Spy Games (34 page)

The crowd spilled from the floodlit building. Mangan heard rotors and engines. Limousines and black SUVs were speeding away into the darkness. A group of women in evening gowns clutching purses were attempting to board a small bus. Men in suits were riding mopeds, bumping across the lawns.

They ran away from the building, past fountains, beds of orchids, out of the light. Sweat was running into Mangan’s eyes, stinging. He looked over to where he thought the river was, saw a helicopter hovering, a searchlight trained on the dock, the
thunk-thunk
of its rotors. Rocky was ahead of him, running doggedly, splay-footed, the backpack bouncing up and down. They ran deeper into darkness, towards the trees, and then they were forcing their way into undergrowth, out of sight. They pushed on, following the tree line, moving parallel to the river, the ground rising. Mangan was slowing, his chest pounding, ribs hurting badly now, specks dancing in his eyes.

“I have to stop,” he said.

Rocky slowed, turned.

“What? Are you mad? No stopping.”

“Just for a minute.” Mangan bent double, retched, spat. “How much farther?”

“Two kilometers. Maybe three. Something. We must go.”

“Just wait, for Christ’s sake.”

Mangan looked out from the tree line. They had gained some height. He saw that the vehicles speeding away from the complex had been stopped by a roadblock. A queue had built up, drivers leaning on their horns. The helicopter was still over the dock. He saw its searchlight, the river’s glitter. He could just make out shadowy black figures moving about outside the complex, a scattering of the clientele still on the steps, the lawns, some pulling suitcases on wheels. And then, to the edge of his vision, a flicker of movement. A man had come out of the building by a side door and was running across the lawn in the same direction Mangan and Rocky had come. Mangan touched Rocky’s arm and pointed.

“It’s him,” he said.

Behind the Clown, three of the black-clothed figures were moving fast, effortlessly. They were catching him. The Clown half-turned, saw them just yards behind him and ran for the tree line. But the three of them were with him in seconds, and one did something with a foot and the Clown was down, rolling on the grass. One of the men had him covered with a weapon. Another grabbed him by his jacket, hauled him to a sitting position. The Clown had his hands up as if trying to fend them off. They seemed to be talking. One of the men delivered a hard kick to the Clown’s midriff, but the Clown carried on talking, gesturing to the tree line. The three men in black all looked in unison toward the trees.

“Shit,” said Rocky.

“What?” said Mangan.

“He’s told them.”

“What? Told them what?”

“Where we’re going.”

Two of the men had shouldered their machine pistols and stepped away from the Clown, who sat on the grass, leaning on one hand. The
third man, the one covering him, moved in closer. A fraction of a second later there was a mild
tap tap
sound on the air and the Clown slumped quickly to the side. The man repositioned himself.
Tap tap
.

Mangan felt the falling sensation engulf him, as if something deep and heavy inside him were yawling through space, drawing his stomach and heart down, and for an instant he was quite lost; he felt himself going over, caught himself with one hand in the cool damp earth, leaf litter. He held himself there, a prickling rising up his back, a flushing in the face, the feeling that his bowels would open, that he’d shit. Rocky was whispering something, the same thing over and over. Mangan couldn’t make out what it was.

More people were running now, women in gowns and mini-dresses, men in tuxedos, the croupiers, scattering across the lawn. Someone was screaming. A moped was describing a wide circle across the grounds, looking for a way out. The three men had left the body crumpled on the lawn and were loping toward the tree line. One was using a walkie-talkie. They moved with a powerful, unhurried grace. Rocky was pawing at him. He stood, stumbled on into the wet dark. Rocky had them on some sort of path, beaten earth, patches of mud, puddles, the surge and ebb of insects. Mangan felt himself retreating inward.
This is how it works
, an inner voice was telling him. This is how fear works, when you are here rushing through the heat and the night and the new appalling knowledge of it all.

I am present at the hatching of my terror.

They ran, upward, in the darkness, Rocky keeping a punishing pace toward the top of the rise. Mangan thought of the men coming through the trees. Rocky took them off the path, into undergrowth. It slowed them, and made their progress noisy, so they went back onto the path. After eight or ten minutes, Mangan thought he heard footfalls some distance below. He stopped, his chest a furnace, hissed at Rocky. They listened. Not so far behind now. Rocky, bathed in sweat, was clenching his fists. He gestured urgently, making a sign to
go right. They cut off the path again, quietly. A downward slope, then a wrecked wire fence. Mangan saw a darkened building silhouetted against the night sky, Rocky running for it, up steps, through a splintered and rotting wooden doorway. A long corridor, something soft and squelching beneath their feet, and a stench of mold, disrepair.

“Where the fuck are we?”

“Quiet! Just follow.”

Mangan could see almost nothing; he blundered behind Rocky, a crunching of broken glass underfoot, up more stairs, the banister damp, slimy. A frenzied flutter of wings above him scared him. Bats? Then rotors,
thunk-thunking
in from the direction of the river, and everything was glowing. He looked up at shafts of light boring in through holes in the roof. He looked around himself. Rocky had dropped to one knee, staying very still, head down, one hand over his eyes to protect his night vision.

They were in a wreck of a place, wooden paneling splitting from the walls, vile, sodden carpet scattered with filth. In the sudden light Mangan saw abandoned gaming tables, a vast
fu
character on the wall, spilling golden chips into a red, glittering ether, streaked with slime. The rotors deafening now, the beams playing around the room.

Still. Stay still. They see movement.

The helo repositioned, the beams stalking away, playing along the outside wall now, hunting. Rocky was up and moving, through two more reeking gaming rooms of moldering baize and rusting slot machines, to a window, crouching. Mangan came up beside him. The searchlight was scanning the front of the building. And there, briefly illuminated, as the beam painted them, the three men, standing on the cracked concrete forecourt, one pointing, another checking his weapon. What were they waiting for?

Mangan forced the words out, his voice someone else’s.

“Do you have a plan? Are you going to tell me what it is?”

“There’s a boat. A fast boat. Driver is waiting. I keep him there, in case. We go there.”

Mangan closed his eyes, shook his head.

“We can’t go back on the river.”

“Yes, fast boat.” Rocky patted the air, a
calm-down
gesture.

“We can’t.”

Rocky rounded on him.

“Where do we go, then? How else? You want to drive? Hundred and twenty miles through Myanmar to the Thai border? You want that? Or walk maybe? Or maybe we follow those cars, the mopeds back into China. You want that? What do you want?”

The men had started to move toward the building. Rocky swore, reached in one of the pockets on his vest, brought out his handheld. He poked at the touchscreen.

“Come,” he said.

They ran toward the back of the building, down a long dark corridor lined with what appeared to be hotel rooms, the doors splitting, the jambs warped, holes in the drywall, a smell of fouled drains. Rocky laid the handheld down on the carpet. He took Mangan by the arm and they went farther down the corridor. Rocky motioned him to lie down. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Mangan made out at the far end of the corridor a window to the night sky. Rocky was rummaging in the backpack, had pulled out something, but Mangan could not make out what it was. Mangan pulled the sidearm from his waist, but Rocky hissed at him.

“
No!
No shooting, Philip. Let me do this.”

They lay there, three minutes, four. The alarm went off on the handheld, a gritty, metallic whine. The handheld pulsed silver, forty feet from where they lay, casting a glow on the walls and ceiling. The whine grew louder. Another minute passed. Still, the alarm whined.

Silhouetted against the window, now, shapes flitting, very slow, very silent. Two, or three?

They were coming.

Mangan felt Rocky shift, very slowly, bring up whatever it was he was holding.

The first of them approached the shrieking handheld, weapon to his shoulder, scanning, the muzzle stroking the air. The man knelt,
reached very slowly to pick up the device, and as he did so he looked up.

From Rocky’s hands shot a silent, flickering, green beam.

The beam played down the corridor, scudding over the walls, ceiling, running over the bodies and the weapons and the faces of the three men. Mangan saw the eyes of the men as tiny points of light in the darkness as the beam touched them, watched the men jerking away. A thud, a weapon dropping to the floor? A shout.
Zenme?
“How?” Then a wail, turning to a scream. And one of them was trying to run, hitting the wall, thudding away down the corridor, Mangan could see his lurching silhouette. Another got some rounds off, silenced, their
thop-thop
in the darkness over the screaming of the alarm, but Mangan couldn’t tell where they were going. He forced himself downward into the carpet, felt specks of plaster falling on his hair. The green beam was still playing down the corridor, the handheld’s alarm screeching now, distorting. The first of the men, the one who had gone to pick up the handheld, was on all fours, one hand over his eyes, blind, gasping, his breath catching, chest heaving. His cheeks were wet, liquid dripping through his fingers. And the thought skittered across Mangan’s mind that he had never seen anything so brutal.

They ran, took another stairway down, and fled through a fire door into the night, over an expanse of shattered concrete and rubble, making once again for the trees. The helicopter loitered over the building, didn’t see them go.

Mangan was close to collapse when they came on the boathouse. Rocky, pulling him along, soaked in sweat, bright-eyed, maddened, hammered on the door, Mangan falling to his knees. An old man in faded blue denim beckoned them in. Mangan couldn’t stand, crawled into the boathouse, which was lit by a single bulb, the river slapping and shimmering against a tiny concrete dock. The boatman regarded him, spoke in broken Mandarin.

“Who is he?” he said.

“Never fucking mind. Get him on board,” said Rocky.

The boat was a wooden thing with a flat bottom, twenty foot or so, two powerful outboards on the stern. But the boatman was pulling up panels.

Christ, no.

“How long will it take?” Rocky was saying.

The boatman shrugged.

“Go fast, no stop, maybe ten hours.”

And then Rocky and the boatman were pulling him onboard and forcing him down. He tried to struggle, pushed against the
boatman’s arms of corded muscle, felt the man’s hands like clamps on his shoulders. He thought of the weapon for an instant but couldn’t reach it. They made him lie down on the same foul, sodden rubber mats, and Rocky was lying next to him, and the boatman dropped in a bottle of water, then the panels came down and the light was gone, and the boatman seemed to be hammering them back in place.

Mangan heard himself emit a scream, battered his fists against the planking, thrashed with his legs, but the engines started, drowned everything out. The wood felt slippery, soapy, against his fingers. He could see nothing. The boat started to move, the water bubbling beneath the hull. His breath was coming shallow and fast, panicky, the air hot and soaked with the stench of the river.

“Are you there?” he said.

“Yes.” Rocky’s voice was tight, straining over the engines.

The boat was starting to pitch and jerk with the river’s chop.

“This is our coffin.”

“No, no.”

“I cannot do this.”

Rocky was speaking, but he could hear nothing over the engines, the vibrating hull, the slosh and slap of the water. The boat pitched mercilessly, Mangan scrabbling for purchase against the wet wood. He was sodden, deafened, weak with panic, when his mind suddenly flooded with a childhood memory.

At a fairground, he had been urged onto a ride, a drum that started to spin, flattened you against the wall and held you there as the floor fell away. He was terrified, loathed it and cried and wet himself, and his mother had pulled him away and taken him home and his father had not said anything, smoked his pipe. Damp with piss, he had sat and watched television, an animation, singing animals in an herb garden, his mother telling him not to be babyish. The animals’ songs looped in his head—
I’m Dill the dog, I’m a dog called Dill—
as the boat crashed down on the water and the engines screamed. He tried to shout to Rocky.
Should have told the polygraph
man about that. So he could calibrate me.
But the words came out blurred, knotted, half-formed.

He was retching, choking, drifting, receding.

By three, Mac had them hard by the river, just outside Chiang Khong. They stopped by the bridge, looked across the water. Mac turned off the car, and the night was silent, no traffic, just the effervescent insects.

“Now what?” he said.

Patterson ignored him. She had the laptop out, was cabling it to the sat phone, searching for a signal.

She said nothing, showed Mac the message, then Cliff, who nodded.

“So we park up and wait,” he said.

Mac started the car and they nosed up the road. Chiang Saen, she calculated, was about thirty miles. They settled on a rutted track behind a temple, a stand of bamboo and palm trees hiding them from the road. Mac put his chair back, tried to sleep. The heat was oppressive, even in the pre-dawn. Cliff got out of the car and ambled a way off, stretched, shook out the stiffness. Patterson watched him go, then got out and followed him. He turned a corner in the track, slipped from view.

When she caught up with him, he was murmuring into a secure handheld.

She walked back to the car, the disappointment aching in her.

At the beginning, she thought, we are in control. And then control slips from us. Who is in control now? Who are we serving?

Late evening at VX. Hopko, her left wrist wrapped in a beaten silver spiral, glasses poised in mid-air for emphasis. Tonight, thought
Chapman-Biggs, she is embattled. She demands the attention of the crowd with her smoky charisma, her knowingness, but she has choices to make.

She had a screen set up in her office. Chapman-Biggs, Mobbs, C, and a cluster of other Service worthies studied it.

“The reports,” she was saying, “are filtering out from the Hong Kong press and are as yet, unconfirmed.”

She looked around the table.

“They report odd troop movements in Beijing. Social media is showing images of a cordon around Party Headquarters at Zhongnanhai.”

Click.

On the screen, a photograph of Chang’an Avenue, shot at night from a moving vehicle, the image soaked in orange, the street lamps streaked across it. Before the vermilion walls of Zhongnanhai, security barriers lining the street. A column of
wujing
, the paramilitary police, snaked away past five or six armored crowd control vehicles.

“The embassy is being roused from its stupor. Foreign reporters are trying to get down there, but they’re being stopped before they can get close.”

She turned and studied the image.

“And we’re seeing messages on social media saying roads in and out of Beijing monitored, checkpoints and what have you. They’re deleted as soon as they appear.”

Click. Beijing airport, more armored vehicles on the approach road,
wujing
lining the shoulder.

“And we have Chinese bloggers, God bless them, declaring that troops of the Capital Garrison and all Beijing Military Region have been ordered to stay put in barracks. Normally something we’d discount, but Cheltenham say they’re seeing something strange. A big military exercise in Inner Mongolia has gone silent. Airwaves should be crackling with signals, but they’re not. Everyone’s stopped work. Or gone home. Reduced Air Force activity, too. The People’s Liberation Army seems to be on hiatus.”

She smoothed her hair.

“So this is what it looks like.”

“What what looks like?” said the Director.

Hopko sighed.

“China coming undone.”

C, arms folded, his head cocked at her, spoke.

“I don’t think that’s going to happen though, do you?”

Hopko waited a moment.

“I wasn’t aware it was up to us.”

C laughed, a harsh little bark, spread his arms wide.

“But, Valentina, we have exercised extraordinary leverage, wouldn’t you say? We’ve been able to warn, to advise, even provided them with first-rate operational intelligence, the pinpoint location of key plotters.”

He paused, watched her through his rimless spectacles, and then rammed it home.

“And all due to your superb tradecraft, Val, your peerless operational planning.”

And it was there, for a sliver of a moment, that Chapman-Biggs saw Hopko reel.

“I hope they are grateful,” she said.

“Oh, they are. They contacted us twenty minutes ago.”

“And?”

“The Chinese Communist Party thanks us and welcomes our intervention on behalf of security and stability in the face of criminal plots.”

No one said anything. Then C spoke again.

“Oh, everyone is grateful, Val, everyone. They’re, well, relieved, frankly, not to have to think about all those Chinese accounts in Jersey and Cayman.”

She had put her glasses on the table in front of her and sat looking at them, with her hands in her lap.

“Foreign Office is thrilled,” C went on, “to be basking in Beijing’s approval. Anticipating all sorts of goodies, they are.” He nodded, but she had had enough.

“Did they say anything else?”

“Oh, if you mean did they say anything about Mangan, yes. Yes, they did. Said they had no knowledge of his whereabouts. Which I took to mean that if he can skedaddle, they won’t go out of their way to find him, wring him dry and shoot him. Rather generous of them, I thought. Given his history.”

A long, awkward silence. Chapman-Biggs felt himself on the very edge of saying something, anything to fill it. Until C finally broke it.

“They do, however, want
HYPNOTIST
, of course.”

Hopko put one hand on the table, palm down.