The Chinese Assassin (25 page)

Yang nodded
and
reached for the case. He began
unfastening
the
brass locks, using
both hands. As he opened it,
Scholefield
heard Nina’s stifled scream. He looked up
and saw
she had risen to her
feet.
Her face was
cl
enched in an
expression of alarm
and she
was stating at
Yang
pointing
with an
outstretched a
rm
towards the case whose
lid
was
now raised in
her
direction, giving her
a ‘view
of its
contents.
She shouted something unintelligible and the Chinese
looked
up
in
astonishment as
she flung
herself towards him.

For Scholef
iel
d the room tilted suddenly and he felt himself tumbling backwards off his chair. He fell,
it
seemed, only very slowly towards the floor. All the
t
ime his eyes were riveted on Nina, Yang and S
tillma
n,
although the rest of his body seemed to
spin rapidly around the axis of his
vision. All movement outside himself seemed to take place haltingly as though already
recorded by a slow motion
camera
and
be saw, the Chinese
dive very
deliberately
for the cover of the
heavy wooden
dais.
Then
he felt
an
unbearable pressure squeeze his
car
drums tight inside his
head. Still
m
an and
Nina who
had first
of
all been
flung together
in
a violent,
unwilling
embrace, separated abruptly
and began
to glide apart above him in opposite
directions as
the
great
roar burst inside his
brain.

He
hit
the floor
and
at the
same time saw Sti
ll
man
floating jerkily away from him towards the ceiling,
like a ping-pong ball
on a
fairground rifle range being
propelled
erratically
upward by an
invisible
jet of
water.
He heard very
clearly
the heels of
his
shoes knock against the
perforated
acoustic tiles of the ceiling.
Then great cataracts
of
plaster and other
debris began
cascading down all
around him. A
confused
babble of shouting reached
him through this
curtain of grey, roaring
fog.
Then abruptly it ceased and he heard,
and
saw, nothing more.

PART TWO

LONDON, Friday—Ten months after Mao’s chosen successor Lm
Piao, his wife and four
top
military
leaders vanished
into
the
night—or
into a Mongolian hillside, if
indeed
they were passengers in
that
mysteriously vagrant Trident jet—the
Chinese
have offered no official explanation of the
event.

The
Economist
,
8
July
1972

9

‘Ring
by eleven—and your coffin’s
flying
by seven! That’s what we promise at
Jarvis’s, Mr. Ketterman.’ The dapper little
cockney,
dressed all in black, standing at the American’s elbow in the noisy crowded bar of the Black
Horse
in Marylebone
High
Street, looked up into the blank smoked
lenses
that covered Ketter
m
an’s eyes
and
opened his mouth wide in
expectation. His
tongue f
l
ickered
briefly
out of the dark void
like a stunted
red
antenna
seeking
reaction
to the motto he had
just chanted.

When
Ketterman
didn’t reply he turned abruptly
and sank his nose
into the froth on top of the pint of bitter the
American
had
just
bought him. ‘You won’t
find
another
FD
in London who
can
match
Arthur
Cooper for speed—your
consular
officer tell you that,
did
he?’ He
wiped
his mouth
and
nose on the sleeve of his black jacket
and
set
the
pint mug
down
on a counter already awash with spi
ll
ed
drinks.
‘Should have done, if he
didn’t.
I’ve lost count of the
cases
I’ve
handled for your embassy.’

Kette
rm
an
nodded absently as
he
picked up his
own half-pint
tankard. His face
twisted
in disgust as he sipped
the warm
beer,
and
he pushed it away. He leaned back hard against the noisy crush of
bodies
that was threatening to squash him
against
the bar
and
looked down speculatively at
the narrow-shouldered
little funeral director. He could see from
the
discoloured roots on the crown of his head that he’d dyed 1is white
hair
black to
match
his undertaker’s
cl
othes.

‘All the pubs are
running out of ice about this time every night,
y’know, in the heat
Must be terrible
for you
Americans.
You live on
it, don’t
you?’ He took another
sip
of his beer. ‘Here, what’s happened to you then, Mr. K? Looks as if you’ve had a nasty knock. There’s a lovely bruise
turning
out on your cheek,
isn’t
there?’

‘I
had a fall
earlier this evening.’
Ketterman
waved a dismissive hand. He slipped a
sealed foolscap envelope
from the
inside
pocket of his jacket
and
handed it to Cooper. The
little man looked
up into his face with a
puzzled
expression. ‘Take it to the
washroom and
count
it,’ said Ketterman
softly.

Cooper
picked up his
beer with
his other
band
and took a long gulp. ‘You were lucky to catch
me so late, Mr.
Ketterman,’
he
said
loudly. ‘It’s thanks to this little fellow of course.’ He pulled a
bleeper,
of the
kind carried
by
doctors
on
call,
out of his
top
pocket then slipped it back again. ‘
If
I
hadn’t
been out at
the
airport on another
rush
case for the Sudan, I’d have been at home in Potter’s Bar long ago.’

Although all the
windows and
doors were wide open, the air
inside
the pub
was
hot
and dank and
condensation dripped
occasionally
from the
ceiling
onto the
heads and
shoulders of the
drinkers.
‘Excuse me
then,’ said Cooper with a
leering wink, ‘I’ll
just
go
and shake hands with
the wife’s best friend.’
Ketterman
leaned on the bar and watched the little
ma
n p
ush
his way through the crowd to a door beneath an illuminated ‘Gentlemen’ sign.

Outside in Marylebone
High Street
the
last flush
of light
was
fading from
the
sky. The
traffic
had died to a
trickle and even
the swallows wheeling
and
swooping above
the
rooftops seemed to be moving slowly and
listlessly
through the heavy,
humid air.
Ketterman watched Cooper coming back
through the
crowd in
the mirror.
The envelope
and
the money were nowhere to be seen. Under cover of the dark glasses he watched the
funeral
director mop his glistening brow with a grey
handkerchief.
With sweating
fingers
he pushed the already greasy knot of his black
tie
tight against his
bulging
Adam’s apple
and
stepped forward to
tug
at Ketter
m
an’s elbow. ‘That’s four times what it would cost for us to airfreight
the
deceased
urgently
to Washington for you, Mr.
K
etterman, did
you. know?’ His
voice was a hoarse whisper and
his mouth opened wide again
revealing
the tip of his tongue dickering hopefully in
its
frame.

Ketterman
put a
cigarette
in his mouth and immediately,
with
a deferential gesture
born
of his profession, the
little
Londoner produced a silver-plated lighter from his
pocket. ‘That’s the first
installment
of a
personal and
private retainer for you,’
said Ketterman
quietly as he bent his head
dose
over the
proffered
flame.
‘Your
firm’s
account
will be settled separately through the embassy.’

Cooper closed his mouth
and
the
lighter with a simultaneous
snap. He screwed up his watery blue
eyes and stared
at
the American. ‘Your consul said on
the phone you were a government officer and you would want my personal
attention
for the urgent
transshipment
of very
important
re
m
ains, Mr. Ketterman.’ He stopped
and looked
round to see if anybody
was listening.
‘I’m not
averse
to doing a bit of “overtime” in return for a
backhander.
But a tenner’s the
most
your embassy’s ever
slipped
me for
running
out to the
airport
for a night f
l
ight.’ He looked round uneasily again and leaned
cl
ose. ‘
N
obody, Mr. Ketterman,
has
ever offered me
two thousand quid.’

Ketterman raised
his eyebrows significantly. ‘That’s only ten per cent of your eventual gross—if you do the job to my satisfaction.’

‘Ten
per
cent?’
Cooper’s mouth opened wide again
and this time
stayed open. He
cocked
his head
on
one side,
looking
at the American
like
a loyal but puzzled puppy.
‘Whose
corpse is it?’

It
was
Ketterman’s
turn
now to look
carefully
around him. But
the
roar of conversation
and
laughter from
the
crowd swirled
unheeding
around
their
heads. ‘I don’t have a corpse, Mr. Cooper. I want to rent one from you.’

‘Rent a corpse?’ Cooper’s eyes widened in
disbelief.

‘Let’s
say
an elderly,
white,
Anglo-Saxon, embalmed
male.
For an hour or so in the morning. Long enough to get
the
right legal documentation so the coffin
can
go out on
the
six p.m. flight to Washington.’

Cooper suddenly straightened up, squaring his puny shoulders. ‘Mr. Ketterman, it’s more than my job’s worth to do
anything
illegal.’

Ke
t
terman signalled
to the
barman and ordered
another
pint
of bitter for Cooper. When he’d paid for it he turned back to the little
undertaker,
removed his
dark glasses and
smiled. ‘You’ve been in your
line
of
business
for 49 years, man and boy, Mr. Cooper. Shipping coffins out of London since before the war.
Only
about
six
a
year
went Out by
sea, then,
right? Now you fly out around a thousand a year all over the world—up to
a half
dozen every day.
Almost all of ‘em are tourists
who
die visiting Britain
or
sickly
Arabs who come to Harley
Street
for medical
treatment.
You
use
metal-lined coffins
and
wrap them in
hessian sacking
so pilots
and
passengers don’t get unnerved by the idea of
flying with
the
dead. And
when you put your hermetic
seals
on the
zinc
inner
box
at your embalming premises, as
the
law
requires, and
swear a written
declaration that
there’s only a
cadaver
inside, the customs men, who don’t
like
looking in
coffins any
more
than
anyone
else, know
you
well
enough to
feel certain
that’s going to be
true. Because
you personally and your company
are highly respected and want
to stay in business. Right?’

Cooper
sipped his
fresh pint
of
beer and stared
apprehensively at Ketterman, nodding wordlessly.

‘And
you
can
get
documents too—fast. Death certificate from
Caxton
Hall, certified permission
to
take remains
abroad from the
Westminster
Coroner, a no-contagious-diseases
clearance
from the
Medical
Officer of
Health in
Victoria. All those
officers
know you
and trust
you
personally. And
the coffin has to be in the airlines cargo area four
hours
before take-off: You’re the only people who
can
do it.
“Ring
by eleven—fly by seven.” Right?’ Cooper nodded quickly again
and Kette
r
man
lowered his voice. ‘That’s the
kind
of back-up, Mr. Cooper, that’s worth
twenty
thousand to me.’
Cooper
stared transfixed at
the American, his
face
flexing and unflexing with
indecision.

Ketter
m
an watched him for a moment longer.
‘You
retire, Mr.
Cooper, six months from now.
And
although you’ve
been a
loyal
servant
to Jarvis’s for forty-nine years your pension won’t top three
thousand
pounds a year after tax.’ Kette
rm
an drew on his cigarette, looking
steadily
at the
undertaker through
narrowed eyes. ‘You won’t refuse, Mr. Cooper.’

The
little man swallowed
hard
and took
a deep
breath.
‘How do you
know all this, Mr. Ketterman?’

The American
replaced his
dark glasses and smiled again. ‘Call
it careful forward planning.’

Cooper’s eyes narrowed. His mouth
opened
again and his tongue f
l
ickered calculatingly. ‘If I
agree
to help you out, when will the rest of
the cash
be handed over!’

‘At ten o’clock tomorrow morning you’ll deliver your “goods” to an
address
near Grosvenor Square.
Then
you round up the documents. When we seal the coffin at
mid-day
at your premises—just you
and
me alone, no other
staff
around—you’ll get another
installment
like
tonight’s. When I’m satisfied the casket’s sa
fe
ly on
board
the six o’clock
Pan
Am flight
to Washington in the pressurised hold I’ll
hand
you the other sixteen thousand.’