The Mandarin Cypher Read online

  Silk and small hands, a cherry-red mouth.

  'Would you like some tea?'

  Eighteen-forty and a cloth of gold flung across the window where I sat, the humped green hills of two hundred islands growing night-black before their time as the day lingered along the Tropic of Cancer, we hope that you enjoyed your flight, a rhythmic vibration setting in and the weight coming off the seat, and will fly with us again on China Airlines, fishing junks below on the flat gold water, sampans and a submarine and the chalk-white wake of a hydrofoil as it settled to the surface, in from Macau.

  'Will you be staying long in Hong Kong?'

  'It depends on what business I find.'

  'Oh yes, you told me - you deal in coins.'

  'Coins and bullion, they're the best hedge against inflation.'

  'Ah yes.' He unclipped his seat-belt, smiling. 'In Tokyo we put our faith in transistors..'

  The white Tiger Balm pagoda across the window, and Victoria Peak, then boats coming past in a swinging blur as we flattened along the approach path, tankers, freighters, two destroyers of the US 7th Fleet and a group of junks from Canton with the Chinese Communist yellow-starred flag and then the sub again, 'S' class with the Union Jack, belts until the plane has come to a stop, the hollow roar as the jets reversed and then the unaccustomed silence as the power came off, leaving conversations suddenly exposed.

  . . . but heroin's their worst problem, even the schoolkids have started using it . . .

  . . . they're not really poor, darling, I think they just like living on boats . . .

  . . . the prettiest girls in Asia, Joe, and I'm not kidding . . .

  Warmth underfoot across the tarmac and the air clammy against the face, the end of a long day's heat, the sinuous flicker of her cheongsam ahead of us as she led the way against the frieze of ponderously moving shapes, Swissair, Lufthansa, Transworld, and beyond them a curtain of jewels across the harbour as the island began burning in the dusk.

  'Taxi?'

  'Cathay Hotel.'

  'Take ferry?'

  'No, tunnel.'

  The Cathay because in the_ dossier of Nora Millicent Tewson her present address was given as 403 Jade Imperial Mansion, ten minutes' walk away. Besides, if I chose anything more than seventy dollars a day those arthritic old tarts in Accounts would bust a corset.

  The place was near Cat Street and there was a boy outside roasting a duck over charcoal, with a woman already waiting. The clatter of a mah-jongg game sounded from a doorway farther along, where a letter-writer sat with an upturned keg for her table.

  I passed the shop twice, wanting to familiarize myself with its environs, and then went in. The place was full of snakes, a hundred of them, I can't stand the bloody things.

  'Mr. Kwan?'

  'No, Younger Born. I am Mr. Chiang.'

  He came out from behind his jars of snakes and stood with his hands together, short and at first glance fat, then if you looked again, muscular.

  'Will it rain, Mr. Chiang?'

  'It has rained.'

  'Will the typhoon come?'

  'It has gone.'

  'How many brothers have you?'

  'Seven.'

  'And sisters?'

  'Seven thousand.'

  'What is the goose?'

  'It is gold.'

  I showed him the scar under my wrist and he nodded, going to the door of the shop and closing it and coming back. The sizzling of the duck was no longer audible but the clack of the mah-jongg pieces came faintly through the walls.

  'Don't these bloody things ever get out?'

  'They have no wish. They are fat now, and ready soon to hibernate. That is when the price will be high.'

  'I'm happy for you.'

  He led me through the bead curtain and up some pitch-dark stairs to a room under the roof, the air heady with herbs. There was dust everywhere from the sacks filling the shelves, except on the radio, which was as clean as if he polished it every day.

  'What are your main stations, Mr. Chiang?'

  'Pekin and of course Taipei.'

  'The Embassies?'

  'Your Embassy in Pekin, your Consulate in Taipei.' He went over to the set, soft-footed and eager to please. 'You wish to make contact?'

  'Not now.'

  He was disappointed, stepping back but still looking at the set as if it had suddenly stopped working.

  'When did you come to Hong Kong?'

  He swung his large head to look at me. 'A long time ago.'

  'From the mainland?'

  He looked away, and in a moment went down the steep flight of stairs ahead of me, his stubby hand on the rail. 'Yes, from the mainland. We swam across Deep Bay, one night. But I reached the shore alone.'

  'Who was with you?'

  'My wife.'

  One of the snakes rose heavily as our shadows passed over it, and spiralled round the big glass jar; I could hear the dry scuffing sound of its skin as it moved. Mr. Chiang stood with his short black shoes neatly together.

  'That is all?'

  'Yes, Elder Born.'

  He unbolted the door and I left him. The duck was done but the boy and the woman were arguing about the price. On the other side from where the letter-writer sat there was a jeweller's and I went in and asked if I could use the phone. Mr. Chiang's number was among those I'd memorized from the briefing material and dialled it.

  'Wai?'

  'Lee seen-saang hai-shue ma?'

  'Nee-shue mo yon sing Lee.'

  'Doei m-jue. Ngaw daap chaw seen.'

  I hung up and put a dollar on the counter but the girl shook her head so I circumspectly picked it up and thanked her and turned left outside the jeweller's so as not to pass the snake-shop again. When London sets up a safe-house abroad it doesn't fool around because the whole mission can sometimes be thrown in jeopardy by an unreliable contact and of course blown up if he's a double, and they know that, they've known it for so long that a lot of us still survive. It was just a reflex that made me do it and anyway it wasn't conclusive because if he'd wanted to phone anyone to say that Wing had arrived in Hong Kong he needn't have done it within three minutes of my leaving the place: but that was when he'd be most likely to do it. I'd lowered my voice and all he knew was that one of the thirty thousand foreign devils in Hong Kong speaking atrocious Cantonese had got the wrong number.

  And all I knew was that for a period of ten seconds during the critical three minutes when he'd been most likely to inform a contact that Clive Wing had arrived on the island his phone had been innocently disengaged. Most of us work on the principle that if you've got the time and the chance to check every step of the way, it's worth doing. It's a bore checking the ignition wires for tampering every time you get back into your car after you've had to leave it in a suspected area and I must have done it a couple of hundred times, including the time in Calcutta when I found they'd rigged a bomb.

  I picked up a dark-blue Capri from Fleetway Rent-a-Car in Watson Road and took it past the Cathay and found some shadow where the trees in the park hid some of the light from the lamps. Jade Imperial Mansion was one block distant and I went there on foot and saw him sitting in a Hillman with the visor down but I didn't stop because this was completely unknown territory and I needed to feel my way in.

  I didn't stop at the board in the lobby either because there were people about and I noted them. There was enough light on the board to confirm in passing that 403 was on the fourth floor and I took the lift to the top and went down seven floors by the emergency exit stairs, finding the back entrance and going through the service complex and coming out by the park and getting into the Capri, putting the window up to leave a reflection and checking the time, 8.44. The parking slot for 403 was on the far side of the building but there was only one exit and at 9.21 I heard the Hillman start up and a minute later the Jensen came through the gates and turned west and then north and then west again into Gloucester Road and we were in business, the traffic fairly thin because most people were in the theatre
s and restaurants and supper-clubs at this hour, and the only one I didn't like was the Taiwan-registered Toyota and I took a right and a left and a left and came up on the lights at red and watched him go past, no reaction whatsoever, too far behind the Hillman to be tagging that, but it had been worth the risk of losing the Jensen and having to find it again because the opposition-in-place in whatever city are very watchful and you can pick up ticks just by stopping to tie your shoe-lace.

  In six blocks I came up on the Hillman again and this time overtook it, slotting in behind the Jensen and noting the ash-blonde Peter Pan head that never turned to look sideways, the occasional glint of emerald below her ear, the way her eyes flicked obliquely upwards at the mirror and down again, once the flash of a gold lighter, her movements deft and her driving calculated as we ran into Harcourt Road and bore left along Cotton Tree Drive. At the next set of lights I went past her and got a clear visual impression in profile, thin, bony, rat-faced attractive, her head not turning, the flash of an emerald ring as she used the ashtray, then I was past and put three private cars and a taxi between us before I peeled off and made a U-turn and came back to wait.

  Flower should have been on to me by now but he was looking straight ahead as he cleared the lights and I made the turn and fell in two cars behind, beginning to worry because he'd looked so young: the top security departments were taking them straight out of school these days and letting them loose too soon.

  A right into Garden Road and past the Hilton and left again and slowing, taking the smaller streets: she knew her way and didn't hesitate, any more than Nora Millicent Tewson ever hesitated, I was beginning to think, about anything.

  The Hillman tried to stop in time to pull in somewhere behind her when she began slowing but there wasn't enough room so he went on past and left her looking for a slot. I backed up and couldn't find one and put the Capri under a Strictly No Parking sign and found cover and waited. There were a few people about and Flower wasn't far behind her when she came into view and crossed the road and went into the Orient Club. I gave it ten minutes and followed.

  'You are a member, sir?'

  All smiles but standing right in my path.

  'No.'

  'Would you care to take out a membership?'

  'Please.'

  He went on talking while I signed the form, nothing more than a formality of course, police regulations, licensed as a private club, many apologies for the necessity, so forth, one hundred Hong Kong dollars.

  Imperceptibly he had moved out of my path as I reached for my wallet, and I was ushered between heavy curtains into the traditional ambience of incense and candlelight, not a large place but pretty full, the tables mostly in alcoves, the waitresses Eurasian and topless, the men mostly in white suits and DJ's, the women discreetly glittering, some of them wives. Imported floor-show, Edwardian vaudeville, half a dozen long-legged girls kicking their net stockings out, those were the days and all that.

  They got me a table and I began working, picked her out over there near the band, still alone at a table for three, watching the floor-show, smoking, smoking rather hard and sometimes looking around, the earrings catching the light, not looking for anyone, but at them. Flower was nowhere near her but perched at the far end of the bar looking bored. When I was sure I asked for a telephone and a girl came and plugged one in.

  'Directory Enquiry - can I help you?'

  'Please. I'd like the Orient Club.'

  'Which club?'

  'The Orient.'

  'Just a moment'

  Across in the alcove she was lighting another cigarette, looking up, looking around, but not at people coming in through the curtains: she wasn't waiting for anyone. They were bringing her first drink, no cherries or anything fancy for Nora Tewson: it looked like straight Scotch.

  Enquiry gave me the number and I dialled.

  She began on the drink straight away, she's still very cut up, Macklin had told me.

  'Orient Club.'

  'I'd like to speak to Mr. Flower.'

  Had to repeat it, then had to spell it 'He is a member?'

  'Yes.' He'd come straight in.

  It wasn't the kind of place where you went up to lonely-looking women and asked them for a dance but someone was doing it, an elderly and elegant Chinese. She was shaking her head a little too emphatically and he took a step back, bowing quickly, dissembling. I suppose he'd thought that by her looks she had more breeding, not a very good judge.

  'Mister Fowler not here, sir.'

  So I spelt it again and said he should be there because he'd asked me to telephone him. There were probably a hundred people here, a lot of them on the small dance-floor now the girls were taking a break, and they didn't want to go and look, I quite saw their point. In five minutes they got him, and the bartender showed him the phone in the corner, just inside the curtains.

  'Hello?'

  'I'm from London,' I said. 'I came in on Flight fifty-three.'

  The code-introduction for the first to the fifteenth was to throw in a random number and listen for two below and four above, world-wide, all missions, it saved trouble.

  'That's how we missed each other,' he said. 'I was on three seven.'

  He was turning round slightly, just enough to keep his eye on Nora Tewson. I asked him:

  'When did they start the tag?'

  He turned his back on the room again, blocking his free ear because of the band.

  'When did they what?'

  I suppose he wanted it straight from the book: maybe he was college-trained, Norfolk. 'When did the subject come under opposition surveillance?'

  He didn't say anything for a bit and I began getting worried because it wasn't possible for me to tell whether he couldn't hear properly or whether he was having to think something out. There wasn't anything for him to think out: I'd asked him a perfectly simple question.

  'D'you mean,' he said, 'she's being -'

  'Don't look round.'

  I said it sharply because he'd begun turning his head the other way and for a second I didn't believe it. He turned back to face the wall and I hoped he'd begun sweating as hard as I was. In a minute I said:

  'You mean you didn't know?'

  There was a short silence, then he said: 'Oh shit . . .'

  It was about all he could say because he was obviously straight out of training so they'd given him the simplest job on the list and London had sent him a top-ranking shadow-executive all the way to Hong Kong to tell him he'd mucked it up, I felt for the poor little bastard but that wasn't the point, he was dangerous.

  I looked for a waitress and let my eyes pass across the table for two on the far side from the bar. The man hadn't moved. He glanced at the Tewson woman every five seconds, away to the dance-floor, back to the woman, every five seconds, police-trained, possibly Special Branch, but Macklin had told me the enquiry into Tewson's death had been closed. I was waiting for him to look across, just once, at Flower. He was the thin tubercular Chinese with glasses I'd noted in the lobby of Jade Imperial Mansion and again in the four-door Honda that had been three cars behind Flower when we'd turned into Gloucester Road and again when I'd been waiting in cover across the street from here.

  'Shut up,' I told Flower. He was trying to talk.

  I gave it another full minute. The man was like a robot, every five seconds and never varying, never interested in anyone else, never looking at Flower, a professional amateur with precise instructions - don't let her out of your sight - and doing his job to the letter.

  'Flower.'

  'Yes, sir?'

  'You're off the hook. They haven't seen you.'

  He said bitterly: 'That isn't my fault.'

  Give him credit at least for knowing what he'd done. But he'd been lucky and that was what made it potentially dangerous: if that little police-trained robot had got on to him he wouldn't have stood a chance - they could have roped him in and put him under intensive questioning and blown his cover, finis. Worse, they could have tagged him to
any rendezvous that he and I might have made, putting surveillance on me and forcing me to show my hand by throwing them off. Of course there were built-in fail-safe factors and even if they'd caught him and put him under the lamp he couldn't have exposed the Bureau or anything to do with it because he'd never been there; they don't let a raw recruit go anywhere near the place till he's proved he's safe. And I hadn't on principle gone near him myself when I'd seen him stationed outside Jade Imperial, any more than I'd gone near him when I'd come in here. But it doesn't matter how hard you try to keep the safety mechanism operative: you can make a mistake or have some bad luck and then all you need is someone like Flower and the whole thing's going to blow.

  'Are you here in the club?' Flower was asking me. He'd asked me before and I'd told him to shut up.

  'Just keep on looking at the wall.'

  But I was ready to drop the receiver and put the phone on to the banquette below table-level in case he took it into his head to look round anyway because with his lack of experience I didn't want him to be able to recognize me at any time or in any place until I was ready.

  'All right, Flower, I want a quick breakdown on her travel-pattern.'

  A couple of seconds went by and I wondered if he was normally as slow as this or whether it was nerves. 'She goes quite a lot to jewellers and places like -'

  'Which ones?'

  'Erm-- the House of Shen, that was this morning. And a place called Constellation "144" - that's in -'

  'Where else?'

  'Kaiser's, and - I think that's all. She -'

  'Does she always buy something?'

  'You mean jewellery?'

  'Yes - come on, Flower -'

  'Well, I can't be sure whether she -'

  'Then you bloody well ought to be, they've got windows, haven't they? Where else does she go?'

  He didn't get any faster but it was no good my taking the pressure off because I wanted to know things, a whole lot of things, this wasn't really my kind of operation, Macklin had told me, he must have known I'd have Flower to deal with.