North had a bad feeling.
But at least the hotel room was a step up from his home for the past two months. It also had the advantage of room service. He ordered a huge pot of coffee as well as steak and eggs for two, and cleared both plates. Only when he’d moved the tray into the corridor did he unzip the overnight bag and briefcase and settle in the chair at the desk.
He boiled the kettle, rigging it with the cardboard key wallet to keep it on the bubble, and steam spilled from the spout. Taking care not to burn himself, he held the left-hand bottom corner of the postcard over it. Had she hidden something in it? She’d seen it done before, he knew. Using the edge of the razor blade, he eased the paper point away from the card, then used the tweezers to lift and peel back the paper in one go. The image of the bridge furled itself into a tube as if it had a secret life of its own, but the card underneath was raw and clear.
He ran his fingers around each of the edges: the top, the right side, the bottom. Paused. Extracting the cardboard from the kettle’s switch, the funnel of steam fell away and his fingers rubbed along the final edge. Was he wasting his time? Then there it was – a bump along the left-hand side. Fleck by fleck, he scraped at the potato starch with the razor blade, before sliding the corner of the blade into the hole that appeared and lifting the tiny white cap of starch away from the edge. He turned the card to tap it on to the blank piece of white paper, and the microdot fell out.
Microdots – used during the Second World War, and into the Cold War. He was twenty-seven. How old did Fang think he was? Switching on the magnifier, he held it over the black speckle. It had a 20x magnification, but even so he could barely make out the message. He rammed the magnifier into his eye, his vision blurring before it settled. ‘Bastard Hone took Mum. She’s on plane 2 China unless we sort Derkind mess. For real, moron-person. Call me.’
You’ll change your mind, Hone had said in the Turkish café. I’ll change it for you. We all have people we go the extra mile for.
So much for the one-eyed man’s invitation to come home and his talk of the future. Hone wanted North to believe he had some choice in the matter, when in reality he had none. The one-eyed man didn’t stop him leaving the diner because he already had all the power – North just hadn’t caught on yet. Hone had picked up Fang’s mum and dragged Fang into this mess before he even flew to Berlin. Because the one-eyed man had predicted that North would turn him down and that he couldn’t buy him or strong-arm him into coming back. But with Fang’s mum as his hostage, North was officially drafted. North lost his mother to drugs when he was only a kid. He wouldn’t let Fang lose hers.
Why hadn’t Hone admitted what he’d done in the Turkish café?
Because this way he made his point so very much clearer. He was the puppet master and they were his puppets.
As North pressed down on the handle of the French window, first the noise of the city hammered him, and then the bitter cold of a Berlin February. On the street below, bundled-up tourists took selfies in front of the monumental arch. Aside from his passport picture, in his entire life, there were three photos of him. At his arrest when he was a kid; in front of a Humvee with a general-purpose machine gun slung around his neck; and one in a suit as ‘something in finance’ for his previous legend. That was it – all the proof he’d ever existed.
In his shirtsleeves, North shivered, but he forced himself to stay out there. He’d met Fangfang Yu on his last job, when it was him and her against the world. She was unique, with a brain the size of a planet, and he would defend her until his dying breath. Fang would do whatever the one-eyed man wanted to get her mother back home, but she needed help.
North turned his back on the crowds. Staring into the room, he finished the coffee, feeling it burn as it travelled down his throat. He was sober for the first time in forever. And he wasn’t happy. He should have given in to his impulse and strangled his Good Samaritan in the alley after the brawl in the bar.
Because there was a reason Hone wasn’t using his own people, he thought as he showered and shaved. Two reasons. He nicked the cleft in his chin, and watched the bright red blood drop into the swirl of running water and disappear. North was deniable and he was expendable. Which made him convenient. So the one-eyed man had stacked the deck. Yes, Hone had his own agenda, and North was going through the mirror and pulling Fang through after him. But North had an agenda too – making sure Fang at least, survived, whatever unholy mess Hone was dragging them into.
If that was an option.