Charles Cumming - Typhoon

Celil now looked at each of the four men in turn. He had arrived at the most vital part of the meeting.

“You will go to the locations in order to prepare yourselves this week,” he told them. “Each of the four devices will be timed to detonate at exactly nine o’clock. You are responsible for this. God has provided us with the tools to carry out his sacred work and now you must perform his task. I leave your bombs with you now.” He indicated the three devices on the table. “Remember,” he said, “this is only the first stage of our battle, a first phase in our work. There is more to come. Now let God be in your hearts. May he bring us together soon in Beijing.”

The conversation with Waterfield had prompted Joe to act. If he was going to engage Isabella’s co-operation in finding Ablimit Celil, this was the moment to do so. He did not feel that he was manipulating her by taking advantage of her mood of candour. On the contrary: she possessed vital information that it was his duty to extract.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course.”

“How much do you know about what Miles has been doing in China since 1997?”

Isabella had removed her hat because the sun had been obscured by a bank of yellowed clouds. She did not look at Joe as she said, “Very little.”

“Are you interested in knowing?”

She touched her face. “Not really.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re not in business together, are we? We’re husband and wife. I think it’s better that I don’t know things like that.”

“He doesn’t talk to you about his work? He doesn’t complain or celebrate or use you as a shoulder to cry on?”

“Never.” Isabella touched the fabric of her shirt. “Since when did Miles Coolidge ever need a shoulder to cry on?”

Joe met the remark with a nod of assent and tried a different, more combative tactic. “What if I told you that he was being investigated? What if I told you that MI6 has sent me to Shanghai to find out what he’s up to?”

It was an extraordinary gamble, not least because it assumed that Isabella’s loyalties lay with Queen and Country, rather than with her husband, the father of her child. Joe witnessed its impact in a moment of brittle shock which seemed to tighten Isabella’s entire body. She looked at him in a way that she had not looked at him since the eve of wui gwai. With disbelief. With disgust.

“Are you still not who you appear to be, Joe?” she said quietly, and Joe knew that he would have to be extremely careful with his answer. One false move, one glib remark, one overly defensive plea for understanding, and she would leave the cafe. His only hope lay in complete honesty. His only way of convincing Isabella to help him now was to tell her the truth.

“I’ll tell you who I am,” he said. His voice was very steady, very controlled. “I have nothing to hide from you any more.” He leaned forward, so that she could see directly into his eyes. “At the end of last year, I was on the point of leaving the Service. I’d been offered a job in Beijing and I was going to take it. I was sick of what was happening in Iraq, sick of the mood of defeat in London. Then David Waterfield came to me and told me that Miles had been at the forefront of a four-year American effort to destabilize Xinjiang.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” Isabella said quickly, though the remark was designed not to placate Joe, but somehow to restore her rapidly evaporating self-confidence.

“The operation was called TYPHOON. It was disbanded after 9/11 when Washington, in its infinite wisdom, more or less decreed that all Uighurs were terrorists. But in the last two years a clandestine unit within the CIA, mounted with Pentagon approval, has been trying to revive TYPHOON in mainland China. Miles has been at the forefront of that effort because he maintains links with Uighur separatists who were involved in acts of sabotage prior to September 11th.” Joe saw that tears had welled in Isabella’s eyes but that she was willing them away. “Elements within the American government, as far as we know without presidential approval, are planning a terrorist atrocity at the Beijing Olympics. Miles is at this moment attempting to recruit the men who will carry out that attack. There is also an al-Qaeda cell somewhere in Shanghai planning a hit this summer. That cell has American backing. It’s what I’m here to try to stop. You ask me who I am. I’ve told you.”

Isabella tipped her head back and looked at a point in the sky, breathing very slowly. She reached down for the hat and again placed it on her head, as if to shield herself from what Joe was telling her. He wanted to say “I’m sorry,” he wanted to help her, but there was nothing he could do. Her husband was aiding and abetting terror.

“Why?” she said, shaking her head. She was staring at him, as if the whole thing was Joe’s fault, another ghastly, unforeseen consequence of his secret identity.

“I really don’t know,” he said, and began talking again, because he felt that by doing so he would at least keep Isabella at the cafe. “The Americans want a massive loss of face at the Olympics. That’s the simple answer. They want to show the world that China isn’t as modern and sophisticated and peaceful as she says she is.”

“How does killing people do that?”

Joe was briefly silenced, both by the question, with its unarguable logic, and by a passing security guard, who stared at him intently as if he were one of the exhibits at the museum. “The bombs would have a Uighur signature,” he said finally. “They would bring the world’s attention to the plight of the people of Xinjiang, to human rights abuses which have escalated tenfold since 9/11. The Americans would again start pressing for independence in Eastern Turkestan. If that happened, they would ultimately control the flow of oil into China, Japan and Korea.”

“Are you mad? Do you believe this stuff? Have you listened to what you’re saying?”

“Izzy, I’m not the guy who thought this up.” He had briefly lost his temper, but the effect of his words was startling. Isabella made a gesture of apology, muttering, “All right, sorry, OK,” as she sat back. Joe realized that he might quickly become her sanctuary. Who else, after all, did she have to turn to? “It’s a new version of the Great Game,” he said. “Who knows what Washington ultimately wants? To break up China? To make China more authoritarian? To bring sympathy to the Uighur people or to tar them with the same brush as al-Qaeda?” He unscrewed a bottle of water and poured its contents into a plastic cup. Isabella picked it up and drank from it without saying a word. “It’s like Iraq. They’ve ended up with the exact opposite of everything they said they hoped to achieve, so maybe chaos and instability is what they wanted in the first place.”

An announcement came over the public address system, praising “The Motherland, the Party, the Great Advance of Chinese Technology.” Joe saw that Isabella understood what was being said and realized, with a feeling of almost sibling pride, that she had learned to speak Mandarin. He waited until the announcement had ended before continuing.

“Have you heard of a man called Shahpour Moazed?”

“Of course I have. I know Shahpour.”

“Do you know what he does for a living?” Joe hoped that Isabella already knew about the CIA’s arrangement with Microsoft, or things were going to get even more complicated.

“I know what he does for a living,” she replied quietly.

“And what do you make of him?”

“What do I make of him?” She plainly regarded the question as an almost complete irrelevance. Nevertheless her response helped, in small measure, to lift the air of gloom which had descended on the conversation. “I think he’s the sort of person Miles would like to be.”