The Chinese Assassin (40 page)

Neither
man spoke for a long while after she had left
the
room.
Ketterman finished his drink and
stood looking at Scholefield indecisively, holding
the
empty
glass
in his hand. The
Englishman
returned his gaze steadily.
Eventually Ketterman
turned away to get
himself another drink.

‘You knew
all
about
the
Yang thing in advance,
H
arvey.’ Scholefield’s voice
had
a hostile, accusing note,
and
when Ketterman turned round he found he’d stood up.

The American took a long pull at his drink, then continued to
inspect
the contents of the glass
intently,
avoiding
Scholefield
’s eyes. ‘So what, Dick?’

Scholefield
put down his
coffee cup and
took a step towards him, his fists clenching at his sides. ‘So if you had mid me what you knew in London,
Nina might still be
alive.’

Ketterman
lowered the glass and looked at him. ‘I
didn’t
know they were going to bomb the
poor
bastard out.’ He lifted a hand to his
bruised
and swollen cheek as if in
corroboration.

‘But you knew about
the whole
jar of worms beforehand from the Israelis in Moscow—and you let it all run smoothly to schedule even though I
was
being used as an oily
rag!’

‘How the hell do you know that?’
Ketter
m
an
stopped and
looked
round at Katrina, who had reappeared in the doorway dressed in a long white kaftan. He spread his arms suddenly in front of
him
in a de
ri
sive gesture. ‘For
Chrissakes,
this is no
place
to discuss—’

Scholefield’s
left
shoulder
dipped
suddenly and his body swung back
and
down
through
a low
arc
as
if beginning a discus throw.
His
bunched right
fist
came up
fast
out of the flat, sti
ff
-armed swing and caught
Ketterman
squarely
between
jaw and cheekbone, propelling him
bodily across
the room. The glass flew from
his hand and
smashed against
the
door. He slid backwards down the
wall
onto the
carpet,
his eyes glazed with
shock and
a dribble of
blood running
down the
centre
of his chin from a
cut
inside his mouth.

At that same moment the
Russians,
watching
from a
car
parked fifty yards
along P Street in
sight of the
white Georgian villa, saw
the
first
stretcher coming down the front steps. The
two
men
carrying
it
hurried to
the open rear doors of an ambulance parked at the kerb
under
an ornamental wrought-iron
street
lamp. The driver of the
Russian car started
the engine as the
two
men
slid
the stretcher inside
and
closed
the
doors. Then Bogdarin, who
was sitting
beside him, let out a muffled curse
and
pointed
through
the
windscreen
to a second ambulance nosing slowly out across the
intersection
from 34th
Street.
By radio, he alerted the back-up car parked round the corner in Volta Place, then watched with a dark scowl disfiguring
his
features as a second stretcher borne by
two
more
men
appeared at the top of the villa’s front steps.

The driver had
pulled
out of the
line
of parked cars and was easing towards the
intersection
when Bogdarin spotted the third ambulance coming slowly south down 34th. He cursed again, more loudly this time, as it swung round in front of
the villa and
stopped well out from the kerb, blocking the way westward where the other
two ambulances
were
already moving off

Two more
figures descended
the
steps
of the house
with a third
stretcher and quickly ran it into
the back
of
the third
ambulance
and
closed the
doors.
They strolled back up
the
steps
into the
house, without looking back at the
Russian
car
although the driver
was
leaning on
its
horn in
frustration
at being blocked in. The back-up
car,
seeing what was happening, accelerated frantically away
down
34th
and
swung westward
along
O
Street with a loud scream from
its tyres,
clearly hoping to pick up
the
track of the other
two
ambulances by
making
a detour to the southwest.

The third ambulance moved slowly off followed by
the Russian car.
Once it
was
under way the fair-haired young
man
threw back the blanket covering
him
on the stretcher and crept to
the
windows in the back door to look out. When he
saw
Bogdarin through the
windscreen
of
the car cruising
slowly
behind
him, he waved
and
grinned, picked up a hand microphone from
its
rest on a side
wall
of the ambulance
and
asked to be
connected to
K
atrina
Jackson’s number.

When the
telephone rang inside Katrina’s apartment, she
was bending
over
Ketterman
where he’d fallen
with
his back jammed against the wall. She
dabbed
gingerly with a
damp
sponge at the blood running from his mouth, then
thrust the
sponge
into
his hand
and
rose to answer
the
telephone. Scholefield
stood
watching impassively from the other side of the room,
finishing his
coffee.

Katrina carried the telephone
across
to
K
etterman and pushed the
receiver into his empty hand. The voice of
the fair-haired
young man
was
exuberant, but
correct.
‘Departure procedure carried through correctly, Sir,’ be
said
quietly. ‘The vehicle transporting “lost dog” is on
its
way unimpeded. Estimated to arrive at
its
destination in seven
minutes
from now.’

Ketterman grunted his thanks and
handed the telephone back to Katrina. He looked at his watch then wiped some more blood from his teeth with the sponge. He rose unsteadily to his feet
and
looked balefully at Scho
l
efield.

‘You’ll live, Harvey.
That was just
to relieve my feelings enough so I could talk to you. If I’d really wanted to
hurt
you I would have
used
my
feet.’

‘Thank you,’ said
Ketterman
feigning gratitude. ‘Thanks a
million.’

Scholefield put his
coffee cup clown. ‘Where’s
Yang, Harvey?’
Ketterman massaged
his jaw slowly with one hand.
Instead
of replying, he
walked
over to
the drinks
table
and began
pouring himself another
bourbon.”
That’s a question,
Dic
k
,
that goes far beyond
the bounds
of
our unspoken understanding
on exchanges of
academic
interpretation.’
Ketterman
spoke over
his
shoulder without
turning
round.

‘Letting
Yang
and his friends abduct
Mathew so you could watch the pot boil up and
check the validity
of Israeli
information
was way outside
that
mark too, Harvey.’

Ketterman
swung round. ‘Okay, Dick, okay, you feel aggrieved. But, so help me, I never foresaw things
turning
out this way.’

‘You’re a lying bastard!’ Scholefield
stepped quickly
towards him
again.
‘In the course of doing whatever it
is
you
do—
“protecting justice
and freedom
for the
western
democracies” is no doubt how you’d
describe
it to yourself—you use other people
like
paper tissues—to do all the dirty jobs you don’t want to
soil
your
own
fingers
with.
You
betray
every damned moral principle —loyalty,
honesty and
decency—that’s supposed to lie at
the heart
of what you’re defending.’

Ketterman
closed
his eyes
and
held up his palms towards Scholef
i
eld. ‘I don’t have a pat answer ready for that right now.
Let
me work on
it,
will ya?’ He opened his eyes again
and
looked round at
Katrina
for support. But
she
stood
watching him
expressionlessly, holding the blood-soaked sponge limply in one hand. ‘Hell, this is
like
one of
those arcane Gree
k
tragedies
where everybody double-crosses everybody
else
so many times you lose count.’ He shrugged wearily. ‘The only trouble is there’s nobody here to come to the front of the stage from
time
to
time
to tell me which are the good guys
and
which are the bad.’

The telephone
jangled
at
that
moment beside
Ketterman and
he picked it up. ‘The lost dog’s sa
fe
ly back on the basketball court,’
said the
voice of the young
fair-haired man.

‘Thank Christ!’,
said
Ketterman explosively and hung up. His shoulders sagged as he dropped the receiver. He looked dully at his watch
and
moved
off
towards the door. Scholefield
and Katrina
stood watching him but he went out without
turning round.