The Chinese Assassin

by Anthony Grey

  Ketterman spread his hands outwards suddenly in a gesture of resignation. ‘Okay Dick, I’ll give you a picture, right? It won’t be everything because as I’ve told you this whole thing is in the White House now. And I can’t compromise any of that.’ He took Scholefield by the elbow and guided him down the hill towards Constitution Avenue arid the park. ‘Yes okay, I talked to “Yang”. That’s not his real name. He won’t say what it is. But he claims he’s a genuine survivor and old Toktokho did give him succour and sustenance—that part at least of his folios seems true. I’ve had him sign a Ninth Folio that counteracts the other eight which he concocted together with the KGB’s disinformation fairytalers. A lie for a lie, a truth for a truth—but it blocks the goddamned Russkies, okay?’

  Scholefield was listening intently, his head bent as he walked. ‘What really happened on that Trident?’

  ‘We think Lin’s men got to know it was going to be sabotaged by the radicals so they put a Lin-Piao “look alike” on board and kept the genuine article at home, meaning to produce him later. Yang went along to supervise the spoof—and jumped on a parachute before the bomb went off. He kept the Russians in the dark about that for the four years they held him.’

  Scholefield let a long breath whistle out between pursed lips. ‘So what are the Russians trying to pull out of the hat now with the folios?’

  They had come out onto Constitution Avenue at the foot of the hill and the fast flow of traffic halted them abruptly at the pavement’s edge. Ketterman stared across at the bright flood of white light illuminating the Doric colonnade of-the Lincoln Memorial The dark matchstick-sized figure of a man was visible standing silhouetted against the white stone between the massive middle pillars of the northern face of the monument. Ketterman stiffened for a brief instant. ‘Yang says they’re planning to assassinate Mao in Peking any time now.’ He had to shout to make himself heard above the roar of the traffic rushing through the green light. ‘They’re using Yang and the folios as a smoke screen to hang it all on the radicals. They want to cool the border thing, he says, and bring home a million and a half boys to work in the refrigerator factories and on the farms to build a Soviet fatherland running with milk and consumer goods.’

  ‘Where’s Yang now?’

  The lights changed suddenly and the flow of traffic screeched to a standstill. Ketterman immediately hurried across. Inside the park it was quieter. ‘I’m sorry Dick, I can’t reveal his whereabouts to you—now or ever.’ He looked at his watch and quickened his pace again.

  They walked on in silence for a minute then Scholefield stopped in mid-stride. ‘You’re handing the poor bastard back to Peking!’

  Ketterman swung round, studying Scholefield’s face intently, but saying nothing.

  ‘It was a guess, Harvey,’ Scholefield nodded silently. ‘But I know from your face it’s right. It fits your style—and the White House, too. You’re beyond disgust.’ They stared at each other in silence for a moment. Then Scholefield’s brow furrowed into a frown. ‘But I can’t help wondering whether you haven’t both miscalculated. Has it occurred to you that the Russians may not have been trying to kill Yang at the Institute—but just trying to give that impression? He dived for cover pretty smartly—almost as if he knew what was coming.’

  Ketterman’s eyes widened suddenly. ‘Jesus! And they missed him at the mortuary too, even though they saw me switch him!’

  ‘What?’ Scholefield gazed at him mystified.

  But Ketterman was staring distractedly towards the Memorial again. He turned back and opened his mouth as if to say something more then seemed to change his mind. ‘Let’s discuss it later.’ He glanced at his watch and there was an uncomfortable silence for a moment. Then the American looked unaccountably embarrassed. He gazed down suddenly at his shoes. ‘Look Dick, Katrina was just kidding me, wasn’t she? She’s a helluva kidder, you know. The best thing is to ignore her, not encourage her, not give her any satisfaction, am I right.’ Scholefield didn’t reply. After a moment Ketterman looked up at him, with his eyebrows still raised in mute enquiry.

  ‘Before I answer that, Harvey, just give me one piece of useless information first,’ said Scholefield slowly. ‘Just to prove you have a single redeeming feature.’

  Ketterman glanced impatiently at his watch again and nodded absently as if he really wasn’t listening.

  ‘Tan Sui-ling is probably our Chinese lady-friend’s workname, right?’ Ketterman nodded again. ‘What’s her real family name?’

  Ketterman shrugged carelessly. ‘Li Kwei-min, why?’

  Scholefield shrugged too. ‘Just curiosity, Harvey, just curiosity.’

  The American waited a moment then nodded his head impatiently. ‘Well, okay, Dick, okay, you got your answer. Now tell me, Katrina was just horsing around back there without her clothes, right?’

  Scholefield stared straight at him for a long moment. Then slowly he shook his head.

  Without another word Ketterman spun round and marched away towards the steps leading up to the Memorial. Scholefield stood watching him go. The American’s broad shoulders were hunched around his ears in a curiously defensive attitude, his tall, angular body a stooping silhouette against the bright glow of the marble temple. As Scholefield turned away he saw him slip between a row of tourist buses and begin running across the circular approach road.

  Razduhev saw him running too, from his concealed position at the foot of one of the giant Doric entrance columns high above the road. He watched him trotting up the steps beneath him then stepped back quickly out of sight. He walked inside, checking his watch as he went, and stopped and gazed up at the second inaugural address, chiselled into the stone of the north wall.

  The twenty-foot marble figure of Lincoln, massive and craggy-jawed on its great stone throne, faced out towards the distant floodlit rotunda of the Capitol above the trees, dwarfing Razduhev and the swarm of midnight sightseers to tiny match- stick figures. Flashguns on the tourists’ cameras flared constantly but as Ketterman toiled up the last few steps most of the milling crowd were beginning a ragged retreat from the awesome scale of the god-figure down towards the small acceptably mundane buses that had brought them. Ketterman stopped at the top to get his breath and let the crowd pass by. Immediately he spotted Razduhev and walked over to him. ‘While the first inaugural address was being delivered from this place,’ he whispered over his shoulder reading from the quotation, “insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the union and divide effects by negotiation.” Is that your favourite American quotation, Yuri, huh?’ He grinned and banged Razduhev heartily on the back with his right hand while he slipped a key into a pocket of the Russian’s jacket with the other. ‘No offence, Yuri, no offence meant, fellah.’

  Razduhev looked at him contemptuously for a moment then brushed by him and walked away. He paused, gazing up at the mural depicting an angel freeing a slave above the Gettysburg Address on the south wall, then he turned and slipped abruptly into the shadows beyond the Tonic columns flanking the statue.

  Ketterman scanned the faces of the few remaining tourists carefully and when he was satisfied that nobody was paying him any attention, he turned and sauntered casually into the shadows after Razduhev, making for the lift in the east wall. He pressed the call button and the door opened immediately. Only when he was sure the doors had closed behind Ketterman did Bogdarin step out from the deep shadow in the three-foot gap behind the base of the Lincoln statue and follow in the same direction.

  When the muted bell announced the arrival of the lift Bogdarin moved quickly inside before the doors were fully opened. At the bottom he stepped out and glanced to the right along the passageway towards the rangers’ offices. They were silent and deserted. Inside the lift shaft the groaning of the lift motor indicated it was rising again. Bogdarin edged along the wall and peered round the side of the spectators’ window that gave a view of the massive concrete bowels of the monument. A concrete walkway with steel h
andrails linked the great square concrete piles that had been driven sixty-five feet into the earth to hold up the thousands of tons of marble overhead. Heating and air conditioning ducts snaked among them and Bogdarin could see Razduhev and Ketterman standing on the gantry in the shadow of the ducts, absorbed in a heated conversation. Razduhev’s face was purple with anger and he was gesticulating fiercely with one hand as he spoke. Bogdarin dropped to his knees and crawled bent double beneath the window as far as the door to the men’s washroom. Inside he tried the handle of the maintenance door that opened onto the gantry but found it had been carefully secured by Ketterman from inside. Bogdarin drew a picklock from his pocket and began working silently on the door. As he worked he heard the lift motor whirr into life again.

  The raised voices of the two men inside penetrated faintly - through the door as their argument grew more acrimonious. Thirty seconds later Bogdarin grunted ‘with satisfaction as the lock tumblers yielded. He reached inside the waistband of his trousers and drew out a short-bladed knife and began to turn the handle at the same moment that the faint ‘ping’ of its bell announced the arrival of the lift once more.

  A moment later Richard Scholefield, still breathing heavily from his run up the steps of the Memorial, opened the door to the washroom to find Bogdarin hunched in a half-crouch with the knife clutched in his free hand. The Russian already had the maintenance door half open but he remained frozen in a moment of indecision looking at Scholefield, his eyes wide with the apprehension of discovery.

  Scholefield began moving towards him immediately in a reflex action and at the same instant caught sight of Ketterman and Razduhev. The American’s back was still turned towards the door and the hum from the ducts and the lift motor had clearly covered the sounds of the door opening behind him.

  ‘Watch your back, Harvey!’

  Scholefield screamed the warning and lunged towards the Russian’s knife hand at the same moment. Bogdarin tried to fend him off with his free hand but slipped and fell to his knees. Ketterman swung round, his face suddenly white with alarm, to find Scholefield and the Russian writhing in the open doorway in a desperate contest for the knife. He turned back but although he began to duck away as soon as he saw the silenced .22 hand gun in Razduhev’s right fist, he was too late to avoid its first shot. The Russian had aimed for the heart but because of his sudden movement, Ketterman received the tiny slug between his second and third ribs, low down on the right side of his chest. He staggered back towards the doorway clutching the wound with both hands, staring at Razduhev in disbelief. The Russian extended the gun in front of him to make more sure of his aim—and as he moved slowly towards Ketterman, cursing him softly in his native tongue.

  Scholefield freed himself from Bogdarin’s grasp at that moment and struggled upright. He swung his left foot high and brought the heel down squarely across the fallen Russian’s throat. The knife flew from his hand, slithered across the steel gantry and fell over the side into the darkness between the foundation piles.

  Scholefield spun round to see Ketterman folding up slowly over the top guard rail He was coughing and clutching at the centre of a large and growing blood stain spreading over his lower ribs. Even though he was bent practically double he still stared helplessly aghast at Razduhev, who was continuing to advance on him holding the tiny gun at arm’s length.

  In desperation Scholefield threw the only thing that was to hand and Bogdarin’s pick-lock tool caught the Russian a glancing blow on the cheek before clattering to the floor of the steel gantry and dropping away into the darkness. Scholefield followed in fast behind the throw twisting sideways and aiming a high, two- footed yoko-tobi-geri at the Russian’s gun hand. The gun recoiled soundlessly the moment before Scholefield’s feet struck and the second lead pellet hit Ketterman in the left shoulder three inches from his jugular vein. The impact knocked him to his knees and the top half of his body slipped slowly sideways through the first and second bars of the safety rails.

  Scholefield’s double kick broke Razduhev’s arm and his gun flew into the air in a high arc. Scholefield ducked closer and chopped hard at his throat with the edge of his right hand. The Russian took the full force of the blow directly on the Adam’s apple, staggered two steps and toppled backward over the rails. The strangled shout of pain and shock ceased abruptly as he hit the dirt floor of the foundation chamber twenty feet below.

  Scholefield flung himself to the floor and grabbed the tails of Ketterman’s jacket in tune to prevent him slipping over the edge. When he had untangled him from the railings, and dragged him into a sitting position he was still coughing and flecks of blood had appeared at the corners of his mouth. He stared wide-eyed at Scholefield. ‘Christ Almighty, Dick ...‘ His voice was barely a croak and he was unable to manage anything further before his eyes clouded with pain and he began coughing again.

  Scholefield bent and got his shoulder under the American’s armpit and half-carried and half-dragged him off the gantry. He stepped over the unconscious body of Bogdarin and struggled with Ketterman as far as the ranger’s offices. He broke the door open with his foot and stretched Ketterman on the floor while he used the telephone.

  Four and a half minutes later the whoop of sirens and the blue glow of revolving lights announced the arrival of police and an ambulance at the foot of the Memorial steps. But by that time Harvey Ketterman was dead.

  PEKING, Tuesday—Concern grew here today about the health of Chairman Mao Tse-tung after he failed to receive a visiting head of state for the first time in fourteen months. An official Chinese spokesman told Reuters: ‘The Central Committee of our Party has decided not to arrange for Chairman Mao to meet foreign guests.’

  Reuters, 15 June 1976

  22

  The blue and white Boeing 707 of the Civil Aviation Administration of China throttled back its engines as though pausing for one last deep breath, then plunged its nose into the sea of stagnant cloud pressing on the flat plain beneath it. A clammy grey fist clutched immediately at the tilting aircraft and from his window seat inside it, Scholefield watched glistening pearls of moisture grow quickly on the leading wing-edges. As it lost height they began to tear themselves free and explode in translucent streaks of light across the outside of the windows.

  The Boeing sank slowly through to the bottom of the grey fog and gradually the ancient, shaded patchwork of the landscape below began to reveal itself in fleeting, distorted glimpses through the scarred Perspex. Scholefield watched this disfigured image of China glide slowly up towards him for a full minute, then turned his eyes away. Flight CA 922 from Tokyo was three-quarters empty. It carried only a delegation of twenty Japanese businessmen in charcoal grey suits, a handful of Chinese government cadres in their high-buttoned uniforms and a group of European diplomats and wives returning to their Peking base from a long weekend in Japan.

  During the flight Scholefield had studied all their faces carefully. None of them had been on the plane from New York. He’d watched embarking passengers carefully at Anchorage but no one had seemed to take any special interest in him. Nobody had approached him in fact on either aircraft although he had been constantly prepared for a surreptitious contact

  The Chinese stewardesses in dark blue boiler-suit jackets and ballooning trousers, were hurrying to finish clearing the last remains of a savoury buffet they had offered with Chinese beer and erh-kuo t’ou, the local red wine. They had treated everybody with a polite correctness, taking obvious care not to show any signs of obsequiousness to the foreigners. Their best smiles they reserved for the Chinese government cadres on-board.

  Scholefield had been looked after all the way from Tokyo by a tall skinny girl with a pinched-looking face. Her blue boiler-suit hung about her bony frame like a collapsed tent and her mouth had remained set in a thin, unsmiling line throughout the flight she had acknowledged his ‘hsieh hsieh ni’s’ only with curt nods of the head. As she leaned close across him now to remove his tray he noticed that more had disappeared than just th
e red silk jackets he had seen on China’s smart air girls when he’d first flown into Peking in 1959. The crimson ribbons, with which they had decorated their long glossy braids then, had now been replaced by functional elastic bands doubled several times over their short bunches of carelessly cut hair. Ten years after it erupted, he reflected, the Cultural Revolution was still demanding a heavy toll in proletarian drabness.

  Outside, die evening light beneath the clouds had become grey and luminous. One wing of the plane dipped suddenly and it banked to the right giving Scholefield a distant glimpse of paved runways. As its engines throttled back a match of subdued conversation reached him from the two nearest Japanese businessmen. Scholefield leaned dose to his window trying to identify, in the village below, the tunnel entrances they were discussing.

  China and Japan had fought a great battle in the Second World War here in the Shunyi district, a middle aged man was explaining to a younger colleague. Chinese peasants had continued a fierce, unyielding resistance in tunnels linking the villages and the international airport had been built dose to this old ‘underground battlefield’. But it was better to make no mention of the fact, he advised the young man earnestly—not even in praise to their hosts who would nicer them on the runway.

  The thin stewardess chose her moment carefully, waiting until Scholefield had turned his head to look at the Japanese who was speaking. He giggled in sudden embarrassment at Scholefield as though realising, too late, he had been overheard by someone who spoke his language. At that instant the stewardess dropped the blue canvas holdall onto Scholefield’s lap. He turned back in surprise but by then she was moving away along the aisle, reaching down coats and parcels for other passengers from the overhead racks.

  He half rose to hand back the case but the stewardess swung round in the aisle and stood looking meaningfully at him. She neither nodded nor shook her head. Her face remained expressionless but she held his gaze long enough to make it clear the case had not been given to him inadvertently. Scholefield settled back into his seat and pulled open the zip.