Noble House

by James Clavell

  Brian Kwok.

  Always back to Brian Kwok.

  And always back to the 40,000 in used notes that he had found in his desk drawer; the one he always kept locked.

  Concentrate, he told himself, or you’ll slip. You’ll make a mistake. You can’t afford a mistake!

  He was weary and felt an overpowering dirtiness that soap and hot water would not cleanse away. With an effort he forced his eyes to seek his prey, his ears to hear the street sounds, and his nose to enjoy the food.

  He had just finished the bowl when he saw the American sailor. The man was thin and wore glasses and he towered over the Chinese pedestrians even though he walked with a slight stoop. His arm was around a street girl. She held an umbrella over them and was tugging at him.

  “No, not this way, baby,” she pleaded. “My room other way … unnerstan’?”

  “Sure, honey, but first we go this way then we’ll go your way. Huh? Come on, darlin’.”

  Armstrong hunched deeper into the shadows. He watched them approach, wondering if this was the one. The man’s accent was Southern and sweet-sounding and he was in his late twenties. As he strolled along the busy street he looked this way and that, seeking his bearings. Then Armstrong saw him spot the tailor’s shop on one corner of the alley that was called Pop-ting’s Handmade Suits, and, opposite it, a small, open-faced restaurant lit with bare bulbs and with a crudely written sign nailed to a post: WELCOME TO AMERICAN SAILORS. The bold column of Chinese characters over the door read: “A Thousand Years’ Health to Mao Tse-tung Restaurant.”

  “C’mon, honey,” the sailor said, brightening. “Let’s have a beer here.”

  “No good place, baby, better come my bar, heya? Bett—”

  “Goddamnit we’re having a beer here.” He went into the open shop and sat at one of the plastic tables, bulky in his raincoat. Sullenly she followed. “Beer. Two beers! San Miguel, huh? You savvy huh?”

  From where he sat, Armstrong could see them both clearly. One of the tables was filled with four coolies who noisily sucked noodles and soup into their mouths. They glanced at the sailor and the girl briefly. One made an obscene remark and the others laughed. The girl blushed, turning her back to them. The sailor hummed as he looked around carefully, sipping his beer, then stood up. “I gotta use the can.” Unerringly he went to the back through the flyblown string curtain, the counterman watching him sourly. Armstrong sighed and relaxed. The trap was sprung.

  In a moment the sailor returned. “C’mon,” he said, “let’s get outta here.” He drained his glass, paid, and they went off arm in arm again the way they had come.

  “You want more S’pore noodles?” the stall keeper asked Armstrong rudely, his hostile eyes just slits in his high-boned face.

  “No thanks. Just another beer.”

  “No beer.”

  “Fornicate you and all your line,” Armstrong hissed in perfect gutter Cantonese. “Am I a fool from the Golden Mountain? No, I’m a guest in your fornicating restaurant. Get me a fornicating beer or I’ll have my men slit your Secret Sack and feed those peanuts you call your treasure to the nearest dog!”

  The man said nothing. Sullenly he went to the next street stall and got a San Miguel and brought it back and set it on the counter, opening it. The other diners were still gaping at Armstrong. Abruptly he hawked loudly and spat and put his cold blue eyes on the man nearest him. He saw him shiver and look away. Uneasily the others went back to their bowls too, uncomfortable to be in the presence of a barbarian policeman who had the bad manners to swear so colloquially in their tongue.

  Armstrong eased more comfortably on the stool, then let his eyes range the road and the alley, waiting patiently.

  He did not have long to wait before he saw the small, squat chunky European coming up the alley, keeping to the side, stopping and peering into the storefront of a cheap shoe shop behind the street stalls that crowded the narrow roadway.

  Ah, he’s a professional, Armstrong thought, very pleased, knowing the man was using the glass as a mirror to case the restaurant. The man took his time. He wore a shapeless plastic raincoat and hat and appeared nondescript. His body was hidden for a moment as a coolie swayed past him with huge bundles on either end of the bamboo pole on his shoulders. Armstrong noticed his knotted calves, varicose-veined, as he watched the feet of the other man. They moved and he walked out of the alley, covered by the coolie, and did not stop, just continued up the road.

  He’s very good, the policeman thought admiringly, still having him in sight. This bugger’s done this before. Must be KGB to be this smart. Well, it won’t be long now, my fine fellow, before you’re hooked, he told himself without rancor, as a fisherman would seeing a fat trout teasing the bait.

  The man was shop-watching again. Come along, little fish.

  The man was acting just like a trout. He made several passes and went away and came back but always very carefully and without attracting attention. At last he went into the open-faced restaurant and sat down and ordered a beer. Armstrong sighed again, happy now.

  It seemed to take the man an interminable time before he, too, got up, asked where the toilet was, walked through the few diners and went under the bead curtain. In time he reappeared and went for his table. At once the four coolie diners fell on him from behind, pinioning his arms and holding him helpless, while another strapped a stiff high collar around his neck. Other diners, real customers, and not undercover SI police, gaped, one dropped his chopsticks, a couple fled and the others froze.

  Armstrong got up from his stool leisurely and walked over. He saw the tough-looking Chinese behind the counter take off his apron. “Shut up, you bastard,” the fellow said in Russian to the man who cursed and struggled impotently. “Evening, Superintendent,” he added to Armstrong with a sly grin. His name was Malcolm Sun, he was a senior agent, SI, and ranking Chinese on this 16/2. It was he who had organized the intercept and had paid off the cook who usually worked this shift and had taken his place.

  “Evening, Malcolm. You did very well.” Armstrong turned his attention to the enemy agent. “What’s your name?” he asked pleasantly.

  “Who you? Let me go … let go!” the man said in heavily accented English.

  “All yours, Malcolm,” Armstrong said.

  At once, Sun said in Russian, “Listen you mother-eater, we know you’re off the Ivanov, we know you’re a courier and you’ve just picked up a drop from the American off the nuclear carrier. We’ve already got the bastard in custody and you’d bet—”

  “Lies! You’ve made a mistake,” the man blustered in Russian. “I know nothing of any American. Let me go!”

  “What’s your name?”

  “You’ve made a mistake. Let me go!” A crowd of gaping, gawking onlookers was now surrounding the store.

  Malcolm Sun turned to Armstrong. “He’s a ripe one, sir. Doesn’t understand very good Russian. I’m afraid we’ll have to take him in,” he said with a twisted smile.

  “Sergeant, get the Black Maria.”

  “Yes sir.” Another agent went off quickly as Armstrong went closer. The Russian was gray-haired, a squat man with small, angry eyes. He was held perfectly with no chance of escape and no chance to put a hand into a pocket or into his mouth to destroy evidence, or himself.

  Armstrong searched him expertly. No manual or roll of film. “Where did you put it?” he asked.

  “I no understand!”

  The man’s hatred did not bother Armstrong. He bore him no malice, the man was just a target who had been trapped. I wonder who shopped this poor bugger who’s frightened to death, rightly, who’s now ruined with the KGB and with his own people forever and might as well be a dead man. I wonder why it’s our coup and not old Rosemont’s and his CIA boys? How is it we’re the ones who knew about the drop and not the Yanks? How is it Crosse got to know about this? All Crosse had told him was the where and the how and that the drop was going to be made by a sailor from the carrier and intercepted by someone off the Ivanov.r />
  “You’re in charge, Robert, and please, don’t make a balls up.”

  “I won’t. But please get someone else for Brian K—”

  “For the last time, Robert, you’re doing the Kwok interrogation and you’re seconded to SI until I release you. And if you bitch once more I’ll have you out of the force, out of Hong Kong, out of your pension and I hardly need remind you SI’s reach is very long. I doubt if you’d work again, unless you go criminal, and then God help you. Is that finally clear?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Good. Brian will be ready for you at six tomorrow morning.”

  Armstrong shivered. How impossibly lucky we were to catch him! If Spectacles Wu hadn’t come from Ning-tok—if the old amah hadn’t talked to the Werewolf—if the run on the bank—Christ, so many ifs. But then that’s how you catch a fish, a big fish. Pure, bloody, unadulterated luck most times. Jesus Christ, Brian Kwok! You poor bugger!

  He shivered again.

  “You all right, sir?” Malcolm Sun asked.

  “Yes.” Armstrong looked back at the Russian. “Where did you put the film, the roll of film?”

  The man stared back at him defiantly. “Don’t understand!”

  Armstrong sighed. “You do, too well.” The big black van came through the gawking crowd and stopped. More SIs got out. “Put him in and don’t let go of him,” Armstrong said to those holding him. The crowd watched and chattered and jeered as the man was frog-marched into the van. Armstrong and Sun got in after him and closed the door.

  “Off you go, driver,” Armstrong ordered.

  “Yes sir.” The driver let in his clutch easing through the crowds and joined the snarled traffic heading for Central HQ.

  “All right, Malcolm. You can begin.”

  The Chinese agent took out a razor-sharp knife. The Soviet man blanched.

  “What’s your name?” Armstrong asked, sitting on a bench opposite him.

  Malcolm Sun repeated the question in Russian.

  “D … Dimitri Metkin,” the man muttered, still held viselike by the four men and unable to move a finger or a toe. “Seaman, first class.”

  “Liar,” Armstrong said easily. “Go ahead, Malcolm.”

  Malcolm Sun put the knife under the man’s left eye and the man almost fainted. “That comes later, spy,” Sun said in Russian with a chilling smile. Expertly, with a deliberate malevolent viciousness, Sun rapidly sliced the raincoat away. Armstrong searched it very carefully as Sun used the knife deftly to cut away the man’s seaman’s jersey and the rest of his clothes until he was naked. The knife had not cut or even nicked him once. A careful search and re-search revealed nothing. Nor his shoes, the heels or the soles.

  “Unless it’s a microdot transfer and we’ve missed it so far, it must be in him,” Armstrong said.

  At once the men holding the Russian bent him over and Sun got out the surgical gloves and surgical salve and probed deeply. The man flinched and moaned and tears of pain seeped from his eyes.

  “Dew rieh loh moh,” Sun said happily. His fingers drew out a small tube of cellophane wrapping.

  “Don’t let go of him!” Armstrong rapped.

  When he was sure the man was secure he peered at the cylindrical package. Inside he could see the double-ended circles of a film cartridge. “Looks like a Minolta,” he said absently.

  Using some tissues he wrapped the cellophane carefully and sat down opposite the man again. “Mr. Metkin, you’re charged under the Official Secrets Act for taking part in an espionage act against Her Majesty’s Government and her allies. Anything you say will be taken down and used in evidence against you. Now, sir,” he continued gently, “you’re caught. We’re all Special Intelligence and not subject to normal laws, any more than your own KGB is. We don’t want to hurt you but we can hold you forever if we want, in solitary if we want. We would like a little cooperation. Just the answers to a few questions. If you refuse we will extract the information we require. We use a lot of your KGB techniques and we can, sometimes, go a little better.” He saw a flash of terror behind the man’s eyes but something told him this man would be hard to crack.

  “What’s your real name? Your official KGB name?”

  The man stared at him.

  “What’s your KGB rank?”

  The man still stared.

  Armstrong sighed. “I can let my Chinese friends have at you, old chum, if you prefer. They really don’t like you at all. Your Soviet armies ran all over Malcolm Sun’s village in Manchuria and wiped it out and his family. Sorry, but I really must have your official KGB name, your rank on the Sovetsky Ivanov and official position.”

  Another hostile silence.

  Armstrong shrugged. “Go ahead, Malcolm.”

  Sun reached up and jerked the ugly-looking crowbar from its clip and as the four men turned Metkin roughly onto his stomach and spread-eagled him, Sun inserted the tip. The man screamed. “Wait … wait…” he gasped in guttural English, “wait … I’m Dimitri…” Another scream. “Nicoli Leonov, major, political comissaaaar …”

  “That’s enough, Malcolm,” Armstrong said, astonished by the importance of their catch.

  “But sir …”

  “That’s enough,” Armstrong said harshly, deliberately protective as Sun was deliberately hostile and angrily slammed the crowbar back into its clips. “Pull him up,” he ordered, sorry for the man, the indignity of it. But he had never known the trick to fail to produce a real name and rank, if done at once. It was a trick because they would never probe deeply and the first scream was always from panic and not from pain. Unless the enemy agent broke at once they would always stop and then, at headquarters, put him through a proper monitored interrogation. Torture wasn’t necessary though some zealots used it against orders. This is a dangerous profession, he thought grimly. KGB methods are rougher, and Chinese have a different attitude to life and death, victor and vanquished, pain and pleasure—and the value of a scream.

  “Don’t take it badly, Major Leonov,” he said kindly when the others had pulled him up and sat him back on the bench, still holding him tightly. “We don’t want to harm you—or let you harm yourself.”

  Metkin spat at him and began to curse, tears of terror and rage and frustration running down his face. Armstrong nodded at Malcolm Sun who took out the prepared pad and held it firmly over Metkin’s nose and mouth.

  The heavy, sick-sweet stench of chloroform filled the stuffy atmosphere. Metkin struggled impotently for a moment, then subsided. Armstrong checked his eyes and his pulse to make sure he was not feigning unconsciousness. “You can let him go now,” he told them. “You all did very well. I’ll see a commendation goes on all your records. Malcolm, we’d better take good care of him. He might suicide.”

  “Yes.” Sun sat back with the others in the swaying van. It was grinding along in the heavy traffic irritatingly, stopping and starting. Later he said what was in all their minds. “Dimitri Metkin, alias Nicoli Leonov, major, KGB, off the Ivanov, and her political commissar. What’s a big fish like that doing on a small job like this?”

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  7:05 P.M.:

  Linc Bartlett chose his tie carefully. He was wearing a pale blue shirt and light tan suit and the tie was tan with a red stripe. A beer was open on the chest of drawers, the can pearled from the cold. All day he had debated with himself whether he should call for Orlanda or not call for her, whether he should tell Casey or not tell Casey.

  The day had been fine for him. First, breakfast with Orlanda and then out to Kai Tak to check his airplane and make sure he could use it, for the flight with Dunross to Taipei. Lunch with Casey, then the excitement of the exchange. After the exchange had closed he and Casey had caught the ferry to Kowloon. Canvas storm shades lashed against the rain shut out the view and made the deck claustrophobic and the crossing not pleasant. But it was pleasant with Casey, his awareness of her heightened by the knowledge of Orlanda, and the dilemma.

  “Ian’s had it, hasn’t he, Li
nc?”

  “I’d think so, sure. But he’s smart, the battle’s not over yet, only the first attack.”

  “How can he get back? His stock’s at bargain prices.”

  “Compared to last week, sure, but we don’t know his earning ratio. This exchange’s like a yo-yo—you said so yourself—and dangerous. Ian was right in that.”

  “I’ll bet he knows about the 2 million you put up with Gornt.”

  “Maybe. It’s nothing he wouldn’t do if he had the chance. You meeting Seymour and Charlie Forrester?”

  “Yes. The Pan Am flight’s on time and I’ve a limo coming. I’ll leave soon as we get back. You think they’ll want dinner?”

  “No. They’ll be jet-lagged to hell.” He had grinned. “I hope.” Both Seymour Steigler III, their attorney, and Charlie Forrester, the head of their foam division, were socially very hard going. “What time’s their flight in?”

  “4:50. We’ll be back around six.”

  At six they had had a meeting with Seymour Steigler—Forrester was unwell and had gone straight to bed.

  Their attorney was a New Yorker, a handsome man with wavy black-gray hair and dark eyes and dark rings under his eyes. “Casey filled me in on the details, Linc,” he said. “Looks like we’re in great shape.”

  By prior arrangement, Bartlett and Casey had laid out the whole deal to their attorney, excluding the secret arrangement with Dunross about his ships.

  “There’re a couple of clauses I’d want in, to protect us, Linc,” Steigler said.

  “All right. But I don’t want the deal renegotiated. We want a wrap by Tuesday, just as we’ve laid it out.”

  “What about Rothwell-Gornt? Best I should feel them out, huh? We can kite Struan’s.”

  “No,” Casey had said. “You leave Gornt and Dunross alone, Seymour.” They had not told Steigler about Bartlett’s private deal with Gornt either. “Hong Kong’s more complicated than we thought. Best leave it as it is.”