by Adam Brookes
In this case the message was brief. Would representatives of Yip Lo please make their way to Beijing, reside in certain hotels, attend the All China Moulded Plastics Industry Expo, and await contact using prearranged methods. On reading the message the representative of Yip Lo—a small but industrious exporter of plastic flowers, tablecloths and novelties to European retailers—understood that he should move fast, book tickets, reserve rooms and start to check his back.
The representative of Yip Lo closed and deleted the file and replaced the computer in the safe beneath the protective gaze of Guan Yin. He stood, stretched and looked from the window—the Poon apartment was on the eighteenth floor for luck—across to Hong Kong island, where the big Chinese bank buildings paraded in the night.
And then the company representative got to work. For the Poon family—matriarch Eileen, known as Granny Poon, majority stakeholder in Yip Lo Exports Inc. of Kowloon and smoker of small, foul Indian beedis; her sons Frederick and Peter; and a cousin Winston—were a small treasure of British Intelligence. Patterson had read their personnel files repeatedly. The Poons were venal, loyal, quiet and the best street artists in Asia.
They had to be. If they were anything less, China’s Ministry of State Security would have found them and shot them by now.
15
Beijing
Evening, and Mangan was in the midst of a ghastly but lucrative commission for an Italian television station via the agency. Some starlet, promoting a fashion and perfumery line launching in China, simpering at a big hotel. Harvey was grinning. An officious little flack in heels pointed them to a spot on the carpet, behind a rope. Harvey muttered obscenities under his breath. Ting carried the tripod on her shoulder, loving it, her evening just beginning. Harvey followed the starlet in, then tilted up and down the dress—aquamarine, taffeta, said the flack, as Mangan wrote despairing notes—the shoes, the smile. Mangan, in a blue blazer that had seen years of cruel and degrading treatment, waved a microphone at her. She gave her spiel, first in Italian, then English. Her lips were plump and pink and glistening, but her breath smelled of something sharp and chemical.
Afterwards Harvey and Ting packed up in raucous good humor, chiding Mangan for his terrible interviewing. But Mangan left them dealing with the lights and cables, walked out into the street and lit a cigarette. He took out his mobile phone.
“Charteris.”
“I’ve a bone to pick with you.”
“Philip! Welcome back! Let’s pick it over together.”
“Where do you suggest? For the picking?”
“My dear chap. Hyatt. Rooftop bar. We’ll pick in comfort. Does right away suit?”
Midnight. The hotel was a marble air-conditioned nowhere. Charteris was in a corner of the empty bar on a leather banquette. He sat in shadow, so Mangan could not make out his features. He flapped an arm as Mangan loped in.
“I’m drinking vodka. Lots. Have one?”
Mangan nodded assent. The vodka was cold, shot with lime.
“So, David. I’ve been to Singapore.”
“Fascinating chaps down there at the Pan Asia Institute, I hear,” said Charteris. “Terribly on the ball.” A sardonic smile.
“Odd, David, that a Foreign Office type—a close associate of yours, I got the sense—should show up like that.”
Charteris said nothing, smiled.
“You took those documents and sent them back to London, didn’t you?”
“Yes.” Charteris affected a patient expression.
“I rather get the impression that they… I mean, this is not what I do.”
“What’s not what you do?”
“They want me to try to establish the source.”
“But that is exactly what you do, isn’t it? If you’re going to write the story, you must establish the source, mustn’t you? Philip, this is an ever so slightly precarious topic for discussion in public.”
“I won’t be used.”
Charteris leaned forward, the humor gone.
“Oh, come on, Philip, don’t be so bloody precious.”
“I’m not being precious. I do not want to get mixed up in something.”
“Oh, really. Well, what can I say, Philip, that will stiffen your nerve a little?” Charteris was speaking fast now, urgently, quietly. “You have made an impression on them, Philip. They have decided to let you inside the wire a little. Rashly, I recommended they do so. That doesn’t happen often, Philip, and it’s a two-way street. Get a little, give a little. Don’t fuck it up.” Mangan, startled, made to speak but stopped himself.
“When are you going to call him?” said Charteris.
Mangan still said nothing.
“Do not meet him without telling me. No phones. Tell me in person.”
Charteris was formal, cold almost. Then he stopped, and relaxed. The smile returned.
“Look, Philip, you’ll have a big one in the favor bank if you do this. And if you do it soon. It will work for you. Just let me know, okay?” And then he was gone, his jacket slung over his shoulder, and Mangan sat alone, staring through the glass at the shimmering glow over Beijing.
Peanut lay awake. The storeroom was cold. He had dozed for a while, sunken in the half-place between sleep and waking, where memories of his father floated. A summer morning in the Fragrant Hills, the forest, a rocky path. Dappled light, the pulsing whirr of the cicadas. His father’s pale hands held out a frond picked from a bush. A finger run down the stem made all the leaves curl and close.
He felt the thrum of the mobile phone before he heard it. The phone lay next to his pillow. The glowing screen cast a silver light around the storeroom. Peanut reached and clicked the answer key.
“Yes?”
“This is the journalist, the British journalist, you spoke to.”
“I know.”
“I need to speak to you again.”
“Yes, you do.”
“Where can we meet?”
“The Zhihua Temple. Tomorrow. Four in the afternoon. I’ll find you.”
Silence.
“Have you got that?”
“Yes.”
Peanut turned, pulled the blanket up.
“Do my friends know I’m here?” he said into the mobile phone.
“What?”
“Do they know?”
Then just the digital pip and silence.
Patterson stumbled into the kitchen, searching for her shrieking phone.
Three-thirty in the morning. Saturday. Christ.
“Trish? Val. Office. Now.”
She ran on to the Holloway Road in jeans and trainers and her green Intelligence Corps sweatshirt, her breath steaming in the pre-dawn air. And, miracle of miracles, found a taxi, emptied by some late-night clubbers spilling on to the pavement.
She made the driver drop her on the Embankment. She jogged across the bridge, towards the angular greenish glow of headquarters. By 4.17 she was swiping her pass, the tall green gates closing behind her, hurrying past the bicycle racks and little trimmed box hedges and into the building.
Hopko was already in the operations suite. No make-up, hair tied back in a scarf; was that a tracksuit? On one screen, Charteris, coming in on a secure video link from Beijing Station. On another, a map of east-central Beijing, with points plotted in red. On a third, a list of telephone numbers, matched to codenames GODDESS 1 to 4. On a fourth, the T2 IOP visualization software. Patterson logged on and started working her way through the telegram traffic. A round-shouldered technician was playing with incoming telephone lines.
Then Yeats was there, in a T-shirt and fleece, all questions and rubbing of hands.
“C’mon then, Val, what do we have?”
“The meeting is in three hours.” She pointed to the map. “RATCHET has to walk from his apartment here to the temple, here. About half a mile. The surveillance will make an initial pass of the temple in a while. Granny Poon will go in and have a look around. Two of the boys outside, one back-up ready to roam. Afternoon there, nice weath
er, sunny cold day.”
“So the main thing is just to get a sight of him, yes, the contact?”
Hopko looked fixedly at the screen.
“Well, more if we can, I think, Roly. If all’s clear, Granny Poon and the boys will try to pick him up and go home with him. See where he bunks. But they won’t overdo it.”
“Comms?”
“Pay as you go mobile phones, Roly, newly bought, one use only, then we’ll get rid of them. They call the local number, we encrypt and route through fiber.”
“Right, right. Absolutely. And RATCHET? Up for it, is he?” said Yeats.
Hopko looked at the Beijing screen. “David?”
“He said he would do this for us, but only this. Very earnest.” Charteris’s voice was thin, the encryption lending it a digital tinnitus. “But I think he’s fine. It’s not like he hasn’t met a sensitive contact in Beijing before. He’ll be fine.”
Yeats thought for a moment.
“Does he mean it, when he says this is all he’ll do for us?”
Charteris looked to camera.
“No.”
Yeats smiled.
“Good, good. Right, then. Who’s for coffee?” He bustled out. Patterson watched him go and then caught Hopko and Charteris frowning at each other down the video link. Hopko held up her hands.
“Don’t ask me, David, I don’t know why he’s here.”
“But, Val.”
“I don’t know, David.”
Charteris could be seen shaking his head. Then he got up and moved out of shot.
Hopko grinned at Patterson.
“Carpe diem, Trish. What is that horrible bloody sweatshirt you’re wearing?”
In a gray-walled alleyway of east-central Beijing, an elderly woman moved through the bright, cold afternoon. She wore a long quilted winter coat of nondescript color and ancient vintage, and a blue woolen hat pulled low over her brow. Her scarf rode up, obscuring her jawline and the lower part of her face. What could be seen of her features revealed a complexion a little more sallow than that of the pale Beijing ren. A southerner, perhaps. Or a face from the emerald hills and rivers of central China. Hunan? Somewhere damper, more lush than this dusty north China plain, where the grit gets in your rice, under your nails, between your teeth. Her eyes were dark and narrow, preoccupied. Of short stature, this lady, but erect, willfulness in her walk. She carried a plain canvas bag, with a little shopping perhaps, a change purse, diary, tissues.
At the gate of the Zhihua Temple the woman lingered for a moment, apparently considering something, a change of plan. The temple, the elderly lady knew, was no longer a functioning place of worship, the monks long gone. The brass plaque at its gate informed her that it was now administered by the Cultural Relics Bureau. The temple had been saved, the woman remembered, from the wrecking infants of the Cultural Revolution by Prime Minister Zhou Enlai himself. Now it was home to a troupe of earnest, impoverished musicians who spent their days reconstructing the haunting ritual melodies of ancient China, to the annoyance of those who lived in the neighborhood. Opening hours: ten a.m. to five p.m. Admission five yuan.
The woman stepped back a pace. She looked at her watch and placed a finger to her lips, considering. She reached into her canvas bag and withdrew a small purse, from which she took a five-yuan note. She paid the attendant and stepped into the first courtyard.
The elderly woman wandered round the temple for perhaps fifteen minutes, through the Drum Pavilion, the Ten Thousand Buddha Pavilion. A marvel! The strange black roofs sweeping skyward, the sculpted dragons and owls atop them. No other visitors today. She was alone.
After a while she sat on the steps and took out her mobile phone.
On the screen a green sphere next to GODDESS 1 began to blink. The technician leaned over and tapped it, the click of fingernail on plastic in the silent suite.
“Connected to GODDESS 1.”
Hopko leaned towards the console.
“Wei?”
“Wei? Wo lai le. Lai chi feng le ya! Tianqi zhen hao. Tiangaoqishuang.” Mandarin, with a southern clip to it. I’m here. I’m taking a stroll! The weather’s lovely. Crisp and clear.
I am telling you that I see nothing to indicate hostile surveillance.
Her breathing. A distant siren in the background.
“Hao. Xiexie.” Good. Thanks.
The technician tapped the screen and the line went silent.
Hopko stood, hands on hips, looked questioningly at Yeats, who nodded.
“David?”
Charteris looked into the camera.
“I’m happy.”
Then, the wait.
They sat, silent, in the suite. Their disheveled clothing lent them a weird, uncomfortable intimacy. After what seemed to Patterson an interminable period of time the green sphere next to GODDESS 2 began to blink.
“Wei? Keren laile.” The guest’s arrived.
RATCHET has entered the temple.
“Xiexie.” Thanks.
Stillness is the enemy.
Peanut approached the temple from the west, moving quickly, reasoning it would be easier to spot a tail if he progressed from busier to quieter streets. He stopped twice, once in a medical supply shop, where he absorbed himself in the study of wheelchairs and commodes, and once in a reeking public toilet, where he lingered for twelve minutes. In his right hand he carried a plastic bag. His left remained in his pocket, cradling the knife.
He walked straight past the gateway to the Zhihua Temple. In the ticket booth, one attendant, female, listening to a radio, drinking tea from a pickle jar with a screw-on lid. He headed on, away, turned south down a narrow alley with soaring walls, then eastward towards the second ring road. One parked car, silver, no occupant. One street sweeper, male, dressed in gray, wearing a surgical mask. One purveyor of fried noodles, female, rotund, red anorak, pushing a cart. Atop the cart a gas ring and a wok; beneath it a propane tank, in a configuration not unlike that used by Chef in the early morning, and from which a migrant who sounded like a Beijing native purchased greasy dough sticks dusted with sugar six weeks, or a hundred years, ago. One passing jeep, blue, Beijing plates.
When he reached the second ring road, he stopped, stood beneath a plane tree. His fingers, he noticed, had turned numb, so tightly were they clenched around the handles of the plastic bag. He lit a cigarette, inhaling on a stream of icy air, massaged his hand. Three minutes to four.
Move.
GODDESS 2 again.
“Wei? Pengyou laile.” Our friend is here.
“Xiexie.” Thanks.
He paid with a five-yuan note. The attendant did not look at him. The radio was playing a xiangsheng, long-winded comedy, and she was listening and grinning as she handed him a ticket.
He walked through the first courtyard. The Englishman was standing there, hands in the pockets of a green windbreaker, gawping at him. He walked on towards the rear of the temple, through deepening shadows. The Englishman followed like some dim-witted animal. The temple was all but empty. One other couple, an old woman and her son, took pictures of each other with a mobile phone before the Hall of Wisdom and Cultivation.
The Pavilion of Ten Thousand Buddhas was almost dark inside now. Peanut inhaled its woody, resin smell, ancient incense smoked into the timbers. The little niches, each with seated Buddha, thousands upon thousands of them, disappeared up into the dark eaves. Peanut turned right and made for a wooden stairway. He sensed the Englishman behind him. The stairs were narrow and rickety, the wood blackened and smooth, leading to an upper chamber. Light streamed in from a balcony. The altar held Sakyamuni, seated on a lotus, his foguang, Buddha-light, aglow from copper skin. At his side the Buddhas of past and future. No one else, just the divine. The journalist was coming up the stairs. He emerged, stooping, into the chamber. Peanut gestured and stepped behind the altar. A low doorway into the eaves, some sort of storage space, lit by a single bulb.
Peanut squatted. The Englishman, bent almost double, entered the spa
ce behind him and closed the door. They sat close. Peanut could see the Englishman had not shaved, could smell his foreign smell; butter, fat.
“So, Mr. Mang An.” Peanut, whispering.
“We don’t have very long before this place closes,” said Mangan, in Mandarin.
“We have about half an hour. That’s enough. We can speak in Chinese?”
“Yes. And I have questions.”
“And I have conditions,” Peanut responded.
The Englishman blinked.
“All right. What are your conditions?”
“You’ll tell them this.”
“Tell who?”
Peanut cocked his head to one side.
“Do not fool around with me, Mang An. You have contacted the relevant departments of your government, yes?”
Mangan was silent.
“And they saw the proof, yes?”
“The proof?”
“The document and the letter I left in your office.”
Mangan gave a tight nod.
“So, tell them this,” said Peanut. “A one-off transaction. Access to stand-alone networks in the General Armaments Department and the Launch Vehicle Academy. One time only, but superb access.”
The journalist was holding up both hands.
“Wait. Just… wait.”
“What? Why?”
“This is not why I’m here.”
Peanut leaned forward now and took Mangan’s wrist. He spoke in a rasp.
“I will tell you why you are here. And you will tell them. A one-off transaction. Access to stand-alone military networks. In return a passport—a polite nationality, please. Maybe Australia. Or Singapore. And fifty thousand dollars, and a ticket out of here, however that works. This is truly a reasonable offer. You will tell them. They know me, and they know I will deliver.”