The Pekin Target q-10

by Adam Hall

  I won't have this. A sob came from him because of the pain of his eyes; he was blinded by now because he'd brought me to the edge of death and I'd had to work hard to get clear again, I will not have this do you understand, coming in here and trying to kill me, this is the fifth time you bastards have — his hand tugging to get free of my teeth, his other hand slamming a sword-edge for my throat and reaching it and producing great pain for an instant before I rolled half over and brought my knee into his groin and felt him rock back with his breath hissing, I won't have it, it's too personal, too intimate, you're too fucking impudent to think you can come in here and splodge me out like a fly, it can't be done, I won't have it, but great fear somewhere, too, fear for my life, its stimulus giving me the strength I would not have had without it, and now an end to this, my hand rising for his larynx and connecting easily because he was blind now and couldn't see its shadow in the shadows of the night, rising and driving against the cartilage and breaking it and going deeper as his head and body jack-knifed and their dead weight came down on me and we lay like lovers, where no love ever was.

  Sinitsin lit a cigarette.

  "That won't be necessary. They won't send a new ambassador now; even the Americans have that much sense."

  "But the Chinese Premier," Major Alyev said with a certain deference, "will have to go?"

  "Of course. But not by violence."

  He was sitting in the only chair, a bamboo tripod with goatskin stretched across it; his two aides were on the long stone bench nearer the radio transceivers; the interpreter was cross-legged on the floor, one foot sticking out at an odd angle and his head in a listening attitude. One of the Korean guards was crouched on his haunches in the big arched entrance, facing away from the room with a submachine gun tucked under his right arm. There might have been other people there but I couldn't be certain: this was as far as I could go along the stone-flagged passage without their seeing me.

  The time was 11:54.

  There had been a rough blanket in the cell, folded tightly and thrust into a niche in the wall, and I had spread it over the body on the mattress, leaving the head half-exposed; in the faint light it hadn't been possible to see where blood had stained the floor and the mattress; all I could do was increase the chances that if anyone shone a lamp through the oblong in the door they'd believe it was the Englishman lying there asleep.

  The element of time was totally unpredictable. If anyone went along the passage to my cell they would see Yang was no longer there on guard, and would try to find him, sounding the alarm when they failed. That could happen within minutes from now, although the cell was at the end of a passage forming a cul-de-sac where only my guards would normally go. The latest deadline was an hour and six minutes from now, when Yang's relief took over the guard and saw he was absent. That would be at 01:00 hours tomorrow.

  I stayed where I was for a few minutes longer, hoping to pick up evidence of anyone else's being in the room with the KGB party. Both transceivers were switched on, with their panels glowing; one would be waiting to receive Moscow; the other would be tuned to the Triad or the KGB group holding Tung Chuan. It was tempting to stay here in case a message came through, but time was already running out. Half an hour ago the chances of my taking any kind of action, even to save my own life, had been nil; but now that I was free to move through the monastery the situation was radically changed.

  There were eleven men here, all of them armed. This was excluding Tung Kuo-feng. He was the key.

  His quarters were at the far end of this passageway and across the courtyard where they'd taken me out and stood me against the wall. I went in that direction now, moving on my bare feet in total silence. Not far from the pagoda there was a small fountain in a basin carved from the solid rock, and I stopped to lean over the water's surface and plunge my face where the moon's reflection lay afloat, opening my mouth and cleansing his blood from it, drinking deeply and slaking my bruised skin with its cooling touch, my body hunched at the basin's rim like a beast at a waterhole, easing the ravages of the hunt before moving on.

  There was a guard mounted outside Tung's quarters, the white stripes of his tracksuit showing up against the stones of the building; I could see the blunt shape of the submachine gun slung from his shoulder as he moved into full moonlight towards the parapet that overlooked the mountain slopes, tossing a cigarette-end across the wall and standing there for a moment and then moving on, stalking his own squat shadow, his track shoes making no sound. A patch of light shone from a grilled aperture in the building, catching the hammered brass of a gong against the wall inside. I couldn't see Tung Kuo-feng but he would be there, because the guard was there.

  I listened. From the reaches of the slopes an owl gave voice, and I could hear the faint ringing of bells as goats moved; but they were far away. Behind me the small fountain splashed, and I listened to that sound particularly: it was between where I was standing and the distant arches of the monastery where Sinitsin and his aides kept their vigil at the radios. If they were talking, their voices didn't carry this far; I stayed for minutes, because this was important, and as I listened I watched the Korean pacing between the parapet and the lighted aperture; sometimes he looked up at the moon and halted, staring as if he'd only just seen it there; his face was white and shadowless in the flat light, a clown's face.

  There was no way of reaching him from where I watched, in the shadow of the stone Buddha. I waited until he turned his back to retrace his steps towards the parapet; then I moved nearer, crossing the open space and risking his turning and seeing me; at this stage risks had to be taken, and they were not small; they had to be taken because Tung was the key.

  I waited again, in shadow; when the guard turned and paced back, towards me, I drew fully into cover and watched the edge of his own shadow flowing in rhythmic patterns cross the uneven flagstones as he came nearer. During the time I'd been watching him he hadn't come as far as the corner of the building here, but he might do it now, and if he did there wouldn't be time to reach deeper cover; I'd have to confront him, and there wouldn't be much chance: his hand was near the trigger of that bloody thing and he'd only have to swing it towards me and there'd be nothing I could do.

  I watched his shadow as it neared; his movement was no longer soundless; I could hear the soft wincing of his rubber soles and the faint brushing of his legs as the inner seams of the track suit rubbed against each other. He was so close now that I could smell gun-oil. If he came right to the corner here I wouldn't have time to jump him before he put out some shots, and even if he missed me the sound would bring the others.

  Wincing of the rubber soles, smell of oil, and the thought that I shouldn't have taken a risk so big so soon, that being suddenly free had made me overconfident: it was a classic syndrome. His shadow came on, and when an owl called from the belltower my scalp shrank and I drew a breath sharply, and then the barrel of the gun swung in a half circle as he turned and his shadow moved away, flowing across the ones obliquely in front of him and becoming smaller. Then I broke cover and stood there watching his back and judging the distance and the terrain and the state of its surface and its acoustic properties and the number of steps it would need for me to take him down at this precise point and in silence without the heavy gun hitting the stones and alerting the other guards; then I moved back into cover because it was no go; the distance and the terrain and the acoustics were all in my favour but I would have to go for him alone and I couldn't do that, because of the moon; I'd have to take my shadow with me and he'd see it before I was close enough and when I jumped him I'd be jumping straight into the gun, no go.

  From here he looked smaller.

  A minute ago the owl that had called earlier from the bell-tower had lifted, beating its wings three times and then dropping in a long slow glide to the rocks below the parapet, uneasy about my presence.

  The Korean looked smaller because from this height his body was foreshortened, twelve feet or so below where I crouched on the r
oof of the pagoda. It had taken me some time to reach here, climbing the thick flowering vine and testing each glazed tile of the roof before I put my weight on it. The time was now 12:06 and I was sweating uncomfortably because the gap was narrowing and there was so much to do, yet I mustn't hurry: to hurry would be dangerous.

  To delay, also, would be dangerous.

  The man below me paced with his gun. All the salient factors were the same now except one. The terrain was the same and from this height I could take him down and even more easily, and do it without the gun hitting the stones if I got the angle right; and now I could do it alone, before he saw my shadow: if I could do it blind. This was my worry now, and it was in the form of a linear pattern: at the precise place where I could most easily drop on him, the moon and my head and the flagstone immediately in front of him would be lined up, and he'd see my shadow. I would have to watch him nearing below me, then move back and wait, judging the time and then dropping at once and almost blind, seeing him only as I went down.

  I didn't like that, and the sweat was prickling on me as the watch on my wrist pulsed indetectably; to hurry and to delay were both dangerous, and for the first time since I'd left London I wondered if I were losing my nerve. It can happen, during a chain-action mission when there's no time between phases to relax; stress is cumulative, and these people had been hounding me from the minute I'd seen Sinclair fished out of the Thames eight days ago; stress is also at its highest when there is frequent killing: the theory is that when we go into the field we know we're moving into hazard and we've done it before and we know how to cope and we're ready to kill if we have to, rather than not go home; but in practice it doesn't work like that: when they come at us and we get away with it there's no relief, but just the feeling of Christ, that was close, while the stress builds up in the nerves and that bloody little pest somewhere deep in the organism starts snivelling, we ought to go home now, raising the small and trembling voice that we learn to loathe because we know it's the voice of cowardice, and you can call it caution if you like but we know better — if we'd got any sense of caution in our souls we wouldn't be out here at all.

  It's like that when they come at us and we get away with it: there's no relief. And when we've got to go for them and make a killing it's no different, because they are our opposite number and we understand them, sometimes more than we can understand ourselves, and underneath the scaly carapace that shelters us and our conscience we know we're brothers, and when we've got to do it to them we don't do it lightly; we do it with pain, however subdued, and the stress goes on building and there's no relief, just the feeling of Christ, there but for the grace, so forth, it could have been me, and in a way, it was.

  Night thoughts.

  Ignore.

  Death thoughts.

  Let them come.

  Let 'em come, my brave lads, let nothing you dismay, the bugle's sounding and the flag's a-flutter in the wind, so let 'em come, my boys… but it's not like that any more and it's not like that when you're alone and the notes of the bugle fade and the colours of the flag grow dark in the shadows of night and all you can see is his squat foreshortened body and the barrel of the gun sticking out and the moon's light on his white clown's face as you wait and count off the time and then kick forward from the edge of the tiles, oh come on for Christ's sake it's quite simple but I might have got it wrong as I drop and go down and take my fear with me, ice in the gut, watching his gun, death on my breath, all the way down, all the way down.

  27: Storm

  Tung Kuo-feng sat perfectly still.

  "My son is precious to me," he said in his toneless English. "Our line stems from the Ch'ing dynasty, and he is my oldest."

  I said nothing.

  "They knew that," he said with his night-dark eyes brooding on mine. "That is why they abducted him."

  For an instant I saw a sinuous shadow moving towards him across the flagstones; then it was gone. This time it was not a dream.

  The submachine gun lay in the corner of the small ornate room under a folded tapestry he'd taken down from the wall. The body of the Korean guard was among the rocks below the parapet; in the pocket of his tracksuit I'd found some bookmatches and a half-empty packet of cigarettes; they were all the tools I would need.

  Tung had asked me nothing, a few minutes ago when I'd called his name through the grilled aperture and said I must talk to him. Seeing the gun and the empty courtyard he knew what must have happened. Now we were sitting facing each other in the lotus position on the Thai silk carpet. I asked him how much he valued his son's life, and he'd answered me.

  "There's a chance I can save him," I said now.

  "Was there a message?" He meant from Ferris, on the radio.

  "There was a message," I said, "from Moscow."

  "How do you know?"

  He alone here spoke English, the only language he believed I understood. Only he could have told me there'd been a message from Moscow.

  "It was the message we listened to in there, last night. It was about Tung Chuan, your son. Remember?"

  He lifted his head, his back straightening slightly, and the movement was almost startling: it was like a reptile moving, after that total stillness. "You understand Russian?"

  "Perfectly."

  His eyes burned; he'd lost face: I'd deceived him.

  "What did the message say?"

  "That there's a chance I can save your son."

  "What did it say, in words?"

  I could feel the force in him, as I'd known I would. He was going to fight me on this issue of the message. I attacked at once.

  "I'm not giving you the actual words, and if you try forcing them out of me in any way you'll lose the last chance of saving your son, because only I can do it, and only if I can work extremely fast."

  He was silent, watching me. I didn't envy him the decision he had to make. If he could force me to give him the exact message he could signal his Triad and repeat it, using a speech-code of his own, and they could go straight to Kimpo Airport and wait for Tung Chuan to arrive. But how long would it take to make me talk, if he could do it at all?

  "Why is time so important?" he asked me, his tone strident.

  "At any minute they're going to find my cell unguarded. They'll tear the whole place apart, looking for me. Before that happens I must get away. Otherwise I can't save your son."

  The air was trembling, and I wanted to close my eyes, but that would be dangerous: I mustn't give him ground.

  "Where is my son?"

  The air shuddered and I was appalled.

  He'd made his decision: he would force me to talk and he'd do it without wasting time.

  "I don't know."

  If his Triad could free his son, he would never have to do what I was here to make him do. Jade One had become a double mission: it wasn't enough to halt Tung's operation; the damage to Chinese-American relations was already too great. We had to make him expose the instigators: the Soviets. I was here to do a deal with him.

  Reptilian stillness, his eyes on mine, dark, shimmering with an inner light, the sound of soundlessness shaking the air and drumming softly against my ears as the force in him rose like a storm.

  "Where is my son?"

  "They're going to — "

  Christ alive, don't let him do this.

  "They are going to what?"

  His voice came through the drumming air like a shaft of thunder aimed at my head and I shook it away, dragging in breath, my own prana, my own ki, you're not the only one, damn you -

  "You're not the only one!"

  "What are you saying?"

  The gong on the wall vibrating, pushing out rings of sound, waves of brass vibration that boomed in my head while I sat there staring into the dark shimmering eyes, look away, his terrible stillness at the heart of the storm, look away -

  "Where is my son?"

  His voice crashed over me like waves over a rock and the rock shuddered and I was afraid, crouching under the onslaught of t
he force he was gathering in him and hurling against me, look away, yes, look away, the patterns on the Thai silk carpet, a sea of leaves with white beasts leaping, leaping but never moving, suddenly still, the air clearing, you'll lose your -

  "You'll lose your son, don't you understand? You'll —»

  "Where is he?"

  Waves crashed, but I dodged them — "You'll lose him, you bloody fool, if you go on like this, you want him dead? You want him dead, I'll —»

  "Where is he?"

  Huge waves beating me back, beating me down under their darkness — "You'll kill him like this! I'm the only one who can save him, and you're trying to —»

  "Where is my son?"

  Crashed against me and flung me back and I hit the wall and fell down and got up and fell down and got up and started staggering, where is he, behind me, don't let him, I suppose I was a bloody fool to shove that gun in the corner, I should have kicked the fucking door down and shot him right between the fucking eyes, that would have shown him what was — steady, we need time to think, we need to stop waste, stop wasting -

  "Time — you're wasting time — "

  "Where is my son?"

  Great force hurling its waves from wall to wall and I stood swaying in it, a swimmer in black water, strike out, black water booming as my head went under and came up again, strike out or you're going to drown, strike out or he's got you -

  "Strike out — "

  "What are you saying — "

  "Listen to me, damn you, I can't save him if you waste my time like this, you're killing him like this don't you understand? Because I'm not going under, I don't care what you —»

  "Where is he?"

  Wave crashed and I went under, black water rising, crashing again, but could swim all -

  "I can swim — listen to me, I'm not going under," dragging in breath, not frightened now, but very angry, "Tung Kuo-feng," I said and looked down at him, swaying and looking down at him in the middle of the room, "you tried it and it didn't work," head hammering like a brass gong, but I knew now, "it didn't work, you understand," knew I was all right now and even the anger going because he looked so terribly pale, trick of the light perhaps, white as anything, and terribly still, "if you want your son to live you've got to let me go and see to it, now is that clear?"