Quiller Bamboo

Chapter 21: Dog

Chong hit the brakes and the big truck lurched to a stop.

'What did you tell them?'

'Jesus,' he said, 'we've done a kilometre in thirty minutes down this goddam road.' We were blocked off by a yak wagon, couldn't overtake. 'I told them nobody was at the depot yet, they'd have to come back.'

'They didn't argue?'

He rested his hand on the huge vibrating gear lever, the engine rumbling. 'Sure they argued. But their heads are full of rice.'

One of the yaks was lying slumped in the shafts. 'What's the problem?'

'It's died. Everything dies, wait long enough.' He kicked the clutch and hit the gear lever and we moved off again. 'We going anywhere?' He was still furious, his throat tight when he spoke. 'We going to find where they took him, maybe?'

I watched the road ahead.

'Eventually.'

This was the road south into the town, Linkuo Lu, where the temple was, where I'd taken the coat from the man. Grit blew in through the cracks of the doors; there was a wind getting up. Eventually, yes, of course, we would find where they'd taken Dr Xingyu Baibing, and we would bring him back under our protection, but meanwhile they would not be very happy in London, there would be no dancing in the streets.

Subject seized, location unknown. PLA sergeant deceased.

Croder at the signals board, his black basilisk eyes watching the man with the piece of chalk as the stuff came in from Pepperidge, Hyde standing there poking his tongue in his cheek, the whole place very quiet as they listened to his voice, the calm and gentle voice of my director in the field as it reached them through the government communications mast in Cheltenham and the unscrambler in Codes and Cyphers three floors above.

Subject is expected to reveal critical information with or without duress. His captors believed to be private cell, repeat, private cell operating in the field.

There's a bell, in Lloyd's of London, the Lutine bell, since that is the name of the vessel it was salvaged from, and they ring it whenever news comes that a ship has gone down, and there is a silence afterward. It's rather like that in the Signals room, when news comes of the kind that Pepperidge had given them now, that the mission had foundered.

Executive to ground and inactive.

The two major items of course were that the subject was expected to 'reveal critical information' — to blow Bamboo — and that the executive had gone to ground and was inactive, which meant that he must be wanted by the police and security forces of the host country and could no longer operate at street level, and that he had no further ability to advance or even protect the mission.

'Who's this bastard?' Chong said.

Man waving.

The signal reporting a deceased PLA sergeant in the field was obligatory: any 'terminal incident' must be noted in the records. But it also told London Control that there was now a hue and cry going on as a result, with the military searching earnestly for the assassin.

'Pull up,' I told Chong.

The report that a private cell had entered the field was of critical importance, but with the mission crashed and the executive incapable of further action there wasn't much that London could do about it.

'You say pull up?'

'Yes.'

Not quite incapable: that is a mortuary word, suggestive of worms and the silence of the tomb. Pressed, harassed, beleaguered, what you will.

The man who had been waving came to the side of the cab as the truck ground to a stop with the brake drums moaning. His Beijing jeep was standing at the roadside.

'Keyi da nide bian che ma?'

'Chong, what's he saying?'

Stink of diesel gas seeping through the floorboards. I wound the window down.

'Wants a lift.'

'We'll give him one.'

Chong looked at me. 'He a friend?'

As distinct from foe, trade argot.

'Yes.'

'Shang che.'

As the man came around the front of the truck I said, 'Chong. You don't speak English.'

'Gotcha.'

I pushed the door open and shifted over to make room and the man came aboard, hauling himself up by the big iron handgrip, expensive duffel jacket, heavy black beard, an energetic, barrel-shaped body, dropping onto the seat beside me, pulling the door shut with a noise like a bomb.

'Xiexie.'

'That's all right,' I said.

'Ah.' Peering at me, then — 'Well, well! You're getting a lift too?'

'Yes.'

I had sunglasses on; otherwise he would have recognized me sooner, even with the two-day stubble. A lot of people wore sunglasses here without attracting attention; the ultra-violet was intense at this altitude: this was cataract country.

'Trotter. How is the head?'

'Much better, thanks of course to you.'

'My dear fellow, I'm glad it turned out all right.' In a moment. 'That bloody jeep always gives trouble about here — I do this road every day. Grit in the carburettor, I daresay, an occupational hazard for every vehicle in Lhasa, but the thing is they never replace the air filters at the rental place.'

He sounded, I thought, a degree too talkative.

'That's a shame,' I said.

Chong shifted the huge gear lever again. For a truck as big as a dinosaur there wasn't much room in the cab. I felt Trotter moving closer to me.

Very quietly, under his breath, 'This chap speak English?'

'No.'

'Ah.' Gloved hands a little restless on his knees, fingers tapping. 'I don't know if you're aware of it, my dear fellow, but the police are looking for you. Locke, isn't it?'

'Yes. How do you know?'

'I'm sort of local here, on and off, come here to dig as often as I can. Police know me well, and they sometimes haul me in whenever there's a problem with a round-eye, ask me if I know anything and so on.' In a moment, 'From what I gather there was an agent of the KCCPC found dead in a temple yesterday.' A beat. 'The one where I picked you up. It appears someone described you.' He turned his face toward me. 'I can assure you it was not I.'

Chong hit the brakes again as a tour bus cut things close past a horse and cart, and we put our hands on the dashboard.

'Bie dang dao!'

I hadn't given Trotter any kind of an answer.

'Look,' he said, 'in the first place I told them I didn't know anything about you, obviously. It wouldn't be wise for me to refuse to help those buggers when I can, because they turn a blind eye if I'm still on the road after a curfew, back late from a dig, that sort of thing. But they get damned little out of me, I can assure you.'

Buildings were coming up as we passed the nomad camp ground, the big Telecommunications Office in the distance: we'd been making better time. I hadn't said anything.

'In the second place,' his deep voice muted, 'I'm not the slightest bit interested in your affairs, but if by chance you happen to have dispatched an agent of the KCCPC then I'm delighted, between you and me. You're certain, are you, that this chap doesn't understand English?'

'Certain.'

'Well and good, because this is tricky territory, as I imagine you realize. Never know who you're talking to' — his gloved hand on my knee for an instant — 'I mean the Chinese. So the thing is, since the police are after you, it might be a good idea to make yourself scarce, don't you agree?'

'It sounds logical.'

'Ni yao kouxiangtang ma?' Chong, holding out his packet of Wrigley's.

Trotter shook his head. 'Bu, xiexie ni. It's not easy,' he said, 'in a place like this, to make oneself scarce, with martial law and everything. Of course, the entire populace hates and detests the authorities, but one or two are so scared of reprisals that they'll give anyone away, even their friends, even their relatives.' We reached for the dashboard again as Chong used the brakes for the first traffic lights, the drums moaning. 'What I would like to tell you, my dear fellow, is that if you need a good place — a safe place — to sort of lie low till things blow over, I'd be delighted to assist.' He leaned forward, looking past me at Chong. 'Mafan ning, keyi rang wo zai xiayitiao jie xia che ma?'

'Keyi'

'I gave you my card, I believe?'

'Yes.'

'Phone me at any time, my dear fellow. At any time. I know a safe place, if you're really stuck — not the hotel, of course, it's just a tiny apartment in the native quarter. Dear God, the whole town used to be the native quarter, but now the Chinese are taking over, it's appalling. The sooner they get that gang of cutthroats out of power in Beijing the happier I shall be, not to mention my good friends the intellectuals.' He looked at Chong again. 'Wo qian ni shenme ma?'

'Bu. Heng huanying ni da wo de che.'

'Ni zhenshi ge re xin ren.' He braced himself as the truck slowed. The big black beard close to my ear — 'Please remember, Mr Locke, that you can count on me, for the aforesaid reasons. I have a feeling you are hardly a friend of those bastards in Beijing, which makes you one of mine.'

He used a fist on the door handle and dropped onto the street, looking up at me with his dark eyes serious. 'You know where to find me.' Swung the door shut with a bang.

Across the road was a red-and-white sign in Chinese and English: Truck Rental.

Chong gunned up and got into second gear. 'You know that guy?'

'Slightly.'

'British?'

'Yes. How many people,' I asked him, 'have we got in the field?'

'Maybe a dozen in support, some of them sleepers, got a short courier line to the airport, longer one to Kathmandu, then we can use-'

'All right, I want a two-way radio with a ten-kilometre range and fresh batteries. I want another one delivered to our DIP with the frequencies synchronized.' He slowed for traffic lights, and I gave him a rendezvous. 'I also want a different truck — what are those brown things with the rounded front?'

'Called a Dongfeng, sure, I can rent one of those.'

'How long will it take to get what I need?'

'How soon do you want it?'

'Fast as you can.'

He worked at his gum. 'Gimme an hour, okay?'

I switched to receive. 'Hear you.'

'I've had no response yet.'

There wouldn't have been time. With the signals board in the state it was, they'd have to call in Bureau One, the all-highest, and he'd have to confer with Croder and possibly that bastard Loman and decide which way to go, leave me out here in the hope that I could make another move or call me in and replace me.

'Did you tell them I'm asking for a few hours more?'

'Of course. But I assume nothing has changed.'

He waited.

You cannot lie. You can lie to every single human being you meet in the field, you can lie like a trooper, like Satan himself, because your life will often depend on it, and that is understood. But the shadow executive cannot lie to his director, because he is his link to London, to Control, and to the signals board and the mission screens in the computer room and finally to the decision-making process that is the crux and fulcrum of the entire operation. That too is understood.

'No,' I said into the radio. 'Nothing has changed.'

Someone else came through the doorway across the street, a man wrapped in rags with some kind of basket on his back. I watched him until he was out of sight past the vegetable stall. I was sitting in the truck, the new one, the Dongfeng, bloody thing reeking of yak dung.

'But at least we are now in constant touch,' Pepperidge said.

That was like him: he'll always find the remnant of a silver lining in the darkest reaches of despair and bring it into the light.

Said yes.

'Location?'

It would be very dangerous to give it to him: there was no scrambler on these things. 'I can't do that.'

'Very well. I had a signal,' he said, 'through Beijing, an hour ago. The deadline has been moved up a little.'

Mother of God.

The briefing was that Premier Li Peng was due to address the Chinese nation on television from the Great Hall of the People at ten o'clock on the morning of the 15th, and that was the governing factor that fixed the timing of Bamboo: the premier was to be removed by force from his desk and Dr Xingyu Baibing installed in his place. The briefing had noted that if the deadline couldn't be met, we wouldn't get another chance for months: Premier Li wasn't scheduled to speak again until the spring.

I asked Pepperidge: 'By how much?'

'The speech was going to be made at ten hundred hours on the fifteenth, as you know. It's now down for eighteen hundred hours the previous evening, which means that the bomber will have to pick him up at Gonggar at three tomorrow afternoon, instead of midnight.' Short silence. 'Bit rough, I know.'

I watched the doorway.

Nine hours.

'What's London telling the coordinator?'

'In what way?'

I think he knew, but didn't want to get it wrong. This was sensitive ground. 'Is the coordinator being told that the subject is now missing? That we can't have him ready for the rendezvous at Gonggar in any case?'

In a moment, 'No.'

A gust of wind rocked the truck, blew dust along the street. 'When will they tell him?'

'I think they'll leave it to the last possible moment. There's not much to lose, after all. The bomber's scheduled to leave Beijing at fifteen hundred hours Beijing time, thirteen hundred hours Lhasa. If we can't make the rdv, all we have to do is put through a signal for them to cancel the flight, five minutes before takeoff. It gives us a slight edge, if there's anything we can do in the meantime.'

Meant find Xingyu.

'All right,' I said.

In a moment, 'Have you any plans?'

'I'm going to follow up whatever I can find.' Couldn't tell him what I'd asked Chong to do for me; we weren't scrambled. But I think he knew what I was going to do. I think he knew.

'Very well.' A note of cheerfulness, I wished he wouldn't do that, it was like whistling at a funeral.

Meant to be kind, he meant to be kind, God knew how this man had got through all the missions he had — major operations, three of them Classification One to my knowledge, global scale — with this much humanity, this much compassion. Simply because, perhaps, he could preserve enough heart in his executive to keep him running on, give him the feeling he wasn't alone, take enough tension out of his nerves to let him see a chance he might otherwise miss, and muster the strength to take it.

Miracles do not always come easily, do not burst upon us with the holy light of revelation; they must sometimes be conjured from the sickly flame of despair, the hands held close to keep the draft away and the gaze steadfast, bringing to bear upon the matter the grace of faith, until through the dark of disaffection the small flame thrives, leaping at last to burn with a light that holds the very soul in thrall, by which I mean, my good friend, that one must not go limping home, must one, when all is wretchedness, no, one must sit here in this stinking truck and watch the doorway over there, not for an instant taking the eyes away, in case there is a last chance, however thin, of conjuring that little flame within the hands, and there she is.

Su-May.

She was alone, coming through the doorway of the little broken-down hotel, first looking to her right and then to her left in the way they do, the amateurs, when they want to take care they are not watched, making her way past the vegetable stall, a small figure bundled against the freezing wind, soon to be lost among the blade-edged shadows of noon.

Hit the button — 'Breaking, stay open, out.'

She was at a table in the far corner.

I could only just about see her: large luminous eyes set in a small pale face above the fur collar of her parka; something had gone wrong, I suppose, with one of the stoves in here, the cafe was thick with smoke. This was a bigger place than the one I'd gone to before with little Su-May and later Pepperidge; it was crowded, people hungry in the middle of the day. My stomach was empty but I hungered not, had ordered tea. Fear doth not prick the appetite, and Lord, I was afraid.

The oil lamps flickered against the walls like warning beacons across a foggy sea, and dark figures moved through the smoke, servers, customers, beggars, and monks; dogs darted between their feet and under the rickety bamboo tables and out again, seeking scraps for their hallowed stomachs.

They are sacred, she had told me, little Su-May, believed by some to be the reincarnation of departed monks, I think she'd said, believed by some but not by me, kicked at one of the little buggers and felt it connect, they'll start gnawing on your bloody ankle if you don't watch out, sitting with my hands around the cup of tea, nursing my nerves.

Because it had come to this. When a mission has crashed and the opposition has gained the field and there is nothing you can do, almost nothing, we will correct that, almost nothing you can do, there is always a last desperate play that you can consider using, and it has never failed. It will give you access again, a way in through the wreckage, and if you get it right you will once more confront the enemy, and with luck and the blessing of every saint in Christendom you may even, finally, prevail.

Men moved like shadows in this ghostly place, women too, I suppose, though it was difficult to tell because most of them were swathed in robes or skins or coats and big fur hats, the drab plumage of their winter hibernation here on the bleak roof of the world. Someone was coughing his heart up in the drifting smoke, and a door was banged open behind me to let some of it out.

There were no mirrors in here.

It's not in the book, the ploy I was talking about, even though it has never failed. You'd think a thing like that would be a dead ringer for the Manual of Procedures, which is the Bible rewritten for the shadow executives of the Bureau, and I've tried to get it put in, but their lordships of the hierarchy won't have it, and the best I can do is spell it out for the — neophyte spooks whenever I give an instruction class between missions at Norfolk.

She had been sitting alone, but now a man was joining her at the table, his black leather outfit gleaming in the shadows as the light from the oil lamps caught it. He looked young, athletic; he was an Oriental. I didn't think I'd seen him before, though I might have — no one in this smoke was easy to recognize. I hadn't known she'd come here to keep a rendezvous, but I'd thought it possible, by the way she'd checked the street outside the hotel, right and left, in the way they do, the amateurs, the unfortunates in this life who pass too close to the machinery, sometimes with the thought in mind of monetary gain or the perverse excitement of betrayal, sometimes just by accident — as in her case, I believed, little Su-May's — passing too close to the subtle and delicate machinery of international intelligence, fine as the web of that black widow we talked of, you and I, the machinery of subterfuge and treachery, deceit and untimely death.

They were talking, she and the young athletic-looking Oriental, their heads close. She hadn't seen me: I knew this. She would have reacted, would react if she saw me.

They won't allow it in the book, their lordships of the hierarchy, because although this last desperate play has never failed, it is deadly. It is lethal. It has killed.

At first I thought she was all she'd seemed to be, little Su-May, a refugee from the continuing oppression in Beijing, afraid for her father. Then I'd thought — had known — she was something more than that, perhaps working for the private cell that had moved into the field — not, certainly working for the police or Chinese Intelligence: she was totally untrained. Then I'd assumed that she had, yes, simply passed too close to the machinery, to become caught up, her loyalties compromised, fragmented, so that she was grateful to me for the message I'd sent to her father, impressed that I'd killed an agent of the KCCPC, the arch enemy, had protected me from the police in the cafe — perhaps on instructions — but had been working against me for the private cell and even then had become torn both ways and finally had warned me.

You must be careful. When you go down to the street, make sure you are not followed.

By the police?

No. By anyone.

All I knew of her now was that she might provide me with the only link there was to the opposition, to whatever agent or cell she was working for, and could conceivably lead me to Xingyu Baibing.

The man in black leather could have been one of the people who had gone into the monastery last night and seized Xingyu and killed the guard. I could be within touching distance of the subject, the messiah.

It was all that sustained me, this thought, all right, this straw I was clutching at. Without it, nothing could have made me leave the truck and follow this woman here through the bright streets of noon, totally unable to know if I myself had picked up a tag among the people of this place in their robes and skins and coats and big fur hats, their disguise if you will, because that's what it amounted to, totally unable to know if I had been followed here and being watched at this moment through the drifting smoke.

No mirrors, and a door wide open behind me, does that tell you anything? Normal security measures had gone to the dogs: I'd used no cover on my way here, hadn't even looked back, had walked into this place alone instead of waiting for other people to camouflage the image through the doorway, had sat down at a table in the middle of the room, my back to the door, breaking every single bloody rule in the book, chapter and verse, because that is what the ploy demands before it can work for you.

I took another swallow of tea; it was thin, bitter, sharp with tannin, but hot, scalding still from the big black insulated jug they carried from one table to the next; it warmed my hands, burned them, as I sat here with the skin crawling and the nerves flickering along their pathways like liquid fire, a lone spook cut off now from all support, contact, and communication, sitting here like a rabbit on a firing range, divorced from the mission, sequestered in a location unknown to my director in the field, offering myself body and soul to the opposition in the hope that all could be reversed as the hours mounted slowly through the day, to allow me at last a chance, however small, of finding him, Xingyu, Dr Xingyu Baibing, and of bringing him to safety.

You know what it is, the ploy.

She was standing up suddenly, Su-May, at the far table in the corner, still talking to the man in black leather, looking down at him, one hand resting on the tabletop, a bag of some kind slung from her shoulder.

You know what it is, my good friend, if you've soldiered with me before: it is a matter of getting in their way. If you cannot find them, let them find you. Let them see you, let them come for you, let them trap you, and if it becomes necessary let them do the most dangerous thing of all — let them take you.

Voila.

Jason did it in Sri Lanka and got away with it, brought home the product. Tomlin did it in Costa Rica, got in and got out and left a chief of police hanging from his feet in a brothel. Cartwright did it in Tokyo, took on their mafiosi and got a British national home and followed on with a smashed hip and his nerves like a bombed piano — but they were the success stories, the ones we pass around in the Caff between missions to remind ourselves how good we are at this game, how successful, how intrepid, as an antidote to the fear of going out again. There are also the others, the other stories, which are not passed around in the Caff — Brockley tried the get-in-their-way thing in Athens and the colonels had him shot at dawn; Fairchild tried it in Calcutta and went out wearing a garotte; Myers tried it in Damascus and lasted three days and died mad, I was there in the signals room when the DIF reported through a drug runner's radio: executive seized, believed under torture, am pulling out.

So that is the way it is, it sometimes works and then you're in spooks' heaven and hallowed by the name around the tea-slopped tables in the Caff, but it very often doesn't work and you can end up in the scuppers of some stinking hulk with your throat cut or spread-eagled on a trash heap with their heavy bone-white beaks picking at the still-warm flesh, I don't mean, I do not mean to sound discouraging, my good friend, but that, as I say, is the way it is, we must keep our fingers crossed and from the depths of the timorous soul pluck up a prayer that this time it will work for us. She had taken a step, had turned again and was coming between the tables, coughing in the smoke, and I angled my head to make sure she'd recognize me and she slowed at once, almost tripping, then went on past my table without looking at me again, her voice just loud enough for me to catch.

'You are in great danger.'

Swallowed some more tea, didn't actually need telling of course but she'd meant well, could have saved me as she'd done before in the other place, went out, she went out through the wide-open doorway into the street.

He stayed ten minutes, the young Oriental in black leather, then put some money down and left the table, moving along the bar on the far side without coming anywhere near me, though the path Su-May had taken was the more direct. So I had made contact, and must follow up.

Put five yen on the table, the generosity of a man with nothing to lose, got up and went to the door and found the smoke drifting into the sunlit street and some policemen pulling up in a jeep, it looked in fact as if the whole place was on fire, turned my face away and followed the man in black.

He wouldn't carry a gun; the police were fussy here, pick you up on the spot and search you and he'd known that. But he was a senior belt, by his walk, and that was far more dangerous. And he wouldn't be alone: he was walking alone toward the marketplace, but there would be others not far away; this was already a mobile trap they'd got me in — it hadn't, you see, failed; it never does.

They wouldn't like it in London.

Executive in immediate contact with opposition and fully compromised.

It's the way they say things on the signal boards, and I suppose it works, as a kind of shorthand. They wouldn't know, of course, for a while; they'd have to wait until I'd surfaced and reported my new position to Pepperidge, or had not of course reported at all, because of the bone-white-beaks thing they so charmingly call sky-burial.

How does it feel to have the left eye plucked from the socket and carried aloft, and then the right, carried aloft by those great black wings and digested in the airy pathways of their going, the eyes and the tongue and the genitals and then the whole thing buried in the sky with only the skeleton left down there, grinning at its fate, how does it feel? But we must not be morbid, we must keep on walking, keep up a steady pace and not bump into any monks, they're everywhere, there must surely be redemption for this doomed spook in a place so holy, turning to the right, into an alleyway, the man in black leather, and I followed him.

The sun beat down from a brazen sky and the smells from an apothecary's stall were rich and strange as I passed through them; they grind the bones of tigers here, and bottle the ashes of snakes and sea horses, a different smell, you will acknowledge, than your good old milk of magnesia.

I walked into the alleyway and in a moment they followed, the others, but simply kept station, not crowding me, and I felt pleased, as well as frightened, horribly frightened, pleased that even though I might never get out of this alive at least I had decided to make a final effort and get in their way, not for his sake, Xingyu's, not for the future of the Chinese people or the stock market in Hong Kong but of course from pride, the stinking pride of the professional, that and vanity, the constant itch to take on dangerous things to prove not that I can do them but won't die in the doing, that personal and very special game of hide-and-seek you play in the shadows, so that when the grim reaper comes you can take him by surprise and with his own dread scythe cut him asunder.

There were stray dogs here in the alley, mangy and hollow-flanked, their eyes milky, and one of them, dirty white with brown patches, backed off from me as I went down on my knees and stayed like that for a moment and then fell prostrate like the monks I'd seen, the dog coming close now and sniffing at me as I wondered if I was facing the east as I should be, prone on the ground like this.