Night Heron (20 page)

“We?”

And may God forgive him, because he would never forgive himself.

“Yes, I wondered if you might help me with it.”

“Doing what?”

“Helping me get all the materials together. Forcing me to write the bloody thing. You’d get a credit—if you wanted it. There’s a bit of money. It could be very good for you.”

The food arrived. Ting spooned bean curd into her bowl. The sauce was a deep red on her rice. She was pensive.

“So is that why you’ve been preoccupied?”

“Yes, I think so. All in a good cause, you see.”
You see?

She smiled, and nodded.

“All right, Philip. I’ll think about it. The Followers. And thanks.”

They ate, chatted about the rumors swirling around that Harvey was being considered for some big network job in Hong Kong. But there were always rumors swirling around Harvey.

Mangan paid, and looked at his watch.

“Somewhere to be?” said Ting.

“Yes.”

Ting thrust her face forward in exaggerated curiosity.

“Well, where?” she said.

“Nothing you’d enjoy.”

Now she frowned.

“Don’t say that, Philip.”

“Sorry. I just meant…“

She placed her fingertips on the back of his hand.

“I know very well what I’d enjoy.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He got up and left.

God forgive him.

GENIUS
made the contact in
TUANJIEHU
Park.
GODDESS 4
made one pass only of the meeting. The contact was a man aged approximately fifty years old, gray-haired, with the appearance of a successful professional.
GENIUS
and the contact sat on a bench and were in conversation for seventeen minutes. After the meeting ended
GODDESS 4
stayed on the contact. The contact returned to the main gate of
TUANJIEHU
Park and hailed a taxi.
GODDESS 4
lost him in traffic.
GODDESS 1
picked up
GENIUS
as he left the park.
GENIUS
appeared agitated.
GENIUS
walked north to scheduled meeting in
SANLITUN
district with
RATCHET
.

At the north end of the Workers’ Stadium couples waltzed under streetlamps to music from a karaoke machine placed on the pavement. A dozen or so couples, in thick jackets and woolen hats, lifting and turning.

Mangan stood in the shadow from a tree, scanning the bystanders. But Peanut was behind him, breathing hard, pressing something into his hand. Mangan palmed it and put it in his pocket. A voice in his ear.

“Anything for me?”

Mangan’s mouth was dry.

“They say you are to stop all counter-surveillance immediately. It makes you conspicuous.”

Silence. He turned, saw Peanut’s hard eyes.

“They’re watching me?” said Peanut, grinning. “Ha!”

Mangan looked straight ahead at the dancers.

“Anything else?”

Mangan shook his head. Peanut spoke very close to his ear.

“Tell them I need a commitment. Soon.”

And then he was gone.

Something like a polka came on, the sound rattling across the asphalt, vying with the traffic, and the dancers picked up their pace.

Washington, DC

Monroe chose the quiet car. He would use this time properly, to read, as the landscape slipped by. Philadelphia languished in a cold rain, the scrapyards of twisted metal and weeds. Monroe loathed the plane. He took the train for the calm and quiet. Hours still to Boston, where they’d meet him in a big, comfortable car, and drive him to the Charles Hotel. His talk, for the benefit of Harvard faculty, principally, though he had allowed the presence of a few doctoral students, was entitled, “The Dragon’s Crosshairs: Towards a Reframing of China’s Defense Priorities.” And there would be dinner at the Harvard Faculty Club, beneath the Canalettos, with a select group. He read. New York came and went. And by three he was in Boston. He asked the driver to go via the Back Bay, where Beacon Street twinkled under snow, and over the river to Cambridge.

“He doesn’t step out often. He does his work quietly, and usually reserves his analysis for the corridors of power in Washington. So we’re very privileged to have here today the foremost analyst of Chinese affairs in the U.S. intelligence community, Jonathan
Monroe of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, known as INR. Ladies and gentlemen, today’s session is of course unclassified, but nothing is for attribution. I hope everybody will respect that. Jonathan.” A liver-spotted professor—no stranger himself to matters of intelligence—gestured to Monroe.

Monroe nodded. “And if I start slipping into the indiscreet,” he said, with a grave smile, “perhaps Mark will ease me back on to the path of the righteous.” He nodded self-deprecatingly towards the professor.

It was Monroe’s stump lecture, with a little secret sparkle added for Harvard. He strode with purpose through China’s military modernization: its scope, its cost; he tantalized with details of China’s newest submarines; he danced through the professionalization of the army’s non-commissioned officer corps, in-flight refueling, anti-satellite capability, and perhaps, soon, a ballistic missile, known as a carrier killer, which could drop out of the sky on moving naval targets at sea.

“Oh, and ladies and gentlemen—and I should be careful here—I’m hopeful that we will soon see developments in our, let us say, understanding of China’s launch vehicle capacity.”

A smile and a wink. A frisson in the room.

For the next hour the attendees immersed themselves in earnest discussion of what it all added up to. China’s claims to exclusivity in international waters. China as strategic competitor? As peer competitor? As asymmetric threat? How, when China’s defense budget did not exceed one sixth that of the United States, could China be seen as any kind of competitor at all? Surely China was really no more than a prudent emerging power protecting her interests?

And towards the end of the session a question from the doctoral student in pink, a pink dress, sort of salmon pink, the one whom Monroe had been trying not to gaze at for the last hour
and a half, but for whom he had reserved some of his most confiding glances and knowing smiles. Her question was spoken in the accent of the China coast, leavened and smoothed by the society of America’s great universities, spoken softly from beneath a beguiling fringe of bible-black hair. Her question was about what exactly? Something epistemological, by the sound of it.

“My name is Nicole Yang and I am a doctoral student here at Harvard. I’m from Taiwan. Thank you for taking my question, Mr. Monroe. I want to ask you about
knowing
. It is your business as an intelligence analyst to construct knowledge, is it not? Knowledge of the geopolitical landscape, knowledge of the threats that face us. Knowledge on the basis of which our nations make great decisions. I wonder when you
know
you know, if you see what I mean. When does uncertainty stop? How do you
know
when it stops?”

What I
know
, young lady, is that I’d like to
know
what’s under that dress.

“Well, that is a fascinating question, Miss Yang, and one that, as I think you have shrewdly surmised, bedevils the intelligence analyst.” A pause for reflection, a frown. “Or it
should
bedevil the intelligence analyst. When it doesn’t, well, you get certainty, and Iraq.”

Knowing laughter. Then Monroe put one hand to his chin. Silence in the room.

“But intelligence work, Miss Yang, is rarely definitive. It
tells
you very little. But it
suggests
a lot. So the job of the analyst is to be, I think, less a knowledge-maker, as you put it, and more a
sense
-maker. We try to wrestle form and meaning out of shards of information, and these assemblages are the fulcrums on which our leaders must balance policy, and we must constantly rebuild those assemblages adding and subtracting slivers of information as we go. And we must always, always, allow uncertainty its due.”

Applause. A modest tip of the head.

Afterwards, when he had shaken some hands and pried off the junior faculty, she was waiting for him in the foyer. His eyes flickered down to her breasts, flickered up again.

“That was a wonderful talk, Mr. Monroe, thank you so much,” she said.

“It was my pleasure, Miss Yang. And what, if I may ask, is the subject of your doctoral dissertation?”

“Chinese strategic thought, Mr. Monroe. Notions of territoriality. A taxonomy, of sorts. There is a great deal I would like to ask you, if the opportunity were to arise.”

Monroe looked at his watch, blew out his cheeks.
Might it be possible?

“Well, Miss Yang, I have a dinner this evening, but afterwards, at perhaps ten, I may be found in the bar of the Charles Hotel. If you join me there, and you buy me a glass of something warming, perhaps we can look at one or two of those questions in more congenial surroundings.”

She actually lit up. And did she just bite her lip?

“I will see you there, Mr. Monroe.”

The Permanent Under-Secretary was still in his cycling gear, lurid shorts that hugged his crotch and thighs, a T-shirt and a helmet. The Director of Requirements and Production, known for fastidiousness in his dress, wondered how the man could bear to be seen like this every morning, sweaty and exposed before his staff.

“Morning, morning,” said the Permanent Under-Secretary. He made a saluting gesture with a small bicycle pump. “I’ll be right with you. We’re meeting in room four.”

The Foreign Office Special Adviser was already seated. He motioned a hello as he leafed through his file. They sat in silence. The Director of Requirements and Production fidgeted.

The Permanent Under-Secretary hurried in, suited now, his hair wet. The D/RP readied himself to brief, sat up in his chair. The Permanent Under-Secretary wasn’t interested.

“Okay, right then. Seems to me this is a risky op. We’re using a UK citizen on a freelance contract, and we’re fiddling with some serious Chinese stuff.” He ran his finger down a page. “But I must say, the reaction to the first tranche of product has been very, very positive, hasn’t it? My word. Commendations from Defence. Thank-you notes from Langley. Collateral flying in from those clever chaps at INR. Doesn’t get much better than this, does it?”

The Permanent Under-Secretary raised a warning finger. “But. We are proposing a whole new level of complexity, are we not, in the next stage of this thing? The potential for a flap seems pronounced. What happens if the civilian, this
RATCHET
, screws up?”

“
RATCHET
has a high degree of deniability built in. He is very flexible, very mobile. He’s a freelance. He has no dependants, no serious ties to China. If he has to up and leave in a hurry, he can. I’m not too worried about
RATCHET
.”

The Permanent Under-Secretary looked at him.

“Oh, really? What
are
you worried about, then?”

“
GENIUS
is also sound, we have a high degree of confidence.”

The Permanent Under-Secretary waited.

“My concern is with the sub-source. He has been issued a codename, now, I believe. Yes, sub-source
CRATER
. We have one sighting, which seems to confirm his identity as that of our former sub-agent. But we know little about him. The reliability of
CRATER
is perhaps the area of greatest uncertainty.”

“And?”

“Well, as of now, this is planned as a sale,” said the D/RP. “There will be no defector in place, just a one-off transaction,
access in return for reward. There’ll be mutterings over the quality of the product due to its being in the form of digital files, and so susceptible to forgery. And, of course, a one-off operation does not allow us to find collateral and build an agent’s track record over time.”

“Absolutely. Taken on board,” said the Permanent Under-Secretary. Meaning, yes, your arse is covered.

The Special Adviser spoke now.

“If I may, to what extent might the arrangement—this one-off transaction business—be open to review at a later stage, do we think?”

The Director of Requirements and Production nodded.

“These things are of course always open to review.”

“It’s just,” said the Special Adviser, “the attraction for me in the operation, and I think the Foreign Secretary would agree, is the degree to which it may allow us a look at the Chinese network itself. Quite apart from what’s stored on it. A number of consumers come to mind who possess considerable appetite for this category of intelligence, both inside and outside government.”

The thought hung in the air of room four for a moment. The Permanent Under-Secretary nodded his agreement.

“Cyber, yes. I like cyber very much. Cyber is hot. And cyber is, as we know, gentlemen,
funded
.”

She ordered, to Monroe’s astonishment, very old, very expensive Scotch. She didn’t ask what he wanted, she just handed it to him without a word, its gorgeous amber shining in the soft light. Then she went to a quiet table with leather chairs, sat with her legs angled to one side, ankles crossed, like a fifties movie star. He followed. She’d changed out of the pink and wore a cocktail dress of deep green silk, her shoulders bare, and a single string of pearls. Still she said nothing.

“So. Tell me again. You are writing your dissertation. How can I help you?” he said. For want of anything better.

“Well, there really is so much,” she said.

GODDESS
1 was pulling out, for now. She would be heading quietly to the airport, the mobile phone wiped and dumped in a rubbish bin, the memory card just that, a memory, the boys already gone. Eileen Poon waited for an elevator with her luggage, a little suitcase on wheels in plain black. She would not miss this hotel, with its cracked floors of fake marble tile, its peeling gilt fittings, its thumps and screeches in the night. Though she knew she’d be back, if not to this hotel, then to a hundred more like it. This operation was going ahead, she could feel it. The target was dry as a bone. Nothing even resembling contact with in-country counter-intelligence; no dodgy little meetings, no unexplained absences. She’d rarely seen a man so
insulated
.

And yet.

Granny Poon, during thirty years on the streets of China, had developed instincts that she half-trusted. Those instincts now told her of something hovering just out of reach, out of her field of vision. Not any corporeal presence—she’d spot that in seconds—but an
interest
. She had hinted of her unease to Patterson, and afterwards reproached herself.
Stupid old woman, jumping at shadows, losing her touch.
The elevator hissed and rattled.

She walked through reception. The girl behind the counter looked at her. She walked on, and as she reached the revolving door, looked back. The girl was on the phone, dialing. A porter in a stained red coat stood on the pavement.

“Airport?”

“Yes.”

“Which terminal?”

She said nothing.

“What time’s your flight?”

“I’ll get a taxi on the street.”

“No, no, get one here.” The porter blew on a whistle and gestured into the dark. Headlights came on.

Eileen Poon turned and walked to the street.

The porter was shouting after her and another man was with him. She turned a corner, quickened her pace and let the darkness wash over her.

Operation
STONE CIRCLE
came into being with a flurry of paperwork, authorizations, briefings, clearances. A stingy budget received speedy, if grudging, approval. Yeats hovered, and disappeared for hours at a time. He would leave the building, but quite where he went was hard for Patterson to ascertain. Hopko was a blur. She spent hours with the technology—the “gadget”—closeted with technicians in the basement, and making lightning dashes to Cheltenham, where in the huge, chill GCHQ building, she was briefed and briefed again on the new mechanics of cyber-espionage. And she spent an almost equal amount of time with the Service lawyer, cajoling and reassuring, explaining how the use of a UK citizen as freelancer posed no insurmountable legal challenge.

Patterson sat in her cubicle sorting the paperwork and writing an operational schedule. Hopko had ordained the operation to be done and dusted in four weeks. Charteris came up with local procedures, meeting places, protocols. Mangan was eased along with occasional calming words from Charteris and was dispatched to Singapore for a “meeting with his editors.” The editors—bemused by this unknown newcomer to their authorial stable—quietly commissioned a book, as they had been politely asked to do by one of the Pan Asia Institute’s most important donors.

For Patterson, yet another plane.

In Singapore, at a white, cool villa not far from Phoenix Park, once the residence of British army officers, she talked Mangan
through what they knew, what they thought they knew, and what they had planned. The night before he left, they sat on the veranda, in the tropical night, the frogs chirruping. Mangan lit a cigarette.

“How do you feel?” Patterson asked.

Mangan tilted his head one way then the other, as if to say, okay.

“Is there anything you need?”

“Don’t think so,” he said.