Macau, China
WHEN THE DOOR opened Hannah Slade was expecting several of her captors to come into the room. But instead it was just one man – a local, she guessed – of medium height, dressed in jeans, trainers and a polo shirt. The material was stretched tightly enough across his chest for her to notice his bulging pectoral muscles. A body-builder. Or a martial-arts guy. Or both.
She had never thought of herself as a violent person, or an impulsive one. She was a scientist, for God’s sake, a careful, cautious individual who tested each course before following it. And yet, at that precise moment, a voice inside her told her, ‘It’s now or never.’ She knew, as most people do, that the best chance of escape is often in that first golden hour. And this could be her only chance to get away from these people. Her eyes flicked towards the man in the doorway. He was carrying a tray of food, both hands occupied. She could see a bowl of noodles and a plate of dry crackers. He nodded to her without saying a word, and she watched him searching for somewhere to set the tray down. It had to be now. Hannah bowed respectfully and backed away until she got to the window. Reaching behind her, the fingers of her right hand curled tightly around the small but heavy bronze Buddha. The man with the tray was setting it down on the bedside table, his back half turned to her. Quickly, quietly, she walked up behind him and swung the bronze statuette at his head. He looked up just too late. It struck him hard on his right temple and he went down with a groan then lay there, motionless on the carpeted floor. For several seconds Hannah stood over him, still clutching the Buddha, ready to hit him again if he got up. Her breath came in short, urgent gasps. She had committed herself now. There was no going back.
And there was the open door, her pathway to freedom. Cautiously, she peered around it. She saw a narrow, windowless corridor lit by a sputtering neon light on the ceiling. Her nostrils registered a cloying smell of damp, tropical mould. Before her was a grey, threadbare carpet leading to an illuminated sign in Chinese and English. It said ‘Elevator’ and, yes, it was tempting, but the stairs, if she could find them, would surely be safer.
She closed the door behind her and stepped gingerly into the corridor, still expecting to be stopped at any moment, and turned right. After only a few paces it ended in a door. She tried the handle but it was locked. Her heart was thumping. Any minute now someone was going to come looking for the missing body-builder. She had to find the exit and fast. Hannah retraced her steps down the corridor, half breaking into a run. She passed the lift, following the corridor as it turned a right angle and there it ended abruptly. But over to one side was a set of double doors. She pushed against them and they opened, revealing a landing strewn with litter. And there, oh joy, was the stairway she was looking for. But now, quite suddenly, she felt a wave of nausea sweep over her and she sank to her knees, clinging to the railings that ran alongside the stairway, her head dizzy and bile rising in her throat. For several precious minutes she couldn’t move. Was it an after-effect of the drugging or a natural, visceral reaction to the fact that she had just brained another human with a bronze Buddha?
She stood up and picked her way over plastic bags full of discarded food, sending a stream of large brown cockroaches scattering in all directions around her feet. Hannah didn’t care: she was heading down the stairs now, as fast as she could. Four floors down, she stopped to listen. She peered over the side of the metal railings to see several more floors stretching away below her. Still no one had come after her. Maybe she would make it.
At last she reached the bottom, her breath still coming in short gasps, and there, right in front of her, was the building’s exit door. Just a single push bar stood between her and freedom. Above it, a sign in Chinese and English told her it was alarmed. Too bad. She pushed hard and the door swung open. No alarm sounded. For a second or two she stood there in the darkened back-street, between the giant rubbish bins on casters, breathing in the hot, damp, night air of Macau, her eyes adjusting to the darkness tempered by the nearby flashing neon signs, hearing the familiar hum of traffic. Yet this all felt so surreal, so otherworldly, she was having trouble getting her bearings. Because, what, two days ago, maybe three, Hannah had been in her little office at the university back in London, wrapping up her work before ‘going on holiday’, as she had told her peers. Then a dash into Waitrose to pick up some cat food, head home, hand her beloved pet to the neighbours, check the expiry dates on what was in her fridge and make one last call to her handler at Vauxhall Cross. Apart from the last, it was all so damned normal, so everyday, it bore absolutely no relation to the situation she now found herself in.
She didn’t wait long before moving. Hannah knew she needed to put some distance between herself and her captors, to get away somehow to safety. She started to walk, briskly, towards what looked like a main road with lights at the end of the back-street, scattering the scavenging cats as she went. Suddenly she stopped as she remembered. She reached up with her hand and felt with the tip of her right index finger at the back of her mouth. Yes! It was still there, that hardened piece of gum with the miniature memory stick encased inside it. The thing she had flown halfway across the planet to retrieve in the name of ‘national security’. Hannah had no idea what data was contained in it, only that the people who had sent her here from London were desperate to have it.
She cast a quick glance over her shoulder but there was no one behind her. She reached the main road, a broad, two-way street flanked by high-rise buildings and a neat line of palm trees down the median divide. There was traffic but the only pedestrians she could see were workmen fixing some electrical appliance on the pavement. Without her watch, she had no idea what time it was, it could have been 11 p.m. or five in the morning for all she knew. She walked on, suddenly self-conscious, this lone Englishwoman wandering the streets of Macau in the dead of night.
She spotted the two policemen standing at the junction with the next street. They were dressed in light blue short-sleeved shirts with their ranks on their epaulettes and dark blue baseball caps on their heads. Absurdly, given it was night time, she could see both were wearing sunglasses. Abandoning all caution, Hannah broke into a run, racing up to them and waving her arms.
‘English!’ she shouted. ‘Tourist! I need help!’ She looked from one to the other but the two officers looked blankly back at her then spoke to each other in Cantonese. ‘Embassy,’ she continued. ‘Help, please!’ Did Britain even have an embassy in Macau? She had no idea since she was never supposed to be here. Hannah pressed the palms of her hands together in a pleading gesture but she could see something was wrong. She wasn’t getting through to these two. Instead, their attention was distracted. They weren’t looking at her any more. She followed their gaze and saw two men in dark suits walking rapidly towards them from the direction of the building she had just left. Oh Christ, no, she couldn’t be certain but they looked terrifyingly similar to the pair from the café back in Kowloon. The same two who had chloroformed her and then kidnapped her.
‘No!’ she screamed, her voice rising in fear. ‘These men are criminals!’ But, to her horror, the policemen seemed to recognize the two men and were greeting them with little deferential bows. What the hell? Now one of the policemen was taking her by the arm and she couldn’t tell if it was a protective gesture or something more sinister. Should she break away and run for it? She tried to shake her arm free from his grip but he only held her tighter, saying nothing as she felt his fingers digging into her upper arm until she let out a cry of pain. Escape was out of the question. There were four of them and she knew they would quickly catch her. Helpless, Hannah watched the other policeman shaking hands with the two suits, and in the yellow glow of the overhead street light she clearly saw a wad of banknotes change hands. She felt like a piece of flotsam being washed downstream by the current. She had lost all control of her situation. Now she could see one of the two suits talking rapidly into his mobile while keeping his eyes on her. Moments later a car drew up, sleek and silent, with tinted windows, a Mercedes E-class. Then it all happened very quickly. Someone inside the car flung open the rear door and she could feel herself being propelled unwillingly towards it by the policeman. To Hannah it suddenly seemed like the gaping mouth of a cave where very bad things happened, a cave she desperately wanted to avoid entering. But already she was aware of strong hands pushing her head down and her body inside the vehicle. She resisted but they pushed harder. The next thing a hood was being placed over her head and as everything went dark she felt her wrists grabbed and bound together. Hannah was once again a prisoner and this time she knew her predicament was far, far worse than before.