INCARNATION (6 page)

David said nothing. There was nothing he could say in answer to that. Operation Hong Cha was something only he, Matthew Hyde, and Anthony Farrar had known about in the first months. Something only ten people knew about even now. One of British intelligence’s most secret operations since the Second World War. Donaldson was right. If the boy knew about Hong Cha, he was more than he seemed.

‘He knows the details?’

Pauline nodded.

‘Everything,’ she said. ‘At least, everything Matthew Hyde knew.’

‘Go on with your story, Mr Ross. I’m sorry I interrupted.’

‘I came away from that first interview feeling as though I’d just been scooped out. Yongden told me enough to convince me he knew about the Secret Service, about London, about places I’d only heard of. Like this house. When I got back to Delhi I made enquiries about Matthew Hyde. It was then I got in touch with Dennison. The boy was brought back here after he spoke with him.’ 

‘Surely this is just some sort of circus trick.’ 

‘I assure you it’s not, David.’ Pauline’s voice was dark and troubled. She didn’t like this any more than he did. ‘He says Hong Cha was not aborted. That Hyde got into the Taklamakan and out again. That he knows the full coordinates and all other details. But he’ll only reveal them to you.’ 

‘I see.’

That explained why Donaldson was here then. Operation Hong Cha had been set up three years earlier on the back of rumours that Iraqi nuclear scientists had been spotted near military research centres in western China. Matthew Hyde had been sent on a mission to explore a number of possible sites where, it was rumoured, a super-weapon was being developed for Saddam Hussein. Hyde had made contact twice with a local contact in Charkhliq, then vanished. Every attempt to locate him after that had failed, and in the end Farrar had shut down the operation. And, despite David’s protests, given up the hunt for Matthew Hyde. He looked at the boy.

‘What’s your real name?’ he asked in English. 

‘Tursun.’

‘Why did you lie about coming from Ladakh?’ 

‘It was a necessary lie. If I’d said we were from Sinkiang, the Indian authorities would have sent us back. Now I’m here, there’s no point in it. It makes no difference.’

‘Is there a weapon?’

‘There was none while I was alive.’

‘And now?’

'I can’t speak for now. Three years ago they had made considerable progress, but the project was still continuing. They must be very close by now.’

‘What is the name of the Iraqi general who handles things at their end?’

‘Abd al-Latif Nuri.’

David felt like someone who has started to drown, but who still has enough sense to know when to start swimming.

‘Tell me about the project,’ he said. 'Tell me everything you know.’

‘F
arrar did not turn up that afternoon. David tried more than once to contact him. Each time a secretary with an icy voice told him Sir Anthony was not in his office, or Sir Anthony was in a meeting, or Sir Anthony had just stepped out of the building, and would Mr Laing please ring back later? He gave up ringing in the end. Try as he might, he could not stop thoughts of Farrar and Elizabeth from forming in his brain. When he thought of them now, they were sweating and naked, writhing together on a hot bed. He sneezed several times and went back to room number seven.

‘No luck,’ he said. ‘The great man’s still out and about.’ 

‘He’ll have to speak to you.’ Pauline was adamant. She disapproved of Farrar, she’d never made a secret of it. He wasn’t qualified to run the China Desk, she argued. Just because he’d spent a few years as First Secretary in Peking, taken a year off to learn something rudimentary which he called Chinese, and licked every upper-class backside in sight, did not make him desk head material. In her opinion. And, though he was never so forthright, in David’s as well.

'I’ve asked him to ring back.’ He sneezed again. His hay fever had been late in coming on this year. Rain had kept the pollen at bay until a week ago. But now he could feel it marshalling its strength to make the summer miserable.

‘He could be on his way,’ suggested Donaldson. Pauline gave him a withering look.

There were several sessions with Tursun, each more frustrating than the one before. The boy knew a great deal, that became more and more obvious as the day wore on; but not everything he said made sense, and a lot of the information he passed to them was self-contradictory.

He gave them a place name - Karakhoto - but could not locate it on any map of the region. Nor could anyone else. When asked for the names of the generals responsible for liaison with the Iraqi scientists and military men, he could only name two - Wang Chigang and Zhao Chingyu - neither of whom rang bells with David, who knew the names of everyone in the provincial military hierarchy. There were several map coordinates, but when David pressed for details of what they referred to, the boy became visibly confused and started contradicting what he’d already said.

At times it was hard to pin him down. He would allude to things in an imprecise, airy fashion, as if he were a medium at a travelling fair.

‘There’s a man with thin hair,’ he said. ‘In the Taklamakan. Be careful of him.’

‘What’s his name?’ asked David. Tursun shook his head sadly and said he did not know.

‘Black walls,’ he said. 'There are black walls without windows or doors. They are hiding something behind them.’

‘Hiding what?’ The boy shook his head again and lowered his eyes.

To David, the whole affair had a bad smell about it, an overpowering odour of incense sticks and tarot cards, cheap horoscopes cast in old bazaars, oracles murmured darkly at wayside shrines. He’d seen it all in his day - sleight of hand and sleight of tongue, old men touched by madness more than holiness, little boys with large eyes and outstretched hands. The only thing was, this time he couldn’t for the life of him work out how it was done.

By mid-afternoon, the boy began to flag. His confidence was leaving him. He said he was tired, that he’d travelled a long way, and had had little sleep. They were all exhausted by then anyway, so David called an early halt to the last session. Mrs Hughes took the boy back to his room, where he went straight to sleep. His parents were being kept in a separate suite on the top floor for as long as the debriefing lasted. They were frightened and, without Tursun to interpret, they talked to no one.

David went upstairs and knocked on their door. The father opened it, a small man with a permanently pained expression on a face that looked years older than it could possibly have been.

‘As-salamu alaykum. Kirishka rukhsatmu?’ David greeted him. He expected some sort of pretence, a masquerade to chime with Tursun’s, but there was none.

‘Wa alaykum as-salamu. Kirin. Olturup biraz chay ichin.’ The man’s invitation was spoken in plain Uighur. As he asked David inside, a half-smile crossed his lips, and he seemed to stand a little straighter. 

‘My name’s David Laing. I’m in charge of your son.’ 

‘Yes, Mr David. Please. Please come in.’ David followed him inside, along a short corridor to the living room. Tursun’s father introduced himself as Osmanjan. His wife was sitting on the sofa watching the cartoon channel, her lips moving silently as though following the words. She got up when David was introduced, and bowed shyly. When he spoke to her in Uighur, her eyes almost popped out of her head, as if it was the last thing in the world she might have expected. Osmanjan introduced her. Her name was Rotsemi.

‘Our guest would like some tea.’ Osmanjan sent her off to the little galley kitchen where Britain’s most notorious traitors had brewed endless cups of PG Tips.

‘I would like to speak to her as well,’ said David as she left. ‘You understand that, don’t you?’

Osmanjan nodded. What little trace there had been of a smile on his face had gone. He knew he was not among friends. Just because a stranger came speaking Uighur…

‘She knows nothing of all this.’

‘And you - what do you know?’

The man shrugged and invited David to sit down. In the corner, the television continued to make a nuisance of itself. The garish colours and jerking movements of a Looney Tunes cartoon flickered and gyrated on the edge of vision. Screeches and whoops boomed from the set.

‘You are Muslims,’ David said. ‘Why all this talk of reincarnation? Shouldn’t you leave that to the Hindus and the Buddhists?’

Osmanjan reddened. It was as if David had accused him of sleeping with other men’s wives. Or betraying his people.

‘It is the boy’s story, not mine.’

‘Then you say you do not believe it?’

‘It is not for me to say. It is his story.’

‘He is your son, isn’t he?’

Osmanjan nodded. Behind him, a new cartoon had started. Road Runner zoomed through the desert, pursued by Wile E. Coyote. Every few seconds, the room was rocked by an explosion.

‘How old is he? He says he is twelve, but I don’t think he can be more than ten.’

‘No, twelve is correct. He has always looked younger than his real age.’

‘And he was born in Sinkiang?’ Another nod. ‘Where in Sinkiang?’ 

‘Khotan.’

‘Have you always lived there? You don’t have a southern accent.’

‘No, we have lived many places. Urumchi. Charkhliq. Turfan. Kashgar. Many places.’

‘And you got to India through Ladakh?’ 

‘Yes. It was a long journey. I thought we would die. It was cold. The snow was like demons.’

‘Who told you to make that journey? Who told you to go to India?’ 

‘The boy.’

‘You take orders from your son?’ 

Behind him, a woman’s voice answered. ‘You don’t know him. You don’t understand.’ 

David turned to find Rotsemi standing in the doorway. She held a tray on which a sturdy brown teapot and three china cups were balanced precariously. David recognized them: British Home Stores, Swansea. There were little crowded tears in the woman’s eyes. David got up and went to her.

‘Let me take that,’ he said. She shook her head and came in, fighting the tears back, and set the tray down on a low pine table. In her world, it was unthinkable for a guest to help his hostess.

‘My son has done nothing wrong,’ she said. ‘All this is to help us, his father and mother. He seeks nothing for himself.’

‘I wouldn’t suggest such a thing. I only want to know what is happening.’

She poured tea into the cups, Uighur-style, without milk, very sweet. The tea was golden-brown, more suited to Chinese than Uighur taste. David thought there’d be little point in having a word with Arwel or his good lady. He’d get a couple of black tea bricks in London and bring them down. And give Glynis some pointers about traditional Uighur cuisine.

‘We have come here with our son,’ said Rotsemi. David took a closer look at her. She couldn’t be more than thirty, but her face was white and drained, and her eyes held a vacant look, as though both curiosity and terror had been wiped from them.

‘Is he your only child?’

‘Yes.’

‘I have other children,’ said Osmanjan. ‘From my first wife.’

‘Where is she?’

‘Dead.’ He said it in a flat voice, as though to tame an emotion more acid than simple grief. ‘They took her from me. She died in prison. Then they took the children. There are three of them. Perhaps they are alive. Perhaps dead.’

David did not need to ask who ‘they’ were. Only the Han Chinese authorities could have put a wife in prison and taken children away by force.

He looked at Rotsemi.

‘And you? Do you want more children?’

Her pale face coloured gently, and she nodded.

‘Now, perhaps. Now that we are safe.’

‘Why were you in danger? What did you do that made Sinkiang dangerous for you?’

Rotsemi shrank back visibly. She’d said too much already. Osmanjan sipped from his cup, holding it from behind, as though it had no handle.

‘You must speak to my son,’ he said. ‘He knows everything. He will tell you.’

‘Was it on account of a man called Hyde? Matthew Hyde?’ Osmanjan did not answer. But David could see he recognized the name.

He spent half an hour with them, and at the end he was no further forward. The son had led them here, the son knew everything. They were just his hangers-on. When he finished his tea, he made his excuses and left. The last thing he heard as the door closed was Woody Woodpecker’s insane laugh. Stepping on to the landing, he sneezed loudly.

Chris Donaldson was waiting for him downstairs.

‘I’m told you came down by car.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Any chance of a lift back?’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Hampstead.’

‘Well, that’s not too far out of my way.’

‘You don’t have to take me all the way there.’

‘May as well. But you’ll have to pay your way.’

‘I thought you’d say that.’

David fished in his pocket for his keys, and tossed them to Donaldson.

‘You drive. I’m bushed. But I’ve a few questions I’d like to ask you.’

People‘s Republic of China

Western Region Military Installation 14 (Chaofe Ling) [Coordinates classified]

Level 3, Corridor 13

T
he corridor was almost two and a half miles long. Four kilometres, to be precise. Four thousand metres. Engineer Zhang Fengsuo said it was the longest corridor in China, maybe the world, and he should have known - he’d designed it, costed it, and supervised its construction. It never turned, never wavered, never altered, not for an inch of its length. In the ceiling, two thousand light units burned day and night. A team of fitters replaced those in each section on a week-by-week schedule. The corridor was divided into twelve sections, so it took three months to work through the corridor before starting all over again.

There were forty-one corridors like it in the installation, six on each level, crossing and crisscrossing, one hundred and sixty-seven kilometres in all. Each corridor on level three had a minimum of five hundred doors, and each door …

Karim Hasanoglu shook his head in bewilderment and kept his eyes fixed straight ahead. Thinking about this place didn’t help your nerves. He’d been here three weeks now, and still dreaded these long drives through the white, brightly lit corridors, each one exactly like the rest, with no landmarks or markers apart from the Chinese signs that he could not decipher.