by Adam Brookes
“It’s okay, I won’t break,” she said.
“I know,” he said.
They just stood there, locked together for a while.
“I remember,” he said, “you once told me not to expect endings. You said the stories don’t end, they just hang there, unresolved.”
He felt her nod.
“I think that’s about where I am right now. It’s over. But it’s not,” he said.
“Oh, Philip,” she said, looking up. “They’re not finished with you yet. Or me.”
54
The message from Hopko was terse and angry. They were to meet that night in San Francisco, at the Marriott near the airport. Arrangements were being made. On no account were they to communicate with anyone. On no account were they to undertake any operational activity. The operation was stood down.
“Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars,” said Patterson, her face lit silver by the screen.
They talked about it, and agreed on a course of action, despite Hopko’s order. Or perhaps because of it. So Patterson took her secure handheld and dialled. She put it on speaker so Mangan could hear.
“Polk.”
“Frankie, it’s Trish Patterson.”
“My oh my, it’s the Disappearing Woman. What the bejeezus, Patterson, I thought we had a good thing going.”
“Can you talk?”
“When my mouth’s not full.”
“Frankie, listen. Are you secure? I’m going to give you something.”
“Really? Not humping me today? I’m disappoi—”
“Are you secure?”
“Okay, okay, I’m secure. Tighter than a gnat’s ass.”
“Frankie, get to San Francisco. Now.”
“Shit, we eloping?”
“There’s a flight in two hours from National. Get on it, Frankie.”
“Uh, why?”
“I have something for you.”
“You’re a little vague there, Patterson.”
“We have a proof. Proof of the whole network.”
“FedEx it.”
“Get here, Frankie. We’ll be at the airport.”
There was silence on the line.
“Frankie?”
“Jeez, Patterson, you’re like a frickin’ hernia. I can ignore you in the short term but you just keep—”
“Get here.”
And she hung up.
This is it, Mangan thought. This is the last time, the very last time, I will ever do this. This is the last time I will ever be operational, the last time I will depend on tradecraft. He was back in the Tenderloin, standing on a street corner watching as Patterson trailed up and down Ellis Street in the late afternoon.
Was anyone there?
That filthy white kid in a sleeping bag, eating something out of a styrofoam tray, was he a watcher?
What about that strung-out old black guy on limbs like dry sticks, weaving in and out of the gutter? What about him? Or the woman in a pink wig and heels and tattoos idly smoking and staring at her phone? Was she static surveillance? Who owned her? Who owns any of us?
And the absurdity of the scene struck him hard, the ridiculousness of it all, a stupid contrived little story about spies and power aspiring to seriousness. The more dangerous the better, because danger means authenticity. When someone dies, it’s real.
He couldn’t tell if anyone was watching Patterson. He had no idea.
The General Delivery Post Office was a block away. They’d conducted a first pass earlier and the place was nothing more than a store front with a graffitied metal shutter, a window of bulletproof glass and a counter. Sod it, he thought, and set off up the block towards it.
Patterson was with him in an instant, flitting out of nowhere, gripping his upper arm.
“What do think you’re doing?” she said.
“I’m going to pick up the bloody package.”
She walked beside him, her eyes skittering across the street.
“We agreed I would go up there first, take a look, come back for you. Remember? We had a whole conversation. About fifteen minutes ago. Ring any bells?”
“I just want to get this over with.”
“Don’t lose the plot now, Philip. Not now.”
He stopped, heaved a huge, exhausted sigh. She looked at him, a bright, brittle smile on her swollen face.
“Just … wait here,” she said.
He nodded. She turned and moved up the street, jogging through traffic, swerving, sidestepping, ducking in and out of some store, and he glimpsed on her the deftness of the trained operative, before losing her from sight altogether.
He lit a cigarette, trying to push aside the leaden sense of failure, of pointlessness, that squatted at the centre of him.
She was back in minutes, coming from behind him.
“All right. We go,” she said.
Just this one last thing, he thought.
They walked towards the post office.
In the event, it was easy. There was no one there watching them or waiting for them, and Mangan walked up to the window and presented his ID while Patterson stood there taut as a steel cable and watched his back. The woman went back into a storeroom and came out with a package: a yellow, padded envelope with Pearl’s handwriting on it. And he walked away, back to the car.
The only difficulty he encountered came when he saw the handwriting. Its childish swirls and loops stirred it all up, and, sitting in the car as Patterson drove, he was soaked with shame all over again, to a point where he could hardly breathe.
Mercifully, there was no note, just the hard drive.
Patterson drove them out of the city and they holed up in a side street in Oakland for two hours, and then it was time to get to the airport.
Polk came off his flight rumpled and snappish, in a beige trench coat and a grey suit. Patterson carried a backpack with the drive in it and took him to a quiet gate with empty seating. Mangan stayed away.
Polk leaned forward, staring at her fat lip, her swollen eye.
“Jeez, Patterson, fuck happened to you? You walk into a door?”
“It’s not important.”
“Don’t tell me what’s important. Fuck am I doing here, anyway?” he said. He was quietly furious again, his eyes crystalline blue in his pale, pouchy face.
“Listen to me.”
“Knock yourself out.”
“There’s a network. It’s run from Beijing, through the Caribbean. A lawyer in Suriname. T. Y. Teng. Tango Echo November Golf. He’s the money, carries the bags. One of the network’s assets is in your manor. Silver Spring, Maryland. Name of Tao. Tango Alpha Oscar. Given name Mitchell.” She gave the address, waited a beat for a reaction, for a flood of questions, but he was silent, just sat there with folded arms. She pushed on.
“Their target is high tech in the Washington area—defence, corporations, government contractors.”
Silence.
“Frankie, are you hearing me?”
“Um, yeah.”
“Okay, well, next is one of the handlers. Chinese woman, name of Nicole, surname Yang. Her cover is fancy academic, she has a history at Harvard and Oxford. Taiwanese, but an asset of MSS.”
More silence.
“We think the network included Jonathan Monroe, and Nicole was his handler, and his squeeze.”
And there was a girl, she thought. No, a young woman. Short-sighted and pale and ill-favoured in all but the most important ways. And we lost her, and the knowledge of that loss is clattering around inside me as I speak to you, even as I don’t mention her name.
“Frankie, are you with me?”
“I’m listening.”
“Start with Mitchell Tao and his wife, and it will unravel from there.”
He had taken a packet of gum from his pocket, and was unwrapping a piece. He put it in his mouth, began to chew.
“Frankie?”
“Patterson, you’re freaking me out a little bit here.”
“It’s all true, Frankie. Yo
u can roll it up.”
“On the basis of what you just told me? What am I, Chuck Norris?”
She took the hard drive from the backpack, handed it to him.
“Put that in your pocket, Frankie.”
Polk exhaled.
“You gonna tell me what it is?”
“I think it’s everything.”
He took the drive, held it, feeling its weight, and studied her.
“Patterson, you seem like a nice person. You seem like you’re not gonna shoot the Pope, or push opioids in trailer parks or whatever. So I’m going to give you one chance to take it back and we pretend like this never happened. Or you’re going to explain why the fuck you are giving this to me and not to the weirdos who run your Washington Station.”
“Personal preference.”
He fingered the drive, saying nothing. Then he suddenly sat up, as if remembering something.
“Hey, Patterson, guess what? A little bird shat on my desk. Seems Jonathan Monroe was about to begin cooperating.”
“What? He’d gone to the FBI?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“He’d decided to confess?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“But then he goes and tops himself,” she said.
“Anything’s possible. I mean, it’s Washington, right? The city that eats and breathes paranoid delusion.”
“You think he was killed as well.”
“Do I?” he said.
“Don’t you?”
“You coming back to DC, Patterson? Why don’t you buy me a chilli half-smoke and ask me again.”
“I’m asking you now.”
“I think it doesn’t matter what I think. It matters what the prosecutors think.”
“It matters what you tell the prosecutors.”
Polk made a mock-surprised face, his mouth an O. “Holy Toledo! Nothing gets past you.” He smiled and held out a hand to her. “What do you say? C’mon back to DC with me.”
She gave him a tired smile.
“You trying to recruit me as a source, Frankie?”
He looked at the hard drive in his hand.
“Uh, seems like I already did that.”
“I don’t think I’m going back to DC. “
“You want to tell me why that is?”
“I may have to go back to London.”
“Is that right.”
“It’s become … complicated.”
“I’m not complicated, Patterson. Look at me. I’m a lunk. I make seventy-two grand a year. My kids don’t talk to me. I buy discounted shoes. You bring glamour into my life. Come on back east and let’s talk. About all this stuff. Lots to talk about. Lots of people interested.”
What?
“Lots of people?” she said.
“Oh. Lots and lots.”
“You trying to tell me something, Frankie?”
“Ya think?”
Patterson blinked.
“Thanks, Frankie.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“I won’t.”
“Right answer, babe.”
And then he was gone, the hard drive in his pocket, and she watched his huge frame recede along the concourse, wondering if she’d ever see him again, and she if were to, if he would be putting cuffs on her.
Mangan was behind her.
“Well?” he said.
“They’re onto it. All of it. And I just confirmed it all for him.”
She frowned. “And I think he’s just given us a minute to get out.”
They went quickly to the car and left, Mangan driving, Patterson sitting stiffly in the seat, holding her ribs. Her eye had opened a little, but was coming out in a terrible bruise.
It was gone two in the morning when they got to the Marriott and O’Riley was in the lobby, waiting for them. She nodded at them and led them to the elevator without a word.
Hopko was waiting in a suite on the ninth floor, sitting on a straight-back chair in the middle of the room like a Cleopatra in jeans and a mannish shirt; her silver bracelets, her dark-rimmed spectacles. Her hair was pulled back, and she looked exhausted. The other three watchers—Harker, the Paulsons—were positioned strategically around the suite. Mangan had a ridiculous vision of them standing there wafting peacock feathers, like ancient Egyptian flunkies, with himself and Patterson as miserable petitioners. He caught Harker’s eye, and the man raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips as if to say, Watch out, shit storm coming in.
Mangan and Patterson walked towards Hopko, and he noticed O’Riley move to cover the door. The tension was coming off Patterson like a heat lamp. He felt suddenly terribly tired, and his mouth tasted foul, and he could feel his own resentment starting to build at this fatuous room and its fatuous kangaroo court.
There were no pleasantries. Hopko had a file open on her lap. She began.
“The body has been recovered, you’ll be glad to hear.”
Mangan felt himself unable to react. He had no idea what was expected, or what he expected of himself.
“There’ll be an autopsy, of course. There are tyre tracks all over the place, and apparently at least one empty shell casing.”
“She just … she jumped,” said Mangan.
“And we failed to stop her,” said Patterson.
“We failed to stop her,” Mangan repeated quietly.
Hopko was silent for a moment. She adjusted her glasses.
“This is now a flap,” she said. “You will leave the country in the next few hours. You,” she looked at Patterson, “will fly to Mexico City and from there to London. The Paulsons will accompany you. You will be met at Heathrow by Service Security Branch and taken for debrief. Is that clear?”
Patterson didn’t reply.
“You,” she looked at Mangan, “will fly separately to London, via Costa Rica. You will be accompanied by Harker. You, too, will be met on arrival in the UK, and taken for debrief.”
Hopko’s gaze was utterly level. It had, he thought, the look of the inquisitor to it.
“Neither of you will attempt any communication with anyone.”
Mangan took a breath.
“And what if I say no, Val?”
Her facial expression didn’t change.
“No to what, exactly?”
“Just no. No to you. No to London. No to debrief.”
“Philip, I am terribly sorry, but that is not an option you have at the moment.”
“You’d force me?”
“I expect you to cooperate. Let’s leave it at that, shall we?”
He was aware of a stirring in the room, Harker adjusting his stance.
“I’m afraid that may not be possible, Val.”
She shot him a mock-offended look, which germinated a little flower of anger somewhere in him.
“It may not be possible!” she repeated. “And dare I ask, Philip, why it may not be possible? Do you have other professional commitments?”
This is it, he thought. This is where I acknowledge to myself all that’s happened, all I’ve done, how wrong I’ve been.
“I think we both know—”
“Both know what?”
“We both know that this is finished for me. I thought I could do this, but I can’t.”
“Nonsense. You’re a bloody natural. Didn’t I say so, Trish? One of the best I’ve ever worked with.” Hopko’s voice dripped with derision. She looked to Patterson. “Didn’t I say?”
“I’m not equipped for it. I thought I was, but I’m not,” he said.
Hopko was half smiling.
“So it all ends with a whimper, does it, Philip? All right. You’ll help us find Mitchell Tao’s laptop. I assume you know where it is. And we’ll see you home. Back to Blighty. We’ll have a nice chat about all that’s gone on. You’ll sign a few boring pieces of paper. And then you’ll be free. Free to go. Free to bugger off back to your career in journalism, what remains of it. Who knows, there might even be a little money for you.”
Patterson spoke quietly.
“I wouldn’t believe a fucking word if I were you, Philip.”
“Good heavens, it talks,” said Hopko. “Philip, if you stay here, the FBI is coming for you. A woman is dead. Do you understand? You have a day or two and they will be on you.”
“Two women,” said Patterson.
“What? Two women?”
Patterson took a step forward. She was holding herself very straight, despite her pain, and Mangan was struck anew at the physicality of her, the way her physical strength emanated from her, dominated a space.
“You are responsible for the death of Molly Monroe,” said Patterson evenly. “So, yes, two women.”
“You are absurd,” snapped Hopko. “Are you suggesting that British intelligence would commit a murder on American soil? That is unthinkable. Good Lord, woman, who do you think I am? Get a grip.”
But Patterson had taken another step forward, and the Paulsons shifted themselves, moving away from the wall and closer to Hopko. The room was starting to seethe with intent.
“You were trying to protect Mitchell Tao, weren’t you, Val? Molly Monroe could have brought him and his network down. And she died.”
“You are embarrassing yourself,” said Hopko.
“What about Jonathan Monroe? Did he kill himself? Really?”
Hopko got up from the chair and stood behind it. She’s defensive, Mangan thought. And suddenly Patterson was bellowing at her.
“Come on, Val, let’s have it. Tell us!”
Mangan realised that she was close to hysterical. Hopko took a wary step back.
“You are going to have to explain,” yelled Patterson. “You have made us into murderers. That is not who I am, do you understand?” The chair now stood between her and Hopko; she batted it away and it fell over onto the carpet. “I am not responsible.” The expression on Hopko’s face changed to one of concern. Genuine concern, it seemed to Mangan.
“Oh, Trish. I see what this is about. Really, I do.”
“Do you hell.”
“You are blaming yourself for a great many things.”
“I’m blaming you.” She was shaking.
Hopko stood with hands on her hips, and Patterson was close to her now, too close. Harker moved like quicksilver across the room to interpose himself with a sharp, “That’s enough.” O’Riley had left the door and was there too, her hand around Patterson’s upper arm, but Patterson, in one fluid movement, turned fast, twisting herself out of O’Riley’s grip and locking the woman’s wrist and bearing down on it with her torso. There was a distinct cracking sound, and the woman gasped For fuck’s sake and Patterson thrust her away and she stumbled backwards cradling her wrist. She hit a side table, fell backwards, knocked over a lamp, and the room was suddenly chaotic, with Hopko yelling at Patterson and Harker advancing on her, the Paulsons both positioning to get behind her and bring her down, and O’Riley moaning.