The Mandarin Cypher

Chapter Three: CONTACT

'Fettuccini.'

'Si, signore.'

While I was eating it I reversed ten transfers, switched all groups at random and dropped the alert in every time without making a mistake, running off rome air-port 07.45 who the hell is tew-son and why won't they tell me. Then I reached for the vinegar and leaked some into the little flat box and watched the plastic card slowly dissolve. She was dead right: it took a good thirty seconds, not exactly the kind of trick you'd want to leave till the last minute if you found yourself in a shut-ended situation. Most people keep the key on them throughout the whole mission unless they run into problems: it's as tough as a credit card and you can take it through fire and water and it won't break unless you actually stand it on edge at a bus stop but I like to get rid of it early-it gives me the creeps because if they do happen to get to you before you can stop them they can begin reading your signals and sending stuff back and you won't necessarily live to know you've blown the whole operation.

Si pregamo i passeggieri per Bangkok di recarsi all'entrata d'imbarco numero uno.

Final check for messages. Negative.

Bangkok and the heat of a humid noon burnishing the gilded cupolas; palms and tamarinds and somewhere in the reek of kerosene a hint of sandalwood. Inside the building a bunch of people, mainly Japanese, were crowding the Royal Bank of Thailand counter: that would be the devaluazione monetaria featured in La Strada.

Nothing on the message board for Clive Wing.

There was a twenty-minute delay on the screen at China Airlines and I asked about it and they said the plane had come in late from Tokyo avoiding a typhoon that was now moving north-eastwards towards Korea, so I had time to walk around, stiff as a board after twenty-one hours up there and already feeling the disorientation as the metabolism struggled to adjust, the windows full of jade and teak and silk, the smell of incense and a display of gold pieces on black velvet and a board showing the world market: Mexico 50 Pesos 1.21 tr. oz. US $242 Bid, $249 Asked, Austria 10 °Corona.980 tr. oz. US $190 Bid, $797 Asked, the only two that interested me, the prices much lower than in London or New York.

Will passengers for Hong Kong please go to Gate No. 1.

Twelve-twenty-five and the air steamy across the tarmac, tso sun, tso sun, music tinkling from the speakers, no smoking, seat-belts, so forth, the thing was he probably thought I'd blow up in his face if all they'd had for me was a routine investigation into Tewson's death and he was absolutely right, I would have. So he'd had to catch me softlee, softlee, and not the first time, it was Egerton's speciality, and I would have walked out on him flat at London Airport the minute I knew about the reservation except for two possibilities: either George Henry Tewson was a top kick in some kind of specialized field or this operation was just too sticky or tricky or hair-trigger sensitive for anyone else to want to take on. He could have gone right through the list without getting a bite — because we can refuse a mission and there's nothing they can do about it — so he'd come down to the one man who might conceivably be persuaded, the one who'd been out of ops for nearly two months and was ready to take anything, anything, so long as they wrapped it up to look fancy.

Silk and small hands, a cherry-red mouth.

'Would you like some tea?'

Eighteen-forty and a cloth of gold flung across the window where I sat, the humped green hills of two hundred islands growing night-black before their time as the day lingered along the Tropic of Cancer, we hope that you enjoyed your flight, a rhythmic vibration setting in and the weight coming off the seat, and will fly with us again on China Airlines, fishing junks below on the flat gold water, sampans and a submarine and the chalk-white wake of a hydrofoil as it settled to the surface, in from Macau.

'Will you be staying long in Hong Kong?'

'It depends on what business I find.'

'Oh yes, you told me — you deal in coins.'

'Coins and bullion, they're the best hedge against inflation.'

'Ah yes.' He unclipped his seat-belt, smiling. 'In Tokyo we put our faith in transistors…'

The white Tiger Balm pagoda across the window, and Victoria Peak, then boats coming past in a swinging blur as we flattened along the approach path, tankers, freighters, two destroyers of the US 7th Fleet and a group of junks from Canton with the Chinese Communist yellow-starred flag and then the sub again, 'S' class with the Union Jack, belts until the plane has come to a stop, the hollow roar as the jets reversed and then the unaccustomed silence as the power came off, leaving conversations suddenly exposed.

… but heroin's their worst problem, even the schoolkids have started using it…

… they're not really poor, darling, I think they just like living on boats…

… the prettiest girls in Asia, Joe, and I'm not kidding…

Warmth underfoot across the tarmac and the air clammy against the face, the end of a long day's heat, the sinuous flicker of her cheongsam ahead of us as she led the way against the frieze of ponderously moving shapes, Swissair, Lufthansa, Transworld, and beyond them a curtain of jewels across the harbour as the island began burning in the dusk.

'Taxi?'

'Cathay Hotel.'

'Take ferry?'

'No, tunnel.'

The Cathay because in the_ dossier of Nora Millicent Tewson her present address was given as 403 Jade Imperial Mansion, ten minutes' walk away. Besides, if I chose anything more than seventy dollars a day those arthritic old tarts in Accounts would bust a corset.

The place was near Cat Street and there was a boy outside roasting a duck over charcoal, with a woman already waiting. The clatter of a mah-jong game sounded from a doorway farther along, where a letter-writer sat with an upturned keg for her table.

I passed the shop twice, wanting to familiarize myself with its environs, and then went in. The place was full of snakes, a hundred of them, I can't stand the bloody things.

'Mr Kwan?'

'No, Younger Born. I am Mr Chiang.'

He came out from behind his jars of snakes and stood with his hands together, short and at first glance fat, then if you looked again, muscular.

'Will it rain, Mr Chiang?'

'It has rained.'

'Will the typhoon come?'

'It has gone.'

'How many brothers have you?'

'Seven.'

'And sisters?'

'Seven thousand.'

'What is the goose?'

'It is gold.'

I showed him the scar under my wrist and he nodded, going to the door of the shop and closing it and coming back. The sizzling of the duck was no longer audible but the clack of the mah-jong pieces came faintly through the walls.

'Don't these bloody things ever get out?'

'They have no wish. They are fat now, and ready soon to hibernate. That is when the price will be high.'

'I'm happy for you.'

He led me through the bead curtain and up some pitch-dark stairs to a room under the roof, the air heady with herbs. There was dust everywhere from the sacks filling the shelves, except on the radio, which was as clean as if he polished it every day.

'What are your main stations, Mr Chiang?'

'Pekin and of course Taipei.'

'The Embassies?'

'Your Embassy in Pekin, your Consulate in Taipei.' He went over to the set, soft-footed and eager to please. 'You wish to make contact?'

'Not now.'

He was disappointed, stepping back but still looking at the set as if it had suddenly stopped working.

'When did you come to Hong Kong?'

He swung his large head to look at me. 'A long time ago.'

'From the mainland?'

He looked away, and in a moment went down the steep flight of stairs ahead of me, his stubby hand on the rail. 'Yes, from the mainland. We swam across Deep Bay, one night. But I reached the shore alone.'

'Who was with you?'

'My wife.'

One of the snakes rose heavily as our shadows passed over it, and spiralled round the big glass jar; I could hear the dry scuffing sound of its skin as it moved. Mr Chiang stood with his short black shoes neatly together.

'That is all?'

'Yes, Elder Born.'

He unbolted the door and I left him. The duck was done but the boy and the woman were arguing about the price. On the other side from where the letter-writer sat there was a jeweller's and I went in and asked if I could use the phone. Mr Chiang's number was among those I'd memorized from the briefing material and dialled it.

'Wai?'

'Lee seen-saang hai-shue ma?'

'Nee-shue mo yon sing Lee.'

'Doei m-jue. Ngaw daap chaw seen.'

I hung up and put a dollar on the counter but the girl shook her head so I circumspectly picked it up and thanked her and turned left outside the jeweller's so as not to pass the snake-shop again. When London sets up a safe-house abroad it doesn't fool around because the whole mission can sometimes be thrown in jeopardy by an unreliable contact and of course blown up if he's a double, and they know that, they've known it for so long that a lot of us still survive. It was just a reflex that made me do it and anyway it wasn't conclusive because if he'd wanted to phone anyone to say that Wing had arrived in Hong Kong he needn't have done it within three minutes of my leaving the place: but that was when he'd be most likely to do it. I'd lowered my voice and all he knew was that one of the thirty thousand foreign devils in Hong Kong speaking atrocious Cantonese had got the wrong number.

And all I knew was that for a period of ten seconds during the critical three minutes when he'd been most likely to inform a contact that Clive Wing had arrived on the island his phone had been innocently disengaged. Most of us work on the principle that if you've got the time and the chance to check every step of the way, it's worth doing. It's a bore checking the ignition wires for tampering every time you get back into your car after you've had to leave it in a suspected area and I must have done it a couple of hundred times, including the time in Calcutta when I found they'd rigged a bomb.

I picked up a dark-blue Capri from Fleetway Rent-a-Car in Watson Road and took it past the Cathay and found some shadow where the trees in the park hid some of the light from the lamps. Jade Imperial Mansion was one block distant and I went there on foot and saw him sitting in a Hillman with the visor down but I didn't stop because this was completely unknown territory and I needed to feel my way in.

I didn't stop at the board in the lobby either because there were people about and I noted them. There was enough light on the board to confirm in passing that 403 was on the fourth floor and I took the lift to the top and went down seven floors by the emergency exit stairs, finding the back entrance and going through the service complex and coming out by the park and getting into the Capri, putting the window up to leave a reflection and checking the time, 8.44. The parking slot for 403 was on the far side of the building but there was only one exit and at 9.21 I heard the Hillman start up and a minute later the Jensen came through the gates and turned west and then north and then west again into Gloucester Road and we were in business, the traffic fairly thin because most people were in the theatres and restaurants and supper-clubs at this hour, and the only one I didn't like was the Taiwan-registered Toyota and I took a right and a left and a left and came up on the lights at red and watched him go past, no reaction whatsoever, too far behind the Hillman to be tagging that, but it had been worth the risk of losing the Jensen and having to find it again because the opposition-in-place in whatever city are very watchful and you can pick up ticks just by stopping to tie your shoe-lace.

In six blocks I came up on the Hillman again and this time overtook it, slotting in behind the Jensen and noting the ash-blonde Peter Pan head that never turned to look sideways, the occasional glint of emerald below her ear, the way her eyes flicked obliquely upwards at the mirror and down again, once the flash of a gold lighter, her movements deft and her driving calculated as we ran into Harcourt Road and bore left along Cotton Tree Drive. At the next set of lights I went past her and got a clear visual impression in profile, thin, bony, rat-faced attractive, her head not turning, the flash of an emerald ring as she used the ashtray, then I was past and put three private cars and a taxi between us before I peeled off and made a U-turn and came back to wait.

Flower should have been on to me by now but he was looking straight ahead as he cleared the lights and I made the turn and fell in two cars behind, beginning to worry because he'd looked so young: the top security departments were taking them straight out of school these days and letting them loose too soon.

A right into Garden Road and past the Hilton and left again and slowing, taking the smaller streets: she knew her way and didn't hesitate, any more than Nora Millicent Tewson ever hesitated, I was beginning to think, about anything.

The Hillman tried to stop in time to pull in somewhere behind her when she began slowing but there wasn't enough room so he went on past and left her looking for a slot. I backed up and couldn't find one and put the Capri under a Strictly No Parking sign and found cover and waited. There were a few people about and Flower wasn't far behind her when she came into view and crossed the road and went into the Orient Club. I gave it ten minutes and followed.

'You are a member, sir?'

All smiles but standing right in my path.

'No.'

'Would you care to take out a membership?'

'Please.'

He went on talking while I signed the form, nothing more than a formality of course, police regulations, licensed as a private club, many apologies for the necessity, so forth, one hundred Hong Kong dollars.

Imperceptibly he had moved out of my path as I reached for my wallet, and I was ushered between heavy curtains into the traditional ambience of incense and candlelight, not a large place but pretty full, the tables mostly in alcoves, the waitresses Eurasian and topless, the men mostly in white suits and DJ's, the women discreetly glittering, some of them wives. Imported floor-show, Edwardian vaudeville, half a dozen long-legged girls kicking their net stockings out, those were the days and all that.

They got me a table and I began working, picked her out over there near the band, still alone at a table for three, watching the floor-show, smoking, smoking rather hard and sometimes looking around, the earrings catching the light, not looking for anyone, but at them. Flower was nowhere near her but perched at the far end of the bar looking bored. When I was sure I asked for a telephone and a girl came and plugged one in.

'Directory Enquiry — can I help you?'

'Please. I'd like the Orient Club.'

'Which club?'

'The Orient.'

'Just a moment'

Across in the alcove she was lighting another cigarette, looking up, looking around, but not at people coming in through the curtains: she wasn't waiting for anyone. They were bringing her first drink, no cherries or anything fancy for Nora Tewson: it looked like straight Scotch.

Enquiry gave me the number and I dialled.

She began on the drink straight away, she's still very cut up, Macklin had told me.

'Orient Club.'

'I'd like to speak to Mr Flower.'

Had to repeat it, then had to spell it 'He is a member?'

'Yes.' He'd come straight in.

It wasn't the kind of place where you went up to lonely-looking women and asked them for a dance but someone was doing it, an elderly and elegant Chinese. She was shaking her head a little too emphatically and he took a step back, bowing quickly, dissembling. I suppose he'd thought that by her looks she had more breeding, not a very good judge.

'Mister Fowler not here, sir.'

So I spelt it again and said he should be there because he'd asked me to telephone him. There were probably a hundred people here, a lot of them on the small dance-floor now the girls were taking a break, and they didn't want to go and look, I quite saw their point. In five minutes they got him, and the bartender showed him the phone in the corner, just inside the curtains.

'Hello?'

'I'm from London,' I said. 'I came in on Flight fifty-three.'

The code-introduction for the first to the fifteenth was to throw in a random number and listen for two below and four above, world-wide, all missions, it saved trouble.

'That's how we missed each other,' he said. 'I was on three seven.'

He was turning round slightly, just enough to keep his eye on Nora Tewson. I asked him:

'When did they start the tag?'

He turned his back on the room again, blocking his free ear because of the band.

'When did they what?'

I suppose he wanted it straight from the book: maybe he was college-trained, Norfolk. 'When did the subject come under opposition surveillance?'

He didn't say anything for a bit and I began getting worried because it wasn't possible for me to tell whether he couldn't hear properly or whether he was having to think something out. There wasn't anything for him to think out: I'd asked him a perfectly simple question.

'D'you mean,' he said, 'she's being — '

'Don't look round.'

I said it sharply because he'd begun turning his head the other way and for a second I didn't believe it. He turned back to face the wall and I hoped he'd begun sweating as hard as I was. In a minute I said:

'You mean you didn't know?'

There was a short silence, then he said: 'Oh shit…'

It was about all he could say because he was obviously straight out of training so they'd given him the simplest job on the list and London had sent him a top-ranking shadow-executive all the way to Hong Kong to tell him he'd mucked it up, I felt for the poor little bastard but that wasn't the point, he was dangerous.

I looked for a waitress and let my eyes pass across the table for two on the far side from the bar. The man hadn't moved. He glanced at the Tewson woman every five seconds, away to the dance-floor, back to the woman, every five seconds, police-trained, possibly Special Branch, but Macklin had told me the enquiry into Tewson's death had been closed. I was waiting for him to look across, just once, at Flower. He was the thin tubercular Chinese with glasses I'd noted in the lobby of Jade Imperial Mansion and again in the four-door Honda that had been three cars behind Flower when we'd turned into Gloucester Road and again when I'd been waiting in cover across the street from here.

'Shut up,' I told Flower. He was trying to talk.

I gave it another full minute. The man was like a robot, every five seconds and never varying, never interested in anyone else, never looking at Flower, a professional amateur with precise instructions — don't let her out of your sight — and doing his job to the letter.

'Flower.'

'Yes, sir?'

'You're off the hook. They haven't seen you.'

He said bitterly: 'That isn't my fault.'

Give him credit at least for knowing what he'd done. But he'd been lucky and that was what made it potentially dangerous: if that little police-trained robot had got on to him he wouldn't have stood a chance — they could have roped him in and put him under intensive questioning and blown his cover, finis. Worse, they could have tagged him to any rendezvous that he and I might have made, putting surveillance on me and forcing me to show my hand by throwing them off. Of course there were built-in fail-safe factors and even if they'd caught him and put him under the lamp he couldn't have exposed the Bureau or anything to do with it because he'd never been there; they don't let a raw recruit go anywhere near the place till he's proved he's safe. And I hadn't on principle gone near him myself when I'd seen him stationed outside Jade Imperial, any more than I'd gone near him when I'd come in here. But it doesn't matter how hard you try to keep the safety mechanism operative: you can make a mistake or have some bad luck and then all you need is someone like Flower and the whole thing's going to blow.

'Are you here in the club?' Flower was asking me. He'd asked me before and I'd told him to shut up.

'Just keep on looking at the wall.'

But I was ready to drop the receiver and put the phone on to the banquette below table-level in case he took it into his head to look round anyway because with his lack of experience I didn't want him to be able to recognize me at any time or in any place until I was ready.

'All right, Flower, I want a quick breakdown on her travel-pattern.'

A couple of seconds went by and I wondered if he was normally as slow as this or whether it was nerves. 'She goes quite a lot to jewellers and places like — '

'Which ones?'

'Erm- the House of Shen, that was this morning. And a place called Constellation «144» — that's in — '

'Where else?'

'Kaiser's, and — I think that's all. She — '

'Does she always buy something?'

'You mean jewellery?'

'Yes — come on, Flower — '

'Well, I can't be sure whether she — '

'Then you bloody well ought to be, they've got windows, haven't they? Where else does she go?'

He didn't get any faster but it was no good my taking the pressure off because I wanted to know things, a whole lot of things, this wasn't really my kind of operation, Macklin had told me, he must have known I'd have Flower to deal with.

'She's been to the Bayside Club, the Danshaku and Gaddi's.' He was speeding up a little now and by the way he was standing I thought he'd got a notebook. 'She's had dinner twice at the Eagle's Nest — that's at the top of — '

'Hilton, right. Companions? Contacts?'

'You mean-'

'Who does she meet?'

'Oh. Nobody.'

'Nobody at all?'

'Not that I've seen.'

I was looking across at her. They had a can-can number warming up on the floor and she was leaning back, one arm lying along the top of the banquette, her bare shoulders pale and luminous in the low-key light and her small head poised as she watched the dancers. I wasn't surprised the elegant Chinese had risked a snub by going over to speak to her, and not surprised he'd got it. From Flower's observations she was avoiding men, avoiding people altogether, still upset by Tewson's death two months ago but not wanting to wilt alone in her apartment. Maybe this was where they used to come together, here and the other places.

'What's her usual time-pattern?'

'She never leaves her pad before ten or eleven a.m. and she's usually back before midnight, unless — '

'Away all day? Lunches out, dines out?'

'Yes, she never goes home before eleven or twelve, once she's left there in the morning. She — '

'You'd say she drifts around, spending money or window-shopping, killing time, that kind of thing?'

'Yes, sir, I'd say that. I-'

'Never takes a trip — '

'Only Kowloon — '

'Shopping again? Drifting?'

'Yes. Once she stayed overnight at — '

'Overnight?'

'Yes, last Sunday, at the Golden Sands Hotel.'

A break in the pattern and I pressed him on this, did she stay there alone, meet anyone, talk to anyone in the lobby, in the bar? Not that he saw.

'What was her room number?'

'One hundred and ninety-two.' A notebook, yes.

Went on pressing him, what time did she get there, what time did she leave, got him to think up a few of the questions for himself before I had to ask, finally drained him dry on the routine stuff like where she bought her petrol, what hairdresser, did she go to theatres, walk alone in the streets at night, ever take a taxi instead of the car, watching her from where I sat and trying to learn the things I couldn't see, the things I'd have to know to reduce the risk of losing her when I took over the tag for a stretch. Then I let him go.

'All right Flower, where are you based?'

'The Wanchai.'

'Hotel?'

'More of a boarding-house really.'

He gave me the address and I said: 'Listen, you're off-duty from now on till I contact you, but you're on stand-by so don't leave your base at any time except between fifteen hundred and sixteen hundred hours on any day, repeat, fifteen and sixteen hundred and at no other time. Understood?'

'Understood, sir.'

'Leave here now and don't look around.'

'Where can I contact you if I have to?'

'You won't have to.'

I hung up and put the phone on the banquette and watched him pay his bill at the bar and go through the curtains. The thin Chinese with the glasses was watching Nora Tewson and nobody else and I relaxed.

'Change this for me will you? There's gin in it.

'I'm sorry, sir, I thought you asked for gin and tonic.'

'No, Indian tonic.'

'I'll fix it right away.'

Eurasian with a United States accent out of Taiwan, they all ought to be like that instead of the ones we've got in Accounts. In three minutes she was back and in fifteen minutes I saw the Tewson woman ordering her third drink and I began working out what to do.

The George Henry Tewson dossier gave me quite a lot, from his schooldays on, through Cambridge but missing out his job, filling in relations, contacts, interests, addresses, vacation movements, the marriage of course, everything I'd need if I wanted to go across there and say well well well, long time no see, you're looking marvellous and tell me, how's old George these days, there was nothing she could do about it because I even knew his golf scores.

But it wasn't the way in, for a lot of reasons. London said they'd closed the enquiry into Tewson's death so the thin man over there shouldn't be Special Branch, and the police-trained thing didn't add up to a lot because most of the Asian cells used people from official departments and he could be anyone, anyone distinctly dangerous if I didn't wipe my feet.

Her waitress had reached the bar.

Of course he could be insurance because a couple of years ago Tewson had been overdue with his fees at the golf club and his Austin was three years old and they'd come out here on a package trip and by the way she was enjoying her widowhood he'd either carried heavy life assurance in the UK or had known how to use a piggy bank or had taken out a short-term big-figure policy here in Hong Kong, which might explain why the thin man was Chinese.

I didn't think he was insurance.

Her waitress was leaving the bar.

The long way in was to keep up the tag till I found out enough to signal London and ask for further briefing but that would take time and if Nora Tewson was the key figure in Mandarin they wouldn't want me to sit back: they'd pulled me in halfway through a ten-day call and pushed me on to a plane and that could have been partly because they couldn't get anyone else to take this one on but it could have been totally because they wanted me to go very fast now they'd lit the fuse.

The thin Chinese could be on the tag to see if she made any contact with anyone who knew George Henry Tewson or knew anything about his death or who wanted to know something about it: so the only foolproof way in that would be fast, effective and noncommittal was to make first contact as a complete stranger and in public, going in deliberately under the opposition surveillance and making it quite clear that I knew nothing at all about Tewson, Tewson's death or Tewson's wife.

I got up, timing it so that as her waitress reached the table I was there too, pressing my way through the people towards the dance-floor and catching my foot on a chair-leg. The whole tray went down with a crash, not just the glass, better than I'd expected.