The Gaze of Caprice (The Caprice Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  The Gaze of Caprice

  The Caprice Trilogy Book I

  Cole Reid © 2014

  All Rights Reserved.

  Chapters

  Chapter 1 Chessmaster

  Chapter 2 The Exception

  Chapter 3 Knowing Why

  Chapter 4 Taiwan

  Chapter 5 An Appropriate Woman

  Chapter 6 Young Rain

  Chapter 7 Hong Kong

  Chapter 8 A Great Honor

  Chapter 9 Eight Years

  Chapter 10 An Antic Disposition

  PART TWO

  Chapter 11 Vaudevillian

  Chapter 12 On Chariot

  Chapter 13 Open Gate

  Chapter 14 Again

  Chapter 15 A Different Room

  Chapter 16 Dimension

  Chapter 17 Many Years

  Chapter 18 Awake

  Chapter 19 The Door

  Chapter 20 Pinocchio’s Nose

  Chapter One Chessmaster

  “Let’s not be too long.” His hands were cuffed and each arm restrained, but his head could move. He looked straight up at the sky and that was all he could do of his own free will.

  • • •

  Her office was big and cold. She was a senior in some capacity by the sofa bed in her office. The sofa bed said a long relationship with the office. Vlaminck prints hung on nails along with Chinese scrolls that hung by ribbon. Black on red text displayed the Chinese characters Luck, Health, and Longevity. Behind a desk that resembled a drawing table, was a lonely road Vlaminck had painted. The road was dotted by trees leading to a deserted village. An office blended with fauvism was at the west end of a floor with a multi-tasking sense of morality—a floor easy to get to, but hard to get on. Most in the building would not sacrifice enough judgment to be on this floor. She had. It was the reason she didn’t walk confidently, she just walked. Having an office on the floor spoke for itself, so did being the only woman. She passed one mahogany door after another, until her body swung round bringing her eyes parallel to a brass name card. The card was mounted on a mahogany door—like the rest—with engraving meant to spell GEORGIA STANDING.

  The conscious habit of entering her office in sequence had gotten old even when it was new to her. She had to swipe her ID badge to activate the keypad. Then there was an 8-digit pin. She always felt the console was a little low and the keys a little small. If she managed the keypad, she just had to insert an old-fashioned key—turn it—then open the door. She did. She walked straight to the chair behind the desk. She covered the chair with her coat and wiggled a wireless mouse until her computer screen came on. Using a tenured screen name and recently changed password logged her into the secure system. After that, it navigated much like any other operating system. She opened her email. Her inbox was littered with classified emails. They all came from high ups and didn’t go any lower than her. She ignored the first two emails and opened the third. If not for the title IMAGES, she would have ignored it as well. The first file showed an image of a man with neat hair, as seen from above. He was obviously uncomfortable, noticeable even from above. He was surrounded. His arms were strayed behind his back. He was handcuffed and flanked by uniformed military personnel, each holding one of his arms. She thought the surrounding military police were overkill. She knew he wasn’t going to try anything; they didn’t. The last two images were nearly identical. The second was a tighter angle than the first. In both frames, his face pointed toward the lens. Something he accomplished by looking up at the sky. The first of the two images was close enough to see his face—the second was close enough to see his eyes. For the first time, she saw him looking desperate. For the first time, he was counting on someone other than himself. And he needed her to do a lot.

  Georgia looked at the man’s face for several minutes. The office smelled of a faint affection. Time had turned him into a stranger that she struggled to hold on to. But this was a stranger’s face—a look she had never seen before. His face was different and detached. He didn’t have that focused look. It was the difference between going inside or the drive-thru. He was at the same place, just not in the building. He looked impatient, hoping he could get what he needed and leave. And she would make sure everything went as planned. She would do that for him. That was why he looked up, to remind her who was asking, letting a satellite in lower earth orbit get a good look at him. The only man she had ever truly cared for. She wouldn’t say she loved him, not in the sense that her English parents would say. Since she was a girl, everything her parents told her to do was for good measure. But she hadn’t done anything for good measure since joining the Agency. She did everything out of necessity.

  Her relationship with him was also necessity. She was getting older and older had its consequences. She knew she could never be with a man one-on-one. It wasn’t because she suffered at the hands of a man. She was never abused as a child. It was the opposite. Her parents made great sacrifices to provide for her and her brother, and they loved them the same. She could never be on the same level with a man because that was who she was. She had always known. Since she was a girl, she knew no man could do good enough to be around for too long. But that too had its consequences. She had never married, never had children and avoided a foundation laid on loneliness with frequent visits to her office. She had convinced herself that what she did was more worthy than what she could have done. A woman as smart could have done anything. She had an office to prove herself and it justified her place in life. That was how she saw it and reality gave her no other choice. She was too old to have it any other way. That was why she needed him years before. He was younger. She felt fifteen years put her at a safe distance and he felt the same. The age difference made it safe and safety was a common necessity.

  To her, he was more loyal son than lover, which is why their relationship worked for so long. She had many men but no children. She was barren. She couldn’t conceive. Her alliance with the man whose image burned into her computer screen was a double penance. She advised him as forgiveness for all the men whose lives she brought to ruin and she protected him as the son she would never have. She knew no man would be enough for her because none would be able to give her a child. So she burdened herself with a grown man whom she put her faith in like a child. In exchange, he confided in her. He confided in her so much that only she knew what he was doing.

  Two weeks before, she received an encrypted email from codename Chessmaster. That was him. The revelation set forth in the email was crippling. Chessmaster had attached files and gave explanations that proved beyond doubt that someone was going on the side. There was a high-level mole in the Agency. The mole was sabotaging the Agency’s wide-scale spying operation in Venezuela. Files had been deleted or taken. Data had been manipulated to conceal numbers. Chessmaster said the concealment could hide money transfers between the mole and his handlers, as well as anyone working with the mole. Chessmaster also said he would need to light a fire to buy time to find the mole. He said the Venezuelan government was launching a counter-intelligence offensive and he worried the Agency’s entire Venezuelan operation would be blown. The whole spy network would be captured or killed. Dozens of high-level agents working in Venezuela would be arrested. Sensitive archives would be handed over. The fallout would be a political catastrophe and a major handicap for the Agency. The international press would be like moths to a flame.

  Chessmaster’s plan was straightforward. He would hand himself over to the Venezuelans—effectively defecting. Handing himself over would stall the Venezuelan investigation into the Agency’s activities. Chessmaster would exchange information for certain guarantees. His presence would fo
rce the Venezuelans to reorganize and refocus their investigation. They would have to investigate his leads, validate information and decide what they wanted to do about it. While the Venezuelans took time to plan outside their original plan, certain key agents in Venezuela would have time to decide what they wanted to do. Escape. Go into hiding. Defect. Georgia’s role was biggest of all. She had to find the mole. When a high-level field agent—like Chessmaster—was in custody of a foreign government, there were steps to be taken. The first step was always to verify whether the foreign government was telling the truth. This had always been a dedicated process, especially during the Second World War, when American military intelligence spent so much time trying to decode German propaganda. Near the end of the war the tide turned against the Germans. They stepped up their propaganda machine to make it seem otherwise—some propaganda was true though. After the war, it was apparent that spies on the ground were not enough. They could intercept communications that were still just propaganda, limiting their effectiveness. They could be captured or killed, likewise limiting their effectiveness. After 1945, the Americans and Soviets fought for intelligence market share, competing over German persons of interest. Persons of interests were scientists, engineers, politicians and high-ranking military officers. All had information that the Americans and Soviets wanted to deny each other, so both sides went on recruitment blitz. The trick was to collect as many people with as much information as possible, but integrating German personnel to combine information posed the same problem as training your own officers to collect information—limited effectiveness. At war’s end, the American spy community shifted from military intelligence to civilian intelligence almost overnight.

  The spy community changed but the rules of the game were much the same. Every side had to have spies on the ground. You couldn’t play the game otherwise. But spies could only be in one place at a time. They were limited. Those limits didn’t apply to the community at large. For the community, the sky was the only limit to speak of. And the sky was everywhere. The spy community’s need to take flight was echoed by the Space Race between the Americans and Soviets in the 1950’s and 60’s. The Space Race was as much an intelligence gambit as a technological one. The Race was ostensibly an attempt by the Americans or Soviets to gain the upper hand in space exploration. In reality, both sides realized going up meant being there to look down. The Space Race left a previously deserted sky populated with a nomadic tribe made for the desert of Space—composite scouts looking down at the world. Like camels, they stored sunlight for the long haul. And their population grew. Now, the tribe was hundreds strong and they were called spy satellites. They were the Central Intelligence Agency’s frontline soldiers, an effective tool to determine if foreign governments were telling the truth. Venezuela was.

  The satellite images were several hours old. They showed a man with parted brown hair and dark circles under blue eyes. He had a reputation for well-planned and well-played organization, which earned him the codename Chessmaster—a name he laid into. The images showed a side of him that Georgia had never seen before, more novice than master. The look in his eyes said he wasn’t sure about the move he was playing. Georgia herself was only sure of one thing. She was sure it was him. The satellites did their work. They proved the Venezuelans were telling the truth. Chessmaster did his work as well. He had turned himself over to the Venezuelans. The vacuum created by Chessmaster in Venezuelan custody was on a timeline. Georgia had to take advantage to find the mole. She closed all images on her screen puckered her lips then exhaled.

  She sat back in her chair, her hands gripping each armrest. Finding the mole wasn’t worrying Georgia. Chessmaster had planned well for that. After the Agency verified an agent was in custody of a foreign government, a consortium of seven high-ranking officers met to survey the landscape. It had to be determined what information the agent had or could have access to. A brief profile of the agent had to be sketched, complete with conduct review. They had to look through his operation history, specifically for deviations from protocols. Any psychological episodes would be a red flag. They had to determine how valuable he really was. The seven people were not selected at random. They “should be the most likely to make a reasonably accurate and valuable assessment of the situation and person(s) involved; and shall include the superintendant(s) of the project or operation from which the matter arises.” Chessmaster had followed a paper trail several thousand miles long, from Caracas to Langley, Virginia. In fact, Chessmaster said the mole had to have high enough security clearance to gain access to intelligence operations in Venezuela without tipping anyone off. In turn, Chessmaster knew the mole would be one of the seven. Someone “likely…to make a reasonably accurate and valuable assessment of the situation...and shall include the superintendent(s) of the project”. Chessmaster also knew that Georgia would be required to be one of the seven as someone “to make reasonably accurate…assessment of the person(s) involved.” Georgia’s close professional relationship to Chessmaster was no secret. But the extent of their relationship wasn’t measured by certainty. Chessmaster again showed his brilliance at playing pieces on a board. He sacrificed every piece he had but his queen. And he put her in a room with six pawns. The mole would hide behind the others to protect himself. Georgia had to move through the pawns to uncover the mole. And she was good at it. As a rule, she was the best counter-intelligence operative Chessmaster had ever met. The rule—though—had one exception.

  Chapter Two The Exception

  The building was three stories of mostly concrete. The front exterior was covered with polished white brick tiles. The building was surrounded by a 3-meter wall laid of orange clay brick lacquered with lime-cement stucco and double-coated with a chalky white primer. The base of the wall still showed clay brick stacked two deep, one on top of the other. In the gaps between the brick, was garbage shoved into oblong spaces. Some were green or clear plastic bottles flattened like coins. Others were pieces of Styrofoam from anywhere. They were all dust-laden. The wall was stately besides the bottom 25 centimeters. And the wall was graffiti free. The top of the wall was crowned with burnt-red tiles each clapping the tile beneath. The tiles were stacked, built like a fort and glued with cement. The wall covered the yard like a poker player with cards. The yard was big, the size of a soccer field bent into an L-shape. Half the yard was flattened yellow dirt where students played soccer; the other half was paved with cement. White lines were painted on the cement forcing students to stay in bounds. A permanent 10-foot hoop stood at each end of the cement half of the yard. A gate made of expanding accordion-like metal stood at the 10-meter gap in the wall. Complimenting the gap in the wall, was a windowed booth covered with the same polished white tile.

  In the booth, was an elderly man listening to an AM/FM radio while reading the Handan Daily newspaper. A plastic bottle of sunken green leaves so soaked they looked black rested in front of the radio. The volume was low. The bottle partially blocked the sound. The elderly man didn’t seem to care; he was too interested in his newspaper. His black hair was slightly peppered and swept across his head right to left. His hair wasn’t neat or untidy, much like him. As the sentry of a school gate, he was under constant reminder that the mind needs exercise, so each day he studied his newspaper. While the students were in class, there wasn’t much else for him to do. He operated the accordion gate but for now, no one needed in or out. It was just him and his paper and the sound of the radio shut out all loneliness. Along the outside wall of his booth, were the Chinese characters Handan No. 4 High Middle School. He had manned the gate there for eleven years. The school was simple enough. Each classroom was designed to hold fifty students, most averaged around forty-four. The floors were all finished concrete, no carpet, no tiles, no surfacing. The walls were painted the same chalky white as the outside, but only one coat of paint was used for inside—not two. There was a whiteboard at the front of each classroom 4-meters in diameter. Every whiteboard had railing attached with a world map tha
t slid to any position along the whiteboard. The People’s Republic of China was centered on the map. All desks were wooden, including the teacher’s desk. The rooms had six florescent bulbs each. There was no lamp at the teacher’s desk. There were twelve classrooms on each floor and three floors with classrooms. An outdoor stairwell built of steel and concrete was wide enough for three lanes of human traffic. The stairwell connected all floors top to bottom.

  Just off the stairs on the second floor, two classrooms over to the right, was Room 208. There, Mr. Li taught English literature where most students enjoyed most lessons. Most female students thought Mr. Li was very handsome, even the male students could see why. The boys were willing to admit that Mr. Li was worthy of more than a passing glance. His looks were interesting because they were uncommon. The overwhelming majority of locals had features explaining Asian ancestry, but Mr. Li was ambiguous. His hair was as black as any, but it did something different with the light. Instead of reflecting light cleanly, it choked darkness in some places—guilty-like. His hair made waves with its increasing length, being delightfully mischievous. His skin was deep red to brown and his nose was a little long and a little broad. His eyes were big for a Chinese man but they spoke Chinese fluently, so did Mr. Li. He spoke through lips that were thickened, not thick, and surrounded by newly shaven facial hairs. From far away, he would not draw much attention. From close up, some would call him laowai—foreigner. Most would stop themselves before calling him a foreigner. They couldn’t be sure if he was or if he wasn’t, still unsure what he was and what he wasn’t. His face had many scars but time had negotiated against most of them. Two didn’t go unnoticed: the one above his right eyebrow over three centimeters and the one on the right side of his upper lip about a centimeter long. Like the faded scars on his face, he looked blended. Some people thought he was foreign, but when he spoke the clue was big enough—he was a half-breed. In China, it made his authority on English literature that much more convincing. It wasn’t the Chinese half; it was the other half that carried the authority. He played the part well. He seemed extra worldly and well-traveled for someone in his early thirties. His worldliness approached other-worldliness.