by Adam Brookes
He could, he had discovered, dampen the memory’s potency with alcohol, and some nights he did.
Three weeks after his arrival, there’d been a visitor, of course, the type instantly recognisable to him. Young, white, clever in a university way, fluent in the calculating charm of English institutional power. He was down from the Embassy in Jakarta, and wore hiking boots and a T-shirt with a clever design on it. We just wanted to say hello, Philip, touch base, make sure you’re okay. Mangan had nodded, resisting the urge to be rude and just send him packing. He knew that, if they were to leave him alone, they needed reassurances. So he gave them. No books, no splashy exposés in the Sunday supplements, no semi-fictionalised novel. Nothing. There would be silence. And the young man smiled and expressed relief and satisfaction, but looked at him with an expression that said, We’re watching. Mangan was surprised at the amount of contempt he felt for all of them.
Except, perhaps, for Patterson, whose letter lay on his desk. She’d written on paper, believing it more secure, oddly. She gave her address as a poste restante in Accra.
So, Philip,
I hope this finds you well. I just wanted to be in touch with you, but I’ll understand if the feeling is not mutual.
I don’t know if you’re aware, but I was dismissed from the Service. It was unpleasant. There was questioning, and a board of inquiry, and a lot of lawyers. I even had to talk to a psychologist at one point. It didn’t take very long, but it was a horrible experience. I felt as if I had failed by every standard I ever set myself. I had become the unreliable, shaky woman, the one who lost her head, who choked when things became hard. I am the black woman who couldn’t hack it. In their eyes, that is who I will remain. It makes me furious, and I try not to think about it. I am trying to put it behind me.
But when I walked out of VX for the last time, I went and stood on the bridge and looked out at the river. It was this beautiful day, crisp and cold, and I felt very alone. But even in my misery, I felt a sort of freedom, or maybe just the beginnings of it. I’m not much given to self-reflection, you know that about me. I’m not like you, constantly moping around examining my own motives. But I had a gnawing suspicion that none of it mattered very much any more, like I’d left something heavy behind.
Through some old army friends I’ve been lucky enough to get some contract work in West Africa, working security for aid organisations. We travel with aid convoys and set up perimeters in refugee camps, that kind of thing. It’s boring and hot and the food’s horrendous. But I can do the work and do it well, and maybe it means something.
Philip, you once said to me that ours was the only honest relationship you had. I took that to mean that all your other relationships had been corrupted by the nature of what we were doing, by the need to lie.
But I also hoped it meant that I deserved your trust. I feel the same way now. I feel that there is nobody in the world who can understand me except you. What happened up on those cliffs changed me for ever, and I am only beginning to comprehend how. And only you know what happened.
So, I guess what I am trying to say in my very clumsy soldier’s way is … should we meet? I get leave. And I hear the beaches are nice where you are. We could go hiking or sailing, except I imagine you don’t hike or sail.
Never mind. We can sit in a bar. What do you say?
I hope you say yes. It would do me good to see you. It really would. Perhaps it could be good for both of us.
All the very best to you,
Trish
He thought of her, in her soldier’s stance, her straight back, flinty expression, lecturing him on the stories that don’t end, but hang in the air, unresolved. He imagined her in the forests of West Africa, pursuing her frantic search for duty and integrity and meaning. He imagined her in a bikini, on a beach. Maybe he could hike. A bit.
“Pleep.” There was a tapping at the door. “Jantar.” Dinner.
He let Inacia lead him downstairs, her hand tiny in his. It was twilight now, and the rain had been nothing more than a shower, and the concrete was already drying and was cool beneath his bare feet. The girl’s mother gestured for him to sit. The little boy was in a high chair, his fingers in a bowl of rice, probing, moulding it. Inacia served, her mother looking on. Rice, a fish grilled crisp with lime and basil, some corn and pumpkin stew, a great welt of red chilli sauce. There was a cold Anker beer for him. They ate together, the four of them, fumbling their way gently through conversation in Indonesian, Tetum and English. The weather, the market, school.
I can live in these moments, he thought. It is when I search beyond them that I make such terrible mistakes.
He said goodnight, and Inacia gave him a little wave. He went back up to his room, left the light off, and watched the street in the blue, darkening air.
He wondered what he should write back to Trish Patterson, the woman who was once his handler, but now had to become something else, something new.
He wondered what he could write about the day that had just passed, and everything that had gone before it.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The odyssey of these characters, Philip Mangan, Trish Patterson and Val Hopko, has come to an end, but its telling was made far more vivid by the many people who helped along the way. Chief among them are my agent, Catherine Clarke, and everyone at Felicity Bryan Associates, and my editor, Ed Wood, and everyone at Sphere. Ed is a marvellous editor who reaches deep into the story, finds its innermost machinery, and makes it run more smoothly. I am very lucky indeed to have had such help.
At the FBI, Robert Anderson helped me imagine the position of the sleeper agent in America from the perspective of those who know whereof they speak, for which I’m very grateful indeed.
Pearl’s flight was facilitated by Sarah Manello, whose knowledge of fugitives and how to hunt them would be chilling were it not for her great good humour. Pearl’s mathematical prowess is entirely down to Ittai Baum, a very talented young mathematician who tolerated my ignorant questions with forbearance, and helped Pearl become who she was.
James Lawrence and Kara Wright first introduced me to the beauty of northern California, and have fostered my love for San Francisco over the years. A late night walk with them through the Tenderloin gave Pearl a destination.
Harmen Boerboom and Pieter Van Maele showed me Suriname and aided me enormously in the creation of Mangan’s sojourn there. The two of them have the true reporter’s eye, and the wit and insight that makes journalists such good company.
I have had help, too, from a small number of people who can’t be named, because they are current or former intelligence officers. I’m very grateful to them. The failings and mis-imaginings of Philip Mangan’s world are all mine.
I continue to trespass on the goodwill of the public libraries of Takoma Park, MD, and Takoma, DC. Long may they tolerate me.
None of my writing would be possible without my family. Susie, Anna and Ned, to whom this book is dedicated, keep me secure with their love and humour and perspective. They are the finest handlers that an operative, alone on the continent of writing, could hope for.
Adam Brookes, Takoma Park, MD. February 2017
MEET THE AUTHOR
ADAM BROOKES was for many years a journalist and foreign correspondent for BBC News. He reported from China, Indonesia, the United States, and many other countries, Iraq and Afghanistan among them. His debut novel, Night Heron, was nominated for the 2014 CWA John Creasey Dagger and appeared on best of the year lists in the TLS, Kirkus and NPR; its follow-up Spy Games was nominated for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger. The Spy’s Daughter is his third novel. He lives with his family in Takoma Park, Maryland.
By Adam Brookes
Night Heron
Spy Games
The Spy’s Daughter
Praise for Adam Brookes
Night Heron
“The must-read thriller of the year.”
—NPR Books
“Night Heron is a fascinating portrait of the dangerous com
plexities of spying in a restricted country, the competing agendas driving international intelligence, and China’s startlingly varied social realities. A must-read for fans of espionage and smart global fiction in general.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“Outstanding fiction debut … Brookes [is] a thriller writer to watch.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Night Heron is a wonderfully cinematic novel—I felt myself visually transported into every scene, watching the action unfold—that also immersed me in the sounds and smells and feel of China, all the while telling a rich, complex espionage story. A remarkable accomplishment.”
—Chris Pavone, international bestselling author of The Expats
“A top-notch thriller about stolen secrets. … Night Heron already places [Brookes] near the first rank of today’s spy novelists.”
—Washington Post
“Engrossing and compelling.”
—Los Angeles Review of Books
“Fans of the international espionage genre will inhale this fast tale in a few suspenseful breaths.”
—Library Journal
“The pace is frenetic and Brookes does a wonderful job with both the high-tech world of cyber intelligence and survival on Beijing’s gritty, smog-smothered streets. Highly recommended.”
—The Bookseller
“One of the best and most compulsively readable spy fiction debuts in years.”
—Kirkus
Spy Games
“[Adam Brookes] does an excellent job of keeping the action moving and the tension high, making Spy Games a difficult book to put down. … Brookes has separated himself from the pack: I’ve read a lot of very good China books by excellent journalists, but I’ve never before stayed up far too late on a work night to finish one, unwilling to go to sleep until I knew how it ended.”
—Los Angeles Review of Books
“A rich, can’t-put-it-down thriller. … Terrific.”
—Joseph Kanon
“A smarter or more exciting mystery likely won’t be released this year.”
—Kirkus (starred review)
“Authentic, taut and compelling. Brookes is the real deal.”
—Charles Cumming
“Brookes shows that his impressive debut was no fluke, and readers will look forward to Mangan’s next adventure.”
—Publishers Weekly
Thank you for buying this ebook, published by Hachette Digital.
To receive special offers, bonus content, and news about our latest ebooks and apps, sign up for our newsletters.
Sign Up
Or visit us at hachettebookgroup.com/newsletters
