South China Sea
MISS XINYI WAS RIGHT about one thing. At the same time as she was sitting at a table with Luke and Jenny in a strip club in Macau, Hannah Slade was still not far away. But the distance between the abducted British climate-change scientist and her two would-be rescuers was growing by the minute.
Hannah Slade was alive and conscious but her freedom had once again been whisked away from her. Coming round after being drugged with chloroform for a second time, she found she was flat on her back, strapped to some kind of bunk bed, her arms pinned to her sides, a low ceiling only centimetres above her face. It took all her willpower to fight back a rising tide of claustrophobia. After a few minutes, with a supreme effort, she managed to lift her head long enough to peer down towards her feet. What she saw came as a shock. A nappy! Christ, they had put her in a nappy, like an al-Qaeda suspect being shipped off to Guantánamo Bay under ‘extraordinary rendition’. Had she soiled it? No, she hadn’t, not yet, but the very thought repulsed her. What an indignity. She didn’t deserve this. And then she remembered that she had tried to brain one of her captors with that miniature bronze Buddha so she supposed it was natural they were taking no chances. Meanwhile she felt terrible, nauseous and close to vomiting. She put it down to the effects of the chloroform.
If she had had any doubts before, they had evaporated the moment she came round. She was in serious danger now, no question. After her short-lived unsuccessful bid for freedom Hannah was back in the hands of her captors, whoever they were. And this wasn’t like last time. This was no comfortable, high-rise apartment with a view. No freedom to walk around, no hand-delivered meals on a tray. When she turned her head to the side, with some difficulty, she could see she was in some kind of cabin. There was a pervasive mechanical smell in her nostrils that her years as a climate-change scientist told her was from diesel oil. She could hear the occasional metallic clanking sound and she could sense a constant, low vibration that juddered through her. It was obvious now. She was on a ship.
But who were these people holding her? Did they know who had sent her to Hong Kong? Did they know why she had been meeting that contact in the Tai Wo Tang Café in Kowloon? Did they – the questions in her head stopped as she remembered. The miniature flash drive! The one containing the data he had passed to her just before her abduction. The whole purpose of her being sent on this mission in the first place. Immediately her tongue sought out the space behind her third upper molar, the place where her wisdom tooth had been so painfully removed all those years ago. Yes! The wad of gum containing the tiny memory stick was still there, dried hard now, embedded in the upper reaches of her mouth. Good. That was something. At least they hadn’t found it. Not yet anyway. But what if it came loose? Without the use of her hands she had no means of putting it back in place. She would have to swallow it. And then what? She shuddered to think what that meant.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the cabin door being opened, loud and metallic, and she felt the air pressure change. She was aware of two men coming in. Both looked to be Chinese or perhaps Korean. She couldn’t tell. One was dragging something behind him. Oh God, was she about to be tortured? They had warned her about this, back in London. It’s very unlikely to happen, they’d told her cheerfully, but if it does, try to hold on to your cover story for as long as you can. Never offer up anything about yourself that they haven’t asked you. Oh, and try to establish a rapport with your captors. It might help you to escape if you get the chance. But, honestly, they said, the chances of this happening to you, Hannah, are so remote. After all, practically nobody else knows we’re sending you.
‘Hannah Slade,’ said a voice slowly, and that was a shock straight away. So they already knew her name. But then again, they could have got that from her passport. They had taken it from her, as well as everything else.
‘Yes,’ she tried to say, but her throat was parched dry and the word came out as ‘yukh’.
‘Could I …’ She tried to salivate her mouth. ‘Could I have some water, please?’
‘Hannah Slade,’ said the voice again, ignoring her request and drawing out the syllables of her name again, as if she was being pronounced guilty of some terrible crime. ‘Eng-a-lish spy.’
‘Umm, no,’ she answered, through dry lips. ‘Not a spy. I’m an environmental scientist.’ She tried to make the words come out as calmly and naturally as possible. But it wasn’t easy as she lay strapped to her bunk, straining to turn her head so she could at least see who was addressing her.
‘Yes, that is your cover, for sure,’ came the reply. She could see the men in the room now. The one asking the questions was standing up. He was short, with a shaven head and wearing a green bomber jacket. The other was seated and she saw, with some relief, that the thing they had dragged in behind them was just a chair. But she could see he had a thin, weaselly face with eyes that darted everywhere. He looks mean, she decided.
‘But in fact,’ continued Bomber Jacket, ‘you are really an officer in British intelligence, are you not?’
‘No. I told you,’ she said. ‘I hold a PhD in environmental science and I don’t know why you are holding me. I would like to go now, please.’ Had she just volunteered too much information? Damn. She desperately wanted to ask who these people were but she decided to say as little as possible from now on. She heard the chair scrape across the floor and Weasel Face stood up and walked over to where she lay. Hannah braced herself for something unpleasant, she wasn’t sure what. But he just stood over her and stared at her with those cold, dark, malevolent eyes.
She heard the cabin door open once more, someone called something in Chinese and abruptly the two men were gone, leaving her alone, frightened and thirsty.