Night Heron by Adam Brookes Page A

the professor took the document from the bag. The assistant was looking at them. Wen placed the document on the photocopier’s glass. Closed the lid. Pushed the button.
    Opened the lid. Turned a page. Closed the lid.
    Pushed the button.
    Peanut saw the copy of the cover page spill smoothly from the bowels of the copier, and reached for it quickly. Then the second page, a table of contents.
    A third page. Closed the lid. Pushed the button.
    “For God’s sake. How many?”
    The professor stopped and looked at him. “Sixty.”
    Peanut looked around, licked his lips. The counter assistant was busy with another customer.
    “Well, hurry.”
    For twelve agonizing minutes the professor copied. Peanut put the sheets in the plastic bag. Then it was done.
    Peanut propelled Wen out of the shop and they stood on the pavement, Wen still holding the report.
    “How did you get it out?”
    “Put it up my shirt.”
    “Anyone see you?”
    “Would I be here if they had?”
    “You take it back tonight. Back to your safe, yes?”
    “I can’t do this, Huasheng.”
    “You are doing it. Give me the number of your mobile phone.”
    Wen Jinghan told him and Peanut wrote it on a scrap of paper.
    “And the money.”
    A wad of one-hundred-yuan notes. A thick wad, Peanut noted.
    “Now listen carefully. We are offering a one-time transaction. One time only. What you’ve given me tonight is the proof. You are in this now, Jinghan, and there is no turning back, do you understand?”
    Silence. Peanut wanted to hit him again. “I’ll call you with instructions. It will all be over soon and no one the wiser.”
    Wen Jinghan shook his silvered head and looked away, to the muffled figures in the street, the lights of the traffic flaring in the Beijing night.
    “It’s never over,” he said.

9
    United Kingdom Secret Intelligence Service (SIS),
    Vauxhall Cross, London
    The view from the terrace was remarkable. One of the privileges, perhaps, of this work, this place, though God knew the privileges were few enough, once you discounted the sense of the special, the insiderness so cultivated by the Service. Leaning against the railing, she looked across the Thames, squinting against the river’s late autumn glitter, the sky a condensate blue. She turned and went back inside.
    She sat in her cubicle, her gray cell. The telegram lay on the desk in front of her. Phone calls to Hopko always merited a little consideration.
    She reached for the phone, hesitated, then forced her hand to the receiver and dialed.
    A soft burr.
    “Hopko.”
    “Val, it’s Trish. Patterson.”
    “Good morning, Trish Patterson.” The voice wry, non-committal.
    “Well, yes. You’ll have seen the telegram from Charteris. I’ve run the traces. And it’s curious. I wonder if we should gather.”
    “Well, Trish Patterson, gather we will. My office, say, one hour?”
    “Fine, see you then.”
    So, an hour to think about it. Perhaps rehearse a bit.
    Patterson made notes, went for a cup of coffee in the staff cafeteria, sat alone and reread them. Meetings of the Service’s Western Hemisphere and Far East Controllerate were usually conducted on an assortment of chairs in Hopko’s sanctum. The air of collegiality could dissipate quickly. Rivalries and resentments turned the conversation spiky. Intelligence Officers who had been in their role for a paltry eight months knew not to make a point too forcefully.
    She arrived first, of course. Hopko wasn’t there. So she took a chair in a corner—always secure your flanks and rear
—
and waited. Hopko had Chinese prints on her walls, delicate things from the Song dynasty: a butterfly, a grove of bamboo.
    Next to arrive was Drinkwater, Security Officer, suited, hair cropped to gray stubble, meaty, ruddy, the suggestion of inner rancor.
    Then, hard behind him, Waverley, Requirements Officer, Far East, who winked at her and sat with exaggerated relief. Waverley teetered on the edge of louche. He had long fair hair, an olive-green