‘My mother made them. She heard I was working all night and sent them in a taxi.’
Yawen was in her fifties, so her mother must be in her seventies, Kai thought. He bit into a bun. The bread was light and fluffy, the custard deliciously sweet. ‘Your mother is a blessing from heaven,’ he said.
‘I know.’
Kai took a second bun.
Yang Yong hovered in the doorway, a large sheet of paper in his hand. ‘Come in,’ Kai said.
Yawen left as Yang entered. He came around Kai’s desk and unfolded the paper, which was a map of north-east Africa. ‘The drone was launched from an uninhabited area of desert a hundred kilometres from Khartoum.’ He put his finger on the map at a point west of the River Nile. Kai noticed the ropy veins on the back of his elderly hand.
‘You were quick,’ Kai said in surprise.
‘These days you can set the computer to do the tracking for you.’
‘How far is that spot from the border with Chad?’
‘More than a thousand kilometres.’
‘So this supports the theory that the perpetrators are local Sudanese insurgents, rather than Islamist terrorists.’
‘The same people can be both.’
Just to make things more complicated, Kai thought. He said: ‘Can you track the drone back farther?’
‘I can try. It might have been transported disassembled, of course, in which case it won’t be visible. Otherwise it must have flown in. And we don’t know how long ago. I’ll see what I can find, but don’t hold your breath.’
A few minutes later Zhou Meiling appeared, her young face alight with eagerness. ‘Salafi Jihadi Sudan seems genuine,’ she said. ‘It’s a new name, but they have posted photographs of the members – heroes, as they call them – and some are known extremists that we’ve seen before.’
‘Are they Sudanese rebels or Islamic terrorists?’
‘The rhetoric suggests both. In either case it’s hard to imagine how they got hold of an MQ-9 Reaper. They cost thirty-two million dollars to buy.’
‘Any indication of where the group is based?’
‘The website is hosted in Russia, but SJS obviously isn’t there. They can’t be in one of the refugee camps, which have no connectivity. They could be holed up in a city, either Khartoum or Port Sudan.’
‘Keep looking.’
It was another hour before Shi Xiang reported, but he had the most important information of all. He walked in carrying a laptop computer. ‘We just received a photo from Tan Yuxuan in Port Sudan,’ he said excitedly. ‘It’s a fragment of the wreckage.’
Kai looked at the screen. The picture had been taken at night with a flash, but it was perfectly clear. In among the debris of corrugated iron and sheet rock was a piece of scorched and twisted Kevlar-type composite, the kind of lightweight material that drones were made of. Clearly visible was a white star in a blue disc, with red, white and blue stripes extending either side – the roundel of the United States Air Force.
‘I’ll be damned,’ said Kai. ‘It was the motherfucking Americans.’
‘It certainly looks that way.’
‘Make me twenty high-quality prints of this, please.’
‘Right away.’ Shi went out.
Kai sat back. He had enough now to brief the politicians. But the news was bad news. The Americans were involved in the slaughter of more than a hundred innocent Chinese people. This was a major international incident. The explosion on the Port Sudan waterfront was going to send shock waves around the world.
He needed to know what the Americans had to say.
Kai called his CIA contact, Neil Davidson. The call was picked up immediately. ‘This is Neil.’ He sounded alert and fully awake, even with his laid-back Texas drawl. Kai was surprised.
‘This is Kai.’
‘How did you get my home number?’
‘How do you think?’ The Guoanbu had the private phone numbers of every foreigner in Beijing, naturally.
‘My mistake, stupid question.’
‘I expected you to be asleep.’
‘I’m awake for the same reason you’re awake, I guess.’
‘Because one hundred and three Chinese citizens have been killed in Sudan by an American drone.’
‘We did not fire that drone.’
‘The wreckage bears the symbol of the United States Air Force.’
Neil went quiet. Clearly this was news to him.
Kai added: ‘A white star in a blue disc, with stripes both sides.’