Then, the words that changed it all, that changed everything. And they came from Bhang’s mouth, as if from a ventriloquist.
“We’ll pay you fifty million dollars to spy for China,” Bhang had said to Dillman. “Agree, promise to set me free, and it will be wired within the hour.”
He’d guessed, correctly as it turned out, that it needed to be an awe-inspiring number. Anything less, and the Israeli wouldn’t have done it. The ministry had paid Dillman the $50 million and at least another $50 million over the years. In return, Dillman had been a virtual treasure trove of information, not only about Israel, but America too.
The turning of the high-ranking Israeli had propelled Bhang upward within the ministry. He bathed in the reflected glory of the mole’s revelations.
* * *
“Dillman,” said Bhang, looking at the corpse, at rest in the trunk.
“Are you sure, sir?”
Bhang did not answer or show any emotion, as he stared at the dead Israeli.
* * *
Fao Bhang did not like idle talk. In fact, on the day when Bhang was elevated to his leadership post of the Ministry of State Security, leapfrogging over more than a dozen more senior officers who were, on paper, more experienced than him, Premier Zicheng had remarked, “Fao, you seem more like a librarian than a spy.”
Bhang, in typical fashion, had not responded, except to nod a humble thank-you. Premier Zicheng then presented him the Order of the Lotus—the ministry’s highest honor. Bhang was appointed, at the age of forty-three, to arguably the third most powerful position in China.
Only Bhang knew that Zicheng’s remark really could not have been further from the truth. It demonstrated a critical lack of understanding about him, another underestimation of his abilities, his strengths, and his cunning. In order to claim the ministry’s top office, Bhang had engineered a bold, highly ruthless plot. Over the course of a year, he had systematically destroyed the one man standing in his way, Xiangou, his boss, mentor, and caretaker. Machiavelli himself would have cringed in fear.
It had all begun with a phone call from Bhang’s half brother. Bo Minh was an electrical engineer by training, who’d started at the ministry at the same time as Bhang. But whereas Bhang had political ambitions, Minh was more interested in the obtuse recesses of abstract technology. Minh became a mid-level functionary within the ministry’s electronic espionage and surveillance directorate, designing devices used to listen in on enemies and allies alike, helping to arm agents with increasingly tinier, more-potent tools, which could be deployed in different environments across the globe and used to eavesdrop on any sort of conversation.
Minh had called Bhang past midnight, awakening him in a hotel room in Cairo, where he’d been sent to kill someone.
“I have discovered something,” Minh had whispered conspiratorially.
“Why are you whispering?”
“I can’t talk,” whispered Minh urgently. “Listen to me. There is to be a change at the top echelon of the ministry.”
Bhang had rubbed his eyes, then looked at his notebook, lying next to the bed. The word CAIRO was written out in bold letters. It was a habit he’d formed early on, so that in the jumbled chaos of hotels and cities he traveled to, he could wake up and know immediately where he was.
“What time is it?”
“What time is it? Did you not hear me?”
“How do you know?”
“I was testing a listening device. I had placed it in a bathroom on the seventh floor. The minister himself spoke. He must have gone into the bathroom near the cabinet room. He was alone, on a phone call. He has cancer. He is to resign within the year.”
“Did he say who he would pick as his successor?”
“Xiangou.”
A wave of electricity went down Bhang’s spine. Xiangou was Bhang’s boss, the head of the ministry’s clandestine paramilitary services bureau. He ran the kill teams. In its own way, this was good news. It meant the minister would be selecting a killer over a functionary as the next head of the ministry.
Unfortunately, Xiangou was only forty-eight years old. He would have a long career as minister, which meant Bhang’s chances of running the ministry would effectively be over.
A stark realization occurred to him then. This whole thing was, in fact, his death knell. For while Bhang was Xiangou’s protégé and the most effective assassin within the clandestine bureau’s ranks, Xiangou feared him. There wasn’t a more vicious man alive than Xiangou. As soon as he found out he was to become China’s next minister of State Security, Bhang would be dead within the hour.
“When will it happen?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t tell anyone. Do you hear me?”
“Yes, Fao.”
And so it had begun.
* * *
Bhang knew he would have to design the operation outside of the architecture of the ministry. The ministry was everywhere, and any action he might contemplate involving Xiangou would be detected.
Bhang realized as he sat in that Cairo hotel room that next morning, he would need to do this one off the grid.
He picked up the phone.
“Dillman.”
“Mikal, it is me, Fao.”
“Good morning, Fao. Who will the ministry be putting a bullet in today?”
“I need to see you. It’s urgent.”
“I’ll be in Brussels tomorrow. Meet me at noon at the Metropole. The room will be under Seidenberg.”
In an opulent suite at the Metropole, Bhang laid out his dilemma to Dillman. Not only did Bhang need Dillman’s ideas on how to remove Xiangou, he needed Dillman to actually do it. He needed Mossad to terminate Xiangou. Bhang couldn’t be involved. He’d asked many people to do many things over the years, but always with the threat of violence or the promise of money behind the request. It was the first time Bhang had ever asked anyone for a favor.
“I’ll do it for you,” Dillman had said, placing his hand on Bhang’s knee and patting it. “Anything for you, my good friend.”
* * *
Dillman fabricated a cover story to explain why Israel needed to assassinate Xiangou. He doctored a photograph of Xiangou dining with a high-level Hamas operative in Budapest. For his madhouse compatriots, that was more than enough paper to approve the kill.
Mossad began by infiltrating Xiangou’s personal life and looking for vulnerabilities. He was married but kept a mistress in Macau. He liked to gamble. It was decided that they would strike Xiangou during one of his monthly visits to the sprawling city, China’s version of Las Vegas.
Macau, Dillman knew, would be a challenge. Chinese intelligence was everywhere, particularly inside the big casinos, layered throughout the staffs and monitoring cameras, looking for suspicious or even just interesting Westerners to spy on. The casino where Xiangou would be gambling was the most logical place to hit him. But there were thirty-two casinos in Macau, and trying to guess which one Xiangou would throw away his money at was like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
Then there was the building where his mistress lived, a modern glass skyscraper in the central business district. Her apartment was on the penthouse floor, fifty-six stories up. The building was highly secure, with armed guards at the entrance. More important, Xiangou always brought a two- or three-man detail with him. If the casinos were going to be difficult, the apartment building would be next to impossible.
Dillman’s overarching concern was the possibility Xiangou’s death might be traced back to Mossad. It had to look like an accident.
From public construction records, they studied the apartment building at its various stages. A British structural engineering firm had been hired as a subcontractor, and part of their purview had been the scope and plan for the elevators. A phone call to London was made.
Three weeks later, on a sun-splashed Thursday afternoon, Xiangou landed at Macau International Airport. He went directly to the StarWorld Casino, where he spent several hours playing craps and drinking vodka, with three ministry agents hovering over his shoulders. At dinnertime, he went to his mistress’s apartment. At just before 9:00 P.M., Xiangou and his mistress stepped into the elevator. As the doors shut, Xiangou winked at the young girl, reaching for her hand. Then, as a pair of cables attached to the roof of the cabin failed, the elevator dropped fifty-six stories. Screams from Xiangou’s mistress could be heard at various points by people waiting for an elevator, as the couple rocketed down the air shaft to their violent deaths.