Wall of Night

54

Xiang’s feeling that he knew his quarry had evolved into a certainty.

By noon, Colson’s picture had been distributed to every taxi and bus driver, to every train station, and to every PSB officer, from foot patrols to branch commanders. He’d disappeared. The coolness of the man, his ability to simply fade into Beijing’s background, reminded Xiang of another cat-and-mouse game he’d played with another agent twelve years ago.

Marshal Han Soong’s mysterious benefactor.

He picked up the phone and called for Eng. His assistant arrived a minute later. “Yes, sir?”

“Pull the case file from Soong’s defection.”

The file was exhaustive except when it came to Soong’s intermediary. They had one photo, a black-and-white half profile of a Westerner. Xiang laid it beside Colson’s passport photo and stared at them until both images were etched in his mind.

He closed his eyes and let the photos merge, using his imagination to rotate them, change the angles and lighting … He spent ten minutes like this, waiting for his subconscious to do the work.

Add a decade to the age, lighten the hair, give the face a beard …

Xiang’s reverie was broken by a knock on his door. “Come!”

It was Eng. “Sir, are you—”

Xiang silenced him with a raised finger.

It’s you, isn’t it? You came back for him, you stupid son-of-a-bitch. You came back …

“That’s him!”

“Who?”

“His name is Briggs Tanner — Soong’s long-lost friend.”

“How do you know his name?” Eng asked. “Soong never gave us—”

“My God, the arrogance! I’ll say this: He’s patient. Twelve years and he still came back.”

“How do we know that’s why he’s here? It could be anything—”

“No. Soong’s the reason.” Xiang’s phone rang and he snatched it up. “Yes?” He listened for a minute, then said, “I’m on my way.” He hung up. “We have a lead.”

“Where?”

“The Shahe train station. A ticket agent remembers seeing Tanner earlier this morning.”

Forty minutes later they arrived at the station.

The PSB officer who reported the sighting was waiting in the office. Sitting on a stool in the corner was an old woman in a ticket-agent apron. She glanced at Xiang, then cast her eyes downward.

“Tell me,” Xiang said to the PSB officer.

“She sold him three tickets: Chaoyang, Shanghai, and Tianshui. We’re questioning passengers who might have been here at the time, but so far we haven’t determined which train he boarded.”

“Smart move, buying three tickets,” Eng said.

“We’ll cover them all,” Xiang said. “Where are the trains now?”

“The Chaoyang and Tianshiu have already arrived. The Shanghai one is still en route.”

“Eng, have it stopped and searched.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then contact the PSB commandant in Chaoyang and Tianshiu and have them cover the stations. I want everyone questioned, from the ticket agents to the janitors. If Tanner was on one of those trains, someone had to have seen him. If need be, we’ll put people on every connection.”

Does he know where the camp is? Xiang wondered. No, he couldn’t. No chance.

Then where was he going? If anything, time and experience would have made Tanner wilier, more resourceful. He was moving with purpose, but what was it? Had the ambush at the hotel scared him off? Xiang doubted it. So, if he wasn’t running, what was he doing?

It didn’t matter, he decided. Before the day was out they would have him. Of course, he’d said the same thing twelve years ago. Tanner hadn’t been supposed to escape then, either. “Eng, assemble a search team. Call General Shiun at Fifteenth Army and tell him I want a company of his Dragons—”

“Paratroopers?”

“That’s right. And a pair of helicopters — Hinds. If Tanner manages to slip us again, we’ll hunt him down the old-fashioned way.”

The loudspeaker above Tanner’s head blared to life again, made another curt announcement in Mandarin, then went silent. He was unable to decipher most of it, but caught the word “Chaoyang.”

He opened his map and did a quick calculation. Good. His ruse at the Shahe Station had bought him almost 220 miles. He was refolding his map when the vibration ringer on the Motorola went off. He pulled it off his belt and read the LED screen: Pager message. He punched up the message:

Briggs smiled. Bless you, Walt. He dialed the routing number, punched in the codes for “Message Received” and “In Transit,” then hung up, reopened his map and plotted the coordinates.

No, that can’t be right … He plotted them again, and came up with the same answer. Good God … His journey had just started.

The camp was far to the north, deep in the forests and mountains of the Heilongjiang Province.

He had another three hundred miles to go.

With a great sigh of steam, the locomotive slowed beside the red-and-green-bannered platform and jolted to a stop. The car’s occupants got up and started filing toward the door. Tanner followed.

Chaoyang lay at the heart of Liaodong Province, a farming region mostly bordered by the forests of the Changbei Massif to the east and the rolling foothills of the Chingan range to the west.

Briggs kept his face in his map as he passed the conductor’s assistant and stepped down onto the platform. He blinked against the bright sun and pulled up his collar. The temperature hovered around fifty degrees. A brisk spring day.

He found the ticket office and repeated his Shahe ruse, buying tickets for Shenyang to the east, Datong to the west, and Fuxin to the northeast, which would be his next destination.

If he could make it that far, his choices of routes and connections into Heilongjiang Province increased, thereby making it harder for Xiang to track him.

Thirty minutes passed before the loudspeaker announced boarding for Changchun. He waited for the third call, then boarded and walked to the rearmost of the train’s eight cars. Only six other people occupied seats. Several of them clutched chickens or potbellied pigs in their laps.

As he passed, an old woman gave him a gap-toothed grin. “Zoo shang hao.” Good morning.

Briggs nodded and smiled back, surprised to feel a flood of gratitude wash over him. However small, the human contact felt good. To her, it didn’t matter that he was waiguoren.

“Ai, ail” the woman called to him. She reached into her pocket, pulled out an egg, and handed it to him. “Hao chi, hao chi!” Good eats.

Tanner took the egg and patted her hand. During hard times this one egg might have been an entire meal for her. He said, “Xiexie buxie, ma pengyou.” Providing he’d gotten the inflection right, he’d said, “Thank you, old mother.” If he’d botched it, he’d just called her a horse.

The woman smiled back. “Bu kegi, huang tou!” You’re welcome, blond hair.

They shared a laugh, then Tanner wandered to the back of the car and found an empty seat and waited, coiled like a spring, until the train began moving.

An hour later and fifty miles out of Chaoyang, they were entering a wooded valley north of Jiudaoling when the train suddenly lurched, followed by the shriek of metal on metal. The train began slowing. The other passengers started murmuring and looking around.

Briggs opened his window and stuck his head out.

Ahead lay a road junction; sitting across the tracks was a black Peugeot. One man sat behind the wheel, while two more, each wearing charcoal gray suits, stood at it’s side.

PSB. Someone at either Shahe or Chaoyang had identified him.

The screeching continued until the train ground to a halt fifty yards from the Peugeot.

Two of the PSB officers walked to the locomotive, had a brief shouted conversation with the engineer, then boarded the first car. Moments later, Tanner heard some shouting from the cars ahead and caught a few snippets: “Stay seated … have papers ready …”

The locomotive’s whistle blew and the train started chugging forward again. Whether it was due to a mistake on the part of the officers, or to an engineer dedicated to his schedule, Tanner had just gotten a break. He knew he couldn’t elude them on the train, but if he could get off without them noticing …

He looked up the aisle. The old woman was leaning out, looking back at him.

She frowned, worry lines around her eyes. “Ni?” You?

He nodded and said, “Shi.” then added a phrase he hoped translated into “egg thief.”

The old woman laughed uproariously, then glanced through the adjoining car’s vestibule. She pushed her palm at him several times and said, “Zou, zou.” Go, go. With the chicken clutched to her chest, she stood up and began waddling up the aisle.

She’s going to run interference for me, Briggs thought. “Bui shi!” he called. No, don’t.

She turned and shooed him. “Zou!”

She disappeared through the doors.

The only way he could help her now was to not be found. Hopefully, none of the other passengers would report her complicity. They were looking at him, eyes wide, but he saw no anger, merely worry.

He opened the rear door and stepped onto the platform.

On either side, the ground raced past, a blur of green underbrush. Cold wind whipped around him. About a hundred yards from the tracks was a line of thick fir trees.

With one hand on the railing, Tanner descended the steps then leaned out. The ground was mercifully flat, but that was no guarantee. Movie portrayals aside, jumping from a moving train — a moving anything, for that matter — was no easy stunt. At this speed, he would hit the ground at nearly quadruple his weight.

From the train came more shouts and the sound of a chicken squawking. He peeked through the door. The PSB officers were in the next car forward.

Time to go.

He leaned out, took a deep breath, and jumped.

The ground rushed toward him. He tucked himself into a ball, rounding his shoulders and covering his head with his hands. He began tumbling. He let himself go limp. On the second revolution, his tailbone slammed into the ground. With a grunt, all the air rushed from his lungs.

After a few seconds he stopped rolling and lay perfectly still, willing himself to meld into the ground. Don’t move, don’t move …

“Aiyahhh!” came a shout. Tanner lifted his head. Framed in one of the train’s windows was one of the PSB men. “Aiyahhh!” he shouted again.

Dumbfounded, Tanner watched as the man pulled open the window and began crawling through, legs first. On his belly, he extended one leg, then the other until he was dangling from the pane. The man dropped. He hit the ground and began tumbling, limbs flailing like those of a rag doll.

Tanner didn’t wait to see his landing. He snatched up his backpack and started running.