by Adam Brookes
“Who, then?”
“Who knew my phone number?”
“Me, you, the London team, Beijing Station,” said Patterson.
Eileen shook her head.
“Nobody. It’s nobody. Just a feeling.”
Patterson said nothing.
“Maybe a junk call. Some advertising, something,” said Granny Poon.
“Did you change your phone?” said Patterson.
“Yes. We change every day, anyway.”
Patterson considered.
“Do I need to make this official?”
“Tell you what. I go back to Beijing. All this week I keep an eye out, okay. Then we talk again.”
An awkward embrace. Hopko had sent shortbread from Fortnum’s, which Granny Poon loved.
Mangan, installed in the Plaza’s Italian restaurant, had finished the carpaccio and was wading into the linguine with seafood in a clear broth, when a young man in suit and overcoat approached his table.
“Mr. Mangan?” He was blond, young.
Mangan swallowed and wiped his mouth.
“Yes.”
“Oh, good evening. I’m very sorry to disturb your dinner. My name is Backhouse. I’m from the embassy. I just wanted you to know I’ll be picking you up in the morning. Would nine be all right? Downstairs?”
“Nine.”
“Wonderful. See you then.” And he was gone.
So that was contact.
18
Seoul, South Korea
It was “Rachel Davies” again. Sitting on a vile black leather sofa, in a flat in some godforsaken corner of the city. She wore a black turtleneck and jeans. She was alone. Were there others lurking unseen? She stood up when he walked in, her face a mask.
“Hello, Philip. Thank you for coming. I know it was short notice, but things are moving quickly.”
“Are they?”
“Yes. But let me just ask you, any problems on the way here?”
“No,” he said, blankly.
“At Beijing airport did they ask you any questions at passport control?”
“No.”
“Anybody contact you here in Seoul, apart from the embassy?”
“No.”
She walked him through his plan for the rest of the day, his return trip to Beijing. She told him what they should do if they were interrupted. Mangan listened, mystified.
“Well,” she said. “You’ve done it again.”
“Done what again?”
“Created a stir.” Mangan felt her warm a little. The way to her heart, he thought, lay through the provision of secret intelligence.
“And how’s that?” he said.
“Well, you got a good deal out of our man in a very short time. And you had deft footwork with that document.”
She sat down, crossed her legs.
“But you’re a reporter. So you know how to do these things, right?”
Do I? he thought. He wondered if that was sarcasm he was hearing, running beneath her words.
“How reliable do you think he is, Philip? Now you’ve talked to him?”
“I don’t have the first idea. How good was his information?”
“Oh, first rate, if it’s true. If it’s not some horrible plot to ruin us.”
“Might it be?”
“Yes. But we don’t think it is.”
“Why not?”
She’s opening a little, talking about what she knows, he thought.
“Well, deception operations often feel slick, well-thought-out. And then you find a gaping hole.” She paused. “But with a genuine operation, there’s a rickety feel to it, constant improvisation. A human feel.”
Operations, now, thought Mangan.
“May I be very frank with you?” he said.
“Of course,” she said, but Mangan saw the flicker of concern.
“You need to tell me exactly what my position is now.”
“I’m coming to that, Philip.”
She opened a folder on her lap, consulted something. This is punctuation, thought Mangan; a semi-colon in my life. Then she spoke again.
“As I’m sure you realize, you’re talking to British Intelligence.”
“Is Charteris an Intelligence Officer?”
“Yes.”
Mangan bit back a response.
“Which part of British Intelligence?” he said.
“The Secret Intelligence Service. SIS.” She was trying to gauge his reaction, he sensed.
“And I’m now part of an operation?” he said.
The woman spoke quietly and with great seriousness.
“Philip, at this point I must impress upon you—though I think you understand—the need to remain utterly discreet. For everybody’s sake, including your own. We need to be very, very careful now.”
Mangan nodded. Every response I make takes me one step further in, he thought.
She continued.
“We would like to come to an arrangement with you. Put you on our books for the duration. There’ll be remuneration, of course.”
“You’re offering me a job?”
“No. We’re offering you an association. This isn’t uncommon. People help us out a good deal. Not so common for a journalist to come on board, but there we are.”
“Why? Why do people help you out? Why can’t a professional do what I’m doing?”
The woman thought it over. All the time her eyes stayed on him.
“Beijing is, well, you’ve seen the cameras. You understand surveillance. You’ve encountered the MSS, the police, the neighborhood committees. Every old lady on a street corner is a sensor for the state, even if she doesn’t know it yet. The web mamas, the phone tappers, the GPS locators, every hotel a listening post, every handheld a beacon. How easy do you think it is for a professional to work?”
“Why is it any different for me?”
“Because you have natural cover, Philip. You’ve a reason for being where you are, for going where you go. And it’s been built up over years. It’s quicker and safer to reverse engineer you than it is to build something from scratch.”
She paused. Then spoke again.
“Let’s leave that for a moment,” she said.
For the next two hours she took him through the meeting, probing his memory.
Mangan talked, reconsidered, talked again. He found himself using the same mental muscles that he used in reporting; the way of looking, looking at something for what it is, for what it isn’t.
At her pressing, he found memories of the meeting he didn’t know were there. The man’s left hand in his pocket was holding something. What was it? Or the flicker on his face when he spoke of the prison camp, the sense of anger tamped down, doused.
She made no notes. They were presumably recording. She kept returning to the offer.
“But what, in your view, was he actually offering?”
“He’s offering you a person, a collaborator. He believes he’s got someone on the inside, and he’s the middle man.”
“And he wouldn’t tell you who this collaborator was.”
“No. As I told you, he just said it would be like before.”
“And the collaborator’s motive? Anything at all, Philip. Do think, now.”
Nothing. She frowned.
“When he used the term ‘collaborator,’ what sort of tone of voice was he using?”
“It was faintly sarcastic perhaps. He had a half-smile, a knowing look.”
“So it’s possible he used the term in an ironic way?”
“Yes. Yes, I suppose that’s possible.”
“Is it possible that he doesn’t have a collaborator at all? That whoever’s supplying him with material is doing it under duress?”
“Impossible to know.”
She nodded. A pause. Mangan took the leap.
“He’s done this before, hasn’t he? With you,” he said.
She looked up sharply.
“There are aspects of this that you are going to remain ignorant of. I’m sorry.”
“You already know who the collaborator is, don’t you?”
She gave her tight smile. She appeared ready to wind the conversation up.
“I’m not just flattering you, Philip. You’ve achieved a great deal. And we want to take this further.”
“And if I don’t want to?”
“You can walk away at any time. That’s understood. But if you do, we’d appreciate some warning, and some candor. And we’ll need assurances from you.”
Mangan said nothing. “Rachel Davies” stood, walked to the window, pulled back the curtain and looked out.
“If we go ahead, we’ll meet outside China as much as we can. Nasty little flats like this one.”
“I rather enjoyed the meal in Singapore,” said Mangan.
“Treasure the memory,” she said, absently. “Doesn’t happen often.”
What was she looking for?
“We have in mind a project for you,” she said. “A book. The Pan Asia Institute publishes a series called Topics in Asian Studies. Nice glossy little numbers. There’d be lots of trips, meeting editors. Interviewing. How does that grab you?”
Mangan was nonplussed.
“Is it a real book?”
“Oh, yes. Publication guaranteed. Might even do you some good. And it will give you mobility. A reason for being out of the country.”
“I see.”
“Charteris will be there, in Beijing, but he’ll have to keep a distance. You’re good at working alone, aren’t you?”
Silence.
“The important thing, Philip, is to keep things normal. Carry on reporting. Maintain your friendships. Go out, stay in, succeed, fail, do what you normally do. But you’re writing this book. Choose a topic. Write a summary. Do this as quickly as you can. Approach the institute. They will commission it, I’m assured.”
“What will you want me to do? I mean, really do?”
“You will meet our man perhaps three or four times, no more. Once or twice you’ll have to carry a small item, something that’s normal, natural for a journalist to have. That’s it. We’ll keep it very simple.”
“How long will this last?”
“Impossible to say. I think it will be weeks, a few months at the most. And then it’ll be over.”
“And why should I do it? What’s the purpose?”
She sat back down on the sofa and crossed her legs.
“The purpose.” She let the words hang in the air.
“The point of it,” said Mangan.
She looked surprised at the question.
“Well,” she said, “most of us tend to think that in the digital age we have all the tools we need to know the world, don’t we? We think our search engines and our satellites and our data-mining programs and our sensors allow us to know the world. But it’s an illusion. All that digitized information is a sample, nothing more. And in the case of China, the sample we see excludes the most salient facts, because the most salient facts are kept secret. And the Chinese are good at keeping secrets. That’s one little bit of Leninism they haven’t forgotten. Keep your mouth shut. Keep everybody guessing. Knowledge is power. Knowledge of what gets said in the Politburo meeting, who says it, what the Party leaders think, what they feel. What animates them. What their intentions are.”
She paused, then spoke again.
“If you think that reform and openness and networks have rendered China terra cognita, Philip, you’re wrong. It’s terra very bloody incognita.”
“So you spy,” he said.
“So we spy. We have to.”
She paused.
“Good enough to persuade you to act?”
Mangan exhaled. To act. To cease observing from a distance, through a lens.
But writing is acting. Reporting, constructing narrative is acting. Isn’t it? To inform is to influence.
“I will need an answer,” she said.
19
Beijing
Yin took Peanut to an Internet café in Fangzhuang. She paid and registered and they searched for a vacant screen among rows of silent boys in headphones. Peanut looked at their screens. He saw cars exploding, helicopters, rockets, gleaming silver surfaces, fountains of flame. What was this? What were they doing?
They sat, and Yin showed him the, the what, the browser. He read an article from the People’s Daily on the screen, and then people commenting on the article. Some of the comments suggested the newspaper article was wrong, or mistaken.
“Can they do that?” he said.
Yin just laughed.
He saw pictures of a South Korean singer—Yin’s favorite, a smooth boy with windblown hair—performing on a stage with thousands of people watching.
He lit a cigarette and asked the thing to show him pictures of the People’s Liberation Army. There were thousands. Thousands! There were the mobile launchers, on a road somewhere, troops in camouflage milling about. Short-range missiles, these ones. Was that a DF-15? DF stands for Dongfeng, East Wind, he told her. Yin was uninterested. They scuffled over control of the keyboard and Yin brought up a picture of two women barely clothed, doing… what? He spluttered and reddened while she laughed again.
Later they had lunch at some hamburger place, one bite and it was gone. She asked him how it was he didn’t know about computers, mobile phones. He didn’t reply.
“Where have you been?” she said.
“You don’t tell anyone, Yin. That I don’t know about these things.”
“You were inside, weren’t you?” She was grinning, leaning over the table.
“You don’t tell anyone.”
“Everyone already knows.”
He forced a smile.
“What do they know?”
“Chef says you’ve ‘been away,’ and he and Dandan Mama talk about it.”
“Do they.”
She nodded, eyes wide, enjoying herself.
“Well, you don’t talk about it,” he said.
“What did you do?”
“I won’t be here much longer.”
Her smile fell away.
“So you won’t be able to tease me any more,” he said.
“Are you going away?”
“Yes.”
Her lip was trembling, he saw with astonishment.
“Where will you go?”
“I don’t know yet. Come off it, Yin.”
She had dropped her head and was staring at the table. He saw a tear fall on to the red plastic tray. She murmured something.
“What?”
“I said, maybe I could come with you.”
He didn’t reply. They left the restaurant and walked towards the subway station. At an intersection Peanut looked up at a billboard. The advertisement showed a woman in sepia, her shoulder, her lips, her shining hair in a twist. The slogan read: Because it’s my time.
Yin caught him staring at it.
“They do something to fix the picture. They tell you it’s real when it’s not,” she said.
Beneath the billboard, on a wall, was the stenciled graffiti again. THREATEN. This time it was a bird, a crow, wearing the goggles.
Patterson had decrypted the telegram, and now read it quickly.
GODDESS 4 reports that GENIUS left the salon at 02.42 ZULU/10.42 local. GENIUS was accompanied by a young woman who also resides at the salon and who goes by name BEAUTIFUL PEONY. GODDESS 3 and GODDESS 4 were on rotation. GENIUS and companion walked to subway station. No contacts were observed en route. No sign of hostile surveillance. At Puhuangyu subway stop, GENIUS alighted, still accompanied by young woman. They proceeded out of station and walked three hundred meters to the WANG BA Internet café. They entered the café at 03.36 ZULU/11.36 local. They sat at a screen. The young woman appeared to be instructing GENIUS in use of the computer. GODDESS 4 made one pass. GENIUS and the young woman appeared to be viewing semi-pornographic images. GENIUS and companion left the WANG BA Internet café at 04.50 ZULU/12.50 local. They proceeded to a fast food restaurant where they ate hamburgers. They appeared to
be deep in conversation. The young woman known as BEAUTIFUL PEONY became distressed. They left the restaurant and returned to the Metro, arriving back at the salon at 05.46 ZULU/13.46 local. No further contacts were observed. GODDESS 2 and 4 withdrew. GODDESS 2 and 4 carried out a series of passes over the next six hours. On several occasions GENIUS was visible through the salon window or mopping the front steps. GODDESS 2 and 4 assume GENIUS remained on the premises. At 13.30 ZULU/21.30 local GODDESS 1 took up a static position in the BLUE MOUNTAIN restaurant opposite the salon, and confirmed repeated sightings of GENIUS on the premises until GODDESS 1 withdrew at 15.00 ZULU/23.00 local.
20
Washington DC
The few runners out that morning along the Parkway were hooded and muffled. Winters in Washington DC could be surprisingly sharp, the air, on occasion, streaming down from the Great Lakes, shrouding the capital in dry, bleak cold.
Monroe had strapped his legs before heading out, bandaged his creaking, middle-aged knees. He jogged slowly through trees that stood stark against the sky.
He was back on his front porch now, through the screen door, and enveloped in the aroma of coffee from within. Molly was at the kitchen table with the Post. He stood for a moment in the ticking silence, smelling the coffee, the chemical cleanness beneath it, bleach, laundry detergent.
She looked up from the paper.
“It’s seven-thirty, Jonathan.”
He took the stairs slowly, walked through the bedroom to the bathroom. He stood under the shower, which was hot but fitful. Limescale in the head? He toweled his lean torso, rubbed a clear spot in the steamed-up mirror, leaned in to clip his beard. The snick of the shears. His beard was short and tidy, a dignified frosting that strengthened his jaw, made up for the baldness and the grayness. Naked, he padded to the cupboard for underwear, starched shirt, sober crimson tie.
On the Metro the young man seated next to him read a Bible in Korean. He looked out of the corner of his eye, tried to piece together the script.
At C Street the security was tight. Some visiting Foreign Minister was snarling traffic, the diplomatic police watchful. Once inside he moved, frictionless, through security to his office.
“Morning, Mr. Monroe.”
“Morning, Mr. Monroe. You have the interagency at 10.30; you have the Assistant Secretary at 11.30. Afternoon is clear. Mr. Harman of Liaison has already called and awaits your call back.” The secretary handed him a note with Harman’s number. He nodded and entered his true home, the SCIF, the muffled, airless Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility.