Night Heron

by Adam Brookes

  TREEFROG: froggy averse to life thretnin situations, kno wot im sayin

  ME: must happen fast frog.

  Another pause.

  TREEFROG: where you get it?

  Mangan shook his head, exhaled. Peanut was looking at the door.

  “Hurry up, Mang An.”

  ME: Can’t say where got it. really cant.

  TREEFROG: SHEESH

  ME: THIS IS VERY VERY FUCKING IMPORTANT

  TREEFROG: ok ok OK jeez frog will take a lil looky look

  ME: How do I get iot to you if I cant plugit in?

  TREEFROG: ok jes listen i take control of yr terminal so i can reasd the drive, download it without whatever shit’s on it cranking up and blowin us up. go here.

  A web address, a fast download, an install.

  TREEFROG: let go yr mouse

  Mangan lifted his hand from the mouse. The cursor began to move of its own accord, barreling through a series of settings.

  TREEFROG: OK mangman I got it now. plug the sucker in. oh and hope. Hahaha

  They left the café. At the door the girl waved Peanut over, wanting payment. Peanut argued, and the girl shook her head and tapped her fingers on the counter and watched him slowly count out yuan notes. And while she watched Peanut, Mangan, his back to the surveillance camera, lifted the girl’s phone from the counter and slid it into his pocket, next to the drive.

  They were back in the car, Peanut watching the mirrors.

  “How far now, do you think?” said Mangan.

  “We should be there by evening.”

  They pushed on under a sky of moving cloud coming in off the East China Sea. They stopped to fill the car up and to buy water and food. Peanut stood by the petrol pump and a police car pulled up next to them. The officer got out, stretched, said something to his companion in the car. Peanut turned his back, fiddled with the hose. Mangan looked down. The police officer regarded him for a minute, then turned and walked across the forecourt. Peanut rammed the hose back into the pump and they left.

  “Are they still following us, do you think?” said Peanut.

  “The police? No,” said Mangan.

  “No, not the police. The others. Whoever they are.”

  “They want their drive back,” said Mangan.

  “We give it to them,” said Peanut. “It’ll be over.” Mangan heard a flicker of desperation.

  Mangan shook his head.

  “They want us, too.”

  Mid-morning Mangan pulled off the highway and parked next to a field. He took the stolen phone from his pocket and logged into the secure chatroom.

  TREEFROG: you there?

  TREEFROG: you there now?

  TREEFROG: FROGGY GETTING A LIL BIT TENSE HERE

  ME: here

  TREEFROG: where u BIN?

  ME: what have you got

  TREEFROG: wot I GOT? dunno mangman. this ting is fuckin huuuuge. take years to even read it

  ME: but what is it?

  TREEFROG: DUNNO

  ME: CHRIST FROG GIVE ME SOMETHING

  TREEFROG: it is loaded

  ME: WHAT? HOW/

  TREEFROG: feel like i seen bits of it before

  ME: frog what does it do?

  TREEFROG: mangman im just scratchin the surface. its many layers, many. rootkits, cloaked surveillance pckages. Infect yr network, read yr keystrokes, clone it, find ways of getting the info out. Itll turn on the camera on yr desktop an dfilm you. shit thers a thing will turn on all wireless apps of entire network, every handheld, and start sendin shit out on the airwaves. ha. Jeez if you tell it to, im guessin it will go up like nuke and kill whole network.

  Mangan rubbed his eyes, Peanut was outside the car smoking, watching.

  ME: I don’t get what does that mean

  TREEFROG: mean? it means this one EPIC fuckin spy machine. it will spy the shit out of you and you never kno. it will take yr network and wring it fuckin dry. it will collapse yr systems. it will expose you, make you weak. it is a weapon silent stealthy and very very dangrous. and it means some very srious people—govment if yr lucky, corporate if yr not lucky—involved.

  A pause.

  TREEFROG: And it means froggy done with this shit now. And it means mangman watch yr butt. cos Im guessin some angry fcukers be wanting that drive back soon

  ME: theyre after us

  TREEFROG: shit

  TREEFROG: nice knowin ya mangman

  The highway was slow, gorged with trucks. As they passed a town called Rui’an, an accident, something burning and acrid smoke in the air. A woman in a pink jacket sat by the side of the road, her face in her hands, and next to her a shape under a blanket.

  And later, as Mangan tried to overtake, a tanker pulled deliberately over into his lane, its mudguard touching the side of the sedan. Mangan, wrongly, braked as he swerved and the car began to spin. They came to a halt on the central reservation, horns blaring as the cars behind flashed past. Mangan was stiff-arming the wheel, rigid with fear. Peanut just pointed.

  “Move, Mang An, don’t stay here.”

  36

  SIS, Vauxhall Cross, London

  Nearly midnight. The building was silent, but for the occasional lonely officer in an ops suite, waiting for something, someone.

  Patterson stared at the email. It had been sent half an hour earlier to Charteris on his personal email account, to her horror. Charteris had encrypted it and sent it on securely. Now it lay spread across her screen and she felt the acrid falling in her stomach, an operation collapsing in front of her, an agent panicked, running. Hopko had a hand on her shoulder, leaned in to read.

  THIS MESSAGE IS FOR YOU, DAVID, AND IT IS FOR “RACHEL DAVIES.” PLEASE FORWARD IT TO HER IMMEDIATELY. IT IS APPARENT TO ME THAT YOUR SERVICE HAS ABDICATED RESPONSIBILITY FOR THIS OPERATION AND SOME OTHER GROUP—I HAVE NO IDEA WHO THEY ARE—IS TRYING TO RUN IT. BUT THIS OPERATION IS NOW OVER. TELL WHOEVER IS HUNTING US TO STOP. THEY MUST STOP NOW. TELL THEM THAT I KNOW WHAT IS ON THE DRIVE, THAT IT IS A MASSIVE CYBER ATTACK ON CHINA, PROPAGATED BY CORPORATE INTERESTS WITH THE COLLUSION OF GOVERNMENT. TELL THEM THAT IF THEY DO NOT STOP HUNTING US, I WILL MAKE PUBLIC THE CONTENTS OF THE DRIVE. I WILL SEND THEM TO EVERY HACKER, EVERY SECURITY FIRM, EVERY RESEARCHER, EVERY PRIVACY AND SECRECY ACTIVIST AND I WILL EXPOSE THE AUTHORS OF THIS CYBER ATTACK TO PUBLIC RIDICULE AND LEGAL SANCTION. I WILL DO THIS. IT IS TIME TO GET US OUT OF HERE. PHILIP.

  Hopko read over her shoulder.

  “Clever boy,” she said.

  Patterson had her hands to her cheeks.

  “Who?” A voice from across the office. “Who’s a clever boy?”

  Hopko and Patterson turned. Yeats was striding towards them, between the cubicles, the lights rendering his face pale, shadowed.

  “What have you got there?” he said.

  Patterson gestured to the email.

  “Our boy talking to us, is he?” said Yeats. “Do share.”

  He began to read, then exhaled.

  “My, he’s bold.”

  He paused.

  “But I don’t react well to threats,” he said. “Do I, Val?”

  He folded his arms, then rubbed one hand over his beard.

  “You’ll reply,” he said. “You’ll tell him no one is hunting him. Tell him he is ordered to stay where he is. And help will be with him soon, and exfiltration will follow. Do it.”

  “You’re going to get him out?” said Patterson.

  “Oh, yes,” said Yeats.

  “How are you going to find him?”

  “I have all the information I need, thank you. I assure you this situation is in hand and you may now desist from any further involvement. Do I make myself absolutely fucking clear?”

  “Quite clear, thank you,” Patterson said.

  Yeats let a beat pass, then leaned down to where she sat, and put his face very close to hers.

  “Not keeping anything from me, Trish?”

  Patterson said nothing.

  Yeats straightened, glared at Hopko, turned and walked
away. The two women watched him go.

  “Those people. The Shady Creek people. They’re tracking Mangan, aren’t they?” said Patterson.

  “It would seem so,” said Hopko.

  “What will they do when they find him?”

  “Kill him, I imagine,” said Hopko.

  By six in the evening they had turned off the highway short of Fuzhou and were heading east to the coast, on back roads winding through fields of sugar beet. They stopped and asked a woman by the side of the road the way to Xiao’ao. She stood, shaking her head at Peanut’s Mandarin, smiling, looking wonderingly at Mangan. She wore a hat of woven reeds, and from the carrying pole on her shoulder dangled two plastic trays filled, Mangan saw, with razor clams.

  “Xiao’ao,” Peanut said, writing the characters in the air. A flash of recognition. She nodded and gestured down the road, towards the coast, saying something neither Peanut nor Mangan could understand. As they pulled away she was standing there, still smiling, pulling a mobile phone from her pocket.

  As they came closer to Xiao’ao low hills of deep green rose up, rice terraces curling and angling across them. They rounded a corner and there was the township stretching away ahead of them, beyond it the sea.

  They made a first pass. The Golden Crab was closed, its paintwork peeling in the salt wind, its parking lot empty. Behind it the breakwater stretched out into the sea, its concrete a dim whiteness in the dark water.

  They pulled the car off the road, left it nose out and unlocked in a stand of scrubby trees a little way from the restaurant. Mangan had wanted to scout the breakwater, but Peanut wouldn’t let him. They climbed a wooded hill, slipping on damp leaves, and sat looking out over the deserted restaurant and the road and the breakwater and glittering lights out to sea that belonged, Mangan realized, to the Matsu Islands, those tiny, defiant scraps of Taiwanese territory, bristling with radar and missile bases, just miles from the Chinese mainland.

  “Is that where we’re going, do you think?” said Peanut. His voice was tense, but Mangan thought he could hear anticipation in it. “You’ll talk to them, won’t you, Mang An, about my payment. My papers. All that.”

  “Yes, I’ll talk to them.”

  “We had a deal.”

  “Yes.”

  A pause.

  “They should stick to it.”

  “Yes, they should.”

  The night had cleared. No moon, but starlight. They sat, waited, smoked. Mangan dozed.

  At 1.50 a.m. two cars pulled into the parking lot at the Golden Crab and stopped, their lights off. Mangan, awake now, thought he saw another further back down the road, but couldn’t be sure.

  At 2.04 a.m. a car door opened and a figure emerged and walked towards the breakwater and stopped, looked out to sea, hands on hips. Then the figure turned around and went back to the car.

  “Is that them?” said Mangan.

  “Is that who?” said Peanut.

  Mangan peered into the night. “Whoever is supposed to meet us.”

  “How the fuck do I know?” said Peanut. “If it’s not… “His voice trailed off.

  “We should go down now,” said Mangan, “if that’s them.”

  “No.” Peanut held up a restraining hand. “If they set a time, they set a time.”

  At 2.25 a.m. several figures got out of the cars. Two walked to the breakwater. Another two stayed by the side of the road. There was at least one more, but Mangan didn’t see where he’d gone, and Peanut didn’t see him at all. They all waited.

  At 2.35 a.m. Peanut said, “All right, we go now.”

  Mangan stood, stiff and cold. They slithered down the hill and emerged at the side of the road facing the restaurant. They crossed over the road and made straight for the breakwater. The two figures kept their distance. Mangan heard the hiss and crackle of a radio, a monosyllabic message. Peanut was walking fast, chest out, arms slightly out from his sides, looking for a fight. Was that the knife, palmed in his right hand? Mangan stayed slightly behind him. One of the men had planted himself in their path. The way to the breakwater was blocked.

  “What do we do?” The words not his, someone else out there speaking for him.

  “Just walk to him and give him the signal,” said Peanut, quietly.

  They walked closer to the figure who stood between them and the breakwater.

  “Shichang.”

  There was a silence.

  “What?” said the figure, irritation in his voice.

  Mangan said it louder. “Shichang. Are you going to the shichang?”

  “Oh, I see,” said the figure. “No, no, we’re not the people you think you’re going to meet. You’re not going with them, I’m afraid. You’re coming with us.”

  The man was tall, wore a long leather jacket, had an overly pronounced jaw. Peanut was still moving towards him.

  “Now stop there, friend,” said the man. “Let’s have no repeat of last time. You’re not quite forgiven for that, yet.”

  Peanut stopped.

  “You again,” he said. “Who the fuck are you?”

  “Well, we’re in charge of this operation, and we’d like to talk to you. At some length, I think.” Lantern Jaw held his hands out. “So let’s all be friends, and come and get in the fucking car.”

  Five of them were surrounding Peanut and Mangan now.

  “The operation’s over,” said Peanut. “I’m pretty sure.”

  “Now why do you say that?” said Lantern Jaw, cheerfully.

  “Because it’s blown. And MSS is all over it like flies on shit.”

  “Well, you should probably explain all that to my elders and betters. Get in the car.” He made a theatrical gesture, towards the car idling by the side of the road. In the front passenger seat Mangan thought he glimpsed the elderly man from the silver sedan, the hooded eyes fixed on him.

  An engine, a deep-throated growl, coming from the sea beyond the breakwater. It had been growing on the edge of Mangan’s consciousness, but he was only now aware of it.

  “Get in the car.” A threatening tone now, which Peanut studiedly ignored. Mangan saw a searchlight on the water. Peanut made to push past Lantern Jaw, but the taller man’s hand was in his chest. And from behind, a quick, snake-like move from one of the others to take Peanut into an arm lock. But Peanut stepped quickly to one side and with a short jabbing motion did something with the knife that had Lantern Jaw bending over and clutching at his groin. Mangan saw Peanut ripping himself out of the arm lock, spinning his assailant around. Round and round they went, until Peanut tore himself away and began to run towards the breakwater. Mangan lunged forward, arms out, but one of them was there, smiling, even, took him easily and held him. Peanut, he saw, was halfway to the breakwater shouting about a market, and they were after him, gaining on him.

  And then something exploded in Mangan’s lower back, and a second time, and white specks danced in front of his eyes and he sank to his knees. Then a vice-like grip on his shoulder, two fingers in his neck like iron bolts.

  “Stay still now,” said a voice in Mangan’s ear.

  Mangan looked towards the breakwater, could make out only shadows flickering in front of the searchlight, shouts. Then a dull thop, thop sound, and something in the air hissed past him. The grip on his shoulder loosened slightly, and the man holding him dropped to his knees.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” the man muttered.

  Mangan heard a cackle of laughter come from the breakwater. The searchlight was blinding.

  The man holding him shouted, “Is that really necessary?”

  Another thop and a hiss.

  Now Mangan could see, waddling out of the searchlight, an enormously fat man, dressed in a hooded top and baggy shorts. He had cropped hair and a goatee and in front of him he held out a handgun with a sound suppressor attached.

  “There’s only supposed to be two people here, and there’s all you,” said the fat man, his Mandarin sibilant and singsong, pure Taiwan.

  “Is that the foreigner?�
�� he said.

  The man holding Mangan said, “Look, this has nothing to do with you. Now just run along.”

  “Just what?” said the fat man.

  “You’re involved in something you do not understand,” said Mangan’s captor.

  “You’re right about that,” said the fat man, and shot him in the leg. Thop. The man fell, gritted his teeth.

  “You cunt,” he said.

  “Shut your mouth,” said the fat man, and shot him again.

  Mangan tried to stand, but couldn’t. The fat man waddled over to him and hauled him up.

  “There are others,” said Mangan, though he didn’t know where they’d gone.

  “Yes, so let’s go, shall we?” said the fat man, not unkindly. Mangan leaned against him, felt the world fade, a spinning sensation, then came back a little. An utter weakness took hold of him and a deep, nauseating pain in his back and groin. He’d been hit, where? By what? There were shouts and more gunfire, a revving of engines. The fat man suddenly seemed angry. Mangan saw the white, sloping concrete of the breakwater beneath his feet and was scrabbling and sliding, the grit beneath his fingers and his feet in the water, to where hard hands took him by the upper arms and pulled him into a yellow boat: long, sleek, unsteady. The hands laid him down on the floor of the boat, and someone was shaking him and saying, “Mang An, Mang An.” And the same voice was shouting, “Zou! Zou!” Go. Go. The boat lurched as the fat man jumped in, and someone said something in a dialect Mangan didn’t understand and there was more laughter, and more thop, thop sounds, and a huge roar and the boat seemed to rise up and the searchlight went out and they were crashing into the waves, spray spattering the boat, and Mangan looked up and saw stars in an obsidian sky, and he felt a hand on his chest, and a voice in his ear saying, Mang An, we did it. We did it.

  37

  Taipei, Taiwan

  The safe flat smelled of cooking grease and cigarette smoke. The blinds were drawn. A minder, in vest and shorts, sat at one end of the table, a mug of tea and a sidearm in front of him. Mangan wondered what would happen if he lunged for the weapon and turned it on the man and the woman who faced him across the table. He thought about the smooth snick of the safety catch, the bucking in the hand, the shock on their pale, English faces.