The Mandarin Cypher

by Adam Hall

  Said no.

  'He liked it, in a way. It was the fishing.' From this point she lost touch and most of the time forgot I was here, 'It quite brought him out, the first time we came,' a curl of her light hair falling loose as she talked, her small stockinged feet silent as she moved across the carpet, the nervous giggles more frequent and the memories more random, 'though to tell you the truth it might have been the Isle of Wight as far as he was concerned, everywhere was the same once he'd got over the shock of leaving England for a couple of weeks,' gesturing now and saying suddenly and bitterly, 'he never thought much about sex,' stopping just this once to listen to what she'd said and then going on, 'giving me the impression that she didn't really want to tell me about George Henry Tewson but about something much more urgent that she daren't even mention, so this would have to do, giving her some kind of release.

  I could have looked around at the Ming and the Cat Street Contemporary while I was listening because that was all I'd come here for, to listen, but she was using her body a lot, couldn't keep still, and I looked at that, and the movements it made, the way she shivered sometimes as she went on, she'd only meant to go in as far as her knees and it was up to her stomach now, the tense trembling fear of going too far, the thrill of not going back, talking to me all the time, and none of the time, about Tewson, 'then of course I found he'd been putting it away in Savings Certificates and buying insurance and that kind of thing, poor lamb,' her cigarette tracing smoke in the air as her feet did a pirouette, 'that's how I can live like this, and quite honestly it makes a change. My God, I can go on once I get started - you must be bored stiff!'

  Said of course not.

  'Then I thought no, I'll stay here, and never go back at all. I don't want to leave him, you see? The psychiatrist said I was right, the one I went to. He said I'd get over it quicker if I stayed here, where George was.'

  Then she just stood perfectly still in the middle of the room looking at nothing, a girl with ivory skin and stockinged feet and a lock of hair and a sheath dress with stains where the scotch had soaked it, her head turning slowly as she remembered me, her dark eyes deepening.

  'You don't have to go, do you?'

  'No.'

  The shivering began again.

  'I'm so bloody frightened,' she said.

  I walked north, away from the Cathay Hotel, going along Kingston Street and up as far as Gloucester Road without seeing any traffic, not really expecting to at this hour, three in the morning. A patrol car slowed a little to check me, going west, and turned down Cannon Street. The smell of the harbour came on the wind, and a ship was hooting, some way off, three slows, farewell.

  It had been as if she hadn't slept with anyone for years, or as if she knew it was for the last time, an act of desperation, and afterwards depression of course, tugging the cigarette out with small sharp nails, tearing the packet, I don't even know who you are, Clive, who are you, so forth. Essential to ask her why she was frightened, two reasons: I wanted to know and she'd expect me to ask. No go. Did I say that, I must've been stoned, furious with herself for having said it and with me for reminding her.

  There was a taxi outside the Excelsior and I got in.

  'Mauritius Hotel.'

  The streets swung past and I shut my eyes, lingering flight-disorientation and nothing to have to watch, everything under control. One certainty: she wasn't an agent, either ours or theirs. One probability: Tewson had been. But there were inconsistencies because everything fitted so well and then came apart: he'd presented a classic cover in his dossier, lowly work for a government department, three-year-old Austin and a few small debts and never travelling until Spain (to establish the new image) and then suddenly Hong Kong, three trips in a row and then careless, leaving a widow, no children. All right, started off in DI6, ferreting around Portsmouth and places, then seconded or transferred to MI5 for missions abroad, a feint in Spain and then the Far East theatre, something strictly specific and confined to Hong Kong as a base for the South China seaboard area. Then the classic sequence: approach from Pekin, temptation, defection, exposure, elimination, but not before he'd been paid enough for his widow to blow it on Ming. Chief inconsistency: MI5 are a gritty lot but they wouldn't have given him the terminal handshake, they'd have sent him back to London for the full fourteen-year stretch, justice seen to be done, so forth.

  I'm so bloody frightened.

  Because she'd known about it and couldn't stop it running. But Tewson had stopped running and she was still frightened so what was running now?

  South and then west again into Hennessy Road, a dark bundle of clothes on the pavement and some police around it, the end of the opium trail. We began slowing.

  'Mauritius Hotel,' the driver said.

  I got out and paid and under-tipped to provoke an argument because the lights weren't too bright here and I wanted to make it easy, oh all right then, here you are, but you people are bloody robbers, and he went away happy as anything with a Hong Kong dollar.

  I went into the hotel and nodded to the night-clerk when he woke up, taking the stairs. The first-floor passage was conveniently long and I walked nearly to the end, thinking it could of course have been Nora Tewson herself who'd pushed the poor bastard into it, like Mrs. Tuckman: she was hooked on money and there might have been quite a lot of it from Mao if Tewson had something they particularly wanted.

  I got my keys and pushed one of them against the door of the cleaner's closet and then opened it, going in and shutting it, nothing but bloody brooms everywhere, pitch dark, don't tread on anything, there may be a bucket. Standing against the wall I thought the only thing she'd said that was really interesting was about his work, and even that had been clumsy: Pretty important, well, I mean it was important that he worked there, actually his work wasn't important, to tell you the truth.

  Most of what she'd told me was in his dossier and the rest I could check on. His cover had been something in technical or engineering, design or research or development, him and his slide-rule, she wasn't bright enough to make that up or deliver it without over-acting. Some kind of cleaning-fluid stinking to high heaven, ammonia in it, eyes accommodating now, faint light from a ventilator above me. I couldn't hear him but I didn't expect to: There was carpet in the passage and he'd walk quietly, coming just far enough to note the number of the room next to the closet, then going away.

  The watch was probably changed at midnight: this one was shorter and quite a bit older, no glasses, quite good, turning away when I'd come down from her apartment and through the lobby, nearly missed him. And a Morris, not the Honda, keeping such a big gap that I thought I'd better stand there arguing with my cab-driver to give him a bit of time. I don't even know who you are, Clive, who are you, got quite excited when I'd mentioned bullion, I'd better pick up a tag tomorrow and take him to one of the dealers they'd given me in Credentials and then lose him afterwards, somewhere near the Singapore.

  Check: I'd given him enough time to reach the top of the stairs before I was halfway along the passage and there hadn't been any cover because the doors weren't recessed so he'd have had to wait there in case I turned round, and from that distance and from that fine angle of view, almost zero degrees, he couldn't see if I were going into the closet or the room next door. Satisfactory: given him five minutes to clear.

  Proposition: she was still frightened so something was still running and she knew it and she knew what it was and London had given me the key to Mandarin at the outset: Nora Tewson. But I didn't know if Mandarin was their name for an opposition project they wanted me to penetrate or survey or destroy, or the name of my own mission on the files, and it was beginning to look a bit like a counter-intelligence thing. I didn't mind that: it could be a legitimate penetration job either way and that was in my field, somewhere to go into and go into alone, a prescribed target and access availability and a safe-house for signals and refuge. So far there hadn't been any problem: since touch-down at Kai Tak I'd checked the safe-house, made the conta
ct with Nora Tewson, noted the opposition surveillance, gone in under it to develop the contact and established a false base, Room 12, Mauritius Hotel. The sole hazard potential was Flower and as soon as possible I'd have him recalled to London.

  I turned the handle of the door and it took ten seconds to push it open one millimetre, the diameter of the human pupil in artificial light. Field clear. Stairs, lobby, street, check, re-check, clear. I had to walk as far as the Luk Kwok before I found a taxi.

  'Orient Club.'

  'You want nice Chinese girl?'

  'No, just the Orient Club.'

  Got out and paid him and watched him away. Re-check: clear. The street very quiet in the pre-dawn hour, no lights anywhere on this side of the consulate, a haze of gnats floating below the lamp near the sand-bin. Notice of Opportunity to pay Fixed Penalty, so forth, put it with the other one, some people collect absolutely anything these days, check ignition wires and start up. Final check: clear.

  There were no messages for me at the Hong Kong Cathay and I went straight up to my room and opened the door and froze.

  It's not only dogs.

  The room was at the rear of the hotel and on the top floor. It faced north-east and at this moment the first light was coming into the sky above the theatre and the trees in the park. The shutters were half open, the way I'd left them, making a silhouette against the ashy light. My cases were on the stand, the way I'd left them.

  It's not only dogs that have a sense of smell, the ability to sense alien presence in the environment, or its recent presence. All animals have it, but in varying degrees of refinement. In humans it has been atrophying over the decades since they began living with machines and relying on lights, locks and mechanical systems, but in creatures of the wild it remains highly developed. In creatures of the wild and in those few of us who express and incur mortal enmity in pursuit of our complex purposes.

  There was no actual smell that worried me. In the short time I'd spent in this room I had become familiar with the subtle blend of sandalwood, jute, linen, polish, Jeyes Fluid and the ingrained odours of the human body. Nothing was different about the smell. There was no particular sound. From somewhere in the hotel I could hear the clack of mah-jongg pieces and the far faint jangle of an alarm-clock, but they weren't loud enough to prevent my detecting human breathing in the room here, if there were any human near me. There was nothing to be seen but faint light, shadows, areas of near-darkness, and various objects occupying positions familiar to me. The shutters, the cases, shoes, hotel literature, doors, lamps, bathrobe, everything I could see in the dim light was as I had seen it last.

  The only cover in the room itself was under the bed and if a man were there he would be facing this way, towards the door, so I moved very fast, using the bed itself as a springboard and spinning as I hit the floor on the other side and checked the space underneath against the light from the open doorway. No. I opened the bathroom door and threw the bathrobe in and waited two seconds and dropped and went in and looked behind the door. No. Check wardrobe, check window, no point in checking the main doorlock for signs of tampering because in a small hotel you don't have to force a lock, you get the concierge to turn his back on the keyboard for the required five seconds.

  So everything was perfectly all right and I put the light on and shut the door and began checking small details: I'd left the bottom corner of the hotel literature precisely lined up with the pattern on the table and the three drawers had been left pulled open a quarter-inch at the right-hand, left-hand, right-hand ends from top downwards, and the cases had been set with their top corners exactly touching, the left rivet an inch lower than the right, so forth, it wasn't anything special, we always do it and we do it with the speed of habit and we can check just as fast. It's absolutely foolproof providing the opposition isn't too professional but if it's professional enough then you don't have a chance unless you go into the more refined mechanisms: a hair across the wardrobe doors, tautened between notches; a dead match on the floor with the ash still intact; £ pin balanced across the gap in the bathroom doorway.

  I hadn't used these traps because no one had tagged me since I'd landed except for the two men surveying Nora Tewson and I'd made sure neither of them had tagged me to this hotel. When I'd picked up the Capri just now I'd been absolutely clear and I'd come into the hotel with security intact. Except for one factor: If they'd wanted to they could have got my address, the Hong Kong Cathay. I didn't think they'd want to, because I'd gone in overtly to make the contact in the Orient Club and I'd let them tag me to Jade Imperial and later from there to the Mauritius Hotel. There was no reason why they should suspect my cover: no reason at all.

  Disregard.

  Discount the animal instinct, ignore the slight raising of the hairs along the arms under their sleeves, the prickling of the scalp, the micro-watt surge of galvanic force along the nerves of the spine. Dismiss and rationalize: fatigue, flight-disorientation unfamiliarity with the environment, imaginative fears, so forth.

  Very well. Because it was so very unlikely they would have taken any real interest in me so early, so fast. The young thin tubercular Chinese had been police-trained and predictable: he hadn't even noted Flower in the surveillance area. The older man had been much better and I'd nearly missed him in the lobby of Jade Imperial, but he'd been so cautious on the run to the Mauritius Hotel that I'd had to give him a full minute outside the place so he could keep me in sight.

  The access to the Mandarin target was prescribed and orderly: it wasn't a night-drop or a crash-drive or anything panicky like the Tunis thing. Egerton and Macklin and the administration in London had roped me in but they hadn't thrown me in: they'd given me time to contact the key figure -- Nora Tewson -- and develop a relationship and the thing I had to do now was give her total attention until she showed me the way in and I sent for a director and set the action up and got moving.

  So there was no reason for me to stand here in Room 39 of the Hong Kong Cathay Hotel with the instinctive feeling that someone had been here in my absence. No reason. Because Mandarin wasn't as big as that yet: this was still the preliminary phase and I'd have to make a mistake or provoke them or get in their way before they'd extend their own routine surveillance of the Tewson woman and move into my field on covert combat level. If they'd been here this early and this fast it would mean that the initiative had already passed from the local cell or unit to the major directive: not Hong Kong but Pekin. And I just didn't believe that had happened. I wasn't prepared to credit the idea that within twelve hours of landing at Kai Tak Airport I was faced with a mission that had started blowing right open in the primary phase.

  Sleep.

  Normal precautions, pull the shutters and swing the catch, throw the security bolt, put a coin on the door handle and the two glass ashtrays on the carpet below, a gesture to the needs of survival now that I'd rejected instinct. Last thoughts as I took off my things: call her later today and listen to see if they've got her phone bugged, go and ask Fleetway Rent-a-Car if anyone's been trying to find out who hired the Capri, tell them about the carburation, difficult to start and that could be critical on a tagging run.

  There was a mosquito Whining in the bathroom and I wondered what the humidity was in this place in September, felt somewhere near eighty. Then I forgot about it because when I squeezed some toothpaste on the brush an air-bubble popped and the stuff was too runny and I felt suddenly cold and thought I don't mind London offering me capsules but I don't like people putting the bloody stuff in my toothpaste.

  Chapter Five

  FLOWER

  'Where the hell have you been?'

  The light in the room was dim, because I hadn't opened the shutters. Earlier, bars of gold had appeared on the carpet as the angle of the planet, relative to its local star, had changed progressively. Now the beams of sunlight through the shutter-slats were thinning again as I watched. Motes of dust drifted through them, suddenly bright and then vanishing, and I saw them with great clarit
y, as I saw everything in the room. I've noticed before that to miss death narrowly leaves you with your senses heightened: these bright hallucinatory images were always there before but you were too busy to see them.

  'Nowhere,' he said.

  'Yes you bloody well have. I phoned you fifteen minutes ago and you weren't there.'

  'Oh -- I had to go and move the car.' He sounded surprised and aggrieved. 'They wanted to unload a -'

  'You could've given them the keys couldn't you, for Christ sake?'

  Bit of a pause, then rather quietly: 'Yes, sir.'

  I let it go. I'd told the little fool to stay at his base at all times except between 15.00 and 16.00 hours and just now I'd phoned him at 10.25 and there'd been no answer from his room and they'd failed to locate him by page, said he'd gone out. Moving his car, all right, three minutes, but three minutes could make a critical gap at a time when there had to be instant liaison. The opposition believed I was dead and fifteen minutes ago they could have come in here to search the body and I might not have had time to do anything about it - except to phone Flower with a last signal so that Control would know what had happened. But he would have been moving his car. I needed him today but tomorrow I'd have him on a plane for London before he could do any damage.

  'Flower,' I said.

  'Yes, sir.'

  'Have you been on an active mission before?'

  'No'.'

  There was a click and I stopped to listen, but it was one of the cleaners in the passage outside, nothing on the line. I'd checked it for bugs when I'd made the connection and we were clear.