Taipei Botanical Garden, Taiwan
MID-MORNING, AND THE RAIN had cleared as Luke and Jenny sat on a stone bench beside the lotus pond with the man from the British mission in Taipei. Great Mormon Swallowtail butterflies, each the size of a child’s hand and coloured black, white and crimson, floated and glided amid the lush plants that grew all around. From the tree canopy above, a chorus of trills and squawks from tropical birds.
Britain doesn’t have an embassy in Taiwan. The island may be self-governing but it is not recognized as an independent country. Instead, His Majesty’s Government website lists its presence in Taiwan as ‘The British Office in Taipei’, which ‘maintains and develops relations between the UK and Taiwan’. Even that was enough to annoy the men with lacquered hair and dark suits in Beijing, who raised furious complaints every time a Western government minister had the temerity to pay a visit to this rogue ‘breakaway province’.
The official cover for Graham Leach, the man from the British Office, was ‘First Secretary Economic’. He was also the MI6 station chief in Taipei. Since Taiwan was considered a friendly nation he was ‘declared’: the authorities had been told exactly who he was. A graduate in Mandarin and Oriental studies from SOAS, London University, followed by a short service commission in the Intelligence Corps, this was Leach’s first overseas posting. A cautious man by nature, he was acutely aware of the need to avoid hostile surveillance. When he suggested the botanical garden for their meeting he judged that to be the safest place to avoid the infiltrators and paid informants from Beijing who were known to be operating around the island and in the capital.
‘So let me get this straight,’ he began, and stopped almost immediately as a woman approached, wheeling a pram. ‘As I understand it,’ he resumed, once she was out of earshot, ‘your contact has offered you a meeting this afternoon with the organization that seized Hannah Slade? And this has come via Angela?’
‘That’s correct,’ Jenny said. Luke remembered that this wasn’t the first time she and Leach had met. Jenny had told him she had sat on one of the recruitment boards at a country house in Buckinghamshire when Leach was joining the Service. She’d had misgivings about his rather stiff personality but his knowledge and understanding of China and its culture had impressed her.
‘I’m not sure we need this, do we?’ Leach wondered. ‘I mean, if this maritime operation goes as planned, we should have Hannah safely back here and ready for the debrief within the next twenty-four hours. There’ll be some arrests onboard, I believe. So I don’t think it’s sensible to risk sending you off to meet these people. The triads here are not as violent as they are on the mainland but, believe me, you still don’t want to mess with them.’
Luke shifted himself along the bench into a patch of shade. The sun had finally broken through the cloud and shafts of light were lancing down through the glistening foliage where the butterflies still fluttered and flitted.
‘That’s rather a big “if”, Graham,’ Luke reminded him. ‘This maritime interdiction is a bit of a fishing expedition. We don’t even know for certain that Hannah is on that ship even if the Navy manage to find it in the middle of that ocean out there.’ He gestured in a vaguely westerly direction. ‘Let’s look at it this way. The Service – or let’s be specific here – the Chief has decided to send us all the way out here as it’s a Tier One priority. If we can get Hannah off that ship and back here with whatever intel she’s carrying, then great. Fantastic. That’s the result we’re all rooting for, right?’ He could see Jenny was giving him an uncertain look, as if to say, ‘Where are you going with this, Luke?’ He pressed on. ‘But I’m sure you’ll remember the phrase “concurrent activity” from your days in uniform. I think it makes sense, unless you have strong objections, that we use this time here in Taiwan to find out all we can about the people who’ve taken Hannah, don’t you? I mean, for a start, if this abduction is a Chinese state op, if it’s MSS, then they have most definitely crossed a line.’ Even as he said this, Luke was thinking of his close encounter with the chilli oil the day before, and the last-minute intervention of Miss Xinyi. ‘More than that, Graham, it would mean Beijing has torn up the rule book. It would mean none of our officers is safe. Including you.’
He saw Leach wince visibly at this but the man recovered quickly. ‘I doubt that,’ Leach retorted. ‘It would hardly make sense for Beijing to send Hannah Slade all the way here if they had her in their clutches in Macau. Can you tell me more about this “contact” Angela set you up with?’ he asked. ‘I’m just rather surprised she didn’t let me know about this.’
‘Let’s call him the Jogger,’ Jenny said. ‘He gave very little away but I don’t think he’s too far up the food chain. Whoever he works for is not going to risk anyone valuable for a first contact. But I’m with Luke on this one. I think this is a stone we can’t leave unturned, not when we’ve got a lead and a firm rendezvous.’
Leach looked down at his shoes. There was a long pause before he answered. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘But we can’t have you two walking into the lion’s den unprotected. I really don’t want to be calling Vauxhall to tell them we’ve now got two kidnapped officers held God-knows-where in this country of twenty-four million people.’ He stood up abruptly. ‘This doesn’t leave us a lot of time, but I’m going to sort out what back-up I can. You won’t see them but they’ll be there, watching you. And don’t worry, they’re very proficient at this.’