Free An American Spy by Olen Steinhauer

department that was disbanded after Xin Zhu’s actions,” Sun Bingjun reminded him. “It doesn’t exist anymore. It receives no funding.”
    Wu Liang spoke up: “The Department of Tourism, as documented by Xin Zhu, has a tradition of finding funds through any and all means when its Langley paymasters have withheld money. Only a couple of months ago, it robbed an art gallery in Zürich to fund its nefarious actions.” He paused. “A department exists when those inside of it agree that it exists. A department that knows how to fund itself can, arguably, live forever.”
    Heads turned—not to Zhu, but to Zhang Guo, who was staring at his knees. It was generally agreed that, on issues of financing, Zhang Guo was the most qualified in the room. Though he didn’t look at them, he knew what the silence meant. He lifted his shaky teacup, saying, “Wu Liang is correct. One example is a man we all know, Yevgeny Primakov of the United Nations. He has not only been able to maintain a secret intelligence section within the UN without an official budget, but he was able to create and develop it outside the knowledge of the UN Secretariat and the general public. If a man can single-handedly do that, then a handful of people can certainly maintain a department that already existed.”
    Zhu stared at Zhang Guo, but his friend kept his eyes averted from everyone.
    Sun Bingjun cleared his throat. “So. This Department of Tourism has resurrected itself. As an opening salvo, it is exacting revenge on Xin Zhu and, by extension, the People’s Republic. That is the present theory?”
    “You tell me, Comrade Lieutenant General,” said Yang Qing-Nian. “The facts are here. One of their agents pries into Xin Zhu’s personal life, then meets with one of the Republic’s great enemies. Then leaves.”
    “To where?” asked Sun Bingjun.
    “To Cairo. From there we lost her.”
    Zhu watched Yang Qing-Nian’s features, trying to judge if this was truth. If it was, then he was ahead of them on at least one point. Sharing the information that Leticia Jones had gone to meet with the former head of Tourism, though, would do nothing to help his case.
    Sun Bingjun drank his tea, musing over the facts in front of him. He was senior only in terms of age, and despite the glories of the past much of his actual power had been washed away, not only by his drinking but also by his early opposition to Hu Jintao’s presidency, which had led him to speak too publicly during the SARS crisis of 2003. Since then, all the old veteran’s public statements had been masterful balancing acts between saying much and saying nothing. Now, though, they were behind closed doors and, remarkably, he looked sober. Sun Bingjun exhaled. “In my experience of examining the actions and motives of the Central Intelligence Agency, its reasoning is never so simple. Revenge as an end in itself is simply not part of the Americans’ thinking process. They’re not Mossad, nor are they adolescents.”
    Yang Qing-Nian, the closest to an adolescent in that room, said, “Revenge is not for the sake of revenge, Sun Bingjun, but for the sake of sending a message that they will not be treated as Xin Zhu has treated them. That is one motivation. The second is timing. With the Games nearly upon us, any disruption they can provoke—be it here in Beijing or in Xinjiang—will embarrass us on the world stage. Even if they fall short, the possibilities for success are too great for them to ignore.”
    “Of course you see it that way, Yang Qing-Nian,” Sun Bingjun said in his bored voice, “because you still think in terms of revenge. But if a plan like this fails, it does not simply mean that the Americans won’t disrupt our Games. It means the exposure of their plans to the world, which would damage them more deeply than anything they could do to us. Remember what happened last year? The CIA was caught funding those feral agitators in the mountains who call themselves the Youth