CHAPTER 10
MESSING WITH CHINESE SPIES
I
n my experience, Chinese foreign intelligence officers can be brazen, at
least by the relatively refined American standards of espionage etiquette.
(I’m guessing our British cousins in MI6 say the same thing about their
dreadfully less sophisticated CIA counterparts.) Chinese spies seemingly
either cannot or will not make much of an effort at disguising what they’re
really up to, whether socializing or on the job. After learning this lesson the
old-fashioned way, I managed to turn the tables on one particularly pesky
Chinese agent in Latin America.
I first became aware of this Chinese proclivity for crude approaches at
a CIA-financed bash my wife Stacy and I hosted one balmy Saturday night
at our Palmera villa, to which we invited a select number of priority recruit-
ment targets and fellow station officers. The entire affair was not unlike
inviting fish to a party in a barrel. A station-orchestrated function like this
provides much more bang for the buck than a typical reception, where you’re
as likely to bump into a talkative Canadian economics analyst as a sullen
but priority East German spook. Our modern Spanish-style quarters and
tropical garden were jammed with a happy throng of Soviet, Nicaraguan,
Eastern European, and Chinese spies and officials, along with several local
political figures of operational interest. (Our Palmera friends would typically
show up around midnight and expected us to do the same when they invited
us to an intimate dinner party ostensibly starting at 8:00 p.m.)
All seemed to be enjoying the open bar, tasty arepas, and live music
provided by a phenomenal reggae band from the Caribbean. The weather
was perfect—as always—and many of the normally button-down guests
wore guayaberas and other casual dress to this scripted but informal affair.
Spanish was the common language among most of the guests, and their
language skills (and mine) improved greatly after several Cuba Libres,109