by Adam Hall
‘No. But I want a contact to make a letter-drop. One man.’
‘Look, you can have more than -‘
‘One. One man.’
Hesitation, then, ‘All right. Got a pencil?’
‘Yes.’ I reached for the phone pad.
‘His name’s Westerby. He’s at 734-49206.’
‘Description?’
‘Thirty, five-eleven, thirteen stone, dark brown hair, brown eyes.’
‘I’ve got that. Give me a backup.’
‘Lee Yeo. Asian. He’s at -‘
‘No. Caucasian.’
‘All right.’ Short pause, the scuffing of paper. ‘Veneker, at 734-289039. Thirty-five, five-ten, eleven stone, black hair, dark blue eyes, a san-dan in Shotokan.’
‘That’s all I need,’ I told him.
‘Look, I’ll man this phone nonstop. You’ve got immediate access.’
‘Don’t lose any sleep.’ Because I knew how he felt: he’d handed me a mission and after twelve days I was trapped and set up for the kill and although it wasn’t his fault he knew the situation, knew it of old. It’s the time when the laughter stops.
I pressed the contact and dialled for Westerby and got the ringing tone and waited.
Clock. Nineteen minutes to go.
Went on ringing, wasn’t there.
Jesus Christ, this wouldn’t have done for the Bureau.
I dialled for Veneker and got the ringing tone again and waited again, Al talking to the three Asians, they were showing him a swatch of raw silk, the TV flickering above the bar, Mary came straight round here the minute she heard, hut Cindy was aver at the ball-game with Bob and we couldn’t give her the news, they’d never get their fucking lives worked out, went on ringing — ‘Hello?’
‘Veneker?’
‘Yes.’
‘Jordan.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I want you to come to the Red Orchid Hotel in Chong Street, just of Boat Quay in Chinatown. It’s in a —’
‘I know where it is.’
‘All right, how soon can you be here?’
‘Ten minutes.’
Running it bloody close, wished I hadn’t said it, wished I’d called it off, 'Oh, yes.'
‘In this rain?’
‘Yes, sir. Ten minutes it is.’
‘Bring a suitcase or something, look like a tourist and register at the desk - I’ll make contact immediately afterwards.’
‘Got it.’
‘Synchronise watches at 20:05 hours.’
‘20:05.’
If you can’t make it on time, stay away. You’ll be coming through heavy surveillance.’
‘Understood, sir. But I’ll be there.’
I put the receiver down and asked Al for some paper and an envelope; then I centred for a moment to slow the adrenalin but the nerves were humming with it and I walked out of the bar and through the lobby and up the stairs, climbing them slowly, steadily, counting them as a mental exercise to keep the left brain occupied while I went through the next sixteen minutes, checking to see if there was anything else that should be done and coming up blank — everything was done, the fuse had been lit and it was burning.
Fifteen stairs and a Chinese woman on the second floor, carrying a child, Lily coming along from my room on the third. You eat here tonight, Mr. Jordan?’
‘I don’t know,’ I told her, didn’t know what was going to happen tonight, could be anything, life, death, the wire biting deep or the courtyard coming up, spinning slowly, they say you never cry out, maybe the air rush, or of course the dawn and no conclusion - he’d take his time, make certain of me, no hurry.
Negative dunking, yes, all right, try it this way, with a bit of luck I might turn it into an overkill, catch him off balance and use a sweep or get to his throat, whatever, blow his world away instead of mine.
Whistling.
Fifth floor and the rain drumming on the roof, a crack of yellow sky through a window again like a rat on a treadmill until it was nineteen minutes past the hour and then I went down to the lobby and walked past the man registering at the desk without looking at him, going into the short passage that led to the courtyard at the rear, turning, waiting.
Al was writing in the big book with its worn soiled cover and its oxidised gold tassel, a gesture to elegance, a suggestion that was in fact the Mandarin Oriental and not a sleazy doss-house on the waterfront, writing in the book, dear Christ, we haven’t got time for dial, but then it has to be done because the shutters don’t fit exactly across the windows and they’re watching him now, the man at the desk, just as they’ve been watching me for the last hour from the doorways opposite.
Two minute to go. Two. Not long but within the critical time-frame; centre and relax.
The doors banged open and someone came into the lobby from the street and I froze and waited for them to move into sight, a woman with a dog in her arms, middle-aged, Caucasian, discount.
‘Okay,’ Al said to the man at the desk, ‘you need a hand with the bag?’
‘No.’
Early thirties, five-ten, eleven or twelve, black hair, dark blue eyes, his raincoat soaked, he’d walked here, quicker, no cabs available but got here in time, good as his word, a san-dan in Shotokan, to be expected.
He picked up his bag and turned and saw me and I made a signal and he came into the passage, an easy stride, confident.
‘Veneker.’
‘Jordan.’
‘Nice weather for ducks.’
I gave him the envelope. ‘Take this to the airport and leave it at the Hertz counter, to be picked up by this man, who’s flying in tonight.’
‘That’s all?’
‘Yes.’ I gave him the keys of the car. ‘Toyota, parked in shadow. Don’t be seen getting into it, and in this rain you’ll keep the windows shut anyway. If you’re followed, try and lose them, but don’t try too hard: they won’t let you.’
He stood with his feet apart, balanced, tapping the envelope on the knuckle of his thumb, some of the tension in him coming off because he’d expected something a lot more dangerous than this.
‘Roger. Once out of the car, sir, do I try and lose them? Going through the terminal?’ A beat. ‘I’m quick off the mark.’
‘Again, try to lose them but don’t.’
‘And once I’ve done the drop?’
‘Fade. They won’t be interested in you after that.’
I sensed his hesitation as he stared at the name on the envelope, Harrison, J. MacKenzie. He was wondering why I was doing a drop in a public place and involving other people, and what would happen when the surveillance team asked for the envelope.
But they wouldn’t.
‘Okay, sir. Do I report back to Cheltenham?’
‘I’ll do that.’ I checked my watch. ‘You’ve got less than two minutes. Leave the bag here.’
He put it down. ‘Do I go out by -‘
‘No, this way.’
I took him past the kitchen and into the courtyard at the rear. Rain in the lamplight, falling straight down, smelling of steel.
‘Use that door in the wall across there. The car’s on the other side.’
Toyota.’
‘Right.’
He slipped the envelope into his mac and gave me a sudden straight look. ‘You be all right, will you?’
‘Never say the.’
He nodded and ducked through the rain towards the door.
I turned back into the hotel and went along the passage, picking up his bag and putting it behind the desk, and that was when the heavy booming sound came and the slats in the shutters were lit with a white flash and I stood with my eyes squeezed shut - no, oh no, Mother of God forgive me.
CHAPTER 17
CRUCIFIX
Rain on the roof. Underneath its sound I listened to the silence, tuning the rain out, listening to the silence. But even then I was picking up small sounds that came into the silence and faded: a distant voice on another floor of the hotel; a door shutting; the f
ar faint note of a ship’s siren from the river.
It was necessary, vital, to keep the steady drumming of the rain tuned out and to identify every small sound in the undertow of the silence, because he would come for me barefoot, and my only chance, here on the fifth floor, would be the ability to catch any slight sound he might make: the creak of a floorboard, the rustle of his sleeves as he brought his arms up in the final instant, the jerk of his breath.
Dark - pitch dark.
The lights had been burning when I’d reached here, halfway along the corridor, a minute ago, four dim bulbs under dusty silk shades with burn-marks on them. Now they were dark. The switch was not in the corridor, but round the corner by the stair well. That was how I knew he was there: he needed the dark.
Dead man’s shoes.
In the last few seconds I suppose he’d make a rush and all I’d know about it would be the sudden change in the air pressure and the breath blocking in his throat and the hot sharp bite of the wire before I could She moved.
The rain drumming, louder here than in the other place, would Al find the bag behind the desk?
In a dead man’s shoes, dear Mother of God.
Stirred beside me.
He came at me in a flash and I screamed The hands of a child, still.
‘Fuckee, fuckee?’
Her small pointed breasts against me, the smell of her as she moved close and held onto me, not held me, held onto me, there’s a difference.
‘No,’ I said and drew a long breath and lay still, listening to the only sound that had crossed the bridge of nightmare into reality: the rain on the roof, louder here because it was falling on corrugated iron, and maybe that was why she was frightened, and would also be frightened of thunder.
So I put my arms round her, bring her child’s body curving into the arch of my own. She mistook me and opened her legs and began moving, and I whispered, ‘No, Chu-Chu, no fuckee.’
‘No?’
‘You must sleep,’ I said. She stopped moving and held me now in a different way, not dutifully like a prostitute but almost tenderly, for her: there’d been no tenderness for her to receive or express for a long time, I suppose, in the refugee camp, unless Chen had thought it necessary to teach her again, in between the fuckee.
At some time in the next few minutes she fell asleep, her head in the hollow of my shoulder, and I forgot about her and the rage came back, the self-rage, scalding, because when I’d walked out of the Red Orchid it had been in a dead man’s shoes: Veneker’s.
I hadn’t been thinking.
It was like a dog-pack tearing at my throat, the guilt, I couldn’t shake it off. Sleep was the only anodyne, and even then I saw it again, the white flash in the slats of the shutters, heard it again, the dull booming, and Al’s voice, startled, what was that, for Christ’s sake?
Veneker.
You be all right, will you?
He’d been thinking of me, of my welfare, knowing that I was in the middle of massive surveillance and knowing from Pepperidge that I was up against Shoda - he’d hesitated, hadn’t liked leaving me there on my own, Veneker, a man used to helping people out, getting them through if he could, I’d known men like that and he was one of them and it was my honour, my everlasting privilege, and all I’d done for him was send him straight into a booby-trap and let him get blown apart, oh Mother of God have mercy on my soul.
Chen had seen the rage, felt it. ‘So what happened?’
‘Wheel came off.’
He’d told me to come in, shut the metal door and reset the alarm. ‘A wheel came off?”
Bureau idiom. ‘Someone got killed.’ Very intense, and he stared at me with his lidless eyes and decided not to say anything more. He was tense himself, shut-faced, and I said, ‘Sorry about your friend.’ The co-pilot of Flight 306.
‘You went out there, didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘What was - I mean did he look -‘ and I waited, then he said, ‘what the fuck difference does it make? Come on upstairs.’
In the huge cluttered room he asked me, ‘What did you come here for, Jordan?’
‘Shelter.’
‘From the rain?’
‘From people.’
‘Shoda’s people?’
‘Yes.’
‘You mean you want a safe-house?’
‘Call it that. For a few days.’
He angled his narrow head, thinking, watching me. ‘I’m due out on a flight in an hour, but you can stay if you want. Guess you could use a shower. Hang your things over there - they’ll be dry by morning; this place is watertight.’
When I came back he gave me a worn silk robe; it smelt of opium. ‘Some things you’ll have to do for me while you’re here, okay?’
‘Whatever you say.’
He was still watching me, considering. ‘When that flight went down, you must have thought I was in on it, right?’
‘It occurred to me.’
‘I’ll bet. Now you know different, or you wouldn’t be here.’
‘Katie told me about your friend.’ Pepperidge had also cleared him: I’ve done the necessary homework.
Chen looked at the aircraft chronometer on the desk. ‘Sure.’ Head on one side. ‘You’re putting a whole lot of trust in me, right?’
‘I don’t think it’s misplaced.’
‘But if it is, you’re dead.’
‘Correct.’
‘There’s no particular reason,’ he said casually, ‘why I should drop you in the shit, but if I find a reason that’s what I’m going to do. You don’t have anything to worry over so long as what you’ve told me about you is true. You’re also okay by Katie.’ He got one of his black cigarettes and lit up. ‘Just spelling it out for you, because I have to trust you too, if you’re staying here in my absence.’ Blew out smoke, watching it. ‘I’m not talking about little Chu-Chu, so long as you’re gentle with her - she’s only a kid. But feel free. I’m talking -‘
‘She’d have stayed here alone, if I hadn’t come?’
‘She’s learned life the hard way. She can take care of herself ‘Is anyone likely to come here?’
‘Nope. If anyone rings the bell - that’s just figurative -she’ll deal with the situation. You won’t be disturbed. What I was saying was, I’m going to trust you with one or two things you can do for me that wouldn’t get done if you weren’t here, because she doesn’t speak English, maybe a couple of words.’ We were sitting on two of the leather-covered tabourets, and a coin fell out of his pocket as he reached for a notebook; he picked it up and wrote in the book and tore out the page and gave it to me. ‘That’s where you can call me, in Laos. There’s an answering-machine over there, and I want you to monitor calls, okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘There won’t be too many, nothing social - this place is a kind of safe-house for me too, as I guess you know. But if there’s anything that sounds urgent, call me.’
‘Will do.’
He nodded. ‘When did you eat?’
‘God knows.’
Let’s have a snort!
‘They been giving you a hard time?”
‘Not as hard as it could’ve been.’ Another wave of guilt, hot and overpowering. The hard time had been for Veneker.
Chen left another telephone number with me; it was punched out on an embossed strip and stuck to the side of the Autocall machine.
‘I should be back in a couple of days, Tuesday some time. If I don’t show up by Wednesday, or haven’t contacted you here, call this number and tell them I’m overdue, okay?’ He was stuffing a Walther P38 into his airline bag. ‘This trip I’m not sure what’s going to happen.’ He zipped the bag shut. ‘If you want to leave here before then, that’s okay. And she’ll be fine on her own. Take care.’
That had been hours ago and now she rested like the child she was, curved against me with one thin arm around me, her breathing as soft as a young animal’s. I slept again, and the next time I woke it was because of the silence. The rain
had stopped and it was almost first light.
She stirred.
‘Johnny?’
‘No. He’ll be back soon.’
She drew herself up against the pillows, and when it was light enough to see her face I said, ‘Can you smell smoke, Chu-Chu?’
She watched me quietly, that was all.
‘I can smell smoke,’ I told her. ‘I think this place is on fire.’
She didn’t turn her head to look anywhere.
‘Are there any extinguishers here, Chu-Chu? We don’t want to be burned alive.’
She gazed at me with soft and uncomprehending eyes, and I knew it was all right to call Pepperidge.
‘Veneker’s dead.’
Short silence, and I heard something being knocked over, alarm clock or something. Over there it was eleven o’clock last night and maybe he was trying to conserve sleep in case I needed him.
‘What happened?’
‘They rigged a bomb. I should have thought of that.’
‘Can’t think of everything. You -‘
'Then I bloody well should have.’
In a moment he said quietly, ‘You’ve got a war on. We have to expect casualties.’
I got control again. ‘He didn’t know a thing, of course.’ Desperate for consolation.
‘Best way to go. But I don’t understand. That doesn’t sound like Kishnar.’
‘No. It must have been one of the surveillance people. I’d left a car standing outside, and they assumed I’d use it again.’
‘And he got in.’
‘Yes.’
It had been a thin chance but any chance had been worth taking, so I’d worked it out: Veneker would get into the car without being seen and drive to the airport. They’d tag him there and when he was under the bright lights they’d see it wasn’t me, but by that time it would be too late because they’d have been drawn away from the Red Orchid and I could have walked out when I wanted to, and that’s what I’d done, but in a dead man’s shoes.
‘It was obviously a temptation for them,’ Pepperidge said.
‘They must have been mad.’ Shoda had wanted absolute discretion and had sent a soft-hit agent to take care of me with no fuss and no trace and she’d have that man’s life when she heard about this, have his neck under a sword, because this time it wasn’t going to be kept out of the papers and Veneker would be identified and she’d know I’d got clear and gone to ground, have his neck, another little shred of consolation, an eye for an eye, so forth.
