The Chinese Assassin

by Anthony Grey

  Scholefield looked at Ketterman. ‘Harvey, do you know Percy Crowdleigh?’

  The American stood up and offered his hand. ‘Only by reputation until now.’

  Crowdleigh offered a perfunctory handshake without looking directly at the American and without getting up. Instead his eyes stayed on Scholefield’s face. ‘Richard, you’ll be relieved to know Matthew’s now at home safe and sound. None the worse for wear either.’ Scholefield stared at him as though he’d suddenly recalled something temporarily forgotten.

  ‘1 wish in heaven’s name you’d told us about it.’ Crowdleigh removed his glasses and dabbed with his handkerchief at eyes shrivelled small by powerful lenses.

  ‘I thought it best to do things the way I did.’ Scholefield’s voice had taken on a note of irritation. ‘Where was he found?’

  Crowdleigh breathed on his spectacles and polished them carefully with his handkerchief. ‘He was brought back and dropped off in a street close to your ex-wife’s home with his nanny—about eight-thirty last night. They’d spent the afternoon locked up in some house in North London. Fed, allowed to watch television, well treated apparently. Several different people all of Chinese appearance involved.’ Crowdleigh tipped his head forward and glowered suspiciously round the ward over the top of his spectacle frames. When he was satisfied with his survey he let his’ eyes come to rest steadily on the American’s face for the first time. ‘But that’s not all I came to tell you. There’s a D-notice on all this, of course, from the explosion onwards. That’s why you haven’t got wind of it from the papers. If the press had got hold of it, it would be all over the front pages now’ paused and drew a long breath. ‘Because Yang’s gone!’

  Ketterman cocked his head in puzzlement. ‘Gone? You mean he’s died?’

  Crowdleigh’s eyes never left the American’s face. ‘No, Mr. Ketterman.’ He spoke very slowly and. deliberately. ‘He was abducted from this hospital at three thirty precisely this morning.’

  ‘By whom, for chrissakes?’ Ketterman’s eyes had widened in amazement.

  Crowdleigh studied the American in silence for a long time, ‘We don’t know. He’s disappeared without trace.’

  ‘But what happened to his guards?’ asked Scholefield incredulously.

  ‘They were overpowered by a group of men of—’Crowdleigh hesitated, choosing his words pedantically—’of Asiatic appearance. Yang was spirited away down a fire-escape into the mews behind the hospital and driven a short distance hi an ambulance. He was then passed through a wall into another unidentified vehicle which proceeded to disappear into the bowels of London.’

  Ketterman whistled. ‘So it looks like a Chinese embassy job?’

  ‘I’d prefer not to advance into the realms of speculation at present,’ said Crowdleigh shortly. ‘Even though a man of Chinese race was found dead by the abandoned ambulance with four bullets in his chest.’

  ‘From the embassy?’

  ‘They say not. They hotly deny all knowledge in fact. And the police think he might have been a member of one of the Soho Triads.’

  ‘The Hong Kong heroin gangs?’ Scholefield’s voice rose in disbelief.

  ‘The modem descendants of a Chinese secret society fifteen hundred years old,’ said Ketterman crisply. ‘And frequently in their long history, you might remember, they’ve mixed political intrigue with their more orthodox criminal activities.’

  ‘Who killed him then?’ asked Scholefield quickly. ‘The police?’

  Crowdleigh closed his eyes and clutched both hands round one knee. ‘The abduction was organised and executed so quickly and efficiently that it attracted no police attention beyond Yang’s ward on the fourth floor. Both guards there were overpowered.

  The police think there might have been another group of “persons unknown” disputing for possession of Yang in the mews below. This could have resulted in the Asian’s death. Some commotion was heard by people living in the area.’

  Ketterman lowered himself slowly into a sitting position on the end of the bed and stared distractedly out of the window.

  ‘Who in hell’s name is trying to do what to who?’

  ‘I suppose what we’re meant to think,’ said Scholefield reflectively, ‘is that the Peking moderates have smuggled out survivor Yang. Although the folios I showed you before the meeting don’t name names specifically, and neither did Dr. Stillman, the clear implication is that Mao’s radical supporters led by his wife are now fighting to secure their right to succeed him. We’re being presented with what appears to be first-hand “proof” that they were thinking along these lines as long as five years ago and that they murdered Lin Piao. Yang’s the moderates’ trump card to smear the radicals and stop them taking over.’

  Ketterman turned back slowly from the window. ‘If Yang’s batting now for the moderate “good guys” then by an extension of that theory it would be the radical bad guys who tried to blow him up last night,. along with the rest of us at the Institute, to shut him up. And having failed to kill him publicly, presumably they would want to snatch him—and finish him off somewhere quietly, wouldn’t they?’ Ketterman looked from Crowdleigh to Scholefield and back again seeking support.

  ‘Using a strong arm squad of the Triad drug smugglers?’ Crowdleigh’s tone was offensively sarcastic. ‘The Chinese do happen to make some pretty clear distinctions about who they regard as true revolutionaries. Some of the best organised crime gangs in the world gorging themselves on the carrion of capitalism haven’t been among them so far. Or hadn’t you noticed, Mr. Ketterman?’

  Ketterman scowled. ‘They’re all goddamned Chinese, remember.’

  ‘I wonder,’ said Crowdleigh dryly, ‘why you are turning your face deliberately away from the more obvious explanation?’

  A wary look came into the American’s eyes and he sat straighter on the bed.

  Crowdleigh folded his arms and this added a new pedagogic rigidity to his demeanour. ‘Richard used a felicitous phrase just now. He said, “What we’re meant to think”. It was probably subconscious, but let’s consider who would have the most to gain from humiliating the radical group in Peking. They’re steeped in Mao’s extremer creeds, aren’t they? They would make China more independent, more xenophobic, more of an isolated rogue elephant on the international scene. More dangerous to those whom Mao dislikes. And who does he dislike more than anybody else? The great unloved neighbour with four thousand miles of common frontier, who made the historic mistake of patronising him! So who would have most to gain if these anti- Soviet acolytes of Mao lost out in the power struggle after the old man dies?’

  The other two men watched Crowdleigh in silence, waiting for him to answer his own rhetorical question. ‘The Russians! So who is it that is most likely to have regurgitated an imaginary survivor from Lin Piao’s long-lost Trident that crashed into the mists of history five years ago?’ With slow deliberation he unfolded his arms and placed his hands palms downward on his knees. ‘No ideas at all? Our old friends in Department “A” of the First Directorate of the KGB in Moscow. The “dezinformatsiya” fiction writers! Those folios Comrade Yang gave Richard the other night may be their best bit of creative writing ever. And Stillman’s report and his involvement could as easily have been fabricated by the same people.’

  Ketterman dabbed at his forehead with his handkerchief, wincing as he touched a tender area of the bruise around his left eye. ‘Okay—but that still doesn’t tell us who bombed out Yang at the Institute, and why.’

  ‘Speculative discussion about such short term imponderables as who planted the bomb on Yang is futile at present,’ Crowdleigh paused and looked deliberately again at Ketterman. ‘Or indeed who has kidnapped him—although in both cases the obvious scapegoats to choose would be the Peking radicals. What for me is beyond question is the unmistakable style of the initial operation. Taking Matthew hostage, putting vicious pressure on Richard here and the whole sly backdoor method of trying to filter out disinformation through respected Western academic
s, specialist writers and what have you. It all reeks far too powerfully of something cooked up in the rancid cauldrons of the Kremlin’s Kitchen. Especially the stuff about the Mao death plot. The Chinese don’t really have enough international self-confidence in the twilight zone to do things quite that way. It’s a too otherworldly for them. And that’s exactly the kind of blind spot which always gives the Kremlin away. It didn’t occur to them that it was all too sophisticatedly cynical for Peking to have conceived it. The Chinese simply think and act differently.’

  Crowdleigh got up suddenly and went over to the window. He sucked deeply on the still, hot air outside for a few moments then turned with his hands hi his pockets and leaned precariously backward on the unprotected windowsill.

  Ketterman stirred impatiently on the end of the bed. ‘Haven’t we learned anything about our late friend Stillman that tends to authenticate what he said? Could be have been suborned and taken to Mongolia?’

  Crowdleigh rocked backwards on the windowsill. ‘I’ve had only one preliminary report on the poor devil, which of course is classified, but I suppose I can tell you he was dismissed from his post with the Royal Armaments Research and Development Establishment ten years ago on account of alcoholism.’

  Scholefield snapped his fingers suddenly. ‘That’s the gesture I remember, the wagging head. The sure sign of the alcoholic. It bothered me vaguely all through the meeting.’

  Crowdleigh nodded impatiently. ‘He worked for a couple of years after that on retainers for various city insurance underwriters investigating air crashes abroad for them as a freelance. Then he was black-listed by them, too, for his drinking and he moved lock stock and barrel to Yugoslavia. He’d done a few jobs in Eastern Europe and it was through those air accidents that he got to know a few influential Communist intelligence types in the Warsaw Pact countries.’ Crowdleigh rocked backwards again at an alarming angle, lifting both feet off the floor. ‘That was in 1970. Whether Belgrade will co-operate in further investigations of his “career” or not remains to be seen. His British pension has been drawn regularly through a transfer arrangement with a Belgrade bank ever since—but if the Russians wanted to snap up a tame western aircraft accident investigator they certainly had one available as a sitting duck in Belgrade circa September 1971.’

  A nurse appeared silently behind Ketterman. Crowdleigh stopped talking abruptly. She began straightening Scholefield’s pillows. ‘I think, gentlemen, Mr. Scholefield should rest now,’ she said firmly.

  Ketterman stood up and looked uncertainly at Scholefield. ‘I must dash, Dick. Got several things to do before I go to the airport this afternoon. Washington wants to put the folios through the computers.’ He grinned, then hesitated, again holding his briefcase in both hands hi front of him. He seemed to be on the point of walking away but didn’t go. He looked uncomfortably across at Crowdleigh who was still balancing precariously, hands in pocket, on the open windowsill. Finally he stepped up beside Scholefield, bowed his head towards him and grasped his forearm again in an awkward parting gesture. ‘Dick I’m real damned sorry about Nina. You know that, don’t you?’

  Scholefield nodded quickly without looking up. Ketterman opened his mouth as if to say something else. Then he changed his mind and hurried away.

  Crowdleigh smiled perfunctorily at the nurse and let his feet fall slowly to the floor. ‘My deepest condolences, too, Richard, of course.’ As he went away down the ward behind Ketterman he turned back and lifted one hand in a silent, parting salute.

  OTTAWA, Wednesday—Soviet officials probing the plane crash in Mongolia in which Lin Piao was said to have been killed, found evidence that pistols had been fired on board. Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin was understood to have told Pierre Trudeau this when he was here a month after the episode.

  Canadian Press News Agency, 30 August 1972

  14

  The five-ton truck moved cautiously at walking speed along a street pitted with potholes in a wedge of bleak industrial wasteland carved out of North London by the recent passage of a stilted urban motorway. The hotel laundry letterwork had now been replaced with ‘Genders’ Light Removals’ and the whole vehicle had been resprayed a muddy brown colour. A row of derelict houses lined one side of the street, their smashed windows staring sightlessly out over the desolate rusting wreckage of a scrap dealer’s yard on the other. Dust and grit swirled up from under its wheels and hung in a cloud around the truck as it jolted slowly towards a grimy railway arch at the end of the road.

  A corrugated tin fence closing off a municipal refuse tip between the scrap yard and the bridge had been decorated in lurid poster colours. But the hundred-yard panorama of green bills, bright flowers and grazing nursery cows was darkening with grime too. A group of youths playing cricket against a wicket whitewashed on the fence swore obscenely at the truck as it enveloped them briefly in its gritty dust cloud. One threw a large stone which thumped against its side, leaving a visible dent. The young fair-haired American swore quietly to himself inside the dosed driver’s cab as he swerved to avoid an emaciated German Shepherd dog which rushed barking wildly from the refuse grounds to retrieve the stone.

  At the far end of the street the West Indian had parked his taxi in the shadow of the railway bridge a few yards short of the only building in the street in good repair. Its bright modern brickwork contrasted sharply with the blackened, crumbling masonry of the railway viaduct. A low, square complex of modern offices and workshops, it was fronted by a carefully swept forecourt, and two neat bay trees in tubs stood either side of the white-painted double doors. On a black frieze above the doors, freshly painted gold lettering embellished with discreet Gothic serifs spelled out ‘H. Jarvis & Sons Ltd. Funeral Directors since 1897.’

  Arthur Cooper was sitting inside the back of the parked taxi clutching a plastic folder of sealed documents. He tamed an anxious face to look at the truck as it drew up behind, but the black driver shook his head meaningfully. A minute later another taxi arrived and Harvey Ketterman climbed out. The West Indian driver unlocked the doors then to release Cooper and together they hurried up the steps between, the potted bay trees.

  At that moment the scratch cricket game against the fence along the street was interrupted again by the arrival of a television repair van. It parked outside the row of derelict houses and two men in overalls climbed out carrying metal tool boxes. They ignored the obscene abuse howled at them by the cricketers and hurried off towards the railway bridge and the funeral parlour, keeping close to the front of the gutted houses.

  Inside Jarvis & Sons’ offices the last of the administrative staff’ were leaving for lunch and Cooper led Ketterman quickly through towards the embalming workshops at the rear of the premises. The doors were already locked but Cooper produced a bunch of keys and motioned the American ahead of him. Ketterman stopped abruptly inside the door at the sight of a dead Arab on an embalming table, covered to the waist with a white sheet. Three or four more bodies covered with black blankets were lying on stretchers that seemed to have been deposited carelessly in the first convenient place their bearers had found among the clutter of collecting coffins, polythene canisters of embalming fluids and empty caskets.

  Cooper smiled nervously as he locked the door behind them. ‘That gentleman’s ready to go home to Tripoli tonight.’ He nodded towards the waxen face of the Arab. ‘The Imam is coming after lunch to wash him. Their religion demands it.’

  But Ketterman was already walking quickly round the racks of coffins that stretched from floor to ceiling, checking that nobody was concealed in the room. ‘Are all these damned things empty?’

  ‘Most of ‘em are full.’ Cooper leaned closer to read a label. ‘This one’s waiting shipment to Beirut next week.’

  Ketterman hurried over to the sliding doors that formed the far wall. He hauled them open and looked out into a large garage filled with black hearses and collecting ambulances. The doors to the street were padlocked on the inside. He bent down and peered under a row of carpe
nter’s benches, but saw only a clutter of wood and metal shavings, acetylene gas cylinders and scattered tools. As he stood up the coffins began to tremble on their racks. A distant rumble of sound built up rapidly to a roar as a train raced across the railway viaduct outside. For several seconds the workshops were filled with a deafening clamour of noise. When the silence returned Ketterman walked slowly back to Cooper. Beads of sweat stood out on the undertaker’s forehead although the atmosphere in the embalming room was chilled.

  ‘I thought our “Connaught” would suit best, Mr. Ketterman. It’s always been popular with you Americans.’ Cooper pointed to a large ornate casket carved out of dark mahogany that was lying open on two low trestles. With a shaking hand he stroked the quilted interior. ‘Zinc-lined, then white satin and flannellette. Our best finish.’

  Ketterman glanced into the pristine cleanness of the casket’s interior and nodded. ‘Perfect. Let’s get on with the holes, fast!’ Cooper blinked uncomprehendingly at him. ‘At least a dozen.’ Ketterman strode over to a workbench and picked up a one-inch brace and bit. He thrust it impatiently into the little man’s hands and began indicating spots around the casket where he should drill

  ‘But we only make holes in caskets to be buried at sea—’ Cooper caught sight of Ketterman’s threatening expression and bent quickly over his task, winding frantically on the handle of the drill ‘—to make them sink, of course.’