Where had he heard the name before? Their eyes met but Joe was disappointed to see that Shah-pour now looked just as bored and as indifferent as before. He was even angling past them as he shook their hands, heading back in the direction of the cantina.
“It was great to meet you guys,” he said. “Dancing Queen” was coming to an end. “Maybe we’ll run into each other sometime.”
“I certainly hope so,” Tom said, without feeling, and before Joe could add a farewell of his own, Shahpour Goodarzi had been swallowed up by a balcony of girls.
An hour later, out on the terrace, Joe saw Shahpour leave the club in the company of a young Chinese girl wearing torn denim jeans and a tight pink top. Turning to Megan, whose T-shirt was soaked through with sweat after a long session on the dance floor, he said: “Well, your Iranian friend got lucky.”
“My Iranian friend?”
“Shahpour. The guy who worked in construction. You remember? The one you were talking to on the balcony.”
“Oh him.” She had forgotten their encounter entirely. “Were you jealous, Joe?”
He liked the way she went directly to the point. Her game was never over. “Inconsolably,” he said, because he was now loose and drunk and strangely tempted by the idea of going to bed with her. “What was he like?”
“Didn’t you and Tom stay and talk to him afterwards?” A line of German students squeezed past them, pushing Megan’s body closer to Joe’s. He caught the sweet toxicity of her breath as she held his arm for balance.
“Only for five minutes. He said he used to work in construction.”
“That’s right. Some big American company,” Megan remembered.
Zapata’s was emptying out. Joe could not afford to ask too many questions, at the risk of seeming unusually inquisitive. He offered Megan a cigarette and looked around the terrace.
“Where are the others?”
“Jeff and Sandrine went home about an hour ago. I guess Ricky and Tom are still dancing.” Megan had not moved from her position, close to Joe. It was strange, he thought, how alcohol and the adrenalin rush of work could combine to push his longing for Isabella temporarily to one side. For weeks he had thought about little else but their first possible encounter, yet this alluring, flattering woman had worked her way under his skin. In Megan he detected something of the same rawness of spirit which had once captivated him about Isabella. Running his hand across her flat, cool stomach, he began to doubt the nature of his own feelings. How much of his need for Isabella was love, and how much a desire to get even? Did Joe want to possess Isabella again, only so that he could walk away? Seven years is a long time to harbour the grudge of heartbreak.
“So you think he was Iranian?” Megan asked, the palm of her hand gently brushing the hairs on Joe’s arm. Here was another chance to discuss Shahpour, but all he could think about was the delicacy of her touch.
“Iranian Californian,” he said. “A lot of them live over there. Families who escaped the Shah.”
Megan nodded. They were communicating as much through silence as they were through words. The early hours of the humid Shanghai morning were a possibility into which they could pour their desire. Joe pulled Megan towards him so that his arms were completely encircling her waist. She leaned back against his chest. He lowered his face into her hair and closed his eyes to the smell of her. It was in this blissful instant that the name Ansary Tursun suddenly returned to him and he was alone again on the streets of Tsim Sha Tsui. The process by which Joe’s brain arrived at the inspiration was as puzzling to him as the momentary loss of his desire for Isabella. He looked up at the night sky and smiled.
“So what are the rooms like at the Ritz-Carlton?” Megan whispered.
“What’s that?”
Joe had heard her, but he needed time. His memory was racing back to the apartment, to Sadha and Lee, to stories of torture and betrayal.
“I said, what are the rooms like at the Ritz-Carlton?”
“A mess,” Joe said, because he knew now that he ought to leave, to contact London, to speak to Waterfield before England went to bed.
“Don’t they tidy up after you?”
“Not when I tell them not to.”
Megan was waiting for an invitation. Of course she was. A woman needed more than code. He thought of the long night that lay ahead of them, the sudden end to his permanent solitude, the challenge and the excitement of taking a beautiful woman to bed, then the rapture of eventual sleep beside her. The twin, competing strands of Joe Lennox’s personality, his immense tenderness and his ceaseless professional zeal, helixed in an instant that dizzied him. He wondered whether it was possible to do both: to love and to work; to lie and to please? He was drunk and he was out of answers. A weakness in him, or perhaps it was a strength, said, “Come home with me tonight.”
Megan squeezed his arm so tightly that he almost laughed. He saw her twist away from him and turn and look up into his eyes in a way that was suddenly beyond lust and game-playing. Did this girl actually understand him? A few hours earlier Joe had been sitting beside her eating green curry, trying to sound clever about China. Yet his desire for her now was overwhelming. He wanted to kiss her, but also to save that kiss until they were alone and there was privacy and control. He did not want anybody to see them. He did not want those kinds of rumours.
“There are cabs outside,” she said.
“Let’s go.”
35
Nine hours later, Megan was sitting up in Joe’s wide double bed, a sheet wrapped around her body, picking at a room-service fruit salad. The curtains were drawn and she was watching BBC News 24 with the sound switched off.
“So is it true?” she called out.
Joe had stepped out of the shower and put on a dressing gown. He could still taste the sweetness of her body, the scent of the night on her skin. Drifting in and out of sleep beside this sensual, beguiling woman had been a waking dream of pleasure, by turns wild and then eerily calm. They were at ease with one another, and the morning had been blessedly free of any awkwardness or indifference.
“Is what true?” he called back.
“That you used to be a spy.”
Joe searched for his reflection in the bathroom mirror, but found that his face was obscured by a film of steam on glass. This is where it always begins. This is where I have to start lying.
“What’s that? Ricky’s theory?”
“Everybody jokes about it.” Megan had a cup of black coffee on the table beside her and she picked it up. When Joe came into the bedroom, rubbing a towel through wet hair, she clasped the cup against her chest and sneezed.
“Bless you. Who’s everybody?”
“You know…” They were both tired and Joe simply smiled and nodded. He sat on the edge of the bed.
“To be honest with you, it always irritated me that they never asked. At Oxford, it was a sort of running joke that anybody studying Mandarin who could tie their own shoelaces would get talent-spotted by MI6. But the offer never came. Even when I was working for the Foreign Office, I never got the nod.”
Megan sipped her coffee. “How come?”
“Search me. I can lie to people. I can drink Martinis. I’ve fired a gun.”
She pushed her foot against his thigh and he felt toes wriggling through the fabric of his robe. “You’d have been good at it, I think.”
“You do?”
“Definitely.” She lowered the coffee and teased him with her eyes. “You’re discreet. You’re sensitive. You’re
