The Pekin Target q-10

by Adam Hall

  "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… sitting 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."

  14: Shadows

  Decapitation produces almost total blood loss from the facial area within a few seconds, but the embalmers had injected their resins skilfully 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 Kuo-feng," 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 Kuo-feng who ordered my brother's death." She watched the doorway. "Tung Kuo-feng," 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 r
easons."

  "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 Kuo-feng 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 Kuo-feng. There is no excuse for that. But he was my brother, and Tung Kuo-feng 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 Kuo-feng."

  "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.

  "We need to know where to find Tung Kuo-feng," 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 Kuo-feng?"

  "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 Kuo-feng.

  "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 Kuo-feng; 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 Kuo-feng 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 Kuo-feng 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 Kuo-feng?"

  "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."

  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.