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media.”
    “What do they say?”
    “Normal stuff, they… you know.”
    “Philip, don’t be coy, now. What do they say?”
    Mangan sighed.
    “For a while they asked me what had happened, why I left Beijing so abruptly, where I’d gone. I gave the right answers, what was agreed. That happens less these days. They ask how I am, what I’m up to. They see stuff I’ve written, they comment on it.”
    “No one being more persistent? Asking about the girl? What was her name, Ting?”
    “One or two. But I asked them to stop.”
    “I’ll need names.”
    Mangan said nothing. Hoddinott sat, arms folded, and spoke very quietly.
    “Does anybody, in your view, harbor any suspicion of your involvement in the operation?”
    Mangan shook his head.
    “You are sure, now?”
    “As sure as I can be. If any of the crowd in Beijing had caught a whiff of it they wouldn’t have let go. They’re serious journalists.”
    “Would you say you’re still friendly with any of them?”
    “Not really. Many of the old crowd resent me. They blame me for Ting’s arrest.”
    “I don’t have to tell you to keep your distance, I know that,” said Hoddinott. “And have you had any contact at all from the Chinese state?”
    “Nothing,” said Mangan.
    “Really? No visits? Messages? Chaps on a street corner watching you go by? You’re sure.”
    “Nothing I’ve seen.”
    Hoddinott paused as if considering.
    “What?” said Mangan.
    “Nothing. That’s good news, of course. And I know you’ve been told before, but I will tell you again. There is a great deal of respect and gratitude for what you did. A great deal.”
    “Even though it ended the way it did,” said Mangan.
    “Even though.”
    Mangan drained his wine, slid the glass across the table for more. Hoddinott refilled it, the wine gold in the twilight, its murmur in the glass.
    “And financially, Philip? Not bankrupt? Not about to sell your story to the Sundays out of desperation?”
    “Not quite that bad.”
    “Paper paying the bills?”
    “Just.”
    “Well, all right then.”
    And at that awkward moment, Joanna skipped from the kitchen. She carried a bowl of clever-looking salad.
    “Now that’s enough shop, you two. Let’s eat,” she chirped.
    She knows.
    “Anything out of the ordinary, Philip,” said Hoddinott. “Anything at all. You let me know, yes?”
    Hoddinott grilled steaks and shrimp, doused them in butter and garlic. They ate in the gathering dark, a candle on the table, and Joanna propelled the conversation with self-deprecating anecdotes of life as a diplomatic spouse in Addis Ababa, the functions she attended, the committees, her exasperating book club. “Really, Philip, there we are, all these embassy ladies, earnest Americans, clever Germans, and we plough through all this worthy literary fiction, when all we secretly want is a jolly good bodice-ripper!” Mangan listened, did his best to be appreciative. Joanna’s ingenuousness was, he suspected, merely part of her cover. They were a Service couple, he was sure.
    They saw him out afterward to a waiting taxi, waved from the doorstep in the darkness, Hoddinott’s arm around his wife.
    The taxi ground back across Addis, windows open, letting in a breeze cluttered with the smells and sounds of the city’s late night, the crowds thronging the pavements, the boys hawking single cigarettes and bushels of
chat.
    So he’d been “topped up.” A watchful Service, keeping an eye on an old, blown agent. He wasn’t ungrateful.

6
    London
    Kai thought the Park Lane restaurant must be one of the most effete and pointless places he’d ever been in. Charlie Feng was there, straight from the bank, in a suit, waiting for him, and two others were down from Cambridge. Kai walked across the bar to them, mumbled a greeting.
    “Well, hello, Fan Kaikai,” said Charlie. “I wasn’t sure we’d see you.” He was speaking Mandarin.
    “Well, here I am.”
    They all looked at him, then at each other.
    “So how are