The Pekin Target q-10

by Adam Hall

  I wanted to get at that radio. It was the only chance.

  "Do you trust Tung Kuo-feng?"

  "With what?"

  "Your life."

  "I think he'll keep me alive as long as it's in his own interests."

  "They are also my interests."

  Wrong.

  I said: "Then I've got a double chance."

  "Your chance of remaining alive for more than a few hours precisely nil." Ice in his eyes.

  "I wouldn't say that. I'm your direct access to the opposition. You can funnel enough dope through me to knock them right out of the running."

  Dismissed with a shrug. "Where is your safe-house in Seoul?"

  "There isn't one."

  "Then where will you send your signals, if I permit it?"

  "To my director in the field."

  "What is his name?"

  "Murray."

  "Where can he be reached?"

  "At the British Embassy."

  He swung away from me and paced for a while, probably to show Tung that he was in total control here and still hadn't decided whether to use me or not. Beyond him I saw one of the Koreans standing closer to the archways, looking in at us; when he saw I was watching him he brought up his submachine gun and aimed it at me and I thought yes, Sinitsin was probably right: my chances of remaining alive for more than a few hours were precisely nil.

  We listened to the sound of the grey suede shoes across the flagstones, like the ticking of a clock. I was getting no emanations from Tung; when I looked away from the muzzle of the submachine gun I saw he had his eyes closed, perhaps in meditation.

  The little interpreter shuffled a few steps away, perhaps needing movement to ease his leg; he wasn't wearing a track suit like the rest of them; I suppose he was just a civilian from one of the Communist liaison groups in Pyongyang or the Demilitarised Zone.

  I watched Sinitsin. If he said no, Tung would have to abide by it, and they'd have no further use for me; there'd be the wall and the rattle of shots, and the name of my replacement would go onto the board for Jade One in London.

  If he said yes, my voice would vibrate the speaker in the Embassy signals room and Ferris would look up in disbelief, and we could start work again, and use our one chance in hell of saving the mission.

  Shoes on the flagstones, like the ticking of a clock. Then Sinitsin stopped pacing. "No," he said.

  23: Shoot

  It was only a short walk.

  Tung Kuo-feng didn't come with us, probably because this was Sinitsin's show and they didn't like each other. Sinitsin himself led the way out of the stone-flagged hall, through one of the arches and along the narrow courtyard between the monastery and the ruined temple nearby. The two track-suited guards came forward and I recognised one them as Yang; apparently he knew Russian, because Sinitsin spoke a few words to him directly, without the interpreter's help, just saying I was to be executed immediately. Yang moved behind me and pushed the muzzle of his submachine gun into my spine; it wasn't necessary, because I couldn't run away; he was just expressing his feelings. They took me to the middle of the long wall between the Monastery and the little pagoda, opposite one of those carved stone Buddhas that were everywhere. Yang left me now, (swinging the gun barrel round and moving back to where the others stood, about thirty feet away.

  I don't know what had changed Sinitsin's mind. I'd thought Tung had won his argument in there. Apparently not.

  My eyes were getting used to the moonlight after the glare of the butane lamps in the hall where we'd been. The soft indigo haze across the mountains had lightened a little, and the tiles of the pagoda's curving roof had begun shimmering. The air was still, with the scent of woodsmoke in it. You could say it was a fine night.

  Those present Colonel Igor Sinitsin, Major Alyev and Captain Samoteykin of the KGB, five North Koreans in Olympic strip, and the crippled interpreter. The three Koreans who had come up were probably members of the helicopter crews, invited to watch the show because they still felt badly about the man I'd killed. Tit for tat, so forth, c'est la vie. You can't have everything.

  C'est la mort, also, of course; that you can have.

  Moira.

  One single rose, for Moira.

  Listen, they can't do this. They -

  Shuddup. Die like a brave ferret.

  Records for Jade One: Executive replaced July 16th following final signal reporting extreme hazard. As far as it can be ascertained, first executive in the field deceased shortly afterwards, remains never discovered.

  Sinitsin was coming towards me, his leather heels clicking across the stones.

  The last I'd heard from Moira was that she was shooting some retakes near Paris. I suppose it would be some bloody little second assistant director stopping her as she left the set, Miss Sutherland, there're some flowers come for you in a box. Flower, you idiot, one flower, don't you understand, one rose, don't you know the difference? And don't let her think it's just from one of her fans, make her open it now.

  No. Never let her open it. Throw it away somewhere.

  There weren't any lamps out here in the courtyard; there was just the moonlight, gleaming on the curved tiles of the pagoda and the bell in the archway and Yang's gun.

  They didn't need any more light than this. Yang was thirty feet away and he could blast me into Christendom with one sustained burst of fire, even if I tried running for my life. The only logical place to run would be straight into his gun, to get it over with.

  What will she do with the rose? Will she clasp it tenderly in her slender hands, closing her amethyst eyes while the first hot tears begin falling? You don't know her, my friend. She'll just look at it and say Christ, he was always so bloody sentimental, I wish he'd sent a case of gin so I could get smashed out of my mind.

  Throw it away. Don't let her know.

  Executive deceased. Relevant records show -

  Listen, there's time to run. You can't let them -

  Shuddup, will you. Be brave, little man. You're dying for Queen, country, a stack of piratical death duties and the overweening arrogance that made you think you could run this one solo, so stop snivelling and let that be your epitaph.

  Colonel Sinitsin stopped in front of me with his grey suede shoes neatly together. "Tung spoke a certain amount of logic in there. You could have been valuable as a disinformer; but we know your record and we know you can't be trusted to behave intelligently when it's all over. You'd only try something stupid, and I'm not going to have that."

  I stared him back but didn't show any reaction. There was no point now in concealing the fact that I understood Russian, but it's the kind of thing we've been trained to do, in whatever circumstances: maintain the cover. Actually it's a bit like running around like a chicken with its head cut off, and I would much rather have told Sinitsin something to annoy him, Lenin was a silly shit, something simple enough for him to understand.

  "So you can only blame yourself," he said, and gave a brief energetic nod, as he'd done earlier when I was introduced; then he turned his back on me and walked with his measured stride to where the others were standing, saying a word to Yang as he passed him; Yang was standing alone and slightly forward of the group, and I heard the interpreter catch the word from Sinitsin and translate it for him. Sinitsin had been walking with his back to me when he'd spoken, and I didn't hear what he was actually saying; I suppose it was something like "in your own time".

  They say that we go through three phases in the last few moments of our life: we panic, then we get angry, then we accept. I had got through the first phase — Listen, there's time to run, so forth; and my thoughts about Moira must have been part of the acceptance. I didn't feel any anger, because in this branch of the trade you kill or get killed, and there's nothing personal. I was still in the final phase, the acceptance bit, because my mind was clear enough to wonder why Sinitsin had bothered to come up and speak to me. He believed I didn't understand Russian, or he wouldn't have wasted his time with all that palaver i
n there, with the cripple and Tung translating. Was it conscience, then? Wanting to go through the motions of addressing the condemned man, telling him he'd only got himself to blame? A KGB colonel from Department V with a conscience, yes, that would do all right if I wanted to go out with a funny story.

  I watched Yang bring the submachine gun into the aim. There would be fifty rounds in that model and the stuff would be coming into me with the force of a pneumatic drill. If there were any humanity in him he would start with the head and work downwards through a series of a dozen shots, so that the brain would go first and not understand what was happening afterwards; but there wouldn't be any humanity in him; he'd just stand there and spread me all over the wall and leave it at that; or to put it another way he might have some humanity in him, but that marksman was either his brother or a good friend and he was very upset about him and he'd get a kick out of blowing me apart.

  They were all standing very still now, watching me.

  Physical reactions normal for the situation: sweat running down my sides, the pulse accelerated, a tightness of the chest and a reluctance to breathe in case it disturbed the delicate balance between a living body and a mess of disintegrating chemicals.

  The muzzle of the gun was a small hole and I watched it, and the squat blockish shape of the magazine beyond it. He should be pumping that thing by now.

  Everything very still, and the sweat trickling on my skin moonlight and indigo dark, and faces, and silence, and suddenly someone's voice, pitched in a shout.

  "Come on then, you bastard! Shoot!"

  My own voice, yes. Its echoes came back from the walls of the pagoda. Rather bad show of nerves, but too late now.

  "Come on!"

  Sweat pouring on my face; staring into the muzzle of the gun; breathing rapidly now and the heart thudding under the ribs, if you're going to do it, do it, if you're going to do it, do it —

  "Shoot, damn your eyes!"

  Shaking all over, the animal smell of fear, breath coming painfully, sawing in and out, only one thing to do, Mahomet, mountain, so forth, my legs weak as I began walking towards him, towards the gun, watching the small black hole where the flame would burst with its orange light puckering to the dark stitching shapes of the bullets -

  "Shoot, fuck you! What are you waiting for?"

  Walking into his gun.

  Tung Kuo-feng was standing there in the shadows.

  I had only just seen him.

  And now I knew what they were waiting for. Page 97 of the GB Manual entitled Treatment of Prisoners and Hostages. The heading for Chapter IV reads: "Effectiveness of Fear Inducement".

  This was Russian, and it was routine.

  But the human body is a body and as I walked right into at bloody thing he didn't lower it, and I stood there with the muzzle against my stomach and the sweat still running on me because you can never be sure… you can never be absolutely sure that you're right, that they're just pulling your psyche apart to soften you up, to make you afraid, to make you obey. Because prisoners and hostages get shot dead every day all over the world and you can't simply stand here and whistle just because you've read their bloody manual half a dozen times in the Behaviour under Stress class at Norfolk.

  Yang must be military, and under tight discipline; otherwise it would have been too much for him: he would have pumped that thing at me like an orgasm he couldn't stop.

  I looked up from the gun into his dark burning eyes. He'd frightened me, and I felt the reaction developing inside me with the gathering force of an explosion and then I was working hard, my hands driving down against the barrel of the gun and smashing it away so fast that he could loose only a short burst before my half-fist went into his throat and he staggered back.

  Hands grabbing me, dragging me away from him, that's all right, you frightened me, that's all, and I've got a rotten temper, not my bloody fault, I was born with it.

  24: Minefield

  5051 kHz.

  Tung was on one side of me, Sinitsin on the other. Somewhere behind me were the two track-suited guards, one of them Yang. It hadn't been my intention to kill him, though I could have done that: I had been fast enough and there had been more than enough rage behind the half-fist strike to the larynx; but discipline hadn't been undermined even after what they'd done to me, and I had known that if I killed Yang there wouldn't be another mock execution: they would gun me down on the spot.

  So he was behind me now, with a bruised throat and the submachine gun in his hands again, in case I tried to smash up the radio or said anything wrong. I hadn't increased my chances, of course, by going for him like that: he'd want even less of an excuse now to shoot me out of hand; but without having to think about it I'd realised we had to do something about the fear they'd induced in me, about the wish to obey; we had to minimise the effects that were the object of the whole charade, and the rage and then the release of rage which going for Yang had done. It had been a calculated reaction on the part of the psyche, bringing in the risk-benefit factor: the risk of death at the hands of Yang was now increased, but I would benefit from the fact that my fear of these people and my wish to obey them was much less than it would have been, and if a chance came of destroying them I was more ready to take it.

  But everything is relative. As I sat in front of the illuminated console the nerves in my spine were crawling, because the smell of cordite was still on the air and I knew they were standing behind me with loaded guns, in case I tried to smash the radio or use my bare hands on Tung or Sinitsin.

  5051 kHz.

  Eagle to Jade One. Eagle to Jade One.

  I'd been trying for ten minutes or so, without getting anything more than a faint voice speaking what sounded like Korean; the interpreter said he couldn't understand what was being said. I was rather sorry for the interpreter: I was certain now that he wasn't military, even in a non-combatant capacity; he'd really thought they were going to shoot me out there, and when we were all coming back into the operations room he'd stayed outside and we'd heard him vomiting.

  Eagle to Jade One.

  The Korean voice came again and this time the interpreter said we were being received.

  "Ask for Murray," Sinitsin told him, and the interpreter leaned over my shoulder while I held down the transmit lever.

  They would know who Murray was in the Embassy signals room: it was the give-away name for Ferris, the one I'd given away to Sinitsin earlier tonight.

  I was worried about the bad reception we'd been getting it wasn't the mountains between here and Seoul: this was a Hammarlund HQ-105-TRS with a multiplier and BFO and an auto-response circuit: they could raise Moscow with this. Maybe there was something wrong with the antenna rig, or we weren't getting the full 105 volts from the generator.

  "He will find Murray," the interpreter told Sinitsin.

  I felt a sudden surge of confidence. Physically I was less than a hundred per cent after the march through the mountains, and the bullet-wound in my cheek had swollen half my face in the healing process, bringing a fever and leaving a tenderness that kept the nerves bared; but the physical is infinitely less important than the psychological when the stress comes on, and I'd needed an antidote to the lingering fright induced by standing against that wall out there and staring at the muzzle of the gun. Sinitsin had compromised: he'd decided to accept Tung's logic and let me use the transceiver, but had first put me through page 97 to reduce the risk of my breaking out. To a certain degree he'd done that, but the thought that Jade One was still running and that I was resuming contact with the director in the field was almost heady.

  The Korean voice sounded again but almost immediately faded, and the interpreter told Sinitsin he hadn't caught anything intelligible. We went on waiting.

  The idea of smashing the radio kept recurring, but I hadn't got enough data to work on. If this were the only radio at the monastery I might do quite a bit of good by knocking it out and cutting their communications with Moscow, but it wouldn't cut off Tung from his actio
n group: he could raise them with one of the helicopter sets, and they might well have a short-wave transceiver that could reach Moscow. I couldn't destroy their operation; I could only cause temporary confusion.

  Jade One to Eagle.

  Something like a spark went through my nerves. It was the voice of Ferris, loud and clear: a voice I thought I'd never hear again.

  Eagle receiving.

  I sensed Sinitsin closing in from my right side.

  "You are in danger," he said, "but you have obtained information and may be able to obtain more."

  I sat doing nothing while the interpreter put the Russian into Chinese for Tung Kuo-feng, then as Tung began speaking in English I hit the transmit lever.

  "There is a Russian connection," he said. "The operation is being run from Moscow."

  I gave it straight to Ferris, but had to use speech-code because even among people who speak only their own language there are many who pick up foreign words: most English people know niet, parachik, so forth. This applies particularly to the names of people and cities, and a KGB Colonel would know the English for «Russian» and «Moscow», and if I hadn't used «bearish» and "Place Rouge" Sinitsin would have dragged me away from the radio and told Yang to wipe me out, this time for real.

  It was like moving slowly through a minefield, and there was a lot to think about. Tung had opened up with a hot signal, and I'd had to control my reaction. The last thing the KGB wanted anyone to know was that there was a Russian connection, and as I sat here waiting for Sinitsin to give me the next item of dezinformatsiya I knew that I'd just dropped an intelligence bomb in the signals room of the British Embassy; depending on the turnaround facilities there, it could be known in London within minutes from now that Moscow was behind the assassinations in Pekin.