The Chinese Assassin (37 page)

‘Parrots do
the
same,’
said
Scholefield
absently.

If she heard
him she
ignored him. ‘Especially when it’s a
man like Harvey-the-bastard.
‘:Not everybody you meet was a junior OSS
military
attaché
with enough
of a
brass neck
to get to talk
to
Mao, Chou
En-lai
and
Chiang .Kai-shek in Chungking during
the war. Not
many “suspect” China
scholars survived
the
McCarthy
purges
to come back and head up
the
State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. Not too many
men these
days are as together as he is, know where they’ve been
and
where they’re going.’ She drew so
hard
on her
cigarette
that the
end
glowed a fierce red, burning down fast
into a sharp
spearhead. ‘I’m
just
a whole damned
bunch
hung up on him, it’s as simple as that. Dick. But I’d
sure
as hell like to hurt
the bastard
right now. So if you’d
like
to come up to my apartment
upstairs and
let him come
back
to
find us rolling
around in
bed
together
with
our
legs wrapped
round each other,
that’s fine
by me. I’d only be following his
instructions.’

‘Where is he now?’
asked
Scholefiel
d
gently.

‘I don’t know, Dick, honestly, I don’t. He
treats
me
and
the rest of his
staff like mushrooms—you
know, keeps us in the dark all the
time
and opens the
door just
occasionally to throw a bucket of slat over us. I think. he went up to Georgetown earlier this evening. He drove off
that
way at least. He
asked
me specially to
stay
on in the
office.
When he rang in I told him you’d called and he told sue to come
and
meet you because he had to go urgently to the White
House,
would you believe?’

‘Shouldn’t you perhaps believe
him, this
once?’

‘He’s addicted to complex cover stories, Dick. It’s a compulsion with him. All those
goddamn lies
mean is’ that he’s got not
just
one fancy whore but
two—one
at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue,
and
his pride in his machismo compels
him
to
service
them both on the same evening.’

‘Why not get away somewhere for a bit, if it’s eating you up
that
much?’

She
turned and
looked at him levelly with wide dark eyes. ‘Where can I go to get away from
Katrina
Jackson? I
did
go away once, remember, for
two
years,
and
what happened? I got
myself married
to a rich, boring guy who
talks
people into lining their houses
with aluminium
sheeting for a living. So I came back. The world is
full
of
dummies,
Dick,
and
whatever else Harvey-the-bastard is, he isn’t
a
d
ummy.’

Scholefield poured some of the Hearty Burgundy for her. She tasted
it,
pulled a
fa
ce and pushed
it
away. Scholefield toyed uncomfortably with the stem of his glass for a moment. ‘Katrina, you don’t have to concoct an elaborate front for me. Although I’ve known you and Harvey for a while, I know that you must respect office confidences.’

‘Dick, I genuinely haven’t the faintest notion what’s going on. If his lies are true, then
it
is something big.’ She lifted her shoulders in a shrug and held them there looking at him, the pale palms of her long slender bands turned theatrically upwards.

Scholefield leaned his elbows on the table suddenly,
his chin
resting on the clasped knuckles of both hands, as if coming to a sudden decision. ‘Katrina, I want you to help me.’

‘Anything, Dick, like
I
said, is anything.’

‘I want to check a name—quick!’

‘Is that all?’

‘It’s an obscure name.’

‘Chinese?’

He nodded. ‘Is needs to be an exhaustive computer check— tonight.’

She lifted her wrist and looked at her watch. ‘The son of a mega-millionaire who owns every second barrel of oil in Texas is int
o
the China thing in a big way at Harvard right now and Daddy’s bought him the biggest and best computer there is outside of Langley. I could call one of the guys who operates
it
fo
r him, he’s an admirer of mine I guess you could say. He’d run the check for you. They’ve put everything into
it
that was ever known about anybody who’s ever been anybody in the People’s Republic—right down to the laundry marks on Chou En-lai’s underpants when he was a student in Paris.’

‘That sounds terrific,’ said Scholefield quickly.

‘We can go up to my apartment to make the call—it’s right here in the Governor Shepherd block overhead.’

Scholefield shot her a quick wary look. ‘Can we do
it
from the phone booth over there in the corner? If you get through I’ll take over and tell him what I want.’

She smiled slowly. ‘Don’t trust the bugging boys not to listen in on my line, huh Dick?’ She got up and made her way to the telephone in the corner of the
r
estaurant. He remained at the table and watched her dial. She spoke into the receiver
q
uietly for about a minute then waved
Scholefield
over, and handed him the receiver. ‘Go ahead. My friend’s name is Larry.’

Scholefield took the phone and introduced himself. ‘The name I’d like checked
out
is—’ he paused and glanced round the restaurant. ‘Li Tai-chu.’ He repeated the name twice, describing the characters visually to the man at the other end, so there would be no mistake, drawing them out unconsciously with his index finger on the wall above the telephone as he spoke. ‘No other clues. Just see if he exists—or if he is simply a figment of my imagination.’

‘Sure. I’ll call you right back.’

Scholefield hung\up and walked back to where Katrina was sitting. She had ordered a hamburger and he sat down and watched her lift its lid and decorate the interior of the bun liberally with tomato sauce from a plastic squeeze bottle. She wore a large pearl ring on her left hand, he noticed now, and a gold band around the base of her throat.

She picked up a crinkly chipped potato between her f
in
ger and thu
m
b, dipped
it
into the tomato ketchup inside the hamburger and slid
it
sideways into her mouth with a delicate movement of her wrist. All the time she smiled suggestively into his eyes. Somewhere not far away a pianist began belting out a jazz version of
How High the Moon.
He watched her eat the hamburger in silence. Once he picked up the glass of Hearty Burgundy, then remembered, and quickly put
it
down again. They both looked at each other and laughed suddenly. Gradually the restaurant emptied. The woman who’d baked too many crepes led her husband out. Then the girl haunted by the idea of Beatles in wheelchairs left with her friend.

When Katrina had finished eating the hamburger she stood up and picked up her bag from the windowsill. ‘When you’ve had your phone call, come on up,’ she said softly. ‘You can relax up there—whichever way you like.’ She leaned over him and smoothed her hand affectionately over his hair. Then she turned and walked to the door withou
t
looking round.

Ten minutes later the phone rang in its booth and
Scholefield
hurried across the restaurant
to
answer
it.
Larry’s voice came apologetically on the line.

‘Only the very slightest of references, Mr. Scholefield, I’m sorry to say. And a very old one at that.’

Scholefield held his breath. ‘Well what is it, for God’s sake?’

‘Way back in
1964,
I’m afraid. Not a report, just a picture caption on the back of a May Day edition of the
People’s Daily.
A back page photo montage. I’ve had to fish out the appropriate number of the paper to check, that’s why I’ve been so long. Li Ta
i
-chu is one of several minor functionaries listed—on a pre-May Day platform with Marshall Lin Piao.’

Scholefield tensed. ‘What’s Li Tai-chu look like?’

‘The picture is the usual blurred
People’s Daily
quality, you know.’

‘Can you describe Li to me, for Christ’s sake? This is important!’ Scholefield shouted in his impatience, and then apologised immediately.

‘He’s not much
of a looker,’ the v
oice at the other end said at last. ‘Short and dumpy, I’d say...’

‘Describe what you can see very carefully, please.’

There was a long silence. Then a sigh of professional frustration. ‘It really is hard to say from the quality of this shot. He’s got a roundish sort of face. I guess you’d say, kinda cherubic for a Chinese.’ There was another long pause. Then Larry’s voice came on again slightly more excited. ‘I’ve just taken a magnifying glass to the caption and picture and it looks as though his face does have one distinctive feature—
h
e’s got bad skin. Kinda pock-marked, I’d guess. So Li Tai-chu, I think you could surmise, is or was a round-faced heavy acne victim and a one-time supporter of the late
Li
n Piao.’

‘Thank you, Larry. Thanks, a million. I’ll tell Katrina you’ve been a great help.’ Scholefield hung up and stood looking indecisively at the door through which she had made her exit ten minutes earlier.

19

Harvey Ketter
m
an paid
off his taxi at the
corner
of
Pennsylvania and Western Executive Avenue and walked quic
kl
y
to
the security blockhouse inside
the north-west gate of the White House. The
guard behind
the
reinforce& glass
gave a nod of approval as
soon
as he
announced himself and pushed
a
numbered, plastic-covered
security pass through a flap at the
bottom of
the window, even before he went
through
the
formality
of ticking Ketter
m
an’s name on the
check-list
of
invited visitors.

Ketterman fixed die pass into his lapel and hurried along
the path that
curved
away
between
lawns and
shrubs
towards the
National Security Council offices in
the
western basement
Before he’d gone ten yards the guard
in the blockhouse bad telephoned the China
specialist on the National Security Council in
the Old Executive Office
Building
on the other side of Western Avenue. He
immediately
left his desk and
hurried through
the underground tunnel to the White House.

He arrived at the security guard’s desk inside the basement door at the same moment as
Ketterman
and he offered his hand gravely in
greeting.
Despite this show of
recognition,
the
guard with a gun
on his hip insisted on
inspecting
Ketter
m
an’s pass before
allowing
him inside They
walked
by a sign on the wall
announcing
‘Situations
Room’ with an arrow pointing in the opposite direction and
entered a lift. No conversation was exchanged
as the NSC man led him out of
the
lif
t
and along
a carpeted corridor on an upper floor
and opened
a door into an office
that faced South
over
open parkl
and
to the Potomac.

Through
the window
the floodlit
monuments of the
capital
were already glowing
brightly in
the
deepening darkness. Although
the three
men standing
by the window had
their
backs to the room
looking
ou
t
,
Ketter
m
an recognised
all of them
immediately.
The Director of the Central
Intelligence
Agency
was
on
the right, the
burly, hunched
figure
of the
Secretary
of
Sta
t
e
on
th
e
left
, and in the middle, wit
h
his hands thrust deep
into his
pockets,
stood the President of
the United States.
They
had been talking quietly
in low voices
as the two
newcomers entered
and
now
they
stopped
and turned round. After
a quick
flurry
of handshakes, all five
men
sat down at a small
circular
table.

The President sat
with his back
to
the
reinforced window
and
the
two distant red eyes in the top
of the
pointed
stone hood of the Washington Monument winked
alternately
over his shoulder at the
men facing
him. The President
nodded
at
Ketterma
n
and
turned the
palm
of his right
hand
upward, inviting him to begin. Ketterman
glanced
round at each of
the
four faces watching him in turn, trying to gauge their mood from
their
expressions. Then he
cl
eared his throat. ‘Mr. President, gentlemen,
you are already
familiar with
the contents of the eight folios
that
the man
known
as
Yang presented to Richard
Scholefield m London as a
true account
of the Li
n
Piao incident’ He
nodded
to the
translations
of the folios which were
lying
open
on the table in front of the President
and
the
Secretary
of State.
‘And
you are also aware, I think, of the existence of the
“Ninth
Folio” which I prepared, to
counteract them in case the
Soviets pressed their
efforts
to get
the original
eight disseminated publi
cl
y. Well, as you know, I have just completed
an interrogation
of
the
man
calling himself
Yang who says he
is
a survivor of
the
Trident crash. He’s told me what he claims is the
full
story of the
incid
en
t.
He
also
gave me his
interpretation
of
why
Moscow
has now decided
to try
and disseminate these lies, some
of
which he helped cook up.’

Ketter
m
an paused and looked
slowly round the table once more.
‘The upshot of his information is, gentlemen, that
there
is a Russian
plot
to kill Chairman Mao Tse-tung in
Peking.

What’s more it’s been timed to
coincide with the breaking of his
false story from London.’

The President who had been watching
K
etterman with his chin resting
on
one hand
straightened in his chair. The owlish eyes of the
Secretary
of
State blinked quickly behind his heavy
h
ornri
m
s, but nobody
attempted to interrupt.

‘The first thing you will want to hear from me,
gentlemen,
I’m
sure,
is my
assessment
of the
reliability of Yang’s
“testimony”. Well, in answer to that I can only
say that although
his version of the
Lin
Piao incident is more
fantastic than anything
yet
suggested,
it does check out
fully with
the
information
we gathered at the
time
by electronic surveillance methods.’ Ketterman paused
and
drew a long
breath. ‘The layers of deception
in this whole affair have sometimes
seemed endless, Mr. President.
But my
guess is that, at last, through
Comrade Yang we’ve
finally hit bedrock.’

‘What does
your friend
say the
Soviet motive
is in attempting
to assassinate
Mao?’
The
Secretary
of
State
put the
question in a matter-of-fact
voice, while subjecting the
fi
ngernails
of his right
h
and
to a
minute scrutiny.

‘He claims the cost of keeping a
million and
a half
troops,
who
can’t
be used anywhere else, on the
Chinese
border,
is
proving
an
intolerable
strain
on the
weak
Soviet economy. Yet another
failure
of
their agriculture
has sharpened
the
problem—in addition to
which
they’re not too keen on
the
prospect of
China’s constantly improving rocketry
being able to
take
out Moscow
with increasing accuracy as time goes
by. For
these reasons
they’ve
decided to
make a big throw
for a rapprochement
with their
Communist brothers now. With a change of
re
g
ime
due
any
moment
with
Mao
sinking
fast, they
see the
chance receding
rapidly if they don’t
grab
it now. They want to prevent
the
anti- Moscow
supporters
of Mao—the radicals led by his
wife
Chiang Ching—from taking over at all costs. Hence, the plot to kill Mao
and the elaborate
p
l
oy built around “Yang”, the ace they’ve been holding quietly for four years, to
blame
it all on Mao’s
radical
supporters.’

The
NSC China
specialist, a distinguished
Harvard
academic
who
had the bull-like shoulders of
a college football player and cropped steel-grey hair that looked like wire wool, nodded several times and looked
at the
President over
the
top
of his
glasses. ‘That’s a totally logical
prognosis
, Mr. President.’

‘How, precisely, do the
Soviets plan
to carry
through the assassination?’
The CI
Director
put
the
question in a
dispassionate
voice, but even so it
failed to conceal
his burning
curiosity
about the practical
planning,
of such an operation.

‘Yang
said
he
kn
ew no details of the
actual
assassination plan, beyond the fact
that they
have
the capability
to
place an unsuspected Chinese
assassin in Peking.’
Ketterman
touched the
bruise
on his cheek absent-mindedly with the fingertips of
his
right
hand and
stared over
the
President’s shoulder at the burning eyes of
the
Monument. ‘Yang is a very tough
customer indeed and has been playing a deep
game. I believe he
m
anaged to hold them
off
for four
years
in Moscow without telling them what had really gone on with that Trident. I think he
agreed
to help them in this plan or maybe even suggested it, for
two
reasons. First
their aims
to bring down
the radicals
probably
coincided with those
of his old boss
and himself—and
second it was his one sure escape route out of Moscow. He
seems
to think he was going to get political asylum in Britain. He didn’t see
that
they would never allow him to live once he’d done their dirty work. I don’t think he
realises
how lucky he is to be alive.’