ADAM HALL - The Mandarin Cypher

My hand was throbbing. Must take care of it, she'd said. The feeling of deathly cold wouldn't go, and I got fed up because I ought to get more bloody control over myself: the mission was still in its access phase and I ought to be feeling right on my toes and I wasn't and there was no excuse.

' Tui mm chiu .'

I stood back, keeping clear of the actual doorway but remaining close enough to use it. Two other people went in, a woman and her small boy, and it wouldn't do if the wrong people saw me and recognized me and went in, say three or four men, and turned round and blocked the doorway while the rest of them came up. I wouldn't know any of them. I wouldn't have time to know anything at all, if they came.

I began working back up the shallow steps — it was a ladder street like most of them in this area — having to push my way through tourists and vendors and groups of shopkeepers gathered in the bright morning sun, want roast duck ? The scent of cheap perfumes and the drains, long time no rain, people said, working back towards the snake shop but turning off as soon as I could to avoid the cardinal sin of visiting a safe-house with surveillance known to be active, want haircut ? The sudden clatter of a mah-jong game in a doorway, a stall with wardrobes for the dead, is this the place where you can get to see those fruit sellers, do you know ? A child's laughter as a fortune-telling bird picked a card from the basket, turning into the alley and walking faster, checking twice and going on, using every pane of glass there was, bumping into people because I had to watch the reflections, tui mm chiu , sometimes attracting attention and that could be dangerous, slowing down, taking the next street, a wider one, looking for a taxi. Finding one.

'Lane Crawford's.'

When we reached there I went through the front and out by the back way, climbing over a new delivery of merchandise, finding a bar and calling Ferris.

We listened for bugs.

'My car was covered in ticks.'

'Oh I see,' he said. He meant that was how the boy had got on to me.

'It could be rigged as well.'

'Of course. Anything in it?'

'A suitcase.'

'Everything all right apart from that?'

'It is now.'

I rang off and sat down in the corner of the bar with my left shoulder against the wall, the mirror on the other side of the room and the door facing me. I was clear of the Taunus trap but they were getting very insistent and I could be picked up anywhere, anywhere at all, because of the photograph.

'Coffee.'

To help chase some of the adrenalin out of the system: there was no chance of physical exercise. The eyelid had stopped flickering, I should bloody well hope so, I must be getting old or something. Relax, switch off, leave things to Ferris. He'd be on to the police by now, telling them where to find the Taunus and what to do with it: check it for an explosive device, check the suitcase, take the car back to Fleet-way and put the case into the harbour or wherever they liked, because i wouldn't get it back: they'd hold it for me but they wouldn't part with it or with me either without asking me an awful lot of questions Hong Kong is just like other places: the police don't like being rung up and told to look for bombs in abandoned cars without wanting to know why. Ferris could pull enough rank to tell them to shut up but it'd mean revealing the fact that we were on the island and we didn't want to advertise it.

I'd asked him to do a couple of other things for me while he was about it: pay my bill with Fleetway, and get a dozen gardenias sent to El Caliph before eight o'clock tonight with a message: Please forgive, been called to Rome due to the devaluation crisis, tried four times to ring you but not home. Will never forget you. Clive.

I put on the mask.

The nerves were back to normal and it hadn't taken so long as I thought: for three hours I'd been moving around Central as free as a tourist and nobody had tried to raid me or even get on my tail, besides which Ferris hadn't been mean: it was a white summer-weight linen suit and quite a good fit and I felt a bit less like a lavatory brush with the mange. I'd kitted up again at Lane Crawford's: new suitcase, shaver, toilet things, shoes, so forth, and the case was genuine leather because I can't stand plastic, so that scaly old hell-hag in Accounts was going to cough up her brimstone when she got the bill.

I breathed in through the nose and the faceplate tightened satisfactorily and I took it off. We spent a lot of time getting a good fit for the fins: he was a helpful little man, five feet high with a crew cut and a jolly smile and the right hand off at the wrist, said it was a shark and I believed him.

'You from England?'

'Yes.'

'What part?'

'London.'

'So! I have sister in London! Beshnill Green!'

'Well I never.'

I asked him for a double hose regulator and three standard single cylinders of compressed air with reserve mechanisms and nickel-plated interiors, capacity 71 cubic feet each.

'Can you recharge these for me if I need more air?'

'No.' He shook his head beaming. 'Used to have charging-room, but had also assistant who broke valve one day. Tank went through wall here and flew three streets away, finish through side of bus!' Peals of laughter. 'Nobody hurt, but take permission from me. You get them filled at another place, I give you address.'

'Thank you.'

Tank harness with instant release buckle, lead belt, depth gauge, compass, underwater watch.

'Dry suit?'

'No, wet. Foam neoprene, have you got one?'

'Oh yes.'

Diving knife, saw-tooth edge one side, straight edge the other.

'You want shark repellent?'

'Yes.'

'Speargun?'

'No.'

'Abalone iron?'

'No.'

I had to try three wet suits on before I found the right one. It had a yellow insignia on the back as a safety marker and I'd have to cover it with black adhesive tape later.

'Do you stock chains?'

'What sort of chains?'

'To secure the tanks to the boat.'

'No. Tell you where to buy.' He gave me another address.

'I need a lamp.'

He kicked the stool over to the shelves again and jumped up and hooked down the box, catching it in the crook of his elbow. We tested the batteries and I signed a traveller's cheque, sweating a lot after trying on all those suits but feeling much better, almost back on form, even the muscles feeling smoother. Tonight I'd be getting some sleep because Ferris wouldn't be able to rustle up everything we needed before the morning. God only knew how he was planning to send me in to the objective but if it was going to be an air drop we'd obviously have to make it by night: that would be tomorrow at the earliest.

I'd hired a dark grey station wagon from Fleetway so that I could lay the air tanks flat. I stowed the gear and found the place where they sold chains and noted the place where they could give me a recharge if I needed one and bought some black adhesive tape and reached the Harbour Hotel on the north shore of the island by noon. That was where Ferris had booked me in.

There was already a message for Mr Wing: please call TWA about my reservation. I used the phone in my room and we listened for bugs and then he went straight into speech code, switching to cypher where he had to and rattling off the numerals. The code was standard operational for this date, Far East theatre, listed arbitrary with no mnemonics: October for briefing, Monday for rendezvous, Gin-rummy north east, yellow left hand, so forth. I went into the same pitch and thought Christ, he's got something moving.

'I want you for briefing,' he said.

'When?'

'20.00 hours.'

'Where?'

He gave the directions: there was a junk tied up in the Causeway Bay typhoon anchorage, the August Moon , the seventh along from the base of the north-east breakwater, left-hand side of the utilities stanchion.