Typhoon (2008) Read online

  Traffic on Des Voeux Road, coming both ways: buses, bicycles, trucks, cabs, all of the multi-dimensional crush of Hong Kong. The journey took forty minutes, under the cross-hatch of neon signs in Central, past the mamasans loitering in the doorways of Wan Chai, then dropping into the congested mid-harbour tunnel at North Point and surfacing, ten minutes later, into downtown Kowloon. Joe directed the driver to within two blocks of the safe house and covered the last 200 metres on foot. He stopped at a street cafe for a bowl of noodles and ate them at a low plastic table in the heat of the night, sweat coagulating against his clothes. His shirt and the trousers of his suit seemed to absorb all of the dust and the grease and the slick fried stench of the neighbourhood. He finished his food and bought a packet of counterfeit cigarettes from a passing vendor, offering one to an elderly man jammed up at the table beside him; his smile of gratitude was a broken piano of blackened teeth. Joe drank stewed green tea and settled the bill and walked to the door of the safe house at the southern end of Yuk Choi Road.

  The burned buzzer had been replaced with a blue plastic bell. Joe pushed it quickly, twice, paused for three seconds, then pushed it again in four short bursts to establish his identity. Lee came to the intercom, said, “Hello, fourth floor please,” in his awkward, halting English, and allowed Joe to pass into a foyer which smelled, as all such foyers did in the colony, of fried onions and soy sauce.

  Lee was thirty-two, very short, with neat clipped hair, smooth skin and eyes that constantly asked for your approbation. He said, “Hello, Mr. Richards,” because that was the name by which he knew Joe.

  “Hi, Lee. How are things?”

  The stale air in the light-starved apartment had been breathed too many times. Joe could hear the high-frequency whine of a muted television in the sitting room as he laid his jacket on a chair in the hall. No air-con, no breeze. His only previous visit to the safe house had taken place on a cool autumnal day six months earlier, when Miles had done most of the talking, pretending to comfort a cash-strapped translator from a French trade delegation while three CIA stooges took advantage of his absence from the Hilton to ransack his room for documents. To the right of the hall was a cramped bathroom where Joe splashed water on his face before joining Lee in the kitchen.

  “Where is he?”

  Lee nodded across the hall towards a red plastic strip-curtain which functioned as the sitting-room door. The sound had come back on the television. Joe heard Peter O’Toole saying, “We want two glasses of lemonade,” and thought he recognized both the film and the scene. “He watch Lawrence of Arabia,” Lee confirmed. “With Sadha. Come with me into the back.”

  Joe followed the slap-and-drag of Lee’s flip-flops as he walked through to the bedroom. Once inside, with the door closed, the two men stood in front of one another, like strangers at a cocktail party.

  “Who is he?” Joe asked. “Mr. Lodge wasn’t able to tell me very much on the phone.”

  Mr. Lodge was the name by which Kenneth Lenan was known to those former employees of the Hong Kong police force, Lee among them, who occasionally assisted SIS with their operations.

  “The man’s name is given as Wang Kaixuan. He claims to be a professor of economics at the University of Xinjiang in Urumqi City.”

  “So he’s not a Uighur?”

  Uighurs are the Turkic peoples of Xinjiang—pronounced “Shin-jang”—a once predominantly Muslim province in the far north-west of China which has been fought over, and colonized, by its many neighbours for centuries. Rich in natural resources, Xinjiang is China’s other Tibet, the province the world forgot.

  “No, Han Chinese, forty-eight years old. This morning at dawn he swam from the mainland to the east of Sha Tau Kok, where he became involved in a struggle with a soldier from Black Watch.” Lee picked up the file that Lenan had mentioned and studied it for some time. Joe watched him flick nervously through the pages. “The soldier’s name was Lance Corporal Angus Anderson, patrolling a beach on Dapeng Bay. Mr. Wang try to present himself as Hong Kong citizen, a birdwatcher, says he is a professor at the university here in Western District. Lance Corporal Anderson does not believe this story and they get into a struggle.”

  “Birdwatcher,” Joe muttered. “What kind of struggle?”

  Outside on the street a young man was trading insults in Cantonese with a woman who yelled at him as he gunned off on a motorbike.

  “Nothing. No injury. But something about the situation makes Anderson uneasy. Most blind flow in his experience do not speak fluent English, do not, for example, know much about the history of the Black Watch regiment. But Mr. Wang seems well informed about this, very different to what Anderson has been trained to look for. Then he begs him not to be handed over to immigration.”

  “Isn’t that what you’d expect someone in his situation to do?”

  “Of course. Only then he claims that he is in possession of sensitive information relating to the possible defection of a high-level Chinese government official.”

  “And Anderson swallowed this?”

  “He take a risk.” Lee sounded defensive. For the first time he was beginning to doubt the authenticity of the man who had spent the last three hours beguiling him with stories of China’s terrible past, its awkward present, its limitless future. “The soldier walks him back to Black Watch base and tells his company commander what has happened.”

  “Barber was the company commander?” Joe was starting to put the pieces together.

  “Yes, Mr. Richards. Major Barber.”

  Major Malcolm Barber, an ambitious, physically imposing Black Watch officer with impeccable contacts in the local military, was known to SIS as DICTION. He had been feeding regular gobbets of information to Waterfield and Lenan for three years on the tacit understanding that he would be offered a position within MI6 when he resigned his commission in 1998. To my knowledge he was last seen wandering around the Green Zone in Baghdad, trying to hatch plots against the local insurgency.

  “And he believed the story? Got on the phone to Mr. Lodge and had him brought south for questioning?”

  “That is correct. Mr. Lodge send a car to Sha Tau Kok. Had to make sure police and immigration know nothing about it. Every detail is in the report.”

  Joe thought the whole thing sounded ludicrous and briefly considered the possibility that he was being wound up. Professor of economics? Dawn swims across Dapeng Bay? A defection? It was the stuff of fantasy. Why would Lenan or Waterfield take it seriously? And why would they consider RUN for such a job? Surely by presenting himself to an unidentified eye-eye Joe was running the risk of breaking his cover. If most of his colleagues were up to their eyeballs in port and Stilton at a Stonecutters function, why not keep Wang overnight and have them tackle him in the morning? What was the hurry?

  Lee handed the file to Joe, let out an exhausted breath and took a respectful step backwards. It was like marking a change of shift. Joe said, “Thank you,” and sat on the bed. Barber had typed a covering letter, written in a tone which suggested that he shared the broad thrust of Anderson’s conviction. Nevertheless, he had been wise enough to cover his back:

  I would be very surprised if Professor Wang turns out to be bona fide, but he is natural defector material, highly intelligent, immense charm and perfect English, clearly knows his way around the Chinese political structure, claims to have been tortured at Prison No. 3 in Urumqi sometime between 1995 and 1996. Has the scars to prove it. At the very least he may have the sort of local information in which HMG might be interested. Suggest you hold him for 24 hours, then we can spit him back to Shenzhen with no awkward questions asked. No harm in finding out what he has to say, etc. Of course always the danger that he might be a double, but that’s your area of expertise. As far as the central claim regarding defection is concerned, I’m afraid I can’t be much help. Wang is a sealed vault on that. Insists on speaking to CP in person. But he hasn’t been difficult about it. In fact, rather grateful to us for “taking him seriously,” etc. Best of luck. />
  “Has he said anything to you?”

  Lee was sipping a glass of tea. Joe’s question caught him off guard.

  “About what, Mr. Richards?”

  “About anything? About SIS setting up the defection? About swimming to Cambodia?”

  “Nothing, sir. We talk about general Chinese political situation, but very little connected to the report. The conversations have been recorded in accordance with instructions from Mr. Lodge.”

  “And is that tape still running?”

  “The tape is still running.”

  Joe gathered his thoughts. He had no experience of this sort of interrogation, only those particular skills of human empathy and intuition which had been recognized, and then nurtured so successfully, by SIS. He had left Isabella alone in a restaurant with two close friends whose good intentions towards his girlfriend he could not guarantee. He was very hot and craved a shower and a fresh set of clothes. It was going to be a long night. He followed Lee into the sitting room.

  “Professor Wang, this is Mr. John Richards from Government House. The man I tell you about. He has come to see you.”

  Wang had not slept for twenty-four hours and it was beginning to show. The spring had gone out of his step. Rather than leap to his feet with the effervescence that Anderson would have recognized, he lifted himself slowly from an armchair in the corner, took two steps forward and shook Joe Lennox firmly by the hand.

  “Mr. Richards. I am very glad to make your acquaintance. Thank you for coming to see me so late at night. I hope I have not been any inconvenience to you or to your organization.”

  What can you tell about a person right away? What can you take on trust? That Wang had the face of a man who was decent and courageous? That he looked both sharp and sly? Joe studied the broad, Han features, absorbed the power of the squat, surprisingly fit body and considered that last phrase: “Your organization.” Did Wang already suspect that he was British intelligence?

  “It’s no trouble at all,” he said. “I’ve very much been looking forward to meeting you.”

  Wang was wearing the same blue jeans and black shirt into which he had changed on the beach. His tennis shoes were resting on the floor beside the armchair, a pair of grey socks balled into the heels. He looked to have made himself at home. Sadha, the burly Sikh charged with guarding Wang, nodded at Joe and excused himself, following Lee into the kitchen. In time Joe heard the bedroom door clunk shut. The sweat and the humidity of the hot Asian night had combined in the sitting room to leave a stench of work and men and waiting.

  “What do you say we get some fresh air in here?”

  Wang nodded and turned to open the window. Joe made his way across the room and parted the curtains to help him. It was as if they understood one another. Outside, the still night air remained stubbornly unmoved: no breeze ventured into the room, only the permanent cacophony of traffic and horns. To preserve the take quality of the microphones installed in the safe house, Joe decided to close the window and to begin again. The return of the heat and the silence seemed to act as an ice breaker.

  “You are hot,” Wang said. It was a statement more than a question.

  “I am hot,” Joe replied. Wang had the sort of face in which a man would willingly confide: eyes without malice, a smile of seductive benevolence. “Are you comfortable? Have you eaten? Is there anything that I can get you before we begin?”

  “Nothing, Mr. Richards.” Wang pronounced the name pointedly, as if he knew that it was not Joe’s true identity and wished that they could dispense with the masquerade. “Your colleagues have looked after me far better than I could ever have anticipated. I have nothing but good things to say about British hospitality.”

  “Well that’s wonderful.” Joe gestured Wang back into his chair. There was a bottle of Watson’s water resting on a low coffee table between them and he filled two white plastic cups to the rim. Wang leaned forward and accepted the drink with a nod of thanks. Joe settled back into Sadha’s fake leather sofa and wondered how to kick things off. It seemed to be even hotter in the room at this lower level. Why couldn’t Waterfield stretch to a fan? Who was running the safe house? Us or the Americans?

  “So I would say that you are a very lucky man, Mr. Wang.”

  The professor frowned and a squint of confusion appeared in his eyes.

  “How so?”

  “You survive a very dangerous swim. You are surprised on the beach not by Hong Kong immigration, who would almost certainly have turned you back to China, but by a British soldier. You claim to have information about a possible defection. The army believes your story, contacts Government House, we send a nice, air-conditioned car to pick you up and less than twenty-four hours after leaving China here you are sitting in a furnished apartment in Tsim Sha Tsui watching Lawrence of Arabia. I’d say that qualifies as luck.”

  Wang looked across the room at the small black-and-white television set, now switched off, and his face elasticated into a broad, wise smile. He sipped his water and looked over the cup at Joe. “Seen from that point of view, I of course share your opinion, Mr. Richards. May I ask, what position do you hold within Government House?”

  “I am an assistant to Mr. Patten’s senior political adviser.”

  “But you are still very young, no? Young enough to have been one of my students, I think.”

  “Perhaps,” Joe said. “And you are old enough to have been one of my professors.”

  Wang liked that one. The professor’s delighted expression suggested the intense relief of a cultured man who, after a long hiatus, has finally encountered evidence of intelligent conversation.

  “I see, I see,” he laughed. “And where did you study, Mr. Richards?”

  “Call me John,” Joe said, and felt that there was no harm in adding, “Oxford.”

  “Ah, Oxford.” A Super 8 of dreamy spires and pretty girls on bicycles seemed to play behind Wang’s eyes. “Which college, please?”

  “I studied Mandarin at Wadham.”

  “With Professor Douglas?”

  That impressed him. There was no getting round it. For some reason Wang knew the identity of Oxford’s leading authority on imperial Chinese history. “No. Professor Vernon,” he said.

  “Oh. I do not know him.”

  They paused. Joe shifted his weight on the sofa and his hand slid into a dent the size of a beach ball created by Sadha’s substantial girth. Wang was watching him all the time, trying to assess the hierarchical importance of his interlocutor and wondering whether to reveal something of his terrible secret to a probable agent of the British SIS.

  “And you, Professor Wang? What’s your story? Why does a highly educated Chinese intellectual with a position at a prestigious university wish to flee his homeland? Why didn’t you go through the normal channels? Why not just apply for a visa? Surely you have friends in Hong Kong, family you could visit? Why risk your life swimming across Starling Inlet?”

  “Because I had no choice.”

  “No choice?”

  “This was no longer an option for a man like me. I had lost my job. I was no longer permitted to leave China.”

  “You’ve lost your job? That’s not what you told Major Barber.”

  Wang tilted his head to one side and the poor light in the room momentarily lent his face the granite stillness of a sculpture. “I was concerned that the British army would not take my situation seriously. I had already been very lucky to be captured by a soldier with the Black Watch. I lied in order to increase my chances of remaining in Hong Kong. For this I apologize.”

  “Well at least you’re honest,” Joe said, with more candour than he had intended. He felt an odd, almost filial sympathy for Wang, and found his position of power over him oddly disconcerting. “Tell me, why are you no longer permitted to leave China?”

  “Because I am regarded as a political undesirable, a threat to the Motherland. My actions as an academic drew me to the attention of the authorities in Xinjiang, who jailed me along with ma
ny of my students.”

  “What kind of actions?” Joe remembered the line in Barber’s letter—Has the scars to prove it—and wondered why a man like Wang would be tipping the British off about a high-level defection. From the start he had doubted this element of the professor’s story: ten-to-one it was just another ruse to win his way past Anderson. More likely, the professor was simply a radicalized intellectual who had fostered anti-Beijing sentiment on campus. That was the sort of thing for which you were flung in jail in China. It happened all the time. “Why was it necessary for you to leave China?” he asked.

  “As I have told you and your colleagues many times, I am holding information for the British government which will be of vital importance to the relationship between our two countries. That is why I have to see Governor Patten immediately.”

  Joe smiled. He knew now that he was being lied to, in the way that you know when a person is bored by your company. “And where do you want to meet him?” he asked. “Surely not in Government House? Aren’t the Chinese disdainful of our feng shui?”

  This was intended as a joke, but Wang did not find it funny. Speaking in Mandarin for the first time, he said, “Do not make fun of me, young man.”

  “Then tell me the truth.” Joe wasn’t about to be patronized and snapped back his response. He was struck by the sudden fierceness in Wang’s gaze, not because it unsettled him, but because for the first time he could see the force of the professor’s will.

  “I am telling you the truth.”

  “Well, then I’m sorry to have to inform you that a meeting of that kind is highly unlikely. I am as close to Governor Patten as you are likely to get. And unless I leave here tonight with some firm answers, the Black Watch are under instructions to return you to China without delay. Your presence here contravenes political understandings between our two countries.”