Spy Games by Adam Brookes

troubled. The other two had faded into the background. Monroe pulled the robe tight about him, as if it could armor him. He was aware of the man’s wateryeyes, the tangled sheets, the whiteness of his own legs and feet. Someone had turned on the overhead light and the room’s intimacy and coziness had vanished.
    “Have you disclosed to the appropriate security organs the interest that Nicole Yang, a foreign national, has displayed in certain matters of national security policy? During your conversations?”
    Monroe looked at the man, tried to quell the surge of warm, paralysing nausea in his gut.
    “No. Well. Fortunately, Mr. Monroe, we are not law enforcement. We are friends of Miss Yang’s. Good friends.”
    “You are from Taiwan,” said Monroe.
    The man looked regretful.
    “No. No, I am afraid not.” He held out his hands in a plea for acceptance. “We are from Beijing. From China.”
    Monroe jolted backward as if he had been struck, an involuntary spasm of shock. He felt his mouth open and work soundlessly.
    “And we simply wish to continue the relationship you had with Miss Yang,” said the man.
    For an absurd moment, Monroe envisaged walks along the harbor with these three men, intimate dinners with them, crab cakes, Chardonnay, and afterward…
    “What?”
    “I mean, we wish to continue the informational transactions. And we are prepared, of course, to compensate you very generously.”
    But the man’s reassuring words were lost, because Monroe was up and running. He tried for the door, but the two others were there, the one with Western features blocking him. His robe had come open. He changed direction, bare feet stuttering on the carpet, made a rush for the French window which led onto the balcony, batting away the drapes, but they were there too and, one to each arm, they took him and led him to the bed and sat him down gently.
    “I’m sorry. I know this is a bit of a shock. But I assure you, we are professionals. Everything will be very well managed.”
    Monroe was spluttering, wild-eyed.
    “It is absolutely impossible. I will not cooperate with representatives of the Chinese state under any circumstances.”
    There was an awkward pause.
    “Mr. Monroe. Please. Consider your position. You have been cooperating with us for a year already.”
    Monroe shook his head, aghast.
    “Nicole is…”
    The man just nodded.
    Nicole, in a bathrobe, was guided quickly down the corridor to another room by one of the team, a lean young woman who looked at her with a hungry admiration. She went into the bathroom, dressed in jeans and a shirt of green silk, picked up her bag and checked her phone.
    A car was waiting, a wordless driver in the darkness. So. The airport. Back to Boston, pack, clean out the apartment. Then, next week, Britain, damp little island of self-regard in a sea of change.
    She looked out at the headlights on I-95, wondering what would happen to Monroe, the man she had run for a year. Her case officers believed that he was conscious, that he knew what he was doing from the start, but she wasn’t sure. Men lie to themselves so completely, so deeply, she thought.
    At least she wouldn’t have to wear those hideous scarves anymore.

8
    Dire Dawa, Ethiopia
    Mangan stood in a graveyard of trains. Rolling stock as far as he could see, weeds sprouting through the bogies, track sinking beneath sandy soil. Here a wagon-lit with crusted windows, there an old Fiat engine that had pulled Italian infantry up and down the line in the 1930s, rusted out now, but the driver’s seat still there, reddish and flaking. In the long afternoon shadows, it was cool, chilly even, at this elevation. He walked along the track toward the disused station platform, the elderly guide gesturing and muttering in French.
    Le Chemin de Fer Djibouto-Ethiopien had run for a century, then coughed and expired. It had been four years since its last scheduled service and since then the station and marshaling yards had simply been