The Mandarin Cypher

Chapter Six: BREAKTHROUGH

'Wai?'

'What is the goose?'

'It is gold.'

'This is for London, immediate.'

'Wait.'

I listened carefully, thinking he was warning me, 'Yes?'

He'd just been getting a pencil.

'Mandarin. They picked the flower. Wing.'

I could hear his breathing as he wrote it down: he'd been in the shop below when the telephone had rung.

'Yes.'

'Please repeat.'

'Wait. Mandarin. They pick the flower. Wing. Yes?'

'Picked.' I spelt it.

'Yes. Picked.'

'Thank you.'

Then I got Fleetway and said I'd left the Capri outside the Excelsior and they could pick it up there and I'd see them as soon as I could to sign the papers and they said they'd prefer me to bring the car in personally and complete the formalities and I said they wouldn't be in business long if they didn't learn to co-operate, feeling savage, wanting to curse everybody just as one does when it's been one's own fault.

I can't stand a messy death. I don't mean the smear bit, I mean a death that doesn't do anything, doesn't mean anything. Thornton did it the right way, Thornton above all people, hit the Caucasus Mountains head-on with a twin-engined Petrov X-7 trying to dodge the missiles they were sending up from the base at Krasnodar, one big bang and no heel taps, the whole of the Bureau laughing all the way to Codes and Cyphers with the stuff he'd given the Queen's Messenger in Odessa, complete blueprints of the submarine complex and defence installations with blown-up photographs. If you've got to go, do it like that.

Bobbie? Oh he's fine, I think. He's off abroad again, you know, some sort of government work, to do with the consular staff welfare scheme, I believe that's what he told us. Yes, we do miss him, of course — we were hoping he'd go into Arthur's bank, but there you are, so long as he's happy, that's the main thing, isn't it?

A long red smear down the street and my fault because I should have kicked him out of Hong Kong last night when I'd seen he was low calibre and dangerous and too young to be out alone; they'd let him run because they'd thought he must be Special Branch and then they'd picked me up and seen it was Intelligence and finished him off. The thing they were running was so big and they were so determined to push it through that they weren't even interested in asking questions when the opposition turned up: they just moved straight in for the kill.

I left the phone-box and went out to the street again. There was a case for asking London for a director because the pressure was coming on hard, but there wasn't anything to report yet, there was no breakthrough. The key to the breakthrough was Nora Tewson, and she'd gone.

I'd had to cross the road and go up there to make sure they'd been thorough, and she was already coming past in the Jensen before the traffic began jamming up around the 'accident'. There wasn't a taxi in sight and I'd been tempted to wave to her, well well well, fancy seeing you here, take her to lunch, get everything I could out of her. But that would have been expedience, not design, The Jensen was a death trap and I left it alone, edging back from the knot of people and finding an alley and getting clear, checking with every step because they were still here somewhere in the area.

The alley led on to Kwong Yuen Street and I turned right and hurried but couldn't see her car. There was a taxi near the intersection and I got in and we did the whole travel pattern, starting with the House of Shen, Constellation '144', Kaiser's and the places she'd stopped at earlier in the day, in case she was looking for something specific and trying to make up her mind, doubling back.

No go.

At four o'clock I picked up a Taunus from Fleetway and went to the Standard office, back numbers department, giving them the date I needed. The report took some finding because the tourist trade is a major industry in Hong Kong and they like to feel that everything looks just as it does in the brochure.

Tragic Death of British Visitor, page ten, one small photograph of George Henry Tewson, the same as the one I had in my briefing file and obviously from the same source, undistinguished, glasses, indefinite age. There wasn't anything I hadn't been told already. I asked if I could use their phone before I left but she wasn't in. The self-disgust about letting that poor little devil get caught in the machinery like that had so far kept my mind off the present situation. The present situation was that the key figure in the field was changing her routine tonight for the second time and it could be critically significant and I wasn't going to be there unless I tried everything in the book and had some luck as well.

On my way back to the Cathay I stopped to buy a pair of Bushnell 7 X 50's with a 7 30' field and ultraviolet niters because Jade Imperial Mansion was a quarter of a mile from the hotel and I might risk holing up there for another few hours if the binoculars could give me a reasonable view of the entrance gates the Jensen normally used. There was a chemist's next door to the optical place and I went in and bought some more toothpaste, Neodens Safeguards your Health, more than you could say for the last lot.

I parked the Taunus in St Paul's Hospital and walked down Cotton Path into Tung Lo Wan Road, crossing it and keeping on, going round past the theatre into Causeway Road, checking the windows of Room 39, shutters still closed.

A gentleman had telephoned three times, they told me at the desk, a Mr Chou. He hadn't left his number. It hadn't been Flower and it hadn't been Chiang and no one else knew me in the whole of Hong Kong. I said I was going out again this evening but I'd let them know when I left, so they wouldn't have to page me if Mr Chou called again. Then I went upstairs.

They must have been very quiet or the management would have heard about it by now. Every drawer was upside down and the carpet was off the floor and draped across the bed. They'd prised several boards up and stripped some of the wallpaper and turned off the pipe-tap in the bathroom and dragged the cistern away from the wall, taking down the air conditioner grilles, unscrewing the wall plugs and turning the wardrobe on its side to get at the bottom. The lamp brackets were on the floor with the wires pulled out of the swan-necks and the bathroom door handles were off and lying on the window-sill. The base was off the phone but it worked and I dialled and waited for ten rings but she didn't answer.

It took an hour to check for booby traps, even though I didn't need to move more than a few things: clothes, shaver, toilet bag, so forth; the shoes weren't any good because they'd taken the heels off. I was sweating a lot by the time I'd finished (someone had slammed a door when I was picking up the shaver), but I'd decided to do it instead of just walking out and rekitting at Lane Crawford's because I wanted to know if they thought I was green enough to blow myself up in here, and to know if they'd rigged something for me anyway: if they hadn't, it could conceivably mean they were going to let me run till they could bring me down and interrogate. As a general rule you don't ferret your way into their operation by picking their locks, you do it by picking their minds.

I tried again twice during the hour, ten rings each time, the cover line being I missed her and was she sure she couldn't make it tonight, oh well, have fun. If she answered, I was going to take the Taunus along Caroline Hill Road and work north and find somewhere convenient for starting the tag when the Jensen showed at the gates. She didn't answer.

I was still drawing blank at 18.00 hours. Now that they'd been here again and Mr Chou had started breathing down my neck I didn't feel like opening the shutters wide enough to take the 7 X 50's because they might have put a man on the peep down there or in a building nearby, and just the glint on the glasses could be fatal.

The maids could come in any time now to turn down the bed and things wouldn't be easy for them so I took one of the suitcases and went down and checked out at the desk, very pleasant, yes, and what a wonderful view, but my office had called me back, another strike, yes, wouldn't it be excellent if they could only run things in England as they ran them in Hong Kong.

Crossing the road to the hospital car park I felt the nape of my neck tingling. It was normal but uncomfortable and there was nothing I could do about it. They hadn't rigged anything for me but it didn't mean they might not use some other method when they were ready. The thing is, as soon as you start working in a sensitive field you're going to attract attention and as often as not you're going to be put on the opposition list, right at the top, if they think you look like getting in their way. The deeper you go into the tunnel, the more difficult it's going to be to come out again alive. It's no good digging a hole and waiting till they've gone because they're not going to go, and you can't run your mission by remaining immobile. So all you can do is settle for the situation and check every shadow, every sudden movement, and try to make sure there'll be time to duck. And of course ignore the snivelling little organism that's so busy anticipating what it's going to feel like with the top of the spine shot away, why don't you run for cover, trying to make you wonder why the hell you do it, why you have to live like this, you'll never see Moira again if you let them get you, trying to make you give it up when you know bloody well it's all there is in life: to run it so close to the edge that you can see what it's all about A chill at the nape of the neck. Ignore.

Cerebrate: start worrying over something real, the way they'd switched tactics. As soon as I'd arrived on the island they'd got on to me and moved straight in for the kill, failing with me and succeeding with Flower and taking not the slightest interest in asking questions. Suddenly they'd decided to ask a whole lot of questions up there in Room 39, without even leaving anything terminal for me to walk into. I knew it wasn't from consideration for innocent persons: this was a Pekin operation and if a Hong Kong chambermaid went in there first and caught the blast it'd serve her right for having deserted the Daughters of the People's Liberation Army to work for the wicked capitalists across the water. One aspect was fascinating: did they really think anyone from London would leave his cypher key stuffed in a lamp bracket for them to find? They must be thinking of the Russians.

The Taunus was all right: I'd left traps. There wasn't any need to look under the facia but I looked just the same, from habit. The face was at the window as I straightened up.

'Are you visiting the hospital?'

A Chinese, nobody I knew.

'No.'

He wagged his head. 'Would you please not park here unless you are visiting hospital.'

'All right.'

'We have sometimes many people park here, and no room for — '

'I won't do it again.'

'Thank you. Hospital is for emergency, and if people park here, we cannot get ambulance up to doors, so — '

'Oh, use a bloody shoe horn.'

Start up and back out and turn, not at all polite, but it was beginning to look as if I'd missed the boat and I wasn't very happy. There were two chances left: ring every restaurant and supper club on the island, and set up a temporary base at the Golden Sands Hotel.

It was in Telegraph Bay and there were some hill roads to it but I took the major route through Victoria and down past the university, peeling off along the meandering drive that led to the beach. The Golden Sands was long, low, exotic and recently built, with vines and creeper still trying to cover the pagodas and terrace walls. A small group of people were down on the private beach, playing with a dog; the only others I could see outside the place were a man and a woman stowing the sail of their boat at the jetty. Two or three motor-launches were throbbing in the channel, one of them leaving a wake that had curved away from nearer the shore, possibly from the jetty here.

'D'you have a room facing the beach?'

At the Golden Sands the focus of social life would be on the beach, at the poolside and along the two lower terraces.

'I will see,' he said, looking a little worried that he might have to disappoint me, but with only half a dozen cars down there and the terraces deserted I had an idea things might turn out all right. 'We can offer you this one, sir, if it's just for one night.'

Room 27, second floor, view taking in the jetty. The Hong Kong life-style was maritime and there could be as much traffic to and from the hotel by sea as by road. I stayed in the room for less than half a minute to check security points and then went across to the terrace bar at the front, because you could watch the road from here and anyone arriving by boat would take the lantern-lit magnolia walk past the end of the building, coming around to the entrance.

Small girls in glowing cheongsams, their feet making no sound.

'No,' I said. 'Indian tonic.'

There was a phone and I started work: ten rings for Jade Imperial Mansion and then the rounds, beginning with the ones in her known pattern — the Bayside Club, the Danshaku, Gaddi's, the Eagle's Nest.

Even from the front of the building you could hear the noise of the power boats, and I kept one ear open in case any of them came across to the jetty. Two cars arrived: two couples, their voices floating up through the dusk, way to come, I know, but Felicity said it was a simply fabulous place for fish, headlights moving along the main road through Pok Fu Lam.

'Yes, I think table reserved in name Tewson.'

The Harbour Room. A hit and a miss, because I was here, not there.

'For tonight?'

'Yes, sir.'

'What time?'

'I think — excuse me. Lady cancel table.'

'She what?'

'Lady cancel table. Not come tonight.'

Hugo's, the Man Wha, the Tai Pan Grill, trying Kowloon now as well as the Island, no go, every time a negative, trying the Miramar as the low grey Jensen came round the curve of the drive and parked under the row of lanterns.

She was alone.

19.07.

Small neat steps that would have left footprints in a dead straight line, not turning her head as she came towards the doors, not looking upwards. I had a cover line if she saw me here but it might be dangerous, better she didn't see me, turquoise tonight, a discreet shower of sequins, her midriff bare, where the mole was, though I couldn't see it from here. The Honda arrived within ninety seconds and although the driver didn't get out I could see it was the short Chinese, the one I'd taken to the Mauritius Hotel. A whiff of exhaust gas came on the air.

I went to the top of the double staircase and looked down. Not every word was distinct but there wasn't any delay at the desk: the room had been reserved. The boy was taking her to the lift, her short hair bright as she passed below the lamps. It stopped at this floor and I was in my room when they came past, a breath of something by Faberge, she'd told me she always seemed to go for the expensive ones, she didn't know why.

She wandered, for the next half an hour, among the few people who had moved on to the lower terrace, not speaking to any of them, not looking anywhere in particular but sometimes at the sea, drinking three vodkas in a row-twice going along the lantern path under the magnolias, so that I had to use the binoculars to keep her in sight among the shadows there. Then she got fed up and came back, her steps quicker and her bag swinging, and sat at one of the tables not far below my windows, clasping her bare arms and swinging one foot all the time, now and then swatting at insects.

Taking calculated intervals I got out the map from the briefing material and spread it on the bed, looking at it for half a minute in every five, Directorate of Overseas Surveys Series L882, Sheet 20, Hong Kong 1:25,000, Cape D'Aguilar (Hok Tsui) Area, Grid Zone Designation 50Q. Very close to Grid Ref. 2:14–24:60, roughly in the centre of Tai Tam Bay, Macklin or Egerton or someone had put a red cross: Tewson drowned from boat here. Peripheral features: Tai Tam Village, prison at Tung Tau Wan, Lo Chau Island, Turtle Cove Beach. A second reference, blue cross: Slipway where Tewson hired boat. Also Witness 3 and 4. This was 1,650 yards from the centre of the bay where the red cross had been marked. Witnesses 3 and 4 were two of the Chinese fishermen who had seen Tewson in trouble. A green cross marked the point on Turtle Cove Beach where Tewson's papers had been washed up later. Submarine contours gave only 5 fathoms within a 100 yards of the shore near the slipway, 10 fathoms for the general bay area.

She hadn't moved.

The report was attached to the map. Approximately twelve noon Tewson hires boat from Mr T'sai, game weight tackle. Alone on board as before.

There were some bits about Tewson's being noticed by several people: coastguards, narcotics officers, the crews of fishing junks.

Approximately 16.00 hours several others, including the four key witnesses, see Tewson in 'some kind of difficulty'. Mr Fu Jen-chang sees boat rocking, flurries in water (normal surface conditions smooth throughout bay), 'silvery flashes on surface'. Mr Yung Lung-kwei, fisherman on junk within 100 yards of Tewson's boat, sees him 'struggling' with what appeared to be a fish, just prior to his overbalancing and falling in. Another witness -

A woman laughed suddenly below and I went to the window, thinking it might have been Nora, but she hadn't moved, and no one was talking to her. From here she looked small and somehow significantly alone, untouchable, sitting there with her secrets, trying to drink some of them away. I wondered where she'd been, that day: whether she'd been on the slipway watching the distant blob of the boat when her husband had struggled with his fish, and lost. I wondered whether she had known it was going to happen, this event that had brought so much change in her fortunes.

There were still beats out on the channel, their lights making patterns across the still water; and one of them was swinging in a curve towards the jetty, the throb of its motors fading to a murmur. It was the fifth I'd counted since Nora had gone out to the terrace, and three of them had left their mooring again. She'd watched each of them as they'd arrived, and she was watching this one, not leaving the table but keeping her small head angled attentively.

I picked up the 7 X 50's again and focused them on the jetty.

The glow of the lanterns left shadows, and I could have seen better by the more diffuse light of the moon that was just rising. A small group of men, one of them remaining with the launch as the others began moving towards the building. The; woman's laugh came again from below but I didn't look away. There were four of them, three wearing white shirts or jackets. i As I went on adjusting the focus I saw that two of them hung back a little. As they came under the terrace lights the details were immediately clearer: three Chinese and a European, two of the Chinese hanging back quite a few yards (big men, possibly bodyguards), the other Chinese walking side by side with the European, who wore some kind of bush jacket and a pair of sunglasses.

I got this man into sharp focus and studied his face for a moment and then put the binoculars down as he saw someone and gave an awkward little wave of his hand. Nora had left her table, smoothing down her dress and going to greet the two men, the Chinese holding back a pace, the two others remaining by the pagoda some dozen yards away. The European embraced Nora, kissing her on the cheek, a shade embarrassed, Nora a shade cool and breaking away rather soon, perhaps because they'd all kept her waiting for nearly an hour.

I shut the window quietly and went to the phone.

A girl answered and sweat broke out on me at once because we were going to have to work very fast: Mandarin had shifted gear again, kicking hard into phase three, and we had to go with it.

'He come,' the girl said.

Briefing said the arrangement was that Chiang would remain on close call continuous throughout this operation but that didn't mean he could go and — 'Yes?'

Goose, gold, so forth.

'For London, urgent, immediate, coded numerals.'

He didn't answer. Getting his pad.

'Ready?'

'Yes.'

I gave it to him in Cantonese: there didn't have to be any mistakes. There were two signals but the first was the most urgent.

'Saam — yat — baat — saam,' extended phase digits, 'Leong say — leong — sup — saam,' reverse transfers for the sake of speed, 'Yat — look — baat,' throw in a suffix group of three fives repeated to cancel any inadvertent alert in case he left an omission in the blanks. 'Read back.'

He was quicker in his own tongue, only just giving me time to phrase it mentally in English, but he'd got it all right, first go:

Need director fully urgent. Tewson alive.