Night Heron by Adam Brookes Page B

linen suit, a smile that failed to reassure.
    Silence, as the three of them looked over Charteris’s telegram and the traces. Patterson tried to read their faces, but found nothing.
    Patterson wondered if Hopko contrived her entrances. She breezed in now, coffee cup in hand, closing the door behind her with a foot clad in a black heel.
    Hopko, Valentina. Targeting Officer, China. Visiting CaseOfficer, who knew where, though the stories abounded. Hopko placed the cup on her desk and then licked a finger of spilled coffee. Patterson could feel the energy pulsing from her like heat. Stocky, dark Hopko. She was dressed, to Patterson’s austere eye, too young for her nearly fifty years, the black skirt riding a little too high, the emerald blouse gaping a little too open, herringbone stockings. Hair the color of jet, teased or backcombed or something to give it body. Patterson, for all her army years, felt the stirring of her inner snob. She thought, She looks like a bloody waitress.
    Hopko turned, as if she’d heard. Patterson shifted in her seat.
    “Morning, Trish.” Hopko fastened that gaze on her. “Things afoot in the Middle Kingdom, are they?”
    Hopko’s face had seen a great deal of sun, the skin imperfect, freckled, almost tawny. She wore heavy black-rimmed glasses. Behind them, restless eyes.
    Hopko sat. “Shall we?”
    “I would draw your attention to two things.” Patterson could feel her tone of voice slipping into military. Calm down, she thought, it’s not a bloody O-group. She cleared her throat. “Charteris requested traces on keywords ‘night’ and ‘heron.’ Those terms are associated with a network known as PAN GLINT . Long defunct. It was an emergency signal, to be delivered by phone or letter.”
    Hopko was skimming the papers in front of her with a pen.
    “Second, we all know the newspaper Philip Mangan represents, and we all know that its Beijing bureau for a while played host to an officer of this Service, operating under natural cover. PAN GLINT was handled by that officer.”
    Silence. Which Patterson looked to fill.
    “Hence, perhaps, the contact’s insistence he was an old friend of the paper.”
    “Perhaps.” Drinkwater of Security, looking at her. “Sorry, Trish, can we be a bit more specific? When, exactly, was this PAN GLINT network in operation?”
    “From 1985 to 1989.”
    “Bit of a blast from the past, isn’t it? Who were they?”
    “ PAN GLINT targeted China’s aerospace research. They were aerospace engineers. Five of them. All graduate students at the big academies in Haidian. Rocketry, telemetry, metallurgy. The lead agent, and cut-out for the rest of them, was codenamed WINDSOCK . The ‘night heron’ code was WINDSOCK’ s emergency signal. He handled the product and contacts with the case officer.”
    “Officers, plural, surely,” murmured Hopko.
    “And do we know who that officer was? Or officers?” said Drinkwater.
    “No.” Initial traces had taken Patterson no further than cover names.
    Hopko turned to Drinkwater, took off her glasses. “But I’d warrant, Simon, it was Sonia and Malcolm Clarke.”
    “Really? Good lord.” Drinkwater seemed wrong-footed. The temperature in the room had risen a notch, but Patterson had no idea why.
    Waverley, of Requirements, began. “Obvious question, what happened to PAN GLINT ?”
    “ PAN GLINT fell apart in late eighty-eight and into eighty-nine,” said Patterson. “Less and less active. No contact reports after March eighty-nine. WINDSOCK was reported disappeared in mid-eighty-nine. One of them killed himself. The others stopped responding.”
    Hopko swiveled on her chair. “After the demonstrations in Tiananmen Square and June fourth, everything came to a halt, I think. The Clarkes left that year, a few months after the shootings. So.”
    “And Mangan. What do we know about him?” This from Drinkwater of Security, impatiently.
    “Not much.” Patterson gave herself a mental kick for not having a