“Sure.” Shahpour seemed bored by the detail. “Teaches Chinese to corporate suits at one of those language schools in Haidian. He doesn’t want anything to do with me. He doesn’t want anything to do with Miles. For professional purposes he’s changed his name to Liu Gongyi. Says he’s lost faith in the concept of armed struggle. But the only people he hates more than Americans are the Chinese, so he won’t tell them about the cell.”
Language school? Joe remembered that Macklinson had set up free language schools on construction sites as a means of recruiting disenchanted labourers. Were the two connected, or was this yet more obvious bait? “And who’s in the cell?” he asked, his desire for information briefly causing him to forget that he was supposed to be playing the role of a disinterested observer.
“What do you care?” Shahpour had poured himself the last of the wine, which he finished in three long gulps. “Uighurs. Kazakhs. Guys with nothing to lose.” The wine caught in his throat and he coughed. “All I know is that in Christmas 2002 I was getting ready to move to Tehran when I was told to pack my bags for China. Have SIS check me out if you’re in any doubt. My real name is Shahpour Moazed. My father’s name is Hamid Moazed. I also have an American name-Mark-because that’s what all good Iranian-American boys do so that they can get along in California. Ask your people in London to check the employee register at Macklinson Corporation. They’ll tell you that a Mark Moazed was working in Xi’an between 2002 and 2004. What they won’t be able to tell you is that the CIA spent three years routing weapons and explosives through Macklinson to Uighur separatists who blew up innocent women and children all over China. What they won’t be able to tell you is that I spent two years trying to clean up the mess. Tell them to give Microsoft a call while they’re doing that. They’ll tell you that Mark Moazed joined them late last year. They might even be surprised to learn that two of their employees are in league with clandestine elements within the Pentagon and have recruited a cell of Islamist radicals prepared to kill hundreds of innocent people in Shanghai. And why? Why have we decided to do this? Why am I dedicating my life to an operation with no value or purpose or principle? I really have no idea at all.”
39
As soon as he left the restaurant, Joe took a cab back to his apartment, telephoned Waterfield on a secure line and gave him chapter and verse on Shahpour’s extraordinary gamble.
“It’s a trap,” Waterfield said when he had finished, and Joe knew that he would now be alone. Whatever he told them, London would never believe that Shahpour Moazed had just dropped out of the sky to make a hero of Joe Lennox. “Think about it,” Waterfield said. “I know you want product, Joe. I know you’re looking for answers. But this is too simple. He’s a poisoned pawn.”
Joe was not a chess player and ignored the metaphor. “So you don’t think Miles had Lenan killed?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You don’t think there’s a cell planning a hit in Shanghai?”
“I didn’t say that either.”
“Then what are you saying? It seems perfectly obvious to me that Miles couldn’t give a flying fuck what I’m up to out here. He has bigger things on his mind. I sent a text to Zhao Jian on my way home. Guess what? Miles really did leave in the middle of dinner so he could get his cock sucked in Gubei. That’s how much my presence in Shanghai means to him. He doesn’t care that we might find out what happened to Ken. What are we going to do? Arrest him? Run crying to Washington? The Office is irrelevant in all this. A bit-part player. Even if half of what Shahpour just told me is correct, this thing has taken on its own momentum and is going to happen, with or without British interference.”
There was a long silence. Joe sensed that he had found a route through Waterfield’s objections, but he was mistaken.
“Let’s suppose that it is true. How do you know the cell isn’t penetrated? Every other Miles Coolidge operation in China has gone tits up. What’s so different about this one? The man has an inverse Midas touch. Besides, Cousins don’t suddenly walk off the plantation and start baring their souls. Your American friends were trying to provoke exactly this sort of reaction. They’ll be watching you from now on. They’ll want to find out whether you respond to what you’ve been told. This is basic stuff. Page one.”
“Then at the very least let’s try to find Wang.”
“No. Aren’t you listening to me? They’ll have eyes all over him. You try to flush Wang, you’ll draw MSS, CIA, and God knows how many other services into a shitstorm of unimaginable proportions. Leave well alone. Your assignment is to get close to Coolidge. Your operation is to discover how much local liaison knew about Lenan’s activities and whether they can be traced back to London. Now I have to go into a meeting.”
“David, with the greatest respect, those are side issues now…”
“I said I have to go into a meeting. You’re obviously very tired, Joe. It’s late out there. Get some sleep.”
Joe heard the hollow click of Waterfield hanging up and shook his head with frustration. He was sitting at his desk in the second bedroom of his apartment, which he had turned into a makeshift office. The walls were uncovered save for a large National Geographic map of China and a pin board onto which Joe had tacked documents relating to Quayler. The conversation with Waterfield had served only to remind him of the pettiness and obstructive bureaucracy which had characterized the Office in recent years. Where was Waterfield’s willingness to take a risk? What was the purpose of Joe’s being in Shanghai if not to discover what America was up to? Taking a drawing pin out of the board, he pushed it repeatedly into the soft wooden surface of his desk and felt the utter frustration of his solitary trade. He would never make progress. He would never see Isabella. Joe was convinced that Shahpour was telling the truth, that he was trying to find a way of destabilizing the cell which would bring dishonour neither upon himself nor upon the American government. But how to convince Waterfield of that when he was thousands of miles away?
Just before 2:30 in the morning, with a glass of whisky at his side, Joe sent me a text message in Beijing. He had made the decision to ignore Waterfield and to follow his instincts. If he was wrong, so be it; he was deniable to London. If he was right, Waterfield could take credit for his foresight in sending RUN to Shanghai.
I was sitting in the lounge bar of the Kerry Centre Hotel with a government official who was helping me with a story I was writing about the Olympics. A group of Japanese businessmen were sitting on the sofa next to mine drinking Californian Merlots and watching coverage of a golf tournament on ESPN. Jumbo Osaki sank a monster putt at the seventeenth and a roar went up as my phone beeped.
“Ring your sister,” the message said, and I experienced one of those strange, out-of-body surges which are the perks of life as a support agent. Making my excuses, I took a cab back to my apartment, found a clean SIM and called Joe in Shanghai.
His instructions were simple: to find Professor Wang Kaixuan. He was teaching English as a foreign language at one of the schools in Haidian district. What was the name of the school? Where was it located?
As tasks go, it was not particularly taxing, certainly for a reporter of long and weary experience in investigative journalism. A quick search of the internet provided me with an exhaustive list of language schools in the Beijing metropolitan area and I simply cold-called each and every one of them in Haidian throughout the course of the next morning. Joe had given me a simple cover story: to pretend that I was a former student in Mr. Liu Gongyi’s class who wanted to send him a book through the post. Predictably enough, the first eighteen receptionists insisted that they had nobody of that name teaching at their school and that I had dialled an incorrect number. The nineteenth school, however, was only too happy to provide me with a full postal address and were certain that “Mr. Liu” would be delighted to receive his gift.
I called Joe with the good news.
“Not bad for an ageing hack with a drink problem,” he said. “I’m coming to Beijing.”
40
