by Adam Brookes
One letter, on thin grainy paper, squared, of the sort children might use to practice their characters. In handwritten Chinese, but the characters clearly drawn, each stroke separate and particular. A letter written for a foreign eye. One photograph, passport size, full face against a white background; the face that of the old friend of the paper who spouts nonsense about birds and who arrives unbidden on Sunday mornings and who, we are almost certain, does not work as a painter.
And one document, two pages. Photocopied. On the first page, in the blocky, spiky typeface that screams Communist Party, two characters. Juemi. “Top Secret.” At the bottom of the page, a number: 157. And in the middle of the page, a title. A Preliminary Report. Certain Questions. DF-41. The other characters demanded a technical dictionary, but Mangan was not of a mind to consult a technical dictionary just now, to go digging for radicals and phonetics and scrolling through hundreds of unfamiliar terms. Leading Small Group.
On the second page a table of contents. Background. Explanation of April 16th Incident. Actions and Policies Related to April 16th Incident. Criticisms of Responsible Cadres. Implications for Launch Schedule.
Mangan ran a hand through his hair and wondered if he’d left any trace of himself on the page. A fingerprint? Annexes. Key Personnel. Timeline of Key Events. Minutes of Leading Small Group Discussions of April 16th Incident. His Chinese was fairly good, in its way. Good enough to know that he was looking at a document whose origins lay deep in the secret heart of China’s ballistic missile program. Good enough to know that he was looking at a death sentence. For someone.
He locked the documents in a desk drawer, and dialed.
“Charteris.”
“David, it’s Philip. Sorry to call on a Sunday.”
“Not a problem. Something exciting happening? You’re so assiduous, Philip, always the first to know.”
“Well, not this time. You remember my telling you about that, um, encounter I had. Birds.”
“Careful.”
“Well, another encounter. Bit perplexed, to be honest. Where are you?”
“At the gym. Come here. Now.”
Dear Mr. Mangan,
I am an old and dear friend of your country. I have served your country in the past. There are many in your government who know of my service. I would suggest that you or your colleagues in the UK government contact Mr. and Mrs. Clarke if your government needs to be reminded of my service to your country. I enclose a photograph so they may easily identify me.
I now stand ready to serve your country once more, one last time. I suggest an exchange. I can provide access to very valuable items. In return, I seek help with travel, the means and the opportunity. I may be reached at this number: China country code, 196 447 3349.
I would prefer to deal only with you, Mr. Mangan. The fewer entanglements the better, I find. You will, of course, need reassurance that my offer is genuine, and is not orchestrated in some way. Please be assured that my offer is utterly sincere and I make it of my own volition. Anything I can do to persuade you of this I am very happy to do. I enclose a sample of the kind of material I am able to deliver.
You will also wonder why I do this. I will refer you to a passage of ancient Chinese poetry:
I cut water chestnut and lotus a garment for to make,
And gathered hibiscus to girt myself about.
I regret not the loss of place.
I shall hold to the purity of mine own heart.
I am sure Mrs. Sonia Clarke will know who the author is.
We must conduct this business quickly, so I hope to hear from you very soon.
Your friend.
Mangan took a cab to Dongzhimen. The sprawling compound of “villas,” a pastiche of a northern European garden suburb, was flanked on all sides by skyscrapers. On the wall surrounding the compound, a graffiti artist—he was all over Beijing, an anti-hero, infuriating the authorities—had stenciled his signature image in black: a figure, this one a dog, wearing goggles. Underneath it one word: THREATEN. Mangan paid the taxi off and walked into the compound.
Charteris waited at the entrance to the clubhouse, a towel round his neck. He said nothing, just beckoned Mangan into a damp, gray room filled with exercise machines. Televisions suspended from the walls were playing Korean music videos. Charteris turned his mobile phone off, removed the back cover and took out the battery and memory card, and put all the pieces in his gym bag. Mangan, making a wry face, did likewise. Charteris put the bag down in one corner and walked over to the far side of the room. Mangan found himself leaning into the corner, his face only a few inches from that of Charteris, who murmured.
“Where did he approach you?”
“He came to the flat. Why all the bloody drama?”
“How did he get into the compound?”
“I don’t know.”
“And what did he say?”
“He gave me documents, a letter.”
Mangan could feel Charteris tensing. “Where are they now, the documents?”
“They’re where I left them in the flat, locked in a drawer. What are you not telling me, David?”
“We’re going back to the flat. Now. Don’t say anything.” Charteris walked quickly across the exercise room, picked up the gym bag, took Mangan’s arm and walked him out of the clubhouse to the car.
Minutes later Charteris’s black BMW was parked in the Jianwai compound and the two of them were in the lift, silent, Mangan embarrassed, Charteris businesslike. Mangan entered the flat first, but Charteris was quickly to the desk, waiting for him to open the drawer. Charteris pointed to the desktop computer and made the slicing gesture at his throat. Mangan sighed and shut the computer down. Then he unlocked the drawer and took the letter, photo and photocopies out and laid them on the desk with a mock-dramatic gesture. Ta-da!
Charteris looked around him and took a piece of paper from the printer and wrote, Is this all of them? He pushed the paper across the desk to Mangan, who was trying to signal indignation, hands on hips, head to one side. Charteris just pointed at the note.
Mangan nodded.
How long have they been here?
Forty minutes now, about.
Charteris breathed out.
Anybody else been in the flat?
Mangan shook his head.
Come with me.
Charteris picked up the letter, the photograph and the document, eased them back into the envelope and put them in a pocket, along with the printer paper. Mangan stared, mute, testy now. But Charteris was already out of the apartment at a near run and Mangan followed him down the stairs.
“David, it’s polite to ask before you walk off with other people’s secret documents.”
“Philip, shut up.”
“No. What’s going on?”
They were outside now, in the bright morning, the cold almost metallic. Charteris stopped and faced Mangan. He spoke in little more than a whisper.
“That letter and that document are extremely dangerous. I’m taking them from you and I’m giving them to the Embassy Security Officer, who, I imagine, will destroy them the minute he claps eyes on them.”
“Just hang on there, David. This man is communicating with me.”
Now Charteris looked irritated. “Philip, grow up. If those documents were ever found, you—and Ting—would be in Qincheng Prison for twenty years. Or worse. Dangle or no dangle, it is my duty to take them from you, which is what I’m doing.”
“Your duty?”
“Or whatever you want to call it.”
“But, wait. Think for a moment. If you take them, I’m doing exactly what this man wants me to. I’m passing them to the UK government. If this is a dangle, I’m incriminating myself even further.”
Charteris said nothing, just shook his head again. He was in his car now, slamming the door.
“Do not tell anybody about this, Philip, and if he approaches you again, let me know immediately.” Charteris had backed the BMW into its parking space and now pulled straight out, fast.
Qu Yuan, the ancient, doomed adviser to kings, had supplied the verse for Peanut’s letter. Peanut wondered if they’d pick up on the code he’d agreed with them all those years ago: lotus—I am operating of my own free will. I am not under duress.
Qu Yuan had, indeed, supplied an entire framework for Peanut to think about his situation and his appallingly dangerous bid to contact British Intelligence.
But it was the other book, the brown volume given him by the old man in the store, which now absorbed him. For the Tai Bai Yin Jing, the Hidden Book of Venus, had much to say about agents and how they should comport themselves.
Be as the hawk entering the deep forest, or the fish plunging deep, leaving no trace.
Be as a swirl of dust arising. Subtle! Subtle!
Peanut sat in the storeroom, the air a fug of cigarette smoke, feeling his way through the text, the ancient, complex characters. The author, Li Quan, about whom Peanut knew nothing, had written a treatise balanced somewhere between strategy and philosophy. His was the metaphysics of the baggage train, the siege engine, encirclement. And of intelligence.
Writing thirteen hundred years ago, Li Quan referred to those who gathered intelligence as xing ren.
Xing: to walk, to move. Ren: person, man. Moving man.
Spy as moving man. Stillness is the enemy.
Later Peanut stood ladling out the vegetables in their cumin broth, steam rising in the cold bright air, black paint still under his nails. Yin, covername Beautiful Peony, deep dark circles under her eyes, was holding out her rice bowl. And the spiky, hatchet-faced, orange-haired girl, covername Pavilion of Softness, was pressing the peppers into the rice with her chopsticks, swirling the broth. Moving man, spy.
Peanut wondered how much longer, here.
11
SIS, Vauxhall Cross, London
The date. A reference number.
FM CX BEIJING
TO LONDON
TO TCI/29611
TO P/64815
FILE REF C/FE
FILE REF R/84459
FILE REF SB/38972
TO: CABINET OFFICE 771
TO: RESEARCH DEPT 864
LEDGER UK S E C R E T
LEDGER DISTRIBUTION: CABINET OFFICE JIC ASSESSMENTS STA
PRIORITY
/REPORT
1/ BEI 2 received a telephone call from Philip MANGAN P77395. MANGAN said he had been approached for a second time by unidentified Chinese male P77396. The contact came uninvited to the flat in which MANGAN works and resides. The contact deposited documents with MANGAN. The documents included what appeared to be photocopies of official materials at the highest level of classification.
2/ BEI 2 met MANGAN immediately and took possession of the documents. BEI 2 advised MANGAN his continued possession of the documents endangered his own security and that of his staff. MANGAN allowed BEI 2 to remove the documents.
3/ The documents are as follows:
A—Photocopy, two sheets, title page and table of contents taken from report on experimental launches of DF-41 missile. Numbered. Juemi/Top Secret classification.
B—Handwritten letter, one sheet. The writer, presumed to be contact P77396, appears to make an offer of service.
C—Photograph, one. MANGAN confirms the subject in the photograph is contact P77396.
Documents are scanned and attached. They follow by bag.
4/ BEI 2 advises that Document A may have CX value, advises immediate assessment.
5/ Grateful for traces on PAN GLINT, WINDSOCK, confirmation that P77396 is identical WINDSOCK.
/ENDS
Patterson’s phone rang. It was Hopko.
“You will get to those files. At once, please.”
Patterson left her arid little cubicle and walked the silent corridor. She took the lift to Central Registry.
A matronly Registry bee stood next to a pile of files. She was wiping what looked to be dust from her hands with a tissue.
“There you are. Eighty-four to eighty-nine. The lot.”
Patterson ran her fingers over a tan cover.
PAN GLINT
SECRET
She signed the files out and carried them back to her cubicle. That afternoon she made a start, and stayed at it into the night. She moved chronologically, making notes, building the narrative, fighting her way through the Service’s long-abandoned paper system, the memoranda known as minute pages, white for substantive, pink for ephemeral, the tally sheets, an obsessive record of who saw what, when, festooned with the self-important signatures of officers long gone. Audit trails. Telegrams. Malcolm Clarke’s pungent contact reports. Requirements. Assessments of product. The short life of a forgotten network, frozen in dusty, bureaucratic amber.
Patterson found the Clarkes’ reports working on her, drawing her in. There was a persuasiveness, a vividness to them. PAN GLINT was made up of five agents, she read. WINDSOCK was Li Huasheng, born 1960 in Beijing, to a family of intellectuals. The father was a geologist, Professor at the Institute of Mines. The mother taught Chinese literature in a high school.
She turned a page.
The family, wrote Clarke, was stable, intellectuals building New China, watching their step in the volatile Mao years, getting by, caring for their children. Little Li Huasheng went to primary school in 1966.
And then things started to go wrong. The Cultural Revolution was underway. Red Guards were all over the campuses and one day they were at the door and the father got it in the neck. The Red Guards threw things out of the apartment windows, hurled pot plants to the floor, smashed pictures. They branded the father a capitalist roader. They locked him in a maintenance room in the Academy of Mines for four months in the summer and autumn of 1966. When they remembered, the Red Guards pushed rice or bread through the door. He nearly starved. They took him out for struggle sessions. Sometimes he was made to kneel on a stage, a sign around his neck, as a crowd shouted abuse and denounced him. Sometimes mother and son were forced to attend the sessions. The father was beaten twice, but the real damage was psychological.
Patterson stopped and rubbed her eyes.
When the father was allowed out of the maintenance room, he came home, but he never worked again. He died a few years later. The mother supported the family. They lived in a single room. Things died down. The Red Guards were reined in, but they were still around, posturing and glowering, keeping track, waiting for next time. Li Huasheng forged on through high school. He took the university entrance exams and won a place at Tsinghua University. He was bright. He read physics and went on to the Aerospace Institute, where he specialized in ballistics. And it was there that the Clarkes recruited him.
Patterson picked her way through the recruitment process, watched the Clarkes deftly place their agent at the center of a network. She scoured the protocols, the tradecraft, for clues. She looked for duress codes.
Patterson was exhausted. She left the building for twenty minutes to walk quickly in a freshening wind off the river, clear her head. She bought a kebab and sat on a bench on the river bank in the chill dark and ate it, and returned to her cubicle reeking of onion.
At two in the morning she turned the page to find an encounter report the Clarkes filed early in the operation. They’d picked up WINDSOCK in their car, at night, driving slowly through Beijing’s darkened streets, had spoken with him for eighteen minutes.
“WINDSOCK remains preoccupied by the fate of his father. He speaks of his father as a gentle man reduced by the depredations of the Cultural Revolution to a shadow who spent his days in a darkened room, starting at noises, venturing out seldom, weeping often. He died in 1972. The posthumous rehabilitation of the elder Professor Li came in 1979, as it did for many of the victims of the Cultural Revolution, but for WINDSOCK the sense of monstrous injustice was only the greater for it. The proximate cause of death was a heart attack, but WINDSOCK insists his father died of fear.”
Patterson imagined
the Clarkes probing their new agent, feeling out his motivations, calculating how far he’d go for them.
“WINDSOCK may hold limited access for now, but a combination of anger, ambition and acquisitiveness may render him a highly exploitable asset in the long term.”
By three she had moved on to the sub-agents. The first to come on board was TANGO, one Gu Hua, a metallurgist at Tsinghua University, a friend of WINDSOCK’s. Then COPPER. He was at the Aerospace Institute. His field was Materials and Precision Tools. Clarke described him as “larcenous.” Then came CURTAIN. He’s the truly clever one, wrote Clarke, destined for great things. Wen Jinghan. He’d already gained his Ph.D. in rocketry and telemetry. The last was NEPTUNE, an electrical engineer. Deceased, said the file, a suicide. WINDSOCK was cut-out. The Clarkes only encountered the others a handful of times.
The next morning, on three hours of sleep, Patterson briefed Hopko, who ate an eclair at her desk.
“And what year was it they first met him, Trish?”
“Nineteen eighty-four.”
“Ah. Interesting moment.”
Patterson sighed inwardly. “Why interesting?”
“Oh, China really started to change that year. The Cultural Revolution trauma was fading. Those big beautiful reforms were starting to take hold. In the villages the peasants had been allowed to grow what they wanted. No more horrid communes, or fewer anyway. In the cities they started to think things were possible. And that October was the thirty-fifth anniversary of the People’s Republic. Big parades, lots of looking forward. Something new in the air, some sense that you could start to push boundaries, transgress.”
Hopko dabbed her mouth with a napkin.
“So, WINDSOCK. Mr. Li Huasheng. Clever, furious, missing his daddy, has resurfaced after all these years. He’s turned up on the doorstep of what he thinks is the Service, because that’s what he knows. To encounter a bemused journalist. Is that what we think?”
“I think it’s a real possibility. One worth pursuing,” said Patterson.
Hopko was silent for a moment, weighing it.
“I’m constantly amazed,” she said, “at how many agents have fathers who are missing, either physically or emotionally.”