by James Adams
“Shit, the bastard,” Lin Yung exclaimed, pushing away from the stream of blood.
He watched for a moment and then, realizing that there was nothing to be done, he moved to the sink, washed his hands and left the room.
Jonny had listened to the torture of Stanley Kung with growing horror. He had arrived at the house half an hour earlier and been shown into the sitting room, where he was asked to wait. He had expected Julie to be there but had been told by one of the guards that she was delayed.
One cup of coffee later, he had heard the car turn into the driveway and the garage door opening and closing. Then he had heard Lin Yung introduce himself and he realized that there must be a microphone in the kitchen relaying the conversation to him.
He had no idea what was going to happen until he heard the motor of the food processor whirr into action. Suspicions were confirmed by the rending scream which seemed to go on and on and on. He tried to go through to the kitchen to stop the torture but two Chinese with drawn guns were standing just outside the door and they thrust him back inside.
Revulsion at the brutality had been subsumed by the stunning revelation that Lisu had betrayed him. God, what could she have passed on? he thought, as he frantically reviewed their conversations of the last few days. He remembered his remark about the planned move into the Tunnel the previous evening. It must have been she who betrayed them. Oh God.
Lin Yung came into the room and sat down opposite Jonny. “I’m sorry you had to listen to that but, as you heard, I got the information we need.”
“Not enough though,” Jonny replied. “We still don’t know where the radio transmissions were coming from or who was making them. Even without Kung, this operation will be running on autopilot. To stop it we need to find the messenger before the next signal gets through.”
The door opened and Julie walked in. He noticed that she had changed back into a more formal skirt and blouse. Lin Yung turned to her and continued speaking.
“We have some information that the terrorists plan to kill half the hostages in advance of the deadline and that they will get their orders via radio from outside the Tunnel. Unfortunately we don’t know where those orders will come from or when.”
“But at least it’s something,” Jonny interrupted. “We should go to the authorities with what we have. We can at least make them move.”
“I don’t think that’s a very good idea, Jonny,” Lin Yung said quietly.
“Why the hell not?” Jonny asked. “We’ve got a chance to save some lives. We should take it,”
“I think you’re being a little bit simplistic,” Lin Yung contradicted. “Of course we should tell the police about the radio. They’ll be able to block the transmissions and so Dai Choi won’t know when to start the killing.
“But we don’t want to encourage an assault on the Tunnel. If you tell them the terrorists are going to start killing before the deadline, then they’re bound to move in. On the other hand, if we let this play out a little longer, we may all get what we want.”
“And just what exactly is that?” Jonny asked.
“Well, for a start, you’ll probably get Dai Choi. But more importantly, the longer this goes on, the more discredited the Triads become. The British are not going to give in and they will have to go and clean out the Triads once this is over. The British government has been held to ransom by a bunch of crooks who have been tolerated for years. Once the media hears about all the cosy relationships that exist back home — and I can assure you they will hear about it — then the government will have no choice.”
Jonny felt Julie’s hand on his arm. “It’s true what he says, Jonny,” she said. “The longer it runs, the higher the price the Triads will have to pay. And that’s what we all want.”
Jonny’s mind had been racing ahead, seeing the opportunities that the information gave him. He needed time to get his man and for now that is what the Chinese were prepared to give.
“For the moment, you can have my silence,” he told them. “We both want Dai Choi and the Triads to suffer so at least we have a common goal.” He got up to leave. “I’d better go and see Lisu. She’s done enough damage. What about you, Julie?”
“I’m heading back to the flat so you’ll be able to get me there for the next couple of hours.”
The drive to Chelsea took thirty-five minutes, the cab weaving in and out of the snarled traffic in a semblance of forward progress that seemed to do little but make the meter tick faster. The journey gave Jonny time to think. Lin Yung was right when he said that the defeat of the Triads was a reasonable excuse for his silence and Julie’s promises for the future mattered little against the opportunities today. But what really mattered was that today, and for the first time, Dai Choi was trapped where neither money nor influence could buy his escape. It was the chance that he had been waiting for all these years and he would not allow it to slip through his fingers because of some spurious deal. Instead, the information he now had could ensure him a place at Dai Choi’s final party. It was madness, of course. He could see with an awful clarity the dangers of the course he had chosen. Once the detail of his role was uncovered — and it surely would be — there would be little sympathy for his actions. He had sold his job and his soul for the price of a shot at Dai Choi. But after years of frustration, this was his first real opportunity to get his man. He shrugged, the small movement of his shoulders a visible sign of his mentally dismissing the risks. He was tired of the hunt and wanted to end it, to have the chance to start a new life free of the burden. Perhaps Dai Choi’s head would buy him personal freedom and the forgiveness of his masters.
The cab pulled up outside the block of flats and Jonny walked swiftly through the doors to the banks of lifts. As the lift wheezed its way to the eleventh floor, he steeled himself for the confrontation. Letting himself in, he walked through to the sitting room. Lisu was in the seat she had taken as her own in the past few days. Now Jonny understood the reasons for the tears and the despair. He felt a rush of sympathy for the woman who had once been so much to him.
She looked up and somehow seemed to sense his knowledge. She flinched as if he had slapped her. He saw her reaction and knew with absolute certainty that Stanley Kung had spoken the truth.
“Yes, I’m afraid we know,” Jonny said. “Stanley Kung told us.”
At the mention of the name she shuddered, her revulsion for Kung and for her own role clear in the expression of disgust. “Evil. That man is evil.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry about him anymore. He’s dead.”
“Thank God. Thank God.” Her hands covered her eyes and she began sobbing.
“But why did you do it, Lisu? Did they force you? Did you volunteer? What?”
“They blackmailed me, Jonny. I had no choice. If I had refused, someone in China would have been killed. I had to do it. I had to.” She looked up, a new fear in her eyes. “What will happen to me?”
“God knows,” he replied. “The intelligence people will already be investigating how information on the attack leaked and they’ll get to you in the end. Better to say something now and be seen to cooperate. That way you can maybe limit the damage.”
Before she had time to argue or think through the consequences of Stanley Kung’s death and the effect that might have back in Beijing, Jonny moved to the telephone, dialled New Scotland Yard and asked for Mike Williams. After the head of Special Branch came on the line Jonny identified himself and explained the circumstances.
“I think it would be best if you got a couple of your people round here to talk to Lisu,” he advised. “She’s happy to tell everything she knows and you may get some leads into both Chinese intelligence and what they know about the Tunnel. Also, they may be in touch with her again so you might catch some of their people in the act.”
“I’ll fix that right now,” Williams agreed. “Look, Jonny. You’d better get down here. I’m about to go to a meeting of COBRA and you should be there.”
But Jonny
needed more than just a deal for Lisu and another meeting. “Mike, it’s vital that I talk to you before the meeting. I have some information that you might want to use at the meeting. I also want something from you. Can you be outside the Whitehall Theatre in fifteen minutes?”
That arranged, Jonny hung up and was about to leave when Lisu reached for his arm.
“There is something else you should know,” she began nervously. “These past few days, you’ve spent so much time with that Cohen woman I was sure there was something between you. Kung has been obsessed with you and what you might have found out. They see you as the real threat to their plans and want to stop you. Their people have been trying to kill you but you’ve been moving around too much. They asked me what might make you stop and I told them about the woman. I said that if they threatened her, you might be forced to stop. I’m sorry, Jonny.”
Jonny stared at her, appalled. “There was never anything between Julie and me,” he said finally, anger cutting through his sympathy. “You’ve not only killed the policemen in the Tunnel but placed an innocent woman’s life at risk.”
He turned away, leaving a broken Lisu behind him. He paused briefly by the phone, debating whether to call Julie. He was already late for the meeting with Williams and if he delayed any further he would miss him altogether. She was a pro. She could take care of herself. He went out of the door, slamming it behind him.
Regent’s Bridge Gardens was supposed to be a secure area. The double gates into the complex of townhouses and luxury flats could only be opened with a remote control or by someone already inside. It reassured the occupants but to anyone other than the casual amateur teenage burglar, the defences were a joke. When the gates opened, they stayed open long enough for two or more cars to pass through. By parking on Rita Road and waiting for a resident to turn into the entrance, it was possible to get instant and unobtrusive access.
When Julie returned to her flat from Lin Yung’s house, she was exhausted. The interrogation had been shocking. It had revealed a dark side to her business that she had never experienced before. They taught you how to kill, to live a shadow life and to exploit human weakness. But there was a difference between manipulation and the brutal extraction of information.
She parked her car and walked up to her flat, looking forward to a quiet evening with a glass of wine and her cat for company. The door had two locks and she carefully undid both and pushed open the door. She had not left talcum powder in the hall to betray an intruder’s footsteps, or hairs stuck between the door jambs to show they had been opened in her absence. But still, the flat seemed different, smelled different. She controlled the shudder down her spine as instinct prevailed.
Cautiously she opened the door to her sitting room and flicked on the lights. At first she could see nothing. Then her hand flew to her mouth to stifle a scream of horror.
The body of her cat lay on the glass table in the centre of the room. It had been disembowelled with a single knife cut from anus to throat. The guts were spilled out on the table like bloody spaghetti and blood had dribbled off the edges of the table to form wide red pools in the carpet.
She could feel her stomach begin to heave. Then the bedroom door swung open and two Chinese men stepped out. Despite the darkness, both wore large dark glasses, plain grey suits and white turtlenecks. They looked like mutants modelling clothes bought in a church bazaar. They also looked very frightening.
“Good evening, Julie,” the larger of the two men said. “Catch.”
Julie’s hands rose in reflex in front of her to catch the ball he threw at her. As her hands caught it, she felt how wet it was, glanced down and threw the cat’s head to the floor with a cry of disgust.
The first man produced a gun while the second brought a long-bladed knife from an armpit sheath.
That is to show you we are serious, Julie,” he continued, his voice soft.
“What do you want with me?”
“You are a little insurance that the person we work for thinks might be useful. So we’d like you to come on a short drive with us. We don’t wish you any harm but I can assure you you will suffer much more than your cat if you try to escape or attract attention in any way.”
The two men moved into the room to stand on either side of her. She thought for a moment of resisting and then dismissed it. She had no wish to end up eviscerated beside her cat on the floor.
“Oh, and one other thing,” the leader of the two men continued. “I’ve been told to tell you that if all goes well, then you will be released unharmed.” He laughed lightly. “I always think that’s such a bad line. After all, what choice do you have?”
CHAPTER XXIV
For two hours now Captain Jeremy Greaves had been on the bridge of HMS Campbeltown, his gut taut with the solid overwhelming tension that in the end will break a man. His Type 22 frigate had been powering up the Channel at its full speed of twenty-nine knots through driving rain and visibility down to half a mile. In any other circumstances barrelling like that down the world’s busiest waterway would be considered suicidal and terminally damaging to a promising naval career.
But the orders he had received from CINCFLEET North-wood two hours earlier had been quite clear: He was to make “all possible speed” to take up station midway between Folkestone and Dover, over the Channel Tunnel.
The only way to carry out that order was to rely not on precision navigation but on the integrated radar and detection systems that would normally be used to control and fire Harpoon and Sea Wolf missiles as well as the Goalkeeper gun, which can fire 4,200 30 mm rounds a minute as a final defence against incoming missiles.
Perched on top of the bridge, three feet above Greaves’s head, were two huge white metal spheres which looked like giant bowling balls. The similarity was emphasized by the three black holes in each of the balls, which are in fact different eyes. One is for thermal imaging, the second has a TV camera and the third is a laser range-finder adapted from the Challenger tank. The system is known as G-PODS for General Purpose Electro-Optical Directors and relays a series of images to screens on the bridge and in the operations room.
At that moment the TV camera was showing only the opacity of the mist and the rain but the thermal imager could pierce the murk to hunt out all sources of heat and show them in green outline to the G-PODS operator. By lightly touching the rollerball under his right hand, the operator moved the cursor over the image and fired the laser at the target. Instantly, the distance and direction of the vessel in relation to Campbeltown’s heading appeared on the screen.
Greaves felt like a racing car speeding through the night with the lights off. There was a difference though. The massive power of the Rolls-Royce Spey engines combined with the Tyne gas turbines meant that the 440- foot-long ship could be brought to a halt from 29 knots in under 700 feet, the equivalent of bringing a Volvo from 30 m.p.h. to a stop in 12 inches.
Looking out of the bridge he could see nothing except the huge foaming mass of the bow wave as each thrust of the bows into the sea drove 200 tons of water out to either side.
He sat erect in the Captain’s leather swivel chair looking straight ahead. Listening intently to the radar operator’s constant stream of information, he related it to the moving map display he was keeping in his head and then issued instructions to the helmsman standing to his left.
Bobbing and jinking, the frigate sped down the Channel. Looking around the bridge, Greaves felt the pride of all commanders when men and machine work to their maximum. It was magnificent, fantastically exciting, and mad. But there was no emotion in his face apart from heavy dark eyebrows drawn close together to hood his eyes. The two vertical lines in the centre of his forehead were the only real outward signs of tension. He had learned during the campaign in the South Atlantic the value of leadership in a crisis. If they survived this, it would be the stuff of legend, but until then he would remain exactly where he was for as long as it took.
As a much younger lieutenant serving under David
Hart-Dyke, the skipper of the Coventry, he had first experienced what the Navy doctors call FUF or Fear Under Fire. It had been brought about by a recognition of two things: his vulnerability and the fickle nature of technology.
HMS Coventry had been sunk after her 909 Sea Dart radars had been unable to distinguish between the land mass of the Falklands and the low-flying Argentine Sky-hawk jets. The Sea Wolf on her sister ship, HMS Broadsword, saw two aircraft flying wingtip to wingtip and hesitated, unable to decide which aircraft to aim at. Rather than make a mistake, the computer decided to do nothing and turned itself off. Three thousand-pound bombs had hit Coventry, causing mortal damage.
Greaves had been knocked unconscious by the blast and when he came to it was to see a scene straight from hell. The bridge had been destroyed and men all around him were on fire, flaming like burning candles, their screams adding to the horror. He looked down and saw that his white fireproof gloves had been literally burned off and the skin underneath appeared to be boiling in the heat, blisters rising and then popping like some miniature sulphur spring.
Greaves had jumped from the canting deck into the sea, swimming to one of the liferafts with the salt turning his hands into agonizing balls of fire. Ironically, it was that short swim which had saved his hands from permanent damage. The plastic surgery gave them a mottled appearance, his own red badge of courage, although every time he looked at his scars he was reminded not of his heroism but of his fear. The hard-won lesson ensured he never again relied on technology to save him, his men or his ship.
Like many of the Falklands veterans, Greaves had moved swiftly up the promotion ladder. Campbeltown was his first command and at forty-three he was clearly still on the fast track. He wanted to make sure it stayed that way.
