‘Why not speak to her yourself?’ suggested his gran. Connor heard the phone being passed across.
‘Hello, darling. How’s school?’ His mum’s voice was weak and fragile. That told Connor all he needed to know about her state of health. Her MS was taking its toll.
‘Fine,’ Connor replied as cheerily as he could. ‘I’m just calling to let you know … the school’s phone line is down. So don’t try and contact them. Should be fixed in a couple of weeks or so.’
‘OK. How are your studies getting along? Have you managed to improve your maths grade yet?’
The last concern in Connor’s head was maths! Nonetheless he had obtained a C grade in the most recent test, a vast improvement on his previous E grades. As his mum chatted with him, he became aware of the Chinese man from the security queue. Thin, narrow-jawed and with a bowl haircut, he perched at the end of a bench in the waiting area. He wore a plain dark blue suit and was reading the Financial Times, both signs that he was a businessman or banker. But Connor didn’t like the regularity with which the man glanced over in his direction.
‘So how’s Charley?’ asked his mum. ‘Have you spoken to her recently?’
‘Ermm … fine. We haven’t had much chance to talk. The time difference doesn’t help and she’s undergone surgery and been in and out of physiotherapy sessions like a yo-yo. They’re pushing her pretty hard by the sounds of it.’
‘Any progress?’ Confined to a wheelchair herself, his mum was eager to hear of any improvement in Charley’s condition.
‘Too early at this stage, she says. But Charley’s hopeful. So am I.’
Connor glanced over his shoulder. The man with the bowl haircut had gone. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of someone he thought he did recognize. Someone he never wanted to see again. Someone who made his blood run cold. ‘Sorry, Mum – I’ve got to go.’
‘I understand, darling. They do work you hard at that school! You take care.’
‘Give my love to Gran.’ Connor put down the receiver and darted over to the cover of a pillar. Peering out from behind it, his eyes rapidly scanned the crowd. He spotted the man’s charcoal-grey suit first, then clocked his pallid complexion. Yet Connor couldn’t see his face fully so couldn’t make a positive ID. But the way the man walked – no, the way he stalked like a panther – through the crowd was chillingly familiar.
Could it really be … Mr Grey?
On his last assignment in Russia, Connor had shot the assassin in the chest. But the man had survived somehow, most likely due to a bulletproof vest. Ever since, Connor had been expecting the assassin to exact his revenge. But days … weeks … then months had passed, and Connor had forgotten all about him.
The suspect peeled away from the main crowd and ducked down a side corridor. Connor dashed out from his hiding place in pursuit. For his own safety and security, he had to confirm whether it was Mr Grey or not. As he reached the corner, his suspect headed up a flight of stairs. Where was he going?
Following the man up to the next floor, Connor watched as he entered a code into a digital keypad on the wall and disappeared through a set of double doors. Before they could lock shut, Connor ran down the hallway and slipped through the gap. He found himself in a marble-floored room with an artificial waterfall and misted-glass privacy screens.
‘Excuse me, young man! You’re not allowed in here.’
An elegant woman in a flight attendant’s uniform hurried out from behind a reception desk. She pointed to a sign that read: MEMBERS’ LOUNGE – FIRST-CLASS PASSENGERS ONLY.
‘Sorry,’ said Connor, trying to look past her into the lounge.
‘I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave.’
She ushered him out of the door, but not before he snatched one last glimpse of the man. His back to Connor, he was drinking an iced water at the bar, a warped reflection of his lean face tantalizingly visible in the rows of glass bottles. Then the doors closed on him.
As Connor retraced his steps back to the departure lounge, he pondered the reflection. Had that been Mr Grey? It was hard to tell. Whatever, he was sure the man had been looking at him … and he’d been smiling, a thin sadistic smile. Or had that been merely a distortion of the bottles?
Connor began to wonder if he was becoming paranoid. After the multiple attacks on Buddyguard, who could blame him? But, if it was Mr Grey, did that mean the assassin was involved in the assault on HQ? Surely revenge didn’t extend that far … yet if it did, Connor would have to be even more on his guard. The assassin was as ruthless as he was relentless.
‘There you are!’ cried Amir, laden down with shopping bags. ‘They’ve already called our flight. Here’s your new phone, and you’ll never believe what I managed to get my hands on. The latest ultra-thin hybrid tablet with –’ He noticed Connor’s intense expression. ‘Are you all right?’
Connor nodded absently as an announcement sounded over the tannoy: ‘Final call for Flight VS250 to Shanghai Pudong. Please go to gate twelve for immediate boarding.’
Eleven hours and five thousand, seven hundred and fifty miles later, their plane touched down at Pudong International Airport on the east coast of China. After negotiating passport control on a pair of hastily obtained student visas, Connor and Amir made their way to the connecting Maglev station.
‘Do you know this train hits a top speed of two hundred and sixty-eight miles an hour?’ said Amir, looking out of the window as they rocketed towards the centre of Shanghai. ‘It’s the world’s fastest magnetic levitation train in commercial operation and covers the nineteen-mile journey to central Shanghai in under eight minutes –’
Connor was only half listening. For most of the overnight flight he’d been preoccupied with thoughts of Mr Grey; even his brief sleep had been troubled by nightmares of the ruthless assassin. But now his attention was distracted yet again by the presence of the man with the bowl haircut. As Amir read from the downloaded travel guide on his new fancy hybrid tablet, Connor kept a careful watch on the man, who sat in the next carriage, facing their direction yet steadfastly avoiding any eye contact. This, as Connor knew from his training, was unnatural behaviour. Most people would at least glance in the direction of someone looking at them.
‘This train is amazing,’ Amir declared as building upon building whizzed by at warp speed. ‘The guide says it arrives at the station with on-time reliability – to the second – of greater than 99.97 per cent. In England we’d be lucky to get one train arriving on time in a day!’
‘Uh-huh,’ Connor murmured as Amir went on. His suspicions had been aroused when Bowlcut, as he was now beginning to think of him, had boarded their plane at Heathrow. Repeated sightings were a strong indicator of surveillance and Connor had seen Bowlcut in the security queue, in the departure lounge, on the plane, and now he was on the Maglev. During bodyguard training, Bugsy had taught them that once is happenstance, twice is circumstance and three times means enemy action.
Although this was the fourth sighting, Connor still wasn’t absolutely certain that it meant enemy action. Bowlcut could well be a Chinese businessman simply returning home on the same flight as them. There weren’t many variations of route someone could take in an airport. So none of the sightings were conclusive proof that Bowlcut was following them. However, when the train arrived at the Longyang Road terminus, Connor planned to hang back with Amir to allow the suspect to go ahead of them, to rule out the possibility, once and for all, that Bowlcut was tailing them.
‘We just hit maximum velocity!’ exclaimed Amir, pointing to the digital display above the carriage door.
Connor glanced up at the read-out: 09:32 … 431 km/h … The train didn’t feel to be going that speed; the ride was so smooth and quiet. In the next carriage Bowlcut was talking on his mobile. After a minute or so he ended the call. At the exact same time Connor heard a flip-phone snap shut a few seats behind.
Coincidence? Connor thought not. A phone call was a classic handover technique between survei
llance operatives. If Bowlcut thought he’d been clocked, he’d swap with another accomplice.
Connor rose from his seat. ‘Going to the toilet.’
‘Really?’ said Amir with a puzzled frown. ‘We’ll be at the station in less than two minutes.’
‘Can’t wait,’ Connor explained. But he could. In fact, he had no desire to visit the toilet at all. He simply wanted an excuse to leave his seat and get a good look at whoever had made the call behind them. As he headed to the toilet, his gaze swept over the passengers. A couple of excited tourists. Several travel-weary businessmen. And two seats behind, next to a Chinese woman with steel-framed glasses, was a heavyset man in a black shirt and a black tie. He had a square jaw, shaved head and appeared to be local. The man didn’t look up from his magazine as Connor passed. Nor did he pay any attention when Connor returned to his seat.
‘Told you,’ said Amir, retrieving his Go-bag as the Maglev pulled into the terminus.
‘Hold on,’ said Connor, making a show of searching in his own bag.
Amir shot him a questioning look. ‘You lost something?’
‘No,’ he said under his breath, ‘but I think we’re being followed.’
Amir’s eyes widened in alarm. But he kept his cool and didn’t automatically glance round – an instinctive reaction that would have alerted any operatives to the fact that they were aware of their surveillance.
After waiting for the carriage to empty, the two of them disembarked.
On the platform Bowlcut had gone; so too had Black Shirt.
‘Looks like I was wrong,’ Connor admitted. ‘But stay sharp.’
Amir nodded. Entering the colonel’s coordinates into his phone, Amir studied the digital map, then headed towards the escalator. Catching the metro, Connor and Amir got their first taste of Shanghai: TV adverts floated in the air outside the windows as the train hurtled down the tunnel.
‘I think …’ Amir said, staring in fascination at the futuristic illusion, ‘the tunnels are lined with LCD screens that display the ads at the same speed as the train. Ingenious!’
Then the adverts disappeared and they arrived at their stop. Emerging from the metro station into the heart of Shanghai, Connor and Amir were immediately confronted by a jaw-dropping cityscape of glittering skyscrapers and impossibly tall office blocks. The streets criss-crossing this immense urban forest were a flood of cars, taxis, motorbikes, scooters and bicycles. The noise from the traffic and the surrounding building sites was almost overwhelming. Hordes of people, many wearing white elasticated pollution masks, surged along the pavements – a situation made more hazardous by the constant stream of scooters and bikes that appeared to use the pavements as much as they did the roads.
Connor had always thought that London was noisy and crowded. But Shanghai was on a totally different level. A mega-city. As he and Amir headed for their rendezvous, they needed three-hundred-and-sixty-degree vision just to cross the roads and negotiate their route through the chaos. Then, all of a sudden, the city landscape opened out on to a wide spacious promenade alongside the Huangpu River.
‘This is the Bund,’ said Amir, checking the map on his phone. He pointed across the water at a megalithic series of skyscrapers that stretched high into the haze of smog. ‘That’s Pudong, the city’s finance and trade zone. The skyscraper that looks like a massive bottle-top opener is the Shanghai World Financial Center. At the top is a sky walk with a glass floor. Then next to it is the Shanghai Tower, one of the tallest buildings in China. It also has the world’s fastest lifts. And the rocket-shaped domed structure is the Oriental Pearl TV Tower. At night it supposedly lights up like a Christmas bauble –’
Connor realized his friend was gabbling to hide his tension and nerves. So, while Amir led the way, Connor scanned the area for Bowlcut and Black Shirt, just in case. But it was a task easier said than done. Thousands of people strolled up and down the promenade. For Connor to spot two Chinese men among so many of their fellow citizens would be nigh-on impossible. To make matters worse, he and Amir were virtually the only foreigners in sight and stood out like sore thumbs. If someone wanted to follow them, then it wouldn’t be hard.
He glanced at his smartband: 10:09 a.m. They were running out of time. ‘So where’s the rendezvous point?’
Amir was still studying the map. ‘We got off at the closest metro stop. But I didn’t appreciate how vast Shanghai is. According to the map, we’ve got at least a twenty-minute walk!’
‘You need a tour guide?’
Connor and Amir spun round to face a hip-looking Chinese teenager in tight jeans, a loose-fitting T-shirt and red baseball cap, tufts of black hair poking out from underneath.
‘No, it’s all right. I think I’ve already got one,’ replied Connor, smiling and thumbing in the direction of Amir.
The teenager eyed Amir dubiously. ‘But he doesn’t know Shanghai like I do. I can show you the real Shanghai.’
The guide pointed in the direction of a gleaming motorcycle with a leather-seated sidecar, the logo Shanghai Insiders emblazoned on the body.
‘Nice motorbike,’ remarked Connor.
‘No, not that one!’ said the guide irritably. ‘The one next to it.’
Connor shifted his gaze to a clapped-out-looking rickshaw powered by a rusty bicycle. A handpainted sign on the side announced: SHANGHAI SURPRISE! Tours to open your eyes!
‘Errr … thanks, but I think we’ll take a taxi.’
‘No taxi!’ protested the guide with an indignant look. ‘This is the only way to travel. My electric rickshaw is fast through traffic, friendly to the environment and fun for you!’
‘Sounds wonderful,’ said Amir with a gracious smile, ‘but we aren’t here to sightsee.’
‘I give you a good deal,’ the guide insisted. ‘Special offer for not-sightseeing tourist.’
While Amir did his best to discourage their persistent guide, Connor hunted around for an available taxi. That’s when he spotted the woman with the steel-framed glasses. The same woman from the Maglev. Although she’d now donned a pollution mask, Connor recognized the glasses. She was on her phone and looking in their direction. This couldn’t be a coincidence. Connor rebuked himself for overlooking the obvious. Women often made far more effective covert surveillance operatives than men due to their ability to blend into different environments with ease. Black Shirt hadn’t been the handover – she had!
On instinct Connor glanced behind him. Three heavily built men were converging on them.
Connor grabbed Amir’s phone. ‘You know this location?’ he asked the guide urgently, pointing to the red dot on the digital map.
The guide nodded. ‘Fifty yuan, I take you there.’
‘Done,’ said Connor, striding purposefully in the direction of the rickshaw.
‘We’ve been had!’ Amir hissed, hurrying along behind Connor. ‘According to my guidebook, a taxi there should only cost twenty yuan!’
‘Get in,’ Connor ordered, leaping into the back seat of the rickshaw, ‘before it’s too late!’
‘My name is Zhen,’ said their guide with a flash of a smile. The teenager had a slender build and Connor questioned if the boy would be strong enough to cycle with them both in the rickshaw – let alone fast enough to get them out of their imminent danger. Then he noticed the electric motor rigged under their seat.
‘Can we go?’ urged Connor, glancing back anxiously at the woman and three men advancing towards them. ‘We’re short on time.’
‘Sure!’ said Zhen.
First adjusting the baseball cap, their guide slipped on a grimy mask and mounted the bike. Without looking, he pulled out into the traffic. A car honked furiously. Zhen ignored it and zipped between a bus and a taxi. The three men hurried to the kerb and for one horrifying moment Connor thought they might try to follow them into the road. But the traffic soon swallowed up the rickshaw and their pursuers were left behind.
‘Welcome to Shanghai,’ said Zhen proudly as both Connor and Amir let out a sig
h of relief. ‘Its name means upon-the-sea and is home to the world’s busiest container port. But you won’t see the port or ocean from here. The city stretches over one hundred and twenty kilometres north to south, and nearly one hundred east to west. One of the most populated mega-cities in the world, Shanghai has –’
‘Watch out!’ cried Amir as a taxi ahead of them stopped without warning.
Zhen niftily swerved round the vehicle, barely avoiding a collision, and continued the tour commentary as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened: ‘– over twenty-five million people living here. Across the river, you can see the Jin Mao Tower. It looks like bamboo pieces stuck together to make a super-tall glass pagoda –’
His heart in his mouth as a scooter shot across the rickshaw’s path, Connor held on tightly to his seat, his knuckles going white. Having narrowly escaped capture, he began to question whether they’d now escape with their lives from the rickshaw ride.
Amir’s dark brown eyes registered mute panic as their guide cut across four lanes of traffic and turned off the Bund. He whispered to Connor, ‘Do you think we lost them?’
‘No sane person would follow this suicidal rickshaw rider!’ replied Connor through gritted teeth. Nonetheless he looked over his shoulder to check if anyone was on their tail. He’d last glimpsed the woman with the steel-framed glasses frantically hailing down a blacked-out silver Mercedes. It was hard to tell among the maelstrom of traffic, but he couldn’t spot the car. They appeared to be in the clear.
‘This area of Shanghai is called Old Town,’ announced their guide, turning down a narrow road and through a stone gateway carved with dragons. On either side of the street squatted ageing two-storey buildings, somewhat dilapidated yet quaint when compared to the modern glazed towers of Pudong district. Telephone and electricity lines criss-crossed above their heads in a confused cat’s-cradle, and people’s laundry festooned windows, eaves and wires like a festival of tattered prayer flags. ‘It’s the original heart of the city, the only part remaining from the 1850s –’
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