Then, out of the back of his brain, it came to him with the hot brilliance of a 1000-watt bulb. Fan Su had been selling herself, selling that lovely body, to buy her way in and out of China! Nick stubbed out his cigarette and immediately lit another one. He stared at the ceiling through the blue smoke coils. She would never tell him, of course, or admit it, and he would never mention it. But that had to be it!
When he had first met her, back in Hong Kong, she had been going in and out of China several times a month. Crossing the narrow bridge over the Sham Chun in the guise of a peasant woman taking produce into the city. She had said then that it could not last forever, that she was sure to be caught one day.
Yet she was still using the same route. When they parted tomorrow she was going to fly to Hong Kong and go back into China. Her cover on this trip was that of a social worker for WRO — World Relief Organization — and that passport was good enough for the Hong Kong police. Then she would disappear into the teeming shack cities, or among the water people, and come out as the peasant girl.
Killmaster shook his head. No. It was only his intuition but he trusted it. Fan Su had been caught. And she had bought her way out, at least temporarily, with her body. It was not a new thing in China, or in any part of the world, for that matter. In China it was just another version of the «squeeze» — the graft that made the world go round. Paid in flesh.
He wondered how far she was compromised, and with whom. It would be an official, fairly high up, but what sort of an official? A fool in love? A libertine getting his fill before he hauled her in? Some cunning bastard playing it double on orders from the top?
Nick got up and started pacing the floor. Damn it! He didn't even know that Undertong was involved — she might have been caught for something minor. Like smuggling ball point pens, or cigarettes, into China. At times they were better than money on the mainland.
No matter. Caught she was. He was positive of it. And she didn't want him to know. He shook his head in wonderment at the oddities of all women — danger, yes, risk their pretty skins for a cause, yes. Take chances that would curl your hair. Defiant, ashamed of nothing. But when it came to a simple physical act it was different. He knew what ailed her now. She was afraid, of course. Nervous, tense, plain scared. Who wasn't in this game?
The real trouble was that she now considered herself a whore. Forever a whore. And she was afraid he would find out.
As he picked up the red phone and put his call through to Washington, Nick wondered if Fan Su was in love with him — really in love. For both their sakes he hoped not.
The red phone was an automatic scramble. Delia Stokes, the most private of private secretaries, answered immediately.
Nick said, "Hi, sweetheart. Is he there?"
Delia knew his voice, but in one of her rare facetious moments she said, "Who is calling, please? And in reference to what?"
Nick Carter grinned at his end of the line. "Can't catch you with your panties down, can I? Okay, martinet! In reference to Yellow Peril and Yellow Venus. All right?" Hawk, on further thought, and in the interests of clarity, had broken the mission into two parts: Yellow Venus was Undertong and Shanghai and Fan Su; Yellow Peril was the Chumbi job for the CIA. Now, as he waited for Hawk to come on the line, Nick softly whistled a tune from an old show.
"Well?" Hawk sounded tired, his voice harsher than usual. It was late in Washington, and the old man hadn't been getting much sleep. "What is it this time, son? No hitches, I hope?"
It would never do to let Hawk know about the emotional problem that was fretting Nick. The old man didn't understand emotional problems. He was capable of killing the mission on the spot.
So Nick said, "I've got it pretty well worked out, sir. Let me give it to you in order, okay?" He picked up a sheaf of papers from the table, done in Fan Su's neat hand while Nick dictated.
"Go ahead."
"I'll need a few things," Nick said. He had to smile as he continued. "Like a submarine, an aircraft carrier, and an AXE plane dummied up to look like a Chinese commercial craft. That's for a starter, sir."
Hawk did not make the sarcastic remark that Nick expected. He only grunted and said, "I guess we can handle that okay. In fact, there is more interest in this thing at the White House than I had expected. We can have anything we want. Any cooperation from any service."
Killmaster was a little startled, but pleased. "Like that, sir?"
"Like that. I sold him a bill of goods." The fatigue left the old man's voice. Nick visualized an old gray cat purring over a saucer of cream. Hawk added: "They'll try to get their licks in tomorrow, of course, and there is never enough to go around, but right now you can think big. So?"
Nick Carter began to read from the papers in his hand.
A quarter of an hour later Hawk said, "I'll say one thing for you, son. When you think big you really think big. But that's all right. Can do. What's a few million dollars these days!"
"The timing will have to be exact," said Nick. "Split second. Dead on the nose or I'm dead. I figure a week from right now, sir, I should be in Shanghai."
"Better you than me," his boss said with his usual candor. "Latest report is that the city is boiling. The Red Guards and the peasants are fighting, nobody seems to know what the People's Army is doing, and things are in a hell of a mess generally. But that should work for you — their security won't be so tight."
Nick agreed that this was probably so.
"The sooner the better now," Hawk told him. "CIA says that their pet satellite tells them the ChiComs are getting their tunnel ready for winter. Stopping work, that is. Could be that in a week or so they'll pull a lot of personnel and troops out and leave only a skeleton crew for the winter. That should help, boy."
"I'll take all I can get, sir."
"CIA has also sent me a batch of new pictures from their satellite. They've got the Prop B pretty well spotted, they think. An off-shoot of the tunnel that leads back into a mountain — but you'll see all that yourself. I'll send the blowups along with the photo interpretation."
Nick picked up a card from the table. He had made a special note to himself. "Sir, I'd like you to send Charles from Makeup, too. I've got a feeling I'm going to need the best."
"I'll do it." Hawk chuckled. "If he can make a Chinese out of you he will be the best!"
"I'll only have to pass at night. And then only for a few hours at a time. Be sure that Charles doesn't forget to bring along the hump, sir."
"Don't worry about it. Charles knows his business. You'll get your hump. Now go over it again from the start."
At the end of half an hour Hawk said, "I think maybe we've got it. Things will come up, naturally, but we expect that. But I think we've got the main problems whipped. All but the base near Tibet. That worries me. Nobody in Washington seems to know much about this Teng Fa. How old did Venus say he was?"
Kill master glanced into the bedroom. She was sleeping peacefully now. Fan Su — Venus, to Hawk — had come up with a rather startling answer to the worrisome, and most important, problem of a base camp near the Chumbi Valley. You could not simply drop an agent in at night on a barren mountain and expect results. Especially not in Tibet with winter coming on.
He repeated to Hawk all that Fan Su had told him. "Teng is over a hundred, sir. Last of the old warlords, I take it. Back in the early days he ran southwest China as he pleased. When Chiang Kai-shek came along in the twenties, Teng joined him for a time. Later he switched over to the Commies. Then he went back over to Chiang. Typical Chinese deal, I suppose. Silver bullets, you know. Anyway, as Venus tells me, when the ChiComs took over for good they let the old man retire instead of killing him. He couldn't hurt them, so they let him save face and made a little for themselves. I imagine they keep an eye on him, but not too closely. After all the guy is over a hundred. So now he lives in a mud castle about fifty miles outside of Chungtiene — that's about as far southwest as you can get in China, and still be in China — and bothers nobody and nobody bothers
him. However…" Nick laughed, knowing what Hawk's response would be. "Venus tells me that the old boy still keeps concubines! He's very old-fashioned, it seems."
To his amazement Hawk also laughed. "Maybe he keeps them, yes, but what does he do with them? But never mind that — this base problem has been worrying me. It's a bastard, all right. But we don't have any alternatives. Not in China. If you were going in from the other direction, yes, but you aren't. So it looks like it will have to be this Teng. Of course he might turn you in."
"That's hardly likely, sir. For one thing, he's senile, and I doubt he understands much of what is going on. Another, and most important, is that Teng is Venus's great-godfather. Or something like that. I don't really understand it myself, but it is all linked up with the Chinese ancestral and patriarchal system. So Venus can claim some relationship) — that and the laws of hospitality — I said he was old-fashioned — should be enough for a few days. All I'll need to get organized. I think, sir, that we'll just have to play it that way."
Hawk sighed audibly. "I think you're right. Near Chungtiene, you say? Wait a minute, son."
While his boss was consulting a map, Nick lit another cigarette and glanced into the bedroom. She was still sleeping.
Hawk came back on the line. "You'll still be over five hundred miles from the Chumbi!"
Killmaster said that he was only too well aware of that fact.
"No help for it, sir. I can't get much closer without tipping the mission — and there just isn't another base! It has to be the old man and Chungtiene. We're really lucky to have that. If the Sikkim people do their part and pick us up and drop us just right, I should be able to bring it off. I'll give CIA their Prop B — in little pieces."
It was like Hawk, and Killmaster, that neither mentioned what was in their minds — getting out after completion of mission. That timing would have to be split second, too. But working with AXE made you fatalistic — you either did or you didn't.
They talked for another five minutes, during which time Nick came to a decision. He really hadn't meant to mention it to Hawk, but now decided that he'd better.
"It's probably borrowing trouble," he said, "and not too important right now, but it might help in the future. Venus tells me that she, and this goes for all of Undertong, want no part of Chiang Kai-shek. They won't even accept help from him, as desperate as they are, so you can see they mean business. They consider Chiang a reactionary fascist, sir, and that he'll sell out the revolution if he gets in on it. Her words were that Chiang will 'try to put the genie back in the bottle. I thought that perhaps you'd like to pass that on to the other people."
There was a long pause. Then Hawk laughed, a derisive sound. "There isn't going to be any revolution, and we know it. Don't tell Venus I said it, though. I don't want any more complications than I have to have, and there are plenty right now. But I'll pass it on to Political Section for what it's worth. We'll cross those worries when we come to them. So forget it — that all?"
"That's all, sir. It's go in the morning, then?"
"It is go. At eight sharp. Get Venus on the plane for Hong Kong and you get over to Korea. I'll be in constant touch until you board the submarine in Pusan. Until you're actually on the Chinese mainland the situation will be Fluid State. Goodbye, son. And watch it. This is going to be a mean one."
"Goodbye, sir."
Killmaster mixed himself a tall Scotch and soda at the little bar. He was remembering the girl's words: "Mei yu fa tzu." It can't be done!
It could be done. Given luck, and guts and determination, it could be done. Especially the luck part. He remembered Hawk calling New York two days ago — three now? — and telling him that he had won another Gold Coss.
Nick gathered up the papers and fed them into the electric shredder wastebasket. His grin was wry. The Chinese admired ingenuity and courage. If he brought this one off, maybe old Mao would award him the Order of the Brilliant Jade. Posthumously.
Carrying his drink, he went into the bedroom. Dark eyes peeked at him through very slight epicanthic folds. Fan Su was as near a «round-eye» as an Oriental could get.
Nick sat on the bed and began to explain matters to her. At the moment she was not interested. She curled a soft arm around his neck.
"I was dreaming of the jade stick," she whispered. "Now make it real."
Chapter 7
The eastern sector of what was formerly the International Settlement, especially around the south bend of the Whangpoo and just below the famous Bund, is a heavily industrialized part of Shanghai. It has never really recovered from the depredations of the Japanese invasion. Along both shores of Soochow Greek, where a great horde of water people exist on sampans, there are still many ruined and moldering factories. This part of Shanghai, as well as the Old City, is a welter of narrow streets and paths, a festering stew that harbors both criminals and poor alike in huge numbers. By day the police and even the Army travel in groups of not less than four; by night the sector is left to the denizens who come out of their burrows to make a living as best they can. These latter, not without logic, are known to the police as the "night people."
Killmaster had been in Shanghai four days. Too long. He and Fan Su, along with a dozen members of Undertong, were living in the stinking, rat-infested basement of a ruined cotton factory. Things had gone well at first. A United States submarine, Snark II, had made the run down from Pusan without incident. Nick Carter, now in heavy disguise, and a cargo worth a million dollars had been put safely ashore on a deserted beach somewhere in the vast alluvial delta of the Yangtze. Fifty men, commanded by Fan Su, had appeared like ghosts out of the moonless night to greet him. Nick had been impressed. Fan Su, wearing the neat uniform of a Red Guard girl, had been all crisp efficiency; any resemblance to the girl who had shared his bed so recently was entirely missing.
Within an hour after the Snark had submerged, Nick and the girl were on their way to Shanghai in a junk. The cargo had vanished into a dozen rattletrap trucks. Nick and the girl retained only two of the transceivers, about a hundred thousand dollars in gold cubes — actually the size of a boullion cube — and a small suitcase containing one million dollars in new yuans. This paper money, in small notes, was exquisite counterfeit, and CIA wanted to try it out.
Fan Su had objected at once to the counterfeit. She was very angry. Undertong, she blazed, was trying to start a revolution — not undermine the country's economy! Killmaster could see her point. He knew that Hawk had been pressured into including the queer money in the shipment. Somewhere in the south channel of the Yangtze he consigned the counterfeit to the deep, smiling as he visualized the reactions of the Deputy Director, and others at Langley, had they seen this end to their experiment.
They had gone to ground safely in the smashed cotton factory. Nick had tested the transceiver, cunningly made to resemble a transistor radio that might be carried by any affluent, or lucky, Red Guard. He had worked Snark, very briefly, and both send and reception had been Five. Loud and clear.
Then luck turned all sour. Po-Choy, Fan Su's half-brother, was captured while fighting with a group of peasants in the southern suburb of Nantou. He was being tortured and he was talking. New arrests were being made almost hourly. Wall posters were screaming. Po-Choy's confession had touched off a new madness in the Red Guards. They had beaten off the peasants in the suburbs and then turned on the city itself in a frenzy of burning, looting, raping and killing.
Rumors were as thick as fleas on a pariah dog. Runners were constantly arriving at the cellar with stories of new outrages: hands had been cut off, ears, noses. A merchant had been beaten to death because he could not quote correctly from Mao's little red book. There had been a beheading in Karl Marx Square and Red Guards had played football with the head. There was talk of mobilizing the People's Militia to restrain the Red Guards. There was talk of bringing in large units of the People's Army to put them both down. There was talk. And more talk.
Killmaster chafed. Until now he had not given
commands or interfered in any way, though he was Chief of Mission and Fan Su understood that. But four days was long enough to spend in Shanghai. He had seen what he had come to see. Fan Su, in spite of all the chaos, had made her arrangements. And an American carrier was waiting, steaming in slow circles, two hundred miles out in the China Sea. It was time to go.
He glanced across the gloomy cellar at the girl. She was talking at the moment to a man called Wong Chao-tien, one of her chief lieutenants in the city. He was a skimpy little man wearing a tee shirt and black pajama pants. He had no shoes. His hair was long and greasy, held back by a dirty sweat cloth.
Nick watched them talking. Bad news, he thought. Worse than anything yet. He could tell by the droop of the girl's shoulders, by the way she had seized Wong's arm and shaken him. It was, intuition told him, news that was going to prove dangerous for someone. Nick shrugged his big shoulders, feeling the artificial hump shift ever so slightly as he did so. He admired the job that Charles, of AXE makeup, had done on the hump, but it was bothersome. But it did the job — it cut the AXEman down to size, twisting and contorting his big perfect body so that he did not stand out. That and the dark stain, the glued-on wig over his shaven scalp, the few long wispy hairs implanted in his chin and upper lip — these all permitted him to get by as a Chinese. In the dark and if nobody looked too closely. He had a perfect set of papers whipped up by Documents, so old and filthy and tattered that not even the most impatient of officials would have waded through them.
Best of all was the dark yellow stain. It was indelible and allowed him to shave each day.
"It will just have to wear off," Charles had told Nick. "You'll have a piebald look for a time, sir. And the more dirt you let accumulate over it the better."
Killmaster had managed to accumulate the dirt. And all that went with it. He was scratching incessantly. Already he had begun to look forward to the end of the mission not so much as destroying Prop B as to having a long and luxurious bath. Nick knew from experience that on a mission small things took on a new importance, like a combat soldier more concerned with keeping his feet dry than his head down.
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