Spy Games (20 page)

London

On a warm Saturday in late June, Mangan was installed in a small gray mews house in Paddington. Upstairs, a studio flat, a kitchen, posters of Impressionist art on the walls. Downstairs, a conference room with a wooden floor, blinds and a coffee machine. A short-term corporate rental, in the name of a company domiciled in Jersey. A safe house, he thought, a rather chic safe house.

He slept most of a day, watched the sun crawl down the wall in the midafternoon. Patterson came, bringing a curry in foil containers for the two of them, striding up the stairs. She laid it out on the breakfast bar in the flat, and, he noticed, proceeded to eat her generous portion with speed and concentration, mopping the plate with naan. The way a soldier eats, he observed.

“They’ll come in a couple of days,” she said. “And they, we, will ask you to consider making a commitment.”

“What sort of commitment?”

“They’ll explain.”

“Doesn’t the fact that I’m here rather suggest that I’m committed?”

“You don’t know what they are going to ask of you.”

He was, she said, free to come and go. But he should be discreet
and report all—
and that means all, Philip
—contacts to her. He was to stay away from friends and acquaintances for now. He was to use the internet only sparingly and emails needed to be discussed with her first. And no mobile phones.

To the neighbors, to anyone who asked, he was to be a returning reporter, in town for a month, maybe a bit more, discussing a new venture, meeting some editors, web publishers, designers. Earnest discussions. The contours of the new journalism. Disruptive change, the death of branded, legacy media. Reporter as curator in a boundless, ever-shifting digital archive of the now.

To himself, he was insubstantial, skittish. He stood in the studio with the lights off, looked out through the blinds at the houses opposite, their brightly lit windows, watched their inhabitants cook dinner, make a bed. He watched a woman sitting at a table reading. As he watched her, he smoked, thought about Ethiopia, wondered what effect the bomb and the episode at the villa had had on him. He sensed his own need for movement, momentum.

I am present at the hatching of my own dubious future.

And on the Tuesday, four days after he arrived, Hopko, Patterson and Chapman-Biggs came to the mews house and sat across from him at the conference table. The atmosphere was anticipatory. There were introductions, first names. Mangan, still in bare feet, made coffee. Hopko began the business abruptly.

“The web address that was left in your flat in Addis is that of a darknet site. Very deep, very secure, the tech wallahs tell me. The site asks for a key. We assume that the password will allow us access, but we haven’t tried yet.”

“Why not? Why haven’t you tried?”

Hopko smiled.

“We were waiting for you.”

“Is it him?”

Hopko made a
who-knows
gesture.

“The tech wallahs say they anticipate that inside the site will be some sort of secure communications protocol.”

A silence. Mangan watched her, this short, implacable woman with the teased-up dark hair, the expensive suit, the silver dripping from her like some metallic crop awaiting harvest. Patterson sat very still at her side, tall, aligned, in a severe navy blue suit, her flinty look on.

“It’s our belief,” said Hopko, “that
HYPNOTIST
is now in China and that he is trying to communicate with us securely. We are going to find
HYPNOTIST
, Philip. And we are going to run him and we are going to find out what he is about. And you, if you are willing, will help.”

Mangan felt his pulse sharpen.

“How? I’m blown in China. The Ministry of State Security has a file on me two foot thick. What should I do? Wear a wig?”

Hopko smiled.

“Wouldn’t help. They’ll pick you up with facial recognition software. Or they’ll spot you with behavioral tracking. Or they’ll lift a hair off the pillow in your hotel room and match your DNA. Or, if my experience is anything to go by, some bugger you once knew will recognize you in an airport or a hotel lobby and shout out your name. If we send you back, they’ll know you’re back.”

“So? How?”

“We intend you to be one element of, let’s say, a broader effort. You will be a friendly face for him when meetings abroad can safely be arranged. You’ll be a conduit. You will be an initial eye on his product. You will provide continuity and reassurance. The operation will be larger than you, Philip, but you will be a presence within it.”

Mangan frowned.

“I don’t understand. Where will I be? Here?”

Hopko turned to Patterson.

“Trish?”

Patterson shifted in her seat, opened a file.

“We have a proposition,” she said.

At the end of the mews stood a Victorian pub with hanging baskets of geraniums, The Compasses, which Mangan came quickly to love.
But Patterson surprised him by warning him sternly, and prudishly, about engaging in anything more than polite chat with the Hungarian girls behind the bar, an admonition he found at once patronizing and verging on prejudiced, he thought.

He bought a pint and sat at a wooden table outside, by himself.

He would, he had learned, leave his job at the paper. No great hardship there.

He would establish himself as an independent journalist. He would have a website, a blog. On it, he would post travel writing, commentary, reviews. He would commission pieces from others. There would be seed money from a generous and open-minded venture capitalist who specialized in media startups. The website would be speckled with ads, and it would flourish in a modest sort of way.

And, crucially, the website would provide Mangan with the journalist’s enviable prerogative: to be exactly wherever he wished, whenever he wished, talking to whomever he wished. He would travel light and move quickly.

A grand life fiction. Philip Mangan would hide in plain sight.

And there’d be a salary. A real one. Paid discreetly into a quiet little account in a jurisdiction where not too many questions were asked, one whose flag had distinctly British overtones.

“Journalism is a marvelous cover,” Hopko had said. “But we were ordered hands off journalists, oh, years ago. Couldn’t touch them, let alone recruit them. Supposedly we were protecting the reputations of the media companies, keeping the reporters above suspicion. Perhaps it was wise. But, now. Well, things are a little different.”

“As cover goes, Philip, it’s cushy,” said Patterson, and there had been laughter. Mangan wondered what un-cushy cover would be.

He drank his pint, felt the gentle bite of it in the warm evening. Londoners were emerging from offices, shops, from the station, clutching bags, children, a woman held a bouquet and looked around herself, puzzling out the streets. Mangan thought for a moment about lives he might live. At some point in the future.

His operational focus would be
HYPNOTIST
. He might be required to assist with other operations. In Asia, or elsewhere.

He was to undergo a month of intensive indoctrination and training.

This is how.

The following day, a beginning. At eight in the morning, Mangan opened the door to Patterson and two tech wallahs holding black flight cases.

In the conference room, they quietly unpacked two laptop computers, set them on the table and connected them to the Internet. The men worked quietly, fastidiously. They were both young, had the look of students, postgraduates perhaps.

“So, what we have here,” murmured one, to Mangan, “is a connection to a darknet.” Mangan looked over his shoulder. “An ironclad browser, all encrypted, which will take you off to places your everyday white bread browser won’t, you see. And all twenty-four-carat anonymous as you do it.”

“What places?” said Mangan.

“Well, that’s just it. All sorts of places down there. Some of it’s not very nice, is it, Jeff?”

The other man shook his head.

“Shocking, some of it.”

“There’s lots of drugs. Big sites where you can order up your crystal or your skag. Pay in Bitcoin. There’s crims, looking for jobs. Kiddie fiddlers. Crypto-anarchists. Terrorists. Carders. All sorts.”

“Spend much time down there, do you?” said Patterson.

“Oh, yes,” said the man, mildly. “Because in the dark no one can see you. No one knows who you are. So the spies like it just as much as all the other low-lifes. Don’t we, Jeff?”

“We’re right at home, Michael.”

“So, if we’re careful, and we set up a nice little encrypted file-sharing site, we can talk to people down here and exchange all sorts of goodies, without any danger of being seen, or overheard.”

“And that,” said Jeff, “is exactly what your friend seems to have done, bless him.”

On the other laptop, Hopko suddenly filled the screen, peering at her camera with the air of a troubled landlady.

The site, when they found it, was nondescript. Black screen, with a password prompt.

“Everybody agreed?” said Hopko, raspy over the wireless link. The two techs nodded.

“We’re happy,” said Patterson.

“Philip?” said Hopko.

“Yes. Sure.”

“Tally-ho, then.”

Michael slowly read out the password, a long jumble of letters and digits, one at a time. Jeff repeated them back and tapped them in, hit Enter.

The cursor blinked for a few seconds. A single line of text appeared.

They waited. Hopko bustled off. Jeff and Michael gazed at the screen, seemed to enter a sort of vegetative state. Mangan went upstairs, made tea and toast. After a while, Patterson joined him and sat, watched him spreading butter, marmalade.

“Have you thought about it?” she said.

“Of course. I haven’t thought about anything else.”

“And?”

Mangan took a bite of toast.

“I’m still here.”

“There’s something they didn’t tell you.”

He stopped chewing.

“You’re going to be fluttered.”

There was a noise on the stairs. Jeffrey was standing there, looking awkward.

“Sorry to interrupt, but I think we might have something.”

A brief ribbon of text in the darkness.

“Since you have no recognition code,” said Michael, the tech wallah, slowly, “I would suggest no name, just a relevant identifier.”

Patterson looked at him, questioningly.

“Well, Philip?”

Mangan considered, rubbed his unshaven chin.

“Try, African friend.”

A pause.

“Tell him, hyena town.”

“What?” said Patterson. “What the hell does that mean?”

“What does that mean to you, Philip?” said Hopko, over the link.

Mangan swallowed.
What?

“I’ve no idea,” he said.

“Think, Philip,” said Patterson. “Peter? Is it a word code?”

Mangan thought back, saw the market on the smoky hillside, the rattling shoe production line. Peter?

“Nary a Peter comes to mind, I’m afraid.”

“Jesus Christ,” said Patterson.

“Oh. Hang on,” he said.

“
What?
” said Patterson.

He looked at her.

“Just… just keep your knickers on, Trish.”

Patterson looked as if she might deliver a sharp blow to his throat.

“Philip, that is the wrong thing to say to me just now. If we do not reply, he may log off and we’ll lose him forever. So fucking think of something to say to him. Now.”

“If it’s him,” said Michael.

“It’s him,” said Mangan. “Ask him, what food do you hate most?”

The reply was immediate.

A beat, then more text.

“Write, the fat. Kneeling in the snow.”

Hopko spoke via the link. “Where is he, precisely?”

“He’s in Kunming,” said Mangan, “the southwest.”

Hopko again. “I want you to get him to commit to a third country meeting. Soon. Make him plan.”

Then just the blinking cursor in the blackness.

“The Peter thing,” said Mangan. “It’s derived from Latin, isn’t it?
Or Greek? One of them. It means stone. His surname, Shi, means stone. He’s Peter. Rocky.”

Patterson was giving him a you-can’t-be-serious look.

“His sense of humor at work,” said Mangan, and Patterson noted the budding empathy of the handler for his agent.

“And that, Philip,” said Hopko up close to the camera, her features rounded, distorted, “is why we pay you the big bucks.”

Oxford

The Chen girl was not hard to find. Nicole attended an event sponsored by the Oxford University Chinese Students’ Association at the Business School, a lecture on the future of Anglo-Chinese business links given by a former British ambassador. The man droned on and on from a lectern, a face the color of uncooked pork, a soul-crushing hour of platitudinous jargon. Then, dear God, questions. She allowed her mind to drift, thought of New York, Hong Kong.

And then there she was, standing, reaching for the microphone, all petite and virginal, wearing leggings, a loose beige top that slipped from one shoulder. Her question, something earnest about the sustainability of China’s growth model, corruption, Western over-optimism.

The ambassador answered carefully, moved on, allowing his eyes to wander hopefully across the audience. For a second, Madeline Chen looked bemused, unimpressed, but yielded the microphone with a shake of her hair, a downward, impatient look.

Afterward, there was warm white wine under neon strip lights in the common room. Nicole circled, then approached.

“Hi!” she said, her language English, mannerisms American.

“Hi,” said Madeline Chen, frowning at her.

“I thought your question was the most interesting part of the evening so far. But there’s still time, right?” She laughed. “I’m Nicole.” Held out her hand. The Chen girl took it, let it go quickly.

“I am Madeline.”

“Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m new, just arrived, so I don’t know anyone.” She adopted a hopeful look. The Chen girl regarded her, her eyes flickering down and up again, registering the silk shirt, the jeans from Barney’s, the Tiffany bracelet.

“So where are you from?” said Nicole.

“Beijing. You are American?”

“No. Taiwanese. I’m from Taipei. But I’ve been in the States the last few years.”

The Chen girl was paying attention now, looking at her searchingly.

Nicole switched to Mandarin, peppered Madeline with questions about Oxford, about Britain, weather, food. Madeline answered guardedly, tried to turn the conversation around.

“So what’s your subject?” she said.

Nicole grinned a does-it-really-matter grin, flapped a hand.

“Oh, Chinese strategic doctrine. Ships, nukes, sea lanes. So tedious.”

Madeline smiled a disbelieving smile.

Nicole stood closer to her.

“So will you show me around a bit? I don’t know the first thing about this place except it’s old and creepy and damp. Perhaps we could meet up.” She looked expectant.

“Perhaps,” said Madeline.

Nicole said nothing more, just smiled and handed her card to the hostile target and with a meaningful look swept from the room, Madeline Chen watching her go.