Quiller Bamboo

by Adam Hall

  Dark again, totally dark after the flash, place stinking of cordite, I found his right arm by feeling for it, you can say feeling for it but I mean we were spinning together trying to find the killing point, or at least I was, he seemed more interested in breaking clear so that he could threaten me from a distance with the gun and of course I .didn’t want that.

  Strong smell of sweat from both of us: the adrenaline was pouring into our systems and the muscles were charged, I found his gun hand and extended ki and tried for a kotegaeshi but he was very strong and I felt the gun turning toward me, into me, and that was frightening because he’d be selective, shooting to maim, to incapacitate, to put me out but keep me alive and get me to an interrogation cell and ask me where Xingyu Baibing was.

  I didn’t want that either. We draw the capsule but we’re not going to use it if we can make a killing first, it’s not just a gesture, you know, we’re not a league of bloody gentlemen, fired again and the sound crashed and 1 wasn’t certain if he’d made a hit, you don’t always feel a bullet going in when the organism’s functioning at this pitch because the endorphins move in immediately on the pain, fired again and I couldn’t afford this so I used the flash and saw his throat exposed and made a half-fist and drove deep and he fell and dragged me down with him and my head hit the edge of the open door.

  He didn’t move again. I got his parka off and put mine on him and took his papers, shut the door after me, hit the wall once or twice before I found the steps and went down them, the sky reeling overhead.

  There’d been a horse and cart and I was trying to get the driver to take me on board when the jeep had come past and Trotter had seen the blood on my head and put his brakes on.

  The stuff was stinging, whatever he was putting on the wound.

  All right, my dear fellow?’

  He was watching me attentively. I said fine, yes, the stuff smelled like alcohol, suppose it was some kind of anesthetic.

  ‘Ta shuo ta fuede tinghao, li zhun me renwei?’

  ‘Ta buhui you da wenti. Haiba zheme gao tou shou shang douhui yunde. Ta shibushi shuaile yi xia?’

  ‘If you feel,’ Trotter said cheerfully, ‘sort of ga-ga, don’t worry about it. The altitude makes things worse than they really are. What happened, did you fall?’

  ‘Yes. Fell on my head. Time is it?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘What time is it?’ My watch had got smashed.

  The man, the doctor man, helped me sit up and the whole place spun, the scrolls whirling around, ‘Steady as you go,’ Trotter was saying, ‘steady as you go, my dear fellow.’

  Their hands on me, felt grateful, good of them.

  ‘Time?’

  ‘What?’ Trotter took out a heavy gold pocket watch. ‘It’s twenty past eleven.’

  ‘I need a taxi.’

  I stood up and Trotter’s huge hands were supporting me again, he was like an amiable black-bearded bear, ‘Look, you mustn’t—’

  ‘Taxi,’ I said, and managed to find my wallet. ‘Ask him how much I owe, will you?’ My head was clearing now, by necessity: I had to reach Xingyu Baibing by noon and we were running it close because I couldn’t take the taxi all the way, I’d have to get him to drop me off half a mile short at a different monastery, the hills were full of them, some where tourists could go. I got out a Y 100 note. ‘Is this enough?’

  ‘Look, you can’t go anywhere on your own like this. You need—’

  ‘Appointment,’ I said, ‘extremely important, I’ve got an appointment.’

  He studied me, worried. ‘He doesn’t need money; he’s a friend of mine. Now let me take you to your hotel -which one, the Lhasa?’

  ‘Several places,’ I said, ‘I’ve got several places to go. I can’t keep you hanging about.’ I put the Y 100 note away. ‘Will you thank him for me, then? I’m most grateful to you.’

  He followed me out and said, ‘Hop on board, then. There’s a taxi up by the post office.’

  It was a broken-down Austin smothered in dust, and Trotter helped me into it. ‘I don’t know whether you’re intrepid,’ he said, ‘or foolhardy.’ Laugh booming, gave me his card. ‘If ever you need a friend … in the meantime for God’s sake look after yourself.’

  Thanked him for everything and slammed the door and slumped back against the torn vinyl seat.

  ‘Where go?’

  ‘Telephone.’

  He twisted around to look at me, a wizened face wrapped in scarves. ‘Number One Guest House?’

  ‘No. I want to make a telephone call.’

  ‘Rei. Telephone at Number One Guest House, not far.’

  ‘Good.’

  The light kept flashing so I shut my eyes but it went on doing it. He drove on the horn, this man, and one of the rear tires kept hitting the crumpled wing, what shall I say, how shall I tell it, the light fluttering on and off, it wasn’t, probably, so much the actual concussion but the stress of things in the temple, you don’t imagine, I hope, that we operate like bloody robots, do you, with no feelings?

  He answered on the second ring.

  ‘Yes?’

  I spoke in French; it’s less understood here than English. ‘There’s a body,” I said, ‘in one of the abandoned temples at the edge of the town. One of the opposition, but I put my coat on him and took his papers. If you can get someone to go along there and bury it, there won’t be so much of a fuss.’ I gave him the directions. ‘How long will it take you to make the call?’

  Some people came into the guest house, dropping baggage.

  ‘Sixty seconds.’

  ‘I’ll call you back.’

  I leaned with one finger on the contact: there were three hikers, round-eyes, crowding me, one with dark glasses on and his face peeled raw by the ultraviolet.

  Then I got the operator again and asked for the Barkhor Hotel.

  At first they said there was no one of that name there and I told them I’d just been talking to him and they wanted me to spell it and we were running it so very close to the noon deadline.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Can they do it?’ I asked Pepperidge.

  ‘They’ll try.’

  ‘All right, and then I’ll need an rdv, say about fourteen hundred. Where?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  The only place I knew was the one I’d been to with Su-May Wang, so I told him where it was. I didn’t want to go to his hotel more often than I had to; it’s always dangerous to establish patterns.

  ‘I’ll be there,’ he said. He sounded relaxed, quietly cheerful, though he must be working out the signal to London: any kind of major action had to go on the board, and this involved a death, the fourth of Bamboo.

  ‘For now,’ I told him, ‘you need this: they were watching every source of insulin in Lhasa, and this man tagged me, so it looks as if they either suspect or know that the subject is here in the town.’

  Short silence; it had rocked him, of course. ‘How did that happen?’

  ‘I think I know. But we’ll talk about it later. I’ve got to go now.’

  ‘Fourteen hundred,’ he said and rang off and I went out to the taxi.

  ‘Where go?’

  Told him north, I’d show him the way, got out some money, quite a lot. ‘Go very quick, understand?’

  The apothecary had given me a dozen new needles, 23-gauge one-inch Becton Dickinsons, and I pulled one off the strip and fitted it to the syringe.

  ‘You feel all right?’

  ‘Yes,’ Xingyu said. ‘But I was worried.’

  ‘I got delayed.’ Drew five cubic centimeters out of the ampoule, pressed out the air. I didn’t tell him he could save saved his worries if he’d just let me know he was out of insulin a bit sooner.

  ‘You do not look well,’ he said.

  ‘Touch of indigestion.’ Pulled the plunger, got no blood, put pressure on it.

  Everything had become very clear, sensitive. Head was throbbing and I was still out of breath from climbing the ladder, but even in the li
ght from the dirty windows things had a sharp outline and I could hear one of the monks chanting three floors below and could feel the plunger hit bottom before I pulled the needle out. Mental clarity was back too, heightened, the dance of conscious thought quick and colored.

  Put the plastic sheath back on the needle and dropped it into the waste box, pressed the cap on the syringe, everything orderly, the blood singing quietly through the veins, the beat of the heart strong and steady, vital signs, the vital signs that had come so close to getting cut off down there in the temple, and this was it, what it meant, this feeling of heightened awareness, I’ve had it before, it comes as a revelation when you realize that life is going on and not without you as you thought it must, were certain it would, the reek of cordite in the lungs and the crash of the last shot still roaring in the brain, the certainty of oblivion in the next breath and then the reprieve. It leaves you exalted for a little time, touched with grace.

  I put the box in the corner of the cell, underneath the pile of hides that Jiang had given us for extra warmth at night. ‘You know where it is,’ I told Xingyu. ‘If I’m absent at any time, remember where the stuff is, and do it yourself.’

  Exalted, touched with grace, but touched also with the guilt when the struggle has been to the death, though we mustn’t put it too dramatically, must we, but that was what it had been today, and the loser loses all, lying there in the dark with a rat’s carcass his fellow traveler to the shades of Lethe, I can never take a life without adding it to the little wooden crosses in the shadows of the mind, of the memory, I’m never free of them, never shall be.

  ‘What is that smell?’ Xingyu Baibing asked me.

  ‘Antiseptic. Where did you put your mask?’

  He finished buckling his belt and went across to a part of the wall where the plaster had broken away and left a hole that he’d covered with a bit of loose timber. . ‘In here.’

  He stood with his arms hanging by his sides, head turned to look at me, something in his eyes asking for my approval, and I was moved and it caught me unawares because nothing much can ever get through the scaly carapace of this man’s soul, moved by his attempt to play the espion, hiding things away, making my life easier.

  ‘A good place,’ I said. ‘I’d never think to look there.’

  ‘I washed it.’

  ‘And dried it completely?’

  ‘Yes. The Japanese gave instructions.’

  I went and sat down, my back against the wall. ‘We need to talk, Dr. Xingyu.’

  ‘Very well.’

  He squatted on the floor with his legs drawn up, the light catching his glasses as he looked at me. The chanting rose from below, many voices now, surrealistic m this great shadowed ruin, the voicing of lost souls.

  ‘In the town,’ I said, ‘I found out that the KCCPC suspect that you’re here in Lhasa.’ I didn’t tell him that when the body was found in the temple they’d know for certain. But it might not happen before we flew this man 10 Beijing. ‘Can you think why?’

  He went on watching me for a time, and then looked down.

  ‘I mentioned it,’ he said.

  I didn’t say anything for a moment. My tone would have to be perfectly normal when I spoke again, with no anger in it, no frustration. He was an astrophysicist, not an intelligence agent; he was also a man, by reputation, to say what was on his mind, even to the chiefs of government.

  ‘When did you mention it?’

  ‘When I was in the British embassy in Beijing.’

  It had been the only answer I could think of, when I’d known they were watching the sources for insulin, the KCCPC. I was certain we’d reached the airport at Gonggar clean, and that we hadn’t been followed, Xingyu and I, into the town: I’d checked thoroughly for surveillance. I’d even thought that one of the Chinese agents who’d seen the snatch outside the terminal in Hong Kong might have recognized me when we went through there later, on our way out to Chengdu; but if that had happened they’d have seized Xingyu on the spot. They hadn’t known. We’d pulled it off, Pepperidge and I, we’d got Xingyu Baibing through a whole regiment of the KCCPC and into Lhasa, clean. But he’d brought his own seed of destruction with him, like a bacillus in the blood.

  You told someone you might come here, if the Chinese allowed you to leave the embassy?”

  It was easier for him if I gave him questions, easier than having to tell me direct. He knew now what he’d done.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who was it? Who did you tell?’

  ‘One of the embassy staff. I think his name was Fellows.’

  A first secretary: they’d given me a list of people at the embassy when I’d gone through Clearance. Fellows was down as totally reliable; they all were, except for two counselors, Murray and Sleight, whose backgrounds were less well documented.

  ‘Fellows,’ I said, ‘didn’t give you away. Was there anyone else there at the time?’

  He took a little while. ‘Yes. We were in the cafeteria.’ Spreading his hands, ‘I was just talking, that was all.’

  And hadn’t known that when you’re talking about something sensitive you’ve got to make bloody sure you know who you’re talking to and that there’s nobody else around. He wasn’t an espion, that was the trouble with this man, he wasn’t one of us; he was just a normal human being with a brilliant reputation in science instead of secret intelligence and that was why he’d walked straight into the trap in Chengdu and I’d had to get him out again by giving him Bamboo, chapter and verse, filling his head with stuff that was going to blow us all into Christendom if they found him and put him under the light, and that was why he’d brought those KCCPC agents into Lhasa on our track, a whole cadre of them, specialists, assigned specifically to hunt him down and throw him into a cell and get all that stuff out of his head, finis, finito.

  ‘You were “just talking,”’ I said.

  I hadn’t meant to say it, hadn’t meant it to sound like that; I was furious, that was all. No excuse.

  ‘But of course.’ He’d raised his voice.

  ‘Never mind, let it go. It wasn’t Fellows, but someone else must have overheard it and passed it on, maybe not wen seeing the danger. It’s too late now, so don’t worry about it. But you’ve—’

  ‘How do you know the KCCPC think I am in Lhasa? How do you know that?’

  Gray light flashing across his glasses as he bent forward toward me. Furious too, furious with me, for Christ’s sale.

  ‘I told you, don’t worry. The thing—’

  ‘But you do not answer my question. You wish to accuse me of doing something wrong, but you will not answer my question. That is unjust.’

  Characteristic of the man: he’d ranted and raved about ‘justice to the Chinese government until they’d chased Mm into the embassy.

  ‘Dr. Xingyu, the important thing for you to remember—’

  ‘My question! My question!’

  ‘Keep your voice down, for God’s sake, don’t you realize—’

  ‘Answer my question,’ hissing it out now, ‘and tell me why you think the KCCPC—’

  ‘Because they were watching every single place where you can buy insulin - doesn’t that answer your question?’

  I came away from the wall and got on my knees to face him, close as I could, to stop him raising his voice again.

  ‘How do you know they were watching?’

  Patience, God give me patience. ‘Because one of them followed me.’

  ‘Perhaps you believed he was following you. You are always suspicious, because you are an intelligence officer, and you therefore believe—’

  ‘Dr. Xingyu,’ I leaned closer, ‘I was followed by a KCCPC agent and I led him into cover and when he tried to shoot me I killed him with my bare hands. Now will you understand that we are not playing games?’

  In a moment— ‘You killed him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That is terrible.’

  ‘Taking a life is always terrible, yes, but if this man had overpo
wered me I would have been taken to a cell and tortured until I told them where you are, and they would have come here for you. Now will you understand why we have to do things that are sometimes terrible? You must get a perspective on this.’

  He said nothing.

  I sat kneeling, as he was. We faced each other in the gray light from the windows, looking, I suppose, like two monks at their prayers.

  In a moment I said, ‘Your life is in danger, Dr. Xingyu, every minute. You must understand that. My government has committed me to protect you and defend you until you can go back to Beijing in a few days and lead your people toward the new democratic government that is their most fervent dream, and if you can bring perspective to bear,, you’ll see that the death of one junior officer of an organization that is the most ruthless enemy of the people was necessary. Terrible, but necessary.’

  After a time he raised his head and looked at me. ‘I am not very helpful to you, am I?’

  ‘You’re not trained in the field, that’s all.’

  ‘I am not used to violence.’

  ‘Not personally, no. But you can remember the violence in Tiananmen Square. Those are the people you have to fight. You have a reputation for being among the first to man the barricades, and you’ve got to understand that you’re there again now - these are the barricades.’

  In a moment, ‘Yes. I understand that.’

  ‘Good. You must also understand that when the KCCPC agent who followed me is reported missing, it’s going to look as if someone in fact bought some insulin, and managed to silence the agent. Have you ever used a gun?’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Have you ever fired a gun, on a practice range?”

  ‘Of course not.’

  His back had straightened. He was indignant.

  ‘Now that you know your life is in danger here, every minute, would you be prepared to fire a gun hi your own defense?’

  He looked from side to side, into the shadow, confused, hunted. ‘No. Of course not!’

  ‘All right. Don’t worry about it. But—’

  ‘Did you imagine I would be capable of such a thing?’