by Adam Hall
“We need to know where to find Tung Kuofeng,” I told her quietly. Within a few minutes he realised that I was the questioner, not Li-fei, and he sat with his head turned towards me.
“What do you want with Tung Kuofeng?”
“He is guilty of crimes,” I told him through Li-fei. “He has caused men to murder.”
She spoke for some time, answering questions without consulting me, except for a quick - “He wants to know how we are sure of this.” I suppose she was telling him her brother had killed for Tung, and that it was too late to save him now. In the deepening gloom the old man turned his head more to Li-fei than to me.
“What do you want with him?” she asked me, translating that same question again.
“I want to bring him to justice.”
Death would be justice, for Tung Kuofeng.
“Who are you?”
I waited a moment, aware of the two young acolytes not far away, and aware that if any of the Triad put questions later to Li-fei she might not be clever enough to keep her secrets. The priest moved his head slightly towards me, alert to my hesitation. In a moment I said:
“I was responsible for the safety of the British Secretary of State in Pekin.”
Li-fei told him, and he was silent for minutes, while the robed boys watched us from the shadows and the smell of incense came on the warm evening air from the temple doorway; and now I was aware that the future of Jade One rested here in this peaceful garden, and that one of the signals they were waiting for at the console in Whitehall, London, would have to come from the lips of this old man. Ferris had persuaded them to give me twenty-four hours, and there was no other way I could think of that would get me any kind of access to Tung Kuofeng; even if I could find, and stalk, and interrogate one of the Triad in Seoul, I’d learn nothing; they’d keep their silence whatever I did to them; they were fanatics.
Fat chance, in any case, of my capturing one of these people; they’d got onto me right from the start in London and they’d been crowding me ever since: I’d kept one step ahead of death in the last five days, and that was all; I could see Croder’s point of view: the odds were too high, and the Triad was too strong. Perhaps unbreakable.
The old man had begun speaking, and I sat listening, but understood nothing. Li-fei didn’t interrupt him, though there were silences where it seemed he’d finished. His head was lowered now and he was facing neither of us as the soft variant tones and unaspirated consonants fell and flew from his lips in a kind of dry music, and when at last he was finished Li-fei let the silence go on. for a little time before turning to me.
“He was speaking in parables,” she said, “but I believe what he means is that he possesses some kind of knowledge that would lead Tung Kuofeng to ‘losing everything’ if the police knew of it - I think he means death by execution or life imprisonment. Some time ago he warned Tung that he would have to expose him, so that justice could be done and so that he could be freed of his earthly sins; but at that time Tung said that he was going to leave the Triad and devote the rest of his life to solitude and prayer as a means of atonement. This is what I think the priest means.”
I glanced at the ancient man in the gloom, but couldn’t get any kind of impression as to his personality; he sat in perfect stillness, his back bent only a little and his sightless eyes giving away nothing; he looked like one of the stone Buddhas that inhabited every shrine. “From what he says,” I asked Li-fei, “do you think he’s naive? Does he really know what kind of man Tung Kuofeng is?”
“He’s very religious, but I don’t think he’s naive; and he knows Tung: he called him a ‘bad devil’. Of course there are good devils and bad-” she broke off, uncertain of how to put it - “in French we’d say ‘the Devil himself’, or ‘a disciple of the Devil’, something like that.”
In a moment she was going to tell me all I wanted to know: whether I still had a mission or whether it was going to be taken out of my hands; but I couldn’t wait for her; I had to ask. It wasn’t easy.
“Does he know where I can find Tung Kuofeng?”
“He hasn’t said anything about that.”
I took a breath. “Ask him.”
She turned to the priest, and as she began speaking he lifted his head to listen; then for a while he was silent, and I had to wait, and not think of anything.
Then he spoke, and she turned to me again.
“Yes. He knows where Tung is now.”
I suppose I didn’t believe it, right away. It looked as if we’d got access for Jade One, after five days of running blind and drawing blank and trying to stay alive; for five days the Bureau had been shaking the whole of the international network for information and as it had started coming in it was sealed forever in death - Sinclair’s, Jason’s, Spur’s. But now the luck was breaking, and we stood a chance.
Second question.
“And will he tell me?”
Then I had to wait again while she asked him, while he listened and was silent, sitting with his head turned to me as if he were watching me, trying to sense what kind of man I was, and whether I could be trusted to follow the path he believed was good, according to his gods and his teachings.
There was nothing I could do to persuade him; I didn’t know enough about him; it could be dangerous: a wrong word could slam the door on hope.
When he spoke, it was only a word or two, and I turned to look at Li-fei.
She nodded to me. “Yes,” she said, “he will tell you.”
Chapter 15
Signals
In terms of driving-time Kimpo Airport was about halfway between Karibong-ni and the British Embassy in Seoul so as soon as we left the temple I asked Li-fei to stop at the nearest service station with a telephone; then I called the number Youngquist had given me in the subway this morning.
I recognised his voice when he came on the line, but we went through a double code-intro routine to make absolutely sure; then I told him I wanted a rendezvous with the director in the field, fully urgent, in the departure lobby on the third floor of Kimpo Airport half an hour from now. He didn’t ask any questions and he wouldn’t have got any answers if he had; nor was there any doubt that Ferris would be there on time: apart from a few hundred other things, your director in the field is required to make himself immediately available to you at whatever hour of the night or day; the executive is his sole charge and his sole responsibility.
I rang off and went back to the car.
Li-fei didn’t say a word all the way to the airport; I think our meeting with the priest had brought the whole thing back to her: this was the time when the sleepless nights would begin, when she’d lie awake and wonder where things had gone wrong for her brother, and whether she could have tried harder to keep him out of trouble, away from Tung Kuofeng’s deadly influence. Nothing would have stopped him, she had told me, and I shall never know why.
She pulled up at the entrance to the terminal building and looked at me and asked: “Will you need me anymore?”
“No.”
“You must be very careful.”
“Yes,” I said, “I’ll be careful.”
I was looking for Ferris but couldn’t see him.
“What will you do,” Li-fei asked me, “when you find Tung?”
“I don’t know.”
“Will you arrest him?”
“Something like that.”
“Or kill him?”
“I really don’t know.”
“Whatever you do to him,” she said in a small cold voice, “let it be also for my brother.”
I got out and she drove away and I watched as she made the turn, with the bright overhead lamps throwing their light across the pale china-doll face at the driving window; then I turned and went through the main doors and took the stairs to the third floor, walking with my head down and turned slightly towards the walls, because they were out there somewhere and ready to try again the moment they picked up my trail.
You’d think my instinct to survi
ve was adequate, but now there was something extra I wanted to live for: if they were going to finish me, let it not be yet, because now I’d got something to do; grant me, 0 Lord, at least the luck of a street dog, and let me endure.
Third floor, because there were fewer people up here and all of them going one way. Two stairwells, exit report gates, two shops, airlines VIP lounge and toll waiting rooms. A group of five Japanese in light summer suits, all men and bowing to one another with punctilious regularity; two China Airlines flight attendants hobbling on high-heeled shoes; a black-uniformed chauffeur escorting a small European boy as far as Gate Three. There was no one else here: this was between flights. Through one of the windows I could see the wink of a beacon and the yellow glitter of the city to the north-east, and headlights along the highway.
Ferris late, discount, traffic problems, look at the gift shop window, what lovely plastic Buddhas.
Are you sure? Ferris would ask.
The map was in my pocket.
I’ll have to signal London.
Of course. Tell Croder. Cheer the bastard up.
What pretty Japanese fans.
Get here. For Christ’s sake just get here. All I ask.
A big jet came in with a thump and I saw lights flickering across the windows. Nine seventeen on the clock. But there is absolutely no point in watching the headlights. Youngquist understood the message and the message was ultra-priority and he knew that: when you’re operational and you use a telephone to your director or a contact it doesn’t matter which telephone you use, it’s a hotline.
Two heads floated against the glass of the window, bobbing up from the stairwell behind me and moving across the pantomime masks, a man and a woman; I heard their voices, half lost in the whistle of the jet as it came in towards the parking bay.
Others came, their heads appearing above the stairhead and turning, floating across the row of masks while I watched them, one of them not turning but growing larger and facing in this direction, pink and sandy and with glasses catching the light, bringing me back to a world where a future was possible again, “Bit of a jam leaving the city,” he was saying.
I turned round and said: “I’ve got access.”
He opened his mouth to say something but thought better of it for some reason and just stood watching my face as if he was trying to see if I really meant it.
“Access to Tung Kuofeng,” I told him. “I know where he is.”
He glanced around and asked me, “Why the airport?”
“It would have taken me another half hour to get to the city.”
“Is time critical?” I didn’t answer, and it took him a full second to get it all straight. “Sorry.”
“I should bloody well think so.” It had taken me four days of murderous pressure to get here with what they wanted, and he’d wondered why there was suddenly such a rush.
“Are you sure enough,” he asked me, “for me to let them know?”
“You can put through an interim signal, in case they’ve got to take up any slack in the system.”
He nodded and we went down the stairs and he used one of the phones near the post office on the second floor, giving it cold to Youngquist or the Embassy or whoever was near a radio: The executive in the field has access. Then he put me in the Embassy car and took the slip road for the highway and turned north-east, slotting into the traffic stream.
“Did you catch that leak?” I asked him.
“Yes.”
“We’re going to the Embassy?”
“Yes.”
He smelled of soap.
“Who was it?”
He always smells of soap. He’s always washing. They say he’s guilty about something and I can believe that: there’s something in his voice like the echo of a distant shot.
“A Korean clerk, handling host-country PR.”
Everything coming up roses. Tonight nothing was going to go wrong. The mood was swinging wild now: I’d stood there watching the pretty Japanese fans and thinking my God they’ve got Ferris and he’s not just late, he’s dead, and so’s the mission, and now the elation was coming in, and when I finally flew out of this bloody place I’d take one of those plastic Buddhas back for some poor sod at the office, preferably Croder.
“How did you get him?” I asked Ferris.
“Routine trap. We asked HE to say there was a suspected security problem, and checked everyone on the staff below second attaché on their way home. This character had some papers on him, nothing classified but not his business.”
A lot of the elation going, downswing now, but that was normal. “This man Tung,” I said, “is just about everywhere.”
“It might not have been Tung’s man. In Asia there’s a lot of intelligence mercs: they’ll pass on whatever they can pick up, to whoever will pay most.”
“There could be someone else,” I said, “at the Embassy.”
“No. I’ve been working all day on that: five trial rendezvous with Youngquist and three contacts, half of them by open phone and half over various radios in open speech, three languages, and no one ever turned up to survey. Youngquist took the skin off his feet.”
“That’s a shame.”
“I thought you’d like that.”
When the lights of downtown started swinging overhead I told him about the priest and he listened for ten minutes without interrupting before he asked:
“Is he sure?”
“Yes. I told him that lives depended on it, and he said he could believe that, because he knew what kind of man Tung was, and he knew I was an agent opposing him.”
“You told him that, did you?”
“I had to, for Christ’s sake”
“Just wanted to know,” he said quietly.
“Look, he wouldn’t have opened up if I hadn’t told him that much, Christ, I could’ve been anyone, can’t you see that?”
“Everything’s perfectly all right,” he said, and I sat back and started cooling in my own sweat. Nerves, that was all; paranoia; it’d been a rough four days.
“Bloody Ferris,” I said. “You know what they say about you in the Caff? They say you strangle mice.”
He gave that thin, rustling laugh of his, like a snake shedding its skin, and we pulled into the Embassy yard in Chung-dong Street and got out of the car and went into the building and up the stairs to a room on the second floor, empty except for some garden furniture and a cardboard box of paper cups and a projection screen hanging at an angle against the wall.
Ferris shut the door and I got out the map.
“You mean there’s no approach by road?”
“The nearest road is this one, twenty miles away. All you’ve got are mule tracks.”
Ferris looked at the larger map he’d got from the night clerk. “He pinpointed the monastery here?”
“Yes.”
“He was absolutely certain?”
“He said it was his home for fifteen years.”
“We’re depending,” Ferris said, “on the word of one man. A blind man.”
“He had his sight up till three years ago.”
“How did he lose it?”
“I don’t know. But I asked him. He said it was ‘karma’. And I realised we’d have to depend on his word alone; that’s why it took an hour and a half to get it all clear; and I’m satisfied. He knows the mountains, the terrain and the layout of the monastery.”
“You say it’s in ruins now?”
“Partly. There was a rock fall, three years ago, and the monks had to leave.”
“That was when he was blinded?”
“He told me it happened three years ago, only that.”
“You think Tung did it? Or had it done?”
“That was my impression. I’d say their paths had crossed.”
There was a knock on the door and Ferris went over and unlocked it. The night clerk looked in.
“I’ve got the cook out of bed.” He was a young chap with a long face and inquisitive eyes; or perhaps they had
n’t looked so inquisitive before we’d come in here and asked for food and maps and a camp bed and absolute privacy; he didn’t know who we were but he knew Ferris must be persona grata with HE. His eyes were darting from our faces to the maps all over the floor. “Bacon and eggs and toast, was that right?”
“And coffee,” Ferris said.
“Okie-doke. Coming up.”
That was at 11:25.
I’d slept for an hour by the time Ferris came back from the cypher room, his face perfectly expressionless. He told me they’d exchanged fifteen signals so far, and that London was “open-minded.” Two people from the Bureau had gone across to the Foreign Office to sit at the radio, and ten minutes ago Croder had come on the air.
“Why doesn’t he make up his mind?” I asked Ferris.
“He’s in the process of doing that.” Cool tone: rebuke. He was getting fed up with his executive needling Control all the time; I could see his point so I shut up. “They want to know,” he said in a moment, “what the chances are of putting a chopper down in that area.”
“I asked the priest. He said the only place you can put down a chopper in that region is at the monastery itself; the surrounding terrain is nothing but peaks and crags.”
He got onto the floor with the maps again. “We’re going to assume that if Tung is using this place as a refuge it’s liable to be more like a fort than a monastery.”
“Thank you. That’ll give me a chance.”
“You wouldn’t want to try going in with a chopper?”
That was obviously an official question and for the record.
“No. There’s only one way I’m prepared to go in, as I told you.”
He sat there cross-legged like a thin sandy Buddha. “Why did he go there? Why did he need refuge?”
Some of these questions were passed on from London; some were coming into his mind as the sessions progressed.
“The priest didn’t say.”
“But you asked him?”
“Yes.”
“You think he didn’t know?”
“I think he knew, but wasn’t saying.”