by Anthony Grey
‘I answer to “Ketterman”.’
She sucked in a quick breath. ‘Are you sure that what you have found complies exactly with the description of what we are seeking?’
‘Positive!’ said Ketterman. ‘And I can have it back to you within the hour. No rewards sought’
Tan Sui-ling covered the phone and consulted the man at her side in rapid Chinese. Then she uncupped her hand from the mouthpiece once more. ‘We shall open the gates onto the basketball court in forty-five minutes time.’ She spoke the words crisply and hung up without waiting for a reply.
Ketterman walked slowly back to his car and lowered himself wearily into the driving seat. When he’d turned its nose south again he leaned over the dashboard and picked up the hand microphone for the two-way radio. ‘Our friend, is expected in forty-five minutes from this time.’ His voice was tired. ‘Deploy three ambulances with one patient in each. Maximum security precautions are to prevail at points of departure and arrival. Contact me at Katrina’s to confirm.’
‘Your message read and understood,’ said the voice of the young fair-haired man from the Georgian ‘villa on P Street.
Ketterman replaced the hand microphone in its cradle and had to swerve wildly to avoid an oncoming car because he’d drifted into the centre of the road while sending his message. The Governor Shepherd restaurant was in darkness when he reached it and he left his car at the kerbside next to a ‘No parking’ sign and opened the street door to the adjoining apartment block with his own key. He took the lift up to the eighth floor and used a latch key to open the door of the apartment. In the sitting room he found Richard Scholefield sprawled in an easy chair with his jacket off, balancing a cup of coffee in one hand. Katrina was sitting by his feet on a white goatskin rug, her arm resting casually on his thigh. She was naked and her flimsy black brassiere lay crumpled on the rug beside her. She looked round and smiled sweetly up at Ketterman but didn’t move. -
He stood in the doorway looking expressionlessly from her face to Scholefield’s and back again. She made a little shrugging movement with her shoulders and nuzzled the swell of her breasts closer against Scholefield’s knee. ‘You look tired and old and grey-faced, Harvey you bastard,’ she said, still smiling sweetly, ‘where the fuck have you been?’
‘Working my ass off to save the goddamned western world, as usual—for no thanks.’ Ketterman turned and closed the door and shrugged out of his jacket.
Scholefield didn’t get up. He sat watching the American carefully, still holding the coffee cup in his right hand.
Ketterman draped his jacket over the back of an easy chair and lowered himself into it with a weary groan. ‘Nice to see you, Dick. Even if it is a helluva surprise.’
‘I wish I could say the same, Harvey.’
Ketterman appeared to study the long dark curve of Katrina’s naked back for a long moment. Then his gaze strayed to the flimsy undergarment on the rug before returning to Scholefield’s face. ‘What brings England’s most celebrated sinologist to Washington, may I ask?’
‘You.’ Scholefield’s voice had a hard edge to it.
Ketterman leaned over suddenly and rubbed his hand quickly over Katrina’s tightly fizzed hair. ‘A Jack Daniels and ice, Kat, please.’
Katrina smiled dazzlingly into his-face. ‘Get it yourself Harvey.’
Ketterman stood up slowly, looking first at Katrina then at Scholefield. Then suddenly he grinned. ‘Hey, what the hell goes on here? The hunter’s home from the hill and all he gets in his tepee is unmitigated hostility.’
‘His squaw’s tepee,’ corrected Katrina, turning to smile brightly at him once again. ‘On a nine thousand year mortgage maybe, but technically his squaw’s, not Harvey’s.’ She sipped her drink, still looking into his eyes and still resting her elbow on Scholefield’s thigh. ‘Maybe it’s got something to do with what the hunter was doing on the goddamned hill. If there was a popularity contest in the wigwam right now he’d get no votes out of two.’
Ketterman rubbed his eyes with both fists and went over to the tray of drinks on a side table. He dropped some ice into a glass and poured himself a large bourbon, While his back was turned Katrina stood up. She plucked her bra from the rug and stood dangling it from one hand, resting the other on a jutting hip. ‘I guess I’ll go and slip into something less comfortable now you’re here, Harvey.’ When she knew he was watching her, she turned and minced out on her toes, waggling her hips exaggeratedly and swinging the brassiere around her finger. She looked both vulnerable and desirable in the same moment.
Neither man spoke for a long while after she had left the room. Ketterman finished his drink and stood looking at Scholefield indecisively, holding the empty glass in his hand. The Englishman returned his gaze steadily. Eventually Ketterman turned away to get himself another drink.
‘You knew all about the Yang thing in advance, Harvey.’ Scholefield’s voice had a hostile, accusing note, and when Ketterman turned round he found he’d stood up.
The American took a long pull at his drink, then continued to inspect the contents of the glass intently, avoiding Scholefield’s eyes. ‘So what, Dick?’
Scholefield put down his coffee cup and took a step towards him, his fists clenching at his sides. ‘So if you had mid me what you knew in London, Nina might still be alive.’
Ketterman lowered the glass and looked at him. ‘I didn’t know they were going to bomb the poor bastard out.’ He lifted a hand to his bruised and swollen cheek as if in corroboration.
‘But you knew about the whole jar of worms beforehand from the Israelis in Moscow—and you let it all run smoothly to schedule even though I was being used as an oily rag!’
‘How the hell do you know that?’ Ketterman stopped and looked round at Katrina, who had reappeared in the doorway dressed in a long white kaftan. He spread his arms suddenly in front of him in a derisive gesture. ‘For Chrissakes, this is no place to discuss—’
Scholefield’s left shoulder dipped suddenly and his body swung back and down through a low arc as if beginning a discus throw. His bunched right fist came up fast out of the flat, stiff-armed swing and caught Ketterman squarely between jaw and cheekbone, propelling him bodily across the room. The glass flew from his hand and smashed against the door. He slid backwards down the wall onto the carpet, his eyes glazed with shock and a dribble of blood running down the centre of his chin from a cut inside his mouth.
At that same moment the Russians, watching from a car parked fifty yards along P Street in sight of the white Georgian villa, saw the first stretcher coming down the front steps. The two men carrying it hurried to the open rear doors of an ambulance parked at the kerb under an ornamental wrought-iron street lamp. The driver of the Russian car started the engine as the two men slid the stretcher inside and closed the doors. Then Bogdarin, who was sitting beside him, let out a muffled curse and pointed through the windscreen to a second ambulance nosing slowly out across the intersection from 34th Street. By radio, he alerted the back-up car parked round the corner in Volta Place, then watched with a dark scowl disfiguring his features as a second stretcher borne by two more men appeared at the top of the villa’s front steps.
The driver had pulled out of the line of parked cars and was easing towards the intersection when Bogdarin spotted the third ambulance coming slowly south down 34th. He cursed again, more loudly this time, as it swung round in front of the villa and stopped well out from the kerb, blocking the way westward where the other two ambulances were already moving off
Two more figures descended the steps of the house with a third stretcher and quickly ran it into the back of the third ambulance and closed the doors. They strolled back up the steps into the house, without looking back at the Russian car although the driver was leaning on its horn in frustration at being blocked in. The back-up car, seeing what was happening, accelerated frantically away down 34th and swung westward along O Street with a loud scream from its tyres, clearly hoping to pick up the track of the other two
ambulances by making a detour to the southwest.
The third ambulance moved slowly off followed by the Russian car. Once it was under way the fair-haired young man threw back the blanket covering him on the stretcher and crept to the windows in the back door to look out. When he saw Bogdarin through the windscreen of the car cruising slowly behind him, he waved and grinned, picked up a hand microphone from its rest on a side wall of the ambulance and asked to be connected to Katrina Jackson’s number.
When the telephone rang inside Katrina’s apartment, she was bending over Ketterman where he’d fallen with his back jammed against the wall. She dabbed gingerly with a damp sponge at the blood running from his mouth, then thrust the sponge into his hand and rose to answer the telephone. Scholefield stood watching impassively from the other side of the room, finishing his coffee.
Katrina carried the telephone across to Ketterman and pushed the receiver into his empty hand. The voice of the fair-haired young man was exuberant, but correct. ‘Departure procedure carried through correctly, Sir,’ be said quietly. ‘The vehicle transporting “lost dog” is on its way unimpeded. Estimated to arrive at its destination in seven minutes from now.’
Ketterman grunted his thanks and handed the telephone back to Katrina. He looked at his watch then wiped some more blood from his teeth with the sponge. He rose unsteadily to his feet and looked balefully at Scholefield.
‘You’ll live, Harvey. That was just to relieve my feelings enough so I could talk to you. If I’d really wanted to hurt you I would have used my feet.’
‘Thank you,’ said Ketterman feigning gratitude. ‘Thanks a million.’
Scholefield put his coffee cup clown. ‘Where’s Yang, Harvey?’ Ketterman massaged his jaw slowly with one hand. Instead of replying, he walked over to the drinks table and began pouring himself another bourbon.” That’s a question, Dick, that goes far beyond the bounds of our unspoken understanding on exchanges of academic interpretation.’ Ketterman spoke over his shoulder without turning round.
‘Letting Yang and his friends abduct Mathew so you could watch the pot boil up and check the validity of Israeli information was way outside that mark too, Harvey.’
Ketterman swung round. ‘Okay, Dick, okay, you feel aggrieved. But, so help me, I never foresaw things turning out this way.’
‘You’re a lying bastard!’ Scholefield stepped quickly towards him again. ‘In the course of doing whatever it is you do— “protecting justice and freedom for the western democracies” is no doubt how you’d describe it to yourself—you use other people like paper tissues—to do all the dirty jobs you don’t want to soil your own fingers with. You betray every damned moral principle —loyalty, honesty and decency—that’s supposed to lie at the heart of what you’re defending.’
Ketterman closed his eyes and held up his palms towards Scholefield. ‘I don’t have a pat answer ready for that right now. Let me work on it, will ya?’ He opened his eyes again and looked round at Katrina for support. But she stood watching him expressionlessly, holding the blood-soaked sponge limply in one hand. ‘Hell, this is like one of those arcane Greek tragedies where everybody double-crosses everybody else so many times you lose count.’ He shrugged wearily. ‘The only trouble is there’s nobody here to come to the front of the stage from time to time to tell me which are the good guys and which are the bad.’
The telephone jangled at that moment beside Ketterman and he picked it up. ‘The lost dog’s safely back on the basketball court,’ said the voice of the young fair-haired man.
‘Thank Christ!’, said Ketterman explosively and hung up. His shoulders sagged as he dropped the receiver. He looked dully at his watch and moved off towards the door. Scholefield and Katrina stood watching him but he went out without turning round.
* * *
Inside the back door of the former Windsor Park Hotel, Tan Sui-ling stood beside the Central External Liaison Department’s station chief as two junior diplomats wheeled the stretcher bearing Yang across the basketball court. Against the glare of the floodlights they were gawky silhouettes. Behind, them the American ambulance reversed towards the gates in the high fence. As they watched, it stopped in the gateway, and the black driver jumped out and ran back to the doorway. The CELD man went forward to meet him.
‘The special Japanese Airlines flight JL 719 scheduled to leave Dulles in 90 minutes will be held for him,’ he said tersely. ‘Customs and security at the airport have been primed to allow hint through unconscious. The Japanese have agreed to co-operate for this one flight to Tokyo to make a connection to Peking with no questions asked. If you don’t get him out tonight, we give no further guarantees.’ Without waiting for a response the black man turned and ran back to the ambulance. He jumped in and moved the vehicle out onto Connecticut Avenue. The gates were slammed shut behind it and the floodlights on the asphalt basketball court suddenly blacked out.
The two diplomats pushing the stretcher trolley manoeuvred it carefully in through the double doors and the CELD nun stepped forward to inspect Yang’s face in the overhead passage light. A moment later he picked up his right wrist and felt for a pulse. He stood with his head on one side for fully half a minute, checking his watch. Then he dropped the wrist and nodded briefly to Tan Sui-ling, before swinging round to lead the way along the corridor towards what had once been the hotel’s service lift.
Tan Sui-ling walked beside the stretcher, with her back to the two men pushing it. As the party moved down the dimly-lit corridor, Yang’s -eyes flickered open. The first thing his gaze lighted on was Tan Sui-ling’s face. Shielding the movement from the men pushing the trolley with her body, Tan let her hand fall on Yang’s arm. She applied quick, gentle pressure with her fingers and smiled at him. Immediately he closed his eyes again.
PARIS, Friday—Scores of men and women supporters of the late Lin Piao who led an abortive coup against Mao Tse-tung in the autumn of 1971 have been executed during the past few weeks in Nanking, according to French businessmen recently in China.
The Daily Telegraph, 10 May 1974
21
Scholefield lunged down the stairs two at a time, ran across the lobby and wrenched open the door to the street. Then he stopped. Harvey Ketterman was standing stock still at the kerb. He had given himself up entirely to a foul and fluent stream of cuss-words which only ceased when he noticed Scholefield standing beside ham
‘It was right here, dammit!’ He pointed foolishly into the empty gutter. ‘I left it right here and the bastards have towed it away.’ Another torrent of four-letter words escaped his lips in an unbroken flow. ‘Christ, if this isn’t my lucky day!’ He rubbed his jaw again and glared at his watch. It was ten minutes to midnight.
‘Your bio-rhythms have obviously all hit zero at once, Harvey. You should go home, go to bed and stay there till there’s an upturn.’
Ketterman ignored Scholefield and stepped off the kerb. He ran across in front of two fast-approaching cars, coming dangerously near to cannoning into the front wing of one of them. The wail of blaring horns from two drivers, more relieved than angry at having narrowly avoided slaughtering another insane jaywalker, faded fist into the night as they rushed on down Virginia Avenue.
Scholefield waited for a safe gap in the traffic then ran after Ketterman. He caught him up on the grass by the mounted statue of Bernardo Da Galvez and fell into stride beside him. They rounded the western wing of the State Department and turned south down 23rd Street. A high grassy bank rose abruptly on the western side of the street topped with a chain link fence and barbed wire. A signboard announced that they were passing the Naval Bureau of Medicine and Surgery.
‘Have you got Yang in there, Harvey?’ Scholefield nodded towards the sign. ‘Pumping truth drugs into him and shining bright lights in his eyes?’
Ketterman didn’t reply.
‘I know you flew him to Washington after the Russians brought him to England on a submarine-and-rubber-dinghy package tour. Then you used a friendly Triad gang to snatch h
im from St. George’s.’
Ketterman stopped suddenly and turned to face Scholefield. ‘Why did Tan Sui-ling approach you?’
‘To complain about your treacherous ways, Harvey, of course. What else? Everybody’s doing it these days.’ Scholefield’s tone was deliberately offensive. ‘The Chinese, the Russians—even Katrina. And certainly Percy Crowdleigh and his friends aren’t going to be very pleased when they find out you smuggled Yang out of the country under their noses.’
‘She wouldn’t give you that information without some special motive!’
‘Maybe the Chinese are growing tired of their perfidious superpower friends and are looking to a reliable third force in dear old Europe.’
Ketterman put a hand on Scholefield’s shoulder in a confiding gesture. ‘Look Dick, I’m genuinely sorry I can’t throw more light on this. But this isn’t a matter of swapping notes on a Red Flag editorial any more. It’s up as high as the White House roof right now—and those who don’t know you like I do, would say “How the hell do we know be isn’t working for the Chinese?
Scholefield shook his head slowly in disbelief: “Deceit makes the world go round”, is that your motto, Harvey? To you nothing seems what it really is. I’m surprised you can tell who you’re working for any more.’
The two men glared at one another for a moment without speaking. In the brief silence a police siren wailed distantly then grew stronger. Above their heads the disembodied landing lights of an aircraft swung slowly down the sky heading into the National Airport