Night Heron (30 page)

Mangan wore the woman’s green woolen hat and drove south. He ate some of the rice porridge and egg, but threw it up. He pulled over and slept for an hour in the late morning, woke to find Peanut changing the license plates on the car, working at the screws with a coin. He’d swapped the plates with those of a car on a second-hand dealer’s lot.

The highway broadened on the approach to Shanghai, but they skirted the city and kept up a reasonable pace through the trucks, Mangan weaving, trying to stay alert. He pulled over again in the afternoon and slept more, Peanut shaking him awake at dusk and feeding him
baozi
, which he ate ravenously. Then on into the night, the temperature rising a little as they headed south.

They crossed the Hangzhou Bay Bridge in darkness and Peanut looked back at the lights of Shanghai.

“I would like to have seen all that,” he said.

Mangan said, “We’ll never be able to come back.”

“Not such a blow, for you,” said Peanut.

“And for you?”

Peanut thought for a minute.

“Mang An, do you know the story of Qu Yuan?”

“Some of it. But tell me.”

“Well, ancient China. Two thousand three hundred years ago, more. The Warring States period. All these little kingdoms battling each other year in, year out for resources, influence. One of the kingdoms was called Chu. A mysterious place, Chu, all mountains in the mist and shamans and tigers in the forest and apes hooting through the trees.”

Mangan, listening, pulled into the left lane to pass an eighteen-wheeler groaning under a load of timber. The
tick tick
of the indicator, its greenish light on Mangan’s face in the darkness.

“And the king of Chu had an adviser named Qu Yuan. Loyal and wise and brave, this Qu Yuan. He loved his country, feared for its future.

“And Qu Yuan pleaded with the king to stop fighting the other kingdoms and to forge an alliance with them. Because the real enemy out there was the state of Qin. A brutal bunch in Qin, forever expanding, pillaging, burning books, murdering scholars.”

Rain on the windscreen, the highway a halogen blur.

“Anyway, the king rejected Qu Yuan’s advice, and the other advisers told lies about him and he was banished from the court. So he wandered in exile and studied the country he loved so much and wrote poetry. Beautiful, Mang An, but mournful.

“Well, Qu Yuan was right, of course. Qin troops attacked Chu and the capital fell. And when news reached Qu Yuan he was heartbroken, wandering along the river, haggard, filthy, muttering lines from his poetry. In the end he threw himself into the water, drowned himself.

“Didn’t matter to the Qin leadership of course, just one more crying poet out of the way, what did they care? And Qin set about doing what it did, burying scholars alive, burning libraries, imposing order, rubbing out culture. And eventually Qin unified all the kingdoms into one empire, China. You with me, Mang An?”

Mangan nodded in the darkness.

“All that difference, all those ways of living and being, just gone. And the super state, Qin, triumphant. Imposing standards, weights and measures and axle widths, laws and punishments, aggrandizing itself at every turn with slaves and monuments and palaces and great tombs. Sound familiar, Mang An?”

They were moving away from the sprawling conurbation around Shanghai, the traffic thinning.

“I suppose,” Peanut said, “what I mean is that, no matter how much we want to belong, Mang An, Qin makes exiles of us.”

By ten, Mangan was unable to continue. They turned off some way past Ningbo, drove the car on to a back road, parked up under trees, and Mangan lay in the back seat, wondering how much he’d lost, and falling into a racked sleep.

Off Route G104

Mangan woke in darkness, his jaw clenched, Peanut leaning over him, hissing. He felt cool night air on his face.

“Get up. Now.”

Mangan lay, thick with sleep, blinking up at him.

“What?”

“They’re here.”

Peanut pulled him from the car and Mangan sat heavily on damp earth and leaves. Peanut had hold of his arm now, starting to drag him, spoke in a rush.

“I walked up to the main road. There’s a car there. Three of them. Two are walking down towards us.”

“But that’s… who?”

“I didn’t fucking ask them, Mang An.” Peanut turned him bodily and pointed. Torchlight through the trees, still some distance away. “Now
move
.” Peanut wrenched at his coat and the two of them stumbled into the undergrowth away from the car. They pushed through scrubby bushes and low trees in the darkness, Mangan breathing hard, the branches snapping against his coat with a
thwock
sound. They came on a small clearing, refuse
piled at its center: a charred mattress, plastic bottles. Peanut stopped and turned and looked past Mangan. The torchlight was just visible, close to the car. Mangan struggled to think.

“They’re tracking us? Now?” he whispered.

Peanut just shook his head and let his hands fall. Voices came, faint, from the direction of the car.

Mangan licked his lips, pointed to the road.

Peanut nodded and they cut off to the left, back into the undergrowth, as quietly as they could. Underfoot was dry, their footfalls rustling. The hum of traffic from the road grew louder. The torchlight was still behind them. Then a voice, a dry echo in the trees.

“We can see you.”

Mangan froze.

“We can see you. And you should probably just stay where you are and we’ll come to you.”

A pause.

“
Hao ma?
” Okay?

Peanut was shaking his head, his eyes wild. They stood at the base of a steep bank, studded with saplings. At the top of it the main road, the traffic rushing past in the night. They were up and scrabbling in the earth and leaves and rubbish, on their knees now.

Another shout.

“We can see you. Really, we can. And we’re following you. And you have something of ours, don’t you? So let’s just stop all this.”

Silence.

“Please?”

Peanut reached the top of the bank first, emerging on to the roadside, the traffic yards away. He pointed. Mangan looked thirty, forty yards, perhaps, to their left, where a white car was pulled over. Mangan made out a figure at the driver’s
seat, illuminated by a glow. Peanut stopped, held up a hand, crouched, then crawled along the verge, approaching the car from behind. He turned.

“Mang An. Go to the right side and bang on the window. And pray the driver’s door isn’t locked.”

Mangan stood and walked quickly to the passenger side of the car. The figure in the driver’s seat balanced a laptop against the steering wheel. The glow lit the interior of the car in silver. Mangan thumped on the window. The driver looked up from the laptop, startled, squinted towards him, leaned over to see him more clearly. But then the driver’s side door was open, Peanut’s arm around the man’s neck. The man, eyes wide, moved quickly to break the headlock, ramming one hand into the hold and twisting, but the laptop constricted his movement, and Peanut was dragging him from the car, falling backwards on to the verge. Mangan ran around the car. Peanut was on his back, holding the headlock. The man lay on top of him, writhing and twisting in the manner of a wrestler seeking a way out. Peanut was grunting and hissing through his teeth, spittle on his chin.

“Knife, Mang An.”

The stubby knife, Mangan now saw, lay on the ground about four feet away. He lunged for it, brought it up. He pointed it at the struggling man, whose eyes followed the blade, but who still tried to break the hold.

“Stop moving,” Mangan shouted. The man worked harder. He had one hand well inside the hold now, between his own neck and Peanut’s iron grip, to the wrist, but his eyes were bulging and he wasn’t breathing.

Mangan moved closer, held the blade to the man’s face. Still he fought. Peanut rasped, his voice high and tight.

“Cut him, Mang An.”

Mangan hesitated. The man’s eyes were on him. Then he pointed the blade upward, raised the knife high in the air and
brought it down fast, ramming the heel into the man’s face. It found the bridge of the nose, and the man grunted and stopped struggling, closing his eyes tight. Mangan was surprised at how quickly and copiously blood began to flow from the nostrils. Blood everywhere, in seconds. Mangan stood, his knees threatening to give. He looked down and saw a spatter of blood on his sleeve, felt his gorge rise. The man had his hands raised in front of him, palms outwards. He was trembling, Mangan saw. Peanut loosened his grip and the man took a long shuddering breath, and then slowly raised his hands to his bloodied face. His eyes were still tight shut, as if he were about to cry. Peanut slipped out from under him, breathing hard, grabbed the knife and held it to the man’s throat, and leaned on to him.

“How are you tracking us?”

The man said nothing.

“How are you doing it? Tell us or I’ll cut you.”

The man spoke from behind his hands.

“On the laptop.”

Mangan darted to the car, reached in. On the laptop screen was a map with a purple arrow at its center. Above, GPS coordinates.

“They’re tracking us. But what can they see? What are we carrying?”

Peanut gripped the man’s jaw with his left hand, forced the blade closer to the man’s neck.

“Tell us.”

Still the man said nothing, just the sound of his breathing from behind his hands, the blood running through his fingers.

Carrying, thought Mangan.

We are carrying.

He stood shakily, dropped the laptop on the ground, and stood on it, grinding his heel into the screen, stamped on it. The plastic casing shattered and Mangan kicked it into the road, into
the wheels of the passing trucks. When he turned back he saw torches bobbing through the trees.

“Get the keys from him.”

Peanut screamed at the man, who just said, “In the car.”

The keys were in the ignition. Mangan started the engine and yelled at Peanut, who was already running for the passenger side door. The man lay on his side now, was starting to prop himself up with one elbow. Mangan saw movement in the rearview mirror. Two men were emerging from the scrub at the side of the road, running towards the car. As the headlights washed over them Mangan glimpsed a tall, powerful figure with parted hair and a jawline so pronounced it suggested deformity. In one hand the man carried a torch, and in the other Mangan thought he saw the dull glint of a sidearm.

We have something of theirs.

We are carrying.

The drive.

A beacon on the black, bulbous second drive.

And what else was on the drive?

Mangan stamped on the accelerator and felt the car lurch forward, wheels spinning. He jerked the steering wheel over and took them out into the traffic, horns blaring as the trucks veered past him.

What else?

Just after dawn, a turnoff for somewhere called Linhai. He took it, Peanut looking at him, frowning.

“Why are we doing this, Mang An?”

Mangan said nothing.

“How does this help us, Mang An?”

“Shut up. Look for an Internet café.”

Low cloud, gray light, street sweepers arcing their straw
brooms through pooling rainwater. Mangan drove them slowly between white tower blocks, past a stadium, down Lantian Lu, Blue Sky Road, scanning the storefronts.

The Net Queen café was open, empty, foul-smelling. A girl with a pierced lip sat, rocking back on her chair, thumbing messages on a mobile phone. She stood and thrust a clipboard at Peanut, who signed in as Song Ping. A camera, mounted on the wall, watched them. Mangan hovered in the background. The girl looked at him, then gestured to a row of moldering terminals.

“Number thirty-six,” she said.

Mangan sat and logged on, Peanut leaning in.

ME:
Frog, you there?

ME:
Frog?

A pause.

ME:
Talk to me, Frog. Now.

Nothing. Just the blinking cursor.

“He’s not fucking there, Mang An. He’s eating dinner or playing games or jerking off. Let’s go.”

“Wait.”

He clicked over to his email account.

PHILIP MANGAN—IF YOU ARE RECEIVE THIS MESSAGE, PLEASE KNOW WE MUST TALK WITH YOU. WE REQUIRE YOU CONTACT US IMMEDIATELY. PLEASE CALL THIS NUMBER. WE WAIT YOUR CALL.

A mobile phone number. No signature, the sender a generic address. Dated two days previously. Then another.

PHILIP MANGAN—YOU ARE IN GRAVE CIRCUMSTANCE. YOUR FRIENDS IN GRAVE SITUATION. PLEASE BE CONTACT US IMMEDIATELY. CALL THIS NUMBER.

Four more messages, the same. Mangan swallowed. Then one more, dated six hours previously.

PHILIP MANGAN—IF YOU USE THIS ACCOUNT, WE KNOW. WAIT FOR US WHERE YOU ARE.

“Dear fucking God, Mang An. We leave, now.”

“No.”

“
Yes.
”

“Who the hell is sending them?”

“Who cares, we go. Now.” Peanut was gripping him by the arm.

“Even if they can see I’ve used the account, they can’t get here that fast.”

Then, a muffled
pip
.

TREEFROG:
Yo
MANGMAN
.
Where u bin? Frog in da house

Mangan exhaled, Peanut shaking his head.

ME
:
Listen to me. I have a thumb drive. Can you read what’s on it?

TREEFROG:
Duh

ME:
wtf does that mean can you read it or not. Serious now.

TREEFROG:
OKOK chil.n I can read. Wot on it?

ME:
Don’t know. Govt stuff, spook stuff.

TREEFROG:
say what now?

ME:
A thumb drive from govt—has spy stuff on it.

TREEFROG:
apps?

ME:
What? Say again

Peanut had his head in his hands.

TREEFROG:
SO COULD BE APPLICATIONS YES? PROGRAMS? EXE FILES? THINGS THAT DO THINGS? CLEAR ENUFF FOR U
?

ME:
yes shall I plug it in

TREEFROG:
NONONONNONODON’T PLUG IT IN

ME:
why

TREEFROG:
DO NOT PLUGIT IN
.
You kno wots on it? No? Fucksake mangman could start world war fuckin three. or four. or six. chill. froggy telling you do not repeat not plug it in. Where dyou get this thing?

ME:
I cant say. Butits sposed to be targeted at China.

TREEFROG:
Sposed by who?

ME:
govt/security.

TREEFROG:
so classified?

ME:
very very

TREEFROG:
ok youre frightnin froggy now a lil bit

ME:
Ffs frog can you read it or not?

TREEFROG:
Affirmative mangman. But on wot basis we talkin here?

ME:
i need to know whats on it. just look at it and tell me whats on it.

A pause.

TREEFROG:
why?

ME:
ive been set up. i think it’s a weapon or a spy program or something.

TREEFROG:
w w w wait a goldarn sekkin. how you got this, mangman?

ME:
long story

TREEFROG:
fuck you bin up to?

ME:
will you help me?

TREEFROG:
if it is wat you say mangman that some v v dngerous shit. made by v v dangeros people

ME:
tell me about it

TREEFROG:
froggy averse to life thretnin situations, kno wot im sayin

ME:
must happen fast frog.

Another pause.

TREEFROG:
where you get it?

Mangan shook his head, exhaled. Peanut was looking at the door.

“Hurry up, Mang An.”

ME:
Can’t say where got it. really cant.

TREEFROG:
SHEESH

ME:
THIS IS VERY VERY FUCKING IMPORTANT

TREEFROG:
ok ok
OK
jeez frog will take a lil looky look

ME:
How do I get iot to you if I cant plugit in?

TREEFROG:
ok jes listen i take control of yr terminal so i can reasd the drive, download it without whatever shit’s on it cranking up and blowin us up. go here.

A web address, a fast download, an install.

TREEFROG:
let go yr mouse

Mangan lifted his hand from the mouse. The cursor began to move of its own accord, barreling through a series of settings.

TREEFROG:
OK
mangman I got it now. plug the sucker in. oh and hope. Hahaha

They left the café. At the door the girl waved Peanut over, wanting payment. Peanut argued, and the girl shook her head and tapped her fingers on the counter and watched him slowly count out yuan notes. And while she watched Peanut, Mangan, his back to the surveillance camera, lifted the girl’s phone from the counter and slid it into his pocket, next to the drive.