The Pekin Target

by Adam Hall

  One of the nurses had come in five minutes ago and would be back again soon; I could call them both here if I needed to, just by raising my voice. Jason still didn’t move.

  “How do you feel?” I asked him quietly, and stood over the bed so that he could see my face. He looked at me for a long time, but there wasn’t anything in his eyes; then they closed again as he murmured something.

  “What?” I asked him. In a minute he said it again, but I couldn’t make out any specific words: I had to put the sounds together and guess at a verbal pattern. Two men.

  “Two men?” I asked him.

  His lips moved. These were different sounds. Killer

  “Killer?”

  I had to wait again. After a bit his lips moved again and I watched them; there seemed to be a W after the first K. KW something. KW ill?

  “What did you say, Jason?”

  Same sound. I watched his lips, and then got it.

  “Yes. I’m Quiller. Don’t rush it. Relax.”

  If I called the nurses they might give him a shot of something, do something to break this fragile thread of consciousness. One of them would be in here at any minute.

  “You were attacked by two men?” I asked in a moment. His eyes opened, and I think he tried to turn his head, because there was a spasm of pain and he grimaced and a sheen of sweat began covering his ash-white skin.

  “Don’t rush it, Jason. Take your time.” A minute went by.

  Sounds came again. The only patterns I could guess at were Elsie. I. Spur. Sool.

  “Say again,” I told him softly, “when you’re ready.” I felt the sweat on my own face now, because of the need to hurry, and to find the delicate balance between drawing some kind of information out of him and keeping him alive: the more we hurried, the more he might say but the sooner he might lose consciousness again, perhaps for the last time.

  His eyes opened and looked up into mine.

  “Tell,” he whispered, and this time it sounded perfectly distinct.

  “Tell who?”

  Then just sounds again, the same as before, or nearly.

  Elsie. I. Insool. Ay eh? Not sense. Tell Elsie?

  The pale lips moved, and I watched and listened. See spur. C? Elsie? Elsie spur? He was using all his strength on the syllables, slurring the consonants; I couldn’t tell whether he was leaving out the beginnings and endings of words, or even whether he was rambling.

  “Jason. Tell who? Elsie? Who is she?”

  He was watching me back. Tell see I eh. Tell see -

  “Tell the CIA?” I leaned closer.

  “Ess. CIA.”

  “Tell them what?”

  There were voices now in the distance, a man’s and a woman’s, someone talking to one of the nurses along the corridor. I tuned them out, concentrating on Jason.

  “What do I tell the CIA?”

  His eyes closed and I waited, flicking a glance at the screen on the wall where the green dot was bouncing lower again. In a moment he rallied, and sounds came again. R spur. Hasper? Ask her? After?

  “Jason. Say again.” I leaned closer still.

  He opened his eyes. Ask per. Per? Spur?

  “Ask Spur?”

  “Ess.”

  “Who is Spur?”

  Then there were footsteps and a young Chinese in a white coat came in, a stethoscope hanging from his neck. One of the nurses followed him, the small girl with plaits under her cap. He looked at me hard, saying nothing.

  “Do you speak English?” I asked him.

  “Mee ye?”

  “Parlez-vous francais?”

  He looked away without answering, and prepared a syringe while the nurse swabbed Jason’s median vein. I tried him with German and Russian, desperate to stop him doing anything to Jason now he’d begun talking. He didn’t answer, and I had to move away to give him room as he lanced the tip of the needle into the vein and put slow pressure on the plunger.

  The nurse made an entry on the chart and they both went out, leaving the air acrid with the smell of the ether she’d used on the swab.

  “Jason,” I said softly, and leaned over him. His eyes opened slightly.

  “I will ask Spur to tell the CIA. Is that right?”

  His lips didn’t move, and there was no understanding in his eyes.

  “Jason.”

  But the pallor of his skin was now tinged with blue and when I looked up at the screen on the wall I saw the dot of light levelling out and leaving a thin featureless line.

  “They’ve killed Jason,” I said.

  The line was silent for a bit; then Ferris asked: “How?”

  “One of the doctors here injected cyanide, or someone posing as a doctor.”

  “I’ll be right over,” Ferris said.

  “No. Keep away. This place is a death-trap now.”

  Chapter 6

  Grace

  They wouldn’t shoot. It would make too much noise. There were extra police patrols in the streets tonight and the curfew was in force until dawn. To shoot, in any case, was not their fashion; the creators of the martial arts preferred silence, and hidden strength.

  I climbed higher, and reached the top floor of the hospital. It was no good going down and into the street, before I was informed. It was a four-storey building with a flat roof, one of the new concrete additions to this ancient city, bare of tiles or balconies or arched outer walls that might have offered me exit. I would have to go out by a door.

  Ferris had told me that he’d remain at the Embassy, and had wished me luck; there was nothing else he could do. Once the executive is in hazard, his director can only withdraw from the area and save himself, and remain available to receive the next man out if the executive is lost. Nor could Ferris send a squad of police into the hospital to bring me out under protection; the Chief of Police would have agreed to do that, to do anything, in fact, that would alleviate the guilt and embarrassment that he and the People’s Republic security forces were still suffering; but the laws and edicts chiselled in the timeless rock of ages by that gaggle of demigods who lord it over us in London, world without end, didn’t allow for that. In no circumstances will a director or an executive in the field call upon the police or any other service of whatever country is their host. It would lead to questions, and enquiries, and complications; it would place us under the obligation of officials who might later decide to exert their power over us, bringing the risk of exposure. Ferris and I were in Pekin as two security agents responsible for the safety of the visiting British delegation, and could call on extensive help from the Chinese police; but that was only our cover, and beneath our cover were two human cyphers with code names and nothing more, working in the dark of our own making for an organisation that didn’t officially exist; and we must make no sign, and leave no shadow.

  Thus sayeth those tyrannical bloody red-tape artists in London who have never known what it’s like to be trapped in a building with the fear of death creeping in the gut like a time-fuse and not much chance of getting out.

  I walked to the end of the concrete passage and found the trap door to the roof, and the iron ladder. The night was calm, with pale stars and a wash of light from the street lamps four storeys below. I began crawling when I neared the edge of the roof on the south side, to avoid presenting a silhouette against the skyline in case they chanced to look upwards; but most of the time they’d be watching the doors.

  They hadn’t come into the building for me because the night staff was there, and they would have had to show themselves, and use violence and make a noise. With Jason it had been easy, and they’d needed to silence him as soon as they could, cutting off the source of information. With me it would be more difficult and they could afford to take their time; I had no information; my death was required simply to protect their own security; they had an operation running and I mustn’t get in their way.

  One.

  He was in the doorway almost directly opposite, his back flat against the wall and his head turned to watch
the street; from there he could see the main entrance of the hospital and the windows along the whole of its length. He was in the loose blue cotton uniform of a factory worker, but in the low light I couldn’t see his shoes. In terminal confrontation, shoes can be important; the hard edge of a heel can be lethal.

  I crawled to the east parapet, straightening up in the cover of the elevator tower and feeling a tug of pain as the ribs opened out, a reminder that they hadn’t yet healed. Body awareness was increasing, helping me to prepare for survival. I crouched low again, the sharpness of the loose flint burning against my palms as I dropped onto my hands and toes, reaching the parapet.

  Two.

  It took me five minutes to make him out, because he was deep in shadow and standing absolutely still; it was the blinking of his eyes that signalled his presence, covering and exposing the faint glow of the cornea. I couldn’t see what he was wearing, but the colouring of his clothes was neutral, midway between dark and light. From his position he would be able to see the narrow flank of the building and the emergency entrance where the ambulance was parked.

  I moved on, crossing the corners of the roof and once kicking a flattened tin can and dropping immediately into a crouch clear of the rooflines. Sometimes I heard voices from below, the light fluting tones of women; the nurses had left many of the windows open along the north side above the park. It took me half an hour to locate the three other men: one at the end of a narrow street leading towards the Embassy; one in the shadow of a bus shelter on the west side, one almost lost in the darkness of an alley where the lamp on the wall had gone out.

  Total of five. At least five, possibly more.

  I looked at my watch, its blue-green figures glowing among the stars reflected in the black glass panel. The time was 5:14 and I could wait until dawn or even later and go down through the building and walk into the sunlit street and stay in the open where there were people; but they might not hold off; they might have instructions to make certain of a killing before I could reach the safety of the Embassy; and that would bring the police, shouldering their way through the crowd of white faces watching the awkward-looking object spreadeagled on the pavement with the blood beginning to make a rivulet in the dust; and that would mean questions, enquiries, a full-scale investigation that would lead to the Ambassador’s office, and Ferris, and finally to London.

  We must make no sign, and leave no shadow. Thus sayeth those omnipotent despots over there, planning their operations in the civilised comfort of their offices, unaware that this beleagured little ferret would very much like to wait for daylight and try for the safety of the open street rather than crouch here with the sweat gathering and the knowledge that he must go down there now and in the half-dark make an end of it one way or the other.

  Take no notice: this is only fear. They’re right. The things we’ve pulled off, the really big operations that have blown the opposition networks or averted war or forced Moscow to re-think in the naked light of intelligence exposure, have been pulled off because the executives who got back home alive with the objective achieved were able to do it under total cover, picking their way through the shadows of their own anonymity, faceless and unseen. It works. It has always worked. But it doesn’t alter the fact that we’re sometimes required to lay down our lives for it.

  At 5:15 I moved away from the north parapet, straightening up and keeping close to the elevator tower and stepping over the low radio aerial that criss-crossed the roof, going down through the trap-door and shutting it quietly.

  There was no point in any case in waiting for the safety of daylight. They would trail me wherever I went, so that I’d have to keep away from the Embassy, and Ferris; they’d trail me all day long through the city if they had to, waiting for a chance, then finishing me off on the street or forcing me to hole up somewhere like an animal and wait for them to come. Whatever I must do I must do it now, because things would only get worse. They’d seen my photograph in the papers and they’d seen me with Jason and I was blown and must go to ground wherever I could. I didn’t just have to get out of this building: I had to get out of Pekin.

  On my way down to the ground floor I passed three nurses and a boy mopping the floor; one of the girls asked me something and I made a gesture that could mean anything, going down the next flight of stairs before she could try to stop me. On the ground floor I turned left, because it was on the west side of the building that I might stand a chance. From the roof I’d seen that one man was posted on each side, with a fifth placed so that he could cover the main doors and the emergency entrance together. On the north side there was the small park, an open space with almost no cover; on the west there was only one man posted, and he was at the end of the alley where the lamp had gone out. He was the man I would have to go for, and try to put down; but he must be so sure of me that he wouldn’t signal the others first. If he alerted them I was finished; I might prevail over one man, possibly two, but not five.

  At the end of the passage there was a narrow door, half-blocked by a pile of linen, and I stopped in front of it to loosen my tie and pull my shoelaces tight; then I opened it and went into the street.

  The figure in the alley straightened up as he heard me, and faced this way. He was in silhouette now: from the roof I hadn’t been able to see beyond him along the alley, but now there were three lamps visible and beyond them an open square in the dim light of the distance; it wasn’t a cul-de-sac, and the way was open to me. If I turned to the left or right along the street I would move closer to a second man, with this one at my back; I must cross the street here and make straight for the one in the alley, and he must see me coming, and feel confident, with the knowledge that time and strength and expertise were all on his side, together with the element of surprise - because I wouldn’t look at him as I neared. Then he wouldn’t call or whistle to the others; he’d want to take me alone, for his pride’s sake. These would be trained men, trained in the dojo and the street to kill with finesse and with dispassion; they would be panther-quick with hands like knives, and they would enjoy executing the weaponless techniques they’d used a thousand times, a hundred thousand times against each other with full control; now the control could come off and they would experience the hot blood of a kill.

  He mustn’t signal them, this one in the alley. That was my only chance.

  I walked across the street towards him, looking to the left and the right and then lowering my head a little as I picked my way through the light debris near the gutter, stepping onto the pavement, glancing to one side again as if distracted, moving straight towards him with no indication that I knew he was there, ten feet away from me, six feet, three.

  Then he signalled the others with a quick call like a bird and came at me with a rising half-fist to the throat for an immediate kill, a strike that would have worked if I hadn’t been ready for whatever he decided to do. I dropped and went inside and felt his fist rake along my shoulder as I struck for the siliac plexus and heard his breath catch before he swung clear and broke the power that was building up. Data was coming in as everything started to slow down in the way it does when the organism meets with crisis; I knew already that he was young and tiger-strong, a high dan in the arts with access to force sufficient to open my skull with a bare hand if I let him get in. If I tried to fight on his terms it would be lethal.

  The others would have heard him, and would have started running by now. I suppose I had fifteen seconds, twenty, but no more than that, to do what I could to stay alive. A thought floated into my head and out again … Ferris, you’ll need a replacement … before the man stopped withdrawing from the plexus strike and came in again, blocking my wrist and swinging one elbow in a curving blow for the chin and nearly connecting but losing the force that would have snapped my neck as I felt it whipping past my cheek before the momentum died. It left his body open and it was here that I would have to work like a surgeon, remembering the charts and the wire-and-rubberbag dummies and the long nights in Norfolk where
Mashiro and Yamada and Dr. Dietrich had shown us that in dealing with a terminal confrontation one must try to move away from the kinetic action and concentrate on the body itself, feeling for its weak areas and worming one’s way into the nerve-centres and the major vessels and the vital organs where even a finger can stun or shock to death, given applied force.

  His body was still open to me during the next few microseconds and I went for the seventh intercostal area to the left of the celiac plexus with a centre-knuckle strike that connected and penetrated as far as the main fist profile before he doubled and broke its force; but I knew I must have reached the spleen and started internal bleeding because of the depth I’d achieved: he’d started to regurgitate and his breath was blocked off, and he had to come back at me without thinking, moving directly into Zen and using me as a reflection of his own body, hooking one foot into a sweep and bringing me down with one hand saving me and the outline of his bare foot filling my vision as he drove down with the force of a swinging axe against my face in the instant before 1 rolled and heard the air rush past my ear. He was now balanced on one foot and I wrenched at the knee, jack-knifing it and bringing him down beside me.

  Vision had been partially phased out by now; there was nothing to look at; we were fighting blind. I was aware of spinning shapes and colours in the background, that was all: the glint of a yellow eye, the angular silhouette of the roofline against the stars, the lintel of a doorway. Sound had closed in, to become intimate: the soft fierce inhalations as our breath was forced into our lungs, the rustling of his clothes as he span sideways to break his fall, hooking a claw-hand across my face without preparation. Our sense of touch was heightened to an exquisite awareness, because the need for sight and sound had almost gone; we had to feel our way into the citadel and lay it waste in the silence and the dark, blindly and with deaf ears; but there was no sensation of pain, since pain works against the organism in hazard, distracting it from the effort needed to survive; blood from a wound somewhere was shining along his forearm, but I felt nothing.