ADAM HALL - The Mandarin Cypher

'You're looking for someone else,' I told them, shaking my head. The two of them looked up again.

'What this?'

He held out one of the letters of introduction, trying to sound accusing. He could have questioned any of the other papers just as well: he wanted me to react, that was all.

'Coins,' I said. The Mendoza letter heading carried three gold pieces, sumptuously embossed and gilded. With great care I moved my hand, pointing to my pocket.

'What coin?'

I took a risk and tapped my pocket with a stiff finger, making my small change clink, then bringing my hand very slowly to point at the letter. 'I am a coin dealer.'

'How this?'

He meant my left hand.

'Accident.' I didn't want to go into that one so I produced a short embarrassed laugh. 'Look, I thought you were going to rob me, but now I can see you're looking for someone in particular.' I spread my hands till the gun prodded my spine. 'I am not the man you are looking for.'

It was the only possible hope. They were young and inexperienced and would fear their superiors; and they weren't keen on knocking off an innocent party before they'd made sure who he was. On the other hand they felt frustrated about this: they were three of the toughest young thugs I'd ever seen and they were longing to make a killing for the hell of it because that's what their Pekin instructors had been training them to do for so long.

'You come Londan?'

He had the inhuman stare of the disciple newly ordained: with all the power of Mao behind him, he was addressing one of the imperialist vermin he had learned about at the desk and on the blackboard. They'd stuffed his head with ta tzu-pao and his stomach with government rice and sent him out crusading, a true Son of the Socialist Revolution, a brave Soldier of the People's Liberation Army, neither lance in his hand nor falcon at his wrist but just an itch in the pit of his guts to do in reality what he had done so many times in make-believe, spilling the sawdust out of the sacks in the sweaty gymnasium, sending them swinging on their ropes at a chop of his hand or a kick of his foot without even hating them, and dreaming of the day when his masters would give him something alive, something to hate, something to kill.

Something like me.

'No,' I said, 'I don't come from London.'

I didn't think he could read Roman characters. He couldn't: he didn't react. The passport and the other papers didn't mean anything to him and that was why he found them impressive: their very unintelligibility was mystic and had power over him. He went on staring for a moment and then turned suddenly away to talk to the other man: not the one with the gun at my spine, the one with the blepharitis. They spoke in Mandarin still, the Kuo-yu , and I couldn't follow; but it seemed as if they thought they'd made a mistake and didn't know what to do next, so I began rehearsing a speech in simple Engish. They wouldn't understand but the words would implement my gestures and provide the vehicle for tone: and the tone was very important — rueful, conciliatory, half-admitting myself as party to their unfortunate mistake.

'Listen,' I said, and they looked at me. 'If you will let me go, I will tell no one. It is a silly mistake. I will go away quietly, and forget.' I rang the changes on this theme, bowing myself out of their ken, taking a step towards the station wagon, shaking my head sorrowfully about our foolish misunderstanding, the bloody thing poking sharply into my back as I took that one step nearer the car. I stopped and waited for them to react.

There were chimes sounding somewhere, probably from one of the English churches. Eight o'clock, the hour when a young married widow with a taste for Ming and emeralds and soixante-neuf would be going through the doors of El Caliph to receive in surprise a dozen gardenias in lieu of dalliance; when a thin owlish man with a thing against insects and a scar on his soul would be waiting in the shadows on a Hong Kong junk and listening to these same chimes, checking his watch; and when Clive Wing, coin dealer, was standing on a deserted quayside wondering how many minutes longer he was going to live.

They'd listened to what I'd said and their rather bright stares had followed my gestures attentively: the language of mime is universally understood, even by children. They seemed to be waiting for me to go on, but I decided to leave it at that, as if I felt confident and didn't need to protest. It was quiet here, and we all stood perfectly still as we considered, in our divers ways, what should be done.

I thought I could neutralize one of them: the one with the gun at my back. It would take him a long time, relatively, to pull the trigger, because I would induce nervous trauma in him first. That's why I always disappoint those people in Firearms when they try to sell me their goods: I just don't trust the bloody things. They're heavy and awkward and unreliable and of course an absolute give-away, and I don't like the bang they make. When these ticks had hijacked me just now in the car I couldn't have used a gun even if I'd carried one, and they wouldn't have accepted my cover: they'd have known right away they'd pulled in the spook they were after. No go.

It takes time to pull a trigger because the chain of events is long and intricate. This boy would have fast reactions but that would only narrow the time gap: it wouldn't close it. Whatever move I made would surprise him because he was holding a gun and I wasn't and this gave him enormous confidence and left him wide open to surprise and all its hazards: he'd lose something in the region of a tenth of a second right at the outset because the flood of incoming data would be blocked off by the condition of shock. He wouldn't be able to think what I was doing because his ability to reason would be suspended until the shock phase was over. Added to this critical delay would be the normal physiological requirements in terms of time: the time needed to assess the data, decide on the appropriate action, envisage it, analyse the image, reach the decision to act, and order the action. The transmission of nervous signals would take very little time, the electrical impulse travelling at a hundred miles per second and in this case probably a little faster since the organism was trained in unarmed combat. But once his trigger finger had become active Under its muscle contraction he was going to run into a phase of gross delay in the overall operation: the flesh of his finger alone would absorb several minor fractions of a second, and the spring mechanism of the gun would then begin using up the greatest proportion of the total time demanded from initiation to completion.

They stared at me, at my rueful smile.

Somewhere inland the clock in the church ended its chimes.

None of us moved. None of us.

So maybe I could neutralize one of them: the one with the gun. But there was too much against it. I'd have to move sideways instead of forward and down, and even then his gun hand would follow until I could mount the blow. And if I brought it off there'd be one dead man and that was all: there wouldn't be time to cripple him or put him out of action — it'd have to be a shikana , the force of both arms swinging the elbow in a murderous curve for the diaphragm, a rising blow that wouldn't call for sight, since I knew precisely where his diaphragm was at this instant.

But if I did it there'd be another death a second later because the nearer of the other two, the one with the blepharitis, would recognize the blow I was using and come for me with any one of the forward-killing kicks while my neck was exposed to him at the end of my own movement. He'd be too frightened to do anything else: because this is the way with the graduated belts — their powers are so deadly that they recognize the dangers of an equal.