ADAM HALL: The Mandarin Cypher

'The problem,' Egerton said apologetically, 'is that they got the timing wrong. It wasn't their fault.' He checked a sheet in the folder, looking down through the lower lenses of his glasses and trying to get used to the focus. 'We were all ready to send you in, and now we're not.' He shut the folder and slid it to one side.

'Oh, for Christ's sake.'

I got up again and squelched around in my leaky shoe.

'Not, anyway,' he said, 'for a few days.'

'A few days ?'

He looked surprised.

'Yes.'

The thing is that after two months you get the feeling you'll never be able to do it again unless you do it soon, and it bring the nerves to the boil. I thought he'd meant weeks, not days.

'Look, if it's Pekin — is it Pekin?'

'Yes.'

'If it's Pekin, why don't you put me into Hong Kong, so I can wait for the signal?'

He looked up sharply. 'Why Hong Kong?'

'Well, I'd be right on the doorstep.' Even to get out of London would be something, I'd at least be on my way. He was thinking it over so I sat down again and caught a spring of that bloody Louis Quinze right on the buttock.

'Bring me the blue file,' he told someone on the phone, and put it down and looked at me and said: 'Frankly I'd rather you waited here. We're expecting signals.'

He could switch them to Hong Kong, it was a Crown colony, but it wasn't my job to remind him of that. A woman came in, brogues and a bun and a whiff of carbolic, typical Bureau staff, and left a blue file on Egerton's desk, and then of course I realized why he'd popped a tuck when I'd suggested Hong Kong: it looked as though they had something running there and he was wondering how I knew.

NIAVONVW

He brooded over the folder, slipping one sheet out at a time and craning his neck instead of moving it nearer, he ought to have those things changed, the tears running down his long thin face while the rain pattered at the window. I wouldn't mind, once I could get him off the pot. Once I'd elbowed him into putting me out there I wouldn't mind having him as my London Control. He was a miserable sod and over-cautious (he'd brought Walsh back from Beirut a month ago just because they'd bust a cypher), but he wouldn't ever make the kind of mistake that would leave you without a chance.

NIBVCNVW?

You don't see with your eyes, you see with your brain, and while I was thinking about Egerton there was peripheral cerebration going on, trying to read the name on the folder, typed in capitals and upside down from where I was sitting. I gave it my full attention.

MANDARIN

His thin raw hands moved softly, shifting the papers, the hands of a priest performing the last rites.

'No,' he said slowly. 'We could use you there for a day or two, but I don't want to take the risk.' He put the last sheet back into the folder and closed it and pushed it to the end of his desk. 'As soon as the signals come in, you can take the first plane, after all.'

I drew a steady breath. 'What risk?'

'Well, communications, really. I don't care to switch signals. The risk of delay , really.'

I took another slow breath and let a couple of seconds go by, because if you try jumping Egerton he shuts like a clam.

'Be a delay anyway, wouldn't there? What's Hong Kong — twenty-four hours?'

'A little more than that, I rather think.'

He phoned again and put the receiver back and took his glasses off and pinched the bridge of his nose.

'We'd save that much,' I said.

She came in again and he gave her the file.

'Did you want to see Colonel Fraser, Mr Egerton?'

'Not particularly.'

'He's waiting.'.

'Oh, is he?' He put his glasses on again. 'All right, I'll be along in a moment.'

She went out and I didn't say anything because he might still be thinking over what I'd said, about saving at least twenty-four hours if I went right away.

'It would mean helping us out a little,' he said, looking into the middle distance.

'I wouldn't mind that,' I said.

Like trying to get a bird to eat out of your hand.

'It's just a routine investigation.' A bleak smile. 'Not quite your field.'

'That'd be okay. Just for a few days.'

He got his long thin legs together and stood up and wandered about for a bit, finally stopping and gazing quietly at a young lady in knickerbockers holding her very own new bicycle.

'Well, perhaps we could, yes, fit you in.'

Gotcha.

I was still hanging around at midnight waiting for someone to take me in Field Briefing, bangers and mash in the canteen when I finally got fed up, then back to square one, thinking I might have been a bloody lemon after all if this was the way they were going to play it.

There was a lot on, of course, and not all of it overseas. Those bastards had put one in St Paul's, nobody hurt, a small one or not very efficient but that wasn't their fault, then one of the staff at the Palace had found something rigged up in the kitchens, God knows how they'd got in there through doubled security. Lawson was in charge of the main counter-terrorist unit and somebody had heard him say if he actually caught one of them at it he'd spear the bastard bodily on the railings outside the Tower and the thing we all knew about Lawson was that he'd probably do it.

Signals was hard at it and all you could see were trays of tea going in, but then Signals was always manned, even when most of the other sections were shut down. There must be a whole unit going out, for Field Briefing to keep me hanging around like this. I didn't check with the upstairs people to see if Egerton had changed his mind because he would have got a message to me, he had good manners, whatever else.

'Quiller?'

'Don't tell me.'

'Macklin's ready for you.'

I was in Monitoring, military communique from Cyprus Radio, air attacks increasing around Nicosia while the Security Council issued further appeals for a ceasefire, the old 1974 lark all over again, couldn't care less, Field Briefing was the next floor up and I began hurrying and then remembered this wasn't really the outset of a mission, I was going to have to piddle about in Hong Kong for a while, looking at all the postcards. Well, I'd asked for it.

Macklin was buried in a filing-cabinet and poked his head out and told me to sit down. Tilson had gone off hours ago and we were alone, with the bright neon light-tubes buzzing in the ceiling and Macklin's ashtray thick with dog-ends. He came over, giving the metal drawer exactly the correct amount of push so that as he sat down opposite me it rolled shut behind him with a click.

'Not your kind of operation.'

'It's just something to do out there while I'm waiting.'

'Yes, Egerton mentioned.'

He was sorting out the material, one glass eye gazing slightly off-centre, the hard neon light discolouring the scar so that it looked even deeper than it was. He'd been running an escape chain and got his minefields mixed up on the chart near Hellingenstadt, three months of plastic surgery so he wouldn't frighten the children any more, then he'd opted for an office job, lucky to get it.

There's not much,' he said, and slid the file across the desk to me, never handed things to people if he could avoid it, still had the shakes. 'You'd better curl up with it and give me a prod when you're ready.'

One of his phones was ringing and he answered it and I opened the folder and went through the stuff: George Henry Tewson, 43, five foot so forth, several pictures, last seen alive 22 July, Tai Tam Bay, Hong Kong. Three local fishermen (named: see Coroner's Report) saw him lose his balance in the boat and go overboard, 'a big fish tugging at his line'. According to several other witnesses, disturbance in water indicative of shark attack. Remains never found, but wallet and some papers washed up on Turtle Cove Bay, unmistakably identified, confirmed by wife.