INCARNATION (5 page)

From behind a curtain came the voices of the weavers, chanting the talim, the coded instructions that laid down the patterns for each design.

‘Let’s go through,’ said Mohammad. ‘My brother’s inside.’

They passed through the curtain into a much larger room. Four upright looms took up almost all the available space. The weavers squatted in front of them on wooden boards, their hands moving rapidly as they knotted the pattern through the cords. Tuft of wool was laid upon tuft in strict and ordered sequence, generating birds and flowers and Arabic letters as if from nothing.

‘Nabil!’ Mohammad spoke the name softly, as though calling upon a spirit of the air to leave its realm and join him on the dusty floor. One of the weavers, a tall man dressed in black, got to his feet and came towards them. He reached out a hand and took Dubey’s firmly.

‘Mr Dubey. My brother has told me much about you. He says he has business with you. And then, perhaps, I can speak with you as well.’

Dubey nodded and smiled. He turned to Mohammad.

‘What did Mr Dennison ask you to speak with me about, Mohammad?’

‘Oh, very little really. A trifling thing. He said I was to ask about your report. He said you will have written it by now, and that you will be carrying it with you.’

‘What report is that?’

‘How should I know? I am only to ask about it. If it is finished. And if it is with you.’

I don’t think it’s Mr Dennison’s business to know about my report.’

‘That’s not for me to enquire. He paid me to ask. Is it in your bag?’

‘I only have some nan in here. My wife expects me home with it for dinner.’

‘Who do you buy your nan from?’

‘Jamshid Khosraupur. He bakes the best.’

‘I’m sure he would not mind if I took a look at his nan. I’ve heard it’s very good, as you say.’

Mohammad’s hand reached out for the bag. Dubey made to push him aside, but he felt his arm taken by Nabil.

‘My brother would like to look in your bag, Mr Dubey.’ Nabil looked hard at him. There was no warmth in the look. 1 think it’s only polite to let him.’

The bag was pulled unceremoniously from Dubey’s hands, and opened. Mohammad lifted out the thin file containing the report.

‘This is very strange nan,’ he said. ‘Not very edible. Perhaps this Jamshid is not as clever a baker as I’d heard.’

Next to them, one of the weavers paused in his work and snickered at Mohammad’s lame joke. Nabil snapped at him, telling him to keep on weaving. Dubey took his handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead. It felt uncomfortably hot in the karkhana.

‘Maybe this is your report,’ said Mohammad. ‘The one Mr Dennison would like to see.’

‘My report is confidential. Not even Mr Dennison is authorized to see it. If he wants to see, he must ask through proper channels.’

Mohammad shook his head languidly. Nabil had not let go of Dubey’s arm.

‘I am Mr Dennison’s proper channel. He has paid me to bring him this report. Paid me very well. Much more than you can pay me to leave it alone.’

Suddenly, Nabil twisted his arm behind his back, grabbed his other arm, and held them both pinned hard in that position.

‘Don’t be such fools,’ Dubey shouted. ‘You know who I am. There will be a full inquiry if I’m harmed.’

Mohammad took a long knife from an inside pocket. It looked very sharp, as if it had been honed and honed to a perfect edge. When it entered his stomach, Sunil Dubey hardly felt it. He watched it go in with a sense of wonder, and he watched Mohammad draw it upwards, then down again with renewed astonishment, as if it was all happening to another person. Then the pain began, and with it the most terrible nausea. He saw Mohammad’s face spin, slowly at first, then at sickening speed. There were words in the air, but he could not catch them. And snatches of an old song, shuddering through his head and out again towards the open sky. He tried to follow where they had gone, but something exploded in his head, and he was blind and deaf and spinning down a dark tunnel that had no end.

Carstairs

‘T
hey’re waiting for you in room number seven, Mr Laing.’

Arwel Hughes was the larger-than-life uncle David had never had. A huge man, tall by Welsh standards, he’d played rugby for Neath in his youth, and had continued coaching a local team until a year or two ago. He and the loquacious Mrs Hughes had run the safe house out here in the Cotswolds for as long as anyone in the service could remember, trundling down to South Wales once a month in their battered Volkswagen estate, and coming back laden with laver bread from Bridgend and tubs of Joe’s ice-cream packed in ice.

Generations of spies and double agents had breakfasted on Glynis Hughes’s fry-ups of laver bread, sausage, and mushrooms, and gone to bed wondering how they’d ever get by back in Moscow or Peking without regular helpings of Joe’s strawberry sundae. It had tempted more than one KGB stalwart to consider doing a deal.

‘Who’s here? Anthony Farrar isn’t among them, is he?’

Arwel shook his balding head. He and David had always got on particularly well. They’d played more than one hard game of rugby together over the years, always on the same side, always on the winning side. And afterwards they’d gone to the pub together and talked. Over the years, Arwel had been one of the few people David could talk to about his troubles at home. He was a good listener.

‘I’m sorry about what’s happened, Mr Laing. I couldn’t help hearing.’

‘Don’t worry. If there’s one place you can’t keep a secret ...'

‘It’s the Secret Service. I know. But, it’s not right, all the same, sir. He’s your desk head, after all. It’s unforgivable to steal someone else’s wife at the best of times, sir, but ...’

‘He didn’t steal her, Arwel, you know that. She went of her own free will; in fact she was extremely willing. I’d better not say anything more, or you’ll be reporting me to our ever-vigilant masters.’

David never liked to be reminded about Anthony Farrar, his boss and successful rival for his wife’s affections. He had always had a fundamental dislike of the man even from the early days of their acquaintance; that had been less because of his cuckolding ways, which were notorious, or his looks, which Bronzino might have painted, or his connections, which Madame de Stael might have envied, than by reason of Farrar’s inherent unfitness for the job. His appointment had ruffled the usual feathers on the usual birds, but in his case the feathers had stayed ruffled. Of course, the man would have been perfectly suited to the task if all anyone had demanded of him had been polish, an ability to command anything that moved, and an innate knowledge of how to behave in the best clubs. It had been a political appointment at a time when the Desk needed more than ever a man with different abilities. ‘What’s in room seven?’ he asked.

‘They have a boy in there, sir. Chinese or something. Around the age of our Megan’s Richard. Mr Barker brought him down from London.’

‘Who else?’

‘Miss Potter; that new man from Section Six, Donaldson.'

‘The one with the squint?’

‘That’s him. And a Mr Ross, a Scotsman.’

‘Don’t know him.’

‘He knows you, sir. Or your name.’

David thanked him and set off along the corridor that led to rooms five to nine. The room numbers were an innovation of the Patterson years, part of the cold restructuring that had modernized and dehumanized the service. They’d done well enough in the old days with ‘second on the left’ or ‘the one at the end’. The house was small enough, after all, and homely enough. You could have fooled yourself into thinking you were spending the weekend with old friends. Now it was like a second-rate country house hotel, keeping up the pretensions but providing little of substance. Next thing the fry-ups would give way to pre-packed breakfasts from an outside contractor, and there’d be synthetic ice-cream on Formica tables in the evening.

Like all the rooms on this floor, number seven had a glass pane set in the door. David stopped before entering and looked inside. His colleagues were seated round a small table at whose head sat a boy of perhaps ten. He was not Han Chinese, that much was certain. Possibly Tajik, but more likely Uighur. Sinkiang Province, then. That would provide a link with Matthew.

He opened the door. Heads turned, but no one spoke. Softly, David closed the door behind him. Still no one spoke.

‘Something wrong?’ he asked. ‘Wasn’t I expected?’ It was the boy who spoke. He smiled at David, as though greeting an old friend.

‘Hello, David. You look surprised. I see you don’t recognize me.’

David looked at him blankly.

‘I see no reason why I should,’ he said. He turned to Pauline Potter. Pauline, like himself, was China Desk staff, an old trooper from the Peking embassy. ‘Suppose somebody explains to me what’s going on.’ I’m sorry, David. We wanted to see if he recognized you. It seems he has.’

‘Clearly you all have the advantage of me. Who is the boy?’

‘All in due course,’ said Pauline. ‘First let me introduce you. You know Richard Barker. And I think you’ve met Chris Donaldson from Section Six. The man beside him is Douglas Ross. Douglas is a field agent in northern India. The boy is his discovery. He’s been interviewed before this by P. J. Dennison.’ 

‘Why isn’t Dennison here?’ 

Ross answered the question for her. ‘He’s in London pow-wowing with your boss, Anthony Farrar. He may come down later today.’ 

‘Is this a border problem?’

David Laing was Britain’s leading intelligence expert on Chinese military activity in the western province of Sinkiang. Sinkiang, which was inhabited mainly by Uighur Muslims, was separated from India by the Karakoram Mountains, and the border region had long been a bone of contention between the two countries. A frontier problem would explain why Ross and Dennison from the India Desk would be here. But it didn’t make sense of Donaldson, whose section dealt with Iraqi nuclear capacity. And it didn’t explain the boy or his strange greeting. What had that meant, ‘recognized you’?

‘Not in the sense you mean,’ said Ross. ‘Nevertheless, I think there may be a problem with another border entirely.’

‘Meaning what exactly?’

‘Meaning the border between this life and the next.’

The man said the words flatly, without affectation of any sort. As though he meant them. It was as if they had stepped out of the ordinary world of intelligence-gathering into one of mediumship and astrology.

‘Like the X-Files?’

Barker chuckled, looked at David, and resumed the expressionless face he had worn until then. He’d be the boy’s minder, thought David, there to make sure his charge was treated well.

‘Why don’t you sit down, David?’ Pauline gestured to a chair next to her. She was a small woman, whose neat, nimble movements always surprised David by their delicacy. Her formidable intellect frightened him, and when in her presence he could not help feeling like a small schoolboy brought to explain himself to his headmistress. He sat down and waited.

‘Mr Barker, would you please leave us now?’ she asked. ‘You’re welcome to monitor proceedings on the screen in the next room, but the rest of this discussion is above top secret.’

Barker made no protest. That wasn’t part of his job. He made his departure in silence.

‘Exactly who’s in charge here?’ David asked when Barker had gone.

‘At the moment, I am,’ said Pauline. ‘By the time we’ve finished, you will be. Or so I hope.’

‘What about Farrar?’

‘He has overall responsibility. But this is your baby.’

‘Why wasn’t I notified before this? If it’s to be my baby, as you put it?’

‘The boy’s story had to be checked,’ said Pauline. ‘There was no point in pulling you off vital work on the off chance something might come of this.’

‘But now?’

‘Something will come of it. We’re fairly certain of that.’

‘And this nonsense about the afterlife?’

‘It may not be nonsense. Mr Ross will explain.’

Ross was fresh-faced and nervous, almost juvenile. His imperfectly tanned skin implied a tour of duty that had some years to go.

‘It started back in May,’ he said. ‘I received a message from an Indian intelligence officer in Srinagar, a man called Dubey. He didn’t tell me much, just that there was someone he thought I should meet. I went up and was introduced to Yongden here and his parents. Yongden said they had recently arrived in Kashmir from Ladakh. He claimed - this is not easy to explain - that he was the reincarnation of a British intelligence agent named Matthew Hyde. The name meant nothing to me, of course. I’m new in the service, and I believe Mr Hyde worked in quite a different area.’

‘And you swallowed this story?’

‘Of course not. I swallow nothing I might have to throw up again. Believe me, I took care. I questioned him closely. The interview did not go as I expected. For one thing, the boy speaks almost perfect English. I don’t think many children from Ladakh can do that.’ 

‘He’s not from Ladakh,’ David said. 

‘How can you know?’

‘I only have to look at him.’ He turned from Ross to the boy. ‘Khush, yakhshimusiz?’

The boy smiled, like someone who has been caught out in a minor deceit.

‘Yakhshi,’ he replied, as though he’d known David for years. There was no trace of embarrassment or guilt in his face or voice. ‘Ozinizchu? Qandaq ahwaliniz?’ Fine. How are you? How are things going?

‘He’s from Sinkiang,’ said David. ‘He’s a Uighur. Now, perhaps we can drop this silliness about reincarnations.’

‘Actually, I don’t think we can, David,’ Pauline said. ‘Where he comes from isn’t terribly important. It’s what he knows.’

‘He lied about where he came from. Presumably the rest is a lie as well.’

Donaldson treated the comment as a cue to speak for the first time.

‘I’m sorry, Mr Laing, but I think you’re jumping the gun here. The boy’s already been through exhaustive questioning. We’ve determined that, whatever the source of it, his story is basically true. He knows things it would be impossible for any child from Ladakh or, for that matter, Sinkiang to know. He knows about Operation Hong Cha.’