Page 169 of Never

‘Approximately one hundred Chinese people have been killed by a drone in the city of Port Sudan.’

‘Where we’re building a tanker dock for billions of dollars, as I recall.’

‘Just so. Chinese engineers are working on the project. The dead are mostly men, but with a small number of women, plus children who belonged to the engineers’ families.’

‘Who did this? Who sent the drone?’

‘Sir, the news has just come in and I thought it best to inform you before making further inquiries.’

‘Send a car for me.’

‘I already have. Monk should be outside your building any minute now.’

‘Well done. I’ll be with you as soon as I can.’ Kai hung up.

Ting mumbled: ‘Would you like a quick one?’

‘Go back to sleep, my darling.’

Kai washed quickly and dressed in a suit and a white shirt. He put a tie in one pocket and his electric shaver in the other. Looking out of the window, he saw a silver Geely compact sedan waiting at the kerb with its headlights on. He picked up his overcoat and went out.

The air was frosty and there was a cold wind. He got into the car and started shaving while Monk drove. He called Fan and told him to summon some key people: his secretary, Peng Yawen; Yang Yong, a specialist in interpreting surveillance photographs; Zhou Meiling, a young woman expert on the Internet; and Shi Xiang, Arabic-speaking head of the North Africa desk. Each of them would call in support staff.

He wondered who could be responsible for the attack on Port Sudan.

The Americans were automatically prime suspects. They were threatened by China’s drive to forge trading links across the world, what was called the Belt and Road Initiative; and they realized that China wanted control of Africa’s oil and other natural resources. But would they deliberately murder a hundred Chinese people?

The Saudis had drones, sold to them by the US, and they were only two hundred kilometres from Port Sudan across the Red Sea; but the Saudis and the Sudanese were allies. It could have been an accident, but that seemed unlikely. Drones had direction-finding computers. This had been targeted.

That left terrorists. But which ones?

It was now his job to find out, and President Chen would want answers in the morning.

He reached Guoanbu headquarters. Some of his team were already there and others arrived in the next few minutes. He told them to gather in the conference room. He had acquired the coffee habit recently, like millions of Chinese people, and he got a cup and carried it with him.

On one of the screens around the walls of the room, the Al Jazeera news channel was showing live footage of the fire in Port Sudan, apparently taken from a ship. Night had now fallen in East Africa, but the flames illuminated the smoke cloud.

Kai sat at the head of the table. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got,’ he began. ‘I assume that some of the engineers are Guoanbu assets?’ Every overseas venture was kept under close observation by Kai’s agents.

Shi Xiang answered him. ‘Two of them, but one was killed by the bombing.’ Shi, head of the North Africa desk, was a middle-aged man with a grey moustache. He had married an African girl, years ago during his first posting overseas, and they had a daughter now at university. ‘I have a report from the surviving agent, Tan Yuxuan. The dead include ninety-seven men and four women, all of whom were on the dock when the drone struck. It was the heat of the day, when people take a long break in that part of the world, and they were all inside an air-conditioned hut, eating lunch or resting.’

‘This is terrible,’ Kai said.

‘The drone fired two air-to-ground missiles that badly damaged the partly built dock and set fire to nearby oil tanks. There were also two children killed. We don’t normally allow people working overseas to take their children with them but the chief engineer was an exception, and yesterday he happened to bring his twin sons to see the project, tragically.’

‘What’s the government in Khartoum saying?’

‘Nothing substantive. They made an announcement two hours ago claiming that they were getting the fire under control and would investigate the cause. It’s a typical holding statement.’

‘Anything from the White House?’

‘Not yet. It’s now early afternoon in Washington. They may react before the end of the day.’

Kai turned to Yang Yong, an older man with a lined face, experienced with satellite imagery. ‘We have the drone on camera,’ Yang said, touching keys on his laptop. A picture appeared on one of the wall screens.

Kai leaned forward, trying to make sense of what he was looking at. ‘I can’t see anything,’ he said.

Yang was an expert, and had probably started out peering at high-altitude aeroplane photos, before the days of satellite photography. He picked up a laser flashlight and shone a red dot on the image. With that assistance Kai was able to make out a silhouette. He might have taken it for a seagull.