Zero Days, page 21
Drayton looked ahead and saw why.
On the far side of the adjoining room stood Yuri, Dobberman’s killer, the man who had tried to kill Vika and attacked Drayton in the Digital Futures office. He was wearing a suit, a badly fitting suit, but there was no mistaking him. He was standing with Dmitry and his moneyman, Ken Tsang. Yuri began to move towards the door. Drayton turned away and leaned down as if to tie his shoelaces, Yuri passing behind him and out into the garden.
Drayton entered the room.
There were perhaps twenty people milling around with drinks. He approached Dmitry and Tsang, his hand outstretched. ‘Andreas Fischer. How you doing?’
They shook hands, though with no great enthusiasm. Neither was wearing a name tag, and neither volunteered a name.
Ken Tsang looked at Drayton’s name tag. ‘So what’s AF Digital Solutions.’
‘Oh, secure health systems mainly. Are you familiar with them?’
Dmitry flicked back his hair. He looked beyond Drayton at the window overlooking the lawn, where security officers were still chasing the robot servers, the ones that hadn’t ended up in the swimming pool.
‘Quite a party,’ Drayton said. ‘Neat cabaret from the robots.’ Then, when neither man answered, he said, ‘Dmitry, isn’t it? And Ken. I think we met briefly at a business club in Yangon. I was there looking for business opportunities. Good to see you again. What brings you to Hong Kong?’
Dmitry looked at Drayton now, the small grey expressionless eyes drilling into him. The Russian flicked back his hair, and then with a heavy Russian he said, ‘I think you must be mistaken, Mr Fischer. I think you have the wrong person.’ He began to move away, but then stopped, looked towards the door and then back towards the man who’d just claimed to be Andreas Fischer.
Drayton heard the familiar voice before he saw her. It was coming from the doorway.
‘Chuck! Chuck! I don’t believe it. What are you doing here?’
The voice got louder as it closed in.
‘Chuck. It’s me. Anna.’
*****
Drayton’s first thought was to intercept Anna, take her gently by the arm, and guide her out of the room just as quickly as he could. To lead her back out to the garden. But she moved quickly, too quickly. And before he had time to act, she was at his side, full of bubbly enthusiasm, just like in the early days in Berlin.
At any other time, in any other place, that would have made him feel good.
Instead, a horrible feeling of dread welled up in his stomach.
‘It’s so good to see you Chuck. I’m here with Efren, helping at the conference. It’s so exciting.’
Drayton tried to remain calm, smiling, but with a terrible sense of dread, thinking quickly. Chuck could be a nickname. His middle name maybe. He’d make some quip about everybody calling him Chuck. They weren’t to know.
He began to speak, ‘It is a small world …’
But she interrupted him, shaking her head. ‘Chuck, somebody’s made a really stupid mistake.’ She took his hand, gripping it warmly with both of hers. ‘Your name tag, Chuck. They’ve given you the wrong name tag.’
Then she turned to Dmitry and Ken Tsang, smiling. ‘We’re old friends from Berlin.’ Then to Drayton again. ‘I can’t believe you’re here. I really can’t believe it.’ Squeezing his hand. Then another smile, a big playful smile. ‘Still chasing bad guys breaking into computers, Chuck?’
Drayton turned and headed for the door. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Anna staring after him in confusion. Dmitry was already on his cell phone. As he reached the main door of the house, Drayton saw Yuri crossing the lawn towards him. He turned back inside and went up a staircase. The map that Raymond had hacked from the robot cleaner showed a back exit from the first floor, but the actual house seemed more complex than it appeared on the map and he quickly got lost, following one long corridor and then another shorter one.
He reached a room with a large curved window and a double door out to a long balcony, a panoramic view of the south side of the island in front, a sheer drop off below. At least two hundred metres to a rocky ridge and then forest.
He turned to return to the room, but collided with something hard, blunt and painful. The force of the blow threw him backwards and onto the floor of the balcony. His first thought was that he’d walked straight into the glass of the balcony door or an overhead beam. His head was throbbing, his vision blurred. He felt blood dripping from above his hairline.
He raised his throbbing head, his eyes coming slowly back into focus. The first thing he saw was the spider tattoo, then the tattoo of the cupola poking out of the top of a white short-sleeved shirt, the gold chain, the face with the deep scar, like a pink crevice down one side.
Yuri had taken off his badly fitting jacket, which he’d thrown over a chair. He stood over Drayton, in one hand he had the fire extinguisher he’d hit him with, a gun in the other, weighing up which to use next. Then he tossed the extinguisher on the chair beside his coat, pocketed the gun, and looked out from the balcony, as if he’d decided that throwing Drayton over the edge was a neater way of disposing of him. He leaned down and grabbed a fist full of Drayton’s turtle-neck, lifting him to his feet and pushing him hard against the balcony rail.
Drayton began to struggle, but his arms were pinned behind him, and he was still groggy from the blow from the fire extinguisher. Yuri’s hand grabbed his neck, squeezing and pushing him backwards, over the rail, lifting him off his feet. Then Yuri released his grip, turned and looked back in the room.
The sound was like a sharp but prolonged intake of breath. As if somebody was sucking air through pursed lips, and it was getting louder.
Like a vacuum cleaner.
A stubby cylindrical object had entered the room, and was accelerating towards the balcony, faster and faster. Was the look on Yuri’s face one of contempt or confusion? It was hard for Drayton to tell, but the Russian seemed to freeze as Dust Dog raced towards him, crashing into his shins, whipping his feet out from under him, and throwing him into the air. Drayton watched the spider arm flailing around, grasping for the rail and then at nothingness, because he was already over the edge and falling, falling quickly.
Drayton heard a dull thud below.
He got painfully to his feet. Yuri’s body was face down on a rocky ridge below, his limbs in horribly contorted positions, blood forming a dark shadow around his head and chest. Dust Dog was waiting near the door, and Drayton followed the machine down a corridor and then through an empty gym to a fire door that led to a path behind the house.
He kept to the path, a hiking trail that wound its way down the mountain, stopping at a public bathroom to clean the blood from his face. It was dark now, and in places it was hard to see the path. But he didn’t want to go near the main roads. It was a long and circuitous route, mostly downhill, but still took almost three exhausting hours to reach the marina where Raymond’s boat was moored.
At first he thought he’d boarded the wrong boat.
But it had to be Raymond’s. It was the shabbiest in the marina.
Only nobody was there, and everything had been cleared. The computers. The clutter of Coke cans and crisp packets. It was all gone. All that was left were Drayton’s bags.
He sat at the table that only hours earlier he had shared with Vika and Raymond. In the middle of the table was a memory stick, nothing else. He powered up his laptop, inserted the device, and opened a file marked ‘Drayton,’ which contained two items, a document and an audio file.
The document was a short typed note from Vika.
The creep’s phone came back online again, but all I got this time was a brief audio recording. Now I have to leave. Sorry and good luck. Take care. V.
The recording was around thirty seconds long, a series of sounds. First a kind of clanging and screeching, getting louder and then fading. The ringing of a bell came next. Then something like faint bursts of static. That was followed by a deep rumbling and then jazz. Brubeck’s ‘Blue Rondo à la Turk’. Definitely Brubeck.
Then it ended.
To Drayton the sounds had a strange familiarity about them. But he couldn’t place them. They definitely weren’t sounds from the house on the Peak.
The phone had moved on. And so had Vika.
*****
Drayton slept on the boat, on a long padded bench at the edge of the covered deck. Perhaps it wasn’t the wisest thing to do, but his head hurt like hell. He was also exhausted by the trek down from the Peak, and he still hoped Vika might return.
He was woken early by the crackle of a boat’s motor. There was shouting in a language he didn’t understand. He crept to the back of Raymond’s boat and looked out across water that was a leaden grey in the first light of morning. The spluttering engine and the shouting grew lounder as a beetle-shaped sampan passed close to the bow of Raymond’s boat. The noise faded, and Drayton relaxed and returned to the bench. The sampans provided a taxi service for those living on the boats. And the language was Cantonese, the local dialect, which always sounded angry and loud to him, even when it wasn’t.
He looked again at Vika’s note: Now I have to leave. Sorry and good luck. Take care.
It had a finality about it, but also a tone of regret.
Why? What was so important to her that she’d abandoned their search, just as they seemed to be making progress? She’d seemed determined to hunt down Dmitry. She was the one who’d been taking the lead, driving them forward.
He thought about her mood. How distracted she’d been before he’d left for the party on the Peak. After she’d seen that report about fighting in Ukraine. And then her phone calls to Ukraine and Germany. What was it that could have shaken her so badly?
He opened a news app on his cell phone and searched for Ukraine. There was plenty about the school attack, almost certainly a stray Russian rocket, but that wasn’t what had most shaken Vika. It was something else. There were several reports about renewed fighting on the front line in eastern Ukraine, but the details were confusing and contradictory. One in particular caught his attention. It described a raid by masked men to free a high profile hostage being held by Russian separatists in what it called a fortified and well-defended compound, possibly a prison, though one Ukrainian website claimed it was a cyber bunker, a Russian-run control centre for cyber-attacks.
He then started to write an email to Anna. ‘I owe you an explanation,’ he wrote. But then he stopped. How could he even begin to explain? Maybe it was better to wait until he was back in Berlin and talk to her there, if she would even speak to him again.
Among a clutter of unread emails he saw messages from Milo Müller and Wolfgang Schoenberg, both marked ‘urgent’. Both sent to his personal email.
Milo’s message contained a request and a warning. He asked for more information about the people Drayton had met. ‘Everybody you have come across. However minor they may seem. Every detail will help me find patterns in the dark web’. Then came the warning. ‘From what I have been able to piece together, Viktorya Shevchenko (also known as Vika or Punch) is still working for the GRU, the Russian military intelligence.’
Drayton closed the email without replying.
Wolfgang Schoenberg’s message was brief. ‘I am on my way to Hong Kong,’ he wrote. ‘Meet me at 1 p.m. at the old police station in Tai O. Tell nobody and come alone.’
*****
Tai O’s old police station was a grand relic of British colonial rule. It sat high on a hillside, on a remote headland jutting out into the mouth of the Pearl River. A plaque near its entrance said it had been built as a lookout post, to stop rampant smuggling and piracy in the waters below.
He was an hour early, and took a seat on a terrace beside the building’s whitewashed arches. Below, to his left, he could see the sweep of Tai O’s main village, with its packed, stilted houses lining the waterfront. To his right was the ocean, a parade of ships heading up the Pearl River to the factories of southern China.
A server brought Drayton a cold beer, telling him this was just about the most western spot of Hong Kong. What he called China proper started just out there, he said, pointing vaguely out to sea, towards an invisible line in the water. He said it with a distaste, not uncommon among natives of the former British colony.
The police station had been turned into a hotel, the old buildings spruced up. Right down to the old cannons, the watchtowers and the search light. The server said that in its day it had been a great spot for spies, which made Drayton smile. Maybe that’s why Schoenberg had chosen this remote lookout as a place to meet.
He was looking forward to meeting Schoenberg. But at the same time, he was uneasy. What could be so important that the German felt the need to fly out personally to Hong Kong? And Schoenberg had been adamant about their encrypted messaging system. This account must be the only way we communicate. Yet he’d broken his own rule. Both he and Milo had sent messages to Drayton’s regular email address. Perhaps they realised he’d lost access to it. Maybe it was the urgency. But it wasn’t like Schoenberg at all. He wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment kind of person. Milo, perhaps, but not Schoenberg. He wasn’t impetuous. He was fastidious, calculating even.
As he drank his beer, Drayton tried to suppress those nagging doubts.
He ordered another beer and looked at his watch. Still forty minutes to go. He imagined what it might have been like in colonial times. He pictured police officers sipping their gin and tonics at this very spot while smugglers and pirates crept in and out of the village below.
Another five minutes passed. He was willing on the time.
Then his cell phone rang. The screen told him nothing, an unknown number. But the ringtone told differently. It was The Pink Panther theme tune. An emergency call from Schoenberg.
Drayton sat bolt upright in his chair, almost knocking over the beer.
He took the call, saying nothing at first. Then the silence was broken by the unmistakable voice of Wolfgang Schoenberg. ‘Drayton. Where are you?’
‘I’m here. In Tai O. At the meeting point as you asked. Waiting for you.’
Schoenberg’s voice was clear, sharp and urgent.
‘Get out of that place, and get out right now.’
*****
Drayton rose slowly to his feet, his heart pounding from fear and anger. Fear, because they had him where they wanted him, in this remote corner of Hong Kong, and he knew the violence they were capable of. Anger at himself for being so stupid, for taking the email from Schoenberg at face value, when the German would never break his own rules. It had clearly been a fake.
He looked at his watch. Half an hour left before the meeting was due. Half an hour to get clear of there. For all he knew, they might already be watching him. He needed to appear calm.
He looked along the deserted terrace, then took a few paces to the edge, to a low wall from where he looked down on a path along the seafront. He raised his phone as if to take photographs. The sort of thing a visitor might do, somebody without a care in the world, zooming in on a small pier to his right, two fishermen sitting at the end of it. Nothing suspicious there. Then to his left, towards the village. The path was quiet, just an old man sleeping in a doorway.
There was no access to the old police station by vehicle. The only route in was on foot along the path, which began in the village. They’d have to come that way, or else by boat. And as far as he could tell, they were also the only routes out.
He entered the hotel lounge at the back of the terrace, past big leather chairs and bookshelves. On one shelf, beside a book about the migratory birds of Hong Kong, were two small pairs of binoculars. He placed one pair in his pocket. A rear door led to a store room, which opened onto a narrow alley behind the hotel. He turned left and followed the alley, which was sandwiched between the rear wall of the hotel and the steep hillside.
Then he heard footsteps behind him, getting closer. He began to walk faster, without turning. The footsteps got faster too, and closer, until he felt a hand on his elbow. He span round and was looking at the server, a piece of paper in his hand.
‘The bill sir. You forgot the bill.’ The server sounded business-like, as if guests slipping out the back of the hotel without paying was an everyday event. Drayton handed him a one hundred Hong Kong dollar note, saying to keep the change.
‘I thought I’d take a different route to the village,’ Drayton said.
‘Not that way,’ said the server, pointing to a sign beside the path, alongside some steps climbing the hill. The sign was in Chinese and English, in capital letters, saying, ‘LAND USED FOR MILITARY PURPOSES. NO TRESPASSING.’
‘The PLA,’ said the server. ‘The People’s Liberation Army has a base above the hotel. They don’t welcome visitors.’ He pointed to another route down behind the village. ‘Take that one.’
Drayton handed the server another note, one hundred US dollars this time. ‘Look, I can’t really explain, but if anybody should ask, I was never here.’
The server took the money, looking at Drayton. Thinking. Then he nodded and went back into the hotel.
The path was cracked and overgrown. It followed a ridge along a hill above and to the back of Tai O village. He reached a small shop made of sheets of metal with small wooden windows, an old woman wearing a knitted woollen hat and thick cardigan was sitting in the entrance. Drayton removed the binoculars from his pocket and flapped his arms, doing a poor imitation of a bird. The woman laughed, took his arm and led him past shelves straining with dried seafood, snacks and drinks, to a small veranda.
She’d had birdwatchers passing through before, and it was a perfect spot.
He trained the binoculars down onto the path out of the village, which was becoming busy, mostly with youngsters, day-trippers from the city coming out for a glimpse of Hong Kong’s wild side. Together with elderly villagers. Twice the old woman came out of the shop and tapped him on the shoulder to offer more tea and to tell him that generally speaking sea birds could be found at sea.
