ADAM HALL - The Mandarin Cypher

Final phase: they'd returned to their base, the impressive building with the big brass doors at the corner of Statue Square, overtly the Bank of China, covertly the party and diplomatic headquarters of the Communist Chinese Republic in Hong Kong, Pekin's listening-post and window on the West. They wouldn't have bothered to look up Clive Wing because cover names are only used once, and they wouldn't find Quiller on their books because it's a code name and never used for cover or signals, never used at all outside the doors of the Bureau in Whitehall. They'd looked up the mug shots in the Western Intelligence section and found this particular scarred and bitten-eared alley-cat face with the cynical mouth and the watchful eyes, the picture that some bright spark had managed to take when I was crossing the road or going through Customs or feeding the ducks in Bangkok or Tokyo or Seoul — because they're everywhere, the Chinese, everywhere in Asia, a cell in every city and a plant in every consulate; and they'll follow anything that moves, they'll survey and observe and monitor every intelligence operation they can smell out, whether it involves Pekin or not. They'd looked at the pictures and the man who'd observed me outside the Orient Club and outside Jade Imperial Mansions had identified me. Very well, they'd said, this man is London. Eliminate him.

I left the Capri outside the Excelsior and went in and used a phone and the ringing tone began.

Flower had said she never left her pad before ten or eleven in the morning and it was now 11.21 and I could have missed her and that would mean driving through her travel pattern in the hope of seeing either the Hillman or the Jensen and taking it from there. But it had been near dawn when I'd left her this morning and she might want to catch up on her sleep, so I let it ring eight times, nine.

It didn't matter too-much if her schedule was different today because part of my object was to meet Flower, get a complete report on every aspect of his surveillance, take his notebook and then tell him to get on the first plane to London and don't come back. I could make contact with him anywhere and at any time. But the other part of my object was to ease myself into the tag: watch her travel pattern and note the busy areas and short cuts and cover availability, taking loops and coming back while Flower manned the tag.

Eleven rings, twelve.

If I found more than two of the opposition in the field at Jade Imperial I'd warn Flower off and order him to London straight away because there wouldn't be room for two of us if they were going to move into an actual guard action around Nora Tewson. The mission had already gone into active phase and it could keep on changing as fast as an automatic gearbox, all the way up through the range.

Fourteen, fifteen.

I'd left it too late. I'd have to take the risk and 'Hello?'

'This is Clive,' I said.

Slight pause and then a soft easy laugh. 'Oh. And how do you feel this morning?'

'I'm only just coming down.'

There was another soft little laugh, and she said sleepily, 'Let's do it again.'

'That's why I rang.'

I was having to think what to say, because the bug was already there when she'd opened the line: they had a permanent three-way station operating. There'd been the slight ker-lunk as the circuit had tripped in, and now the line was hollow.

'Hoping you would,' she said.

'Would you like to go somewhere tonight? The El Caliph — '

'Not tonight,' she said quickly, and didn't say why. I tried to catch the tone, to imagine what she would have added in explanation, I've got to do my homework , or my mother's coming round , it was on that wavelength.

'Tomorrow?'

'Yes.'

'What time shall I come?'

'Don't come here. I'll meet you there at eight.'

'The El Caliph Room?'

'Yes.'

I tried every time to listen between the words and get the message. Her voice wasn't sleepy any more: it was a little breathless, secretive, excited, guilty, not quite any of those things but all of them. In her inexperienced way she was conducting an intrigue.

'All right,' I said.

'Clive.'

'Yes?'

It came in an arch little rush. 'I've never known anything like it. You know?'

'Nor have I.'

'My God, I bet you have.'

I said I'd never met anyone like her, been searching all my life, so forth, repeated the time and place and let her ring off first. An instant of regret as I put the phone down, because if I ever met her again it'd have to be without the ticks in tow and that was unlikely. Painfully inexperienced, arch, gauche, coy, but hungry and demanding, like a half-starved waif, wanting to learn and then going for it hard the moment she got the message, God, I've seen them do this in a film , wanting to do everything and do it now, as if it was going to be for the last time, Clive, I didn't know it could be like this , some of the dialogue, presumably, from the same film, though she meant it, and finally you bastard , for some reason, oh you bastard, meaning this too and leaving blood on me with her nails. It seemed fairly clear that she'd made the mistake of marrying a slide-rule and couldn't think of anything to do about it except play about with a flickering projector in a girl-friend's cellar.

Slight progress made: I'd confirmed they had a bug on her phone and there would obviously be others here and there among the Ming. She didn't know about it, or with her Victorian attitudes she wouldn't have said what she did on the phone just now, and she certainly wouldn't have done what she did last night. Another point of interest was that she couldn't meet me tonight because she had to do something she didn't particularly want to do, and conceivably she had to do it in Room 192 at the Golden Sands Hotel, because Flower had told me that the only time she'd made a definite movement was when she'd gone expressly to that hotel and stayed the night.

If they picked me up today and I shook them off they'd know where to find me again if I checked out of the Cathay, or at least they'd think they knew. I supposed I'd have to send another magnum and a dozen gardenias or something to the El Caliph Room tomorrow night; that snivelling old crone in Accounts was going to fracture a whalebone at this rate.

The sunshine bright as I went down the steps, the smell of the sea much stronger here, the ragged banners of the sails in the typhoon shelter and the throbbing of power boats.

'Want taxi, sir?'

'Yes.'

Because they knew the dark blue Capri. I left it when it was and got into the cab. 'This is for you.' I gave him ten dollars. 'You drive the way I tell you and there'll be another ten when you've finished. What's your name?'

'Kwan.'

Not much more than a kid, a bit scared of me, eyes very wide, didn't know who I was, knew I wasn't the police or I'd have just flashed my ID.

'All right Kwan, get down into Yee Wo Street and head for Causeway Road, quick as you can but don't break the speed limit unless I tell you.'

'If I break speed limit I lose licence and they-'

'Shut up and start driving.'

I began checking for tags the moment he turned left into Cannon Street. The odds against a tag at this point were a thousand to one and that's one of the ways you can get pushed right off your perch, by thinking what the hell, it's a thousand to one we're all right.

I told him to take Sugar Street and turn left and make one slow pass through the operational field and I saw the Toyota parked under the trees by the park entrance and the Hillman a hundred yards farther north.

'Kingston Street,' I told him quickly and he did rather well: most people would have overshot and we'd have had to traipse all the way round the block and come back and risk losing the action and showing our hand by blinding along to catch up. 'Very good, Kwan. Now go to the end and turn round and stop.'