Night Heron (16 page)

Peanut squatted. The Englishman, bent almost double, entered the space behind him and closed the door. They sat close. Peanut could see the Englishman had not shaved, could smell his foreign smell; butter, fat.

“So, Mr. Mang An.” Peanut, whispering.

“We don’t have very long before this place closes,” said Mangan, in Mandarin.

“We have about half an hour. That’s enough. We can speak in Chinese?”

“Yes. And I have questions.”

“And I have conditions,” Peanut responded.

The Englishman blinked.

“All right. What are your conditions?”

“You’ll tell them this.”

“Tell who?”

Peanut cocked his head to one side.

“Do not fool around with me, Mang An. You have contacted the relevant departments of your government, yes?”

Mangan was silent.

“And they saw the proof, yes?”

“The proof?”

“The document and the letter I left in your office.”

Mangan gave a tight nod.

“So, tell them this,” said Peanut. “A one-off transaction. Access to stand-alone networks in the General Armaments
Department and the Launch Vehicle Academy. One time only, but superb access.”

The journalist was holding up both hands.

“Wait. Just… wait.”

“What? Why?”

“This is not why I’m here.”

Peanut leaned forward now and took Mangan’s wrist. He spoke in a rasp.

“I will tell you why you are here. And you will tell them. A one-off transaction. Access to stand-alone military networks. In return a passport—a polite nationality, please. Maybe Australia. Or Singapore. And fifty thousand dollars, and a ticket out of here, however that works. This is truly a reasonable offer. You will tell them. They know me, and they know I will deliver.”

Peanut felt himself becoming annoyed at the Englishman’s pained, pale stare.

“I cannot make any such arrangement. I am a journalist,” said the Englishman.

“Screw journalist. You just tell them, Mang An. That’s your job.”

“Christ.”

“Tell them.”

“Listen. I have questions.”

“All right. Ask your questions.”

“The document you left with me. The cover sheet and table of contents.”

“What about it?”

Mangan licked his lips. God in heaven, he thought.

“Right. Where does it come from?”

“It said on the cover sheet. It’s a report for the Leading Small Group on Military Affairs, a technical report. It’s very secret. It’s so secret it’ll break your balls. Here’s the rest of it, by the way. A show of good faith.”

Peanut reached into the plastic carrier bag and pulled out a pile of photocopied pages, and thrust them towards the Englishman.

“Oh, Christ.” Mangan had his hand on his forehead.

“What do you think of that, then?”

“Just. Stop. For one minute.”

Peanut said nothing.

“Where did you
get
this document?” said Mangan.

“Who’s asking? Who cares where I got it? There’s more and I can get that, too.”

“I’m asking.”

“You don’t—”

Mangan spoke over him. “
They’re
asking. Understand? They want to know the source.”

Peanut looked at the Englishman, his flaming hair, flushed face, green eyes. He looked like a piece of fruit.

“Tell them I have a sub-source. Like before.”

“A sub-source.”

“He is… collaborating with me.”

“And you got the document from him?”

“Yes.”

“And who is he, if I may ask?”

“I’m not telling you. He’ll get some of the money.”

“But this sub-source has access to the documents?”

“Yes. And to the networks.”

The Englishman took a breath. He seemed to be calming down.

“And who are you?” Mangan asked.

“What do you mean who am I? They know who I am. I gave you a photograph, for heaven’s sake.”

“But
I
don’t know who you are.”

Peanut breathed out. God, for a cigarette.

“Perhaps better you don’t know.”

“Do you have a name?”

Li Huasheng. Counter-revolutionary spawn. Night heron. Traitor. Peanut. Prisoner 5995. Song Ping.

“Quite a few.”

“Give me one I can use,” said Mangan.

“They called me Peanut.” The “Peanut” in English, carefully pronounced.

“Peanut,” the Englishman repeated, looking levelly at him now. “Do you have a family?”

For a moment Peanut was unable to respond. He looked at his hands. Was it rage? This tide rising in him?

“No, I do not have a stinking family.”

The Englishman said nothing, gave a questioning look.

“I have not been in a position to have a family,” said Peanut.

“Why?”

“I was in a fucking labor reform facility. Next question.”

“Why were you in the labor reform facility?”

“I hit someone.”

“You must have hit them pretty hard.”

“I did.”

“When was that?”

It was when everything ended. It was when our hopes proved as easily crushed as the skull of that little soldier.

“
Liu si
,” said Peanut. The fourth of June, 1989.

“Where do you live now?”

“Never you mind.”

“How long ago were you released?”

“Never mind.”

“Had you served your sentence?”

“Let’s just say my path to this point has been unorthodox,” Peanut said.

The Englishman thought for a moment.

“You’re on the run, aren’t you?” he said.

What? Peanut thought. How the hell did we arrive here quite so quickly?

“That’s enough—”

They froze.

Feet on the stairs. Peanut grabbed the Englishman’s arm, held up a silencing hand.

Light footsteps. Slow.

Coming towards the altar now. Peanut could hear the Englishman’s shallow, fast breathing.

The footsteps stopped. Muttering. Peanut felt his own blood pulsing in his clenched jaw, behind his eyes. Hello, fear. You’re back.

Then a voice, a woman.

“
You ren ma?
” Anyone there?

Silence.

“
You ren ma? Kuai guan menr le ya.
” We’re closing soon.

A longer silence. Then the footsteps receding, back down the stairs.

“
Kuai guan menr le ya
.”

The Englishman had his hand over his mouth and exhaled slowly.

“I’ll leave first,” Peanut said. “Remember what to tell them.”

He made to get up, then stopped, looked hard at the Englishman.

“You’re a clever bastard, Mang An. Do not let me down.”

The technician ran the video
GODDESS
3 had shot on the mobile phone. Granny Poon waved inanely at the lens, then a quick move away to glimpse the contact walking across the temple courtyard, the rolling, aggressive gait, the brush cut, the frown. A slight pan, and the shot fell on
RATCHET
, stooped, in jeans and a green waterproof, a few yards behind the contact, matching his pace and direction. Following him, in other words. The two
disappeared into the second courtyard and the shot returned to Eileen Poon, looking over her shoulder, then went to black.

“The contact was holding a bag.” This from Yeats. “I thought it looked like documents in it.”

“Could have been, Roly,” said Hopko, who sat, her legs stretched out and her arms folded, eyes fixed on the screen showing the incoming lines.

Mangan sat hunched under the eaves. He ran his hand across the wooden floor. It was smooth. He imagined generations of cloth slippers with straw soles lending the floorboards their patina, centuries of monks, devotees, scholars in silks, ladies of the court, eunuchs, merchants of tea and opium, fortune tellers, hucksters, the sick, the lame, the panoply of traditional China.

The photocopied report lay by his feet. The man who mumbled about birds and who had black paint on his hands and called himself Peanut had left it there, gesturing briefly to it as he’d left.

Never accept classified documents. Read them? Fine. Take notes on them? Just about okay. But don’t take possession.

Nimble, that man, for his bulk. Something fluid and muscular to his movements. He was a man used to physical work. But his eyes ticked with calculation. How did he live? Where did he get his money? How did he buy that atrocious blue jacket with the shiny buttons?

The photocopied report still hadn’t moved.

In the gloom Mangan could make out the characters in the title at the top of the first page.

DF-41 Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Programme: History, Objectives, Parameters.

What if he just left it lying there? Someone would find it. The ticket collector would be interrogated. The authorities would pull the footage from the cameras on all nearby intersections.
And there would be Mangan, on a jerky, digital path to a Chinese prison, while the diplomats wrangled for years over his fate.

He was cold. A sliver of sunlight appeared between the wooden door and its frame, slicing through the murk. He watched the dust motes float through it.

And then Philip Mangan shed his illusion that he was working in the name of journalism, of a story, of a little collaboration, and became operational. He picked up the pile of photocopied pages, opened his windbreaker and placed the pages under his sweater, tucking them into the top of his trousers.

He zipped up the windbreaker, crawled through the doorway and moved quickly towards the stairway.

“
GODDESS
1 on the line.”

“
Wei? Keren zoule. Wo ye yao zou. Keren geile liwu.
” The guest has left. I’m leaving, too. The guest gave a gift.

Hopko sat forward.

“
Shenme liwu?
” What gift?

“
Geile huar
.” Flowers. Meaning documents.

“
Hao. Xiexie.
”

Hopko turned to the Beijing Station screen.

“David,
RATCHET’
s carrying.”

Charteris looked up, startled, then was gone.

Mangan was clammy, despite the cold. The heat rose up his back, into his neck and cheeks. It was nearly dark. He came from the alleyway almost at a run, forcing himself to slow, on to Jinbao Jie, snarled traffic, blinding headlights. A woman stood at the street corner with a cart, selling
baozi
. A taxi slowed, the driver gesturing at him from the window. The pages dug into his stomach. The flat? Could he take the document pages back there? Walk through the gates into the compound, past the guards and the State Security hoods in the little gatehouses? To his bugged
flat? Could he call Charteris? Should he? He turned north, away from home, and walked fast.

“
GODDESS
4 on the line.”

“
Wei? Pengyou bu hui jia li qu. Dao biede difang le.
” Our friend’s not going home. He’s going somewhere else.

“
Hao. Ni pei ta qu ma?
” Are you going with him? Hopko, biting her lip.

“
Dangran. Yihuir zai shuo.
” Of course I am. We’ll talk again in a while.

“Translate, please. Where are we?” Yeats sounded tense.

“Granny Poon is staying with the contact. But whatever the contact was carrying when he went into the temple, he no longer has, so the assumption is he’s given it to
RATCHET
, who’s now carrying.” Hopko stood, dangling her spectacles in one hand. “And
RATCHET
is not heading back to his flat, he’s heading elsewhere, so one of the boys is staying with him. Charteris will track him down, won’t he, Trish?”

The elderly woman boarded a bus. She wore a green scarf now, and thick glasses. The target had made some sorry and revealing attempts at dry-cleaning—some hammy business in a shoe shop, a public toilet, again—but nothing to trouble her. The target now sat, six rows in front, staring from the filthy window as they ground eastward down Jianwai Avenue. So noisy, so cramped these buses! So slow! The woman would believe in China’s economic renaissance when public transport approached the silken speed of Hong Kong’s. Not till then. Two seats behind her
GODDESS
3, eyes half-closed beneath the brim of a baseball cap, sat with a shopping bag on his lap, the leaves of a cabbage visible. Still all clear.

So who was he, this man? She liked to play guessing games with her targets, spin out her own versions of the stories she’d
never know. He was educated, but down at heel. A crudeness to him, but fiery. No congruence in his appearance and his bearing. He wore a smart jacket but walked as if he meant to tear someone’s lungs out. No congruence. And that, to the woman’s practiced eye, made him conspicuous. He needed to change.

And his efforts at counter-surveillance, dear God. She’d put a stop to
that
.

The bus began to empty as it left the city center. The elderly woman descended at a poorly lit intersection and made her way into the back streets of brick and neon as if she had lived there all her life. Here, in snatches of talk on the night air, she heard less of the soft Beijing speech and more of the choppy, sibilant south, her own speech. Anonymous, this place. She kept the target on the edge of her vision, reeling herself in a little closer when he twisted and turned. She could sense more than see her boy,
GODDESS
3, behind her.

And then, as she turned a corner, the target was gone. She kept her pace steady. There he was. Yes. In the window of, what was this, a beauty salon? He was speaking to an orange-haired girl, who put her hands on her hips, leaned forward to him. He was taking off his jacket and seemed to be laughing. Was he a client? No, something else. Proprietor?

And at that moment Granny Poon’s mobile phone rumbled. She reached into her bag fussily and pulled it out, staring at the screen. No number. She keyed answer. But there was only silence.

What was that?

She moved thirty paces further, then abruptly crossed the street. She turned and looked for, for what? A flicker, a hint. Movement out of the flow. Some tension of gait or look, fleeting as a shadow, visible only to one who had spent decades on the streets of China. They were good, these people, when they tried. Were they out there tonight? Were they on her?

The street was quiet.