by Adam Hall
"No," the boy said in English.
"Well we won't do it in front of our visitor. Just leave him alone for the moment." He turned to me again. "It's absurd — we have to buy him frozen rats, when in fact he's here to clean up the real thing. There's a lesson there, my dear fellow — if you're too bloody efficient you risk losing your job. Tung," he said as he poured the tea into the rice-grain china, "has got some very superior people working for him, twelve at the latest count. He's —»
"Eleven," I said.
"What?"
"I ran across some of them in Pekin."
"Ah." His pale eyes studied for a second or two. "And one of them wasn't quick enough, yes. But they wouldn't have been Tung's people; they would have been hired for the rough work, you see. If you'd run across Tung's people, you wouldn't be here now. You ought to watch that. If those bastards in London are putting you solo into the field with Tung Kuo-feng, you don't stand a chance. And I know a good deal about you. Not a chance in hell. Lemon?"
"Yes."
He cut a slice for me. "Lapsang Souchong. They dry the leaves on wooden racks, and to protect the wood they soak it in tar. That's where a lot of the flavour comes from. Tung's people, you see, comprise a hit team, for the most part; but they're used for special operations, like the one in Pekin. And when they hit, they don't miss. They're utterly loyal to him, and regard him as a living Buddha. They began in the usual way: he trained them as terrorists, and as soon as they'd made their first kill they couldn't go back to their normal lives as students. One was a computer technician and three had got their PhD in social science at Pekin University; but, as you know, the creature man is not driven by his brain but by his emotions, which aren't all that different from those of a well-educated baboon."
He was maddeningly slow, but I couldn't hurry him. The information I wanted was coming on stream now and nothing must interrupt. He wasn't doing this for London; he was doing it for a fellow slave of the Sacred Bull, which is the name we have for the Bureau, the dispenser of so much sacred bullshit.
"Rumour has it," he said as he sipped his tea, "that Tung is peddling snow, though I rather doubt that. But I know he runs a Triad, and that it's very powerful. I'm sure you know that Triad societies were first organised in the 17th century, to combat by secret means the tyranny of the Manchus, who overthrew the Ming dynasty. Their original aims were therefore legitimate, but like the Mafia they deteriorated over the passage of time to become illegal gangs." With sudden emphasis he went on. "But don't misunderstand me. The people of the Triads are rather more sophisticated than our Sicilian friends; they are secretive, subtle and infinitely more dangerous. Such a man, then, is Tung Kuo-feng. Whether or not he's engaged in exporting heroin out of the Golden Triangle I don't know, as I say, but that bombing in Pekin carries his signature: it was decorative, ironic and effective. Tung to a T, if you'll forgive the expression."
I waited until I was sure he'd finished.
"Where is he now?"
"Don't move," he said softly. "Just keep absolutely still. It's all right."
I tensed, and felt slight pressure along my left leg as the bloody thing came gliding past me, its scales making a whispering across my shoe as it turned and came back, its head lifting and sensing me.
"He just wants to know who you are," I heard Spur murmuring, "and if you move too suddenly you'd frighten him, and he'd bite. Just keep still."
I could smell the thing now: a faint, bitter scent like something rotten. That was why Spur burned the incense in the corner there. The narrow head was lowering now, and the sinuous ten-foot body went gliding towards the bamboo basket by the wall, where it formed coils again.
"Everyone loves old Alexander," Spur said with his silent laugh. "He was the gift of a grateful Armenian whom I got off a murder charge in Calcutta. Of course I told him it was just what I wanted. And where, you were asking, is Tung Kuo-feng now? He's in South Korea, that much I know, I'll put out a few feelers and give you a buzz if I get any warmer." He put down his teacup gently. "Or perhaps you'd rather do the buzzing, would you?"
"Yes."
"And you don't want me to have you followed about any more, I quite understand. I hope you'll forgive my saying so, but the less we see of each other the more I'd like it; if you're going to be so foolhardy as to tackle a chap like Tung Kuofeng on his home ground, I'd rather stay in the clear. Sudden death has never appealed to me, even as a way of avoiding taxes."
The Chonju Hotel was halfway down a narrow street of small shops that sold jewellery, silk, lacquerwork and porcelain, one or two of them still open despite the moist wind that was rattling at the shutters and singing through the spokes of the bicycles that leaned everywhere against the walls.
I went into the lobby of the hotel and checked in, fetching the desk clerk away from his game of Jang-gi with an ancient Chinese under the leaves of a big potted palm.
No messages, either from Ferris in Pekin or the British Embassy here in Seoul; and suddenly I felt cut off and helpless to make a move. It was hard to believe that in London they'd opened up a plot board for this mission in signals, with a man sitting there at the console waiting for Ferris or our contact at the Embassy to feed in information and request instructions, while Croder stood by with his mouth tight and his black eyes hooded and that brilliant and complex brain of his keyed to the work of sending me through the dangerous intricacies of a mission that was blocked at the start by the will-o'-the-wisp elusiveness of the opposition.
Four men dead, within four days — Sinclair, Jason, the Secretary of State and the US Ambassador to Pekin — and I was holed up in a backstreet of Seoul with the monsoon fretting at the shutters and the lamplight flickering and no messages in the key-box, almost nothing to go on, while somewhere Tung Kuo-feng was planning his next move, playing his own game of Jang-gi with a fifth man on the board and ready for sacrifice.
Nerves. Discount. Nerves and the faint putrid smell of that bloody thing still in my senses, and the haunting memory of the death I'd brought to the boy in the alley, his tigerish fierceness stilled by my own hands as he lay under me with the blood filling his throat.
I went up the stairs, past grilled windows and a huge brass gong hanging from the wall; the corridor of the second floor was deserted as I walked to my room at the far end and opened the door.
Instant impressions: the sheen of dark silk and the scent of sandalwood, the glow of an emerald bracelet on a slender wrist, and in the ivory fingers with their lacquered nails the blue metal of a gun.
8: Li-fei
A gun at close quarters is always dangerous because of the unpredictable factors involved: the state of the opponent's nerves and the degree of his fear and the position of the safety catch and the distances and angles that will govern the trajectory of the shot if the gun is fired. Timing, above all, will decide the difference between success or failure.
She was only just inside the door and well within my reach so I hit for the wrist and the gun span across the floor as she cried out in pain and came at me with her lacquered claws, hooking for my eyes with the soft ferocity of a cat as her scent wafted over me and her face was held close to mine, the faint light from the street glowing in her eyes as she fought me, her breath hissing in fury.
She was hardly bigger than a child, but it took a few moments to subdue her, and even with both slender arms locked behind her back she still went on trying to struggle. I left things like that for a couple of minutes, giving her time to think; the Astra Cub.22 was lying on the Numda rug between the window and the bed and her dark head was turned in its direction; her breath came painfully in the quiet of the room as she began whispering to me in Chinese — to me or to herself or her gods, I couldn't tell.
I said in English: "I'm going to hand you over to the police." I was Clive Ingram, an innocent travel agent, and it was outrageous to find myself attacked like this in my own hotel room.
She didn't answer, but stood quivering with her head still angled to watch the gun. I
was aware of warm silk against me, and of the fury that was still in her as I kept the lock on her arms; I could feel blood creeping on my face where her nails had torn the skin close to my eyes, and I knew that if I let her go she'd fly to the gun or spin round and try to blind me.
I told her again that I was going to call the police, this time speaking in French, and her small head jerked upwards as she tried to look at me.
In the same language she said: "I shall kill you." Her breath shuddered out of her with the force of what she was saying.
"Why?"
"One day I shall kill you, however long it takes. Do you understand?"
"Not really." She knew I could snap her fragile arms and finish with it, but she also knew that a civilised male of the species wouldn't want to do that. If I let her trade on it she wouldn't give me a second's chance. "My name is Ingram," I told her wearily, "and I'm an English travel agent on a visit to Seoul. You're mistaking me for someone else." I waited, feeling the small vibration of her heartbeat as her fury went on forcing its rhythm; but her breath was slowing now, and I was encouraged. I wanted to get her out of here, and sleep; I hadn't slept since the flight out from London two nights ago, and the death struggle in Pekin had left me bruised and drained.
It occurred to me that this woman hadn't seen me very clearly in the gloom of the unlit room, so I pulled her backwards and felt for the light switch with my shoulder, moving it down; then I walked her across to the mirror on the dressing-table and for a moment we stared at each other; she was a pure Chinese, her delicate bone structure lit and shadowed by the lamps on the wall and her cinnamon eyes glistening; I looked less elegant, with streaks of blood on my face.
"You see," I told her, "I'm no one you know."
She stared at me for another few moments and then broke, her head going down and the tears coming and her slight body shaking under my hands; and when I released her she covered her face and sank slowly to the floor, the gold embroidery of her long silk hanbok glowing in the light as her black hair fell forward and revealed the pale ivory of her neck. I left her there, going to pick up the gun. She'd come close to killing me and by mistake, and now the reaction was setting in.
For a long time she didn't move, and when the worst of the sobbing was over I asked her gently: "What is your name?"
She turned her tear-wet face. "Soong Li-fei."
"What were you doing in my room?"
I was holding the gun, its trigger-guard hanging from one finger; but she didn't even glance at it.
"It was a mistake," she said, so softly that I only just heard; her French was cultured, with the accent of Touraine.
"What kind of mistake, Li-fei?"
Slowly she straightened up, wiping at her face with the back of her small hands. "It was for my brother. They killed my brother."
The wind was rattling one of the shutters, and I went across to the windows and secured the stay. Her handbag was on the floor near the door, where she'd dropped it; it was of the same dark eau-de-nil silk as her dress. I took it over to her and she found a handkerchief and blew her nose a few times, turning away from me. When she was quiet again I said:
"They killed your brother?" I went over to the handbasin and washed the blood off my face. "Who did?"
"This is the wrong room," she said, "or you are the wrong person. Please let me go now."
"Someone told you I killed your brother?"
"No." She put away her handkerchief and clicked the bag shut. "It was a mistake, m'sieur. I apologise."
"Then someone must have told you that the man who killed your brother would be coming to this room tonight."
"No."
"It's got to be one way or the other, Li-fei."
She watched me with reddened eyes, the last of the tears still glistening on their lids. "I had the room number wrong."
That was possible, but I had to make sure. In the initial phase of a mission I like my privacy.
"Who gave you the room number?"
"I forgot." She was lying with a child's simplicity now, embarrassed, wanting to go. Her lip was trembling and she was making an effort to keep control; it occurred to me that she'd cried tonight from disappointment because I'd been the wrong man and she hadn't been able to avenge her brother.
"When did they kill your brother?" I asked her.
On a sudden sob that she couldn't stop — "Yesterday." I went across to her quickly and held her small cold hands, and she looked up at me in surprise.
"Was this in Seoul?" I asked her.
"No. In Pekin."
My nape crept; but she'd said yesterday, not this morning. "How did they do it?"
She opened the little silk bag quickly, showing me a news cutting folded many times. It was in Korean. "I can't read it," I said.
"It says — " but there was another sob, and she gripped my hands tightly, refusing to break down again. "It says it was a ritual murder, on the steps of a temple." She thrust the small wad of paper back into her bag and closed it.
I felt the tension leaving me. "What was his name?"
"Soong Yongshen."
"I'm sorry. Do you live with your parents?"
"I have no parents."
And no brother now. "I'll see you home," I told her. "Where do you live?"
"No. Just let me go, please.
The monsoon sang through the street outside, banging at the shutters and swinging signs on their rusty hinges. It would blow her away, scattering her like fragments of porcelain.
"I'll get a taxi for you downstairs."
"No. I don't live very far away."
I took out the gun and put it into her hands, and her ivory fingers closed round it clumsily, as if she'd forgotten what it was, and what it was for.
"Thank you."
"I'd throw it away, Li-fei."
"No," she said at once. "I will find him, and kill him."
"Where did you get it?"
"From a friend."
I went with her to the door. "What do you do?"
"I'm an official interpreter for the airline."
"French and Chinese. No English?"
"No. Japanese. There are so many who speak English." We were by the door now but I didn't open it yet; I'd been giving her time to recover. "What did your brother do?"
She caught her breath but steadied. "He worked for — for some kind of organisation. I'm not sure."
"Why would anyone want to kill him?"
"He did something wrong. It was something to do with the dreadful thing in Pekin."
"What dreadful thing?"
"The bombing at the funeral."
Blown.
As if from somewhere outside myself I noted that my voice didn't change in the slightest, but my skin was creeping along the whole length of my spine as the nerves reacted.
"What did your brother do wrong, would you think?"
"I don't know."
I'd been in this city three hours and no one had followed me in from the Chinese mainland and only Ferris knew where I was staying and already I was blown and I didn't even know how to start believing it.
She wanted to go but I kept her.
"How do you know he did something wrong?"
"I was told." My voice hadn't changed and my face hadn't changed but her eyes were wider now as she watched me, her own nerves picking up the alarm in mine. There was nothing I could do about that.
"Who told you?"
"It would be dangerous for me to say."
"That doesn't worry me."
She was frightened now, underneath the perfection of the pale porcelain skin, underneath the elegance of the softly articulated French. There was nothing I could do about that either: it wasn't my fault that I'd walked in here at gunpoint tonight.
"It would be dangerous for me," she said, "to tell you anything."
"I think you're running with the wrong set, Li-fei." I chose the Parisian idiom of the milieu and she looked suddenly bitter, her head going down.
"Yes. There are things
happening that I don't — that I don't understand. But I understand that my brother is dead."
I listened to every word and the way she said it; I watched her cinnamon eyes and the way they changed when she spoke of her brother and when she spoke of other things, the ones she didn't understand; I listened and watched for the slightest sign that she wasn't in point of fact Soong Li-fei, an official interpreter for Korean Airlines, but an exquisite and deadly emissary of the Tung Triad who'd been sent here to trap me with the performance of an accomplished actress. There was no sign; but my mind was clouded with fatigue and the dizzying certainty of the impossible: that I was blown and within the next hour would have to go to ground and somehow stay alive.
I'd tested her, but it had been crude: when I'd put the loaded gun back into her hands the safety-catch had been on and the whole of my body's musculature had been tensed and prepared to hit the thing away again if she changed her mind and tried for a second time. I'd have to test her again when the chance came, before I could be sure. I asked her now:
"Did someone tell you I'd killed your brother? I mean did they give me a name?"
"No."
"What did they say? How did they put it?" I gave an edge to my tone and she heard it, and looked trapped.
"You are nothing to do with this," she said in sudden despair. "It was a mistake — you are not the man I'm looking for. Please let me go, and I promise you'll never see me again."
Choice: threaten her or make use of her. I could threaten to get the police here and accuse her of attempted murder if she didn't tell me what I wanted to know; but she might still decide it was safer to keep silent, whatever I chose to do: I had no means of knowing how unyielding she might be, how enduring, at the dictates of the torment that was driving her; the shock of her brother's death would have unbalanced her for a time.
"All right," I told her, "it was a mistake. Go home and give that gun back to your friend, and forget about vengeance; it could get you life imprisonment."
She closed her eyes for a moment in relief and then stood back as I opened the door for her, giving me a formal little bow and saying something softly in Chinese and then in French. "I thank you for your great kindness. May good fortune always be with you."