The Chinese Assassin (33 page)

Tan Sui-
l
ing saw
him stiffen
and
lean
closer
to
inspect the
vertical column of
script.
After several seconds he turned to face her,
still
holding the lamp above his
head.

‘Your “Comrade Yang”
also had
more than a trace of bourgeois
sensibility
in his love of
traditional Chinese art, didn’t he?’
Scholefield
nodded towards
the painting
behind him. ‘He admired this
Ming painting as well as the
jade-and to my considerable disappointment informed me it
was
a
nineteenth century
Chi’ng
dynasty
“reproduction” in the
Ming
style. I bought it in Peking
thinking
it was genuine Ming.’ He watched her
begin
frowning in
irritation.
‘But one of the
last
things he
said
to me at
the
Soho
cinema was
a reference to this painting.’

Suddenly she was listening intently, her head cocked
slightly
to one side in concentration.

‘He
said
the
artists
signature gave it away.’ He paused, watching her
reaction
carefully. ‘Now a second signature has been added with a felt tipped pen since I last looked at
it.’

She made as if to go to
inspect the painting herself
but Scholefield lowered the
lamp quickly and walked
back to replace it on his desk,
leaving
the
wall in
deep shadow once more. ‘It
was
your picking up the jade figure
that
made me remember. Does the
name Li Tai-chu mean anything to you?’

The only sign of
reaction to his question
was a
slight
tightening of her knuckles on the bamboo handle of her bag. Before she
spoke he noticed she
exhaled slowly as though she had previously been holding her breath. ‘The name means absolutely nothing to me. Nothing at al
l
’

She took a sudden quick
step towards him. ‘Mr. Scholefield, I have yet
to
reveal
the main purpose
of
my visit.’
She hesitated for a moment, then
hurried
on speaking
with
a new
intensity. ‘Chairman
Mao
Tse-tung is
an old man. His
health
is
ailing
now, but he is
still
in touch
with day to day
events.
He
has
been
told
of the
Russian
plot to
plant
false
evide
n
ce
about
China
in the
m
inds of the world outside. He knows even
that
you
were
chosen tube
the
focus
of this plot by the Kremlin.’

Scholefield
sat straighter suddenly on the desk. She had opened the
bamboo-handled bag and was fumbling
inside
it.
When she withdrew her
hand
it held a long white envelope sealed
in
several places
with
red
sealing
wax. ‘For several days he has been asking for all
intelligence
reports to be
submitted
to him. He has taken a
detailed interest.
Now,
in
view of
the vicious
nature of the Soviet plot, he has decided to
intervene
personally.’ She held the sealed envelope
towards Scholefield.
He looked at it
with suspicion
for a moment
then smiled sarcastically. ‘A personally written
folio by Chairman Mao himself;
is
it? Giving his version. of events?’

Her watchful, cat-like
eyes gazed back
at
him unblinking. ‘
I
t
is not a joke,
Mr.
Scholefield.
And
it is more
than an
explanation.’

There
was
a long
silence in the
room broken only by
the sound
of the
fly buzzing
drowsily on the
windowpane
in
its final death throes.

‘Open
the letter. You will see then it is genuine.’ Again she held it towards him.

He took it but had
difficulty breaking
the
seals.
In the end he had to
slit two
sides of the envelope to extract the single
sheet
of thick cartridge paper inside. He held it under the desk lamp to study the scrawl of
Chinese
calligraphy
that
spread erratically across the page. His
name
and ‘24
July
1976’ were typed in
English in the
top
right-hand
corner. At the foot of the page a large red circular seal embracing
China’s national
symbol of five
stars
above the Gate of Heavenly
Peace was impressed in the
paper,
surmounted
by a
ring
of
characters
that spelled out Office of
the Chairman
of the Communist
Party
of the
Chinese
People’s Republic’.

He leaned close over
the
paper, his body suddenly
alert, his
eyes intent on the inscription. Eight vertical lines of
four
characters
had
been
scribbled
seemingly in haste beside the almost illegible
three-character
signature. With
difficulty Scholefield
traced each scrawled ideogram with his finger, his lips moving as he went. Then he took a pencil from a jar on the desk top
and began jotting down
a translation of
the
inscription on the blotter. When he’d
finished,
he
sat
back
and
re-read what he’d
written.
It
said:

Amid the frowning
shades of
dusk

Riotous clouds are racing,
swift and
terrible

The hostile
northern
bear clambers foolishly upward to his doom.

Let us now
ensure his fall
f
r
om perilous peaks!

He picked up
the
blotter
and
stared at the words in
silence.

‘Does
the
distinctive
hand
and
style convince you now of
the
authenticity of
this personal message?’

At the sound of her voice he looked round sharply, almost as if he’d forgotten she
was
there.

‘If this is another
hoax
it’s commendably elaborate.’ He
shrugged
wearily
and
dropped the blotter back on the
desk.
‘Those few lines have all the right ingredients: Mao’s poetic hatred of the Russian “bear”, his reputation for eccentric
calli
graphy—it even looks
like
the writing of a tired old man.’

She gesticulated impatiently towards the note once more. ‘Read the back.’

He
picked
it up
and turned
it over. On the reverse side the
same almost
illegible
signature and
the
imposing red s
e
al had again been appended under
a block of characters
imprinted
by a
Chinese typewriter. They said:
‘Give
assistance and safe
passage. The bearer,
Richard Scholefield, is invited to
Chung
Nan Hai to talk with Chairman Mao Tse-tung.’

He
was still
staring at the message,
reading and re-reading
it, when he heard the click of the
outside door.
He
looked
up then
and
found the room
empty.

17

Harvey Ketter
m
an swung the
long
nose
of his
red
Chevrolet
Malibu
sharply to
the north at the junction
of M
Street and
Wisconsin Avenue
and, because tension
was
beginning
to tighten his reflexes, accelerated
too
fiercely up the bill towards the heart of
Georgetown. A sharp
summer shower
was giving
way to bright evening sunshine again
and the
tyres of the
car
skittered dangerously across
the
impractical cobblestones
that
Washington’s
history-hungry
citizens had never been able to
bring
themselves to tear up from between the iron
streetcar
tracks.

The tourists thronging the
old tobacco port’s boutiques
and
bistro
restaurants,
under
heavy
garlands of red,
white
and blue bicentennial bunting, glanced
indifferently
at
the
skidding
car
for a moment, then
resumed their
cow-like window
gazing.
Other
sober-suited escapees
from the vast administrative bunkers along the capital’s
main
avenues mouthed silent
obscenities
at
him
from behind
their
tightly closed windows
and
pressed on
their
accelerators
with
almost as much impatience as they neared the end of
the
long north-west haul up Pennsylvania to
their
bijou hilltop dormitory. Ketterman ignored them
and eased
across to the inside lane as the bow-fronted
windows
of
the
Georgetown Inn came in sight.

The moment he swung
the
Malibu in
under the
arch, a doorman,
top-batted and
livened in deference to bygone days of
carriages and horse-drawn streetcars, hurried over to park
it
for him. Ketterman passed him a dollar bill and strode quickly through the tiny lobby into the hotel’s dimly-lit modem American drinking lounge. He made straight for the grand piano which doubled as a coy little leather-rimmed musical bar in the centre of the room. Razdu
h
ev was sitting on one of the swivel stools placed round
it,
his -elbows on the piano, apparently lost in the rapture of the syncopated selections from ‘The Sound of Music.’ He opened his eyes as Ketterman approached and lifted a small glass of clear liquid slowly to his lips. He offered no greeting as the American eased into the swivel seat beside him.

For a moment the two men looked, at each other without speaking. Then Ketterman suddenly grinned broadly and gripped .Razduhev’s forearm in a genial gesture. ‘You know Yuri, if I ever have the offer of reincarnation in the after-lif
e
I’m going to grab
it
and come back as a KGB “overseas”.’ He glanced over his shoulder into the gloom. The faint glow from the pink candles in the over-large crystal chandelier above the piano-gave insufficient light to identify anybody but an
imm
ediate neighbour. But he had chosen the bar because he knew the pianist’s roundly struck chords would preclude them from being overheard at least, and he turned back to the Russian, still grinning. ‘You wouldn’t change places with a
m
ember of the Kremlin politburo would you? Chief of Mission in London, all your kids’ schooling paid for at home, a dacha at the beach outside Moscow, expensive Persian rugs on the floor of your apartment overlooking Hyde Park, all expenses paid to the best hotels of your choice in the Western world.’ He punched the Russian lightly on the arm. Then turned to signal to a passing waiter who came immediately. ‘Two vodkas. Polish, not Russian. Large ones please.’ He turned back again to Razduhev, still grinning. ‘Never touch Russian vodka, Yuri. You n-might poison a year’s supply just to get me, huh?’ He laughed uproariously at his own joke then leaned away to speak to the piano player.

As the drinks arrived the pianist wound up
The Sound of
Music
with a flourish and went straight into a lachrymose rendering of
Midnight
in
Mo
s
cow.
Ketterman smiled
B
roadly at Razduhev and lifted his glass.

Razduhev left the new drink untouched. ‘Washington is like
an elephant’s asshole,’ he said in wooden
English. ‘Very big and
very unattractive.’

Ketterman
nodded appreciatively. ‘Only in Washington
twenty-four
hours, Yuri,
and
already
making with the
wisecracks. That’s
good.
You’ll tell me next you’ve
proof that
Rock Creek Park
isn’t
a South
Korean
intelligence agent.’

‘I didn’t come here to swap wisecracks.’

‘I
know Yuri,
I know. You want Comrade Yang back—and you’re gonna have him,
yes
sir.’ He broke
off and
looked at
his
watch. ‘I can’t get him to you here
this minute,
you understand, Yuri, but if you’ll give me an hour I’ll try to have something for you.
. . .‘
He looked up with an eager,
boyish grin
on his
fa
ce.
‘Will
you do
that
for me, Yuri? Give me an hour?’ Ketterman smiled broadly again but
Razduhev
continued to stare at him stony-faced.

‘Could you be at
the intersection between 34th and
P
Street
in an hour, Yuri, do you think? It’s here in Georgetown, you
can
walk. It’s
just
a few blocks northwest of here. I’ll meet you on the corner
myself;
okay?’ He stood up, dropped
two bills
on
the
tray of the
waiter
as he
passed
and told him to give
the
piano player a drink. Then he turned back,
still
grinning, punched Razduhev on
the
upper arm again
and
hurried out.

At the hotel entrance Ketterman hung back until he was sure
the doorman
who had parked his
car wouldn’t
notice him leave, then hurried through the arch onto
Wisconsin
Avenue. He turned
north
and walked quickly towards
the
junction with P Street. As he turned west at
the intersection
he took a
guide
book from his pocket and, carryi
n
g it
ostentatiously in
his hand, began
sauntering
slowly along the narrow pavement under
the trees
looking about him as if
admiring
the elegant
frontages
of
the
town-houses decked
with their
clusters of bicentennial flags. The
unshuttered
windows revealed
glimpses
of brass-stemmed lamps, heavy colonial furnishings, potted rubber
plants, gilded
mirrors. Cocktail-hour drinks were being downed in some of the houses by little
knots
of neatly dressed men
and
women. From
time
to
time K
e
tterman
stopped and bent close to peer at
the
wrought-iron work on gates or railings,
turning
his head surreptitiously as he
did
so to look back
along the street.

As he approached the
junction
of P Street
and
34th, he stopped
and gazed up
at
a white colonial Georgian villa with black
shutters, standing back from the street on high, sloping lawns. Black metal fire-escapes
ran
down
the
side of
the building
from dormer windows in
the
curved mansard roof
and
ugly air- conditioning
b
ox
es
jutted from several of the finely—proportioned windows. On the front steps
under
a
white
portico an old
rusting
bicycle
was
chained
incongruously
to the hand railings.
Ketterman
put the guide book in his pocket
and began whistling
loudly, as he gazed up at the house, as though appraising
its architectural features. Then
he turned
and set off
westward again at a
brisk
pace.

A hundred yards further along the
street
he turned abruptly
and
walked back, stopping once snore opposite the
three
storeyed
villa. The rusty bicy
cl
e had now disappeared from the front porch
and
when he
saw
this, Ketterman
crossed
the street
and ran
lightly up the front steps. The door opened from
inside
as he reached the top
and the
black
man
who
h
ad drive
n
the taxi
in London closed it quietly
behind
him. He
was
no longer
wearing
the tartan
cap
or his dark glasses.

Together they went into a small
room
off the front lobby
and
peered at a
ba
n
k
of closed-circuit television
screens.
All of them from different
angles showed
the
junction
of the
tree-lined
streets outside.
Ketterman
bent over a console
and twiddled a
knob which
panned
the cameras
individually
inside the fake
air—conditioning boxes
on the outside of the
windows.
He
studied
all the
screens showing
the four approaches to
the
house in turn but,
with
the exception of an
occasional
car passing, the
crossing
remained empty. Ketterman nodded his approval to the black man
and
they walked
quickly
out into the vestibule and entered an elevator that had
been tastefully
concealed behind a broad, panelled door, opened by a porcelain door
handle decorated
with
roses. When he stepped out on the top floor, a white-coated doctor
was waiting
for him.

‘How is he,
Doc?’

The doctor fell into
step
beside
Ketter
m
an
as he
set off
along the broad corridor towards a
white door
at
the
end. ‘Surprisingly well for what he’s been
through.
He’s out of
shock
now—asks frequently where he
is—in English.
I haven’t told him, of course
-
but he should be told
something soon
to help
him re-orientate.