Wang Kaixuan is a myth, a spook story. Nothing that old fuck told you has any meaning.
“Is that you talking, or Miles?”
Shahpour appeared offended by the criticism implicit in the question. He stepped out in front of a cyclist and separated himself from Joe by crossing the street. They were on a narrow, dimly lit road in the heart of the French Concession, the dark plane trees bending low over their heads and stretching like a tunnel into the distance. Without hurrying, Joe caught up with him and simply picked up where they had left off.
“How do you meet Almas?” he asked.
Shahpour did not hesitate before responding. He was eager to dispense of operational secrets which had been weighing down on him for too long. “We go to a bar on Nanyang Lu. Place called Larry’s.”
Joe knew it. Larry’s was a block behind the Ritz-Carlton, a split-level American-style pub with big-screen sports and pool tables. He had eaten there, watching coverage of a one-day cricket international between England and South Africa. It was popular with twentysomething laowais who liked burgers and French fries. “You meet him in the open? In a restaurant?” He did not want to risk incurring Shahpour’s wrath by asking further questions about the sloppiness of his tradecraft.
“Sure. He blends right in. We sit in the corner, get a cheeseburger, we watch a ball game and act like a couple of Americans a long way from home. Chinese can’t tell the difference. We all look the same to them.”
“How often does this happen?”
“Twice, maybe three times since he came to Shanghai.” From the slightly obstinate tone emerging in Shahpour’s voice, Joe sensed that he was feeling defensive. Best not to push too hard.
“How do you contact him?”
Shahpour scratched an itch on the lobe of his left ear. “Text message.” He waited until he was clear of an elderly lady washing plates in a plastic tub at the edge of the street. “I gave him a cellphone. There’s language I use that indicates a desire to meet. Memet speaks English and we just code the time and date.”
Joe nodded and asked how it worked from Memet’s end.
“Same thing, more or less. He sends a text from a cellphone sourced in the US telling me to contact my grandparents in Sacramento.”
“Because your grandparents in Sacramento are no longer with us?” Joe was always fascinated to glean titbits of Cousin tradecraft.
“No, they’re still with us. But they live in Tehran.”
Joe smiled. “What about Miles?”
“What about him?”
“How does he do it? How does he meet the cell?”
“I have no idea.” Shahpour was shaking his head. Briefly, it looked as though he had no more to say on the subject. Then: “All I know is that he sometimes uses his wife.”
Joe felt a lurch of surprise which quickly turned to indignation. “Isabella?”
“Sure. For cover. You guys know about that, right? Take a chick with you, pretend like you’re going shopping or something, then meet your contact along the way. Isabella makes Miles look normal. But ask me where the hell he takes her and I’ll tell you I have no idea.”
44
“Where is your wife?”
The whispered voice of Ablimit Celil was audible above the screams and gunfire of an American disaster movie. He had taken the vacant seat beside Miles Coolidge at the far end of row Q, entering the cinema shortly after the film had begun.
“She couldn’t make it,” Miles replied. “Women’s troubles.”
He enjoyed taunting Ablimit’s religious beliefs, sexualizing women in his company, occasionally referring to his own agnosticism. He wasn’t going to be dictated to by a fanatic. Miles needed Celil, certainly, but Celil also needed Mike. Without American money and American explosives, he was just another two-bit saboteur.
“You wanted to talk.”
Miles had not yet looked at his agent. Three rows ahead of them, a man wearing a baseball cap was making his way through a tub of ice cream and laughing at a snatch of dialogue on screen. Had he turned around, he would have been met by the incongruous sight of two overweight middle-aged men, one with a thick beard, the other clean shaven, leaning towards one another like lovers in the back row. A vivid montage of flickering light reflected in the blackened eyes of Miles Coolidge and Ablimit Celil as they spoke reverently and quietly, like mourners at a funeral.
“How are you doing?”
“We are fine,” Celil replied. “But we must have more money.”
“So what else is new? Patience, for Christ’s sake.”
“Ansary has been ill. He does not work. He questions the direction we are taking.”
“I saw him last week. Ate a good dinner at Kala Kuer. He looked fine to me.”
Miles popped a single kernel of popcorn into his mouth, allowing it to melt on his tongue.
“I mean he is anxious for action. We all are. We wonder why we are waiting.”
Celil was speaking quickly, in Mandarin, and the whisper of his voice was almost lost amid the wail and crash of an action sequence. The film appalled him, the violence and the blasphemies. He tried not to look at the screen.
“I’ve been working up some possible targets,” Miles said, passing a package across the armrest. Celil placed it on his lap, straining to listen. “Factories. State-owned banks. A Sichuan restaurant in Pudong. I don’t want Americans hit, I don’t want Europeans. We’ve suffered enough.” Not much came back from Celil by way of a reaction, just a blank stare into the middle distance. “I want you to think about switching jobs. Leave Abdul at his factory, but Ansary can take a job washing dishes at the restaurant. I can get you security passes for the banks, access all areas. We have a lot of time.”
Celil sniffed violently. The American’s ignorance of Chinese affairs was still breathtaking to him. “This is not easy for Uighurs,” he said. “We cannot just walk into jobs in such places.”
“It’s all in the file,” Miles replied.
His apparent ignorance was, in fact, a front. After a recent meeting with his contact at the Pentagon, Miles had been persuaded that any successful attack in Shanghai would only strengthen Chinese resolve to protect the Games of 2008. There was also the added, obvious risk of losing the cell entirely. Every Uighur within a hundred miles of Puxi would be arrested and interrogated in the wake of a co-ordinated terrorist strike. Washington therefore had no intention of green-lighting an operation for the forthcoming summer. The information Miles had passed to Celil in the envelope was sketchy, at best; if the members of the cell succeeded in securing the positions he had described, Miles would simply pull them at the last minute, citing intelligence indicating that the operation was blown. He had also slipped fifteen thousand American dollars into the package, which would be more than enough to buy off Celil’s frustrations for several more months. Beijing was now the sole target. Both parties would eventually get what they wanted: the Uighur cause on a global stage; carnage to overshadow China’s precious Olympic Games.
“How are the others?” Miles asked. “How are Abdul and Memet?”
The audience suddenly burst into laughter. Miles looked up at the screen. A character appeared to have fallen over accidentally and was attempting to stand up. The Chinese love a pratfall.
“Memet I never see. Abdul also. It is the way we want it, the way we have always operated. I only know about Ansary because I visit his restaurant and they tell me he is sick. It is too dangerous to be seen with them. We want action. We want to hit the Chinese. We are tired of waiting.”
“And action’s what you’ll get.” Miles was irritated by these repeated calls for progress. The cell’s bloodlust was entirely of Celil’s making; he had brought a new fanaticism to their work. At the high tide of TYPHOON, there had been no undercurrent of religious fervour. The men had regarded themselves as soldiers, fighting for a just
