The Mandarin Cypher

by Adam Hall

  The man beside me spoke now, prodding me, and I drove off across the intersection, going east. It was obvious what he'd told me to do, though I didn't understand: he spoke in Mandarin, the common language of the new China, as the first man had done.

  'What do you want?' I asked them in English. Just a slight tremor of alarm in the voice, a couple of snatched glances at the man next to me. My cover was that of a man who dealt in rare coins and bullion and I must have had a few brushes with violence or attempted violence in my profession: a safe-break or a mugging or a bag-snatch, things like that; so I shouldn't be too frightened by this turn of events, but merely alarmed.

  There was a flat half-muted singing of Mandarin again and I shook my head hopelessly. I was waiting for a bit of Cantonese but I wasn't going to understand that either because there's a distinct advantage in the language barrier: it invites the competition to speak freely among themselves in their own tongue and it slows the action down quite a bit when they bark out an order, because if you don't understand what they're barking out they can't expect immediate obedience.

  I was now being searched, as far as was possible in the confines of the station wagon, and they were surprised not to find a gun. The ones they carried were now pressed a little harder against me, possibly because they were suspicious. Intelligent agents normally use guns.

  Some more Mandarin, then some rather inept attempts at Cantonese when I kept shaking my head. These were hit men, recently arrived in Hong Kong, uneducated and no more than action-trained. Probably they'd been flown in from Pekin when the people down here had found my photo in the files. There were a lot of them here, anything up to a hundred, and it didn't even have to stop at that because the population of China is embarrassingly large. They were here in force, presumably, because one operator can often mean a whole cell has moved into the field, and a cell would depend on a network.

  'Down along!' he kept saying in Cantonese, while I looked suitably puzzled. He jerked a hand across the windscreen, showing me where I had to go: down towards the harbour.

  I looked at my watch, being careful not to take my hand off the wheel, just angling the wrist, because they seemed rather excited and I didn't want any accidents. Both guns were suddenly pressed harder against me and I had a verbal warning. The time was 19.52 and I noted it because it's often important to remember what time an event happened: or this could be just rationalizing the subconscious need for orientation. To know the time was to control the situation, if only in terms of being informed, of being able to measure one of its elements; and I suppose this was a sop to the whimpering little organism as it tried to get my attention - they're going to kill you . . . it's three to one and you've had it and there's nothing you can do but I don't want to die, don't let them-Bloody well shut up.

  Sweat on my hands.

  'Down!' he said at the next intersection, pointing with his thin hand, its striking edge swollen and inflamed. He'd be somewhere near the yellow standard and still having trouble with the bricks. In a couple of minutes we came to a quay on the west side of the typhoon shelter and the man made me put the station wagon through a narrow gap between ropes and warning flags where the parapet was being repaired. Nobody was here, because at night there was nothing to come here for.

  'Stop!'

  There was a lot of sign language: I had to get out and stand with my hands raised against the wall of the rope store while they patted me all over for the gun, beginning to chatter when they couldn't find one. I could hear two of them back inside the car, pulling up the seats and snapping open the glove compartment.

  'Where gun?' they asked me, frustrated.

  'What the hell would I want a gun for?' Getting irritable now, a good mind to call a policeman, so forth.

  It was possible they were brighter than they looked, so I launched a daring tirade of indignation in colonial English, mentioning the severe punishment they would receive at the hands of the judge, and the long years in prison they were risking by their infamous conduct. They let me go on for ten seconds or so, not because they were listening but because they were completely thrown by not being able to find my gun. Then they told me to shut up, and began on my wallet. They had a photograph of me - I could see it was another copy of the one I'd found on the boy in the snake shop — and they began comparing it with my face and the photograph in my passport, making me stand facing the tall lamp at the edge of the quay. They weren't too satisfied, but then I didn't see how they could be, because passport photos are only ever good for a giggle and the one their network was circulating in Hong Kong was grainy.

  I stood as they'd placed me, hands by my sides so as not to attract attention if anyone came by. A gun was pressed against my spine while the other two went through my papers: driving license, membership card of the British Numismatic Association, representative's card for Mendoza S.A. of Buenos Aires, the letters of introduction.

  'You've made a mistake,' I said.

  They looked at me and then at the papers again. I don't think they'd understood, but I sensed they were pretty impressed by the cover material and for the first time it occurred to me that I had a chance of getting out of this alive. The feeling was quite heady, and an indication of how depressed I'd been getting before I'd seen the straws in the wind. The thing was that all they'd had to go on was the photograph: the copy of the one on file at the Bank of China. The station wagon was clear and so was the Harbour Hotel, and they'd picked me up on sight alone: part luck and part efficiency. There weren't many English in Hong Kong but the faces of Caucasians looked much alike to the Asians and they'd been very good and that was probably why they were so excited when they'd got into the car. Now they were beginning to wonder if they'd got the right man.

  'You're looking for someone else,' I told them, shaking my head. The two of them looked up again.

  'What this?'

  He held out one of the letters of introduction, trying to sound accusing. He could have questioned any of the other papers just as well: he wanted me to react, that was all.

  'Coins,' I said. The Mendoza letter heading carried three gold pieces, sumptuously embossed and gilded. With great care I moved my hand, pointing to my pocket.

  'What coin?'

  I took a risk and tapped my pocket with a stiff finger, making my small change clink, then bringing my hand very slowly to point at the letter. 'I am a coin dealer.'

  'How this?'

  He meant my left hand.

  'Accident.' I didn't want to go into that one so I produced a short embarrassed laugh. 'Look, I thought you were going to rob me, but now I can see you're looking for someone in particular.' I spread my hands till the gun prodded my spine. 'I am not the man you are looking for.'

  It was the only possible hope. They were young and inexperienced and would fear their superiors; and they weren't keen on knocking off an innocent party before they'd made sure who he was. On the other hand they felt frustrated about this: they were three of the toughest young thugs I'd ever seen and they were longing to make a killing for the hell of it because that's what their Pekin instructors had been training them to do for so long.

  'You come London?'

  He had the inhuman stare of the disciple newly ordained: with all the power of Mao behind him, he was addressing one of the imperialist vermin he had learned about at the desk and on the blackboard. They'd stuffed his head with ta tzu-pao and his stomach with government rice and sent him out crusading, a true Son of the Socialist Revolution, a brave Soldier of the People's Liberation Army, neither lance in his hand nor falcon at his wrist but just an itch in the pit of his guts to do in reality what he had done so many times in make-believe, spilling the sawdust out of the sacks in the sweaty gymnasium, sending them swinging on their ropes at a chop of his hand or a kick of his foot without even hating them, and dreaming of the day when his masters would give him something alive, something to hate, something to kill.

  Something like me.

  'No,' I said, 'I don't come from London.'


  I didn't think he could read Roman characters. He couldn't: he didn't react. The passport and the other papers didn't mean anything to him and that was why he found them impressive: their very unintelligibility was mystic and had power over him. He went on staring for a moment and then turned suddenly away to talk to the other man: not the one with the gun at my spine, the one with the blepharitis. They spoke in Mandarin still, the Kuo-yu, and I couldn't follow; but it seemed as if they thought they'd made a mistake and didn't know what to do next, so I began rehearsing a speech in simple English. They wouldn't understand but the words would implement my gestures and provide the vehicle for tone: and the tone was very important - rueful, conciliatory, half-admitting myself as party to their unfortunate mistake.

  'Listen,' I said, and they looked at me. 'If you will let me go, I will tell no one. It is a silly mistake. I will go away quietly, and forget.' I rang the changes on this theme, bowing myself out of their ken, taking a step towards the station wagon, shaking my head sorrowfully about our foolish misunderstanding, the bloody thing poking sharply into my back as I took that one step nearer the car. I stopped and waited for them to react.

  There were chimes sounding somewhere, probably from one of the English churches. Eight o'clock, the hour when a young married widow with a taste for Ming and emeralds and soixante-neuf would be going through the doors of El Caliph to receive in surprise a dozen gardenias in lieu of dalliance; when a thin owlish man with a thing against insects and a scar on his soul would be waiting in the shadows on a Hong Kong junk and listening to these same chimes, checking his watch; and when Clive Wing, coin dealer, was standing on a deserted quayside wondering how many minutes longer he was going to live.

  They'd listened to what I'd said and their rather bright stares had followed my gestures attentively: the language of mime is universally understood, even by children. They seemed to be waiting for me to go on, but I decided to leave it at that, as if I felt confident and didn't need to protest. It was quiet here, and we all stood perfectly still as we considered, in our divers ways, what should be done.

  I thought I could neutralize one of them: the one with the gun at my back. It would take him a long time, relatively, to pull the trigger, because I would induce nervous trauma in him first. That's why I always disappoint those people in Firearms when they try to sell me their goods: I just don't trust the bloody things. They're heavy and awkward and unreliable and of course an absolute give-away, and I don't like the bang they make. When these ticks had hijacked me just now in the car I couldn't have used a gun even if I'd carried one, and they wouldn't have accepted my cover: they'd have known right away they'd pulled in the spook they were after. No go.

  It takes time to pull a trigger because the chain of events is long and intricate. This boy would have fast reactions but that would only narrow the time gap: it wouldn't close it. Whatever move I made would surprise him because he was holding a gun and I wasn't and this gave him enormous confidence and left him wide open to surprise and all its hazards: he'd lose something in the region of a tenth of a second right at the outset because the flood of incoming data would be blocked off by the condition of shock. He wouldn't be able to think what I was doing because his ability to reason would be suspended until the shock phase was over. Added to this critical delay would be the normal physiological requirements in terms of time: the time needed to assess the data, decide on the appropriate action, envisage it, analyse the image, reach the decision to act, and order the action. The transmission of nervous signals would take very little time, the electrical impulse travelling at a hundred miles per second and in this case probably a little faster since the organism was trained in unarmed combat. But once his trigger finger had become active Under its muscle contraction he was going to run into a phase of gross delay in the overall operation: the flesh of his finger alone would absorb several minor fractions of a second, and the spring mechanism of the gun would then begin using up the greatest proportion of the total time demanded from initiation to completion.

  They stared at me, at my rueful smile.

  Somewhere inland the clock in the church ended its chimes.

  None of us moved. None of us.

  So maybe I could neutralize one of them: the one with the gun. But there was too much against it. I'd have to move sideways instead of forward and down, and even then his gun hand would follow until I could mount the blow. And if I brought it off there'd be one dead man and that was all: there wouldn't be time to cripple him or put him out of action — it'd have to be a shikana, the force of both arms swinging the elbow in a murderous curve for the diaphragm, a rising blow that wouldn't call for sight, since I knew precisely where his diaphragm was at this instant.

  But if I did it there'd be another death a second later because the nearer of the other two, the one with the blepharitis, would recognize the blow I was using and come for me with any one of the forward-killing kicks while my neck was exposed to him at the end of my own movement. He'd be too frightened to do anything else: because this is the way with the graduated belts — their powers are so deadly that they recognize the dangers of an equal.

  So there wasn't a chance but you have to think of everything or you'll miss a trick and they'll go in there and switch the lights on and lock the door and pull your dossier out of the safe and drop it into the document destruction thing, just because you didn't think of everything.

  'You're making a mistake,' I told them again.

  They didn't understand and it worried them in case I was saying something they could use for their profit. They told me to shut up: I didn't know the word but I knew the tone. Then the thin one folded my papers and put them into the passport and I waited for him to hand them back to me and give a shrug and let me go, because the imperilled psyche becomes undisciplined and clutters the mind with false hopes, however you try to reason.

  He said a word and the gun was pushed harder against my spine and we moved at last, the four of us, towards the station wagon. I was forced back into the driving seat and they took my wrists and put my hands on the wheel-rim. Then they all climbed in and slammed the doors and one of them tugged out the street map from the glove compartment and got it open and stared at it for a moment and finally stabbed his finger near one of the folds. 'Here.' He looked at me with his blank animal eyes to see that I understood. 'Go here.' The facia wasn't lit but there was a chemical glow from the quayside lamps and his finger was stabbing again at the point on the map: the corner of Statue Square, where the Bank of China stood with its great brass doors and its garrison of armed guards and interrogators, the place where they were going to take me and after a while make me wish to Christ I'd drawn a capsule.

  Chapter Eleven

  TARGET

  'Have you seen this chart?'

  'Yes,' I told him.

  'Where?'

  'On the launch.'

  'What launch?'

  'The narcotics boat.'

  'Oh yes.'

  He had it spread across the table: Chart 341 - China - South-East Coast - Approaches to Hong Kong-Islands South of Lantau.

  'Have you studied it?' he asked me.

  'Not in detail.'

  His head turned slightly and he became very still for a second or two. Then he went across to the bulkhead and put his foot down and there was a light crunch and he came back.

  'I wish to Christ you wouldn't do that,' I said.

  He gave a titter but watched me with unamused eyes. 'Cockroach, old boy, the mariner's bane. How are you feeling?'

  'Bloody awful.'

  Physically I was all right but it had put an edge on my nerves, those three little ticks trying to get at me like that within minutes of final briefing.

  'You've got three and a half hours yet,' said Ferris. 'Take it easy.' He leaned over the chart again, moving the lantern so that its light featured the bottom right-hand corner. This was the target zone, centred on Longitude 114 by east, Latitude 22 by north. The oil rig was two miles south of t
he San-men Islands and I saw he'd marked it in: I suppose he'd asked the Navy or someone where the thing was.

  'Have you seen any other charts?'

  'One or two.'

  'On the narcotics launch?'

  'Yes.'

  I hadn't studied them. He got another one and unrolled it and spread it out and began topographical briefing while I sat in my track suit and tried to get my left eyelid to keep still: they could have wrecked the whole mission for me, those little bastards.

  'Hong Kong is pretty well surrounded,' said Ferris, 'with these little islands, a couple of hundred of them belonging to the Colony and the rest of them garrisoned by the Communist Chinese.'

  I didn't ask any questions yet but I was already wondering how the hell he was going to drop me into the target zone with any kind of security, even by night.

  'You'll be going in by sub,' he said without looking up from the chart.

  It wasn't telepathy: he was just a very bright director and keeping one step ahead of me. I let him go on talking, trying to get the other thing out of my mind.

  They were probably dead.

  'This group is perfectly barren, with the nearest garrison on this island here, five nautical miles to the north-east.'

  I was beginning to steam now so I unzipped the track suit to the waist and let it hang open. Ferris had gone to fetch it for me from the Harbour Hotel, mustn't catch a cold he'd said with a whinnying laugh, and left me here on the junk with a towel round me. I hadn't dried off enough before I put the track suit on and that was why I had begun steaming.