by Mark Dawson
#
THE RUSSIANS had bought him a first class ticket. Air Astana 929’s itinerary called for two stops in Kazakhstan en route to Hong Kong: the first after three hours in Astana and the second, after another two hours, in Almaty. The plane was an Airbus A320 and, thankfully, it looked like it was in decent condition. Milton’s seat was on the aisle with Anna opposite him. He stared out of the porthole as the plane accelerated away down the runway, climbing into the angry black sky that had remained over Moscow since their arrival. The vast city, covered over with white, disappeared from view as they climbed into the dark clouds and then, after fifteen minutes, they broke through into the clear vault of midnight blue above. The stewardess, statuesque and with the Asiatic cheekbones and complexion of a typical Eastern European beauty, pushed the trolley down the aisle, the bottles clinking with their promise of oblivion. Milton hadn’t been to a meeting since he left San Francisco and he felt the familiar temptation even more keenly than usual. The bottles rattled joyfully, the stewardess bending closer to his head and asking whether she could get him anything. Milton looked at the miniatures of gin, whiskey, and vodka for longer than he had for months but, when she asked him again, he shook his head. When she left, he found that he was gripping the armrests so tightly that his knuckles were white.
A moment later he realised he was about to have the dream again. The first time in months. He closed his eyes, trying to control his breathing, the urge to gasp and gulp, focussing everything to keep it inside, keep it hidden so that Anna–– close enough to touch if he reached out an arm––didn’t see his weakness. That familiar feeling of fatigue, of being hollowed out, like a beaker into which misery and pain would be poured. He felt the muscles in his shoulders lock and set, as if petrified, and then his thighs and his calves. He held onto the armrests again. Then he was gone, barely conscious, standing in a blasted desert, the heat rising from the sand in woozy waves, and the smell of high explosives cloying in his nostrils. Time passed; he had no idea how long. He heard a lone, anguished cry and it sounded so strange because he should have been alone in the desert, but then he turned and it all flooded over him.
The desert.
The village.
The madrasa.
“Captain Milton?”
The children in their Western football strips.
The plastic football, jerking in the wind.
“Captain Milton?”
The young boy.
The plane, fast and low, engines echoing through the valley.
“John?”
He followed the sound of the voice back out of the dream, forcing himself out of the desert and back into the cabin of the jet: the endless drone of the engines, the clink of cutlery on china plates, the sound of a baby crying in the back of the plane.
“John?”
He turned to Anna and forced a smile onto his face.
“You were moaning, Captain Milton.”
“Bad dream,” he said. “Sleeping tablet. Must have disagreed with me. What time is it?”
“Eleven.”
They had been in the air for three hours.
“Are you sure you’re alright? You missed dinner.”
She looked at him and, for a moment, he wondered if there was something on her face beyond the dutiful concern of an intelligence agent responsible for the wellbeing of an important asset. Her hair shimmered in the shining cone of the overhead light, her green eyes glittered.
“I’m fine,” he said. “Not hungry.” He reclined his seat until it was flat and covered himself with the thin blanket that the airline supplied. “Get some sleep. We’re going to be busy tomorrow.”
* * *
PART FOUR
HONG KONG
* * *
Chapter Twenty-Two
HONG KONG tended to enjoy dry winters; the guidebooks all suggested that December was one of the better times to visit, with pleasant temperatures and dry days. As the Airbus descended from thirty thousand feet, however, it passed through a deep carpet of cloud that became progressively darker and angrier until it was almost pitch black outside the windows. The rain, as they sank into it, was a deluge, a torrential flood that had hammered on the city for three days and showed no sign of abating. The pilot came over the intercom and did his best to reassure his passengers that, although they were in for a bumpy landing, it was not unusual for Chep Lap Kok. His words did not go very far and, as the plane started to be buffeted by powerful gusts of wind and the rain sheeted against the windows, several passengers closed their eyes and clasped their hands and prayed to whatever deity they thought would protect them. Milton had been to Hong Kong six times before and had been there long enough ago to remember the old airport, Kai Tak, where jumbos seemingly aimed at the ramshackle apartments blocks before banking at the last minute to line up for the approach to the runway. In comparison, a bit of nasty weather at Chek Lap Kok was nothing to get too worked up about.
The details of the new facility resolved from out of the rain-lashed murk: the reclaimed land, the hangars, the servicing areas, the jumbos lined up at the terminal building and then the runway, demarcated by arrays of red and yellow lights. The plane bumped as it descended, the rear wheels screeched as they bit into the asphalt, the front wheel followed, the flaps popped open and the engines squealed as the plane’s headlong rush was arrested.
Milton packed away the book he had been reading and allowed his thoughts to wander a little. Beatrix Rose: that was a name he hadn’t heard for many years. She had disappeared after the botched operation to assassinate DOLLAR and SNOW; or, as he knew now, Pascha Shcherbatov and Anastasia Ivanovna Semenko. There had been nothing from Control that might have explained her absence but that, in itself, was not unusual. Group operations were typically one or two member jobs and, even where Milton had been paired with another, it was usually a different agent each time. Group Fifteen was carefully segmented so that each agent was independent of all the others. It was their own form of the cut-out that had shielded the agents who worked with Mamotchka; should one of them be captured, it would not matter how badly they were tortured since they would not know anything about the other members of the Group. Everyone breaks eventually during torture; it is a simple matter of biology. But you cannot reveal details that you do not know.
Milton knew a little more about Beatrix because she had presided over his selection and training but, even then, his knowledge was limited. He did not know very much about her private or professional lives, where she lived, what she had done before she joined the Group. He did not know her politics, her likes or dislikes, anything that might allow him to dab a little colour on the empty tracing of her personality. He did know that she was a brilliant agent, terrifyingly clear in her focus and relentless when she had been given a target. Of all of the men and women he had worked with during his career with Group Fifteen, Beatrix Rose, who would always be Number One in his eyes, was the most impressive by far.
He realised now, as he remembered her, that he had never really given the question of her disappearance much thought save her luck must have run out during a job. That happened. But now that he knew that she was alive, and hiding in a place like this, he began to wonder. He had experience of Control’s ruthlessness. He had form for seeking to terminate his top agent when he lost his trust in them. It did not seem so far fetched, especially given what Shcherbatov had told him, that he had done the same to her.
He looked out at the multitude of lights that twinkled amid the throbbing power of the storm. Finding a person in a city like this, an abundance of millions crammed onto an island that was much too small for them, was going to be difficult. He hoped that the leads that Shcherbatov had uncovered were enough.
The plane drew up to the gate and the pilot extinguished the Fasten Seat Belts sign. Across the aisle, Anna stood up and muscled her carry-on luggage down from the overhead bin.
“Here we are,” Anna said.
“Here we are.”
Their passports
recorded them as Mr. and Mrs. Roberts. For the purposes of their cover story, they were a couple from London in Hong Kong for a vacation. Milton had questioned whether Anna’s accent would raise suspicion but she modulated it effortlessly: the light southwestern twang that she used while in America had been superseded by a more guttural Russian inflection while they were in Moscow and now that, in turn, had been replaced by a flatness that could very easily have located her in the English Home Counties. She was an excellent chameleon.
They followed the snake of passengers down the aisle and disembarked onto the air bridge. As the corridor widened, Anna moved alongside him and slipped her hand in his. Milton did not resist.
#
THEY MADE it through immigration with no issues and took a cab to the city centre. Anna asked their driver for the Landmark Mandarin and he piloted them through the drenched streets, the tail lights of the cars ahead of them smeared as stripes of red against the sodden asphalt. Milton looked out of the window, reminding himself of the city: everything was tight and cramped, the skyscrapers jostling each other shoulder to shoulder, the buildings sheathed in black glass. They reflected the vast neon signs that flicked between advertisements: a pretty Asian girl, all perfect skin and red lips and gleaming teeth, selling insurance; an SUV, too bulky for these choked roads; confectionary and instant noodles and gambling websites and catwalk models and more cars and online catalogues. The streets were crammed and hectic.
The Mandarin was an expensive, luxury hotel. The reception was neat and functional and the girl behind the desk processed their reservation with good-natured efficiency. Only as they exited the elevator on the fifteenth floor did Milton pause to consider their sleeping arrangements. They were husband and wife; their cover demanded that they share the same room.
Anna approached the door and slid the card key into the reader. She must have detected his unease and, pausing in the doorway, she put a hand on his arm. “It’s a twin room,” she said, standing aside so that he could see into the large room. “Our cover need not extend any further than this.” She left her hand across his bicep and he knew what she was leaving unsaid: unless you want it to.
“This will be fine,” he said.
Milton stepped inside, and, unable to suppress the caution that had been drilled into him over the course of a decade, hundreds of nights spent in identikit rooms like this in countries where the local spooks made it a matter of routine to bug arriving travellers, he made a quick examination: the large en suite with a bath and shower; the twin beds; the large LCD screen on the bureau; the telephone beside the bed. He went back to the start and made a more detailed check. He dropped to his knees and checked under the beds, then he took out a dime from his pocket and used it to unscrew the plug sockets. He took the bulbs from the lights and dismantled the telephone handset. He opened the closet, lifted the television from the bureau and shut it away. It took him ten minutes to satisfy himself that everything was as it should be. Anna watched him quietly, saying nothing.
Milton wheeled his bag to the furthest bed, stood by the window and looked out. The window was high up and the view was impressive. The swarm of people in the street below hurried about their business, their umbrellas like tiny black mushrooms. The skyscrapers bristled, utilitarian and graceless, the tops muffled by low clouds. Lightning forked the sky and, seconds later, the answering boom of thunder rattled the glass in the window.
Seven million people, Milton thought.
He sat down on the edge of the bed, unable to ignore the fatigue that had sunk into his muscles and bones.
Seven million.
The sheer weight of the number pressed down on him oppressively. He had to find one person amid the mad tumult. That person, for all he knew, had been hiding in the city for ten years; hiding successfully, too, which was more than he could say for himself. Control and the Group had located him in just six months and the Russians had found him again soon after that. Beatrix Rose was better than he was. If she didn’t want to be found, Milton wouldn’t find her.
“When will you start?” Anna asked him.
Milton assessed his reserves of energy. The dream had exhausted him, as it always did, and the task could wait another day.
“Tomorrow,” he said.
He took off his shoes and shirt and went through into the bathroom. He closed the door, undressed and stood beneath the shower for twenty minutes, scrubbing the hot water into his scalp. He dried himself and pulled on the dressing gown embossed with the hotel’s logo. He stood before the mirror and regarded himself carefully. He did not inspect himself because of vanity, although pride would have been warranted if he was so inclined. He did so because he was an artisan; his body was his tool and his discipline demanded that it was always in good condition. The horizontal scar on his face seemed to have faded a little, as if blanched by the chill of Moscow, and the tattoo across his shoulders and back was more obvious now that his tan had faded almost completely.
He opened the door and went back into the bedroom. Anna had undressed, her clothes folded neatly on top of her suitcase. She was in bed, her chest rising and falling with the shallow susurration of her breath. Milton watched her sleeping: the long red hair; the full lips; the vulnerable, exposed neck; the slim body with the shape of her breasts perfectly obvious beneath the thin cotton sheet; the curve of her hip; the long legs; the porcelain white, ice-pale, skin. He wondered, for a moment, whether he could allow himself the luxury of accepting her unspoken and yet obvious offer.
No, he decided.
He could not.
He crossed the room quietly, removed the dressing gown and slid between the cool sheets of the other bed. He closed his eyes, listening to the hum of the air-conditioning and the exhalations of her breath.
Chapter Twenty-Three
MILTON COULDN’T SLEEP. His mind was turning this way and that and there was nothing that he could do to settle it. He got up and made his way quietly across the room to the chair where he had piled his clothes. He took them into the bathroom and dressed, took one of the keycards from the writing desk, left the room and took the elevator down to the lobby. There was a small business centre just away from the main desk with a couple of Macs, a fax machine and a printer. One of the computers was occupied and so Milton sat down next to the other one, opened the web browser and navigated to Google. He found the information he wanted, closed the browser down, cleared the history and went outside. It was still hot and humid, steam issuing from air vents and from the grates in the street. There was a taxi rank next to the hotel and he nodded to the driver of the one at the front of the queue; he nudged his car forwards and Milton got inside.
“Where to, sir?”
“Connaught Road West,” Milton said. “Sai Ying Pun.”
“Yes, sir.”
It was midnight. Milton had not been particularly surprised that there was an English speaking meeting, even at this hour. Hong Kong was a twenty-four hour city, after all, and being a drunk was a twenty-four hour problem. It was a closed meeting, which meant that only those in the fellowship were able to attend, and its title was Humble in HK. Milton had not been to a meeting for weeks and he knew that he made himself more vulnerable to the dream every extra day he missed. That, in turn, made him more vulnerable to the temptation of taking a first drink and everything he had learned in the months he had spent in the Rooms, all the way through South America and in San Francisco, made one thing perfectly clear: he would not stop at the first drink.
Connaught Road was a flyover that passed through an unlovely area of town in the Central district. Tall office buildings were to the left and a stretch of park was to the right. The driver exited the flyover and looped back around so that he could get to the maze of roads that ran beneath it. Po Fung Mansion was a three storey building with a shuttered takeaway on the ground floor. It was constructed from concrete and its walls were adorned with air conditioning units, a metal balustrade that prevented a drop from the first floor balcony and a collection o
f unhealthy looking pot plants. Traffic hummed across the flyover and the three-lane road beneath it. It was busy, smokey and noisy, and the three young men loitering outside the entrance to the nearby bar glared dolefully at Milton as he stepped out of the car. He paid the man and the taxi drove off. The men kept looking; Milton ignored them. He saw the familiar sign blowing in the breeze, attached with a piece of string to the door handle: two blue As, within a triangle, within a circle.
He crossed the street, opened the door and went up to the third floor. The meeting had just started: the secretary had welcomed the group and was about to lead them in the Serenity Prayer. He smiled at Milton and indicated an empty seat in the front row. Milton felt self-conscious as he picked his way towards it and sat down gratefully.
The secretary recited the prayer: “God, give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”
He continued with the familiar preamble and introduced the member who had been asked to read from the Big Book. Milton closed his eyes and listened, gratefully aware that the tension and worry was seeping out of him.
The reader finished and closed the book.
“Do we have any new members tonight?” the secretary asked.
No-one raised their hand.
“Any visitors?”
There was no point in staying silent; they all knew he was fresh at the meeting. “My name is John and I’m an alcoholic,” he said. “I’m from London.”
The others returned the greeting, welcoming him.
The secretary introduced the speaker. The man’s name was Chuck. He was corpulent: he dressed in a white shirt and beige trousers and he talked in a lazy American drawl. He didn’t discuss his background in depth, but Milton gathered that he was stationed in the city on behalf of an American corporation. His story was about the things he had done as a younger man; he did not specify exactly what they were, fencing around the subject even in light of the injunction that members should not fear honesty, but it was obvious that something had happened with his family and that it still caused him great shame. Milton closed his eyes again and allowed the man’s words to wash over him. The precise content of the story was not important (it involved a series of domestic faults that this man had to regret) and it could not have been more different to the bloody crimes that that haunted Milton’s dreams. The point of a good share was to find the similarities and not the differences, and Milton understood the man’s disgrace, his insecurity, and the fear that he would never be able to atone for his sins. Those were the universal similarities that bonded all of them together; the details didn’t matter.
