challenged his natural authority.
“Oh she’s great,” he replied. “Why? You wanna meet up with her?”
Joe remembered the last time that he had seen the pair of them together, sitting on a sofa at a party in Causeway Bay. He had walked into the room and Isabella had immediately turned away, pretending to hold a conversation with the woman to her left. They had been separated for two months at that point and Joe had watched Isabella’s hand link into Miles’s arm, playing with the strap of his watch. Afterwards, out on a balcony, he had deliberately started an argument which had ended with both Miles and Isabella leaving the party. Those were the worst times and the humiliation of that period still ran through him like acid in the stomach.
“Sure. It would be great to see her.”
“Dinner?” Miles suggested immediately.
Joe suspected that this was pre-ordained. Miles would want to maintain as much control over Joe as possible, to shunt him around town until he knew exactly what he was dealing with. Joe had planned to decline any initial invitation from Miles under the pretence of leaving Shanghai on Quayler business, but he was aware that he had several bags of fresh food resting at his feet and that such a tactic would now be impossible.
“Dinner sounds great.”
“What about tomorrow? I know Izzy’s free. I can get us a table at M on the Bund. She’d get a kick out of seeing you.”
A kick? He had forgotten Miles’s seemingly effortless slights and condescensions. He was acting as though Joe had been a mere footnote in the long narrative of Isabella’s life. The rain was starting to ease off on Huaihai and he listened to the sound of the crawling traffic, to horns, the squeal of brakes.
“Fine,” he said. “I’d like that.” M on the Bund was a rooftop restaurant with views over the Huangpu and prices to match. Though he had imagined the circumstances of their reunion for seven long years, in that moment Joe had no conception of how he would react to seeing Isabella after such a span of time. What would he say? How would she behave? Why was he agreeing to meet both of them at the same time?
“You gotta cellphone?”
“Of course.”
Miles was sipping his tea. He knew, as well as anyone, how much the separation had cost Joe in terms of his happiness and self-esteem and appeared to be enjoying his discomfort. Joe, realizing that he had been handed an opportunity, lifted his briefcase onto the table, flipped the catches and swivelled it towards Miles so that it was possible for him to view the contents. He looked quickly at his face and noted the eagerness with which the American scanned the leather interior.
“What you got in there?” Miles asked. “Vaccines? Viagra?”
“Just work,” Joe said, “just work,” closing the lid and passing Miles the card. “You got one of these?”
“Sure.”
This was the second part of his plan. Miles took a card from his jacket and handed it to Joe, who carried off the act to perfection.
“Microsoft?”
Miles nodded. “Yup.”
“I think I met a colleague of yours the other day. I’ve got his card in here somewhere.”
Reopening the case, he scrabbled around for several seconds before emerging with what he needed. “Shahpour Goodarzi?” he said, as if struggling to pronounce the name. “Does that ring a bell?”
The deception had been simple and effortless and Miles fell for it like a hooked fish. “Shahpour?” he said, snatching the card out of Joe’s hand. “Where the hell did you meet him?”
Joe strained, reaching for the memory. Eventually he said: “Zapata’s? Maybe three nights ago. Matter of fact, I think he was trying to chat up my girlfriend.”
“You’ve got a girlfriend already?”
The information had slipped out in the heat of the moment. It was his only mistake. There was no operational advantage in Miles knowing about Megan and Joe stubbed out his cigarette, annoyed with himself.
“Early stages,” he said, “early stages,” knowing that Isabella would now be told. How would she react when she heard the news? The only thing he feared was her indifference.
“Why don’t you bring her along?” Miles suggested.
“Tomorrow?”
“Sure.”
Joe agreed, although he had no intention of extending the invitation. The dinner would be complicated enough without throwing Megan into the mix. “Not a bad idea,” he said. “I’ll see if she’s around.”
“Maybe Shahpour can come too,” Miles added. “The more the merrier, right?”
“Right,” Joe said. “The more the merrier.”
Forty seconds after Joe had left the restaurant, Miles took out his mobile phone, walked out onto Huaihai Road and called Shah-pour on a secure number.
“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me you’d run into Joe Lennox?”
“Who’s Joe Lennox?”
“British. Ex-MI6. Works in pharmaceuticals. Ring any bells?”
“Miles, I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”
He did, of course. From the moment Shahpour had shaken Joe’s hand in Zapata’s, seen his card and registered the name, he had been weighing up the implications of their encounter. The look Joe had seen in his eyes was the look of a man who had found his salvation. Shahpour Goodarzi was Miles’s right-hand man on the renewed TYPHOON, but he was also the greatest obstacle to its fruition.
“Hold on,” he said. “Pharmaceuticals?”
“That’s right.” Water was dripping onto Miles’s scalp. He looked up at the offending balcony, wiped the rain off with his hand and began walking east towards the metro station at Shaanxinanlu. “Six foot, dark hair…”
“Yeah. Oh yeah. Sure, I remember.” Shahpour was smoking a joint in his apartment on Fuxing Middle Road and rested it on a table in the kitchen. “He gave me his card. I’ve got it here somewhere. Who did you say he was?”
“Only the guy who first interviewed Wang Kaixuan. Only the guy who supposedly quit MI6 three months ago and now just happens to be living in Shanghai. Only my wife’s fucking ex-boyfriend. I told you about him, for Chrissakes. I told you two weeks ago there were rumours he’d been sent to Shanghai.”
“Calm down,” Shahpour said. “It’s probably just coincidence.”
“Coincidence?” Miles was barking into the phone as he walked. “What is this? A seance? Don’t tell me to calm down, you prick. How did he get to you?”
Shahpour removed the phone from his ear, mouthed the words “Fuck you” soundlessly at the mouthpiece, and picked up the joint. “He didn’t get to me,” he said, dragging on the roach. “I was talking to his girlfriend and his buddies came down on me like a SWAT team.”
“Who’s the girlfriend?”
“How should I know? Mary or Megan or something…”
“Well, she’s coming to dinner tomorrow night. So is Joe. And so are you.”
“Miles, it’s the weekend. I have plans…”
“The only plans you have are to make it to M on the Bund by eight o’clock. Do your job, Shahpour. Fuck this up and you’re on a cargo flight back to Sacramento.”
38
Joe spent the next twenty-four hours trying his best to convince himself that he was ready to see Isabella.
He made dinner for Megan at his apartment, took her for a drink at the Cotton Club, lay awake beside her until almost four o’clock in the morning, then woke at nine to find her standing at the end of his bed bearing a tray
