Typhoon

14

When Miles Coolidge wanted to avoid awkward conversations he adopted a number of different tactics: meetings cancelled at the last minute; phone calls ignored for days on end; letters and emails left stubbornly unanswered. If it wasn’t in his best interests to tackle a problem, he would leave that problem unresolved. So when Joe walked into Samba’s at nine o’clock that evening and spotted Miles at the crowded bar surrounded by a seven-strong group of his American consulate co-workers, he saw it not as a happy accident of the diplomatic life in Hong Kong, but as a deliberate delaying tactic to prevent any serious discussion of Wang. They had agreed to meet alone. Miles was playing games.

“Joe!”

One of the girls from the consulate-Sharon from the Commercial Section-had spotted Joe coming through the door. Her greeting had a ripple effect on the rest of the party and those who knew him broke off from their conversations to acknowledge his arrival.

“Hey, man, great to see you again.”

“It’s Joe, right?”

“How’s the shipping business?”

Miles was the last to turn round. Resplendent in a lime-green Hawaiian shirt, he removed a tanned, muscular arm from the shoulder of a Chinese woman at the bar and moved a couple of steps forward to shake Joe by the hand. His impassive eyes said nothing about their broken arrangement; there was no apology in them, no embarrassment or regret. If anything, Joe sensed a certain triumph in Miles’s expression, as if he was actually glad to be wasting his time. Joe knew that it was useless to complain. Any formal expression of his frustration would simply play into Miles’s hands. The trick was to stay the course, to act as though nothing had happened, then to corner him at the end of the evening when everyone else had gone home.

To that end Joe ordered a round of drinks-eight bottles of beer, eights shots of tequila-and went to work on the crowd. He was a genius with names and faces. He remembered that Sharon had a brother in the US navy who was currently serving in Singapore. He reminded Chris, a gay African-American who worked in the Culture Section, that he still owed him a hundred dollars for a bet they’d had about Chelsea Clinton. When Barbara and Dave Boyle from Visas came over and complained that Joe was a “bad influence” for plying them with drink, he bought them two more tequilas and asked fascinated questions about their recent wedding in North Carolina. Meanwhile Miles, who was attempting to seduce an Australian backpacker near the cigarette machine, occasionally looked over in Joe’s direction as if surprised to see him still there. The clincher was the backpacker’s departure at eleven o’clock. Claiming the sudden onset of a migraine headache, she climbed into a cab with Barbara and Dave and took off down Lockhart Road. With a belly full of alcohol and a wounded ego, Miles was left with nobody to play with. Joe was the obvious target.

“So how’s Isabella?” he asked. He had eaten garlic for dinner and the smell of it on his breath cut through the smoke and the sweat of the bar.

“You tell me.”

Miles seemed to take this as a compliment. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You were the last person to talk to her. When I got home last night she was asleep. When I left this morning she was asleep.”

“And where is she now?”

Joe looked at his watch. “Asleep.”

One by one, the consulate crowd departed until Chris was the last of them. At around half-past eleven he spotted a vacant table at the window overlooking Lockhart Road and ordered another round of drinks. Joe was keen to get Miles alone but could see that Chris was gearing up for a long night out on the tiles. Realizing that he would have to resort to a lie, he waited for Miles to go to the bathroom, then slumped down at the table with deliberate exaggeration and played what was, in the circumstances, his only viable card.

“Thank God for that.”

“What do you mean?” Chris asked.

“I’ve been trying to have a serious conversation with Miles all night. It was impossible to pin him down with everybody here.”

Chris was a sensitive soul and would soon pick up on the signals. “Talk to him about what?”

Joe opened a packet of cigarettes. He made a point of crushing the cellophane wrapper nervously in his hand and let out a stagey sigh.

“Can I tell you something in confidence?”

“Sure.” Chris’s gentle, attentive face was quickly filled with concern. “What’s up, man?”

“I’ve got a bit of a problem at Heppner’s. A serious problem. I called Miles about it earlier today and he said he’d be able to help. We arranged to meet for this drink but with everything that’s been going on I haven’t been able to talk to him.”

“Shit.” Chris looked genuinely crestfallen. “Anything I can do to help?”

“That’s really good of you, but I’m afraid Miles is the only person who can do anything at this stage. Apparently he knows somebody in logistics in San Diego who’s the one guy that might be able to solve things. But I have to catch a flight to Seoul at eight tomorrow morning and this needs to be sorted before then.” Joe looked up at a clock on the wall, then at his watch. “It’s still the late afternoon in California…”

Chris interrupted him. “Listen, man, if you need some privacy to talk things over with Miles…”

“No, no, that wasn’t what I meant. Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply…”

“You didn’t imply anything.” Chris was in his late thirties, a decent, obliging “soul,” and he adopted an expression of infinite wisdom and understanding in the presence of the younger man. “You got a tough job, Joe, and-”

“No, no, please don’t worry. We can do it later.”

“-and I’d like to help you out.” Chris laid a firm, understanding hand on Joe’s arm and gave it a meaningful squeeze. “You don’t wanna be sitting here listening to me all night when you’ve got this shit preying on your mind. And you’re right. Miles is exactly the guy you should be talking to. That man is unbelievable.” He stalled a little here, as if unsure whether Joe was aware that Miles was CIA. “I can see how frustrated you are and I totally understand. In any case, I could do with an early night. When he gets back I’ll finish my beer and slip away.”

Joe, who was certainly not above using his looks to gain an advantage in such a situation, whispered, “That is very kind of you, Chris, thank you so much,” and offered up what might have been construed as a flirtatious smile. Then they both spotted Miles returning from the bathroom. Joe calculated that Chris would be gone in under fifteen minutes.

It took ten. He smoked one of Joe’s cigarettes, drained his Michelob, then stood up from the table and announced that he was heading for home.

“You sure, man?” Miles asked. There was neither concern nor particular surprise in the question.

“I’m sure. I’ve got an early start tomorrow. You guys be good. Take care now.”

Joe rose to his feet.

“Thanks,” he mouthed as Miles bent down to pick up a fallen beer mat. Chris gave a second airing to his expression of infinite wisdom and understanding and whispered the word “Pleasure” back. After handshakes all round, Chris left a hundred-dollar tip on the table and disappeared into the crowds of Wan Chai.

“What got into him?” Miles was fingering the hundred-dollar note, as if weighing up whether or not to steal it. “I go to the bathroom, I come back, suddenly he wants to leave.”

“Search me.”

“Did you arrange for him to take off, Joe? Did you want me all to yourself?”

Joe smiled as the chorus of “With or Without You” played loud on the Samba’s sound system. They were sitting opposite one another at the table, drunk blondes from England singing at the bar. “If you play games with me,” he said, “I’m obliged to play games with you.”

Miles looked away. “Noisy in here,” he said. Their relationship was frequently a sparring match in which neither side was prepared to concede ground or admit to weakness. Isabella once compared them to a couple of alpha-male gorillas grappling it out in the eastern Congo, which may have been hard on Joe, but was certainly a compliment as far as Miles was concerned. Their mutual bravado concealed a deep affection, but it saddens me to look back and realize that any loyalty between them was strictly oneway traffic.

“So you wanted to know about Wang?” Miles said finally.

“Yes. I want to know about Wang.”

“Why didn’t you just ask Kenneth?”

“I did. And now I’m asking you.”

Samba’s is the sort of place where expats gather to drink in the evening before moving on to dinner or a nightclub in Lan Kwai Fong. It is always packed and always noisy and, with the music as a constant smothering background, there is little danger of conversations being overheard. Nevertheless Miles lowered his voice as he said, “I’m prepared to tell you anything you want.” The lime-green Hawaiian shirt glowed against the dull red upholstery of his chair, sculpting gym-toughened shoulders into slabs of power. Very few men in Hong Kong could have worn that shirt and not looked ridiculous. “You look a little pissed, Joe,” he said. “Everything OK?”

Joe hadn’t meant to look angry but he was aware that thirty-six hours without meaningful sleep, combined with an evening of beer and tequila, had scrambled his senses. He tried to appear more relaxed.

“What’s the situation between you and Kenneth? Why did you wait outside last night instead of coming in?”

Miles leaped forward at the accusation. “Why did I what?”

There were customers all around them, standing at the bar, between tables, sitting on chairs near the window. Joe warned Miles with his eyes and began to repeat the question. “I said, why did you-”

“I heard what you said. Is that what you think? Is that what you think I’d do to you?”

“That’s what it looked like.” Joe ordered two more beers from a passing waitress and felt a tremor of guilt for doubting Miles’s story. Then he remembered that he was speaking to one of the colony’s most accomplished liars, a man whose characteristic response when cornered was to become confrontational and aggressive. “Is that not what happened?”

“No, it’s not.” Miles shot back the reply with apparent disbelief. “What happened is that you left because it was three o’clock in the morning and Kenneth thought you looked wiped out. I was on my way over and must have missed you by less than five minutes.”

“Why didn’t Kenneth mention to me that you were coming over?”

“How the hell am I supposed to know? Isn’t that something you should be asking him?”

At the next table a Chinese girl turned round and scowled at them, as if to make it clear that their argument was proving detrimental to her enjoyment of the evening. Miles saw her off with a flare-eyed stare.

“What time did you leave Isabella?” Joe was determined to check every inch of Miles’s story.

“I have no idea. I got a call around midnight saying Wang was using one of our houses. I told her I had to get going and left her in Club 64.”

“You left my girlfriend on her own in Club 64?”

Miles shook his head. “Oh come on, Joe. She’s a big girl. Why do British guys always act like that around women?”

“Act like what?”

“Like the fucking knight in shining fucking armour. She’s a tough lady. She can take care of herself.”

“At around midnight?” Joe repeated.

“Sure. At around midnight.”

Was there a slight hesitation here, a gap in the story?

“And you’re saying that your people had already heard of Wang Kaixuan?”

Miles swallowed a mouthful of Michelob and emerged with a look of disgust on his face. “ ‘My people?’ Are you OK, Joe? Aren’t we supposed to be fighting the same war? Aren’t we supposed to be working on the same side?”

“Apparently.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Joe wondered whether to back off. They were both drunk, both tired, both ambitious, fractious spies talking around a subject which would be better discussed in the sober light of a new day. “It means I’m confused,” he said. “It means I’ve not been given the full picture…”

“So you’ve spent most of your day moping around feeling sorry for yourself, wondering whether Kenneth and Miles, and probably David, too, have got their own little conspiracy going that you aren’t a part of?”

Joe didn’t bother denying this. “The thought had occurred to me.”

“Oh come on.” Miles raised his hands in the air, finally pushed too far. It looked for a moment as though he might leave.

“It surprises you that I would ask that?” Joe offered him a cigarette. “You don’t think there’s anything strange in what’s happened over the last twenty-four hours?”

“Frankly, no.” Miles’s eyes were on the Chinese girl’s back and the worst of his anger seemed to have passed. “Look. Wang draws a lot of water on the mainland. He was involved in an operation in Beijing three years ago which exposed two of our agents. Led to deportations. That’s how we already knew him.”

Joe frowned. “What kind of operation?”

“The kind I’m not allowed to talk about.”

When a spook says that to another spook, you know you’re in trouble.

“So all anyone has to do is hear Wang’s voice on a safe-house microphone and they immediately know it’s him?”

It was the obvious flaw in Miles’s version of events, but the American had it covered.

“We got lucky,” he said.

“How?”

“You know Steve Mackay?”

Joe knew Steve Mackay. “Yes.”

“He was involved in what happened in Beijing. Got a routine call from Kenneth yesterday asking if it was cool for you guys to use Yuk Choi Road. Said they had a Xinjiang walk-in who’d rafted over from Shenzhen. Bill asked for a description, got a hold of the audio, called me in when he put two and two together.”

“Hence Kenneth’s presence this morning.”

“Hence.” Miles made a face at the word. “He was your man, Joe, he was your walk-in. You had a duty to share.”

Joe leaned back and caught the eye of a girl at the bar. She smiled through the crush of bodies, dark, interested eyes. For some reason “With or Without You” was playing a second time on the sound system and he felt as though he were trapped in a loop of persistent evasions.

“What happened when you got there?”

“Like Kenneth told you. We already knew who he was and took him back up to the border.”

Joe seized on this. “You’ve spoken to Kenneth about me today?”

“Sure.” Miles took a drag on his cigarette, like a tell in poker. “You think that’s odd?”

“I don’t think it’s normal.” Miles produced a look of bewilderment which invited Joe to continue. “Try to see it from my perspective. I get to the apartment this morning, Lee acts like I’m a priest about to walk in on an orgy. It was as if he’d been instructed to keep me in the dark.”

“That’s the nature of the business we’re in.” Miles illustrated his point with hard, staccato chops of his hand, as if stating the obvious to a junior officer still learning the ropes. “That’s how Lee has been trained to operate. When a Chinese double gets turned back to the mainland, the less people that know about it, the better. Right?”

“So I can’t be trusted with that information? I spend three hours interviewing this guy, uncover intel about riots in Yining, revolutionary fervour across north-west China, as well as what appear to be astonishing human rights abuses in Xinjiang prisons, but his whereabouts are to remain a complete mystery to me.”

Miles was about to say “What mystery?” when two things happened. First, the Chinese girl stood up, along with the other four members of her table, and left the bar. Second, a troupe of five stewardesses passed her on their way into Samba’s wearing the bright red uniforms of Virgin Airways. It was Christmas Day for Miles Coolidge. He forgot all about the Wang situation and produced a low, involuntary hum like the mating call of a sperm whale.

“Sweet Mary mother of all that is good and sacred. Look at what we have here.”

Joe could follow their progress in a mirror hung on the opposite wall, a moving tapestry of hair and make-up laughing all the way to the bar. He watched as Miles’s tanned, shaved head rotated through a hundred and eighty degrees.

“Don’t even think about it.”

“Oh come on.” The American was already on his feet. “Isabella’s all tucked up in bed. Let’s go get some before it gets cold.”

But Joe was lucky. As Miles walked towards the bar, taking with him all hope of their conversation continuing, the stewardesses were enveloped in a ring of freshly showered pilots and cabin crew, never to be seen again. Miles turned on his heels.

“Fuckers,” he said, returning to his seat. “Fuckers.”