Canada House, Trafalgar Square, London
ALEX MATHESON REACHED up with the tip of her index finger and touched the faint scar beneath her right eye as the car moved slowly through the early-evening traffic along London’s Pall Mall. The Chief of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service always did this when something was troubling her, and the news from Jenny and Luke in Macau was troubling her greatly. They had called in earlier to the operations centre at Vauxhall Cross – it must have been very late at night where they were – to report a possible deconfliction issue. Deconfliction was what you tried to achieve when two agencies unwittingly bumped up against each other on an op. Given the sensitivities of Luke and Jenny’s mission in China, the Service could not afford to find itself working against an agent of a friendly Five Eyes nation, like Canada. This boil needed to be lanced immediately, with a hastily arranged visit in person to the Canadian High Commission on Trafalgar Square.
Alex Matheson’s Service driver pulled into nearby Suffolk Street and parked illegally on a double yellow line. The Chief got out, examined her reflection in the tinted window, straightened her skirt and jacket and walked the few paces to Canada House. She waited for a gap in the traffic then crossed Pall Mall East. Instead of using the main entrance, she entered the building as arranged by a discreet side door, set into the grey stone wall of this venerable late-Georgian house, shaded by the spreading branches of a mature tree, well away from public scrutiny.
They met upstairs in the British Columbia Room, just the two of them, her and the CSIS station chief for London, an energetic man with a French surname that she always struggled to pronounce.
They sat opposite each other on curved white leather sofas, the SIS Chief on one, the Canadian intelligence officer facing her, a hideous swirling black and white carpet between them that, Alex felt, did no credit to the elegance of this Grade II-listed building. A large floor-to-ceiling window should have given them a magnificent view over Trafalgar Square towards St Martin-in-the-Fields church but not today: it was obstructed by scaffolding. She took a sip of her tea from a mug emblazoned with a crown, a lion, maple leaves and chevrons. ‘Visit Québec in 2022’ it read. She had already rehearsed in her head how she was going to handle this.
‘We have,’ she began, ‘something of a situation in China. It involves your Service and mine and I have a call scheduled later this evening with your Director in Ottawa. But before I do that …’ She stopped, took out a Kleenex from her handbag and dabbed at something caught in her eye. ‘Before I speak to Jean in Ottawa I thought it only right I should run this by you, if you don’t mind.’
She looked across the space between them at the Canadian station chief for a reaction. He was sitting bolt upright, hands clasped around his knees, face fixed in a permanent smile as he waited for her to continue. He was wearing a tiny, patriotic maple-leaf flag on his left lapel.
‘You have an operation ongoing in China. As do we,’ she said. ‘I think we’re both aware of the bigger picture on the whole South China Sea situation that our agencies share through Five Eyes and the premium we all place on actionable product coming out of China.’
‘Absolument,’ replied the Canadian, his smile still in place. ‘How can we be of service?’
‘I’m going to cut straight to the chase, Louis. I wanted to run a name by you. If it checks out, we would kindly request full cooperation with one of your people down there. She’s a Miss Xinyi Yip, or Yip Xinyi, depending which usage you prefer. She works undercover for the Rodrigues group in Macau. She’s already provided some assistance to our people there but we really need her to work with us on this one.’
Alex Matheson had not yet reached the end of her sentence before she noticed the fixed grin fading. The Canadian station chief was starting to look bewildered and embarrassed at the same time.
‘Mais … je suis désolé,’ he replied. ‘I am so sorry but this is not possible.’
‘Excuse me?’ She braced herself to hear something about needing to refer back to Ottawa.
‘It is not possible,’ the Canadian repeated slowly, ‘because we have no one working for us in Macau.’ He spread his hands apologetically. ‘Personne. Nobody.’