Night Heron (27 page)

Beijing

Just before dawn, soaked in sleep, Peanut heard the banging on the salon’s front door, loud raps, rattling the door in its flimsy aluminum frame. He stood and crept out of the storeroom. One of the girls, barefoot, in a long T-shirt, was walking up the corridor and through the beaded curtain. She pushed a loose strand of hair behind her ear. There was shouting, now, too. Open. Police.

He ducked back into the storeroom and pulled on trousers, jacket, thrust his feet into shoes. He emptied the contents of the little basket by his mattress into a carrier bag.
Shenfenzheng
, money. He ripped the phone from its charger. It was turned off. He stuffed it in his pocket. His books, a few papers, he left. He felt in the pocket of the coat, the knife’s hard outline. The voices were louder.
Where are the exits? How many people in the building?
Police voices. The girl—was it Yin?—stammering her replies. He was almost out of the rear door, into the alleyway, when he stopped. Back into the storeroom—footsteps in the corridor now—and reaching under the mattress, fingers fluttering until
they fell on the bulbous form of the second thumb drive. Then he was gone.

Charteris spoke in tight, clipped tones. They were outside, in the grounds of the embassy, just after eight in the morning, barely light, a lowering sky. He didn’t have a coat on and hunched his shoulders against the cold.

“Philip, the operation went extremely well. Your part in it is over. It has moved to a new phase.”

“I thought there was only one phase, David. He coughed up, we paid him. Done.”

“These things often change.”

“For Christ’s sake, David, someone’s turned up with another drive.”

Charteris blinked.

“He contacted you?”

“Yes. He contacted me. Unsurprisingly, he wants to know what’s going on.”

“When?”

“Recently. What the fuck
is
going on, actually, David? Who are these people giving out drives?”

Charteris looked at him, seemed to be considering.

“I can’t, Philip. Now back off and go home.”

“So I’m just supposed to disappear?”

“There is, I’m told, a plan to contact you and talk through with you your next move.”

“My next move?”

“It’s for them to discuss with you, Philip. Not me.”

“Are you no longer involved either?”

“That’s not for me to discuss with you either, Philip.”

“You’re no longer part of this thing, are you?”

“I’m getting rather cold now, actually, Philip, so I am going to go inside. Go back to your flat and wait to be contacted.”

The police had sat everybody down in the salon, lowered the blinds. Dandan Mama, Chef, Yin, the other girls. The shouting had been calmed by an older man who spoke with more authority, and smoked.

“There is no Li Huasheng here,” said Dandan Mama, swallowing.

“Who was living in the little room at the back?”

“Uncle. He just helped out. Song, his name. Song Ping.”

“Where is he?”

Dandan Mama looked around, despairingly.

“I don’t know.”

“He was here last night,” said Yin.

“Was he.”

Another plainclothesman pushed the beaded curtain aside, came back into the salon. He was waving a piece of paper.

“Receipt for the purchase of a mobile phone and prepaid card.” He showed the older man, pointed something out. “Here’s the number.”

The older man looked at it and nodded.

“Go. Now.”

Mangan left the embassy, walked for a while, to the south, over Jianwai Avenue, past Hot and Prickly, into a neighborhood with a school, the children in red scarves, Disney backpacks. Two old men sat beneath a plane tree, from which hung caged songbirds, their voices fluting, reedy among the branches. They sing from fear of each other, Mangan thought. Their songs are screams of fear and aggression. The old men sat silent.

When he returned to the flat Harvey was making toast in the kitchen and Ting was lying on the blue sofa, her arm bent across her face, feigning the vapors.

“Christ, what are you putting her through?” shouted Harvey from the kitchen.

Mangan was jangled, confused.

“What do you mean?”

“If I have to listen to another interview of another Follower, I’m going to jump out of the window, Philip. Why can’t we do a book on something sane? Opera. Food.”

Mangan could find nothing to say. Harvey came in with a plate full of toast, a jar of marmalade.

“It’s cruel and unusual punishment, Philip.” He bit into a piece of toast, then looked at Mangan.

“What’s eating you?”

“What? Nothing.”

“He’s been like this for a week,” said Ting. “All, what do you say, surly, yes.”

Mangan just shook his head, went into the kitchen to escape Harvey’s searching look. He sat at the kitchen table, pretended to read the paper. He could hear Harvey and Ting talking in lowered voices.

The bureau phone went. He heard Ting’s
Wei?
And then she was at the door to the kitchen.

“It’s for you.”

He stood and went back into the office.

“Philip Mangan.”

“Mr. Mangan. Would you be so good as to come and meet me downstairs? Our mutual friend at the embassy suggested we should chat sooner rather than later.” The voice: controlled, calm, Chinese-American.

Mangan said, “All right.” And hung up. Ting and Harvey were watching him intently.

He picked up his jacket and gestured
I’m going out
. Harvey made an exasperated face.

“Philip, for God’s sake.”

But Mangan was closing the bureau door behind him and taking the stairs two at a time. Outside his block a silver
sedan with darkened windows was waiting, its engine running, exhaust steaming in the chill air. A front window hissed open and a hand in a leather glove gestured to him. He walked over. A man, massive, blond, stepped from the driver’s side. He wore a black suit and a subdued tie.

“Mr. Mangan? Please get in.” His accent—something European. Dutch? Danish? He held the door.

“And, Mr. Mangan, if you have a mobile phone?” He held out his hand. Mangan gave him the phone, which he turned off. He took out the battery and shut the phone in the glove compartment.

Another man sat in the rear seat, a small man, in a black overcoat with his hands folded in his lap. The man had Chinese features and gray hair, expensively cut in a buoyant parting. In his sixties, perhaps, the cheeks just a little pouchy but the skin pale, smooth, cared for. Hooded eyes. He was gentle, distinguished, reminded Mangan of a lecturer he had at university, who was studiedly polite and relentlessly oblique. The car pulled smoothly away. The man spoke quietly, America vying with China in the accent, America winning in the idiom.

“Mr. Mangan. Thank you for meeting with me. I am genuinely sorry you have been inconvenienced.” He gestured, a soft, regretful chopping motion. His hands were small and manicured, Mangan saw.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” said Mangan. My refrain, he thought. No, my epitaph. Philip Mangan, reporter, spy. He was unsure what you meant.

“I had hoped you would not be further distracted. The phone call from our interlocutor should not have come.”

Interlocutor? Did he mean Peanut?

“In any case,” the man went on, his speech slow and careful, almost ponderous, “we hope that your involvement is now at an end.”

The man nodded. Mangan did not reply.

“And so,” the man said, “it just remains to consider your course of action. Might it not be wise for you to leave China for a little while? We thought you might consider a sabbatical in Singapore, while you work on your book.”

“Would you mind telling me who you are, please?” said Mangan. “Who is the ‘we’?”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” The man looked rueful. “Please forgive me. You should consider us to be representatives of your government, just as you did the fine individuals you have dealt with up until now.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about.”

“Of course. I think it would not be fruitful to pursue this line of conversation any further. Perhaps we can agree that there is always much to be learned, and few opportunities to learn it. So we will be carrying on your fine work.”

Mangan felt his anger rising in his neck, his throat, at this smooth fatuous man, his euphemisms.

“Just stop the car,” he said. The man looked at him. The car continued.

“Mr. Mangan, it would be desirable for you to have no further involvement in this matter. Your work has been very much appreciated. But we would like your assurances that you will take some time. Singapore would be very suitable, I think.”

“I heard you the first time. Now stop the car.”

The man looked up, caught the eye of the driver in the rearview mirror and nodded gravely, as if it were a great effort. The car pulled over. Mangan got out, closed the door and walked away.

“Mr. Mangan,” the driver called, standing on the curb. He was holding up Mangan’s mobile phone. Mangan walked back and took it. The driver gave him a knowing smile, a nod.

Mangan took a taxi back to the flat. He walked to his desk, and sat. Harvey was still there. Ting came and perched on the edge of the desk, put a hand on his shoulder.

“Philip, please tell us what’s going on. Who was in that car?”

“It’s nothing that concerns you, really.”

Harvey walked across the room and leaned against the wall, by the window. They’ve planned this, thought Mangan.

“Philip, you know bloody well that’s not true,” said Harvey. “If something is up, you need to let Ting know.”

Mangan shook his head.

“Is it something to do with the book?” asked Harvey. “Are you getting strife about our last trip? What is it, Philip?”

“Ting, I think I should probably go back to Singapore for a bit. Could you book me a ticket in a couple of days. There’s a love.”

Harvey sighed, pushed himself off the wall and went to the sofa. Mangan saw a glance shared between him and Ting.

“I’ll be away for about a week or so.”

“Okay, Philip.”

“Okay, then.”

His mobile phone rang.

“Mang An.”

Mangan’s stomach lurched. The sound of traffic, rustle and noise, and Peanut’s breathing.

“Hello,” he said.

“Are you listening?”

Mangan stood up quickly, went out on to the balcony.

“Yes, I’m listening.”

“Police. Security. They came. This morning.”

Mangan experienced the half-second during which consciousness forms, the fractional delay in understanding. The finger on
the burning surface, waiting for the pain. The hiatus on news of a death.

“Police?”

“Yes. Get out. Come to Zhaogongkou Bus Station. Now.”

“But you said, your management.”

“Not that. This is different. I don’t know. We’re blown. Get out.”

“Wait—are you on a mobile phone?”

“What? Yes.”

Christ.
He hung up and pushed the off button.

He swallowed. The temptation was to go back into the bureau, sit, pretend nothing had happened, rely on the foreign correspondent’s bubble of protection, the journalist’s self-righteousness.

We’re blown.

Move.

He walked back into the office, to his desk. From a drawer he took an envelope with some cash in it, two credit cards he seldom used, a mobile phone charger, a notebook and pen. He put these things in a small shoulder bag that had printed on it the device of some economic summit he’d attended in Shanghai. Twenty-First Century Visions, Hopes, drivel. He checked he had his wallet.

Ting and Harvey were both watching him. He turned to them.

“Ting, something has blown up. I’d like you to go home, please.”

“At last,” said Ting. “Tell us, Philip.”

“A contact of mine, a source, is in some trouble.”

Ting frowned.

“Which contact?”

“You don’t know him. Please go home, Ting, and don’t come back into the office before I tell you it’s okay.”

Mangan saw her expression change to alarm.

“What have you done, Philip?”

He walked around the desk, kneeled down beside her.

“I don’t know,” he said.

She raised her hand and ran her fingers through his hair.

“Can I help?”

“No. No. Please go home. Stay there. For now.”

She drew back, the hurt on her face. He looked away.

“Harv, I need you to do me a big favor,” he said.

“And what would that be, Philip?”

“I need you to drive me somewhere and wait for me.”

“Take a bloody taxi.”

“It’s important.”

“Not to me.”

“I need this.”

“Need away.”

“I just need a pair of eyes, that’s all.”

Harvey didn’t reply, just stared.

“Harv, this is very important.”

Harvey sighed, picked up his jacket, reached in the pocket for his keys.

“Ting, go home,” he said.

She was on the verge of tears, sitting at her desk, holding herself tight, looking fixedly at the desktop. Mangan walked to the door, Harvey followed. Mangan stopped, turned, walked back to his desk. He opened the drawer again and pulled out his passport.

“I’m so sorry.”

She wouldn’t look at him.

“Tell me what you’re sorry
for
, Philip.”

Harvey pulled his jeep out of the compound.

“So where are we going? Or is that too sensitive to share as well.”

“The bus station, Zhaogongkou.”

“And why are we going there?”

“I just have to see someone, very briefly, make sure they’re okay.”

“And you want me to wait.”

“Yes. Please.”

Ting sat that way for another ten minutes in the silent flat. She had a sense of something ending, her little set-up here, the three of them. The trust had gone, quite suddenly. She and Mangan had worked together for three years, more, they had lately become lovers—gentle, casual, for sure, but lovers—and now he wouldn’t return her look.

She stood and went for her coat, the silvery quilted jacket. She put it on, and the funny hat with fur earflaps that made Harvey laugh. Really warm, though. She went into the kitchen, took her lunch box from the fridge, put it in her backpack. She went back to the laptop. The screen showed a frozen image of a woman in a village in Heilongjiang, walls covered in newspaper and a bowl of rice and bean curd on the table. She had been in mid-flow, something about the Master’s way of communicating through a stellar plane. Ting had been there when they filmed that. Harvey, she remembered, had pinned blankets over the windows so no one could see in. She turned off the laptop and closed it. Phone, keys. She walked towards the door and reached to turn off the light.