The Mandarin Cypher

Chapter Eighteen: OBJECTIVE

His silhouette came into the window again.

This was a different one: they'd changed the guard at midnight. His ears stuck out from a rather thin neck. I couldn't see his eyes. The window was narrow and I'd taken a lot of time measuring it to see if my body could pass through it. In the end I gave it up.

That was before he'd started again. Not this one, the one with the red-rimmed eyes.

Why did you destroy the listening devices?

I've told you.

Why did you destroy the listening devices?

Gave me three hours.

Three hours can be a long time. I could still see the lamp.

What did you say to him?

Leave me alone you bastard!

What did you say to him?

Screw yourself.

One hundred and eighty minutes and five repetitions every minute and the light making pools at the back of my empty skull, blazing its way right through the sockets. One hundred and eighty temptations to tell him.

The light was still in my eyes.

They were shut but it was still there.

I would like to sleep. I would like to sleep. I would like to see the light go out and hear the dark and feel the silhouette turning slowly, the tape running through the bright metal dishes, anything else but millet? Of course if I'd known you were married, she laughed and opened her legs and the blood was there in a long smear down the road, a man flower, what is a man.

Watch it.

Mouth dry and the breath pumping, happened, what happened?

Bloody well wake up.

Window was blank he wasn't at the window.

Check.

00.55.

Don't do again. It again. Tired that's all, haven't had any sleep since eight o'clock last night, last no, night before, yes, a long time.

I raised my head off the pillow and waited.

He came again.

Very regular. Every five minutes. Assumption was that he paced the width of the deck and took station at the rail and surveyed and paced back. The door was locked from the outside and he'd remain within earshot and I couldn't do anything with the door and if I tried the window it'd make a noise.

What did you say to him?

Oh Christ don't you start.

Very well. In the morning you will be escorted to Pekin.

Down the long narrowing tunnel.

The silhouette left the window and I got off the bunk again and picked up the twist of newspaper and lit the end and held it to the air extractor. The grille was getting sooty: this was the fourth time and there didn't seem to be much reaction. I shut my eyes, standing there with my arm raised. My eyes wouldn't stand the light of the flame.

The night was quiet. I listened but the night was quiet.

Don't you face it, hope in hell.

The heat of the flame on my fingers.

I blew it out but didn't take it away till the last of the smoke was drawn through the grille. There was another twist of paper ready because I'd found I could light two within the five-minute period when the guard was absent. I lit the second one and the light of the flame pushed into my skull through the eye-sockets. I could smell the paintwork burning around the grille.

O Jesus Christ you're in a locked room and the guard's armed and there are four others out there, at least four others, you saw them last night and you'd get fifty yards in the sea if the drop didn't kill you, fifty yards before they started firing and you wouldn't even float because of all the lead so what are you doing here lighting bits of bloody paper off your rocker or something?

Heat on my fingers.

Sleep.

Bells.

Quite loud bells, don't you go to sleep on your feet, I'm warning you. Bit of action to wake you up. Whole place full of bells, more noise out there than a fleet of fire engines. They must have smelt smoke somewhere.

I hadn't really expected it to work and it took a second or two to get the brain-think going again. The ball of newspaper was in the corner with the cheap cardtable over it, three-ply, go up a treat.

I lit the newspaper.

There were voices outside. A lot of shouting. Time I went.

It wasn't really a refinement. The thing had to be credible and if I'd just started a fire in here and banged on the door they'd see what I was doing, trying to get out. But if the alarm system went off they'd take it seriously. So I broke the window and shouted and went to the door and started hammering and the place filled up with smoke and the heat was on my back and I began wondering if he'd get here and open up before the fumes knocked me out. I didn't want to try the window till there was nothing else for it, because it was so bloody narrow that I might get stuck halfway and the whole thing would turn into a barbecue.

Eyes running and the fumes burning in my throat, table was crackling, some sparks flying off. I kept on hammering but I couldn't shout any more, couldn't breathe. Everything red behind me now and roaring.

Then the door fell down and I went on top of it and the flames came blowing in the air rush as he got me by the wrists and dragged me across the deck. Hands beating at my back, slapping my shoulders, got me there I suppose, the flames had got me there. Bells.

Bells and feet running and the clang of a fire bucket Shouting.

They dropped me against the bulkhead below the derrick and I let my head sag. One of them had got the hose from the nearest point and they were in business now and I watched them but you haven't got time to watch them, couldn't see too well because eyes streaming and everything blurred but come on for Christ sake come on!

They were forming a group, watching the blaze, some of them bringing another hose, and I crawled as far as the iron ladder and got on my feet and knew I couldn't do it and then did it, still there where I'd left it but sweet Jesus be careful, be careful.

Thing weighed a ton.

One of them was coming now and when he saw I was on my feet he pulled his gun and I brought my arms up high, lifting the thing above my head, ready to throw it.

He stopped.

And the man behind him stopped.

The man behind him was naked to the waist, just out of bed.

He was my interrogator.

'Tell the guard,' I said, 'to drop his gun.'

He stood still, staring above my head.

The thing weighed a ton but only because I was so bloody tired. Normally it wouldn't take a lot of lifting, a lot of holding up.

'Tell him — ' but my throat was too sore.

So I brought it forward suddenly and he made a shrill sound to the guard and repeated it and the guard dropped his gun. I raised my arms again to make it easier to hold there. The big deck lamp was behind me and I could see the shadow, enormous, with the horns sticking out from its sphere. They'd be gleaming quietly in the light above my head, copper coloured, copper red. I couldn't see them.

The shouting had died away.

It sounded as if they'd got the fire under control: there wasn't much in there that'd burn. The walls and ceiling and floor were iron. This whole thing was iron. The deck here was iron, and the gun had made a dull ringing when it fell. Even if I couldn't make it, even if it got too heavy, even if my legs just crumpled and I fell forward, the thing would detonate on the iron deck.

He knew that. And he didn't want to die.

'Bring Colonel T'ang here,' I told him. 'No!' as he moved. 'I want him brought here. Send someone. And be quick because I don't know how long I can hold this.'

He didn't do anything right away so I let one leg buckle at the knee and the big round shadow moved on the deck, the horns swinging. He spoke sharply to the guard and the guard began running.

I'd asked Tewson who was in charge of the rig. T'ang, he'd told me. I wanted to know about him. Army colonel, honorary rank, actually a physicist, their top missile man, big in Pekin. He'd do. That was what had changed my mind. I'd unscrewed this thing from the turnbuckle and brought it up here last night in case I could use it for a last-ditch get-out, chuck it at the fuel tanks and drop overboard while everyone was busy, swim to the island and make the rendezvous. But Tewson might not have been game, didn't look like a swimmer.

With a man like T'ang on the hook we could do it with a bit more style provided I didn't drop this bloody mine and someone didn't shoot me.

Back on fire. I could swear those bastards hadn't got the flames out. They were just standing there gawping, stink of wet charred bedclothes coming out of the cabin, water all over the place. I could hear the rest of the crew coming on deck, some of them asking what was going on, three fast shots banging into the girders behind me and a shrill voice but not in time to stop the fourth one and it bit into my ribs and I staggered and the voice of the interrogator shrilled out again and they started dropping their guns where they stood.

Then he was staring above me again.

I think he was praying.

Been a shock and I brought the mine down, holding it against my chest like a medicine ball, ready to throw, I suppose some stupid prick had panicked, well, this wasn't the most stable situation, anything could happen.

'Listen,' I said, 'get T'ang here!'

Could feel the blood under my tunic, warm on the skin. No particular pain and nothing coming into my mouth, smashed a rib with any luck but oh Jesus Christ I was tired, I was tired.

The Colonel was a short man, very straight-backed, epaulettes on his white tunic, pyjama pants, comic opera if it hadn't been so bloody deadly, I said what I wanted him to do.

He looked at me for a long time.

It was incredibly quiet. Thirty or forty men on deck in a semi-circle and the big lamp throwing shadows.

The bells had stopped and the hydrants were shut off and all I could hear was someone whispering and someone telling him to shut up.

Colonel T'ang stood in front of me.

He hadn't said anything yet.

My eyes were still watering and he looked blurred. I couldn't see what he was thinking and I didn't really care because I was going to tell him what to think and if he didn't like it I was going to lob this bloody lollipop right in his face, getting fed up with holding -

Come on, get a grip.

Drifting away again.

'Colonel.' He was like a statue. 'I'm ready to die for my beliefs. You have five seconds.'

If I could only stay on my feet another five seconds.

One.

He didn't move.

I'd spoken in English: he was an educated man and more likely to know English than Cantonese.

Two.

I thought my hand was bleeding. My left hand. Must take great care of it, little Chih-chi had said. Fat lot of chance.

The interrogator was standing next to the colonel, a step to the rear. He was watching the mine, fascinated. Conceivably he was thinking in terms of a flying leap, catch it before it hit the deck. I'd stop that lark.

Three.

Thing of course was that nobody could really do anything without this man getting killed, and if they let that happen Pekin would have their balls off.

Four.

Possibly he was wondering if he could talk me out of it but I'd pre-empted that one: tell these people you're ready to die for your beliefs and they won't question it, terribly keen on ideology, there's a species of ant that fights fires, they throw themselves bodily on to the flames till the sheer weight of numbers puts them out, I suppose it takes all sorts.

Five.

He was still watching me and I got the thing above my head and lurched forward with it and an enormous hiss went up from the crowd of men and T'ang threw his hands out but I managed to keep my balance in time when he just said:

'No!'

After that it was okay.

I told him to go first down the iron ladders and I followed him and the seaman fell in behind. He was going to pilot the launch.

'Hello,' I said when we got there. 'Coming along?'

He was standing by the launch, his thick-lensed glasses catching the light. I'd told him to wait for us here at 01.10 hours if he was interested. I'd expected he would be: he didn't like the bit about Tai Tam Bay.

I began thinking she wasn't there.

The break-off rendezvous was for 01.29 hours, Heng-kang Chou Island, rotating sectors beginning with the north coast. So she ought to be standing off by now and I'd been using the signalling lamp on our way in.

Mandarin. Mandarin. Mandarin.

No acknowledgement but I changed it to instructions.

Surface. Surface. Surface.

Felt rotten, all this trouble and they couldn't even get here in time to -

There she was.

The sea broke ahead of us in a long dark wave and the water streamed off her hull as she came up, black and shining under the moon.

Swordfish.

The launch slowed and I had to grip the rail as the weight of the mine started swinging me round. I'd got it in the crook of my left arm and Tewson made a move to steady it but I warned him off because I didn't know how sensitive these detonators were. He was watching me, obviously worried: I suppose I looked a bit far gone because the blood had soaked into the tunic below my ribs and my back was in a mess and my eyes wouldn't quite focus, kept blurring, use some sleep that was all, but he was waiting for me to keel over and blast the whole lot of us into Kingdom Come.

Colonel T'ang stood erect in the stern, hadn't looked at us once since we'd left the rig. Shocking loss of face and all that, well, I couldn't help it, got my job to do.

We pulled alongside and started wallowing in the waves the sub had put out when she'd surfaced, our fenders squawking against her plates as a seaman swung a boathook across. Lot of people in the conning-tower: Ferris and Ackroyd, couple of officers, all with drawn revolvers as if they were expecting some sort of trouble. I told Tewson to go aboard first.

'These two men are going back to the rig,' I told Ackroyd.

'All right.'

'Can someone take this thing for me? But go easy.'

'Oh my oath,' one of the officers said, and reached down.

'Christ sake don't drop it.'

I could hardly lift it now, but we managed. Most of them looked as if they'd stopped breathing for a bit. Then they helped me aboard and I nearly fell over and someone had to put out a hand, bloody embarrassing. Braced myself against the rail.

'Ferris,' I said, 'this is Tewson.'

The objective.