The Spy's Daughter

by Adam Brookes

  Eleven days at sea, eleven days of monosyllabic conversations with the Filipino and Ukrainian crew, found him in a boredom so profound he was driven to old sitcoms and jigsaws. He wrote a piece about the economics of the container industry, touching on the security of global sea lanes and piracy, but didn’t post it to the website, reasoning it would be insecure, then debating himself about the need to live his cover.

  The static, grey Atlantic horizon began to warm, turn to azure. He saw porpoises, fishing skiffs out of the Caribbean islands, and blue-green phosphorescence in the water at night, the bow wave aglow. He stood on deck, the wind in his face, and thought of what he was about to do.

  The MV Paragon left Mangan—sweating, unsteady, clutching his duffel bag—on the dock at Sao Luis, on the shoulder of Brazil, his passport stamped, details entered cursorily on God knows what computer. He spent a hellish night in a hostel near the port, a club across the street pounding until three, shouting in the street, car horns. The next morning he wandered down to the jetties looking for small boats heading west along the Brazilian coast.

  It took him some time, and some arguing, but he found it. A peeling blue scow, laden with cigarettes, soft drinks, cheap clothing, and perhaps other, more profitable, items. A Barca flag dangled from her stern, and she was bound for Cayenne, in French Guyana, seven hundred miles to the north-west, a little sliver of France on the edge of the rainforest. He had an elaborate story ready, a travel feature for a London magazine, very lucrative, but the captain couldn’t care less, just stood beneath a jerry-rigged canvas sunshade on the deck and counted out the dollar bills. Mangan brought with him tins of tuna, crackers, tinned pears, cigarettes, water and a half-bottle of rum. He slept on the deck. He was glad of Widodo’s motion sickness tabs, and lay silent, his scarf over his face under the blistering sun as the boat clattered along, rolling foully and belching black fumes into the blue.

  At Cayenne, he came ashore in darkness, sidling down the jetty and past the harbour master, disappearing into the town. A taxi out of town to the west, and by two in the morning he stood on the beach at Saint Laurent du Maroni, the brown water of the Marowijne River lapping at his feet.

  He smoked, dozed for an hour, swatted at the mosquitoes, wondered about dengue and zika. At five, a tall man in shorts walked up to him and jerked his thumb across the river.

  “En face?” the man said.

  “Oui,” said Mangan.

  The man gestured for a cigarette. Mangan gave him one and lit it, peeled off more dollars. The man shouldered Mangan’s duffel bag for him and walked him to a slender, yellow craft with an outboard, pulled up on the sand. The man pushed off and turned them into the current.

  The sun was coming up, the heat rising and the water beginning to shimmer when they reached the other side.

  Exhausted, filthy, his skin red and itching, Mangan clambered onto the riverbank in Suriname.

  The last time anyone had asked him for identification was in Brazil, two countries and eight hundred miles away. He congratulated himself, a little.

  In Washington, word of a death.

  She’d come in early to get a start on the day, pounding up Mass. Ave. in eighty-nine degrees. Cleaners were buffing the floors in the Embassy foyer and the café wasn’t open and the Station was empty and still. She sat heavily in her chair, dropped her backpack, put in her key card and started the laborious logon process.

  And there, in her classified email, a message from Hopko. The sight of the name made her stomach swoop and lurch. In the subject line just a question mark, but in the body of the message were two links. One to a public website that claimed to specialise in uncovering intelligence stories, another to an unclassified report on a UK government network.

  A suicide.

  The man’s name was Jonathan Monroe. He had been an analyst at the U.S. State Department’s own intelligence shop, INR. Patterson knew the name, having seen it on the coversheets of dense, forbidding China product. Monroe was a heavy hitter, one of those intelligence titans who glide between diplomacy and policy and academia and all the secret compartments of the intelligence machine.

  And now he was dead.

  A nine millimetre in the back of the mouth, said the website. In a car, parked up under some trees somewhere out by Great Falls. So far, so tragic. Patterson thought of the cold metal against the palate, the taste of gun oil.

  Patterson skimmed the government report.

  There was a wife, a house in Bethesda. No sign of depression or illness. The FBI was investigating. Of course they were.

  Patterson sent a message back to Hopko. What do you want me to do with this?

  Her phone rang, a secure line from London. Oh, Christ.

  “My, you’re in early.” Hopko’s deadpan voice, dry as dust. Patterson thought of her lolling behind her desk in her sanctum at VX, the black hair teased up, the chunky, beaten silver jewellery, silk blouse tight across her blocky frame.

  Patterson started to reply but her throat caught and she had to swallow.

  “They’re keeping me busy,” she said.

  “Quite right. Idle hands and all that. Are you settling in? Is the ghastly Anthony Tipton behaving? Not taking you out for little dinners, is he? Sneaking peeks down your cleavage? He does that, you know.”

  “I must not be his type.”

  “Good. Frighten the shit out of him, I would.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “He says you know nothing outside your subject area and your writing’s woeful. So you must be doing something right.”

  Patterson closed her eyes. Hopko went on.

  “Now, look, you’ll keep an eye on this Monroe thing. Let me know everything you see, open source or otherwise. I want everything, and I mean everything.”

  “Do you want to make a formal request to the FBI? Because if you do—”

  “I know, I know. I have to go through the luscious Anthony. Not yet. I just want to know if there’s anything to it. Did he just get sad and pop himself, or was there motive?”

  “I’ll send you everything I find.”

  “And if you can go and work your charms on those lunks at the FBI, well, you never know.”

  “You want me to go outside channels?”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Trish, you’re a diplomat now. Go and be diplomatic. Show a little leg.”

  Patterson realised she was digging her nails into her palm.

  “I’ll try.”

  “Yes, you will.”

  “All right.”

  “And Trish, try not to act as if you’re in mourning.”

  And that was it. She was gone. Patterson collected herself. Was it meant unkindly? Did Hopko mean to devastate her, every bloody time?

  And she was, of course, in mourning. For her own ambition. For a version of herself.

  She met Polk at a Starbucks off M Street. She got there early and tried to think of an approach. When he arrived, in rumpled tan chinos, black shoes, a blazer, he ordered some ridiculous concoction with vanilla and whipped cream that he licked from a spoon while he listened to her ask the question. He considered for a moment, then exhaled and made a surprised face.

  “My, you’re forward, you English.”

  “You said if I needed anything.” She tried a smile.

  “Jeez, Patterson, you might take a girl out for dinner before you rip her panties off.”

  He was toying with her.

  “Simple question, Franklin. Is there anything to know? Was he sick? Wife bugging out on him? Was he just fed up?”

  “No one calls me Franklin except my Gramma Schatzi in Somerville, Massachusetts, and you’re not her.”

  “What do I call you?”

  “Frankie. Or bitch, given the way you’re humping me.”

  “No one wants to hump you, Frankie.”

  “Ain’t that the truth?”

  “London just wants to be tipped off as to how nervous they should be.”

  “Fuck’s it got to do with them?”

&nb
sp; “I don’t know. Something.”

  Polk sniffed.

  “Well, I’ll tell you, Patterson.” He made a cheap magician’s gesture, arcing his hand over the table, fluttering his fingertips. “There’s nervousness in the air.”

  “Because?”

  “Because?” He leaned in to her, mock conspiratorial. “Because as you will no doubt read on the front page of the Post tomorrow or the next day, so I don’t believe I am giving away too much in the way of professional confidences, they kicked down the door to his very nice house, in a very nice part of Bethesda, decorated in very nice pastel colours and furnished nicely from Crate and fucking Barrel, and they searched the place and found stacks of classified documents in the basement. Big fucking stacks. Very fucking classified.”

  “Shit.”

  “Indeed, yes. Shit. Yes. And there were USB drives, too. So, yes. Double shit.”

  “The wife?”

  “All weepy. Nothing to say. Knew nothing.” He held up his hands.

  “You were there.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “So?”

  “So? You do the math.”

  “There’s an investigation.”

  He snorted. “I think it is safe for you to assume there will be a deluxe, supersized, force-twelve counter-intelligence investigation, and my beloved Bureau will be relaying to its intelligence partners a sparkling damage report, when such a thing becomes available.”

  “And when does such a thing become available?”

  “When? When we’ve done our thing. Gone hither and thither. Walked back the cat.”

  “Sounds like months.”

  “And maybe never. See, Patterson, the FBI is a law enforcement agency. Sure we do counter-intel, but arresting people is what gives us a hard-on. It’s what gives our bosses a hard-on. We’ll run a spy to catch a spy, but in the end we hate ’em all. So if Mr. Monroe was, in fact, playing footsie with a foreign power, we will want to roll up whatever the fuck network he was a part of. We won’t want to let them run, or double them, or otherwise indulge in wet and slippery espio-play with them. We will arrest them, prosecute them and send them to the Supermax in Florence, Colorado, where they can wallow in their own shit for forty years.”

  “That’s beautiful, Frankie.”

  “Well, fuck you very much. Anyway, Patterson, at least you hump nice.”

  “Why? Someone not being gentle?”

  “Who d’you think? The un-dead of Langley, Virginia.”

  “Because?”

  “Give us all the files! Give us the corpse! Give us the wife! Tell no one!” He was holding his arms out and staring, zombie-like. “It’s a human tragedy! Let us feed!”

  Patterson was stifling a laugh. Polk licked his spoon, enjoying it.

  “So how do you fight them off? Garlic?”

  “Crime-scene tape. And bad language. And guns. They don’t got guns, and we do.”

  He made to stand. Patterson tried to stall him.

  “But Frankie, what do you think? What does your experience tell you?”

  “Hump me harder, Patterson.”

  “Look—”

  “No, you look.” He pointed off to the left, but looked straight at her. “Channels. Okay? Get your guy, what’s his name, your Markham—jeez, that guy, what’d they do to him? It’s like they drained his blood and embalmed him at birth. Anyway, get him to put in the paperwork and we’ll tell you what there is to tell when the time is right to tell it.”

  Then he stood up, leaned towards her and spoke quickly, quietly.

  “But in the meantime, it’s a shit stew. And there’s plenty to go around. Enough even for London.”

  She blinked, realising she’d got something of what she came for.

  “Right. Thanks, Frankie.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Right answer.”

  She summoned her courage and called Hopko on a secure line. Hopko harried her like a terrier.

  “What exactly did he say?”

  “Just what I told you. The files, it’s a shit stew, enough for London.”

  “And tell me again, you think—”

  “He was signalling that there were files in Monroe’s basement that compromise material of UK origin.”

  “But he didn’t say that.”

  She had her forehead resting on her palm.

  “He did not. But that is my read. Val, honestly, that’s what he was saying.”

  “Paper files?”

  “He said there were thumb drives, too.”

  “Well, you know what we have to do now.”

  “The appropriate thing would be to put in a formal request for the damage report.”

  “Trish! Get a grip, woman. That could be months, as you yourself so perspicaciously pointed out. You will go back to Polk, and you will endeavour to ascertain what material he is referring to. We need filenames, designations. I will speak to Tipton and Markham. Do you understand?”

  Patterson was silent, her stomach churning.

  “Do you understand?”

  “Yes. Are there any particular designations you are concerned about?”

  A pause. She could hear Hopko’s breathing on the line. She’s trying to decide whether to tell me, Patterson thought.

  “There is one, as it happens. It is a designation that you will not have heard before, and you will keep it entirely to yourself. It is BOTANY. But in the U.S. system, it will have been given a different designation, obviously. You will need to ascertain which U.S. designation matches material originating in BOTANY.”

  And just how the redacted fuck am I supposed to do that?

  “BOTANY. Can you give me any sense at all of what BOTANY is? Or was?”

  “No.”

  “Well, okay, I’ll try.”

  “Yes, you will.”

  Patterson put the phone down and steadied her breathing. She knew Hopko’s tone well enough to read minute variations in it, tiny fluctuations from her wry, ever-so-relaxed norm. There was stress there, she thought, running just underneath, a tiny, brittle edge to her.

  Valentina Hopko. Her mentor, turned tormentor. What a difference a syllable makes, she thought.

  14

  Baltimore, Maryland

  Pearl arrived at Cal’s clutching two big bottles of Coke, some brownies, and, as a joke, a bottle of black Shanxi vinegar. She wore a tight-fitting, turquoise, sleeveless top which she hoped might show off her small breasts, or at least might suggest to Cal that she did, in fact, possess breasts.

  She pushed the buzzer, and the door opened with a click. Cal’s tiny apartment was at the back of the building, in the basement. The corridor smelled of detergent and cigarette smoke. Cal’s door was open and Pearl heard raised voices, laughter. She went in tentatively. Five or six people were lounging around on the battered blue sofa and on the floor, talking. Some were Chinese, some white. Pearl recognised faces from the engineering department and from comp sci. They were talking about a movie, a sci-fi blockbuster. A space mission to Mars, a man left behind on the red planet. Could he survive? For years? The engineers were taking the movie apart, working over its assumptions, its conceits, mocking it and laughing in loud, hearty bursts. Pearl tried to slip past them with a nervous wave, and they watched as she went to the kitchen.

  The kitchen was full of steam, the walls and windows streaming. Cal was wearing oven gloves to take piles of steamers off the stove. He turned and saw her, his upper lip beaded with sweat. He put down the steamers, and held his arms wide.

  “You came!” he said. “She came!”

  “Yeah, well,” she said.

  “Dear old dad finally wasn’t an impediment?”

  “There was, like, negotiations.” She held out the bottle of vinegar. “And I stole this.”

  Cal took it and examined the label as if evaluating a fine vintage.

  “Shanxi Lao Chen black vinegar. I am intrigued.” He took the cap off and sniffed it. “Holy crap,”
he said. “Smell that.” He held the bottle out to another boy, or maybe man, who was leaning against the counter. He was Chinese, thin, had a widow’s peak and a sharp, unsmiling face.

  “Pearl, this is Charles. He’s in astrophysics.” Pearl nodded, but Charles ignored her, leaned over the vinegar bottle and inhaled.

  “Oh yes,” he said. “Very nice.” He was mainland China, heavily accented. He looked at Pearl, his eyes flickering over her body. “You are from Shanxi?”

  “My father.”

  Charles looked past her and gestured to someone else.

  “Julia! Come!” Julia was bright-eyed, her hair in a messy bun, and she bustled into the kitchen, gave Pearl a big, reassuring smile, and smelled the vinegar bottle.

  “Wah!” she said, her face lit up. “Mmm! Delicious! For the baozi!” She held her hand out to Pearl.

  “I am Julia Chen,” she said.

  “Oh, Hi. I’m—”

  “I know who you are! Of course. We all know you. Even over in physics we know who you are!” But it was said kindly, with real admiration. Charles was nodding. Pearl, shrugged, embarrassed. Julia looked earnestly at her.

  “So Cal has still not persuaded you to come and live on campus!” Pearl looked at Cal, but he was pretending not to hear, busying himself taking the baozi out of the steamers.

  “It’s, uh, complicated.”

  “You should come! Come and live in our building. Charles here, he can really cook. Makes everything. Lasagne, cookies, everything.”

  “I think you can afford it,” said Charles. They know everything about me, she thought. Cal has discussed me with them. “Also, maybe you can tutor us in math.”