Taoyuan International Airport, Taipei
SANDBAGS. AND HESCO BASTION protective walls. Luke hadn’t seen these defensive precautions against bomb blasts and incoming missiles since his days of operating out of Kandahar airfield in Afghanistan. Yet here they were, freshly erected at Taiwan’s principal civilian airport. ‘This is going to take a bit of getting used to,’ he said.
‘What – the sandbags and soldiers, you mean?’ Jenny nodded towards the armed men in uniform flanking the walls on either side of the arrivals hall. She and Luke were barely off the plane and already they felt as if they had pitched up in a country preparing for war.
‘That, yes. But also the facemasks. It’s like we’ve just stepped back into the middle of the Covid pandemic.’ He gestured towards the large number of passengers and airport staff wearing pale blue surgical masks. There were still some posters up on the walls warning people to keep two metres apart, and in the middle distance, just before Passport Control, two health officials were in full white protective suits and Perspex face shields, brandishing temperature monitors. The soldiers were masked up too, he noticed, all wearing camouflage clothing and carrying T91 assault rifles with a second full magazine of ammunition taped to the first to save time if something kicked off. He also noted that their boots looked rather too shiny and new to have spent much time outside barracks.
‘Masks are a thing in this part of the world,’ said Jenny. ‘Remember, they had the SARS outbreak long before Covid came on the scene. People here just feel safer that way. Plus they tend to do as they’re told. Unlike us bolshy Brits.’
They took their place in the queue at Immigration. Taiwan was considered a ‘friendly nation’ yet Luke and Jenny were coming in undeclared. That was the way Felix Schauer wanted it. Under the radar. No one else in the country needed to know they were there except the station chief in Taipei. Luke regarded Jenny as they shuffled forward, passports in hand. She was somehow managing to look remarkably fresh despite the long day they’d had already. But then again, he thought, she hadn’t been threatened with chilli oil being poured into her nostrils.
‘Anyway,’ she said, glancing up at him with concern, ‘how are you holding up, Luke? Do you want to talk about what happened back there in Macau?’
‘Not really.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m more interested in knowing what the hell Miss Xinyi was doing in that police station at the airport. I’m still trying to process that. She vanished the moment I saw her and then I was being rushed onto the flight. I’m just relieved they didn’t get to you as well. I suppose …’ He stopped to bend down and peel off an adhesive baggage label that had stuck to the sole of his boot. ‘… I suppose I should be grateful to her. She fished me out of that mess. But it’s made me think.’ He lowered his voice as a space opened between them and the passenger in front. ‘She’s got to be, hasn’t she?’
‘Got to be what?’
‘She’s Chinese MSS. State Security. She has to be. Or else she has connections very high up in Beijing. I can’t see how else she could pull rank over those thugs back at Macau airport. Come on, Jen, I only caught a glimpse of her but she was acting like she owned the place. It was almost like she was in charge.’
They had reached the passport counter and a masked immigration officer was beckoning them towards his booth.
‘Purpose of visit?’ he asked, when Luke approached.
It was such a routine question asked at any immigration booth around the world, yet it resounded in Luke’s head and reminded him of why they were in Taiwan: We’re here to debrief one of our people as soon as she’s rescued off a ship, someone who’s carrying top-level intelligence that might just help stop this country getting invaded by China.
‘Tourism,’ he replied. ‘We’re here for tourism. For two weeks.’
The man stamped his passport and waved him on.
It was dark by the time they emerged onto the taxi rank outside the terminal. Jenny approached the first of the yellow cabs that drew up alongside them but Luke stopped her.
‘Always take the second or third,’ he advised, ‘in case it’s a set-up and someone’s waiting for you to come out. I know we’re out of China but you can never be too careful.’ She was looking at him questioningly but he steered them towards the next car in the queue. ‘It’s a rule I’ve stuck by after bitter experience, trust me.’
On the long, elevated expressway from the airport to their hotel in town they stared out of the window at the darkened, charmless outskirts of Taipei, each lost in their own thoughts. The traffic ahead was starting to back up as they joined a slow-moving queue near the capital’s western suburbs. ‘Checkpoint,’ announced the driver. When they inched slowly forward Luke could see three concrete-filled oil drums that had been placed halfway across the road next to a sandbagged hut. Soldiers in rain capes with weapons slung over their shoulders were shining torches into cars and asking questions. When they pulled up alongside one he took a brief look at their blue-black British passports, peered into the cab at Luke and Jenny, then waved them on. As they passed through the checkpoint Luke noticed a lone Taiwanese soldier sitting on a swivel chair behind a machine-gun on a tripod. It reminded him of something he had once seen in a tunnel beneath the Demilitarized Zone, the DMZ, that separates Communist North Korea from its democratic neighbour in the south. There too, a lone South Korean soldier had been sitting behind a machine-gun pointing down the tunnel towards the north, just in case the Communists should choose to invade underground. It was a symbolic gesture of defiance by a country that knew its army was far outnumbered by that of its neighbour, and, to Luke, there was an obvious parallel here with Taiwan and China.
The Service’s Taipei station chief had booked them into a suitably nondescript and inexpensive hotel: the Blue World Nanjing. It was in a part of the city so bland and featureless the district didn’t even have a name. Just a plate-glass skyscraper on the corner of an intersection where the traffic roared past at all hours and where the perpetual Taipei drizzle cloaked everything, including the lines of drooping Taiwanese national flags that stretched down the street, in a damp, depressing mist.
Checked in and up in his room, with Jenny across the corridor, Luke found he was unable to turn off his air-conditioning, set uncomfortably low at 14°C. Neither could he close the curtains, which meant he was treated to the glare of a neon hoarding across the road, which flashed up an advert for shampoo every few seconds. Wide awake now, he checked his phone once more for messages and found a new one from Angela at Vauxhall Cross: You have meeting confirmed tomorrow. Useful contact. Meet at 0930 at Chiang Kai-shek Memorial, Dazhong Gate.
It read a bit stilted compared to Angela’s usual style but then, Luke thought, she’s probably in a rush. He put his phone away, reached into the cupboard for an extra blanket, pulled it over his head and fell asleep within minutes.