The Pekin Target

17: Dance

Newcomb was using the omni stations at Seoul and Sogcho and at 04:07 he came back from the flight deck as we felt the airspeed slackening off.

"Five minutes," he said. "Everything okay?"

"What's our altitude?" de Haven asked him.

"We're coming down from seven thousand now and we'll be running in at three five." He crouched in the aisle between the seats, looking at us in turn. "The moon's at one o'clock, seventy degrees. I'm going to put you down to the west of the target point by an estimated mile. You won't be silhouetted against the moon to anyone watching from the monastery."

The pale blur of de Haven's face was turned towards me in the gloom; the interior lights were out, so that our eyes could accommodate for moonlight. "All right, Clive?"

"Except for the altitude."

"Except for the altitude," she said, "all right?"

I looked at Newcomb. "What's the estimated ground wind?"

"Up here we're in still air. It should be the same on the ground."

I twisted over on the twin seats and looked down through the cabin window and saw only patches of dark and light: the mountains and the mist between them. Where we were going in was mountainside but not steep. The slope was ridged, narrow terraces across loose rock slope. Newcomb straightened up and went forward to the flight deck.

We were gradually losing height, and the airframe sent panels creaking as it flexed. Newcomb had forgotten to shut the door to the flight deck and its low-key illumination was in our eyes. I got up to go forward just as he remembered.

"Sorry.

"That's all right."

The panel of light narrowed and went out.

"Did you see that cartoon?" de Haven asked me.

"Which one?"

"It was in a flight magazine at the base. A picture of a sky-diving team: they'd just linked hands together after free fall, in a nice neat circle, and one of them was talking to the man next to him, you know, in the caption. He was saying: 'You should have thought of that before we jumped!' Is that your kind of funny?"

"Yes." I laughed for her, but it sounded false. The only caption I'd seen at the base just gave the name under the photograph: Soong Li-fei.

If they had made her talk, there'd be a night watch mounted at the monastery and it wouldn't matter if we went down on the blind side of the moon or not.

A crack of light came, forward.

"Two minutes."

Still losing speed and altitude; it felt more like an approach. Lewes had told us we could cut the engine sound by almost half, this way.

De Haven got to her feet, clumsy under the weight of the parachute. "The captain would like to thank you for travelling USAF, and we hope you'll join us again on your next trip.

"Not if you serve that chocolate mousse again. You know what I thought it really was?"

She gave a quick dry laugh and the door of the flight deck opened and I went first down the aisle.

"One minute."

We checked our harnesses, settling the webbing.

Slight pressure under our feet: Lewes was levelling out.

"Thanks for everything," de Haven said; her voice sounded forced, a fraction too loud.

"You're very welcome," I heard Newcomb say; then he swung the door lever and suddenly there was the empty night sky and I went out first as we'd agreed.

No sensation of falling, just the slam of the air and then the diminishing sound of the plane.

One.

The body turning. Moonlight against the retinae.

Two.

Turning and tilting now. Two dark shapes in the dome of night, the plane and a small blob, de Haven.

Three. And pull.

Pilot chute crackling, and the hiss of the lines.

In Seoul I'd been a hundred miles away from Tung Kuo-feng. Now, if it were daylight and I used the field-glasses, I'd be close enough to see him, to see his face.

Access.

Main canopy deploying, black nylon against the black sky and the harness jolting and the windrush gone off. Falling through the dark, knees and feet swinging straight up into the moonlight, and then down. Even in the dark, if he used his field-glasses, he would see me now, a cloud drifting against the wink of stars, no bigger than a man's hand.

He would have all the time he needed. Things would be easier for him than at a shooting gallery.

Li fei, what did they ask you?

Everything slow now, and no wind. Night and silence, and the wink of moonlight on the metal grip of the toggle above me and to the left with the girl sixty feet away above my left shoulder.

What did you tell them?

The cold pressed at my face. When I looked down I could see mist shrouding the mountains in white. A blind landing could be a killer, but we'd known that.

Anything?

May you rest, anyway, in peace, with your cinnamon eyes so modest under their smoky lashes, touched there by the artist with a stub of charcoal as his signature to perfection.

Hanging in the sky, like something caught up on a web and powerless to move in any direction. Loss of identity: neither fish nor fowl, with arms but nothing to hold, no ground to tread. A target, perhaps if you must have a name.

A white sea below, flooding from horizon to horizon, with dark islands of rock, and suddenly close. I reached up to the toggles, rehearsing. There was no sign of the girl; she must be directly above the black spread of my canopy.

The mist smelled wet, and had the bitter taint of woodsmoke in it; there were three villages below, on the periphery of our main target area.

The mist rushed white, swirling as I turned, with the dark peaks thrusting upwards and tearing the vapours into shreds along the valleys; I pulled the toggles and started a swinging action, turning slowly to face the moon and then looking down; if there were lights burning at the monastery I should see them by this time unless the mist were too thick; it was patchy now and breaking up, and I saw a mountain peak at eye level and watched its dark cone rising against the stars, blotting them out one by one.

At any second now I was going to hit rock.

Dropping through mist, under the milky light of the moon.

I spat twice, trying to find the wind's direction so that I could turn my back to it for the landing; but Newcomb had been right: there was no wind.

Falling fast now: I could see crags and a dark cliff face through a gap in the mist as it swirled around me and filled the canopy, spilling away in the moonlight; falling faster and faster but at the same speed: it was just that I could see more of the environment and could orientate visually. Turning slowly away from the moon's white haze, the moon itself hidden by the canopy, turning and swinging and looking downwards now, watching for the ground, if there were any ground and not just a cliff or a crag or an outcrop waiting to break my back; falling, falling fast with the mist clouding white and then suddenly dissolving, clouding again, the ground rushing up, then a great rockface sliding against the sky and the lines trembling as the canopy caught against something, tugging and swinging me full circle and back again, dizzying, look down, keep on looking down, everything

dark now, the mist gone and nothing below me but black rock, look down, then suddenly the sense of nearness to great mass, and I dragged myself up the straps to soften the impact and saw the rocky floor and doubled my legs and pitched forward and flung out my hands, kicking at the rubble and feeling a tug on the lines as the canopy dragged and caught and jerked me upright before it broke clear and I went pitching down again, sliding on all fours across the rocks until everything stopped.

I thumped the release and stepped out of the harness and looked up to find the girl; then I heard her cry out and saw the huge shape of her canopy billowing against the sky before it reached the cliff and spilled air and she span and struck the rockface and bounced away again, swinging in a wild arc as the nylon tore free and dropped her small figure beyond the edge of a ridge. I began stumbling forward, pulling the radio from the kit strapped to my waist and hitting the transmit button.

Eagle to Jade One. Eagle to Jade One.

I kept moving forward, checking the straps securing the rest of the equipment; if she were still alive she'd need first aid.

The set put out a rush of static, then cleared as I adjusted the squelch. Come in, Eagle.

Ferris.

Eagle to Jade One. Q down and safe. DH injured. Will report.

He acknowledged and I shut the thing off and started running, my boots sliding over loose gravel and sending it scattering. Even with the noise I was making I was aware of the great silence around me, and the weight of the mountains that sprawled here in the shadow of night. I crossed the ridge and fell twice, loosening rock and hearing it tumble as small stones sent their echoes crackling against the hard face of the cliff. Three or four times I called her name softly, but heard no answer. The light was better here; the moon had found a break in the mist and the rocks glittered like jet. I called again, but there was only the massive silence pressing down.

I let myself drop again, sliding through a crevice and finding flat ground at the edge of a dark pool that had no reflection; and the eye-brain interchange of data and association took an instant to inform me that the pool wasn't water but her black canopy.

"Hello, Clive."

She was on the ground, face up, just lying there. I bent over her, freeing the buckles of the medical kit. "What's the damage?"

"Broken leg. Don't touch it; it's beautifully numb."

"Are you bleeding?"

"Not much, I think. Don't worry. I thought I saw a light, when I was coming down, over to the east — did you see it too?"

"No." I was touching her flying suit lightly, feeling for damage and odd angles, and also letting her know that she wasn't alone; sometimes the voice isn't enough. Blood glinted along her left leg, where the suit had been ripped away. "I'm going to clean you up a bit; it'll sting. Try to —»

"Clive," she said, "listen to me. And don't do anything. I think I saw a light from the direction of the monastery; then either it went out or the mist hid it again. You know what I'm saying. They might have seen us."

I soaked one of the cotton-wool pads in the ether. There was no blood pooling anywhere; it was just oozing from the surface capillaries of the abrasion. "We knew there was the risk," I told her.

"Okay. Clive, please listen and do what I ask. Put that stuff away. It stinks." Her voice was light but emphatic, and I stopped what I was doing. "I've got a broken leg, and there is absolutely no way you can get me out of here: no way. When the pain starts I'll need morphine — I'm no bloody hero; and that would mean carrying me across these mountains to a goat track, and finding a goatherd and asking him to fetch a horse and cart from the nearest village, and waiting till he did that; and there'd be the trip to the village, in a bumpy cart. Clive, do you know your paramedic stuff? Do you know what state my leg would be in by then? After two days, maybe three days?" She put her hand on my arm. "There's just one other little thing. When daylight comes we'll be in sight of the monastery, or if we're not, we'd move into sight of it a dozen times on the trek to the goat track, unavoidably. Are you starting to get any kind of message?"

I began swabbing her leg and she hissed her breath in, gripping my wrist. "The sooner we start getting you out," I told her, "the more chance we'll have."

"Oh Christ," she said, "I didn't know you were such a stupid bastard."

I finished swabbing and went for the roll of lint in the canvas bag. "Save your energy, Helen. Relax. Are you feeling thirsty yet?"

She closed her eyes and began laughing strangely, and the sound went on until she could speak again. "Am I thirsty? Clive, I'm dying."

I stopped unrolling the bandage. "Of a broken leg?"

"Of a broken leg. And the mountains."

There was a gash on the side of her crash helmet: I'd noticed it when I'd been feeling for damage. Perhaps she'd struck her head on the rockface, and the pain was making her irrational. But somewhere in my own mind there was a cold thought creeping: that she wasn't being irrational at all.

"Did you hit your head? Do you feel disoriented?"

She struggled to move a little, lifting her shoulders and propping herself on her elbows, watching me steadily in the moonlight. I was pulling in her chute.

"Clive, will you bloody well listen to me? I know you're acting according to your instincts, and I understand that. You think the first thing to do is to save life. But there isn't one to save — only yours." She spoke with slow clarity, as if she wanted to make absolutely sure I understood. "I'm not only talking about the sheer physical impossibility of getting me through these mountains with anything left of what I am now; and I'm not only talking about gangrene and pneumonia and no chance in hell of finding competent medical aid in the nearest village, though I'll just mention that morphine isn't totally effective with bone trauma and that I do not intend spending the next two or three days in screaming agony before they see us from the monastery and shoot us both. I'm also talking about why I took this job on, and what they told me when I was briefed, and what I agreed to do. I agreed to give you whatever assistance was necessary in making the drop and getting a fix on the monastery, and then to make my own way out while you proceeded with your mission; those were the actual words, in writing: while you proceeded with your mission. And that's what you've now got to do."

She went on watching me, giving me time to think over what she'd said.

"And leave you here?"

"And leave me here. I'll be all right. You're going to fix things for me."

"Fix things?"

"They shoot horses, don't they?"

"You're out of your mind."

"I've never been more rational in my life." Her voice was perfectly steady. "All you've got to do is cut a wrist. I'm an awful coward when it comes to self-inflicting anything. I can't even get a splinter out. We're all different, aren't we?"

I was aware of the bandage in my hand: conscious thought was overlaying the desperate attempt to deny all she was saying, to believe it wasn't the simple and appalling truth.

"You're asking me to kill you?"

"Don't be so melodramatic, Clive. I'm asking you for your charity. I'm asking you to save me from unbearable pain, and the unbearable waiting for the time when they see us, and come for us. I'm going to be killed anyway; you'll be more gentle than they will."

I thought for a long time, or it seemed long, kneeling on the loose shale beside her with the lint bandage in my hand and nothing to do with it, while I relearned the lesson that had been brought home to me rarely in my life: that to be helpless is the most subtle of all agonies.

"What we're going to do," I said at last, "is to find our way out of here without being seen, and to assume quite confidently that the morphine's going to do its job for as long as-"

"Clive, you've got to face it. You've just got to face it." Her small fingers were dug into my wrist. "If this were just a geological field trip I'd let you try getting me across those mountains before I went out of my mind, but it isn't like that. When they briefed me they told me enough about your operation to let me know it's important. I've worked for D 16 and I've worked for NATO intelligence- which is why your people trusted me with this little trip — and I know the signs of a top secret mission when I see them; I know it's quite likely that if you reach your target you'll save lives, maybe a lot of lives, but certainly more than one — more than this one. You —»

"You're just making up your own weird scenario —»

"I haven't finished. The thing is, Clive, that my integrity is at stake, and if you think for one moment that you can monkey with that, you'll get a real surprise. Who the hell do you think I am? D'you think I'm the type to give my word to your people and sign the clearance form and then go back on it when the going gets rough? You know the kind of form I've signed — you've done it often enough yourself if you're in this game. Last bequests, next of kin, the whole bit. And listen to me, and understand what I'm saying: I agreed that whatever happened to me I would do everything in my power to help you to proceed with your mission. Whatever happened. And now something's happened; one of the many calculated risks we accepted has come up and hit me in the face; and you're asking me to go back on my word. By God, you've got a nerve!"

Her voice had begun shaking with anger because I wouldn't understand, because I wouldn't think it out, as she'd had time to think it out while I was looking for her. "And listen to this, Clive, and it's all I'm going to say. If you try to carry me out of here I'm going to resist, every inch of the way. I'm going to fight you, every bloody inch and every bloody yard, till you realise it's not worth it, and drop me, and leave me to rot." Then the anger was suddenly spent, and she was speaking so softly that I could barely hear. "But if you've got any kindness in you, any humanity, you'll face what you know you've got to do, and be gentle with me, and save me from all those things we all hope never to die with: pain, and humiliation, and indignity."

I knelt there for a time, going over it all, while the shadows in the moonlight crept from rock to rock, lengthening as the night moved on towards the dawn. I don't know when it was that she spoke again, as softly as before.

"Face it, Clive. Bite the bullet."

And at last I knew there was no argument, and no choice.

"I wish there'd been time to know you," I said.

"I've told you quite a bit, in the last few minutes. I'm someone to be reckoned with. Are you going to help me?"

"Yes."

She gave a quick shuddering laugh. "I finally got it into your thick skull."

"That's right."

"What made it so difficult? Because I'm a woman?"

"Probably."

"Then you're a male chauvinist pig. Listen, the monastery is east of here, the other side of that long ridge with the funny-looking rock at the end. Okay?"

"Okay."

"You knew that already, but I'm just cross-checking. To climb that ridge won't be easy, but there's no other way to go. It'll be easier, though, with some of the extra equipment you'll have: you can make hay with the pitons, using mine as well — you won't have to salvage any. And there'll be double the food and water ration. Did you see the terrain the other side of the ridge?"

"Not very clearly, in this light."

"You're not trained. You have to watch for the shadows, and know what they mean, how deep they are, and how high the object is that's throwing them. Listen, the terrain on the far side is almost flat, a narrow strip maybe a dozen yards wide and almost as long as the ridge itself. Are you listening?"

"Yes." But she knew that half my mind was still circling, looking for an escape, an escape for her that didn't demand her life.

"I'd say you'd be in full sight of the monastery, anywhere on that ridge, with one exception. There was a long shadow crossing it at an angle, starting just north of the middle and going obliquely south-east — in other words, towards the monastery. One thing I can tell you for sure: the monastery is something like five hundred feet above that ridge; six hundred at the most. Did you notice the ring formation?"

"Where?" The only escape was an escape for me: to leave her, and let her keep her word to them in any way she wanted, and let her do it alone. There was no choice there either.

"The rings on the mountains here," she said. "Clive, you'd better listen — there's no time to think about anything else. The ridges go up the mountains here in a typical ring system, though it's been mostly obliterated by time. You might be able to reach the monastery by following the oblique cleft towards the south-east, out of sight from the ridge. Okay?"

I was rolling up the bandage. "Yes. I'll try that."

"If it doesn't work, then you'll have to climb straight up from the north or south. That's when you'll need the extra pitons. There's no sheer rockface anywhere, except that bit we hit when we came down. You've got something like forty-five minutes of darkness left, to stow the chutes and conceal them." She looked away. "And me."

I put the roll of lint back into the bag, and pulled the zip. One had to keep order.

"I'll remember what you've advised. I'll try the cleft."

"It could work. But don't try it while it's still dark; there's a nasty bit between here and where it begins; it's where the rock goes sheer down."

"I'll wait till daylight."

"That's about it, then." She turned her head and looked at me again. "Except that I've got a last request. I want you to make love to me."

I'd noticed a movement in the mist here, not long ago; there was a bluff of rock throwing its shadow across the ground where we were, and the shadow was creeping as the moon lowered towards the mountains in the west. I suppose a wind was getting up, though hardly what you'd call a wind: just a stirring of the air, its movement playing on the insubstantial vapours, giving them the life of ghosts. There'd been the hint of woodsmoke, too, before, coming from one of the villages, one of the villages that was so close that we could smell its fires, so far that she would never see it; now there was the scent of pines on the air; or it had been here too, before, but overlayed by the bitterness of the smoke. Make love, yes, a certain logic in that, the way she saw things; I was beginning to know her nature.

I'd been quiet for too long, because she said, "Of course I might not be your type. I don't want you to think I'm- you know — sort of soliciting." She tried a laugh but it didn't quite come off.

I told her quickly, "Certainly you're my type. You'd be anyone's. Newcomb could hardly keep his eye on the navigation, as you must have noticed."

"You were very well brought up."

"Last dance, is that it?"

"Last drink, or whatever. Last anything I can get. I'm not one to go out with a whimper."

But I knew it was more than that; it was her sense of affirmation, of life at the death. It had been a good party, and she wasn't going to leave until the music stopped.

"Can you smell the pines?" I asked her.

"Yes. I wondered if you'd noticed. Isn't it lovely?" She was lifting her hand to me and I kissed her fingers; they were deathly cold: there'd been a certain degree of shock, and I think anyone else would have passed out by now.

"We'll have to look out for your leg," I said.

"You bet. Forget the missionary position, but thank God there are plenty of other ways." She was trying to reach for one of the haversacks, and I got it for her. "Put it under my head, Clive; there's no need to be uncomfy." Then the tears began, as she let everything go; there was no grief in this, I thought, and no self-pity, but just the gathering sense of loneliness that even she couldn't hold back; and perhaps it was a sign that she could now trust me enough to let me hear tier cry, knowing I wouldn't think of it as weakness. I remember being surprised, as I put my mouth on hers, that her tears could feel so warm against the coldness of her face, and so tender in someone so strong.

"Clive," she said in a moment, "we're strangers, but it doesn't mean we can't find some kind of love, just while it lasts. Do what you can."

Her blood was black in the moonlight, pooling among the stones. My hand was over her wrist, held loosely there, and I don't know why; to stop the rhythmic spurting from staining her flying suit — one must, yes, keep order; or to tempt me to deny all her arguments and grip with sudden force and reach with my other hand for the pressure point and then a tourniquet and somehow carry her through the mountains; or simply to ease the soreness for her, by the comfort of touching.

"I could have done a lot worse, Clive." The strength was leaving her voice.

"A lot worse?"

"Than finding you, for the last dance."

Her cropped head turned sideways on the haversack, but she straightened it to look up at me, like someone falling asleep and then waking because the time wasn't right.

"I wouldn't have wanted anyone else to be here now," I told her.

"It was a privilege."

"A privilege?" A little dry laugh came. "Oh God, I'm in such a mess." Her lips could scarcely open now. "You must try the cleft in the ridge, Clive… the way I said…»

"Yes." Her head fell sideways again but this time she let it stay there, and closed her eyes. "Sleep well," I said.

"Dizzy… Clive?"

"I'm here." I lay beside her, covering her as much as I could so that she'd know she wasn't' alone. She felt like a child in my arms.

"Clive… good luck…»

The sunrise was beautiful, a filling of the sky with saffron and then rose and then a flood of blinding light across the peaks to the east.

I had stowed the two chutes together and spread rocks over them, and sorted out what extra equipment I'd take along. Helen de Haven was over there, where the heaped stones were catching the first light of the day. I turned away and moved through the rocky terrain, keeping clear of the sheer face and the drop below it.

In an hour I had reached the bottom of the ridge, where she had told me I should go, and rested for a moment against an outcrop; then the shot came and splinters of stone cut through the air near my face and I dropped flat.