Night Heron (9 page)

Mangan couldn’t resist. “Which other departments would those be, Madam Wang?”

The half-smile again.

“Well, perhaps you encountered some of their representatives in, where was it now, yes, in Jinyi. Those departments.”

Mangan liked Deputy Spokeswoman Wang. He thought he sensed an ember of irony glowing somewhere in there, behind the façade. Now and then, speaking privately, she might actually tell you something, if you could break her code.

The silent girls brought bowls of fine, soft crab in a clear broth, shrimp sautéed in pepper and a flaking carp steamed
in ginger and scallions. Madam Wang merely lifted her chopsticks and touched the food. Harvey loaded his bowl and ate voraciously.

“Those other departments, Mr. Mangan, Mr. Harvey, felt that your reporting of the authorities’ efforts to safeguard good order at Jinyi was not entirely fair. And they felt that you were not… straightforward with them. And on the basis of that, they have suggested a review of your accreditations as Beijing-based foreign correspondents.”

Oh, shit, thought Mangan.

Harvey stopped chewing.

“But we in the Foreign Ministry have suggested that would not be appropriate. At this time,” said Madam Wang. See? We protect you, for now. Don’t do it again.

After another half-hour of excruciating small talk Madam Wang and the minions took their leave. Mangan and Harvey stood, and thanked them gravely for the lunch. Mangan pledged full cooperation and begged the Foreign Ministry’s continued understanding. The restaurant staff escorted Madam Wang’s party out of the restaurant. Harvey turned to Mangan. They looked at each other for a beat and burst into laughter, and Harvey ordered beers.

Beijing

Stillness is the enemy. So Peanut walked.

The evening turned chill and clear. Sunset, coming early now, shards of purple cloud strewn to the west. Jianwai Avenue was fraught with traffic, long queues at the bus stops,
Beijing ren
all motion, heading home to the dim, overheated apartment, the mug of tea, the rice bowl, the pork sizzling in the wok.

Through Altar of the Sun Park, up to the Workers’ Stadium, where the young boys were busy on skateboards, and with the twilight, south on Dongdaqiao. Peanut laced his movement with stops and sudden turns, crossed the road in heavy traffic, readied himself for a first pass of the photocopy shop.

And there was Wen Jinghan, standing outside the shop, waving at him limply. Dear God, he thought. He crossed the street in sudden, gathering darkness. The professor stood hunched and silhouetted against the harsh neon spilling from the shop window. He held a plastic carrier bag. Inside the shop, assistants in blue shirts and baseball caps worked copiers and faxes.

“You’re early,” Peanut said.

“Huasheng, we have to talk.” His voice was weak, tentative.

“What did you bring?”

“Not here, for heaven’s sake.” Whining.

“Give it to me, now.”

The professor didn’t move.

“Now.”

Wen’s hands, Peanut saw, were trembling. He handed over the carrier bag. Peanut took him by the arm and walked him into the copy shop. Then stopped, unsure.

The professor looked at him. “You have to pay at the counter.”

“You pay. Hurry up.”

Wen Jinghan walked slowly to the counter and handed over yuan notes. The assistant gestured with her chin to a free copier. Peanut looked inside the carrier bag.

A document, thick, ringbound.

On the cover two characters in red,
juemi
, “Top Secret,” the highest level of classification. Then a number: 157.

Also, the title:
A Preliminary Report on Certain Questions Relating to Second Stage Failure in Launch Vehicle DF-41, with Implications for Scheduling in MIRV Experimental Launch Programme.

And underneath:
Leading Small Group on Military Affairs.

Peanut felt the dryness coming in his mouth. Dear fucking God.

“Copy it, Jinghan, now.”

“You will get us killed, like this.” His voice little more than a whisper. “You know that, don’t you?”

The professor looked close to collapse. Peanut had seen it before, in the prisons, the sudden shrinking of the spirit, in hours sometimes, utter defeat. Peanut shielded Wen as the professor took the document from the bag. The assistant was looking at them. Wen placed the document on the photocopier’s glass. Closed the lid. Pushed the button.

Opened the lid. Turned a page. Closed the lid.

Pushed the button.

Peanut saw the copy of the cover page spill smoothly from the bowels of the copier, and reached for it quickly. Then the second page, a table of contents.

A third page. Closed the lid. Pushed the button.

“For God’s sake. How many?”

The professor stopped and looked at him. “Sixty.”

Peanut looked around, licked his lips. The counter assistant was busy with another customer.

“Well, hurry.”

For twelve agonizing minutes the professor copied. Peanut put the sheets in the plastic bag. Then it was done.

Peanut propelled Wen out of the shop and they stood on the pavement, Wen still holding the report.

“How did you get it out?”

“Put it up my shirt.”

“Anyone see you?”

“Would I be here if they had?”

“You take it back tonight. Back to your safe, yes?”

“I can’t do this, Huasheng.”

“You are doing it. Give me the number of your mobile phone.”

Wen Jinghan told him and Peanut wrote it on a scrap of paper.

“And the money.”

A wad of one-hundred-yuan notes. A thick wad, Peanut noted.

“Now listen carefully. We are offering a one-time transaction. One time only. What you’ve given me tonight is the proof. You are in this now, Jinghan, and there is no turning back, do you understand?”

Silence. Peanut wanted to hit him again. “I’ll call you with instructions. It will all be over soon and no one the wiser.”

Wen Jinghan shook his silvered head and looked away, to the muffled figures in the street, the lights of the traffic flaring in the Beijing night.

“It’s never over,” he said.

United Kingdom Secret Intelligence Service (SIS),

Vauxhall Cross, London

The view from the terrace was remarkable. One of the privileges, perhaps, of this work, this place, though God knew the privileges were few enough, once you discounted the sense of the special, the insiderness so cultivated by the Service. Leaning against the railing, she looked across the Thames, squinting against the river’s late autumn glitter, the sky a condensate blue. She turned and went back inside.

She sat in her cubicle, her gray cell. The telegram lay on the desk in front of her. Phone calls to Hopko always merited a little consideration.

She reached for the phone, hesitated, then forced her hand to the receiver and dialed.

A soft burr.

“Hopko.”

“Val, it’s Trish. Patterson.”

“Good morning, Trish Patterson.” The voice wry, non-committal.

“Well, yes. You’ll have seen the telegram from Charteris. I’ve run the traces. And it’s curious. I wonder if we should gather.”

“Well, Trish Patterson, gather we will. My office, say, one hour?”

“Fine, see you then.”

So, an hour to think about it. Perhaps rehearse a bit.

Patterson made notes, went for a cup of coffee in the staff cafeteria, sat alone and reread them. Meetings of the Service’s Western Hemisphere and Far East Controllerate were usually conducted on an assortment of chairs in Hopko’s sanctum. The air of collegiality could dissipate quickly. Rivalries and resentments turned the conversation spiky. Intelligence Officers who had been in their role for a paltry eight months knew not to make a point too forcefully.

She arrived first, of course. Hopko wasn’t there. So she took a chair in a corner—always secure your flanks and rear
—
and waited. Hopko had Chinese prints on her walls, delicate things from the Song dynasty: a butterfly, a grove of bamboo.

Next to arrive was Drinkwater, Security Officer, suited, hair cropped to gray stubble, meaty, ruddy, the suggestion of inner rancor.

Then, hard behind him, Waverley, Requirements Officer, Far East, who winked at her and sat with exaggerated relief. Waverley teetered on the edge of louche. He had long fair hair, an olive-green linen suit, a smile that failed to reassure.

Silence, as the three of them looked over Charteris’s telegram and the traces. Patterson tried to read their faces, but found nothing.

Patterson wondered if Hopko contrived her entrances. She breezed in now, coffee cup in hand, closing the door behind her with a foot clad in a black heel.

Hopko, Valentina. Targeting Officer, China. Visiting Case
Officer, who knew where, though the stories abounded. Hopko placed the cup on her desk and then licked a finger of spilled coffee. Patterson could feel the energy pulsing from her like heat. Stocky, dark Hopko. She was dressed, to Patterson’s austere eye, too young for her nearly fifty years, the black skirt riding a little too high, the emerald blouse gaping a little too open, herringbone stockings. Hair the color of jet, teased or backcombed or something to give it body. Patterson, for all her army years, felt the stirring of her inner snob. She thought, She looks like a bloody waitress.

Hopko turned, as if she’d heard. Patterson shifted in her seat.

“Morning, Trish.” Hopko fastened that gaze on her. “Things afoot in the Middle Kingdom, are they?”

Hopko’s face had seen a great deal of sun, the skin imperfect, freckled, almost tawny. She wore heavy black-rimmed glasses. Behind them, restless eyes.

Hopko sat. “Shall we?”

“I would draw your attention to two things.” Patterson could feel her tone of voice slipping into military. Calm down, she thought, it’s not a bloody O-group. She cleared her throat. “Charteris requested traces on keywords ‘night’ and ‘heron.’ Those terms are associated with a network known as
PAN GLINT
. Long defunct. It was an emergency signal, to be delivered by phone or letter.”

Hopko was skimming the papers in front of her with a pen.

“Second, we all know the newspaper Philip Mangan represents, and we all know that its Beijing bureau for a while played host to an officer of this Service, operating under natural cover.
PAN GLINT
was handled by that officer.”

Silence. Which Patterson looked to fill.

“Hence, perhaps, the contact’s insistence he was an old friend of the paper.”

“Perhaps.” Drinkwater of Security, looking at her. “Sorry, Trish, can we be a bit more specific? When, exactly, was this
PAN GLINT
network in operation?”

“From 1985 to 1989.”

“Bit of a blast from the past, isn’t it? Who were they?”

“
PAN GLINT
targeted China’s aerospace research. They were aerospace engineers. Five of them. All graduate students at the big academies in Haidian. Rocketry, telemetry, metallurgy. The lead agent, and cut-out for the rest of them, was codenamed
WINDSOCK
. The ‘night heron’ code was
WINDSOCK’
s emergency signal. He handled the product and contacts with the case officer.”

“Officers, plural, surely,” murmured Hopko.

“And do we know who that officer was? Or officers?” said Drinkwater.

“No.” Initial traces had taken Patterson no further than cover names.

Hopko turned to Drinkwater, took off her glasses. “But I’d warrant, Simon, it was Sonia and Malcolm Clarke.”

“Really? Good lord.” Drinkwater seemed wrong-footed. The temperature in the room had risen a notch, but Patterson had no idea why.

Waverley, of Requirements, began. “Obvious question, what happened to
PAN GLINT
?”

“
PAN GLINT
fell apart in late eighty-eight and into eighty-nine,” said Patterson. “Less and less active. No contact reports after March eighty-nine.
WINDSOCK
was reported disappeared in mid-eighty-nine. One of them killed himself. The others stopped responding.”

Hopko swiveled on her chair. “After the demonstrations in Tiananmen Square and June fourth, everything came to a halt, I think. The Clarkes left that year, a few months after the shootings. So.”

“And Mangan. What do we know about him?” This from Drinkwater of Security, impatiently.

“Not much.” Patterson gave herself a mental kick for not having a biography. “You’ll have seen his copy. Reliable journalist. Some way from greatness in his profession.”

“But decent, though, isn’t he?” Hopko leaned forward, looked expectant. “I think his stuff is rather good.”

“Why, Val? Why’s it good?” said Drinkwater.

Hopko sat back, dangling her glasses. “Because he’s thoughtful. Some investigative pieces of his in the paper told me things I didn’t know. And those arrests in Jiangxi, all those poor bloody Followers. He was the only journalist who got himself there, I think. Rather resourceful of him. And the pictures were extraordinary.”

“No previous with the Service?” said Drinkwater.

“None,” said Patterson.

“All right, everyone. Can we go round, please?”

Hopko’s Fancies, they called her insistence on hearing every possible explanatory narrative, no matter how far-fetched, wringing each one dry before throwing it away. “Trish?”

“Well, let’s take this man at face value,” began Patterson. “Let’s say he was an asset, twenty years ago, more. He’s back. We don’t know where he’s been, what he wants or what he’s got. But the approach to the bureau and the recognition code tell us he’s real.”

Hopko was jotting notes. “But twenty years?”

“Any number of reasons. A new opportunity. New needs. Middle age.”

Hopko looked at her. “So age makes traitors of us, does it?”

“No. He was a traitor already,” said Patterson. “Age makes us want to revisit. Doesn’t it?”

Hopko nodded. “Point. Tom?”

Waverley, Requirements Officer, would write up and distribute
the product from any operation, Patterson knew. R officers stripped away the nonsense, the delusions, deflated the grandiosity of the agent, the credulity of the agent runner. She watched him balance skeptical with collegial.

“I’ll go for nasty,” he said. “It’s Ministry of State Security. They’ve found out about
PAN GLINT
. Or maybe they knew all along. They’ve sweated
WINDSOCK
for his tradecraft, and now they’re pushing someone back at us.”

“What for?” said Patterson.

Waverley shrugged. “Mischief-making. Disruption. Distracting us from other things. Why does anyone ever run a counter-intelligence operation?”

“And why would it be someone else, Tom? Couldn’t they have just turned
WINDSOCK
? They could be pushing
him
back at us,” said Hopko.

“They could indeed. But normally they just shoot them, don’t they, rather than try to turn them. MSS tends to feel they’re trouble, double agents.”

Hopko was silent. Waverley cocked his head at her.

“Val, I have the worrying impression you would like to pursue this,” he said.

Drinkwater snorted. Hopko turned to him and crossed her legs.

“Simon. Please. Save me from myself.”

Drinkwater shook his head and adopted a tone of patient explanation.

“It’s just the usual. The locals are trying to flush out natural cover officers among the foreign journalists. Or at least they’re looking for links between the journalists and the local stations. Smoking out freelancers or whatever. So they throw out a marker—some cute little recognition code, for example—to see where it goes.”

Hopko was poker-faced and said nothing. So it fell to Patterson, who abhorred a vacuum.

“That doesn’t really explain the fact that the recognition code was valid, though, does it?” she said.

Drinkwater didn’t look at her, spoke directly to Hopko. “Well, I dare say it’s like Tom said. They got something out of
WINDSOCK
. Years ago, probably.”

The meeting dragged on. If Security Branch had its way, thought Patterson, the Service would not run operations because all operations were by definition threats to Service security. Drinkwater was like a man trying to drown a kitten. Patterson decided not to give up.

“We have nothing to lose,” she said. “Let me at least establish the identity of the contact. In any case we can’t approach him. He’ll come back to Mangan in his own good time.”

Drinkwater, speaking past her again, shook his head and smirked.

“Val, can we just put this out of its misery, please? Security Branch will not sanction Beijing Station chasing around after some MSS dangle.”

Hopko looked at her notes. Then, ignoring Drinkwater, turned to Patterson.

“Might I suggest we issue them both P numbers, Mangan and the contact. Put them in the system. Charteris to pay attention, signal us if the contact reappears. Let’s see what develops.”

Hopko shuffled papers and looked about her brightly. “Thank you so much, everyone.” Dismissed.

It took until late afternoon for Patterson to apply herself to
WINDSOCK
, or whoever he might be. She applied to Registry for two five-digit P numbers.

Into the system. Seeds planted.