The beijing conspiracy, p.9
The Beijing Conspiracy, page 9
‘Yes,’ Jack agreed, ‘Business.’
There was a nod and a surreptitious glance at her watch. Fei Yen probably felt she’d done enough to entertain an old friend of her mother.
‘Xia says that you’re doing a doctorate – hoping for a semester or more in Georgetown.’ Actually, it was Peter who had provided that information.
‘That’s right,’ she agreed.
‘She thought I might be able to help – that’s my neck of the woods.’
Fei Yen laughed. ‘My mother is trying to arrange a babysitter in advance? Typical! She has always been overprotective of me – there’s never been anyone else, you see.’
‘Your father?’ He watched her face.
There were no shadows when she said, ‘He ran out on us before I was born.’
He reached into his pocket and retrieved a card with his telephone number scribbled on it. ‘Call me when you get there,’ he said.
‘Thank you,’ she said. She rose to her feet. ‘I have to go now. Next class,’ she explained. She must have suddenly felt sorry for him because she added, ‘If you’re feeling lost, I am happy to give you a tour of Beijing after classes?’
He nodded and cracked a genuine smile. ‘That would be good. Everything has changed so much! Later this evening?’
‘I’ll see you here at four.’ She smiled.
He waved her away when she tried to clear the mugs. ‘I’ll do that. You shouldn’t be late for class. Your mom wouldn’t thank me for that.’
He watched her walk out the door, same long-limbed stride as her mother, same hip sway. Once she was out of sight, when he was sure no one was watching, he slipped Fei Yen’s empty mug into a plastic bag and into his rucksack.
His daughter?
Maybe. Trust, but verify.
‘But where is this “hero of the people”, this Tank Man who is going to symbolize this era of change? Do you have his likely whereabouts?’ Kai Pin was still sceptical.
‘Colonel Guo Feng will brief us.’
The colonel stood up and saluted smartly. He wore his uniform with pride and his broad face and matching broad shoulders inspired trust. Juntao relied on him when it came to the more delicate errands that the exercise of power required.
‘Senior members of the Politburo, it is a privilege to be here in your august presence. As you know, the man in question disappeared after the incident in Tiananmen Square. Many believed that he was seized by the army and executed or kept under lock and key somewhere. The truth is’ – he paused to ensure that he had their full attention – ‘he was rescued by the Americans.’
‘Why would they take such a risk?’ muttered Bao En, pressing the tips of his fingers together like an irritable professor.
‘This cannot be right. It would have been madness to interfere,’ agreed Li Keqiang.
Juntao interrupted. ‘Our working hypothesis is that they thought that if the 1989 rebellion succeeded in overthrowing the government, it would be useful to have lent aid to a potential future leader – at the very least a symbol of the resistance.’
‘The other possibility, also recognized by the Party,’ said the colonel, with a nod at Li Keqiang, ‘is that a rogue element within the CIA smuggled him out without the involvement of the US government.’
‘That seems more plausible!’ exclaimed Kai Pin. ‘Can you imagine if the Americans were found out, aiding and abetting an enemy of the state? The student movement would have been discredited – they would have looked like pawns of the Western powers.’
‘But why would a rogue element assist him?’ asked Bao En.
‘Perhaps they were impressed with his courage?’ suggested Juntao. ‘After all, is that not why he has value to us?’
‘We believe that the operation to smuggle the Tank Man out of China was conducted in the greatest secrecy and his new identity known only to a few,’ continued Colonel Guo Feng.
‘In which case, how will we ever find him? Your plan is in tatters before we have even begun, Comrade Juntao!’ said Li Keqiang.
Juntao waved a hand at Guo Feng, indicating that he should continue with his narrative to answer the criticism of Li Keqiang.
‘We have, through our agents, identified a man – a junior official at the embassy – who was involved in the operation to get him out of the country.’
‘An American?’ asked Kai Pin.
‘Yes.’
‘What is the use of that?’ demanded Li Keqiang. ‘He will not tell us where this man is. And we are not in a position to force him to talk.’
Colonel Guo Feng was too accomplished an operator to show any smugness but Juntao suspected that it was quite an effort to keep his face impassive. He was, after all, about to play his trump card.
‘This American agent is retired and living in Washington, DC after many years in the military, where he served with distinction.’
‘You imagine the CIA will let us get near him?’ It was Bao En who interrupted this time. ‘An American hero?’
‘This man is presently here,’ responded Colonel Guo Feng.
‘He is here?’
‘Yes, comrades. He is here in Beijing.’
Wide smiles broke out around the table.
‘That is clever work, Comrade Juntao. It seems the reform agenda is in good hands.’
‘This man, Jack Ford, will tell us every single thing he knows about the new identity of the Tank Man and his whereabouts,’ continued Juntao.
Comrade Li Keqiang allowed himself a nod of approval.
‘What if he refuses to talk?’ asked Kai Pin.
‘He will talk,’ said Colonel Guo Feng with supreme confidence. ‘We have the means to make it so.’
Secretary General-elect Juntao pressed his lips together and a thin line of moisture appeared along the top edge; should he feel guilty that Guo Feng’s methods were likely to be harsh? No, he was working towards the greater good of China and its people. What was that expression he had heard once in the West?
‘Unfortunately, comrades, there is no way to make an omelette without breaking eggs.’
EIGHT
‘How can you possibly know him?’ demanded Director Griffin, breaking the silence that had engulfed the other two men for a few moments after Bonneville claimed to have recognized the man in the photograph.
‘I’ve seen his face – a file photo somewhere – I know it.’
‘A mug shot?’
‘No, he’s one of us.’
‘An agent?’
‘Maybe.’
Bonneville was perched on the end of Griffin’s desk. It was not a position he would have dared adopt if he wasn’t lost in thought, brow furrowed like the cornfields of his home state Iowa, after the harvest.
‘I’ve been looking through our China files – he must have been in one of them,’ continued Bonneville.
‘Which one?’ asked Davies.
‘I can’t remember,’ confessed Bonneville.
‘Well, perhaps you should be lookin’ rather than polishing my table with your butt?’ said Griffin.
‘On it, sir,’ said Bonneville, and bolted from the room. He hurried down the long corridor, ignoring the doors at regular intervals, until he reached the conference room at the end. Bonneville had co-opted the room for his research and forged Griffin’s signature on the request form. He needed space, not an open plan office with four other analysts discussing the football scores. He shuddered briefly. Sometimes he wondered whether Americans would sleep as soundly if they knew what some of these guys did during work time.
Bonneville dragged a box on to the table, opened it and started flicking through files methodically in reverse chronological order. The stuff from the last twenty years was all computerized so the first physical file he looked at was 1998. There were stacks of information from each year but Bonneville was confident of finding the needle.
An hour later he was beginning to feel discouraged. Had he really seen the guy somewhere? He only had the faintest memory of doing so and even that was rapidly fading. Why in the world had he sounded so certain to Griffin? He wasn’t looking forward to having to tell him he’d been wrong.
Bonneville dusted another file, a slim folder on personnel in the embassy during the Tiananmen Square episode.
He hit pay dirt.
The man he wanted looked a lot younger in the black and white photograph in front of him but there was no mistaking the square jaw and the aquiline nose. Jack Ford. The man was listed as a junior official in the student liaison office. Code for agent? Probably. In those days, everyone had been a spy. He would have to crosscheck against the old CIA files. He dragged his chair around to the computer in the corner – a lot of the CIA archives had been digitized. It was just possible that this man might appear in their database without there being any further need to thumb through files, with the time and paper cuts that entailed.
Bonneville licked his finger, tasted blood, keyed in the name and waited. It only took ten seconds. Jack Ford had been young, handsome and fervent. The perfect agent to send into the field to befriend China’s youth back in the day. No one, least of all the CIA, had predicted Tiananmen Square, either the activism or the crackdown. But they must have sensed rumblings of discontent. It would have seemed like a good idea to put a personable young man in the field. It was less obvious why he had returned to the States less than twelve months later and resigned with immediate effect.
The computer information was the bare bones, preserved by bureaucrats, not analysts. He needed flesh on the bones, which meant more digging in the subterranean filing labyrinth. There was a story here, Bonneville was sure of it. But how had that story led Jack Ford to be caught on CCTV at a crime scene in Singapore? Coincidence? Not a word that made sense to Andrew Bonneville. There were always connections, fine lines between people and events, between the past and the present. He looked at the picture on the file and again at the one gleaned from the CCTV camera. What was the connection?
He had an idea. He hit a few quick keystrokes. Nothing. He turned to the ancient file again. Turned the pages slowly, scrutinizing the faces. Found him. Peter Kennedy. Attached to the embassy cultural division at the same time that Jack Ford had been there. Two young men in a foreign country, thirty years ago. Their paths had crossed again in Singapore. One was dead now and the other on the run. This was not coincidence. The two were linked by some shared and dangerous history.
He’d got his man. It was time to report to Griffin.
Jack ducked his head to get under the low, narrow doorway, past two stone lions wearing identical rictus grimaces which guarded the way. He found himself in a tiny, square courtyard with a few tables and bamboo chairs. Old men in black shorts and white vests played checkers with each other, stopping only to take long draws on hand-rolled cheroots and sip tea from fragile porcelain cups. An elderly man made a loud slurping noise as he drank soup from a bowl. There was steam rising from it and Jack realized he was hungry, hadn’t had anything except that Starbucks coffee, black, no sugar, in the morning with Fei Yen.
Jack wondered for a moment if he was in the wrong place. The taxi driver had been adamant that this was the hutong – one of the narrow streets of Old Beijing – which he was looking for, although the man had been forced to drop him at the entrance to the street. It was too narrow, like a grey-walled corridor, for modern vehicles; only bicycles and handcarts traversed the lane and people bustled hither and thither.
As he stood there indecisively, the men within the square began to stare. Drawn by the sudden silence, an elderly man emerged from the small cottage fronting the yard. He was dressed in some sort of embroidered gown with wide sleeves and had a long white beard. Jack hurried to him, eager to get away from the curious eyes of the clientele.
‘Are you Confucius?’ he asked in Mandarin.
‘Not the original,’ responded the man in English and then chortled heartily at his own humour. ‘However,’ he added, ‘I am sometimes called that. I fear it is shorthand for “pompous old windbag”.’
Jack tried a smile but his heart wasn’t in it. ‘Peter … Peter Kennedy gave me your name. He said I should come to you if I needed anything. That you would lend a hand.’
‘Peter is a good friend and his friends are always welcome here. Confucius says, “Never contract friendship with a man who is not better than thyself.”’
Was the man nicknamed Confucius actually quoting Confucius? Did Chinese people do that? The Chinese man ushered Jack back into the house and the American blinked to adjust his vision to the gloom. ‘Spartan’ was the kindest word for the bare room with a small table and two chairs. A mat rolled up in the corner presumably functioned as a bed at night.
‘Er … nice place,’ muttered Jack.
‘My ancestors have been here since the Ming dynasty,’ responded the old man, ‘when they were servants to emperors.’ He continued, ‘So how is Peter? I have not seen him for more than a week.’
‘Peter was a good friend … I’m afraid he’s dead.’ Jack had a sudden flashback of the spreading bloodstain from the severed wrist.
‘What happened?’ asked Confucius. Even in the half light, Jack saw that he’d grown pale. The news had come as a shock.
‘He was gunned down – in Singapore.’
‘Why?’
‘For a briefcase. He begged me to take it before he died, to stop it falling into the wrong hands.’
‘What was in the briefcase that was so important?’
‘That is why I have come to you. I need your input to translate the documents – they’re in Mandarin. I never did learn to read the language.’ Jack slung his rucksack on to a rickety table and undid the clasps. He took out the three-page document, handwritten notes in the margins. ‘It looks like a memo from some sort of meeting,’ he explained.
‘How do I know that you did not kill Peter for this yourself?’
‘In a way, it was my fault,’ admitted Jack. ‘He took a detour to see me … about … a personal matter. It gave the men a chance to ambush him. He was only five hundred yards from the American Embassy when they got him.’
‘Who were they?’
‘Chinese, from their methodology – I’d say military.’
‘What happened to them?’
‘Two are dead,’ said Jack bluntly. ‘The third caught a bullet and has a broken jaw at the very least.’
Confucius drew a curtain over the open doorway. ‘Some deeds are too dark to be discussed in sunshine,’ he said. ‘Why have you come to the Forbidden City? Surely it would have been safer to get the document translated elsewhere? In Singapore?’
‘I had to come to Beijing on some … personal business,’ said Jack.
Eyebrows were raised, but Jack had no intention of mentioning Fei Yen. He continued, ‘This briefcase is a sideshow for me. But I owe it to Peter to figure out why someone killed him to get it. I want to get rid of it – but right now I don’t know who the good guys are.’
‘Your embassy in Singapore? Isn’t that where you thought Peter was going? Why didn’t you just take it there?’
‘There must have been a leak,’ said Jack. ‘Someone knew Peter was on his way and told the Chinese. I couldn’t just hand it over to the doorman. The bad guys may well have plans for getting their hands on this. Besides, they would have arrested me after the mêlée at the Botanic Gardens, and I needed to come here to Beijing.’
‘You are a tactician,’ said Confucius.
‘Just a soldier,’ retorted Jack.
‘I don’t want Peter to have died in vain,’ said Confucius. ‘We were friends, Peter and I.’
‘Did you know he was a spook?’
‘He told me he was the cultural attaché at the embassy. It was never a very likely story. So, in answer to your question, yes – I guessed that he was a spy.’
‘He trusted you,’ said Jack. He made it sound like an accusation. He remembered the note urging him to seek out Confucius. But that had been about Fei Yen, not a secret memo that men had died to obtain. Did that change anything? He looked at the other guy. Ridiculous clothes, ridiculous beard obscuring his face. Thin face. A mole with hair sprouting from it like an epiphyte.
Jack made up his mind. He held out the memo and Confucius took it with a reluctant hand. Jack understood his hesitation. The men who had attacked Peter for the case weren’t going to be keen to allow anyone to live who knew its contents.
‘They don’t know who I am so they can’t find out who you are,’ he said. ‘Once you tell me what’s in it, I’ll walk away. All you have to do is tell me what it says. What was so important it was worth killing Peter over?’
Dominic Corke was briefing the Vice President. Once again, he had decided to avoid the man in the Oval Office in favour of the number two. There would be hell to pay if it became public knowledge that he was bypassing the Commander in Chief. But Corke was a patriot, not a lackey. Harris sat behind a big desk. He stood on the other side of it and tried not to shuffle his feet. Vice President Harris had her mind on other things. ‘The Singaporeans got his fingerprint off a handkerchief? I didn’t even know that was possible,’ she exclaimed.
‘Some sort of new technology. The key thing is that we know who this guy is now. His name is Jack Ford.’
‘From that long face of yours, I’d guess he’s one of ours. CIA?’
Corke nodded reluctantly. The Vice President was famous for her ability to read people and her sudden and accurate insights. Corke had assumed she was just lucky. Now he wasn’t so sure. ‘He got out a long time ago. His first and only CIA posting was to China during the Tiananmen Square massacre. After that, he just walked away.’
He added, knowing it was going to be a red rag to a bull, ‘From the file we know he served in China at the same time as Peter Kennedy.’
‘Your dead guy?’
‘My dead guy.’
‘What else do we know?’
‘Jack Ford was Delta Force.’ Corke explained what he knew. ‘Decorated. A patriot.’
‘If he was such a patriot, how come he didn’t take the case to the US Embassy?’
Corke remained silent. Even if the Vice President had been expecting an answer, he didn’t have one. He turned his head away from the penetrating gaze and found himself looking at a bust of Obama. It was rare for a sitting vice president to acknowledge a president other than her immediate boss – but exceptions had to be made, he supposed.
