Spy Games (22 page)

A spell of heat, the sun a mild shock, turning London’s brown-gray stone to amber and gold in the morning. Mangan left the mews house and took the Tube to Highgate, and walked through Waterlow Park. He found a bench, lit a cigarette, watched the white-skinned girls in shorts and bikini tops and sunglasses lying on the grass, reading, texting. No one acknowledged him or spoke to him.

The park was filled with people, but was so quiet he could hear a dove cooing in a tree, the attenuated roar of the city just beyond. He smelled freshly cut grass and thought suddenly of the garden at Burger House, the nails, shards of iron, the feel of packed earth under his hands. Jarred, he threw his cigarette away, stood, walked quickly.

Addis, lying fraught just beneath the surface of memory.

And just a little deeper, a little darker, China, a cold highway at night, the unexpected heft of a knife in his hand.

Hardened operative Philip Mangan encounters inconvenient recollections, courageously ignores them.

He thought of Rocky Shi, his agent. His
joe
. And now, keeper of his future. For everything, Mangan was coming to understand, depended on Rocky’s next moves. Far from running his agent, he was in thrall to this man’s decisions, and his nervous tics and chewed
nails, his envelopes under the door with their lethal, cryptic messages, the smile stretched fit to burst, the hyperextended personality of the man. His ingenuous, conniving
joe
.

In a café with red awnings, he ordered an omelette and coffee. The waitress, young, east European, lips pink and glossy, served him wordlessly.

Rocky loathed women, Mangan realized. He was foul to the weak, dolled-up girls in the nightclub, wary of the tall woman who had bested his goon in a lift, dismissive of his own mother. And he was fascinated by men with power.

So what fascinating man was he serving? Certainly not himself. What fascinating, powerful man was he in thrall to?

Mangan sat and ate, paid, ran his hands through his hair, then walked more, his long stride devouring the pavement in the warm, windless afternoon. He walked for two hours, meandering southward through silent swathes of Victorian north London, through Holloway and Barnsbury. He had a sense of gathering himself in, of shaping an understanding of what was to come.

In Islington, a poster outside a small cinema caught his eye. He went in, bought a ticket for the matinee. It was a Chinese film, a new retelling of the fall of Nanjing, a huge black-and-white wail of pain and fury, Japanese officers in puttees beheading Chinese soldiers by a river, tiny children screaming in bombed-out streets, the camera eking out their trauma.

He came out in the early evening, crossed the street to a pub and sat outside, putting away three beers fast, one after the other.

Back in Paddington, Patterson was waiting for him, sitting in the darkening studio flat. He hadn’t known that she had a key. He stood, swaying slightly.

“There’s a message,” she said, quietly.

“Christ. That’s only three weeks away,” said Patterson. They were sitting side by side at the conference table, Jeff at the keyboard.

“Why’s that a problem?” said Mangan.

Patterson rubbed her eyes, looked at him.

“My, you’re keen,” she said. “Well, we have a lot to do—if we even get the authority to move. Your cover. Your preparation.”

“But now I have been introduced to the correct template for the, what do you call it, the single-source CX report, how can I possibly be considered unprepared?”

Patterson was uncomfortable with the deadpan. Hopko did it, and she didn’t like it. She didn’t find it funny. She found it aggressive. It was intended to leave her at a loss. She decided to ignore it.

“Tell him yes. To be confirmed,” she said.

Mangan was frowning at her.

“Is there a chance the answer might be no?” he said.

Patterson had been wondering the same.

“There are battles still to fight, Philip.”

That surely could not be considered overstepping her authority, she thought.

But it could.

“What the hell do you mean, you said yes?” This from Drinkwater, of Security Branch, an iron-faced, gray-haired pressure cooker of a man. To Drinkwater, Patterson thought, all operations threatened the security of the Service and should be abandoned forthwith.

“I said yes, to be confirmed.”

They sat in Hopko’s sanctum, beneath her Ming dynasty landscapes, gentle birds fluttering on spring branches, Hopko delphic behind her desk, Drinkwater going off like a fire hydrant.

“Thereby
intimating
that we would confirm. This is… outrageous.” He accompanied his speech with a tight, wide-eyed
shaking of the head, designed to project exasperation, speechlessness. They act out, Patterson reflected.

“What would you rather I had replied to him?” she said, which brought a direct look from Hopko.

“What I would
rather
,” said Drinkwater, “is that you had come to a grown-up.”

“It was eight on a Saturday evening,” she said. “Are grown-ups available and sober at that time?”

“I certainly wasn’t,” said Hopko, amiably. Drinkwater’s face was puce against his lightweight gray suit, his steel-wire hair.

“I
will
be raising Security Branch’s concerns at the ops meeting,” he said, grandly. He stood, regarded Patterson for a moment. She met his look. He turned and left the room.

“It’s a mistake to humiliate them, Trish,” Hopko said.

“What, then? Tell me what I should do.”

“Well, my strategy was always to try and sort of smother them with respect. But I can appreciate that you might find that hard.” She smiled over her glasses.
Dismissed.

Patterson stood, wanting to salute, instead inclining her head in Hopko’s direction. She left the sanctum and walked down the corridor to her cubicle. At her desk, she reached into her bag and withdrew a tupperware container. She spread a paper napkin on the desk, opened the container and laid out a bagel, a slice of cheese, a yogurt and a banana.

As she ate methodically, she reflected on Operation
WEAVER
, for so it had been dubbed by Hopko from her throne. Hopko appeared intent on managing the enterprise herself.

Why?

Why would an officer as senior as Hopko, a Controller, assert day-to-day management of an op?

What was it in Rocky Shi, the round-shouldered colonel with the unfathomable motives, that Hopko saw?

Oxford

Madeline’s house was just off St Clement’s, a brick two-up two-down
painted pale blue, dustbins in the front yard, a bicycle. Nicole walked the length of the street twice, then stopped and waited at the corner. It was nearly twenty-five minutes until the girl appeared. She wore a jean jacket and earphones, and was carrying a heavy-looking tote bag. Books? Returning them to the library, perhaps. Madeline turned, locked the front door and began walking in the direction of town. Nicole kept her distance until the bridge, then caught the girl up, tapped her on the shoulder. Madeline turned, startled, pulled the earphones out abruptly.

“Hello, stranger,” said Nicole.

Madeline blinked.

“Oh. Hi,” she said.

“Look,” said Nicole, “I just wanted to apologize. For the other night. I didn’t mean to… make you uncomfortable. I’m sorry. I just wanted to say that.” She gave her best contrite smile.

“Okay,” said Madeline, evenly.

“I was prying. I shouldn’t have. It’s just… you seem to be such a…” But Madeline was looking past her, and as Nicole turned she cursed herself, her own stupidity, her shitty tradecraft.

The man stood perhaps six feet away from her, holding up a smartphone. Nicole registered his wrinkled shirt, lank hair, then the
click
of the digital shutter. And again.
Click
.

The man lowered the smartphone and stood, unmoving, looking at her.

Nicole turned back to Madeline.

“What’s that for, might I ask?” she said.

“Precautions, I think,” said Madeline.

Nicole just smiled.
Enough of this shit, now.

“I’ll see you soon, Madeline.” She turned and walked away.

“I don’t think so,” she just heard Madeline say, to her back.

“Have you ever handled a weapon, sir?”

“No,” said Mangan.

The sergeant was barrel-chested, shaven-headed, braced in his
movements. A Royal Marine, someone had said. The shooting range had a corrugated iron roof, the rain drumming on it, neon lighting rendering Mangan even paler than usual. Between him and the sergeant, on a table, lay a mournful little pistol. Patterson watched.

“No. Well, all right then.” The sergeant scratched his cheek. “Well, sir, I’m told that we are going to go over some basics today, give you an idea of how to operate the weapon.”

He picked up the pistol.

“Sig Sauer P938. Subcompact, slender, light, easy to conceal. But, a 9 mm round.”

Patterson saw Mangan’s sigh. The sergeant’s thick index finger flitted around the weapon’s black exterior.

“Here you have the safety, the magazine release, and here, you’ll see, sir, useful little night sights.” Mangan leaned in and peered. “Seven-round magazine, sir, a nice little weapon effective up to, well, far enough for our purposes.” The sergeant cleared his throat.

Mangan held the weapon, then learned to hold it properly, both bony hands wrapped around it, one cupping the other.

“Index finger lying along the trigger guard at all times, please, sir.”

Mangan loaded a magazine, felt the metallic
chenk
of the slide on release, and Patterson wondered if she saw a slight smile appearing.

He fired off twelve magazines, and the targets were messy, peppered irregularly, the rounds tending down and left as he squeezed the grip too hard.

“Well, that’ll properly frighten them,” said the sergeant.

Patterson shot a three-inch group.

She drove them back to Paddington from the range in a Service car. Mangan was quiet, watched the bleak motorway slip by. She parked outside the house, and the two of them got out and stood there.

“Oh, sod it,” she said. “Come on, Philip.”

They walked through the jostling crowds, past the station, down Praed Street, to a tapas place. Mangan ordered a bottle of Albarino
which came cold and dewy. He seemed to relax a bit, Patterson thought, noting how the relaxation correlated with proximity to alcohol. The restaurant opened onto the pavement and they sat in the cool, damp evening air, candles on the table. They ordered squid fried in paprika, roasted figs, grilled pigeon, chorizo. Mangan poured the wine, made a mock serious
cheers
gesture, and drank.

“So,” he said.

“So.”

“I now have my license to kill.”

She laughed.

“You have nothing of the sort.”

“You seemed… adept.”

“I was a soldier. Before.”

He nodded.

“You went to Iraq, Afghanistan, presumably.”

“Presumably,” she said.

“What were you? Infantry?”

“Intelligence Corps.”

He raised his eyebrows, sat forward.

“And what was that like?”

“It was… interesting work.”

“Oh, come on Trish, what was it like?”

She sipped her wine, hating the question.

“It was hot and demanding. And it got very brutal at times.”

He made a regretful face.

“Subject off-limits?”

“Somewhat.”

He put his head to one side, considered her. He’s looking for another tack, she thought. The restaurant was filling up, the clatter of crockery, the buzz of voices.

“Where are you from?” he said.

“Nottingham,” she said. “An estate on the outskirts. Dad was on the buses.”

“And Mum?”

“Cooked in a hospital kitchen.”

“Happy family?”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, a happy family. They were surprised when I went away to college. Felt like I was breaking everything up.”

“Where did you go to college?”

“Coventry.”

“And that’s where the army found you, I’ll bet.”

She nodded.

“Credulous black girl. All muscles and no sense. Dead eager,” she said. “They loved me.”

Steady on, she thought.

Mangan just nodded.

“Then Sandhurst,” he said, prompting.

“Yes. God, Sandhurst. Felt like a fairy tale. A wet, cold one. But I could go beagling. Got invited to balls.”

He smiled.

“I’m trying to see you in a ball gown.”

“I had one. It was a huge green thing. Held a powerful static charge.”

Mangan was laughing now.

“Did you enjoy them? The balls? Did you foxtrot?”

“What do you think? No. I stood and stared furiously at others.”

That’s enough now
. The food started to arrive on little pink plates, glistening with oil.

“And you, Philip? What of the blue remembered hills around… Orpington, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, it was. Orpington. My father was a doctor there. A GP. Mother was a teacher. But I went away to school, a sort of distressed gentlefolk place in Hampshire.”

Patterson had read the polygraph transcript, thought of Mangan weeping in the stairwell, didn’t let on.

“Why did they send you to boarding school? Only child, going away like that, seems strange.”

He shrugged.

“It spoke to their aspirations, I think. Important to be a well-rounded, emotionally stunted chap.”

“Did it make an emotionally stunted man of you?”

“What do you think?”

“You’re man enough, Philip,” she said, laughing. “Just not on the shooting range.” He laughed, too, for a second. But then she thought she saw a shadow cross his face.

They paused, ate, wiped the plates with crusty bread.

“And the freelance journalism, all the travel,” she said. “Why all that? It seems like a precarious sort of life.”

He considered, nodded.