The Experts Praise
THE GOOD SPY
By Jeffrey Layton
“The excitement never stops in The Good Spy by Jeffrey Layton. Richly detailed and bristling with fascinating political intrigue, the story sweeps between the United States and Moscow as the danger intensifies. This is high adventure at its very best.”
—Gayle Lynds, New York Times bestselling author of The Assassins
“An explosive high-stakes thriller that keeps you guessing.”
—Leo J. Maloney, author of the Dan Morgan thrillers
“Layton spins an international thriller while never taking his eye off the people at the center of the tale. A page-turner with as much heart as brains.”
—Dana Haynes, author of Crashers, Breaking Point, Ice Cold Kill, and Gun Metal Heart
“Breathless entertainment—a spy story with heart.”
—Tim Tigner, bestselling author of Coercion, Betrayal, and Flash
“A fast-paced adventure that will challenge readers’ expectations and take them on a thrilling journey—even to the bottom of the sea. Written with authority, The Good Spy is a visceral yet thoughtful read about an unusual pair of adversaries who join forces in an impossible mission.”
—Diana Chambers, author of Stinger
THE FAITHFUL SPY
“An exciting novel launching readers into political and military intrigue…The Faithful Spy is the perfect novel for military enthusiasts who enjoy the technicalities of submarine espionage and warfare, and for those who love an unlikely hero. Modern warfare fans will be captivated with the ultra-high-tech military nautical weapons and reconnaissance equipment at the center of the story—from crawler bots, acoustic sensors, nuclear submersibles, and autonomous underwater vehicles, to mini aerial drones that fire nine-millimeter hollow-point bullets…”
—The Big Thrill
Books by Jeffrey Layton
*The Faithful Spy
*The Forever Spy
*The Good Spy
Vortex One
Warhead
Blowout
*Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation
The Vigilant Spy
A Yuri Kirov Thriller
Jeffrey Layton
LYRICAL PRESS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
www.kensingtonbooks.com
Copyright
To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
LYRICAL UNDERGROUND BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2020 by Jeffrey Layton
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
All Kensington titles, imprints, and distributed lines are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchases for sales promotion, premiums, fund-raising, educational, or institutional use.
Special book excerpts or customized printings can also be created to fit specific needs. For details, write or phone the office of the Kensington Sales Manager: Kensington Publishing Corp., 119 West 40th Street, New York, NY 10018. Attn. Sales Department. Phone: 1-800-221-2647.
Lyrical Underground and Lyrical Underground logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.
First Electronic Edition: May 2020
ISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0559-5 (ebook)
ISBN-10: 1-5161-0559 1 (ebook)
First Print Edition: May 2020
ISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0561-8
ISBN-10: 1-5161-0561-3
Printed in the United States of America
Dedication
For Cody and Tyler
Contents
The Experts Praise
Books by Jeffrey Layton
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Good Spy
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
About the Author
Chapter 1
The city of nine million woke as first light oozed heavenward from the Yellow Sea. A leaden stratum of vapor rich clouds hovered over the coastal metropolis of Qingdao. Drizzle smeared the windshield as the boat puttered along the one half-mile-long waterway. Its diesel exhaust lingered over the still waters of the harbor.
Along the north flank of the waterway, an immense industrial wharf protruded westward into the embayment. Workboats, barges and fishing vessels occupied assorted floating piers that connected to the dogleg-shaped wharf. At the western terminus of the waterway, an offshore breakwater split the channel, providi
ng north and south navigational passageways to and from the adjacent bay.
Elegant, slender buildings jutted skyward twenty to thirty stories along the channel’s southern shore. Lights blinked on as hundreds of the tower residents rose to the new day.
Two men were inside the cabin of the 35-foot workboat as it approached the midpoint of the waterway known as Zhong Gang—Middle Harbour. They had patrolled the eastern half of the channel for over an hour, running back and forth, broadcasting the recall signal. The hydrophone hung three feet below the aluminum hull, suspended by a cable secured to a starboard guardrail located amidships.
“It should have surfaced by now,” said the slightly built man standing on the starboard side of the cabin. In his early thirties, he wore gray coveralls and work boots. A mop of dense black hair hung over his ears. A cigarette dangled from his left hand.
“Something’s wrong,” replied the man standing at the helm station. Like his companion, the workboat’s captain was of Central Asian lineage. He was several years older, half a head shorter, and thirty pounds heavier than his cohort. A ball cap concealed his balding scalp; a navy blue windbreaker encased his chunky torso.
The observer took another drag from the Furongwang and turned to face his collaborator. “Maybe we should boost the signal. The recorder might be buried deeper in the mud than planned.”
“Good idea. Go ahead and turn it to max.”
Both men were fluent in Mandarin, but when alone they spoke in their native tongue—an offshoot of Turkic.
The observer relocated to the nearby chart table. A laptop rested on the surface. Yusup Tunyaz fingered the keyboard. “It’s now at maximum strength,” he reported.
“Okay, I’ll make another run.” Ismail Sabir spun the steering wheel, turning the boat about.
Ten minutes went by. The boat drifted near the eastern end of the channel.
Ismail peered at the instrument panel display. “GPS says we’re over the coordinates that Talgat provided. You see anything?”
“No.”
“It should be in this area.”
“The recorder must have malfunctioned.”
“Maybe.”
Yusup crushed the spent butt in an ashtray. “What do you want to do now?”
Ismail’s brow wrinkled as he peered through the windshield. The bow pointed westward. The twin wipers were set to cycle at minimum speed. He was about to comment when he noticed a skiff speeding from the bay into the channel’s north entrance. Powered by an outboard, it carried five men, all wearing raingear, hardhats, and flotation vests. “We’ve got visitors.”
Using binoculars, Ismail watched as the skiff tied up to an enormous crane barge moored on the north side of the waterway, about two thousand feet away. The crewmen scurried up a ladder and boarded the barge. Within two minutes, a cloud of black soot spewed as a diesel generator powered up.
“Wonder where they’re going?” Yusup commented. Both men had noticed the moored marine construction equipment earlier.
“Probably some place for the port. It has all kinds of work going on around here.”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
One of the construction crew boarded a small tugboat tied up to the far side of the crane barge. After starting the engine, the operator engaged the tug’s propeller. The tug, still lashed to the barge, began to pull the crane barge away from the pier. Secured to the crane barge on the opposite side was a second steel barge. It was about the same size but with an extra four feet of freeboard.
The tug and double barge combination moved to the center of the channel near the mouth of the Middle Harbour’s northern entrance. Instead of heading westward into Jiaozhou Bay, the floating equipment stopped moving. Mammoth steel pylons—spuds—towering fifty feet high on each side of the crane barge were lowered, anchoring the barge to the bottom.
Yusup squinted. “Now what’re they doing?”
“I don’t know.” Ismail set his binocs aside and advanced the throttle, seeking a closer look.
From a hundred yards away, Yusup and Ismail observed the colossal steel truss boom on the crane barge rotate seaward from the deck. A steel bucket the size of a Ford pickup truck, its clamshell jaws wide open, hung over the water suspended by four steel cables that passed through a block at the peak of the towering derrick. The bucket plunged into the water and sank to the bottom. The generator aboard the barge blasted out a fresh exhaust plume as the crane struggled to lift the payload.
“Dammit,” muttered Ismail as the revelation registered.
The bucket rose above the water’s surface, its jaws clamped tight. The crane operator swung the boom across the deck until the bucket hovered over the companion barge. The jaws opened and twenty-four tons of bottom muck plopped into the dump barge.
“They’re dredging the harbor,” Yusup said.
“They dug it up. That’s why we can’t find it.”
“There was nothing about this in our orders.”
“I know.”
“What do we do now?”
“Let me think.”
After a five minute search on his smartphone, Ismail found the article. The port authority advertised the project on its website. The Middle Harbour was being dredged to increase water depth for deeper draft vessels to match the newly deepened Jiaozhou Bay navigation channel. That was not an unusual activity for such a sprawling enterprise as the Port of Qingdao.
However, what did not follow the norm for China’s state-owned port and harbor facility—one of the busiest in the world―was the disposal of the dredged materials from the commercial waterway. Instead of dumping the spoils offshore in deep water or reusing the sediments as fill to create new dry land, the 150,000 cubic yards of bottom mud from the Middle Harbour was allocated for an environmental mitigation project.
Mimicking projects sponsored by public ports in the United States and Western Europe, China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection funded the Port of Qingdao’s ‘Project Seagrass.’ Dredged material from the Middle Harbour formed the core of a new intertidal island located in nearby Jiaozhou Bay. When filling operations ended with a cap of clean sand, the artificial atoll would cover the area of fifteen soccer fields. Later in the year, the mound was scheduled to be planted with patches of eelgrass―Zostera marina―transplanted from donor sites. Over several years, project scientists expected the seagrass to propagate, eventually covering most shallow sections of the knoll. By providing protection for fin fish and shellfish and offering a host of nutrients and microorganisms, the underwater eelgrass forest would offer an oasis for marine life within the otherwise degraded industrial harbor.
After digesting the web article, the two men considered their options.
“It’s gone,” Yusup said as he sucked on another cigarette. “We should just go back to the marina.”
“My orders were explicit—recover the recording device at all costs.” Ismail remained at the helm.
“Talgat should have known about the dredging project.”
“I agree. But still it’s my—our problem.”
Yusup took a deep drag on the fresh Furongwang. His religion frowned on smoking, but the habit provided good cover for his work. “So,” he said, “what do you want to do?”
Ismail stepped to the navigation table. He pushed the laptop aside to view the nautical chart of Jiaozhou Bay. “The website said the disposal site is in this area.” He pointed with a finger.
Yusup said, “You think we might be able to recover it at the dump site?”
“Unlikely. That dredge bucket probably destroyed the recorder. But at least we can make a couple of runs with the hydrophone broadcasting the recall signal.” Ismail faced his companion. “By checking the dump site, Talgat won’t be able to blame us for not completing the mission.”
“Good plan. Let’s go.”
* * * *
Aft
er a thirty minute run across the bay, the workboat slowed to a crawl. Hundreds of rice paddies lined the muddy shore to the north. Southward, a sleek modern bridge dominated the skyline. One of the world’s longest bridges over open water, the Jiaozhou Bay Bridge spanned a distance greater than the width of the English Channel between Dover and Calais. Ismail and Yusup watched the depth sounder. Built into the instrument panel, the device displayed a profile of the bottom depth.
“This must be the right area,” Ismail said. “It’s definitely shallower here, just a meter and a half deep.”
“Probably exposed at low tides.”
“Drop the hydrophone overboard and let’s see if we get a response.”
“Okay.”
After passing over the shallow zone, the workboat idled; it drifted westward with the quarter knot current. Both men scanned the water around the boat, each hoping the lost recorder would magically pop up to the surface.
“I don’t see anything,” Yusup announced.
“Neither do I.”
“Are we done?”
“Let’s make one more run then we’ll go.”
“All right.”
It was a fateful decision. Had the two men from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region started their return trip after the initial pass, they would have survived. But their lifespan was now limited to seconds.
The object the boat crew searched for was buried in bottom sediments about fifty yards away. The Uyghur dissidents believed they were searching for an acoustic recording device used to spy on the Qingdao Naval Base, located just north of the Port of Qingdao’s Middle Harbour. It was a lie fed to them by their Russian handler, cover name Talgat. Unknown to Ismail and Yusup, their hydrophone was actually signaling a bomb.
Designed to resist hydrostatic seawater pressure to a depth of over three thousand feet and endure subzero freezing conditions as well as function in temperatures exceeding the boiling point of water, the weapon survived dredging. It lay in wait at the bottom of the bay.
Entombed within the excavated sediment, the audio receiver inside the warhead compartment listened for the command signal. The three feet of mud over the cylindrical steel casing degraded reception significantly. But as the workboat approached, the digital signal from the hydrophone penetrated the muck. Recognizing the acoustic command, the bomb’s electrical firing circuit triggered the detonators embedded in the concentric lenses of plastic explosive that surrounded the core. The semtex charges exploded, compressing the tennis ball sized hollow sphere of uranium-235 to the size of a grape. A microsecond later, the nuclear weapon detonated.