by John Gapper
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
“Not badly.”
He knelt, checking her. Her hands were bloody and limp, and her legs and feet were lacerated. Blood leaked from her wrists where the cuffs had bitten her flesh.
“Don’t move.”
Mei was too weak to question him. She lay her head on the roof as he placed his jacket over her. Her body shook and her teeth chattered. She saw a light in the sky, which grew as it hovered above Long Tan toward them. In the last seconds, as it floated across the roof, she heard thundering. It landed fifty feet away, rotors spinning—a Harbin Dolphin helicopter in green camouflage, with the red star of the People’s Liberation Army.
A soldier in overalls climbed out as the blades slowed, pulling a stretcher with him. Another joined him, and they ran across the roof to Mei. Slipping webbing bands under her body, they lifted her onto the stretcher and covered her with a foil blanket. Lockhart walked alongside as they carried her back and slid the stretcher into the rear cabin. It was locked in place by a third crew member as Lockhart took a seat. The soldiers secured the doors, and the craft started to lift as soon as the latches clicked.
Mei saw only the sky twisting across windows as they climbed across the compound.
“Where are we going?”
“Somewhere safe,” he shouted above the roar.
When they’d reached a stable altitude, a nurse came to the front to examine her. She worked rapidly, bandaging her wrists and applying dressings to the wounds on her leg. Giving Mei an injection, the woman tucked a container of pills in her pocket, tapping the label. Mei nodded—she would have to dose herself.
Before long, they descended. The helicopter bumped through turbulence on its way down and described a lazy circle, lingering before landing as if the pilot had to pick his spot carefully. The touchdown was so gentle that Mei wasn’t sure the flight had finished until the soldiers removed their harnesses, the rotor whine softened, and a door slid back. The nurse loosened Mei’s bindings and placed an arm beneath her shoulders to lift her.
As Mei sat, she got her first view of the outside world. She’d expected to see an airport or a PLA base, but they were resting at the edge of a marsh. The pilot doused his lights and lit a cigarette.
“That guy can fly,” Lockhart observed, and a soldier nodded.
He unbuckled his harness and took off his helmet, then climbed out and turned to Mei. She clambered to her feet, every muscle aching, and he lifted her down. When they’d walked some distance, the engines pounded and the rotor blades screamed. The helicopter lifted, as delicately as it had arrived.
The only light on the marsh was from a pair of nearby headlights, and he held Mei’s arm as she limped across to a stationary SUV and they climbed in. Feng sat behind the wheel.
“Unbelievable. You made it.”
She punched the wheel, then reached back and held Mei’s bandaged hand. Mei put her head in her other hand, trying to recover from the shock. After a while, Lockhart gave her a tissue to wipe her nose.
“What are we doing here?” she asked.
“It’s as far as we can go.”
“Feng has a fleet of PLA aircraft at her disposal,” Lockhart said. “Helicopters, aerial drones.”
“I know how to ask nicely. Tom will handle it from now on. Now, I don’t want to rush you, but did you find anything?”
“A logic board, but they took it.”
“Anything else?”
“A master chip.”
“Where is it?”
Mei opened her mouth, pointing a finger down her throat.
“You’re joking.” Feng laughed as Mei shook her head. “Just clean it up before you show it to me, okay?”
“Come on,” Lockhart said.
They got out and Feng bumped the SUV across the field to the road, waving as she drove. They were in the marsh, perhaps fifteen hundred feet from the Jinggang’ao Expressway. Lockhart stepped into the field, beckoning her to follow, as he had before, and she limped behind him.
The marshes deepened on both sides of the path into rice fields. A boat had been abandoned in one field, its slats rotted, sunk halfway beneath the surface. They headed toward two lights, suspended off the ground; as they approached, Mei saw lanterns on poles. They marked the jetty where she had stood before, where she’d seen Lockhart standing in the beam before he escaped. Mei was exhausted—she couldn’t stay upright much longer. She sat on the wooden slats until the waterway echoed with the sound of an engine chugging through the delta—a fishing boat with masts jutting in a V shape. It came to a halt by the jetty, the tires that hung from its side bumping and squeezing against it. Lockhart climbed up and flipped onto the deck, then reached for Mei. She clasped his hand, and he hauled her on board and led her to a tar-faced captain under a rickety awning, surrounded by trash.
The old man grunted an acknowledgment as they climbed below, then steered his boat toward the Pearl River.
The cabin was as cluttered as the captain’s nook. It was stuffed with plastic fuel cans, wooden crates, wire cables, and half-broken chairs. A pile of old videocassettes occupied a corner, from before the days of the DVD. It stank of diesel oil, fish, and marsh water, some of which was sloshing around in a dirty bucket. Two crew members lay on narrow bunks, one snoring and the other reading the celebrity pages of a Hong Kong tabloid. Lockhart kept walking through a passageway to another cabin that was emptier and unoccupied.
“You should rest,” he said.
Mei nodded—she didn’t have the energy to reply—and lay on the thin mattress on one of the bunks. The bulkhead by her side sloped inward, following the line of the hull. Lockhart rummaged through a compartment under the bunk and pulled out a rough blanket that smelled of oil; she pulled it up around her neck, closing her eyes. She’d experienced terrible things, and she tried to think of something nice instead—wearing a tiger-head hat with Wing on the fifteenth day of the spring festival, when she’d been six.
She dozed off to the throbbing of the diesel, waking several hours later. The cabin light was dimmed, and Lockhart lay in the bunk above. The engine was working harder than before, and the boat was being rocked by waves as it pushed forward. Water slapped against the outside of the porthole near her knees, but she couldn’t see anything out of it but darkness.
When she woke again, Lockhart stood by her, shaking her arm. She heard voices from the captain’s deck. The porthole shone with the lights of another boat, which had drawn alongside. Lockhart took a tool, like a screwdriver with a T-shaped end, and poked it through two holes in a bulkhead panel on the other side of the cabin, at floor level. The panel was about three feet high by six feet wide, and he twisted the tool twice to unlock it. Pulling it free, he pointed—get inside. Mei was groggy, but she climbed down and pushed her body into the gap, feet first. She heard Lockhart tidying up behind him, then he climbed in beside her and secured the panel behind him.
It was pitch-black, and it felt like being buried alive in a sarcophagus, a fellow slave beside her. She heard Lockhart’s breathing, low and steady, and the creak of the boat shifting in the water. They lay on cold metal with a stamped metal panel inches above their noses. Lockhart said nothing, but he took her left hand, giving it a squeeze that was painful but comforting. Straining her ears, Mei heard the echoes of voices, then a motor’s whir and the sound of creaking. Boots descended a ladder and then, without any warning, there was a deafening bang. Someone had jumped onto the roof panel.
Another person climbed down more gently, while the owner of the metal-tipped boots paraded up and down, stamping the panel by Mei’s head, as if testing it. It felt as if they were being crushed underfoot, as if a boot might break through at any moment, kicking their bodies. Then the banging stopped, and a conversation broke out between two men, starting with murmurs and then getting louder. Mei couldn’t make out the words. One man laughed, then footsteps ascended the ladder. After two minutes, the vessel’s engine roared and waves rocked the boat.
“We’re out,” Lockhart said.
He unlocked the panel and pushed it, letting air and light back into the hole. Mei pulled herself backward and climbed out, kneeling on the bunk and gazing through the porthole. She saw lines of lights and the hulking shapes of container ships. The boat was moving again, rocking through the Pearl River estuary toward the sea. Lockhart sat by her on the bunk, as if nothing untoward had just happened.
“We can go up,” he said, looking at his watch.
Both crew members were asleep as they passed back through the other cabin. It didn’t look as if they planned much fishing. Mei breathed the air gratefully as they surfaced. The captain was still at the helm, but with one hand on the wheel now—it was a simple matter to navigate the reaches of the Pearl River estuary. The aircraft in line to land at Chek Lap Kok formed a string of lights as they sailed toward the clustered islands between Hong Kong and Macau. It was an hour before dawn.
“What did the customs want?”
“Money.”
“How much?”
“The usual.”
Lockhart pulled a wad of notes from a pocket and handed some to the captain, as the man changed course to skirt Lantau Island, along the route of the Macau ferries. Mei sat on a grimy bench, looking out at the cluttered South China Sea, dotted with rocky outcrops, boats, and ferries. A fat container ship, stacked high with the output of factories, inched across the horizon, which was glowing with the approach of the sun. It was five-thirty—twelve hours since she’d started her last shift—when they squeezed past Cheung Chau and headed across the West Lamma Channel toward Hong Kong.
They chugged into Aberdeen Harbor on the island’s south side as dawn broke, between Aberdeen promenade and the triple-towered apartment blocks on Ap Lei Chau. The captain steered past gaudy junks and floating restaurants to the row of lashed-together boats and swung his vessel in line. As soon as they’d stopped, a boat pulled up beside the cabin—a flat-bottomed sampan with a roof of green canvas strung on hoops, red and yellow flags fluttering in the breeze. A man tending an outboard engine shouted in Cantonese for them to hurry, and the captain turned his back, his business done.
The sampan puttered across the water, past the Jumbo Kingdom restaurant, as if they were tourists taking a view of the Aberdeen Harbor before breakfast. Cars flitted past on Aberdeen Praya Road, up early to be the first through the tunnel to Central. The sampan moored at the harbor side near the Tennis and Squash Club, where a red and white taxi waited. When they climbed in, the driver didn’t wait to be told a destination. He headed east along the highway connecting Hong Kong’s dormitory bays, driving on the left-hand side of the road under the road signs with English names.
They drove along a beach strip, then turned up Deep Water Bay Road, a winding climb past narrow bends, with a steep rock face on one side and the Hong Kong Golf Club on the other. The lush fairways were spread at the bottom of the valley, with a few players on an early round. They climbed higher, clouds above the valley, the sea shining in the bay behind them. The farther they went, the more sculpted and protected the mansions looked. A gray battleship of a villa loomed at the top of one bend. There were no signs of life, and Mei wondered if it was a home or merely an investment—a place for some tycoon to stash millions in Hong Kong dollars in case he had to flee.
The taxi darted off the road, down a cobbled driveway to a house propped above the valley, and Lockhart paid the driver while Mei climbed up stone steps cut into the rock. She emerged on a wide marble terrace with a swimming pool. A table and chairs had been placed at the end, with a priceless view over Deep Water Bay. Past sliding doors, cushions sat plumped on sofas in a wide living room, and the kitchen surfaces gleamed. Nothing moved.
“I wonder who owns this,” said Lockhart.
“You don’t know?”
“I didn’t fix it. Feng gave me the keys.”
Mei couldn’t make sense of it, and she didn’t try. She went through the kitchen and upstairs to a bedroom. A closet lined one wall, filled with expensive dresses—Prada, Alberta Ferretti, Gucci. She took off her uniform and kicked the clothes to the side of the bathroom, stepping into a white marble shower. Afterward, she dressed in silk pajamas from the drawer and stood by the window. Below her, a gardener was skimming leaves from the swimming pool with a net. She felt like an heiress.
Lockhart rested on the terrace until noon, letting his body heal in the sun. He hadn’t used a gun outside a firing range for a long time, and he’d been lucky to take down the guard in two shots. He’d realized as he ran up the stairs to the roof how frantic he was to save her; desperation had helped his aim.
When he rose from the lounger, he was alone. The gardener had left for the day, and the maid had disappeared. She’d laid out sandwiches on a plate on the kitchen island, with a bowl of chips for the expatriates. He poured a Coke into a long glass and sat by the island to eat. Then he went upstairs to check on Mei, poking his head into the shaded bedroom. She was asleep on the surface of the quilt, her hands flung back from her head, defenseless. He went into the next bedroom and lay down himself, but it took him a very long time to get to sleep.
At six o’clock, he was woken by a sound in the basement of the house. By the time he reached the kitchen, Feng was there, having climbed the stairs that led from a garage below. She carried two cases and was trailed by a man like a cable guy, in overalls, with a belt of tools and a case. They looked as if they had brought enough to move in for a few weeks.
“How do you like the place, Tom?”
“I’m impressed.”
“It belongs to a friend. He doesn’t use it much.”
“If he has a house on Deep Water Bay, he’s doing well.”
“Family money.” Feng patted her companion on the shoulder and pointed along a corridor. “There’s a room there to set up.”
Lockhart heard footsteps on the stairs, and Mei walked in. Barefoot, wearing a silk tunic and pants, she’d regained some color in her cheeks and looked more human. He pulled out a stool from the island and poured her a glass of water from the fridge. As she drank deeply, he saw that the bruises on her hands and wrists were turning purple.
“How are you, darling?” Feng asked.
“I have something for you.”
Mei pulled a tiny square from her pocket and laid it on the kitchen counter—a master chip engraved with the Poppy logo. Feng prodded it suspiciously, as if it might be infectious.
“You swallowed this?”
“Don’t worry, it’s clean.”
“That’s not the problem. You’re not supposed to get water on it, never mind store it in your stomach.”
“I sealed it in a rubber.”
“Where did you get that from?”
“A girl in the dormitory gave it to me.”
“God, Mei. You’re quite an operator.”
Lockhart rested a hand on Mei’s shoulder, which felt thin through the fabric. “You did it.”
“We’d better check before we celebrate,” Feng said.
Feng’s companion had stuffed one of the rooms at the rear of the house with his equipment. He’d put a computer on one desk, linked by cables to two Poppy tablets, and placed a soldering iron on another table close by. It looked like a crude version of the workstations Mei had seen in the factory. The technician had started to take one of the tablets apart, prying open the face, exposing the insides and going through the sequence of unscrewing parts and pulling them out. He paused when he reached the inner frame, stumped for a moment. Standing behind him with Feng, Mei pointed at the next screw. Finally, he had the parts on the table, and the logic board was exposed to view.
Feng gave him the chip Mei had smuggled out, and he placed the logic board under a jeweler’s loupe and held a heat gun to the back of the board, melting the solder. Brushing away the soldering flux, he pried the master chip off the board with pliers. He cleaned the face and then lined up the replacement chip, soldering it in place with the incandescent prods of the soldering iron
. Once he was happy with it, he reassembled the tablet, as rapidly and deftly as Mei had seen it done, and slotted it back in the dock. Then he pressed the button to start the device. They watched nervously as a counter whirled on the black screen, then the tinkle of a Poppy tablet booting sounded, and the pink branches appeared. It worked.
“I need an hour,” he said.
They spent it on the terrace. Feng found a bathing suit upstairs and lay on an inflatable raft in the pool, waving her arms in the water, while Lockhart and Mei sat on chairs. Mei scanned the Deep Water Bay beach in the sun with binoculars, watching a couple with kids bouncing in the shallows of the ocean. The technician appeared right on schedule an hour later, tapping on the sliding doors to get everyone’s attention. Feng maneuvered herself to the side of the pool by scooping the water and put on a robe.
By the time she emerged, the sun was setting and she had gotten dressed. She crossed the terrace and sat in front of them.
“Congratulations, Mei.”
“The same chip?” Lockhart said.
“Identical.”
“But you don’t know what it does.” Mei said.
“We do now. We found out while you were inside Long Tan. The NSA sent over a helpful young man to work with us. You met him in Washington, I think. He’s called Joe, or that is what it says in his passport. Not good at eye contact but very clever. We enjoyed the cooperation.”
“We ought to do it again,” Lockhart said.
“Maybe. I shouldn’t tell you this, but you earned it.”
Mei nodded. She didn’t care what they said—it was forgiveness. She had brought herself back from the ghost shift, and they had stopped talking about Yao, or breaches of discipline, or traveling on a false passport. She was not locked in a PLA camp or Camp Peary. She was at liberty.
“I’ll keep it simple,” Feng said. “Everything sent over the Internet is scrambled so that nobody can read them except the person they’re intended for. Every document, every file. They’re encrypted on the sender’s computer using a number called a public key. The key is exchanged with the other computer to decrypt the message, but it doesn’t matter if the number is intercepted on the way because possessing the public key isn’t enough. You need to know the private keys—the two numbers the computer has multiplied to create it.”