The Mandarin Cypher

by Adam Hall

  He laughed quietly, his teeth very white in contrast to his brick-red face. He was one of those Englishmen who never tan: they just get redder and redder. He looked suddenly serious, the laugh dying abruptly as he peered at me through his thick-lensed glasses.

  'You know why I left the club?' he asked.

  'No?' I thought quickly and began laughing. 'Oh God, not for the same -'

  'No. I got behind with the fees.'

  'Is that all? Of course I always paid up right on the dot - the only trouble was the cheques always bounced!'

  We laughed again.

  'How are you feeling now?'

  'Oh,' I said, 'not bad.'

  'You've had a rough time of it.'

  The girl put the needle in and we watched it.

  'It was a shock, that's all. Upset me, I can tell you.'

  'I expect it did,' he said. 'What happened, exactly?'

  She went on pressing the plunger. I hardly felt it.

  'Well,' I told him, trying to think back, 'I must have drifted here, pretty well unconscious. Then I saw this chap coming for me with his knife, and - well, I had to do something. Woke me right up, I can tell you. He was a real bastard, came at me --' I broke off and looked around at the young nurse and the man standing by the door and the other one sitting on a stool near the sterilizing unit. 'Do these people understand English, old boy?'

  'It doesn't matter,' he said.

  'Well, I mean I wouldn't like to upset anybody, but quite frankly, after what that - that chap did to me down there I'm pretty annoyed. Wouldn't you be?'

  'I certainly would.'

  Someone else came in, looking at my hand without touching it, saying something to the nurse in Chinese and then slipping a white gown on and taking some surgical gloves from a sterile packet.

  'He's the doctor,' Tewson told me.

  'Good afternoon,' I said cheerfully, but the man didn't seem to hear me. I hoped he was good at his job, that was all: my hand was looking like a not-terribly-well-done steak.

  'Go on,' said Tewson.

  'What? Oh. Well I mean there it was. That Chink came at me with his knife out and it woke me right up, as you can imagine. I'm pretty strong, and I know a thing or two about looking after myself, and — well, I suppose I must have been in a flaming temper, or of course I wouldn't have been so rough with him.' I looked down for a moment, a bit ashamed of myself. 'Poor little sod. But I mean he shouldn't have -' I broke off and shrugged with my right shoulder, 'Well, it's done now, I suppose.' .

  The nurse inclined the articulated couch an inch or two lower, so that I was in a half-reclining position. The man in the white gown was working on my hand but I couldn't see it because they'd put a little screen round it.

  'I can't feel a thing, you know. They're pretty good, aren't they?'

  'Yes.'

  I looked at him very straight, 'Listen, old boy, are they very annoyed about that poor little bastard? I mean sod?'

  'He was only doing what he thought was right.'

  'So was I.' I gave an ironic laugh. 'At least, it was right for me!'

  He was watching what they were doing to my hand.

  'How did you come to be drifting so near the rig?'

  'God knows! It was just the current.'

  He nodded slowly, still watching the operation. 'Did you fall off a boat, or something?'

  'Not exactly. I was in a rubber dinghy, with an outboard, and I'd put the anchor down while I was diving, you see. Then when I tried to pull it up, it wouldn't budge. So I went down again to free it. Thing was stuck in a whole lot of weed, I was about waist deep in the stuff. Well, I cut the anchor clear, and then had to cut myself clear after that because the stuff was all round my legs. Then I must have lost consciousness, or as good as. I just remember feeling sort of drunk - you know how it feels, do you? D'you do any diving?'

  'Not a lot.'

  'Kind of narcosis. I'd been down too long-always overdo things, that's me.' I shut my eyes and didn't say any more.

  'It doesn't hurt?'

  I opened my eyes.

  'M'm? No. Can't feel a thing, old boy. No, the fatigue's just catching up on me, I suppose. Bit whacked.'

  I shut my eyes again.

  'I expect you are.'

  'Sorry.'

  'That's all right.'

  He didn't talk again for a while.

  Situation totally zero in terms of a get-out and I didn't like the way they'd brought Tewson in to put the questions because the other two men in here were obviously bugs and understood English perfectly and it meant the intelligence cell knew how to think and I don't like people thinking. They hadn't had any more than a few minutes to brief Tewson and I didn't like the way they'd done that either: he clearly wasn't intelligence but he probably wasn't a fool either and they'd just told him to talk about himself as much as he wanted to, if it would help him put me at my ease, and that meant they were perfectly confident that whatever he told me I wouldn't ever be able to pass on.

  The thing that interested me most was his present state of mind. It was so like his wife's: he was lonely, and he was scared. But I didn't think they were scared of the Chinese: they'd got into something deeper than it had looked and they hadn't given themselves a chance to pull out while there was time. In spite of his briefing there'd been no need for him to admit he'd lived in Redhill or that he'd been asked to resign from the golf club because he hadn't paid his fees: I'd been aware of his strong compulsion to reminisce with a fellow-countryman just for a couple of minutes, until he'd remembered the others were listening and that he was meant to interrogate me.

  That was why they'd taken him on a lead to the Golden Sands at regular intervals for sexual recreation and wifely reassurance: they didn't want their missiles to get stuck in the tube because their design consultant was spiritually disorientated.

  'All over,' he said.

  'What is?'

  I opened my eyes.

  'Your little operation.'

  Reaction hit the nerves but stopped short at involuntary muscular stimulation. He wasn't looking at me as he said it: he was unaware of any double meaning.

  'It feels fine.'

  'They're very skilled.'

  The surgeon was peeling off the thin disposable gloves and dropping them into a sani-bin and leaving the nurse to do the final dressing. She looked at me once, not smiling, looking away again, just wanting to know that the capitalist-imperialist dupe was exhibiting the correct clinical reaction following anaesthetized surgical trauma.

  They wanted to keep me in good health and this tied in with the Chinese attitude towards captive political or intelligence officers of foreign extraction: they relied more heavily on indoctrination, mind-bending and intensive exploration of the psyche rather than induced physical pain. It also tied in with the way they'd pulled me out of the sea an hour ago: there'd been a sudden alarm raised and for a few minutes I'd been a floating target for half a dozen guns, but after they'd made sure I couldn't do anything they'd got me into the launch and given me the appropriate rescue attention while I rolled my eyes and moaned and so forth.

  The only sign of enmity had come from one of the divers when he'd surfaced and seen me lying in the stern: his stream of invective had gone on until one of the officers had cut him short. Possibly he was a close friend of the man I'd killed, perhaps even his brother.

  The nurse activated the very expensive-looking surgical couch and tipped me upright.

  Thank you,' I said to her. 'Thank-you,' nodding and smiling.

  Drew a complete blank so I turned to Tewson.

  'This come under the National Health?'

  He laughed pleasantly, rocking back an inch on his heels. I thought he probably hadn't seen an Englishman to talk to for a long time: 'National Health' was a very English institution and the phrase had struck another chord with him. I could believe that if I just said 'Piccadilly' or 'God save the Queen' he would have broken down and sobbed on my shoulder. Served him bloody well right: he should've tho
ught of what he was doing before he sold out to the Reds in such a hurry. At least people like Philby had the decency to go on hating our guts after they'd made the break.

  But of course he hadn't sold out to the Reds at all.

  He'd sold out to Nora.

  'When were you in England last?'

  I was certain he hadn't meant to ask.

  'Me? Oh, couple of months ago. Why?'

  'I just wondered how things were over there.'

  I gave a short laugh. 'Price of bangers is up again, and you can still get into the News of the World if you leave your flies undone on the Tube.'

  We laughed together, real old pals.

  He'd sold out to Nora: the girl with a taste for soixante-neuf and Ming. He couldn't give her the one so he gave her the other. A man short on libido doesn't have to be insensitive about it and she wouldn't have spared him: it had gone on for years and he hadn't been able to do anything about it because he wasn't earning enough. Then the chance came and he'd sold two things in the same deal: the design of the missile launcher he was working on, and his conscience. And he'd bought back his pride.

  'So I suppose you never saw your dinghy again?'

  'My what? Oh-no. Drifted off into the wide blue yonder. Cost me a packet. On my income, anyway.'

  'Where were you diving?' he asked casually, and I felt sorry for him: he was a genuine boffin and all he'd got on his mind was a slide-rule and they'd told him to interrogate me and make it sound natural and he just wasn't capable. He was a simple-minded genius and this wasn't his field at all.

  'South China Sea,' I told him with a shut face.

  'Just doing a bit of scuba fishing, were you?'

  'That's right.' Then I put my right hand on his arm and lowered my voice. 'Fact is, old boy, I can't tell you what I was doing because I've been sworn to secrecy. Be breaking my word to a friend, get it? Awfully sorry.'

  'That's all right'

  He was obviously relieved: he'd put the question they'd told him to put and if I didn't want to answer it he couldn't make me.

  The nurse was putting my left arm in a sling and I looked into her blank young face as roguishly as my cover demanded, trying to make her look up at me. No go. She pinned the sling to the white tunic I had on: when they'd brought me on board the rig they'd cut away the remains of the rubber suit and put me into this Mao outfit and together with the sling it made a first class change of image if I'd had any use for one.

  The Chinese near the door pulled it open and beckoned us outside. He looked like the one who'd escorted Tewson to the Golden Sands Hotel. He went out first and we followed and nobody said anything till we were going along the deck towards the living quarters and suddenly I knew I had to make a move and I didn't know precisely what kind of move and I had to think and I thought fast, strolling beside Tewson near the rails.

  It didn't have to be a physical move. The last-ditch get-out thing I'd set up wasn't for now: it was for the dark and for the time when I was driven to do something suicidal. The move I had to make now was psychological and I was beginning to see its shape.

  Situation: I was free to walk on deck in the warm afternoon sunshine and chat with my fellow countryman but appearances were deceptive because this was an opposition stronghold and they'd got me and they were going to keep me unless I could stop them and I didn't think I could stop them. In metaphysical terms I was at the wide end of a narrowing tunnel that would take me through the imminent interrogation phase with their professional from the Hong Kong cell and through increasingly restrictive incarceration and withholding of privileges to the final elaborate mind-bending sessions with the intelligence psychiatrists in Pekin that would leave me physically emaciated and with irreversible personality changes that would kill off any hope of making an eventual break because I would no longer be the kind of human being who could plan such a thing or even want it.

  Probably it was my last chance of using Tewson for my own purposes or even of seeing him again. They'd briefed him to question me before they put any kind of pressure on because you couldn't feel suspicious of a chap born under the same flag and all that, and I was expected to be relaxed and make a slip or decide to give him my confidence. I'd pushed this one as far as I could and the only thing that worried me was that he'd seemed to accept the fact that I'd met him sometimes at the golf club. The dossier on George Henry Tewson that Macklin had given me was exhaustive, even to the names of his acquaintances in Redhill, but I'd expected him to challenge me on this one: what year were you there, then? I don't seem to remember you, so forth. But in the first few minutes of talking to him I'd recognized a whopping case of homesickness and thrown him the golf club thing: and I think he took it without question because he'd wanted to run into someone from his intimate past, all the way out here on this remote prison of his where he lived among strangers.

  I think he'd accepted the whole of my cover story and the two Chinese had been listening attentively so that they could trip me on the second time round. They wouldn't be able to do that because I'd been speaking to their ears and not Tewson's and there wasn't anything they could trip me on, so they'd have to console themselves with the obvious ones: what were you doing so far from land in a small rubber dinghy, why were you sworn to secrecy, who is your friend, so forth. That was all right. Most of the cover was pick-proof: the thing about cutting the anchor free and then losing consciousness was to give me a base they'd never find but couldn't prove was non-existent. Because they were going to check up on every word: I'd heard the helicopter take off soon after they'd brought me aboard and I was pretty certain they'd gone to pick up the interrogator in Hong Kong. So I didn't have long to make a move.

  I made it.

  The Chinese was leading the way and the guard had followed us out of the clinic and I don't think I could have said anything to Tewson quietly enough without their catching some of it and even if they only caught a couple of words they'd get the drift. But the riveter had started up a few minutes before we'd left the clinic and it was still hammering away on one of the lower decks, and the sound cover was adequate.

  It was a hundred to one against my getting off this missile base with a whole skin but I was going to try and if I got clear then I was taking Tewson.

  Tewson was the target for Mandarin.

  He was the objective London wanted me to bring out: Executive will withdraw objective from target zone. And if I was going to pull off a hundred-to-one shot and get out alive, then I was going to take the objective with me because I wasn't interested in aborting the mission.

  I didn't have much to lose.

  Because you don't need a capsule, you know, when it comes to the crunch. That's just the most convenient way. You don't even need drain cleaner or exhaust gas or a knife or a gun or a high window without bars or a rope: you just need your nails and an artery - and their belief that you want to stay alive. That bit's important because if they think you're going to try switching off they'll start watching you and that's a bore.

  I'd do it because I don't like tunnels: I'm claustrophobic.

  I wouldn't want to go through with the intensive interrogation phase and the increasingly restrictive incarceration and the final mind-bending sessions in Pekin because they'd break down the psyche to the point when I didn't think the Bureau was important anymore and then I'd give them the lot. And I wouldn't mind.

  But I minded now.

  So I hadn't got much to lose if I tried to get the objective out of the target zone and failed, even if it killed me. A lot would depend on Tewson.

  He was saying something but I couldn't hear.

  'What?'

  'Bloody noise!' he said with his quick white laugh. 'They're doing repairs!'

  'Just like the Strand,' I said, 'always got the road up!'

  We laughed about this, nodding together.

  The Chinese in front of us hadn't turned round so the chance was wide open and I went over the whole thing in the next two seconds to make sure I got it right.

/>   I had to blow my cover.

  But only to Tewson: not to the opposition. They'd told him, or they would later tell him, that I was an intelligence agent sent to Hong Kong to find him and take him back to London; and I'd have to say something to him that would cut right across their story. It must be something he couldn't repeat to the opposition without endangering himself. And it must carry the name of a sponsor to give it high credibility, but a sponsor he couldn't contact openly for confirmation. And finally it must be short, because at any next second the din of the riveter could stop and leave me without aural cover.

  All I had to do was light a fuse. A short-burn fuse in his mind.

  'Tewson.' I waited till he'd turned his head, then pitched my voice against the background noise. 'Nora says she's found out you're expendable. They're going to kill you the minute you've done this job, for their own security. She wants me to tell you to get out of this as soon as you can.'

  Chapter Seventeen

  COVER

  'When?'

  'Last night.'

  'What time?'

  'I've told you I can't remember what the time was!'

  'You told me nothing!'

  'Oh for Christ sake 'Who are your employers?'

  'I'm not going to tell you!'

  'Because you are lying!'

  'If you say that again I'll --'

  'Where are they now?'

  'Who?'

  'Your employers.'

  'They're - oh Jesus, are you off your fucking rocker? How many times have you asked me that one?'

  He'd been at me for two hours without a break but he wasn't very good. Thin chap with a wide jaw and a short haircut, Mao tunic, some kind of insignia, worker's merit medal or something. He'd started sweating because of the heat of the lamp.

  They'd given me the smallest cabin on the whole rig: one narrow bunk set in the wall like a niche at the crematorium where you put the urn, cheap cardtable and picnic chair, army mirror on a chain, tin-washbasin, no loo. There was only one lamp and it was high on the wall and they'd put a two hundred watt bulb in it and he was getting as much of the glare as I was, but I suppose he thought he should do this thing like they did it on the flicks.