The Pekin Target

4: Assassination

"Then for God's sake," said the Ambassador, "get him for me on another line."

The girl in green came through again with a file of papers, catching the toe of her lizard-skin shoe in the frayed silk rug but saving herself, dropping a loose paper and picking it up and going on into the Ambassador's room. They'd left the door open: there was no point in shutting it with all these people wanting to see him.

"Then tell him to ring me back."

He dropped the phone and another one rang and he picked it up. "Metcalf here."

The Chief of Police came through again from the main entrance, a small man, hurrying, with an officer trying to catch him up.

"Then tell him to hold the plane." The Ambassador dropped the phone and looked up. "Who are you? Oh, yes, come in."

Another reporter tried to get through the main entrance and I saw the Chinese guard pushing him back with surprising strength for such a small man. The two people from the Xinhua News Agency were still talking to a girl in the room on our left and getting nowhere: she spoke rapid Cantonese with a lot of emphasis.

Night was falling outside the tall windows overlooking Kuang Hua Lu Street, and there was no sound of traffic. We'd been told that the Ministry of the Interior had ordered a curfew throughout the city beginning at ten o'clock; that was a few minutes ago. Checkpoints had been set up along the roads out of Pekin and there were long lines at the railway stations and the airport as passengers were put through an emergency screening. Half a dozen political agitators of high rank had been arrested but their names hadn't been publicised.

I got up and started walking about again, feeling the draught of the slow ceiling fans. Ferris was aggravatingly calm, sitting at his ease on the wicker chair with one arm hooked over the back and his legs crossed, a foot dangling. But that was what he was for: to be calm, to keep his head while I went on fuming. "This isn't a mission," I'd told him when we'd come into the Embassy, "it's just a mess they've got themselves into over here and Croder's thrown me in to see what happens."

I was also worried because my face had appeared in two of the evening papers already and I knew that by this time tomorrow I'd get world coverage as the man standing behind the British Secretary of State in the instant before he died. If that was Croder's idea of effective cover for an executive arriving in the field I didn't think it was all that funny because it could cost me my life. The Bureau doesn't officially exist and we operate in strict hush, but after a certain number of missions we become known among the opposition networks and intelligence services — known, recognisable and vulnerable.

I'd come out here under RAF security and the opposition didn't even know I'd left London, but all they had to do now was pick up a paper and when I went through those doors and down the steps and into the street I could walk straight into the cross-hairs.

"You'd better get those chaps in here," I heard the Ambassador telling someone. "And McFadden too."

He'd been standing a few feet away from me when it had happened, though I couldn't remember much about it in any kind of order: it had seemed like a moving surrealist picture with sound effects — the heavy brutish grunt of the explosion and then the sudden blizzard of white flowers filling the sky as the shockwave came and the black-suited figure of the Secretary of State was hurled against me, while slowly the flowers settled and the sky was filled again as hundreds of pigeons flocked from the buildings in fright and women began screaming. A moment of strange stillness, then the police began closing in, with press photographers racing in front of them and shooting wild. Then suddenly Ferris's voice right behind me: "Come on — we're getting out."

The Secretary of State had died in the ambulance, they'd told me at the hotel; I'd gone straight there, smothered in blood from his injuries, to change my clothes and wash.

"HE would like to see you," the girl in green was saying, and Ferris got out of the wicker chair as McFadden joined us from the corridor, a compact man, freckled and ginger-haired and shut-faced: Ferris had introduced us in the signals room when we'd got here this evening.

"Sit down, gentlemen," Metcalf told us, "and someone please shut the door."

The room was crowded and the Chief of Police was insistent on standing because there weren't enough chairs. The Embassy interpreter, a young Eurasian girl, began translating for him without any preliminaries.

"The police guard on this building has been substantially reinforced, on instructions from the Minister of the Interior, and I hope this will not be found inconvenient for you; it is for your personal safety." When the girl had stopped speaking he gave a slight bow. "Enquiries are still proceeding at the place of embalmment, and all those who were involved in the construction of the coffin, in the security of the building, and in the preparation of the late Premier Jiang Wenyuan's earthly remains have come under our closest scrutiny." Another bow. He was facing the Ambassador, standing directly in front of his desk, and didn't look at anyone else. "The findings of the five doctors who attended the late British Secretary of State are that the pressure of air and debris from the explosion disrupted the heart and lungs, while at the same time the pressure invaded the cavities of the face and distended the sinuses, damaging the frontal lobes of the brain. As to the —»

He broke off as one of the telephones began ringing, and the girl in green reached over and picked up the receiver.

"No calls, Janet."

The Chief of Police waited punctiliously until she was sitting down again. "As to the explosive device itself, our skilled experts, who are members of the International Association of Bomb Technicians and Investigators, have collected material from the site and used electro-magnets to probe the debris from the whole area. Analysis has been made and a considerable portion of the device reconstructed; we already know that it was of Japanese make, but do not regard this as necessarily significant, since terrorism is international and so are its weapons. We know also that the device was detonated by remote control, via a radio beam."

The Ambassador lifted his head an inch.

"They're absolutely certain of that?"

Ferris hadn't moved.

"Yes, Your Excellency."

Metcalf leaned forward. He was tanned and athletic-looking but must be close on sixty; this could be his last tour, and it hadn't been very pleasant, apart from the physical shock he'd received down there in Tian'anmen Square; he'd caught some of the blast and his left eye was still red from the effects of the flying debris.

"You mean," he asked carefully, "that the timing of the explosion was also controlled?"

"We cannot say that. We can say that the timing of the explosion was technically feasible." When the girl finished translating he made to add something but the Ambassador cut in.

"You mean," he asked with even more care, "that if these — if the perpetrators had wanted to explode the device at a precise and premeditated time, they could have done so. Is that right?"

"That is right, yes."

Ferris was gazing quietly at the wall, where there were yellowing photographs of Princess Anne taking a jump on a thoroughbred and Charles clouting a ball. We were pretty certain of one thing, and had talked about it this afternoon: this hadn't been an act of terrorism, a public and dramatic show to catch world attention; it had been an act of assassination, and at the moment when the Secretary of State had bent forward close to the coffin to place the wreath there'd been someone in the crowd or on a rooftop with binoculars and a transmitter.

We also suspected something else, but hadn't wanted to talk about it. This was the information that Sinclair had brought to London: that the Secretary of State was marked for death. If Sinclair could have talked, we could have prevented it.

Jason too might have known, and might have warned Ferris when he'd flown in last night, before the opposition had got at him. But why hadn't either of them sent a signal?

"Thank you," the Ambassador told the Chief of Police. "I wanted to make sure of the facts, and of the implications."

"The implications we must divine later, when we have all the facts. I shall allow myself the honour of making further reports as the enquiry proceeds." He waited until the interpreter had finished speaking in her soft musical tones, then drew himself straight. "I wish to repeat, Your Excellency, that together with other city and government departments, the Metropolitan Police Department of Pekin is shocked and distressed by the tragedy that has befallen your distinguished countryman, and will devote all its energies to bring those responsible to justice."

A couple of straw mattresses had been brought in and a clerk sent to the Hotel Beijing for our toilet things: the last signal from London had ordered that Ferris and I should remain at the Embassy until further notice. McFadden raked up an alarm clock and a small transistor radio to make us feel at home, which was civil of him.

The Embassy cook knocked together a scratch meal and McFadden came along to share it with us in one of the offices, talking a bit but not about the bombing; he missed England and wanted to know if The Mousetrap was still running and whether you could buy camel feed in Harrods these days. It was nearly midnight before Conyers came, and we moved into the main reception room because it was bigger.

Conyers was an American anti-terrorist agent, but we didn't know his official background and he didn't explain. He was a quiet and slow-moving man with a weathered face and a bright-blue stare and an artificial hand encased in a black leather glove.

"How are the other guys?" he asked no one in particular and lit a cigarette, flicking the match into the pot with the half-dead fern in it near where Ferris was sitting.

"Nothing serious," Ferris said.

Detective-Inspector Stanfield had gone in the ambulance with the Secretary of State but was let out of hospital an hour ago with minor injuries; he'd caught more of the blast than I had, because Bygreave had provided a shield. The three other security men hadn't been touched.

"I'm in Pekin," Conyers said with a glance across the two doors, "because we had wind of something, but it wasn't anything to do with the British team. Your Ambassador here has asked me if I have any ideas as to the motive involved in this thing. Frankly I haven't. Frankly I'm mystified. The Chinese have no motive for antagonising the West, at a time when they're looking for expanding trade and closer military ties. It doesn't escape your attention that I'm talking as if the British Secretary of State has been assassinated. I believe he was. I believe that bomb was intended for him, and for nobody else. Some people are saying that this was an act of terrorism, designed simply to blow a dead body out of its box in front of a captive audience with instant media replay world-wide by courtesy of the international journalists present, a protest against the prevailing political constitution of the People's Republic of China. That's bullshit. There isn't any prevailing political constitution in this place, simply because they haven't had time to clear up the mess that Mao left all over the doorstep."

He took a drag on his cigarette. "This, gentlemen, isn't Lodd Airport and it isn't the Munich Olympics. Nobody has come forward to claim responsibility, even though the PLA and half a hundred other terrorist organisations would be sorely tempted to do just that, simply because this was a Hollywood spectacular and if there'd been any message for anyone it would've gotten an Oscar for Western Union. The only message I can see is that somebody wanted the British Secretary of State to be dead. You boys will know a lot more than I do about that, but you have my deepest sympathies; it's a lousy way to go."

"You think it was a political assassination?" Ferris asked him.

"I think it was a political assassination." He flicked ash off his cigarette and I noticed his good hand was never quite still. He watched Ferris with his bright blue stare.

"Don't you think it's a bizarre way of doing things?"

"Sure. But hellish effective. Look, they didn't do it this way for fun. These are experts. Technically it took a lot of working out, and I know of what I speak." He glanced down briefly. "My left hand was last seen travelling at five hundred feet in a south-westerly direction, and although it was a mistake on my part, I'd been trixying around with these toys for ten years without so much as a broken finger-nail. They decided this was the most effective way of working, that's all. Remember how the Basque activists terminated Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, the President of Spain? They dug a tunnel thirty feet long underneath the street in Madrid where he used to pass every day on his way to morning mass, then they packed the place with a hundred and seventy-five pounds of dynamite and blew it up from a hundred yards away by remote control. The President's car was lifted five storeys high and it wasn't found for several hours because no one thought of looking for it on the far side of the Church of San Francisco de Borja, where it had landed. Bizarre? Sure. But effective? Sure."

Ferris got up and began walking about and Conyers watched him and waited to see if he wanted to say something, but he didn't. He was just restless, and it didn't do my nerves any good because Ferris walking up and down was like anyone else yelling the roof off.

"We also have to consider this," Conyers went on. "It might seem that it would have been easier to pick up a telescopic rifle and do it that way, but with an estimated crowd of half a million people and the security services of fifty-three nations plus the Pekin contingent can you imagine any way it could have worked? They had to put the assassination instrument right into the centre of the target area, where it could be guaranteed to do the job, and then they simply had to wait for the target himself to approach the instrument — which again, he was guaranteed to do. How could they miss? They didn't. And the man who pressed the button just went on standing there. So let's forget the 'bizarre' angle, gentlemen. It makes our teeth ache to say so, but this was a success story."

After what seemed a long time Ferris stopped walking up and down and said, "Does anyone feel a draught?"

"What?" McFadden took his chin out of his hands. He saw Ferris was looking up at the two big fans overhead. "Oh," he said, and went across to the scalloped brass switch on the wall, and the fans began slowing down.

"You'd rule out the Chinese?" Ferris was looking at Conyers now.

Conyers lit another cigarette and picked a strand of tobacco off his lower lip and said: "The Chinese aren't a nation of uniformed robots. I'd say that none of the Chinese in present authority would want such a thing to happen, especially at a time when, as I've said, they're looking forward to increased trade with the West, subscribing to the American presence in the Pacific and entertaining — like they did just a month back — a US Defense Department logistics delegation on their own ground here, for meetings with the Chinese armed forces chief of staff. I'd say that these people wouldn't want this kind of thing to happen to any Western government representative, and certainly not to a representative of Britain or the United States, with their close historic and military affiliations."

The big ceiling fans had come to a stop and a dying fly came down in spirals from one of the dusty motor housings, landing on the worn leather blotter of the escritoire and buzzing in mad circles until Ferris went over there and stabbed one finger down and wiped its tip on the blotter and came back and said:

"Then who?"

Conyers blew out smoke. "Who? Holy cow. You're pointing at a broken window and looking around at a playground full of kids and asking who? Terrorist organisations aren't isolated units. They're Communist inspired or directed or motivated, and all roads lead away from Moscow. They're all in touch with one another; they help one another; they lend one another hard cash and weapons and forged papers. The order for this coup might have originated anywhere on earth. But in the final analysis, like I said, I frankly don't see this thing as an act of terrorism anyway."

"Is terrorism criminal or political?" Ferris asked him. "It's the criminal implementation of political ideals." "Was Bygreave's assassination political?"

"Okay, I know what you're saying, but the fact that polar bears are animals, and white, doesn't mean that all animals are white. I'm going to put it on the line. I'm going to say that whoever assassinated the British Secretary of State was a political but not a terrorist."

"Or somebody," Ferris said, "who was paid to do it?"

"Or somebody who was paid, sure, by a political group that is not a terrorist group, since terrorist groups do their own dirt without paying other people to do it for them."

I said: "A hit man?"

Conyers put his bright-blue stare on me. "Or a hit group. This had to be the work of more than one operator."

"So that we're not concerned with questions of nationality."

"Right. Not if this job was paid for. The Mafia will hit for the Church Army Zionists so long as the money's good."

Ferris was watching me, perhaps thinking I'd got someone in mind. I hadn't. Twenty-four hours into the mission we were still at ground zero, with a major objective already achieved by the opposition — the major objective, if it was Bygreave's death alone. Sinclair could have told us; Jason could have told us; but without the information they'd taken with them we couldn't make a move. If the Bygreave assassination had been the thing we'd been pushed into Pekin to prevent, we might as well go home.

Except for London. London would have called us in by now.

"There's nothing on my mind," I told Ferris obliquely. "Nothing at all."

All I could think about was the way that man's arms had been flung out like a cross by the shockwave as his body was hurled against me in Tian'anmen Square this morning, knocking me down, while the flowers had clouded the sky. What would Sinclair have put in his signal? What would Jason have told us?

Don't let the Secretary of State lay the wreath. Tell him to feign a sudden turn and ask the Chinese attendant to do it for him. Then get him back inside the RAF transport, fast.

No. They couldn't have known, or they would have sent a signal, in code. Then what had they known?

"The thing is," Conyers said, "the Chinese are working on it. They are the host country and it's their responsibility. And they're smart. They're also as conscience-stricken as hell over this thing, even though they didn't have any part of it — in my opinion. They want to get that son of a bitch that pressed the button, so they can prove to the world they didn't do it themselves. Look what they stand to lose if they can't: zillions of yuan in international trade; nuclear power equipment from theWest; Japanese and American support against the Soviets. Who wants to support a country that can't even put on a funeral without a major international incident?" He dropped more ash into the fern pot. "So maybe we should wait a few more days and see what these guys can come up with. Maybe we —»

Then one of the Embassy clerks came in and said that the man named Jason who'd been reported as missing last night by Mr Ferris had been found by the police with severe head injuries in a freight truck at Beijing Station and taken to the hospital, where they were trying to save his life.