Typhoon (2008)

by Charles Cumming

  “We have to be prepared for every eventuality,” he said. “Does Wang ride a bike? Has he got a car? Does he live within walking distance of the school or, more likely, is he going to want to get on a bus and ride across the city? This is how it’s going to work. He knows what I look like so I can’t get close to him. You, on the other hand, can be standing outside the school entrance with a bike speaking to me on the phone when he comes out. I’ll identify him for you and we can work it from there. We’ve got to hope he has some kind of hat on, or a distinguishing characteristic in his dress, because he’s going to get lost in the rush-hour crowds within seconds of being on the street. If he’s on a bike or in a car, you’ll have to try to stay on his tail. Don’t worry about getting too close—it’s normal to ride in packs and you’ll get lost in the vehicles surrounding him. If he runs a red light, follow. If you sense that he’s about to stop, try to get directly behind him so that he’s not aware of a Caucasian hanging on his shoulder.”

  “What if he walks?”

  “Take the bike but follow on foot. Again, try to anticipate when he’s going to stop. Get on the opposite side of the road as much as you can. If he doubles back more than once, chances are he’s conscious of you and will try to shake you at a choke point. But if he walks, it’s probably because he’s heading for a bus stop. If that’s the case, hang well back and, once he gets on board, just tail the bus for as long as you can. I’ll have a cab waiting on the corner outside the school. Once you have a good idea of the mode of transport he’s using and the direction he’s heading in, I’ll follow in the vehicle. More than likely I’ll try to get close to where you are and we can work him in parallel.”

  “How do you know the cab will stick around?” I asked, beginning to feel anxious about the demands Joe was placing on me. “Wang might not come out of the school for an hour. The driver could get itchy feet.”

  “Because I’ll pay him to stick around,” Joe said, as if my basic understanding of the pathology of taxi drivers needed fine-tuning. A ragged Chinese boy, no older than five or six, came into the restaurant and handed one of the waiters a few coins in exchange for a bagged-up duck carcass. His family would use it for soup. “Another thing,” Joe said. “Charge your phones up overnight so they don’t run out of juice.”

  “Phones?” I replied. “Plural?”

  “We could be talking for up to three hours. If one of them drops, I need to know that I can reach you quickly. To blend in, wear a plain white T-shirt and a pair of sunglasses. If Wang turns round, you don’t want him looking into your eyes.”

  This went on for another half-hour. Every angle was covered, every nuance of Wang’s possible behaviour anticipated and thought through. Then Joe settled the bill and headed back to his hotel for an early night. The next morning he was at my apartment by eight and we travelled north to scout the immediate area around the language school. Feeling somewhat ridiculous, I practised cycling around while talking to Joe on the phone, using an earpiece and a microphone clipped to my shirt. By midday, I knew every bus stop, restaurant and traffic light within a two-block radius. That said, Haidian is the university district in Beijing and I did not feel that I knew the rest of the area particularly well. Having lived in the city for just a few months, I was still frequently spun round by the grid system of seemingly identical streets; there are very few landmarks in Beijing, no hills, nothing to give you a bearing. My worry was that Wang would vanish in a section of the city that I simply did not know or recognize. There were times when every corner in the capital looked the same. How would I then be able to give Wang’s location to Joe, who might be five or six blocks away in a cab?

  As things turned out, we got lucky. At 4:45 p.m. on the Wednesday, I leaned my bicycle against the exterior wall of the Agosto and dialled Joe’s mobile. We were both using clean phones purchased the previous day. He was fifty metres away, on the opposite side of the street, sitting on a metal railing with a street map of Beijing open on his lap.

  “You look like a tourist,” I told him.

  “And you look like a sad middle-aged man who can’t afford to buy a decent bicycle.”

  It was a grey, smoggy day and there was plenty of traffic between us. When Wang came out, he would be unlikely to spot Joe through what amounted to a permanent, moving screen of dust and cars. The cab driver was waiting on the next corner, reckoning it was his lucky day, because Joe had picked him from five different drivers that he’d spoken to at the rank outside his hotel and handed him the equivalent of a hundred and fifty dollars to be his chauffeur-on-call all day. At about five to five, a gorgeous Chinese girl wearing a knee-length qipao walked past me and Joe made a joke about giving me the rest of the day off to follow her. I was grateful for his easy humour because it cut through the tension of the long wait. I was ashamed by how edgy I was feeling; at this early stage, to avoid drawing attention to myself, I had my phone in my hand and the hard plastic casing was sticky and damp against my ear.

  “Not long now,” Joe said. “Try to look as though you’re waiting for your girlfriend. A lot of washed-up European perverts get lucky at foreign-language schools.”

  I looked across the street and Joe was smiling at me, looking extraordinarily relaxed; he’d done this sort of thing dozens of times before. Just then, the first of the students started trickling out of the entrance and he said “Here we go” in a way that made my pulse kick. About five of them hung around on the pavement in front of me, all Caucasians in their late twenties, and they were soon joined by a flood of others. This went on for about ten minutes until I was lost in a thick swarm of foreigners.

  “I can’t see you,” Joe said. “That’s good. Blend in. Try to keep the camouflage. And don’t look at the door. When he comes out, I’ll tell you.”

  I must confess that Professor Wang Kaixuan had become so mythologized in my imagination that I was half-expecting him to look like Pat Mo rita, the wizened martial arts guru who offers instruction to Ralph Macchio in The Karate Kid. I had said as much to Joe over dinner and he had attempted to describe Wang’s basic physical characteristics.

  “He’s stocky and fit. At least he used to be. A broad face with smooth, dark skin. No distinguishing characteristics except intelligent, contemplative eyes, the sort that encourage young people to do things that they shouldn’t be doing. I probably wasn’t the last person to fall for them.”

  “And you say he’s about sixty now?”

  “About that. Might look younger.”

  Wang finally came out at five-fifteen. Joe recognized him instantly and I heard his voice quicken with excitement.

  “OK, he’s here. White, short-sleeved shirt. Black flannel trousers. Coming down the steps carrying a blue canvas bag over his shoulder. Stay where you are, Will. A student is going towards him. Tall black girl in the red T-shirt. A smile, he knows her. Looks like she’s thanking him for his class. Our man seems very popular with the students. Apples all round for Professor Wang. He’s facing in your direction now. His head is completely shaved …”

  “I see him,” I said.

  Joe’s commentary ran on as Wang loitered on the pavement in front of me. He was no more than ten feet away. I kept him in my peripheral vision with my eyes on the entrance to the school, as if waiting for somebody to come out. Joe became increasingly certain that Wang was waiting for a lift.

  “It probably won’t be a taxi,” he said. “Not on a teacher’s salary.”

  Sure enough, after three or four minutes a dark blue Hafei Saima with Beijing plates, driven by a blonde woman who can’t have been more than twenty-two or twenty-three, pulled up on the street in front of him.

  “That girl came out ten minutes ago,” Joe said quickly, and I was astonished by his powers of recall. “Probably one of his students. Let’s bank on that. She’s probably giving him a lift somewhere.”

  Wang was talking to a tall, extraordinarily ugly German with tattoos on his arms as the car came to a halt. He shook the German by the hand, said “Now go
home and study” in Mandarin, and then ducked into the front seat. I looked across the street. Joe was already walking east towards his waiting cab. Both of us were muttering the Lord’s Prayer into our phones as a way of looking like we were talking.

  Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

  Taking my bike off the wall, I plugged the earpiece into my cellphone, clipped the microphone to my T-shirt and fell in behind the car.

  “Are they moving?” Joe asked. It sounded as though he was already inside the cab.

  “Just taking off now.”

  I managed to stay with the Hafei for the next fifteen minutes. The driver headed south in dense traffic on Landianchang Road, which runs along the western side of the Jingmi Canal. Joe was in my earpiece the whole time, talking openly about Wang’s position because he had made sure that his driver didn’t speak a word of English. It was extraordinarily hot and the pollution in my mouth was like a chemical liquefying on the lungs. God knows what I must have looked like to passers-by: a sweating, panting laowai, riding a second-rate bicycle surrounded by mellow, drifting flocks of Beijing cyclists. I became concerned that the Hafei would make a turn on Fushi Lu towards either the second or third ring roads which surround downtown Beijing. As soon as that happened, Wang would be on a three-line highway and I would no longer be able to follow him on the bicycle. Yet the car continued as far south as Fuxing Road.

  “You’ve done well,” Joe said, passing me for the fourth time and accelerating ahead to stay within touching distance of Wang. We were on a wide avenue, surrounded by billboards advertising Western brands of clothing and cigarettes. At times it was difficult to hear precisely what he was saying because of the noise of the traffic. “It looks like he’s following signs to Tiananmen Square. Don’t worry if you lose us. There’s nothing more you can do. I’ll call you when I get a fix on his position.”

  Two minutes later the Hafei was travelling east on Fuxing Road, doing an average of about twenty miles per hour. The line went dead in my ear and Joe’s cab was nowhere to be seen. I looked ahead at a blur of traffic near the subway station at Wanshou Road and tried to reach him on a different number. There was no answer and therefore nothing more that I could do. If Joe had him, he had him. If Wang had disappeared, he would doubtless call me back and we would have to go through the whole, exhausting process all over again at the same time tomorrow.

  41

  HUTONG

  Wang stepped out of the Hafei at the southern end of Jingshan Park, having taken a somewhat circuitous route to get there. Jingshan is just to the north of the Forbidden City, in the very heart of old Beijing, and the young female driver, perhaps ignorant of the city’s basic geography, could have cut east far earlier in their journey. Carrying the blue canvas bag over his shoulder, Wang headed directly towards an outdoor exercise area, where he proceeded to change into a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. Joe kept a distance of between seventy and eighty metres between them, settling on a bench with a novel in his hands while Wang stretched and worked out. He was still in excellent physical condition, bench-pressing weights which would have troubled a man half his age.

  He remained there for about twenty minutes. During this time Joe removed a green long-sleeved shirt he had been wearing to reveal a grey T-shirt underneath. He also took a red baseball cap from a moneybelt around his waist and placed it on his head to effect a basic change in his appearance. While Wang was doing pull-ups, Joe moved to a grass clearing two hundred metres away and made conversation with a small group of tourists so as not to draw attention to the fact that he was on his own.

  Just after six o’clock, Wang crossed to the north corner of the gym area and drank water from a public fountain. He had changed back into his work clothes and draped a towel around his neck and now began to walk slowly towards the north-eastern corner of the park. Joe tailed him through an oasis of dappled light and evening birdsong, blending easily with the large numbers of tourists who were passing through the park on their way back from the Forbidden City. Throughout this time I was waiting for Joe to call me in, but he had decided not to risk the small chance that Wang might see me and recognize my face from the school. He was also certain that Wang lived nearby; with any luck, he would not have to tail him for more than a few blocks.

  The professor left the park via a gate on Jingshan East Road, walked for three minutes along a crowded side road, purchased a copy of the Beijing Evening News and then turned into a hutong a few hundred metres from the Times Holiday Hotel. Hutongs are quiet, crumbling Chinese neighbourhoods, characteristic of old Beijing, most of which have been gradually and systematically torn down by the communist government in recent years to make way for yet more concrete-and-glass skyscrapers with no discernible purpose; in Shanghai, they are more commonly known as shikumen. As Wang disappeared, Joe broke into a sprint to catch up with him. Turning into the hutong he saw the professor up ahead at the end of a narrow alley criss-crossed by washing lines. There was nobody else nearby and he decided to take a chance.

  “Excuse me!”

  Wang stopped and turned round. It was as if his eyesight was failing him because he squinted and took several paces forward. Joe had spoken in Mandarin and the professor seemed unsure whether or not he was the person being addressed. Caged birds were singing on the balcony of an apartment building high above their heads. The two men moved closer together.

  “Are you speaking to me?”

  Joe was within fifteen metres now and yet still Wang seemed not to have recognized him.

  “Professor?”

  “Yes?”

  “We met in Hong Kong several years ago. I wonder if we could go somewhere private to have a talk.”

  Wang was holding both ends of the towel around his neck. He tilted his head to one side and stared at Joe as if he were a strange and rare bird.

  “Were you followed here?” he asked.

  “I really don’t know.” Joe was surprised that he had been so frank. “Which makes it all the more necessary that we go inside as soon as possible.”

  Wang looked quickly to his left and, for an instant, Joe was concerned that he was going to try to run for it, to lose himself in the labyrinth of the hutong. Instead, he took a further step forward, frowning as he struggled to throw his memory back into a forgotten past.

  “Let me put you out of your misery,” Joe said. An insect flew into his face and he waved it away. “You knew me as John Richards, a representative from Governor Patten’s office in Hong Kong. I interviewed you at a safe-“

  “How extraordinary.” There was no artifice in Wang’s interruption, nor in the portrait of surprise painted on his face. He removed the towel from his neck and studied Joe’s eyes. “Why are you here?” he said, as if talking to an apparition. “I thought it was over.”

  “Well, you see, that’s exactly what we need to talk about.”

  Wang shook his head and turned. There was a certain fatalism in his movements. A woman carrying fresh cherries and lychees in baskets braced across her shoulders passed them and greeted Wang with a singing hello. This was clearly his neighbourhood, a place where he was known to the locals. Joe followed the professor to the end of a second narrow alley, perpendicular to the first, where he stopped and pulled out a key. His house appeared to be little more than a single-storey shack. The front door was made of rotting wood which clung to a rusty hinge. A blue shirt, frayed at the collar, hung on a coat hanger from a stretch of electric cable outside. Joe accidentally kicked an old tin of paint as he ducked to pass into the living room. It was dark inside until Wang switched on a bare lightbulb and closed the door behind them. The ceiling was less than six feet high and Joe lowered himself onto a hard wooden sofa to avoid banging his head.

  “This is your home?” he said. He wasn’t feeling sentimental about their reunion and was not concerned if he caused any offence with the question. The room was barely larger than his bathroom in Shanghai.

  “I am shortly to be relocated,” Wang replied, a
nd said something about the entire hutong being razed at the end of the summer. Ahead of them was a tiny bedroom with a bare mattress, boxer shorts and books on the floor. There was a faint, possibly ineradicable odour of vermin. Wang went into a small kitchen where he lit a gas stove and filled a pan with water. “Tea?” he said and Joe accepted the offer, setting each of his phones to vibrate. While the water boiled, Wang went into the bedroom and put on a thin brown cardigan and a pair of trousers. His feet, Joe noticed, were unwashed and black and he wondered what had brought Wang to such lowly circumstances.

  “So what do you want?” the professor asked. There were no pleasantries, no gentle probings to establish the other man’s character and credentials. Wang Kaixuan had spent eight years dealing with spies: they were all the same to him now. “I have told your people I have nothing left to say. I have abandoned the struggle. I wish to live my life in peace.”

  Joe had calculated that it was safe to talk in Wang’s home, on the simple basis that he had survived undetected by the MSS for more than a decade. “And who are my people?” he asked, mesmerized that the charming, confident crusader of his memory had become little more than a paranoid loner hiding himself away in the depths of old Beijing.

  “MI6. CIA. Does it make any difference? Why have they sent you this time? Why did I never see you again after our conversation in 1997?”

  “I’ve been asking myself the same question,” Joe replied. Wang caught his eye and there was a flicker of confusion. The water was boiling on the stove and he went back into the kitchen, returning with tea.

  “I cannot help you,” he said, sitting on a rickety wooden chair. Wang looked like an old man waiting in line to see a doctor. “You have risked my life coming here. I am not interested in any more of your propositions. You have lied to me before and you will lie to me again.”