The Pekin Target Read online

  I looked at the wall clock, but couldn’t focus. “No. No doctor. Only Koyama.”

  “He’s on his way here now. I’ll stay with you till he arrives.”

  I hitched myself up again, feeling weak and furious and afraid. “Listen, they didn’t go for you, or Tilson, or anyone else out there. Only me.”

  “They recognised you. They know you as one of our field executives. They might have thought you’d be replacing Sinclair.”

  My skin crawled.

  “Am I?”

  Impatiently he said, “Someone’s got to.”

  We don’t like doing it. We’re made superstitious by the life we lead, outside society and often isolated, often in danger and often afraid. We don’t like the feel of a dead man’s shoes.

  “Did you have me down,” I asked him, “for this one?”

  “That’s academic now. You’re not fit enough.”

  There was an edge to his tone and I knew he blamed me for what had happened. I shouldn’t have let them get at me like that; I should have been more alert. But they hadn’t come up on me from behind, because I always know what’s in the mirror; they must have come at me at a right angle from Dolphin Square, because the other side was the river; they must have come at me on my blind side and very fast but he was right: I should have heard them, and done something.

  “Give me a couple of days,” I told him.

  If they had a mission lined up, I wanted it. I wanted to go back into that strange limbo and find out who they were, and hit them, and hit to kill. Then I’d be safe again.

  “Time is too short,” Chandler said.

  The throbbing in my rib cage reached my skull, hammering there.

  “One day, then. Give me one day, you bastard.” But he and his shadow were tilting against the wall, dancing together weirdly into the dark.

  Chapter 2

  Croder

  “I’m not refusing the mission. I’m refusing Croder.”

  He didn’t ask why.

  We can refuse anything we like and we don’t have to explain, because it’s our life, or our death, and they know that.

  “Then he might give you someone else,” Tilson said gently, and went on checking the papers as our driver went through the red lights into Parliament Square. “In any case we might as well clear you, to save time.” He held the papers up to the window at an angle to catch the light from the street. “No next of kin, sole bequest to St Dunstan’s - you want any changes? And five hundred roses.”

  The man beside him was digging in his pocket, and held out a Walther P.38.

  “He doesn’t want anything like that,” Tilson said. “Put it away.”

  They’re always changing the staff in Firearms.

  “Sign here, old horse, when you’ve read it.”

  “Cross out five hundred,” I said, “and put one.”

  “One rose?”

  “Yes.”

  “Right you are. One rose for Moira.”

  I’d had time to think about that in Moscow, when that bastard Ignatov was following me through the snow.

  I signed the form and sat back, watching the rush of green leaves as we passed Victoria Tower Gardens. The driver went through the red again past Lambeth Bridge and we heard a siren start up but she didn’t take any notice; they’d seen our plates now, and the siren died away.

  “Croder’s all right,” Tilson said as he put the papers into his briefcase. “He looks after his people, you know that.”

  I let it go. The swinging of the street lamps past the windows was beginning to sicken me and I didn’t want to talk, least of all about Croder. Koyama had taken all morning to straighten me out, working on the nervous meridians and concentrating on the spinal column; but the lingering influence of the phenobarbitone was still fogging the system and throwing me off balance.

  “Slow down a bit here, would you?” Tilson asked the driver, then turned to me again, talking quietly. We were going along Grosvenor Road now and I could see the flat expanse of the Thames. “The thing is to see how you feel when you arrive there, old fruit. You’re not committed, after all; I mean we all realise you’re still a bit groggy.”

  I couldn’t look at him. The scene through the windows was hypnotic, with the lights from across the river flowing in reflection beyond the dark swinging trunks of the trees.

  “What’s the area?” I asked him, not wanting to know.

  “Pekin.” His voice had gone faint, but I still couldn’t look at him. The sound of the engine had died away and we were moving in a kind of vacuum while the trunks of the trees went flickering past the flow of lights, just as I’d watched them before, somewhere before. “That’s all I know.”

  “What?”

  “That’s all I know,” Tilson said, and when I turned my head at last I saw he was watching me steadily. “That’s all any of us knows. Don’t worry, old horse, just relax.”

  “Those bloody drugs,” I said, and looked through the windscreen past the driver’s dark hair.

  “Not entirely. That was the spot where you crashed last night.” He told the driver to speed up again. “I just thought it might stir the old memory; we’re a bit desperate for clues, because the witnesses said it was anything from a black Mercedes to a red Jaguar. Never mind.”

  I looked back through the rear window at the long perspective of the trees, at the area of limbo where memory had given way to shadows. “I’m getting nothing,” I told Tilson.

  “Maybe it’ll come back to you later. No hurry.”

  “That Humber,” I said, “was behind us when we left Whitehall.”

  “True. And there’s another unmarked car ahead of us. We don’t want any more larks.”

  This evening they’d smuggled me out of hospital in a dry cleaner’s van.

  “What happened to Chandler?” I asked him.

  “He was going to run you. Then Croder moved in.”

  I had to make an effort to think, to try patching some sort of future together for myself. All I knew at this moment was that they needed me badly: with Sinclair dead less than twenty-four hours ago they were dragging a half-doped executive through the night to try setting him up as a replacement.

  “Where are we heading, Tilson?”

  It was about time I began taking an interest: it might be dangerous not to.

  “Battersea. The heliport.”

  “Are you going to fly me somewhere?”

  “We’re going to meet Mr. Croder.” His tone became more gentle still, more amiable, and I was warned. “Just so that we all know what’s going on, old horse, tell me one little thing: do you really want this mission?”

  “It depends on what’s involved.”

  “I didn’t mean that,” he said carefully. “I mean do you want it regardless?”

  I began waking up, because the driver was swinging left into the park. “You know bloody well I do.”

  “But of course you do,” he nodded comfortably. His plump hands began moving again on the briefcase. “Those nasty people tried to smear you all over the Embankment and you can’t wait to find out who they are and rub their horrid little noses in the mustard, and quite right too. Now you’d - “

  “I’ve been out of action for three months and I’m fed up with refresher training and Sinclair’s dead and if you bastards can’t find me something to do I’m going to lose my grip. Put it that; way.”

  “Now that sounds much more like my old friend. So you’d better finish clearance while there’s time.” He produced more papers and a wad of currency. “You heard about the death of Jiang Wenyuan, the Premier of the People’s Republic of China, two days ago. The UK is sending the Secretary of State to represent Her Majesty at the funeral, and you’ll be joining his two official bodyguards.”

  “That’s my cover?”

  “Cover and access.” He gave me the papers and I looked at them in the half-light. Detective-Sergeant William Charles Gage of New Scotland Yard, seconded to the Foreign Office on temporary overseas duties. The wad of not
es was marked 1,000 yuan and die-stamped by Lloyd’s Bank. And now my hands were growing cold and a lightness was coming into my head because I’d been too groggy to realise how close I was to the new mission, after three months of debriefing and recuperating and trying to relax with the saunas and the girls and the long bracing tramps across the Downs at Brighton while the thought hovered in the back of the mind, the same thought we all have, in between missions - the thought that perhaps we ought to get out now before it’s too late, before the luck runs out and we’re cast up in a Gulag labour camp or lashed blindfold against a post in Beirut or by the grace of unknown gods spreadeagled against the mountainside with a ripped parachute for a shroud and one last intimate friend plucking strength from us with his bone-white beak.

  Suddenly, this time, it was too late to get out: they were already pitching me headlong into the dark and I was letting them do it, because who the hell, after all, wants to die in a pensioner’s home with the veined hand limp on the tartan rug and a torn bingo ticket for an epitaph?

  But Lord, I was afraid.

  “I see we’re on time,” Tilson said, and we got out.

  Five men were standing in a group below the rotors of the RAF helicopter and one came a few paces to meet us, and I recognised Croder.

  “Has he been briefed?” he asked Tilson softly.

  That was typical of the man. He’d spoken as if I weren’t there. Croder can get me to hate him instantly, the moment we make contact.

  “No, sir.”

  “Cleared?”

  “Yes.”

  Croder turned to me, standing hunched in his dark blazer with his thin head down and his eyes lifted to watch me in the lamplight. “What have you decided?”

  “I want the mission.”

  “With me as your Control?”

  “No.”

  His thin mouth tightened; or perhaps I imagined it; Croder isn’t a man to give anything away, anything at all.

  “You can’t have it both ways,” he said, and glanced down at his watch. “And I can’t give you very long.” His dark expressionless eyes were raised again to watch me.

  I wanted to turn and walk away from him; I think I tried. I sensed Tilson near me, and heard the four men talking together below the slanting rotor of the machine. I said:

  “Give me someone else.”

  They wanted me for this mission, or they wouldn’t have dragged me out of hospital with the shock still in my nerves and the drugs still clouding my brain. So it would have to be on my terms.

  “I am already in control of this one,” Croder said, his tight mouth nibbling at the words like a rat. “And I am inviting you to join me as the executive in the field. I believe you’re the most appropriate man for the job, and so do my advisers.”

  “I’m not fit,” I said. I was going to make him ask.

  “There’s no immediate action foreseen, in Pekin. And you can rest on the flight out.”

  “The notice is too short.” I was going to make him ask me outright.

  “You don’t like delays. They don’t suit your temperament.”

  “But this is too rushed. I’ve had no London briefing.”

  Then he asked me. “Why won’t you accept me as your Control?”

  “Because of Moscow.”

  His hooded lids closed for an instant as he fought for patience. I knew how much patience he was having to use; he was extremely high in the London echelon, a controller who could pick his missions and his executives and his directors in the field without any competition, and any executive would work with him simply for the prestige. He wasn’t used to refusal.

  “You did well,” he said, “in Moscow.”

  “I broke the rules.”

  With impatience coming into his tone for the first time he said, “You showed compassion for Schrenk as a fellow executive and as a result he nearly killed you. I would assume you’ve learned from it.” He looked at his watch again. “I would also assume you’d want to do something about the people who wiped out Sinclair last night. It’s the first time the opposition has broken right into our field and made a killing - tried, indeed, to do it twice. I’d expect someone of your calibre to - shall I say - react.” He inclined his head slightly. “However, there’s no more time left, and I must accept the fact that you can no longer be counted on.”

  The bastard was working on my weakest point: my professional vanity. He knew that if I turned this mission down I’d have to face myself afterwards.

  As he turned away I said: “Has anyone else been cleared?”

  “Of course. We’re pulling Fox out of Hong Kong. He’ll be in Pekin by noon tomorrow, their time.”

  “Fox? You can’t be serious.”

  “Unfortunately he’s the only reserve.”

  He was lying, of course. Fox had done only five missions and he’d run two of them into the ground. But I believed him, because I had to, because I wanted to. I’d tried everything else.

  “Croder.”

  “Well?”

  “Who would you give me, to direct me in the field?”

  “Ferris. I wouldn’t give you anyone less.” He was making it difficult.

  “Where’s Ferris now?”

  “In Tokyo, waiting for a signal.”

  “Would he be directing Fox?”

  Croder was silent for a moment, facing me with his shoulders hunched and his hooded eyes on me; then suddenly he brought his guard down and I heard despair in his voice. “I don’t think it would matter who directed Fox, would it?” With more urgency he said, “This is the first time we’ll be operating in mainland China, liaising with the Chinese, and we were rather hoping we could count on you to go in and break new ground for us.”

  The last of my own defences came down, as he knew they must. He was offering me a top controller, a top director in the field and virgin ground to break open for the Bureau. And he was showing me his despair. I had the wry thought that to go on refusing would amount to bad manners.

  “If I took this on, I couldn’t guarantee not to break any rules, if I had to.”

  “I realise that. I’m prepared to take the risk.”

  My head seemed suddenly clear.

  “All right,” I said.

  “You accept the mission?”

  “Yes. With you as my Control.”

  He turned quickly. “Mr. Toms, you can start up as soon as you like. Tilson, get the bag from the car, will you?”

  “What about briefing?” I asked him.

  He came to stand close. “You’ll be briefed in the field. At this end we know nothing except that Sinclair was bringing us information of some kind - information so vital that he couldn’t entrust it to signals or a courier; and so vital that he had to be silenced.”

  “Is there a specific objective, at this stage?”

  He stood closer still as the helicopter’s rotor began chopping rhythmically at the air. “We want you to find out what Sinclair was trying to tell us. That’s a high-risk objective, I know.”

  Tilson was hurrying past us, giving my bag to the flight lieutenant to stow in the freight bay. The girl was turning the car and moving it clear of the downwash area.

  “How do we fly?” I asked Croder.

  “You’ll go from here to Benson and board an RAF personnel transport with the rest of the delegation and three more security officers. Ferris will meet you in Pekin.”

  “Understood.”

  He turned and led me across to the group of men, raising his voice above the noise of the rotor. “Let me present the Right Honourable George Bygreave, Secretary of State. These other gentlemen are Detective-Inspector Stanfield of New Scotland Yard, and - I’m sorry, I - “

  “Wiggins, sir.”

  “Oh yes, Flight Lieutenant Wiggins, thank you. Your pilot is Squadron Leader Toms. Gentlemen, this is Detective-Sergeant Gage, the reserve security officer.”

  We all nodded and Wiggins helped the Secretary of State up the metal steps. The man from the Yard followed him on board and made
room for me as the flight lieutenant squeezed between us and swung the door shut; through the window I thought I saw Tilson out there lifting a hand - good luck, I suppose - and then the pilot gunned up and the last I saw of London was the thin hunched figure of Croder standing with his feet together and his face tilted to watch us with the downwash tugging at his clothes as we lifted off and swung towards the west across the lights of Fulham and Chiswick.

  Chapter 3

  Funeral

  I had worked with Ferris before.

  He’d been sitting on the stairs with the gun on his lap in the Hong Kong snake shop while I’d fought for a kill with the hit man they’d sent from Kowloon to wipe me out. He’d pulled me out of Morocco with the coastguard cutter’s searchlight sweeping the sea as we lay prone on the afterdeck of the fishing boat and Sandra’s jewelled revolver sank below the waves to the bottom, where no one would ever find it. He’d been with me when Alitalia Flight 403 had hit the runway too short in Beirut and we’d lost two back-up executives but saved the mission because the documents weren’t on board.

  And now he was walking with me from the Beijin Hotel along Wangfujing Street in Pekin, a tall thin man with his body sloping forward and his wisps of sandy hair all over the place in the light breeze coming off the rice-fields to the north.

  Dark suits, black ties. Someone from the Bureau had done my packing for me yesterday evening while Tilson had been getting me out of the hospital in the dry-cleaner’s van; the other clothes they’d put in were much lighter: the July temperature here was already eighty degrees and it was only ten in the morning.

  My ribs were still painful but I’d slept off the lingering effects of the drugs on the long flight out, and my head was clear enough to warn me that London must have been desperate, to have moved me into the field without warning and without a home briefing.

  “They must have been desperate,” I said.

  Ferris turned his honey-coloured eyes on me, watching me for a moment from behind his glasses. “I wouldn’t disagree.”

  “Desperate to get me into Pekin, or out of London?”

  “You were a target there.”

  “I’ll be a target here, once they pick up my trail.”