PAIN. DARKNESS AND MORE PAIN. That was all Dr Hannah Slade could register at first. Her joints ached and her head felt numb, woolly, unfamiliar. It took her a few seconds and then an unpleasant memory came flooding back: those men in the café, her brief, futile struggle with them, then that damp pad with the chemical smell that they had clamped over her nose and mouth. So she’d been drugged and now presumably kidnapped. But by whom? And why? And where was this place they’d brought her to?
She realized she was on a bed, a comfortable one, in a darkened room and apparently alone, still in her own clothes. Her hands were unbound. She felt around her in the dark, her fingers touching pillows and sheets. Then she remembered her phone. Of course! She could call the emergency number MI6 had given her before leaving London. She patted her pockets, checked all around her on the bed. No, her phone was gone, along with her watch. They must have taken them from her. At least her phone was clean. There was nothing in it to link her to the intelligence agencies. Anyone prying into its contents and her online history would find only work emails and copious data on climate change. Security Section at Vauxhall Cross had made sure of that.
Hannah’s eyes were adjusting to the near-darkness in the room now and she could see a crack of light coming through a gap in the curtains. With an effort, she rolled herself off the bed, walked unsteadily to the window and pulled the curtain to one side. A small bronze Buddha rested on the sill and she used it now to pin back the curtain. She flinched. Was she dreaming? Was she still drugged? This didn’t look real. Looking down from a great height, every building she could see was lit up like a Christmas tree in garish pink and purple neon. They looked like giant casinos and for a moment she thought she was in Las Vegas. But then she realized. Of course. This must be Macau. Whoever had abducted her must have taken her across the Pearl River delta from neighbouring Hong Kong to this former Portuguese colony. Which meant she was still in Chinese territory, with everything that entailed.
With enough light coming into the room from all that neon outside she was able to get a look at her surroundings. Bare, clean walls, a cupboard, a bedside table, a door to a bathroom. It looked like a serviced apartment, except there was no TV and no phone. Nothing, in fact, to give away any indication of where she was or what purpose this building served. She walked over to the door and tried the handle but it was as she’d expected. Locked. She shook her head. This must be a case of mistaken identity, surely. What was it that woman from MI6 in the charcoal-coloured jacket had told her back in London to reassure her? ‘Look, Hannah, every operation carries a risk, of course it does. But on this one we’re putting it at close to zero. We wouldn’t be sending you otherwise. It’s a simple in-and-out, you’re a clean skin, and no one there knows you’re coming.’
Well, someone clearly did, she thought, or I wouldn’t be here. Standing alone in that sterile room in the semi-darkness, Hannah began to feel the regrets flooding in. She wasn’t afraid, not yet anyway. But already she was kicking herself for agreeing to make this trip to Hong Kong. What had she been thinking? She had a well-respected position in her field, a secure job at the university. She didn’t need this, yet she had volunteered for it and now it had blown up in her face.
She sat on the corner of the bed, staring out at the neon glow reflected on the glass windowpane, and began to go over the possibilities. Was she being held for ransom? Was this a triad thing? Hannah swallowed hard as a terrifying thought occurred to her. Macau was the gambling capital of Asia, with casino takings far outstripping those of Las Vegas in a good year. But it also had a notorious reputation for sex trafficking. She remembered her sister telling her there were Chinese, Russian and Thai organized-crime gangs here who were utterly ruthless in luring vulnerable women and girls into forced prostitution, locking them up in massage parlours and illegal brothels for subsistence pay. They couldn’t really be thinking … No. Hannah shook her head. She was a woman in her forties, surely an unlikely target for them.
A sound behind her interrupted her thoughts. She could hear footsteps outside the door, the tap of a pass key, then the click of the electronic door release. Hannah froze as she watched the door open. She was about to meet her captors.