Night Heron by Adam Brookes

Author:Adam Brookes [Brookes, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction / Thrillers / Espionage, Fiction / Action & Adventure, Fiction / Political, Fiction / Mystery & Detective / International Mystery & Crime, Fiction / Thrillers / Suspense
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2014-05-27T00:00:00+00:00

16

SIS, Vauxhall Cross, London

Patterson had been home to Archway, showered and eaten a fried egg sandwich, before heading straight back to headquarters. She took the stairs from the Tube to the street two at a time and dodged traffic.

Just opposite the headquarters of the Secret Intelligence Service, to Patterson’s perennial amusement, stood the Pyramids Sauna. Catering exclusively to men, and open for business twenty-four hours a day, Pyramids enjoyed an ancient Egyptian theme. Its façade featured images of oiled boys in white shifts and golden headdresses, King Tut-style. London’s raunchiest venue! Weekend parties! In the cafeteria she had once joked that the Service was surely the mirror image of its steamy neighbor, “full of overheated men trying to stab each other from the rear.” It hadn’t gone down well, and she had made few jokes since.

She was in the lobby now. She inserted her pass and stepped on to the pressure pads. She was due in Hopko’s office in forty minutes. The telegram traffic had come through: contact report; a version of the product—Charteris had been up half the night scanning and encrypting; surveillance report from the GODDESS team, encrypted by Winston and dropped, for seconds only, on the Yip Lo website. She was to collate them and have them ready for the meeting and Hopko’s Fancies and sod the weekend. Though weekends, Patterson was finding, were largely deserts of silence relieved only by television.

Hopko was still in her tracksuit. Roly Yeats had managed a discreetly checked shirt and a jacket and was stroking his beard. Tom Waverley, of Requirements, had been hauled in from the golf course.

“So,” said Hopko. “Poons seem happy that no one’s watching. We can, perhaps, rest a little easier that we are not being played. Trish flies to Seoul tonight. She will have meetings with Eileen Poon, and Mangan.”

Hopko turned a piece of paper and looked at it over her glasses.

“I must say I think they did awfully well, the GODDESS team. Don’t you, Roly? I do hope there’s nothing wrong with Winston, not being able to perform like that. What do you think, should we encourage him to see a specialist? His insurance will cover it, won’t it?”

She turned to Yeats, as if expecting an answer. Patterson found Hopko’s ability to deadpan terrifying. Yeats said nothing.

“Perhaps it just needs a pill, Roly, what do you think?”

Yeats was deep in the telegrams. Hopko turned to Patterson.

“Men’s problems.” Don’t drag me into this, Val.

“So, Mangan steps up,” said Hopko. “Thought he would, didn’t I, Trish? And in the course of about, what, twelve minutes in a cupboard upstairs in a temple, speaking in Chinese, he elicits an astonishing amount of information. Man’s a bloody natural.”

“Information that is not readily confirmed, though,” said Waverley.

“That’s true,” said Patterson. “But the pieces fit together. Our man was WINDSOCK. He assaulted someone during the Tiananmen uprising in eighty-nine, he was arrested, went to labor reform like a common criminal.”

Waverley smiled regretfully.

“But it’s circumstantial,” he said.

“Well, I think we can check the prison part,” ventured Patterson.

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