The Chinese Assassin (34 page)

The
left ear-drum’s definitely perforated—but he’s hearing
okay
with
the
other
one. Other lacerations
stitched
in
London are heal
in
g okay.

They stopped outside the
door and
Ketterman motioned the doctor to wait. Then he
knocked quietly, and went in. Yang
was
lying stiffly
in a hospital bed, his
head and shoulders raised
on a bank of pillows. The
high-ceilinged
room
was
furnished
over-elaborately
with gilded red-velvet French
antiques. A
pale Indian carpet covered
the centre
of
the
polished wood floor and
vases
of summer flowers and bowls
of fruit
had been carefully arranged
on side tables. A Handel concerto
was playing softly
from concealed speakers.

Yang’s
round,
moon-like f
a
ce was
drawn and
p
a
le
and
he watched
Ketterman
approaching ‘with a suspicious stare. The
American pulled
a straight-backed
chair
to the bedside
and sat
down. He
smiled and
waved a
hand vaguely
round
the room.
‘I hope you feel we are
looking
after you
well
here, Comrade Yang.’ He paused, ‘In Washington.’
Ketter
m
an had
spoken
Mandarin and
he watched Yang’s eyes widen in
surprise.

‘How
did
I get to
Washington?’

‘Let’s just say
I had it
arranged.’

Yang
was
silent for a moment, his
narrow,
lashless eyes
studying
Ketter
m
an’s face. ‘You wer
e
at the Institute,’ he
said
slowly, ‘the
American
who
came
late.’

‘Right!
Harvey
Ketterman, US State Department’ He held out his
hand towards Yang. When the Chinese
ignored the
gesture
he dropped it
and, still grinning,
gripped
his right
forearm
through
the sheet instead.

Yang turned
his
head
angrily in the direction
of
the
black guard pacing
ostentatiously
back
and
forth outside the window on
the fire-escape.
‘So
after
four
years
as a prisoner of the
socialist imperialists
in Moscow, I am to be held captive now by the
American imperialists.’

‘Wrong, Comrade Yang. That guy out there is
one
of
several
affording you protection fro
m
your “friends” from Moscow. They tried to blow your
brains
to
pieces in London.
They very nearly succeeded—and they
did kill
Dr.
Sti
ll
m
a
n
and Dick
Scholefield’s friend,
Nina
Murphy.’

Yang’s angry glare
filtered
for only an instant. ‘It
was not the Russians.
The
culprits
were the radical
faction
in Peking whom I have exposed!’

‘You’re
still
trying to
sell
your
bum
folios,
hub,
Comrade.’
Ketterman
stood up
and
walked slowly to a fake antique chiffonier
standing
against the
wall
at an angle to the bed. He removed the
vase
of flowers, lifted the
false
top
and
turned down
the
volume of the
Handel
concerto in the control panel of
the
concealed tape deck inside.

‘Your
fraternity
brothers Razdu
h
ev
and
Bogdarin took the bomb in the
brief
c
ase
to the World
Affairs Institute.
Dressed up a minor diplomat from the Mongolian
embassy
in a Peking-style cadre’s
uniform
to deliver it, of course, to
make
it look
like a
Mao-job.’
Ketterman
opened the doors of the chiffonier to reveal a built-in
29-inch television screen.
He
switched
it on and stepped back to study the picture that immediately appeared of the
intersection
outside the house. A car drove slowly across, followed by
two girls
on bicycles.
After that
the
screen remained
devoid of activity.

Ketterman turned back to
find Yang
looking at
the screen
with a baffled expression. ‘Sorry
the
programme isn’t more
fun,
Comrade. It’s
just
so we
can see which
people try to pay a call on you. You’re a popular guy right now. You could have a whole
stream
of
visitors
coming up here all
day
long if we’d let ‘em.’ He closed the doors of the chiffonier,
leaving
the
set
switched on,
and
turned round grinning.

‘Why was I brought here from London?’
Yang
winced as he shifted his position
slightly in the bed.

‘There
are an awful
lot of shepherds
running
ar
o
und the field looking for one lost sheep right now, Comrade. Three-quarters of
the
intelligence
services
of all
Russia and
China, I’d guess, are working 24 hours a
day to locate
you.’

A faint
tap
on the door
interrupted him and Ketterman
opened it. The fair-haired
man
who had driven for him in London
handed
him a slim leather
document case and quickly
closed the
door
again. Ketterman
unzipped
it
and
took out a
large
folded
sheet
of
pink
paper. He opened it
and
held it out in front of
him
at arm’s length,
running
his eye rapidly over the handwritten
Chinese script.

Yang’s features
twisted into a sneer. ‘And why should you care whether I am safe
or not?
Have
the rabid
capitalists
of
America
suddenly
become concerned with the
sanctity of li
fe
of every single communist, worldwide?’

‘Fair question,’
said Ketterman
calmly, ‘to
which the answer’s
“No”. We
just
want to
keep
you in one piece long
enough to
counteract the
lies
your
buddies
from the
Kremlin
have cooked up with you in those folios of
yours.’

‘They are not lies.!’ Yang raised his
head
from the pillow, his eyes
blazing.
‘They
tell
the truth.’

‘The whole truth
and
nothing but
the
truth, Comrade?’
Ketterman raised
an eyebrow
and walked
back to the chiffonier again. He
took an unmarked
tape
cassette
from the
document
case lying on the chair beside it, stopped the
Handel and removed
it. He slotted the new cassette into the deck
and
turned up the volume.
Yang
sank back on the pillow
listening
as a crackle of
static came
from the
concealed speakers.

Above the
interference
a
Chinese
voice shouted a
call sign first
in
Mandarin,
then in
English. ‘Trident
25
6 to
Irkutsk
control.

Trident
25
6 to
Irkutsk control...’
Yang’s face
cl
enched tight suddenly as he listened. ‘Cleared take-off
Peitaiho,
heading Irkutsk.
. .
Marshall
Lin safely
on board.
.
Repeat
Marshall Li
n
safely on board...
Anticipate
no interception at
border with
People’s Republic of Mongolia...’

The
static and
background roar took over again
and
Ketter
m
an
softened
the volume. He turned
and
looked questioningly at Yang.

‘It’s a fabrication!’ The
Chinese glared
at
Ketterman
from the pillows.

The
American smiled
patiently. ‘Comrade Yang,
our
satellites don’t lie. We know every
time Chairman
Mao
leaves his zip-fly
undone—and how
many
workers you’ve got on the
nuclear night
shift at
Lop
Nor.’ He spread his hands wide
and hunched his shoulders.
‘The National
Reconnaissance
Office has
four
or five hundred pieces of
junk
bumping
around
up there in
the sky
over
the
Soviet-Chinese
land mass—and
we’ve got B29’s
flying around with basketball
nets on their
noses
catching the tape
decks
jettisoned from
those birds—that’s
how we get such clear reception on your signals. The National Security
Administration employs eighty
thousand
guys around
the
world
intercepting
radio signals
and
playing them through the largest computer complex in existence anywhere in
the
world.
Its
budget is twice the CIA’s. With
outfits
like that we don’t even have the
time
to
fake
up
signals.’
He
walked
over to
the bed and
dropped his
arms
to his sides,
grinning
hugely again. ‘Besides—your Szechuanese accent is a dead give-away—you’re
mixing
up your
third and
fourth tones, as usual.’