by Adam Brookes
At Kensington the hard-eyed men in the lobby didn’t want to let them in and there was some squaring off until the inspector stalked in and pulled rank. With ill-will, the hard-eyed men opened the lift, tailed them up to the apartment.
Nobody there but the housekeeper, reported the inspector. She was cowering in the kitchen and didn’t appear to speak English. Nobody else. They had taken a look around and decided it was quite a place, marveled at the huge windows of bulletproof glass, the surveillance systems everywhere, motion sensors. Panic room with its own egress system, apparently. That was locked, though, so they couldn’t get in. And all this bloody awful furniture, all cream and gold and twirly, like something out of Versailles but cheap-looking.
But Regent’s Park, that was different, said the inspector. One of those bloody great white Georgian places, a palace, surveillance everywhere. A Bentley in the driveway. On buzzing, a croaky voice didn’t want to let them in, told them to go away at first, so a translator told it about warrants issued under Section 42 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, and after a short interval, the gate slid open and the big black front door was opened by this little old lady in chef’s whites, face like a collapsed paper bag, all red-eyed, weepy. She’d been cleaning up, smashed crockery all over the floor. The house had been turned over. The old lady said she was the cook and had worked for Madame Charlotte Fan for thirteen years, and loved her for the way she looked out for the cook’s family in Lewisham, and the cook made her pork and coriander dumplings and dandan noodles and onion pancakes and proper rou jia bing with tender minced pork and sesame and pickles all wrapped up in the pancake and Madame Fan always told her how much she loved it because you couldn’t find proper food in London anywhere. And when gently pressed she said men had come in the early morning, and she didn’t know how they’d got in, and Madame Fan had got out of bed and there’d been a big row and the men had started searching the house and smashing things up, and then they’d said they were taking Madame Fan with them and the cook was told if she said anything to anyone or talked to the police that would be the end of her and her family down in Lewisham, so she wasn’t to say anything. So, really, she was afraid she couldn’t tell them anything at all.
The inspector looked up, smiled. But Hopko had her eyes closed. He pushed on.
The translator was sitting with her arm around the cook, and one of the constables had brought her a glass of water, and the Service liaison officer had knelt down beside her and said she shouldn’t worry, the police would make sure her family were kept safe and what, please, had happened to Madame Charlotte Fan. And the cook, face creasing and puckering, said that Madame Fan had grown very pale and then given her, the cook, a nod as if to say it’s all right do what they say. And they all went out of the front door, and a big gray car drew up and they all got in and drove away. And, no, she had not seen the license plate, even though as the car turned out of sight she realized that she should have and now was cursing herself for being so thoughtless and disloyal and stupid. And the translator said not to worry, we’ll find it, and what time was it roughly and the cook said they left at about four-thirty in the morning. And a police guard was put on the house and the cook was left, weeping over the shards of early Qing vases which had been hurled to the floor as General Chen’s men moved against those who had corrupted and degraded China.
“Though I must say, I wonder,” said Hopko, in her sanctum, to Chapman-Biggs, paper cups of coffee on the desk, “if we are right to frame this as a move by the military against a Communist Party elite. Or whether we ought to see it as a sort of family feud. Is that what it is? Two bloodied old revolutionary families and their retainers duking it out?” She brought up her fists in a Queensberry rules gesture. “They loathe each other, you know. The Fans are all metropolitan and modern and entrenched in the Party, rich as Croesus and principled as cooked spaghetti. And the Chens, all austere and nationalist and martial and convinced they’re the true repository of Confucian virtue.”
She stopped and Chapman-Biggs knew better than to say anything. This was pure Hopko, the careering analytical zigzag at the last minute.
“Or is it a combination of the two?” she said. “Are they reverting to something? To an older way of doing things, of being. Perhaps Communism was just a blip, after all, and clans, warlords, dynasties are reawakening, remembering how to function.
“But whatever it is,” she said, “it’s here. In the UK. And it’s begun.”
The car, a silver Pajero, showed up on the cameras at 4:22 a.m. leaving Regent’s Park and heading west on the Marylebone Road. Later, it turned north and entered the underground parking facility of a large residential block. Multiple vehicles left the block, rendering further tracking of the abducted Charlotte Fan difficult.
The squad cars that roared through Oxford’s early morning streets and came to an overly dramatic halt outside the gates of Fan Kaikai’s college were disappointed. The boy was not there.
Kai had walked as the evening turned and the dark came on. He needed movement. Movement served to calm the gnawing, impotent fury in him. He walked around the city center, avoiding the knots of late night drinkers. He walked over the bridge and down St. Clement’s. At her street, he stopped, looked around. He walked quickly to the small wrought iron gate in front of her house. The windows were dark.
He opened the gate, went to the front door and listened.
He bent over and pushed open the mail slot to peer through it. He could just make make out the tiled floor in the hallway. He smelled something rich and pungent, a chemical overlay to it.
And then, from inside, a muffled movement. Someone standing, perhaps, a footfall on a carpeted floor.
He stood upright, let the mail slot snap shut, its metallic snack startling in the darkness. He backed away, toward the front gate.
And there, in the downstairs window, a flicker of movement, a face to the glass. Then, gone.
Kai turned and ran.
He ran back to the main road, panic driving him. The road was empty now, open and silent, the traffic lights at green. He ran up a long hill with parkland to one side, his breath roaring in his ears. He stopped, chest aching, rested against iron railings, his hand on the cold black metal. He looked back toward her street, listened to the city’s low-frequency night hum, and over it, the sound of a motorbike starting up, revving.
He straightened up, another bilious jolt of fear.
From her street, a bike pulled out, fast, came in his direction, accelerating hard into the turn, the back wheel giving slightly, then righting and racing through the gears.
He ran blindly on, up the hill. The bike’s roar was growing in his ears. I have seconds, he thought.
He turned to the railings. They were six feet or so high, the spikes atop them blunted by layers of black paint. He hurled himself at them, grabbing hold of the spikes, dragging himself upward, feet scrabbling furiously against the railing for traction. He got one knee up, wedged between the spikes. He hauled his torso up, balanced precariously, felt the fence wobbling beneath his weight.
The bike was hurtling up the hill toward him.
Nothing for it. He toppled to the side, the spikes jabbing him in the stomach and groin, one catching his shirt. For a second he hung there, half over, stuck, and wondered if this would be how they caught him, absurd, dangling. And then the shirt ripped and he fell, hitting the grass hard with his shoulder and the side of his head. And then he was up and running into the park, into darkness, shrubs, trees. He glanced over his shoulder.
The bike had stopped by the side of the road, its engine idling. Its rider seemed to be holding a phone. And just as the thought registered, he felt his own phone vibrate in his pocket.
What?
He rounded a corner, ducked behind an oak and pressed himself against its trunk. He answered the phone.
“Where the hell are you?” It was Nicole. He struggled to comprehend what was happening.
“Is that you?” he said.
“I mean… you’re on the bike? Calling me?”
“What? What bike?”
He shook his head, tried to focus.
“I’m… that’s not you?”
“What the fuck are you talking about? Why are you not in your rooms?”
“I… someone’s chasing me, on a motorbike.”
“What? Where?”
“I… I don’t know… I’m in a park. It’s dark.”
“Oh god, what park, Kai? Tell me. I will come to you. What park?”
Kai took the phone away from his ear for a second, heard the motorbike revving its engine.
“It’s… it’s near her house… on the hill.”
“Listen to me. I am coming. By car. I will call you again when I am near, and I will find you.”
“What should I do?”
“Run, or hide. Do not let them take you, Kai.”
“No… I…”
“Kai, do not let them take you.”
The line went dead.
He crept out from behind the tree, looked back toward the road. The bike was still there, its headlamp on, its engine idling. But there was no one on it.
He felt as if he were reduced to childhood, to a blind, uncontrollable, infant fear. He ran, arms flailing, aware of a mewling noise escaping his mouth. Suddenly he was in open parkland, the shelter offered by the trees far behind him. He stopped, crouched in the dark. Another engine, a headlight streaking up the far side of the park.
Two of them, now? More? A new flood of panic, and he was off and running again.
To his left, more trees, and beyond them street lamps. A way out? He turned and ran for them. The darkness seemed to be full of engine noise, flickering headlamps nosing along the edges of the park, closing on him.
He made the trees. A gateway led out of the park and onto a narrow, dimly lit street, the park’s vegetation spilling over into it, lending it a wooded, overgrown feel. He stopped and crouched, looking in both directions. He was breathing heavily and in his mouth the saliva had turned thick, pasty. Then, a weird moment of clarity. He took out his phone and, with a trembling finger, opened the maps application. Cheney Lane. He was on Cheney Lane.
He dialed her number.
“Where are you?”
“Cheney Lane. There. I’m… in the bushes.”
“Where are they?”
“They’re… oh god… they’re all around. They’re on motorbikes. I can hear them.”
“Three minutes,” she said.
He looked up: at the far end of the wooded street was a headlamp, moving slowly toward him. He backed into the bushes, crouched, then lay flat, smelling the cool earth, the night damp. The bike was zigzagging down the street, letting the beam from its headlamp play along the verges.
He dug his fingers into the earth, held his breath.
The bike came closer. Opposite the gateway to the park, it stopped, the engine slowing. Kai could see the feet of the rider resting on the tarmac, clad in black boots. He imagined the rider sniffing the air, like some scenting animal. He forced himself down into the leaves.
His phone vibrated.
He dared not move, so let it buzz. And now—shit—the ringtone, a stupid train whistle sound. Could the rider hear over the bike’s engine? He watched the booted feet on the tarmac, unmoving.
And then the rider gave a flick of the wrist and the engine growled briefly and the booted feet lifted and the bike nosed slowly, warily, away.
He lifted one hand and pulled aside the leaves. More headlamps, but a car this time. Was that her? It was a red Mini, coming on fast. No time to dial her now. He eased himself up onto one knee and looked the other way. The bike’s red taillight seemed to be receding. As the Mini got closer he readied himself, and then, when it was almost on him, he launched himself up and out into the road, arms up, waving. The tires screamed against the asphalt and the car turned slightly in the skid and lurched to a halt. She was gesturing at him from behind the wheel, her eyes wide. He ran for the passenger side door, jerked at the handle. It was locked and he thumped on the window, bent down, mouthing at her open the fucking door, please open it. She was staring straight ahead through the windscreen. He followed her line of sight.
The motorbike was turning back.
The door unlocked with a chunk sound, and he wrenched it open, got in, slammed it shut and the Mini accelerated, Nicole’s hands white on the wheel. The bike had turned and was heading toward them. He looked over at her, saw light sliding across her face, light from the rear-view mirror. He turned. Behind them, another bike, very close. She shifted slightly in her seat.
“Put your belt on,” she said, quietly.
The bike in front of them was veering crazily across the road and came to a stop, side on, thirty meters ahead.
“You’re going to hit…” he said. But she had already clipped the front wheel, the thunk from the driver’s side. He turned to see the bike spiraling away. He couldn’t see the rider. He wanted to shout, scream at her, but nothing would come. He was grasping the safety belt in one hand, his seat with the other, his feet rigid against the floormat. The bike behind them was swerving, staying with them. Nicole accelerated suddenly, pulled away from it.
“Hold on to something,” she said. She stamped on the brakes, threw the car into reverse, turned in her seat leaving one hand on the wheel, and gunned the Mini backward down the street, its engine whining. The bike behind them slowed and veered to the side. Nicole wrenched the wheel around and hit the accelerator. The Mini lurched at the bike. They shuddered to a halt in bushes, tree branches scraping the roof of the car. Kai saw a gloved hand against the rear window, then nothing.
Nicole, calm, jaw set, jammed the car back into drive and they took off down the street, Kai rigid and gasping with fright. They turned back onto the main road into the city center. Nicole brought her speed down, took a deep breath.
From the villa outside Chiang Mai, Patterson watched it begin with a fascinated horror, piecing it together from the net. She sat in her room staring at her laptop, Cliff looking over her shoulder, Mac on the sofa, silent and hostile.
There would be no troops crashing down the alleyways of Beijing, because Fan Ping, the poorly tailored chairman of the high-tech behemoth and whorehouse, China National Century, she saw, was on tour in China’s far southwest, Yunnan Province, dangerously close to the plotters’ stronghold. He was due to tour a new manufacturing facility some eighty miles from the provincial capital, Kunming. The facility manufactured cellular repeaters, which, CNaC hoped, would speckle the buildings of all Southeast Asia as the corporation’s networks spread across the continent. The factory’s managers stood, nervous and fidgety, in rows beside a red carpet.
But a Hong Kong journalist, representing an impudent web-based business publication and hoping for a fleeting moment with Mr. Fan, remarked indecorously on social media that CNaC’s chairman had not arrived, that the managers were perplexed and milled about, and a planned luncheon had been abandoned.
Fan Ping, chairman of all CNaC, progenitor of China’s digital future was, in some fashion, indisposed.
His elder brother, Fan Rong, whose presence on the Politburo guaranteed the political fortunes of the clan, was also out of the capital, according to the papers. The previous day, said the Chengdu Daily, he had addressed the Party School there and had undertaken a tour of the factory at which the J-20 fighter was built, and was due to address a conference on organizational work in the national defense industry.
So where was he now? And the boy, Fan Kaikai?
She stood, pushed past Cliff, went to the window, reaching for anything, any course of action. But her sense of agency had left her, and the feeling of redundancy was overwhelming.
64
Oxford
Fan Kaikai was in Nicole’s bedroom, the curtains drawn.
He had wanted to resist, but he had not known how. Her manner made him powerless. She was very cold, very
calm as she drove them back through the city. He had tried to protest and she had spoken to him very quietly.
“What do you wish to do, Kai? Do you want to call the police again? Do you hope that the British police will come to help you? To protect you? The little detective? That black woman? Whoever the hell she was. Do you know who she was, Kai?”
He just shook his head.
She had forced him into the house, a hand on his back, in through the front door, the lock snapping into place behind them, two dead bolts which looked to be newly installed, he noticed. Then, up the stairs to the bedroom.
“You will stay here, without speaking, or moving, until I say you can come out.”
“What happened to Madeline?” he said.
She was looking at a handheld.
“Madeline went away,” she said absently. “Anyway, she was too smart for you.”
“What did you do to her?”
“Me? I didn’t do anything, Kai.” She gave him a smile of such intensity, such beauty, that he was rattled, and she turned away, making to close the door.
“Is she dead?”
She stopped, gave him a long look, as if she were making some sort of concession.
“No, Kai, she’s not dead.”
It was dark. There were locks on the windows. He lay and shivered under a blanket, dozed a little. Sometime before dawn, he tiptoed to the door and opened it a crack, and she was sitting on the top stair, wrapped in a blanket, unmoving. Next to her, on the wooden floor, lay her handheld.
“Shut the door,” she said. “It won’t be long now.”
By the middle of the afternoon, Chapman-Biggs had composed a brief, pungent CX report. The report was reviewed, edited and cleared by Hopko and the Director, Requirements and Production, and C, the head of the Service himself. It was titled “Indicators of Imminent Political Crisis in the People’s Republic of China.”