Read Online Spy Games by Adam Brookes - Free Book Online Page A

lacking affect. A broad, supple mouth. A startling face, shocking almost. Mangan thought of a marionette, of a clown.
    “No, we have not met,” said the man. Then he stood and leaned towards Mangan, a fulsome smile, the eyes like coal.
    “But perhaps we will,” he said. He walked from the bar. Mangan watched him cross the lobby and leave the hotel.
    What was that? he thought.
    Though somewhere in an earlier self—a clandestine self—he knew.

9
    Oxford, United Kingdom
    Fan Kaikai stumbled through the graveyard, as bidden. When he reached the requisite headstone, one which marked the plot of an obscure statistician, he stopped, and as club rules demanded, raised the silver cup to his lips. The concoction it held was of sickly liqueur topped with champagne to form a vile, frothing swill. In a circle around him stood a group of undergraduates, all male, shouting, jeering in the darkness. Some of them wore masks and tailcoats. He could hear the traffic going past on the street. Why am I here? he thought. What am I to them?
    He drank, letting some of the liquid run down his chin and spill down his front. His stomach lurched. The club’s other members, all well lubricated themselves, yelled encouragement. Kai dropped the silver cup to the ground and walked away, bent over and heaved up a warm, foul gush.
    He felt hands on his elbows amid inchoate laughter. They all spilled from the cemetery onto the street, reeled back to college in the darkness.
    As they approached the gate, Kai saw her. She was standing under a street lamp in a long silver-blue gown, closing a purse. Waiting for someone? She saw him at the same time, regarded him from across the street.
    He stopped and looked back at her. She turned away. He walked through the college gate, and then they were up in someone’s rooms, and there was more champagne and a lot of noise, shouting. And he looked up and there she was again in that incongruous gown that showed pale, slender shoulders. He considered for a moment, then went over to her, leaned into her, spoke in Mandarin, but felt the words thick and slurring.
    “I’m Fan Kaikai,” he said.
    “I know who you are,” she responded.
    “And you are Madeline Chen. We should be friends,” he said.
    She leaned away from him, as if from a bad smell, her eyes flickering down to his damp gown.
    “We could,” he said. “We could, you know, get past all this stupid stuff.”
    “What stupid stuff?” she said.
    He gestured in a way that felt slightly wild. Someone had put music on, complicated, sinister-sounding, with a bass like an industrial roar. Kai tried to focus.
    “All the… history. All the family history, the anger. It’s their fight. Not ours.”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    He blinked.
    “What? Of course you know. We should talk about it. Couldn’t we do that?”
    She was looking around herself, as if searching someone out. Who? he thought. A friend? A minder?
    “Why would I want to talk to you about my family?” she said.
    “I didn’t mean… I just…”
    He stopped, took a breath.
    “I’m sorry. We’re supposed to avoid each other, I know. We aresupposed to mistrust each other. I just thought I would like to make my own decision, that we could make our own decisions.”
    She was still leaning away from him, lips pursed, eyebrows arched. The music was a distended roar, a thumping in his chest.
    He shrugged.
    “Sorry,” he said, and made to walk away. She spoke to his back.
    “Are you always this earnest?”
    He turned back, struggled to find something to say. She was looking at him as if he had just vomited a magnum of champagne. Which, come to think of it, he had.
    “Only when I’m drunk,” he said. “I’m a sober sceptic.”
    “Earnest drunks are the worst. What is this ridiculous drinking club you’re a member of?”
    “It’s called ‘The Amnesiacs.’ I don’t know what it is, really. They just asked me to join. We have to wear these clothes.”
    “And