The Pekin Target

13: RV

One hour later at 11: 06 I invoked an extreme-urgency rule and telephoned London direct, asking for the Jade One console and using the established code phrasing to warn Control not to signal through the Embassy because communications there were compromised. I also requested a rendezvous with the director in the field at 09: 00 tomorrow at the currency exchange office at Kimpo Airport. I gave the number of the telephone I was using and rang off.

I recognised Croder himself on the line — he's got the voice of a dispassionate hangman — but he couldn't ask any questions because my code prefix had warned him that it was a shut-ended signal: the taxi driver was still in the room with me and he understood English. The first two drivers had turned me down when I'd stopped them, but this one — a small bearded Hindu with permanently surprised eyes — had been ready to agree that I wouldn't get into a hotel in this state and that for 50,000 won I could stay the night at his place if I didn't make any noise: I'd explained the fact that I was soaking wet and smothered in weeds by mentioning a drunken brawl over a woman.

There was a call at three in the morning and he got me out of my low narrow bed to take it. Phrase-coded instructions were that a rendezvous would take place with a contact instead of my director in the field, and on the subway station at Jongro and Waryong Streets at 09:00 tomorrow. The names were spelled out in letter code and so were the brief specifics, broken glasses being the main identification key.

He'd repaired them with a piece of white adhesive tape and I took him through a four-step introduction check before I felt happy with him, not because he was suspect in any way but because I was now ready to think that every other man-in-the-street of this city was working with the Triad.

"All I want," I told him, "is an RV with my director. That's what I asked London for."

He was a bland, shut-faced character with dirty nails and a terrible haircut and he gazed at me sideways most of the time while he sucked on a toothpick.

"They asked me for info," he said.

"I haven't got any. Christ, if I'd got any info I would have given it to London, wouldn't I?"

"Orders," he shrugged, but I had the feeling he was rather less crass than he sounded; when he wasn't looking at me he was looking everywhere else and without letting it show, and underneath the crumpled tourist's clothes there was a certain strength in his stance, a certain weight.

"Spur is dead," I told him, and saw a spark come and go in his colourless eyes. "The opposition did a chain job on me and set up a street ambush and I went into the river with the car; they tried hard this time, really hard, but if you call that information I'm happy for you. Tell them I want Ferris and a new cover before the police pick me up and ask for papers."

He hadn't looked away from me now for the last ten seconds, and the toothpick had stopped moving. "How did they do Spur?"

"They put a snake round his neck."

"That thing," he said softly.

"That thing. Who gave you the instructions to meet me?"

"I clean forget." He gazed at me obliquely for a moment and added: "It wasn't through the Embassy."

"Fair enough." It was all I needed to know. In any given operation the executive in the field has communications access to the Embassy and to whatever other facilities are as signed to him (they gave me Spur); but there are always others that he never knows about, because it would endanger them. The executive is something like a leper: nobody wants to go near him, because if the opposition can trap him and put him under that bright white light before he can get to his capsule he's liable to break and expose people and they won't know it until they switch on the ignition and come down in fragments: two years ago a stamp dealer in Dresden was put into direct touch with the executive making his final run at the end of a sticky mission and the whole thing happened: the executive was tripped and grilled before he could cyanose and two weeks later the stamp dealer lost his footing on a crowded underground platform in the rush hour and the train didn't have time to stop. And that man had been a Bureau sleeper in Dresden for twelve years before someone in London panicked and told him to make direct contact with an executive.

What had happened now was that Croder had signalled a facility unknown to me in Seoul, and that facility had passed on the instructions to the man who was watching me now, his eyes narrowed against the flying dust as a train came in from the tunnel.

"Are you dead or alive?" he asked me.

"What?"

"After the river."

"I don't know. I heard some sirens when I was climbing out of the water, so they've probably sent divers down or pulled the car out by now; all we can say is that I'll be down as missing, officially."

His bland eyes were watching people getting off the train: I could see some of their reflections, a girl in red, a man with a cap. "Dead would be good," he murmured. "I mean convenient."

"I'm going to stay dead until they pick up my tracks again."

"If that doesn't sound," he said, "like a contradiction in terms." His wide mouth smiled over the toothpick.

He wasn't just a contact, I knew that now. A contact is a tea boy and he doesn't cheek the executive. I said: "Are you Youngquist?"

He stopped watching the people getting off the train and looked at me instead. "We vary," he said, "don't we?"

So this was why.

"Tell Ferris I want to see him at South Gate in two hours," I told him. "I'll be at the north kerb. And do something about communications, for Christ's sake: the Embassy's out and I haven't got anywhere else. Give me a number to phone."

This was why Croder had sent a contact to meet me instead of Ferris: this man wasn't just a contact; this was Youngquist, my potential replacement, and London thought it was a good idea for us to meet and get to know each other, by way of easing the transition. As we stood together with the drone of the train filling the station as it pulled away, its lights throwing a chain of yellow oblongs across the walls, it occurred to me that I couldn't find any rage to help me through this moment of truth; all I can remember thinking was that I'd got away from the opposition five times now, but I couldn't get away from Croder.

Youngquist gave me a number. "Ferris wants to see you too. He left the specifics to you, so I'll tell him it's South Gate, the north kerb, 11:00 hours. Look for a light-green Toyota with CDs on it. Anything else?"

"Yes. In future, keep out of my bloody way."

"They told me you were like that," he said.

I got in and slammed the door and we drove five blocks to the elevated car park and went up to the seventh floor and found it deserted.

Ferris switched off the ignition and said: "They've told me to call you in."

"They can't do that."

The rage came now and I got out and hit the door shut and sent echoes among the concrete pillars. Ferris followed me out and paced in a tight circle with his hands in his pockets and his eyes down, looking for something to crush: I'd never seen him like this before.

"Those are my instructions," he said thinly.

"When did you get them?"

"Half an hour ago."

After I'd seen Youngquist. After Youngquist had passed on the information that I'd been got at for the fifth time and survived. Not his fault: he'd been there to pass on whatever I told him. But London was panicking now.

"They didn't like the bit about Spur, did they?"

I saw his eyes flicker. "It's a setback, you ought to know that. He was our main source."

"He'd got something for me. That's why he told me to go and see him. What he can get, we can get."

"I don't think I follow," he said. I could feel the chill.

"There's a source. He had access to it. All we've got to do is find it."

He looked at me for a moment and then turned away, pacing again in his tight little circle; I suppose he knew that was the worst thing he could do as an answer: to ignore what I was trying to tell him; but then, he knew that what I was really trying to tell him was that I'd never been called in from a mission before and I didn't know how to handle it.

"If you could give me any reason," he said, "why they should leave you in the field…»

"I'll give you a dozen reasons. I've taken on jobs that no one else would touch; I've let those bastards use me as a sacrifice when it was the only way we could get through to the objective, and I've done that simply because I've got the alley-cat savvy to survive, and no thanks to them; I let Croder pull me out of hospital and kick me into the pitch dark with no background information and no specific objective and now he's breaking out in a rash because I'm not getting anywhere. Doesn't he know I've only been in the field three days?"

Ferris stopped pacing and watched me for a moment as if something I'd said had got through to him. But it hadn't.

"I didn't mean personal reasons."

"They're all I've got."

"They won't do. Croder didn't have to con you into this operation. You'd been out of action for three months and you were burning to hit back for Sinclair. You wanted this job badly. All you didn't want was Croder, because he told you to eliminate Schrenck in Moscow and you wouldn't do it, and it nearly blew up the mission. It would be rather cosy," he said and took a short step towards me, "if you'd regard Croder as the most efficient Control that anyone could hope for, instead of the kicking boy for your own guilt-feelings."

"For Christ's sake leave Freud out of it. What sort of reasons do you want me to give you?"

"Technical."

"I haven't got any. You know that. We couldn't get anything out of Jason, in time. We couldn't get anything out of Spur before they went for him. They're always one step ahead of us. But give me a bit of time, can't you?"

He looked down. "I'd leave you in, if it was my decision. It's not."

"You'd leave me in?"

He considered this, as if he had to make sure. "Yes."

"Then tell that bastard —»

"All I can tell Croder is that we're not making any progress here in the field. We've never been up against anything so difficult as the Triad — and this is Croder's thinking: we need more support out here; the mission's changing shape — it's not the kind of operation we thought it was; London thought they could get you some kind of access when the action started, but they can't; we're losing ground, day after day, and all you've been able to do is stay alive. Croder thought he was sending an executive into the field through planned routes and with extensive communications, but now he knows that all he did was to push one lone man against a battalion. We don't know how many people Tung Kuo-feng has got working for him; it could be hundreds."

"That doesn't make any difference. The way to kill an octopus is to put a spear into the brain."

In a moment he said, "If you could do that…"

"I can't do it if they call me in."

He began pacing again and I didn't say anything more; there wasn't anything more I could say that would do any good. London wanted technical reasons for leaving me in the field and I hadn't got any. If they -

"Stand still," I said.

He stopped at once and looked up, and we listened to the sound of the car. There was nothing but a waste of concrete here with pillars breaking up the sound into echoes and it was difficult to get an aural fix; but the engine was loudening all the time.

The sixth level had been less than half full when we'd driven through it ten minutes ago but this car wasn't stopping

Ferris didn't move. He watched me.

I turned slightly until I was facing the long perspective of concrete, waiting for the front end of the car to come into sight, then realising that we wouldn't have a chance if we didn't go now.

"Come on," I said and moved, pulling the door of the Toyota open. Ferris worked very fast, starting up before his door had slammed shut, kicking the thing into reverse and heeling it into a tight arc and hitting the brakes and the gear shift and giving it the gun. We couldn't go upwards: this was the highest level; we could only go down. Tyres screaming as Ferris got wheelspin, place like a torture chamber with all the echoes. We passed the other car halfway through the first turn and I crouched low and sighted across the bottom edge of the windscreen, camouflage-green Chrysler station-wagon with US Army plates, a young GI and an Asian girl, both of them looking the other way, up here for a bit of snatched privacy and glad we were going.

On the level below I told Ferris to shove the bloody thing in a slot for a minute and then I just sat there in my own sweat and for the first time wondered how far gone I was, sitting here still crouched in the instinctive low-profile target position while the signals flashed through my mind from Ferris to Croder, they've tried five times now and I don't think he can stand the pace… Croder to Ferris: there's no point in leaving him out there if he's losing his nerve… sitting hunched up with my eyes screwed shut, wondering how to face the man beside me when I opened them, because there had been no chance, no chance at all, that anyone of the Triad knew where we were.

After a long time I heard Ferris saying quietly, "Why don't you go home, Q? Anyone else would."

I opened my eyes and straightened up in the seat and took a breath and held it and took another one, wanting to get some steadiness in my voice.

"This is home."

"Where the brink is?"

"That's right."

After a while he said, "The most I can probably get for you is another twenty-four hours out here."

"Then get me that."