Beijing Smog

by Ian Williams

  “I was hoping we’d have some better news for Washington today,” said Dick, looking at his watch. “Conference call is in an hour.”

  “I can deal with that,” Drayton said. “I need to be back at the consulate anyway.”

  “Sure, if you don’t mind, Chuck.”

  Drayton didn’t mind, in fact he was pretty keen to get away, finding the atmosphere of the room tense and stuffy, the geeks far too serious. To make matters worse they’d run out of beer. These NSA guys were strictly mineral water only, making Drayton feel bad each time he cracked a Tsingtao.

  Drayton reckoned they’d both had a sense of humour bypass. Maybe that was a qualification for all this stuff. Personalities need not apply.

  Tom thanked him again and coughed, a deep hacking cough.

  “Jesus, I haven’t had a cough like this in years. Is the air always this bad?” he said.

  “It gets worse,” Drayton said, picking up his coat and mask, and making for the door. “Get yourselves some good masks. There are a couple of apps you can download too, give you the air quality real-time. I can send you the link.”

  Tom said thanks, but don’t worry. That wouldn’t be necessary. They weren’t the kind of guys who downloaded anything from anybody.

  Once out on the street he followed a routine they’d set up, heading north along another narrow cluttered road lined with old shophouses. He then cut back towards the river, beside an empty block of land that used to be more shophouses but was now enclosed by a fence plastered with pictures of the ugly office tower they planned to replace them with.

  Drayton instinctively raised his collar and adjusted his hood and mask as a police car, lights flashing, raced past him. Then another. He reached an abandoned riverside warehouse with a narrow alleyway running beside it, where he stopped and sent a brief message on his phone, just the word “smog”. The signal that he was ready to be picked up.

  Five minutes later a green Toyota taxi pulled up in front of the warehouse and Drayton climbed into the back seat.

  “Good afternoon, Mr Drayton.”

  “How you doing, Cyril?”

  “I am doing good, though the car takes a bit of getting used to. It’s not like driving the consulate limo.”

  “But it is discreet, and discreet is what we need.”

  “Probably need a few more dents then, if you really want to blend in. All Shanghai taxis have got dents,” said Cyril, in a slow, languid delivery that irked Drayton. He’d arrived with the NSA guys, who said they needed a trusted driver and a vehicle that wouldn’t get noticed.

  Cyril was Cyril Chow, a Chinese-American, and this guy didn’t give much away either, though he did have a family name. He sure knew his way around Shanghai, and Drayton wondered whether he also planted bugs in online dumplings.

  “You certainly know the streets here, Cyril man. Been here before, I take it?”

  Cyril just said that Shanghai wasn’t that complicated a city to find your way around.

  “Do me a favour, Cyril, and just slow down here a little. I’m curious about what’s going on, all these cops.”

  The police cars that had swept past him had joined several more and a couple of vans outside an office block they were now passing on their left, on the river bank. The building was maybe seven or eight storeys of dark red brick, and pretty rundown. There was a neon sign, high up and reading, “Shanghai Glorious Shipping Company”. Though it was tough to read through the smog, and not all the neon was working.

  As they passed, two cops were carrying an elderly man to one of the vans. He was wriggling and shouting. There was a big group of people inside the main lobby, chanting and yelling. The police were yelling back, were trying to get them out of the building. There was a loud crash as a window smashed.

  “Pretty feisty bunch,” Drayton said. “Wonder what that was all about. Did you catch what the old man was shouting?”

  “Hard to tell. It was a tough accent, from the west of China I’d say. Something about children, killing children,” Cyril said.

  “That’s not good,” said Drayton, intrigued. He asked Cyril to swing around the block again, but Cyril said that wouldn’t be smart, that he didn’t want to get noticed, that they should get back to the consulate.

  The traffic was heavy and it took forty minutes to reach the French Concession. Drayton’s phone rang twice as they crawled along the Concession’s tree-lined streets. The Mission Impossible ringtone, his ex-wife Debbie. He ignored the calls, switching the phone to silent. The ringtone made Cyril laugh, and Drayton was about to tell him that the grief he was getting was no laughing matter, but he thought better of it. That wasn’t the sort of private detail you shared with a guy from the NSA, at least not knowingly.

  And he knew what the calls were about. Debbie had already emailed him to say the roof problem wasn’t just a little leak from the blow from the tree, but was structural, and that was a big job, an expensive job. And guess who’d have to pay for that.

  Which made him think about Sakura. She didn’t give him any of that grief. Though right now she wasn’t giving much of anything at all.

  She was number two at the Shanghai branch of the Japan External Trade Organisation, and Drayton had met her a couple of months earlier at a reception at the consulate, one of the rare moments when he was wearing his official Economic/Commercial Officer hat, or at least trying to, doing his best to avoid serious conversations since he knew very little about either economics or commerce.

  It turned out that Sakura found the reception as tedious as he did, and told him that. Then she said it was hard to figure out what was going on with US policy on Asia. Or on anything else for that matter. Drayton just smiled and offered to fetch her another glass of wine, getting one for himself too, because diplomacy these days was a good deal easier after a couple of drinks.

  Sakura then suggested they escape to a bar in the Concession, near her place. Which they did, talking some more in the bar, small talk mostly. Drayton hadn’t said too much about himself, largely because she never asked. And she was as guarded as him, though he did learn that she was from Nagoya, spoke fluent Mandarin and was perhaps a couple of years older than him.

  She was tall, slim and wore dark-rimmed designer glasses and dark blue suit, with a skirt just above her knees. And she was available, because that’s what she told him, out of the blue, after two more glasses of wine, and they immediately left for her small apartment, tastefully decorated with Japanese prints and furniture, above an old shophouse.

  She fetched some warm sake from the kitchen together with something to snack on. Maybe meat. Possibly fish. But definitely raw – and chewy. He thought he heard snoring coming from the kitchen, but not like snoring he’d ever heard before. She said that was Bobby, sweet, sweet Bobby.

  “Is he your only child?” Drayton had asked.

  Sakura said, “Good gracious no,” sounding very English. “He’s a dog. A beautiful pug.”

  Then, just as Drayton thought things might get interesting, she told him to leave since she didn’t want to wake the pug. She said she also had a call scheduled with Tokyo, and was working early in the morning.

  Drayton said he hoped to see her again, and she said sure, but to please keep the noise down as he left because Bobby was a light sleeper.

  Though it had been a strange evening and ultimately a bit of a let-down, he was intrigued by Sakura, and especially the bit about being available. But she had her own priorities. And right now Drayton didn’t appear to be one of them, since she wasn’t returning his calls or messages.

  His journey back to the consulate took him past her office, and he thought about having Cyril drop him there, but he was already running late for the conference call, and she’d hate him turning up at the office. She didn’t even like him ringing her there.

  He messaged her again, saying let
’s get together, maybe tonight, have some fun, but there was no reply.

  Cyril stopped the old taxi a few blocks from the consulate; when Drayton said he was running really late and couldn’t Cyril take him straight there, Cyril said that wasn’t smart, wasn’t protocol.

  Drayton jogged the rest of the way, which probably wasn’t protocol either, but neither was turning up late.

  Once inside the compound, he crossed to the old mansion and down the stairway that led to the wine cellar that was now the secure communications room, the Bubble Room. He went quickly through the retina check, which opened the first door. The scanner on the second door accepted his forefinger, but twice rejected his thumbprint. He wanted to hit the thing. See if it recognised a fist. But then he remembered the security cameras watching him and decided that might not be such a great idea. He tried for a third time, which worked, the scanner having second thoughts and accepting reluctantly that the thumb belonged to Drayton.

  The security stuff could be tedious, but it also gave him a buzz. It made him feel part of something bigger, something sexier, and something altogether unexpected. He’d be the first to admit that for a Cyber Guy his qualifications were less than stellar. He’d been in the right place at the right time, and had found his way to Shanghai more through luck than judgement.

  But now he was a real player, rubbing shoulders with the spooks, at the heart of US-China relations.

  “It’s in San Francisco Bay for Christ’s sake. How can Alcatraz be part of China?” said a voice from Washington DC as Drayton entered the room, taking a seat by the wall. “It’s 6,000 miles from Beijing.”

  Somebody at the table in the Bubble Room – Drayton thought it was the consulate’s political guy – said it was all over the internet. That it had first appeared on some nationalist website, but had gone viral, quoting a top Party source.

  There were about a dozen people in the Bubble Room talking to five large flat screens, all of them feeding live video and audio from identical conference rooms in the States. Everyone sitting around long tables, badly lit. From left to right, little digital labels under the screens said State Department, White House, CIA, NSA and FBI.

  The Beijing embassy was coming in on an encrypted audio line.

  A State Department voice said that since the Alcatraz stuff went viral, there’d been a ten-fold increase in Chinese tourists visiting the island and several what he called annoying incidents: graffiti, and Chinese flags being planted. One tourist had chained himself to the bars of a cell, refusing to leave until America recognised China’s incontrovertible rights.

  The White House voice said he’d put it on the tentative list for the President’s visit, but the embassy should lodge a strong protest with the Chinese Government. Get some clarification.

  “The President doesn’t want to look stupid,” he said.

  “No, we wouldn’t want that,” said one of the figures on the NSA screen, asking what they all made of the picture, the doctored Escape from Alcatraz movie poster, Clint Eastwood as an alien.

  “We should check that out. Might help us find where the thing came from originally. Think you can look into that, Chuck? You’re the Cyber Guy. Chuck, you there?”

  And Drayton said yeah, he was there, and he’d get onto it, not really knowing where to start.

  It was midday in Shanghai, eleven in the evening on the US east coast. Drayton thought they all sounded surprisingly alert, though if somebody had nodded off it wouldn’t be the first time.

  It wasn’t always easy to see who was talking. Not only were those distant rooms badly lit, but there were frequent glitches, which Drayton assumed was because of all the encryption stuff they needed to make it secure.

  Then a woman on the White House screen asked about the cyber operation.

  “The President’s a dealmaker,” she said. “He needs information to confront them with, so we can draw up some ground rules on this. Is Chinese cyber spying still rampant? Is it falling? Or is it just getting cleverer, more targeted?”

  The NSA screen said it depends, but possibly all of that.

  “How’s Team Panda doing? Tom, Dick, are you there?” said a man from Langley, the CIA.

  “The guys are at The Facility,” Drayton said.

  “Okay, talk to us, Chuck. Seems like you guys are making a bit of a meal of things,” said somebody from the FBI screen.

  Which wasn’t entirely inaccurate, what with the dumpling bug, but he wasn’t about to go into details of the operation, just telling them it was coming along fine.

  “We’re close,” he said, sounding more confident than he felt.

  “We need names, Chuck. We need to know what they’re doing. We need to know who’s in there. And preferably before the President’s visit,” said another voice from the NSA link.

  “Got it,” said Drayton.

  And a voice from the White House screen said, “Okay. Good. Keep us posted. Anything else we should think about for the President’s visit?”

  “Well, the human rights situation is looking a lot worse than it has for a long time, lots of lawyers arrested,” said another voice from around the conference table. “There’s a big crackdown underway.”

  And the consulate’s economics guy said, “There’s also the market meltdown. Some people think the economy here’s an accident waiting to happen, and that could have a big knock-on effect on America and the world economy.”

  But the meeting was already breaking up, screens going blank.

  Drayton left the Bubble Room and as he climbed the stairs, his iPhone came back to life with a beep, the signal blocked down below. It was a short encrypted message from the one called Tom, which Drayton unscrambled.

  – 13 –

  The Professor

  The wide road that ran from Wang Chu’s University to The Moment On Time coffee shop was lined mostly with colleges and research institutes, announcing themselves with large signs and logos, which he used as subliminal landmarks as he walked without ever taking his eyes off the screen of his smartphone.

  He knew them all by heart, except for one. A drab grey twenty-storey building was set well back from the road behind a high wall with broken glass embedded in the concrete on top. It was in the centre of a large compound along with several smaller buildings. There was no sign, just a number. And the building didn’t appear on any map.

  Liu said he’d heard it was a secret prison. That once you went in, you never came back out. Zhang said it was where they took corrupt officials. He said it was the headquarters of the Party’s anti-graft enforcers.

  To Wang it was mostly a nuisance, slowing down his journey to the coffee shop, since whatever they did in there, they seemed to be doing a lot more of it. He was always getting held up. It was worse than the railway crossing near Fatso’s place, as the sidewalk and road in front were repeatedly closed while fleets of black cars and vans with darkened windows swept in and out, often accompanied by wailing police cars and bikes.

  The last time it happened Wang was playing a game on his smartphone, back in the temple being chased this time by monkeys and zombies. He’d walked straight onto the rigid outstretched arm of a paramilitary guard, who was blocking the sidewalk, blowing a whistle. Wang was knocked backwards and slipped, dropping his phone. He sprained an ankle, but it could have been a lot worse. The phone could have been damaged. Luckily there was just another crack to the screen. He could live with that.

  It was a creepy building, that was for sure, but the roommates wouldn’t have given much more thought to it, had not one of their University’s most popular professors suddenly disappeared.

  *

  After Wang’s collision with the arm, he’d limped on to The Moment On Time, where he began to play another game. This time he was a medieval king riding a tall stallion, leading an army of thousands across a misty plain. With a few tap
s on his screen he upgraded his weapons and closed in for a final assault on his enemies, now fleeing the battlefield. He was just a few clicks from world domination.

  His concentration was interrupted by an argument on a nearby table, where a couple wearing nearly identical dark padded jackets and beanie hats had just sat and ordered tea. They were trying to keep their voices down, but not doing a good job of it.

  “It was a stupid thing to do,” the boy said. “Think of your parents. Your career.”

  The girl snapped back, calling him a coward and said you had to stand up for what you believed in, that the students had to support Huang Guangbi. She said it wasn’t fair, what had happened to him. She said that the Professor was one of the most honest men she’d ever met and the accusations against him were rubbish.

  The boy told her she was talking nonsense. That fairness and honesty had nothing to do with anything. It’s just the way things are, he said, and there was no point in making a fuss. He shook his head, and she looked away before both pulled out their smartphones and retreated to the comfort of the world beyond their screens.

  Professor Huang Guangbi taught urban planning at the University, or at least he used to. A week earlier he’d stopped giving classes. It was as if he’d abandoned his job. Just like that. Students who went to his office expecting a lesson found books and files still open on his desk, a half-filled tea cup, but no Professor. The department said they had no idea what had happened.

  Three days later a short statement on the university website said the Professor was being investigated by the Communist Party’s Central Committee for Discipline Inspection, the graft-busters, for what it called “serious disciplinary offences”. It gave no further details, but everybody knew that was usually Party-speak for corruption. Wang said that maybe the Professor had been in one of those vehicles with darkened windows they’d seen sweeping into the building that didn’t officially exist.

  His disappearance triggered an unusual wave of online support from students, even a small placard-waving protest outside the University’s administration office.