by Adam Brookes
Patterson paused, caught herself. They are just trying to unsettle you, she thought.
“No, I did not,” she said brightly.
Weekes was looking at a file.
“What is it that you really want to know?” she said.
“What I really want to know? What I really want to know is if your Mangan is a faker. A pathetic little wannabe.”
There was a silence.
Patterson cleared her throat.
“I don’t know how to respond to that,” she said.
Vezza sighed. He picked up a sheet of paper and slid it across the table to her. It was in Chinese.
“Trish, this came in seven hours ago from Addis station. Mangan passed it to station officers. He fancies it an agent report. A Chinese agent report, if you please. Not that we knew the Chinese had agents like this one, but there you are. And it gives a pinpoint location for Mat Naim, the bomb maker.”
Patterson swallowed.
“What did Mangan say by way of explanation?”
“That he had been targeted,” said Vezza. “A Chinese man in Addis. We don’t know who he is. This man passed him the papers, said to report it to his… what, connection? What was the word, Val?”
Hopko was looking directly at Trish. Those unmoving, brown eyes.
“He said it was for Philip’s guanxi,” Hopko said.
Patterson sat very still.
“We have to decide, right now,” said Vezza, “whether we send this on to the Americans.”
“Mat Naim could be long gone by now, and Mangan may be a fabricator,” said Weekes.
Vezza’s voice was raised.
“And he could still be there. We are not in a position to withhold this.”
“And Mangan is no fabricator,” said Patterson.
“How the hell do you know what Mangan is?” snarled Weekes.
“He has strong instincts. He is a reporter, as well as an agent.”
“He was an agent. And he’s not much of a bloody reporter.”
“He is good at gauging these things. If he passed it to station, it means he feels it’s for real.”
“Very bloody civilized of him. That’s enough. Get out,” said Weekes.
Vezza had raised his hands in exasperation. Hopko rose and followed Patterson out of the room. In the corridor, Patterson turned to her, but Hopko spoke first.
“They don’t know what to do, and Weekes seems to have a problem handling stress,” she said, smiling.
“Val,” said Patterson.
“Oh, I know. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? ‘For his guanxi,’” said Hopko.
“What is this?”
“Someone wants to talk. And they are bringing gifts. Wouldn’t you say?”
Patterson just shook her head.
“Tell you one thing, though,” said Hopko, matter-of-factly. “Mangan’s a bloody natural.”
The two pieces of paper were sent two hours later, festooned with caveats. They went via liaison to the National Counter-terrorism Center, just outside Washington DC. There, they created considerable excitement and no small degree of bafflement, given their unusual origins.
But their specificity was very persuasive.
For, it transpired, the Americans had already placed Mat Naim somewhere in the Horn of Africa some twenty-six days previously. Through a hideously expensive and complicated combination of cyber surveillance—a penetrated laptop—and satellite surveillance, they had him in Zanzibar, arriving by boat. And they had him moving up into Somalia. And there, a local asset in Baraawe, a boat captain, flickered providentially into life, using an encrypted phone to relay the gossip surrounding a farmhouse on the edge of town. A known transit point, this farmhouse. And now, said the captain, movement. Convoys of SUVs going in and out, deliveries. Extra checkpoints on the roads, dead-eyed boys lounging in pickups, sparked up on chat, cradling their AKs. A frisson in town, you could feel it. Someone big is here.
Finally, the kicker. The captain had heard a fellow sailor refer repeatedly to al-Malisi—the Malay.
And now, late in the day, collateral and grid references from a Chinese source via the jolly old Brits. The Chinese appeared to have an asset inside the target’s circle, said the Brits, obliquely. Well, who knew? And a long and fascinating list of phone numbers, some of which matched known numbers for Mat Naim’s southeast Asian handlers.
The numbers were planted in the servers at Fort Meade to see the gossamer web of contacts and associates breathe and grow.
And from there things began to move very quickly, for Mat Naim’s full name already resided in the Disposition Matrix, alongside the contingency plans laid for a moment when he might slip into view. Capture, or kill, said the Matrix.
Within hours, from a small airbase at the edge of a lake in southern Ethiopia, a drone lifted off the tarmac, an MQ-9 Reaper, piloted remotely by an air force officer in Nevada. The officer’s commands took one point two seconds to reach the drone. The officer pointed the drone’s nose southeast. A little more than two hours later, the drone was over the town of Baraawe. It loitered at thirty thousand feet, listened, then eased down to a lower altitude to paint the target.
23
Oxford
Kai, back in his rooms after a soul-crushingly dull meeting of the Chinese Students’ Association at which Madeline had not appeared, picked up the memoir. His grandfather’s long ago links to the Chen family were explicit. The source of the Chen family’s rage was not. Not yet, at least.
Grandpa was victorious. The Japanese surrendered in 1945. And China was able to get back to the business of its own unfinished civil war. This time Grandpa joined the fighting in earnest. His role—running cable from brigade headquarters out to the field telephones of frontline units. Sometimes he carried a great wheel of cable on his back, staggering across China’s burned and blistered landscape. When the cables separated, he went on his knees in the mud, found the break and repaired it. He repaired radios, advised on tactical communications. He moved up in the Communist Party.
In 1949, Communist divisions pushed in from the west and took Beijing. Grandpa was quite the technician by now, and in the days that followed the founding of the People’s Republic of China, he burrowed into the nascent Communist bureaucracy, securing a billet at the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications. Not very glamorous, Kai reflected, but the ambitious, grasping old man knew very well what he was doing. For the next sixteen years, Grandpa oversaw the building of China’s telephone network. He supervised the running of copper cable all over the country for the first time. He traveled to foreign countries, East Germany, Hungary, divining the mysteries of teletype, microwave, even television. And all of this, all of it, was crucial work, vital to socialist modernization, vital to the Party. Grandpa Fan became an important man, a gaoji ganbu—a senior cadre in a powerful ministry. He had a wife and three sons and a daughter, a nice flat. Access to a car, maybe. Pork for supper, white rice, even as they were starving in the villages. A tailored Mao suit with pens in the top pocket—all the subtle signifiers of status.
Kai was enveloped in the narrative now, sensed that something was coming. The memoir had taken on a sketchy, withholding tone.
In 1966, China descended into chaos. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution had begun. The Red Guards, filled with revolutionary fervor, taking literally Chairman Mao’s instruction to “Bombard the Headquarters,” barged their way into ministries across Beijing. Many cadres were taken away for criticism and struggle. It was a very uncertain time.
Initially, the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications was protected from struggle, but in 1967, it was our turn. Senior cadres were forced to undergo long and terrifying criticism sessions. I was among them. I was bound and forced to kneel on broken glass. I said many things under duress that I later regretted. The bitterest moment came when my service in the war was criticized. The Red Guards alleged that I was a traitor because I had fought alongside Nationalist troops against the Japanese. They demanded I name those I fought with, and I did.
It is a great cause of sadness to me that I was placed in this position. My family suffered, too. My children were shunned and beaten, my wife ostracized.
Dawn came as a dullness in the window. Kai put the book down, stood and walked around the room, ran his hand along the windowsill. He wondered how many his grandfather had denounced. Was it only Literary Chen? Were there others?
24
Kai leaned against the wall. The evening was damp and warm, the pavements shiny with rain. He watched the street, the churning in his gut part unease, part transgressive thrill.
He had left a handwritten note in her pigeonhole. It said, in cheery English, “Book Discussion! Memoir To Help Historical Understanding. 8 p.m.! Meet Outside Zoology.” Madeline came at four minutes after the hour. She wore sunglasses, a baseball cap, trainers, as if she expected to run. She didn’t stop, walked right past him, then hissed over her shoulder at him.
“Follow me.”
He hurried after her. She crossed the road, took the footpath that led into the Parks. He stumbled along behind her, caught up to her. He could smell her, something perfumed and lush and feminine and flecked with citrus.
“Is there anyone behind us?” she said.
“Should there be?”
He could feel the tension in her, in her slight shoulders, the tightness in her neck.
“They follow me sometimes. They are there, and then they’re gone. They check up on me.”
“What? Who does?”
“These… men. My father sent them. But they frighten me.”
“Are you sure you’re not…?”
She turned to him, defensive.
“Not what?”
“Not… making a mistake?”
“Imagining them, you mean?”
“Well…”
She shook her head, made a hissing noise through her teeth. They walked on, her eyes skimming over the parkland, the trees.
“Did you read it?” she said.
“Yes.”
“And?”
“Literary Chen is your grandfather.”
“Was my grandfather, yes.”
“What happened to him?”
“What happened? Your grandfather denounced him. He was with the Writers’ Association by then. The Red Guards came for him. They smashed up the family home, dragged him away. His wife and his little boy watched. They put a dunce’s cap on him, made him run all around the neighborhood.” She stopped, and they walked in silence, just the crunch of their feet on the wet, gravelly path. He prompted her.
“And then?”
“And then? Then they made him write self-criticism, beat him, struggled him. And then they sent him to a 7 May cadre school.”
Kai said nothing.
“And that’s where he died.”
“How?” The question quiet, tentative. She ignored it.
“My grandmother was left alone in Beijing to bring up my father. She was thrown out of their apartment, of course. They had nowhere to go. She ended up being taken in by a foreman at Capital Steel, and they lived in his dormitory. A terrible place. I don’t know much. But I know he hit her, handed her around among the steelworkers. And my father running wild amid all this filth, seeing it all.”
Kai said nothing.
“Oh, everyone was very sorry later. Literary Chen was rehabilitated, posthumously. My father was given a helping hand into the army to make up for things. But my grandmother was shattered, just this broken fragment of a woman who hardly ever spoke. And ever since, my father has taken all the simmering rage, the sense of waste, the damage, the trauma, all the years of poverty and unbelonging, and we have projected it single-mindedly… onto you. The Fans. The Chens’ humiliation is the Fans’ fault. Didn’t you know?”
Kai shook his head.
“Your grandfather. At the cadre school. How did he die?”
She had stopped and was looking quizzically at him.
“I don’t think I’m ready to tell you that yet.”
He couldn’t meet her eye, her cool amber gaze. He heard birdsong hanging in the air, registered the puddles on the path, their film of oily mauve and purple. And then she was taking his hand and laughing a quiet, resigned laugh.
“I almost came and talked to you,” she said. “I saw you around. I knew exactly who you were.”
“And why didn’t you?”
She played with his hand.
“I don’t know. I was warned that you were some monster. I was scared. I thought… you’d just be… you know, dismissive.”
“Well, I’m not,” he said.
“I see that now.” She paused, looked around. “Do you like it here?”
He smiled.
“Not really.”
“Me neither.” She nodded. “Thanks.”
“For what?”
“For… for talking. And for asking about what happened. And for not arguing with me, or explaining to me.”
For the briefest moment, their fingers interlaced. And then she took her hand back and walked away.
He watched her receding figure, stopped himself from walking after her. Where had he suddenly learned such self-control? He lifted his hand to his face, tried to breathe in the smell of her.
He left the Parks alone, the way they’d come. He turned onto South Parks Road, looked around himself. He felt an unfamiliar need for vigilance.
The street was quiet, the light fading now. An occasional car passed, a bicycle.
He headed for his college. As he walked past the chemistry buildings, he caught sight of another pedestrian walking toward him, a man with Asian features, Chinese perhaps, in his forties, a slight waddle to his walk, lank, thin hair. The man wore a gray padded anorak. Too heavy for a summer evening, Kai thought, he must be hot.
The man had stopped.
Kai continued to walk toward him and it became clear the man was watching him, waiting for him, even. Kai crossed the street. The man stood still, his eyes on Kai as he passed, a look of amused curiosity on his face.
25
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Mangan was in the Radisson Hotel, seated in the air-conditioned coffee shop, ordering lunch, when he saw the Associated Press flash.
Urgent
Washington, DC (AP)—A United States drone struck a target in Somalia overnight, administration officials confirmed. The drone fired two missiles at a compound in the town of Baraawe, south of Mogadishu.
A second lead moved a few minutes later. The officials still awaited confirmation that the target, a well-known extremist of Malaysian origin wanted in connection with acts of terrorism, had been killed, but there was a “90 per cent probability” that the strike had been successful.
Mangan wondered how they’d confirm. Was an agent in the rubble, grubbing about for DNA? Or were they just listening to the chatter?
He felt light-headed, placed his hands palm down on the table.
From decision to consequence in less than forty-eight hours.
Mangan decided to skip lunch. He got up and left the hotel. He stood on the pavement, lit a cigarette, then walked. He walked fast in the color-killing gray light of the early afternoon, low cloud fastening Addis in a tight, thick humidity, trapping the fumes, the dust. He went down Tito Street, turned onto Menelik Avenue, found himself walking shakily into the park. And there he stopped, sat heavily on a concrete bench, tried to gather himself in, process it. He found his hands trembling. He felt hot, clammy, feverish.
He took a taxi back to Gotera, stumbled into his flat, threw his clothes off and got under the covers with a thermometer. He had a temperature of a hundred and two.
Patterson sat in Hopko’s sanctum, watching a rolling news channel. At a Pentagon press briefing, a spokesman was deflecting questions about the drone strike. Hopko was straightening a picture on her wall, a gorgeous Ming dynasty landscape, crags in mist, thorn trees, a river, a tiny boat and a fisherman half-seen. She wore a long coat-like garment of a crimson velveteen, a hammered silver cross of Coptic origin arou
nd her neck. And those boots. She looks like some mad Spanish prelate, Patterson thought.
“So the Americans went with it, the grid reference,” Hopko said.
Patterson took a breath.
“They did. They trusted the intelligence.”
“Is that the most interesting thing we’ve learned?” said Hopko.
“And the Chinese are running penetrations of jihadi networks in southeast Asia.”
“There is that. A highly successful penetration, too,” said Hopko, absently. “I wonder who he is. Or she. A Chinese Muslim? Even a Uighur? Ferreting away down there. Someone’s compliant wife?”
She stopped, let her gaze fall on Patterson, who hated these searching looks, these pregnant pauses, and shifted in her seat.
“We need to move,” said Hopko. “Don’t we?”
“Do we?”
“Well, I should say so. Wouldn’t you? A botched approach to reach us in Hong Kong. Our poor man tops himself, or so we’re told. A second try in Addis, this time sweetened with exotic intelligence, intelligence guaranteed to buy us love in Washington. My, someone knows how to push our buttons. There’s a plan here, Trish. Someone’s probing.”
She scents opportunity, thought Patterson. She’s like a raptor. Or a card shark.
“What do we do?”
“Do? We put Mangan back in play, no?”
26
Mangan lay in his wrecked, damp bed, stunned with fever. He tried to read, but his hands shook, limbs soft as treacle. He managed a fitful sleep as the afternoon wore on and the room darkened. Evening brought distant thunder beneath the rattle of the city and at seven the rain came on, the room turning dank and cold.
He lay, the fever singing in his head, bright, brittle images winding and looping behind his eyes. A hot, toxic plasticity, blast wave, trauma, gelatinous spatter, blood trail. In a restaurant, in a darkening city, in a small town by the sea.
Maja phoned. And now she was here, with soup. She turned on the lights, boiled the kettle. He sat up, wrapped in his duvet.
“God, you look miserable,” she said.