Kowloon, Hong Kong
WHAT, IN GOD’S NAME, had made her agree to do this? As the taxi sped her along the eight-lane expressway in air-conditioned silence Hannah Slade turned the question over and over in her head. Was it for the money? Hell, no. The Service was paying her expenses, suitably routed through a circuitous cover, but that was about all. As a respected authority in her field of study, she was invited to quite enough conferences around the world as it was, without having to take on this sort of risk. Was it patriotism? Well, yes, maybe. She had always liked the idea of doing something discreet, behind the scenes, to serve King and country. But no, there had to be something else, and the sane, sensible scientist in her shuddered to admit it. It was the sheer bloody thrill of it, the hint of danger, the mystique of doing something highly valued by her handlers at the Secret Intelligence Service, an organization whose doors she had never darkened.
She had gone for the interview to join in her final year at university – in fact she knew of quite a few people who had done the same. That strange, stilted conversation with a balding man in a grey suit in an upstairs room in London’s Carlton Gardens. He had shoved a copy of the Official Secrets Act across the desk at her to sign then told her how, if she were lucky enough to be selected for admission and training, she would be able to tell almost no one what she did for a living. Oh, and because she would be unlikely ever to make ambassador she would appear to most people to be a mid-career failure. By the time the interview was over Hannah had already made up her mind: a career in MI6 was not for her. But then had come the second approach, the offer of a little secret work on the side, no strings attached. And something inside Hannah Slade had stirred. It was the idea of having her cake and eating it, of pursuing her full-time career in science yet every so often going off on … well … a secret mission. Yes, there was no other word for it. And this one, for some hush-hush reason they weren’t prepared to tell her, was apparently more important than anything she had ever done for them before.
She glanced out of the taxi window at the towering canyons of white tenement blocks that had sprung up beside the road. A sign they passed told her it was called Prince Edward Road East. More than a quarter of a century had passed since Handover, the day in 1997 when Britain had returned the colony to Chinese rule, yet somehow, she noticed, Hong Kong had managed to cling on to these colonial British names like Argyle Street, Boundary Street and even, she saw on her phone map, somewhere called ‘Good Shepherd Street’. Perhaps, she mused, that’s what I am to them in Vauxhall Cross. A good shepherd, bringing home the data, safely undetected. And this job was apparently so sensitive they couldn’t even let MI6’s Hong Kong station know she was coming. It had to be watertight, sealed off from all but a tiny number of people in the know. Never underestimate the opposition, they had told her, in one of their park-bench briefings back in London. China’s Ministry of State Security had watchers everywhere and this was their home turf.
Outside the window the scene had changed. Now she was looking onto drab, crowded, low-rise apartment blocks with washing hanging out on every balcony. Rusting air-conditioning units clung to the walls, looking as if they might fall off into the street at any moment. They were now in a world of narrow, traffic-choked side-streets where every shop sign was in Chinese, while English signage had disappeared. They lurched forward, then the driver slammed on the brakes and banged his fist on the steering wheel in frustration, cursing in Cantonese, as an old woman hobbled slowly past in front, her deeply lined face looking up at him for a fleeting moment, her lips muttering a silent profanity.
Hannah checked her map once more. They were nearly there. She asked to be let out at the junction of Nga Tsin Wai Road and Nga Tsin Long Road, paying the driver and stepping quickly into the shade of an awning. According to her phone, the assigned rendezvous for the pick-up was just fifty metres ahead. Casually, she strolled on past it as she’d been told, her eyes taking in the clothes shops, the furniture emporium and the empty barber’s shop where the owner sat outside on a stool in his white vest and crumpled shorts, smoking as he waited for customers. She stopped in front of a large plate-glass window and studied her reflection, waiting to see if anyone stopped abruptly behind her. Good. No tail. She doubled back and pushed open the door to the rendezvous.
The Tai Wo Tang Café was sandwiched between a food store and a video shop. Its dark and uninviting entrance gave way to a cavernous interior where framed photographs of past clientele hung from a railing and bare pinewood tables stretched all the way to the back. At this time of day, on a hot afternoon midweek, there were no customers. She chose a table near the back with a clear view of the door, and before long a girl in an apron emerged to take her order. She asked for iced lemon tea and checked her watch. She was early, just as she had intended.
Seven minutes later a slight, middle-aged man walked in and sat down at a nearby table. He was facing her but looking down and paying her no attention. Suit trousers, short-sleeved white shirt, baseball cap pulled down low over his face and tinted glasses. She watched him as he spoke to the waitress to give his order and now he was getting up and coming over to her. Hannah felt her pulse quickening.
‘Have you tried the peach tea?’ he said, in heavily accented English, standing over her. This was it – this was the moment. Get one word wrong in her response now and this man would walk out of that door and her whole mission would end in failure.
‘Too sweet for my taste,’ she replied, enunciating each word clearly as they had made her practise. She saw his expression change as a flash of recognition passed over his face. It was Blue Sky.
‘May I?’ He gestured to the chair opposite her.
‘Please.’ She waved an invitation with her hand.
She watched him scrape the chair back, sit down, glancing once towards the door to the street, and now he was extending his closed hand towards her across the table. He held her gaze, nodding towards his closed fist but saying nothing. Even above the hum of the air-conditioning Hannah thought she could hear her heart thumping in her ears. She looked down at his hand as he slowly uncurled his fingers. And there it was, nestling in the palm: the flash drive mini, tiny yet with a massive storage capacity. It looked exactly like the one they had shown her, the one she had practised with, over and over again, in her bathroom in London.
Gently, with her thumb and forefinger, she took the flash drive off him. Already he was getting up to leave. No words, no small-talk about the humidity outside, no goodbyes. The handover had been made. She knew what she had to do now, without a moment’s delay. By the time the man was out of the door, leaving her alone in the empty café, she was reaching into her pocket for the packet of chewing gum they had given her. Wrigley’s Spearmint, it said on the packet, and indeed she could smell the mint-flavoured powder even as she unwrapped the first stick. Quickly, she popped it into her mouth and began to chew. Moments later, as soon as the gum had become a moist, sticky ball, she spat it into the palm of her hand and pressed the tiny memory stick into it, taking care to envelop it so nothing protruded. Then keeping her eyes on the door, she took the wad of gum with its contents and pressed it carefully into the gap behind her third upper molar, the gap where her wisdom tooth had long ago been removed. Within seconds it would harden and be all but invisible to anyone unless they knew exactly what to look for. It was time to pay up, head out of the door and catch that flight to Singapore.
It was just as she was getting up to pay that she saw the two men walk in. Despite the heat they were wearing suits, dressed like civil servants, but she could see they were stockily built and they didn’t look to Hannah like the sort of people who worked in an office. Once, when she was fourteen and riding her bicycle, she had been involved in a road accident. She had watched the car swerving and skidding towards her before it hit her side-on with a terrible bang. The whole thing could not have lasted more than three seconds at most, and yet it had seemed to her at the time to play out in slow motion. What Hannah was experiencing right now, in the Tai Wo Tang Café in Kowloon, was just such a moment.
Half mesmerized, she watched as the men turned and locked the bolts on the door from the inside then began pushing their way past the tables and chairs towards her, closing the distance between them. With a jolt, she realized she was trapped. Instinctively, she screamed for help and dashed towards the kitchen area at the back but there was no one there and nobody came to her aid. It was all happening very fast. Within seconds the men were on her: the choke hold, the breathless struggle, the frantic kicking and the awful feeling of being outnumbered by superior odds and then, in the final moment, the chloroform pad being clamped over her nose and mouth as Dr Hannah Slade sank helplessly into oblivion.