The Mandarin Cypher Page 8

  Jensen.

  'Kwan.'

  Hillman.

  'Please?'

  Toyota.

  'Follow that Toyota.'

  He nodded and stood on it and I nearly got whiplash. Going down through the park I said: 'Notice that it's dark grey and rather dirty, and that it's registered in Taiwan. Remember it has that aerial on the roof. Try and keep two or three cars between you and the Toyota, because I don't want him to see that we're following him all the time. If there's anything you don't understand, ask me.'

  'Is okay, all okay.'

  'Good.'

  Down Leighton Road and heading south-west, Jensen, Hillman, Toyota, taxi - Christ, all you wanted were the flowers, I didn't tell him to keep an eye on his wing mirrors as well because he'd have quite enough to do in the lunch-hour traffic. His off-side mirror was too high from where I sat, but the right-hand end of the interior mirror gave me a couple of inches if I sat well in the corner and the chrome on the pillar beading was nice and clean and picked up primary colours.

  I wasn't really expecting an easy ride. They knew I was London, they knew my face and they knew I was interested in Nora Tewson. Wherever she went, they'd look for me: and you can calculate fairly precisely - all other things being equal-just how long you can keep up a tag in a taxi before they get the vibrations and close in. It isn't very long.

  The knife flashed and the skin of the pineapple came away like a flower unfolding. His hands were so quick that I was reminded of a stopped-action film, the fruit seeming to peel itself in a series of jerks without anyone there. One of the Americans was crouched on his knee, squinting and turning the focus ring of his camera; and three small Chinese children stood porcelain-still and hand in hand, watching the fruit seller with their luminous black eyes unblinking.

  The Jensen was parked a hundred yards away near Queen's Road Central, and I could see most of its windscreen from here. It was pointing this way and couldn't go anywhere without passing me: a U-turn was impossible on this stretch and there weren't any side streets available. Her bright head moved in the sunshine and she stopped again: they were mostly jewellery shops in this area.

  I couldn't see the Hillman because Flower hadn't been able to find a slot when she'd pulled in, so he'd come past and left it somewhere out of sight, passing me on his way back to look for her. He didn't see me, or know I was there. It was much brighter than it had been in the Orient Club last night and I saw him clearly for the first time: a rather intense-looking boy with a Tudor haircut and very pale skin, a lot of pens clipped inside his breast pocket, one of them probably full of tear gas: they go in for gadgets at that age.

  I couldn't see the Toyota either but I knew where it was. We'd all been here a good thirty minutes and I'd taken a loop on foot to see if there were any short cuts available in the travel pattern Flower had given me: along Hillier Street and down Jervois - nothing but bloody snake shops, they give me the creeps - and back into Queen's Road, finding the Toyota and passing it and coming up far enough to see the Jensen. It was the thin one, with glasses, and he was standing over there at the entrance to the silk emporium.

  I still wasn't quite sure, but it had looked very like a sudden pincer movement. We'd been tooling along Des Voeux Road in line astern when a bus had pulled out and three or four cars had bunched, two of them quite unnecessarily because they could have got past without any trouble. I just left ten dollars on the seat and was inside the dry cleaner's and out through the back before anyone had time to ask any questions, picking up a taxi in Wing Kut Street and telling the driver to wait, because I'd been quicker than the traffic. The jam was just clearing and I saw the Jensen coming past and told him to slot in there. No harm done, and I had in fact seen the doors of those two cars coming open when they'd bunched behind the bus, though of course they might have just decided to get out and walk, such a lovely lot of windows here to look at, so forth.

  The smell of pineapple was in the air and the man was telling me I ought to buy one, it was pure and delicious and quenching, so I moved on, he was quite right: static surveillance from obtrusive corner was asking for it, if that really had been a pincer attempt in Des Voeux Street.

  A rickshaw man went padding past, the wickerwork creaking, a pair of girls on the seat laughing delightedly.

  'C'est mieux que le Metro!'

  'Mais un peu plus cher!'

  The sunshine of the early afternoon was slanting across the rooftops, lighting the windows on the other side of the street, where it was reflected across the two lines of traffic. I saw her bright head moving again as she turned away from me and began going towards the Jensen. The lights had changed and a No. 5 double-decker was leading the pack from the Wellington Street intersection, and for a couple of seconds I couldn't see the thin Chinese; then the traffic strung out a little and I had him in sight again. He hadn't moved.

  She hadn't stopped anywhere for lunch yet: we'd been kept on the move the whole time since we'd left Jade Imperial, and I needed a chance to break off and get closer to Flower and make a rendezvous for whenever she holed up somewhere; then I could get his report and take his notes and tell him to book a flight. She was nearing the Jensen now and the next phase was ready to open: the Chinese would wait till she was in the car and then he'd turn suddenly and come down this way on the other side with that gangling head-forward walk of his and be in the Toyota with the engine running by the time she came past.

  I'd have time to make a brush contact with Flower and give him the rendezvous and let him get to the Hillman.

  But it didn't work out that way because when she reached the Jensen I looked at Flower to make sure he'd seen. He obviously had: he was turning and making his way down on the other side, hurrying a little and trying not to show it. The pavement was a bit crowded and as far as I could see he stepped off the kerb at the wrong time and someone shouted and there was the fling of an arm and then a long red smear where the wheel of the bus went dragging.

  Chapter Six

  BREAKTHROUGH

  'Wai?'

  'What is the goose?'

  'It is gold.'

  'This is for London, immediate.'

  'Wait.'

  I listened carefully, thinking he was warning me, 'Yes?'

  He'd just been getting a pencil.

  'Mandarin. They picked the flower. Wing.'

  I could hear his breathing as he wrote it down: he'd been in the shop below when the telephone had rung.

  'Yes.'

  'Please repeat.'

  'Wait. Mandarin. They pick the flower. Wing. Yes?'

  'Picked.' I spelt it.

  'Yes. Picked.'

  'Thank you.'

  Then I got Fleetway and said I'd left the Capri outside the Excelsior and they could pick it up there and I'd see them as soon as I could to sign the papers and they said they'd prefer me to bring the car in personally and complete the formalities and I said they wouldn't be in business long if they didn't learn to co-operate, feeling savage, wanting to curse everybody just as one does when it's been one's own fault.

  I can't stand a messy death. I don't mean the smear bit, I mean a death that doesn't do anything, doesn't mean anything. Thornton did it the right way, Thornton above all people, hit the Caucasus Mountains head-on with a twin-engined Petrov X-7 trying to dodge the missiles they were sending up from the base at Krasnodar, one big bang and no heel taps, the whole of the Bureau laughing all the way to Codes and Cyphers with the stuff he'd given the Queen's Messenger in Odessa, complete blueprints of the submarine complex and defence installations with blown-up photographs. If you've got to go, do it like that.

  Bobbie? Oh he's fine, I think. He's off abroad again, you know, some sort of government work, to do with the consular staff welfare scheme, I believe that's what he told us. Yes, we do miss him, of course - we were hoping he'd go into Arthur's bank, but there you are, so long as he's happy, that's the main thing, isn't it?

  A long red smear down the street and my fault because I should ha
ve kicked him out of Hong Kong last night when I'd seen he was low calibre and dangerous and too young to be out alone; they'd let him run because they'd thought he must be Special Branch and then they'd picked me up and seen it was Intelligence and finished him off. The thing they were running was so big and they were so determined to push it through that they weren't even interested in asking questions when the opposition turned up: they just moved straight in for the kill.

  I left the phone-box and went out to the street again. There was a case for asking London for a director because the pressure was coming on hard, but there wasn't anything to report yet, there was no breakthrough. The key to the breakthrough was Nora Tewson, and she'd gone.

  I'd had to cross the road and go up there to make sure they'd been thorough, and she was already coming past in the Jensen before the traffic began jamming up around the 'accident'. There wasn't a taxi in sight and I'd been tempted to wave to her, well well well, fancy seeing you here, take her to lunch, get everything I could out of her. But that would have been expedience, not design, The Jensen was a death trap and I left it alone, edging back from the knot of people and finding an alley and getting clear, checking with every step because they were still here somewhere in the area.

  The alley led on to Kwong Yuen Street and I turned right and hurried but couldn't see her car. There was a taxi near the intersection and I got in and we did the whole travel pattern, starting with the House of Shen, Constellation '144', Kaiser's and the places she'd stopped at earlier in the day, in case she was looking for something specific and trying to make up her mind, doubling back.

  No go.

  At four o'clock I picked up a Taunus from Fleetway and went to the Standard office, back numbers department, giving them the date I needed. The report took some finding because the tourist trade is a major industry in Hong Kong and they like to feel that everything looks just as it does in the brochure.

  Tragic Death of British Visitor, page ten, one small photograph of George Henry Tewson, the same as the one I had in my briefing file and obviously from the same source, undistinguished, glasses, indefinite age. There wasn't anything I hadn't been told already. I asked if I could use their phone before I left but she wasn't in. The self-disgust about letting that poor little devil get caught in the machinery like that had so far kept my mind off the present situation. The present situation was that the key figure in the field was changing her routine tonight for the second time and it could be critically significant and I wasn't going to be there unless I tried everything in the book and had some luck as well.

  On my way back to the Cathay I stopped to buy a pair of Bushnell 7 X 50's with a 7 30' field and ultraviolet niters because Jade Imperial Mansion was a quarter of a mile from the hotel and I might risk holing up there for another few hours if the binoculars could give me a reasonable view of the entrance gates the Jensen normally used. There was a chemist's next door to the optical place and I went in and bought some more toothpaste, Neodens Safeguards your Health, more than you could say for the last lot.

  I parked the Taunus in St Paul's Hospital and walked down Cotton Path into Tung Lo Wan Road, crossing it and keeping on, going round past the theatre into Causeway Road, checking the windows of Room 39, shutters still closed.

  A gentleman had telephoned three times, they told me at the desk, a Mr. Chou. He hadn't left his number. It hadn't been Flower and it hadn't been Chiang and no one else knew me in the whole of Hong Kong. I said I was going out again this evening but I'd let them know when I left, so they wouldn't have to page me if Mr. Chou called again. Then I went upstairs.

  They must have been very quiet or the management would have heard about it by now. Every drawer was upside down and the carpet was off the floor and draped across the bed. They'd prised several boards up and stripped some of the wallpaper and turned off the pipe-tap in the bathroom and dragged the cistern away from the wall, taking down the air conditioner grilles, unscrewing the wall plugs and turning the wardrobe on its side to get at the bottom. The lamp brackets were on the floor with the wires pulled out of the swan-necks and the bathroom door handles were off and lying on the windowsill. The base was off the phone but it worked and I dialled and waited for ten rings but she didn't answer.

  It took an hour to check for booby traps, even though I didn't need to move more than a few things: clothes, shaver, toilet bag, so forth; the shoes weren't any good because they'd taken the heels off. I was sweating a lot by the time I'd finished (someone had slammed a door when I was picking up the shaver), but I'd decided to do it instead of just walking out and rekitting at Lane Crawford's because I wanted to know if they thought I was green enough to blow myself up in here, and to know if they'd rigged something for me anyway: if they hadn't, it could conceivably mean they were going to let me run till they could bring me down and interrogate. As a general rule you don't ferret your way into their operation by picking their locks, you do it by picking their minds.

  I tried again twice during the hour, ten rings each time, the cover line being I missed her and was she sure she couldn't make it tonight, oh well, have fun. If she answered, I was going to take the Taunus along Caroline Hill Road and work north and find somewhere convenient for starting the tag when the Jensen showed at the gates. She didn't answer.

  I was still drawing blank at 18.00 hours. Now that they'd been here again and Mr. Chou had started breathing down my neck I didn't feel like opening the shutters wide enough to take the 7 X 50's because they might have put a man on the peep down there or in a building nearby, and just the glint on the glasses could be fatal.

  The maids could come in any time now to turn down the bed and things wouldn't be easy for them so I took one of the suitcases and went down and checked out at the desk, very pleasant, yes, and what a wonderful view, but my office had called me back, another strike, yes, wouldn't it be excellent if they could only run things in England as they ran them in Hong Kong.

  Crossing the road to the hospital car park I felt the nape of my neck tingling. It was normal but uncomfortable and there was nothing I could do about it. They hadn't rigged anything for me but it didn't mean they might not use some other method when they were ready. The thing is, as soon as you start working in a sensitive field you're going to attract attention and as often as not you're going to be put on the opposition list, right at the top, if they think you look like getting in their way. The deeper you go into the tunnel, the more difficult it's going to be to come out again alive. It's no good digging a hole and waiting till they've gone because they're not going to go, and you can't run your mission by remaining immobile. So all you can do is settle for the situation and check every shadow, every sudden movement, and try to make sure there'll be time to duck. And of course ignore the snivelling little organism that's so busy anticipating what it's going to feel like with the top of the spine shot away, why don't you run for cover, trying to make you wonder why the hell you do it, why you have to live like this, you'll never see Moira again if you let them get you, trying to make you give it up when you know bloody well it's all there is in life: to run it so close to the edge that you can see what it's all about A chill at the nape of the neck. Ignore.

  Cerebrate: start worrying over something real, the way they'd switched tactics. As soon as I'd arrived on the island they'd got on to me and moved straight in for the kill, failing with me and succeeding with Flower and taking not the slightest interest in asking questions. Suddenly they'd decided to ask a whole lot of questions up there in Room 39, without even leaving anything terminal for me to walk into. I knew it wasn't from consideration for innocent persons: this was a Pekin operation and if a Hong Kong chambermaid went in there first and caught the blast it'd serve her right for having deserted the Daughters of the People's Liberation Army to work for the wicked capitalists across the water. One aspect was fascinating: did they really think anyone from London would leave his cypher key stuffed in a lamp bracket for them to find? They must be thinking of the Russians.

 
The Taunus was all right: I'd left traps. There wasn't any need to look under the facia but I looked just the same, from habit. The face was at the window as I straightened up.

  'Are you visiting the hospital?'

  A Chinese, nobody I knew.

  'No.'

  He wagged his head. 'Would you please not park here unless you are visiting hospital.'

  'All right.'

  'We have sometimes many people park here, and no room for --'

  'I won't do it again.'

  'Thank you. Hospital is for emergency, and if people park here, we cannot get ambulance up to doors, so —'

  'Oh, use a bloody shoe horn.'

  Start up and back out and turn, not at all polite, but it was beginning to look as if I'd missed the boat and I wasn't very happy. There were two chances left: ring every restaurant and supper club on the island, and set up a temporary base at the Golden Sands Hotel.

  It was in Telegraph Bay and there were some hill roads to it but I took the major route through Victoria and down past the university, peeling off along the meandering drive that led to the beach. The Golden Sands was long, low, exotic and recently built, with vines and creeper still trying to cover the pagodas and terrace walls. A small group of people were down on the private beach, playing with a dog; the only others I could see outside the place were a man and a woman stowing the sail of their boat at the jetty. Two or three motor-launches were throbbing in the channel, one of them leaving a wake that had curved away from nearer the shore, possibly from the jetty here.