Typhoon - Charles Cumming

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o’clock. He also said that Malcolm Coleman was here.’ Lee, listening in, took a deep, chest-inflating breath.

      ‘Lee said that?’

      ‘Yes, sir.’

      Why had Joe bothered to call him ‘sir’? He never called anyone ‘sir’. In his relationship with Waterfield, whom he regarded as something of a father figure, there was respect and understanding, but also a quality of candour which allowed Joe to relax and speak his mind. The more guarded, watchful Lenan, on the other hand, was a different proposition: he brought out something deferential in Joe, who could never escape a feeling of slight nervousness, even of intellectual inferiority, in his company.

      ‘Well, as you know, the Cousins have ears on the safe house.’ Joe sensed that this was already more information than Lenan had been prepared to divulge. Restricted access. Expediency. Need to know. ‘Somebody at the consulate was listening in. They contacted Miles. Reckoned they’d run into Wang before.’

      ‘Run into him before?’

      ‘That’s right.’

      ‘And had they?’

      Lenan reacted as if Joe was asking dull, obvious questions to which there were dull, obvious answers. ‘Yes.’ Then it sounded as if the line had gone dead.

      ‘Hello?’

      ‘I’m still here.’

      ‘I’m sorry, you said Wang had been to Hong Kong before? You’re saying the Cousins had a file on him?’

      ‘That is what I am saying, Joe, yes.’

      Don’t patronize me, you prick. Why should I have to keep pressing you for information? Why is one of my own colleagues blatantly lying to me?

      ‘And?’

      Lenan dropped the bad news. ‘Well, the conclusion that Miles and I arrived at pretty quickly is that Professor Wang was MSS. So we spat him back this morning.’

      Joe was stunned. It simply didn’t make sense that the man he had interrogated less than eight hours earlier was a Chinese double. Wang Kaixuan may have been many things – a smooth-talker, a liar, a sentimentalist – but he was surely not an agent provocateur.

      ‘Well, I have to say that I’m amazed by that. It certainly wasn’t my instinct when I spoke to him.’

      ‘No. It wasn’t. We might have to chalk that one up to experience.’

      The implied criticism was clear: Joe had fallen for a basic Chinese deception. All of which would reflect badly on his reputation within the Office. It was a body blow.

      ‘So he’s already back in China?’

      ‘Dropped him off in Lo Wu this morning.’

       14

       Samba’s

      When Miles Coolidge wanted to avoid awkward conversations he adopted a number of different tactics: meetings cancelled at the last minute; phone calls ignored for days on end; letters and emails left stubbornly unanswered. If it wasn’t in his best interests to tackle a problem, he would leave that problem unresolved. So when Joe walked into Samba’s at nine o’clock that evening and spotted Miles at the crowded bar surrounded by a seven-strong group of his American consulate co-workers, he saw it not as a happy accident of the diplomatic life in Hong Kong, but as a deliberate delaying tactic to prevent any serious discussion of Wang. They had agreed to meet alone. Miles was playing games.

      ‘Joe!’

      One of the girls from the consulate – Sharon from the Commercial Section – had spotted Joe coming through the door. Her greeting had a ripple effect on the rest of the party and those who knew him broke off from their conversations to acknowledge his arrival.

      ‘Hey, man, great to see you again.’

      ‘It’s Joe, right?’

      ‘How’s the shipping business?’

      Miles was the last to turn round. Resplendent in a lime-green Hawaiian shirt, he removed a tanned, muscular arm from the shoulder of a Chinese woman at the bar and moved a couple of steps forward to shake Joe by the hand. His impassive eyes said nothing about their broken arrangement; there was no apology in them, no embarrassment or regret. If anything, Joe sensed a certain triumph in Miles’s expression, as if he was actually glad to be wasting his time. Joe knew that it was useless to complain. Any formal expression of his frustration would simply play into Miles’s hands. The trick was to stay the course, to act as though nothing had happened, then to corner him at the end of the evening when everyone else had gone home.

      To that end Joe ordered a round of drinks – eight bottles of beer, eights shots of tequila – and went to work on the crowd. He was a genius with names and faces. He remembered that Sharon had a brother in the US navy who was currently serving in Singapore. He reminded Chris, a gay African-American who worked in the Culture Section, that he still owed him a hundred dollars for a bet they’d had about Chelsea Clinton. When Barbara and Dave Boyle from Visas came over and complained that Joe was a ‘bad influence’ for plying them with drink, he bought them two more tequilas and asked fascinated questions about their recent wedding in North Carolina. Meanwhile Miles, who was attempting to seduce an Australian backpacker near the cigarette machine, occasionally looked over in Joe’s direction as if surprised to see him still there. The clincher was the backpacker’s departure at eleven o’clock. Claiming the sudden onset of a migraine headache, she climbed into a cab with Barbara and Dave and took off down Lockhart Road. With a belly full of alcohol and a wounded ego, Miles was left with nobody to play with. Joe was the obvious target.

      ‘So how’s Isabella?’ he asked. He had eaten garlic for dinner and the smell of it on his breath cut through the smoke and the sweat of the bar.

      ‘You tell me.’

      Miles seemed to take this as a compliment. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

      ‘You were the last person to talk to her. When I got home last night she was asleep. When I left this morning she was asleep.’

      ‘And where is she now?’

      Joe looked at his watch. ‘Asleep.’

      One by one, the consulate crowd departed until Chris was the last of them. At around half-past eleven he spotted a vacant table at the window overlooking Lockhart Road and ordered another round of drinks. Joe was keen to get Miles alone but could see that Chris was gearing up for a long night out on the tiles. Realizing that he would have to resort to a lie, he waited for Miles to go to the bathroom, then slumped down at the table with deliberate exaggeration and played what was, in the circumstances, his only viable card.

      ‘Thank God for that.’

      ‘What do you mean?’ Chris asked.

      ‘I’ve been trying to have a serious conversation with Miles all night. It was impossible to pin him down with everybody here.’

      Chris was a sensitive soul and would soon pick up on the signals. ‘Talk to him about what?’

      Joe opened a packet of cigarettes. He made a point of crushing the cellophane wrapper nervously in his hand and let out a stagey sigh.

      ‘Can I tell you something in confidence?’

      ‘Sure.’ Chris’s gentle, attentive face was quickly filled with concern. ‘What’s up, man?’

      ‘I’ve got a bit of a problem at Heppner’s. A serious problem. I called Miles about it earlier today and he said he’d be able to help. We arranged to meet for this drink but with everything that’s been going on I haven’t been able to talk to him.’

      ‘Shit.’

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