The Chinese Assassin

by Anthony Grey

  New York Times, 28 July 1972

  18

  When he pulled the woven red curtain aside Richard Scholefield could see through the plastic foliage of a vase of everlasting carnations, the steps leading up from the canopied D Street entrance to the State Department. As he shifted the vase along the window-sill to give himself a less restricted view, a female voice behind him asked, with an irritable note of reproof, if she could help him. He turned to find an unsmiling middle-aged waitress in beige slacks and a loose gaudy blouse of synthetic material holding her order book pointedly in front of her with a pencil poised over it.

  He glanced at the slip of card tucked into the handle of a wire basket of pink sugar-substitute sachets on the table. It announced that for the pleasure of his dining the Governor Shepherd Restaurant invited him to try a carafe of Californian wine— Hearty Burgundy, Chablis or Sauterne, all at a dollar fifty. He chose the Hearty Burgundy. But when the waitress brought it he wished he hadn’t—it tasted like raspberryade spiked with warm water. He left the rest of the carafe untouched and gazed out of the window again.

  The communications mast and radio antennae on the State Department roof stood out in silhouette against the fading silver light of the southern sky. Among them a large yellow-painted funnel structure shaped like an old-fashioned ear-trumpet suggested that headquarters was adapting some of the early principles of the phonograph era to pick up signals from its far-flung space-age embassies. Behind him. little groups of State staffers who had been working late were snatching belated, inexpensive dinners and muted desk officer gossip about incoming telegrams and policy points drifted to his ears in fragments. At the next table an efficient-looking harridan with greying hair scraped back tight above her ears was moaning to a female companion about her husband. ‘Then I asked him how many crepes he thought 200 people would eat, and he said about three or four each, so I spend hours snaking them—and everybody ate just one. I was furious!’

  Scholefield stared out of the window, watching without seeing as the Virginia Avenue traffic signals. chopped and packaged the mid-evening traffic flow with steady precision, halting, accumulating, then releasing the cars to run on down towards the West Potomac Park in well-spaced, neatly tied bundles. Prom time to time he rubbed his hand over his face or massaged his left wrist lightly’ through its bandage. But always his eyes returned to the entrance under the canopy which he knew the Research Bureau staff used.

  He turned in his chair when the door opened to admit a man in a blue suit with his left arm in a sling. One of a group of four men seated by a bank of plastic ferns greeted him with a loud remark which set the table laughing uproariously. The woman with the scraped-back hair made a disapproving sound with her tongue, and her haughty expression didn’t change even when the man came over and pecked her sheepishly on the cheek, before lowering himself gingerly into an adjoining chair.

  At that moment Scholefield saw her coming up the steps. He recognised her at once, even though the light was beginning to fade. She was dressed in a flame-coloured corduroy trouser suit tailored tightly round the hips that on anybody less startlingly attractive would have looked vulgar The tall heels she wore accentuated her height and she moved with the easy, stalking grace of her race. He watched her swinging across the grass in front of the mounted statue of Bernardo Da Galvez, her face set in an unconscious half smile as if the very sensation of movement pleased her. She ignored the pedestrian crossings and slipped across the two lanes of Virginia Avenue, between the halted cars. Several drivers turned to watch her progress and missed the change to green which set horns blaring loudly in the ranks further back. Conversation stopped and heads turned as she paused inside the door looking round the tables. Even the woman who had baked too many crepes turned to stare. Some of the male diners greeted her politely, as though pleased to be favoured, as she made her way across the restaurant.

  At Scholefield’s table she stopped and stood looking down at him with a sad, rueful smile on her face, saying nothing. When he stood up, she put an arm on his shoulder and leaned her cheek against his in greeting. ‘Dick, I’m terribly sorry, you know that’ She sat down and placed her handbag on the window-sill beside the plastic flowers. She peered into his face with concern, then leaned across the table and put a hand on his arm. ‘You were very lucky to get off so lightly, weren’t you? Harvey’s still got a black eye down to his goddam navel.’

  ‘Where is he, Katrina?’

  ‘He’s very tied up right now. Where, I don’t know. He was amazed when I told him you’d rung from the airport and were coming to Governor Shepherd’s to wait for him. He thought you were still in hospital.’

  ‘Thanks to him, I might have been.’ He sucked breath in angrily between his teeth.

  The pale gold smoothness of her brow crinkled into a worried frown. ‘I don’t get you. But if you’re having a “hate Harvey Ketterman” week, welcome to the dub. That makes two of us.’ She took a packet of cigarettes from her handbag and lit one. ‘By the way, the bastard said I was to take great care of you till he can get here. See you have anything you want.’ She raised an eyebrow archly and squeezed his arm. ‘And that really means “anything” Dick. I’ve always liked your English cool, you know that.’

  Scholefield turned away to look out into the gathering dusk. The cars were turning on their headlights and they reflected on his face as he gazed out of the window.

  ‘How long had you known Nina?’ She asked the question in a quiet, compassionate voice.

  ‘About six months.’

  ‘Were you in love with her?’

  Scholefield didn’t reply. He turned to look at her carefully for a long moment, made as if to say something, then took a deep breath and looked out onto Virginia Avenue again. During the silence that followed the conversation of two other coloured girls with skins darker than Katrina’s drifted across from the table behind them. ‘I saw Frank Sinatra on television last night— be just can’t sing any more. My mother was really cut up. It’s like for us I guess when we turn on TV one day and see the Beatles in wheelchairs. Then we’ll really know it’s all over.’

  Katrina was staring at Scholefield with a strange expression in her eyes. ‘I wish Harvey-.the-bastard-Ketterman would say something even half as eloquent about me.’ Her voice had a catch in it.

  ‘Comparing you to a Beatle in a wheelchair, you mean?’ asked Scholefield frowning.

  Katrina didn’t smile. ‘I’m talking about that expression on your face when I asked you if you were in love with Nina. Eloquence doesn’t always require words.’

  Now it was her turn to look away and stare out of the window. Scholefield studied her profile. The tight curls of her short- cropped hair and the proud way she held her head gave her a self-contained look. ‘He’s still giving you a tough time then?’

  She let out a long slow breath. ‘He still runs home every goddamned weekend to the wife and kids in Greenwich. Sailing and tennis at the club in summer, skiing and paddle tennis in the winter. “Just till the kids get into school then it’s all up”, he used to say. Now it’s “When the kids are through school”.’ Her voice suddenly became bitter. ‘Next it will be “When they’re through college”—Harvey Ketterman betrays people like other guys drink bourbon—as a matter of course.’

  ‘Why don’t you ditch him?’

  She shrugged and continued staring out of the window. ‘I guess I’ve got something of the baby goose in me. A gosling thinks the first thing it sees when it comes out of its shell is its mother, right? Maybe the first male thing an oriental studies major sees when she emerges from the shell of the Asian Department has to be her man for life, whether she likes it or not.’

  ‘Parrots do the same,’ said Scholefield absently.

  If she heard him she ignored him. ‘Especially when it’s a man like Harvey-the-bastard. ‘:Not everybody you meet was a junior OSS military attaché with enough of a brass neck to get to talk to Mao, Chou En-lai and Chiang .Kai-shek in Chungking during the war.
Not many “suspect” China scholars survived the McCarthy purges to come back and head up the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. Not too many men these days are as together as he is, know where they’ve been and where they’re going.’ She drew so hard on her cigarette that the end glowed a fierce red, burning down fast into a sharp spearhead. ‘I’m just a whole damned bunch hung up on him, it’s as simple as that. Dick. But I’d sure as hell like to hurt the bastard right now. So if you’d like to come up to my apartment upstairs and let him come back to find us rolling around in bed together with our legs wrapped round each other, that’s fine by me. I’d only be following his instructions.’

  ‘Where is he now?’ asked Scholefield gently.

  ‘I don’t know, Dick, honestly, I don’t. He treats me and the rest of his staff like mushrooms—you know, keeps us in the dark all the time and opens the door just occasionally to throw a bucket of slat over us. I think. he went up to Georgetown earlier this evening. He drove off that way at least. He asked me specially to stay on in the office. When he rang in I told him you’d called and he told sue to come and meet you because he had to go urgently to the White House, would you believe?’

  ‘Shouldn’t you perhaps believe him, this once?’

  ‘He’s addicted to complex cover stories, Dick. It’s a compulsion with him. All those goddamn lies mean is’ that he’s got not just one fancy whore but two—one at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, and his pride in his machismo compels him to service them both on the same evening.’

  ‘Why not get away somewhere for a bit, if it’s eating you up that much?’

  She turned and looked at him levelly with wide dark eyes. ‘Where can I go to get away from Katrina Jackson? I did go away once, remember, for two years, and what happened? I got myself married to a rich, boring guy who talks people into lining their houses with aluminium sheeting for a living. So I came back. The world is full of dummies, Dick, and whatever else Harvey-the-bastard is, he isn’t a dummy.’

  Scholefield poured some of the Hearty Burgundy for her. She tasted it, pulled a face and pushed it away. Scholefield toyed uncomfortably with the stem of his glass for a moment. ‘Katrina, you don’t have to concoct an elaborate front for me. Although I’ve known you and Harvey for a while, I know that you must respect office confidences.’

  ‘Dick, I genuinely haven’t the faintest notion what’s going on. If his lies are true, then it is something big.’ She lifted her shoulders in a shrug and held them there looking at him, the pale palms of her long slender bands turned theatrically upwards.

  Scholefield leaned his elbows on the table suddenly, his chin resting on the clasped knuckles of both hands, as if coming to a sudden decision. ‘Katrina, I want you to help me.’

  ‘Anything, Dick, like I said, is anything.’

  ‘I want to check a name—quick!’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘It’s an obscure name.’

  ‘Chinese?’

  He nodded. ‘Is needs to be an exhaustive computer check— tonight.’

  She lifted her wrist and looked at her watch. ‘The son of a mega-millionaire who owns every second barrel of oil in Texas is into the China thing in a big way at Harvard right now and Daddy’s bought him the biggest and best computer there is outside of Langley. I could call one of the guys who operates it for him, he’s an admirer of mine I guess you could say. He’d run the check for you. They’ve put everything into it that was ever known about anybody who’s ever been anybody in the People’s Republic—right down to the laundry marks on Chou En-lai’s underpants when he was a student in Paris.’

  ‘That sounds terrific,’ said Scholefield quickly.

  ‘We can go up to my apartment to make the call—it’s right here in the Governor Shepherd block overhead.’

  Scholefield shot her a quick wary look. ‘Can we do it from the phone booth over there in the corner? If you get through I’ll take over and tell him what I want.’

  She smiled slowly. ‘Don’t trust the bugging boys not to listen in on my line, huh Dick?’ She got up and made her way to the telephone in the corner of the restaurant. He remained at the table and watched her dial. She spoke into the receiver quietly for about a minute then waved Scholefield over, and handed him the receiver. ‘Go ahead. My friend’s name is Larry.’

  Scholefield took the phone and introduced himself. ‘The name I’d like checked out is—’ he paused and glanced round the restaurant. ‘Li Tai-chu.’ He repeated the name twice, describing the characters visually to the man at the other end, so there would be no mistake, drawing them out unconsciously with his index finger on the wall above the telephone as he spoke. ‘No other clues. Just see if he exists—or if he is simply a figment of my imagination.’

  ‘Sure. I’ll call you right back.’

  Scholefield hungup and walked back to where Katrina was sitting. She had ordered a hamburger and he sat down and watched her lift its lid and decorate the interior of the bun liberally with tomato sauce from a plastic squeeze bottle. She wore a large pearl ring on her left hand, he noticed now, and a gold band around the base of her throat.

  She picked up a crinkly chipped potato between her finger and thumb, dipped it into the tomato ketchup inside the hamburger and slid it sideways into her mouth with a delicate movement of her wrist. All the time she smiled suggestively into his eyes. Somewhere not far away a pianist began belting out a jazz version of How High the Moon. He watched her eat the hamburger in silence. Once he picked up the glass of Hearty Burgundy, then remembered, and quickly put it down again. They both looked at each other and laughed suddenly. Gradually the restaurant emptied. The woman who’d baked too many crepes led her husband out. Then the girl haunted by the idea of Beatles in wheelchairs left with her friend.

  When Katrina had finished eating the hamburger she stood up and picked up her bag from the windowsill. ‘When you’ve had your phone call, come on up,’ she said softly. ‘You can relax up there—whichever way you like.’ She leaned over him and smoothed her hand affectionately over his hair. Then she turned and walked to the door without looking round.

  Ten minutes later the phone rang in its booth and Scholefield hurried across the restaurant to answer it. Larry’s voice came apologetically on the line.

  ‘Only the very slightest of references, Mr. Scholefield, I’m sorry to say. And a very old one at that.’

  Scholefield held his breath. ‘Well what is it, for God’s sake?’

  ‘Way back in 1964, I’m afraid. Not a report, just a picture caption on the back of a May Day edition of the People’s Daily. A back page photo montage. I’ve had to fish out the appropriate number of the paper to check, that’s why I’ve been so long. Li Tai-chu is one of several minor functionaries listed—on a pre-May Day platform with Marshall Lin Piao.’

  Scholefield tensed. ‘What’s Li Tai-chu look like?’

  ‘The picture is the usual blurred People’s Daily quality, you know.’

  ‘Can you describe Li to me, for Christ’s sake? This is important!’ Scholefield shouted in his impatience, and then apologised immediately.

  ‘He’s not much of a looker,’ the voice at the other end said at last. ‘Short and dumpy, I’d say...’

  ‘Describe what you can see very carefully, please.’

  There was a long silence. Then a sigh of professional frustration. ‘It really is hard to say from the quality of this shot. He’s got a roundish sort of face. I guess you’d say, kinda cherubic for a Chinese.’ There was another long pause. Then Larry’s voice came on again slightly more excited. ‘I’ve just taken a magnifying glass to the caption and picture and it looks as though his face does have one distinctive feature—he’s got bad skin. Kinda pock-marked, I’d guess. So Li Tai-chu, I think you could surmise, is or was a round-faced heavy acne victim and a one-time supporter of the late Lin Piao.’

  ‘Thank you, Larry. Thanks, a million. I’ll tell Katrina you’ve been a great help.’ Scholefield hung up and stood looking i
ndecisively at the door through which she had made her exit ten minutes earlier.

  TAIPEH Sunday—More than 37,000 Chinese Communist military personnel have been arrested for being involved in an alleged plot by Lin Piao to overthrow Chairman Mao Tse-tung, according to secret Communist documents smuggled into Taipeh.

  Central News Agency, Taiwan 5 November 1972

  19

  Harvey Ketterman paid off his taxi at the corner of Pennsylvania and Western Executive Avenue and walked quickly to the security blockhouse inside the north-west gate of the White House. The guard behind the reinforce& glass gave a nod of approval as soon as he announced himself and pushed a numbered, plastic-covered security pass through a flap at the bottom of the window, even before he went through the formality of ticking Ketterman’s name on the check-list of invited visitors.

  Ketterman fixed die pass into his lapel and hurried along the path that curved away between lawns and shrubs towards the National Security Council offices in the western basement Before he’d gone ten yards the guard in the blockhouse bad telephoned the China specialist on the National Security Council in the Old Executive Office Building on the other side of Western Avenue. He immediately left his desk and hurried through the underground tunnel to the White House.

  He arrived at the security guard’s desk inside the basement door at the same moment as Ketterman and he offered his hand gravely in greeting. Despite this show of recognition, the guard with a gun on his hip insisted on inspecting Ketterman’s pass before allowing him inside They walked by a sign on the wall announcing ‘Situations Room’ with an arrow pointing in the opposite direction and entered a lift. No conversation was exchanged as the NSC man led him out of the lift and along a carpeted corridor on an upper floor and opened a door into an office that faced South over open parkland to the Potomac.

  Through the window the floodlit monuments of the capital were already glowing brightly in the deepening darkness. Although the three men standing by the window had their backs to the room looking out, Ketterman recognised all of them immediately. The Director of the Central Intelligence Agency was on the right, the burly, hunched figure of the Secretary of State on the left, and in the middle, with his hands thrust deep into his pockets, stood the President of the United States. They had been talking quietly in low voices as the two newcomers entered and now they stopped and turned round. After a quick flurry of handshakes, all five men sat down at a small circular table.