by Adam Brookes
“Didn’t someone say that hell is other people? Who said that?”
“Sartre.”
“Well, these other people are hell.”
“Tell me who they are.”
“We do not have a lot of time, Philip.”
“Time for what?”
“Time for what? Time for us. Time for this.” He had stood up and was walking toward the window. He turned, ran his hand through his hair. The smile was gone. Mangan had a feeling of glimpsing the raw man, and he was soaked in fear.
The date. A reference number
CX BRAMBLE
UK S E C R E T
URGENT
REPORT//
1/ BRAMBLE met HYPNOTIST at prearranged public location in central Chiang Mai. HYPNOTIST insisted location was secure. A large number of security personnel were in evidence, acting at HYPNOTIST’s command. HYPNOTIST agreed to move to a more secure location. Security personnel escorted BRAMBLE and HYPNOTIST to a villa in the mountains northwest of Chiang Mai.
2/ HYPNOTIST declined to answer questions contained in tasking.
3/ HYPNOTIST provided what he said is a sample of the skin used on the exterior of the J-20 fighter. The sample is in BRAMBLE’s possession.
4/ HYPNOTIST provided a memory stick containing further information regarding the J-20, also in BRAMBLE’s possession.
5/ HYPNOTIST asserts that the formula used in the J-20 skin sample was “stolen,” by implication through espionage.
6/ HYPNOTIST would reveal no further details as to how the sample and information regarding the J-20 were acquired.
7/ HYPNOTIST asserts that CNaC is manufacturing laser weapons in contravention of international treaty obligations.
8/ HYPNOTIST appeared at times amenable and confident, at others agitated and afraid, and made repeated references to an unidentified group pursuing him. He insisted this unidentified group was not “local,” meaning not identical with THAI72.
9/ HYPNOTIST has returned to base. BRAMBLE remains in place.
10/ Next contact to be within ten days, arranged through secure protocols.
11/ Grateful for immediate/immediate contact re onpassing of sample and memory stick, instructions.
APPENDIX 1
1/ BRAMBLE believes HYPNOTIST is not acting alone, but has considerable resources at his command, as demonstrated by the large and intrusive security operation surrounding his presence in Chiang Mai. HYPNOTIST appears to be participating in a larger operation the objectives of which are unknown. The compromising of China National Century Corporation appears to be one element of those objectives.
2/ HYPNOTIST appears to think that the operation is compromised in some way, but will not say how. He refers repeatedly to “not having much time.” He refuses to give context.
3/ BRAMBLE assesses that HYPNOTIST is privy to a Chinese operation that has successfully acquired highly sensitive and closely protected US defense technology including the formula for stealth skin used on the J-20 fighter.
ENDS\
At 4 a.m., Mangan sent, pulled out of darknet, closed the laptop. The hotel room was dark, just the low hum of the air conditioner, the subdued rattle of traffic from the street. He lit a cigarette, went to the window, pulled back the net curtain, rested his head against the cool glass, watched.
Very, very careful, now, he thought.
51
Mangan slept for an hour, fully clothed. By dawn he had packed a run bag. In it, the laptop, some clothes. Cash, credit cards, passports were at the base of his back. The sample and the drive he wrapped in a hand towel and pushed deep into the run bag.
At seven he left the hotel and walked north, out of the old city, carrying the run bag, no phone. He walked for an hour in the hot, overcast morning, stopped at a clattering café that opened to the street, the girls presiding over tin trays of curry, pork with basil, dumplings that they served on plastic plates, or put in plastic bags to be taken away. He sat on a three-legged stool facing the street. He ate rice porridge with shredded pork, ginger, spring onions, drank instant coffee from a sachet.
He walked on, no ducks, no dives. Just a pale girl in sunglasses and a pink polo shirt who wafted by him on a moped once too often, he thought. And a wavy-haired man of Asian appearance who carried a tourist map and a camera in this part of town bereft of attractions or scenery, who ate slices of fruit from a paper tub, and who seemed to be asking for directions on his phone. Rocky, keeping an eye.
Or someone else.
People from hell.
Or his overwrought, sleepless imagination.
He turned abruptly west, walked for three minutes, turned into a soi, an alleyway of crumbling asphalt, broken glass glistening in the sun. An elderly monk shuffled past, carrying his bowl carefully, the smell of rice, salt fish, rising from it. The slap of the man’s sandals on the roadway made Mangan think of the warm night in Harer, the darting, pacing hyenas.
The Banyan guest house had a rust-red iron gate.
Mangan stopped in the soi and listened.
He pushed open the gate. A courtyard, a paint-blistered bench, gladioli spilling from pots, a small greenish pool. Through a curtain of beads, reception, and a sixtyish lady, permed and yawning. He paid for a month in advance.
“Some nights I will be here and others I won’t,” he said.
She waved a hand, dismissing his concerns, and she showed him to a dim, stale room at the top of the house, painted in dark blue by an amateur, careless hand, the blinds drawn, a dank bathroom, a fungal air conditioner that moaned and vibrated. He rewrapped the sample and the memory stick in the hand towel and pushed the bundle into the space between the wardrobe and the wall.
He lay down, exhausted.
The wash of loneliness.
Fear, edging up behind.
London
Patterson waited for the signal. VX emptied as the evening wore on, the corridors falling silent. She went out to buy a kebab from Nikolai’s, as was her habit, and went to a bench by the river, where she sat in the dark and consumed it looking out over the black water, the tourist boats great, churning rafts of light. She watched a yacht making its way toward Greenwich, a party on its aft deck, the men tanned, languorous, shirts unbuttoned, holding champagne bottles, the women swathed in white and gold. She caught a snatch of its music, a popular tenor singing arias. She imagined perfume on the air, laughter, flirtation. The yacht’s lights faded in the night and she walked back to VX.
Later, she repaired to the basement, where a small warren of tiny rooms allowed officers hostage to foreign time zones a place to sleep and shower. She had just lain down when her handheld buzzed, notifying her of an incoming signal. She ran back up to the P section and logged on to the system.
She had argued to be there for the encounter, and had been turned down.
And now this.
A deep breath. She dialled Hopko securely.
“Trish?”
Patterson heard voices raised, laughter.
“Contact, according to protocol. He’s carrying,” she said.
“Suggestions?”
“We use GODDESS.”
“Do it. Anything more?” said Hopko.
“Our friend believes he may be compromised.”
A beat.
“We’ll discuss tomorrow. Early.”
“Understood.”
Then silence.
Oxford
Nicole had not wanted to be part of it, but the three men who’d come from the London residency insisted. For the identification, they said. So now, at three thirty in the morning, she sat breathing the fetid air of their van. They were parked just off St Clement’s, had been for an hour. The men sat silently. She didn’t know what they were waiting for. Nicole thought of Gristle, his loneliness, his bereft sense of honor, his promise to protect her. Dear God. If this went wrong she’d need all the protection she could get.
There was no time to plan. It will be very quick and very dirty, said the men. Probably messy, too.
And it
was messy.
The men were suddenly all motion. They slipped from the van, closing the doors silently. They jogged down the side street, hopped the gate, gliding down the passage to the back of the house. The men carried mole grips and a crowbar, but, astonishingly, the bump keys worked on both locks, the lead man kneeling, feeling out the placement, tapping with a rubber mallet. It took him eighteen seconds.
Inside, they moved silently through a kitchen, a dining room, to the staircase, and they must have set off a motion detector because the protection—a bulky figure, half-dressed, hair awry—was on them with a yell and a grunt. They took him down very fast and very hard, Nicole didn’t see how, some sort of baton, she thought, but he was prone and convulsing, a foot on his neck, when she stepped over him and ran up the stairs.
Madeline Chen was sitting up in bed, a hand in her hair, eyes flickering to the window, her small, pretty mouth an O of shock. The lead man looked to Nicole for confirmation and she nodded and they were on her, spray in her face, a hypodermic in her arm. Her eyes found Nicole, but the fury in her look quickly dulled and her mouth just opened and closed.
“Madeline?” said Nicole. “Madeline, can you hear me?”
The girl’s eyes were open, but her head was lolling. She didn’t respond.
One of the men checked her vital signs. Another was on his handheld, texting.
They put her in a bin bag, carried her down the stairs. The protection was lying quite still now. A white van was waiting in the street. They closed and locked the back door. And that was that. Messy.
52
Yip Lo Exports Inc. of Hong Kong, the small but industrious exporter of plastic flowers and children’s novelties to the European retailers, was a hive of activity. Following a lively, if pained discussion around the corporate lunch table, a decision had been taken—imposed was closer to the truth—Eileen Poon herself, as proprietor of Yip Lo, would travel in person to Thailand for exploratory meetings with local producers in the plastics industry. Such an enterprise, argued her sons, Peter and Frederick, named optimistically for the rulers of Imperial Russia, and their cousin, Winston, who recalled other imperial aspirations, might tax her unduly and should be left in their capable hands. But Eileen was insistent.
“I’m going,” she said.
Frederick Poon squirmed in his chair.
“Ma, this might be a… a demanding meeting.”
She turned to him.
“That is why I need to go.”
“Ma, we don’t know,” said Frederick, unwilling to acknowledge defeat, “what we might learn in such a meeting, who we might encounter. Ma, really.”
Eileen Poon reached for her cigarette case, withdrew from it a bidi, which she lit deliberately, suffusing the room with blue, acrid smoke.
“Ma…”
“You will be with me.”
“Ma, of course, but—”
“Signal,” she said. She made a dismissive gesture with her fingertips.
Frederick sighed, then nodded. Winston got up from the table, wiping his mouth with a napkin, and made his way to the altar in the corner of the room. Atop the altar, the white-robed figure of Guan Yin, Bodhisattva of Compassion, whose serene gaze protected Yip Lo Exports in all its enterprises. Beneath the altar, behind its woven cloth, a safe. And inside the safe, a laptop loaded with a particular sort of software similar to that which resided on Philip Mangan’s computer. Winston started the laptop, sent the one-word signal, its origins obscured by layers of encryption, proxy and digital obfuscation, which would indicate to the right reader: “Understood. Moving.”
And then Eileen went to her bedroom to pack a bag, and Peter was online booking tickets, and Frederick was calling his wife and telling her in a soothing voice that he would be back soon. Winston ordered a taxi to the airport.
Chiang Mai
After dark Mangan left the guest house, carrying the run bag. He walked back toward the old city. From a streetside stall, he bought grilled, spiced chicken in a banana leaf, ate it as he walked. He found a tourist trap café, some sofas, bookshelves with dog-eared novels, ill-lettered signs advertising hill treks and espresso. He went in, ordered a lime soda, sat in a corner, took out the laptop and logged on to the Wi-Fi, burrowed down into the darknet.
CX LONDON
1/ REMAIN IN PLACE
2/ MEETING 23RD. 21.50 LOCAL
PLACE: BOOKAZINE BOOKSTORE, NIGHT BAZAAR, CHANG KLAN ROAD; CHINESE LANGUAGE SECTION
CONTACT: ELDERLY FEMALE, WEARING PINK SUNHAT, CARRYING GRAY TOTE BAG
PROCEDURE: CONTACT WILL OPEN GRAY TOTE BAG. DROP SAMPLES INTO GRAY TOTE BAG. IMMEDIATE EGRESS. SIGNAL
Jesus Christ.
That was in less than one hour.
He wiped his palms on his trousers. He felt chilled, clammy.
Less than one hour to retrieve the materials and make the rendezvous. Why hadn’t he checked earlier? Bloody fucking hell, you amateur.
He left some money on the table, strode from the café, going abruptly left, then right, headed north, looking for an empty tuk-tuk. He turned, walked backward, shielding his eyes against the oncoming headlights.
And it was there he thought he saw, for a split second, a figure, some thirty or forty meters behind him, backlit, ducking into a soi. A bulky figure, girth on it. Something in the walk, the gait, a rolling movement of solidity, strength, the arms out, fingers curled as if for a fight. Short hair, cut to bristle.
For a second Mangan stood like a statue, the adrenaline streaking through his gut, heart pounding, peering into the headlights. The shock of it, the memory streaming across his inner eye: China, chill night rain, the smell of fuel, rubbish, a loading dock, a bus, cigarette smoke in the cold. The running, the panic. And beside him as he ran, the slope-shouldered, bristle-haired figure with the rolling gait.
He turned and ran up the street.
GODDESS 2 AND 3 IN POSITION>
Patterson, leaning over the console in the operations suite, the text messages coming in encrypted, Michael the tech wallah bringing them up on screen. The still air, the quiet, just the tap of fingernail on screen, the plastic clatter and click of the mouse.
GODDESS 1 MOVING TO LOCATION>
They’re early, she thought. She pictured leathery Granny Poon, tramping the stifling streets of Chiang Mai, the boys on her back, circling.
Mangan stood waving his arms at the passing traffic. A tuk-tuk pulled up and he climbed in, found himself yelling at the startled driver. The tuk-tuk hurtled along the darkened streets, its engine pop-pop-pop with every gear change. Mangan held on to the seat back. The tuk-tuk bobbled to a halt outside the guest house and Mangan gestured at the driver to wait. He pushed the gate open, ran across the courtyard, took the stairs two at a time. He left the light off in his room, moved quickly to the wardrobe, reached behind it to find the balled-up towel, memory stick, sample, and found nothing.
Gone.
He went back to the door and turned the light on. He inserted his arm behind the wardrobe. Nothing. He dragged the wardrobe out a few inches from the wall, looked behind it. British agent effects crisis rearrangement of furniture. He knelt, looked underneath. Where, obviously, the little bundle had fallen. He reached and pulled it out, unwrapped the towel, found the memory stick and the gray tile. He took a deep breath, tried to still the shaking in his hands. He stuffed the items in his pocket and ran from the room, slamming the door behind him, crashing down the stairs. The tuk-tuk was there, the driver wide-eyed, uncomprehending at first as Mangan barked the address of the bookshop at him. And then they were roaring and juddering down past the moat, turning into the night bazaar, the street jammed with tourists who moved as if through some viscous medium which slowed their movement to a crawl. 21.44. Six minutes until the encounter. Mangan felt himself sweating, his neck rigid with tension. He thrust banknotes at the driver, jumped out and pushed through the crowd toward the bookstore.
GODDESS 4, Peter Poon, saw him first, rattled off a quick text to signal visual contact. He w
atched the Englishman shove his way through the crowd, too fast, too harried, moist at the temples, the red hair spiked and cowlicked. GODDESS 4 pulled himself in a way, close enough to confirm entry to the bookshop. He saw the Englishman, a head taller than everyone else, push open the double doors, step inside. He signalled. Up to his mother now, the encounter, with GODDESS 3 watching her back. He turned, pushed his gaze outward, ran it over and through the crowd. He shuffled a few paces forward, made to examine a silk stall, but let his eyes wander, seeking the break in the flow, the inconstant.
Amber, amber, he signaled. Proceed.
Eileen, in pink sun hat, gray tote bag on her shoulder, perused Fortress Besieged, Qian Zhongshu’s masterpiece, in a new hardback edition, full form characters. She placed her spectacles on her nose, took them off again. She looked at her mobile phone. The bookshop was busy, tourists sitting cross-legged on the floor, browsing the mystery shelves, the travel section.
All these young people, she thought, these Europeans. Have they nothing to do? They wander through Asia, sit on the beaches, walk in the markets, the temples. What for? So beautiful and directionless and idle. At your age, she thought, I was killing communists. Attending their meetings, mouthing their slogans, penetrating their cells deep in the slum blocks that stank of sewage, cooking oil, cats. The silent mainland cadres in white cotton vests, smoking, eyeing me, trying to feel me up. I ruined them.
Her eyes flickered back to her mobile phone, to the book she was holding.
Amber, amber, came the signal.
GODDESS 3, Frederick, was by the door, holding a magazine.
She put the book back on the shelf. She turned, saw the tall Englishman, his face pale, lined, a sheen of sweat, looking around urgently. Too urgent, too tense. Relax, she thought. Being tired and frightened is permissible, but looking it is not. She moved toward him, slowly, allowing her eyes to roam the room as if for a bookshelf. She felt, rather than saw, his eyes connect with her. He started moving toward her, one hand in his pocket. She glanced over at Frederick. He stood still, holding the magazine. Clear.