Noticing Zula standing above him, he tucked his chin, rolled to his feet, and beckoned her forward. She squeezed past him into the cockpit, dropped to one knee, and looked up.
No more than a hundred feet above them was the underbelly of a 747.
So that explained why they had felt free to gain altitude. They had timed their flight plan so as to synchronize it with this jumbo’s takeoff from Taipei airport. It was headed for (she guessed) Vancouver or San Francisco or some other West Coast destination. Cutting underneath it as it vectored northward from the tip of Taiwan, they had positioned themselves beneath it and gained altitude in lockstep with it, their bogey merging with its bogey on the radar screens of air traffic controllers and military installations up and down the eastern coast of Asia.
She helped herself to a can of Coke and a bag of chips from the plane’s miniature galley, then made her way back aft through the cabin, sensing Khalid’s eyes on her spine. Jones was now sitting across the table from him, and they were examining a chart of the northern Pacific.
The soldier with the laptop was sitting with his back to her. Looking over his shoulder she saw what was holding his attention so closely: he was playing Flight Simulator. Practicing a takeoff run from a rural landing strip.
She didn’t want to make it obvious that she had noticed, so she kept walking without breaking stride and returned to the cabin, closing the door behind her.
THE MAN, WHO was calling himself George Chow, took Olivia into Jincheng: a fishing town at the island’s western end. A couple of hotels had been thrown up near the ferry terminal, serving a mix of tourists and businessmen, and George Chow had taken a suite in one of them. He had apparently traveled here in the company of a Thai woman who had some talents as a hairdresser and a makeup artist. The woman had a bob haircut and wore conspicuous designer eyeglasses and dramatic makeup. She had spread newspapers on the floor and laid out her shears and combs and brushes. Olivia took a quick shower and then received a bob haircut exactly like that of the Thai woman, which, under any other circumstances, she’d have been afraid to take a risk on. The eyeglasses turned out to be fake—the lenses didn’t do anything. Olivia ended up wearing them. The same makeup too. And a few minutes later, the same clothes. A PRC goon holding a blurry photograph of Meng Anlan would not immediately peg her as being the same person; and if anyone had noticed George Chow coming off the Taipei flight this morning with the Thai woman on his arm, they’d assume that he was going home in the company of the same lady.
While all of this was happening, George Chow disappeared for about an hour, then came back saying that various matters had been arranged.
One of which, apparently, was a taxi, waiting for them in the alley just off the hotel’s loading dock, piloted by a man who, Olivia inferred, had been well paid not to notice or talk about anything. They drove to the place in the middle of the island that Sokolov had identified, earlier, as a good meeting site. Its advantages now became plain. They stopped near the culvert, and George Chow pretended to take photographs of Olivia standing against the backdrop of the wooded ridge. Sokolov was able to remain perfectly hidden, even though only a few meters away, until a moment when the road was free of traffic. He then emerged and did a passable job of concealing his amusement at the new Olivia.
“You are fashion queen,” Sokolov observed.
“For two hours. Once I get to Taipei, all of this is coming right off.”
“Then where? London?”
“I assume so. Yes. Let’s go.”
“Where we go?” Sokolov asked, a bit sharply. He was much too worldly wise to imagine that he too would be whisked away to London.
“I’ll explain in the car,” Olivia said.
