Kill with a Borrowed Knife: or Agent Ai

By Michael Wreford

Journalist and SIS (MI6) contract agent George Quant arrives on the run in Beijing. Estranged from Karen, his Moscow-based handler, George is thrust into Asia's clandestine underworld of gentleman spies, nefarious business people, and murderous Party members. With his past catching up with him, George discovers that not everyone in China can be trusted.

At the centre of George Quant's dilemma lie two men: investor-adventurer Pierce de Havilland, and Karen's trusted contact known only as "Ho". Both successful in their own right, the rivals offer diverging perspectives on China's future. As their intentions grow clearer, George recognises that an important choice looms - adopting the life of a millionaire fugitive, or accepting the call of a higher moral imperative.

From his initial assignment in Cambodia in the late '90s - between the drinks, drugs and dangerous card games - George's high octane adventures spill across London, Moscow, and Beijing, before culminating in Hong Kong. Alarmed by Karen's increasing demands and damaged by her unrequited love, he begins to search for a way to disentangle himself from an expanding web of deception.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Wreford
• Release date: Jul 14, 2014
• ISBN: 9781910100172

Michael Wreford

A true double agent, MICHAEL WREFORD is two authors writing as one. The pair hold master's degrees in Chinese and International Relations, and for ten years have worked for leading multinational corporations, including in the investment banking, healthcare, and oil and gas sectors. They have lived in Beijing, The Hague, Hong Kong, and New York, and currently split their time between the United Kingdom and Switzerland.

Book preview

Prologue

‘Tell me, an autodidact such as yourself,’ he said, carefully enunciating his words, ‘you must be familiar with The Thirty-six Stratagems?’

‘Sun Tzu?’ I asked, assuming a reference to The Art of War.

‘No. In fact there is no known originator. They were simply passed down, a word here, a paragraph there, a shared conversation in an imperial hallway, all of it over hundreds of years.’

He clicked his fingers, at which point a gas lamp flickered into existence in front of me. My eyes struggled in the faint light but I made out the contours of a uniform, perfectly formed oblong patches of sweat under each armpit.

‘Deception, you see, lies at the heart of business, politics and war. Even pleasure, wouldn’t you say? Everyone practises it, from the President of China to the whores on Lockhart Road. The Stratagems document this, rather beautifully in fact.’

He started pacing around in the shadows, the sound of his leather soles echoing off the walls. ‘Stratagem three,’ he continued, ‘jiè dāo shā rén, kill with a borrowed knife. To attack with the strength of others: astute don’t you think? You see my friend here, my borrowed knife, has powerful backers indeed.’

This was not what I’d expected. Suspended by my wrists, toes making scant purchase on the tiled kitchen floor, slippery with sweat, water and blood, it took all my strength to hold myself upright. The obese figure sat on a stool by the door, watching through cruel narrow eyes, dark and soulless. The other, his hatchet man, stood near me, twisting electrical flex between his fists, its frayed copper ends protruding, bloodstained, like the tail of some hideous beast.

‘What have you done with it? Where is it?’ They repeated the same question on loop and had done since we started, hours ago, days ago, I could no longer tell. I groaned, desperately asking myself how I was going to play this one.

The events of the past weeks spun through my mind as I tried to assemble a narrative in my sleep-deprived state. Torn by my ambivalence, I wished I’d never met her, yet even in this dark, painful place was craving the sight and touch of her body again. Each beating took more out of me and I began to fear the worst. I had to feed them something to buy me respite.

I started to piece together the story.

PART ONE

BEIJING, 2001

CHAPTER ONE: Winning Stratagems

1. Deceive the Heavens to Cross the Ocean

瞒天过海

Hide objectives by adopting false goals.

ON THE EVENING I arrived in Beijing, smog covered the city, muffling my footsteps and obscuring me from the masses. Stretching my legs, I descended from the Trans-Mongolian Express that had smuggled me into the country and stepped onto the platform. I was tired and hungry, having eaten nothing all day except a tub of instant noodles, rehydrated at the samovar at the end of the carriage. Money was also a problem, my pockets filled with only a few scraps of Mongolian tugrik.

Hoping my contact would reimburse the expense, I jumped in the back of a cyclo-rickshaw and set off towards the rendezvous.

The driver spoke not a word as he peddled into the befogged hútòng, the ageing brick alleys of traditional buildings built cheek by jowl in the heart of China’s capital. Soon the squeaking of the front wheel became the only sound, replacing the drone of buses and cries of hawkers. Grey shadows flickered down tight alleyways, while in the air, the smell of low-grade coal dust briquettes lingered unpleasantly. In the distance the bark of a dog echoed; it felt like I was under surveillance.

With no luggage other than a small rucksack, clasped tightly throughout the trip, I was travelling light and we soon came to rest by a nondescript door loosely covered in peeling red paint. After a wait that seemed to last minutes, my knocks were answered by an old Chinese man who ushered me inside, ‘Jìn lái, jìn lái,’ come in, come in, and into the presence of Ho.

Ho was a tall, slim man, smartly turned out, with a shock of dark hair and, despite his Chinese name, distinctly Caucasian features. In a relaxed frame of mind, he placed his copy of Cáijīng, Finance Magazine, on the table and straightened his tie. With a flurry of Mandarin, he dismissed the attending man and invited me to sit opposite him on a darkly varnished rosewood settee. Despite its unimpressive exterior, the rooms bore the marks of modern design while embracing pieces of classic Chinese furniture: different within from without, like many things in China, I would learn.

Ho’s helper paid the driver a few kuài and returned bearing tea and sunflower seeds.

‘We’ve been expecting you, George,’ Ho said, examining me. ‘You know, the first thing we ought to do is lose that name. It’s too conspicuous. We thought it best if we call you Mr. Ai. That’ll do for a handle when introducing yourself. It means friendly; people will love that, they take good omens very seriously.’

‘Xièxiè,’ thank you, I said, removing my panama, sadly misshapen from the journey.

Mr. Ai. The name sounds funny, too short.

‘I didn’t know you spoke the lingo,’ Ho interjected, scrutinising my rudimentary Mandarin. ‘It wasn’t on your file.’

Before I could respond, a knock sounded at the door, the same all clear pattern I’d been instructed to use. The elderly man shuffled in his black plimsolls towards the silhouette of the visitor, barely visible through frosted glass panels. He opened the door—at first by no more than a single measure of whisky—before confirming the guest’s identity and ushering him inside.

Ho rose to his feet, even taller than I first expected. ‘I don’t believe you’ve met my associate Mr. de Havilland,’ he said, greeting his second guest. ‘Pierce has been an invaluable asset in recent years and will be an excellent contact during your time in the Middle Kingdom.’

Dressed in a linen suit, chestnut brogues, and clutching a leather briefcase, de Havilland slapped Ho on the back before pumping my hand enthusiastically, his powerful grip and collegiate manner indicators of an exclusive upbringing. We sat and tea was poured, ‘The finest Yunnan Oolong only,’ Ho explained before the questioning began.

‘What exactly is the nature of your interest in China, George, or should I say, Ai?’ inquired de Havilland, who had the habit of de-shelling sunflower seeds using his incisors before spitting the fragments to the table.

Pierce de Havilland: to be in his presence was nothing short of exhilarating. His story, for years now, was the stuff of legend; in bars from Sabah to Seoul, all across East Asia, expatriates traded unreliable information about his background.

De Havilland is an aristocrat; he arrived with nothing. De Havilland is a millionaire; his business is in trouble. De Havilland went to Eton; he has no education. Occasionally local interest was also piqued, with threads appearing, then quickly disappearing, on unauthorised Internet bulletin boards. De Havilland likes Chinese girls; his lover is in England. De Havilland is a British agent; he’s a double. De Havilland is dangerous; he’s in danger.

My mind cast back a few years to the first time I heard his name. I was a junior reporter at The Phnom Penh Daily, jointly staffing the economic and political desk. With one eye on regional affairs, the other we focused on the bar’s dwindling stock of beer. Drinking a few bottles over a round of Phnom Penh Pick-up on the veranda of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, I sat with Sound of America stringer, Dusty Phelps, as he outlined the origins of de Havilland’s adventure.

‘We don’t got much on this fella,’ Phelps said in his southern drawl. ‘Appeared here ‘bout five years ago, fresh from England. Mid-thirties, polite, smart. Got tangled up with the generals in Burma, dealing with the red, green and white trades—that’s rubies, emeralds and heroin to you, newbie. Thought he was a dead ‘n’ gone, but he walks into a bar in Kunming, China, one day, cool as you like, having busted outta Insein prison. They say he’d stowed away on an Irrawaddy cargo boat and hacked through the jungle over the border. Dunno if it’s true, but there’s quite the legend around him. How much is man and how much myth, I can’t say, but if I heard rumours that he was dead, I’m not sure I’d believe them. All I do know is he’s talented, successful and dangerous.’

De Havilland looked as though he’d lived; fresh of face yet with prenatural, slightly greying, receding hair, his eyes betrayed experience and wisdom. I decided to throw my lot in with him on the spot; there was something about his character that urged me to accept his direction.

‘Maybe some mǎimài, business,’ I replied, hinting that I wasn’t in the game of honest commerce. My time on the train passing through the plains of nomadic Asia had been spent engrossed in learning as much Pǔtōnghuà, the common speech, as I could from a fellow traveller’s primer.

‘Ah, a man after my own heart!’ exclaimed de Havilland, turning to the host with a raise of his eyebrow. ‘In fact, Ho called me here about some mǎimài of his own: why don’t you listen to his idea?’

Tired from days of sleepless travel and the constant paranoia about losing my cargo, I listened as intently as I could to the conversation that would tie me forever to this land of emperors.

‘Look here Ai,’ said Ho in his rich baritone, ‘you’re young, probably your first major outing to the Far East?’

I made a noncommittal gesture, not wanting to let on too much.

‘This might be just the thing for you, if you want to get to know the ropes. All we need is a bit of information on someone. As you’re new, your face won’t arouse suspicion. Plus you’re quite the linguist. That’s going to work in your favour.’

As Ho spoke, de Havilland rooted around in his pocket, extracted a cigarette and lit it with a Zippo, without offering anyone else. Ho rolled his eyes and gestured towards a humidor of Romeo y Julieta cigars on the table. I declined as Ho continued his spiel.

‘There’s a woman. Married to someone in the Party, Shanghai branch. She’s in town and I need a track of her movements,’ he said, staring through the smoke and into the middle distance. ‘She’s staying at the China World down in Guómào. Think you can manage it?’ he asked with a sly grin and a sidelong glance at de Havilland, who puffed away contentedly.

De Havilland reached into his bag and retrieved a manila envelope. He slid it across Ho’s table, at the same time exhaling a plume from his Zhongnanhai cigarette. Zhongnanhai was his favourite tobacco he later explained, named after China’s Kremlin and once smoked by Mao himself. It was a connection he enjoyed.

‘One last thing,’ said de Havilland, wresting control of the conversation. ‘There’s a saying, wù yǐ lèi jù, birds of a feather. Every Thursday, Ho and I host a table at Yuan’s Jazz Club for dinner and a drink, around eight. Just a casual group, feel free to swing by.’

With that, de Havilland extinguished his cigarette and stood. Squeezing Ho’s shoulder, he disappeared into the night.

Ho, who remained seated, glanced at his watch. ‘You’ll find a room reserved in your name at the Xiangshan Hotel,’ he explained, tapping the manila file. ‘In here you’ll find bank cards, documentation, telecommunications, your tools of the trade. For everything else, Mr. Chen remains at your service.’

With another flurry of Mandarin he instructed the old man to fetch the car.

Ho stood as I took one last sip of my tepid Oolong chá.

‘I apologise for the brevity of this meeting, Ai, but Mrs. Ho expects me for dinner. I’ll ensure Pierce takes the time to fully brief you about this project. In the meantime, it would be excellent to see you at Yuan’s. It is one of Pierce’s numerous joint ventures and you’ll be well cared for.’

Grasping the folder from amongst the sunflower seed shells and replacing my panama, I shook hands. Ho ushered me outside where Chen was waiting with the car.

The leather seats in Ho’s black Lexus LS 430 were a godsend after days in hard sleeper on the Trans-Siberian and then Trans-Mongolian Expresses. With the backpack’s straps looped around my forearm, we accelerated out of the hútòng and were soon enveloped in Jianguomenwai Avenue’s rush hour traffic.

Chen drove in plimsolls, curiously juxtaposed against the luxurious interior of the limo. He had a bald pate, with long strands of grey hair combed over to conceal it. The rest of his locks grew longish at the back as if compensating for not appearing elsewhere. In the mirror, I glimpsed a thin face and prominent cheekbones. When out of sight of his employer, he chewed a toothpick.

As the evening sky turned, the smog encroached further on Beijing’s skyline. The thick haze gave way to a kaleidoscope of industrial colour before darkness set in.

The lobby of the Xiangshan was bustling, with groups of men sitting on luggage and sucking cheap cigarettes. As I entered, an edgy pimp whispered ‘Massage?’ and tried pressing a calling card into my hand. I pushed him aside and made straight for reception.

The room comprised two single beds, uneven mattresses and a boxy television. A pamphlet in the bathroom explained it was one of the first hotels to open to foreign experts in the late 1970s. Past a banquet hall and entertainment facility, my room was the last on the ground floor and even with the door closed the sound of karaoke permeated its walls. Outside was Jianguomenwai, and craning my neck I could make out the junction where the China World Hotel stood a little further down the street.

Noticing a safe deposit box, I unzipped my backpack and tipped the contents to the floor. From amongst my dirty clothes I retrieved an old Sony Discman and ejected a gold DVD. I inspected it for signs of tampering, damage or exchange, a process that each time on the marathon train journey had met with a tangible sense of relief. Other than the word CITADEL scrawled in black ink, there was nothing unusual about its appearance. What was irregular was the data burnt in microscopic patterns over its surface.

My attention switched to the manila file. Unwinding the string around the envelope buttons I discovered a lifeline, a Coutts private banking card. A post-it on the reverse read PIN: 1997, a reference to Hong Kong’s handover to mainland China and a touch worthy of my new handlers. A British passport and permanent Hong Kong identity card also fell to the counterpane. I inspected them, noting my picture alongside the cover of MARTIN MATHESON, born 1976. Finally, there was a Nokia 3310 dual band GSM 900 mobile phone with two SIM cards, one for China, one for Hong Kong. Both carried small green stickers implying encryption.

My friends had done well. Life without the essentials—the tools of the trade, as Ho put it—had been difficult and seeing the items raised my spirits immeasurably. Summoning what little energy remained, I locked the contents away before rolling into the beckoning arms of Morpheus.

Waking with a start that night, I was torn from my dream by its urgency. The voyage on the Trans-Siberian had branded itself into my mind; I was reliving it in vivid format.

After eluding the Moscow thugs, I’d got on board by the skin of my teeth, a ticket but no papers. With the inevitability of an inspection at the next stop, I’d had to remain awake until past 3 a.m. to sense when the train started to slow. Taking my cue from the brakes, I crept from my cabin. My inebriated cabin-mates, businessmen from St. Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod were dead to the world after the drinking games they started, and I joined with subtle, tactical spilling. With the train still rolling, I slid down the window and popped through, clinging to the outside, out of sight from the refuelling point. A game of cat-and-mouse ensued: shivering from cold in the blind spot of the axles, I avoided the four-man patrol’s searchlights and rude demands. After what seemed like an aeon, the troupe slunk off for a cigarette and gulp of vodka to chase off the cold. As the train clanked forward, I reversed the disembarkation procedure, allowing myself a nap before the game recommenced at the next stop.

While not luxurious, the hotel I woke in was a far cry from the rickety bunk I snatched moments of sleep in not twenty-four hours before. I thanked heaven for Ho, and for Karen in Moscow who’d pressed his contact details into my hand as we ran along the platform, breathlessly promising she’d notify him of my arrival.

My mind alert and heart rate high, it would be difficult to return to sleep. I’d drifted off unwashed, fully clothed, the room a tip. The curtains were open and the glow of Beijing’s street lights beamed onto the back wall. Next door, a guest had returned with a Karaoke hostess girl. I blotted out the noise by creating a mental list of chores: new clothes, toothbrush, a shave.

The alarm clock read 2:30 a.m.

Who is the woman?

Perched on the bed, mouth dry and stomach roaring with hunger, I searched for de Havilland’s file. Locating it under my pillow, I straightened its corners and retrieved the final item, a sealed white envelope, dimensions no larger than a postcard. Grabbing my panama, I headed for a snack and drink at the bar.

Over wasabi peanuts and a Chivas and green tea, the barman’s recommendation, I used a letter-opener to extract a monochrome photograph. Although no more than a security frame grab, I could tell she was smartly dressed and well-coiffed, with oversized Italian designer sunglasses balanced on her head; not your run-of-the-mill Chinese politician’s wife. I stared at her trancelike in my meditation, my mind racing with permutations and ideas.

Who is she?

Taking me by surprise from my reverie, my phone buzzed with a message from Chen: he’d be with me by 9 a.m. Who sends text messages at this time of night? Didn’t he need to sleep? The lack of rest and heightened state from living on adrenaline was taking its toll … I had to relax or wake up before I made a mistake.

Nothing for it but a plunge, I thought, heading for the pool.

2. Besiege Wei to Rescue Zhao

围魏救赵

Avoid engaging a formidable foe; strike at weaknesses elsewhere.

CHEN APPROACHED THE lobby at five to nine, right on time by his book and by many Chinese businessmen’s. He beamed his distinctive crooked-tooth smile and addressed me in thick Beijing dialect.

‘Ai Xiānsheng, zǎoshàng hǎo! Chī fàn le ma?’ Morning Ai, Have you eaten? The ubiquitous greeting among friends in China, as who doesn’t care for his stomach above all other things?

‘Nǐn hǎo, Chen lao’r,’ I replied, before switching to English. ‘Let’s eat, I’m starving.’

Chen looked on silently, smiling to hide his confusion. Then the penny dropped—his English wasn’t great, as with many of his generation it wasn’t the foreign language of choice. Possibly he spoke Russian, but it was more likely his schooling had been curtailed due to the Chinese Civil War. I resolved to practise my Mandarin.

‘Wǒmen chī fàn?’ We eat food? I tried.

‘Bù cuò’r! Wǒmen chī fàn ba!’ Not bad. Let’s eat then! he laughed, herding me to the car.

Absent-mindedly, I rubbed my chin where I’d cut it with the razor from the hotel wash kit; in spite of the abuse I felt better that I didn’t have weeks’ worth of stubble marking me out.

As we pulled off, Chen turned and pointed, smiling, to a red envelope. Smiling back, I slid a finger under the flap, extracting a succinct note: "For per diems, Ho." A wad of hundred yuan notes filled the the envelope. The amount had been carefully considered; enough to get business done, insufficient to disappear into the sunset.

We drove towards Haidian District in the northwest, careening past cars, trucks, bicycles, even donkeys and traps. Chen cursed the traffic, insisting it would only improve once the Fourth Ring Road opened. All around, foundations were being laid, teams of builders opening scars in the face of the ancient city. At street level, cables and pipes for modern luxuries, electricity, gas, the Internet, burrowed earthwards, while above, steel structures extended ever skyward, scraping the heavens. These were the groundwork of the greatest transformation in history, the conduit for an era of breakneck growth.

Returning my earlier efforts in his language, Chen managed a few words in halting English. ‘We build new America,’ he laughed, ‘three years only!’ He counted three fingers on his left hand in case I didn’t understand, and didn’t mind driving with both hands off the wheel to illustrate the point.

An hour later, we arrived outside the east gate of the People’s University of China. Across a pedestrian bridge was a Starbucks attached to a shopping centre where, in the build up to this morning’s opening, a phalanx of fifty staff were on parade. Led by a drill sergeant they were being put through their daily group calisthenics.

In amongst the students at the university entrance, I caught sight of the towering figure of Ho. Once again he was dressed impeccably, wearing a chalk-striped suit, red tie and matching pocket square. I thanked Chen for his services.

‘Mr. Ai, I see you’ve found your Lai See packet,’ Ho said, throwing in a Cantonese term. ‘Chen manages my household finances in Beijing, and an excellent job he does. I trust the documents were welcomed and that you are well-rested?’

‘The room was a generous offer,’ I said. ‘Everything is stowed in the hotel strong box.’

I thought of CITADEL. I felt strange without it, naked even.

‘Allow me to be straight up about your finances,’ said Ho. ‘As you’re between assignments, you may rely on us for now. The Coutts plastic can be used for major expenses, whereas a little cash, your Lai See, can be used for day-to-day costs, not to mention any off-balance sheet transactions. In this country, there can be no small number of those,’ he joked.

‘Walk with me,’ Ho said, turning and marching towards a large engraved stone at the entrance to the campus. Impervious to the heat, he moved comfortably in his formal attire, a telling sign of an Asia old-hand. ‘For me, no visit to Beijing is complete without a stroll through the People’s University. I have a nascent business up the road in Zhongguancun Technology Park, so yes it’s conveniently located, but these grounds also hold quite a personal attachment.’

We paused by the engraved rock. I looked on quizzically, sensing that Ho was itching to provide an explanation. Above us the five-starred flag of the People’s Republic of China fluttered in the breeze.

‘The inscription reads "shí shì qiú shì," seek truth from facts,’ Ho duly explained. ‘A phrase often attributed to Mao, but one that is in fact considerably older. I think of it when times get tough, when the path isn’t clear.’

I detected something in his voice: a refined Scottish accent?

We walked into the true heart of the university. Beijing’s sticky air was getting to me; I’d not acclimatised, and the sweat poured between my shoulder blades. Ho seemed unfazed.

‘Allow me to tell you some facts about myself,’ he said. ‘I first arrived in ‘82, my second year of Cambridge. Just a young lad of twenty. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was my lucky break. I stayed in that building there, the foreign student’s block. Of course it’s been renovated now, but was little more than a shack at the time.’ He pointed towards a building, the highest in the compound.

‘There were only a handful of us, and China was different. Back then, if you listened from your room, you could sometimes hear the crackle of gunfire. Execution squads, they said, at the stadium down the road. I was never sure how true that was, but papers do sometimes show rows of people awaiting execution. Kill the chicken to scare the monkey, as they have it,’ he mused. ‘What’s undeniable was that China was poor. Distrust and paranoia prevailed. It’s hard to believe they’ll be hosting the Olympics.’

Ho inhaled deeply, unconcerned by the haze.

‘The university was, and still is, a goldmine. Sons, daughters and nephews of Party members attend this establishment. These days, I’m not sure why they bother. For a hundred US you can organise a PhD on the street outside. Some print them off at the wǎngbā, the cyber café, around the corner! In my day, Ai, it wasn’t like that. Chinese students worked damned hard and everything was done to keep them focused. The foreign cohort was considered a distraction, full of dangerous ideas. The authorities kept us apart, but despite their best efforts we still made contact. With the backing of the Foreign Office, I founded a language club; we named it the English Corner. I made a lot of contacts that way.’

Ho’s voice changed. He became detached, as if remembering something he had to do. A sombre shadow cast over his face.

‘Things became challenging in September of ‘82. Mrs. Thatcher visited to negotiate the remaining years on Hong Kong’s lease. English students were viewed with suspicion. We were followed, threatened, pressured to leave. I went back to the family place in Hong Kong to sit it out. That went on to be a tough year.’

We’d stopped by a makeshift stand outside a low, red-brick building that had seen better days. A queue of students had formed.

‘That’s enough about me,’ he said. ‘Tell me about Russia? Hell on earth, or a terrestrial paradise in the making?’

The line was a quotation from Peter Fleming’s One’s Company, a travel book from the 1930s and an approved title from my Moscow reading list. I took the bait, completing the adage: ‘Both, Mr. Ho, are hopelessly wrong.’

‘Ah, I see you’re well-read. You and I are going to get along famously. Come along, you must be hungry, allow me to treat you to a jiān bǐng. Can you handle spice in your food? Think of it as a Chinese pancake. Onion, coriander, a tasty sauce. You’ll love it, but pass on the egg. I’m never sure how fresh it is.’

We watched as an elderly chef worked a portable gas stove, occasionally dipping his hands into old paint pots which separated the ingredients. It crossed my mind that it could have been the same apparatus, perhaps even the same cook, that served Ho during his student days.

Ho ordered two extra spicy jiān bǐng. To my ears, his Mandarin seemed flawless. He glided through the tones, instantly striking a rapport with the man and a number of students.

‘I know things are moving fast for you,’ he said between mouthfuls, ‘but you came recommended by Karen. Although your background isn’t conventional, we understand you’re someone who knows the trade. We need you started straight away.’

Ho was an enigma. Although suave and successful, he was evidently delighted with the street food in the grounds of his adopted alma mater. Already I held great respect; I had managed less than twenty months in Russia, he’d been at this game for twenty years. My thoughts turned to Moscow, Karen and the escape, my body reliving the tension, head throbbing and muscles clenching. Swallowing down the last morsel of pancake, I wiped my mouth on a clean part of the brown paper tissue that had held it. Around us, students and staff buzzed along with their lives, not paying heed to the westerners, two tall, pale ghosts wading in the sea of Haidian.

‘Today, take your time, get a feel for Beijing. And do spruce up a bit. We can’t have you looking like you shop at Dangdai Market across the road there,’ he said, striding off towards the gate. He looked at me askance and frowned. ‘And get yourself fresh for work. You look like you’ve not slept for a week!’

With determined strides, Ho made for the car where Chen was

Reviews for Kill with a Borrowed Knife

[beckvalleybooks · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A page turning novel full of intrigue, double standards, espionage, having to live on the edge and change not only your game plan but your life as well on a daily basis.The story covers two seperate continents Europe and Asia. The two dominant forces of Russia and China both want a computer programme that controls all the systems in the world. Meet George Quant the new James Bond who has to work out very quickly who he can and cannot trust He is also haunted by what happened in Russia where he had to flee from very quickly.A novel which will ask questions about the worlds computer system, can one programme control or corrupt them and whoever has that programme will they then control the world. Alongside this we have George who has the programme but who can he trust and give it to.The intriguing factor about the book is that two different countries with different cultures and beliefs want the same thing and will use whatever methods necessary to achieve that goal. I think the author has created a character who will be in several more escapades, hopefully!

[readafew · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

George Quant is a journalist turned spy. He burned his bridges in Moscow and is on the run to China. When George arrives in China he is met by the correct people, who help him get settled in China and also immediately find him a job to do. It just so happens that a wife of an important party man may have some important information. They want Quant, now known as Ai, to try and get close to her and pump her for information.It also turns out the reason that Quant is on the run from the Russians, is because he stole from them. He snatched a person and the secret code he was writing. This also put his British handler (who he was in love with) into a sticky place. Mostly because he didn’t deliver either of the items to her.It was a decent book. But George bugged me. Everyone seemed to think he was a great agent, but everything I saw throughout the book was a guy who was just lucky. He did have some talent and skill, which kept him alive, but it certainly didn’t seem to be able to keep him out of trouble, even when he really should have been looking out for and expecting it to show up. He was captured 3 separate times and only one of them should have been a real surprise. Not only that, his escapes were mostly luck and had nothing to do with his personal abilities.The plot was actually fairly intricate and for quite a bit of the book I was having a very hard time figuring out what was happening. The story was filled with flashbacks and they were very necessary for helping paint the picture that Quant found himself in. It was also mostly of his own making. I didn’t rate this one very high mostly because of the confusion for the first half of the book, and Quant’s general habit of poor decisions, that when they worked out, made him look like a genius.