by Adam Hall
I wiped the sweat off my face as I waited.
Sinitsin spoke. "The Pekin assassinations were designed to divert both world and intelligence attention from the actual operation Tung Kuo-feng is running."
I sat listening to the interpreter.
We'd passed the first hump in the minefield but there would be so many others. Whenever Sinitsin spoke, I must remember not to react, but to wait for the translation. Whenever Tung spoke to me in English I had to assess what he wanted Ferris to know, and if I didn't like it I would have to try inserting an «ignore» keyword by careful rephrasing, and that would be dangerous because he might realise what I was doing. I had to use speech-code for any words Tung gave me that Sinitsin might understand, like «Russian» or «Moscow», and I must hope that Tung would know why I was doing it. I had to listen for any internationally known names or words — «Pekin», "airport", so forth — spoken by Sinitsin and put them faithfully into the final signal so that he would hear them: because he'd be listening for them; and Tung would have to do the same. At the same time I had to insert an «ignore» key to cover them, because they'd stand out oddly in the message. If Tung didn't understand what I was doing, he couldn't ask me, because Sinitsin would want to know what we were talking about.
While I waited for the interpreter to finish I thought over what Sinitsin had just told me to send. The Pekin assassinations were designed to divert world and intelligence attention from the actual operation Tung Kuo-feng is running. "Pekin" and "Tung Kuo-feng" would have to go in.
When the interpreter had finished Tung leaned over me. "The Pekin only chance of stopping the operation is by finding and releasing Chuan, Tung Kuo-feng's abducted son."
He was on to what we had to do: he'd inserted «Pekin» at the beginning and got his own name in the right place near the end, using exactly nineteen words, as Sinitsin had. If we could work together like this we had a chance, but it would need only one slip, and Sinitsin was listening hard.
I opened transmission. "The Pekin, really, only chance of stopping… " It was the only "ignore we had to insert.
We all waited.
"Message understood so far." Ferris.
He wouldn't be worried by the «ignore» keyword «really». He would be cautious, but not worried. He was already wondering at the delay between my first and second transmissions, and would almost certainly realise I wasn't alone; he would be listening carefully to the tone of my voice, alert for any stress tones or background sounds; but he would know that the signal as a whole could be trusted and that I was sending what I wanted to send; without duress; otherwise I would have thrown in a priority «discount» key right at the outset and the only reason he would have gone on listening would be to hear what kind of disinformation the opposition was trying to feed him, and to respond with formal acknowledgements to give the impression he accepted the signal.
When they'd led me to the radio I'd tried to angle my chair slightly so that I could press down the transmit lever without anyone seeing, so that Ferris would hear the Russian and Chinese in the background; but it hadn't been possible: Sinitsin and his aides had been watching for that.
I looked up at him now, wanting him to know that the transmission had been acknowledged. He began speaking again.
"The Tung operation is aimed at a mock overthrow of the Kim Sung presidency of North Korea, ostensibly by a South Korean terrorist group, followed by an immediate counter coup and a full military invasion of South Korea and the installation of a Communist government."
The interpreter took it up and passed it to Tung Kuo-feng.
I sat waiting, conscious that Ferris too was waiting, and wondering at the delay; but he had some data to work on: he knew I spoke fluent Russian and that there was a Russian connection; he might guess I was concealing the fact that I spoke Russian, and was speaking through an interpreter; he would know I'd reached the monastery and made contact with Tung, because of the information I was sending; but he wouldn't know why I was having to insert sporadic «ignore» keys as I went along.
Tung began speaking. He'd remembered my use of «bearish» for «Russian» and used it now, putting his own name early in the phrasing and putting in the names of Kim Sung, North and South Korea and Communist; I'd been waiting for Sinitsin to pounce at any moment, but I should have realised that Tung, chief of a formidable Triad, would be capable of working out the game we had to play; and he knew that the better he played it the more chance he had of seeing his son again.
Minus the necessary repetition of the names Sinitsin was listening for, and minus the relevant «ignore» keys, Tung's transmission read: Chuan Tung is held by Russian agents somewhere in South Korea. His location and release would bring the operation to an immediate stop, so you must do utmost. Tung ready to expose Russians' objective, which is to destroy Chinese-American relations.
I lifted the transmit lever and waited on automatic receive. I'd had to use «subject» for the second «Tung», and "Red Indian" for «American», because «American», "States", "United States", «USA», "US", "Uncle Sam" and «Yank», "Yanks", «Yankee» might be understandable to Sinitsin. For five or six seconds there was silence in the room except for the low hum of the transceiver.
"Message understood."
I didn't relax until the silence continued for another few seconds after Ferris acknowledged. Sinitsin would have jumped straight in with a question if he'd had one. Ferris himself was less of a worry: he knew he daren't ask any one of a dozen questions he was wanting to — my reasons for speech-code and «ignore» keys, and so forth; their presence alone warned him of danger.
"He doesn't sound very surprised," Sinitsin said.
I looked blank and turned to Tung Kuo-feng and waited for the translation to come through, at the same time thinking out the answer. When I was ready I said through Tung and the Korean: "In our trade, Colonel, there aren't many things left that can surprise us, don't you agree? And your transmission's being relayed to London, so he's not going to hold things up by any questions. Do you have more?"
"Yes."
He began on the next phase.
It was now midnight by the twenty-four hour chronometer on the lighted console, three o'clock in the afternoon in London. If the Embassy in Seoul had immediate relay facilities, Croder would be channeling this transmission direct to half a dozen departments, alerting sleepers and agents-in-place throughout South-east Asia, asking for an immediate two-week playback analysis from Asian Signals Coordinate to catch anything intercepted during the last fourteen days that sounded like a terrorist or political abduction, and directing emergency staffs into Soviet Department V Operations Monitor Section, Dossier File (Asia), Intelligence Support Stations (South Korea) and Active Signals Search.
Feedback would be reaching Seoul within minutes and all of it would go to Ferris, but only for his information until someone picked up traces of the Tung Chuan abduction or made a lucky hit with one of the dozen radio direction-finding mobile units that would initiate roving missions even while the stuff was still coming in from London. This service offered the greatest hope: they could pinpoint an individual house if they were in the area at the right time; but high-speed transmitting would make it difficult, and if the Russian agents had an automatic player device it would make it impossible. But the signal I was now sending on this set was going to launch a massive intelligence search for Tung Chuan throughout South Korea: I wasn't just speaking to Ferris on an internal directive level.
Midnight plus ten. We walked through the minefield together, a Russian, a Korean, a Chinese and an Englishman, with the glow of the radio console on our faces and hum of the transmitter bridging the silence between the babel of words and phrases.
Sinitsin threw in traps for me a dozen times, and when I looked up at Tung for the translation I warned him with my eyes and he stepped around the traps and I covered the transmission with insertions and «ignore» keys. Three times Tung missed an international name, one of them «Washington», and I put it into transm
ission as early as I could before Sinitsin noticed the omission. Several times Sinitsin threw in an inconsistency, and Tung questioned it, and I covered.
We walked through the minefield not as friends trying to guide each other to safety but as enemies trying to reach our different goals and reach them first; the terrain itself was innocent, and the danger lay in our own conflicting objectives. If Sinitsin caught me in a deliberate mistake or suspected for an instant that I was sending a different signal he would turn to the guards and have me shot. If Tung Kuo-feng caught any hint that my transmissions were trying to compromise him or the rescue of his son, he would tell the KGB party that they were right: I was too dangerous to remain alive. And if I could see a way to do it, as I picked my way through the patterns of explosive phrases, I would destroy them both.
By 00:19 the transmission was completed. Sinitsin had ended his message with the implication that Ferris should ignore the events in Pekin and turn his full attention to preventing the imminent coup in North Korea. I would send further signals when I had more information. This message did not go through. Tung ended his transmission with a warning that in two days' time the first of three further assassinations was due to take place, unless his son were located and brought to safety.
Ferris came back with a formal acknowledgement and I shut the set down and sat for a moment with my eyes closed and the sweat drying on me and the strange feeling that inside the next two days we could achieve the objective and phase out the mission and let everyone go home. The Bureau had massive and effective facilities in the Asian theatre, and Croder would press them into service to the limit, because apart from anything else his reputation was at stake: in the last eight days jade One had been driven into the ground by the opposition, and now there was a chance.
A chance for the mission, but not for me. I wouldn't be going home. Even if Tung Chuan were found and released, the KGB contingent here wouldn't be threatened; they would simply go home like everyone else, after they'd shot Tung Kuo-feng to stop his exposing them, and after they'd shot me for destroying their operation.
I heard Sinitsin pacing now, his shoes clicking over the flagstones. Tung Kuo-feng had left the console, and I could feel the release of tension in the air as the aura of his ki was withdrawn. Yang would still be behind me with the gun.
In a moment I heard Sinitsin say: "Take him to his cell."
The muzzle bit into my spine.
25: Moscow
The fat crumpled face of a god.
A shadow passing.
Playing with bricks again.
The shadow belonged to Yang. It was his tour of duty.
These bricks had belonged to the monk, I suppose, who had lived in this cell; blocks, rather than bricks, smelling of ancient wood and with yellow dust in the carving, perhaps fibres from his saffron robe. I lined up the three fat gods in a row, putting the five thinner ones below them and adding the ram, the deer and the eagle, giving the left hemisphere something to do while I ransacked the other one for ideas.
But there weren't any. It was the evening of the next day and for seventeen hours I'd been stuck in here while Tung's Triad were carefully lining up the next shot in Seoul or Pekin or Tokyo, the next step in the destruction of Chinese-American relations and Chinese-American-Japanese triangle diplomacy.
Tung was powerless to do anything, I knew that. The KGB never let him go near the radio console unless two interpreters were also there; he couldn't send a signal to his Triad, ordering them to postpone the three final assassinations in the hope that the Bureau could find his son. I couldn't get near the radios myself, and even if I could, Tung would be listening, and in any case I'd got nothing definite to tell Ferris; two of the three people on the death list were likely to be the US Charge d'Affaires in Pekin and the Japanese Ambassador; the third was certain to be the Premier of the People's Republic of China, though his death would have to suggest natural causes: the Soviets wouldn't want China's ostensible responsibility for these assassinations to extend to the killing off of her own; but Tung's scenario of a pro-Russian general's assuming power in China would obviously require the Premier out of the way.
It wasn't easy to play with my bricks while somewhere a telescopic rifle was swinging into the aim with an innocent man's head in the cross-hairs.
Tung Kuo-feng, I'd written on a ten won note, and on the other side in English: Urgent we talk again. I'd waited until Yang's relief had taken over the guard outside my cell and given the note to him, tapping my finger on Tung's name; he'd gone off with it but I doubted if Tung ever received it; Yang had a particular hatred for me but the others had the look of the executioner on their faces whenever they came into the cell; I'd killed one of their own and they were all hoping I'd try running for it.
At noon they'd brought me some bean curd in a small black iron cooking-pot; it was still on the floor, empty — a lethal weapon, except that they never came in without a submachine gun levelled at my heart; and if I could ever close up on one of them I knew better ways to do it than with a saucepan.
The bell was chiming again at the far end of the courtyard, and in the narrow slit in the thick stone wall I could see a powdering of the dusk darkening the leaves of the acacia trees. The wooden clappers began soon afterwards, and the low monotone of chanting voices. When it was over, Yang came on duty again, throwing open the big tumbler lock and pushing the door inwards with his gun and looking at me with his black eyes narrowed as if in contemplation; I don't think he was just trying to play on my nerves; I think he wanted to look at me and go through in his imagination what he would finally do with me. The bruise on his throat had darkened, though not so much perhaps as the bruise on his pride: he should have been quicker out there in the courtyard last night.
He backed away until he was in the stone passage outside, then jerked his gun in a sign to me to go with him.
Colonel Igor Sinitsin was in the operations room with his aides, Tung Kuo-feng and the interpreter.
"I want to know if your people have started to act on the disinformation you gave them last night."
While I waited for the translation I noted that Major Alyev and Captain Samoteykin had their right hands in the pockets of their sports coats, even though Yang was standing behind me with his submachine gun; I was close enough to Tung to reach him, and they'd seen what I'd done to Yang last night. Killing Tung was the only workable method of destroying their operation and they knew that I knew that, though I wasn't so sure he needed their protection: I could still remember the impact of that subtle force that had thrown me against the wall of his private chamber.
He said: "Call your Embassy. What sign can they give us if they find my son?"
This was why I'd tried to see him. Even if Ferris wanted to risk sending us a signal he wouldn't be able to do it: one of these sets was kept open for transmissions direct from Moscow and the other for the Triad to report on progress with their continuing operations.
"All right," I said and pressed down the transmit lever. An English voice answered this time, and Ferris came to the Embassy radio within fifteen seconds.
"Jade One."
"Eagle to Jade One. If you find the objective, get a USAF fighter to make a low-altitude pass over the monastery."
"Understood, but we've made no progress yet. This is a tough one."
I began using speech-code. "Keep talking, and put in the names Pyongyang and North Korea, also President Kim Sung, with a neutral background."
After three sentences I turned to Tung. "Over to you."
He spoke to the interpreter and I heard the three names being spoken at roughly the same intervals used by Ferris. While I waited I tried to think how to slip in a warning to Ferris on the three next victims of Tung's operation, but there wasn't a chance, and in any case the deadline was up and the first one was probably on the ground by now with a hand outstretched and the security guards keeping the crowd back and the ambulance siren fading in, and nothing I could do about it except watch Tung Kuo-feng fr
om the corner of my eye and try to work out a murderously fast attack that would take him down on top of me as a shield when they opened up with their guns.
But I would have to change my thinking on that. With this heavy a guard at the monastery I had no chance of getting away; the only chance for Jade One was to find Tung Chuan and try to free Kuo-feng and set him up in a world spotlight and have him expose the Soviets; in no other way could the damage to Chinese-American relations be repaired. Even if a chance came, I musn't kill him now.
I heard Sinitsin saying: "Five members of the Japanese Red Army will assist in the mock overthrow of President Kim Sung, and a few of his guards will be shot for the sake of appearances. These men are now on their way from Tokyo by commercial airliner."
When Tung spoke, it seemed to me that he was using precisely similar cadences and intervals as in the original Russian, and I admired his skill; he used names and speechcode, as he'd heard me do, but when his totally dissimilar message came it carried a brute shock.
"The American Charge d'Affaires has just been ambushed and shot dead in Pekin. You must find my son. The next action is scheduled for noon tomorrow."
I pushed down the transmit lever, sickened, and gave the message to Ferris. There were people above Croder in London, all the way up to the Prime Minister, though he could short-circuit them and reach her direct if he had to. And by now she'd be asking questions as the slaughter went on.
The British Foreign Secretary, the American Ambassador, the passengers on board that airliner and now the American Charge d'Affaires. Have you replaced the agent in the field?
No, Prime Minister. He's close to the opposition now.
How close?
Very close. Within reach of an act of sanction.
A pause on the line while she considered, watching the rain on the window. Then what is holding him up? The tone severe as she demanded of Croder, and Ferris, and the agent in the field to do what they were paid to do, and to do it now.