The Pekin Target

5: Death-trap

I didn't know much about Jason.

At that bloody mausoleum in London where the Bureau runs its field staff into the ground we're not encouraged to know anything more about one another than that whenever our paths cross it could be for the last time. We don't mind that. We don't want to make friends, because on any given mission we might have to leave someone behind and without a chance, or blow his cover because they sent us out first and we've got more information in our heads than he has and only one of us can get out, or simply throw him to the dogs because that's what he's there for — to provide a decoy, a scapegoat, a stand-in for us at the show trial with a life sentence in the labour camps while we're safely back in London sipping a beer and thinking Christ, it could have been me.

We work in a place where friends are dangerous; but we pick up gossip down there in the basement between missions, hunched over the tea-stained plastic tables in the Caff and always looking up when someone comes in, someone we didn't necessarily expect to see in here again; and I know that Jason stuck a limpet mine under the stern of a fishing boat out of Leningrad with so much electronic surveillance gear on board that there wasn't room for the fish; then there was some trouble about a girl in Rio de Janeiro when he was there trying to bug a bordello and catch some pox-ridden generalissimo full of military secrets with his trousers down; and it was Jason who fell through the glass roof of the winter garden of the East German consulate in Budapest and the next day cleared three security checks on his way to the Austrian frontier with the target documents because his face was covered in bandages and his passport photograph was no better than anyone else's.

Now I was looking down at the closed eyes in the deathly face of the man in the bed, waiting for him to regain consciousness and trying to ignore the electrocardiograph on the wall, where the green dots of light had been bouncing lower during the last two hours, losing their rhythm.

"The signs are not good," the Frenchman said, "but you know what they say — while there's life, there's hope."

Ferris tried again. "Is there any chance of his talking to us, even though he's worsening?"

Dr Restieux shrugged. "Nothing is impossible." He was the only one on the medical staff at this hour who spoke a European language, and Ferris had asked him to help us. "The trauma is quite massive, you must understand, and the suboccipital area of the skull is complex. There isn't an electroencephalograph available to us at the moment, so it's difficult to tell what's going on. This patient's brain could be dying, and we wouldn't know. The human brain dies gradually, from the stem to the deeper regions, and that could be happening now. The blood gas reports are showing signs of stability, but that doesn't tell us too much as to his chances. We have to wait." He hooked the chart back and turned away, but Ferris stopped him.

"Can anything be done to stimulate him?"

"Stimulate?"

"Can you bring him back to consciousness, even temporarily?"

Restieux looked puzzled. "You mean with drugs?"

"Drugs, electric shock, whatever would work."

"Not without harming the patient."

"But it could be done?"

In the bleak light of the intensive care unit the doctor's eyes widened slightly. "The question is academic. We're not prepared to harm the patient, whatever else is involved."

"I've discussed this with the Chief of Police," Ferris told him levelly. "This man might help us to find out quite a lot about the assassination of the British Secretary of State, if he could talk to us even for a few minutes. He might help us to save lives in the future. It's extremely important for us to learn any information this man has in his possession, and if you're able to do anything at all, I'm asking you to consider it. The host country is responsible for the welfare of visiting delegates, and we're anxious to cooperate; my orders are direct from London."

Restieux went on watching him for a moment before he spoke. "And I am responsible for the welfare of my patients, and my orders are direct from Hippocrates."

When he'd gone I looked at Ferris. "Have you been in signals?"

"Yes."

"London's pretty desperate."

He stared down at Jason's white face for a moment. "We were handed this one rather late, so we're having to make up time. No cause for concern."

He left me five minutes afterwards, his crepe soles making a faint kissing sound along the linoleum. I sat on the paint-chipped metal chair, watching the slow dripping of the intravenous catheter and the light patterns bouncing across the screen. It was now three-thirty in the morning, and the building was quiet. There were two nurses on duty at the ward station and one of them had been coming in here every few minutes, checking the IV bottle and taking Jason's temperature and noting it on the chart.

During the two hours I'd been here, Ferris had gone down to the telephone in the main hall at intervals, coming back and telling me nothing. There might have been nothing to tell: he'd obviously been signalling London via the Embassy, reporting on Jason's condition and asking for orders; but unless Jason could tell us something there wouldn't be any orders: we couldn't make a move. And I knew this: if Croder was so desperate for information that he was ready to risk Jason's life, the assassination in Tian'anmen Square hadn't been the end of things. Whatever operation the opposition had mounted, Bygreave's death hadn't been the objective; it could have been no more than the first step. Their operation was still running and there was nothing we could do, no direction we could take; it was like waiting in the dark for a blow that could come from anywhere, even from behind.

Just after four-fifteen Jason opened his eyes.

I looked up at the screen and saw the green dot was bouncing slightly higher and with a steadier rhythm.

"Jason," I said softly.

He didn't move, but I thought he'd heard me; his eyes were turned to watch the ceiling above my head. "Jason."

One of the nurses had come in five minutes ago and would be back again soon; I could call them both here if I needed to, just by raising my voice. Jason still didn't move.

"How do you feel?" I asked him quietly, and stood over the bed so that he could see my face. He looked at me for a long time, but there wasn't anything in his eyes; then they closed again as he murmured something.

"What?" I asked him. In a minute he said it again, but I couldn't make out any specific words: I had to put the sounds together and guess at a verbal pattern. Two men.

"Two men?" I asked him.

His lips moved. These were different sounds. Killer

"Killer?"

I had to wait again. After a bit his lips moved again and I watched them; there seemed to be a W after the first K. KW something. KW ill?

"What did you say, Jason?"

Same sound. I watched his lips, and then got it.

"Yes. I'm Quiller. Don't rush it. Relax."

If I called the nurses they might give him a shot of something, do something to break this fragile thread of consciousness. One of them would be in here at any minute.

"You were attacked by two men?" I asked in a moment. His eyes opened, and I think he tried to turn his head, because there was a spasm of pain and he grimaced and a sheen of sweat began covering his ash-white skin.

"Don't rush it, Jason. Take your time." A minute went by.

Sounds came again. The only patterns I could guess at were Elsie. I. Spur. Sool.

"Say again," I told him softly, "when you're ready." I felt the sweat on my own face now, because of the need to hurry, and to find the delicate balance between drawing some kind of information out of him and keeping him alive: the more we hurried, the more he might say but the sooner he might lose consciousness again, perhaps for the last time.

His eyes opened and looked up into mine.

"Tell," he whispered, and this time it sounded perfectly distinct.

"Tell who?"

Then just sounds again, the same as before, or nearly.

Elsie. I. Insool. Ay eh? Not sense. Tell Elsie?

The pale lips moved, and I watched and listened. See spur. C? Elsie? Elsie spur? He was using all his strength on the syllables, slurring the consonants; I couldn't tell whether he was leaving out the beginnings and endings of words, or even whether he was rambling.

"Jason. Tell who? Elsie? Who is she?"

He was watching me back. Tell see I eh. Tell see -

"Tell the CIA?" I leaned closer.

"Ess. CIA."

"Tell them what?"

There were voices now in the distance, a man's and a woman's, someone talking to one of the nurses along the corridor. I tuned them out, concentrating on Jason.

"What do I tell the CIA?"

His eyes closed and I waited, flicking a glance at the screen on the wall where the green dot was bouncing lower again. In a moment he rallied, and sounds came again. R spur. Hasper? Ask her? After?

"Jason. Say again." I leaned closer still.

He opened his eyes. Ask per. Per? Spur?

"Ask Spur?"

"Ess."

"Who is Spur?"

Then there were footsteps and a young Chinese in a white coat came in, a stethoscope hanging from his neck. One of the nurses followed him, the small girl with plaits under her cap. He looked at me hard, saying nothing.

"Do you speak English?" I asked him.

"Mee ye?"

"Parlez-vous francais?"

He looked away without answering, and prepared a syringe while the nurse swabbed Jason's median vein. I tried him with German and Russian, desperate to stop him doing anything to Jason now he'd begun talking. He didn't answer, and I had to move away to give him room as he lanced the tip of the needle into the vein and put slow pressure on the plunger.

The nurse made an entry on the chart and they both went out, leaving the air acrid with the smell of the ether she'd used on the swab.

"Jason," I said softly, and leaned over him. His eyes opened slightly.

"I will ask Spur to tell the CIA. Is that right?"

His lips didn't move, and there was no understanding in his eyes.

"Jason."

But the pallor of his skin was now tinged with blue and when I looked up at the screen on the wall I saw the dot of light levelling out and leaving a thin featureless line.

"They've killed Jason," I said.

The line was silent for a bit; then Ferris asked: "How?"

"One of the doctors here injected cyanide, or someone posing as a doctor."

"I'll be right over," Ferris said.

"No. Keep away. This place is a death-trap now."