Free Spy Games by Adam Brookes Page A

else.”
    “Yes, yes, but the babies are safe because you are there.”
    “Not really,” she said. “The babies are dying at an alarming rate. And the mothers.”
    “Really?” said Mangan.
    She looked at him, adopting a weary tone.
    “Yes, really.”
    “Why? I mean, more than usual?” he said, genuinely curious.
    She shook her head.
    “You journalists are truly horrible people. Do you know that?”
    “Of course we are,” said Mangan. “But what’s happening with the mortality rates?”
    She took his beer from him, took a long pull before speaking.
    “Well, you name it. Forced marriage, genital cutting, disease. And the women are malnourished, so their pelvises don’t develop properly. And all their life they carry weight on their heads, which we think deforms the pelvis. So vaginal birth can be very hard. And they die.”
    Mangan took his beer back.
    “Sorry,” said Maja, “but you asked.”
    “I did. I’m wondering if there’s a story there.”
    She gave a tired smile.
    “A story.”
    “You know what I mean,” he said.
    “Do I? Please can we just talk about food, or football or something?”
    And as she cocked her head at him, the candlelight on her skin, he thought he saw, over her shoulder, a silhouette he knew: a wide face, eyes of dark pewter—eyes with no whites. And then it was gone.
    Mangan half-stood, searched the bar, but the Clown was nowhere to be seen. He felt a nervous ripple in his belly.
    “What is it?” said Maja.
    “No. Nothing,” he said, smiling, shaking his head.
    Abraha leaned over to him, speaking quietly. “Philip, come and see me. I have something for you.”

11
    Hong Kong and London
    Dr. Keung was to be cremated and interred at Diamond Hill columbarium; a daughter was flying in from Canada to oversee the arrangements and to dispose of her father’s effects. The coroner was examining the cause of death before releasing the body. A team in Singapore had been put on standby in case a burglary of the doctor’s apartment in Mid-Levels was deemed necessary. What sign of his betrayals had he left on his laptop, his mobile phone? Were there contact numbers, emails? A diary? Or, heaven forbid, a private journal?
    The Hong Kong police had found video footage, taken by a surveillance camera on the platform, of the moment Dr. Keung tumbled to his death beneath the MTR train. The police had sent the footage to the coroner’s court, and Patterson pondered how to get hold of it, what she might see there that others didn’t.
    But the coroner agreed with the police and ruled the death a suicide, and, to the relief of VX, ordered no inquest. The Singapore team was stood down. The daughter hired an estate service to clear out the apartment. The doctor’s electronics went quickly to a recycling center. No guarantee of oblivion, perhaps, but it was decidedat VX that no further action was necessary. The offshore account into which the doctor’s earnings had been paid was closed, and a substantial amount of money recouped, its disbursement to the doctor’s heirs deemed impractical and insecure.
    Patterson went to the cinema by herself on a damp Friday night. She considered asking Damian from downstairs to go with her, but it felt unnatural. She watched a maudlin film about a dying French woman and her loyal husband, and wished she’d chosen something easier. Afterward, she ate at a little Lebanese restaurant.
Table for one, please.
    She thought of Dr. Keung’s daughter, cleaning out her father’s closets, throwing away his shoes.
    When an agent dies, she thought, their truest self dies unknown.
    Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
    Saturday morning. The connection at Mangan’s flat was down, so he walked out to an internet café on Mauritius Street. The place was grimy, smelled of generator fuel, sweat, coffee. He sat at a crusted terminal beneath a poster of Michael Jackson on a peeling yellow wall. The connection was excruciatingly slow, but extant, at least. An email from Abraha, suggesting