The Mandarin Cypher

Chapter Twelve: SOLO

It was a quick piping note: the call of the sea swallow.

Ferris left the tape running while he helped me with the scuba.

'This side okay?'

'Another notch on the buckle.'

The weight of the tanks shifted.

A seaman came to the doorway.

'The captain wants you to know they've got radar.'

'On the rig?'

'Yes, sir.'

The bloody harness still wasn't right.

'Back another notch on both, will you?'

'Will do. There's no hurry.'

But I could hear his breathing. We'd passed through Chinese territorial waters between the islands and the last report from the control room was that we were now standing off the rig at one mile.

'Feel better?'

I shrugged the scuba a couple of times.

'Yes.' I tipped my head back as far as I could, without feeling the regulators.

The nearest naval base was probably at Kitchioh or somewhere to the west along the South China coast, and even if they could send anything seaborne from Namtow they wouldn't get here before Swordfish was under way again: it was airborne attention Ackroyd was worried about. The chart gave the depth in this area of the continental shelf as eighteen fathoms and if the garrison sent a chopper out from the rig or one of the islands we'd have to crash dive but with periscope depth at sixty feet there'd be critically limited room to manoeuvre: with the sea calm and the moon clear we'd be a sitting duck for any kind of aerial reconnaissance.

'For Christ sake switch it off, will you, Ferris?'

That bloody bird was getting on my nerves.

He went over to the tape-recorder and pressed the stop button.

'Anyway, you'll know what to listen for.' I thought he said it rather deliberately.

'If I don't know now I never will.'

'What we call good briefing, if I may say so.'

There was an edge on his voice, the first time I'd heard it.

'Are they going to put it through the loudhailer?'

'With discretion.' A wintry smile. 'It's not meant to be a peacock.'

Ackroyd was standing in the doorway.

'How are things getting along, gentlemen?' He said it in a half whisper.

'Fine. Where's the head?'

'Through there.' As I turned away he said quickly, 'Don't flush it. We'll do it for you later.'

'Fair enough.'

They were still standing there when I came back. The silence was almost total now and I could hear the rustle of a sleeve as someone in the control room moved his arm. Nobody looked at me, but I was the only man among the whole of the complement they were thinking about. As soon as they could spit this bloody frog out of the escape hatch they could start engines and get the hell out of here before some yellow bastard spotted them.

'Skipper,' I said, 'I'd like to take a final look.'

'By all means.'

He led me into the control room.

I knew they wanted me out of Swordfish as fast as possible but I couldn't help that. I had to establish the image of the rig and I had to do it now and from this precise position because later it wouldn't be stable and I could lose my bearings. We were to the north-east of the thing and midway between it and the San-Men Islands and I wanted to memorize the rig's configuration from this exact angle because if a sea haze covered the Pole Star and the rig's structure sent my compass wild I'd have nothing left but this image as my guide.

'Up 'scope.'

Ackroyd stood aside and I took the grips, turning the sights until the cross-hairs swung to centre on the rig. At this distance it reached twenty or so degrees from the horizontal and I could see its riding lights. There was some kind of flood illumination hitting the cranes and derrick from lamps on the top deck, and a flare pilot was burning with a steady flame from the tip of a stackpipe.

At one side I could make out the black aerodynamic shape of a helicopter, the object we most feared, 'Thank you.'

'Our pleasure.'

The 'scope was brought down and I went through to the wardroom. A young seaman was coming the other way and stood aside for me, his leg catching one of my reserve air tanks: it hit the metal bulkhead and someone said shit under his breath and the seaman's face went white. We all stood perfectly still for a minute, trying to replay the sound in our memory to judge how bad it was.

It wasn't very good so I did a final synchronization check with Ferris and tugged the flippers on and carried the reserve tanks and other stuff along to the escape hatch. Ackroyd led the way personally, which I thought was civil of him.

Ferris helped me stow the gear against the bulkhead and I checked the faceplate for misting.

'Better you than me,' Ackroyd murmured. He had a very held-in smile.

'I wouldn't want your job either,' I said and put the mask on. They swung the door shut without making a noise and the last thing I saw was the pale and watchful face of Ferris, not much of his mind on me, most of it going through a lightning series of checks to see if we'd forgotten anything, overlooked anything, anything that could catch up on us a minute from now or an hour from now or at noon today when I was alone in the target zone and out of reach.

Flooding began.

The sickly rubber smell of the mask.

I shifted the lead belt around an inch, unnecessarily.

The water was waist high.

The thing I had to do was simple. Difficult but simple. During final briefing I'd asked Ferris why the hell didn't we take up station at the Golden Sands Hotel and do a snatch on Tewson the next time he was brought ashore to see his wife? There were three reasons, he'd said. One: Tewson might never go there again. Two: London wanted the evidence. Three: London wanted to know what the evidence was.

The water touched my chin. The mask had started to mist up so I pulled it off and spat into the faceplate and wiped it clear and put it back.

If Tewson never went to the hotel again we could lose him forever: he could disappear into mainland China and that would be that. Presumably the evidence London wanted was to be used against Tewson or through diplomatic channels against Pekin or maybe both. And the evidence London wanted was the evidence of what Tewson was doing on board the rig.

Water above my head. Vision distorted, sound magnified as the water gushed in from the pipes. Left hand stinging: salt in the wound.

Ferris would tell London straight away: he'd have to, because Egerton always insisted on phase situation reports going in on time and it was no good telling him later that you were up a steeple or down a drain. The moment this watertight hatch opened Ferris would have to say so, either through Admiralty Signals and Crowborough or ship-to-shore cable to Chiang in cypher, the standing contraction: Access phase open, executive in target zone.

The hollow ringing sound of the water died away and there was just the steady inspiration and expiration of my lungs, with the soft cathedral echoes. Then hinges turned and a circle of pale light appeared above me and I pushed gently upwards, floating away.

The sea was dead calm and the light milky, with the waning moon trailing a pale gold disc above me on the surface. Minutes later I thought I heard the pulsing of the sub's engines but I wasn't sure: the senses were having to adjust to the laws of this other world where the ears must listen under pressure and the eyes see things as larger than they were, and closer. Halfway to the rig I turned and floated on my back, sighting along the surface through the faceplate. The island was there on the near horizon: Heng-kang Chou. I'd been moving off-course, and when I turned again I saw the rig's configuration had altered noticeably. This worried me because there'd been no figures we could hope to work out for the target-zone duration: I could hold out for three days in terms of rations and drinking-water but that didn't have any reference to the amount of time I'd spend submerged. Standard practice was to economize with the air supply and leave a ten per cent margin of error in making calculations, and you don't economize with the air supply by going off-course.

Watch what you're bloody well doing.

I'd been using the compass because they had radar and there'd be look-outs on the rig. The phosphorescent dial was clear enough to read accurately but the steel substructure was beginning to send the needle wild and from now on I'd have to risk it and take direct visual checks at intervals with the faceplate clear of the surface till I could pick up the base of the rig below water. I was moving almost due south and the moon was climbing in the east and I'd have to avoid tilting my head to the left when I surfaced the faceplate, to minimize reflection from the glass.

They didn't have sonar. We'd known that, long before we'd reached our position. If they'd had sonar they would have sent the chopper aloft to investigate our sound and we'd have seen it and Ackroyd would have turned about or surfaced, signalling difficulties. The main danger would have come from divers below the rig: if the substructure was under repair or there were modifications being made they'd have divers down and they would have picked up the sound of our screws.

I submerged again, moving a few feet below the surface, low enough to prevent the kick of the fins from making a disturbance, high enough to preserve buoyancy. I began looking for the outlines of the substructure ahead of me now but the water was cloudy in patches: it could be just plankton or weed debris, or the machinery on board the rig was perpetually disturbing the sea bed. I began worrying about exhalation bubbles but there wasn't anything I could do: they'd still break the surface from whatever depth I went down to. Ignore.

The world was silent around me, my own sound alone disturbing it: the hollow and echoing rhythm of my breathing as the living bellows of my lungs fed on the inert reservoirs of air and blew it out, each breath exhausting it by degrees, and irrecoverably. Sometimes the reserve tanks and the other gear caught an eddy from my fins and pulled me sideways a little, dragging on the nylon cord, and every time this happened I rose and broke the surface with the faceplate to correct my course: but I didn't like having to do it because this whole operation was so bloody sensitive.

This was a Ministry of Defence thing and they'd got something so big on the board that they'd panicked and thrown us a crash-access and the Bureau hadn't been able to stop them. Control had been kicked into motion with almost nothing to go on: we had to reach Tewson as fast as we could and we didn't have to ask any questions. There was obviously a chance that he'd show up again at the Golden Sands but they couldn't give us time to mount an orderly snatch and that was all right but they couldn't have it both ways: they'd hair-triggered Mandarin to the point where the target was so sensitive that I'd almost certainly blow it before I could get there.

Tewson was the target: Tewson and the rig. And the instant they realized we were getting too close they'd whip him into China. Tell you what London had sent me here to do: I had to stalk a bird bare-handed and catch it before it flew up.

Bloody London for you.

The cord tautened again and I was pulled sideways, getting fed up with it. When I broke surface with the faceplate I saw the configuration had altered, but not too much: I was learning how to do it better, every time. The flare at the tip of the stack made a diffused glow and I took off the mask and demisted it, pulling the mouthpiece away for a moment to drag in the dry taste of ozone.

The rig looked about half a mile away and as far as I could see there was no movement on board: the lights were stable and their pattern didn't change. I'd have liked to audio-survey for a few seconds but it wouldn't be easy: it wouldn't be any good just pushing one ear through the surface because it'd be full of water: I'd have to drain it and that meant putting the whole of my head through and if they had any short-range scanners they'd pick up the blob.

I went down again and listened below water, holding my breath for five seconds. Nothing.

From the information Ferris had picked up from local sources the oil rig had been operational for three months: the crude was said to be already on stream and they'd set up a tanker shuttle between the rig and the refineries along the South China coast. If they were burning residual lean gas at the flare pilot they must be running at production capacity and they ought to be working round the clock because on an operational oil rig there's no difference between night and day.

There was on this one. No sound of machinery. No sound of life.

I checked the time at 01.46. Airstream normal, buoyancy easy to manage, the spare tanks no real problem. During the next long haul I made two brief visual checks from the surface and then stayed below: the faint yellow stain of the flare pilot was now on the surface and I used it as my lode star until the dark trellis pattern of the substructure began showing against the sea bed a hundred feet below.

The glow of the derrick bases flared softly for two or three minutes on the surface and then dimmed out as I arched my back slightly and brought my head down, diving to twenty feet on the gauge. I was assuming there were look-outs and the air tanks on my back could pick up scattered light. It was almost totally dark at this depth and I stopped kicking and drifted, using my free hand to bring me more or less upright. My eyes had been used to the moonglow for some time now, and the flare pilot and then the white reflected light from the derricks had closed the irises to something like half their original diameter, and I needed time to accommodate. The trellis pattern of the rig was very faint now, although I was closer, and the sea was a dark wall around me.

Silence.

Then the long-drawn sound of my inhalation, hollow and strange, as if I could hear only the echo, and not the sound itself. Silence again and then the bubbling as my breath rose from behind me and floated above my head. At each interval between inhalation and exhalation the silence was total.

Slight stress beginning because of this, and because of the dim light. The onset of disorientation: normal but uncomfortable. The organism was starting to ask where it was, what it was doing here where it couldn't see things very well, couldn't hear things. To be ignored, or better still contained. Keep still and keep quiet, listen to what you can: the sound of your own life-giving breath. Look at what you can: the faint pattern of the girders, and above them the square configuration of the superstructure, delineated by the night glow of the sky, and the diaphanous cloud of debris drifting past as the current flowed from the south.

Breathe. See. Hear. All is normal. Relax.

The nylon cord tugged slightly as the current moved the reserve tanks, turning me gently round. With one hand I spun myself slowly back, to keep the girders in sight. They were becoming clearer, darker against the sands beyond, except where the cloud floated, moving nearer against my faceplate, and lower. Its edge was blotting out part of the girders, as if it were opaque, and becoming larger. One of the background girders ran straight upwards from it, thin and perpendicular, and I looked down to follow it, then up again to watch the cloud itself. Its configuration had altered suddenly, and protrusions appeared, perfectly equidistant; and as it bumped against me I put my free hand out to push it away, but it wasn't easy because it was a cable above it, not a girder in the background, and these protrusions bumping against me in the current were detonation horns.

The shock was explosive because the nerves were being hit by imagination as well as fact and in an effort to keep me alive the imagination was picturing for me what would happen if I touched that thing again and for an instant I saw the blinding light and felt the tearing apart of life in the roaring waters and then the inrush of eternal dark.

Christ sake stick to the facts and think, try to think, get back to where you were a second ago, the bloody thing hasn't gone off and you're still alive so do something to stay that way. It could have blown us right — shuddup you snivelling little tick — you'll never see Moira again if it — get out of my head, it didn't go off and we're just the same as we were before but we have to think.

There wouldn't just be this one.

It drifted away a little on the current and then came back, tethered by the thin steel cable. I moved away slowly, fanning the water with both hands, retreating from it but not too far.

They wouldn't have put just this one here. There wouldn't be any point. I was in a minefield.

Fanning with my hands, keeping upright, maintaining the organism in the vertical attitude it was used to, so that it could operate without too much stress. But more data was being rammed into the brain. A whole mass of it to do with my hands, information about my hands, information and questions, why were they both free, my hands, where had the -

I don't know.

Turn. Spin slowly and mind the air tanks because if they hit that — take care, take normal care, if it was a beach ball the tanks would never hit it, it's only because it's full of TNT that you think they might, relax. Turn slowly and look, look everywhere. It can't have drifted far.

Instinct is devoted almost totally to keeping us alive and it functions at nerve speed and it doesn't even refer to higher authority: it doesn't waste time asking the brain what to do. It acts. It short-circuits the normal system that processes the data and presents it for decision-making and signals the motor nerves and contracts the muscles. It doesn't demand cerebration because that would slow the action. And it can't think for itself: it thinks as much as a gun thinks after the trigger's been pulled. If it sees a spark coming it shuts your eyes and if it sees a snake it stops you dead in your tracks and if it sees a high-explosive mine it frees your hands and drives them flat against the water to push you away and that was why I'd lost my hold on the nylon cord and that was why the reserve tanks and the radio and the rations were drifting somewhere in the gloom where I couldn't see them.

Where I had to see them.

But it was getting darker.

Water pressure felt the same but I could be mistaken because in these conditions of dim light and silence and weightlessness the threshold of disorientation was low and if I couldn't maintain psychic stability the senses would have to start struggling to bring in the data and if I missed any data it could be fatal. I wanted to check the depth gauge but the idea of moving my arm, of moving anything at all, was unnerving: but it was the only way to find out if I was sinking imperceptibly to the sea bed and increasing darkness.

I kept my arm to my side, bringing it up by the shortest path until my wrist was in front of the faceplate and I was peering at the gauge like a man going blind. No information. The luminous dial had lost its brightness and the light around me wasn't enough to pick out the shape of the needle. I tilted my head by degrees, moving slowly, the sensory nerves of my skin beneath the rubber suit alerted for tactile signals. Above me it was less dark: a greyness was diffusing the faint light from around the platform of the rig. So I wasn't sinking and they hadn't doused their lights and there was nothing in the water to cloud my vision. I'd been sweating, that was all.

The shock had raised the blood heat and brought the sweat out and the faceplate had misted over and in normal conditions I'd have known what was happening but in these conditions it had taken a lot of finding out and the idea wasn't pleasant because if a diver doesn't know when his faceplate's misted over he's pretty far gone.

Christ sake relax. Take the bloody thing off and wipe it and put it back and do something about that stuff drifting around.

Or do nothing.

Mental blocks were getting in the way of rational thought because the organism was still frightened: not about what would have happened if I'd hit that thing with one of the heavy metal air tanks instead of my chest, but about what might happen if I went after the reserve tanks and came on them just as they reached a mine.

I took off the faceplate and put it back and blew out through the nose. It wouldn't stay clear for long but I didn't want to surface yet and use saliva. A decision had to be made and the whole of the mission would depend on it: I was going to look for that equipment and try to find it before it struck a mine or I was going to get out.

All decisions are subject to chance and chance is incalculable. You can only predict likelihood and I thought it was likely that the reserve tanks would hit a mine if they went on drifting with the current. If they hit a mine there would be debris on the surface and the crew of the rig would see it and examine it and fit the clues together: a buckled radio component caught in the remains of a waterproof bag, an air pocket bringing it to the surface; a carton of protein concentrate, some biscuits still in their waxed paper. They'd know how close we were getting and they'd double the guard on Tewson or fly him out. Either way, Mandarin was blown.

But I'd be alive. The island of Heng-kang Chou was two miles away and I could get there underwater with the air I had left in the tanks. The break-off rendezvous for this access phase was twenty-four hours from the commencement of solo operations by the executive in the target zone: 01.29 hours today when I'd left Swordfish. Location was Heng-kang Chou Island, rotating quarter zones as per standard practice for this topographical situation: the north shore if I could find caves or some other refuge, east shore if there was nothing available in the north, south shore if both were blank, so forth. Life support was no problem in terms of food and water: thirst would develop but that would be containable for the short period involved. I'd be in good condition when Ferris picked me up.

Mission aborted: executive withdrawn.

Because it'd be no good sending in the reserve: there'd be nothing for him to do. George Henry Tewson would be somewhere in the three-and-a-half million square miles of the Chinese mainland. Reserve recalled. And close the file on Mandarin.

Egerton wouldn't like it.

He works for the good of the cause. They all have their different motivations, the London Controls. Loman's working for a knighthood and he doesn't give a damn for his ferrets: look at what the bastard wanted me to do in Tunisia — blow myself up. Parkis is working for some grand and distant checkmate when the board is cleared of the pawns and in the meantime he moves us around and he doesn't care whether we live or die so long as we block the knights and the rooks while he plans his strategies. But Egerton works for Queen and Country and his morality is First World War, with tattered banners and muted bugles and the Greatest Game of them all to win, except for one thing: he won't send you over the top without a chance. As Ferris had put it to me on board the August Moon: 'the Egg doesn't care at all for sending people on suicide stunts.'

The alternative to getting out was going in.

Egerton wouldn't like that either.

But he'd never know, because there's always a phase in the mission when you're suddenly and critically in need of Control direction on a major issue and can't get it or don't want to. There's nothing London can do about it. They can plan the whole operation from initial briefing and access down to the final support liaison that's designed to get the executive into the target zone and out again with a clear exit path and a whole skin and the merchandise they're buying with what they pay him to do it. But you can't always stick to the blueprint and unless you're lucky you're going to find yourself cut off in a red sector one fine day with the access blocked or the radio jammed or someone treading all over your face because you opened the wrong door and then you're going to want field direction or something from Control and you're not going to get it.

They can bust a gut designing a set-up that'll get you past all the pins without flashing a light but there's nearly always a time when you've got to go it alone. We know that. It's why we're in this thing, most of us: the ferrets have got their motivations too. We don't go looking for trouble but if we get it we think we can deal with it and that's when we try very hard because if we fail we're going to have to live with ourselves forever afterwards and that's tough because we're vain.

So when we get close to the edge we don't go back: we look over. It's just another way of getting rid of infantile aggression and if you don't like it you can do the other thing.

There wasn't any real problem. If I let that stuff go on drifting it'd either blow a mine or move free and wallow around in daylight tomorrow and attract attention and if either of those things happened it'd finish the mission and that wasn't the object of what I was doing here. I was here to complete Mandarin according to plan. It didn't look as if I had a chance in hell of coming out alive but that wasn't a reason for not going in at all: it was gut-think.

Immediately around me was an area of dim light and beyond it was a soft gathering wall of dark and somewhere on the other side that stuff was drifting in the current: two steel cylinders, each of them charged at a pressure of two thousand pounds a square inch and capable of smashing through the wall of a building and flying three streets away and going through the side of a bus and that was just if the valve broke. They could do better than that if they went the wrong way through a minefield.

The one factor that had any value for me was that of time: the longer that stuff went on drifting the less chance I'd have of finding it before it hit one of those bloody things and blew the sea apart. So I thought I'd better start now.