by Adam Brookes
She stopped outside the store, peering through its plate-glass window, then turned and looked around. Patterson signalled, Eyes on target.
The girl was still outside the store, looking through the window. She had raised one hand to her shoulder, and was clenching and unclenching her fist in a clear gesture of anxiety. Get a grip, woman, Patterson thought. She was pulling the glass door open now, stepping hesitantly inside.
Clear.
At 3:48 p.m., Mangan walked across the parking lot, hands in pockets, his lazy amble, a breeze catching the copper hair, blowing it about. He was his usual rumpled self, a pair of green cotton slacks, that linen jacket, abysmal scuffed leather shoes. He stopped just short of the store, looked at his watch, shot a look in her direction that sent another shock of adrenalin through her, and went in.
Pearl was sitting in the far corner, looking like a frightened fawn, eyes wide behind her glasses. Mangan gave a smile, went to the counter, bought two Creamy Mint Cookie frozen yogurts and went to her table. The store was empty except for one other group of teens at a distant table.
“Pearl,” he said.
“Oh, hi,” she said. “You came. I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
He grinned at her.
“Of course I came. It’s good to see you. Really.” He pushed the cup of frozen yogurt across to her, and she looked at it, wide-eyed, as if it might explode. He spoke very gently. “Does anyone know you’re here?”
She shook her head, still fixed on the yogurt as if some truth lay encased in its crystalline surface, its nubs of chocolate.
“Where do your parents think you are?”
She shrugged.
“Okay, Pearl, listen just for a moment. If we are interrupted for any reason, any reason at all, I want you to walk down that little corridor there, past the rest rooms, and go out of the emergency exit. Don’t go to your car, okay? There will be people outside there who will make sure you’re okay and will get you home.”
She just looked at him.
“Pearl?”
She nodded, though she looked like she might cry.
“What people?” she said.
“Friends of mine. Good people. Look, it’s just in case. Everything’s going to be fine. It’s really great you’re here.”
She picked up her spoon, returning her attention to the frozen yogurt. Mangan saw that her hand was trembling.
“So you’ve had a rough few weeks,” he said.
Another nod.
“Can you tell me anything about it?”
She looked straight at him, a searching look, and he saw again, behind those thick, smudged lenses, the deep, warm intelligence of her.
“Am I allowed to ask you something?” she said.
“Yes. Anything.”
“Well, I guess, who are you, really, and why are you so, like, concerned?”
“I’m—”
“I mean, are you American?”
“No. No, I’m British.”
“Well, who do you, like, represent?”
Mangan rested his elbows on the table, leaned in, spoke very quietly and quickly.
“Pearl, I’m supposed to give you all sorts of rubbish in response to that question. But I’m not going to. I’m with British intelligence. There. Said it.”
Her eyes went wide.
“You’re what? What does that even mean?”
“It means that … It means you’re in a very tricky situation, to be honest.” He held his hands out. “The man your father met in Paramaribo, he’s … we think he’s an agent of Chinese intelligence.”
He waited a moment.
“So, what we don’t know is why your father—”
“My father is a spy, isn’t he?” She was almost whispering.
“Pearl, we don’t know anything for certain. That’s why we need to talk to you.”
She looked at him.
“I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” she said.
“Well, a start might be just taking me through everything that’s happened.”
“I—”
“We can’t do it here. We’d have to go somewhere we could talk more openly.”
She frowned. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“Really? I think it would—”
She just shook her head, and Mangan could see the resolve, that he was wasting time trying to persuade her. He looked around. The teens had gone. There were two other couples in the store, one girl behind the counter, looking at her phone. Thin, sibilant Christian rock music came from speakers mounted in the ceiling. Where the hell to start?
“All right. All right. Look, you mentioned a trip to China. Can you tell me about that?”
She thought for a moment.
“My dad, he just announced we were going. He’d got tickets and everything. We flew to Hong Kong, and we were, like, spirited into Guangzhou, and just met all these people in a weird house and they wanted to know about my work, and my plans.”
Mangan probed, looking for names, descriptions, places, tried to draw the picture. The “cousin” she hadn’t known about. Her future at Telperion. The veiled threats, delivered so elegantly. The woman in the cashmere shawl. The little smooth-skinned man. It all came tumbling out of her, to Mangan’s astonishment.
“Why you, Pearl, do you think?”
She shrugged. “I’m going to be at the top of my field. I already am, pretty much. And they’re interested.”
He almost smiled at her forthrightness.
“And your field is …?”
“Artificial consciousness. Artificial Super Intelligence. At the moment I’m trying to make drone swarms act autonomously.”
“Oh. Right. And that’s something the Chinese would be, uh, interested in?”
“Interested in?” she said.
“I mean,” he said, flailing, “these are things that might have military applications? Strategic value?”
He felt her looking at him as if he were from another century, some ridiculous throwback mired in curly telephone cords, floppy disks and the hiss and burble of dial-up connection.
“I think we can safely assume that,” she said.
And then there was more. The midnight excursion to the park, the money. Uploading the files to God-knows-what network in a Washington coffee shop. Mangan felt his chest tighten. I found it. I fucking found it.
But Pearl was looking up, beyond Mangan, with fright staining her features.
38
The car came into the lot too fast, a blue Lexus, bouncing over the speed bumps and pulling into the parking space crooked. Patterson saw it immediately and signalled. Seen. Wait out, came the replies. The driver’s door opened and a middle-aged man of Asian appearance got out. He was looking around, searching the lot. He began walking up and down the rows of cars, his posture exuding anger and urgency.
Christ, is that the father?
He spotted the red Honda and strode across the lot towards it. When he reached it, he peered in, tried the door, then straightened up, hands on hips, surveying the stores, looking for her.
Patterson was out of the car and into the Sweet Frog store. She moved to the table where the two of them sat, the girl looking at her in what seemed to be abject terror, Mangan turning, exasperation all over his face. She kept her voice very level.
“Pearl, your father is here. He’s seen your car, he’ll be in this store in sixty seconds. Stay calm. We’ll be in touch soon. Philip, with me.”
He started to speak, but she just said, “Now!” and he was out of his chair and they moved quickly down the corridor to the rear exit.
Mangan looked over his shoulder, to see Pearl staring at them, deep distress on her face. Patterson was leaning into the crash bar on the door, when Mangan stopped.
“What, for God’s sake?” she said.
“Two bowls. On the table.” He turned to go back.
“No.” She grabbed his arm, pulled him back. “I’ll go.”
She ran back down the corridor
. Pearl’s father was at the window, looking in, shielding his eyes. Patterson walked past Pearl’s table, and in a single motion reached out and snatched Mangan’s half-eaten frozen yogurt and kept moving.
Pearl’s father pushed through the front door. He saw Pearl now, and strode across the store towards her. He brushed past Patterson, and she smelled sweat on him, his fury.
She walked to the trash can, took a napkin, wiped her hands, and lingered. He stood over his daughter, berating her in a rushed whisper, one hand on hip, the other jabbing at the air. Patterson couldn’t hear what he was saying, but Pearl was cowering, and Patterson saw him reach out and in a strange, pinching movement, grab the flesh of her upper arm and twist. It was so quick, you’d hardly see it, but her face was crumpling, and the tears were starting, and she had brought her elbows in as if to protect her torso. Patterson felt a surge of anger, and the thought crossed her mind to walk up behind him and kick him hard in the knee, just to watch him go down. He had hold of Pearl’s wrist now and was saying, “Zou, zou.” We’re going.
The other couples in the store were paying attention, and the woman behind the counter had her hand to her cheek, dithering about what to do. Mitchell Tao pulled Pearl towards the door, and she shuffled beside him, strands of hair loose around her face. As she passed, Pearl glanced at Patterson, then looked quickly away, but her father didn’t notice, and then they were out of the door and across the parking lot to her car.
Dear Pearl,
I am so sorry about today. We decided it would be disastrous if your father saw you with me, and that is why we ended the meeting in such an abrupt fashion. Again, I am so sorry. My colleague saw the way your father treated you. But can you tell us the reason for his anger at you? Did he realise you were meeting someone? Or was it just that he didn’t know where you were?
Also, I think your father has planted a tracking device of some sort on your car, and can tell where you are from that. You should check your phone and see if he is tracking that, too.
It seems to me that we must now find a way to keep you safe, extricate you from your father’s scheme, and allow you to get on with your extraordinary life. Does that sound right to you? I am certain that I can help, and I wish to do so.
Let’s please meet again soon. How about this Friday, 8.15 a.m. at the Starbucks on Hopkins campus?
Philip
Hopko stood by the window in the Tyson’s Corner safe flat, her venal, anticipatory expression on. Mangan was slumped on the couch, cigarette in hand. Patterson wondered why Hopko looked so pleased.
“Extraordinary!” Hopko was saying. “Absolutely bloody extraordinary! Whipping her off to China, job interview at an MSS safe house. Hoping no one would notice. By all the pestilential saints! And right after she’s applied for her security clearance, cheeky sods! I confess, Philip, I am floored. Utterly floored.” She started pacing about the room, gesticulating.
Mangan was tiring of the theatrics, Patterson could see. He studied the end of his cigarette and ran a hand through his hair. It was strange. Patterson had always attributed to Hopko a preternatural understanding of her agents, had always seen hers as the dominant understanding in the room, any room. She was startled to realise that Hopko didn’t always get Mangan, didn’t always read him right.
“Astounding, isn’t it?” said Mangan levelly.
“It bloody is,” said Hopko. She paused, collecting herself. “Now, from here, we will be constructing the operation as we go. All players have been assigned P numbers. Cryptonyms are coming. There will be a subvention for operational funds and a small team will be on permanent standby to provide surveillance, liaison and communications. We’re bringing in from London and from Canada, and utilising local assets. We will have mission objectives and modalities defined and circulated in the next thirty-six hours.”
“And what actually is the objective, Val?” said Mangan.
She turned to him and gave him her best, nuclear-powered smile.
“You do what you do best, Philip Mangan: build trust with her, and find things out. You’re a bloody marvel. And the objectives will come clear, soon.”
The treacherous hours, the house silent, the street outside still; a few late cicadas rustling in the trees, the air damp, a fine moisture in the light of the street lamps. Pearl, at the window of her childhood bedroom, looked out, trying to make sense of her life, of herself, trying to recast the narrative.
How do you remake memory? she thought. How do you rewrite the neural map? How do you take years of life and, in the light of new data, understand it differently?
She pictured her schooldays, her huge high school, the bus in the cool, fall mornings, the anticipation of the new school year, the dreadlocked bus driver playing his crazy music as they bumped along; the corridors, the lockers, the smell of floor polish and gym clothes; her tribe of smart kids, eating their peanut-butter sandwiches together in the clatter of the lunch room. She thought of how she was never allowed to go to their sleepovers, or to hang at the pool. Of how, on the rare occasions her father met her friends or their parents, he became almost manic—the terrible back-slapping, the strained attempts at fellowship, at faked intimacies, the singing of songs that left them startled and confused. Once, at a neighbour’s backyard barbecue, she had told him to stop interrupting, to be quiet—she must have been thirteen or so—and later, when they had gone home, he had hit her. She touched her temple, the imprint of his thick hand still burning there.
On the bed behind her lay a backpack, her tablet and an envelope containing nine thousand dollars she’d withdrawn from the bank. And there was a letter for Cal.
She listened for a moment, shouldered the pack, picked up the money, tablet and the envelope, and walked silently out onto the landing in the darkness. They were asleep, she was certain. She crept down the stairs, down to the basement, to his office. It smelled of him—not of his body, but of his life, of who he was; there in the basement dankness, the dust and paper, the airlessness, the hint of mothballs, the stench of emotional confinement.
The smell of the lie.
His laptop was in its drawer. She took it out, wrestling the charger from the extension cord. She moved, very slowly now, back up the stairs.
Opening the back door took her several minutes, easing the latch over in tiny incremental movements, closing and locking it the same way, tiny step by tiny step.
Her car was parked nose out. She’d made sure. She dropped the pack and the other things on the back seat, put it in neutral, and pushed it into the street, one hand on the wheel, one on the driver’s side door. The car lumbered forward, her sneakers scrabbling on the asphalt, her breathing coming in gasps.
She stopped for a moment and looked back. The house was still, dark. It was 2:17 a.m. She leaned into the car again. She was two blocks away before she jumped in and started it, easing out onto 29, heading for the interstate.
Philip,
I’m so outta here.
Pearl
PART FOUR
The Break
39
I-95 South
Pearl estimated she had about four hours, so she drove like a bat out of hell, south into Virginia in the dark with the eighteen-wheelers, their cabins glowing, their grilles filling the rear-view mirror. She was skirting Richmond in an hour forty-five, pushing on towards the south, passed Suffolk before six as the dawn was beginning to show.
On a quiet back road, east of Suffolk, she pulled over and got out. The land here was forested and wet, ribbons of still, murky water and marsh between the trees glinting in the early light. The Great Dismal Swamp, a reeking expanse that stretched way into North Carolina. She’d always liked the name, and felt that, at this moment, it fitted her predicament. She had prised the tracker from where it had been attached with duct tape, inside and above the glove compartment, and held it now, ready to pitch it into the gloom. She almost did. But if it landed in water, well, perhaps it wouldn’t work. So she laid it by the side of the road, and covered it wit
h moss and leaves, a kind of burial.
She went back to the car, picked up her phone, turned off its location features, put it to airplane mode, and shut it down, before popping out the SIM card. Then she wrapped it in a sheet of silver foil that she took from a pocket of the backpack. She checked her tablet, made sure it wasn’t signalling either and wrapped it in foil, too.
She drove on, making Norfolk, the big Navy town on the Atlantic coast, fifteen minutes later. Her lovely red Honda she left parked in a filthy, graffitied underpass, the sidewalk strewn with blankets, boxes and bottles. She left the car door open, the keys in the ignition, hefted the backpack, and walked away.
The bus was heading west now, away from the coast, into the interior. She slept, only waking as they pulled over at Roanoke in the early afternoon. She got out, went to the bathroom, then stood in a line for coffee and a burger. Against the surveillance cameras she had a hoodie and sunglasses, but that was all. It didn’t matter, yet.
She bought a ticket for Knoxville, Tennessee, sat on the sidewalk in the warm afternoon, eating the burger draped in its lank pillow of cheese.
The next bus was half empty. She wanted to listen to music to soften the edges of her feelings, some K-pop, some blow-dried boy band, something normal, but she dared not turn on either of her devices. She curled up in her seat, trying to think, to fend off the clawing in her chest. The bus hummed and shivered and rattled down a road that was forested on either side. It was late in the afternoon now. She spoke to no one.
They’d be after her already. She knew it.
The blank email and the childish declaration contained within it stopped them all in their tracks. Mangan hadn’t even checked his account until mid-morning, so it had been there for hours. Patterson had hauled over to the house at eleven, making two passes. She saw the father’s SUV in the driveway, and another vehicle, a silver Camry. She photographed it, noted the plates. No sign of Pearl’s car, but there was her father’s face at the window, a phone clamped to his ear, watching.