The Mandarin Cypher

Chapter Fifteen: TRAP

I couldn't breathe.

His hands were at my throat and he pressed with his thumbs and I couldn't stop him. His eyes were slits and below the mask his teeth were bared with the effort as he went on pressing with his thumbs. Behind his yellow face the mountain reared.

I tried to move but his weight was on me and the water lapped at my head, its waves coming and going without any sound. The mountain was silent, gigantic, directly above me, and I began running but I couldn't breathe. He was blocking my throat.

Haze began covering the mountain and I pulled off the mask and the mountain was instantly clear. Something was in my mouth and I pulled it away and my lungs bellowed, heaving inside my ribs. There was something under my feet and I pushed upwards and got my head higher out of the water, and the mountain sloped away until it was a low hill, covered in green. I pushed again with my feet and climbed higher, getting a grip on the rocks with my hands, the left one painful and oozing blood.

Then I stopped moving and stood waist-deep in the water, wanting to do nothing but breathe the sweet air in: I'd always believed that thirst was the worst, but it isn't. The tanks had run out of air but I didn't need it because my head was out of the water: I'd been dying for the want of air when there was the whole sky full of it.

He'd gone. I'd been hallucinating.

This was Heng-kang Chou Island.

I couldn't have recovered full consciousness or I would have reacted faster. Situation data was coming in heavily and was so significant that I dealt with it first and the imaginative process was partially inhibited: I'd lost consciousness somewhere near the sea bed and drifted on the southerly current and exhausted the air supply in tidal breathing but I was still alive and had a refuge where I could hole up in safety and this situation was so satisfactory that I didn't look for problems.

Time check: 13.01.

I'd been drifting in the unconscious state for something like two hours and the current had kept me close to the sea bed or the helicopter would have sighted me. The rubber suit was ripped in a lot of places and my knees and shoulders felt bruised: Ferris had told me the south shore of the island was steep granite dropping away to sixteen fathoms within twenty yards of the waterline, so the on-shore current had dragged me up the slope of rock to the surface.

Rotor.

There had to be more data before I saw the danger I was in, and it came aurally from across the sea and I went down slowly and was careful not to make a splash because if this was the south shore of the island it was in sight of the rig and at a distance of two miles a pair of medium-power field glasses could pick up an object the size of a man.

Bloody well wake up and try to survive!

I took off the faceplate to avoid reflection and sank into the water with only my head clear, tugging at the quick-release buckles of the backpack and letting the air tanks go, pushing them down the rockface with my hands and then my feet to start them sliding to the bottom. Then I made a five-second survey across the sea's surface: three helicopters airborne, one of them this side of the rig and the other two well beyond it. Five boats visible, three of them cabin class, two of them smaller craft. I couldn't see from this distance whether they were navy, police or coastguard, but they were flying the yellow-starred flag of the Chinese Republic in the stern. They would almost certainly have divers down.

The nearest cave mouth.was this side of the southernmost point and I submerged with the mask on, surfacing every so often to breathe and keeping my head turned inshore, reaching the cave and crawling on to the fissured floor and flopping down on my stomach, drawing deep breaths, the mask still on until I remembered it and pulled it away. State of semi-exhaustion and it worried me because it hadn't been a long swim and the fins had cut down the work. Possible blood loss: I remembered the wound had come open while I'd been engaged with the diver. Possible residual effects of nitrogen narcosis: I'd been unconscious for two hours and there would still be a lingering retention of CO² in the tissues. Probably combination of both factors and therefore normal but I didn't like it because I had to think and all I could see was a flutter of light in front of my eyes and all I could hear was the chop-chop-chop of that bloody rotor amplified in the cave.

An irregular draught above my head and something pattering on my back, the sense of creatures somewhere near me. Take some interest then because everything is interesting if you want to live: all right, bats, napping all over the place above my head, I'd frightened them.

I let my eyes shut again.

Be too dangerous to go inland and try to reach the far side of the island because the chopper was too close and there wouldn't be much cover in these soft green hills: there weren't any trees, only bushes and short scrub clinging to the rock where it could. I'd reached land but the only cover was in the sea and I'd no air left in the tanks and they were gone now anyway, so much junk, all I'd had to keep me alive not long ago.

Think of nothing. Relax.

Got to think. Want to live.

The break-off rdv for this phase was twelve hours from now and I was in place in the third rotating sector, Heng-kang Chou. The rations I'd been preparing to bring with me were still on the sand below the rig where I'd let them fall when the diver had found me there. I could last without food but I had a thirst beginning because I'd lost fluids in sweat and I wouldn't be able to graze on the scrub till nightfall. Ignore thirst.

The lights kept flashing and I shut my eyes again and lay prone, letting the whole thing go for a minute, leaving the organism to look after itself by automatic data analysis: squeaking sounds and air movement in close proximity recognizable and acceptable; volume of distant sounds constant; psychedelic display behind closed eyes attributable to nerve trauma, this data to be ignored.

The water lapped.

Relax.

Now.

I crawled higher and sat with my back propped on the rock and watched the bats dipping and swerving across the cave mouth, their wings turning pink as the sunlight shone through their thin membranes, turning black as they wheeled inside the opening again. Think. One of them coming very close, unaware of me until its radar picked me up, small ears and flat piglike face, vanishing as it weaved aside. Think of what must be done. Others hanging from the roof of the cave, for some reason undisturbed, asleep and enfolded in their leathery wings.

Face what you know. They're making a lot of effort out there, three choppers and five boats and probably more on their way; they want to find the man who killed their diver and they want to find him badly because he got near their missile base and they want to know who he is: they've got a lot of questions for him.

Check logic. Satisfactory. It would be nice to use this half-doped forebrain for cerebration above the Neanderthal level but for the moment it was the best I could do. There wasn't anything difficult to work out: there was a manhunt mounted for me and I must elude it.

But the thing I had to face was that they wouldn't deploy their forces on that scale without extending the search area and when they couldn't find my body dead or alive in the sea they'd start searching the San-Men Island group and the nearest one was this one so they weren't going to have to look far. They'd start with the caves along the south shore and that was where I was now so I'd better get out but if I got out they'd see me.

Nerve-light receding now. Left hand becoming numb because I was holding ft above me against the rock face to stop the bleeding. So it didn't look as if I could do anything and what worried me was that red lamp over the board for Mandarin where they were sitting on their hands looking at the clock and the situation crossplot and not, very carefully, looking at each other when they got up and walked around and swallowed some more cold tea with the scum on and said no sir, every time Egerton came in, no sir, there's nothing new.

At that end of the mission there was a building full of people with talent enough to man an international chess tournament and signals facilities in excess of the requirements of an operational air force base and a codes staff capable of hitting our agents-in-place in Moscow or Pekin with a telephone directory got up as Hymns Ancient and Modern and a permanent hotline direct to the Minister of Defence and at this end of the mission there was a half-doped ferret sitting in a cave and getting slowly covered in bat-shit.

At a rough guess I'd say Mandarin was blown. All I was interested in now was getting out alive and I didn't think I could do it.

Swordfish would arrive in these waters at 01.29 tomorrow and the call of the sea swallow would be heard and go unanswered and the sub would pull out and all Ferris could do then was consider sending in the reserve, but I didn't think there'd be one available because the Bureau didn't have anyone stupid enough to take on a shut-ended penetration job with a seaborne access problem except possibly for O' Malley and for one thing he was in Athens and for another thing he'd get pissed the night before and go in with a sawn-off motor torpedo-boat and they'd see him coming before he'd started the engine and Control knew that: he'd told Ferris to hang a reserve in front of my nose just to make me go into this thing out of sheer stinking pride.

Well, this time it hadn't worked. If they wanted George Henry Tewson off that rig they'd have to use a skyhook.

Aural data becoming significant and demanding analysis.

Increase in the volume of sound: and the only sound of any consequence was that of the helicopter.

I dropped into the water and floated towards the cave mouth and saw the thing was perceptibly closer. Two of the boats were also moving in, one of them heading directly this way with its bow wave appropriate to half speed: they weren't hurrying because they hadn't seen anything and if there was anyone on this group of islands they could head him off and pin him down without any trouble. It would finally depend on manpower and they had unlimited resources.

I thought the best thing to do was to start getting some information on the cave system on Heng-kang Chou and with that bloody boat heading this way I thought I had less than a couple of minutes to get clear of here. This cave didn't offer anything: it was a cul-de-sac.

Preliminary hyperventilation is dangerous if it's pushed too far and I spent only thirty seconds on it, emphasizing the exhalation and taking nine or ten pints into the lungs before I slid below the surface and followed the undersea cliff.

I couldn't see them.

This cave was no better than the other one. It had a shut end.

I couldn't see them but I could hear them.

They were checking the other cave: two men in a dinghy.

When they'd checked that one, they'd come and check this one.

I waited. There wasn't anything else I could do.

The launch was standing off a short distance. The men on board couldn't see into the cave: they were base and support for the men in the dinghy. There were now two helicopters over the island: I could see one of them banking sharply across the southernmost headland and sloping down from the sky, chop-chop-chop-chop, coming closer.

I sank under the surface and lay prone in the shallows of the cave because even when you know you've finally lost a wheel you go on trying till the very last second: it's in the nature of the beast.

It's always someone else.

Always.

Never you.

Someone like KLJ, Berlin, a long-range rifle shot.

Or Thornton. Hit a mountain head-on with a Petrov X-7, Or North with his brains all over the bathroom.

You never think it's going, one fine day, to be you.

The bloody thing slammed past the cave mouth, chop-chop-chop, the echo slamming back.

I waited five seconds and pushed my face into the air and started breathing again. The bats were going frantic, swarming into the sunshine and back, perfectly understandable, imagine what they must have thought, picking up that bloody great super-bat on their little radars.

It would have been a piece of cake to hyperventilate and go down to fifty feet and come up on the far side of the dinghy and go into the cave after they'd searched it, but they had divers down in the area and I could see their marker buoys on each side of the launch. They were being very thorough.

I suppose Ferris was hanging around one of the islands in Hong Kong waters, Lamma or the Soko group, and from that distance Swordfish would probably notice the aerial activity. Conceivably he'd put a signal out: a lot of choppers up, looks like a search, could be we're blown.

You never think it's going to be you: they're looking particularly shut-faced when you go through Clearance and you know it must be Mario because it's the only one running, or you find you can't reach Parkis and you know his operation must have come unstuck because he told you to be here and he doesn't miss an appointment unless the sky's caved in and this time it's poor old Talbot, or you see two of the escape-crew couriers going into Debriefing as white as a sheet and that's either Fitzroy or Crocker and you don't ask anyone which.

This time they'll know it was you.

The sun was striking into the cave mouth, sending light dappling the rocks. Now that the helicopter had reached the end of its loop a mile away it was quiet in this stretch of water and I could hear voices from the power launch. When I sighted along the surface I saw three of the crew standing in the stern and watching the cave where the dinghy was. The men in the dinghy were armed and carried something heavy and chromed: I'd just seen the shape of it and the flash of the sun when they'd gone in there and it had looked like a portable searchlight taken from the launch.

There weren't any ledges in this cave, in this one where I was trapped. There wasn't a hollow where I could have crouched or a loose rock I could have used as cover. There was nothing.

And nothing I could do when they came. The divers weren't just making a random search of the rockface below water: they were keeping precise station, on watch for anyone swimming out of a cave when the search party went in.

All I could do was wait.

What's wrong with Egerton today?

Who?

Egerton.

Oh, his mission got blown.

Christ. Who was he running?

Dunno. Quiller, I think.

You never think it could be you and then one day you find out you're bloody well wrong and when I heard the splash of their oars I pushed with my feet and floated out of the cave face down so that they could see it wasn't anything worth shooting at.