The Chinese Assassin (3 page)
‘Darling,
at last! rye been
ringing
f
o
r simply ages. I couldn’t get
through. Are you all
tight?
Was
your
plane late? When did
you get in? That is you, isn’t it darling?’
Scholefield
closed his eyes and smiled.
‘Yes,
sweetheart
Yes, three hours late.
About ten minutes
ago.
And yes, sweetheart—
in
that
order.’
¶Don’t be so bloody unfeeling
Richard.
You know I
hate
it
when you
fly.’
‘Not as much as I do. And
I’
m not being
“unfeeling”.
It
’s a mixture
of jet lag and this
heat.
The road
in
from
the airport is littered
for miles
with
abandoned, boiled-up cars. It’s
like a scene
from
The Day the E
a
rth Caught Fire.
A bit
e
e
ri
e’
‘1
know. It’s been
terrible.’
‘That’s why I can’t match
Hedda
Gabler’s
stream
of lively
histrionica—it still is Hedda
this week, is
it?’
‘Yes.
Nina Murphy—remember her?—has got to be at the
un-air-conditioned theatre
in an hour to do
her twice-nightly impersonation
of a
disappearing
grease-spot. But
she might just find tune
for a
breathless,
welcome-home nude
sequence
at your flat at twice the speed of
sound
on her way there—if you want, of
course.’
‘Nina,
you know
damned wel
l
I want,’
he
began,
‘but—’
‘Then
I’ll be
there in
twenty minutes. Starting
from now!’
The dialling tone
resumed
abruptly and
Scholefield
replaced the receiver, grinning
broadly to himself: He bent
and began
picking up the airmail
editions
of The People’s Daily
that had been faithfully
forwarded
during
his absence by the little Co
m
munist bookshop
behind the
B
ritish Museum.
In his study he threw them on a leather
chesterfield
by his desk,
fetched
ice from
the kitchen and poured himself a large measure
of
neat vodka.
Then he sank down on the
chesterfield and
began removing the
wrappers and
glancing at
the heavy black type
of the
headline
ideograms, sipping the
vodka as
he read. But before he
had drunk half
of
it
the telephone began
ringing again and
he
dragged himself reluctantly
back
to
the
ha
l
l.
‘Richard?’
He took
another
swallow from the glass
in
his
hand
to
fortify
himself against the calculated
hostility
of his ex-wif
e’
s voice. ‘Hello,
Sarah.
How nice to
hear
from you.’
‘I’m only
calling to
ask when you
intend visiting
Mathew again.’ Her tone had
descended
immediately
to heavy sarcasm.
‘It’s nearly a
month since
you
saw
him. A
boy
of his age
needs
a father’s attention. Even
if it
is
only very
occasionally.’
Scholefield
felt
his anger
rising
despite himself, but
tried
to
speak
slowly.
‘I’ve been very busy, Sarah.
There’s
been rather
a lot going on
in China. Mao really may be
dying at
last.
Or have you stopped
reading the papers?’
A snort of contemptuous
laughter came
down the line. ‘I suppose I
should
have
cited
Mao Tse-tung
and
Chou En-la
i
in my
divorce
petition,
shouldn’t
I, instead of
your Shaftesbury
Avenue whore! I don’t
imagine
you’ve missed out on
seeing
her
often in the
past
month.’
Scholefield
gritted his teeth.
‘I’ve been away in Ottawa at a
military symposium
on
the
PLA for the past ten days. I’ve got an important article for one of the
monthlies
to
finish
by tomorrow night
and
the BBC have asked me to
script
a programme by
the
weekend on the Peking power struggle—’
She
ignored
the explanation as though he
hadn’t
spoken. ‘All I want to know is whether you
want
Jo
see
him on Saturday or Sunday. ‘The court granted you access once a month, unless you’ve forgotten. If you don’t intend
seeing him I shall be taking
him away for the
weekend.
That’s all I’m
ringing
for.’
A cold silence lengthened
between
them and threatened to become
interminable.
‘I’ll be over at three
o’
cl
ock
on Saturday,’ be said at
last, drawing
his words out, ‘to
take him
out for a couple of
hours.’
Thank
you. I’m
sure
Mathew will
appreciate
that enormously.
It’ll be just
to
the zoo
again, will it?’
Scholef
i
e
ld
banged
the receiver savagely back on
its rest
without
responding and
drained the remaining vodka in his
glass
at a gulp. He
was still standing indecisively in the ha
l
l
when
the sodden ringing
of the doorbell
startled
him. He put down his
glass and
opened the door. The passageway outside was empty. He leaned out to look up the
stairs and
found
himself staring into the
glowing
red
eyes of a hideous dragon’s head. Blue smoke
streamed
from
its
flared nostrils
and
the grotesque fanged jaws
emitted
a sudden moaning
shriek.
He
flinched and started
back
just as Nina’s
face appeared from
behind
the mask, pu
ffi
ng furiously on a
cigarette.
She snatched the cigarette from her mouth laughing uproariously, then
flung an arm around his
neck, pulling his face close to hers.
‘Did I give you a
fright,
darling?
I’
m sorry. It
is
the
year of the dragon, remember. I found him in
Gerrard Street.
Couldn’t
resist him.’
She
pulled
away from him suddenly in alarm
and
stared at his
unsmiling
face. ‘Richard!
Are
you all right?’
He took the dragon’s
h
ead from her and placed
it
carefully on the ha
l
l table. He looked expressionlessly into her eyes, now clouded with worry. ‘Of course I’m all right, you crazy bitch.’ He spoke very quietly—then smiled suddenly. ‘Just a little tired, that’s all. Come here.’
She wore flared blue jeans, a loose cheesecloth smock with nothing beneath
it
and a square of turquoise silk tied gypsy- fashion round her hair. He wrapped his arms around her and they stood pressed close against each other for a long time in the doorway without speaking or kissing.
‘We’d better shut it. I passed your prurient new porter on the stairs.’ She disentangled herself, and closed and locked the door. In the study she refused a drink and took his hand. ‘I have a very good remedy for tenseness and tiredness.’ She smiled and with both hands pressed his fingers gently against the thin stuff covering her breasts. He sighed and kissed her quickly on the ear.
‘I’m sorry, Nina, but I’ve got somebody arriving any minute.’ He shook his head wearily. ‘A mysterious Chinese. You didn’t give me a chance to explain on the ‘phone.’
She dropped his hand abruptly and sat down. ‘Oh shit!’ In the silence that followed she pouted and stared up at him sulkily. ‘You might have waited five minutes after you got home before re-opening your appointments book.’ She flapped her hand in front of her face like a fan, bent over and began-rolling her wide-bottomed jeans up her bare legs to turn them into shorts.
‘I don’t know who he is and I wouldn’t have agreed to him coming tonight except he’s been ringing the flat constantly for the past week. He dialled my number last Thursday morning aid sat listening to
it
ring out for eight whole days until I picked
it
up twenty minutes ago.’
She stopped and stared up at him open-mouthed. ‘You’re joking!’
‘No, I’m not.’
The doorbell interrupted them and Nina stood up quickly, her face suddenly tense. ‘You don’t think you’
r
e in any danger, do you?’
Scholefield laughed. ‘From the Chinese—in W.
1
?’
She barred his way to the door,
and
put a
hand
on
his arm,
looking at him
wide-eyed.
‘Do you want me to go?’
‘Let’s just see, shall we?’ She sank back onto the chesterfield,
fanning herself with
one
hand again,
as he
walked into the ha
l
l and
opened the door.
My senses swam for many days. From the mists of my delirium I remember above all
else
the giant
communal
feeding bowls. Fresh milk,
salt,
butter, green Chinese tea
and
mutton fat were
stirred
together in steaming
cauldrons
that
seemed
to
rise
up regularly b
e
fore my eyes
like
shapeless,
disembodied
ghosts. The
cloying,
tepid liquid
was always
forced into my open throat but
often, writhing
with the heat of my fever, my whole
body violently
rejected this staple nourishment of the nomads.
My eyes
saw
only the
vague
shapes of Toktokho
and his wife and
daughter. Sometimes
booted and
wrapped in
their
long
deli
with broad
belts
wound
many times round their waists, and sometimes naked,
they moved
like disembodied wraiths around the
o
pen fireplace in the centre of
the yurt
as
they
ministered to me they were always
careful
to pay
respect
to the high wooden box against the
felt wall
on
which stood
their revered
images and statues. When the sun
went down
the yurt filled gradually with
the noise
and
the
stink
and the heat of pregnant
and
new-born animals. All the
arats
suffered
piles from
their incessant
horse-
riding and
each night by the light of the
fire
the family
unashamedly tended their discomforts
with mutton grease.
I knew much
pain in those first
d
ays. But
it always seemed far away, as though afflicting somebody
else
at a great distance
outside
the
wails
of my body. Both my thi
g
hs
and
one
arm
were
fractured and
my
neck and shoulders
were severely
burned. I could
not move my head or upper
body
for
many days
and when Toktokho approached to
moisten
my mouth and lips or dress my injuries, the
ornaments
on his
belt always
danced
close
before my eyes in a gaudy mirage. A silver-mounted
flint
steel,
and a
long
narrow
embroidered tobacco pouch
with
a silver
clasp, hung
from a leather strap along
with a lacquered tinder box and a small
bag of tinder. He
was
proud
still
to be able to employ this old art of his forefathers. There was a tinkling silver
bell too, attached
by a silver chain to a metal knob
which
he
used to knock
out his
pipe. I came
to know every
stitch
of the
prancing
blue
and
gold
horses
embroidered on
these ornaments and later I
learned that Toktokho had taken them as the
spoils of victory from the
body of the leader of a camel train, whom he
had
fought
and
killed in a fair fight before liberation. Every night without
fail
he put them on ceremonially,
like
battle honours, when he
returned
from
his riding.
He
also
wore
two sheaths
on
the
belt— a large one for his dagger
and
a
small
one for a steel
tooth
pick which he
used
to fork lumps of mutton
fat
from the feeding
bowls.
In
those
fevered times while the second sheep-shearing
was taking
place outside I
slipped,
without caring, from
wakefulness
to
unconsciousness—and sometimes
approached equally carelessly
near
to
death
.
Each day
throughout this period, I
learned
later, old Tsereng
was riding
the five miles to the
scene of
the
crashed Trident
to watch the flurry of
activity taking place
there.
The dried saltmarsh in
which
the
wreckage had
come to
rest was
cordoned off
with
ropes
and guarded
by large contingents of armed Soviet troops Toktokho
did
not approach the cordons but watched
discreetly
from
behind
an outcrop of
rock
on a rise in the ground several
hundred yards
away. Though he was old, his eyes were
still almost as keen as
in his youth
and
when I recovered he reported
faithfully
to me all
that
he
had seen.
He
was out
at dawn on the first morning
when they began
hauling the blackened
and charred
bodies of Marshall Li
n
Piao
and
the others from the
still-smouldering
skeleton of the aircraft. ‘They were loaded immediately
and
without ceremony into a covered military lorry which remained at the
scene
without moving for several days. A
constant stream
of
vehicles
jolted back
and
forth across the roadless
steppe
from Ulan Bator in great clouds of
dust, bringing
high-ranking Soviet military officers
and
civilians to the site
along with
frequent groups of Mongolian
Party
and government leaders. An
encampment
of military tents
was
eventually
set
up dose by.
By night the area
was
lit by huge arc-lights. The
Russian
troops, who
had
ordered all
curious
arats
away from the cordon ropes in the
first
few days
with much
shouting
and
menaces, fired off their guns
indiscriminately
into the
surrounding darkness
every night,
laughing
loudly as
they did so.
On the third day after
the
crash, Toktokho saw a sudden and
asto
un
ding
change in the pattern
of
activity at the site. By then
he was watching through
binoculars from the rock knoll which ro
s
e from the plain
quite
near
to where he
had
found me.
Just
before noon, he
saw the
soldiers begin un
l
oading
the nine
charred bodies
again
from the lorry. They removed them from
their canvas
bags
and laid
them out
carefully
on the
ground, side
by side on white sheets.
Then the tented camp, which
had
grown
quite
large
by this
time,
was struck in great haste and all
the
Russian troops
on guard were marshalled
quickly into transport
trucks
and driven
away.
Only
four high-ranking
officers
from the Soviet Union
remained t
alk
i
n
g
to
the
Mongolian
officials
for a few
minutes. Then
they, too, drove slowly away
across
the
steppe,
but in the
opposite direction
to
that
taken by
their
troops,
leaving
the Mongolians alone.
Through his binoculars
Toktokho
saw
the
Russian officers halt
their vehicle in a slight depression in the
ground about two
miles away. They
then climbed
on top of it
and, like him continued to survey the site through their field glasses.
A few minutes later a
contingent
of
soldiers in uniforms
of the
army
of the Mongolian
People’s Republic arrived and
took up guard
positions
around the
perimeter
of the
cordoned-off area and
the larger
sections
of the
remaining wreckage A special concentration
of troops was stationed
shoulder to shoulder in a square around
the spot where the
row
of
corpses was laid
out.
They
stood to
attention, their weapons
held clenched
across their chests.
For an hour nothing happened. Then
a convoy of black cars
arrived,
driving slowly
across
the
grassland
in a
cl
oud of
dust
from the
direction
of Ulan Bator. The men who alighted were obviously, Toktokho said, from my
own country,
the People’s
Republic
of
China.
They wore the f
orm
al
tunic suits
of official cadres, buttoned high at the
neck
Toktokho
reported that they behaved
very nervously.
For a
long
time
they stood
rooted to
the
spot, staring
apprehensively
about them
at the
blackened wreckage
of
the Trident
and at the soldiers. Then
they began walking hesitantly
among the debris. They often
gazed
distractedly at the
sky and
barely
looked
at the
ground,
he said, as though they
were anxious
to be
done with their
observations as
quickly and with
as little trouble as
possible.