ADAM HALL - The Pekin Target

The thin needling glare of the street lamp faded out as I went on drifting, and for a time I could see nothing at all; then the pupils expanded and I saw one of the eggshells bobbing in the scum.

Tidal breathing, while the split in the box winked suddenly to the passage of a star. Night and silence, who is here? No one. No one at all, only a box and a dead cat, so you can put away your gun.

I watched for him now.

Ignore the slow creeping of fear, the instinctive tensing of the nerves as the live body became gradually exposed to the death-dealing weapon in the enemy's hand like a floating sacrifice on sacred water; ignore and think of other things.

How did you go, kitty? Was it a car that slung you across the road with a smashed skull and no hope of getting even, or did they get fed up with your favourite sardine trick and shove you into a sack on the way to the river? Did you have time to fight them, with your sinews threshing and your bright claws flashing, your ears flattened and your sharp teeth bared? I hope so, but we can't always choose how we go, can we? You know that now.

Movement against my face.

The current was strong here and eddying, because of some kind of obstruction in the bank. The cardboard box was drifting away from my face.

Don't move.

Fatal to move. Fatal, perhaps, to lie still and let the box go. Without the box, what would he see? The cat, and not much else.

The cold wet touch of its fur against my face.

Don't leave me, kitty. Don't leave me now.

The current went on tugging, swinging my legs away from the bank. I opened one eye, allowing a thin band of vision across the pupil, and saw the silhouette of the nearest buildings against the sky, also a distant street lamp, and a parked car, much closer, and the short figure of the man on the bank.

He was standing right at the water's edge, his body leaning to watch the surface, his right hand holding the gun. I would be drifting past him in a few seconds now.

The box had gone; I could see one comer of it as it drifted away. The cat was curled against my face, its fetid stench half choking me, its tail moving across and across my eyes in the eddying water. There was nothing to do now but wait, and watch my enemy.

It was dangerous to leave my one eye open, even so little, but I wanted to see what was happening. He might catch the glint of my conjunctiva, and loose a shot to see if there were any reaction; but the cat's body was still half smothering my face, vouchsafing me the security of camouflage: it was too heavy for the current to drag away, as it had done with the box, but to be sure I opened my mouth a fraction and bit on the wet, stinking fur and trapped my camouflage tight.

I watched the man on the bank.

I watched his gun hand.

If his hand moved, I would turn and dive, not with any hope of being in time but as a last gesture in the name of survival. At twenty feet he could place six shots effectively grouped in my body before I could reach any depth, but that would be preferable to lying here on the water and watching the flash of powder against the dark.

Drifting. Far away, the sound of the city's traffic.

A short man, his body leaning forward, his eyes looking into my eye but not as yet identifying it, since it was out of context; he was for the moment unaware that somewhere among the eggshells and the scummy flotsam and the dead cat there was shape possessed of intelligence. When he became aware, he would lift his right hand.

Can you see him, kitty? Of course not; all you can see now are your heavenly hosts, their pink tails frisking as you chase them among the stars.

Drifting.

He watched me, keeping perfectly still. His head was turning to follow me as I passed the place where he stood. A shadow, moving insubstantially across him as the river's reflections shifted, made it seem that he was starting to lift his gun hand, and within the period of time required for the nerves to hit muscle I reached the decision to dive, before the brain made its urgent analysis and in the next microsecond countermanded the impulse, leaving the organism to float onwards without motion.

The man's head was still turned to watch me as he made his own more careful analysis of these abstract shapes in the water here; then he looked suddenly in the other direction, attracted by flotsam further upstream; and we went drifting away and away, kitty and I, in the silence of the nightrunning river.

One hour later at 11: 06 I invoked an extreme-urgency rule and telephoned London direct, asking for the Jade One console and using the established code phrasing to warn Control not to signal through the Embassy because communications there were compromised. I also requested a rendezvous with the director in the field at 09: 00 tomorrow at the currency exchange office at Kimpo Airport. I gave the number of the telephone I was using and rang off.

I recognised Croder himself on the line — he's got the voice of a dispassionate hangman — but he couldn't ask any questions because my code prefix had warned him that it was a shut-ended signal: the taxi driver was still in the room with me and he understood English. The first two drivers had turned me down when I'd stopped them, but this one — a small bearded Hindu with permanently surprised eyes — had been ready to agree that I wouldn't get into a hotel in this state and that for 50,000 won I could stay the night at his place if I didn't make any noise: I'd explained the fact that I was soaking wet and smothered in weeds by mentioning a drunken brawl over a woman.

There was a call at three in the morning and he got me out of my low narrow bed to take it. Phrase-coded instructions were that a rendezvous would take place with a contact instead of my director in the field, and on the subway station at Jongro and Waryong Streets at 09:00 tomorrow. The names were spelled out in letter code and so were the brief specifics, broken glasses being the main identification key.

He'd repaired them with a piece of white adhesive tape and I took him through a four-step introduction check before I felt happy with him, not because he was suspect in any way but because I was now ready to think that every other man-in-the-street of this city was working with the Triad.

"All I want," I told him, "is an RV with my director. That's what I asked London for."

He was a bland, shut-faced character with dirty nails and a terrible haircut and he gazed at me sideways most of the time while he sucked on a toothpick.

"They asked me for info," he said.

"I haven't got any. Christ, if I'd got any info I would have given it to London, wouldn't I?"

"Orders," he shrugged, but I had the feeling he was rather less crass than he sounded; when he wasn't looking at me he was looking everywhere else and without letting it show, and underneath the crumpled tourist's clothes there was a certain strength in his stance, a certain weight.

"Spur is dead," I told him, and saw a spark come and go in his colourless eyes. "The opposition did a chain job on me and set up a street ambush and I went into the river with the car; they tried hard this time, really hard, but if you call that information I'm happy for you. Tell them I want Ferris and a new cover before the police pick me up and ask for papers."

He hadn't looked away from me now for the last ten seconds, and the toothpick had stopped moving. "How did they do Spur?"

"They put a snake round his neck."

"That thing," he said softly.

"That thing. Who gave you the instructions to meet me?"

"I clean forget." He gazed at me obliquely for a moment and added: "It wasn't through the Embassy."

"Fair enough." It was all I needed to know. In any given operation the executive in the field has communications access to the Embassy and to whatever other facilities are as signed to him (they gave me Spur); but there are always others that he never knows about, because it would endanger them. The executive is something like a leper: nobody wants to go near him, because if the opposition can trap him and put him under that bright white light before he can get to his capsule he's liable to break and expose people and they won't know it until they switch on the ignition and come down in fragments: two years ago a stamp dealer in Dresden was put into direct touch with the executive making his final run at the end of a sticky mission and the whole thing happened: the executive was tripped and grilled before he could cyanose and two weeks later the stamp dealer lost his footing on a crowded underground platform in the rush hour and the train didn't have time to stop. And that man had been a Bureau sleeper in Dresden for twelve years before someone in London panicked and told him to make direct contact with an executive.