The Spy's Daughter

by Adam Brookes

  She had driven at breakneck speed back to the highway, knuckles white on the wheel, then forced herself to slow, check her mirrors. She looked for a gas station, and when she found one, pulled over and sat for few minutes, breathing, watching. No one was behind her—unless it was a team.

  I’ve never panicked like that, she thought. Never.

  There had been a time, Patterson knew, when she would have fronted up to that slender figure, dared him to get physical, and, if he’d dared, she’d have put him down hard and gone through his pockets.

  That time had passed, it seemed. Something in her, some tension, had slackened, left her vulnerable. Panic attacks when out on a run. Quivering with fright whenever Hopko rings. Wetting myself at the sight of some prick in a hoodie.

  What the living fuck has happened to me?

  Is it a team? Oh, Jesus Christ.

  She started the car and pulled out fast, ducking and diving up the eastern shore, as thorough a vehicle surveillance detection run as she’d ever done. Once, she saw a grey Mazda circling around and coming back at her and her heart was thumping again as she squinted at the plate and accelerated away. And there was a blue Audi with a bumper sticker that said “My Karma Ran Over Your Dogma” that floated a little too close to her for eight miles as she came up on the Bay Bridge, but then disappeared.

  She was back in the District by the late afternoon, returned the car to the rental place and walked back to the flat, stopping in a shoe shop, sitting on a bench at Dupont Circle pretending to read in the muggy heat, watching.

  Emily and Esteban were sitting on the fire escape again. They called down to her, but she just waved and went inside.

  In the flat, Patterson searched every room methodically. She took a handheld device from a box in her wardrobe, held it to her eye and moved slowly about each room as it emitted bursts of red light. She booted up her laptop and searched for wireless signals she couldn’t identify.

  She poured a glass of red and sat at the kitchen table, trying to calm herself, picking at the skin around her fingernails. She was covered in mosquito bites. From the backpack, she took the notepad she’d found in the basement, and held it to the fading light.

  22

  Paramaribo, Suriname

  So it was him.

  The respectable man of East Asian appearance who spoke forcefully in Dutch—who sat in cafés sipping his cool lager, who was a little stooped, a little stiff, whose demeanour and fine office spoke of professional rectitude—was Teng, lawyer, and was somehow of pivotal concern to Chinese military intelligence. He was the weapon pressed into Mangan’s hands in the closing moments of an agent’s life. To be wielded how, exactly?

  Look for linkages, his trainers had once told him. If you have nothing else, look for associations, the place where one thing meets another. That’s where the cracks in the cover are. Look there, and you will find what we call intelligence. The hidden, real shape of things.

  So, to what—or whom—is Teng, lawyer, linked?

  He ate at a raucous Chinese hole in the wall near the waterfront, a styrofoam plate of rice and chopped crispy pork with a few strands of green. The woman behind the counter spoke to her customers in sranan tongo, yelled at the chef in a language that might be Hakka. He said nothing, just pointed to what he wanted, sat at a greasy table by himself and watched the telenovela on the wall-mounted screen. A woman in a tight scarlet top was learning to play golf. Behind her, an older man, venal, manipulative, reached naughtily around her to assist her putt, pressing himself against her. But look! In the bushes, a spy with a camera—and even worse intentions.

  Mangan left half the food, walked out into the darkness, the traffic, the night smells of cigarettes and cooling asphalt and twists of perfume, the river beneath it all. He let his mind wander back to Teng, let the thoughts shape themselves into narrative.

  Teng, lawyer, points somewhere. He is indicative, or predictive. He leads to an agent, or a network. The network of which he is a part unfurls from the Chinese state, and through it run currents of Chinese power, pulsing through nations, across borders, through the markets and banks and offshore, humming in the fibre, breeding in the server farms.

  He walked north, past the Torarica Hotel, glowing with light amid the palm trees, past a vast outdoor café where Dutch tourists, sunburned, drunk, lounged and stared at their phones, past a casino whose frontage boasted a twenty-foot screen that showed a grinning chef preparing teppenyaki. He felt the sweat start again.

  Where might Teng, lawyer, take me? he thought. If I watch him, what will I see? Will I know it for what it is?

  He needed a drink.

  Across the street was a café, bright with cold, blue-white light, open to the street, candles on the tables. He jogged over to it, took a seat at the bar, and ordered Black Cat rum with ice. The bartender was a doughy boy with slicked-back hair, in an apron. He ran his fingers along the bottles, poured without a measure and placed the glass in front of Mangan with a napkin and a flourish.

  “Haven’t seen you in here before,” he said. “Welcome.”

  “Haven’t been in here before,” Mangan said, forcing a cheeriness he did not feel. “Tell you what, I’ll have a cold beer with that, too.”

  The boy poured him a lager, pushed it across to him.

  “You know all your customers?”

  “Sure, man. This place is a village. Every place, they know you.”

  “Really? Paramaribo’s not that small.”

  The boy snorted. “Only half a million people in the whole country, man. And nothing to do. So we all watch each other, nose in each other’s business.”

  He leaned back, folding his arms.

  “So. Visiting? Taking a jungle trip? River boat? Monkeys? Birds? Creepy-crawlies?”

  “Don’t tell me. You know a guy.”

  The boy feigned surprise.

  “You know what? I do.”

  Mangan laughed.

  “No, just taking a look around. Thinking about some business.”

  “Oh, yeah? What kind of business?”

  “I don’t know. That’s what I’m here to find out. There’s a little capital looking for places to go, things to do,” Mangan said conspiratorially.

  The boy’s eyes widened.

  “No shit. Like, an investor? Here? But our economy’s in the toilet, man. Fuck you gonna invest in?”

  “My old dad taught me that’s the time to buy. When things are cheap.”

  “We got casinos. You want one of them? We got a boatload of fuckin’ casinos.”

  “I’d noticed that. Do they make money?”

  “I don’t know, man. They’re all run by Turks. Guys from Turkey. They come here, set up a casino on every street corner.” The boy had picked up a toothpick and was chewing on it.

  “Who’s gambling?” said Mangan.

  “Every stupid fucker. Surinamers, Dutch, Chinese. Lot of Chinese.”

  Mangan nodded. The boy suddenly pointed at him with his toothpick.

  “You thinking about that, the casinos, business and shit, there’s a guy you should talk to.”

  “Oh yeah? Who’s that?”

  The boy jerked his head towards the back of the bar.

  “Him.”

  Mangan turned to look. At a table, alone, sat a man in a tan suit, an open-necked shirt, shiny loafers. He sat with his legs crossed languidly, a pair of glasses low on his nose. Perhaps sixty, tanned, iron-grey hair. He held a document of some sort. But he was looking straight at Mangan.

  “So who’s that and what’s he got?” Mangan said to the boy, who smirked.

  “That, my friend, is a man who knows his way around. Everybody, he knows them. He got houses here, Martinique, Bahamas, every place.”

  “No kidding. You going to introduce me?”

  But there was no need, because the man in the tan suit was standing next to Mangan, holding out his glass to the bartender, jiggling it from side to side in a fill it up motion. The doughy boy reached for an expensive, go
ld-coloured bottle and as he poured, he tilted his head towards Mangan.

  “An investor! Looking for opportunity.”

  The man turned to Mangan with a warm, easy smile.

  “That so? You told him there isn’t any, right?” He spoke with a slight Dutch accent, a fleck of American. He had grey eyes, a wry humour that Mangan liked immediately.

  “I told him casinos,” said the bartender.

  “Casinos? Really? You think? I tried casinos once, a while back. I lost about a quarter of a million and someone left a dead sloth on my doorstep.”

  Mangan laughed.

  “A sloth? Really?”

  “It’s true. A sloth. At first, I didn’t realise it was dead. I thought it was just not moving. You know, being a sloth. It took me a while to realise it was a threat.”

  Mangan and the bartender were both laughing now. The man looked wistful.

  “It was a very Surinamese threat. Sort of slow-acting.”

  “What did you do?” said Mangan.

  “Do? I got out of casinos and went to Martinique for three months.”

  He held out his hand.

  “My name is Posthumus. Peter Posthumus.”

  “Philip Mangan.”

  “And you’re here … what, looking to invest?”

  “Well, to be completely honest, I’m a journalist by trade. But I’m having a look around on behalf of a few people.”

  Posthumus raised his eyebrows.

  “My, your people are looking far afield.”

  Mangan tried to turn it round.

  “What’s your business, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “Oh, not at all. I consult, mining mainly. Gold, down in the interior, and minerals. You know this place used to do bauxite. Well, there’s Chinese interest in what else is here. So I’m trying to channel that and a few other things.”

  “Big Chinese interest?”

  Posthumus shrugged. “Is there any other kind? Maybe that’s why your people are looking here, no?”

  Mangan felt the ground move a little, felt his cover flex and wobble, said nothing, just gave a knowing nod.

  Posthumus put his glass down on the bar and pulled out a name card from an inside pocket.

  “So, if you want any help getting stuff set up—meetings, that sort of thing—I know a few people. Give us a call if there’s anything I can do.” He gave an apologetic smile, as if to say, For what it’s worth, the sentiment at odds with the cool confidence, the good suit, the understated, expensive watch. And Mangan, feeling his look, read something else there, something a little too interested.

  “Okay, thanks, I will,” he said.

  And Posthumus grinned at him and gave his upper arm a squeeze, and left. The bartender was nodding.

  What the fuck was that?

  23

  Capital Forensics occupied a suite of offices in Silver Spring, Maryland, close to the Beltway, in a blank building of dark brick and mirrored glass. The receptionist waved Patterson through to a conference room. The document examiner—elderly, moustachioed, fussy—introduced himself as Dr. Pillsbury. He put on a pair of rubber gloves and took the notepad from Patterson with a pair of forceps, and dropped it into a plastic bag. He looked at her.

  “Can I ask what sort of investigation we’re talking about here? Civil? Estate? What?”

  Patterson smiled. “I’d rather not say.”

  Dr. Pillsbury shifted in his seat.

  “It helps enormously if we know what we are looking for,” he said.

  “I just need whatever you can find on that notepad.”

  He sighed and scratched his head.

  “I mean, I need to know what standard you expect me to work to. Will this be evidence in a court of law?”

  “I need to know everything you find. To any standard.”

  “You want DNA? Prints?”

  She hadn’t thought of that.

  “Start with indented writing.”

  “All right.” He shrugged. “May I ask who you represent?”

  “No, you may not.”

  He raised his eyebrows, picked up the plastic bag containing the notepad and left without a word.

  Dr. Pillsbury called the following afternoon, was about to tell Patterson what he’d found on the phone when she stopped him, saying she’d be there within the hour. She ran from the Embassy without telling Tipton or Markham, hailed a cab, and looked from the rear window as it drove away.

  Pillsbury was waiting for her in the same conference room, a plastic transparency in front of him on the table. He held it up to the light for her.

  99748867364

  VCCSVGV1

  Raafveugel YF Trusts Inc. PO Box 3364,

  Paramaribo, Suriname

  “It was written quickly, but deliberately, by hand,” said Pillsbury. “The pressure is firm, the intent is to pass on important information. The writer was writing for clarity. You can see the indentations, very clear, very distinct.”

  He pointed at the transparency, the revealed writing.

  “You know what it is?”

  “Yes,” said Patterson. It was an account number, followed by a BIC identifier. So, a bank, but where?

  “The bank is in the British Virgin Islands,” Pillsbury said. He had allowed a little smirk to form at the corners of his mouth, pleased with himself. “I looked it up. It’s a small outfit called Berhasil Clearing Ltd.”

  Patterson turned to him.

  “And what else did you look up?”

  He blinked.

  “Well, I just wanted to see—”

  “It might be best if you didn’t investigate any further.”

  “I thought you might not—”

  “I might not what?”

  “I wanted to make sure you knew what we had found. That’s all.”

  “Thank you. I’m well aware. And I expect you will not retain any record of what you found.”

  He was looking at her, alarmed now, his mouth working.

  “No,” he said. “No, I won’t.”

  “Don’t,” she said.

  She ended up paying in cash, peeling off hundred-dollar bills beneath the eyes of the bemused cashier, wondering how the hell she’d expense it. She stood outside in the warm breeze, watching the traffic rocket by, waiting for a taxi, staying aware. She wondered if Polk would pay, and found the thought of meeting him, talking to him, strangely comforting.

  The thought of Hopko, less so.

  Patterson waited until Markham and Tipton had gone for lunch, then called on a secure line from the Station to tell her about Wachapreague and the notepad.

  There was silence on the line.

  “Val, are you there?”

  “Well, that was very enterprising of you.”

  Patterson swallowed. Hopko spoke slowly, in a tone of preternatural calm.

  “You’ll send the details, and the notepad, to me.”

  What am I not understanding here? wondered Patterson.

  “And what about the FBI? I’ll have to tell them.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “Well, it’s evidence.”

  “It’s evidence you’ve tampered with, my girl. Your Mr. Polk will be frightfully upset.”

  Christ.

  “Trish, you will keep the channel open with Polk, do you understand? Tell him where you’ve been. Let him fulminate. But do not give him the bank account.”

  There’s something here.

  “Can I ask why?”

  That pause again, the Hopko pause. The silent sound of calculation.

  “No, you may not.”

  24

  Paramaribo, Suriname

  Lawyer Teng, it appeared, lived within walking distance of his office. Mangan, on day three, summoned up the nerve to follow him, at a distance, when he left Prins Hendrickstraat. He carried his briefcase, walked alone, and for twelve minutes wound his way west and then north to a low, gated, single-storey house painted in cerise and festooned with flowering plants. Lawyer Teng unlocked the gate wi
th a key from his pocket and, as far as Mangan could tell, passed an evening of domesticity.

  Mangan returned to the Buena Vista hotel, spiralling through dark, empty streets. At the hotel, some new guests had checked in. Mangan heard them in the stairwell, speaking loud, accented Mandarin. A trade delegation, said the woman at the front desk. From China.

  “Really?” said Mangan. “What are they trading in, do you know?”

  The woman made a wry face.

  “Everything. Buildings, casinos, gold, supermarkets. They buy the whole country, then they sell it back to us,” she said, becoming animated. “We cannot compete with them. And if you complain, then, well, just a big dyugu-dyugu.”

  Mangan nodded, extricated himself from the conversation, and stood in the stairwell, listening.

  On day four, he hired a car from a rental place near the waterfront, paying cash in advance. He parked on Prins Hendrickstraat, watched lawyer Teng leave his office for lunch, which he took alone at Toothsome Chinese, emerging wiping his mouth with a napkin. The target then attended a meeting at a suite of offices near the presidential palace, subject unknown. Mangan then completely lost him, the entire afternoon a blank, only picking him up again later, on his way home. After dark he drove to the lawyer’s home, parked near the house, watched an elderly woman come out with a watering can, stopping laboriously at each pot, her hand quivering with the weight of the can. The windows flickered silver blue with the television screen.

  The utter futility of what he was doing was starting to become apparent to him. He sat in the car, wound the window down and lit a cigarette. What should he do? Burgle the offices? How? How would he know when he had found what he was looking for? Confront Teng? And say what, exactly? He began to think about how he would explain all this to Hopko, her searing response. He pulled away, ate fried noodles and chicken and sambal at a little Javanese place, before passing a restless night in the hotel.