The Girl From Peking

by George B Mair

  Grant had enough experience to believe almost anything, but Tania’s story was running near the bone. The President must have had a major shock when he found a naked female sleeping in his own room.

  ‘Not at all.’ Tania was almost purring with satisfaction. ‘He wakened, stood up and stretched himself and then turned round. I was wearing long false eyelashes but still pretending to be asleep and could see him perfectly well, because remember that the divan was in a darkish corner. I jumped up with a sort of embarrassed scream only when he reached for a bell, and while I tried to struggle into clothes I asked him what he was doing in the lady’s retiring room. Believe me,’ she added softly, ‘I sounded very angry and very indignant indeed.’

  Grant almost laughed. Only Tania—or Jacqueline—could have got away with that.

  ‘He hesitated . . . and was lost,’ the girl continued, ‘and when he began to explain that there had been a mistake I knew that I had won. I apologised for having taken the wrong door and said I had been tired.’ She laughed again. A deep throated laugh of total self-confidence. ‘Then he admitted that at his age parties had begun to tire him too and he helped me into my dress.’

  ‘I’ll bet he did.’ Grant could just see the scene and imagine the photographer still busy outside a window. ‘And he would believe that he hadn’t seen you because he himself had been half asleep when he arrived.’

  ‘Correct,’ said Tania. ‘It was really very simple. But one thing is for sure. He will never be able to explain it away.’

  Grant’s eyebrows wrinkled in disbelief. ‘Wrong.’ He snapped. ‘The photographer is now dead and his photographs are at my own H.Q.’

  She opened a compact with the name Guerlain in gold across the lid and covered bruises which had begun to mark her lips. ‘That is a pity.’ Her words were almost commonplace, but she was angry enough to kill. And he also knew that she had taken him at his word. ‘So you guessed what was happening.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And who did the killing?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘How and when?’

  ‘With a Shebaba to his neck and poison.’

  ‘But where?’ The woman’s eyes were hard as flint.

  ‘On the roof. It was the only place he could go to since the grounds were thick with guards. You see,’ he added, ‘you made a mistake when you used that smoke bomb. It was useful to distract the guard outside His Excellency’s private room, but it alerted everyone else. Your camera wallah had nowhere else to go. So I met him on the roof.’

  ‘Where he died?’

  ‘He was killed and we’ve got the photographs.’

  ‘So my work has gone for nothing?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ Grant decided to play his hand to the limit. She was in the mood to talk, and the men behind her were becoming just that percentage off-guard which might make all the difference. ‘How did you get on with the Prime Minister? You were going to lead the conversation, have it monitored, probably through that little wrist watch, which was bound to be held fairly near your mouths while you were dancing. Will your editors be able to fake a convincing conversation to dub on to the movies?’

  The woman hesitated. Grant was already as good as dead or at least he was her prisoner and nothing could now prevent his being removed according to schedule. What had she to lose by talking? And her vanity had been stung. It would at least be something to prove that he had failed to scoop the whole pool. ‘He talked,’ she said briefly. ‘My people can use what was said. They can turn it into dynamite. And the movies are superb. No one could guess that it wasn’t the Prime Minister. Britain, at least, will have to do as we say. And the Prime Minister will either have to use his power to force a cabinet decision to get us into U.N.O. or else we’ll break him.’

  Grant was playing two games in the same breath. Winning time and trying to know the worst. ‘The Prime Minister is exceptional,’ he said at last. ‘He grew up the hard way. He is the first dedicated Premier Britain has had who didn’t jump out of the traditional establishment. He fought his way up from the bottom and my bet is he’ll fight his way through anything. In fact he would go back to the bottom before he did anything dishonourable. He’s got guts, and he won’t fall for that one.’

  Tania smiled. ‘So you say. Others think he likes power, that he wants to be loved and that he wants to see China in U.N.O. anyhow.’

  Grant saw one gun begin to waver as the man’s eyes wandered round the room while the other was staring at Tania’s buttocks, moulded like young pumpkins by the skin-tight contours of her gown. The windows behind dropped sheer to the main road and each man was standing in front of glass protected only by thin gauze curtains. Tania was less than nine feet away and standing almost dead centre between them.

  He leaned back in his chair and studied the end of his flattish cigarette. It was at least an even chance that he could come out alive. But it would take more than luck. ‘So we draw even. One stroke each. And a lot of time ahead to settle the match.’

  She shook her head, remembering what her chief had once said. ‘The match is settled. The President will now be assassinated and his probable successor is already in our pocket—or can be made to go into our pocket. We still win.’

  Grant eased his legs and gripped the floor covering with his heels. The trick he had in mind had taken months to perfect. It depended on the strength of thigh and abdominal muscles trained to pivot on outstretched legs, but with a speed fast enough to beat a gun to the draw. And chances were trebled if he could cause even a split second diversion.

  ‘What happened to Madame Guignot?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She pointed, almost unconsciously, towards the two men. ‘My friends are booked in on this floor. All very normal. And it will stay all very normal to the end.’

  ‘Why?’ He corrected himself abruptly. ‘Or rather how?’

  ‘Because you are going to walk downstairs and enter a car parked near the door.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘Just like that,’ she agreed. ‘You see,’ she added, ‘the cigarettes you’ve been smoking weren’t handed over without thought. I chose each one of them myself and they were loaded with just enough dope to make you lose that wonderful self-control which you pride yourself on. The drug lessens muscle nerve co-ordination and if you tried to start anything you would find that you are too slow to pull it off. Or will be,’ she added, again glancing at her watch, ‘because it does take just a little while to work and we aren’t quite ready.’

  ‘And if I spoke to Madame Guignot on the way out no doubt she would be shot?’

  ‘You sum things up beautifully.’

  ‘So first the car. And then where?’ Grant knew that if what the girl said was true he would have to move fast. He allowed his calf muscles to tense, and fastened his heels firmly against the floor.

  Tania was still speaking when the chance came for which he had been waiting. A car with headlights roared down rue Pigalle and its brakes screamed against tarmac as it stopped to give free way to another road maniac doing at least eighty kilometres along rue la Bruyère. The men glanced momentarily through the window and Grant catapulted forwards with a ferocity which knocked Tania flat on her back as he struck her dead on. At the same time he grabbed each man by the throat and sheer momentum hurled them against the glass. Their knees buckled against the window ledges and then he gave a final thrust. The glass fragmented as they crashed through and he heard the muted thump of their bodies striking the sidewalk. A shot went off while one was falling and the bullet smacked against stone to ricochet back into the room and bury itself in the ceiling.

  He heard Tania struggle to her feet. His blow had taken her full on and she was winded, but she was standing between himself and the door, her arms loose by her side and with an attitude of professionalism which made him hesitate. He hated striking women, and especially he hated the idea of fighting Tania. He knew that police must be already on the way and that she hadn’t a chance of escape when she almost casually
lifted a hand and ran it through her hair. She seemed suddenly to have become tired, and Grant was watching with a flatly neutral appraisal when, abruptly, she withdrew the last clip which still anchored part of it in position and flung the slender metal with an off-beat downward movement across the room. He hardly saw it coming and was never able to reconstruct exactly how she did it, but his reaction time was still above average and he threw himself sideways as it nicked his ear. He remembered hearing it thwack into the door of the wardrobe, and then she flung herself towards the window, kicking him with her heel on the way past: a blow which gashed his thigh and ripped his blue black silk pants. It was only later that he discovered how she had a mechanical contrivance built into the side of each heel which would cut like a razor, and it was only later that he realised how close he had been to death. Tania could use her shoes almost as well as she could throw a knife, and her hair-clip was part knife, but designed for stabbing. As a throwing instrument it was poor, but even with that she had rated an outer.

  He moved forwards while the girl stood rock still, marking his every movement, until, with a speed which verged on being incredible she tackled him around the knees and sank her fist into his crutch, pulling at flesh with a force which left him sick with pain.

  He doubled up and felt his head crash against her skull. There was a flare of blue black mistiness before his eyes and then he gripped her by the throat, jerking her head back with a violence just short of what he would have used to break her neck. He felt her hands go limp and the searing pain in his crutch lessened to a blinding ache, but in the same second she thrust the long nail of her index finger into the skin of his neck. It was sharpened and filed to the cutting edge of a knife. He was later to discover that it was sharp enough to cut wood, and he felt her deliberately rip it along the skin as a spurt of warm blood jetted against her chest. He saw the stain soak into her evening gown, and a smear streaked across her cheek as he butted her again and fumbled for her wrists. She beat him by a split second, gathered her hands together under her chin and then shot her fingers forward, each nail a cutting weapon aimed for his face. Even then he saw that her features were carved as though from marble, and her control of every passing second was proof enough that she was an expert in his own class. But an expert where weight had ceased to matter. An expert who could give four stones but still come out top through self-control and precision efficiency.

  He threw himself backwards and felt her fingers crease his hair.

  Forward momentum threw her right on top of him and he rolled sideways as her knee flexed to thrust deep into his abdomen. Her eyes were wary now and he grunted with satisfaction as he heard her yelp with pain when her kneecap missed and struck bluntly against wood. But before he could fix a Boston she had vaulted a divan and climbed on the window ledge. He hesitated, sure that she was going to jump for it, and then she swung outwards, grinning with satisfaction as she swarmed up a drain-pipe two metres ahead of him.

  Crowds were gathering in the street below. Police cars arrived and Grant could see a figure being lifted on to a stretcher. But that was only the fleeting picture of a split second. For the rest his eyes were clamped on the figure above him and on these limbs clawing like a cat against the stone work while she gripped the iron drain-pipe with fingers which fastened like rubber suckers as she neared the roof and wriggled on to the slates. He had another eight or nine feet to go and she had increased her lead. But instead of running she seized a tile, wrenched it free, and with three or four blows cut the drain-pipe from its attachment to the eaves gutter. She was laughing as she forced the thing away from the wall, and Grant began to sway as it creaked backwards in a wobbling arc. The street moved beneath him as the drain-pipe tilted until he was wobbling almost halfway between the houses on either side. His fingers were drenched with sweat and blood oozing from his neck when the thing began to crack. He lurched downwards, dropping ten feet or more and then jerking for a last few seconds when the pipe finally fractured. It did so with a jerk which flung him towards the other side of the road, and then he was falling free as window after window flashed past him and the figures on the street grew in size like characters focussed by a zoom lens.

  It was the end! One part of his brain remembered that flashes of his whole life ought now to be rippling past him in a kaleidoscope of memory. But instead he felt only a resigned bitterness with a longing for just one more chance to live.

  And then he saw it! The still outstretched sun awning of a corner shop below. He forced himself to try and alter direction, and managed a double back somersault which ended by him striking the canvas with the full length of his body. It broke his fall and he jarred with the violence of impact before the canvas began to rip, until slowly he slithered through the rent on to the sidewalk.

  As he dropped that last seven feet he remembered an airman dropping free who fell literally on top of another’s parachute, slithering down until he was able to clutch at the harness. And the two men had landed safely! He recalled also a surgeon in Scotland who once fell out of an aircraft near Dunblane and landed on a pine forest thick with snow. He too had been saved by the sheerest fluke.

  But his own escape had been the tightest thing in his career and he now knew for certain that Tania was no Jacqueline. Jacqueline had been a comparative weakling. Good on the dance floor or a tennis court. Terrific for an hour in bed or nine holes on the golf course. But with none of that self-control or almost primitive savagery of this other woman.

  He rubbed his neck. The bleeding had stopped, but an unknown gendarme held him for a moment while an ambulance man wound a bandage over the wound. Grant remembered shouting that he was okay, that for crissake would they let him get the hell out of it.

  He remembered flashing his carte d’identité and then he was free. She had to touch ground somewhere, and he guessed that she would do it the easy way. There would be no romp down a drain-pipe, but entry through some roof-light and a swift exit from street level.

  He again showed his special badge to an inspector who listened to every word without interrupting once, which for a Frenchman was a miracle in itself, and within five minutes the block was surrounded.

  But Grant’s brain was now ticking over with that computer-like efficiency which seemed to motivate it during every emergency, and already he realised that until she had ‘passed’ the bug which had been swallowed Tania was still traceable . . . once they had got onto her wavelength.

  These new transmitting devices came in many forms. One type could be concentrated into a capsule no larger than a finger tip. But each and every one had to be tuned to a certain frequency, and this frequency, to be effective and easily traced, must be on a different wavelength from any local or area broadcasting station.

  He raced to a telephone inside the hotel and phoned Professor Juin. Speaking in Arabic he rapped out the message. ‘Get a squad of cars on to the scene and have them sound the air. Get a bearing. But get it fast. Get two bearings and trace her to a defined area. Get three and pinpoint her to a yard.’

  He arranged that the technicians in charge would report direct to H.Q. while he tried to figure out what he himself would have done under similar circumstances.

  Until he began to feel drunk.

  The drug!

  Emotion . . . or something . . . may have slowed down its effect. Or perhaps Tania had misjudged the dose. But for sure it was working now.

  He felt lightheaded, and as he hung up the phone his speech began to slur. He just wanted to be away from it all. Away from people. Away from shouting policemen. Away even from Madame Guignot who was fluttering about him, anxiously trying to do something.

  He forced himself to be polite and limped outside. Rue Pigalle was a one-way street and car lights were blinding. He turned round and began to walk up-hill. Better with the lights behind him. He stumbled across two intersections and passed a group of laughing women who jeered when he refused to stop.

  Somewhere along the line he remembered a place at the top o
f the hill. There were night-clubs and things, and he had once known a girl there. She had taken him to some hotel or other. Place Pigalle had several hotels. This one was near a corner and on the way to Sacré Cœur. One could see the lights of ‘Eves de Paris’ reflected on water and it had been fun to watch the tourists as they eyed calculating women in every second doorway.

  And there had been a Metro station nearby!

  Place Pigalle was convenient.

  While deep down inside something told him that people didn’t ask questions.

  He forced himself on, ignoring everyone, until, at last, he reached the Place. A coloured girl joined him and smiled.

  He liked her smile.

  ‘You come and make love with me, darling?’ Her voice was soft and he liked her deep husky contralto.

  He nodded.

  ‘A short time or all night?’

  He forced himself again to speak. ‘All night.’

  ‘Cost you ten mille?’