with something. ‘Anything you want, Louis,’ I told him. And I meant it, and he believed me, because he admitted that he was an American spy.”
    “God in heaven,” Perry blurted.
    “He wanted me to find out about some people. If I did that for him, he would make sure that I would get a real visa to come to America, and that I would never have to worry about money again.”
    “The bastard lost his mind,” Perry muttered.
    “No,” Shahrzad cried. “He said this was very important. The most important job of his career. More important than I or anyone else could possibly imagine. And we were going to be the heroes.”
    “You were to become a spy for him,” McGarvey said.
    “That’s right.”
    “The Chinese?”
    She went a little pale and her hand shook as she reached for her glass. “That’s right,” she said. “But mostly just one man. An important man. General Liu.”

ELEVEN
    LONGBOAT KEY
    They took a short break. Toni was summoned to escort Shahrzad to the bathroom, and when they were out of earshot McGarvey was the first to speak.
    “If she’s here of her own free will, why the babysitter?” So many things weren’t adding up in his mind that he didn’t know where to begin.
    “One of my people was shot to death, after all,” Perry said earnestly. “I’m not taking any chances.”
    “Beyond the ones that you’ve already taken,” McGarvey said.
    Perry’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know what you mean. What chances?”
    McGarvey had to wonder if anyone told the truth. “Updegraf had to be a busy man, running a one-man show with just the help of the girl.”
    “I didn’t know anything about it. We’ve already established that much.” Perry waved his hand in a sweeping gesture toward where Shahrzad had been sitting. “All of this is news to me.”
    “I understand,” McGarvey said. “But your field officer was a busy man. Gone all hours of the day and night. You must have noticed something.”
    “He was going after his code clerk.”
    “A lot of work for a code clerk, wouldn’t you say?” McGarvey asked rhetorically. “But you had to be taking a big chance that with all that activity, something else might have been going on. Something that as station chief you would be responsible for.”
    A sudden shrewdness came into Perry’s eyes, a sudden understanding of what McGarvey was getting at and how best to respond. “Every chief of station worth his salt has his own philosophy. My method is to allow my senior officers the latitude to develop their own sources without hindrance. If they strike gold, or even if they catch a glimmer, they come to me and we put our heads together. Come up with a winning strategy. Heavens, man, I’m a spy, not a paper pusher. Surely you of all men can understand.”
    “But Updegraf wasn’t playing by the rules. I’d say that a senior Chinese intelligence officer was something more than just a glimmer.”
    “What was I supposed to do?” Perry cried, throwing his hands up.
    “Something, I suppose.” McGarvey shrugged. “It was your man who got himself killed. Is there anything else about Updegraf that I should know about? Anything that’s not in his jacket or his OPR?” McGarvey asked. An OPR was an Officer Performance Report that was written every year by an agent’s immediate supervisor.
    Perry shook his head. “No.”
    Shahrzad came back and took her seat, and Toni withdrew. “Could we maybe stop and have some lunch? I’m