15: Macao (JP from RP)

Bobby was troubled as he sat watching his phone in the noodle bar, listening to Clyde Xu’s meeting with the Australian. He was operating eight thousand miles from home, and he was a couple of bodies shy of what he really needed to run his operation.
In the US, as mission controller he could call in backup, other students who had at least commenced their operational training, faculty members who were au fait with field operations. Here. Zilch.
The people and operatives of Xaviers had spent weeks building up to the moment when they could successfully identify Clyde Xu with a more senior member of The Friends of Humanity, but that would all be for nothing if the Australian walked into the crowd and disappeared before being identified.
Someone would have to follow him.
It couldn't be Bobby himself; he would be recognised after sitting opposite the Australian in the restaurant. Emma was back at the apartment coordinating the phone tracking and there was a chance the Australian had been watching the restaurant for some time and had seen Illyana.
That left Jamie and Noah as the only ones who could do the job.
Bobby had told them both to wear protective body armour under their clothing, but he still wasn't comfortable about sending two boys after a man who might be carrying a gun. There was also a chance they would bump into Clyde and get recognised as he left the restaurant.
Bobby studied the physically imposing Australian, looking for any obvious sign that he was armed. But he had been in this game long rough now and wasn't fooling himself: unless your
target is stupid enough to a let a weapon bulge through their clothes, there was no way to tell if someone is carrying a gun.
At least the potential problem of Jamie and Noah bumping into Clyde solved itself. The Australian threw a MOP$ 50 note on the table as he stood up to leave and told Clyde to stay back and pay the waitress.
Bobby grabbed his mobile, dialled up Jamie and kept his voice low.
"Where are you?"
"We're lurking by a cash machine fifty metres down the road."
Bobby's brain tried to turn a dozen contradictory factors into a decision.
Jamie spoke tautly. "Come on, Bobby. We’ve been waiting six weeks. Noah and I can handle this."
Bobby took a deep breath. Friends of Humanity had killed more than two hundred people since they first surfaced as a threat to mutant-kind, not all of them mutants. This was an exceptional opportunity to crack the organisation open and he knew the boys were keen to go.
"All right," Bobby said, running an anxious hand around the back of his neck. "You're going for it, but no stupid risks, OK? Your mark is tall, two hundred centimetres. Big shoulders, squashed up nose like a boxer. Blond hair, side parting. Smart suit, rectangular glasses
with an orange tint."
"Just eyeballing him now," Jamie said. "He's stepping out. How far are we taking this?"
Bobby had no basis for making a decision on how dangerous the Australian was. "Jamie, it's down to your training and common sense. There's nothing I can say."
"Do we just follow, or do you want us to take him down?"
"Yeah," Bobby said. “If you think you can do it, take him down."
He swiped the phone off and hoped he'd made the right call.
Jamie grinned at Noah as he pocketed his phone. "Bobby’s got the jitters, but we're on."
"We work way different to his version of the X-Men. They weren’t as covert as us, didn’t have mission controllers, he always gets the jitters being one," Noah shrugged. "I think it's in his job description."
"He misses being in the field. And we’ve got ourselves a nice easy mark."
The Australian’s blond head stood out in the crowd, and because he didn't know Jamie or Noah they could follow more closely than Bobby and Illyana had been able to follow Clyde. Still, the boys couldn't get cocky: two teenage Europeans stood out, wandering the streets of Macao after dark. Although with his dark hair, black baseball cap and face mask Jamie was much less noticeable than the lanky blue eyed blond he was working with.
After walking a kilometre, the bobbing blond head ducked into an underground MTR station, down a flight of steps and into a gloomily lit ticket hall. The Aussie had a pass and entered through the electronic turnstile.
The boys didn't.
"Shit," Noah said, as he headed up to the ticket machine with a hand a burrowing down his pocket looking for change. An elderly man stood in front of them, trying to feed in a dogeared twenty. It was agony watching the note whirr in and out, with red LED flickering above the slot. Finally, the note got sucked in and a paper ticket and a flurry of coins clanked into the dispensing drawer.
"Come on, Granddad," Noah murmured impatiently, as the old codger scooped up his change.
Jamie pushed in and began feeding his coins. As soon as the first ticket popped out, Noah grabbed it. He raced through the turnstile and began sprinting down an empty fixed staircase that ran between two crowded escalators. Jamie was fifteen seconds behind him, but there was no sign of the Australian when they met up at the bottom.
"Which way?" Jamie gasped, as the crowds bustling around them divided off towards platforms for trains heading east and west.
"We've gotta split up," Noah said anxiously. "You try eastbound."
The boys headed through the crowd on to separate platforms. The metro was packed out, and Noah got jammed into a slow-moving crowd on a short flight of steps leading down to the westbound platform. The crush made it impossible to see anything beyond the head
of the person in front and no amount of pushing was going to help.
Jamie had an easier time making it on to the other platform, but distant rumbling and rush of air meant a train was arriving at any second. If the Aussie was on the platform, he had to identify him fast.
Jamie scanned the area, but couldn't see the distinctive blond head. It was swelteringly hot down here and Jamie removed his cap. To get a better look, he pushed through to a drinks vending machine at the back of the platform, wedged his trainer in the drawer where plastic bottles dropped out and used it as a step to raise himself above the crowd.
It only took a second to spot the blond head, fifty metres down the platform. Meanwhile, the wind coming through the tunnel was blowing back Jamie’s hair and the two lamps on the front of the incoming train lit up the tunnel.
There wasn't time to fetch Noah. Jamie stumbled forwards as he stepped down, clattering into the back of a rough looking dude with punkish hair and slashed up jeans. He turned on Jamie with an angry face.
“Watch it, you piece of shit."
Jamie ignored the remark as the train doors slid open. He ploughed into the crowds of people getting off, but only managed to move fifteen metres along the platform, before having to cut into a carriage as a recorded voice told him to mind the doors.
The air-conditioned space was cooler than the stifling interior of the station, and Jamie felt a hint of relief as he grabbed a pole and the train began to move. It was standing room only, but the carriages weren't packed out, so he began moving towards the front of the train, politely asking people to make way.
"Sorry, I’ve lost my friend... Scuse me ... Coming through."
The design of the Macao metro gave Jamie a huge break. Instead of separate carriages, the train was made up of an unbroken tube, with bendy section every thirty-five metres to enable it to take the corners. The train was slowing up for the next stop by the time Jamie made it to the front section, which was less crowded than the centre. Although he was taller than most here he didn’t stand out, his near black hair allowed him to blend in. And as most people wore face masks that just added to the anonymity.
The target had found an empty seat, and as people stood up to get off, Jamie grabbed one for himself, squeezing between two fat ladies twenty metres away. It was close enough to eyeball the man, but not so close that he would pay any attention to him.
Jamie took out his phone, hoping to contact Noah, but there was no signal in the tunnel, it had been a longshot. He smiled at the idea of taking a longshot to reach Longshot.
He grabbed a discarded newspaper off the shelf behind. The text wasn't English and while several weeks in a Macao school had brought his conversational Cantonese close to the level of a native speaker, he still found the weird little squiggles the language was written in hard work. After a couple of lines, he gave up and stared at a car ad.
The Australian stood as the train slowed down for its fifth stop. Jamie had been watching him out of the corner of his eye and nothing seemed to suggest that he was suspicious.
When the train stopped they exited through separate doors. Awkwardly, Jamie was nearer to the exit, so he rested his trainer on a bench and fiddled with the lace until the Australian was in front of him. Before giving chase, he pulled his Nike baseball cap back on to alter his appearance slightly.
At this end of the line the train ran just a few metres below street level. After passing through the turnstile, the station exit was a short flight of steps up from the platform. They were on a four-lane road, lined with office blocks and hotels. The sky was now completely black and the evening breeze had some bite. Apart from few bars and restaurants, the shops all had their metal shutters pulled down for the night.
If he had had the chance, Jamie would have contacted Emma back at the apartment to say what was going on, but within fifty metres of the station the Australian pushed his way through a revolving door and into the lobby of a smart hotel.
Jamie followed a few metres after him. The place looked expensive and modern: moody lighting, abstract art, a slate floor and black marble columns. There was a rowdy scene in the bar off to one side, as a bunch of tanked-up businessmen watched a horse race on a big-screen TV.
The Australian headed through the lobby and straight for the elevator. With no idea what floor he was staying on, Jamie had no option but to stand alongside his target and wait. He felt nervous, but if the Australian remembered him from the train, he wasn't showing it.
The elevator made bing-bong sound and the doors slid, revealing a glass-sided lift with a marble floor. Jamie let the Aussie step in and press the button for the nineteenth floor. As the door closed, Jamie reached towards the buttons and made an oh sound, acknowledging that they were on the same floor.
This was easily the most suspicious thing Jamie had done, but again the Australian took it in his stride. As the elevator moved slowly up the outside of the hotel, both passengers stared out of the glass sides at the surrounding skyscrapers and the view over the harbour.
A giant cruise liner heading for the ocean terminal was ablaze with yellow light.
"That's one beautiful rowboat," the Australian said, leaning his giant hands on the leather-padded railing.
Jamie was tense and got thrown off balance by the sudden outbreak of conversation. "Um, yes. Probably stuffed with fat old people though."
The Aussie laughed. "You're probably right. Whereabouts is that accent from, London?"
Jamie shrugged. "Yes, my father works for a bank and I’ve lived all over the world." There were loads of Westerners living in Macao.
By the time Jamie said this, the elevator had slowed and the doors were splitting open.
"Well goodnight, son. Enjoy your stay."
Jamie stepped out of the elevator and pretended to be confused by the sign with the different room numbers and arrows pointing in three directions. The Australian strode past a line of massive cacti and purposefully onwards down a thickly carpeted corridor towards his
room.
Unfortunately, he didn't have far to walk. Jamie panicked as he looked around and saw that the Australian had stopped outside the second room along and was already pushing his door open.
"Excuse me Sir," Jamie called out. “I think you dropped this."
The man looked mystified as he backed out of the doorway.
As Jamie strode quickly towards him, holding out the first random scrap of paper he had found inside his jacket, he reached into the opposite pocket and slipped a brass knuckleduster over his fingers.
The Aussie was big and Jamie wasn't taking any chances.