by Adam Brookes
Just candy. In a purse.
This operation, she thought, had an austere feel to it. Very quiet, very deep. Very hard-edged. Just her, dry as a bone. Not even her sons. If Peter or Frederick had been with her they could have sniffed Fastidious Man, filmed him, listened to him, run him through the servers, found him out. She thought of the man’s stillness, his unnatural posture.
From the street, the sound of a car accelerating, too aggressively, too fast.
She stood, pulled the curtain away from the wall a little, looked into the dark.
In nearly forty years on the street, Eileen Poon had learned the virtue of solid cover and pure nerve. She knew to brazen it out, not to run. Every little drama, every midnight flit, left unanswered questions in its wake, left chambermaids calling the shift manager, slack-jawed security officers reviewing the camera footage, accountants looking at your credit card. And soon someone notices. And then the someone starts paying attention, looking for patterns. And before you know it he’s in your phone, your laptop, your apartment, watching you move, sniffing the air as you pass. Better to sit still, wait, move deliberately, calmly.
And yet. A packet of White Rabbit candy currently residing in her purse screamed, Run. Now.
She stood motionless and listened again, her stomach churning. Fear did not come often to her. Why tonight?
She picked up the phone and called room service.
“Wei? Yes. I want club sandwich. But no mayonnaise. You understand? No mayonnaise. Yes, lettuce, tomato, want. No mayonnaise. Mayonnaise give me irritable bowel. Also, Bloody Mary, large one.”
She put down the phone, and went back to her purse, pulling out the packet of candy, feeling in it for the capsule. She put the capsule in a sterile evidence bag. She knelt by the curtains. They were heavy, floor length, of some dun-coloured material. Using the nail scissors, she unpicked two inches of hem, slipped the bag and capsule in, used a needle and thread to tack the hem, let the curtains fall.
By the time the food arrived, she had changed into a cotton nightgown and had donned a hairnet and sat on the bed, watching a Chinese news channel. A parade was planned, said the reporter. A grand military parade! Through central Beijing, past Tiananmen Gate, to mark the anniversary of China’s great victory in the War of Resistance Against Japan. There would be twelve thousand goose-stepping troops, stealth fighters overhead. In preparation, the authorities were seeding clouds and setting monkeys to roam the city’s parks. The monkeys were tasked with killing birds, though it was unclear to Eileen Poon why the birds might pose a security threat. “As the tanks roll down Beijing’s central thoroughfare,” said the reporter, “the people’s unity will reach its peak.”
The waiter pushed a little clinking trolley to her, and lifted a plastic cover to reveal her sandwich.
“Club sandwich. No mayonnaise,” he said. “Bloody Mary.”
He didn’t meet her eye. She tipped him and he left quickly.
She ate the sandwich fast, tipped the Bloody Mary down the sink, turned the television and the lights off, listened. Waited. She badly wanted to smoke a beedi, one of the reeking Indian cigarillos she bought in bunches tied with string from the little store in Wan Chai.
The night spooled out endlessly. Fear slowed time down. She forced herself to think of her boys, back in Hong Kong awaiting her return, waiting to signal She’s back. She thought of the hand-off to Hopko. Where would it be? Geneva? Bangkok? She thought of dropping the capsule into Hopko’s waiting hand, her smile, the venal look that would frame her eye.
And the fuss Hopko would make of her. Hopko would take her for a nice dinner, and give her presents from London, the shortbread from Fortnum’s for which Eileen had such a weakness. It would be just the two of them, nobody else. Because this operation—she didn’t even have a codename for it—was theirs alone. Just Eileen Poon and Valentina Hopko. Twice she had been into Beijing in the last eight months at Hopko’s order, dry as a bone each time. Twice she had cleared an old-fashioned dead drop loaded by an agent she never saw. Did Hopko even know who he was? This one is special, Eileen, Hopko had said. This one has the scent of greatness on him. And he’s just for us, Eileen. Not even for your boys.
Restless, she puffed her pillows, smoothed her nightgown, sipped water to ease the dryness in her mouth, listened to the hiss of the air conditioning.
She had known other long nights. Nights when she feared State Security was at the corner, on the street, at the door. Nights with her nerves writhing and sleep a distant, treacherous shore. Nights when nothing had happened, and when everything had happened. Nights long ago when numbers crackling across the shortwave frequencies told her ABORT ABORT, and she’d burned her passport and run through the backstreets of Chengdu or Semarang or Hanoi. Why such unease tonight?
Perhaps three times was enough. Perhaps it was time.
At four or so, she dozed, and at five she watched the grey light filter in from a crack in the curtains.
If they come, she thought, it will be now.
She got up and put on a pink shirt and tan hiking pants that reached halfway down her blue-veined calves, and a pair of sneakers. She stretched, pushed away the wheeze and shuffle of yesterday, and readied herself to move fast.
She thought of Fastidious Man, his smooth cheeks, his little hands. She wondered what it might be like to be touched by those hands. What they would feel like on her cheek, her waist, her breast. She wondered if, in a way, he was touching her now.
She knelt, extracted the capsule in its polythene bag from the hem of the curtain and returned it to the packet of candy, before packing it in her carry-on.
She stopped at the door to her room, listened, calmed herself.
An operation is a whisper, Hopko had once said to her. Don’t make it an argument.
2
Sorong, West Papua, Indonesia
Mangan entered the shop through a ragged plastic shower curtain. The interior was all clutter. Half-refurbished laptops were strewn about, piles of boxes, cell phones, tablets. From behind the counter, the Javanese woman—toothy, powdered, hair in a bun—eyed him. Mangan was conscious of his own dishevelment: he was unshaven, his T-shirt hanging limply from his awkward, lanky frame, his jeans had gone baggy at the knees, and on his feet were flip-flops, on his back the scraggy backpack. The shop smelled of clove cigarettes and damp.
“You back again,” said the woman.
“Yup,” said Mangan.
“What you want this time?”
“Same as before,” said Mangan.
She frowned.
“Phone card?” she said.
“Yes. Please.”
She flicked an accusatory finger at him.
“You just buy. One week.”
“I want another. The same. Pre-paid. No name.”
She was giving him a stern look now.
“Why you want?”
“Is it important why?”
“You already have. Why you want one more?”
“I lost it. Now can I have another one?”
She paused, considering. He looked at her, and caught in her eye the tick of calculation. He realised that something was happening he didn’t understand, a tinge of alarm bleeding into his chest, his stomach.
“What’s the problem?” he said.
She shook her head, looked down.
“What’s the problem?” he said again.
“No problem,” she said.
She reached into a glass-fronted case behind her, and from a filthy tangle of cables, old phones and chargers, extracted an envelope. She handed it to him. He felt the hard little SIM card through the paper.
“Six million rupiah,” she said. About four hundred U.S. dollars.
“Six?” said Mangan. “Why the price rise?”
She shrugged.
“What’s changed since last week?” he said softly.
She pointed upward with her forefinger.
“Price go up.” She wouldn’t meet his eye. “You pay now.”
<
br /> Very alert now, he leaned across the counter, smiled, laid his hand on her forearm. He felt her tense under his touch.
“What’s changed?”
She said nothing.
“I’ll pay the price, and I won’t come back here again. Okay? Just tell me.”
She licked her lips.
“You. Problem.”
“What? What problem?”
“Some people they come here. Ask about you.”
“They asked about me? Who? What did they say?”
“They say if I have seen Inggris. Tall man. Hair red colour, like you.”
“Did they know my name?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did you tell them?”
She shook her head, her finger-wagging gone now. He let his voice rise a little.
“What did you fucking tell them?”
“I say … I say I see you. But I don’t know where you go. Where you stay.”
His hand was still on her forearm. He felt a prickling of his scalp.
“Who were they?”
“Orang Cina.” Chinese, the words coated in contempt. She paused. “They have photo. You.”
“They showed you a photo?”
She nodded. He took back his hand. She was staring at the counter. He counted out notes from his wallet, dropped them in front of her. She reached out to take them, but he planted his finger on them, pinning them.
“The card,” he said. “It’s good?”
She nodded.
“It register, but name not true. Is okay.”
He kept the money pinned to the counter.
“And now?”
She looked up at him.
“What?”
“You’ll call them, won’t you? The orang Cina. They told you to call them.”
She blinked, then made a what can I do gesture, holding her hands out.
“If I not call, then …”
“Then what?”
“They say they make trouble for me. For family. They say they tell polis, make big trouble.” She was becoming agitated.
“Why did they come to you?”
She looked blank.
“They ask many place. Hotel, phone place, internet place.”
Jesus Christ.
“Did they say anything else?”
She shook her head.
“What you do?” she said. “You are criminal? You are thief.”
He took his finger off the rupiah notes, let her take them.
“I didn’t do anything. I’m just a journalist. Wartawan.” He pointed at himself. “Wartawan.”
He let her take the money, pocketed the SIM card, and left.
3
Washington, DC
Patterson found the apartment on an online listing service, and she loved it immediately. It was off 18th Street, a tiny top floor with big windows in an elderly brick row house. An iron fire escape bore rows of plant pots. Below, a cobbled courtyard.
The owner seemed reluctant, worried about her lack of credit history, and when they met was visibly startled: the British accent on the phone didn’t match the blackness of her person, apparently. In the end, the diplomatic passport prevailed, and the owner, a smooth, highlighted matriarch in beige, pushed the rental agreement across the table for her to sign.
Now Patterson sat on the bed in shorts and T-shirt, the windows open, allowing the sultry late-summer air to move a little. The walls were a clean, bright white, the floors of dark wood. I need some rugs, she thought, some colour. She walked to the kitchen and ran her hands over the stainless-steel fittings. She’d never lived anywhere like this.
And so, she reflected, began her period of exile and disgrace. No rap on the knuckles, more like a vicious backhander to the face, the Service’s way of telling her: You are a monumental, gold-plated fuck-up. Hopko’s way of telling her: You are not ready for operations, nor will you be until you grow up. So here she was. In a gorgeous flat, in a strange new city, where she was of interest, exotic almost. The tall, broad-shouldered black woman who spoke like an English army officer because she’d been one, who was with the Embassy, but whose role was never quite spelled out. Fascinating creature.
Could be worse, she supposed, even as it was humiliating and awful.
She stepped out onto the fire escape, looked across the rooftops. A low city. None of the caverns of New York or Chicago. And then, from beneath her, a mock-dramatic gasp, and a voice.
“Is it? I think it is!”
“It is!”
“Yes, it definitely is!”
“A neighbour!”
She looked down. Two of them, a man and woman, both in sunglasses and shorts. They had pulled cushions out onto the fire escape and were holding wine glasses and looking up at her.
The woman, white but tanned, with dirty blonde curls, raised her glass.
“Hail, neighbour. Come down and make yourself known.”
“Yes, come on down.” He was slender, paler, dark haired. He waved her down.
Patterson’s immediate response was to pull back. Who are they?
They are two people sitting on a fire escape drinking wine, in a new place, a new city.
“Oh, well, hi,” she said.
“Hi, yourself. Get on down here. Get a glass, Este.”
“Comin’ up.” He crawled through their window and disappeared. Patterson started down the iron stairway.
“Nice apartment, huh. We were wondering when it was going to be let. It’s been empty for weeks.” She held out a hand. “I’m Emily.”
“I’m Trish. And yes, it’s a lovely flat.”
The woman was looking at her over the top of her sunglasses.
“Este. Quick. This person appears to be something other than ’Murican.”
The man was reappearing through the window clutching a wine glass. “I hear it. I hear it. Hi. I’m Esteban.” He passed her the glass, and he gave her a quick, light smile that disarmed her.
“I’m Trish. And I’m British,” she said. He was pouring wine for her.
“Welcome, British Trish,” Emily said, holding up her wine glass. “What brings you to these shores?”
“I’m a diplomat. I’m with the British Embassy.”
The two of them made I’m impressed faces at each other.
“Well, that raises the tone around here,” said Esteban. “Which section?” He spoke as if he knew embassy geography intimately.
“Oh. Trade section.”
“Riiiiight. You’ll be busy. Won’t she, Em?” He turned and gestured to Emily. “Em here is on the Hill, dubiously attached to a congressional committee with dubious oversight of trade agreements. Wouldn’t you say, Em?”
“On the nail. We’ll have plenty to talk about.”
Shit.
“Well, terrific,” she said. Both of them were looking at her. She sipped her wine. “What about you, Esteban?”
“Oh, K Street. But in a good way.”
She decided to play it for a laugh.
“I have absolutely no idea what that means,” she said. They did laugh, but it was polite. Emily spoke.
“It means he belongs to that class of bloodsuckers known as lobbyists. He loiters around the offices of congressmen and tries to influence them with flattery and favours and money. Fact-finding trips to Vegas, the Bahamas. Campaign contributions. Private jets. It’s pathetic.”
He was nodding, grinning. Emily went on.
“Though in Este’s case, he’s not looking for defence contracts or drilling rights, he’s trying to get clean energy legislation passed, so perhaps he will escape the fiery pit of hell.”
“I’m a shit in a good cause,” said Este. “And it suits me, right, Em? Have you always been a diplomat?”
“No, I used to be a soldier, believe it or not,” Patterson said.
“I can believe it,” said Emily. “You look fit, tough.” She clenched a fist, made a fierce face.
“Wow. Really? Did you serve in …?” Esteban let the sentence h
ang. He doesn’t know if it’s polite to ask, she thought.
“Yes, yes,” she said. “Three tours. Iraq and Afghanistan.” She smiled. Both of them looked as if she’d announced a death in the family.
“That must have been … intense.” Emily said. She spoke as if war were an alternate universe, incomprehensible.
“Yes, it was. It was. Intense.” She smiled again, not wanting to make a thing of it.
But, there, sliding through the space behind her eyes, was the road of yellow-brown dust, a boy on a moped. He was barefoot, and as he pulled away from her, he looked back with a smile and those eyes that just glowed, and then he was gone. She could hear the insect rasp of the engine, the gear changes, could feel the weight of her own body armour in the heat.
“Well, now look,” Emily said, signalling a change of subject. “Let us come clean with you. We have a terrible ulterior motive in bringing you here and plying you with alcohol. Have some more wine, actually. Este.” Ulterior motive? Esteban reached over and filled her glass. It was a lovely, crisp white from Oregon.
“I’m afraid so,” said Este. “Do you want to ask her, or shall I?”
Patterson felt a jolt of irritation.
“The thing is,” Emily was twisting her fingers into a knot, trying to look cute. She did look cute. Very, Patterson thought.
“The thing is …”
She looked cute and awkward. So did Esteban. What the fuck do they want?
Emily gave an exaggerated sigh.
“Do you think, just possibly, that we might implore you to … not wear your shoes in the apartment?”
What?
Esteban was looking at her with a mock-desperate expression.
“It’s just, the previous guy, he stomped around up there in his shoes on those wooden floors and for us, it’s like an earthquake down here,” he said. “Like, showers of dust from the ceiling, and six thirty in the morning, stomp, crash. It was awful. And he wouldn’t put any rugs down, and it was like, dude, seriously?”
“Yes, rugs. We’ll buy you rugs. We’ll take you to the best rug place and buy you rugs.” Emily was starting to look worried; Patterson realised she had her flinty expression on, and forced her face into a smile.