The Mandarin Cypher

by Adam Hall

  I'd made no provision for pulling a man out with me and there wouldn't have been anything I could have done about it even if London had briefed me on it before we'd gone into the access phase: the rig was manned and guarded and Tewson was under the protection of the opposition and it was no go all along the line.

  Ferris knew that. He'd been instructed to field-brief me with the signal and he'd done that. I'd received the directive and acknowledged it and all I could do now was hole up on Heng-kang till tonight and come back and go over the rig again to see if I could fill in a few of the gaps: try finding out what type of missile they were going to plug into this thing, take a closer peek at the unit that looked like a tropospheric scatter system, do a soft-shoe snatch on one of the guards and get him into cover and see if he Could understand Cantonese.

  But that would be all I could do before I had to pull out and when I pulled out I couldn't bring Tewson with me. They bloody well ought to know that.

  Even at this depth I could feel the vibration of the riveter in the pontoon leg and when I lashed the used air tanks to the girder they began ringing to the percussion: at four atmospheres the residue of air was being compressed by seventy-five per cent and the vibration was hitting them like a drum, so I took them off and looped some of the cord round the girder to damp out the metal-to-metal contact before I lashed everything tight and damn nearly knocked into him when I turned round because he was right behind me and reaching for his knife.

  High cheekbones and light yellow eyes behind the mask, nothing on him except the diver's knife, no spear-gun or anything. His move for the knife surprised me because you can't use any kind of blade under water with enough speed to do any damage: you've got to wait till you can get in close and then start ramming with it. He was shorter than I was and that meant he couldn't get in close unless I let him and I wasn't going to do that and he ought to know.

  Conceivably it was just a defensive reaction when I'd turned round: he was offering the knife correctly, hilt down and blade up at forty-five degrees - he knew how to use the thing and unless I backed off it wouldn't be any good reaching for my own knife because he'd be ripping into me before I could get anywhere near it.

  We looked at each other through our faceplates for two or three seconds before we made a move. Everything was in the eyes: not communication but reaction. His eyes were alert and hostile, the lids narrowed and the pupils enlarged. He watched me with total attention. In my own eyes he'd seen shock and now saw decision. Man is-one of the territorial animals and contact between two members of their species gives rise to an immediate issue when one or the other is on his own ground. For both of them — but particularly for the intruder - there is the primitive decision to be made: to fight or run.

  But he hadn't been waiting to see what I would do. The situation was more sophisticated than it would have been for two of the lower animals: this diver had seen me lashing something to the base of the rig and it could be explosive and whatever it was he wanted to find out as soon as he could and take it aloft for close examination. He also wanted to know what I was doing here and who I was and where I'd come from and he was going to subdue me if he could and similarly take me to the surface and hand me over for interrogation.

  There'd been a chance that I might have capitulated in the instant of encounter but the time was past now and he against me saw that. The very fact of my standing here face to face with him was an expression of hostility and he was going to make the first move: by infinite degrees he was bringing his body lower and turning the trunk with the right shoulder coming towards me and the elbow at right angles, the blade of the knife cocked and steady, dull silver in the strange underwater light.

  Combat at eighteen fathoms has its own rules and some of them run counter to the norm: you don't draw back to bring momentum into a blow because the pressure of the element is going to kill off momentum anyway. You have to streamline the strike and he did that and the blade hit the glass of my faceplate and the point stayed there scraping on the surface as I held his wrist and we looked at each other, locked and motionless. He'd struck directly forward and into the aim and I'd known he'd have to do that because it was the only way and I'd worked fast and my forearm had driven straight upwards to connect my hand to his wrist but the water had built up resistance against the bicep area because it was travelling at right angles and it had slowed the blow but not critically: he'd struck for the throat or my breathing tube and hit the faceplate and his wrist was locked in my fingers and I began squeezing.

  The bone was thin and I began levering, working for a fracture, watching the pain start in his eyes. A foot blow was out of the question because of the drag of the fins so I knew he'd have to use his left hand and I was ready but he was wickedly fast, clawing for my breathing tube again and again as I jerked my head back and kicked upwards from the sea bed and dragged him with me, keeping the pressure on his wrist: but we were clear of the sand now and fighting in the manner of fish, and he used the element for his own defence, letting my grip on his wrist move his whole body, the kinetic energy travelling through the arm to the shoulder and beyond.

  Breathing became difficult as the muscles demanded oxygen: the lungs began creating a vacuum, setting up pressure lag at the regulator.

  He had stopped his left-hand action because I was holding the air tube out of his reach, my back arched and my head angled, but this was defensive because my right hand was immobilized and time was already running out: in scuba diving exertion of any kind is at a heavy premium and we were making demands on oxygen that weren't going to be met. I estimated we had two more minutes before exhaustion set in.

  The current was taking us slowly away from the substructure of the rig and we were drifting higher, with the sandbars below us losing definition. The only purchase either of us had was against the other's body and we were using our legs now, not for striking but for leverage, my right foot working for pressure against his neck as one of his legs was hooked suddenly around mine as he went for a knee lock and got it and began putting stress into the movement with our ankles braced together bone on bone.

  Our black rubber bodies drifted, entangled intimately in a deathly embrace, a slow and freakish sea-creature afloat on the current, the pressures and tensions of its own destruction working within it, the quadruple lung system starving for air, the twin heads close together in mortal enmity, each willing death on the other.

  This wasn't how it was meant to be, this slow surrender to the sea itself, the drifting away to death of a four-armed creature, the light turning as the grey-green world revolved, the mind spinning in silence, in eternal peace.

  Think.

  A whirlpool of colours streaming, swirling, a singing of yellow in my eyes as the deep came, darkening.

  Think.

  Nitrogen narcosis.

  Do something.

  The consciousness ebbing as the rapture of the deep drew over me, the pain sharp in my knee and the brain waking, Christ sake do something, finish him off and get up there, his hand hooking again and the rush of salt water against my face as the mask was wrenched away, fighting him half-blinded now and with pressure against the nose and the shape of his other hand indistinct as his wrist came free and he hooked again and dragged my air tube away, taking my last hope of life.

  Not good enough and had to try but salt water now in my eyes and in my mouth and no more air and he kicked with his fins to get clear while I drowned but don't let him he'll leave you here to die and my hand moved, frenzied, part of the mind driving it, part of the mind striving to clear a space for conscious thought like a bubble in black water, a bubble of light, my fingers closing and snatching at his head and dragging the mask off and going for his air tube and finding it and tearing it away as he squirmed clear of the knee lock and began fighting for his life against the sea.

  Then at some time our faces passed close to each other and his looked as dead as mine must look, the eyes dulled by the water and the mouth flattened as he held on to the
last breath of his life, as I was doing. Then we drifted apart in the reddening light as the blood from the wound in my hand began clouding against my eyes. I felt behind me for the air tube but it was out of my reach: he'd pulled the mouthpiece over my head and the tube was hanging somewhere behind my shoulder-blades. The longing began in my chest: the longing to drag air into the lungs and breathe again.

  The sea darkened as he loomed suddenly against my face, his shoulder hitting and turning me as 'his arm hooked again and again behind him, his hand trying to find the air tube as it drifted past my eyes. I cut it away with my knife and kicked clear of him.

  The effort had taken the last of my strength and my chest was hammering with the need for air and I knew that soon my throat must open and suck the water in, and in the deep red singing I saw Moira, as I knew one day I would, her long eyes and the flow of her copper hair, turning her head in the way she did, to watch me with her smile as my mind became lulled in the soft-coming waves of nothing, nihil, annihilation, while somewhere as if in a different place the organism continued with its desperate travail, my hand reaching overhead and the fingers searching, the breath held in the hollows of the sea and the mind lingering, alive, the nerves subservient to the primitive nub of matter at the top of the spine - the hand suddenly frenzied as the fingers touched the concertina rubber of the tube and grasped it, pulling it over my head and trying to force the mouthpiece against my teeth, think, as they closed on it, on the life it could give, but think, as the forebrain was roused from its narcosis - face the surface and my legs kicked and I turned on my back, remembering, my hand lifting, taking the mouthpiece higher than the regulator with the opening downwards, bring it down, my face reaching upwards and my mouth hungry for the bubbling air and biting on it, exhale, the water turning me, swallow, my body drifting, now breathe, the sigh of the cylinders echoing in the deep vaults of the sea, now breathe, the lungs greedy and pulling at the valve and sweetly filling, breathe.

  I saw him once more.

  He was slowly windmilling in the blood-red cloud, his arms open and his legs apart and his movement graceful as the current turned him, his eyes quiet as he danced alone.

  His mask was still hanging at his neck, its strap holding it, and I pulled it over his head and put it on, squeezing the water out by degrees as I breathed into it. Then I kicked with my fins and my hands reached upwards, following the bubbles and slowly climbing their chain.

  Don't hurry.

  Let the bubbles go, there's no hurry.

  Remember what you know: never climb faster than they do. Let them go.

  The light grew stronger above me, its molten silver spreading in a pool as I neared the surface, following the bubbles, following. Globules of darkness began appearing and I watched them, amused, think, their effect mesmeric, their dark spheres floating psychedelically against my eyes, remember, their thin strings stretching above them, remember the mines.

  The faint trellis of girders was on my left and I turned and moved in that direction, my heart thudding because the organism had been perturbed. Basic forebrain cerebration was starting up again as the effect of the nitrogen narcosis began wearing off: at the crude decision-making level I was able to plan what I was going to do for the next few minutes. Consideration of later problems was beyond me for the moment: it was enough to be alive.

  When I reached the surface below the deck of the rig I removed the mouthpiece and turned off the air and hooked both arms across a horizontal girder and hung there, filling my lungs, slowly and deeply, again and again, sending oxygen through the system and driving the residue of carbon dioxide out of the body tissues, hanging as limp as I could and thinking of nothing, closing my eyes.

  The water lapped at the girders, a slow swell moving the surface without disturbing it; I heard a sea bird call as it flew between the islands; another answered, far away.

  Then the riveter started up again and the shock went through me and I opened my eyes, thinking I'd slept: maybe I had. It was time to go.

  I didn't find it easy to put the mask on and the mouthpiece between my teeth because there'd been death down there and I didn't want to go there again, but I couldn't stay here by daylight: there was no certain cover for me above the waterline.

  Orientate.

  The island was to the north, and I could see it clearly: a series of humped green hills and a fall of granite rock where I knew there were caves. The sea between here and Heng-kang Chou was glass smooth under the climbing sun, except where the flotsam made a patch of black, its edges shining. They could see it too, because I heard cries and in a moment the riveter stopped and their voices were clearer. They were calling in Mandarin but I understood well enough: it was one cry repeated, man overboard, and interspersed with short sharp words of enquiry and response, where, there.

  The hiss of the welding plant died away now and the only background was the murmur of the diesel generators. The men's voices were raised sharply against it and I heard the first order being shouted. Feet began ringing on the iron decks.

  I dived.

  Sound burst suddenly against my eardrums: the power launch was tied up on the far side of the rig, below bad-weather derricks, and its engines started up as I began a long curving path that took me through the girders on the north side of the substructure with the minefield ten or fifteen feet above my head. I turned slowly on my back and saw their dark blobs against the flare of the surface. The body of the diver floated above them and the oblong shape of the launch went curving across, its draught too shallow for the keel to foul the outrigger framework that held the mines suspended. Its engines were loud now, filling the sea with their sound.

  With fifty feet on the depth gauge I was invisible from the surface and this was as deep as I wanted to go because the pressure was already tangible and it was urgent that I stayed free of narcosis. There was also a lingering sense of fear as I moved again in the deeps, watching the enemy above me through a dead man's mask.

  Ignore.

  I kicked with the fins, setting a steady rhythm, still swimming with my face to the surface in the hope of navigating. The compass was useless at this distance from the rig and I couldn't go up and check my bearings: all I could do was to keep the pool of sunlight in my wake and on my left. But it was amorphous and diffuse, its glare dazzling me. I shut my eyes against it. The boat's engines were idling now as they took the body aboard and examined it.

  Desultory thought process: Mandarin was blown. The cover story Ferris had given me had been thin at best but now it wouldn't stand a chance because they knew by now that the diver hadn't just got into difficulties down there: his mask was missing and his air tube had been severed with a knife. The three secret service men who'd escorted Tewson to and from the Golden Sands Hotel were almost certainly on board the rig and there'd be a naval defence cadre with frogmen responsible for underwater maintenance and security and if they were good at their job they'd inspect the substructure down to the sea bed and find my gear and the radio.

  I didn't see any point in going back to the rig when night came, just to get picked off by rapid fire or caught alive and grilled and taken to Pekin and grilled again and thrown on the heap.

  I could hear the launch again, taking him back to the rig. The thing that narked me was that I couldn't tell Ferris we'd blown the operation and he couldn't tell London to switch that red light off and shut down the station on Mandarin. Ferris would go on brooding over the chart and haunting the radio room in Swordfish and Egerton would go on ordering trays of tea for his mission staff in Operations and punching out requests for a situation report and all they'd get was silence.

  Well, they shouldn't bloody well ask me to do the impossible.

  All right I'd done it before but there were limits and this time they'd blown the fuse. Some stupid pratt in the Ministry of Defence had seen the news about Tewson's shark thing and got the wind up and hit the button and told the Bureau to go and verify and set up an operation to get him out of Hong Kong if he was s
till alive. That was all right till we told them he was under an armed guard on Chinese territory in the middle of the sea: that was when Control should have told them to go home and shut up about it and maybe that was what Egerton had in fact done but they wouldn't listen.

  Well, they'd listen now all right. Your bright little boffin's gone and run away from home and he's not coming back so you'd better change the combinations on the files and take that launcher off the secret list and stop his pension because there's nothing more we can do for you.

  The sun was in my eyes.

  It was all I had to steer by but it wasn't very precise: it was just a big dazzling area that changed shape sometimes when the swell ran heavy and created surface undulation, and if I went off course I'd waste time and air and energy and I didn't want to waste any of those things because they were the means of life. But the only hope of taking a straight line to the island was by surfacing and correcting my bearings and I was still only half a mile from the rig and the look-outs were alerted.

  Sun in my eyes.

  I closed them.

  No go.

  I had to watch the surface all the time to keep the flare of light in my tracks and on my left and I had to check the gauge every thirty seconds to keep at a constant depth.

  Dazzle.

  The sound of the engines was faint now but I could hear they were idling: they hadn't been shut off. The body was being put aboard the rig. Another sound was coming in, fainter still but regular, and I couldn't place it. I didn't think it was the riveter: that would make a sharper vibration through the water and they wouldn't have started work again so soon.

  The sun was going down, its brightness flowing away to my left and leaving me in twilight. A kind of peace was coming into me, a stillness, and my eyes were closing of their own accord, drawing darkness across the last of the day, while -