The Pekin Target

by Adam Hall

“What are your thoughts on that?”

  “I’d say that Tung is under some kind of pressure; that he’s running his operation by remote control, using a radio.”

  “A defensive operation?”

  “I don’t think there’s anything defensive about assassinating a secretary of state and an ambassador.”

  “So what do you think?”

  “He could be running his operation this way to avoid the danger of getting hit.”

  “You think if he got hit, personally, it would destroy the operation?”

  “Yes. I think he’s running a cell of out-and-out fanatics, totally loyal, totally obedient, riders of the divine wind. They’re the type who break if the leader breaks.”

  He went on questioning, with intervals of meditative silence. I did the best I could, but it wasn’t easy because there weren’t too many facts: I was bringing out feelings, recalling things that Li-fei had told me in the Chonju Hotel, and at her house, and in the car, and at the temple, when I’d listened half to the things she wasn’t saying, and taking more notice of them than of the things she was. I had also listened to the silences of the priest, unconsciously measuring their length, knowing that the longer he was silent the more he was troubled by the questions I’d asked him through Li-fei.

  “You think the priest would like to see Tung dead?”

  “What?” I had to think about that. “Yes. But not in the way we’d mean it, in the West. He’d feel personally relieved to see Tung cleansed of his earthly sins; that was a phrase he used, if Li-fei got the translation right. And the kind of sins he was talking about can only be atoned for by death.”

  “But not death as punishment?”

  “Death as atonement.”

  Then there was a knock on the door again and the night clerk put his long face in the gap. “Kirby wants you, sir.” Kirby was the cypher clerk and this was another signal.

  00:46 hours, and already morning.

  “They’re in contact,” Ferris said, “with the CIA.”

  “Because of the American Ambassador?”

  He didn’t answer that. “I just want you to know there’s now an American connection. Are you still prepared to go in there?”

  “To the monastery?”

  “Yes.”

  “If it’s my way, by a night drop.”

  Ferris was sitting on the floor again with the maps in front of him. He slotted his long fingers together and didn’t look up as he told me: “Control says you can go in, on his terms.”

  Dead end. Sixteen signals, leading us to a dead end. Because I knew Croder. He wouldn’t have made this proviso if they were the kind of terms I could accept. Croder is God: he giveth and he taketh away.

  “What terms?”

  “That you take someone with you as a guide.”

  I said no.

  01:32.

  “I always work solo,” I said. “You know that.”

  “This time it’s too critical.”

  “Only the landing. After I’m down I don’t want anyone with me. They’d get in my way.”

  “You won’t even find your way, without a guide.”

  “Look, I did a night drop into the Sahara and there was no problem. I was alone.”

  “This isn’t the Sahara.”

  “Croder doesn’t trust me, that’s all. He never has.”

  Ferris began whistling quietly, which was like anyone else kicking the door down. “They’re putting everything on this one venture. If you take a guide with you it’s going to decrease the risk of your getting lost. All the guide has to do is get you to the monastery - to within sight of it. Then you go in alone.”

  “It’s the drop I’m worried about. Two chutes are more visible than one: you’re doubling the risk, not decreasing it.”

  “You’re dropping by night.”

  “By moonlight.”

  “Over completely unknown territory.”

  “With a compass.”

  “And magnetic rocks in the area. You won’t know whether you’re north or south of the target.”

  “If they can drop me reasonably close, I’ll be able to see the monastery; there can’t be too many rectangular mountain peaks.”

  He began whistling softly again and I waited.

  Hear me: if ever I get out of this one alive, I’ll never work for Croder again. This is the second time and he hasn’t changed.

  “Your arguments,” Ferris said, stopping his pacing and looking down at me, “have been presented to London. I foresaw most of them; the others won’t be transmitted because it won’t be worth it. They’ll say no.”

  “They’re not doing the drop. I am.”

  “What you’re doing,” Ferris said, “is provoking Croder. You hate his guts and you want him to know it. But he knows it already, so you’re wasting your time.”

  “Croder’s not doing the drop.” I got up and moved about, keeping out of Ferris’s way.

  “Do you think this is the first one he’s ever set up?”

  “What are my chances, Ferris? You thought about that? I’d put them at fifty fifty and that’s optimistic. That’s why you’ve got Youngquist out here, standing by. Who the hell is Croder to make it tougher for me than it is already?”

  “Croder is our Control.”

  “That doesn’t mean he’s God.”

  “Yes, it does. And he’s the only one we’ve got.”

  It stopped me, but I don’t know why. He saw it, and came closer, and lowered his voice. “It’s the only way we can ever work, isn’t it? With someone in London who knows more than we do, and who can get us out of traps we can’t even see because we’re too close.”

  I didn’t say anything. I’d used all the arguments I could think of and they hadn’t worked.

  “You’d do it for any other Control,” Ferris said, “wouldn’t you?”

  In a moment I said: “Yes.”

  “So you’ll do it for this one. Won’t you?”

  I turned away from him. “Yes.”

  He moved towards the door. “I’ll go and tell them.”

  “Do that.”

  Because it was over now, the little show of nerves because the mission was shifting phase and we were all having to make decisions instead of simply trying to stay alive. A minute ago I’d believed Croder was wrong, that he was trying to kill me off in the only way he could, and that he was the enemy, not Tung Kuofeng. I’d believed it: I hadn’t just been shouting the odds. But Ferris knew that if he talked to me long enough the adrenalin would recede and I’d peak out and come down from the high and listen to reason again. That’s what your director in the field is for, to understand your own particular kind of neurosis and then pander to it, to bitch you about like a nagging mother till you find your own feet again.

  01:40 and to hell with them all. We were going in.

  Chapter 16

  USAFB

  “Okay,” Captain Newcomb said, “these are hard copies of some stuff we took from high altitude with vidicon cameras three or four months ago.” He pushed the square-format pictures across the briefing table and leaned over them with a pointer. “The scale is 1:944,300, or approximately one inch to 15.6 miles, and the ground resolution is 200 feet/line, so we have a pretty clear image of the monastery. It’s right here.”

  One of the lights on the telephone near the door had begun winking but nobody took any notice.

  “Halfway up the mountain,” Ferris said.

  “Maybe a bit closer to the peak. We lose definition lower down on this picture because of the trees and shadow. We estimate the altitude at 1,000 feet. The - “

  “The altitude of the monastery?” I asked him.

  “Uh? Right. The monastery, not the peak. The peak’s around two thousand, which tallies with local survey maps.”

  Lieutenant Lewes sat hunched over the table, chewing gum. He was the pilot. After Ferris had told London I was ready to go in on their terms there’d been a long delay, presumably because Croder had had to go through Washington or the
Pentagon to set up liaison with the US Air Force and arrange the drop. We’d only arrived here fifteen minutes ago at ten in the morning but Ferris had got me through security with no problem. This was the new Air Force base to the south-west of the city: I’d passed the gates last night on the way to Karibong-ni.

  “You’ll be dropping an hour before dawn, so that you’ll have time to release the chutes and stow them and get yourself set up for the ground approach.” Newcomb glanced round as the door opened, but went on speaking. “The Met. tells me that it’s likely you’ll be going down in virtually still-air conditions.”

  The girl slipped into the empty chair without saying anything. Ferris gave her a nod and went on listening to Captain Newcomb.

  “The estimated mean air temperature at that altitude band is fifty-six degrees at the time you’ll be dropping. There’s one potential problem, and that’s the likelihood of ground mist at this season, especially after the monsoon rains. There just isn’t anything we can do to help you with that.” He straightened up from the table. “Are there any questions so far?”

  “What about - ” I began but Ferris stopped me.

  “Hold it a moment, would you?” He pushed his chair back and got up. “Gentlemen, this is Miss de Haven of Geological Survey. She’ll be going in as the guide.”

  The rest of us got up, though Lewes looked a bit uncertain; the girl was in green battledress and he’d heard all about women’s lib. “This is Captain Bob Newcomb,” Ferris told her, “Lieutenant Al Lewes, and Mr. Clive West.”

  “Hi,” Al said.

  “For God’s sake sit down,” she told us. “I’m sorry I was late: your security people held me up.”

  “That’s quite okay,” Newcomb said and we all sat down again rather awkwardly. “I’ll just recap what we’ve done so far.”

  We listened again to the briefing while the girl slung her canvas shoulder bag round the chair and put her elbows on the table and studied the photographs. The light on the telephone was still winking and Lewes went across to it and pressed one of the buttons and came back.

  “There’s a certain amount of night flying by the military and civil freight lines between Seoul and Daegu,” Newcomb told us, “which is a plus in terms of sound cover; the direct air lane between the two fields runs approximately twenty-five miles from the monastery at its closest point on a horizontal plane, so they’re used to hearing air traffic not too far away.”

  He asked for questions again, and the de Haven girl got up and walked about, her arms folded and her gaze mostly on the briefing table; she was short, with chunky blond hair and steady eyes and a square chin; I thought I’d seen her before but couldn’t remember when; I didn’t believe the “Geological Survey” tag: it was almost certainly a cover, because this was a high-risk drop and she must be in some kind of spook unit.

  “What jump altitude are you thinking of?” She looked at me for the first time since the introductions.

  “As low as we can make it. Say one thousand.”

  “That’s too low.” She was looking at the briefing table again. “Even with ground wind zero it’s not going to be much fun in that terrain. Let’s make it three.”

  I got up too, and felt Ferris watching me, and ignored it. “I don’t know what a calculator would give us, but during that extra two thousand feet we’ll be in the air for something like two minutes longer.”

  “So?” She glanced up from the table.

  “There’ll be a three-quarter moon.”

  “Oh. You mean we’ll be visible for that much longer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are they going to be watching for us?”

  “We don’t know,” Ferris cut in.

  “Can we find out?”

  In the silence I thought: either she’s been under-briefed or isn’t thinking.

  “No,” Ferris said.

  She switched her hard blue eyes onto me. “You’ve made drops like this before, Mr. - ?”

  “Clive.”

  “Mr. Clive?”

  “Clive West.”

  “What? Oh. Fair enough. I’m Helen.”

  “I haven’t made a drop over mountains. But I’d rather risk a broken ankle than hang there in the sky for two minutes longer. I’m going in from one thousand.”

  “We’ll talk about it later. For the moment we - “

  “I’d like it to go down now in the operational notes,” I told her, “since this is the only briefing session we’re going to get. We jump from one thousand feet.”

  Al Lewes got up and went over to the window and blew his nose rather noisily. Newcomb went on staring at the aerial photographs. De Haven turned her head to face Ferris; she had a very direct gaze, always moving her head instead of glancing with her eyes.

  “This is only a two-crew operation, Mr. Ferris, but there’s got to be one of us in command, the same as if we were flying a plane in. I was called in as an expert to plan the drop, and the only way I can do it is my way. Is that agreed?”

  Ferris slid his long fingers together on the edge of the table. “You won’t accept Mr. West’s authority?” He said it pleasantly.

  “It’s not a question of accepting him.” Her tone was perfectly cool. “If he knows as much as I do about dropping into that area and finding his way afterwards, that’s fine, and you don’t need me. But if he doesn’t - which I assume is why you shied me in - then I’ve got to be in charge, not only because I want to protect my life too, but because it’ll lessen the risk or us both.” She took her sling bag from the back of the hair and swung it across her shoulder.

  Captain Newcomb picked up his pointer and aligned it carefully along the edge of the nearest photograph. Lewes as still standing at the window with his back to us. In a moment Ferris looked up at me. “My instructions,” he said, “are that if any question arises as to who’s in charge of the drop, it’s Miss de Haven.

  She took the bag off her shoulder and slung it round the back of the chair again.

  “Well, that’s got that out of the way.”

  “Decaffeinated.”

  “Anything with it?”

  “No.”

  Three pilots came into the canteen, still in their flying gear. I’d watched these people throwing F5Es all over the sky most of the day; then I’d seen a film in the auditorium and now I was in here trying to absorb the shock.

  “Can I join you?”

  Helen de Haven.

  “Of course.”

  I turned the newspaper over as she sat down; there was a photograph.

  “How are you feeling?”

  She was in a blue tee shirt and jeans; I hadn’t recognised her for a moment; she looked younger, more feminine. “Feeling?”

  “About the drop.”

  “Not very good. What can I get you?”

  “Coffee. Not very good?”

  I gave the order. “You came at the wrong time.”

  “That’s easily dealt with” She got up and slung her bag across her shoulder.

  “We’ve got to talk,” I said, “in any case.”

  “I’m not sure I want to.”

  “Anything to eat, with the coffee?”

  “What? I don’t know. A bun, I suppose. What the hell’s gone wrong?” She sat down again and looked at me with her steady hard-blue eyes.

  The paper had been lying on the counter when I’d come in. I suppose that was luck, of a kind: I might not have seen it otherwise.

  She met her death, it said on the front page, in the same grim fashion.

  “I don’t know yet,” I told Helen de Haven, “what’s gone wrong. But we’ll keep you briefed.”

  Her eyes were narrowed slightly and her mouth was firm. “Is it this thing about the jump altitude?”

  “No. Although I’d like to reach some sort of a compromise about that.” The girl put two coffees on the counter and pushed the cream and sugar closer. “When you were briefed,” I asked de Haven, “what were you told, exactly?”

  “It was a secret briefing.”r />
  “Were you told, for instance, that we’ll be going into what might be called hostile territory?”

  “Something like that.”

  The same bizarre method, the paper said, was a feature of both killings. Otherwise, I suppose, it wouldn’t have made the front page in a city of seven million people. I watched her again for a moment as the little Subaru made the turn outside the terminal building, her pale face at the window. It was the last I would ever see of her.

  Only hours before her death on the steps of the temple in Seoul, the newspaper had said, Soong Li fei had been the chief mourner at her brother’s funeral.

  Outside the canteen an F5E went down the runway and lifted off with a reverberating rush of sound.

  You must be very careful, Li-fei had told me. She knew Tung Kuofeng, and the things he was capable of doing; but she had forgotten to be careful herself.

  “Are you getting cold feet?” the de Haven girl asked me.

  “What?”

  “This hostile territory thing. It’s losing its appeal?”

  “I don’t know,” I told her, “if it’s still on.”

  “The drop?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, they called me down from the north, and I’m bloody busy.”

  I was trying to focus on the fresh English face with its unwavering gaze, but there was a kind of double exposure and I was also watching the soft cinnamon eyes of Soong Lifei.

  “What do you do,” I asked de Haven, “in the north?” Not that I was interested, but there was a social obligation to keep the conversation going while I thought out what to do.

  “I train parachutists for NATO. Why?”

  “Then you’re too valuable to lose. How did you get yourself into this mess?”

  She put down her coffee with a little bang. “Clive, are you always like this?”

  “Like what?”

  “A bear with a sore arse. Look, if you’ve decided to back out of doing the drop then just tell me. Frankly I couldn’t care less, but by God I shall want expenses and compensation for wasted time.”

  Her anger was finally getting through to me and the image of Soong Li-fei was fading. “Something’s happened,” I told her, “that might stop us going in. I’ve got to ask Ferris for his instructions; then we’ll tell you the score.”