Typhoon (37 page)

“That’s what Miles thinks,” he said.

Joe dismissed the theory with a practised look of astonishment. “Miles still thinks I work for the British government?”

“Do you still work for the British government?”

“No.”

Shahpour looked around him. The terrace was beginning to empty. He appeared to be weighing up the risks of his next remark. There were clearly consequences to what he was about to say and he did not wish to be overheard.

“What I’m about to tell you could get me fired.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t tell me.”

He leaned forward. “I’m like you used to be, Joe. Deep cover. I’m a NOC. I don’t work for Microsoft.” It was the drink talking. Alcohol and circumstance had handed a nervous, inexperienced spy the chance to confide in a colleague whose word he thought he could trust. “Same goes for our so-called buddy. Miles Coolidge knows as much about software as my Uncle Ahmed. We’re both Company. We’re both undercover. Miles has told me everything about your past.”

“Shahpour, you shouldn’t be telling me this. I am not who you think I am. I’m not with the Office any more . . .”

“Well, you see I just don’t believe that.” Joe’s denial had been persuasively sincere, but Shahpour was sticking to his strategy. “I think you’re here because of what happened to Ken. I think you’re here because you know what we did to him.”

“You’re talking about Kenneth Lenan?”

Joe was mesmerized by the confession of CIA culpability in his murder, but there was barely a blink of surprise.

“Of course that’s who I’m talking about. You wanna know why he was killed?”

Joe said nothing.

Shahpour wiped his mouth on a napkin. “Kenneth Lenan worked for us, OK? He came over. Six months ago he gave up a Uighur CIA asset to the MSS because he had conflicted loyalties with his bank balance. Lenan identified the Agency officer who had recruited that asset out of Guantanamo and told the MSS where he was living in San Francisco. That officer got his body dismembered by a Triad gang in Chinatown.”

“Shahpour, you’re being unprofessional . . .”

Goodarzi shook his head. “The officer’s name was Josh Pinnegar. You’re telling me you never heard of him?”

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you.” Joe was trying to keep his mood light and detached, but the flood of information, confirming every detail of Waterfield’s TYPHOON product, was breathtaking. “I work for a small pharmaceutical company because I got tired of this sort of–”

“Don’t lie to me, man.” There was a risk that Shahpour might shut down. Joe had to keep him talking. “My career is on the line here. My life. Now you came to me, Joe. I know why you’ve come to Shanghai. I know what it is that you need and I want to help you.”

What perplexed Joe about Shahpour’s entreaty was its extraordinary sincerity. He knew, with the vivid conviction of a blameless man proclaiming his innocence, that the American was telling him the truth. Somehow it couldn’t be any other way. Yet Joe could not risk the obvious possibility that RUN was being flushed out as part of a clumsy, second-rate plot. He had to believe that Shahpour was putting on an elaborate performance.

“I can help you,” he said. What was the best way of proceeding? He did not want to let go of the rope which now connected them. “I know British officials in China who will talk to you about this. I can put you in touch with–”

“I want it to be
you
.”

“I’m out.” For the first time, Joe raised his voice, as if he was offended by the repeated accusation. He had to play the role. He had to stay in character. “I’ve handed in my notice. I don’t have the keys to the shop any more. I’m private sector. Why do you think I’d be any use to you?”

“Forget it then.”

Their waitress had been waiting for a natural pause in the conversation and she now approached the table as Shahpour turned and stared at the lights of Pudong. The espressos were placed on the table and Joe spooned sugar into his cup as he hit on a possible tactic. Somehow he had to draw Shahpour out without compromising his own position.

“Listen, what do you expect me to say? If I’d come out here under operational cover, I’d hardly be likely to blow that cover on the basis of what you’ve just told me. Why are you doing this? Why would you be so uneasy?”

A burst of sulphurous pollution drifted over the terrace, yet it did not disturb Shahpour from his mood. He continued to stare out over the river like a scolded teenager. It was as if he had played his final hand and there was nobody left to confide in. Then, a breakthrough.

“I’ll tell you why.” He was speaking into a southern breeze which took his quiet words out over the water. “I joined the Agency in the new year of 2002. I did it because I believed in America. I did it because I believed that I would be an asset to my country, that I could help prevent what had happened to us happening again.” Now he turned, and Joe saw the disillusionment in his young eyes, the conflict of a decent man. “My father came to the United States in 1974. He had a place to study engineering at a college in Detroit, Michigan. You know how he came to choose Detroit?” Joe shook his head. “He was from Sari, a city on the southern shore of the Caspian Sea. He looked at a map of America, he saw a big blue lake with a city right beside it, and he thought it looked like home.”

Shahpour turned, scraped his chair towards the table and sank his espresso in a sharp, controlled flick.

“When he arrived there, he saw that it was a good summer and that he’d made a good choice. Then the winter came. He’d never seen snow before, never seen ice on the roads. He had an uncle in Sacramento who invited him over to California. And what does my dad find? That it’s seventy degrees outside in the middle of winter. So he finishes his degree, he moves to Sacramento, he gets a job cleaning dishes in my great-uncle’s pizza parlor. But my dad was smarter than the other guys, you know? He worked hard and started up his own place, his own restaurant. Today he’s a millionaire. He has six children, a grandson, five properties in three different states. He owns twenty-five pizza delivery outlets in the California area.”

“American dream,” Joe said. Shahpour silenced him with a raised hand.

“I’m not trying to sell you America,” he said. “I’m not trying to sell you an ideal. I know that our country has its faults. But I could see past them, you know? I still can. I joined up because I wanted to make a difference, to show that a child of Iran could deal in something more than hate.”

“I can understand that.”

Shahpour looked relieved. “I think you can,” he said. The cry of a bird went up over the Huangpu River. “Everybody heard about what you did, Joe. Everybody heard why you’d quit. I decided to talk to you because you have ideals, because you’ll see the craziness of what’s happening here. Because you’re my best chance of getting out of this.”

So that was it. Waterfield’s plan had worked. The illusion of RUN’s exit from Vauxhall Cross had convinced a compromised American spook that Joe Lennox was the answer to his prayers.

“Getting out of what?” To Joe’s dismay, the waitress appeared again and punctured the conversation at a vital moment. Shah-pour stared back at the entrance to the restaurant, as if to reassure himself that Miles was nowhere to be seen. “Getting out of what?” Joe said again. It had struck him, not for the first time, that at the tender age of thirty-four he was now regarded as a wise old hand by men who looked as young as he still felt.

“Getting out of what’s happening.”

“And what is that? What is happening?”

Shahpour twisted his narrow body to face Joe. He lowered his head. It was as if the open air could not bear the burden of such a heavy secret. Then he leaned towards Joe and looked up into his eyes. “Miles is planning something.” He was whispering. “It has Pentagon approval, covert CIA backing. Funded through Saudi channels. An operation here, on mainland China. We have a Uighur cell asleep in Shanghai which may hit multiple targets this summer.”

“Then you have to go to the police,” Joe said immediately, because the role of a responsible citizen was the simplest role to play. “You have to go to your superiors. You have to try to stop that from happening.”

“How can I? What can I do? I can’t betray my country.”

Isn’t that what you’re doing now
, Joe thought. Abruptly, all of the neon, on both sides of the river, every brand and logo from Puxi to Pudong, blacked out. The terrace was cast into near darkness.

“Eleven o’clock,” Shahpour said, without looking at his watch. “Happens every night.”

“Answer my question,” Joe said.

“What question?”

“Why don’t you find a way of alerting the authorities?”

Shahpour actually smiled. “Don’t you get it?” he said. “
You’re
my way of alerting the authorities. I’ve thought of everything else, every possible way that won’t come back and make me look like a traitor. I even tried with Wang, for Chrissakes. Last time I was in Beijing I spent five hours trying to persuade him to go to the MSS and tell them what was happening.”

“Wang Kaixuan?”

Shahpour stopped. “Of course,” he said, as if he had forgotten a vital piece in the puzzle. “You were the first person to meet him, weren’t you? That’s quite a serious mark on your résumé, Joe.”

“Professor Wang Kaixuan?” Joe said again, because he needed time to think. “What does he have to do with this?”

Calling for the bill, Shahpour spent ten minutes outlining Wang’s role in TYPHOON, an account of the operation so close in character to Waterfield’s own descriptions that Joe began to suspect that Shahpour was London’s source at Langley.

“And now he’s in Beijing?” he said, the only question he allowed himself to ask about Wang’s predicament. “You’ve seen him up there?”

“Sure.” Shahpour seemed bored by the detail. “Teaches Chinese to corporate suits at one of those language schools in Haidian. He doesn’t want anything to do with me. He doesn’t want anything to do with Miles. For professional purposes he’s changed his name to Liu Gongyi. Says he’s lost faith in the concept of armed struggle. But the only people he hates more than Americans are the Chinese, so he won’t tell them about the cell.”

Language school? Joe remembered that Macklinson had set up free language schools on construction sites as a means of recruiting disenchanted labourers. Were the two connected, or was this yet more obvious bait? “And who’s in the cell?” he asked, his desire for information briefly causing him to forget that he was supposed to be playing the role of a disinterested observer.

“What do you care?” Shahpour had poured himself the last of the wine, which he finished in three long gulps. “Uighurs. Kazakhs. Guys with nothing to lose.” The wine caught in his throat and he coughed. “All I know is that in Christmas 2002 I was getting ready to move to Tehran when I was told to pack my bags for China. Have SIS check me out if you’re in any doubt. My real name is Shahpour Moazed. My father’s name is Hamid Moazed. I also have an American name—Mark—because that’s what all good Iranian-American boys do so that they can get along in California. Ask your people in London to check the employee register at Macklinson Corporation. They’ll tell you that a Mark Moazed was working in Xi’an between 2002 and 2004. What they won’t be able to tell you is that the CIA spent three years routing weapons and explosives through Macklinson to Uighur separatists who blew up innocent women and children all over China. What they won’t be able to tell you is that I spent two years trying to clean up the mess. Tell them to give Microsoft a call while they’re doing that. They’ll tell you that Mark Moazed joined them late last year. They might even be surprised to learn that two of their employees are in league with clandestine elements within the Pentagon and have recruited a cell of Islamist radicals prepared to kill hundreds of innocent people in Shanghai. And why? Why have we decided to do this? Why am I dedicating my life to an operation with no value or purpose or principle? I really have no idea at all.”

As soon as
he left the restaurant, Joe took a cab back to his apartment, telephoned Waterfield on a secure line and gave him chapter and verse on Shahpour’s extraordinary gamble.

“It’s a trap,” Waterfield said when he had finished, and Joe knew that he would now be alone. Whatever he told them, London would never believe that Shahpour Moazed had just dropped out of the sky to make a hero of Joe Lennox. “Think about it,” Waterfield said. “I know you want product, Joe. I know you’re looking for answers. But this is too simple. He’s a poisoned pawn.”

Joe was not a chess player and ignored the metaphor. “So you don’t think Miles had Lenan killed?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You don’t think there’s a cell planning a hit in Shanghai?”

“I didn’t say that either.”

“Then what are you saying? It seems perfectly obvious to me that Miles couldn’t give a flying fuck what I’m up to out here. He has bigger things on his mind. I sent a text to Zhao Jian on my way home. Guess what? Miles really did leave in the middle of dinner so he could get his cock sucked in Gubei. That’s how much my presence in Shanghai means to him. He doesn’t care that we might find out what happened to Ken. What are we going to do? Arrest him? Run crying to Washington? The Office is irrelevant in all this. A bit-part player. Even if half of what Shahpour just told me is correct, this thing has taken on its own momentum and is going to happen, with or without British interference.”

There was a long silence. Joe sensed that he had found a route through Waterfield’s objections, but he was mistaken.

“Let’s suppose that it is true. How do you know the cell isn’t penetrated? Every other Miles Coolidge operation in China has gone tits up. What’s so different about this one? The man has an inverse Midas touch. Besides, Cousins don’t suddenly walk off the plantation and start baring their souls. Your American friends were trying to provoke exactly this sort of reaction. They’ll be watching you from now on. They’ll want to find out whether you respond to what you’ve been told. This is basic stuff. Page one.”