“Why would you think that?”
“Because both times he did not return for over a week, because there were flights to Washington that fitted with his schedule on those mornings, and because he did not take his wife.”
Isabella. The thought of her name was melodramatized by the soaring violins of Barber’s “Adagio.” Joe wanted to ask Jian how she was, what he thought of her, whether she seemed happy or sad. He found himself reflecting, not for the first time during his short stay in Shanghai, that he was breathing the same air as the woman he loved. This was the quiet madness in which his heart resided.
“But the other three were internal flights within China?”
“Yes. And one of these could have been to Urumqi, because the timings were also similar. But this is just speculation on my part. The others we are almost certain were to separate destinations.”
“As part of his job?”
Jian nodded. Miles’s cover involved posing as an employee of Microsoft, investigating incidents of copyright theft in China. It was a clever ruse, not least because it allowed a senior CIA man the freedom to move around the country without arousing suspicion.
“What else can you tell me about his movements?”
Jian exhaled through puffed-out cheeks and tilted his head to one side. His eyebrows hooked in a comic expression of exhausted bewilderment and it was obvious to Joe that Miles hadn’t changed. No other man could produce a reaction like that in an asset of Jian’s experience.
“He is quite a character, the American.” Jian booted up the laptop, clicked through various folders and passed it across to Joe. It was a small Lenovo, light and state-of-the-art. There was a photograph on the screen, about the size of a holiday snap, and Joe adjusted the tilt of the lid so that he was able to see the image more clearly.
“If we are disturbed,” Jian told him quietly, looking out at the grass in front of them, “if anybody should approach us and request to see the information on this computer, you only have to hold down the key marked F8, which has been programmed to delete all relevant files.” A more theatrical personality might have paused here for dramatic effect, but Jian moved swiftly on. “The first picture shows you an individual who will probably interest you a great deal.” The photograph was a close-up shot of a beautiful Chinese woman, taken on a busy street in bright sunlight. “We think your friend is conducting a sexual relationship with this woman. Her English name is Linda, with the Chinese name Ling Shu. He is not in Shanghai at the present time and we believe they are together in Hainan. I have written a more detailed account of their meetings in the main research file contained on the desktop.” Joe felt a strange, conflicting surge of relief and anger: relief because Miles was undermining his marriage through infidelity; anger because he was hurting Isabella by doing so. Jian reached across and pushed the right arrow key on the laptop. The photograph of Linda was replaced with another picture, this time of a different woman. “This second image also shows a girl, as you can see, who is Chinese and of approximately the same age as the first.”
Jian withdrew his hand and leaned back on the bench. Was there a slight undercurrent of moral disgust here? Joe knew nothing of Jian’s private life, but the brisk manner in which he had described the second woman led him to suspect that he was himself the father of a girl.
“Miles is seeing both these women at once?”
Jian produced a curious glottal noise in the base of his throat which might have been the laughter of male camaraderie, but might equally have been the sound of an older man’s disapproval. “Yes. Again, we believe so.” A bird settled on the grass in front of them before quickly flying away. “This one lives in an apartment not far from here and has a number of different boyfriends.”
“You mean she’s a prostitute?”
Jian shrugged. Western men preyed on Chinese girls; Chinese girls preyed on Western men. Sometimes money changed hands; sometimes it didn’t. It was the way of things. The music emerging from the speakers had changed to the waltz from Sleeping Beauty. The sun had disappeared behind a bank of yellowed clouds but the temperature in the clearing was still warm. Joe remembered that the “Adagio” had featured in the film Platoon and found that the tune had stuck in his mind.
“There are many more photographs,” Jian told him. Joe was surprised when the next picture showed Miles himself standing at what appeared to be the bar of a smart hotel. It had been so long since Joe had seen a contemporary shot of his face that he found himself squinting at the image in near-disbelief. Miles’s weight had ballooned to fourteen or fifteen stone and, perhaps to compensate for the commensurate swelling in his face, he had grown a wild black beard which somehow amplified his natural charisma. Miles was surrounded at the bar by three Caucasians-a man and two women-all of whom were younger than he was and laughing uproariously at something he had said. It was both reassuring and debilitating to see this. Joe stubbed out his cigarette.
“Click through these,” Jian said, pointing at the keyboard. As Joe moved through a slide show, Jian produced a detailed running commentary. These are your friend’s colleagues from work. This is an American lawyer who he meets at least twice a week. This is his gym. This is his car. This is where he goes to the movies. Like the bullet in Russian roulette, Joe was waiting for his first glimpse of Isabella, but it was the bullet that never comes.
After perhaps thirty or forty photographs, he said, “What about his wife?”
“What about her, please?”
“Well, where is she?”
It was the only moment of awkwardness between them. Jian reacted as though SIS were questioning the quality of his work. Joe felt obliged to reassure him.
“Don’t misunderstand me,” he said. “It’s just that they don’t seem to be spending much time together.”
“They don’t,” Jian replied flatly. “She is hardly ever with him.”
This, Joe supposed, was good news, but he could feel no elation. He had always known that Isabella’s marriage to Miles would be a sham, that the American would betray her, that she would be unhappy. To see it played out as he had predicted was grim and dispiriting. “Hardly ever?” he asked. “They don’t go out?”
“Hardly ever.”
There were a great many photographs of Miles at night. In a sequence of backlit images taken inside what Jian described, somewhat mysteriously, as “a Mexican nightclub,” Miles could be seen in heated conversation with a young man, no older than twenty-six twenty-seven, who looked of Pakistani or north Indian origin. It was quite rare in Shanghai to see Asians from the subcontinent, and Joe began to speculate on a possible link with TYPHOON.
“Who’s this guy?” he asked, pressing the screen so that his fingertip blurred the man’s face.
“We don’t know,” Jian replied quickly. “These images were very difficult for us, because the light was so low. My brother could only use his telephone.”
“He’s not a diplomat? Is he resident here?” Joe was thinking about the Pamir mountains which separate Xinjiang from India and Pakistan. Waterfield’s source in Beijing had told him that explosives which were later used by TYPHOON cells in terrorist incidents had been smuggled through the Khunjerab Pass in the summer of 1999.
“We know nothing. I am sorry. This photograph you are looking at was taken only one week ago, maybe ten days. But I have seen him with your friend several times and he is always in this place. We call him ‘Sammy’ because he reminds us of somebody in our family.”
“Sammy?”
“Yes. He is part of your friend’s group who go out at night to the bars and clubs. He is younger than most of them. That is all I can tell you.”
By coincidence, the next photograph was a medium close-up of a mustachioed Uighur man, slightly out of focus and taken from waist height, possibly from below a table in a restaurant. He was wearing a traditional embroidered yellow shirt and a doppa.