The Chinese Assassin (35 page)

‘If the interception of the
radio
signal by
your sate
ll
ite
is genuine, why is there no response from Irkutsk control?’

‘Peking’s a
difficult bull’s-eye
to hit, Comrade, with those spy-birds.
For a start
if we get the angle of
launch
wrong from Vandenburg Air Force
base
in California, the
satellite just burns
up. We’ve lost a lot
trying
to
throw
them up onto the precise “hook” in the
sky
so that they orbit
constantly
right over your Chung
Nan Hai.’

A movement outside the
window
caught his eye
and Ketterman
acknowledged a hand signal from the black
man
with a
faint
nod of his
head. ‘Even
when we get
it
right
the
slant range gives us a fairly good pick-up over a
radius
of only about, a hundred miles around Peking—that’s why the
first signal
was clear. But out at
150
or 16
0
miles from the centre, the pick-up is down to thirty-five percent. That’s the reason we never registered anything at all from the Irkutsk end. Okay?’

Yang looked away. He winced and
shifted
his position
painfully
in the bed again.

‘So the boys in the Kremlin def
in
itely knew you were coming
-
they were in on the plot. We’ve
known
that all along, Comrade Yang.’ Ketterman grinned. ‘So
the
crap about dodging in under their radar
screen
without
their
knowledge we read straight away as a pure
Kremlin
snow-job to clear them of
any
complicity in
Lin
Piao’s
activities.
We know too you
didn’t
come out of China. We know the KGB put you and
Stillman
ashore in an inflatable
raft
on the North Norfolk coast
two weeks
ago because the
Isra
el
is
in Moscow tipped us off—just
like
they tipped us about the Lin plot in Seventy-one.’

Yang lay silent staring at the ceiling.
Ketterman
walked over to the bedside and stood
looking
down at him, holding the large
square
of folded pink paper
in his hand.

‘We’re pretty sure, too,’ said Ketter
m
a
n
quietly, ‘that Marshall
L
in Piao was still alive and living in Peking in January 1972—four months after he’s supposed to have died in that Trident’

Yang’s head turned slowly on the pillow until he was looking up into Ketterman’s face.

‘We picked up radio messages by satellite that Li
n
’s supporters were sending
to you out
in Mongolia. I can play
them
to
you
if
you’d
like.’
He
delved into
the
document case,
drew out a sheaf of
papers and
dropped them on the bed. ‘Here arc
the transcripts
of the Trident
signals and
the
messages
to you on the
steppes.
We knew somebody
survived
that
crash—and
with a back-pack radio
transmitter and receiver
intact We believe he
was
meant
to survive it.’
Ketterman pulled
up the chair, sat down
and
waved the
pink paper in
front of Yang’s face.
‘Your options have
run out,
Comrade.
Officially
you’re dead.
We know
Yang Tsai-chien died
in that crash, his body
was fingerprinted.
The Russians who’ve
sprung
you to here
obviously
want you
dead
now—whoever you are, if
that
bomb
in
London
is anything to go by. To stay alive, you have to
remain
here.’

Yang’s head
jerked
towards
the win
do
w
in alarm as
the
silhouette of the black
man suddenly
reappeared on the
f
i
re
escape
outside and
tapped
urgently
on the
glass.
K
etterman waved him away
with an impatient gesture.

‘If you want to stay, we want
two
things from
you—first,
some more lies.’ He
opened the sheet of pink paper out so
that
Yang could see the Chinese handwriting.

‘What is that?’

‘The
Ninth
Folio.’

Yang gazed at it
blankly.

‘It begins,’
said Ketter
m
an,
reading from the opening paragraph, “Now
that
I am free
after
fou
r
years’
imprisonment in the Soviet
Union and
about to
start a
new
life
at a secret address in the
West,
I wish to
state that
I ‘was forced to
invent
a
terrible
tissue of
lies that
have been presented as
the truth
in Folios
One to
Eight
written
by me.”
The American
paused
and smiled.
‘There’s a lot of detail telling how
the Russians
encouraged
Li
n
Piao in
a plot
to murder
Mao, how they
offered him
a
safe sanctuary—and
how they
sent up MIGs to shoot his Trident down over Mongolia to cover up their treachery when he failed.’

‘But that isn’t true!’ Yang’s voice was barely a whisper.

‘Sure it
isn’t
true,’ Ketterman
agreed blithely. ‘We know they scrambled
no
MIGs.
Our satellites
would have picked them up if they had. This faked
Ninth
Folio is an
antidote
to
the
other
eight. If the
Soviets try to get their bum information broadcast around the world, we produce this one in your calligraphy
signed
by you
and with
your
thumbprint
on the
bottom
right hand corner,
right, just exactly like
the others.’
Ketter
m
an
was
grinning
affably at Yang again. ‘The other
thing
we want is the
truth
about
the Trident.
We believe maybe even the
Russians themselves
don’t
fully
know what happened. We think even now they
believe
a lot of that bullshit you’ve written in the Folios—that you’ve held out on them right under their noses in Moscow for four years. But most
important
of all, we
want
to know why they’ve
mounted
this elaborate operation.’

Yang swallowed
hard.
His skin
had taken on a grey pallor, but his eyes
still
gleamed’ bright
with
defiance. ‘I won’t cooperate!’

Ketterman
stood up suddenly, his smile gone.

‘Even though you torture me!’

‘You’re in the wrong
country
if you
’
re looking for something as unsub
tl
e as torture.’
Ketterman
rubbed the side of
his
nose with his forefinger, gazing down coldly at the Chinese. Then he turned on his heel, walked briskly to the
fake chiffonier again and
opened the
doors.
He looked at the closed-circuit picture for a moment, standing deliberately in front of the
screen.
‘I think an old fri
en
d of yours is arriving to
see you,
Comrade Yang.’ He stepped aside so that the
Chinese
could
see
the picture of the
intersection from his bed.

Yang raised
his
head to look. On
the screen a car had halted at the kerb on the far side of the street and a man had
climbed out. He stood
uncertainly
on the pavement looking about him,
taking care
to hold
the
passenger door of the car open. Elsewhere in the house an unseen
hand
operated a control switch
that
set the telephoto
lens
of
the concealed camera revolving in a
steady
zoom
to
close-up
on the
man beside
the car.
Within a
few
seconds Razduhev’s chalk-white face filled the screen.

‘He seems to have forgotten your
flo
wers and grapes,’ said Ketterma
n
.

Razduhev was squinting through his wire-rimmed sp
e
ctacles in the late evening sunlight as he peered about him in all four directions in turn. Once his eyes seemed to look directly into
the
room as the lens caught him scanning the windows of the house. Ketterman folded his arms, settled himself comfortably with his back against the wall beside the cabinet, and waited. Yang stared at the scree
n
transf
ix
ed.

‘Sign and thumbprint the
Ninth
Folio, Comrade,
and
I’ll run down straight away and show it to your
fraternal
Marxist ally.’ Ketterman smiled jocularly again. ‘It’s a life-saver, don’t you see? Once the
Ninth
Folio is authenticated by you,
the
other eight are
invalidated—even if
they kill you!
Think
of it as your
life
warrant
. You can
copy it out
in your own
handwriting later to do the job properly—after that
socialist imperialist
jackal down there
has
been sent away with his tail between his legs.’

‘These pictures
are a trick! I
still refuse.’

Ketterman shrugged.
‘Okay. You have a free right to choose
in a democratic country, Comrade—and you’ve chosen wisely. You’re free
to go right away.’ He
eased himself
away from the
wall and strode
across to the window. He opened it and spoke loudly to the black guard. ‘Okay fellah,
stand
down now—and
tell all the
other security guards to disperse
immediately.
Only the
medical staff
need stay on.
And
go tell Razduhev I’ll be right down to talk to him about Comrade Yang.’

He
closed
the window and stood gazing out abstractedly
across
the sunlit lawns for a moment. ‘This is a private clinic,
and
of
course visitors are allowed any time day
or night—no embargoes.’ He
was speaking
out towards
the
gardens,
his
back to Yang. ‘Really concerned
friends can use
the fire
escape as a direct means
of
entry,
even after dark.’ He
turned
and pointed to the screen on which
the
black guard could now be seen crossing the Street to talk to Razduhev. A group of
half
a dozen broad-shouldered young men followed him out from the house and sauntered away along 34th Street. Ketterman watched the screen intently as Razduhev and the black
man
exchanged a few wary words. ‘You
see,
Comrade, it’s no trick.’ He gathered up
the document case and walked over
to
the
bed. Slowly he took out a pen
and
inserted it in Yang’s right hand. After a final
glance
round at
the screen
he
smoothed the pink
folio out on
the face
of the document
case and
held
it
at
a convenient height in front of
Yang’s chest.

The
Chinese hesitated
for a whole
minute.
Then he
signed both
copies,
without looking
up.
Ketterman
removed
the pen
smoothly from Yang’s hand,
then
dipped into the document
case
again
and
drew out an ink pad. He opened
its
lid
and
pressed
it
against
the
unprotesting
thumb
of
the Chinese.
Then he held the
case
under the folios once more while Yang impressed
his print
on the
bottom right hand corner
of each copy of the
Ninth
folio.
Ketterman inspected both documents minutely in turn
then replaced them in the case
and hurried
out. A
minute later
he
appeared
on the grey
screen walking towards Razduhev.
The
camera
moved
into
another telephoto
cl
ose—up
and Yang saw
what appeared to be anger contorting
Razduhev’s features
as he
scanned the paper Ketterman had thrust into his hand.
He
saw
the
American laugh and
punch the
R
ussian lightly
on the
arm.
Then be
walked
back towards the house,
looking
up
into
the
camera and grinning hugely.