Spy Games (5 page)

Hoddinott grilled steaks and shrimp, doused them in butter and garlic. They ate in the gathering dark, a candle on the table, and Joanna propelled the conversation with self-deprecating anecdotes of life as a diplomatic spouse in Addis Ababa, the functions she attended, the committees, her exasperating book club. “Really, Philip, there we are, all these embassy ladies, earnest Americans, clever Germans, and we plough through all this worthy literary fiction, when all we secretly want is a jolly good bodice-ripper!” Mangan listened, did his best to be appreciative. Joanna’s ingenuousness was, he suspected, merely part of her cover. They were a Service couple, he was sure.

They saw him out afterward to a waiting taxi, waved from the doorstep in the darkness, Hoddinott’s arm around his wife.

The taxi ground back across Addis, windows open, letting in a breeze cluttered with the smells and sounds of the city’s late night, the crowds thronging the pavements, the boys hawking single cigarettes and bushels of
chat.

So he’d been “topped up.” A watchful Service, keeping an eye on an old, blown agent. He wasn’t ungrateful.

London

Kai thought the Park Lane restaurant must be one of the most effete and pointless places he’d ever been in. Charlie Feng was there, straight from the bank, in a suit, waiting for him, and two others were down from Cambridge. Kai walked across the bar to them, mumbled a greeting.

“Well, hello, Fan Kaikai,” said Charlie. “I wasn’t sure we’d see you.” He was speaking Mandarin.

“Well, here I am.”

They all looked at him, then at each other.

“So how are you?” said Charlie.

Kai looked around for a drink.

“I needed a break.”

“From what?”

“Everything.”

“So here you are with us.” Charlie Feng nodded a fake nod of satisfaction. “It’s a thrill to have you.”

The Cambridge boys smirked.

They went to the table, sat surrounded by faux chinoiserie in fancy
low light and watched as the pretty little waitress flown in from Guangzhou tottered over with duck and glistening belly pork and lobster in a black bean sauce at forty pounds a plate. Charlie was sneering, spoke in Mandarin.

“What the fuck is this?”

The waitress froze.

“It’s your lobster,
xiansheng.
”

“What moron puts lobster in a black bean sauce?”

“If you are not pleased,
xiansheng,
I can take it back.” She gestured toward the plate, her voice quavering a little now.

“I thought we were buying real food, not Hong Kong faggot food.”

“Charlie, just for once…” said Kai.

“Please,
xiansheng,
let me fetch you the menu and you can order whatever you please, and the chef can make it in whatever way you choose.” She backed away from the table, fright on her face.

Charlie looked around the table, grinning. The others were stifling their laughter. The manager approached, a starchy Brit in a suit, looking concerned.

“Good evening, gentlemen, and welcome. I hope everything is all right?”

Charlie spoke in crisp English now, Harrow and Cambridge-inflected, ripe with self-assurance.

“Everything’s marvellous. Thanks so much.” And then, as the manager nodded and walked away, in Beijing slang, “Prick.”

They all laughed except Kai, and Charlie picked up an entire lobster tail in his chopsticks and held it over his face, letting the black bean sauce drip into his open mouth. He wiped his face with a napkin, then gestured with his chin to Kai.

“So. Where’s your girlfriend?”

Kai looked back at him, startled.

“What girlfriend?”

“The Chen girl.”

“Oh. Her.”

“Still there, is she? Wobbling about Oxford on her little bicycle, in her precious college scarf, sitting in the library, keeping her little legs crossed.”

“She’s still there. I don’t have much to do with her.”

“You heard the news? About her daddy? General Balls-of-steel?”

Kai blinked, feeling a pinch of alarm.

“No. What news?”

Charlie Feng leaned forward.

“Christ, Fan Kaikai, you really do not pay attention, do you?”

He sat back, picked up his wineglass.

“He was appointed to the General Staff Department.”

Kai thought for a moment, failing to make the connections.

“And?” he said.

Charlie adopted an exaggerated expression of astonishment, held his hands up, looked about the table.

“And?
And?
” he said, then dropped the pretense. “Kai, listen to me. You need to start attending to matters of self-preservation. The Chen girl’s father now resides at the very top of military intelligence. Do you hear me, Kai? Are you with me?”

Kai nodded. Though he wasn’t really with him and was afraid to ask. He picked at the lobster.

Charlie stared at him.

“Old man Chen has stepped up, Kai. His people…” He gestured with his chopsticks. “They’re busy. My old man says they’re busy. General Chen and his army eunuchs.”

Kai looked at his plate.

“Mang shenme ne?”
Busy doing what?

“Doing what? Who the fuck knows what? Scuttling around Beijing. Taking a lot of trips to the southwest, where they have friends. Whispering in ears. Watching. Figuring shit out. Doing nothing that is any good for you, or your family or the company, that’s what. They loathe you, Kai. In the Chen girl’s pristine little bosom beats a hateful little heart. Do not give her anything she can use.”

One of the Cambridge boys spoke.

“I think he understands, Charlie. No need to torture him.”

“Does he, though?”

“Don’t talk about me as if I’m not here,” said Kai. He was aware that he was mumbling.

They ate in silence for a while. Charlie ordered more wine, though he was not drinking.

“So you’re not going back to Beijing for the summer,” he said.

Kai shrugged.

“I have to stay here. Study. Catch up.”

Charlie looked to be considering.

“What?” said Kai.

“They’ve got some sort of minder coming, I hear,” said Charlie. “To take care of you.”

Kai stared at him. “What?”

Charlie shrugged.

“What do you mean, a minder?” Kai persisted.

“Well, I can’t be there all the time, can I? Looking out for you.”

“A nanny for Kai,” said one of the Cambridge boys, and they all laughed again. “To protect him from the Chen girl.”

Charlie signalled they should leave it. Kai sat silent, humiliated. Charlie spoke again.

“Uncle Checkbook been in touch? Done his thing?”

“Is there anything you don’t know about my life?” said Kai.

“Thought so. Good. The Fan family business can pick up the tab tonight, then. Thank you, China National Century Corporation. We bask in your greatness.
Wan sui
. Long may you prosper.” He made a
please-go-right-ahead
gesture.

Kai sighed, took out a credit card, waved it at the waitress.

The four of them clambered into the BMW, and drove to Hackney, where an Asian events company had hired out some dark basement club and filled it with students and bankers from back home and models and Filipina nurses and a DJ, and got a champagne company to sponsor it. They sat on sofas under ultraviolet light, the
music pounding, thumbing their phones. A few of the sharper girls present, recognizing Fan Kaikai, the heir to the vast fortune, the scion of political and business greatness, sought to join the group and sat long-legged, pouting, next to him. By three, Kai was unsteady due to the ingestion of substances, so Charlie Feng, sober and vigilant, drove the BMW carefully back to Kensington.

Baltimore, Maryland, USA

They walked slowly across the Inner Harbor holding hands, the champagne doing its work, softening the sea breeze, softening their words, their feelings. She wore a blue silk blouse, a light cashmere shawl, Chanel. He seemed to like her in this classic look. A sign of his age? Or some fantasy of privilege? She went along, of course, wearing the Hermes scarves he bought her duty free, the Cartier bracelet, even though it made her feel like a country club hag.

Later, there was dinner at Mancuso’s, sea bass for her, crab cakes for him, a bottle of Napa Chardonnay. He was a man of predictable tastes, she thought. And predictable appetites, as when, later still, he undressed in the motel room off I-95 and folded his spindly, sixty-year-old body against hers and told her, predictably, of her beauty and her youth and her litheness and the delicacy of her Asian face, breasts, fingers. And when she jabbed her fingernails in his back to remind him of what lay beneath, of her unpredictability, she felt him pull back and look at her, momentarily bewildered.

“Nicole!” he exclaimed, breathing heavily.

She leaned in to him and bit him on the lip.

“Yes?” she said.

“You are like a bad-tempered cat.”

Her legs were wrapped around his waist.

“I will be much more bad-tempered if you don’t give me what you’ve got,” she said.

He smiled, his pompous ownership smile, she thought.

“Oh, really?” he said. He made to pull away from her, get up from the bed, but she kept her legs locked tight about him. He affected an injured look.

“How… how can I give you what I’ve got, if you don’t let me go?” he said, enjoying it.

She waited a beat, then released him. He stood and walked across the room to his briefcase, bent to pick it up. She watched him from the bed, his smooth hairless back, the hollows in his buttocks.

“Nobody saw you on the way here?” she said.

He had opened the briefcase and was feeling inside.

“Of course not.”

“You’re sure?”

He didn’t respond, just held up a memory stick, raised his eyebrows, dangled it at her, tantalizing. She didn’t react.

“Just for you?” Their little ritual.

“Just for me.”

“You are being careful, aren’t you, Nicole?”

She smiled, narrowed her eyes at him, and held out her hand.

“What’s on it?” she asked.

“Some policy papers. Some estimates. Things you should know.”

“Policy papers. Estimates. Jonathan, how you excite me.”

“Trust me.”

He shot her a mock warning look. Did he know what he was doing? His capacity for self-delusion appeared bottomless. Their charade—that he was “helping” her with her post-doctoral research—had lasted for more than a year already. She lay back on the bed and stretched.

“Time for me to go,” he said, looking at his watch. “Are you going back to Boston tonight?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll drop you at the airport.”

She waited a moment. He turned to look at her, expectantly. She lay back, showed him her nakedness for an instant.

Now.

“No.”

He hesitated, not understanding.

“But how will you get back, then?” he said.

“I’m going away, Jonathan,” she said.

He looked blankly at her.

“Going away?”

And then there came, from the door, a mechanical hiss and click as someone inserted a key card from the outside, and the door opened, and Jonathan Monroe craned his neck to see who was entering uninvited, and then he turned back to look at Nicole Yang, his lover, his brilliant Taiwanese protégé whom he had mentored and advised and helped toward her Harvard doctorate, and the first poisonous seeds of understanding began to germinate, a tendril of fear curling through him.

She had risen from the bed and put on a robe.

“Nicole?” he said.

She walked across the room to him, looked at him very dispassionately.

He said, “Where… are you going?” As if she could protect him.

“Britain. Oxford. For a year. A post-doctoral fellowship.” She reached out and gave his arm a squeeze. “Goodbye, Jonathan.”

Three men were standing behind him now—two were Chinese, one of Western appearance. They parted to let her through. She picked up her clothes and her purse from a chair, and left the room, closing the door behind her.

“Mr. Monroe,” said one of the Chinese men. “Please sit.”

He swallowed.

“I demand you leave immediately. I will report this to the proper agencies. Your behavior is absolutely unacceptable,” he managed.

The Chinese man was nodding. He was elderly, had a kindly demeanor, a dampness to the eye above soft cheeks, a weary old hound in a trench coat. He didn’t look unsympathetic.

“Mr. Monroe. You have been seeing Nicole Yang for more than a year now, and you have been supplying her with information, much of it classified.”

“That is outrageous. We have been conducting an academic partnership. Who are you anyway? Identify yourselves.” He was reaching for trousers, underpants, anything.

The man sighed, made a placatory gesture with his hand.

“Mr. Monroe, I think it is best you sit down.” He spoke as if he bore bad news, a crime, a death. The man with Western features reached into the bathroom and brought out a bathrobe, which he handed to Monroe.

“Mr. Monroe, you are a senior intelligence analyst at the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the US State Department. For the last year, you have been engaged in an… an intimate affair with Nicole Yang. And you have supplied classified information to her.” He held out his hands. “We know this is fact. It is very clear. And, if I may say, very understandable. Please. Let us not deceive ourselves.”

“Identify yourselves. If you are law enforcement, I demand to see identification, and I demand a lawyer.”

The man looked sad, shook his head.

“No lawyers, Mr. Monroe.”

Monroe sat, unmoving.

“What is this?” he said.

“Mr. Monroe, have you reported your meetings with Nicole Yang through the appropriate channels? As a foreign contact? As required under the terms of your security clearance?”

“What is this?”

“No. We thought not.” The man looked troubled. The other two had faded into the background. Monroe pulled the robe tight about him, as if it could armor him. He was aware of the man’s watery
eyes, the tangled sheets, the whiteness of his own legs and feet. Someone had turned on the overhead light and the room’s intimacy and coziness had vanished.

“Have you disclosed to the appropriate security organs the interest that Nicole Yang, a foreign national, has displayed in certain matters of national security policy? During your conversations?”

Monroe looked at the man, tried to quell the surge of warm, paralysing nausea in his gut.

“No. Well. Fortunately, Mr. Monroe, we are not law enforcement. We are friends of Miss Yang’s. Good friends.”

“You are from Taiwan,” said Monroe.

The man looked regretful.

“No. No, I am afraid not.” He held out his hands in a plea for acceptance. “We are from Beijing. From China.”

Monroe jolted backward as if he had been struck, an involuntary spasm of shock. He felt his mouth open and work soundlessly.

“And we simply wish to continue the relationship you had with Miss Yang,” said the man.

For an absurd moment, Monroe envisaged walks along the harbor with these three men, intimate dinners with them, crab cakes, Chardonnay, and afterward…

“What?”

“I mean, we wish to continue the informational transactions. And we are prepared, of course, to compensate you very generously.”

But the man’s reassuring words were lost, because Monroe was up and running. He tried for the door, but the two others were there, the one with Western features blocking him. His robe had come open. He changed direction, bare feet stuttering on the carpet, made a rush for the French window which led onto the balcony, batting away the drapes, but they were there too and, one to each arm, they took him and led him to the bed and sat him down gently.

“I’m sorry. I know this is a bit of a shock. But I assure you, we are professionals. Everything will be very well managed.”

Monroe was spluttering, wild-eyed.

“It is absolutely impossible. I will not cooperate with representatives of the Chinese state under any circumstances.”

There was an awkward pause.

“Mr. Monroe. Please. Consider your position. You have been cooperating with us for a year already.”

Monroe shook his head, aghast.

“Nicole is…”

The man just nodded.

Nicole, in a bathrobe, was guided quickly down the corridor to another room by one of the team, a lean young woman who looked at her with a hungry admiration. She went into the bathroom, dressed in jeans and a shirt of green silk, picked up her bag and checked her phone.

A car was waiting, a wordless driver in the darkness. So. The airport. Back to Boston, pack, clean out the apartment. Then, next week, Britain, damp little island of self-regard in a sea of change.

She looked out at the headlights on I-95, wondering what would happen to Monroe, the man she had run for a year. Her case officers believed that he was conscious, that he knew what he was doing from the start, but she wasn’t sure. Men lie to themselves so completely, so deeply, she thought.

At least she wouldn’t have to wear those hideous scarves anymore.