Night Heron (18 page)

Seoul, South Korea

Mangan, a few years earlier, had put together a quick and cheeky feature on Seoul’s new international airport at Inchon. He had likened its architectural form to a giant armor-plated slug. A South Korean diplomat had written to him to tell him of “all Korea’s disappointment.” On arriving amid the dazzling white steel and glinting marble, Mangan half-wondered if they’d let him into the country.

But the passport officer waved him through. He took a train into a cold city, gray as granite, and a taxi to the Plaza, where, once, Mangan had sat in the coffee shop watching the rioting. The hotel overlooked a wide grassy circle that served as a great spot for a riot. And when South Korea’s furious students took to the streets over beef imports, or Japan, or the plight of rice farmers, or just because it was Tuesday, the foreign press corps could watch it over coffee, and avoid the tear-gas.

And now he sat in the lobby bar, with a beer and some nuts and a copy of the
Herald Tribune
. Awaiting contact.

Patterson was at the Service safe flat out east in Gangdong-gu with a cup of green tea, under neon strip lights in a tiny kitchen. Granny Poon famously ignored all rules concerning smoking and had lit a beedi, the stench of which now filled the flat.

Granny Poon eyed Patterson, this new, tall, stony-faced Englishwoman. Trying too hard, she thought, needs to relax into it.

They had gone over every minute of the operation at the Zhihua Temple, the collective Poon memory bringing it to life in granular detail. The target’s briskness, verging on recklessness, his sense of intention.

“He’s dangerous,” Granny Poon said. “He needs to be cautious. It’s Beijing, Trish. Where spies die, yes?”

They talked about the brothel, the target’s calm ruthlessness.

“And tell him,” said Granny Poon, “tell him to stop counter-surveillance. Terrible! All the time he ducks, dives. It’s too much. Anybody from MSS sees him, they know. He may as well write on his forehead, I Am A Spy. Not Very Good One.” She lifted a crabbed finger to her forehead and made writing motions.

“We’ll tell him,” said Patterson.

“Really, he must stop. Also the cameras, they see it. They have software now. Watches you walk, sees if you walk funny.” Behavioral tracking systems. She waved a finger, rarely this insistent.

“He puts the operation in danger. Tell him.”

She described Mangan’s artlessness, which was maybe not such a bad thing. “In Beijing no tradecraft lives longer than bad tradecraft,” she said.

They had agreed on two more tranches of surveillance in the coming week. Where did Peanut go? Any meetings? Any entry to official buildings? The boys were resting up, dry cleaning, building cover. Granny Poon would go back to oversee.

They got up, Patterson to leave first. But Granny Poon stopped her, hesitant.

“What is it, Eileen?”

“I did not put it in the report.”

“What?”

“It’s just. There was… something.”

“What was it?”

Granny Poon made a pinching movement with her fingers, as if trying to pluck something from the air.

“I did not report it because I think it’s not important. Outside the salon, the target already gone in, I just felt something, and then my phone rang. No one on the other end. No number. So I check, but nobody on my back, nobody on the target’s back. Winston, he sees no one. We’re clean, I’m sure.”

Patterson was looking at her, waiting for more, tension on her face.

“This was not Chinese surveillance. I know them, I can see them. You know, right? I’ve been spotting them for thirty years. This was not MSS.”

“Who, then?”

“Who knew my phone number?”

“Me, you, the London team, Beijing Station,” said Patterson.

Eileen shook her head.

“Nobody. It’s nobody. Just a feeling.”

Patterson said nothing.

“Maybe a junk call. Some advertising, something,” said Granny Poon.

“Did you change your phone?” said Patterson.

“Yes. We change every day, anyway.”

Patterson considered.

“Do I need to make this official?”

“Tell you what. I go back to Beijing. All this week I keep an eye out, okay. Then we talk again.”

An awkward embrace. Hopko had sent shortbread from Fortnum’s, which Granny Poon loved.

Mangan, installed in the Plaza’s Italian restaurant, had finished the carpaccio and was wading into the linguine with seafood in a clear broth, when a young man in suit and overcoat approached his table.

“Mr. Mangan?” He was blond, young.

Mangan swallowed and wiped his mouth.

“Yes.”

“Oh, good evening. I’m very sorry to disturb your dinner. My name is Backhouse. I’m from the embassy. I just wanted you to know I’ll be picking you up in the morning. Would nine be all right? Downstairs?”

“Nine.”

“Wonderful. See you then.” And he was gone.

So that was contact.

Seoul, South Korea

It was “Rachel Davies” again. Sitting on a vile black leather sofa, in a flat in some godforsaken corner of the city. She wore a black turtleneck and jeans. She was alone. Were there others lurking unseen? She stood up when he walked in, her face a mask.

“Hello, Philip. Thank you for coming. I know it was short notice, but things are moving quickly.”

“Are they?”

“Yes. But let me just ask you, any problems on the way here?”

“No,” he said, blankly.

“At Beijing airport did they ask you any questions at passport control?”

“No.”

“Anybody contact you here in Seoul, apart from the embassy?”

“No.”

She walked him through his plan for the rest of the day, his return trip to Beijing. She told him what they should do if they were interrupted. Mangan listened, mystified.

“Well,” she said. “You’ve done it again.”

“Done what again?”

“Created a stir.” Mangan felt her warm a little. The way to her heart, he thought, lay through the provision of secret intelligence.

“And how’s that?” he said.

“Well, you got a good deal out of our man in a very short time. And you had deft footwork with that document.”

She sat down, crossed her legs.

“But you’re a reporter. So you know how to do these things, right?”

Do I? he thought. He wondered if that was sarcasm he was hearing, running beneath her words.

“How reliable do you think he is, Philip? Now you’ve talked to him?”

“I don’t have the first idea. How good was his information?”

“Oh, first rate, if it’s true. If it’s not some horrible plot to ruin us.”

“Might it be?”

“Yes. But we don’t think it is.”

“Why not?”

She’s opening a little, talking about what she knows, he thought.

“Well, deception operations often feel slick, well-thought-out. And then you find a gaping hole.” She paused. “But with a genuine operation, there’s a rickety feel to it, constant improvisation. A human feel.”

Operations, now, thought Mangan.

“May I be very frank with you?” he said.

“Of course,” she said, but Mangan saw the flicker of concern.

“You need to tell me exactly what my position is now.”

“I’m coming to that, Philip.”

She opened a folder on her lap, consulted something. This is punctuation, thought Mangan; a semi-colon in my life. Then she spoke again.

“As I’m sure you realize, you’re talking to British Intelligence.”

“Is Charteris an Intelligence Officer?”

“Yes.”

Mangan bit back a response.

“Which part of British Intelligence?” he said.

“The Secret Intelligence Service. SIS.” She was trying to gauge his reaction, he sensed.

“And I’m now part of an operation?” he said.

The woman spoke quietly and with great seriousness.

“Philip, at this point I must impress upon you—though I think you understand—the need to remain utterly discreet. For everybody’s sake, including your own. We need to be very, very careful now.”

Mangan nodded. Every response I make takes me one step further in, he thought.

She continued.

“We would like to come to an arrangement with you. Put you on our books for the duration. There’ll be remuneration, of course.”

“You’re offering me a job?”

“No. We’re offering you an association. This isn’t uncommon. People help us out a good deal. Not so common for a journalist to come on board, but there we are.”

“Why? Why do people help you out? Why can’t a professional do what I’m doing?”

The woman thought it over. All the time her eyes stayed on him.

“Beijing is, well, you’ve seen the cameras. You understand surveillance. You’ve encountered the MSS, the police, the neighborhood committees. Every old lady on a street corner is a sensor for the state, even if she doesn’t know it yet. The web mamas, the phone tappers, the GPS locators, every hotel a listening post,
every handheld a beacon. How easy do you think it is for a professional to work?”

“Why is it any different for me?”

“Because you have natural cover, Philip. You’ve a reason for being where you are, for going where you go. And it’s been built up over years. It’s quicker and safer to reverse engineer you than it is to build something from scratch.”

She paused. Then spoke again.

“Let’s leave that for a moment,” she said.

For the next two hours she took him through the meeting, probing his memory.

Mangan talked, reconsidered, talked again. He found himself using the same mental muscles that he used in reporting; the way of looking, looking at something for what it is, for what it isn’t.

At her pressing, he found memories of the meeting he didn’t know were there. The man’s left hand in his pocket was holding something. What was it? Or the flicker on his face when he spoke of the prison camp, the sense of anger tamped down, doused.

She made no notes. They were presumably recording. She kept returning to the offer.

“But what, in your view, was he actually offering?”

“He’s offering you a person, a collaborator. He believes he’s got someone on the inside, and he’s the middle man.”

“And he wouldn’t tell you who this collaborator was.”

“No. As I told you, he just said it would be like before.”

“And the collaborator’s motive? Anything at all, Philip. Do think, now.”

Nothing. She frowned.

“When he used the term ‘collaborator,’ what sort of tone of voice was he using?”

“It was faintly sarcastic perhaps. He had a half-smile, a knowing look.”

“So it’s possible he used the term in an ironic way?”

“Yes. Yes, I suppose that’s possible.”

“Is it possible that he doesn’t have a collaborator at all? That whoever’s supplying him with material is doing it under duress?”

“Impossible to know.”

She nodded. A pause. Mangan took the leap.

“He’s done this before, hasn’t he? With you,” he said.

She looked up sharply.

“There are aspects of this that you are going to remain ignorant of. I’m sorry.”

“You already know who the collaborator is, don’t you?”

She gave her tight smile. She appeared ready to wind the conversation up.

“I’m not just flattering you, Philip. You’ve achieved a great deal. And we want to take this further.”

“And if I don’t want to?”

“You can walk away at any time. That’s understood. But if you do, we’d appreciate some warning, and some candor. And we’ll need assurances from you.”

Mangan said nothing. “Rachel Davies” stood, walked to the window, pulled back the curtain and looked out.

“If we go ahead, we’ll meet outside China as much as we can. Nasty little flats like this one.”

“I rather enjoyed the meal in Singapore,” said Mangan.

“Treasure the memory,” she said, absently. “Doesn’t happen often.”

What was she looking for?

“We have in mind a project for you,” she said. “A book. The Pan Asia Institute publishes a series called
Topics in Asian Studies
. Nice glossy little numbers. There’d be lots of trips, meeting editors. Interviewing. How does that grab you?”

Mangan was nonplussed.

“Is it a real book?”

“Oh, yes. Publication guaranteed. Might even do you some good. And it will give you mobility. A reason for being out of the country.”

“I see.”

“Charteris will be there, in Beijing, but he’ll have to keep a distance. You’re good at working alone, aren’t you?”

Silence.

“The important thing, Philip, is to keep things normal. Carry on reporting. Maintain your friendships. Go out, stay in, succeed, fail, do what you normally do. But you’re writing this book. Choose a topic. Write a summary. Do this as quickly as you can. Approach the institute. They will commission it, I’m assured.”

“What will you want me to do? I mean, really do?”

“You will meet our man perhaps three or four times, no more. Once or twice you’ll have to carry a small item, something that’s normal, natural for a journalist to have. That’s it. We’ll keep it very simple.”

“How long will this last?”

“Impossible to say. I think it will be weeks, a few months at the most. And then it’ll be over.”

“And why should I do it? What’s the purpose?”

She sat back down on the sofa and crossed her legs.

“The purpose.” She let the words hang in the air.

“The point of it,” said Mangan.

She looked surprised at the question.

“Well,” she said, “most of us tend to think that in the digital age we have all the tools we need to know the world, don’t we? We think our search engines and our satellites and our data-mining programs and our sensors allow us to know the world. But it’s an illusion. All that digitized information is a sample, nothing more. And in the case of China, the sample we see excludes the
most salient facts, because the most salient facts are kept secret. And the Chinese are good at keeping secrets. That’s one little bit of Leninism they haven’t forgotten. Keep your mouth shut. Keep everybody guessing. Knowledge is power. Knowledge of what gets said in the Politburo meeting, who says it, what the Party leaders think, what they feel. What animates them. What their intentions are.”

She paused, then spoke again.

“If you think that reform and openness and networks have rendered China terra cognita, Philip, you’re wrong. It’s terra very bloody incognita.”

“So you spy,” he said.

“So we spy. We have to.”

She paused.

“Good enough to persuade you to act?”

Mangan exhaled. To act. To cease observing from a distance, through a lens.

But writing is acting. Reporting, constructing narrative is acting. Isn’t it? To inform is to influence.

“I will need an answer,” she said.