by Adam Brookes
“Sig Sauer P938. Subcompact, slender, light, easy to conceal. But, a 9 mm round.”
Patterson saw Mangan’s sigh. The sergeant’s thick index finger flitted around the weapon’s black exterior.
“Here you have the safety, the magazine release, and here, you’ll see, sir, useful little night sights.” Mangan leaned in and peered. “Seven-round magazine, sir, a nice little weapon effective up to, well, far enough for our purposes.” The sergeant cleared his throat.
Mangan held the weapon, then learned to hold it properly, both bony hands wrapped around it, one cupping the other.
“Index finger lying along the trigger guard at all times, please, sir.”
Mangan loaded a magazine, felt the metallic chenk of the slide on release, and Patterson wondered if she saw a slight smile appearing.
He fired off twelve magazines, and the targets were messy, peppered irregularly, the rounds tending down and left as he squeezed the grip too hard.
“Well, that’ll properly frighten them,” said the sergeant.
Patterson shot a three-inch group.
She drove them back to Paddington from the range in a Service car. Mangan was quiet, watched the bleak motorway slip by. She parked outside the house, and the two of them got out and stood there.
“Oh, sod it,” she said. “Come on, Philip.”
They walked through the jostling crowds, past the station, down Praed Street, to a tapas place. Mangan ordered a bottle of Albarino which came cold and dewy. He seemed to relax a bit, Patterson thought, noting how the relaxation correlated with proximity to alcohol. The restaurant opened onto the pavement and they sat in the cool, damp evening air, candles on the table. They ordered squid fried in paprika, roasted figs, grilled pigeon, chorizo. Mangan poured the wine, made a mock serious cheers gesture, and drank.
“So,” he said.
“So.”
“I now have my license to kill.”
She laughed.
“You have nothing of the sort.”
“You seemed… adept.”
“I was a soldier. Before.”
He nodded.
“You went to Iraq, Afghanistan, presumably.”
“Presumably,” she said.
“What were you? Infantry?”
“Intelligence Corps.”
He raised his eyebrows, sat forward.
“And what was that like?”
“It was… interesting work.”
“Oh, come on Trish, what was it like?”
She sipped her wine, hating the question.
“It was hot and demanding. And it got very brutal at times.”
He made a regretful face.
“Subject off-limits?”
“Somewhat.”
He put his head to one side, considered her. He’s looking for another tack, she thought. The restaurant was filling up, the clatter of crockery, the buzz of voices.
“Where are you from?” he said.
“Nottingham,” she said. “An estate on the outskirts. Dad was on the buses.”
“And Mum?”
“Cooked in a hospital kitchen.”
“Happy family?”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, a happy family. They were surprised when I went away to college. Felt like I was breaking everything up.”
“Where did you go to college?”
“Coventry.”
“And that’s where the army found you, I’ll bet.”
She nodded.
“Credulous black girl. All muscles and no sense. Dead eager,” she said. “They loved me.”
Steady on, she thought.
Mangan just nodded.
“Then Sandhurst,” he said, prompting.
“Yes. God, Sandhurst. Felt like a fairy tale. A wet, cold one. But I could go beagling. Got invited to balls.”
He smiled.
“I’m trying to see you in a ball gown.”
“I had one. It was a huge green thing. Held a powerful static charge.”
Mangan was laughing now.
“Did you enjoy them? The balls? Did you foxtrot?”
“What do you think? No. I stood and stared furiously at others.”
That’s enough now. The food started to arrive on little pink plates, glistening with oil.
“And you, Philip? What of the blue remembered hills around… Orpington, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, it was. Orpington. My father was a doctor there. A GP. Mother was a teacher. But I went away to school, a sort of distressed gentlefolk place in Hampshire.”
Patterson had read the polygraph transcript, thought of Mangan weeping in the stairwell, didn’t let on.
“Why did they send you to boarding school? Only child, going away like that, seems strange.”
He shrugged.
“It spoke to their aspirations, I think. Important to be a well-rounded, emotionally stunted chap.”
“Did it make an emotionally stunted man of you?”
“What do you think?”
“You’re man enough, Philip,” she said, laughing. “Just not on the shooting range.” He laughed, too, for a second. But then she thought she saw a shadow cross his face.
They paused, ate, wiped the plates with crusty bread.
“And the freelance journalism, all the travel,” she said. “Why all that? It seems like a precarious sort of life.”
He considered, nodded.
“I like it. Liked it. The feeling of not being attached, settled. Always sort of falling forward into something, something new.”
She took a breath as if to speak, then checked herself.
“What?” he said.
“No, nothing.” That’s not true, she thought. You don’t like the not being attached. You want more, said so yourself. You’re looking to invest yourself, to commit. You want to feel that there’s a single truth you can march toward, just around the bend in the road, through the trees.
You’re like me.
They paid. She walked to the Tube. Mangan gave her his slow smile and turned away in the twilight. She watched him go. It was the most intimate conversation she’d had in months.
And Hopko wanted to know all about it.
“How’s his morale, would you say, Trish? What’s his understanding of what’s happening to him?”
“I’d say his morale is high and he understands that he is now an agent of the Service.”
Hopko leaned forward, her hands palm down on her table.
“How very cryptic,” she said, deliberately.
“I mean, he has his eyes open. He’s reflective. I think he’s psychologically committed.”
“And why is he so committed, in your view?”
Patterson swallowed.
“His own reasons. He has a need, we meet it.”
Hopko sat back. Her fingers played with a bead necklace, tiny nuggets of coral, lapis. “Please, do me one favor.” Hopko had the look of a hawk. “Remember that he is not your friend. He is your agent.”
A theme rammed home at the ops meeting.
Patterson was unnerved by the cast of characters in attendance, not having realized how much attention WEAVER was attracting. She loitered in the corridor, her stomach turning somersaults. Mobbs, the Director of Requirements and Production, strode into the windowless, secure room, a minion carrying a black legal briefcase hard behind him. Hopko stood by her chair, sipping coffee from a paper cup, gazing benignly at the assembled group; limbering up, Patterson could tell. Chapman-Biggs of Requirements was there, and the senior P officer for China, dour-browed Claudia Mallory, who, Patterson knew, was snappish about the case, feeling sidelined. And, of course, Drinkwater, simmering at the head of a small phalanx of Security Branch officers. Patterson went in, sat in a chair by the wall. She noted that all the Africa Controllerate and Global Issues/Counterterrorism people had vanished.
Hopko opened.
“The objectives of Operation WEAVER,” she said, “are threefold. One, the penetration of China southwestern military command. T
wo, the penetration of 2PLA, military intelligence. Three, the mapping of factional rivalries at high level, with a focus on the complex of political and economic interactions surrounding China National Century Corporation. We have reason to believe that HYPNOTIST and those he refers to as his associates can deliver on all three objectives.”
She paused, looked over the top of her spectacles at the room. No challenges, yet.
“The initial encounters, as you know, took place in Ethiopia, and HYPNOTIST has already generated for us significant, actionable intelligence. We propose to reestablish and develop HYPNOTIST as an asset in place in China’s southwestern military command.”
Another look. Silence. They’re waiting till they can see the whites of her eyes, thought Patterson.
“To this operational end, HYPNOTIST will be supplied with the means of closed, covert communication. And he will be managed and tasked, where possible, at third country meetings by our access agent, codename BRAMBLE, working in turn to Patterson as case officer.”
Patterson felt the eyes of the room on her, the gaze of Claudia Mallory in particular.
“All with me so far?” said Hopko.
The door opened, abruptly. A gray-suited figure stalked across the room to the table, folded himself into a chair, sat cross-legged, chin in one hand. Through rimless spectacles he regarded Hopko.
“Please carry on,” he said.
“How very nice to see you, sir,” said Hopko. She’s masking her surprise, thought Patterson—C, the chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, has just walked unannounced into her ops meeting. Hopko allowed a sliver of a moment to pass before she recommenced, a marking of her territory.
“We anticipate that HYPNOTIST’s product will be transmitted through these closed, covert channels, and in third country meetings. The darknet link will be used for operational communication only, and sparingly. The access agent is equipped to manage that link securely.”
Drinkwater leaned forward on the table.
“Yes. I wonder if we might discuss the access agent a little. I’m sure we all have questions.” He ducked his head in the direction of C.
“Please,” said Hopko.
“We are aware of Philip Mangan’s operational history, of course,” said Drinkwater. “And, speaking for Security Branch, and I’m sure for others present”—a motion in the direction of C again—“I think we would all like to understand the operational rationale for using him again in this case.”
“Trish?” said Hopko.
Patterson jumped. Christ. How about some warning?
“Well, he knows the asset,” said Patterson. “He is mobile, has excellent cover and strong judgment. And he’s willing. He’s ours. He considerably enhances our capacity in East Asia, to fulfil this and other operational needs.”
“There. Mangan is the face and the voice,” Hopko said. “He’s the reassurance, the humanity. And, crucially, he’s the cutout. How’s that?”
Drinkwater wore a half-smile and nodded patronizingly at Patterson.
“So you have plans for Mangan?” he said.
“We do,” said Hopko.
C looked bored. The Director of Requirements and Production was starting to look alarmed.
“Yes, I see,” said Drinkwater. “I am sure we would all be interested to know how and why Mangan has wormed his way quite so firmly into your affections.”
“Sorry,” said C. “I’m not interested.” He was looking at Hopko.
“Ah. Well—” said Drinkwater. C spoke over him.
“What I’m interested in,” he said, “is what Valentina Hopko feels is at stake in this operation.”
The room was silent. Patterson sat, rigid. Hopko smiled at the aggression.
“I’m not sure I quite understand.”
C spoke louder now, enunciating in an exaggerated way.
“What do you think he’s about, Val? Who are these associates he keeps banging on about?” He leaned forward, a questioning look.
What the hell is this? thought Patterson.
“It does appear,” said Hopko, slowly, “that HYPNOTIST is not acting alone. This fact, while complicating the case operationally, also brings with it great potential. Many spies are better than one.”
Silence. Which C refused to fill. Hopko let it stretch out.
It was Drinkwater who finally blundered in.
“Well…” he was shaking his head, smirking, “one does rather wonder at the logic of employing an access agent and an extended network of resources to service an asset, or assets, who are, in effect, an unknown quantity.”
Mobbs rolled his eyes. C gave a shake of the head. Everyone in the room seemed to know what was coming, except Drinkwater. And Patterson.
Hopko was poker-faced. She addressed Drinkwater slowly.
“My logic is that if we are to ascertain HYPNOTIST’s true motives, and those of his associates, we must proceed with the operation. That is, after all, how we will find them out.” She gave a quizzical tilt of the head. “No?”
Yes, obviously, thought Patterson.
C sighed noisily, then spoke deliberately.
“Val, do you think you might deign to share with the company your view of what we are dealing with here?”
Hopko sat back, looked at the table for a moment, then spoke carefully.
“My suspicion, sir, and it is as yet just a suspicion, is that HYPNOTIST may represent some element in a factional conflict among China’s elites.”
Well, it would have been nice if you’d shared that particular suspicion, thought Patterson, before realizing that Hopko had shared it, over Ethiopian food on the Horseferry Road. A fault line, Trish. She forced her resentment in another direction. Why must you always be so bloody oblique, woman? Hopko was still talking.
“We know there are factions in the Communist Party, of course we do. But we barely glimpse them. We don’t really know of whom they are comprised, or why they coalesce, or around what, do we? We don’t know the geography of it. Who stands where, who’s loyal to whom, who’s ready to cut throats.”
She stopped, allowing a sense of climax to build.
“My suspicion is… that HYPNOTIST may be trying to use us to his own advantage in a factional conflict. And by doing so he will reveal to us a great deal.”
C was still, his watery, clinical stare. Hopko went on.
“We have a chance to see right into China—not its institutions, not its structure, but its biology, its guts. We’ll see it working.”
C was brusque.
“I do not like cabals. I like agents whom we can run. I do not like plots. I do not like fantasies that may disrupt our relationship with China and undermine our interests there.”
Hopko nodded. C wasn’t finished.
“You will use Mangan. And you will ensure that we do not become enmeshed in something that we cannot control.”
He stood and left the room.
Oxford
Kai found her sitting on the staircase, waiting for him. He unlocked the door to his rooms and Madeline slipped inside. She was nervous, waited in the middle of the room. He started to make tea, but she stopped him, took his arm.
“I have to tell you something,” she said.
“What do you have to tell me?”
“Something’s going to happen.”
“What? What thing?”
“Someone’s coming.”
His stomach lurched.
“They’re here? Now? Your father’s people?” he said.
“No… no. I mean, something’s going to happen. Not now, but soon.”
She took hold of his hand, began to work it back and forth childishly, as if the movement might impress upon him the importance of what she had to say.
“What?” He leaned down, tried to look her in the eye. “I don’t know what you mean. What’s coming?”
“They’re getting ready for something.” Her voice was small, thin. “The men.”
With his free hand he made a questioning gesture.
/> “Why? What have you seen?”
“There are more of them. They’ve taken to driving me around, shadowing me. They say it’s for my protection. They’ve rented a house somewhere. I heard them talking in the car. They called it a ‘safe house.’ They talked about ‘the operation.’”
He shook his head, baffled.
“What makes you think it has anything to do with me?”
“Everything is to do with you. Everything.”
“What are you saying?”
She was withholding, he could tell.
“You have to go, get somewhere safe. Something’s coming,” she said.
She leaned against him, put her arms around him, and he breathed in the smell of her hair.
“Please,” she said. “Go.”
And then he felt himself falling, or more sort of toppling, onto the bed, and her face was very close to his and the thought occurred to him that it was the danger of what they were doing that so aroused them both, and then the thought fell away, replaced by the startling sensation of her hands in his hair, her mouth on his.
48
London
Communications took up the next few days. Michael and Jeff brought Mangan a new hardened laptop. They showed him the darknet sites, made him log on again and again, made him learn the passwords and the protocols forward and backward. How to encrypt; how to use secure email; the digital dead-letter boxes, planted deep in the tunnels and sewers of the web where he could leave them things he wanted them to find.
“And where you’ll find us. This is how you talk to us,” said Jeff.
“And security, Philip,” said Michael. “Security is just as important out there in cyber world as it is on the street. Stay aware. If something looks wrong, get out, stay away. Find another route. Or do nothing at all.”
“What if someone steals the laptop?” Mangan asked.
They showed him. They provided lessons as to how to log on from a public computer, from an internet café. How to use a stolen handheld. Phone numbers in case of dire emergency only.
“And never on your usual mobile phone. Never. Or a hotel phone, god forbid. Buy a burner. Steal one, use it once, drop it in a river.”
Recognition signals, duress codes, digital keys.
This is how it works.
Patterson watched him as he sat at the conference table in a T-shirt, barefoot, hair a mess. The journalist’s lips moved as he memorized, as if he were cramming for an exam. She tested him, caught him out, and he’d go back and memorize all over again.