by Chris Ryan
‘Ten million?’ said Bald.
‘Ten million,’ said Land. ‘Payable on completion of the mission.’
Ten million. Bald chewed the number around in his mouth. With that kind of wonga he could start dreaming bigger than the bar and the villa in Monte Carlo. He could relocate to Panama or Colombia, buy himself a whitewashed mansion and a harem of beautiful Latino women. He was starting to see the mission in a whole new light.
He said, ‘Where’s the handover happening?’
‘Jinchun. It’s in Xinjiang, an autonomous region located in the north-west interior. Shares borders with Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Russia. It’s the city farthest from any sea in the world. Getting out won’t be easy.’
‘When is it ever easy?’
‘You’ll extract across the western border with Kazakhstan. We’ll have a team waiting at an RV spot in the border town of Kargol. Just make sure you get across there by midnight. If our team hasn’t heard from you by then, we’ll assume the mission has been compromised. This is a non-attributable operation, naturally.’
‘Does the Firm do any other kind?’
Land ignored this. ‘We’ll fly you in on a diplomatic visa. Be careful, and be discreet. China is the second-most heavily monitored country in the world.’
‘Who’s number one?’
‘Britain, of course. We have almost twice as many CCTV cameras as China in a country a fortieth of the size.’ He paused and inspected something on the sole of his Oxford brogue. ‘The point is, there will always be eyes on you. Cameras, spies, informants.’
Land looked at his watch for the tenth time in a minute.
‘Now, I know what you’re thinking. How can you stay discreet when everyone else is the best part of a foot shorter and six shades yellower? You can rest easy on that count. Jinchun is just thirty kilometres east of the Kazakh border and not far from Russia either. A white face isn’t unusual. I suppose, given the average Russian’s penchant for vodka, they won’t be too alarmed by your drinking either.’
Bald said, ‘Who’s the contact on the ground?’
‘Sorry to disappoint your libido, John, but it’s a he, not a she. And a rather old he at that. But a company man. Loyal. He’s been monitoring communications between the military top brass.’
‘Where do I find this old fart?’
‘English Translation Services Ltd.’
‘Another one of your little fronts?’
Land pulled a much-too-straight face. ‘English Translation Services provides a valuable tool for assisting Chinese companies with the task of transcribing their texts into the language of business.’ He paused, ditched the face, said, ‘And also provides us with valuable intelligence about counterfeiting within Chinese industry.’
‘I would’ve thought the Firm had more important things to do than worry about dodgy tabs.’
‘We do,’ said Land. ‘But the Chinese are counterfeiting much more than a few cigarettes. They’re the world leaders in forged goods. Currency, electronics, Viagra, car parts, Harry Potter novels. You name it, the Chinese fake it. They butcher domestic dogs to make fake Ugg boots. They export thousands of containers of counterfeit goods every day. A report landed on my desk a few days ago. Aeroplanes, John. Two per cent of the parts on every single commercial airplane in the world are Chinese counterfeits.’
‘I don’t give a shit. This contact, I’ll find him at the translation company’s offices?’
Land nodded and took out a passport from his inside pocket. He opened it in the middle. A diplomatic visa was paper-clipped to the left-hand page. Under the clip was a slip of paper folded in half. Land pulled out the paper and unfolded it to reveal a handwritten mobile phone number.
Land said, ‘After you’ve destroyed the dust and neutralized Xia, call this number.’
Bald took the passport and the slip of paper.
‘Now remember,’ Land continued. ‘Xia doesn’t have the dust – only the schemata for developing it. So you need to be on the lookout for papers, dossiers, folders. Not weaponry. Not even the Chinese can reverse-engineer a technological breakthrough that fast.’
The cheers in the street below mutated into blue screams. The gunfire ceased. People were shouting and crying. Bald and Land rubbernecked the crowd. The procession was grinding to a halt. In the middle of the chaos a man was cradling the limp and bloodied body of a young boy.
‘What if I say no?’ said Bald.
Land directed his gaze at him and tightened his face into an angry ball. But Bald wasn’t intimidated. He returned the look with interest and said, ‘Don’t bother trying to threaten me. You’ve done that too often. It’s getting boring listening to the same old track.’
But the closer Bald looked at Land the more he started to think that it wasn’t anger hardwired into his face, but something else.
Land said, ‘We can’t fail, John. If you don’t kill Xia and destroy the Intelligent Dust, there’ll be repercussions.’
Bald cocked his head at Land, looking into his well-bred blue eyes. And he dimly realized what he’d been seeing in Land since they had met in the hotel bar.
Fear.
forty-six
Jinchun, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China. 1309 hours.
At six-five Bald towered over the crowd streaming down the street. His height granted him an unobstructed view of the electronic shops and Western coffee shops lining both sides of the wide road, as well as the ash-grey office blocks and brown new-built apartments chaotically arranged on the horizon. Bald stood out in his informal clobber of olive-green, loose-fit T-shirt, dark-blue zip-up hoodie, desert-coloured combats and Timberland Earthkeepers. The locals opted for the harassed businessman look. Drab grey suits and white shirts, many of them with a Marlboro Red hanging from their bottom lip. They were the perfect match for the city itself, with its monotone skyline, septic smells and brick-dust air.
‘Mister, you want?’ an old woman broken-Englished at Bald. Four-foot nothing and perched on an upturned food crate, she was hawking some kind of deep-fried foodstuffs. They smelled good and reminded Bald of home. A closer look served up disappointment. It wasn’t pizza she was frying, but what looked like scorpions.
‘Mister, you try.’
Bald waved her away.
Someone nudged into his back. He spun round, working his hands into fists. Found himself chin to forehead with a road sweeper. The guy wasn’t much taller than the woman selling deep-fried shit. He didn’t look a whole lot younger either. He was decked out in sky-blue overalls and cap, and a pair of worn grey sneakers. The broom in his hands had a long stick that was almost as tall as the guy himself, and attached to the end was a thick pad of bristles.
The guy dead-eyed Bald.
‘You want to say something?’ said Bald.
Road Sweep didn’t answer. The big Scot thought about punching him into two dimensions. He thought better of it. He was in a foreign country, and he was supposed to be covert. He uncurled his fists, let go the tension in his spine and gave Road Sweep his back.
He set off towards the apartment block housing English Translation Services. The block was easy to spot for Bald above the bobble of Chinese heads.
Bald remembered what Land had told him back in Libya. ‘There will always be eyes on you.’ Now he noticed a young woman to his right. Short black hair, dressed in a red cheongsam with a phoenix pattern splashed across the front. She was glaring at Bald. So was a plump, forty-something man in shades and a cheap black suit. Hard to tell whether they were government agents monitoring his movements, or merely locals giving him the famously warm Chinese welcome. He upped the pace. Checked his six o’clock again, searching out the street cleaner. Bald was starting to wonder whether Road Sweep had been dead-eyeing him for a reason other than a casual hatred of foreigners.
The guy had disappeared.
Bald reached the apartment block. The entry door had been wedged open and he stepped inside.
No lobby. No security guard. No intercom besi
de the door. Just a naked concrete floor, equally bare walls, and a staircase. Place looked more like a prison. Each door had a metal letterbox, and flyers were trapped in these, jutting out like colourful tongues. Bald looked at the business listing fixed to the wall. Helpfully it told him in English that English Translation Services was on the third floor. Bald started climbing. The temperature was cool in the block but he quickly worked up a sweat.
The third-floor landing was L-shaped with a single door to the right. Green paintwork was flaking off the door, revealing scabs of rusted metal beneath. The metal between the lock and the door frame had been reduced to a molten splodge like wax. Bald immediately recognized it as the handiwork of a Hatton breaching round. He stilled his body for a moment, trapped his breath in his throat and listened for movement.
Nothing.
He pushed the door open and edged inside. Entered a room that appeared to be a reception area. About five metres by three, with a linoleum floor that smelled vaguely of antiseptic, it contained an uncomfortable-looking leather sofa and a bank of grey filing cabinets. At the far end another door led into a bigger office. Bald moved cautiously towards it. His breathing was low and his movements were deliberate. At the door he did a quick sweep of the room, and quickly established there were no threats inside. A wooden bookcase to the left was filled with ancient-looking books. Centre stage was a walnut desk. There was a globe on it, and a guy behind the desk. He was slumped forward in his executive swivel chair. Head down, like he’d fallen asleep going over some paperwork.
Hole in the back of his head.
The hole was fresh and prominent and deep, like a surgeon had been performing brain surgery and had forgotten to sew the guy’s scalp up. Blood swamped down from the back of his head and his forehead before dripping off the tip of his nose and settling into a still-moist gel on the desk. The hair surrounding the entry wound had been burnt away. Nothing but singed, charcoaled skin. Smoke still whispered off the surface of the hole.
Bald manoeuvred around the desk to get a solid look at the guy’s profile. Gears clicked and aligned themselves in his head into a single thought.
I know this guy.
Bald froze for a long moment. He spied a bottle of Bowmore twelve-year-old quietly maturing on the bookshelf. He seized it and unscrewed the cap and made a silent toast to the body slumped over the desk. It had been three hours since he’d last had a sip. Long enough that now he thought about it, he could feel another migraine coming on. Since he’d started this op in Mexico and been cut off from his supply of amitriptyline, he’d been relying on alcohol to ward off the migraines. And so far his experiment in self-treatment was working out all right. As long as he juiced his bloodstream with alcohol every six hours, he could keep the lid on the migraines and get on with his life.
Bald necked a half-thumb measure of the Bowmore, mentally reset the timer on his internal booze clock, and asked himself where he went from here. Land had instructed him to link up with the old guy. The old guy knew where to find Xia. But judging from the hole in his head, someone had found Edgar Mallory first. Bald needed a Plan B.
He decided to call Land.
Bald had been equipped for his mission with a BlackBerry Bold modified by the Firm’s tech-heads to operate on a dual-frequency receiver. It had the necessary security hardware and software to encrypt phone calls and text messages in code similar to the encrypted GPS signals employed by the US military. In a country teeming with paranoia like China, you didn’t want to take any chances. Bald tapped in Land’s mobile number and tapped the call button. The line crackled. Eight long seconds later he got a ringtone – fuzzy, three beats long. On the fifth ring the mobile redirected him to voicemail. A corporate female voice told him to leave a message.
Bald said, ‘Stop sucking dick and pick up. The back half of our contact’s head is missing.’ He drained another measure of Bowmore and went on, ‘You didn’t tell me Edgar Mallory was working for you guys. He was the worst rupert ever to disgrace the Regiment. The lads tried to frag him in Iraq.’ He wiped his lips with the back of his hand. ‘Just thought you should know.’
Bald pushed the kill button and stashed the BlackBerry in his jeans pocket.
Edgar Mallory. ‘A company man,’ Land had said. ‘Loyal.’
Bald eyed the dead guy and looked at exactly where loyalty got you in this fucking life. He took a last swig of the Bowmore, screwed the cap back on and replaced the bottle on the shelf. There was nothing else for him to do here, and he didn’t want to run the risk of whoever had murdered Mallory coming back, so he jogged back down the stairs and emerged onto the street, checking his BlackBerry every five seconds. The signal bars had declined from five to zero and there was an SOS icon in the top-right corner. The BB had lost its signal completely. That didn’t make much sense, even to someone of his limited technological smarts. He was bang in the middle of a brand-new city in China. There had to be a dozen mobile-phone masts within pissing distance of his current location.
Suddenly Bald realized how isolated he was.
A lone man in a city of one million, in a country of one billion, with a slotted contact and no way of reaching out to the agent who’d sent him on the op in the first place. Bald hung a right down the main drag. He constantly checked his BB for a signal. Nothing. Bald felt his ten million quid slipping away, pound by fucking pound.
He walked a further fifty metres, then turned right onto a side street. He wasn’t headed anywhere in particular, concerned only with getting a signal on his BB. The narrow street was deserted. Office blocks the colour of smokescreens, gum-stubbled pavements, flaking adverts and a single dark electronics shop hawking counterfeit iPads and iPhones. A Lamborghini Gallardo hurtled down the road towards Bald, the engine booming out its unmistakable growl. People stopped and stared. Bald watched the Lambo flash past his shoulder, slow down fast, then grind to a halt in the distance.
And that’s when he stopped too, and felt a band tighten around his chest. Road Sweep was standing forty metres to his six o’clock. He was clutching his broom but he wasn’t busy sweeping up Coke bottles and McDonald’s wrappers. He was pushing his way through the crowd.
Gunning straight for Bald.
forty-seven
1339 hours.
Bald threaded further up the side street. Away from Road Sweep. Fast. After a hundred metres, he veered left onto a residential street swarming with the sweet-and-sour smell of noodle bars and body odour. Bald checked his BB. The SOS icon remained doggedly in the top corner. Road Sweep was now thirty metres behind. Gaining. Bald took the first right and found himself arrowing down a tiny street. He was hit by a smell of raw sewage. Piles of bin bags were torn open at the seams. Bald wormed past a squabble of Chinese beggars with faces like unwiped arses. Three fuckers had runny noses and clusters of skin lesions on their faces and hands. The tell-tale signs of leprosy.
Sixty metres down the backstreet, Bald ducked into the first left turn. Road Sweep stuck to his tail. Bald hurried past a stretch of dwellings that looked like hangovers from pre-Communist times. The timber on the ramshackle houses was weathered and the roof tiles were discoloured various shades of ill-brown. Tattered talismans were fixed to the front doors. Nobody was outside.
Bald was twenty metres down the street when Road Sweep swung round the corner. Bald broke into a run and darted into an alley at his nine o’clock. It was deserted but cramped. Twelve metres deep, three wide, the back end of it sealed off by a chicken-wire fence three metres high. Dead end. Bald headed for the fence; a rat squealed and scurried out of an open dumpster midway down the alley. Then suddenly there were a dozen of the fuckers streaming around his feet. He kicked them away, sending three or four of them flooding back to the dumpster and the discarded noodle boxes and yellow-bean sauce pots. A thought formed in the back of his brain. Why am I running from this midget?
Then he got his answer as the first blow struck his back.
The pain epicentred at the base of his spine and expanded up i
nto his shoulders and lat muscles. It sent Bald flying forward, like the ground had tilted down at a steep angle and now he was crash-landing. The blur of pain took on definition and form. It became something sharp and vicious. Bald tried rolling onto his back. The second blow came mid-roll. He glimpsed the broomstick swinging down. Too late to block. It smashed into his shoulder, hard wood greeting the bony blade of his shoulder. This new pain was instant and intense. But if he wanted to survive he needed to fight through it. He packaged the pain. Sealed it up and FedEx-ed it to the dark recesses of his brain.
Now he looked up to see Road Sweep bringing the broom handle down at his face.
In Bald’s mind the best operators weren’t the toughest, or the smartest, or even the best with an assault rifle. Those guys were the ones who usually got killed first. The operators who survived were the ones who could think on their feet, even while multiple X-rays were putting heat down on them and they were low on ammo. Bald had less than a second to react to the blow coming at him. He wasn’t able to block the shot; something had snapped in his left shoulder. Felt like his blade had cracked into a half-dozen shards. And he didn’t have enough time to roll out of the way. But he had another idea.
He shot up and forward with his head low and his chin tucked into his neck, and he thrust the hard shell of his cranium into Road Sweep’s midriff. He hit the little prick hard. The guy grunted, backstepped unsteadily, the force of the blow tipping him off balance. Bald kept charging into him. The guy tumbled onto his backside. The fight was turning in Bald’s favour. In the same fluid motion Bald sprang fully upright. Badly winded, Road Sweep generously presented his torso for a free hit. Bald gratefully took up the offer. He fired a Timberland at Road Sweep and winded him for a second time. Road Sweep made a weird sound. Creased his face into a ball of pain. Bald went to kick him again. He was vicious for such a stumpy fucker, thought Bald.
