ADAM HALL - The Mandarin Cypher

Rotor.

There had to be more data before I saw the danger I was in, and it came aurally from across the sea and I went down slowly and was careful not to make a splash because if this was the south shore of the island it was in sight of the rig and at a distance of two miles a pair of medium-power field glasses could pick up an object the size of a man.

Bloody well wake up and try to survive!

I took off the faceplate to avoid reflection and sank into the water with only my head clear, tugging at the quick-release buckles of the backpack and letting the air tanks go, pushing them down the rockface with my hands and then my feet to start them sliding to the bottom. Then I made a five-second survey across the sea's surface: three helicopters airborne, one of them this side of the rig and the other two well beyond it. Five boats visible, three of them cabin class, two of them smaller craft. I couldn't see from this distance whether they were navy, police or coastguard, but they were flying the yellow-starred flag of the Chinese Republic in the stern. They would almost certainly have divers down.

The nearest cave mouth.was this side of the southernmost point and I submerged with the mask on, surfacing every so often to breathe and keeping my head turned inshore, reaching the cave and crawling on to the fissured floor and flopping down on my stomach, drawing deep breaths, the mask still on until I remembered it and pulled it away. State of semi-exhaustion and it worried me because it hadn't been a long swim and the fins had cut down the work. Possible blood loss: I remembered the wound had come open while I'd been engaged with the diver. Possible residual effects of nitrogen narcosis: I'd been unconscious for two hours and there would still be a lingering retention of CO 2in the tissues. Probably combination of both factors and therefore normal but I didn't like it because I had to think and all I could see was a flutter of light in front of my eyes and all I could hear was the chop-chop-chop of that bloody rotor amplified in the cave.

An irregular draught above my head and something pattering on my back, the sense of creatures somewhere near me. Take some interest then because everything is interesting if you want to live: all right, bats, napping all over the place above my head, I'd frightened them.

I let my eyes shut again.

Be too dangerous to go inland and try to reach the far side of the island because the chopper was too close and there wouldn't be much cover in these soft green hills: there weren't any trees, only bushes and short scrub clinging to the rock where it could. I'd reached land but the only cover was in the sea and I'd no air left in the tanks and they were gone now anyway, so much junk, all I'd had to keep me alive not long ago.

Think of nothing. Relax.

Got to think. Want to live.

The break-off rdv for this phase was twelve hours from now and I was in place in the third rotating sector, Heng-kang Chou. The rations I'd been preparing to bring with me were still on the sand below the rig where I'd let them fall when the diver had found me there. I could last without food but I had a thirst beginning because I'd lost fluids in sweat and I wouldn't be able to graze on the scrub till nightfall. Ignore thirst.

The lights kept flashing and I shut my eyes again and lay prone, letting the whole thing go for a minute, leaving the organism to look after itself by automatic data analysis: squeaking sounds and air movement in close proximity recognizable and acceptable; volume of distant sounds constant; psychedelic display behind closed eyes attributable to nerve trauma, this data to be ignored.

The water lapped.

Relax.

Now.

I crawled higher and sat with my back propped on the rock and watched the bats dipping and swerving across the cave mouth, their wings turning pink as the sunlight shone through their thin membranes, turning black as they wheeled inside the opening again. Think. One of them coming very close, unaware of me until its radar picked me up, small ears and flat piglike face, vanishing as it weaved aside. Think of what must be done. Others hanging from the roof of the cave, for some reason undisturbed, asleep and enfolded in their leathery wings.

Face what you know. They're making a lot of effort out there, three choppers and five boats and probably more on their way; they want to find the man who killed their diver and they want to find him badly because he got near their missile base and they want to know who he is: they've got a lot of questions for him.

Check logic. Satisfactory. It would be nice to use this half-doped forebrain for cerebration above the Neanderthal level but for the moment it was the best I could do. There wasn't anything difficult to work out: there was a manhunt mounted for me and I must elude it.

But the thing I had to face was that they wouldn't deploy their forces on that scale without extending the search area and when they couldn't find my body dead or alive in the sea they'd start searching the San-Men Island group and the nearest one was this one so they weren't going to have to look far. They'd start with the caves along the south shore and that was where I was now so I'd better get out but if I got out they'd see me.

Nerve-light receding now. Left hand becoming numb because I was holding ft above me against the rock face to stop the bleeding. So it didn't look as if I could do anything and what worried me was that red lamp over the board for Mandarin where they were sitting on their hands looking at the clock and the situation crossplot and not, very carefully, looking at each other when they got up and walked around and swallowed some more cold tea with the scum on and said no sir, every time Egerton came in, no sir, there's nothing new.

At that end of the mission there was a building full of people with talent enough to man an international chess tournament and signals facilities in excess of the requirements of an operational air force base and a codes staff capable of hitting our agents-in-place in Moscow or Pekin with a telephone directory got up as Hymns Ancient and Modern and a permanent hotline direct to the Minister of Defence and at this end of the mission there was a half-doped ferret sitting in a cave and getting slowly covered in bat-shit.

At a rough guess I'd say Mandarin was blown. All I was interested in now was getting out alive and I didn't think I could do it.

Swordfish would arrive in these waters at 01.29 tomorrow and the call of the sea swallow would be heard and go unanswered and the sub would pull out and all Ferris could do then was consider sending in the reserve, but I didn't think there'd be one available because the Bureau didn't have anyone stupid enough to take on a shut-ended penetration job with a seaborne access problem except possibly for O' Malley and for one thing he was in Athens and for another thing he'd get pissed the night before and go in with a sawn-off motor torpedo-boat and they'd see him coming before he'd started the engine and Control knew that: he'd told Ferris to hang a reserve in front of my nose just to make me go into this thing out of sheer stinking pride.

Well, this time it hadn't worked. If they wanted George Henry Tewson off that rig they'd have to use a skyhook.

Aural data becoming significant and demanding analysis.

Increase in the volume of sound: and the only sound of any consequence was that of the helicopter.

I dropped into the water and floated towards the cave mouth and saw the thing was perceptibly closer. Two of the boats were also moving in, one of them heading directly this way with its bow wave appropriate to half speed: they weren't hurrying because they hadn't seen anything and if there was anyone on this group of islands they could head him off and pin him down without any trouble. It would finally depend on manpower and they had unlimited resources.