“You think?”
“Did the club ask questions? I didn’t mean to make a scene.”
“We were both shit-faced, man. They were cool about it.”
“Did you take Kitty home?”
Joe had been crass to ask the question, but was nevertheless interested in the reply.
“No. We called it a night.” Miles sniffed involuntarily as he uttered the lie. “Had to get an early start.” He began flicking a ball of paper around his desk and said: “Look, I shouldn’t be encouraging you to go with Chinese girls. You got a great thing with Isabella. It’s obviously not right and it’s obviously not what you want.”
“Oh, I want to fuck a Chinese girl.”
“You do?”
Joe was surprised at himself. “Sure. I’m just not going to fuck a Chinese girl.”
“Why?” Miles was genuinely confused.
“You don’t understand?” A bicyclist mounted the pavement beside him and sped past, ringing her bell. “Because then I would have to tell Isabella and that would mean I couldn’t fuck her any more. Do you get it?”
“I get it.” Miles flicked the paper into the bin and put his feet on the desk. “So where are you?”
“Having a suit fitted.” The lie was instantaneous. “Kowloon.”
Joe wondered whether Miles would mention Wang again. If he did, it would imply that he and Lenan were still concerned about his attitude. But the subject did not come up and when it began to rain, he rang off.
“Listen, I’m going inside,” he said. “No umbrella.”
“Sure. I’ll see you around, Joe.”
“See you around.”
Several hours later, long after the majority of consulate staff had returned home for the evening, Miles passed through three sets of security doors in the basement of 26 Garden Road and made another phone call, this time on a secure line to a townhouse in Washington DC where Bill Marston, his assistant, Sally-Ann McNeil, Richard Jenson and Josh Pinnegar of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Mr. Michael T. Lambert, Chief Financial Officer of Macklinson Corporation, had gathered for a day-long conference on TYPHOON, the CIA’s nascent plan for the political and economic destabilization of the People’s Republic of China.
The six-bedroom house, which was located a block north of Pennsylvania Avenue, within spitting distance of Capitol Hill, was used by Macklinson as a venue for lobbying congressmen, hosting fund-raising dinners and as a place for out-of-town executives to hang their hats, saving the expense of a downtown hotel. If one or two of them had girlfriends to stay overnight, well, that was one of the perks of the job.
“Nice place you got here, Bill,” Jenson had said as he walked in shortly after ten o’clock. “Party much?”
But Marston had not been in the mood for jokes. Instructing Sally-Ann to make coffee for six, he watched two former technicians with the NSA, now employed by Macklinson’s security division, sweep the house for bugs, jam UHF and VHF frequencies within a 200-metre radius and ensure that all cellphones, pagers and personal computers in the building were switched off. The younger of the two men then walked into the kitchen, where he set a small portable compact-disc player on the windowsill and put a Beethoven piano concerto on loop. Towards eleven o’clock, the technicians were joined by a third man, from the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology, who set up an encrypted link to the US Consulate General in Hong Kong before escorting the technicians from the building to a mocked-up FedEx van parked on 5th Street.
“Mr. Coolidge? You there?”
Marston was chairing the meeting from a central position in the main lounge. All doors and curtains were closed. Sally-Ann was sitting on a sofa to his right with Josh directly beside her. Josh would shortly be making a presentation to the group using notes hastily assembled from the Historical Intelligence section of the library at Langley. The prospect had made him intensely nervous and he was eager to make a good impression. Jenson, who was relying on Josh to put the case for the CIA, was seated to Marston’s left at a small wooden table beside a door leading into the kitchen. He could hear the piano concerto as a faint background melody and wondered whether the Agency should have employed a man to mow the lawn outside, just to add an extra layer of noise. Probably not worth the effort. Michael Lambert was still on his feet, pacing the room like a senator on election night.
“I’m here, sir.”
Miles’s voice was clearly audible through a set of conference-call speakers positioned on a large dining-room table in the centre of the room. Marston liked it that Miles had called him “sir.” It set the tone.
“We’re all ready to go here,” he said. “You getting a clear line through to Hong Kong?”
“Crystal.”
Josh reached for his notes. Shuttling his eyes between Jenson and a reproduction of Thomas LeClear’s portrait of Ulysses S. Grant, he began to speak.
“Well, thank you all for coming here today. We’d like to thank Macklinson Corporation for making their townhouse available for our discussions. As you know, Richard Jenson has called this meeting to bring everybody up to date on certain developments with TYPHOON. Miles Coolidge, one of our officers in Hong Kong, is joining us by secure telephone from the US consulate. On behalf of Mr. Jenson, I’d also like to welcome Michael Lambert, CFO of Macklinson, whose long experience and expertise we predict will be crucial in the effective running of the project on the Chinese mainland.”
Nobody said a word. Lambert came to a halt in front of the largest of three bay windows, ignored the compliment and placed his hands behind his back. Feeling that he needed to be on his feet, Josh stood up, stepped away from the sofa, unwittingly brushing Sally-Ann’s leg as he did so, and walked to the other side of the dining- room table so that he was facing an expectant semicircle of all-powerful Americans. He placed his notes on the varnished wooden surface, reached to straighten a tie that wasn’t there, and continued speaking.
“So, uh, to begin, it is the Agency’s position that we believe a primary point of weakness for any destabilizing effort in China is going to be the Xinjiang Autonomous Region in the far northwest.”
“Where?” Marston said.
“Xinjiang, sir.” Josh hadn’t expected an interruption so soon. He spelled out the name and pronounced it slowly-“ Shin-jang.” “If you look on the map we’ve provided you, you’ll find the region nestled between Mongolia and Russia to the north, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the west, India and Pakistan in the south. Roughly speaking.”
“And it’s a part of China?” Marston didn’t seem to mind going public with his ignorance.
“Yes, sir, it is a part of China. As you are all no doubt aware, the government in Beijing has been under constant threat from Muslim separatists in the region for the past ten years.”
“And what do these guys want?” Marston was in a bullish mood. The coffee had kicked in. It was as if he wanted to topple Beijing by lunchtime. “You’re saying they’re Muslims?”
“That’s right, sir.” Sally-Ann dropped her pen on the floor and picked it up, a distracting movement which caused Josh momentarily to lose his concentration.
“I said what do they want?”
“Uh, an independent Eastern Turkestan, sir. They’re Turkic Muslims.”
“What’s that? Like a Muslim from Turkey?”
Sally-Ann inwardly groaned.
“Not exactly, Bill.” Jenson had moved forward to help out. He tapped a pen on the small table in front of him while Josh stole a glance at his notes. Jenson was sitting with his back to a closed set of curtains. A bright desk light shining in his face gave his expression a spectral quality. “There are many millions of Turkics in Turkey itself, but they’re also spread out right across Central Asia, Russia, the Caucasus…”
“Exactly,” Josh interjected. “The Turkic regions include Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Iran, Kazakhstan-”
“All right, all right, I get it.” Marston scrawled a note on the clipboard in his lap and muttered something under his breath. In the second uncomfortable silence of the morning, Lambert finally chose to sit in an armchair next to the sofa and emitted a bored, arthritic gasp as he did so. Josh felt slightly dizzy.
“Anyway, just a few weeks ago we got reports of three separate bomb attacks carried out by Uighur separatists in Beijing.” He had assumed that it was time to continue but, still chastened by Marston’s rebuke, aimed his remarks roughly in the direction of Lambert’s midriff.
“Uighurs?” Marston said. He pronounced the word like “Niggers.” Jenson coughed.
“Yessir. There are several different ways of saying ‘Uighur,’ usually with a kind of blowing sound on the first syllable, but ‘Wiggers’ works. ‘Wiggers’ is good.” Sally-Ann hid a smile.
