Spy Games (3 page)

Oxford, United Kingdom

The boy, Kai, stood still in his gown at the corner of the High Street and the Turl, his white bow tie hanging loose at the neck. He held a bottle of champagne and swayed slightly. He raised the bottle to his lips, took a long pull, a solitary celebration. The street was thronged with students making their way from the Exam Schools. On impulse, he placed his thumb over the neck of the bottle and shook it, showering champagne over a group of passing girls, leaving foamy flecks on their black gowns. He let out a whoop. One of the girls shot him a look and walked on.

Exams were finished. His were in Engineering Science, specializing in Optoelectronics. He held out little hope that he had done well. His grasp of English, even after three years here, remained tenuous. The lectures were long, the tutorials minefields of misunderstanding and frustration. The subject weighed on him, bored him. He saw his life unfolding before him in swirls of fiber-optic cable.

A delegation from the embassy had visited the master of his college. They had spoken quietly, given assurances. Kai would spend the summer at the family apartment in London, cramming, catching up.
He would not see his parents, nor home, nor Beijing. He would achieve his degree at this most ancient and prestigious of universities and he would bring what he had learned back to the family, and to the corporation that sustained the family and guaranteed its position, and he would not disgrace the family. In his stomach, a nub of disappointment, pessimism. Kai walked back toward college, the bottle hanging at his side.

In his room he took off the gown, the ridiculous clothes, and left them lying on the floor. He stood in his underwear and breathed in the stale air, before walking to his desk and turning on his laptop. The email had arrived from the usual, obscure address: the deposit was in his bank account. A carefully calibrated amount, naturally; enough to see him through the summer, not enough to give him any freedom. This was the work of his careful father, carefully winding the bonds of obligation tighter around his son.

The money did not come from China.

The money came, as it always did, from an account in the British Virgin Islands, remitted by a man Kai thought of as Uncle Checkbook. Kai’s careful father told Uncle Checkbook how much to remit, and Uncle Checkbook remitted it.

Kai lay on the bed to reflect on the complicated, opaque workings of his family. He had met Uncle Checkbook once, a few years before, in Beijing, a balding Communist Party journeyman with a rutted face, worldly, hard and quiet. He’d worn a gray mackintosh, kept his hands in his pockets, looked at Kai with appraising eyes and flitted silently away. What was Uncle Checkbook’s place in the Fan family industrial-political complex? Retainer? Servant? Sage? Kai had no idea.

But the money was there. So tonight he was on a train to London. He had the keys to the Kensington flat and the BMW. He took another long pull at the bottle, then dozed.

London

Patterson landed sleepless and wired. She went straight from Heathrow to Vauxhall Cross by Service car, speeding along the M4 in spring sunshine. She showered in the staff changing rooms, pulled on a black business suit, repacked her bag, and ate bacon and eggs in the canteen.

On her way up, she paused to look out over the terrace at the river’s shimmer and to recount in her mind the narrative of the previous forty-eight hours, hammering it out through the exhaustion. With Hopko, readiness was key.

Hopko was waiting for her, morning sunlight streaming in her office window, coffee steaming on her desk.

“Trish,” she said, looking over her glasses.

“Val.” She sat heavily on Hopko’s couch. Hopko stood and walked around her desk. She wore, to Patterson’s disbelief, a leather skirt, boots.

“I want the guts of it now,” said Hopko.

“I’m ready,” said Patterson.

“Keung’s state of mind?”

“Panicked. Genuinely fearful.”

“Not ill? Drunk?”

“No. Very alert.”

“And the men who came to his apartment. He was certain they were mainland? Not local thugs testing in some way? Debts or something?”

“He said he was certain at least one of them was a mainlander, a northerner, by his accent.”

“But not State Security nasties?”

“Unclear.”

“And it was a message for us.”

“A message for his ‘contacts,’ which he interpreted to mean us.”

“Could have meant someone else altogether, silly bugger.”

“Could have. But… unlikely,” said Patterson.

“Why?”

Patterson shrugged.

“Everything points to professionals.”

“And this mysterious message?”

“He said they wanted him to attend some sort of meeting. The message would be delivered there. But that’s all I got. We had to scramble.”

Hopko considered.

Patterson watched this formidable woman, with her Mediterranean looks, her blunt figure, her small hands clad in silver, jade. Valentina Hopko, Controller Western Hemisphere and Far East, lately risen to such grand estate. In her fifties now, but dressed, to Patterson’s austere eye, a few years young.

“And this bloke you left mangled in the lift. Who was he?”

“I think he was one of them. But what he wanted with me? No idea.”

“I can’t help wondering if you might have asked him.”

Patterson didn’t reply.

“I am frankly relieved, Trish Patterson, that we are on the same side,” said Hopko.

But you’d never do anything as stupid as getting stuck in a lift with the opposition, thought Patterson.

“Have we heard anything from
CAMBER
yet?” she said.

Hopko walked back to her desk, sat.

She knows something, thought Patterson.

“Nothing good.”

Patterson waited.

“He fell under a train,” said Hopko. “After the meeting.”

Patterson felt the adrenaline shock, felt her chest constrict.

“The police say it was suicide.” Hopko’s eyes were on her.

Patterson grimaced, said nothing.

Hopko spoke quietly.

“There will have to be an internal inquiry. The board’s been convened. They’ll see you next week. You are to write the encounter report now. Then you are to go home and stay there.”

“I’m suspended?”

“You could say that.”

Patterson blinked, opened her mouth to speak, closed it again.

Hopko took off her glasses, leaned forward.

“An agent is dead, and they must decide why. Now, write the report and go home.”

Patterson stood, made for the door.

“Trish,” said Hopko. Patterson stopped, turned.

“If someone in Chinese intelligence wants to send us a message, why don’t they just use the usual channels? Declared officers in Beijing or Hong Kong? Liaison?”

“Because,” said Patterson slowly, “someone wants to talk to us outside the usual channels.”

“I must confess, I’m intrigued,” said Hopko.

Patterson took a taxi home to Archway, dragging her carry-on bag, bumping it up the stairs to her flat. The place was as she had left it, the bed hastily made, drawers shoved shut. She checked that the safe in the wardrobe was undisturbed. She opened some windows, let the
afternoon air waft in, some late sun, some atmosphere to break the silence and the stillness. Footsteps on pavement, traffic, somewhere a child practicing a halting major scale on a piano.

He fell under a train.

She sat heavily on the bed and pulled off her shoes, let the knowledge of it diffuse through her.

He was not the first agent she’d lost.

She thought of the Iraqi boy she’d run in Nasiriyah, a beacon on his moped as he putt-putted between insurgent safe houses. He used to flirt with her, call her my
habashi
, my Ethiopian, my black woman. She thought of the rubbish tip where they found him one smoky dawn, the crows overhead.

And the woman in Helmand who washed the tin plates at a roadside café, spotting license plates, faces, from behind her burqa, phoning them in to Patterson, Captain Patterson by then. She’d disappeared, and one winter evening they’d found the café shuttered and chained.

All these stories, she thought, the endings that resolve nothing.

She undressed, pulled on shorts and a T-shirt, poured a glass of Cabernet, a big one. She remade the bed, refolded the clothing in a drawer that hadn’t shut properly. She vacuumed and ran a damp cloth along the window sills. She scrubbed the kitchen counter.

CAMBER
’s death isn’t an ending, she thought. It’s a beginning. Of something.

In the intervening days, she read, fretted and watched Chinese movies on her computer; the vast, blood-soaked epic of war and revolution; the tiny, silent chronicle of love and death in a village of yellow dust. She loved the films and tried to follow the Mandarin without looking at the subtitles. She went running on Hampstead Heath and shopped at a supermarket. In the evenings, she heated up frozen dinners, ate them from the tray as she watched television, a chicken pot pie, enchiladas. She spoke to nobody, apart from Damian, who lived downstairs. He knocked on her door in his skinny
jeans and high tops and insisted they go for a drink. They walked to a pub on Highgate Hill in warm sunlight and talked about the football and what was happening in the reality shows. Damian worked in advertising, prided himself on his populist tastes. He bought pints and a packet of crisps and asked her about her administrative job at the Foreign Office, how it was going, where she’d traveled to. He knew her just well enough to tell that something was wrong, and he probed a little, but she answered vaguely, turning the conversation back to him, and after a while they walked back home and said goodnight.

On the Monday, she wore a gray suit and flats, pulled her hair back into a tight bun, as she had worn it under her beret in the army. She got into VX early, sat in her cubicle drinking coffee, composing herself. The board convened at nine-thirty. Patterson was shown in to a fifth-floor conference room and found herself facing Mobbs, the Director, Requirements and Production, his dark suit, a tie of primary colors verging on the frivolous, as if to emphasize by contrast the vulpine features, the aquiline nose, deep-set eyes, the whiff of mercilessness to him. Next to him, Hopko, in a billowing pink silk scarf, silver hoops in her ears, her dark hair full, teased. She looked up, wrinkled her nose and smiled. Next to her, Mika Bastable of Human Resources, known throughout the Service as Bust-your-balls, a tall, sculpted woman, younger, who had come to the Service from a corporation. Fine detailing, thought Patterson: highlights, lip gloss, manicure. She looked expensive, and by comparison Patterson felt dowdy, reduced.

“We have read the encounter report,” said Mobbs, patting a file in front of him. Patterson nodded, sat straighter.

“This was the first time you had encountered
CAMBER
, correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you feel you were adequately prepared for the meeting?”

“I was as well prepared as I could be, given the circumstances.”

“That’s not the same as adequately prepared, is it?”

“I was adequately prepared.”

“You informed
CAMBER
of his egress procedures should the meeting be interrupted?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t he follow them?”

“I can’t answer that, sir. I don’t know.”

Mobbs opened the file, scanned the page.

“He left the flat all right. He found the lifts, all well and good, down he goes to the MTR station, but then he goes to the wrong platform. Our blokes can’t find him. Why the blazes does he do that?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Perhaps you got it wrong. You told him to go to the wrong platform.”

“Absolutely not, sir. I told him to take a train to Admiralty. Which was correct.”

“And then he’s dead. Police say he jumped. Did he?”

“He was panicked, very frightened. He thought he was blown. I could see him deciding to… do something drastic.”

Mobbs looked at her.

“Then why didn’t you calm him down, reassure him, for God’s sake? Why’d he leave the meeting worse off than when he went in? That’s not what we do, is it? Let our agents run off in a panic.”

Patterson swallowed, took a breath. Stay calm, she thought.

“I was in the process of talking him down. I needed to establish if he was blown. I was questioning him when the signal came through, and we had to go to emergency procedures.”

“I think you lost control.
CAMBER
didn’t listen to you.”

“That is not the case, sir. The meeting was compromised at a crucial moment and I put emergency procedures into effect.”

“Well, there’s a corpse says it
is
the case.”

“That’s unfair,” said Hopko, bluntly. “
CAMBER
had emergency procedures. He elected not to follow them. Agents, on occasion, make idiotic decisions. All on their own.”

A pause, as Mobbs appeared to contemplate being lectured by his subordinate.

Bastable of Human Resources spoke.

“What we are trying to ascertain here…”

She turned over a page, slowly, let the silence hang for a beat.

“… is whether you mishandled this meeting, and, by extension, whether you are adequately equipped to continue in your present role in operations.”

Equipped?

“One can’t help but notice that this is not the first time you have been party to a… a what should we call it, I wonder?”

“A flap,” said Hopko.

Patterson stayed silent.

“Quite,” said Bastable. “Last year. Operation
STONE CIRCLE
.” She licked a finger, turned another page. She’s attempting gravitas, thought Patterson. “Says here you were responsible for exfiltrating two agents from China by means of an extremely dangerous contingency operation. Rather blotted your copy-book, as I recall.”

“The inquiry found not.”

“All undertaken without the necessary authorizations and permissions.”

“The inquiry found that I acted… excusably.”

“Sod the inquiry. What on earth were you doing?”

“I’ll tell you, if you like. We were spying. Operation
STONE CIRCLE
got us inside classified Chinese computer networks. It worked. For once. We used a Chinese asset, and a British journalist as cutout and courier. The two of them did everything we asked of them, and the entire operation bled gold. Then some cretin on the seventh floor of this Service decided to hand over operational control to an external player. To a private company. And the whole thing went belly up. Read the report.” Patterson felt the shock of memory, thought of sitting alone in the P section watching the operation die, watching her agent run. She thought of Mangan’s voice on the phone, rigid with fear, and of the ruthless, sharp-eyed bastard around which the whole operation had revolved. They’d called him “Peanut.” She wondered for a second what had happened to him, where he was.

Hopko was looking at her, a
there-you-go-again
look. Bust-your-balls’s face was reddening.

“People died,” she said.

“People do.”

“There was a girl involved, wasn’t there. What happened to her?”

“Ting. She was the journalist’s assistant in Beijing. They were… having an affair. She was arrested.”

“Charming.”

Human Resources tucked a stray lock of blonde hair behind her ear, smirked at Patterson.

“You do seem to be a sort of Typhoid Mary of espionage, don’t you? People expiring left and right. Getting carted off to the Lubyanka. Or its Chinese equivalent.” She glanced at Mobbs. Looking for approval, thought Patterson. The Director of Requirements and Production was reading the file, doggedly. Hopko was looking at the ceiling.

“I must say,” Bastable went on, “I sense that the Controllerate has been very accommodating, has allowed you every chance, but from my perspective, I have to ask if your… your background really has prepared you for operations.”

There it is, thought Patterson. There it is.
Background.

Hopko was leaning back in her chair, eyes half-closed. Patterson wondered if she was smiling.

“Well?” said Bastable.

“I’m not sure I heard a question,” said Patterson.

Bastable’s eyes flickered with irritation.

“Well, let me make it very clear, then. I sense an impulsiveness and a lack of judgment in you, as evidenced by your role in
STONE CIRCLE
, and in your handling of the lately departed
CAMBER
. Please tell me why you should retain your operational role.”

Patterson shifted in her chair, but it was the D/RP who spoke.

“Out of interest, what happened to the journalist, the access agent in
STONE CIRCLE
? What was his name?”

“Philip Mangan,” said Hopko.

“Mangan, that’s right. He was a rather clever bloke, as I remember.”

Bastable was regarding him with a frozen expression.

“He’s marinading in East Africa,” said Hopko. “Keeping his mouth shut in this life and the next.”

Mobbs closed the file, placed his hands on the table and spoke directly to Patterson with an air of finality.