Assignment Peking

by Edward S. Aarons

  There were tears in her eyes.

  He spoke in English. "Don't cry, Jasmine."

  "You looked at my mouth. It's so ugly. All those little scars "

  He kissed her gently, deliberately. Her lips were cold under his. "Your mouth is beautiful."

  "You can still see . . . what was done to me "

  "We all have scars, Jasmine."

  She was shaking and looking at him with tortured bewilderment. "Oh, I think I'm going out of my mind! You sound like Sam, you touch me like Sam, but you look so —you're not "

  "I look like Major Shan Tze Peng."

  "Yes."

  "Are you the one who is to brief me?"

  "No. General Haystead will do that."

  "That son of a bitch?"

  "He is in command of the operation."

  "Over McFee? Over K Section?"

  "McFee sent me to get you. He's here in Taipei. He

  wants a private talk with you, because you've been loaned to the E Branch of the NSA."

  "And the KMT." He was angry again.

  "I wish "

  He waited, watching her.

  "McFee is upset about you," she said.

  "Why?"

  "I don't know. And Deirdre Padgett is here with him and she doesn't hide very much. She hates me."

  "Why do you think so?"

  "She's your real girl, isn't she?"

  He hesitated. "We've had a difference of opinion on the definition of love."

  "Well, she does hate me, because . . . because I'm flying into China with you. As your wife."

  He said, still trying to see behind her eyes, "Major Shan was not married. His wife in mainland China died."

  "Yes, but that's all been arranged. Papers were filed everywhere, properly dated. L-5 in Peking was notified a week ago. Shan married a local Taipei girl." She smiled without meaning. "That's me. It was done because I'm supposed to help you in Peking. You will need a woman there, and McFee thought I should be the one."

  He began to smile. "And Deirdre doesn't like this arrangement?"

  "Hardly," Jasmine said.

  "Let's go see them—McFee and Deirdre."

  "Yes. In a minute."

  He paused. "What is it?"

  She was near tears. "Don't you think my mouth is ugly? The scars "

  "I can't see them now, Jasmine."

  And he kissed her again.

  Four

  They went out in silence, he did not question her further. It was plain that the shock of seeing him transformed into a Chinese, into Shan Tze Peng, had thrown her off balance. He was aware of the quick, sidelong looks she gave him as they walked toward the car park beside the hotel. Jasmine did the driving. She talked then, about Washington, and how McFee had hired her as an analyst at No. 20 Annapolis Street, K Section's headquarters, and how she had spent some weeks at the Maryland "Farm" where K section people were trained in their specialties. She was proud of her record there. She spoke too quickly, telling about it in a high, unnatural voice that betrayed her excitement.

  The thought touched his mind that he should not and could not trust her. She had worked for Madame Hung's L-5 apparatus in Singapore; she was Chinese, and her political loyalties could be anything. True, K Section's psychiatric tests were not easily fooled. But this girl had extraordinary intelligence, a quick perception, a gift for landing on her feet. Born in San Francisco, she could still be loyal to Peking.

  Seated close beside her in the Humber she drove, he sensed her perfume, the womanly essence of her. He thought she was more than just desirable. He thought he would enjoy going into mainland China with her.

  The streets were crowded, but she drove through them expertly. The sun had set, and the sky held a bright lime-green color in the west. Lamps twinkled; gaudy neon signs in Chinese characters flashed on and off. The smells of cooking were everywhere. In the old section of the city she parked in an alley, fumbled in her white purse for a cigarette, and Durell lit it for her with a brass Mexican lighter. Her mouth still trembled.

  "We walk a bit," she said.

  "McFree doesn't like slums," Durell commented, looking at the poverty about them. "He's a fastidious little man."

  "But he and Deirdre are not supposed to be here. It's all unofficial. General Haystead made that plain."

  "Better and better," Durell said glumly.

  They walked out of the alley into the evening throngs on the streets. Jasmine was almost as tall as he. Her heels made steady clicking sounds as she moved her long legs. "I can't get over it," she said. "It's as if you are hidden somewhere under that Chinese face, Sam."

  "I certainly hope so."

  "But it's disturbing to me. Last year, in Singapore "

  "That was another time and place, Jasmine. And I wouldn't be alive today if it weren't for you."

  "You don't owe me anything," she murmured.

  They didn't have far to go. They turned up another alley and came to a brick wall with a red-painted wooden gate. Durell looked back at the street, but still could not spot anyone following them. Jasmine pulled on an iron chain, and somewhere beyond the gate a deep gong sounded. There was a click, and the way was opened for them. Inside was a formal garden, with stone lanterns shedding a soft yellow light on a trickling brook, circular stepping-stones, a glimmering house with squat columns and a broad flight of steps. It was, or had been, an old temple. Durell followed the tall girl into this other world, abruptly remote from the noise of the streets and alleys. He was not surprised by this place. Dickinson McFee was an unpredictable man.

  A white-coated Cantonese bowed and smiled in the elaborate doorway. "Welcome, Mr. Shan. Welcome, Miss Jasmine Jones. This way, please."

  Jasmine hung back. "You go alone. I think Deirdre would rather I weren't around."

  Durell followed the servant into a room in the back of the converted temple. There was a delicate scent in the air, a feeling of detachment from all the world. He remembered clearly when he had last seen Deirdre Padgett,

  and for a moment her image moved in him with remembered pain, despite all his efforts at indifference. They had been in love for many years, although he had often told her that it was too dangerous in his business to allow himself to grow vulnerable emotionally. He felt the enemy could always strike at him through her, through his love for her. And although they had discussed marriage, he had always withdrawn from that final step. He did not want her exposed to hurt or danger, either for herself or because of what might always happen to him. His own life, he thought, had long ago been forfeited to the enemy.

  Deirdre had met his objections with unswerving, total devotion. And then, against his wishes, she had joined K Section, first as a Control Resident in Rome, and then as General Dickinson McFee's personal aide and secretary.

  It was more than a year since they had seen each other now.

  He felt her presence in the room before he actually saw her. It had always been like that between them. He felt an inner shock that somehow he was able to control, and the words he wanted to speak were effectively checked. He turned to her with his new face bland and calm.

  "Hello, Dee."

  She stood very still, then whispered, "You are Major Shan."

  "You know me, Deirdre."

  "Yes, of course."

  She was not as tall as Jasmine, and her raven hair was immaculately done in a coronet and French knot. Her eyes, luminous and brilliant, regarded him with the same element of shock that Jasmine had exhibited. But something was missing. She did not smile. She did not walk closer to him. Her body, which he had come to know so intimately, was very still and remote. She wore a gold Pucci sheath that enhanced every fine line and curve of her figure.

  He smiled faintly. "Am I such a stranger, then, Deirdre? I know how I look, but "

  "It's not that."

  "What is it, then? Jasmine thinks "

  "Jasmine? No. Yes. A little. But you have your orders."

  "Jasmine is a fine girl," he said.

  "Yes."
r />   "But there's something else."

  "You and General Haystead—McFee is concerned."

  "About what?"

  "He'll tell you. This way."

  They hadn't touched or kissed or expressed intimacy in any way. He kept his face blank as she turned and led him through other rooms of the silent, elegant house. Through a back door, she walked into a garden, and on a bench beside a pool shadowed by tall oleanders and hibiscus, he saw Genral McFee.

  The chief of K Section, who was as much a mystery to Durell after all these years as he was to most of the intelligence world, looked small and gray and relatively innocuous, with his knobby blackthorn stick upright between his knees. Durell knew that lethal stick, with the poisoned dart at its tip and the explosives and knives built into it by the gadget boys in K Section's lab. He had been threatened by it once, and he never knew, even today, if McFee had been bluffing. It sometimes seemed to him that McFee was the one man he'd ever met who had no soul or conscience.

  The gray eyes in the gray face of the gray man regarded him without depth or meaning, and when McFee spoke Mandarin it was with superb elegance. "Mr. Shan, of course. And you are surprised to see me in Taipei?"

  "Pleasantly surprised, sir."

  "I do travel occasionally, Mr. Shan, when the situation is grave enough to warrant it."

  Durell waited. Brilliantly colored birds in bamboo cages hung about the garden sang their evening songs. He watched Deirdre move almost protectively to a position behind McFee. Her eyes, too, were blank and hostile.

  "Is something wrong, sir?" he asked quietly. "I didn't ask for this assignment, you remember. I don't like having to change the way I am. There are a lot of things about this affair that I don't trust or understand "

  "Exactly."

  "And you don't trust me, General?"

  "No. I do not."

  "To do the job satisfactorily?"

  "It is a situation," McFee said precisely, "that has placed you, myself, and perhaps the world in the gravest danger. You are under Haystead's orders. Nothing I could do back in Washington could countermand that." McFee almost smiled. Not quite. "Even / am neither omniscient nor omnipotent, whatever the image I may project."

  "I still don't understand."

  "It's quite simple. I had you brought here for only a few brief words and they are this. In the course of your projected work ahead, you may find that you and I are in total disagreement as to procedure. You will have to make a grave decision. I shall not influence you one way or another. I can give you no orders." McFee paused and looked at him with eyes as cold as Antarctic ice.

  Durell remained silent.

  "Have you ever heard of the Six Sentinels?"

  "No, sir."

  "You are sure?"

  "Yes, sir, I am sure. As for doubting my loyalty to you "

  "I know your loyalties, Cajun." McFee's voice changed very subtly. "You pretend to be indifferent to all but the job at hand. It's your profession. Under its rules, you know the risks you have taken, the dangers you have welcomed, to do what you felt was in accord with your principles. You are a Puritan, Samuel, and a patriot. You ask for no bugles or medals for the work you do, and you pretend to scorn them. You would be the first to deny your dedication to the free world. And perhaps," McFee sighed, "all this is a fault."

  Durell looked at Deirdre. Still remote, she seemed to him the loveliest and most desirable woman in the world; and he had met and known many marvelous women. He

  was touched by anger, shock, and a lack of comprehension. He came to no decisions. He felt the unfamiliar contours of his strange face and wondered how deep the change in him had really been effected.

  "Who are the Six Sentinels, sir? I don't even know yet what my job is to be. Chu flies me to China tomorrow. Now I understand that Jasmine goes with me. What am I to do or accomplish in Peking?"

  McFee waved a hand in dismissal. "Haystead will tell you all that."

  For one of the rare times in his life, Durell felt utterly at a loss. He felt betrayed by the hostility emanating from Deirdre and McFee. It didn't make sense. He had done nothing but obey orders, blindly and reluctantly, in this instance. His instincts, he reflected numbly, had been right after all. There was something in this particular job that went far beyond anything he had been ordered to do in the past. A sense of enormous darkness and danger touched his mind. He looked at Deirdre, but she stood silently, impassive, lovely and cool and distant, behind McFee.

  "I know you won't tell me more," he said quietly, "for reasons of your own. I can only promise that I'll do what I think is best. I want help from you, some direction, but it's obviously not forthcoming."

  "We cannot help you, Sam. We don't know enough ourselves to advise you on what may come of this affair." McFee stood up. He kept his lethal blackthorn stick ready in his hand. "All I can do is warn you that nothing in the coming weeks will be what it appears. In a way, I'm depending on you to learn, without the prejudice of absorbing my own opinions as to what is going on, the truth of certain suspicious dangers that have come to my attention without the slightest hard core of verification. And that is all."

  He was being dismissed. "When do I see General Hay-stead?"

  "Now. Jasmine will take you there."

  "And what am I to report to him?"

  "You are under Haystead's orders now," said McFee.

  His eyes were like gray stones as he looked at Durell. And then he turned away. For a moment Durell thought that Deirdre hesitated. But then she left without looking back at him.

  Five

  General harry haystead was one of those brilliant young Air Force generals considered a maverick by the majority of his fellow officers, too outspoken to be regarded with ease by the Washington establishment, and yet possessed of .a dynamic drive and private influence that made him seem untouchable.

  Jasmine drove Durell down into the center of the shopping district, among restaurants featuring Peking duck and Cantonese cooking, past food stalls where vendors sold dumplings and noodles, and then into a quiet street of American business branch offices. Most were already closed and dark for the day, but before I.P.S. Electronics she parked and sat still for a moment.

  "I gather McFee really disturbed you, Sam."

  "Yes, he did."

  "And Deirdre?"

  "I don't know what to make of it. I feel as if I'm being used, but I don't know how or why."

  "Deirdre loves you, Sam. Desperately."

  He said flatly, "I doubt that. Let's go."

  General Haystead was waiting behind a broad, immaculate steel desk in a back office of the modern building. Durell knew that I.P.S. was a front for the National Security Agency's electronic warfare branch for espionage equipment. Most of the spy ships of the Navy were equipped with NSA gadgets and were virtually under the command of that agency's people. Electronic gadgetry could perform miracles in gathering, collating, synthesizing and analyzing an enormous multitude of data on enemy and friendly nations' industrial, economic, and

  military capacities. In a sense, the two or three power spheres of the world and their allies now enjoyed electronic and counterelectronic battles that the people of the world did not even dream about.

  Haystead snapped an immaculate cuff back, looked at a complicated wristwatch, and said, "Five minutes late. Not too bad, considering you have a reputation for individualistic behavior. You will have to remedy that trait on this job, Durell."

  "My name is Major Shan, sir," Durell said.

  "Yes, yes. But we're safe here. No bugs, and nothing outside to pinpoint this room and pick up what we say. We're completely shielded, I guarantee it. Sit down."

  Durell remained standing, his eyes giving nothing away to the uniformed man. Jasmine stood by the door. For Haystead, she did not exist. But then, nothing mattered to the general but his passion for the immediate job at hand. Everything about him betrayed a dynamic intensity that could be contagious to anyone but Durell. No one could doubt Haystead's patriotism, if the dr
aped flags behind his desk and the massed ribbons on his chest meant anything. Durell had read enough of the man's published speeches to patriotic organizations and corporate conventions to know that with Haystead his country and its safety came first, guiding everything he did.

  Haystead was one of the younger generation of generals whose work was practically autonomous, dealing as he did with highly classified electronic espionage. He moved briskly, cleanly, and Durell noticed his strong, immaculately scrubbed, stubby hands as he took dossier files from a desk drawer and neatly squared them on his blotter. Haystead had a round, clipped head of prematurely gray, grizzled hair, a flat face that was hard and uncompromising, and pale gray eyes that were almost too intense. About forty, he looked ten years younger. He gave the impression of limitless energy as he jerked his chin up and stared at Durell.

  "I asked you to sit down," he snapped.

  "I prefer to stand, General Haystead."

  "I am not accustomed "

  "And I am not under military orders, sir."

  "Yes. Too bad. Well . . ." His eyes, if possible, grew colder. "What do you know about the Nationalist general, Chien Y-Wu?" he snapped.

  Durell's memory was triggered by the name. "General Chien went on an unauthorized flight over the mainland and was shot down, lost, or killed. Or defected. I saw a memo in my department to that effect about two months ago."

  "Last July 21, to be exact. The flight was not unauthorized. Chien worked for us. By that I mean he had a position with the KMT here, of course, but he was under my orders, and I'm the man who sent him into China."

  "I see," Durell said.

  "Do you? A man has to admit mistakes, Durell—or Shan, or however you think of yourself now. I made a mistake with General Chien. But he was a genius, you know. He was great with our electronic data-gathering equipment. He knew enough "

  "I see," Durell said. "And Peking has him now. He isn't dead."

  "Right."

  "A prisoner?"

  "We have reason to believe that his stay in Peking is not an unwilling one. We think he's been shooting his mouth off, to put it plainly. A big loose lip that can cost us plenty." Haystead's voice grated bitterly. "He's living in high style in a top-security Peking house with L-5 men all around him. We can't get a man near him. We've lost two so far just trying."