Brokenclaw

by John Gardner

  ‘Peter, I’m so glad to see you and Jenny, but your arrival has coincided with a slightly unpleasant domestic problem. It would appear we have been harbouring some kind of spy in our midst. Ding, would you take her away and we’ll deal with the matter in due course? I’m sure our guests will understand.’ He turned towards Bond and Chi-Chi, his eyes dancing and his face composed, but as imposing a figure as ever. This one, Bond thought, would be very difficult to deceive. Then he looked across the room and froze.

  At the far end, between two sets of heavy cream velvet drapes and below a large watercolour showing a lake and mountains in a gauzy mist, stood a large wood and metal chair on which a figure was slumped, the arms and feet shackled to the solid arms and legs of the chair.

  ‘Take the wretched girl now, Ding.’

  With a moan, the girl in the chair raised her head. Her face was covered with bruises. There was blood around her mouth and one eye had been closed. It was Wanda Man Song Hing, whom Bond had last seen in M’s cabin on the carrier.

  11

  WELCOME

  The arrivals terminal of San Francisco International can be a crowded and confusing place to the uninitiated, but at a quarter to one in the morning, Ed Rushia wished the place was seething with people coming in from half-a-dozen flights, not merely the two hundred or so from American Airlines 15. He was, as they used to say in his home town of Jewel Junction, Iowa, between a rock and a hard place.

  First, his job had been to watch Bond’s and Chi-Chi’s backs. They had disappeared into the night on some little corporate jet, so how should he now proceed? Second, he had, like his British colleague, been set up – the target for FBI scrutiny. There were good reasons for this, no doubt, but he felt uneasy about it.

  He came into the ground side of the terminal carrying the small bag containing one change of clothing, his toilet gear and a paperback that he had tried to read during the boring flight. Better to travel light. After all he was now back in his home base and could change properly if they ever allowed him to make it back to the small apartment in which he lived. His young wife would be there waiting for him, probably worrying herself sick about him, even though she was used to his long absences.

  There was one uniformed cop near the sliding glass exit doors, and Rushia made up his mind within seconds of walking into the street side of the terminal. Get a cab, go down to the Embarcadero, then call the carrier from there.

  Outside it was chilly, the usual dampness in the air at this time of year. There was a short line for cabs and he quickly joined it, aware, with that instinct bred into good Intelligence officers, that someone had come up behind him, from the rear, as though he had been waiting for his arrival.

  ‘Indexer?’ a voice said softly in his ear.

  ‘You talking to me?’ He turned his head and saw the face belonged to a youngish man who looked uncertain and anxious, his eyes darting everywhere.

  ‘We’ll take the cab together. They want to see you. The operation’s bust wide open.’

  Rushia grunted.

  ‘If you want sleep, I wouldn’t bank on getting much tonight.’ The stranger smiled happily, as though thinking that if he had to go for a couple of nights without sleep, why should he be concerned about others having to do the same?

  There was no conversation as the cab took them through the night streets, across to the Naval facility. From there they travelled out to the carrier by helicopter. Twenty minutes later, Commander Ed Rushia stood in the makeshift CIA control and communications room aboard the ship. Much had altered since he had last been aboard. More communications and electronic gear appeared to have been installed and there was a new tension among the men who were controlling Operation Curve from this floating airbase.

  He was also surprised when M, not the CIA Officer in charge, gave him the briefing, running through the events which had occurred by the time he arrived.

  ‘To be honest, we haven’t a clue where Checklist and Custodian have been taken.’ The Old Man looked more grizzled and tired than during the previous meeting. A large scale map was lowered in front of him, sandwiched between a pair of heavy plastic plates. The surface of the plastic was covered in lines and circles marked in various colours.

  ‘We know they managed somehow to stage an emergency right at a point which made Salinas their only possible alternate.’ He raised a pointer to show the small airfield. ‘Once there, the local people were convinced it was a genuine problem. They also reported that a limousine picked up at least three, possibly four, passengers. The Gulfstream’s captain, his second officer, a steward and a chef are still at Salinas waiting for mechanics to arrive from their home base which apparently is Los Angeles. We’ve flown out a CIA officer posing as an FAA inspector to try and get more firm explanations. He’ll interrogate the crew, but they’re probably just going to tell us they were obeying orders.

  ‘Now if our two people were moved from Salinas by limo, we figure they could have been taken anywhere within a forty mile radius. They could also be back here in the Bay area. We do know the homers they had concealed on them were still operating in New York. We can but presume they’re still sending signals, but these could be weakened if they’re hidden among buildings. Mr Grant’ll tell you what we feel should be done.’

  Grant also looked tired and washed out. ‘It is true they might well have been brought back into the Bay area,’ he began, ‘but it seems far more likely that they’ve been taken to some kind of safe house outside the immediate vicinity. If I were a betting man, I’d say the natural place is somewhere near Big Sur. We now have six electronics vehicles square-searching the Bay area, tuned to the homer frequency. As you tracked them some of the way in New York, we’re putting you in a helicopter at first light. The chopper’s being fitted with a pretty powerful array at this moment. You’ll scan an area of forty by forty miles with Big Sur as the furthest western point.’

  ‘You got a chopper that’ll do that?’ Rushia growled, poker-faced. ‘Forty by forty comes to around sixteen hundred square miles in my book, leastways it used to, though I haven’t any idea what it might work out if you went metric. I mean . . .’

  ‘Ed,’ Grant’s voice exuded enormous patience, ‘there will be refuelling points. The crew will be experienced in square searches, so leave all that to them. You just sit there and twiddle the buttons, trying to get a fix on one or both of the homers. Okay?’

  ‘Time was when Homer was all Greek to me.’

  They gave him a spare cabin and he drifted off into an uneasy sleep. At one point he dreamed of his childhood in Jewel Junction and thought he heard his father calling him to get out of bed. ‘The doctor’s nearly ready, Ed. Come on!’ But he woke to find one of the CIA juniors shaking him and saying, ‘It’s past five thirty. The chopper’s nearly ready, Ed. Come on!’

  He rolled out of the bunk, washed and shaved, then drank scalding coffee brought to him together with hot cornbread rolls and butter in little foil packets. ‘And I expected butter in a lordly dish,’ he said quietly to himself. Then he thought of his wife and muttered, ‘Well, she’s a lordly dish and no mistake.’ Good ole Ed Rushia, he reflected, just keep up the homespun, a bit eccentric cover and everyone’ll treat you right.

  In the helicopter crew room, they gave him warm flying clothes and a heavy white rollneck sweater. He put the big protective helmet on and thought he must look like a Martian, but once inside the helicopter, in front of the scopes and scanning equipment, the good ole boy in Commander Edwin Rushia drained away like sand in an eggtimer and he became totally focused on finding Chi-Chi and Bond.

  James Bond’s eyes snapped open, and he came from deep sleep to full consciousness in a matter of seconds. Silently he cursed, knowing he had done the unforgivable and dropped asleep when he should have been keeping watch.

  It was four thirty in the morning, and already traces of dawn had started to show through the drapes on the two high, arched windows. With his waking, alertness returned and the memories of the previous n
ight came hustling into his mind sharp and clear.

  On the other side of the bed, Chi-Chi slept, curled on one side with her face turned away from the two pillows that lay down the length of the bed between them. He smiled. That was about the only bright recollection from a few hours ago. His first real thought was of Wanda.

  ‘What kind of spy?’ he had asked of Brokenclaw as Ding strutted across the room, undid the shackles and hoisted the girl over his shoulder like a butcher carrying the carcass of a beast. There had been a little moan from Wanda and a tiny smear of blood had spotted the back of Ding’s jacket.

  ‘The kind of spy that neither you nor I wish even to know of our existence,’ Lee shrugged. There was neither anger nor foreboding in his voice which remained even and soft. ‘Her father owed money to one of my gambling houses. He sought to buy his own freedom from debt by giving me his daughter as a plaything. In China it would be taken as giving me her hand in marriage; in my other life, it would be to add more women to my teepee. Now I fear her father will have to pay in full.’

  ‘But, the girl, what was she up to?’

  Brokenclaw made a gentle gesture, raising his right hand as though to dismiss the whole business. ‘I knew she was in the US Navy. What I did not know was that she belongs to Naval Intelligence . . .’

  ‘Oh, my God!’ Bond feigned extreme agitation.

  ‘Oh, my God, indeed. They have a whole operation dedicated to finding those who have given me the information you are to carry back to Beijing. It seems they are desperate. Already she’s told me British Intelligence is involved.’

  ‘Then we must . . .’

  ‘We must remain calm and enjoy ourselves. Forgive me, I am being a bad host. Can I offer you anything? Food? Drink?’

  Bond looked at Chi-Chi. ‘I think you can possibly offer rest. Both of us are tired.’

  ‘Of course, your journey has been long and arduous. I’ll personally show you to your suite. You can sleep late tomorrow, then we can deal with the information you have to smuggle back to Beijing Hsia. Personally, I’m going to be a little busy for a few more hours. We really have to be more sophisticated with the interrogation of the girl.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘Nothing is ever really accomplished by mere crude brutality.’

  ‘You should dump the oily piece of female rubbish in San Francisco Bay.’ Chi-Chi spoke with venom, bringing a tone of genuine distaste into her voice.

  ‘Ah, Jenny Mo, or is it really Argentbright? An odd name. You might have done such a thing at the old Legation, but we are trying to be more economic these days. She is a beautiful girl, therefore she can be used; she can make money for us. We will simply suck her dry of all she knows about this operation against us, then put her to work in which she excels. It can be all so simple. I have learned that nothing should be wasted if it can be recycled. This also applies to people.’ He extended his hands to both of them. ‘Come, I’ll show you to your suite. Tomorrow we will go over the information, and make arrangements for its safe transference back to Beijing Hsia, before we begin the real work. Come.’

  He strode, not to the door through which they had entered from the hallway, but to a smaller exit which stood in the right-hand wall between high pine bookcases. They discovered that the door led to a short, brilliantly lit, passage, then in turn to narrow stairs which ran down some fourteen feet under the house. There were corridors to left and right and the walls were hung with both Chinese and American Indian art. Brokenclaw took them past the first bisecting corridors and stopped at a door which he opened, standing back to allow his guests to enter a large suite of rooms furnished in almost overpowering modern luxury.

  The main room contained a large leisure complex which took up almost an entire wall – a large screen TV, stereo equipment and video machine set into shelves which appeared to have been sculpted rather than built, the shelves and equipment all in a light grey which reflected the general decor of the entire room, light greys and whites. There were soft leather armchairs, a large glass table, the thick, tinted glass resting on two long drums of marble. Everything from cushions to the telephone were what is known as state-of-the-art – a term which made Bond wince, but he winced easily at many other cumbersome assaults on the English language, such as ‘at this moment in time’ or ‘take on board’, and appalling new words like ‘mindset’.

  The bedroom was decorated in the same shades, but here they took on an almost feminine lushness. A tall four-poster, hung with lace and frills, matched the gauze-thin curtains falling in swirls almost from the ceiling to the floor. Their luggage was placed neatly on folding racks near a long walk-in closet which took up an entire wall. Underfoot it felt as though you might have to cut your way through the carpet with a machete. The bathroom, which Brokenclaw showed them with some pride, was marble and gold with a massive whirlpool bath as the centrepiece.

  Chi-Chi gasped.

  ‘I designed this guest suite myself,’ Brokenclaw purred, ‘like many other things in this house. The refrigerator is well stocked and there is fresh fruit on the table there. Now I trust you will sleep well. When you wake, simply press nine on any of the telephones and order what you will.’

  Bond followed him into the main room, and at the door Brokenclaw smiled his friendly all-embracing beam. ‘If you require any stimulation,’ he came close, his voice dropping to a whisper, ‘just press the button marked M on the bed console. It unveils a superb set of mirrors over the bed.’ He winked, and, for a moment, the proud face became that of a lecherous schoolboy.

  When the door was closed, Bond walked around examining the TV and stereo equipment, then, as though he had suddenly had a thought, he went over to the telephone and ripped a sheet from its small message pad. At the big glass table, he swiftly scribbled a note, taking it straight through to Chi-Chi who he found had started to experiment with the many bottles of scents, bath oils and the like. He pursed his lips, handing the slip of paper to her. ‘Just a note regarding the cameras. We’ll have to ask Mr Lee about them in the morning.’

  She nodded after reading it, then tore it up and flushed it away in the bathroom, giving him a look as if to say, ‘I’m not a fool, not even a trained fool.’

  Bond nodded, and they began to talk of the imagined journey from China to Hong Kong, then of the arrival in New York and their time with Myra.

  ‘What a highly strung girl she is.’ Chi-Chi was starting to undress. ‘As highly strung as I will be if I don’t get some rest. I’m going to take a shower and go straight to bed, darling, or I’ll be no good for anything in the morning.’

  Bond nodded. ‘I’ll go and take a quick brandy, then join you.’

  ‘There’s to be no joining tonight, my dear!’ Chi-Chi gave him a coquettish look that spoke volumes. ‘And isn’t Mr Lee a nice man? No wonder Beijing Hsia thinks so well of him,’ she played to the hidden microphones, and went on undressing as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Bond’s note had warned her of possible son et lumière. Brokenclaw Lee, he thought, was the kind of man who would have a room wired not only as a safety precaution, but also to amuse the voyeuristic traits in his own make-up.

  ‘Magnificent man,’ he answered, sweeping the bedroom with his eyes, trying to figure where the cameras were hidden. Then he went into the main room, poured himself a liberal glass of brandy and sat down in one of the comfortable leather armchairs. Bond was a man who detested all the phoney mumbo-jumbo that sometimes goes on when you order brandy in restaurants. The business of warming vast glasses had nothing to do with the taste of good brandy.

  He allowed the liquid to stay in his mouth for a second before swallowing the first sip. It always did him good, focused the mind. At this moment all he could think of was Dr Johnson’s famous remark, ‘Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy’. Well, Bond did not aspire to be a hero, it was just something that came with the job.

  He took ten minutes over the drink, his eyes lazily inspecting the main room for si
gns of hidden cameras, not that it would be much use nowadays with the advent of fibre-optics, but his main concern was keeping the ASP 9mm hidden when he undressed.

  Back in the bedroom, Chi-Chi seemed to have dealt with her shower in record time, for she appeared to be fast asleep, bundled cosily in the bed, all the lights off except for a dimmed reading lamp on the side left unoccupied.

  He tiptoed through to the bathroom, removing his jacket and at the same time extracting the automatic. Covering it with the clothing, he placed it carefully on one of the pair of bathroom chairs. Swiftly he stripped, showered, dried himself and put on the towelling robe that hung ready for him. A chute was set into the wall with a notice telling guests to put any washing into it. The clean laundry would be returned within an hour. He also caught sight of a piece of torn paper lying by one of the soap dishes. The paper had a swiftly scrawled message on it which he did not stop to read.

  He picked up his clothes and carried them back to the bedroom, slipping the pistol into the robe pocket under cover of the clothing which he now carefully hung on a patent press. He then unpacked his shaving gear and took it, with his soiled clothing, back into the bathroom, dumping the clothes into the chute. In doing so, he palmed the note and swiftly read it.

  Chi-Chi had written—

  I will stay awake for one hour, then wake you. We can do one hour on and one off to be sure of no nasty surprises. Don’t be cross about the pillows. I read about it once. I think it’s called ‘bundling’. Love xx