The Pekin Target

by Adam Hall

  Time had lost its meaning and I had no idea how soon the others would reach here, but it would be in a few seconds now. They’d have started running the moment they heard his call, and the distances involved were short. They didn’t all need to get here at the same time: the first one here would finish me off, if I were still alive when he came.

  I’d have to move faster but my opponent was working for a hold now, knowing that it was all he had to do until the others arrived; he’d turned his body to lie across my legs while he flung one hand in a curve for my neck, aimed at the carotid sinus; I saw the strike in progress and jerked my head away but not fast enough: the hand connected and coloured light burst in my skull as the baroreceptors brought the blood pressure down, draining the brain and leaving me in a kind of twilight. Fear came into me at once and triggered a flow of adrenalin and the twilight brightened and I saw his hand again as it came towards my face and I knew that if I didn’t stop this strike I was done for and the last thing I would see in my life would be the dirty-nailed hand of an unknown Chinese boy in a darkened alley, and it seemed illogical and unnecessary.

  Thoughts were shut off and I began working again, blocking the hand and catching the thumb and snapping it and hearing a hiss of breath. The stunning effect of his carotid strike was still slowing me but I could hear footsteps now, someone running in the quietness of the street, and the adrenalin was forced into the bloodstream and I wrenched sideways and found his throat and put pressure there as he began using his knee in a reflex action, striking again and again at my groin but not connecting because he was too worried now by my hand on his thyroid cartilage: I was using my finger and thumb as a clamp and he began jerking his whole body to shake me off but that was no good because I didn’t want to die and I would do a great deal to prevent it, but so would he and I rocked sideways as he went for the carotid artery again and the thought flickered in the shrinking mind, Oh Christ it’s no go, this time it’s no go, and I lay there at his mercy with the nerve-light flashing through the numbing dark as the footsteps came closing in, their echoes hollow against the buildings, this time no go and nothing left, only a rose for Moira …

  I suppose if the boy could have done anything more to me it would have ended there, but he was dead.

  The cartilage had been crushed in the clamp of my finger and thumb, and the soft tissue of the thyroid area had hemorrhaged, closing his windpipe; those were the sounds I’d heard in the last few seconds as he’d struggled for breath.

  There was a transition period when my body had moved for itself, and memory started recording again only when I was flinging myself along the alley with my hands outstretched to fend off obstacles and my feet driving me forward with the sensation that the energy was coming from somewhere else, streaming into the organism and leaving it galvanised and frantic for life. Footsteps filled the alley but the walls echoed and re-echoed them in the narrow confines and they might only have been my own. The first of them had stopped, perhaps, to check the dead body on the ground, giving me time to get clear, as if the boy had reached out from whatever cosmic field of consciousness sustained him now, and chosen to offer me grace.

  Chapter 7

  Spur

  The monsoon was blowing in Seoul when I landed, and the evening sky was dark with rain over the mountains to the east: we could smell it, and the warm air was clammy against our faces as we crossed the tarmac at Kimpo and went into Customs and Immigration.

  I was already noting the people around me. Ferris had booked me to Singapore by Cathay Pacific with a room at the Taipan Hotel and told the desk clerk at the Beijing Hotel to forward mail there, before using a pay phone and switching me to Seoul by Korean Airlines with a reservation at the Chonju and getting me aboard the late afternoon flight without asking the Chinese for security; but the opposition would be watching for me now and I could have been followed across.

  “You have your smallpox vaccination certificate?”

  I gave it to the immigration officer.

  After the terminal confrontation in the alley I hadn’t been near the Embassy: I’d called Ferris from the clinic where they were patching me up and told him to get me out of Pekin and he’d done the rest, but I was nervous because those three hit-men would be hunting for me and if they picked up my trail they wouldn’t let me go free a second time.

  “What is your business in Korea, please?”

  “I’m a travel agent.” I went through the details of the new cover Ferris had given me: Clive Thomas Ingram, a representative of Travelasia visiting Seoul to open up a tour programme for Western Europe; references Barclay’s Bank and British Airways.

  Most of the passengers around me were Chinese, with one or two Japanese and Americans; others were still coming through the doors, letting the warm wind blow in and ruffle the papers on the desks.

  “You have currency, please?”

  I declared 100,000 won and asked where I could change pounds sterling, watching the young Korean in the dark blue jump suit leaning on the barrier by the exit; I thought I’d seen him on the tarmac outside.

  “Enjoy your stay in Korea.”

  “Thank you.”

  Along the road into the town we fell into line with a dozen other taxis and kept station. Ferris hadn’t said anything, but it was on my mind that if I got blown in this city that would be it: he’d have to withdraw me to London. I could be expected to operate on the run but only after we had a fix on the opposition and knew who they were and how to attack them; if they still kept us working in the dark we’d need a replacement out here, someone who hadn’t been on the front page of the international press editions last night and this morning, someone who wasn’t moving around inside a flexible mantrap that could reach across from the mainland and spring shut.

  But if I could talk to Spur I stood a chance. Ferris said Spur might know.

  I folded the map of the city and put it back into the holder on the front seat, watching the street names come up and telling the driver to drop me a block short of the Metro Hotel because I wanted to look at the shops; then I walked to the hotel and picked up a cab at the front of the line and told him to take me to the main railway station; then I walked again, going east for two blocks, changing my TWA overnight grip from one hand to the other and using standard cover and window reflections and seeing him again three times before I decided to lose him in a street market and turn north.

  It wasn’t possible.

  Ferris had laid a false trail to Singapore and taken me straight to Pekin Airport without going near the Embassy and seen me onto the plane after we’d both checked extensively for tags, but the one I’d just shaken off was the young Korean in the dark blue jump suit I’d noticed at Kimpo and he’d seen me arrive and he’d followed me in and out of two taxis and held onto me for a dozen blocks on foot. And he was a professional: it had taken me a lot of selected cover and parallax movement to lose him.

  They couldn’t be everywhere.

  The street lights were going on and the traffic along the main streets was crowding the signals in the late rush hour. I took three more blocks, rounding each of them and making absolutely certain I was clean before I walked south and found Changsin Street and saw the wine shop at the corner of the small cluttered square. I went across to it.

  “How now,” Spur said.

  He was standing behind the stacked counter, a short plump man with horn-rimmed glasses and an open-necked shirt with food down the front. It was a small place crowded with bottles and crates, with two worn bamboo chairs and a round table no bigger than a stool in one corner. I turned round once and stood perfectly still, watching every open space in the square outside; there weren’t many: the place was like a jungle lost in the middle of the city, with small trees and a newspaper stand and bicycle racks and three fruit stalls cluttering the view.

  “It’s all right,” Spur said. “You lost him, as you know perfectly well.” He sounded mildly annoyed. I turned round and looked at him, feeling the pressure come off.
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  “He was your man?”

  “He was.”

  “What was the point?”

  “The point,” he said with careful articulation, “is that I’m not a bloody idiot. When I’m told to expect someone, I try to make damned sure he gets here without fleas all over him. For your information, you weren’t followed from the airport, except of course by my chap Kim, for at least part of the way.”

  “I know that.” I dropped my bag and got out a handkerchief, wiping the sweat off my face; it was as humid in here as it was outside.

  “Of course you do,” he nodded, and reached for a bottle of wine. “I’d forgotten your reputation. One of the wild bunch, but not totally stupid. I’m Spur, but then you know that too, don’t you.”

  “Ingram,” I told him.

  “Quite so, and spelt with a Q, if I’ve got my alphabet blocks in the right order.” He gave a slight belch. “And you could do with a little drinkie-poo, I’m sure” He held out one of the glasses, and I took it but didn’t drink. “Cheers, my dear fellow.”

  “Cheers. Doesn’t that thing work?” There was an electric fan in the ceiling and I was running with sweat; but it was all right now, they weren’t everywhere and I’d got here clean.

  “Fuse,” Spur said. “What happened to your face?”

  “There was a bit of action.”

  “Ah. And why aren’t you drinking? This is a Cotes du Rhone.”

  “I’m on a diet.”

  “How bloody depressing.” He came round the end of the counter and sat down in one of the wicker chairs, gesturing to the other and putting his glass of wine carefully onto the small rickety table.

  I was catching a lot of vibrations now. I could trust anyone Ferris sent me to, but trust wasn’t enough; this man was my only link with the nameless and faceless opposition and I wanted to know if he’d stand up to pressure and what he’d behave like if the action got out of hand. One or two things in the environment had caught my attention: a faded sepia photograph of Funakoshi on the wall over the cash register, and the way the bottles of wine were stacked in the window. The photograph was probably there for half-forgotten sentimental reasons: if Spur had ever achieved second or third dan he’d let himself go to seed and I doubted if his reactions were any faster now than an ordinary man’s. But the bottles in the window were more interesting; they were stacked in a certain pattern, and from my chair I could sight through gaps at three different angles that revealed strategic points in the square outside: the comers of two streets and the neck of an alley in the far distance.

  “I suppose you’ve heard,” Spur said, “the news from Pekin, have you?”

  “What news?”

  He looked slightly surprised. “Someone shot the American Ambassador dead, not long after you left there. It’s been on the radio.”

  “The American Ambassador?”

  “Seem to pick on anyone,” he said, “don’t they? But I don’t think it’s like that really. There must be a definite policy, wouldn’t you say?”

  “For Christ’s sake, Spur, were we meant to stop that one?”

  He sipped some more of his wine. “Something you ought to know, dear boy. I’m not Bureau. I was once, but not anymore. So there’s no question of ‘we’, you understand.”

  I took a breath and a minute to think. “How well did you know Jason?”

  “How well do we know anybody, in this trade?”

  I didn’t think he was blocking me for any purpose; I think it was the way he worked. I said: “I was with Jason when he died. He only told me two things. One was to see you. The other was to tell the CIA. He didn’t say what.” I waited.

  “Tell them, perhaps, to warn their Ambassador?”

  “That’s what I mean. From what you knew of Jason, do you think he’d got wind of this? And wanted me to tell the CIA, in time?”

  He considered this carefully. The last of the daylight had gone from the patch of sky through the window, and the yellow light of the lamps out there in the square threw shadows under the trees. Two or three children were playing near the newspaper stand with some kind of toy that looked like a diabolo; a lean dog was scavenging among the shadowed doorways.

  “I like your expression,” Spur said, “had Jason ‘got wind of’. Rather apt, for the monsoon season. And it sums up what’s going on at the moment. We’re not getting any signals that mean anything. We’re not getting any real information. We’re just, when we’re lucky, getting wind of things.”

  I got out of the chair, going to the open doorway and looking out, coming back, sweating in the heat of the evening and wishing to God that Ferris hadn’t sent me to someone whose joy in life was to stonewall. “Look,” I told him, “Ferris sent me here because he thinks you know something. Do you?”

  “Oh yes,” he said sleepily, “I know a lot of things.” A faint spark had lit his pale acorn-brown eyes behind their glasses, and gone again. “But I don’t owe Ferris anything, you see, or London. They are both desperate, or they wouldn’t ask for my help. London doesn’t like me, because I walked out of their stinking little sweat-shop right in the middle of a mission, when signals had broken down and my director in the field was holed up in a Hilton Hotel and shit-scared to make a run for the Embassy, and I was stuck on the wrong side of the enemy lines with half the Turkish police force hunting for me with tracker dogs and orders to shoot me on sight. There wasn’t, you see, a hope of surviving unless I chose to walk out, and that is precisely what I did, because I’d had enough of those murderous bastards in London. They’ll set you up and shove you out there and if you don’t come back with the loot then you can fry, haven’t you ever noticed?” There was a new note in his voice now and I listened to it and after a time recognised it for what it was: a smothered cry of rage that covered something deeper, something darker in what London had left of his soul. They’d burnt him out, but there was more than that; and I didn’t want to know what it was, for his sake, because he was trying to live with it and not doing very well.

  “How long,” I asked him, “were you in the field?”

  “Too long.” He drained his glass and got up and looked at me with his eyes naked for an instant. “Too long. You know the signs, don’t you?” He reached for the bottle across the counter, and came back with his glass half full again. “Just look at that bloody wind out there. Brings a few more tiles off, every time it blows; you want to watch that, old boy, when you’re walking in the street. This can be a dangerous city.”

  I’d caught enough vibrations now to know there was only one way in.

  “But the going was good,” I said, “once.”

  “What?” His pale brown eyes flickered again. “It was good, yes, once. What was that thing? Whatever else may come to me, let fear be never a stranger; let me walk unguarded ways that breed the instant stroke and the flaming deed; let me thrill to the call of a desperate need, and the trumpet tones of danger. But that was for us, my boy, not them. All they could think about was how to screw you out of a pension if you ever got back with your skin. I work for the Yanks now, and I’ll say one thing about them, they don’t mind paying a man for his honest labours.”

  So he couldn’t have saved the Ambassador. He hadn’t known.

  “You’re giving me ideas,” I said easily.

  “What? Oh balls, you don’t do it for the money.” He gave a slight burp. “You ever walk out on a mission, did you?”

  I’d been waiting for that. “One day I will.”

  He lowered his eyes. “Wise man. You’ll learn. I learned.”

  The tension had gone out of him, but I waited, because if I rushed him now he’d close up and there’d be no information and the next time it’d be the British Ambassador or someone else in the US team: whoever the opposition were, their target was the West, and somewhere in Pekin there was a third marked man and this time we’d have to stop them if we could. London was waiting for Ferris and Ferris was waiting for me and for the next few minutes I’d have to go on waiting for Spur; it wa
s the only hope.

  “Who’s running you,” he asked me after a time, “for this one?”

  I think if I’d hesitated I’d have blown it, because he needed my trust.

  “Croder.”

  “Croder?” He lifted his glass. “And the best of luck. But of course that’s your style, isn’t it? You want them to flay you alive. Don’t give yourself a chance, do you? Not exactly your own best friend.”

  Quickly I said: “Is anyone?”

  “What?” He watched me for a while, trying to see if I meant it; and I knew how close I was to losing the mission. I was certain now that he could give us enough information to lead us to the opposition and show us how to go in there and destroy them before they could destroy anyone else in Pekin. He wasn’t just playing hard to get; he was suddenly in a position where he could make them beg, in London, make them crawl to him, so that he could face himself again and with this much power over them get rid of the guilt that was giving him no peace. You ever walk out on a mission, did you?

  They’d never forgiven him; but now they were in his hands.

  “You mean,” he said in a moment and still watching me, “I’m not my own best friend?”

  “Not if you’re like me. What is it, Spur? Standards too high? Why do we have to expect more of ourselves than we expect of anyone else?” In the dim light of the shop I went close to him. “You know something? One day I’m going to walk out on a mission just to see what it feels like. You know? Just to make those bastards in London know they’re not God Almighty every time.”

  The reflection of the lamps in the square was on his glasses and I couldn’t see his eyes; all I knew was that he was watching me in the silence, going over what I’d said and testing it for flaws. But that was all right; I didn’t like London either, and he knew it; we all know it; we’re all the same. I went on waiting, looking into his pale and shadowed face while the children out there went on laughing in the game they were playing, and somewhere a horse and cart went rattling through the square. Then Spur turned slowly away from me and drained his glass of wine, putting it onto the stained counter so carefully that it didn’t make a sound.