October 8th 2038
Clayton eschewed using drones as transportation around the city, both here and at home. Many people liked how quickly it allowed you to get from place to place, but Clayton preferred the control he had in a car. While it was true that all cars had been self-driving for years, they at least allowed you the option to override the autopilot and take control for yourself. An option many remaining drivers, including Clayton, preferred. While working though, flying in a drone presented too much danger. The cameras left a trail leading back to him, or whoever used them.
So Clayton sat in his car that he had rented. He was parked near a park in Shanghai, waiting to catch a glimpse of his target. Though he would have preferred it, Clayton was not working alone. Teams smaller than 4 had been forbidden since the incident that had simply come to be labelled the mystery 16 years earlier.
Thankfully Clayton had assembled a group of 5 other operatives who he had trained himself, and were nearly as good at blending in as he was. He trusted this team, and so if he wasn't allowed to work alone, this team represented the next best thing. Clayton looked up and again he saw some drones flying overhead.
Clayton and his assembled group always made sure to make themselves appear as though they were tourists. They made sure to visit all of the tourist centers whenever they were in cities like Shanghai to do work. They even made sure to make a few purchases, as most tourists did. Clayton had discarded numerous objects that he had no interest in because of this. He was thankful the money didn't come out of his own personal funds.
The drones made him nervous, he knew full well they had cameras. Heck the NSA had been using them to spy on people for years now, they were a useful tool and easily hacked. Yet people had become so used to them flying around they didn't seem to even think about them anymore. Of course in China the people expected their government to be spying on them, whereas it was opposite in the U.S.
As he waited for his mark, Clayton looked around at the people walking and talking. What always amazed him on his visits to China was just how normal their lives were. In China you could walk around just as freely as you could in the U.S. Indeed they enjoyed many of the same freedoms, provided you were apolitical, or at the very least seemed apolitical to the government. Occasionally there were reminders that China was ruled with an iron fist, for instance when a public health threat arose and people were literally locked into their living spaces. But on balance these people mostly lived freely.
The Chinese government was incredibly effective at maintaining this mirage of freedom. Perhaps they had come to realize that this was the only way to maintain control of such a large populace. Another thing China was incredibly good at (much more so than the United States) was playing the long game. Clayton had visited Hong Kong over the years and seen the slow but steady transformation. Sure when he first had started visiting there had been on again off again protests, but those had dissipated by now. The pro-democracy faction had mostly left Hong Kong at this point and dispersed among democratic countries in Europe and North America. Even the dialect was starting to disappear, it was getting more difficult to find people who spoke Cantonese in Hong Kong. More and more people had adopted Mandarin. Frankly it was impressive how well China had done in assimilating Hong Kong.
Now Clayton had caught a glimpse of a man who had impressed him, Zhang Jie. Zhang had eluded Clayton for years, being the most difficult to capture of the 10 men who had been there the fateful night of the mystery. Clayton's group had killed the two men they had determined had pulled the trigger that night. He had killed three more who had drawn guns on his team and fired. So he knew it was likely that Zhang was dangerous. He had two snipers in position, just in case. Clayton got out of his car and slowly followed behind Zhang.
Zhang reached a public picnic table and sat down, leading Clayton to pick up his pace.
"Please sit down Clayton." Zhang said in surprisingly accent free English. Zhang sounded as though he had grown up in the Northeastern U.S., and well for that matter perhaps he had.
"Hello Zhang, I am truly impressed you know my name, and so you must know I am here to take you in."
"Yes, I know. I am tired of running, of trying to keep one step ahead. Please let me enjoy my last moments of freedom."
Zhang reached into his bag as Clayton sat down.
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"Please do not be alarmed, it is only a chess board. Will you play a round with my while we chat?" Zhang asked.
"OK, but you know I need to know what happened that night." Clayton replied.
"In good time, all in good time. You see your friends were definitely on to something, but your government was foolish and did not believe them."
Zhang set up the pieces, and allowed Clayton to make the first move.
"OK, WHAT exactly did they find out?" Clayton said, pressing Zhang to answer the major question he had.
"You are going to be disappointed at what I tell you, because I do not know all of the details, but I will tell you what I know. You see my job in the group was to run interference, to work behind the scenes and throw your guys off the scent of the program."
"What program?" Clayton queried.
"This is where you will be disappointed, I do not know. Our government is exceedingly good at keeping secrets, we are not a leaky faucet like yours. Our group was hired to do a job, and we did it no questions asked. Here asking questions with a job like mine gets you killed!"
"I don't believe you!"
"I knew you wouldn't, but how long have you tortured my associates and yet found nothing? You think they love their country so much they are willing to die from the pain? Ha no, it is because like me they do not know."
"OK then tell me what it is that you do know." Clayton demanded.
"I know this, your associates were damn good at their job. Every road block I put in their way they moved around. They tracked down every piece of false information and were able to determine its lack of veracity. They were good at their jobs and that was what got them killed. We couldn't figure out how to stop them."
A couple more pieces were moved around the board and Clayton was showing off some impressive skill for someone who rarely had time to play such games. He didn't fall for any of the opening traps Zhang was laying for him.
"You see, that night those two had tracked down a scientist who was in the program. Our boss called us to tell us that they couldn't find out what he knew. We though your boys were going to go in and grab the scientist, but they were more crafty than that. He had gone in and sat down at public wifi with his laptop and they were stealing the information over the wifi. You won't believe this either, but it was never our intent to kill them. But we hat to when they saw the contents, there was no choice at that point. The program had to remain secret." Zhang explained.
"Damn it, tell me now WHAT is the program?"
"I do not know." Zhang replied calmly.
"Tell me why I shouldn't take you in right now and let them start the torture?"
"I am telling you I do not know. Nor am I expecting you to let me leave here. But if you finish this game with me I will tell you what I do know."
By this point the men were playing an intricate dance on the board, neither had managed to gain any advantage in position. They had been trading pieces and whittling down to the end game, but no significant progress had been made by either side.
"What I do know is that night your friends tracked down important details about the program and downloaded them to a laptop. Our instructions were to take that laptop and incinerate it. Nothing could be left that could possibly be recovered. There were 10 of us that night, we had to follow orders because if we didn't someone would rat us out." Zhang said.
"Tell me then, why have we been able to capture you and your comrades?"
"Precisely because we do not know anything, if we had known something and you had been on to us we would have been dead before you ever captured us. That is how it works here, no leaks at any cost. What I do know is that the program is still active, I was called about a year ago to be a part of another team. This time we were tasked with tracking down an Israeli team that was getting too close to the program. I accepted the job as I always do. You know the reason you are still alive is you haven't gotten close enough yet. The government knows who you are, they track you every time you are here, but you have been playing the wrong game so they have let you go freely about it."
"Oh is that so? What game should I be playing then?"
"Finding what the program is of course. The Israeli team is still alive you know, at least as of yesterday. But I told them I was going to put the mission in jeopardy by remaining on the team, I can't keep you off my back and at the same time operate on a mission that could help you discover the truth."
"Why are you telling me this at all then?" Clayton wondered.
"Because my government has abandoned me, and so now I am abandoning it."
And with that the two men ended both of their games in a draw. Zhang said nothing more and Clayton knew it would be useless to press the case. His team grabbed Zhang and began the long drive heading for South Korea, where they could be airlift him back to the States. The team drove in two cars, one trailing a fair distance behind the other. All of the other times they had pulled this off they had felt perfectly safe.
This time though they were spooked by the words of Zhang.
Eventually the team would stop and get on the ferry in Qingdao to avoid driving through North Korea. Sure North Korea was less dangerous now than it used to be but it still presented some danger. North Korea had evolved to be more like China with a strong central government which ruled with an iron fist and yet economically open. "Free" trade was allowed to allow the North Korean people access to wealth that they had been unable to attain before. Tight control was kept over news agencies however and propaganda was bountiful.
Clayton and his team certainly did not want to take on additional risk by going through North Korea. Especially not now, not when they knew they could be in great danger.