Quiller Bamboo q-15

by Adam Hall

  So Trotter had used the Bureau.

  Had used me.

  Our aims are the same, my dear fellow, I do hope you understand.

  The same, up to a point. Not just as far as getting Xingyu out of Tibet, not just as far as getting him into Beijing and through the streets and into the Great Hall of the People, but to the very point when the lights would come on and the cameras start rolling and he would appear on the television screens right across the nation.

  And speak not for democracy but for the new Communism under Xu Yun as its leader.

  Sat very still, shutting my eyes, absorbing the light of revelation.

  I do hope you understand, my dear fellow.

  Yes, I think so.

  He'd wanted, as we had, to put this man on the television screens — but with a robot's brain.

  'When they came for you at the monastery, Baibing, was Mr Trotter there?'

  'Yes.'

  'And what did he say to you?'

  'That I would not be hurt.'

  'I see.'

  The object had not of course been to hurt Xingyu Baibing but to keep him sequestered in the temple and subjected to intensive brainwashing, probably under the influence of a hypnogenic drug from Dr Chen's little black bag.

  'Did they give you an injection? I don't mean insulin.'

  'I don't remember.'

  It wasn't important; it would simply have been useful to know what kind of change I was dealing with: psychochemical or hypnotic.

  'Did Mr Trotter tell you that he'd be letting you go free?'

  Hesitation again, quite pronounced this time. 'He said I would be returned to your protection.'

  'Yes, I see.'

  He was, then, to have been released in such a way that I would 'discover' him and take him somewhere to safety and finally to Beijing, the same man but not with the same mission.

  And then I'd mucked everything up for Mr Trotter by deciding to get in his way and find Xingyu for myself.

  I do hope you understand, my dear fellow.

  Actually yes.

  'Were you given posthypnotic instructions, Baibing?'

  I don't know what he would have said because the radio crackled and Pepperidge came on and I acknowledged and began listening.

  Chapter 26: Shadow

  'What is your situation?'

  'They're closer,' I told him.

  I watched the ragged line of light in the valley below.

  'By how much?'

  'Half a mile, a mile, it's difficult to tell.'

  'Are they looking for you, or Xingyu Baibing? Or both?'

  I thought about that. 'The military were alerted by two things, the fire in the temple and someone shooting at us from a Beijing jeep behind us. I think Trotter could have been hi the jeep, alone or with one of his hit men. Or it could have been just a hit man, or two of them. I think Trotter was probably injured by the bombs, could be dead by now.'

  The line of light seemed to be breaking up in one or two places. Either one or two of the soldiers were moving up faster than the rest because of easier ground, or the officer in command had ordered probes to move directly into the hills to search the caves.

  I didn't report this. I wasn't certain yet.

  'What might have happened,' I said into the radio, 'is that the military caught whoever was firing at me from the jeep, and put him straight under interrogation.'

  'And he told them you were somewhere in the area?'

  'Yes, with Xingyu. They wouldn't have mounted a search on this scale for me alone. The police and the PSB agents are looking for me, but not the army.'

  I waited.

  My position was not good; it was probably lethal; but I preferred it to what Pepperidge was going through. He'd been pleased to take this one on, had been courteous enough to say he'd be honoured to direct me in the field, and we'd done well together, got the Chinese Communist government's most dangerous political opponent through the trap in Hong Kong and the trap in Chengdu and got him into hiding. Then Trotter and his private cell had moved in and the objective for Bamboo had changed totally. It wasn't that we could no longer hope to fly Xingyu into the Chinese capital: we no longer wanted to. It was the last thing we must do. All that was left of the mission was a static rearguard action outnumbered by something like ISO to one, and my final instructions from London would simply be to save this man's life if I could.

  I did not envy my director in the field. He was talking to, me from this lonely room in that shabby hotel, the link between London Control and his beleaguered executive trapped in a mountain cave in Tibet, with no further objective except to survive.

  His voice, of course, was perfectly steady, and that helped.

  'They haven't brought helicopters in?'

  'God forbid.'

  'Quite so. But if they do, please report at once.'

  'Understood.'

  'Have you explored the cave?'

  'Yes. There's no hiding place.'

  'Will you decide to leave there, do you think, since the search is closing on you?'

  'Yes, unless there's something you can do.'

  Better to be overtaken in the open and on the run than raked out of a hole like a couple of bloody badgers.

  In a moment: 'I signalled you to tell you that London has been very active indeed since I reported our predicament. Through the embassy in Beijing and our courier line they have contacted General Yang.'

  'Yang?'

  'He is the commander who would have supported Xingyu Baibing's television appearance with a tank corps in Tiananmen Square. He was told of Dr Xingyu's critical situation and agreed to send one of his colonels immediately to Gonggar airport to see if anything can be done.' There was a crackle of static suddenly and then his voice came in again. 'Was… course… originally hoped that he might be able to help us get the subject to Beijing, until you reported that he has been compromised.' Read brainwashed. 'If the colonel can do anything now — his name his Zhou — it will be to attempt to rescue both of you from the cave. London reports that he has already left Beijing in a MiG 23 fighter-bomber and should arrive Gonggar in a little less than two hours. I have no information on what he will do then, but I assume he'll use his rank and try to halt the search that is now in progress. But that is conjecture.'

  I didn't answer immediately. It would be pleasant to catch some gleam of hope in what London had set in motion, but it would also be indefensible. If there was going to be any chance Of getting this man out alive it could only be taken by a strictly cool appraisal of the facts, and I didn't believe that a tactical fighter-bomber now airborne over central China could have any real connection with the line of soldiers less than two miles from where I was crouched at the cave mouth.

  Pressed to transmit. 'I wish the colonel a pleasant journey.'

  Regretted it immediately but of course too late.

  'We must not despair, my friend. We must not despair.'

  'Noted.'

  Static again and I looked down into the valley, but there was no helicopter in sight. I think another military vehicle had moved in, a big one, and it could be that.

  'How is the subject bearing up?'

  'He's all right physically, but not totally all there, doesn't really know what's going on. I think he was still under drugs when I got him out of the temple.'

  'Structions… Lond… as possible…'

  'There's some static. I didn't get — oh, Christ.'

  Bright flood of light fanning suddenly across the scree down there from the vehicle that had just moved in.

  'Information?'

  'They've brought in a mobile searchlight.'

  'Will that affect your position?'

  'Not directly, it's down there by the road. There's a lot of terrain to cover and they obviously don't think anyone could have got as far as the caves. But it means they're dead set on finding us, throwing everything in but the kitchen sink. Did you say something about instructions?'

  The huge light beam swung slowly across and a
cross the landscape, the soldiers moving in like insects, hundreds of them, hundreds, silver-green because of the light on their uniforms and throwing long black shadows. They'd make better headway now, could see where they were going.

  'Yes. Your instructions from Control are to protect the subject as far as humanly possible. That is your final objective.'

  Poor little bugger, sitting there dreaming about his bloody windmills, a fine man, he'd been a fine man before that black-bearded bloody maniac had gone to work on him.

  Said I understood.

  'I'm in constant signals with Control, of course,' the tone cheerful, rallying.

  'Good-o.' But they couldn't do anything now, they could do nothing. 'Look, I'm going to take him higher into the hills, all right?' The snow had given over and the sky was clearing and I'd be able to get a fix on Polaris when we went into the open. 'I'm going to head due north, so if that colonel wants to know where to find us we'll be somewhere along that line.' He'd already got a bearing on the cave.

  In a moment, 'Can you wait another thirty minutes before you leave cover?'

  I looked down into the valley. The soldiers were making better headway but there were no probes breaking their line yet.

  'Why?'

  'I don't like the idea of you leaving cover. At least not yet.'

  'Look, that colonel can't get here in time. No one can do anything. We're on our own now.'

  Insects down there, ants on the move. But they'd be much bigger when they got here and they'd be carrying assault rifles.

  'You haven't been party to Signals. General Yang has committed himself totally to saving this well-loved and eminent man. Colonel Zhou was chosen for his reputation for high intelligence and courage.' A beat. 'It would do us no good to underestimate him, do you understand?'

  I thought about it. 'All right, we'll stay put for thirty minutes, if those are your instructions.'

  I wouldn't have listened to those bastards Loman or Fane or Welford but I would listen to this man. He wouldn't give up on us.

  'They are not my instructions. It's more important than that. I value your life, perhaps more than you do.'

  Point taken. Thirty minutes.'

  'Please stay open.'

  I turned back to the cave. I didn't care much for trekking north from here myself, but if we left the cave it was the only direction we could take, and it was uphill and rough going and there might not be another refuge for miles and we couldn't go that far, we couldn't go for miles, he was a diabetic and he'd been drugged and manhandled and put into shock and all he wanted to do was sit here and think about his windmills and his solar-powered people's cars, thousands of them, millions, enough for all those millions of lucky ants.

  I sat down facing him. 'How do you feel?'

  'Very well.' Spoke in a monotone: he was still under.

  'So tell me some more about the new Communism. Why should it fall to China to bring about these great changes?'

  'It is the ideal cradle for change. The Chinese created a civilization before all others; we are a cultured people. We possess vast territories; vast manpower, vast natural resources.'

  'I see. But this man Xu Yun, your potential leader — he's going to start things off with a lie, so you've said, telling the people he's going to give them democracy and then leading them down the same old garden path. I'd call him a bloody hypocrite.'

  Turning his head to look at me, saying with great force — 'But there is no other man to lead us!'

  'No one but a bloody hypocrite?'

  Something was happening. I didn't know what it was.

  'He is for the people.'

  So was Chairman Mao, for God's sake, he had you walking about with your noses stuck into a little red book, don't you remember that?'

  He was changing, Xingyu. Eyes different, looked different. He was surfacing, and I snapped the string of the pendulum and let it fall.

  'Mao was wrong. He was for the people in the beginning-'

  'They're always for the people, Baibing, it was the People's Liberation Army that murdered the people in Tiananmen Square, their own army, surely you remember that.' I went on talking, because something was happening to Xingyu Baibing and this wasn't a political argument anymore, it was something much bigger than that. 'Communist leaders are always the same, you know that, they're either shoving your nose in a book or a gun down your throat. They-'

  'But I was told other things.'

  Breakthrough.

  I didn't say anything.

  He sat staring at me, but now there was intelligence in his eyes; he'd lost that look of a zombie. I didn't know what had happened to him but it could have been that the effect of the drugs had worn off or that I'd challenged him for the first time instead of listening to his precious manifesto, correction, let me correct something, I did know what had happened, they'd only got so far, Trotter and his Dr Chen, only so far with him, and this man's integrity of mind had resisted them and gone on resisting because all his life he'd had the convictions of a revolutionary, a rebel born for the barricades and the stuff had gone in all right, the Utopian bit, but it hadn't stuck, there hadn't been time before Chong had got there and blown the whole thing up, this man wasn't brainwashed, he'd just had a half-baked manifesto shoved into his subconscious and he'd brought it all out again, got rid of it, and the change that had come into his eyes was because he'd surfaced from the effects of drugs and was coming back into beta waves.

  'I was told other things,' he said again.

  'Yes. But you can forget them now.'

  'He is a very persuasive man.'

  'Yes. And a bloody Communist.'

  I understood something else: Trotter had known he hadn't got far enough with Xingyu; there hadn't been time to saturate his brain with the tenets of the manifesto to the point where he could safely go in front of the cameras in the Great Hall of the People and spread the new Communism right across the nation, and that was why the jeep had followed us away from the temple and the shots had come and the windshield was smashed and the mirror had gone flying, because if Dr Xingyu Baibing couldn't go on the screens with his mind fully indoctrinated then he couldn't be allowed to live.

  Glow on the roof of the cave from the distant searchlight.

  'His practical ideas,' Xingyu said, 'have a certain merit. His technical ideas.'

  I looked at him. We'd need to do a little work.

  'Yes, But the West is also waking up to things, and if there's still time to save life on earth, it won't be run as a slave planet. This man Xu Yun — what are your thoughts about him?'

  He looked surprised. 'He is a Communist too, as I have told you.'

  'That doesn't answer my question.'

  'My thoughts, then, are that' — He hesitated, and I thought, Christ, we haven't got any time left for this — 'while he is genuinely for the people-'

  'Listen, Baibing, Chairman Mao was for the people and he brought them to their knees and Deng Xiaoping was for the people and he ordered a bloodbath in Tiananmen and now you're saying that Xu Yun is for the people and you think he's going to turn out to be a fucking saint?' I shifted closer to him, got down on my hands and knees to face him. You are the only hope left for China, Baibing, the most powerful voice in the land, but the Communist credo has rubbed off a little on you, even on you, and you've got to understand that any man getting up on his feet in a Communist state and talking about the good of the people — the people — the people — has got to be told to shut up and sit down and if he won't shut up and sit down then he's got to be taken away and shot before he becomes too dangerous.' Lowered my voice. 'Baibing, you're a man of enormous intelligence and you have got to get rid of the idea that Communism in your country will ever see its people with anything more to their name but a half-empty rice bowl. That man Xu Yun will have nothing to offer you but servitude, suffering, and blood in the streets. Are you listening to me?'

  In a moment: 'Yes.'

  Silence again, and in the silence I could hear the sound of th
e engines below, and voices now, carried on the wind, as the light across the roof of the cave grew stronger.

  'So what are your thoughts on Xu Yun?'

  'He is potentially dangerous. He-'

  'Can you trust him, then?'

  'No, I cannot-'

  'He's a Communist, Baibing. What are your thoughts on that?

  'He is to be mistrusted. He will only bring suffering.'

  Sweat on his temples, I didn't know why, bright on his temples.

  'You help to put that man in power, Baibing, and what will he do?'

  'He will perpetuate Communism in China-'

  'And you'll have blood back in the streets, blood back in the streets.'

  'Yes, it must not happen, it-'

  'If we can get you in front of the cameras, Baibing, what will you tell the people?'

  'That they must establish a democracy, a true democracy-'

  'As the only way, the only way?'

  'Yes of course, as the only way-'

  'Democracy as the only way-'

  'But yes, of course, it is what I have been saying to them in Beijing for so long-'

  'Then you can say it again if we can get you there, and not just on the campus, Baibing, butright across China.'

  'Right across China, yes. It seems to me,' he said, and he lifted a hand to stop me interrupting again, 'it seems to me that I have come very close, dreadfully close, to being turned into a traitor to my own people. Dreadfully close,' the sweat trickling on his face and now I knew why.

  'But that's over now.'

  Felt tired suddenly, should have been the other way, shouting glory hallelujah, so forth, but didn't, just felt very tired.

  'Yes, over now,' he said, and lifted a hand again, this time in a kind of appeal, or that was my impression. 'Do you think I am fully recovered, Mr Locke?'

  I made an effort, got to my feet, picked up the radio. 'Probably. But if we can get you onto a plane there'll be enough time to put you through it again, make sure we know what you're going to say when you get to Beijing. Don't think about it, just take it easy, I'd say you're back in your own mind now.'

  Pressed to transmit.

  'DIF, DIF, DIF.'