Macau Airport, China
LUKE CAST A furtive glance around the terminal as they walked in with their bags. Cameras everywhere. Hardly surprising for an airport, and China had, after all, become a world leader in the art of surveillance, even touting its wares at trade exhibitions at the ExCel Centre in London’s Docklands. Luke recalled a recent report that revealed that, of Britain’s forty-three police forces, twenty-four admitted to using either Chinese-made cameras or components. And that was in everything from body cameras to drones to helicopters. All of this, warned the report, risked video, audio and other data being clandestinely downloaded to Chinese servers, without the user’s knowledge or permission, building up an intimate security picture of the UK.
Would he and Jenny now have to pass through biometric scans? Almost certainly. Just as they had when they had landed in Hong Kong. But that was exactly why they had been chosen for this mission. They should be blank sheets as far as the People’s Republic was concerned. Neither had worked China before. Theoretically, their cover identities should hold up as they passed through Departures. But the fact that Miss Xinyi had seen right through their legends had rattled them. In normal circumstances, when your cover is blown, you get out, fast, without delay. But since leaving the office of Mr Lau in Macau port, Luke and Jenny had made significant progress. Lau had revealed three facts on that hastily scribbled piece of paper; he clearly knew his office was bugged or he would not have been so clandestine about handing it over.
‘We’re obviously not going to take a word of this at face value,’ Luke had said, as soon as they were clear of the port office and waiting for their cab back to the Venetian that morning.
‘You don’t say,’ Jenny had replied caustically. She had her head down, busy taking a photo of the page Lau had given them so she could send it straight to London for validation.
‘Look, I’m as sceptical as you are,’ Luke said. ‘But if even half of what he’s given us turns out to be genuine we’re making progress. Otherwise it’s back to square one.’
The sun was still blazing down and he had to squint against the harsh light that seemed to bleach all colour out of everything around them. A man in baggy shorts and a filthy vest nearby was pushing a trolley stacked with fifteen-litre containers for water coolers, the muscles on his skinny arms straining with the exertion.
‘I’m going to run this place Tan-shui through Survelex,’ Luke said. ‘See what it comes up with while Vauxhall do their checks. I’ve never heard of it, have you?’
Jenny shook her head, frowning, still concentrating on sending off the photo.
‘What the hell?’ Luke said, a few moments later. ‘Tan-shui is coming up as a night market. I thought it was a port.’
‘You sure?’ Jenny said, putting away her phone and looking up at last. ‘That doesn’t sound right. I have to say, Survelex isn’t perfect. I know one of our colleagues who was supposed to meet someone in a church in Kyiv and it tried to send him to the middle of the River Dnipro.’
‘Ah, wait, hang on.’ Luke was examining the screen on his phone and shading it against the sunlight with his hand. ‘Here we go. Tan-shui is the newly constructed port in New Taipei. Taipei? That’s Taiwan. He’s telling us Hannah Slade is heading to Taiwan.’
Things had snowballed quickly after that. By the time Luke and Jenny got back to the Venetian there was already a positive response from the overnight team on the China desk. They confirmed that there was indeed a container ship called the MV Ulysses Maiden, registered to a company in Palau and, more importantly, yes, it had indeed left the port of Macau at 2045 hours the previous evening, bound for Taipei. What nobody could establish – yet – was whether Hannah was onboard. Vauxhall were having difficulties in obtaining a crew manifest and, given everything that had happened, it was highly unlikely that Hannah’s name would be listed on it. This information came with a personal directive from Felix Schauer, Director Critical at VX: Get yourselves on the next flight to Taipei and liaise there with head of station. That flight, they realized, was Eva Air 802, leaving in just under two hours.
The girl at the check-in desk was young, immaculately dressed and efficient. ‘Enjoy your flight,’ she told them, as she handed them their boarding passes. Getting through Security after that was a lot less hassle than Luke had anticipated but something set his inner alarm bells ringing. A suited official standing behind the immigration officer stared hard at Luke, then bent down and whispered something to the immigration man. He picked up a phone and spoke rapidly into it while also giving Luke a long, hard look.
‘Did you catch any of what he was saying?’ Luke asked, as they progressed into Departures.
‘Not a word,’ Jenny replied, ‘but I saw that too and I have to say it didn’t look good.’
They sat on bar stools close to the departures board, downing bowls of noodles. ‘At the risk of stating the obvious,’ Jenny said, in a low voice, ‘just checking you haven’t got anything incriminating on your phone? You know, if it all turns nasty? Which I’m sure it won’t.’
‘No, I’m clean.’
‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.’
It was as they were settling the tab that the two men in suits came up, one on either side of them.
‘Christopher Blanford?’ one asked. Luke’s cover name, the one he’d practised answering to in the mirror, over and over, back in London. He nodded warily.
The other man reached into his jacket and produced a small black wallet that he flipped open for Luke to see. The upper half was emblazoned with a yellow hammer and sickle on a bright red background above a wreath of gold-coloured laurel leaves. Beneath that was a photo of an unsmiling face, a lot of writing in Chinese and the words ‘Ministry of State Security’. ‘You will come with us now, please,’ he said.
It wasn’t a request.