Macau Airport, China
THERE WERE FOUR of them in the room, apart from Luke. Two were wearing what looked like standard police uniforms: light blue shirts, red epaulettes, dark trousers. A third, who appeared to be in charge, was in a cheap suit. The fourth, who hadn’t said a word so far, was wearing, incongruously, a tracksuit. He didn’t take his eyes off Luke for a second.
From the departure lounge Luke had been hurried through a side door and was now being held in some kind of police cell, still on the airport premises. His phone, his boarding pass and what few possessions he had had on him had all been taken from him. He had been strip-searched – still with no explanation as to why he was being detained – then told to put on his clothes. He had protested, of course, quite forcefully. This, he told the men holding him, was no way to treat an innocent tourist, it was an outrage, and he demanded they release him immediately. His protests were ignored. And what about Jenny? Had she been taken too? He didn’t think so but it had all happened so quickly he couldn’t tell.
And now they were moving him into an adjacent room. Luke recognized the device the moment he saw it. He’d read about it in a Human Rights Watch report. Standard procedure apparently in certain Chinese police interrogations. It was called a ‘tiger chair’ and one look at it told him it was going to be painful. He didn’t resist, there was no point – he was heavily outnumbered and they were armed, and besides, where would he run to? – but it still took the two policemen some effort to manoeuvre him into the iron-frame chair, then bolt the shackles into place on his wrists and ankles. Already he could feel the narrow metal bars of the chair cutting into the flesh of his buttocks and this was after just a few minutes. Christ, he’d heard of prisoners being kept in one of these things for months, their flesh turning red and raw where the metal chafed constantly against it.
So now here he was, immobilized, defenceless, caged like a wild animal, while the four of them sat on the other side of a trestle table and discussed him quietly amongst themselves. A single light bulb was directed straight at him, giving off so much heat Luke found himself sweating yet unable to move his hands to wipe away the droplets that trickled down his forehead and onto his cheeks. Surprising, he thought, how such a tiny thing as that could still be so intensely annoying. All part of their game, he told himself. Then at last someone spoke. It was the suit, the man from the Ministry of State Security.
‘Christopher Blanford,’ he repeated, reading out the name in Luke’s passport that he held out in front of him.
‘Yes,’ Luke replied, ‘that’s me.’
‘What is the nature of your business here in Macau?’
‘No business, just pleasure,’ Luke said, in as calm a voice as he could muster. ‘We were on holiday in Hong Kong so we thought we’d come and have a look at Macau. You know, sightseeing? Tourism?’ Always stick to the cover story and stay as close to the truth as possible. But now he was seriously worried. What did they have on him that had made them escalate straight to these drastic measures? Relations between London and Beijing were close to rock bottom but, still, for them to do this to a foreign national they must have a reason.
‘Look,’ he protested, with a confidence he didn’t feel. ‘I think you’ve made a mistake. We’ve not broken any of your laws. I insist you let me out of this thing and let me go right now. We were leaving Macau anyway.’
What happened next caught him off-guard. Without saying a word, Tracksuit Man walked around the table to where Luke was sitting, bolted into the tiger chair. His face blank and expressionless, he drew back his arm and gave Luke a stinging backhander to the temple. It hurt but Luke was damned if he’d give them the satisfaction of hearing him cry out. After all, he’d suffered a whole lot worse on other missions.
‘I ask you again,’ the State Security man said coldly. ‘What is the nature of your business here?’
‘Bloody hell!’ exclaimed Luke, once again feigning righteous indignation. ‘Is this how you treat every tourist who comes here? Just what is your problem?’
But inside his head the questions kept coming. How much did they know? Where is Jenny right now? Had Mr Lau from the port dobbed them in to the authorities? Or Miss Xinyi? Or the oleaginous Mr Rodrigues? Aside from the false name on his passport, State Security had nothing on him. He just had to keep a cool head and this would all be over soon.
The light in his face was so bright he didn’t see it at first but then he realized that his interrogator had come around to sit on the table, his legs dangling casually in front of him, so that he was now uncomfortably close, invading Luke’s personal space.
‘Do you know what this is?’ the man said, holding up a small brown bottle with a red screw top. It had a scarlet label with some Chinese writing on it but nothing in English to reveal its contents.
‘It is concentrated chilli oil. Good for cooking.’ Luke didn’t like the direction this was taking one bit but he said nothing. Silently, the man unscrewed the top of the bottle and took a cautious sniff. He made a point of recoiling, screwing his eyes tight shut for a few seconds as he did so. Then, very carefully, almost like a scientist in a lab, he poured a small amount onto the back of Luke’s shackled left hand. This time Luke couldn’t help himself and he gasped at the pain. It felt as if someone had just touched a red-hot poker to his hand and already he could see the skin turning red raw.
‘I ask you one last time,’ the man said. ‘What were you doing in Macau? Do not tell lies. We know about you.’
‘I’m a tourist, for fuck’s sake!’ Luke shouted at the room. ‘We came here for tourism. What part of that do you not understand?’
They must have rehearsed what came next because it all happened with terrifying speed and proficiency. At a nod from the suit the two policemen rushed up to Luke and forced his head back as far as it would go. He was then aware of a hand being placed over his mouth, it might have been Tracksuit Man’s, he couldn’t tell. The next thing he saw, horrifyingly close now, was that bottle of concentrated chilli oil coming into his field of vision.
The top was off and the State Security man in the suit was poised to pour it straight into his nostrils. And, for the first time, he was smiling.