The answer came to him while he was walking in the streets near his home. He had a duty to warn the authorities of what was about to happen in Shanghai. Wang could no more pretend to be a political agnostic than he could return to the Xinjiang of his youth and alter the path that he had taken as an academic and radical. But how to inform the Chinese of what was happening without risking his own wellbeing? An anonymous phone call would likely be ignored. Besides, why give the government the satisfaction of preventing an atrocity that would further undermine the Uighur cause?
Wang was also concerned for his former students. Bary and Tursun might have attached themselves to a religious code which he believed to be both counter-productive and ideologically bankrupt, but they had only embraced radical Islam because there were no further options left open to them. The Chinese, the Americans and, now, the government in Islamabad had effectively turned two idealistic young men into terrorists. All his students had ever wanted was their land back; now they stood to set back the cause of liberation by a generation.
He decided to send the warning in the form of an email. He was taking an extraordinary personal risk in doing so. Trace the message and the Chinese would lock Wang away for life. Send it out into cyberspace and he would have no clue as to its ultimate destination.
He chose a small internet cafe far from his home. For half an hour he watched the entrance from a restaurant across the street, concluding that enough customers passed through the door for his own brief appearance to be ignored or even forgotten. Wang ascertained that there were no surveillance cameras operating near the premises, though he was certain that there would be at least one camera recording activity in the cafe. Leaving the restaurant, he put on a pair of bifocal spectacles but otherwise effected no further changes to his appearance. The trick was not to draw attention to oneself, but to appear as bland and as unremarkable as the millions of other Chinese men who lived and worked in Beijing.
There was one small obstacle. In order to use a public computer in China, it is necessary to present an identity card-a shen fen zheng — to the operator of the internet cafe. Wang had kept only one false ID from the era of TYPHOON, a laminated card, prepared by the CIA’s Graphics and Authentication Division, which stated his name as Zhang Guobao. Upon entering the cafe, Wang presented the card to the young man behind the desk and was relieved when he began recording its details, as required by Chinese law, in the cafe’s log book, without bothering to compare Wang’s bespectacled face with the outdated black-and-white photograph in the shen fen zheng. Wang then purchased a twenty-renminbi card which gave him thirty minutes of screen time. He sat at a terminal with his back facing the small security camera bolted on the rear wall. Settling into his seat, he then accessed a dormant email account which he had used several years earlier to communicate with Kenneth Lenan.
Wang Kaixuan was on the point of composing his message when he looked up and saw that a uniformed officer with the Beijing police had walked into the cafe. The policeman was moving slowly, glancing idly around the room. Suddenly it occurred to Wang that he was at least twenty years older than almost every other customer in the cafe; bored, glassy-eyed teenagers were slumped in front of the other monitors, others huddled in groups of three or four taking turns to play online games. Wang looked out of place among them; he wasn’t a part of the cyber generation.
A less experienced man might have panicked at this point, but the professor ignored the chill he felt on the surface of his skin and simply signed out of the email account and typed in the web address of a local daily newspaper. The policeman was now making idle conversation with the assistant behind the counter. They lit cigarettes and eyed up a girl. The cop began flicking distractedly through the pages of a magazine and did not seem particularly interested in using one of the terminals himself.
Wang looked to his left. There was an exit three metres from his chair. He could make a run for it, but if the police had come for him, chances are they would have already sealed off the rear of the building. Yet there was surely no possibility that they could know what he was doing: Zhang Guobao’s personal details-his place of birth, ID number, the city in which he was registered to live-had been recorded only moments earlier. It was far too soon for the authorities to have noticed. Perhaps the password on his email account had alerted them. Wang knew that Lenan had been murdered in suspicious circumstances, and that most of the networks with which he had been involved had been rolled up by the MSS. It had been foolish to use the account, foolish to use the Zhang Guobao identity. But what other choice did he have?
A further five minutes passed. The professor remained in his seat, watching the cop, watching the doors. He wanted to take his glasses off, because they had begun to hurt his eyes, but it was important not to change his appearance or to draw attention to himself with even the slightest movement. Then, to his horror, he saw the policeman reach for the log book and begin to study the list of recent entries. Wang kept his head down but could sense the policeman looking up and checking activity at the terminals. Was he looking for Zhang Guobao? In time, a woman in her mid-thirties, seated at an opposite terminal, stood up and walked out of the cafe. When the police officer did not bother to turn round and look at her, Wang felt that he was safe; this cop was clearly just passing the time. According to the clock in the lower left-hand corner of his computer, he had sixteen minutes remaining. As long as the official left within that period, everything would be all right.
Wang waited. He clicked through random pages-news stories, classified ads, letters-and rehearsed the details of Zhang Guobao’s cover in the event of a brief interrogation. He was an engineer, born in Chongqing, registered to live in Beijing. Surely none of these personal details would be necessary? The police officer was not about to interview every one of the twenty or twenty-five customers in the cafe. He was just a friend of the proprietor, stopping by for an idle chat. At the very worst he might walk around on a power trip, looking over shoulders, the personal embodiment of state power.
A further ten minutes passed. Wang could not risk returning to the desk and purchasing another half-hour of time if the cop was still there. Why had he spent so little money? Why had he not bought two or three hours and spared himself these agonies? He began to develop a migraine and longed to return home. He considered briefly the possibility of returning at a later point in the day, but knew that time was a factor if he was to influence events in Shanghai. Eventually, with only five minutes of credit remaining, the police officer walked outside.
It was as if the entire room breathed a sigh of relief. Wang returned immediately to the dormant Lenan account. The email address had been given to him by Mr. John Richards, a man whom Wang trusted and admired. He had looked into the eyes of Joe Lennox and realized that he alone possessed the power to stop the bombs. An old man who had seen too much blood still believed that his salvation lay in England.
He began to type:
An attack is set for Saturday, Mr. Richards. The code they have used is “ZIKAWEI.”
49
On Nanjing Road, not far from the triple towers of the Ritz-Carlton hotel, Memet Almas stepped down from the crowded, shuddering bus, shouldered his rucksack and began walking north along Tongren Lu. Celil had suggested that he arrive at Larry’s at seven o’clock, but he was fifteen minutes early.