ADAM HALL - The Pekin Target

I'd been trying for ten minutes or so, without getting anything more than a faint voice speaking what sounded like Korean; the interpreter said he couldn't understand what was being said. I was rather sorry for the interpreter: I was certain now that he wasn't military, even in a non-combatant capacity; he'd really thought they were going to shoot me out there, and when we were all coming back into the operations room he'd stayed outside and we'd heard him vomiting.

Eagle to Jade One.

The Korean voice came again and this time the interpreter said we were being received.

"Ask for Murray," Sinitsin told him, and the interpreter leaned over my shoulder while I held down the transmit lever.

They would know who Murray was in the Embassy signals room: it was the give-away name for Ferris, the one I'd given away to Sinitsin earlier tonight.

I was worried about the bad reception we'd been getting it wasn't the mountains between here and Seoul: this was a Hammarlund HQ-105-TRS with a multiplier and BFO and an auto-response circuit: they could raise Moscow with this. Maybe there was something wrong with the antenna rig, or we weren't getting the full 105 volts from the generator.

"He will find Murray," the interpreter told Sinitsin.

I felt a sudden surge of confidence. Physically I was less than a hundred per cent after the march through the mountains, and the bullet-wound in my cheek had swollen half my face in the healing process, bringing a fever and leaving a tenderness that kept the nerves bared; but the physical is infinitely less important than the psychological when the stress comes on, and I'd needed an antidote to the lingering fright induced by standing against that wall out there and staring at the muzzle of the gun. Sinitsin had compromised: he'd decided to accept Tung's logic and let me use the transceiver, but had first put me through page 97 to reduce the risk of my breaking out. To a certain degree he'd done that, but the thought that Jade One was still running and that I was resuming contact with the director in the field was almost heady.

The Korean voice sounded again but almost immediately faded, and the interpreter told Sinitsin he hadn't caught anything intelligible. We went on waiting.

The idea of smashing the radio kept recurring, but I hadn't got enough data to work on. If this were the only radio at the monastery I might do quite a bit of good by knocking it out and cutting their communications with Moscow, but it wouldn't cut off Tung from his action group: he could raise them with one of the helicopter sets, and they might well have a short-wave transceiver that could reach Moscow. I couldn't destroy their operation; I could only cause temporary confusion.

Jade One to Eagle.

Something like a spark went through my nerves. It was the voice of Ferris, loud and clear: a voice I thought I'd never hear again.

Eagle receiving.

I sensed Sinitsin closing in from my right side.

"You are in danger," he said, "but you have obtained information and may be able to obtain more."

I sat doing nothing while the interpreter put the Russian into Chinese for Tung Kuo-feng, then as Tung began speaking in English I hit the transmit lever.

"There is a Russian connection," he said. "The operation is being run from Moscow."

I gave it straight to Ferris, but had to use speech-code because even among people who speak only their own language there are many who pick up foreign words: most English people know niet, parachik, so forth. This applies particularly to the names of people and cities, and a KGB Colonel would know the English for «Russian» and «Moscow», and if I hadn't used «bearish» and "Place Rouge" Sinitsin would have dragged me away from the radio and told Yang to wipe me out, this time for real.

It was like moving slowly through a minefield, and there was a lot to think about. Tung had opened up with a hot signal, and I'd had to control my reaction. The last thing the KGB wanted anyone to know was that there was a Russian connection, and as I sat here waiting for Sinitsin to give me the next item of dezinformatsiya I knew that I'd just dropped an intelligence bomb in the signals room of the British Embassy; depending on the turnaround facilities there, it could be known in London within minutes from now that Moscow was behind the assassinations in Pekin.

I wiped the sweat off my face as I waited.

Sinitsin spoke. "The Pekin assassinations were designed to divert both world and intelligence attention from the actual operation Tung Kuo-feng is running."

I sat listening to the interpreter.

We'd passed the first hump in the minefield but there would be so many others. Whenever Sinitsin spoke, I must remember not to react, but to wait for the translation. Whenever Tung spoke to me in English I had to assess what he wanted Ferris to know, and if I didn't like it I would have to try inserting an «ignore» keyword by careful rephrasing, and that would be dangerous because he might realise what I was doing. I had to use speech-code for any words Tung gave me that Sinitsin might understand, like «Russian» or «Moscow», and I must hope that Tung would know why I was doing it. I had to listen for any internationally known names or words — «Pekin», "airport", so forth — spoken by Sinitsin and put them faithfully into the final signal so that he would hear them: because he'd be listening for them; and Tung would have to do the same. At the same time I had to insert an «ignore» key to cover them, because they'd stand out oddly in the message. If Tung didn't understand what I was doing, he couldn't ask me, because Sinitsin would want to know what we were talking about.

While I waited for the interpreter to finish I thought over what Sinitsin had just told me to send. The Pekin assassinations were designed to divert world and intelligence attention from the actual operation Tung Kuo-feng is running. "Pekin" and "Tung Kuo-feng" would have to go in.

When the interpreter had finished Tung leaned over me. "The Pekin only chance of stopping the operation is by finding and releasing Chuan, Tung Kuo-feng's abducted son."

He was on to what we had to do: he'd inserted «Pekin» at the beginning and got his own name in the right place near the end, using exactly nineteen words, as Sinitsin had. If we could work together like this we had a chance, but it would need only one slip, and Sinitsin was listening hard.

I opened transmission. "The Pekin, really, only chance of stopping… " It was the only "ignore we had to insert.

We all waited.

"Message understood so far." Ferris.

He wouldn't be worried by the «ignore» keyword «really». He would be cautious, but not worried. He was already wondering at the delay between my first and second transmissions, and would almost certainly realise I wasn't alone; he would be listening carefully to the tone of my voice, alert for any stress tones or background sounds; but he would know that the signal as a whole could be trusted and that I was sending what I wanted to send; without duress; otherwise I would have thrown in a priority «discount» key right at the outset and the only reason he would have gone on listening would be to hear what kind of disinformation the opposition was trying to feed him, and to respond with formal acknowledgements to give the impression he accepted the signal.

When they'd led me to the radio I'd tried to angle my chair slightly so that I could press down the transmit lever without anyone seeing, so that Ferris would hear the Russian and Chinese in the background; but it hadn't been possible: Sinitsin and his aides had been watching for that.

I looked up at him now, wanting him to know that the transmission had been acknowledged. He began speaking again.