by Adam Brookes
31
Washington, DC
As the plane banked, turning into its approach, Mangan saw a vast, brown, angular building surrounded by an ocean of cars, and realised he was looking at the Pentagon. He sat back, closed his eyes. By the time he was at passport control, he’d be exhibiting every indicator of anxiety and deception: perspiration, hyper-vigilance, fidgeting. They’d read him like a bloody book.
The queue at immigration was long. He stood beneath the surveillance cameras, amid the families chattering in Spanish, the tourists, the students. He took out his book, read while the queue inched forward, yearning to lose himself for a minute or two.
The officer’s name badge said Alvarez. She was petite in her blue uniform, dark-haired, glasses. She didn’t look at him as she fingerprinted him and made him stare into a camera.
“What brings you to the United States, sir?”
“Just a visit. Holiday,” he said.
A pause. She looked from his passport to him to the computer screen.
“And how long are you planning on staying?”
“Two weeks.”
“Mm-hmm. And are you going to do any work while you’re here?”
“No. Just holiday.”
She looked at the passport.
“What do you do, sir? What’s your job?”
“I’m a journalist.”
“Cool. Who you write for?”
“I’m freelance. I have my own website.”
“You going to do any writing while you’re here?”
“No. No work at all.”
“C’mon. You guys are always working.”
“Not me.”
“And you’re coming from Suriname. Was that work?”
“No. Just travel.”
She paused, studying the screen. Looked at his passport again.
“Where are you staying while you’re here?”
“Oh. I have an address. I booked it online. It’s a room.”
“Like, in a hotel?”
“No. In a house.” He made a show of searching in his pockets, pulled out a scrap of paper. “It’s in … Brookland.”
“Brookland. Sure.”
She nodded, as if he finally made sense. The slunk sound of the stamp on the passport, and he was headed, shakily, to baggage claim. Outside, on the pavement, he lit a cigarette, feeling the fear rising like vapour in him.
Her phone rang.
“Patterson.”
“I have your husband on the line.”
Patterson opened her mouth to tell the operator that she did not, in fact, have a husband, but stopped herself.
“Thank you,” she said. There was a click on the line, then a voice.
“Hello? Trish?”
“Who is this?”
“Trish, it’s Philip.”
She sat forward in her chair, put her hand over the receiver but said nothing.
“I’m outside,” came the voice.
What?
“Trish, you there?”
She swallowed.
“Yes.”
“Will you come down? I’m outside.”
Jesus moustachioed Christ.
“Stay there.”
She left the Station, ran down to the foyer and walked out onto Mass. Ave.
And there he was, tall, angular, a little stooped, hands jammed in pockets. He was standing some distance away on the sidewalk, off to the left, too far to see his expression with any clarity. He wore jeans and some sort of grubby jacket. She turned right, walked briskly towards downtown. It was a beautiful, crisp, early fall day, the leaves turning, little flecks of gold. After a couple of hundred yards, she glanced back, and he was following her. Improvising frantically, she jogged across the street, and walked into the park that faced the Embassy, past the monument to Khalil Gibran. It would, she thought, be difficult to imagine a less appropriate location for a crash meeting between agent and handler. The park was thickly wooded, little paths winding between the trees. She slowed, letting Mangan catch up.
Where the hell was he?
She stopped and turned. No sign of him. Dear God, she’d lost him. Should she go back and look?
And then, ambling round a bend in the path, he appeared, walked unhurriedly towards her—he even gave her a wave. And then he was standing in front of her. He was tanned, and he looked older, the cheeks and mouth a little harder. A little more lined. He looked unkempt, the red hair long, a mess. For a moment she was speechless.
Patterson had had a physics teacher once, at her comprehensive in Nottingham, who had pushed her, trying to get her to believe in herself. A great, craggy man in a cardigan, face like a serving dish; thick, hairy arms. Mr. Cranley. He’d kept her after class, looked right into her with eyes that said he’d seen thousands upon thousands of scrappy, sullen teenagers but that the one he was looking at right now mattered. He’d been the one who’d told her to buck her ideas up and go to college. The way Mangan looked at her now reminded her of Mr. Cranley. Not brittle, not domineering or defensive, like the men she’d dealt with in the army and in the Service; just intent, searching, affirming.
“Hello, Trish,” he said. He was wearing his grin, but there was strain in it.
“Philip, are you under surveillance now?”
“I don’t think so. No.”
“If we are interrupted, you will be at the bar, at the E Street cinema, at 21:30 hours tomorrow. Do you understand?”
He nodded.
She suddenly wanted to hug him, the urge taking her powerfully, but she didn’t. Neither of them said anything for a moment. Then she spoke quickly.
“Philip, what the gilded fuck are you doing here?”
“I can explain all this.”
“I hope so. But not here, not now.”
“Okay, not here, but Trish, you need to listen.”
“Don’t tell me what I need to do, please.”
He closed his eyes and nodded in self-reproach.
“Where can we talk?” he said.
“Why have you not communicated with London?”
“I had … visitors. They told me the comms were compromised.”
“So you just stopped using them.”
“Well … yes.”
“What were you doing in Suriname?”
He opened his mouth, closed it again. He looked genuinely shocked.
“How did you know?”
“I work for an intelligence agency, Philip.”
He looked so deflated, she almost wanted to laugh.
“Look,” she said, “there’s a motel on Route One in College Park. It’s a Motel 6. Come tonight—9:10 p.m. exactly. I’ll meet you outside, and we’ll go in separately.”
He frowned.
“Is that secure?”
“Is that secure?” she said, disbelieving. “Is your being here secure? Is your calling me in the Embassy secure? Hello, it’s Philip, I’m outside. For Christ’s sake. Not exactly Moscow bloody rules, is it? And your bimble around South America? Was that secure?”
She made to walk away, but turned back to him.
“Just … just don’t get your hopes up,” she said.
He sagged slightly, ran his fingers through his hair. And she let her gaze linger on him for a moment, felt the pull of him. She didn’t want to leave, to her surprise.
“It’s important, Trish,” he said.
“Good. It better be,” she said. She walked away.
They sat on the bed, traffic rattling the windows. The room smelled of toilet cleaner and old cigarettes. They left the lights off, sat in darkness. Mangan had been late—there were two Motel 6s on Route One, it turned out—and she’d stood on the sidewalk in a fall drizzle, fuming. She’d spent two hours on a counter-surveillance run, convinced herself more than once that they were there, and then convinced herself they weren’t. She was damp and tired and snappish. He was subdued, focused. He’d brought vodka, and she’d given in and had a shot. He’d talked, she’d felt the memory stir and waken. She found
herself back on that riverbank in Thailand, in the heat and the clouds of insects, the Chinese colonel, codename HYPNOTIST, standing there pleading with her as the MSS men waited by their car.
“It was then, just before they took him away, and we let them,” said Mangan. “He just said it. The address in Paramaribo, the name. And then, in Mandarin, he said, ‘Use it. Use it to hurt them.’”
“Hurt who?”
“The people who were about to kill him. MSS.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I told you there was a lead. I told you. You weren’t listening. You were furious and disgusted and you wanted to get away, back to London. You were so angry. I was exhausted; I didn’t know what I was going to do.”
Patterson saw HYPNOTIST going down on his knees in the dust, the MSS men dragging him away.
“And the lawyer, Teng, in Paramaribo, tell me again,” she said.
He walked her through it once more: the zoo, the meetings with Posthumus, the vile club. The man, Mitchell Tao, as he reached across the table, palmed something, pocketed it, the violence in him. His terrified wife.
And the small, bespectacled, bewildered, luminously intelligent girl. The daughter.
Patterson walked to the sink and ran cold water, letting it pool in her hands, holding it to her face.
“What is it?” he said.
What is it? she thought. It’s a network. And Paramaribo is a node, for logistics, money, housekeeping. Teng keeps the books, moves the funds, strokes, cajoles. He’s executor, matron and accountant. And, perhaps, executioner.
This network touched Monroe, before he ate a nine-millimetre round under the trees at Great Falls. It touched Monroe’s wife, leaving her insane and convulsing in a hospital bed. HYPNOTIST knew of it, before he overdosed in a flyblown casino on the banks of the Mekong.
And my brilliant, hopeless, blown agent insists that this network extends to a dysfunctional immigrant family in a Washington suburb.
What assets does this network possess that make it so lethal?
She shivered and poured herself another vodka.
“What?” said Mangan.
But she just shook her head and wondered how much time they had.
If any.
32
Hopko was incandescent, spewing rage. Patterson had never seen her like this.
“You bloody well tell him, and tell him today, that he is to stop what he’s doing immediately. Immediately.” She was back in London, coming in on secure video link, looking down from a wall-mounted screen. Tipton and Markham were both there, but they were silent, and Patterson was sat out front, an offering to be devoured.
“He cuts off communication, swans halfway round the world, and starts tailing a target in an environment he knows nothing, nothing, about. What the hell is the meaning of this? Answer me.”
Patterson sat, rigid, trying to compose some sort of rational response, to convey it despite her own fear, despite the sense of failure that Hopko induced in her.
“He believed communications were compromised. The operatives who assaulted him in Sorong clearly indicated that they knew his communication protocols.”
“Oh, really? And there weren’t contingencies? Like, heaven forbid, coming back to London and making a quick phone call to you, or me? Or going and knocking on the door of an Embassy somewhere? Dropping off a letter? Jesus Christ.”
“I’m not defending him.”
“Don’t you dare. And you keep him there, in Washington, until I decide what is to be done with him. And he will stop everything he’s doing. Everything. Do I make myself clear?”
“Very clear.”
Hopko had taken off her glasses and was looking at a document in front of her, the screen glitching now, little blizzards of pixels sweeping across it.
“So he went from Indonesia to South America, and got into Suriname without anybody stamping his passport or knowing he was there. And then he launches a one-man surveillance op that turns up the corner of a Chinese network in the U.S.”
Suddenly calm, she was wearing her hangman’s grin now.
“That’s what he says.”
Hopko shook her head.
“I tell you, Trish, the man’s an absolute bloody natural.”
Her mother had made meatballs, Pearl’s favourite. Shizi tou—lion’s heads, they were called—and they sat atop cabbage braised in broth, and Pearl had loved them as a child. Now they looked like some craven token, Mom’s pathetic attempt to win back some good will. Thanks, Mom, you love me really, even though you appear to be involving me in something so secret, dangerous and illegal that you won’t even tell me what it is. Both her parents were at the table, their attitude to Pearl’s hypersensitive eye a weird mix of expectancy and threat.
She sat, and her mother spooned a shizi tou onto her plate and it sat there in a puddle of broth.
“I hope you’ve calmed down since yesterday,” said her father.
Pearl didn’t answer.
“Well, we have some news,” he said. “We’re taking another short vacation.”
Pearl stared at him.
“Another vacation?”
“Another vacation.”
“Can I ask why?” The alarm was rising in her.
“Because it’s important. And it will be fun and interesting.” Mitchell pushed a meatball around the serving dish, trying to get it onto a spoon, but it wouldn’t cooperate.
“I can’t,” she said. “I have class.”
“Yes, you can. It’s just a short trip.”
“To where?”
“Hong Kong.”
“Hong Kong? Dad, are you serious?”
“Very serious. We can do some shopping, spend some time together.”
“This is insane.”
Her father brought his fist down on the table and the impact rattled all the crockery and the knives and forks and the sound clattered around the kitchen and Pearl recoiled with the shock, the adrenalin flooding her stomach and heart. She saw the pattern on the vinyl tablecloth, bouquets of flowers and herbs, birds. She sat, rigid.
“We leave on Thursday night,” he said quietly. “We will be back on Tuesday night.”
She glanced up, saw her mother sitting, face down, hands in her lap.
“And Pearl,” he said, “you will tell nobody. Nobody.”
In the treacherous hours, her room darkened, Pearl sat on her bed with her laptop, and examined her situation anew—and found chaos. Blinding, stultifying, thought-stopping chaos.
As was her habit, she sought to disaggregate the chaos, break it down into its constituent parts, contemplate their interrelationships and contradictions, and ascertain which were constant and which were variable.
Constituent part number one: her father’s behaviour, now verging on mania. His project—as yet not fully articulated—to induct Pearl into a set of undefined, certainly illegal, activities, which included digging up cash at night in parks, holding clandestine meetings in small South American countries, and short, secretive trips to Hong Kong without explanation. The threat of physical violence. Variable.
Constituent part number two: her mother’s psychological and emotional freeze, rendering her unable to affect events in the Tao household to any noticeable degree, other than to deepen Pearl’s sense of powerlessness and dread. Constant.
Constituent part number three: Telperion’s Ltd.’s assumption that Pearl Tao is an honest, fit, uncompromised individual who can be trusted with priceless and highly classified intellectual property, and who would never commit a felony by lying on her security clearance forms. Variable.
Constituent part number four: Cal, friend, potential lover and object of Pearl’s betrayal through her own withholding and deceit. Constant.
And finally, constituent part number five: the existence of a tall, dishevelled guy with red hair, rather striking green eyes and what Pearl takes to be an English accent, who shambled over to her only once and briefly in a hotel coffee shop, yet who manged to conve
y, without saying a thing, knowledge of her predicament, and who left an invitation to discuss said predicament in the form of an email address on a scrap of paper and one cryptic phrase. When you need to talk … Variable or constant? Unknown.
Think, now, she said to herself. Think hard about how to survive this.
Think about what to do, when the right moment will be to do it, to move, to act. Get ready, if you can. No one will help you. So grow up, fast.
And there, just at the very edge of thought, a possibility was crystallising. And the Englishman’s cool gaze, his green eyes, were visible in it.
An online search: How do you disappear?
33
Guangzhou, China
The first meeting—for that was what it was, no matter how assiduously it characterised itself as a dinner—took place in a private room at the Shanxi Grand Hotel. The room, in a basement, was windowless and chill. The wallpaper was grubby, its bamboo pattern fading, the blond-wood fittings battered and streaked with grime. Pearl was cotton-wool-headed with exhaustion.
The three of them—Pearl and her parents—had flown in to Hong Kong. They’d passed through immigration to be greeted by three tall, silent men in suits, who had already picked up their luggage. Nobody told Pearl anything. The men walked them to an anonymous door. One of them punched a keypad and waved a card, and they were suddenly airside again, the door slamming behind them. One of the men took out a black bag, and spoke quietly and very politely.
“Please place all your electronics—your phones, laptops, tablets, anything you have with you—in the bag.”
Pearl wanted to object. She turned to her father, gave him a WTF look, but his glare in response was enough to shut down her desire to object. She took her phone and tablet and put them in the proffered black bag.
“Thank you,” the man said, in English. “And the chargers as well, please.” Pearl had to root around in her luggage, found them, dropped them in the bag.
Nothing was said. They walked a long, sterile corridor to a doorway and out into the night to a waiting car that drove them off across the tarmac, flitting past airliners that glowed beneath the lights. They drove for fifteen minutes, to a quieter part of the airport. The aircraft got smaller: private jets, Pearl assumed, some helicopters. The car pulled up next to an anonymous white plane, no insignia save its tail number. They climbed rattling aluminium steps to board, and an attendant waved them to their seats. The interior was a little shabby, with a utilitarian, military feel, the seats cloth-covered and uncomfortable. The safety belts were unfamiliar, reaching over the shoulders and fastening four ways over the stomach. Pearl couldn’t figure it out and asked the attendant for help, and she came over and fastened the belt without once looking at Pearl’s face. She averted her eyes the whole time.