The Chinese Assassin (36 page)

Razduhev climbed angrily
back
into the car which immediately shot
away out of the
picture, leaving
the
intersection quiet
and
still once
more. A
minute later the
black guard re-appeared on
the fire-escape outside
the
window and
dropped into a
squatting position, surveying
the gardens below, as before.
Almost
at the
same
moment
Harvey Ketter
m
an re-entered
the
room.
He went
directly
to the
chiffonier and switched off
the
dosed-circuit picture
of the
street outside.
He put
the Handel cassette
back into
its slot in
the tape deck
and immediately
the
soothing strains
of
the sixth Concerto Grosso swelled gently
from the
concealed speakers.
The same
switch activated another concealed
tape
machine
hidden
behind a panel beneath
the headboard of the
bed and Ketterman picked
up
the chair again, swung
it
round and sat down resting his chin and
elbows
along its
back, smiling
genially
at
Yang.

‘Okay Comrade, so
much for
the
lies—now let’s hear what
really
happened on the Trident. And perhaps as a bonus you’d
like
to tell me the
truth
about this new “plot” to kill
Chairman
Mao. If it’s
really
good we’ll
see what
we
can
do
about finding
you a new
identity and a
new
life in
the
land
of the free.’

18

When he pulled the woven red curtain aside Richard
Scholefield
could see through the plastic foliage of a vase of everlasting carnations, the steps leading up from the canopied D Street entrance to the State Department. As he shifted the vase along the window-sill to give himself a less restricted view, a female voice behind him asked, with an irritable note of reproof, if she could help him. He turned to find an unsmiling middle-aged waitress in beige slacks and a loose gaudy blouse of synthetic material holding her order book pointedly in front of her with a pencil poised over
it.

He glanced at the slip of card tucked into the handle of a wire basket of pink sugar-substitute sachets on the table. It announced that for the pleasure of his dining the Governor Shepherd Restaurant invited him to try a carafe of Californian wine— Hearty Burgundy, Chablis or Sauterne, all at a dollar fifty. He chose the Hearty Burgundy. But when the waitress brought
it
he wished he hadn’t—it tasted like raspberryade spiked with warm water. He left the rest of the carafe untouched and gazed out of the window again.

The communications mast and radio antennae on the State Department roof stood out in silhouette against the fading silver light of the southern sky. Among them a large yellow-painted funnel structure shaped like an old-fashioned ear-trumpet suggested that headquarters was adapting some of the early pri
nci
ples of the phonograph era to pick up signals from its far-flung space-age embassies. Behind him. little groups of State staffers who had been working late were snatching belated, inexpensive dinners and muted desk officer gossip about incoming telegrams and policy points drifte
d
to his ears in fragments. At the next table
an
efficient-looking harridan with greying hair scraped back tight
above her ears
was moaning to a female companion about her husband. ‘Then I asked him
how many
crepes
he thought
200
people would eat,
and
he
said
about three or four each, so I
spend
hours
snaking them—and everybody ate just one. I was furious!’

Scholefield stared out of the window, watching without seeing
as
the
Virginia Avenue traffic
signals.
chopped and
packaged the mid-evening
traffic
flow with steady precision, halting, accumulating,
then
releasing the cars to run on down towards the West Potomac Park in well-spaced,
neatly
tied
bundles.
Prom time to
time
he
rubbed
his
hand
over his face or massaged his left
wrist
lightly’
through its
bandage. But always his eyes
returned
to the
entrance
under the canopy
which
he knew
the Research Bureau staff
used.

He turned in his chair whe
n
the door
ope
n
ed
to admit a man
in
a blue suit with his
left arm in
a sling.
One
of a group of four men seated by a
bank
of
plastic ferns greeted him with
a loud remark which set
the table laughing
uproariously.
The
woman
with
the
scraped-back
hair made a disapproving
sound with
her tongue,
and
her haughty expression
didn’t change
even when
the
man came over
and pecked
her
sheepishly
on the cheek, before
lowering himself gingerly into an adjoining chair.

At that moment Schole
fi
eld
saw
her coming up
the steps.
He
recognised her
at once, even though the light
was beginning
to fade. She
was dressed
in a flame-coloured corduroy
trouser suit tailored
tightly round the hips that on anybody less start
l
ingly attractive would have looked vulgar The tall heels
she
wore
accentuated
her height
and
she
moved
with the easy, stalking
grace
of
her
race. He
watched
her
swinging
across the grass in front of the mounted
statue
of
Bernardo
Da
Galvez,
her face set
in an unconscious half smile as if
the
very
sensation of movement pleased her. She ignored the pedestrian
crossings
and
slipped across the two lanes
of
Virginia Avenue, between the halted cars. Several drivers turned to watch her progress and missed the change to green which set horns blaring loudly in the ranks further back. Conversation stopped and heads turned as she paused inside the door looking round the tables. Even the woman who had baked too many crepes turned to stare. Some of the male diners greeted her politely, as though pleased to be favoured, as she made her way across the restaurant.

At Scholefield’s table she stopped and stood looking down at him with
a
sad, rueful smile on her face, saying nothing. When he stood up, she
put
an arm on his shoulder
and leaned her cheek against his
in greeting.
‘Dick, I’m terribly sorry, you know
that’
She
sat
down
and
placed her handbag
on the
window-sill beside the plastic flowers. She
peered into
his face with concern, then leaned
across the
table
and put
a
hand
on his arm. ‘You were very
l
u
cky
to get off so lightly, weren’t you?
Harvey’s still
got a black
eye
down to
his goddam
navel.’

‘Where
is
he, Katrina?’

‘He’s very tied up right now.
Where,
I don’t know. He was amazed when I
told
him you’d rung from the
airport and
were coming
to Governor
Shepherd’s
to wait for him. He thought you were still in
hospital.’

‘Thanks to him, I might have been.’
He sucked breath in angrily
between his teeth.

The
pale
gold
smoothness
of her brow crinkled into a
worried frown. ‘I
don’t get you. But
if
you’re
having
a
“hate
Harvey Ketterman”
week,
welcome to
the
dub. That makes
two
of us.’ She
took
a
packet of
cigarettes
from her
handbag
and
lit one. ‘By the way,
the bastard said
I was to
take
great care
of
you till he
can
get
here. See
you have
anything
you want.’ She
raised
an eyebrow archly
and
squeezed his arm. ‘And that really
means “anything”
Dick. I’ve always liked your
English
cool, you know
that.’

Scholefield
turned away to look out into
the
gathering
dusk. The
cars were
turning
on
their headlights and
they reflected
on his
face
as he
gazed out
of the
window.

‘How long
had you known
Nina?’
She asked
the
question in a
quiet, compassionate voice.

‘About
six
months.’

‘Were
you in love
with
her?’

Scholefield
didn’t reply. He turned to look at her
carefully
for a long moment, made as if to say something, then
took
a deep
breath and
looked out onto Virginia Avenue again. During the silence that followed the conversation of
two
other coloured
girls with skins darker than
Katrina’s
drifted across
from the table behind them. ‘I saw
Frank
Sinatra on television last night— be
just can’t sing any
more. My mother was really
cut
up. It’s
like
for us I guess when we turn on TV one
day and see the
Beatles in wheelchairs. Then we’ll really know it’s all over.’

Katrina
was staring at
Scholefield
with a strange expression in her eyes. ‘
I
wish
Harvey-.the-bastard-Kette
rm
an
would
say
something even half as eloquent about
me.’
Her voice
had a
catch in
it.

‘Comparing you to a
Beatle in a
wheelchair, you
mean?’
asked Scholef
i
eld
frowning.

Katrina didn’t smile. ‘
I
’m
talking
about that expression on your f
a
ce when I
asked
you if you were in love with Nina.
El
oquence doesn’t
always
require words.’

Now it was her turn to look away
and
stare out of
the
window.
Scholefield
studied her profile. The tight
curls
of her
short-
cropped
hair
and
the
proud way
she held
her head gave her a
self-contained look.
‘He’s
still giving
you a tough
time
then?’

She let ou
t
a long
slow
breath. ‘He
still
runs home every goddamned weekend to the wif
e
and kids in Greenwich.
Sailing
and
tennis at
the
club in summer, skiing and paddle tennis in the
winter.
“Just till the kids get into school
then
it’s all up”, he
used
to say. Now it’s “When the kids are through school”.’ Her voice
suddenly
became
bitter. ‘Next
it
will be “When
they’re
through
college”—Harvey Ketterman betrays people
like
other guys drink bourbon—as a
matter
of course.’

‘Why don’t you
ditch him?’

She shrugged
and
continued
staring
out of the window. ‘I guess I’ve got something of the baby goose in me. A gosling thinks
the first thing
it
sees
when it comes out of
its
shell is
its
mother, right? Maybe the first
male thing
an oriental studies major
sees when
she emerges from the
shell
of the Asian Department has to be her
man
for life, whether
she likes
it or not.’