Macau, China
LUKE CARLTON WOKE UP feeling as if he’d barely slept. He had lain there wide awake half the night, processing everything they had seen, analysing everything they had heard. And when he’d finally got off to sleep he was plagued by nightmares. Ghostly white-masked faces loomed out of cupboards, emaciated arms stretched out towards him, fingers beckoning. He looked across the room to where Jenny lay sleeping, hoping she wasn’t experiencing the same thing.
The instructions from London came in by text before the first light of day illuminated the terracotta-coloured walls of the Venetian Hotel’s bogus bell tower. Jenny and Luke waited until they were out of their room and on the busy hotel concourse before they opened and read it.
Due diligence done on Qianfan Lau, it said. Deputy Director of Export Certification, Marine and Water Bureau. Building 41, Zone C, Port of Macau. Xinyi made contact with him last night. Green light for your meeting but proceed with caution.
‘Proceed with caution?’ echoed Luke. ‘Who writes this stuff back there? As if we go waltzing into every situation out here without a care in the world.’
‘Someone at VX will be covering their backside, Luke. That’s all,’ Jenny said. ‘Remember the rules tightened up in January? If they don’t include that phrase “proceed with caution” officers like us can sue them if it all goes bad.’
Luke shook his head. In his twelve years in the Royal Marines he had seen legal cases spring up like mushrooms while the long arm of health and safety had spread throughout every aspect of the corps. He had heard they even had crash mats positioned beneath the Tarzan course these days, down at the Commando Training Centre at Lympstone. Now, since joining the Service, he had come across more lawyers than he had ever thought possible.
They moved outside onto the patio, feeling the heat of the morning envelop them, like a warm bath. They chose a bench in the shade, a place where no one could overhear their conversation, but Luke found himself squinting uncomfortably against the glare of the tropical sun. Not yet nine o’clock and already it was almost vertically above them in the sky.
‘I’m not going to sugar-coat this, Jen,’ he said, turning to face her. ‘I think this is a dicey one.’
He waited for a pair of young, impeccably groomed business executives to pass them before continuing. ‘It’s all very well London saying they’ve done the due diligence on our man at the port, but this could still be a set-up. We could be walking straight into a trap.’ Even as he said the words Luke was reminded of the grisly fate that had befallen the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. His killers had been waiting for him; they’d had time to plan. They’d known exactly when he was going to walk into the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul and they were ready at the appointed time.
Jenny breathed out hard, staring straight ahead. A group of elderly Chinese had gathered round a table beneath a parasol a short distance away and were starting a game of mahjong. ‘I think,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘if London wants us to go ahead then we have to go with it. It’s not like we’ve got a lot of options.’
‘Sure. But we don’t both need to go. You could stay here?’
‘I could,’ Jenny replied, ‘but how good’s your Cantonese?’
‘Fair one,’ Luke conceded. ‘All right, we go together.’ He glanced at his phone. ‘Ten minutes by cab,’ he said. ‘Maybe twelve, tops. The container port is right next to the airport. That’s according to Survelex here.’ He showed her the map on his phone. Ever conscious of security, the Service had a strict ban on intelligence officers using Google Maps. Instead, Q Branch had devised an in-house app, Survelex, that showed up as ‘Google Maps’ if anyone cared to look for it, yet it left no user history and was considered untraceable by outsiders.
The taxi took them south from the Venetian along a broad, four-lane highway, the Estrada do Istmo, flanked by soaring apartment blocks painted pink and white, then past cranes, a construction site and even a copy of the Rialto Bridge in Venice. A palm-lined reservation divided the two streams of traffic going in opposite directions.
‘Macau is tiny,’ remarked Luke, as they sped past a reservoir and were soon driving through open forest. ‘We’re here,’ he said, moments later. A large low white building on their left bore the initials ‘MCT’ – Macauport Container Terminal. They could see stacks of blue shipping containers piled up on the jetty, glinting in the mid-morning sun, while a black and yellow barrier blocked the entrance to the port. The driver had clearly been there before as the guard in the gatehouse recognized him, raised the barrier and waved him through. Other than him it seemed no one else was around.
Luke tried to imagine Hannah Slade in this place, an industrial container port on the other side of the world. If that was what had really happened to her, how was she brought here? Was she conscious? Blindfolded? Bound and gagged in the boot of a car or sitting sedated in the back, sandwiched between two heavies? He closed his eyes for a moment, envisaging the sheer terror she must have felt. He had never met this collector. That, of course, was the whole point, giving couriers like her minimum contact with serving intelligence officers so no one could join the dots. Of course he had no idea how she would be coping. If she was still alive.
‘Which building?’ asked the driver, twisting to face them in the back.
‘Forty-one,’ Jenny replied.
It was a low white-walled building and it wasn’t hard to find. It had ‘Building 41’ stencilled on it in large letters beside an open doorway leading to a staircase. It looked exactly like the one next to it and the one next to that, all with grey air-conditioning units that clung to the outside walls. They paid the driver, took his number for the journey back and got out. If anyone was watching and waiting for them, Luke thought, they must be well hidden.
They were about to go in when Jenny pointed up at the sky. A pair of Chinese fighter jets streaked low overhead, twisting and turning, followed a couple of seconds later by a deafening roar as the sound waves caught up. They were low enough for Luke to see their twin tail fins and a pair of miniature delta wings protruding from just behind the cockpit. Both aircraft had a rack of missiles slung beneath the fuselage.
‘Stealth fighters,’ remarked Jenny, shielding her eyes against the sun as the roar of the jets subsided and their corner of the port returned to near silence. ‘I think they’re Chengdu J-20s. The PLA call them “Mighty Dragon”. I forget what that is in Chinese but they’re China’s first and only fifth-generation fighter jet. Probably flying out of Zhuhai airbase just south of here. They claim it’s invincible.’
‘And is it?’ Luke asked.
Jenny shrugged. ‘Not sure, to be honest. People usually compare it to the US F-22 Raptor. That’s what it’ll come up against if this develops into a hot war over the Taiwan Strait. The Raptor is faster but the J-20 can fly further and, remember, America’s airbases are a long way from here.’
Luke was impressed. He’d spent the last few months working on the Middle East desk, reporting to the humourless Grimwood. His head was still full of stats on Iranian missile batteries and deep-cover agents inside the middle ranks of Hezbollah. ‘How do you know all this?’ he asked.
‘From that briefing we had at RAF Wyton before we left, remember? You obviously weren’t paying enough attention! Right, come on, let’s find our man Qianfan Lau.’
They walked up the stone staircase in silence until they reached the first-floor landing and another open doorway. An elderly woman with enormous glasses was standing just inside it, pushing an aluminium tea trolley.
‘Qianfan Lau?’ Jenny asked her, and the tea lady pointed upstairs.
‘Bingo,’ Luke said, as they reached the next floor and a sign above the first door they came to read, in Chinese and English, ‘Deputy Director’s Office. Dept of Export Certification’. For a second or two they looked at each other. Luke and Jenny had worked together on enough operations in enough countries that nothing needed to be said. They knew this was one of those watershed moments, a fork in the road that could lead to anything from arrest and imprisonment to a disappointing dead end to a genuine breakthrough in their quest to find Hannah.
Jenny knocked gently on the door, waited for a response then opened it. A middle-aged man was sitting behind a desk, writing, box files and papers littering the space in front of him. The moment he saw Jenny he catapulted out of his chair, came out from behind his desk and bowed. ‘Qianfan Lau, Qianfan Lau, Qianfan Lau,’ he repeated. He gestured for them to sit on the chairs in front of the desk. Luke guessed he was not much older than he was, maybe early forties, with thinning black hair combed back and lacquered to his scalp. But his suit was expensive, and when he’d held out his hand in greeting, Luke had noticed what looked very much like a Rolex. Whatever it was, it was hardly in keeping with this tawdry government office with its institutional lime-green walls and metal shelves groaning with dusty box files. It looked to Luke exactly like the little office at the martial-arts gym back in Hong Kong. Mr Lau, Luke was certain, had more than one income.
A fan turned slowly on the ceiling and Lau caught Luke glancing up at it. ‘Please excuse the heat,’ he apologized. ‘Our AC is bust. Can I offer you some tea? Something colder? Maybe a beer?’
‘Perhaps a Coke if you have one,’ Jenny said, turning to Luke, who nodded.
‘Of course, of course.’ Lau walked over to an ancient-looking fridge in the corner, took out two cans of Coke and handed them to his guests. ‘So,’ he said, returning to his chair and smiling at them, as if this were some long-delayed reunion of old friends. ‘Miss Xinyi tells me you are looking for someone. As you can see,’ he said, waving his hand around his Spartan office, ‘I am just a humble clerk here at the port but I would be happy to be of service. What can I do for you?’
Wow, Luke thought. We’re not even getting to take a sip before we dive straight in. This could go either way.
‘It’s Hannah Slade,’ Jenny said, leaving just enough of a pause for them both to watch his reaction. There was none. ‘She’s a … she’s a friend of ours from London and she went missing in Hong Kong a few days ago. We understand from Miss Xinyi that she passed through this port. Would you know anything about her?’
Qianfan Lau didn’t answer straight away. He held up a finger to his lips and spoke very slowly and deliberately, still in English. ‘I’m sorry. I’m afraid I cannot help you. This name does not ring any bells. Have you tried the Port Authority main office?’ But Luke noticed that as he was saying this he was writing. When he had finished he handed them a piece of paper.
‘Let me call you a taxi,’ he said cheerfully, as they read what he had just written. It was just three lines.
Hannah Slade left Macau Port yesterday.
She is on Ulysses Maiden.
Destination is Tan-shui.