The Pekin Target

10: Arabesque

"You American?"

This table was against the wall between the entrance and the door to the toilet on the opposite side. From here I could watch the entrance and if necessary get up and turn my back on it and reach the toilet before anyone coming in could get to me across the crowded room; I'd checked the windows in there: they were narrow but low down and opened onto an alley; also, anyone coming in here from the street would be half-blinded by the near-darkness after the sunshine outside. But I would have to recognise them.

"No," I said.

I'd walked here from Sadie's through the steaming streets, where the sun was heating the puddles and the choked gutters after the rain; this place was more than a mile from where I was staying; it was a long low building half lost among the derelict houses between the railway and the Han River, and to look for me here would be to look for one fly on a flypaper. The room was nearly full, two-thirds of them customers and one-third working them over. Hard rock came from the cobwebbed gratings along the wall.

"You want hashish? Coke?"

Technically I was safe here, a good distance from the main entrance and the corners of the room; but there would be nothing I could do if they came for me: I was watching the entrance but if anyone came in here to kill me I wouldn't recognise them; I didn't know them, as they knew me.

"No," I said.

This was what it was like, and going to be like, fighting Tung Kuo-feng. It was like, and going to be like, fighting the unknown.

I hadn't told Sadie where I was going: I hadn't even known myself; I'd walked for an hour, double-tracking and making absolutely certain that I wasn't followed, until I'd found this place, the type of bar the police left alone because it would be a waste of time to do anything about it. The moment I'd got here I'd telephoned the Embassy.

A dozen small emeralds hit the table in a shower from a black velvet bag, and the man watched my eyes.

"Direct from the mine," he said, but I went on watching the entrance, and in a moment he swept the stones back into the little bag and moved on to the huge sailor sitting with a girl at the next table.

The entrance was a bright gold oblong, a cave-mouth with the black silhouettes of people passing through. I went on watching it.

Sadie had done well for me: a good shirt, manila suit, tan shoes, Thai silk handkerchiefs to match. "You look real sharp, honey. I sure hope I don't go an' lose you to another woman."

A man came in and stopped, his thin stooping figure outlined against the hot bright street, his glasses throwing a spark of reflected light. I didn't move. But now I was ready to buy emeralds, or hashish, or anything they wanted to sell me. You wouldn't believe what it feels like, when your operation has been immobilised and you've been blown and gone to ground, to see your director in the field show up at the rendezvous.

By the time he'd seen me and made his way through the crowd my mood had swung in the opposite direction to something like anger; it happens like that when things are chancy: you suddenly wonder where your nerves have gone, and there they are all the time on the roller coaster.

"Did he know about this?" I asked Ferris the moment he sat down. I meant Croder and he knew that.

"About what?"

"Those assassinations. Did he know the targets?"

"Not till it happened."

"For Christ's sake, he knew it was something big. Why —»

"How's everything?" he asked me cheerfully and I shut up and just sat there while he ordered a beer and watched me for a minute with his narrow head tilted, his pale eyes hidden by the reflection on his glasses. "Been rough, has it?"

I didn't like the way he was having to play it so very cool, to cover his own gooseflesh.

"Does London want me called in?" I asked him.

He made me wait, simply because it was good for discipline. He had to get me back to where I'd started out, with lots of reserve control.

"Not so far," he said. I felt myself slacken off a little; it had been one of the fears that had run with me through the dark of the last four days: that when they saw that the opposition was closing in on me and certain to kill, London would call me in.

"Then who's Youngquist?" I asked him. It was a name Spur had dropped, and failed to cover convincingly.

The boy brought the beer for Ferris, and he sat for a moment with his thin sensitive hand round the glass, moving it in small precise circles on the teakwood table.

"He's your replacement," he told me.

Ice along the spine.

I didn't forgive him for a long time, for using both barrels at point blank range.

"When's he replacing me?"

He looked surprised. "As soon as you're ready."

I tried to think back to the signal I'd sent to the Embassy. Something was wrong. I said: "I'm not ready."

"Part of your signal read: Where is Youngquist? I assumed you wanted him to take over."

This time I made him wait, and when I was ready I leaned over the table and spoke very quietly. "In the six missions we've done together, have I ever asked for a replacement?"

He didn't have to think. "No."

"What makes you think I'm asking for one now?"

He moved his head and the reflection left his glasses and I could see his eyes, and they were surprised. "You're staying in?"

"Yes. I always have."

"I must say I'm rather glad." He drank some beer.

I sat back again. "I think this is a good time to get one thing straight. If you ever get a signal from me asking for a replacement, discount it. Okay?"

"That's what I did this time," he said. "Then I began thinking."

"You want girl?"

"Fuck off," I said.

Ferris gave his soft sinister laugh. "Of course I didn't tell London. I wanted to see you first."

"I should bloody well hope so. What did you begin thinking?"

"Well, they tried to smash you up in London, and you flew out here full of dope; then there was that thing in Pekin, which left you a bit washed out; and according to your signal they tried again twice. I don't know the details, but it struck me that you might not be physically operational any more. Sorry."

"I would have said so."

"Point taken."

"I asked who Youngquist was, not where."

He thought that over. "We'll have to do better, won't we?"

"I don't want any cutouts or contacts, Ferris. The police are looking for me, as well as the opposition. They can pick up my trail at any time. Any kind of contact could be fatal."

"Agreed. I'll try setting up a radio."

"Do that. And one other thing: when was Youngquist sent out here?"

He'd been hoping I wouldn't ask him.

"After they tried to finish you off, in Pekin. I told Croder you were still operational, but he makes his own rules."

I was going to have to work on him. "What else has he done?"

Reluctantly Ferris said, "There's now quite a bit of support in the field."

"Oh really."

"I told him you prefer working solo."

"Good of you."

He said: "There's no point in your going through the roof. This is Croder, and we'll both have to live with it."

"Just keep the support away from me," I said slowly. "Tell Croder that's what I want. Tell him that if he's not prepared to let me have it, then he can have Youngquist. Tell him he's decided to send this particular executive into the field, and if he wants me to do the job then I'm going to do it my way. Tell him that, Ferris, or by Christ I'm leaving the mission."

In the oblique light from the coloured lanterns I could see the slight movement of his jaw muscle, and noted it.

"It really would be rather nice," he said in his thinnest tone, "if one day some kind soul would give me a mission to field-direct where Control and the executive aren't mortal enemies."

He was in a rage, but I couldn't help that. I said:

"It's my life on the line, not his."

I didn't have to spell anything out for him. Contacts and cutouts can be a lot of help in an operation when signals have broken down or we have to pass papers or a code or documents back to base; but when the executive is on the run and trying to stay alive until he can find access to the opposition then a contact with less than executive-level training and experience can trip him or expose him and bring him down.

"I'll do what I can," Ferris said.

"Tell him those are my terms. No contacts, cutouts, shields or supports. No one else in the field with me. Unless I ask."

He sipped at his beer and put the glass down without a sound. "Understood. Now I need a report."

It took me ten minutes: Soong Li-fei, the man on the staircase, and the information I'd got from Spur.

"We've heard of Tung," Ferris nodded.

"Oh really." I waited.

"You'd better finish your report first."

"Fair enough. There's a leak somewhere."

His head moved slightly. "Oh?"

"You put me on that flight to Seoul with total security, but when I checked into the Chonju Hotel there was this woman Soong Li-fei waiting for me."

"But you said she told you she'd made a mistake — you were the wrong man."

"They told her I was the right one. They told her I'd killed her brother, and she went there to square the account."

"Do you think she's in the opposition?"

I thought about it, aware of the dangers of the halo effect: the exquisite features and the cinnamon eyes, the delicate poise of her head, the soft lilting accents, the grace of her walk. Discount all that and remember there'd been a gun in her hand and a bullet ready to rip through the rib cage and bury in the heart.

"I gave her the chance of using the gun on me again, and she didn't take it; it didn't even occur to her. She said she had a brother, Yongshen, who was murdered in Pekin; and that was true. And I think if she'd been putting on an act while I was with her, she'd have made a name by now on the stage, and a big one. I don't think she's in the opposition, but I think they tried to use her to kill me. So there was in fact a leak."

"At the Embassy," Ferris said at once.

"The cypher clerk?"

"No. He's Bureau. But he must have been overheard when I signalled him to tell him where you'd be in Seoul. Or there's a bug."

"For God's sake," I said quietly, "get it out."

"Yes indeed."

I finished my report, telling him about Sadie.

"Is she safe?"

"No one," I told him, "is safe. All she's got to do is make a slip of the tongue in the wrong quarter. That whole area is a red sector now: the Chonju Hotel, Li-fei's house and Sadie's place are all in the same network of streets and alleyways, and Spur's wine shop isn't far off."

"You need a new base."

"And a new name."

"I've got your papers with me."

"They'll have to be good. I can't avoid a police check forever."

He passed me a fat envelope and I put it away at once.

"A good one," he said. "Made in London."

"There wasn't time."

"They sent me five, the day you arrived. That too is Croder. He obviously knows you've got staying power."

I didn't want to talk about Croder and I didn't want to think about needing three more changes of cover: the statistics are that if an executive gets blown more than twice he's either dead or back in London with the psychiatrists trying to stop him jumping out of windows.

"Have you got a safe-house for me?" I asked Ferris.

"Spur says you can stay with him."

"Civil of him, but he happens to keep a full-grown boa constrictor as a pet. You'll have to find somewhere else."

"Surely it's harmless?"

"Till it wants someone to play with."

"It's going to take time to find somewhere else."

"Then hurry."

"How long," he asked with a shut face, "can you stay at Sadie's?"

"I'm not going back there. These people are only one step behind me and one fine day she's going to have to call in the cleaners to get the blood off the rug, and you know how fussy London is about involving the public at large in our operations. Until you can find me somewhere I'll hire a car and use it as base. I can sleep in it if I've got to. That whole area's a distinct red sector now and I'm going to stay clear of it after I've seen Spur tonight."

Ferris stopped his beer for an instant in mid-air. "He's got something for you?"

"So he told me, on the phone. I'm seeing him at nine o'clock."

Silhouette.

"Then I'll be at the Embassy from nine onwards. Phone me when you've talked to Spur."

"Will do." I watched the silhouette in the entrance, against the glare of the sunlight. Ferris said:

"Until London can dig up something from signals analysis, Spur's our only hope of finding a way in."

The silhouette was wearing a peaked cap and a holstered revolver. I told Ferris: "Give me everything you've got for me. I might have to leave."

His eyes flicked to the entrance and back to me. "There's been a major break in Pekin. The police there suspect Soong Yongshen."

I began listening carefully. "Suspect him of what?"

"The funeral bombing."

"He worked the remote detonator?"

"So they believe. They're keeping us informed."

The man with the peaked cap and the holstered revolver came into the room and the lanterns showed up his uniform and I relaxed; he was a US Navy officer, not a policeman. "Let me know," I told Ferris, "what progress they make with the Soong Yongshen angle."

"Of course. We checked on his sister for you. She's on the records as a bona fide interpreter for Korean Airlines."

"All right." In a moment he was going to ask me where she was located, and I wasn't going to tell him, and he probably knew that.

"The reason," he said a fraction too casually, "why Control has put all that support into the field is because this thing is a lot bigger than anyone thought."

"I see," I said.

He tried again. "No one will get in your way. You've got my word."

I was getting fed up. "I can't take your word for anything, you know that. Croder's making the rules and if he wants you to do something then you do it. Without telling me, if those are your instructions."

In a moment he said: "You're being difficult."

"That's a shame."

The thing was that after six missions together we knew each other quite well, because a mission is like a lifetime; and he knew that if the Pekin police found hard evidence that Soong Yongshen had blown up that coffin, we'd have a way into the opposition: through his sister. I didn't think she was in the Tung Triad, but she knew who they were: possibly her,dead brother and certainly the «friend» who'd lent her a gun and sent her to Room 29 of the Chonju Hotel to kill me with it. But if I went to see Soong Li-fei I'd go alone, without Ferris covering the area with support in case I needed it.

To move closer to Li-fei would be to move closer to Tung, and into danger. But I won't have Control pushing me across the field like a pawn across a chessboard and I won't work for any local director, even Ferris, who isn't given total discretion and total authority to act independently of London if he decides it's necessary.

Croder was sitting at the centre of a signals network in London and getting instant replay of what was happening in Pekin and Seoul, but at a distance of three and a half thousand miles he couldn't sense danger in a glance from cinnamon eyes or feel the hands at the throat on a hotel stairway. The epicentre of Jade One was the shadow executive and it moved with him through the eye of the storm, and that was the way it must be.

"Any other business?" Ferris asked me. His voice was like a stone.

"Look," I told him, "if Croder wanted to send in an executive who could work best with a flock of bloody nursemaids to look after him he should have done that. But he didn't. He sent me. That's simple enough, surely? Any other business? Yes, I think they meant to kill the American Vice-President, not our chap at all."

I like getting a reaction from Ferris because he hates showing any. Not that he shot down the chandeliers or anything on this occasion; he just murmured, "Holy God."

"Amen."

"Tell me."

"It didn't add up," I told him, "until you said the Pekin police suspect Soong Yongshen of doing that bang over there. But now it does. The woman Li-fei told me — her brother had done something wrong, and that it was something to do with 'that dreadful thing over there' — she meant the bombing. Her brother died by ritual murder, from all reports, with his head off. From what Spur told me about Tung Kuo-feng I'd say he's the kind of man who would punish any member of his Triad who made a serious mistake, and probably with death. I think Soong Yongshen might have made a mistake of that order when he pressed the beam transmitter in Tien'anmen Square while our Secretary of State was placing his wreath. If you look at the photos of both those men — Bygreave and the American Vice-President — you'll notice they look rather alike; and to the Asians, one round-eye looks much like the next."

Ferris was quiet for a time, and I waited, watching the oblong of sunlight. The huge sailor at the next table had started singing; it sounded like Greek, and he had quite a good voice; it sounded much better than the hard rock coming out of the wall.

"You mean the original target," Ferris said as he leaned towards me across the table, "was the American Vice-President?"

"And they shot the American Ambassador to compensate for Soong Yongshen's little mistake."

"This wasn't a random attack on the Western delegates, or some kind of terrorist action with no specific target?"

"It was an attack," I nodded, "specifically directed against the United States."

"If you're right."

"If I'm right."

Four Koreans came through the crowd and stood in a circle round the big sailor and for a moment I thought they were going to form a chorus, but they were asking him to leave. He didn't make any fuss; he embraced two of them heartily enough to leave bruises, knocked over the chair and hit his head on one of the lanterns before he blocked the entrance on his way out and put the whole place into eclipse.

It was easier to talk now, but there wasn't much else to say.

"Haven't you got any way in for me?" I asked Ferris

"No."

He said: "I'm hoping Spur can set you running. We all are."

"Good old Spur."

I paid the bill and asked him to send someone round to Sadie's place with two hundred thousand won and a bunch of flowers and he said he'd do that. He told me to maintain signals by phone through Spur until he'd trod on the bug in the Embassy and I told him I would. We didn't mention Li-fei. A few minutes later he got up and I watched him walk through the bright doorway into the street, with the thought in my mind — one of those thoughts that cling to the psyche like a limpet mine when the mission goes badly-that I might never see him again.

8:51.

John Victor Miles, journalist, the Far East representative of Political Scene, a left-wing independent quarterly published in London. Passport, entry visa, WHO smallpox certificate, four letters of reference, photographs of wife, two children, international driving licence, ticket for the violin recital at the National Theatre in two days' time, various credit cards, other material.

Datsun ZX, dark blue, hired from the Korean Tourist Bureau's Arirang service. The passenger's seat tilted back flat for reclining and the speedometer dial showed a top speed of 220 kph.

I parked it off Toegye Street and walked four blocks through the alleyways to the wine shop in the square, doubling twice and using random cover as a routine exercise and halting for a moment to look around, uncertain of my way, as I reached one of the sightlines through the wine shop window display, giving Spur a chance to recognise me and to note, during the next half minute as I approached, that I wasn't bringing anyone with me.

The air was perfectly still after the monsoon and last night's deluge; gutters still ran glittering in the lamplight as water from higher ground found its way into the square; in the far corner two dogs fought over scraps in a blocked drain.

The door of the wine shop was open and I went inside, but Spur wasn't there. I called out twice, but he didn't answer and there was no sign of Kim. A boy ran past the open doorway hauling a handcart full of what looked like papayas, the wheels rattling over the stones; then the silence came down again.

"Spur?"

I'd told him nine o'clock and he'd said all right. It was nine now.

"Spur?"

No one answered so I went up the wide staircase and looked through the grille at the top. Two of the arabesque lanterns were burning, their light throwing a mottled pattern across the rugs where Spur was lying, his body half hidden by the strong dark coils that had formed a spiral around it.