Quiller Bamboo q-15

by Adam Hall

  I gave it some more thought and said, 'Stay on the boat, then, but when Xingyu and I leave here we'll be on our own.'

  'Of course.' He put his notepad away and got up, rummaging in a zipped bag. 'It's going to help me, you see, if I can meet Xingyu and get to know him a little. I shall be better informed, more useful to you later. I brought this for you,' holding out a Kevlar vest.

  'Instructions?'

  'No,' he said, 'I won't insist on it.'

  'Those things worry me.'

  I believe that if you think you'll be bitten by a dog, you'll be bitten by a dog, though there's more to it than that. There's logic too: you'll behave differently when the heat's on, take unnecessary risks because you think you're protected, and besides, any professional is going to shoot for the head if he means to kill.

  'I'm sure you won't need it,' Pepperidge said, and stuffed it into the bag.

  There was a whistling in the air, threading its sound through the pelting of the rain on the roof of the cabin, a big jet lowering overhead on its approach path to Kaitak. We were southeast of there across the water, in Chai Wan Bay.

  I looked at my watch again. I would be leaving in nine minutes.

  'Synchronize?' Pepperidge said.

  'Yes.'

  The mouth still dry, everything settling now, becoming quiet in the mind as the ego accepted the inevitability of things, the understanding that it was too late to turn back, the feeling of being carried slowly by the force of one's own decision to the eye of the storm.

  This degree of gooseflesh surprised me a bit, but I suppose it was partly because there'd been two dead before I'd even reached the field.

  I gave Pepperidge the cable that London had sent to my hotel in Bombay: Mary and children arrive 9:12 pm on 11th, very much hope you can meet them. Doris.

  He put it away. 'Anything else?'

  Bombay hotel bill, air tickets from London to Hong Kong, a postcard I'd bought in Rangoon to look like a tourist. He put those away too. Everything in my wallet now identified me as a resident of Hong Kong: banks, credit cards, driving license; and London had given me shoes made in Kowloon and Hong Kong labels in my clothes.

  'That's all.' I said.

  'Then I won't keep you.' He picked up the phone and dialled and I got my soaked raincoat and put it on. 'You're in place?' he said into the phone, and listened for a moment and then put the receiver down and followed me as far as the deck and the pouring rain.

  'Piece of cake,' he said.

  I said that's right and went over the side onto the jetty.

  I counted twenty of them.

  Flight 206 was running late, with its arrival on the screen showing a twelve-minute delay: 9:24. I had asked about it at the check-in and they'd said there'd been head winds.

  At least twenty of them, possibly more: you can't always be sure. They were professionals, all of them, not just standing around in the gate area but keeping themselves busy, buying postcards, sitting with a paper and a cup of coffee, talking to children, ruffling their heads. I recognized them by their physique — compact, muscled, athletic — and by the way they glanced across people's faces, their eyes never resting, never showing interest, never glancing at one another. I recognized them by their shoes, which were rubber-soled, like mine, not leather, and by the way they sat, and stood, and walked, not because the difference between their way of doing it and the way ordinary people did it was very great, but because there was in fact a difference, a slight one, and because I'd watched people like these in a hundred airports, in a thousand streets, and knew them for my own kind.

  Twenty, then, at least, and there'd be more of them in the main hall and at the baggage claim and outside the terminal, professionals too but with less training or less natural aptitude, mobsters, if you like, dispersed throughout the environment to make a rush at any time if they were needed, piling themselves like fire ants on the flames if something went wrong.

  I'd been on the move since I'd come into the gate area, pacing from one end to the other in my soft grey cap and glasses to establish the image, checking my watch now and then because the flight was late and I was getting impatient. I walked with a soldierly pace, shoulders back and hands behind me, an umbrella tucked under one arm, a copy of the Hong Kong Times folded into a pocket and one end sticking out.

  Hong Kong Airlines Flight 47 to Macao will depart from Gate 3 in six minutes from now at 9:20. Will passengers please go to Gate No. 3 immediately.

  I could also see the two Chinese agents who would personally greet and escort Dr Xingyu Baibing on arrival. They were the only men in the contingent standing together and talking to each other; they were also immaculate in blue serge suits with lots of linen showing, their smart shoes polished right down to the rubber soles.

  I didn't know what their cover story was; they might say they were plainclothesmen from the Hong Kong Police Department, sent here to escort Dr Xingyu through the terminal in case he were recognized, in case the press might pester him; they would show him their official identity. Or they might say they were representatives of the Hong Kong Democracy for China Association, who would be honoured to entertain him during his stay. Whatever they said, he would accept it. Those were his instructions.

  Hyde had done a great deal of work, as I'd realized in Final Briefing, liaising by telephone with the British embassy in Beijing and four of the Bureau's sleepers who had gone into the embassy on routine errands. Xingyu had been shown photographs of me and given a detailed description; he'd listened to a tape of my voice. He'd been told precisely what he should do at every stage from his arrival at Gate 7 to taking his seat in the car outside: the car that I would be driving. He'd been put through an exhaustive rehearsal, using a plan of Hong Kong airport and photographs of the outside of the terminal alongside the baggage claim area. He'd been told what he must do if anything went wrong, if I or any of my three support people made a mistake.

  That musn't happen, because if it happened, Dr Xingyu Baibing would be kept overnight as a guest of the Kuo Chi Ching Pao Chu, the Chinese Intelligence Service, and given a shot of diazepam or one of the other benzodiazepene derivatives and taken back on the first morning flight to Beijing and put into a psychiatric ward for a few weeks and then propped up in front of the television cameras, I was wrong, declares hero of Chinese democratic movement in dramatic appearance on TV, I now realize that only through our resolute faith in the principles of Communism can we construct the future.

  This we must circumvent.

  Japan Airlines Flight 343 to Tokyo will depart from Gate 2 in ten minutes from now at 9:34.

  I took another stroll the length of the gate area and heard the faint roar of reversed engines from the main runway and tucked my umbrella more firmly under my arm and walked back as far as the telephones, standing within a few feet of a group of women in black silk with coloured beads in their hair and a travel agent holding a board marked Criterion and a pretty girl with calm eyes and wavy hair and a blue plaid rug over her legs in the wheelchair. No one was moving about anymore. The flashing red lamp on the top of the 747's cabin lit the windows as the jet slowed to the passenger tunnel, its thin whistle cutting through the walls.

  The timing was accurate: it had touched down at exactly 9:24, as scheduled by its adjusted ETA on the screen. It was a good portent; now that we'd got the head winds thing over, the rest of the evening would go smoothly.

  I suppose Pepperidge had watched this flight a few minutes ago, lowering across Chai Wan Bay and his little boat, and now he would possibly be praying. Does Pepperidge pray?

  We didn't move, any of us. We had friends to greet, wives, husbands, children, business associates, and Dr Xingyu Baibing. Accord him, Hyde had told me in London, appropriate honours while he is in your care. To the brave and desperate Chinese, he is the anointed one, the messiah.

  He was to be the last one off the plane, as agreed between London and Beijing when the deal had been struck; this was in case there were any photographers in the gate
area who might recognize him.

  The passengers began coming through.

  Certain amount of sweat on the skin, and the mouth drying again. I slowed my breathing, brought it under conscious control.

  People laughing as they went by, some of them stopping to hug, a little bunch of flowers falling, for a moment unnoticed.

  Pepperidge, waiting on his boat. Piece of cake.

  A flutter of Chinese schoolgirls in blue uniforms and prim velour hats, their laughter reminding one of bird calls. A thin beak-nosed Englishman in a crumpled tweed hat, just off the grouse moors, 'Hello, Bessie old thing!'

  Pepperidge waiting on his boat and in the signal room in Whitehall the kind of silence that always falls at a time like this, when the executive out there in the field has reached the phase when he will do it right or blow the mission off the board.

  They'd seen the flowers now, the little bunch of flowers, and someone was picking it up, 'Oh darling, thank you, how terrible of me but I was so excited to see you.'

  Then the line of people began thinning, and there were gaps, and a young Chinese came through carrying some kind of stringed instrument made of bamboo, then a lost-looking woman with tired eyes and too much lipstick, and no one to meet her, and then a short man in an overcoat and dark glasses.

  The messiah.

  Chapter 6: Flashpoint

  The baggage claim area was crowded: Flight 206 had been at least three-quarters full and the KCCPC contingent had moved down here and taken up stations around the walls, watching the carousel but not looking terribly like passengers, though it didn't matter: no one would notice.

  As soon as I'd seen the two Chinese escorts go up to Xingyu Baibing and show him their identity cards I'd gone into the toilet and left my coat and cap and umbrella and newspaper in one of the cubicles and then joined the passengers. The bags hadn't started coming through yet; I stood well back from the carousel, six or seven feet away from Xingyu Baibing. He hadn't seen me yet, hadn't looked around for me. Those were his instructions.

  One of my support people was in place near the exit doors to the pavement outside the terminal. He was a signaller, that was all.

  The two Chinese escorts were keeping close to Dr Xingyu, though not crowding him. They weren't expecting him to make a run for it; he'd convinced them that he believed they were friends. He didn't look like a messiah; he was short and wore an overcoat that sagged at the bottom; his shoes no one would call serviceable. The only thing about him you might notice was that his hands were big for such a short man; they hung at his sides. He talked to the two men, nodding sometimes, giving a little bow as they presumably paid him a compliment. They hadn't told him they were police officers; they were behaving much more like representatives from the Hong Kong Democracy for China Association, courteous to him, deferential. I found it refreshing to watch intelligence agents so sophisticated.

  The first bag came through the chute and flopped onto the carousel.

  I felt very good now. There wasn't one of the KCCPC people in the place who wouldn't have shot me dead with a silenced gun if they'd known who I was, why I was here. The odds against me were massive in terms of numbers, but I liked that; it honed the edge of things for me, brought me to the state of mind where I could work at my best, going into that strange mental zone where action becomes automatic, unimpeded by conscious thought.

  You'll need more than nine seconds.

  Not really.

  You must have timed it wrong. You'll need much —

  Shuddup.

  But these people are professionals, trained to kill —

  I said shuddup.

  Bloody little organism, always snivelling when it thinks it can smell trouble.

  'I get that for you?'

  An American, helping someone. A cardboard box with string around it came out of the chute, one side split open. I watched for my bag.

  Xingyu had been asked to pack two bags, one of his own containing junk supplied by the British embassy and one for me, also containing junk with a distinctive multicoloured stripe running lengthwise, so that I could recognise it easily on the carousel. It hadn't come around yet; nor had Xingyu's. I move a little closer to him; both bags should come onto the carousel at about the same time, since he would have checked them in together.

  They were speaking in Mandarin, he and his escorts, and he gave another little bow. Then I saw the bag with the stripes drop out of the chute and onto the carousel and I moved forward, passing Xingyu, watching the bag, checking the handle, swinging the bag across the side of the carousel and turning to face Xingyu as I made my way past him, giving him some time to study me while I looked past and beyond him, edging my way through the crowd.

  His instructions had been to the effect that the man who picked up that particular bag would be the agent from London, and that agent would take care of him from that point onward.

  The man over there by the exit door hadn't moved. He was waiting for Xingyu to get his own bag off the carousel. It hadn't come around yet, and I held back, letting a woman go past me, one of those with the pretty beads in her hair. Then I saw Xingyu move, nodding, and one of the escort people got a bag off the carousel and I turned my head and saw the man at the exit doors go outside and signal for the Jaguar.

  The timing was rather critical now: we were moving toward the flashpoint, toward the start of the nine-second phase. With a crowd this size it was easier, in a way, because of all the movement and the confusion; on the other hand I would have preferred a clearer path because I had to stay close to Xingyu now and keep up the same pace toward the doors.

  I was into the zone by this time: the light seemed a degree brighter, and images, edges, outlines were sharper; they were talking, to my ear, more loudly now, Xingyu and his two escorts.

  They went through the doors ahead of me. I had the bag in my hand. It was still raining outside, and people came across the roadway with umbrellas open, some of them with folded newspapers over their heads; there was a dog, yelping with excitement, soaked, shaking itself, and I heard a woman saying Frou-Frou to it, its name I suppose, you remember the little things as the time telescopes, moving you forward, perhaps because only the little things are unexpected, whereas the major components of the action are already familiar from the exhaustive mental rehearsal that's been going on for hours, days, Frou-Frou, she said, laughing because the dog was so excited about the rain, it was a Mercedes SL 20.

  It was standing immediately outside the curb. A Chinese in chauffeur's uniform was waiting with the rear passenger's door held open for Dr Xingyu Baibing. Another Mercedes was standing immediately behind with two men sitting inside. Behind the second Mercedes was the black Jaguar XJ6, the car I'd brought here, the one the man inside the doors of the terminal had signalled for a minute ago, a minute and a half. A man was at the wheel. He was Bureau. These Jags are lively; in Hong Kong you can hire cars like that from Exclusive Rental; you can even get a Rolls if you give them enough time. I put my bag down next to some others and stood waiting.

  Stood waiting for a few seconds, for the few seconds that were left before flashpoint, looking to my left for whoever it was that was meant to pick me up, though no one was meant to pick me up, we weren't going to do it like that. There were two green-uniformed policemen, one of them fifty feet away, the other closer but at the far end of the pedestrian crossing. That had been expected.

  We had foreseen in Final Briefing that the permutations were countless: Chinese Intelligence could have sent only one escort to meet Dr Xingyu, or three, or four; there could have been two men waiting with the Mercedes, or three, and more than two men sitting in the one parked behind it; there could have been fifty KCCPC people in the background, instead of the twenty or so that I'd counted, so forth. But the reality was containable; we could manage this.

  Dr Xingyu was getting into the rear of the Mercedes, the chauffeur still holding the door open for him. One of the escorts was taking the bag across the pavement to wait by the boot of the c
ar. The chauffeur slammed the door and came to the rear and opened the lid of the boot. The escort started to swing the bag inside.

  We had also decided in London that if the KCCPC contingent were to fire weapons, they wouldn't do it during the flashpoint period, because there would be policemen here, and other people, innocent people, some of them children, and from the negotiations between Prime Minister Thatcher, the Foreign Office, and the Chinese government, it had been made clear that both sides wanted to proceed in very low profile with Dr Xingyu's arrival in Hong Kong, and gunfire in a public place under the eye of the police could bring disastrous repercussions politically. If there were to be weapons fired, it would happen later, when perhaps there might seem a chance for the KCCPC agents to keep Dr Xingyu under their control, or failing that, to kill him.

  But the hairs were lifted a little on my arms: I could feel the gooseflesh, and my scalp was shrinking.

  I brought this for you.

  Holding out the Kevlar vest.

  Instructions?

  No. I won't insist on it.

  Those things worry me.

  But the nerves were still touchy because my body was exposed and vulnerable; and it sometimes happens that when action starts suddenly, someone panics. But don't imagine I had any regrets. I didn't have any conscious fear of a shot exploding in the flesh at this point; the nerves were just reacting to the primitive brainstem awareness of danger, of potential death.

  The man was swinging the bag into the boot of the Mercedes, and I watched him. The scene was still, frozen, because flashpoint was very close now. The brass locks of the bag glinted in the light, and I saw that a thread was hanging loose at one corner where the leather had started to split; I don't think I could have seen a detail as small as that from this distance in the ordinary way, but my vision was brilliantly clear as I watched the bag making its arc across the edge of the boot.

  For all of us, time is variable; it expands and contracts according to what we are doing. Nine seconds, in one sense, isn't long, when one has to do what I was here to do; in another sense it could seem — seemed, now to me — very long indeed, dangerously, fatally long, because I was exposed and alone here against these considerable forces, alone except for the man sitting along there at the wheel of the black Jaguar; but his instructions were to do nothing at all to help me, only to wait.