The Spy's Daughter

by Adam Brookes

  When she got back to the Tyson’s Corner flat, Hopko was livid.

  “So just what the hell does this mean? Has she run away? Where the hell is she?”

  The extra team members were touching down at Dulles airport, on their way to the flat. Hopko was going to have to explain, and she didn’t like it, at all.

  Mangan, dark circles under his eyes, hollow-cheeked, said nothing. He typed slowly and carefully on a laptop.

  “Philip? Well?”

  “We have no means of knowing what she means, or where she’s gone, if she’s gone. The only way we are going to find out is if she tells us.”

  Patterson took a deep breath.

  “What about the FBI? I can call Polk.”

  Hopko rounded on her.

  “You will do no such bloody thing. Do I make myself quite clear?”

  There was a silence, and then Mangan spoke, even as he stared at his screen.

  “Perhaps it’s time you told us the rest of the story.”

  “You are not cleared for the rest of the story,” Hopko muttered.

  Pearl, my friend,

  Can you tell us where you have gone? And why? We are very concerned. The people you are running from—if they are who we think they are—are not forgiving, and they will be searching for you. Please, let us help.

  And please be in touch with me as soon as you can.

  Philip

  That first evening, they ate take-out sushi around the table. The extra help had arrived, and two of them sat on the sofa, silent, listening to Hopko plan—though it was more like improvisation. There was Harker, in from Ottawa, a fortyish contractor, with thick arms and a greying beard, ex-army, something secret, wearing a leather jacket; and next to him, O’Riley, an Irish woman with brown eyes, a soft smile and a watcher’s eye and sensible shoes, on loan from Five in London. Sitting there, they looked like a married couple whose plane had been delayed.

  Hopko was in triage mode, sorting through the elements of her crippled operation, searching for what was still live. And while Pearl’s disappearance was problematic, Patterson couldn’t help but feel Hopko was freaking out a little too much. Something was at stake, one of the “other operational contingencies,” presumably, that neither she nor Mangan—nor anyone else in the room except Brendan—was privy to.

  If we talked to the FBI, thought Patterson, we could easily get the car from number-plate recognition on the freeway. But Hopko was adamant, so no FBI.

  “We are operating,” she said, “on the soil of an ally without their agreement or knowledge. We are operating under a set of authorisations that are very rarely—read never—invoked. We are on thin, thin ice. If we give so much as a hint to the FBI that we have an operation underway, they will eviscerate us.” She smiled a raptor’s smile. “Are we all clear? I want us to be really, really clear.” She looked at Patterson questioningly.

  “We’re clear,” she said.

  “No nuzzling up to Polk.”

  Patterson nodded.

  “No night-time chats, flirty texts.”

  “I understand.”

  “Do you?”

  She’s protecting something, Patterson thought. She can’t let the Americans know what it is.

  Hopko had started the wheels turning, passing everything to Cheltenham, requests graded PRIORITY. Pearl’s details, email addresses, her car licence plates, images—everything they had on her was seeded in the servers, waiting for something, anything.

  Mangan was fingering a cigarette packet: its plastic crackle, the snick of the lighter, his long exhale. O’Riley looked disapproving.

  “They’ll find her,” said Mangan. “Whoever is running her father and mother. MSS. They’ll find her and they’ll take her.”

  “Not if you find her first,” said Hopko brightly.

  Pearl,

  Are you receiving my messages? Just answer. So we know you’re okay.

  Philip

  In Knoxville, Pearl stayed in the bus station all night. The waiting area’s metal seats were bolted to the floor, the air full of disinfectant. She didn’t sleep or eat. She would have gone out for food, but through the doors she saw the indigent and the ill, some begging, others collapsed, wrapped in blankets, and she wondered who else was out there. She ate chips from a vending machine, held on to her backpack, shivering. At two or so, a man approached her. A white guy, in chinos and a black golfing jacket. He was thick around the middle, with slicked-back hair and pale, delicate hands. She couldn’t tell how old he was.

  “Hey, sweetheart,” he said, standing over her. “What you still doing here?”

  She didn’t meet his eye.

  “It’s a bus station. Waiting for a bus.”

  “Well, where’re you headed?”

  “Away from here.”

  “Well, okay then. I guess we all are. Mind if I sit down?”

  He lowered himself into the seat next to her, and she smelled alcohol on him.

  “It just seems pretty late for you to be here all on your lonesome. What time’s your bus?”

  “It’s soon,” she said.

  “Well, I was thinking of going to get something to eat. You can come along if you want. We could go to the all-night place on Ransome. It has burgers, steaks, all that stuff. We could get a beer.”

  “I’m okay, thanks.”

  “Oh, c’mon. It’ll be fun, and I’ll get you back here for your bus, I promise.”

  “I think I’m going to try and sleep.”

  He paused, his eyes flicking over her.

  “Well, I don’t think it’s safe for you to sleep here.”

  “I’m fine, thanks. Really.”

  “Well, I’m just trying to help.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  “You don’t have to be rude.”

  “I’m not being rude. I said thanks.”

  “Fuckin’ rude bitch.” He stood up. “Fuckin’ bitch.”

  She looked away, held her backpack tight and focused on its straps—the black buckles, their orange nylon weave. He leaned forward and allowed a gobbet of saliva to fall from his mouth and land with a splat sound by her feet. Then he walked some distance away, sat, and watched her. She got up, picked up her pack, went to the women’s lavatory and sat in a filthy stall with the door locked, trying not to cry.

  Her bus left at five. North now, on Interstate 75, up into Kentucky, the traffic moving freely in a grey-blue dawn. She wondered if they’d found the tracker and the car yet.

  And who were “they”? She imagined sleek, sculpted Chinese men, wearing black, moving silently out into America, hunting her, breaking into her bank account, her credit card account, her phone; hacking the surveillance cameras; watching her sobbing in a bus station toilet. She wondered if the tall, dishevelled English guy was looking for her, thinking about her. Whether he cared.

  She dozed for a while and woke up fiendishly hungry. To take her mind off it she busied herself with a cohomology problem—Let F be a functor between the following abelian categories—and lost herself for a while as Lexington went by and the bus crossed into Ohio and the Cincinnati skyline came over the horizon.

  In Columbus, Ohio, Pearl got off the bus in the cool afternoon. She was stiff and her blood sugar was low and she felt weak as a kitten. The bus station sat amid a forest of office buildings and she had to walk for blocks before she found a restaurant. When she did, it was a Korean place, and she was the only person in it. She sat away from the window and ordered bibimbap, and thought of Cal and nearly started crying again.

  The food came and the smell of it nearly made her faint. She wolfed it, the egg yolk breaking and running into the rice, a tiny dish of kimchi speckled red with chilli making her nose burn and her eyes water.

  That first night, Pearl checked into a motel near the airport, the Gala Motor Lodge, paying in cash, the morose woman behind the counter only glancing at her driver’s licence. The room was overheated, the walls stained beige and paper thin; there was hair on the pillow.

&nbs
p; She walked to a fast-food place, bought chicken and biscuits and took it back to the motel, eating it while she sat on the bed and watched television. She badly needed to sleep, but before she did, she took her father’s laptop from the backpack and used a small screwdriver to take the back off. She extracted the hard drive and laid it on the bedside table.

  Her tablet was still in its jacket of silver foil. Unable to resist, she unwrapped it and booted it up. She had hardened the machine: built a virtual private network, disabled anything that could leak. She was, she thought, well hidden. Now she logged on to the Wi-Fi connection, just for a moment, downloaded her messages and logged off. Three messages from Cal.

  Pearly, you okay? Didn’t see you today. You sick? What’s up? Dr. Halberman was asking about you, some paper due? C xx

  P, where you at? Texting you but no answer. You said you’d go with me to the grad seminar, but NO SIGN OF YOU. ’Sup? C xx

  Hey P, I called your home, and yr dad was really weird. Wouldn’t let me talk to you. Why’d he do that? Three days now I didn’t see you. Talk to me. Did I do something that upset you? I’m so sorry if I did, just tell me what it is, cause I have no clue. Miss you Pdog. C xxxxxxx

  There are many different species of betrayal, she thought, and here was one of them. She pushed the pain of it to the margins and scrolled through the messages.

  And there he was, her English guy. So polite, so measured, so economical of speech. The people you are running from are not forgiving, and they will be searching for you. No shit, Sherlock.

  Four messages from him, imploring her to be in touch.

  She turned off the lights, stripped, showered and lay on the bed in the darkness listening to the sounds of exile, the mutterings and shouts from the next room, the slamming of a car door, the percussive hiss of the trucks braking on the freeway, and beneath it all, the deep vibration of the city’s subconscious, its barely audible hum.

  So this is to be alone, she thought. This is to be utterly adrift, with no audience, no soundtrack, no ending in sight. No promise of redemption.

  They did this to me, and now I must find a way out of it, alone. Think, Pearl.

  Are they coming? When?

  40

  Columbus, Ohio

  In the morning, Pearl began.

  First, breakfast at a pancake house. Eggs, bacon, fruit, toasted bagel.

  Then, a phone. In a shabby mall not far from the motel, she bought a prepaid SIM card and an unlocked, second-hand smart phone from a store with barred windows that offered to buy your gold for cash. The Latino man behind the counter regarded her curiously as he handed her the phone.

  Next, she walked to a big box store more than a mile away and paid, in cash, for three hundred dollars’ worth of prepaid gift cards issued by a big credit card company. She repeated the exercise four times at different tills. She had researched these purchases—which stores, where—on the big laptop she had left at home, the internet histories untouched, there for a capable investigator to find.

  At times, during the morning, the panic that roiled just below the surface began to rise and engulf her in a storm of fear and self-recrimination, but she forced herself to breathe, to think, forced it back down.

  The letter to Cal went in a blue post box.

  Dearest Cal,

  I am so, so sorry to be writing to you like this. As you may have guessed, I’ve skipped town. I needed to get away for a while, not from you, you’re my only real friend, the only person I can trust right now.

  Everything has just become too much. I feel like I’m under pressure from every direction, and I’m not able to live up to all the expectations that are being put on me. All I want to do is try to lead a normal life, and to work at the things I’m good at. I’m going to hang out here for a while, where I am now, and I’ll be in touch soon.

  All my love,

  P

  Betrayal takes many forms.

  Now, the hard part.

  Back in the motel room, she logged on—as herself this time, no VPN. She went to the Columbus, Ohio, listings on a big classified ads site.

  Three-month let, move in immediately, 2BR, 1 bath. Students welcome. $235 per week.

  The apartment was close to the university, the top floor of a shabby clapboard house, the floors sloping and creaking, the carpet thin, dark brown, a single air-conditioning unit jammed in a window. A good, strong wireless signal.

  “It’s perfect,” she said.

  The woman was short and obese, in a flowered dress that hung to her knees. She smelled of tobacco.

  “I’ll need to see your driver’s licence,” she said.

  And Pearl gave it to her. The woman photocopied it, dropping the copy in the folder with the lease.

  “Thank you so much,” said Pearl.

  “It’s my pleasure, hon,” said the woman, folding the bills, handing her the keys and the Wi-Fi password. “I ran the credit check, and it’s just as I expected, so it’s all yours. You be good now. No parties, no pets, you hear me? I know you do. You Asian girls. You are my best tenants.” She gave Pearl’s hand a squeeze. “Just the best.”

  Later, Pearl walked across the campus at Ohio State University. She put up flyers on three noticeboards. The flyers were in Chinese and read:

  Three-month sublet, available immediately. 2BR 1 bath. Wi-Fi. Close to campus. Very good price $120 per week only! Call.

  That evening, drained, she ate at a Chinese restaurant that looked promising, but it was a disappointment, the mapo doufu shorn of its acrid heat, a mystery fish dish sickly sweet. But just as a sullen waiter cleared it all away, the burner phone rang. An excited voice, speaking Mandarin.

  “The apartment! So cheap! May we come and see it?”

  Of course. Tomorrow evening. See you there.

  41

  The help had been staking out the Tao house in Silver Spring for two days. The street was way too quiet for a static post, so they’d made passes as often as they dared, in cars, on foot. Apart from curtain-twitching, and Mitchell Tao’s face at the window, nothing.

  Until the evening of the second day.

  It was O’Riley that got it, though she insisted it was more down to luck than judgement. But there they were, sixteen digital snaps of the car in the driveway, and, emerging from the house, three unidentified individuals, Mitchell Tao standing in the entrance hall, half in darkness, closing the door behind them. One Caucasian male, six foot three in his socks, two hundred pounds or so, forties but fit, muscle in a good suit, likely armed given the cut of the jacket and the way he looked about. One male of Asian appearance, thirties, in a black thigh-length leather jacket, five ten, hundred and fifty pounds, slender, and—O’Riley was quite clear on this—the body of a dancer and the looks of a reality TV angel, a face to launch a thousand memes. And the third? Female, of Asian appearance, elegant, hair in a bob, sunglasses atop it, in a belted mackintosh, collar up, jeans, boots. Pricey, this one. The look of the executive suite, the superior table, the fundraiser.

  And O’Riley, who had an ear for such things, fancied that all of them, including the Caucasian muscle, were speaking Mandarin.

  As Patterson said herself, what on earth could explain such atrocious tradecraft? Parading around in broad daylight, trooping in and out of the Tao house. Was it arrogance? Panic? Though all present were agreed that the intelligence gods—so capricious, so brutal in their ironies—had smiled on them for a fleeting moment.

  Patterson leaned into the laptop and zoomed in on the woman. That look, somewhere between the sculpted and the gamine, spoke to her.

  “I’m damn sure it’s her,” she said to Hopko. “I’m absolutely sure it’s ‘Nicole.’ It’s the woman who was screwing Jonathan Monroe. The woman Pearl saw in Beijing. It’s the woman I encountered, before …”

  “Yes, Trish, I know. And with the facial recognition, we’ll all know soon enough.”

  And they did.

  Nicole Yang was Taiwanese, of aristocratic parentage, the father somethi
ng big in the KMT. She’d been a Ph.D. candidate at Harvard, no less, and post-doc at Oxford. The subject of her research was New Ontologies for the Modelling of Evolving Security Metrics in the Asia Pacific Region.

  “Fuck’s that mean?” said Mangan, to Patterson’s relief.

  “It means she has good, natural cover,” said Hopko absently.

  The Caucasian was one Krause, ex-German special forces, contractor to a variety of fly-by-nights in Iraq, now apparently joining the exodus of talent to China’s espionage-industrial complex.

  Of the beautiful man, nothing.

  “But with only three of them …” said Patterson. “I mean, I don’t know how you start a nationwide manhunt with that.”

  “Oh, there’ll be more,” said Hopko. “They’ll be working the servers, firing up whatever they already have planted on U.S. networks. We should assume they’ll be able to make use of law enforcement systems if they want to. Cameras, recognition. We must assume—we will assume—that they are ready for something like this.” She was tired, Patterson could see, her voice flattening into a monotone. “Pearl doesn’t have long.”

  The three of them were christened HAMPER 1, 2 and 3. Harker was told to stay on them, and he silently picked up his bag and jangled his keys. It was left unspoken that surveilling three trained hoods with a single watcher was an impossibility. In fact, it actively imperilled the entire operation; a single exhausted watcher, getting sloppy, giving himself away. They’d know, and soon.

  Why would Hopko take that risk? Needs must, Patterson supposed. But still.

  Mangan went to the balcony to smoke. Hopko planted herself at the dining table, wrestling with deployments, signalled London demanding—no, begging for—more resources.

  But it was unclear to Patterson where the objectives of the operation lay. Were they to hunt Pearl? If so, what for? Were they in the business of saving runaways? Or were they to stake out the father and mother in order to flesh out the size and shape of the network, with a view to wrecking it, bringing the Americans heads on a plate? Hopko seemed utterly unwilling to commit to an operational direction. Patterson considered confronting her, but knew she would bridle, snatching away any hope Patterson had of redemption. The soldier in her chafed at the uncertainty. What was commander’s intent? She didn’t know.