Taipei, Taiwan
THE SILVER-GREY MINIBUS that pulled up outside was emblazoned with a logo of white Mandarin characters above the words ‘Big Emerald Tours’. Watching through the window of the hotel’s ground-floor coffee shop, Luke, who had once tried to teach himself some elementary Chinese, recognized the Chinese character for ‘big’: a symbol of a stick man with outstretched arms. He also noted the number plate, which, in accordance with Chinese culture, did not contain the number four as it is considered to be unlucky. But, more importantly, he recognized the man behind the wheel. It was their contact from that morning: the Jogger.
‘Three p.m. He’s bang on time,’ Luke said to Jenny, as he put down his half-drunk cup of coffee. Discreetly, when he reckoned no one was looking, he took a photo of that number plate with his phone and pinged it over to Graham Leach. Just a precaution. Then they picked up their holdalls and walked out to the waiting vehicle, Luke making a conscious effort not to scan the surrounding streets for their back-up team. ‘Bring no one else,’ the Jogger had instructed them, and Luke certainly had no wish to spike this endeavour before it had even begun.
Leach had worked fast since their meeting in the botanical gardens. After liaising with Security Section back at Vauxhall Cross he had arranged for a team of two vetted and cleared former Special Forces NCOs, who had done the evasive-driving course, to shadow Luke and Jenny at a safe distance in an unremarkable car. One would be ‘carrying’, keeping a loaded sidearm in the glove compartment for insurance. Leach had also remotely installed Tracker27 on Jenny and Luke’s phones, a GPS locating device powerful enough to beam out a signal from anywhere across the whole of Taiwan and complete with a panic button in case the proverbial hit the fan. But that, he reminded them, was a last resort as it would almost certainly mean having to call for help from the Taiwan police and that meant there would be a lot of explaining to do. This wouldn’t be the first time MI6 had run into trouble conducting an undeclared op on friendly territory without first informing the authorities. And Taiwan was most definitely considered a UK ally in this part of the world, along with Japan and South Korea. But a decision had been taken in London that there was too much at stake. The risk of infiltration by either the criminal underworld or the agents of Beijing was simply too great. They’d kept the circle of trust as tight as possible, which meant that not even the FCDO man in charge of the British Office in Taipei had been informed as to what was about to go down.
The Jogger leapt down from the minibus, greeted Luke and Jenny with a toothy smile and ushered them into the vehicle as if they were day trippers, off for a picnic on the shores of the South China Sea. He told them his name was ‘Win’, which Luke thought rather ironic for someone who didn’t look like one of life’s winners, but this afternoon he was in a chatty, expansive mood. His English was better than Luke remembered.
‘You see the Chelsea game this week?’ he asked, as they moved out into the afternoon traffic, Luke and Jenny sitting in the row behind him. ‘My team won. Two–nil. Look!’ He twisted in his seat to show them what he was wearing. ‘I even have a Chelsea shirt.’ Watching a football match on television in the middle of such a perilous mission was about the last thing on Luke’s wish list. But maybe there was an opportunity worth exploiting here.
‘Congratulations,’ he said amicably. ‘By the way, where did you learn your English?’
‘In London,’ came the reply.
‘Really? Whereabouts?’ This was getting interesting. If he could get more details there might be something they could pass on to MI5 to see if the Security Service could track down this man’s real identity and who he worked for.
‘All over,’ Win answered noncommittally, and that was it. He fell silent.
Win’s minibus had those annoying black netting blinds on the windows that hid much of the view. What little Luke and Jenny could see hinted at rows of car-mechanic workshops, tyre-repair outfits and mobile-phone shops. Win pulled up suddenly outside a property sandwiched between two garages. It appeared to be a shop of some kind. He turned off the engine and held up a finger.
‘One minute. Back in a moment,’ he grunted. Then he was out of the door and walking over to the plate-glass-fronted shop.
‘What do you think’s going on here?’ Luke said, peering through the netting. A girl was standing in the doorway dressed in a bikini that left little to the imagination. ‘Is our jogging friend popping in there for a quick one?’
Jenny had her hand hooked around the edge of the window netting, moving it to one side for a better look. She shook her head. ‘I know that’s what it looks like but, no, this is a betel-nut shop. They have them all over Taiwan. That girl in the doorway is just a marketing gimmick to pull in the punters. Nothing happens in there. Or so I’m told.’
Seconds later, Win came back, clutching a bag of what Luke assumed must be betel nuts, along with two cans of iced coffee, which he offered to his passengers. They moved off, back into the Taipei traffic.
Win’s manoeuvre, when it came, caught them off-guard. Without warning, he suddenly accelerated, then veered off the main road, turned sharply round a corner and sped down a side-street. Luke and Jenny found themselves hurled against the side of the minibus.
‘Christ alive!’ Luke shouted, struggling to regain his balance. ‘What the hell are you doing?’
He heard Jenny gasp as he looked round for the handle on the sliding passenger door, but they were moving too fast. The next thing he knew the daylight had vanished as they raced down a ramp into an underground car park. Luke tried to rise from his seat to grab hold of the steering wheel, but Win’s deliberately chaotic driving kept him off-balance, making it impossible. The tyres screeched as he threw the vehicle to left and right, hurtling past rows of parked cars, down another storey, then braked to a sudden stop and leapt out. The next moment, Win was yanking open the side door and all the bonhomie of earlier was gone as he ordered Luke and Jenny out.
Through the open minibus door Luke could see three muscular young men dressed in bomber jackets and dark glasses. They were standing, hands on hips, beside a large cardboard box. They looked as if they had been waiting for this moment. A flash caught Luke’s eye. The car park’s yellow sodium lights glinted off a steel blade: the largest of the three men held a vicious-looking meat cleaver, the sort of razor-sharp implement that waiters in the finer Chinese restaurants might use to tackle a Peking duck. As Luke and Jenny stepped down from the vehicle the man with the blade came forward and waved it in their faces. He was close enough for Luke to smell his breath.
‘Take off your clothes,’ he ordered. ‘All of them.’