"Maybe I should let them. It may be the only way to get into the Black House."
"But you wouldn't live a day!" she protested. "You know how L-5 wants to get you. Oh, Sam—Sam, I want "
"When Hao returns, send him in to me."
He stretched out on the bed and slept. He had long ago learned to be patient in his business; but much of the work was slow and tedious, the painful gathering of information and resources. As a boy in the Louisiana bayous, he had often gone hunting with his grandfather, and the old gentleman had taught him how to wait for his quarry, to hold back until the precise moment when the chance for success was at an optimum. But this was different. He felt that this waiting was being forced upon him, and that he was playing the enemy's game by the delay, although he could not yet identify the enemy, or even know the game he was playing. His objective was to rescue or silence the defecting General Chien. But he could not reach the man, or see any way to do so; and no matter which way he turned, he was up against the blank walls of the Black House. To try to scale them at night would be suicidal. To give himself up, just to gain entry, was equally foolish. The Black House people comprised the most efficient espionage operation in China—perhaps in all the world.
But how he might have Tai Ma.
It was almost midnight when Hao appeared. The monk was dubious when Durell described his plan.
"Yes, I know where Tai Ma lives," Hao said. "But it is as impossible to reach him there as in the Black House."
"It must be done," Durell said.
"Yes, I agree to that now." Hao meditated a moment "Buddha, in his wisdom, made man intelligent—less strong than many animals, but with a mind made to conquer without the use of fangs or talons." He paused. "We must use the girl."
"Jasmine? Yes, if we can."
Hao smiled. "Tai Ma likes beautiful women."
They called in Jasmine and told her what to do. Her face changed subtly, and Durell knew she was recalling her early years in San Francisco when she was a child sold to an elderly merchant, followed by her abduction to Singapore where she was forced to entertain as a prostitute. He knew she had hoped that was all behind her, and he watched her draw a deep breath; he could not read beyond the pain that clouded her dark, almond eyes.
"You don't have to do it, Jasmine," he said.
"I will. I want to." She smiled grimly. "It's my one qualification, isn't it?"
"Don't feel that way. In this business "
"I don't mind," she interrupted. "I'm not good for much else, in your eyes, it seems."
He didn't argue about it. They discussed the problem, then Hao made some phone calls and said they would have to wait until dawn. Jasmine shut the bedroom door firmly behind her.
It actually took two more days to set it up, and another day for Jasmine to make contact with Tai Ma. Hao produced all the papers needed; the little monk's resources were remarkable. Peking at one time had had more "Mist and Flower Maidens" than any other Chinese city, but the Communist regime had removed these women from the streets. Still, the age-old trade flourished secretly. Jasmine was moved into the Chien Men, the Front Gate Hotel, a sprawling modern structure with quiet service and poor food. Hao got her a costume of a long, black Chinese-style dress, several woolen sweaters, and an elaborate opera costume with an enormous headdress studded with pearls, representing an Emperor's concubine.
Durell helped her get established. It was an easy walk from the hotel to the nearby Temple of Heaven, with its triple, blue-tiled roofs above vermilion walls. Dark green cypress trees surrounded the shrine. Under the arch of the Front Gate, the wide street was crowded with jingling bicycles, modern trolley buses, and ancient handcarts pushed by women. From Jasmine's hotel window, they could see the Square of the Gate of Heavenly Peace, where much of National Day's festivities would take place. Most of the buildings were shrouded in wrappings of banners. In the other direction, toward Changan Boulevard, above the clusters of lamp standards and Edwardian buildings around the rose-pink walls and golden roofs of the Forbidden City, the spire of the white Buddhist dagoba in Peihai Park loomed against a sapphire, autumn sky. Directly under the hotel room was a huge banner reading, Long Live The People's Republic Of China — Long Live The Unity Of The Nations Of The World.
Jasmine was unimpressed as Durell helped to stow her luggage. "I wish it were all true," she said quietly.
"What?"
"All this progress. It's good, isn't it, Sam? I mean, those people lived in hovels, in such wretched poverty "
"Yes."
The inevitable loudspeaker in the room gave out with several falsetto screeches from recordings of the Peking Opera. Jasmine went on, "The railroad station here, when we arrived, the Beijing Zhan? And all the people who use it, who never left their mud huts and villages in their lifetimes. It's a beautiful building, don't you think?"
"If you like neo-Empire in today's Chinese style," he said.
He, too, had been impressed with the station, its enormous facade of creamy stone, the Chinese-style roof and turrets, the vast foyer of polished marble and potted plants, the cleaning women in their hygienic gauze masks.
"How long must I be here?" Jasmine asked. Her voice was plaintive. "I don't like being away from you, Sam."
"Tai Ma comes into this restaurant every day. He hands reports to subordinates then," Durell said. "And Hao says he has a weakness for tall Chinese women, beautiful women."
"Am I beautiful, Sam?"
"You are."
"But suppose I have to—have to ?"
"We all do what we must."
Her dark eyes were wounded and glistening. Durell turned up the public loudspeaker in the hotel room. The screeching operatic aria had ended, and now martial music blared in the room. Jasmine winced. He said, "I've fanned the place and can't find any bugs; but you know what electronic eavesdropping is like. A transmitter could be anywhere."
"Sam, don't you care at all what may happen to me?"
"I do," he said. "You know that. But you were briefed on these risks when you took on the job. If you want, you can go back to Hao and wait for me to do the job without you."
"Could you?"
"I doubt it."
She smiled tearfully. "I'll manage Tai Ma, don't worry. Give me a couple of days for it, that's all."
He looked at his Chinese face in the mirror. According to Ike Greentree, he'd had three weeks in which to finish this mission before he started to look less Chinese. More than half that time was already gone now.
"Just get Tai Ma up here soon, Jasmine," he said.
He never quite knew how she managed it. He could not remain in the Chien Men Hotel all the time, because of the industrious cleaning women who seemed obsessed with the diligent performance of their job. At night he waited until Jasmine came in alone, and then he would eat with her and talk of her work with the Canton Opera for the benefit, he was sure, of eavesdropping microphones in the room. Finally, on the second day, he found one in a simple bouquet of flowers. It was a marvel of ingenuity, a tiny transmitter smaller than a hazel nut. It probably broadcast on voice impulses to tape recorders in the security office of the big hotel. He left it where it was. Hao's information on Tai Ma proved correct. The fat L-5 chief was a regular patron of the hotel restaurant, and he always had an artist, dancer, or singer with him. Peking was crowded to the bursting point with the delegations and celebrants for National Day, and Tai Ma seemed to have his pick of the finest beauties in China.
On the third night of his watch in the hotel room, Jasmine came up later than usual. He lay on her bed in the semi-gloom broken only by the flashing neon light of newly erected signs in the boulevard below. He drank beer quietly, wishing for a cup of Louisiana coffee laced with bourbon. He was beginning to feel uneasy about her delayed return when he heard her signal at the door.
He rolled silently off the bed, flattened on the floor in the dark shadow under the windowsill. The gaudy signs on the boulevard flickered on and off, splashing the sterile, communal hotel
furniture with bright waves of alternating color. He heard Jasmine's key and the murmur of her voice, speaking Cantonese, and then he moved like a shadow through a wave of red and saffron color into the closet. Her perfume engulfed him.
There was a little foyer and sitting room—it was one of the Chien Men's best suites, thanks to Hao's mysterious influence—and he saw the light go on and heard Tai Ma's thick voice, heavy with liquor and food, gasping a little as he replied to Jasmine's California-accented Chinese.
"My dear Comrade, I must see this costume you will use with the Cantonese troupe tomorrow. The Chairman and the Committee will surely be enraptured by your performance."
"In a moment, Comrade Tai," she replied. "Please wait and be comfortable."
"I've brought the wine. I shall amuse myself."
In the closet where Durell stood was the elaborate headdress and embroidered operatic costume that Hao had procured for Jasmine. She slid the door open. He stood partly in the shadow as the light from the sitting room leaped across the wide bed. Jasmine's eyes were almost level with his. They were wide, but expressionless, and her rich mouth was taut. Her long black hair had been swept up in an elaborate coiffure, with pearled combs of silver and jade. It had been necessary to make her stand out against the usual Communist drabness in order to attract Tai Ma's lustful eye.
He signaled silently to Jasmine to delay returning to the other room; she nodded, pretending to be engrossed in the costume Tai Ma wanted to see. From the closet, he glimpsed the fat man pacing back and forth. The Chinese had a small, anticipatory smile on his moustached mouth. Durell remembered the power in that deceptive, flabby-looking body. He had almost succumbed to the huge man back there in the village railroad station; but this time he hoped to have the advantage of surprise.
"Comrade?" Tai Ma called, after a moment.
"Come in here," Jasmine replied, as if absently.
The man's shadow bulked enormously in the doorway. His footsteps were soundless; his eyes were fixed on Jasmine, who moved away from the closet with the elaborate headdress fixed to her gleaming black hair. Tai Ma's eyes followed, slitted and glistening, but only after he had scanned the bed and the window. For one instant he turned his back to the closet.
Durell had chosen his knife, rather than the gun he had carried on the air-drop. He moved in one silent stride, whipped his left arm about the great pumpkin bulge of the man's chest, and made a shallow slitting cut across Tai's throat with the razor-sharp blade. Blood spouted. The fat Chinese sucked in his breath with a great, shuddering sound.
"One move," Durell whispered, "and it goes deeper."
"Shan?"
"Yes."
"I am bleeding. Am I dying?"
"Not yet."
"I did not think you would cut me."
"Be silent. Don't move."
Blood ran down the man's fat throat. A quarter of an inch more, and the esophagus would have been cut—and nothing could have saved Tai. The man shuddered as Durell pushed him toward the bed. Durell glanced at Jasmine, who stood frozen, her face white. "Get him a towel. Wipe up the mess."
"I thought " she began haltingly.
"I haven't killed him. It's just to let him know I mean what I'm going to say."
Durell patted the man's capacious pockets and found a revolver, a small cyanide-pellet air dart, a wallet of papers, money, and brass coins. He tossed the aggregation onto a chair across the room and told Jasmine, "Don't touch any of that."
She had a wet towel. "I won't."
"Clean him up. Quickly. Tai Ma, lie down on the bed, on your back, arms wide, hands over the sides. Look up at the ceiling and don't move your head. Understand?"
The Chinese whispered, "You did not have to cut me, Shan. I was expecting you."
"Indeed?"
"I was simply wondering what took you so long."
Twelve
Tai ma did exactly as he was told, there had been no alarm. Durell turned up the propaganda speaker to a louder volume, and martial music shook the suite. He decided that a complaint from the management was inevitable, but it would take a few minutes for that, and by then he should have what he wanted out of the fat man.
"You were really expecting me, Tai Ma?" he asked.
"I have studied your files carefully, Major Shan. I do not take your capacities lightly."
"Why are we enemies, then? Why were you waiting to kill me when I returned to China last week?"
The fat man stared at the ceiling. Jasmine had staunched the flow of blood from his throat. "I had orders. You were listed as a traitor, a defector."
"Why? On what evidence?"
"I do not question L-5 orders. One cannot do that. We live to obey and do our duty, Comrade."
"I am not a traitor," Durell said. "I need your help."
"Impossible. I reserve judgment."
"Would you rather die?"
Tai Ma was silent, thinking it over. His slashed throat convinced him, as Durell had hoped it would. "What do you want of me? I knew this young lady was not what she said she was. I knew this was a trap. I walked into it willingly. Modesty is not my best trait. I felt I could handle you. I did not think—I did not expect your violence, Shan."
"I am desperate," Durell said simply.
"Yes, but you cannot win."
"I think I can. What I must do is for the safety and peace of all of us—to defeat the Six Sentinels. You know about them; you mentioned them at the railroad station. I am not an agent of the Six Sentinels."
"You are working for them, whether you know it or not. The Americans have purchased your loyalty," Tai Ma said thinly. "What am I to believe?" His chest still heaved with his rapid breathing. For an instant, as Du-rell's knife sliced across his throat, he had thought himself a dead man. "What do you want me to do?"
"You must get me safely into the Black House."
"Why?"
"I must talk to the KMT defector, Chien Y-Wu."
Tai Ma was silent His round moon face stared at the ceiling. The martial music thumped and rang in the hotel bedroom. Durell glanced at Jasmine. She had not moved.
"Can it be done?" Durell asked.
"To talk to that pig, Chien? No."
"It must be done."
"You will be killed, Shan. You walk into my hands like a fly into a spider's web. Are you mad?"
"Merely desperate, as I told you. I've watched your routine. We'll go together. The girl remains here, so it will be just you and I. If you make one wrong move, you die. At once. Do you believe me?"
"I do. You are clever—and quite mad."
Durell drew a long breath. "You live only until you make a mistake. Jasmine, turn down the loudspeaker. We will be silent until daybreak. Then we go to the Black House."
National Day in Peking had changed the metropolis into one huge carnival. The city glowed with splendor among its ancient palaces. In the vast area of the Imperial Quarter, among the wide courtyards, Throne Halls, marble steps and terraces, there was a vista of multiple roofs, shining with blue and amber and turquoise tiles. The wide avenues swarmed with holiday-minded people. An old man in a park was teaching shadow-boxing to youngsters, and plump button-eyed babies were gathered in kindergarten pedicabs, being taken to special stands set aside for them. Flags, banners, and lanterns were festooned everywhere. Today there were few of the old women pushing handcarts of bricks or dung. Seeing the multitudes, as Tai Ma's official limousine pushed slowly through the crowds, it was easy for Durell to believe that one out of every five people on earth was Chinese.
The festive air made things easier. Today, Premier Chou En-lai, Madame Huang, and Mao himself would appear in the vast audience square, on the reviewing stand that would be passed by parades of singers, dancers, workers, militia, tanks, artillery, and the new rocket launchers, besides symbolic representations of the New China's hydrogen bomb. The talk would be about peace, the exhibits would be for war. China was the center of the world, resurgent, powerful; all other nations, by divine law, were subservient to
Peking; it was simply that they were like rebellious children, not recognizing ancient authority.
The limousine slowly circled the Temple of Heaven, in its fine park, with its huge marble altar at which the emperors once prayed at the summer soltice. Not far away was the Temple of Confucius, dating back to the Chou dynasty. Companies of troops rested here, waiting under their banners and flags for a place in the coming parade.
"You have chosen the day wisely," Tai Ma murmured.
"It's as good a day as any to die in—if you make a mistake," Durell returned.
The big limousine rolled smoothly along devious routes to avoid the massed marchers. Rain fell in a sudden shower, then eased into a dull drizzle. The sky was leaden. Tai Ma touched the muffler he wore to conceal the knife wound across his throat; his round face shone with sweat.
"May I ask how much you have been paid to do this by the enemy, Comrade Major Shan?" he asked softly.
"I have been paid nothing. What I do is for my nation, my duty only, against traitors at home and abroad, and against those warmongers who would kill millions, rather than have their political ambitions frustrated."
"We have the same goals, then. Must we be enemies?"
"You tried to kill me when we first met, remember?"
"Perhaps L-5 was misinformed. It is possible. Even under our glorious Communist State, we are not infallible, eh?"
Durell kept his hand on the gun in his pocket. All that he said could be monitored, somewhere. He didn't know if the faceless, anonymous chauffeur beyond the glass partition could overhear them or not. His nerves tightened as the car made a sudden left turn, then a right. The Black House loomed ahead through the lightly falling rain. The boulevard had been cordoned off, and there was no traffic or pedestrians in sight. The gates showed through the windshield, over the driver's shoulder.
"Do not worry, Comrade Major," Tai Ma said. "We dislike marching crowds past our headquarters. Simply a security measure, even on this day of glorious celebration."
Assignment Peking Page 8