The Pekin Target

by Adam Hall

  He wasn’t just a contact, I knew that now. A contact is a tea boy and he doesn’t cheek the executive. I said: “Are you Youngquist?”

  He stopped watching the people getting off the train and looked at me instead. “We vary,” he said, “don’t we?”

  So this was why.

  “Tell Ferris I want to see him at South Gate in two hours,” I told him. “I’ll be at the north kerb. And do something about communications, for Christ’s sake: the Embassy’s out and I haven’t got anywhere else. Give me a number to phone.”

  This was why Croder had sent a contact to meet me instead of Ferris: this man wasn’t just a contact; this was Youngquist, my potential replacement, and London thought it was a good idea for us to meet and get to know each other, by way of easing the transition. As we stood together with the drone of the train filling the station as it pulled away, its lights throwing a chain of yellow oblongs across the walls, it occurred to me that I couldn’t find any rage to help me through this moment of truth; all I can remember thinking was that I’d got away from the opposition five times now, but I couldn’t get away from Croder.

  Youngquist gave me a number. “Ferris wants to see you too. He left the specifics to you, so I’ll tell him it’s South Gate, the north kerb, 11:00 hours. Look for a light-green Toyota with CDs on it. Anything else?”

  “Yes. In future, keep out of my bloody way.”

  “They told me you were like that,” he said.

  I got in and slammed the door and we drove five blocks to the elevated car park and went up to the seventh floor and found it deserted.

  Ferris switched off the ignition and said: “They’ve told me to call you in.”

  “They can’t do that.”

  The rage came now and I got out and hit the door shut and sent echoes among the concrete pillars. Ferris followed me out and paced in a tight circle with his hands in his pockets and his eyes down, looking for something to crush: I’d never seen him like this before.

  “Those are my instructions,” he said thinly.

  “When did you get them?”

  “Half an hour ago.”

  After I’d seen Youngquist. After Youngquist had passed on the information that I’d been got at for the fifth time and survived. Not his fault: he’d been there to pass on whatever I told him. But London was panicking now.

  “They didn’t like the bit about Spur, did they?”

  I saw his eyes flicker. “It’s a setback, you ought to know that. He was our main source.”

  “He’d got something for me. That’s why he told me to go and see him. What he can get, we can get.”

  “I don’t think I follow,” he said. I could feel the chill.

  “There’s a source. He had access to it. All we’ve got to do is find it.”

  He looked at me for a moment and then turned away, pacing again in his tight little circle; I suppose he knew that was the worst thing he could do as an answer: to ignore what I was trying to tell him; but then, he knew that what I was really trying to tell him was that I’d never been called in from a mission before and I didn’t know how to handle it.

  “If you could give me any reason,” he said, “why they should leave you in the field … “

  “I’ll give you a dozen reasons. I’ve taken on jobs that no one else would touch; I’ve let those bastards use me as a sacrifice when it was the only way we could get through to the objective, and I’ve done that simply because I’ve got the alley-cat savvy to survive, and no thanks to them; I let Croder pull me out of hospital and kick me into the pitch dark with no background information and no specific objective and now he’s breaking out in a rash because I’m not getting anywhere. Doesn’t he know I’ve only been in the field three days?”

  Ferris stopped pacing and watched me for a moment as if something I’d said had got through to him. But it hadn’t.

  “I didn’t mean personal reasons.”

  “They’re all I’ve got.”

  “They won’t do. Croder didn’t have to con you into this operation. You’d been out of action for three months and you were burning to hit back for Sinclair. You wanted this job badly. All you didn’t want was Croder, because he told you to eliminate Schrenck in Moscow and you wouldn’t do it, and it nearly blew up the mission. It would be rather cosy,” he said and took a short step towards me, “if you’d regard Croder as the most efficient Control that anyone could hope for, instead of the kicking boy for your own guilt-feelings.”

  “For Christ’s sake leave Freud out of it. What sort of reasons do you want me to give you?”

  “Technical.”

  “I haven’t got any. You know that. We couldn’t get anything out of Jason, in time. We couldn’t get anything out of Spur before they went for him. They’re always one step ahead of us. But give me a bit of time, can’t you?”

  He looked down. “I’d leave you in, if it was my decision. It’s not.”

  “You’d leave me in?”

  He considered this, as if he had to make sure. “Yes.”

  “Then tell that bastard -“

  “All I can tell Croder is that we’re not making any progress here in the field. We’ve never been up against anything so difficult as the Triad - and this is Croder’s thinking: we need more support out here; the mission’s changing shape - it’s not the kind of operation we thought it was; London thought they could get you some kind of access when the action started, but they can’t; we’re losing ground, day after day, and all you’ve been able to do is stay alive. Croder thought he was sending an executive into the field through planned routes and with extensive communications, but now he knows that all he did was to push one lone man against a battalion. We don’t know how many people Tung Kuofeng has got working for him; it could be hundreds.”

  “That doesn’t make any difference. The way to kill an octopus is to put a spear into the brain.”

  In a moment he said, “If you could do that …”

  “I can’t do it if they call me in.”

  He began pacing again and I didn’t say anything more; there wasn’t anything more I could say that would do any good. London wanted technical reasons for leaving me in the field and I hadn’t got any. If they -

  “Stand still,” I said.

  He stopped at once and looked up, and we listened to the sound of the car. There was nothing but a waste of concrete here with pillars breaking up the sound into echoes and it was difficult to get an aural fix; but the engine was loudening all the time.

  The sixth level had been less than half full when we’d driven through it ten minutes ago but this car wasn’t stopping

  Ferris didn’t move. He watched me.

  I turned slightly until I was facing the long perspective of concrete, waiting for the front end of the car to come into sight, then realising that we wouldn’t have a chance if we didn’t go now.

  “Come on,” I said and moved, pulling the door of the Toyota open. Ferris worked very fast, starting up before his door had slammed shut, kicking the thing into reverse and heeling it into a tight arc and hitting the brakes and the gear shift and giving it the gun. We couldn’t go upwards: this was the highest level; we could only go down. Tyres screaming as Ferris got wheelspin, place like a torture chamber with all the echoes. We passed the other car halfway through the first turn and I crouched low and sighted across the bottom edge of the windscreen, camouflage-green Chrysler station-wagon with US Army plates, a young GI and an Asian girl, both of them looking the other way, up here for a bit of snatched privacy and glad we were going.

  On the level below I told Ferris to shove the bloody thing in a slot for a minute and then I just sat there in my own sweat and for the first time wondered how far gone I was, sitting here still crouched in the instinctive low-profile target position while the signals flashed through my mind from Ferris to Croder, they’ve tried five times now and I don’t think he can stand the pace … Croder to Ferris: there’s no point in leaving him out there if he’s losing his nerve … si
tting hunched up with my eyes screwed shut, wondering how to face the man beside me when I opened them, because there had been no chance, no chance at all, that anyone of the Triad knew where we were.

  After a long time I heard Ferris saying quietly, “Why don’t you go home, Q? Anyone else would.”

  I opened my eyes and straightened up in the seat and took a breath and held it and took another one, wanting to get some steadiness in my voice.

  “This is home.”

  “Where the brink is?”

  “That’s right.”

  After a while he said, “The most I can probably get for you is another twenty-four hours out here.”

  “Then get me that.”

  Chapter 14

  Shadows

  Decapitation produces almost total blood loss from the facial area within a few seconds, but the embalmers had injected their resins skillfully and the face of Soong Yongshen was recognisable as the face of the young man in the photograph above the open coffin as I stood looking down at him. The white death-robe had been drawn all the way to the chin, so that nothing remained visible of the manner of his passing.

  The room was still and airless, and sickly with the smells of formaldehyde and the incense burning in the sconces; the shutters had been closed against the noonday sun, and in the light of the many candles the massed bouquets of flowers bloomed with unearthly colour.

  Soong Li-fei had not been here when I arrived a few minutes ago, but she came in now, wearing a white chongsam and with her eyes red from crying; the instant she saw me she stopped dead and glanced quickly at the faces of the three men who were waiting for her patiently with their flowers and paired silk scrolls; she greeted them hastily, listening to their half-whispered condolences and then making a sign for me to follow her through the screened doorway.

  “Why did you come here?” she asked quickly in French.

  “To talk to you.”

  “They’re looking for you, and there’s nothing to say.”

  “Who are ‘they’?”

  We were in a narrow hallway, darkened by the closed shutters, and her cinnamon eyes were in shadow: I had to learn what I could from her voice alone.

  “You must leave. You’re in great danger here.”

  I could feel her aura of tension as we stood close together; I meant nothing to her, except that perhaps she was grateful for my not having brought in the police and accused her of attempted murder the night I’d arrived in Seoul; also she was sick enough of death, and didn’t want to see murder done in a house of mourning.

  “Who is it that’s looking for me?” I asked her.

  She said impatiently, “Any of them might come here at any moment, to offer condolences. Please go - I’ll show you the back way.”

  I held her arm lightly; it was the arm of a china doll, ice cold under the silk sleeve though the hallway was stifling. “What did the man say, outside the house here, two nights ago? What did you say to him?”

  She sounded confused. “What man?”

  “You were walking home from my hotel, the night of the wind, and a man spoke to you outside the door.” I was watching her eyes, but there was too much shadow for me to read them.

  In a moment she said hesitantly, “He asked me if I had killed you, at the hotel.”

  “And what did you tell him?”

  “I said you were the wrong man, and that they’d been mistaken.”

  She was trying to pull away, to lead me along the hall to the back of the house; I didn’t let her. “What else did you say to each other, Li-fei? The quicker you tell me these things, the sooner I’ll leave.”

  She moved again. “I’ve nothing to tell you. It’s all finished with.”

  I let her go, because I knew how to stop her. “I know who killed your brother.”

  She caught her breath, and I waited; but she said nothing. I could hear quiet footsteps now in the room through the screened doorway as someone came in from the street; or perhaps it was one of the three mourners going out: it was impossible to tell from their sound. I watched the doorway, and the play of shadows on the ceiling, cast by the candlelight.

  It had been dangerous to come here, I’d known that; but Ferris had told me he’d try to get me another twenty-four hours and I’d have to hurry. I’d phoned the airport as soon as I’d left him, and they’d told me that Li-fei was at her house: her brother’s body had been flown in late last night. I’d had to come here; there was no choice.

  “It was Tung Kuofeng,” I told her, “who ordered your brother’s execution. Your brother made a serious mistake.”

  A vertical band of candlelight was falling across the hall from the doorway, and she had moved into it when she’d drawn away from me; it lay half across her body, so that one of her eyes was lit by it, watching me without blinking.

  “How do you know these things?”

  “I know them.”

  The shadows on the ceiling were changing, as a man’s head moved past the candles in the room of the dead; I listened to their feet shuffling, but still couldn’t tell whether anyone else had come in. If one of the Triad were here, he might come through the doorway: Soong Yongshen had been an important figure among them, and entrusted to carry out the assassination in Pekin; the fact that he had made an unpardonable mistake, and had died for it, didn’t mean the Triad wouldn’t officially mourn him, for fear of his outraged spirit.

  Li-fei turned her delicate head a degree, so that she could watch the narrow gap between the screen and the doorway; I could only watch the shadows.

  “Yes,” she whispered, “it was Tung Kuofeng who ordered my brother’s death.” She watched the doorway. “Tung Kuofeng,” she whispered again, as if her tongue could be a dagger.

  “Tell me where to find him.”

  She swung her head. “You want to find him?”

  “Yes.”

  “What would you do?”

  “Kill him.”

  Her one eye, lit by the candlelight, widened. “Why?”

  “I’ve got my reasons.”

  “Who are you?”

  “His enemy.”

  She watched me. I waited.

  “I must know who you are.”

  “What difference does it make who I am?”

  With sudden impatience she said, “Because of trust. There are those who trust me.”

  I would have to go the long way round, and go carefully.

  “Did you know your brother was going to Pekin to carry out an assassination?”

  She closed her eyes and in a moment said with a soft fierceness: “No. I would have stopped him.” Her slender body had begun swaying slightly in the band of light, and she spoke in a kind of rhythm. “He said he was going to Pekin to do something very important. He said he’d been chosen as the one to do it; he said it was an honour for him; he said it with pride.” I watched tears glistening at her eyelids now, and her voice had anger in it. “I knew he was with one of the Triads; but he was young; many young men like my brother go into the Triads, for the adventure of it; many are taken to prison when they’re caught; the lucky ones lose their taste for crime, and come away, and find jobs. My brother didn’t come away in time.”

  “Do you think Tung Kuofeng should have killed him?”

  “What for? Why should he want him killed?”

  “He made a grave mistake. Your brother killed a man, too: the British Secretary of State, a diplomat trying to make peace in the world, a man with a wife and two daughters.”

  She half turned away from me, closing her eyes for a moment. “Yes,” she whispered. “My brother killed a man for Tung Kuofeng. There is no excuse for that. But he was my brother, and Tung Kuofeng took his life away. I cannot forgive that.”

  “Tell me where to find him,” I said.

  The shadows were moving on the ceiling. I was standing within six feet of the doorway, close enough to make lethal contact if a man came through and recognised me and reacted; but he might not come alone.

  “I don’t know
where he is,” Li-fei said, her tone tormented.

  “Someone must know where he is. Think.”

  “There is no time. I - “

  “You must have heard your brother talking about Tung.”

  “No. The people in the Triads never talk about themselves to those outside.”

  “Who were your brother’s friends?”

  “I don’t know which of them are in the Triad. They - “

  “Think, Li-fei. I want to know where I can find Tung.”

  The shadows on the ceiling moved, one of them flickering as a man passed close to a candle. I watched them, waiting for a shadow to grow enormous, filling the doorway as the man came through.

  “There is a priest,” Li-fei whispered, “who might know.”

  “Here in Seoul?”

  “No. But not far away. In Karibong-ni.”

  “What languages does he speak?”

  “He speaks only Korean and Cantonese.”

  “Take me to see him.”

  She was silent for a while, and then said: “Very well.”

  The priest was at evening prayer and we waited for him outside the temple in the gathering dusk, while at intervals a small bell tolled, sending echoes among the walls of the garden.

  “He tried to save my brother,” Li-fei told me, “to stop him from joining the Triad; it was no good; nothing would have stopped him, and I shall never know why.” Her light voice trembled; the ashes had been placed in the urn only an hour ago.

  “How old was your brother, when you lost your parents?”

  “He was five.”

  “It would have left him bereft. Perhaps he saw a father in Tung Kuofeng.”

  “Perhaps.”

  We saw the priest coming, a thin and ancient man in a worn saffron robe, an acolyte leading him on each side until he was standing in front of us with his sightless eyes, his head tilted carefully to listen.

  Soong Li-fei presented me to him, speaking in Chinese; then I interrupted her, asking her to send the two boys away; the priest didn’t object, but they went only a short distance, out of earshot; they were obviously responsible for him. Lifei led him gently to a corner of the garden, where there were stone seats, then looked at me in the half-light.