The Mandarin Cypher q-6

by Adam Hall

  A single main lamp burned alongside the derrick, flooding most of the deck. A blizzard of bright moths blew around it and a lone bat circled, gorging itself, sometimes rising to the height of the flare pilot flame and circling again. Most of the deck was taken up with the drilling rig, skid mounted and abutting on the control cabin. The turbines took up the rest of the space and the helicopter pad was raised on a separate platform clear of the derrick and the two auxiliary pedestal cranes.

  There were more radio facilities than I'd expected: two masts cantilevered off the top deck and carrying microwave dishes, and a third mast with a booster-type unit that looked very like a tropospheric scatter system, conceivably for data transmission, rig-to-shore.

  The one on my left hadn't moved for three or four minutes: he was using binoculars on the sea through a ninety-degrees vector. The other man was pacing, his back to me because I was in the central area and he wasn't looking for anyone there. They were both in some kind of paramilitary uniform but carried only sidearms. The deck was three or four hundred feet across and I assumed there were other look-outs on the far side of the derrick and to the south of the engine-room installations.

  It took me nearly an hour to locate the control console, not because it was far from the central area but because I had to move by inches, getting back into cover and staying there for minutes at a time while a look-out patrolled the area I was working. I couldn't have moved around at all if the cover hadn't been exceptional: the whole of this deck was broken up by cranes and winch gear and power houses, and most of the enclaves were in deep shadow. The dangerous areas were the catwalks and corridors and I kept out of them except when I had to evade one of the patrols. The cover story Ferris had worked out for me was better than nothing but it wouldn't stand up to professional interrogation: it was an extreme resource to keep the opposition stalled while I tried for an emergency get-out from the target zone.

  If one of those patrols sighted me it could blow Mandarin as effectively as a mine.

  The control console was housed in a building like a concrete bunker and the only window was made of smoked plate glass with an integral mesh of extruded steel. Lamps burned inside and the control panels were visible through the glass but the place didn't seem to be manned at this hour. The signs above the main door were in Chinese characters followed by a number.

  It was now an hour before dawn and I began getting out, hanging back in deep cover and moving only when the risk was calculated. The most interesting thing on the middle deck was the work site where they were building some kind of platform into the main structure of the drilling derrick: the area was cluttered with welding gear and pneumatic rivet hammers and there weren't any signs that the job had been abandoned. I had to signal Ferris and I couldn't do it from anywhere near the rig unless I had adequate noise background to cover my voice and if those riveters started up I could get some sort of message out through the interference if the set was any good.

  By 08.00 hours I was beginning to feel the shakes.

  I had a lot of information for London and I wanted to give it to them as soon as I could because the future wasn't too certain. But I couldn't do anything about it until I had some kind of noise background and all I could hear was the low-pitched sound of the diesel generators and that wasn't enough: the human voice range would cut right across it.

  There were two things wrong: geometry, chronometry.

  They wouldn't leave a minefield to look after itself: there'd be a strict surveillance routine to make sure none of those things got loose or trapped flotsam and that meant they'd be sending someone down in daylight and he'd use one of the four iron ladders that ran from the lower deck to the sea bed down the substructure legs. They provided access to the pontoons and anchorage for repair and maintenance and the trouble was that I couldn't hope to find any effective concealment here between the lower deck and the surface of the sea. The geometry was wrong.

  I was wedged in the angle formed by three girders and it was the best cover I could find anywhere in the stormwave gap between the rig and the water: there were twenty other places like this but they were exactly like this and therefore no better.

  If the work crew on the middle deck had started riveting at first light I could have sent my signal to field direction and got out. I'd been thinking of Heng-kang Chou Island in terms of a refuge in emergency but now I'd surveyed the rig I knew I'd have to go out there and hole up till tonight if London wanted me to extend operations: but I couldn't leave here before I sent my signal because the waterproof bag was showing some wear and tear and I didn't think I could get the Hammerlund as far as the island in working condition. One drop of sea water in the wrong part of the circuit could block off the information I had for London and there might not be another chance. So I had to stay here and hope the riveters would start work before anyone came down here to look at the minefield but they hadn't started work yet and that was why I was getting the shakes: the chronometry was wrong.

  At 09.00 I was sweating hard in the rubber suit with the sun eight or nine diameters above the horizon and sending out heat. There had to be a change of plan because I was a sitting duck and the best thing to do was leave the radio here and go down and put on the scuba and wait with my head above water, ready to submerge as soon as anyone came down from the deck. They wouldn't see me and wouldn't see the radio unless they were looking for it and I could stand off below water and get back here when I could. One of the things I didn't like about it was that I'd use up a lot of air but none of the arguments against this plan made any sense because if I didn't put it into action I risked being seen and taken on board for interrogation and the longer I waited the higher the risk would become.

  I tilted the Hammerlund along the inside line of rivet heads against the girder and swung down and went sideways along a horizontal section till I reached a pontoon leg three feet above the surface and then climbed all the way back because the noise had started.

  09.14.

  Frequency 8MHz.

  222.

  Executive in the field to base: Wing to Swordfish.

  A hell of a bloody din from the deck above me, louder than I'd expected, the rivet-hammer trapping the sound and sending vibrations throughout the whole of the rig: I could feel it against my thighs and shoulder as I slid one leg along a girder and lay almost prone with my head against the set.

  222 — 222–222.

  He'd told me he was going to stay on board Swordfish until I could send Him a situation report: Ackroyd had a much bigger radio than anything Ferris could carry around and I might flash the sub to come and pull me out in a hurry and he'd want to be there.

  I kept on talking, giving them blocks of three with my head against the set and my nerves getting tight because it was going to be a fifteen-minute exchange of signals and I hadn't even raised an acknowledgement yet and as soon as anyone came down one of those ladder the whole mission was blown.

  Treble two thrice.

  All right, I was in the middle of seven thousand tons of steel girders waving a six-foot aerial around and trying to hit the ether with it while half a dozen diesel generators were pushing out enough electrostatic squelch to jam any transceiver within ten miles of here.

  222 — 222

  The riveter stopped and I hit the volume control in case Swordfish came through too strongly. The squirt of the welders kept up a low background so I thought I'd try it and spoke right against the mike, treble two, three blocks. Why the hell didn't those bastards -

  345 — 345–345.

  Swordfish.

  Very faint. I acknowledged and turned up the volume a few degrees and waited. They were going to get Ferris. He wouldn't be far away. He'd give me fives: that was Mandarin. Sweat stinging my eyes. Nobody on the ladders. Oh for Christ sake come on, we're -

  555 — 555–555.

  Mandarin.

  I went straight into the spiel.

  We'd been Control-briefed to exchange signals totally in cypher when we were us
ing the Swordfish radio, without any speech-code thrown in to expedite the transmission. The Admiralty was a bit edgy about having spooks on board one of Her Majesty's ships and they'd obviously told London that if we wanted to use the sparks we'd have to do it in strict hush. That was fair enough: they weren't used to having a couple of torn-arsed mudlarks playing about with their sub and the kind of stuff we'd be sending was pretty strong compared with the day-to-day signals normally going out — Have polished anchor — Please send buns for captain's birthday — so forth.

  489 — 356–181.

  Ferris was asking how I was and I told him to shut up and listen because I wanted to give him the whole picture before anyone came down here and stopped me.

  389–376 — 210… Extending and reversing, leaving some of the transfers the right way round whenever they could stand in as a contraction… This isn't an oil rig it's a missile base… thinking up non-standard contractions when I thought Ferris would get it first go without risking delay while he queried it… No well-head and false flare stack and crude reservoirs… image from air would be perfect… basic armament for defence: six eight-inch naval guns camouflaged as lean gas coolers… main structure under modification… electronic and telemetric installations not yet completed… assume Tewson involved as technician or supervisor.

  'Him and his slide-rule,' Nora had said.

  Ferris shot me a couple of queries about crew strength and the type of missile and I told him I thought there was only a skeleton unit on board while the boffins sorted out the stuff for the console. I couldn't tell him anything about the actual missile except that I hadn't seen any exhaust ducts or heat shields. There might be Then the riveter started banging again and I nearly fell off the bloody girder and Ferris began complaining about the interference: the generators had been bad enough but this din was affecting the air acoustics as well as the signal and I was getting fed up.

  209 — 376–177 — 286–164 — 1.

  It threw me and then I got it: I'd read US print Polaris for US Sprint Polaris. Both missiles had a compressed gas launcher giving them a super-fast initial ascent with virtually no heat involved and getting them out of sight almost immediately and this could be the same type, which would explain why I couldn't see any exhaust ducts or shields.

  He was asking me more about the camouflage but when I started off he cut in at the first interval and said he couldn't hear me through the jam so I told him to stand by and we sweated it out for twelve minutes till the riveter stopped and by that time I was right on the edge of my nerves because the logical time for a daily inspection of the minefield below me was first thing in the morning.

  I turned down the volume for receive while Ferris put specific questions and then raised it for transmission and spoke close to the mike with the welders for background cover… configuration on both planes perfectly consistent with oil rig… telemetry requirements identical in many respects… giving similar installation images…

  While I was filling in the picture it occurred to me that it made a certain amount of sense to build a missile base right on the doorstep of a UK possession and call it an oil rig. The Chinese Republic had silos all over the mainland for reaction-take-off missiles but they were being photographed regularly by the American SR71 from eighty thousand feet and by the Soviet Turo-9 from somewhere just under that altitude: it wasn't possible to hide things any more. Aerial surveillance by high-altitude plane and satellite units had been jacked up to the point where you couldn't plant a row of beans without getting a call the next morning from the CIA or the KGB to say that according to their photographs you'd put them in upside down.

  There were immense problems involved in building a conventional-take-off missile base on the continental shelf in terms of getting the exhaust gas away but if you first thought of an oil rig as a disguise and then considered the similarities between an oil rig and a submarine and used compressed gas to pop the missile up the tube as they did with the Sprint and the Polaris then you'd build one of these things.

  Question: how far was George Henry Tewson from the design concept of Polaris?

  'He was with the Ministry of Defence,' she'd said grandly, high on bubbly, then she'd remembered they told her not to say things like that, 'actually his work wasn't important, to tell you the truth,' poor little bitch, out of her depth.

  287 — 387–498 — 190 — 54…

  He was on mission factors now: how long did I think I could stay on board the rig with any security? What was my life-support status in terms of rations, air, essential rig-to-island gear? How long would the radio stand up in these conditions?

  Necessary to leave rig immediately exchange concluded. Fair chance of returning at nightfall but -

  Bloody riveter began banging away and I called a 20–20 into the mike for stand-by and cut it dead to save the batteries and started to sweat it out again, watching the iron ladders and trying to think what I could do if Ferris asked me to keep station while he got into signals with London. That'd take up to an hour in cypher and I couldn't wait that long: I couldn't wait another two seconds with any security and he knew that because I'd told him.

  Banging away, the whole of the superstructure vibrating, the rivets going into my head.

  09.37.

  If they just found me clinging to the girder looking dead beat the cover story might hold up long enough for me to try some kind of a get-out but if they found me with a radio it wouldn't hold up at all. There wasn't anything I could do about that: the instant I saw them on the ladder I could knock the Hammerlund into the sea behind the pontoon leg but they'd hear the splash and investigate and find the rest of the stuff. No go.

  09.40.

  There had to be a limit and in five minutes I'd open up the set and keep sending fifteens: Situation contained but leaving station. London was in a panic or they wouldn't have pushed me into this kind of position but if I could get out to Heng-kang Chou and delay the action for eight or nine hours till nightfall and take it up again from there they'd still have a live executive in the field and total security in the target zone. If I gave it more than another five minutes on board this rig they'd have a dead duck.

  09.44.

  The riveter stopped and I hit the set with twos.

  He came in straight away with another question but I didn't answer it. I told him the situation was too insecure and I had to leave station.

  He asked for a repeat and that brought the sweat out again.

  We were throwing each other contractions for this exchange: the phrasing was right out of the book because the executive was in a red sector and had to get out and the director was having to decide whether to let him go or punch in a priority signal when he had him on the air. Contractions take very little time indeed but I didn't have any to spare because my instinct was yelling at me to get the hell out of this death-trap: send him fifteens and shut down the set and drop into the sea and pull out.

  10.

  Priority message.

  Blast his eyes.

  I waited.

  He wasn't going to ask me for time while he talked to London. He didn't have to. He'd already done that.

  Basic contractions: 2–8 — 0.

  Executive will withdraw objective from target zone.

  The objective was normally a file or a document or a chunk of strictly hush electronics but this time it was a man and what they were asking me to do was bring Tewson off the rig.

  Chapter Fourteen: FLOTSAM

  Something moved away from me in the sand as my fins touched the sea bed, and a flash of silver showed against the pontoon as a group of pomfret took refuge.

  The depth on the gauge was 106 feet and I was aware of the pressure here at 4 atmospheres. Movement felt heavy and the silence brooded. The light was diffused, scattering down from the surface and leaving no shadows where the pontoon legs stood braced on the sand. Visibility was twenty or thirty feet: the girders were sharply defined in the immediate vicinity but grew hazy on the other side of the po
ntoon, finally vanishing into the insubstantial wall where sight was halted.

  I'd changed air tanks on the surface, buckling the full ones into the backpack as a routine safety measure and bringing the old ones down with me to leave here with the radio and some of the rations. There might not be fresh water on Heng-kang Chou and I was taking one quart along with me. The hammerlund would have to be left here and I'd been worrying about that but there wasn't any choice: if I took it to the island I'd be able to stay in signals with Ferris during the next nine hours and with minimum background interference, but the waterproof bag was showing signs of giving out and the two-mile trip wouldn't improve it. The radio was a component in the life-support chain of this operation and I'd have to leave it lashed to the rig with the other gear for picking up tonight.

  I wasn't thinking about the London directive Ferris had thrown me because there wasn't any point.

  I would have said no straight away and shut the set down on that but Egerton always likes you to give it a bit of thought before you tell him he's run the mission into the ground. It wasn't that he didn't realize what he was asking me to do: when the executive's in the target zone the director in the field is normally in rapid and constant signals with Control. The moment I'd left Swordfish they'd lit up the red bulb over the mission board for Mandarin in London and it wouldn't go out till I'd left the target zone or blown the operation or got snatched or neutralized by the opposition.

  Ferris had had all the time he needed to tell Egerton precisely what the situation was and Egerton therefore knew bloody well that I didn't stand a hope in hell of bringing Tewson off this rig. I'd set up a get-out action when I'd gone aboard but London didn't know that and in any case it was in the extreme resource category and I put my chances at ten to one against getting away with it. This was nothing but routine procedure: when you go into the target zone you leave every possible door wide open behind you and if there's anything you can use for a last-minute hit-and-run get-out you give it a go because in a lot of cases the alternative's a ten-year stretch in a brainwash facility or a six-foot hole where no one can see them digging.