Spy Games (11 page)

Oxford

Kai, back in his rooms after a soul-crushingly dull meeting of the Chinese Students’ Association at which Madeline had not appeared, picked up the memoir. His grandfather’s long ago links to the Chen family were explicit. The source of the Chen family’s rage was not. Not yet, at least.

Grandpa was victorious. The Japanese surrendered in 1945. And China was able to get back to the business of its own unfinished civil war. This time Grandpa joined the fighting in earnest. His role—running cable from brigade headquarters out to the field telephones of frontline units. Sometimes he carried a great wheel of cable on his back, staggering across China’s burned and blistered landscape. When the cables separated, he went on his knees in the mud, found the break and repaired it. He repaired radios, advised on tactical communications. He moved up in the Communist Party.

In 1949, Communist divisions pushed in from the west and took Beijing. Grandpa was quite the technician by now, and in the days that followed the founding of the People’s Republic of China, he burrowed into the nascent Communist bureaucracy, securing a billet at
the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications. Not very glamorous, Kai reflected, but the ambitious, grasping old man knew very well what he was doing. For the next sixteen years, Grandpa oversaw the building of China’s telephone network. He supervised the running of copper cable all over the country for the first time. He traveled to foreign countries, East Germany, Hungary, divining the mysteries of teletype, microwave, even television. And all of this,
all
of it, was crucial work, vital to socialist modernization, vital to the Party. Grandpa Fan became an important man, a
gaoji ganbu
—a senior cadre in a powerful ministry. He had a wife and three sons and a daughter, a nice flat. Access to a car, maybe. Pork for supper, white rice, even as they were starving in the villages. A tailored Mao suit with pens in the top pocket—all the subtle signifiers of status.

Kai was enveloped in the narrative now, sensed that something was coming. The memoir had taken on a sketchy, withholding tone.

Dawn came as a dullness in the window. Kai put the book down, stood and walked around the room, ran his hand along the windowsill. He wondered how many his grandfather had denounced. Was it only Literary Chen? Were there others?

Kai leaned against the wall. The evening was damp and warm, the pavements shiny with rain. He watched the street, the churning in his gut part unease, part transgressive thrill.

He had left a handwritten note in her pigeonhole. It said, in cheery English, “Book Discussion! Memoir To Help Historical Understanding. 8 p.m.! Meet Outside Zoology.” Madeline came at four minutes after the hour. She wore sunglasses, a baseball cap, trainers, as if she expected to run. She didn’t stop, walked right past him, then hissed over her shoulder at him.

“Follow me.”

He hurried after her. She crossed the road, took the footpath that led into the Parks. He stumbled along behind her, caught up to her. He could smell her, something perfumed and lush and feminine and flecked with citrus.

“Is there anyone behind us?” she said.

“Should there be?”

He could feel the tension in her, in her slight shoulders, the tightness in her neck.

“They follow me sometimes. They are there, and then they’re gone. They check up on me.”

“What? Who does?”

“These… men. My father sent them. But they frighten me.”

“Are you sure you’re not…?”

She turned to him, defensive.

“Not what?”

“Not… making a mistake?”

“Imagining them, you mean?”

“Well…”

She shook her head, made a hissing noise through her teeth. They walked on, her eyes skimming over the parkland, the trees.

“Did you read it?” she said.

“Yes.”

“And?”

“Literary Chen is your grandfather.”

“Was my grandfather, yes.”

“What happened to him?”

“What happened? Your grandfather denounced him. He was with the Writers’ Association by then. The Red Guards came for him. They smashed up the family home, dragged him away. His wife and his little boy watched. They put a dunce’s cap on him, made him run all around the neighborhood.” She stopped, and they walked in silence, just the crunch of their feet on the wet, gravelly path. He prompted her.

“And then?”

“And then? Then they made him write self-criticism, beat him, struggled him. And then they sent him to a 7 May cadre school.”

Kai said nothing.

“And that’s where he died.”

“How?” The question quiet, tentative. She ignored it.

“My grandmother was left alone in Beijing to bring up my father. She was thrown out of their apartment, of course. They had nowhere to go. She ended up being taken in by a foreman at Capital Steel, and
they lived in his dormitory. A terrible place. I don’t know much. But I know he hit her, handed her around among the steelworkers. And my father running wild amid all this filth, seeing it all.”

Kai said nothing.

“Oh, everyone was very sorry later. Literary Chen was rehabilitated, posthumously. My father was given a helping hand into the army to make up for things. But my grandmother was shattered, just this broken fragment of a woman who hardly ever spoke. And ever since, my father has taken all the simmering rage, the sense of waste, the damage, the trauma, all the years of poverty and unbelonging, and we have projected it single-mindedly… onto you. The Fans. The Chens’ humiliation is the Fans’ fault. Didn’t you know?”

Kai shook his head.

“Your grandfather. At the cadre school. How did he die?”

She had stopped and was looking quizzically at him.

“I don’t think I’m ready to tell you that yet.”

He couldn’t meet her eye, her cool amber gaze. He heard birdsong hanging in the air, registered the puddles on the path, their film of oily mauve and purple. And then she was taking his hand and laughing a quiet, resigned laugh.

“I almost came and talked to you,” she said. “I saw you around. I knew exactly who you were.”

“And why didn’t you?”

She played with his hand.

“I don’t know. I was warned that you were some monster. I was scared. I thought… you’d just be… you know, dismissive.”

“Well, I’m not,” he said.

“I see that now.” She paused, looked around. “Do you like it here?”

He smiled.

“Not really.”

“Me neither.” She nodded. “Thanks.”

“For what?”

“For… for talking. And for asking about what happened. And for not arguing with me, or explaining to me.”

For the briefest moment, their fingers interlaced. And then she took her hand back and walked away.

He watched her receding figure, stopped himself from walking after her. Where had he suddenly learned such self-control? He lifted his hand to his face, tried to breathe in the smell of her.

He left the Parks alone, the way they’d come. He turned onto South Parks Road, looked around himself. He felt an unfamiliar need for vigilance.

The street was quiet, the light fading now. An occasional car passed, a bicycle.

He headed for his college. As he walked past the chemistry buildings, he caught sight of another pedestrian walking toward him, a man with Asian features, Chinese perhaps, in his forties, a slight waddle to his walk, lank, thin hair. The man wore a gray padded anorak. Too heavy for a summer evening, Kai thought, he must be hot.

The man had stopped.

Kai continued to walk toward him and it became clear the man was watching him, waiting for him, even. Kai crossed the street. The man stood still, his eyes on Kai as he passed, a look of amused curiosity on his face.

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Mangan was in the Radisson Hotel, seated in the air-conditioned coffee shop, ordering lunch, when he saw the Associated Press flash.

A second lead moved a few minutes later. The officials still awaited confirmation that the target, a well-known extremist of Malaysian origin wanted in connection with acts of terrorism, had been killed, but there was a “90 per cent probability” that the strike had been successful.

Mangan wondered how they’d confirm. Was an agent in the rubble, grubbing about for DNA? Or were they just listening to the chatter?

He felt light-headed, placed his hands palm down on the table.

From decision to consequence in less than forty-eight hours.

Mangan decided to skip lunch. He got up and left the hotel. He stood on the pavement, lit a cigarette, then walked. He walked fast in the color-killing gray light of the early afternoon, low cloud fastening Addis in a tight, thick humidity, trapping the fumes, the dust. He went down Tito Street, turned onto Menelik Avenue, found himself walking shakily into the park. And there he stopped, sat heavily on a concrete bench, tried to gather himself in, process it. He found his hands trembling. He felt hot, clammy, feverish.

He took a taxi back to Gotera, stumbled into his flat, threw his clothes off and got under the covers with a thermometer. He had a temperature of a hundred and two.

Patterson sat in Hopko’s sanctum, watching a rolling news channel. At a Pentagon press briefing, a spokesman was deflecting questions about the drone strike. Hopko was straightening a picture on her wall, a gorgeous Ming dynasty landscape, crags in mist, thorn trees, a river, a tiny boat and a fisherman half-seen. She wore a long coat-like garment of a crimson velveteen, a hammered silver cross of Coptic origin around her neck. And those boots. She looks like some mad Spanish prelate, Patterson thought.

“So the Americans went with it, the grid reference,” Hopko said.

Patterson took a breath.

“They did. They trusted the intelligence.”

“Is that the most interesting thing we’ve learned?” said Hopko.

“And the Chinese are running penetrations of jihadi networks in southeast Asia.”

“There is that. A highly successful penetration, too,” said Hopko, absently. “I wonder who he is. Or she. A Chinese Muslim? Even a Uighur? Ferreting away down there. Someone’s compliant wife?”

She stopped, let her gaze fall on Patterson, who hated these searching looks, these pregnant pauses, and shifted in her seat.

“We need to move,” said Hopko. “Don’t we?”

“Do we?”

“Well, I should say so. Wouldn’t you? A botched approach to reach us in Hong Kong. Our poor man tops himself, or so we’re told. A second try in Addis, this time sweetened with exotic intelligence, intelligence guaranteed to buy us love in Washington. My, someone knows how to push our buttons. There’s a plan here, Trish. Someone’s probing.”

She scents opportunity, thought Patterson. She’s like a raptor. Or a card shark.

“What do we do?”

“Do? We put Mangan back in play, no?”

Mangan lay in his wrecked, damp bed, stunned with fever. He tried to read, but his hands shook, limbs soft as treacle. He managed a fitful sleep as the afternoon wore on and the room darkened. Evening brought distant thunder beneath the rattle of the city and at seven the rain came on, the room turning dank and cold.

He lay, the fever singing in his head, bright, brittle images winding and looping behind his eyes. A hot, toxic plasticity, blast wave, trauma, gelatinous spatter, blood trail. In a restaurant, in a darkening city, in a small town by the sea.

Maja phoned. And now she was here, with soup. She turned on the lights, boiled the kettle. He sat up, wrapped in his duvet.

“God, you look miserable,” she said.

He did not respond.

“Well, whatever it is, I don’t want to catch it, so I’ll heat you some soup and leave you.”

She went into the kitchen. Mangan heard cupboards opening and closing, the clatter of pans. The flat began to fill with smell. She came back and stood in the doorway, arms folded.

“It’s heating up,” she said. “Bygvandgrød. Danish barley soup. Powerfully medicinal, obviously.”

“I’m sorry I haven’t seen you,” he said. “It’s just been…”

“I’m sorry, too,” she said. “I needed people.”

He nodded, coughed.

“How did you do that?” she said. “After the bomb. You just went away, disappeared into work. Is that how you coped?”

“It was just work.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“I hope your bedside manner is better with the afflicted mothers of Ogaden,” he said. But she didn’t smile, just leaned her head against the wall, a slow, considered blink.

“You walled yourself off,” she said. And she turned and went back to the kitchen, reappearing with a bowl of steaming soup. It was thick and a nut-brown color, made Mangan think of beef, oxtail, childhood.

“If the fever’s not gone in twenty-four hours, go to a doctor,” she said, putting on her coat. Then she stopped, went to the table, took a pen that was lying there, slid a piece of paper from Mangan’s printer. She bent and wrote, big, vigorous strokes. She turned and held up the paper for him to see. It read, “CALL MAJA, THE DANISH!!,” and then her phone number, each digit four inches high.

“And perhaps you can call me this time?” she said, and then she was gone.

He sat in the silence, spooning the soup, letting it warm him.

The fever broke some time around four in the morning, and Mangan slept. He woke at midday, shaky, and padded around the apartment, feet cold on the concrete floor, making tea, picking up his laptop and carrying it back to bed.

There was an email in his inbox, as he expected. The message cryptic.

Following your great success, we feel a meeting necessary. Please be ready travel next week. Congratulation.

He called Hoddinott.

“I have an invitation I need to run by you,” he said.