Hong Kong International Airport
STAY CALM AND BREATHE. Dr Hannah Slade repeated the mantra in her head, over and over again, as her place in the queue inched forward, moving ever closer to the immigration officers’ booth. She could see them sitting side by side behind the glass: white shirt, black tie, pale blue facemask, their hands moving quickly over their computer keyboards as they scanned in each passenger.
What if …?
No. Stop it. She wasn’t going to allow herself to think like that. Hannah Slade knew there was almost zero chance that the People’s Republic of China would have her details on record as anything other than what she was: a full-time climate scientist and researcher at Imperial College London. It was all there in the university records office if anyone cared to check. But that wasn’t quite the full story, was it? Because as well as holding a PhD in human geography and environmental science Dr Slade was also a ‘collector’, someone who, very occasionally, MI6 could call on, sparingly, only in exceptional circumstances, to send into a country incognito for a highly sensitive mission. Which meant she must never be seen or photographed in the company of an intelligence officer, let alone darken the doors of Vauxhall Cross, that sandstone and green monolith on the south bank of the Thames that served as the headquarters of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service. That was the way it had always been, ever since the first approach they had made to her in the month after she graduated. There were meetings, of course, there had to be, but always somewhere anodyne and anonymous like a park or a café. So Hannah Slade was totally off the books. Not even her departmental head at Imperial College had the slightest notion of what she got up to on her leave breaks.
So now here she was, heart thumping, as the immigration officer beckoned her forward to his booth, gesturing for her to look straight into the camera. She had been to Hong Kong before, long ago, as a teenager, visiting her older sister when it was still a British colony and expatriate British officers strode around in lime green uniforms. But that was a holiday and this was different. Very different. ‘We cannot stress enough,’ they had told her back in London, ‘just how critical this operation is, Hannah. What you are about to do for us in Hong Kong is … well … let’s just say it’s going to have an immediate effect on Britain’s national security.’
‘Purpose of visit?’ She realized with a start it was the second time the immigration officer had asked her this question.
‘Oh, er, yes, sorry. A conference. I’m here for the climate-change conference. It’s being held at …’ He held up his hand and nodded, stamped her passport and waved her on. She was through.