The Pekin Target

by Adam Hall

Car in the river.

  Then shock and the spreading illumination of thought through the shadows of my mind. I began moving, feeling, thinking.

  You’ve got to try -

  Shuddup. I know what’s happening now.

  But orientation wasn’t easy. I was face upwards, bobbing against the inside of a dome. Something, yes, had shattered the rear window so the water had come in when we’d sunk into the river.

  How much air is there?

  Not much, my hands clawing around me now, desperate to identify objects, shapes that would help me navigate from death to life: the steering wheel, the seat squabs, the gearshift lever: they were below me; the car was the right way up. I had hit the seat belt release when I’d seen we were going in, and I was floating just below the roof with my face in a bubble of air that was trapped there by the rearward angle.

  It won’t last long.

  Leave to think. Something’s wrong.

  Something was wrong because I wasn’t floating as high as I should be: my head didn’t touch the roof when the black water rose against my face and blocked breathing: something was keeping me down.

  Sensation in the legs, the feet; something was tugging. It was the seat belt. I’d been turning slowly, inside the car, and the seat belt had wound round my feet.

  Turning which way?

  Choking, a long paroxysm this time, bringing disorientation and the touch of panic. When I put my hands out to feel what was happening I found they were closer to the smooth arc of the steering wheel: I was still turning, and with each revolution I was being dragged down. For a long time the organism took over and fought like a cat, kicking at the seat belt’s twisted webbing but doing no good, my hands clawing for a grip on something that would pull me higher and let me breathe, while the conscious mind knew there was nothing there to grip.

  Black water smothered me and blocked my breath.

  Turn. Turn. But which way?

  Then the water rose again and blocked my breath and this time it didn’t recede because the air was escaping from the bubble: the car must be tilting forward in the mud. I struck out with my hands, pulling at the steering wheel and spinning, feeling the padded seat squabs and using them as levers, spinning again, feeling the water rising to the point where I had to hold my breath because there was no more air.

  Turning the wrong way.

  Hands frantic now because I wasn’t breathing any more: the water was at eye level and it didn’t go down. The seat belt was tugging all the time, providing an anchor, securing my body to the huge mass of the car while the water lapped across and across my eyes and the pressure began building up in my lungs and there came the terrible temptation to suck in whatever was there, even water.

  Turning, turning the other way now, my hands in a frenzy as my body span, my head bumping against the roof for the first time and my face lifting to find the last of the air - but it wasn’t there any more: the bubble had rolled along the underside of the roof towards the smashed rear window. My feet were still trapped, but as I went on spinning in a vortex of my own making I felt them release and I jack-knifed and turned half round and dived and felt the scraping of the rear window frame against my back as I cleared it and rose, using my hands as fins to turn me face upwards so that when I reached the surface I could breathe.

  Light burst against my eyes and my lungs exploded and dragged in air and water and I choked and then breathed again with my whole body shaking to the thudding of my heart, while the black river water lapped at my face and covered my eyes as I kept my head tilted back to let the breathing go on, following the rhythm of its own biocosmic tide as the life came back into me and the thought process started again, arousing imagination.

  They would look for me.

  I brought my head forward a little and opened my eyes and waited for them to clear. The men up there on the river bank would be watching for movement, so I let myself drift; the river was swollen after the rains and the current was fast: the street lamps were moving steadily past me against the dark sky. I was quite close to the bank, where flotsam was caught and gathered for a moment before it was tugged clear again; the lights of a car were moving along the road that ran parallel with the river: it looked like the dark blue Mercedes. A pickup truck had stopped near the bridge and I could see two figures moving across to the bank; when I turned my head I could see the black Porsche standing at the spot where I must have gone in, with several figures ranged along the bank and watching the river. They were covering the situation thoroughly, watching for me to surface from the car, and watching for a glimpse of my drifting body further downstream.

  The water lapped and tugged, turning me round in the eddies, blocking my ears and receding as the sound of traffic came intermittently from the streets. There was a man standing a hundred yards downstream, where the Mercedes had now pulled up and doused its lights; with the current moving at this speed I would be floating past him within a minute and at a distance of thirty feet or so.

  I could dive and swim underwater for as long as my breath held out, but it wouldn’t be for more than half a minute because there was still a severe degree of oxygen loss and my lungs were already working hard to replace it; in half a minute I wouldn’t move far from the bank with the current this strong, and when I broke surface I’d present a sure target with the light pattern disturbed. The only chance was to go closer to him and use camouflage.

  I turned slowly over, face down, and veered towards the bank, feeling the gentle bobbing of flotsam against my neck; then I lifted my face enough for my eyes to make a selection, and chose a cardboard box that was drifting at an angle low on the surface, with scum and smaller flotsam clinging to it. I turned slowly onto my back with my face under the box, and moved my hands behind me where their paleness wouldn’t show. And then I did nothing. I drifted.

  When you have done everything you can, you can only wait, and hope that karma will decide in your favour; but it isn’t easy; you don’t become, suddenly, a fatalist, uncaring as to whether you are going to live or die.

  Ignore, and let go, and drift.

  The cardboard box was perfectly empty, with no shavings or paper left inside; it had been ripped open to get at the contents, and there was a split along one corner, giving me a glimpse of a street lamp and then the gleam of a star; it was the only way I was aware of movement, because my body was drifting at the same speed as the current and the water around me was still. Sometimes, much closer, right against my face, I caught sight of other flotsam through the split: some eggshells and a cylinder of straw from a wine bottle, something unidentifiable and covered with slime, and the sheen of wet black fur on a drowned cat.

  I went on drifting, watching through the split, slowing my breathing and letting my lungs fill only tidally, to keep my body’s mass low in the water with the legs angled downwards. It wasn’t easy to judge how close I would be to the man on the bank when I passed him, but it wouldn’t be more than twenty feet. That was very close.

  The flotsam was restless around the box, and once I thought I could feel the fur of the dead cat caressing my face: it was a sensation only slightly stronger than the feel of the lapping water, and infinitely delicate; perhaps it was the tail.

  I would have liked to raise my head enough to get my ears clear of the surface so that I could listen; but if the men along the bank called to each other it would probably be in an Asian tongue I wouldn’t understand, and if one of them shouted there he is it wouldn’t mean anything to me, or give me time to draw the last quick breath and wait for the bullet’s spinning force to sting and pucker the flesh; it was better to keep my head low, and hear nothing, and drift.

  Poor kitty. How did you get here? How long has it been since our paths began meeting? Since the day you were born, I suppose.

  I could see a street lamp. The man on the bank had been standing between two of the lamps, so this would be the first of them; it wasn’t far now. If I could drift past him without being seen I would survive the night; the other vehi
cles had stopped upstream, closer to where I’d gone in. But twenty feet was close, mortally close. On the other hand there were the shifting reflections of the city’s lights across the surface, blinding him a little to my dark shape underwater; all he might see, if I kept still, would be the cardboard box and the eggshells and the dead cat.

  What did the lettering say, on the box? Condensed milk? Condoms? Sardines? You used to like sardines, kitty, whenever you could get them off the kitchen table before they caught you at it. I used to like sardines. I would have given you some of mine.

  The thin needling glare of the street lamp faded out as I went on drifting, and for a time I could see nothing at all; then the pupils expanded and I saw one of the eggshells bobbing in the scum.

  Tidal breathing, while the split in the box winked suddenly to the passage of a star. Night and silence, who is here? No one. No one at all, only a box and a dead cat, so you can put away your gun.

  I watched for him now.

  Ignore the slow creeping of fear, the instinctive tensing of the nerves as the live body became gradually exposed to the death-dealing weapon in the enemy’s hand like a floating sacrifice on sacred water; ignore and think of other things.

  How did you go, kitty? Was it a car that slung you across the road with a smashed skull and no hope of getting even, or did they get fed up with your favourite sardine trick and shove you into a sack on the way to the river? Did you have time to fight them, with your sinews threshing and your bright claws flashing, your ears flattened and your sharp teeth bared? I hope so, but we can’t always choose how we go, can we? You know that now.

  Movement against my face.

  The current was strong here and eddying, because of some kind of obstruction in the bank. The cardboard box was drifting away from my face.

  Don’t move.

  Fatal to move. Fatal, perhaps, to lie still and let the box go. Without the box, what would he see? The cat, and not much else.

  The cold wet touch of its fur against my face.

  Don’t leave me, kitty. Don’t leave me now.

  The current went on tugging, swinging my legs away from the bank. I opened one eye, allowing a thin band of vision across the pupil, and saw the silhouette of the nearest buildings against the sky, also a distant street lamp, and a parked car, much closer, and the short figure of the man on the bank.

  He was standing right at the water’s edge, his body leaning to watch the surface, his right hand holding the gun. I would be drifting past him in a few seconds now.

  The box had gone; I could see one comer of it as it drifted away. The cat was curled against my face, its fetid stench half choking me, its tail moving across and across my eyes in the eddying water. There was nothing to do now but wait, and watch my enemy.

  It was dangerous to leave my one eye open, even so little, but I wanted to see what was happening. He might catch the glint of my conjunctiva, and loose a shot to see if there were any reaction; but the cat’s body was still half smothering my face, vouchsafing me the security of camouflage: it was too heavy for the current to drag away, as it had done with the box, but to be sure I opened my mouth a fraction and bit on the wet, stinking fur and trapped my camouflage tight.

  I watched the man on the bank.

  I watched his gun hand.

  If his hand moved, I would turn and dive, not with any hope of being in time but as a last gesture in the name of survival. At twenty feet he could place six shots effectively grouped in my body before I could reach any depth, but that would be preferable to lying here on the water and watching the flash of powder against the dark.

  Drifting. Far away, the sound of the city’s traffic.

  A short man, his body leaning forward, his eyes looking into my eye but not as yet identifying it, since it was out of context; he was for the moment unaware that somewhere among the eggshells and the scummy flotsam and the dead cat there was shape possessed of intelligence. When he became aware, he would lift his right hand.

  Can you see him, kitty? Of course not; all you can see now are your heavenly hosts, their pink tails frisking as you chase them among the stars.

  Drifting.

  He watched me, keeping perfectly still. His head was turning to follow me as I passed the place where he stood. A shadow, moving insubstantially across him as the river’s reflections shifted, made it seem that he was starting to lift his gun hand, and within the period of time required for the nerves to hit muscle I reached the decision to dive, before the brain made its urgent analysis and in the next microsecond countermanded the impulse, leaving the organism to float onwards without motion.

  The man’s head was still turned to watch me as he made his own more careful analysis of these abstract shapes in the water here; then he looked suddenly in the other direction, attracted by flotsam further upstream; and we went drifting away and away, kitty and I, in the silence of the nightrunning river.

  Chapter 13

  RV

  One hour later at 11: 06 I invoked an extreme-urgency rule and telephoned London direct, asking for the Jade One console and using the established code phrasing to warn Control not to signal through the Embassy because communications there were compromised. I also requested a rendezvous with the director in the field at 09: 00 tomorrow at the currency exchange office at Kimpo Airport. I gave the number of the telephone I was using and rang off.

  I recognised Croder himself on the line - he’s got the voice of a dispassionate hangman - but he couldn’t ask any questions because my code prefix had warned him that it was a shut-ended signal: the taxi driver was still in the room with me and he understood English. The first two drivers had turned me down when I’d stopped them, but this one - a small bearded Hindu with permanently surprised eyes - had been ready to agree that I wouldn’t get into a hotel in this state and that for 50,000 won I could stay the night at his place if I didn’t make any noise: I’d explained the fact that I was soaking wet and smothered in weeds by mentioning a drunken brawl over a woman.

  There was a call at three in the morning and he got me out of my low narrow bed to take it. Phrase-coded instructions were that a rendezvous would take place with a contact instead of my director in the field, and on the subway station at Jongro and Waryong Streets at 09:00 tomorrow. The names were spelled out in letter code and so were the brief specifics, broken glasses being the main identification key.

  He’d repaired them with a piece of white adhesive tape and I took him through a four-step introduction check before I felt happy with him, not because he was suspect in any way but because I was now ready to think that every other man-in-the-street of this city was working with the Triad.

  “All I want,” I told him, “is an RV with my director. That’s what I asked London for.”

  He was a bland, shut-faced character with dirty nails and a terrible haircut and he gazed at me sideways most of the time while he sucked on a toothpick.

  “They asked me for info,” he said.

  “I haven’t got any. Christ, if I’d got any info I would have given it to London, wouldn’t I?”

  “Orders,” he shrugged, but I had the feeling he was rather less crass than he sounded; when he wasn’t looking at me he was looking everywhere else and without letting it show, and underneath the crumpled tourist’s clothes there was a certain strength in his stance, a certain weight.

  “Spur is dead,” I told him, and saw a spark come and go in his colourless eyes. “The opposition did a chain job on me and set up a street ambush and I went into the river with the car; they tried hard this time, really hard, but if you call that information I’m happy for you. Tell them I want Ferris and a new cover before the police pick me up and ask for papers.”

  He hadn’t looked away from me now for the last ten seconds, and the toothpick had stopped moving. “How did they do Spur?”

  “They put a snake round his neck.”

  “That thing,” he said softly.

  “That thing. Who gave you the instructions to meet me?”<
br />
  “I clean forget.” He gazed at me obliquely for a moment and added: “It wasn’t through the Embassy.”

  “Fair enough.” It was all I needed to know. In any given operation the executive in the field has communications access to the Embassy and to whatever other facilities are assigned to him (they gave me Spur); but there are always others that he never knows about, because it would endanger them. The executive is something like a leper: nobody wants to go near him, because if the opposition can trap him and put him under that bright white light before he can get to his capsule he’s liable to break and expose people and they won’t know it until they switch on the ignition and come down in fragments: two years ago a stamp dealer in Dresden was put into direct touch with the executive making his final run at the end of a sticky mission and the whole thing happened: the executive was tripped and grilled before he could cyanose and two weeks later the stamp dealer lost his footing on a crowded underground platform in the rush hour and the train didn’t have time to stop. And that man had been a Bureau sleeper in Dresden for twelve years before someone in London panicked and told him to make direct contact with an executive.

  What had happened now was that Croder had signalled a facility unknown to me in Seoul, and that facility had passed on the instructions to the man who was watching me now, his eyes narrowed against the flying dust as a train came in from the tunnel.

  “Are you dead or alive?” he asked me.

  “What?”

  “After the river.”

  “I don’t know. I heard some sirens when I was climbing out of the water, so they’ve probably sent divers down or pulled the car out by now; all we can say is that I’ll be down as missing, officially.”

  His bland eyes were watching people getting off the train: I could see some of their reflections, a girl in red, a man with a cap. “Dead would be good,” he murmured. “I mean convenient.”

  “I’m going to stay dead until they pick up my tracks again.”

  “If that doesn’t sound,” he said, “like a contradiction in terms.” His wide mouth smiled over the toothpick.