officer did not bother to turn round and look at her, Wang felt that he was safe; this cop was clearly just passing the time. According to the clock in the lower left-hand corner of his computer, he had sixteen minutes remaining. As long as the official left within that period, everything would be all right.
Wang waited. He clicked through random pages-news stories, classified ads, letters-and rehearsed the details of Zhang Guobao’s cover in the event of a brief interrogation. He was an engineer, born in Chongqing, registered to live in Beijing. Surely none of these personal details would be necessary? The police officer was not about to interview every one of the twenty or twenty-five customers in the cafe. He was just a friend of the proprietor, stopping by for an idle chat. At the very worst he might walk around on a power trip, looking over shoulders, the personal embodiment of state power.
A further ten minutes passed. Wang could not risk returning to the desk and purchasing another half-hour of time if the cop was still there. Why had he spent so little money? Why had he not bought two or three hours and spared himself these agonies? He began to develop a migraine and longed to return home. He considered briefly the possibility of returning at a later point in the day, but knew that time was a factor if he was to influence events in Shanghai. Eventually, with only five minutes of credit remaining, the police officer walked outside.
It was as if the entire room breathed a sigh of relief. Wang returned immediately to the dormant Lenan account. The email address had been given to him by Mr. John Richards, a man whom Wang trusted and admired. He had looked into the eyes of Joe Lennox and realized that he alone possessed the power to stop the bombs. An old man who had seen too much blood still believed that his salvation lay in England.
He began to type:
An attack is set for Saturday, Mr. Richards. The code they have used is “ZIKAWEI.”
49
On Nanjing Road, not far from the triple towers of the Ritz-Carlton hotel, Memet Almas stepped down from the crowded, shuddering bus, shouldered his rucksack and began walking north along Tongren Lu. Celil had suggested that he arrive at Larry’s at seven o’clock, but he was fifteen minutes early.
Almas’s movements between 6:45 and 7:00 p.m. remain a mystery: traffic cameras lost him in a black hole on the corner of Tongren and Nanyang Lu. Unimaginative, yet thorough by nature, it seems likely that he waited on a deserted stairwell close to the bar, making a last-minute adjustment to his IED. Satisfied that he could do little more than pray for the successful outcome of the operation, the Kazakh entered Larry’s just after seven o’clock. Staff at the bar remembered a man, whom they took to be a tourist from Central Asia, ordering a bottle of Michelob, eating a plate of nachos and leaving before half-past seven. The coat-check girl, to whom Almas had handed his rucksack, recalled only that the customer had seemed quiet and polite. Confronted with his photograph forty-eight hours later, she recalled that she had joked that the rucksack seemed unusually heavy. No, she had not witnessed him leave. It was happy hour, the bar was busy. She wished that she had been paying closer attention.
Shahpour Moazed was hailing a taxi on Fuxing Road just as Almas was walking out of the bar. He had cleaned his apartment. He had shaved off his beard. The prospect of the meeting filled him with an excitement that was as new as it was unexpected. This was the impact that Joe Lennox had had on his life; there was now vigour and meaning to his work. If Joe succeeded in his recruitment of Almas, Shahpour’s years in China would not have been wasted. Together they would put a stop to the bombs. Together they would bring Miles Coolidge to his knees. Shahpour had adjusted to the probing, thorough approach of the British. He trusted Joe implicitly and believed that the evening would be an unqualified success.
For his part, Joe had spent most of the day fielding Quayler-related calls at his apartment in the French Concession. In mid-afternoon, seemingly oblivious to the fact that it was a Saturday, a representative from a German pharmaceutical company had telephoned requesting detailed information about Chinese patent law. At 4:50 Joe had taken a call from his father. At about 5:15 he had switched off his phone and taken a nap, waking an hour later to discover a text message from Megan-“Dinner?”-and a follow-up from Tom which convinced him that they were working in tandem. He had broken things off with Megan ten days earlier. She had taken the news calmly, but appeared to be trying to hold on to the possibility of a reconciliation. As things turned out, it would be several months before they would see one another again.
Isabella rang just after seven. Her number was programmed into Joe’s mobile and his excitement at seeing the read-out was tempered only by the thought that she might be calling with bad news.
“Joe? It’s me. Izzy.”
Her voice had a quality of defiance perhaps even of mischief. She was standing in Jesse’s bedroom at the villa in Jinqiao, watching Miles drinking a glass of white wine in the garden below. For days now she had been looking at her husband as if he were an apparition. Even given all that she knew about Miles Coolidge, it was impossible to imagine that the man she had once loved had organized an operation on the scale of TYPHOON, given his blessing to a terrorist cell which planned to kill thousands of innocent Chinese.
“It might be happening tonight,” she said. She was betraying the father of her child and yet her words felt like an act of liberation. “He’s taking me to the cinema.”
In view of Joe’s plans for Larry’s, the timing was disastrous. Yet to hear Isabella’s voice was thrilling. She had kept her word.
“Where?” Joe said.
“Silver Reel. Eight twenty-five in Screen Four. It’s the usual place.”
“That’s in less than two hours. When did this get decided?”
“This afternoon. Miles got a text message. He was on his way to the airport. Cancelled everything.”
Isabella looked outside. To her horror she saw that Miles was no longer in the garden. She looked directly below the window but saw no sign of him on the patio. How long had he been gone? Was he already in the house, listening to everything she had said? For a moment she froze, unable to know what to say or do.
“Isabella?”
“I have to go,” she whispered.
“What?”
“I said I have to go. He’s coming.”
Joe ignored her concerns. He was frustrated that it had taken her so long to ring him. Why had she waited? What was the reason for the delay? “Screen Four?” he said.
Isabella was listening at the door of the bedroom, torn between her loyalty to Joe and the pure fear of losing everything. She crossed the room and again looked out of the window. Miles’s empty wine glass was toppled over on the grass. Against her better judgment she whispered, “Yes. Screen Four.”
Footsteps on the staircase. At the top or the bottom? It sounded as though Miles was already upstairs. Jesse, God bless him, was splashing and shouting in the bath. Miles would surely have assumed that Isabella was with him. And there was indeed a look of surprise on his face when she emerged from their son’s bedroom, holding the phone.
“Who you been talking to, honey?”
She longed to say the single word “Joe,” just to see the look on Miles’s face, just to let him know that the game was up. Instead she lied and told her husband that a friend had called from England.
“So you ready to go?” he asked. Mary, the ayi, emerged from the bathroom with Jesse wrapped in a towel. “The driver’s waiting downstairs.”
“I’m ready to go,” she replied. “I’ve been ready for ages.”
By the time Isabella and Miles were on the Yan’an Road, making their way through Saturday night traffic towards Xujiahui, Abdul Bary had told his wife that, as a surprise on her twenty-seventh birthday, he was taking her to the Teppenyaki Shinju restaurant on the sixth floor of the Paradise City mall. He explained that he had been saving up for weeks, although the money to pay for the dinner had actually come from Ablimit Celil. He said that he knew how much she loved Japanese restaurants; this one had a fish tank which their daughter would adore.
Ansary Tursun had bought his ticket, using cash, for Screen Eight of the Silver Reel multiplex. He saw to his satisfaction that the cinema was going to be packed. Unusually for China, two American summer blockbusters had
