The Mandarin Cypher

Chapter Eight: 555

'Put that bloody thing away,' I told him.

I meant it. I wasn't joking.

He'd had me worried for a second, till I'd recognized him. I'd thought it was more trouble and I wasn't ready for it.

He was Ferris.

'Tried to tread on you,' he said, 'did they?'

He gave a wintry little smile, putting the gun away.

Ferris had directed me in Hanover, last time. He was sitting on the steep flight of stairs, thin and sandy and owlish, an eccentric don, his hair all over the place, what was left of it.

'Why didn't you do it?' I asked him, still annoyed at the start he'd given me.

'You wouldn't keep still.'

I suppose he didn't want to make a noise, either, not that sort of noise. And he might have got Chiang in the leg or somewhere. He would only have done it if he'd seen I couldn't do it myself: that was Ferris, he always made you bloody well work for your living.

My breath went on sawing. I'd used an awful lot of muscle in the last few seconds and I needed the oxygen back and my lungs were going like bellows. When I could I said:

'Chiang. What kind of venom is it?'

He didn't answer. He was standing quietly looking down at the boy on the floor, his expression benign. It could have been Chiang who'd done something at the last minute, thinking I couldn't manage: he was a belt, the briefing said. Maybe I'd ask Ferris. Or maybe I didn't want to know.

'Chiang.' My nerves were still sensitive.

His head snapped up.

'What kind of venom have these things got?'

'Venom?'

'Poison — come on, I want to know if it's — '

'No poison.' He shook his head. 'Snake not venomous, no. Law not allow, in shops.' He took a step towards me and dragged my sleeve back, his fingers very strong. There were fang marks all over the place and I tried not to think about it. 'No trouble,' he said. 'It happen sometimes with me too, is like little nails.' He called suddenly in the direction of the stairs. 'Chih-chi!' As he moved impatiently towards the stairs I caught the smell of the incense that clung to his gown. I straightened my back slowly, letting the nerves explore the bones and ligaments. There didn't seem to be anything wrong, just the hand burning, and the punctures in the arm.

Chiang moved past me again, taking the boy's wrists and dragging him through the broken glass, leaving him behind the counter. One of them slid across the floor in a series of smooth curves, black and yellow, and I said:

'Ferris. Where are we going to talk?'

'Up here.'

I walked to the stairs, watching for another one and ready to kick out. A girl was coming down in a cheongsam, not looking at me, looking at Chiang. He spoke to her in Cantonese, with no particular urgency in his tone. They had to see to the Saiyan, his hand was bleeding, then they had to clear up all this mess and find the reptiles, they would keep the door locked, so forth, and she kept saying yes, yes, quickly and repetitively like the chatter of a bird, expressing her fright at the mess, looking down at my hand, then fleetingly up at my face. She went back up the stairs.

'Chiang,' Ferris said. 'What about him?'

'Ah!' He threw his head back quickly. 'I will make all in order.' He came shuffling quickly to the stairs, scattering bits of glass and flicking the dead snake aside with his pointed shoe, folding his strong stubby hands and speaking softly and emphatically to Ferris. 'Will cost money, to take him long way and bury with fung shui. There will be many others to pay, tea-money and for not speaking of this. Will cost two thousand dollars,' watching our faces to catch our reaction.

'You will be paid,' Ferris said thinly, 'what London decides you are to be paid.' I remembered he hated mercenaries, even though we had to depend on them for so many things. It was nothing to do with morality: he knew they were dangerous. 'And there will be no fung shui, because he was our enemy, not yours. And there will not be «many» others to help. You will use one other, and you make damned sure he's deaf, blind and dumb. You should be ashamed of yourself: in London Mr Chiang is not said to be a greedy person. I would not like to report otherwise.'

Chiang gave a breathy little laugh to cover his loss of face, and said nothing more. Ferris didn't look at me, but turned and went up the stairs. The girl, Chih-chi, was at the top, beckoning me to follow her. She sat me on a wicker linen-basket in a bathroom on the first floor, with my wrist across the edge of the cracked handbasin, and used running water and a pair of eyebrow tweezers while I looked at the two rust stains running down beneath the taps, and the toothbrush and Lifebuoy soap and the bottle of black hair dye, one of Mr Chiang's little secrets. She didn't speak English, or was too shy, so we spoke in Cantonese: she was the third daughter and working in a doll factory before going to the university next spring, if she could pass the examinations; but she found English difficult, 'like Chinese puzzle', with a sudden warbling laugh at her own joke, her eyes darting to mine again, wondering who I was and who had smashed the jars and released the snakes down there and what had happened to my hand. The things she told me were only the record I'd asked her to put on.

She used the tweezers delicately, her hand pecking at mine like a bird, flicking the pieces of glass into the basin while I sat there feeling the reaction and feeling it more strongly because I didn't want there to be any; I had to start thinking again. But all I could think was how bloody chancey this trade was getting, it could have been me down there lying in all that hideous mess, with Ferris getting on the radio, Wing broken, or whatever phrase he'd use for immediate and urgent speech-code transmission to Norfolk and by direct private phone to Egerton's bedside at one in the morning. Deceased during mission on the right-hand page in the book before it was closed, and nothing to show for it, nothing like Thornton had shown, just a vulgar brawl with a hit-man, almost an accident.

Hadn't you better think?

Well, I'm bloody well trying to.

She had to grip my wrist to keep my hand still: I was shaking all over, muscular reaction, nervous reaction, could do without it, had to get back on form because they'd dropped in a director for the field and he was waiting to local-brief me. She got some bandage and a dressing and I tried to blank off my mind, clear it of all references and associations and start all over again. It worked, up to a point, and the question came in pretty sharply: Hadn't you better think about what he was doing here?

Well, he didn't tag me from the car because I checked, all the way. And he didn't tag me from the Golden Sands. So he 'Did that hurt?'

'No.'

Must take great care, so forth. She tied the knot.

'How did he get here?' Ferris asked me when I went up to the radio room. He assumed I knew, and it made me touchy, because I should know, and didn't. He was fiddling with the set, his long body angled and propped on one of the sacks that Chiang kept here.

'How the hell should I know?'

He turned his narrow sandy head to look at me for two seconds with his yellowish eyes. They were rather bright, with shifting lights in them, but just about as expressive as a cat's-eye on the road. He wore plain glass in his spectacles: we all knew that. It was some kind of image he was trying to identify with, and it was very successful because you only had to imagine Ferris without his glasses to realize you'd never recognize him. He looked away, with the faintest smile, and went on fiddling with the set. He knew I didn't mean how the hell should I know, I meant shut up I'm trying to think.

There'd been no tag from the Golden Sands and no tag from the Taunus. Either he was one of the people they'd drafted into the field to keep watch for me, or Chiang had blown me.

'Ferris.'

He looked up. I said:

'Has Chiang had recent screenings?'

'Oh, please be serious,' he said, and gave a token giggle, concentrating on the set again, trying to clear the signal identification bleep from the background noise.

I realized I must be in mild delayed shock because if that boy had been one of the people who'd been drafted into the field to watch for me he'd be doing it at the Hong Kong Cathay and the Mauritius and the Orient Club and places like that where I'd been sighted and identified, not here at the safe-house. No one had ever seen me come here: no one. Except him.

There was something I was missing and it wasn't anything to do with Chiang. When London sets up a safe-house it doesn't leave anything to chance because if one major operator gets blown at any given time and in any given place it can shake the whole of the network and do irreversible damage and we'd all know that and I'd forgotten and Ferris had reminded me.

I was forgetting too much.

'Ferris.'

He looked up again.

'I've got something for them,' I said.

'London?'

'Yes.'

'I'm holding open for them now. Can it wait?'

'If you like. But I know where Tewson went to.'

'Oh Jesus Christ,' he said and switched over to send.

I told him where the thing was, 114 X 22, and he began sending in cypher.

Forgetting too much, but some of it was corning back and I went down the stairs and found Chiang putting those bloody things into a canvas bag while Chih-chi swept the glass into a cardboard box marked Nestle's.

'Chiang, are there any more of those things loose?'

'Is all now,' he said, 'all home.' He was looking despondent and I didn't know whether it was because I'd finished off one of his most expensive delicacies or whether he was still annoyed with Ferris for not letting him screw the Bureau for a couple of thousand Hong Kong dollars.

I went behind the counter and bent over the boy and he stared at me with one eye as I found his wallet, checking it, yes, a picture of me, a copy of the one they'd found in their Western networks file, not so good as the one I had of Tewson but quite recognizable, some kind of minaret in the hazy background, it could have been a stray they'd shot while I was doing the Bangkok thing. I took the wallet upstairs for Ferris to go through, and put a match to the photograph and waited until he'd finished sending.

923-843-01 blank 267-783-14…the same as the one they'd given me, because that was the cypher for Mandarin. He was telling them about the boy downstairs while he was at it: no smoke necessary, contact will deal immediate, and dossier to follow. There might be something in the wallet he could send, but the boy was only a hit and wouldn't know anything about the Pekin cell, any more than Flower had known about the Bureau.

'An oil rig,' said Ferris, and swung round on the sack of herbs. 'Now there's a funny place.' He sniffed the air and looked at the curl of black ash. 'Your picture, was it?'

'Yes.'

'They must have it on file.' He looked up at me critically. 'Would you like a tetanus shot or anything?'

'Not really.'

'Are you ready to fill me in?'

'There's not much.' I slid my back down the wall and sat on the floor and told him everything I could think of. He broke in only when he wanted me to know something or when he wanted me to see that he already had the background… yes, his parents are flying out to take his body back home… yes, they sent me a microfilm on the lady Nora… all right, I'll deal with that, when you've told me what sort of damage they did… It took only ten minutes but by that time I'd formed a conclusion about Egerton: he was a worse bastard than I'd thought. Because Ferris had too clear a picture for London to have jumped him in from Pekin as a reflex action in the last twenty-four hours.

'When did they bring you in on Mandarin, Ferris?'

'Six weeks ago.'

'Did they tell you who you were going to direct?'

'They said they hoped to get you.'

'I bet it wasn't Egerton who said that.'

'No, it was — ' Then he broke off and looked at me and the faint crinkles began at the corners of his eyes. 'Did the Egg say he didn't have a director for you?'

'Macklin said so.'

'Macklin?'

'He's in Field Briefing.'

'Oh he is, is he? Well, we're not taking any instructions from him, old boy, he gets all his maps back to front. Oh I see,' he said suddenly, giving a soft whinny. 'The Egg thought you wouldn't take it on if he couldn't drop you straight into the action, is that it? Took you in, did he? Serves you right, you're always trying to pick and choose.' He was looking me all over with critical eyes. 'You feeling uncomfy, are you?'

'It was those bloody reptiles, I can't stand the things.'

'Oh really? I thought they looked rather jolly old fellows.'

He got off the sack like a stork taking off and went to the top of the stairs, waving a finger in the direction of the set. 'Keep an ear open, old boy.' Then he was shouting for Chiang, telling him he'd got some shopping for Chih-chi to do, poking his head back in the doorway. 'What are your measurements?'

'Which ones?'

I wished he'd shut up and settle down and let me think because I wanted to know how it happened. I suppose he was being very decent about it, giving me time to work things out: a director like Sargent or Loman would have slung the whole book at me for turning up at a safe-house for initial local briefing with a tag right on my back. It must have shaken him.

'Need a new suit,' he said. 'Get arrested if you went out of here in that one, blood all over it.'

I gave him my measurements and told him to change the image and felt an immediate fool because it was the first thing he'd think of. He pretended he hadn't heard. I sat watching the carrier level and tried again but all I came up with was another negative finding: they hadn't raided Fleetway (again) or if they had it didn't give them a lead because I'd put my address as the Hong Kong Cathay and I'd never been back there.

'Thing is,' Ferris told me as he came back and sat on his sack, 'there were only two characters who were ready to look at this job, but the Egg said he didn't want them because they probably wouldn't live. No names and all that, but they're a couple of clowns, knives in their teeth, that sort of thing.' Feldman, I thought, and Ptack, neither of them long enough out of middle Europe to develop style. 'They wouldn't have looked twice at the toothpaste, for instance, and you know what the Egg always says: "There are old agents and bold agents, but there are no old bold agents."'

There was a fly buzzing at the window and he got up and began stabbing at it with his long pale finger until I heard a light brittle crunch. He came back and sat down, wiping his finger on the sack, and I remembered him in Hanover and before that in Tangier, going out of his way to step on a beetle and coming back without any interruption in what he was saying. We don't know much about our directors but one thing I knew about Ferris was that he'd been sent into Brussels three years ago with express orders to hit a man who'd been turned, and he was back inside twenty-four hours and nobody asked anything or said anything but the next day the tin came round to all departments and we dubbed up for the widow. At the time we didn't know it was Ferris but we knew it was someone in the top echelon, active branch, and it didn't take some of us long to work it out.

Even his choice of phrase was significant: Tried to tread on you, did they?

'They probably saw you in the street,' he said consolingly. There was some static and the S meter reacted and he looked at it and away again. 'Despite what the chamber of commerce says, the two chief industries in Hong Kong are narcotics and espionage, I dare say you know that. They're all here, including MI5, the CIA and of course half the population of Moscow. More to the point, almost the entire population of Pekin is here, and you may have noticed how the walls of the Bank of China appear to be bulging.'

The set came alive and he adjusted the band spread, listening with his head on one side and perfectly still, like a praying mantis. It was a brief request to stand by and he acknowledged.

'So you may have been seen in the street. Unpalatable but not unthinkable.'

I didn't say anything because he was interested in the set now and anyway there wasn't a lot to say. By 'unpalatable' he didn't mean it was unnerving to think one could be sighted by pure chance, he meant that even if it was a fact it left you with the feeling you were dodging the issue and saying oh well, it was probably a bit of bad luck.

That could be fatal.

Still a point I was missing so I shut it right out of my mind and let the subconscious work on it without any pressure from the forebrain: it was the quickest way. I could hear Chiang in the shop below, clearing up the last of the glass, and Ferris said:

'He's all right, you don't have to worry. One of those who got across just after the purge. They shot his wife before they were a hundred yards out but he kept on swimming: it's ten miles, you know, where he did it. They'd been married three days. Of course he doesn't remember her now, or not much, but the barb went in and it won't ever come out, you know how it goes. Notice how contented he looked when that character down there stopped moving? Hates their guts.' He gave a titter. 'Doesn't stop him trying to ride the Bureau all the way to the bank.'

He was simply telling me that if I thought I was tagged here because Chiang had blown me I was wrong and I'd better think again. I gave it a try and for the first time came up with a positive: the Honda had still been outside the Golden Sands when I'd left there and the Taunus was in view of the windows so I'd got a boy to bring it across to the steps, told him I'd strained my ankle: it had been the best I could do and it had given me full cover from the upper floors but it was just conceivable that the Honda tag had sighted me from somewhere below.

'Dear oh dear,' said Ferris. 'They really are terribly constipated today, aren't they?' He fidgeted with the band spread again but he could tell he was spot on. Then he stopped fidgeting and sat absolutely,still, perhaps as an exercise, to prove he could do it. It worried me a bit because he shouldn't have to. Certainly I'd brought a tag right into the safe-house at the initial rendezvous and had to kill him in front of a witness but as far as we knew the situation was secure again, and Chiang seemed confident: he could lose the body.

As far as we knew. It could be that. The tag could never go back to his cell or send them a signal or in any way blow the safe-house, but somewhere he'd picked me up and if he could do it so could someone else, the minute I left here. Until I could find out how he'd got on to me I couldn't come back here once I'd left: so the safe-house was blown anyway, in that it was no longer usable except for transmission.

I wanted to ask Ferris his thoughts on this but I didn't think I'd like the answer so I left it and went on sitting on the floor with my hand beginning to throb, watching his insect like stillness.

'What happened to North?' he asked me. 'You were there, weren't you?' He eyed me obliquely through his glasses.

'I thought you'd been stuck in Pekin.'

There wouldn't have been any signals on a thing like that. On the contrary, half the staff at the Bureau would have been put on special duties, brushing it under the rug.

'We get the Telegraph,' he said innocently, 'by diplomatic bag. Just for the crossword.'

'He shot himself.'

'I know. It said so.'

In the press his name had been given as Dorkins, and he'd been a charter pilot for some unheard-of outfit.

'Well, that's what happened,' I said.

'That all?'

'He didn't blow anything, if that's what you mean.'

'That's what I mean.'

'He was still peddling his cover, even to Connie, just before he went and did it. I thought that was pretty good, considering the state he was in.'

'Oh very,' he said quickly and looked at the wall. 'Poor old North.'

I didn't say anything, just to make it difficult for him.

'He was doing something for Liaison Group, in Moscow, went and fell hook line and sinker for an actress. He always was a bit corny, remember? Actually she was working Venus traps for delegates from Finland — the roof's coming off Helsinki any time now, did you know? Anyway she fell for him too, snap crackle pop, not just drawers off and the door shut, the whole red rosy rigmarole, hearts entwined forever, going to get married and everything. Then dear old Auntie KG found out and shot her dead in front of him when they were getting on the plane for Antwerp; both had perfectly good papers, he'd fixed them for her. He was all right, travelling separately, clean as a whistle, but I suppose it broke him up. Only known her for three weeks, some people are funny, aren't they? Do you like girls?' He gave a soft little whinny and got down in front of the set, spinning the band spread and moving the main tuner to make sure it was working.

'I heard,' I told him carefully, 'that he'd got out of Lubyanka.'

He didn't turn round.

'Oh really, the things people say.'

I knew he wouldn't have brought up the subject of North without a damned good reason. Bureau policy demands immediate smoke out to cover 'any event of a scandalous nature or an event considered to jeopardize security', and this policy has spread a mortuary silence throughout the corridors of that dreary hole in Whitehall. I'd talked for a minute to Dewhurst the night I'd left London because we were alone and both shocked by what had happened. Policy apart, we still don't chew the fat because a lot of it's too depressing and we'd end up neurotic, Most missions are dangerous and all of them impose a strain and every so often you'll see an operator come back too shot up physically or too shaken spiritually to be sent out again, ever: at this time Macklin was one of them and North, God knows, was another.

When something like that happens, we do not ask for whom the bell tolls. We don't want to know.

Watching Ferris at the set, I thought there was only one reason why he'd brought up the subject: that's why I'd made it difficult for him, to bring him down a peg. It's nearly always a part of the executive-director relationship, especially when a mission hots up: you're both having to think like hell just to survive and you keep your wits sharp with a bit of one-upmanship. The North thing had shivered the whole of the network and London was putting smoke out world-wide. As my director in the field, Ferris was giving me the official version of the affair and that was the one I would adopt if there were any questions asked by anyone, anywhere, even — or especially — under duress.

'Ferris?'

'What?'

'Did North have anything to do with Mandarin?'

'No.' Then I suppose he thought the answer had come too pat, because he spun round on his heels to face me and said slowly: 'Nothing whatsoever. And that is gospel.'

'Fair enough.'

He spun slowly back again. London doesn't tell you more than you have to know when you're briefed because you can work better with your head clear of extraneous data, but you're never misinformed, and Ferris was just reminding me.

'Thing is,' he said over his shoulder, 'if they don't-'

555-555-555-555.

The call-sign for Mandarin, very clear. He acknowledged and stood by. 'Four blocks,' he said, 'aren't they getting fussy? You'd think old Parkis was running this one.'

I sat a bit straighter, waiting, as Ferris was, knowing the signals were going to come on stream. I smelled the herb-and-sacking smell of this room under the roof and listened to the rising din of the narrow street below where the letter-writer would be setting up her stool and the boy lighting his charcoal under the first trussed duck, but I was thinking of London at two in the morning, the wide wet streets and Egerton's battered Rover slipping through them with a bow wave on the gutter side and his pale academic face peering through the windscreen wipers — because this was obviously what was happening over there: he'd taken the earlier signal at his bedside, the one about Tewson's being on the rig, and he had got dressed and gone down to the garage for his car. Now he was inside the building and loping at his own pace along the corridors, heading for the radio room. They knew he'd come in, and had flashed us the call sign, four blocks to indicate direct communication from Control to the director in the field, not really necessary because Egerton would announce himself. They must have someone new at the console.

A full minute went by and Ferris began showing his nerves, leaving the set and sitting on his sack again, crossing his legs and huffing. 'Did you hear the one about the sailor who got his finger stuck in the keyhole? They tried to-'

555-000-000.

Mandarin: Control at console.

Ill Ferris squatted on the floor again with his head near the integral mike and acknowledged. Within five seconds the signals came on stream and I sat upright with my eyes shut reading London, extending the digits and reversing the transfers and trying to place the tone and failing: they had in fact got a new boy in there, rather prissy but first-rate on his pauses and repeats.

After a minute Ferris swivelled round and looked at me.

'You reading?'

'Yes.'

He turned his back again and went full out for almost thirty minutes, getting the details from me as Control asked for them: estimated number of opposition observers in the field — identity of principals if any known — location of opposition base and disposition of other field-quarters, safe-houses-degree of insistence — so forth, most of it routine with key contractions, the kind of things they always wanted to know at the outset of a mission. Then the questions got specific: Egerton wanted to know Mrs Tewson's attitude towards her 'deceased' husband, whether she appeared venal, disloyal, opportunistic. Was she promiscuous?

I did What I could, catching the questions in the air before Ferris had to ask me, and in fifteen minutes I was sweating hard and wishing to Christ I didn't feel so ragged: the little bastard had forced a throat block for ten seconds or so before I could break it and I was still getting flashes in front of the eyes. Then Control went on to the mundanities and the only question I had to answer was about the damage to the Hong Kong Cathay: I said they'd want some new wallpaper and a plumber and an electrician but no windows smashed, telephone okay, so forth, while some poor bloody clerk put it all in the book — you could tell this was Egerton's mission. The Hong Kong Cathay Hotel would in due course receive a cheque 'in compensation for any damage sustained during the sojourn of one of their guests'. If the manager took it into his head to try tracing the cheque to its source he'd grow old before 'his time. Egerton was particular about what he called 'the public domain'. Dewhurst would have just said they must be insured against drunks, bookies and acts of God and left it at that, his point being that as a British taxpayer he wasn't going to fork out for things the insurance companies ought to pay for.

298 — 363–586…

Flower. No further action required on our part.

What would actually happen was that his parents would be met at the airport by a senior secretary of Welfare Section, and all their expenses would be paid.

398 — 277–972…

I began reading alertly again because I could tell they were getting round to instructions. Egerton had probably gone into another room to work things out either alone or in consultation while his second-stringer key-contracted the routine advisories: further movements and establishing of access, liaison and security left to discretion of director in field; transmission schedules to be as per current pattern, Far East theatre; emergency signals to follow established rulings as to times, form and code; allocation of stand-by periods to conform with current schedules, bi-hourly (diurnal), hourly (nocturnal); heavy traffic by-pass key: 555–000. State of mission reports were specified, right down to the last microdot.

Then they went off the air for fifteen minutes.

Two stand-by signals and then four blocks of 555. Then they began on the instructions, the first of which we'd already been expecting: I was to go out to the oil rig and try to get aboard.