“I don’t want you going,” she said, and he could hear both her fear and her determination.
“You’re afraid for me. I’m afraid, too. But I’m more afraid not to go.” He paused. “I’m like a fisherman in a yawl, with something tugging on the line. A sailfish? A great white shark? I don’t know, can’t know, and I don’t dare let go.”
There was a long pause before she spoke again. “Even if it sinks your boat?”
“Can’t let go,” Ambler said. “Even if.”
DISCOVERY BAY, NEW TERRITORIES
The luxurious Hong Kong villa had twelve rooms, all beautifully appointed in a manner consistent with its 1920s construction—much fine French furniture of giltwood and damask; walls upholstered with shot silk—but its true glory was its flower-decked terrace, with its view of the calm waters of Discovery Bay. Especially now, as the waters shimmered with the rosy sun of the early evening. On one end of the terrace, two diners sat at a table, its white linen cloth covered with a dozen dishes, rare delicacies prepared by expert hands. As the aromas mingled in the faint breeze, a silver-haired American with a prominent forehead inhaled and reflected that in previous centuries such a banquet would be available to few outside China’s royal courts.
Ashton Palmer sampled a dish made from hatch-lings of the mountain bulbul; the bones of the tiny songbird were as undeveloped as those of a sardine, providing only a pleasing texture. As with the ortolan dish perfected by Escoffier—another tiny songbird, which French gourmets knew to hold by the beak and eat whole, behind a napkin—one ate the bulbul hatch-ling in a single bite, crunching on its near-embryonic bones, relishing the slight resistance as one did the yielding exoskeleton of a soft-shelled crab. It was a dish whose Mandarin name was chao niao ge—literally, stir-fried birdsong.
“Extraordinary, don’t you agree?” Palmer said to his only dining companion, a Chinese man with broad, weathered features and hard, gimlet eyes.
The man, a longtime general of the People’s Liberation Army, smiled, his leathery skin forming grooved striations from cheek to mouth. “Extraordinary,” the man agreed. “But from you, one has grown to expect nothing less.”
“You are too kind,” Palmer said, noting the uncomprehending faces of the serving staff. For Palmer was speaking to General Lam in neither Mandarin nor Cantonese but in the dialect of Hakka spoken in the general’s native village. “Still, I know that you, like me, appreciate attention to details. This dish, chao niao ge, was last served, so far as anyone knows, in the final decades of the Qing dynasty. I fear that your friends in Wanshoulu”—he referred to a heavily guarded suburb of Beijing where many of China’s top officials made their homes—“or Zhongnanhai would find it decadent.”
“They prefer Burger King,” General Lam grunted. “Pepsi-Cola served in silver goblets.”
“Obscene,” the American scholar said. “But all too true.”
“Not that I have been spending so much time at Zhongnanhai,” the general said.
“If Liu Ang had his way, all the warriors would be exiled to the provinces. He regards the PLA as an enemy, and so has turned it into one. But then, as Chinese history shows, in exile lies opportunity.”
“That has been the case for you,” the general said.
Palmer smiled but did not deny it. His career trajectory was not one he would have chosen when he had started out in life, but then the mistake would have been his. When he was still a young Ph.D. in the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, the smart money had him pegged as the next Henry Kissinger—and the most promising policy intellectual of his generation. But, as it emerged, he had a fatal flaw for a career in Foggy Bottom: he had, he believed, a zeal for the truth. With startling abruptness, the lionized wunderkind came to be the shunned enfant terrible. Thus had the mediocrities upheld their rule, expelling the one who threatened their comfortable assumptions. In some ways, Palmer reflected, his own exile had indeed been the best thing that ever happened to him. The rise-and-fall story about him that ran in The New Republic asserted that, having been drummed out of the corridors of power, he had “re-treated” to the groves of academe. If so, it was a strategic retreat: a regrouping as much as anything. For his disciples—Palmerites, in his enemies’ sneering term—gradually took policy positions in the Defense Department and the State Department, including the Foreign Service, as well as the more connected Washington-based think tanks. He had drilled into them hard lessons of discretion, and the lessons were learned. His protégés were now in the most sensitive of positions. As years passed by, their guru, retired like a Cincinnatus on the Charles, had been patiently biding his time.
Now, however, he was counting the days.
“As for the Zhongnanhai,” Palmer said, “I am pleased that we still share the same perspective on these matters.”
The general touched one cheek and then another as he intoned a Hakka idiom: “Right eye, left eye.” It meant that two people were as close in their views as were a man’s two eyes.
“Right eye, left eye,” Palmer echoed in a murmur. “Of course, to see is one thing. To act is another.”
“Very true.”
“You have not developed second thoughts,” Palmer said quickly, alert to any sign of faltering resolve.
The general responded with a Hakka proverb. “The wind does not move the mountain.”
“I am pleased to hear you say so,” Palmer replied. “For what lies ahead will test everyone’s resolve. There will be winds, and they will be of gale force.”
“What is to be done,” the general said, “is what must be done.”
“Sometimes great disruption is necessary,” Palmer said, “to ensure a greater stability.”
“Exactly so.” The general raised the well-spiced bulbul hatchling to his lips. His eyes narrowed as he savored its crispy perfection.
“One must fell a tree to heat the rice pot,” Palmer said: another Hakka saying.
The general was no longer surprised at the professor’s intimate knowledge of his native region. “This is no ordinary tree, the one to be felled.”
“Nor an ordinary rice pot,” said the scholar. “Your people know their roles. They must know when to act, and do so unfailingly.”
“Certainly,” General Lam said.
But the silver-haired scholar’s gaze was unwavering. “Six days remain,” he said, with understated emphasis. “Everyone must play his part to perfection.”
“Without fail,” the general said, his weathered face tightening in resolve. “After all, the course of history is at stake.”
“And, we can agree, the course of history is far too important a thing to be left to chance.”
The general nodded gravely and raised his finger again. “Right eye, left eye,” he said quietly.
TWELVE
MONTREAL
The man on the cell phone told Ambler to be at the northwestern corner of Dorchester Square at 11:00 A.M. Arriving early, Ambler took a cab to the corner of rue Cypress and rue Stanley, a block away, and did reconnaissance. The Sun Life Building on Dorchester, a beaux arts behemoth, had once been the largest building in the entire British empire. Now it was dwarfed by modern skyscrapers, many of which were clustered around Dorchester Square. Indeed, that was why Dorchester Square made Ambler nervous; it was overlooked by too many buildings.
He was carrying shopping bags from Place Montreal Trust, had a camera around his shoulder—and looked, he hoped, like just another tourist. After loitering in the side streets, he satisfied himself that he saw nobody suspicious in Dorchester Square proper, and he ventured into it. The square’s walkways were perfectly cleared of snow—several straight paths intersecting with a central circle, where a statue of one Sir John A. Macdonald, the country’s first prime minister, looked out. Another monument honored Canada’s role in the Boer War, and not far from it was a Catholic graveyard, for victims of some early-nineteenth-century cholera epidemic. The stones were weathered, their lichen-darkened hues set off by the white snow. Towerin
g over it all was a steel-and-slate erection of the Imperial Bank. In front of the Dominion Square Building, a massive structure in the Renaissance revival style, a red bus marked LE TRAM DU MONTREAL had come to a stop.
However much he reconnoitered, it was clear, the critical elements could change at any moment. Was that why Osiris’s controller had chosen it? Peering through the camera lens, Ambler scanned the hundreds of windows visible from the various office towers. Most were designed not to open; those that could open were closed, given the weather. Though he had dressed warmly, the temperature was in the lower twenties, and his ears were beginning to freeze. He heard footsteps coming toward him, purposeful ones, and whipped around.
“Excuse me, mister.”
Ambler saw an elderly couple dressed in bright down-filled jackets, their white hair tousled by the wind.
“Yes?” Ambler replied, trying to keep his voice bland, incurious.
“Would you mind taking a picture of us?” The man handed him a yellow disposable camera, the sort sold at any drugstore. “With Sir John Macdonald in the background, OK?”
“All right,” Ambler said, embarrassed by his suspicion. “You American?”
“From Sacramento. But we were here on our honeymoon. Guess when that was?”
“Can’t guess.” Ambler tried not to sound distracted.
“Forty years ago!” the wife squealed.
“Well, congratulations,” Ambler said, squeezing the button on the top right of the camera. As he stepped forward to frame the picture, he noticed something—a person stepping behind the statue, a bit too quickly, as if he did not want to be seen. Ambler was perplexed; it was an amateur’s mistake, and surely he was not dealing with amateurs.
He handed the disposable camera back to the elderly couple and suddenly took a few long strides toward the statue’s pediment.
A young man—no, a boy, probably fourteen or fifteen—shrank away.
“Hey,” Ambler said, as neutrally as possible.
“Hey,” the boy said.
“So what’s the deal?”
“I think I screwed up,” the boy said, speaking with a slight Québécois accent. He had a pronounced nose that he might one day grow into and short spiky blond hair that was obviously bleached.
“Nothing you can’t make right, I bet.” Ambler’s eyes did not leave the boy’s face; he was attuned to every shifting expression.
“You weren’t supposed to see me yet. Not until eleven A.M.,” the boy said.
“Who has to know?”
The youth brightened. “So you won’t tell?”
“Why would I? Don’t you think I already know?”
“It’s just that your friend told me it was a birthday surprise. Like some sort of treasure hunt, maybe?”
“Tell me what you were supposed to tell me. I’ll act surprised. Promise.”
“You gotta,” the boy said anxiously.
“How much is he paying you? I’ll pay you the same.”
Now the boy was grinning. “How much is he paying me?” he repeated, stalling.
“Right.”
“Forty.” The boy was a clumsy liar.
Ambler raised an eyebrow.
“Thirty?”
Ambler maintained a look of skepticism.
“Twenty,” the boy finally corrected himself.
Ambler peeled off a twenty and gave it to him. “Now, then, what were the instructions?”
“Instructions were the rendezvous has changed. You’re supposed to meet in the Underground City.”
“Where?”
“Les promenades de la Cathédrale,” the boy said. “But if there’s a surprise for you, you got to remember to act surprised.”
Someone with a mind for metaphor would find it either apt or ironic that beneath Christ Church Cathedral was a vast upscale shopping mall, the promenades de la Cathédrale. Famously, the cash-strapped Anglican diocese had bailed itself out by selling the land underneath. Upon this rock thou shall build a church had been translated into the language of a commercial era, when a church had to support itself by selling the rock on which it stood.
Ambler had just taken the escalators down to the promenades and was trying to orient himself in the cavernous mall when he felt a pair of hands on his shoulders, spinning him around.
A burly ginger-haired man smiled cheerfully at him. “Face-to-face at last,” the man said.
Ambler did a double take. He knew this man—not personally but by reputation. Many people did. His name was Paul Fenton, and his reputation was as murky as his gaze was clear.
Paul Fenton. A prominent American industrialist, who first made his name as the founder of a Texas-based electronics firm with major defense contracts. But his business concerns had expanded a great deal since then, and by the late eighties he had earned notoriety in certain circles for funding right-wing insurgencies and counterinsurgencies around the world. Among the beneficiaries of his patronage were the Contras in El Salvador, Renamo in Mozambique, and Unita in Angola.
To some, he was a patriot, a man whose loyalty was to his country, rather than the almighty dollar. To others, he was a dangerous zealot who played fast and loose with the laws governing the foreign export of munitions, reminiscent of the businessmen who had backed the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of the early sixties. That Fenton was a savvy and aggressive entrepreneur was disputed by no one.
“You are Tarquin, aren’t you?” Fenton asked. He took Ambler’s silence for assent and extended a hand. Yet the question had not been rhetorical—there was a measure of uncertainty. Fenton had not known what he looked like.
Ambler took Fenton’s hand and stepped forward, speaking in a low, harsh voice. “It’s idiotic to meet me in public this way. You’re too goddamn recognizable.”
Fenton just winked. “I find people don’t see what they don’t expect to see. And I’m not exactly a Hollywood celebrity. Besides, sometimes the best place to hide is in a crowd, don’t you find?” He took a step back, gestured around him. “Welcome to the world’s largest underground pedestrian network.” Fenton’s voice was a honeyed baritone. His skin was ruddy, weathered, large-pored, yet oddly smooth, possibly the result of dermabrasion. His hairline was recessed into a widow’s peak, though the areas of recession were dotted with tiny clumps of hair arranged almost geometrically, like doll hair. A man with a passion for self-improvement, then.
He looked athletic, rugged. He also looked rich. There was a sleekness to him, a warrior who would spend one weekend playing polo in the Argentines, another running Abrams tanks through Chad, and the next getting mineral-salt scrubs at a Parrot Cay spa. Rugged, weathered, but . . . moisturized. The visage of the billionaire tough guy.
“The Underground City,” Ambler said. “Perfect place for the underground man.”
Fenton, he knew, had not been exaggerating: the so-called Underground City consisted of twenty miles of passageways and included sixteen hundred boutiques, a couple of hundred eateries, dozens of cinemas. Despite the freezing temperatures above, the Underground City was pleasantly warm and brightly lit. He looked around. Long arched skylights, several tiers of escalators, and balconies that overlooked the enormous volume all contributed to a sense of spaciousness. The Underground City linked the upscale shopping galleries of Cours Mont-Royal to the Eaton Centre and extended through the arcades-filled Complexe Desjardines and even to the Palais des Congrès, the hulking convention center that straddled the Ville Marie Expressway like some gargantuan of steel, glass, and concrete.
Ambler realized why Fenton had chosen the venue: it was to provide Ambler himself with reassurance—the risks of violence would seem small in such a public place.
“Tell me something,” Ambler went on. “Are you actually here by yourself? A man of your . . . stature?”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
Ambler glanced around him, sweeping across dozens of faces. A square-faced man in a drab wax duffle coat, mid-forties, short hair. Another, twenty feet to his left, loo
king much less comfortable in much more costly apparel—a double-breasted camel’s hair top-coat, the slacks of a dark flannel suit. “I see just two. And one of them’s not used to this sort of posting.”
Fenton nodded. “Gillespie’s basically a secretary. Good with the maître-d’s and such.” Fenton nodded at the man in the camel’s hair topcoat, who nodded back, coloring slightly.
“But you were going to tell me about Osiris. And this doesn’t seem the ideal setting for a tête-á-tête.”
“I know just the place,” Fenton purred, and led Ambler to an extremely exclusive-looking clothing boutique, a little farther down the terrazzo walkway. In the window was a single dress, mainly iridescent purple shot-silk with the seams showing and basting threads visible in sloppy green loops. It looked as if it were a garment that was still being made, the sort of thing that tailors sometimes display in their shops, but Ambler realized it was the finished garment: some high-style “deconstructed” look that no doubt wowed the fashion press when worn by a slinkily anorexic model on a runway. A small sign of etched copper gave its name: SYSTÈME DE LA MODE.
Again, Ambler was impressed with Fenton’s choice of venue: this one was cunningly designed to offer both reassurance and privacy. The store, with its intimidating and recherché offerings, was visible to passersby, but not one in a thousand would actually dare to come in.
At the entrance there was the usual antitheft portal, the two plastic-clad towers, though placed a little farther from the door than was usual. A low beep started when Ambler approached.
“Sorry about that,” Fenton said. “Probably doesn’t like your camera.”
Which meant it wasn’t an inventory-control portal at all. Ambler removed his camera and stepped through.
“Actually, if you could just stand there for a moment longer,” Fenton said apologetically.
Ambler did so. The door sucked closed behind him.
The Ambler Warning Page 18