ADAM HALL - The Mandarin Cypher

I thought the best thing to do was to start getting some information on the cave system on Heng-kang Chou and with that bloody boat heading this way I thought I had less than a couple of minutes to get clear of here. This cave didn't offer anything: it was a cul-de-sac.

Preliminary hyperventilation is dangerous if it's pushed too far and I spent only thirty seconds on it, emphasizing the exhalation and taking nine or ten pints into the lungs before I slid below the surface and followed the undersea cliff.

I couldn't see them.

This cave was no better than the other one. It had a shut end.

I couldn't see them but I could hear them.

They were checking the other cave: two men in a dinghy.

When they'd checked that one, they'd come and check this one.

I waited. There wasn't anything else I could do.

The launch was standing off a short distance. The men on board couldn't see into the cave: they were base and support for the men in the dinghy. There were now two helicopters over the island: I could see one of them banking sharply across the southernmost headland and sloping down from the sky, chop-chop-chop-chop , coming closer.

I sank under the surface and lay prone in the shallows of the cave because even when you know you've finally lost a wheel you go on trying till the very last second: it's in the nature of the beast.

It's always someone else.

Always.

Never you.

Someone like KLJ, Berlin, a long-range rifle shot.

Or Thornton. Hit a mountain head-on with a Petrov X-7, Or North with his brains all over the bathroom.

You never think it's going, one fine day, to be you.

The bloody thing slammed past the cave mouth, chop-chop-chop , the echo slamming back.

I waited five seconds and pushed my face into the air and started breathing again. The bats were going frantic, swarming into the sunshine and back, perfectly understandable, imagine what they must have thought, picking up that bloody great super-bat on their little radars.

It would have been a piece of cake to hyperventilate and go down to fifty feet and come up on the far side of the dinghy and go into the cave after they'd searched it, but they had divers down in the area and I could see their marker buoys on each side of the launch. They were being very thorough.

I suppose Ferris was hanging around one of the islands in Hong Kong waters, Lamma or the Soko group, and from that distance Swordfish would probably notice the aerial activity. Conceivably he'd put a signal out: a lot of choppers up, looks like a search, could be we're blown.

You never think it's going to be you: they're looking particularly shut-faced when you go through Clearance and you know it must be Mario because it's the only one running, or you find you can't reach Parkis and you know his operation must have come unstuck because he told you to be here and he doesn't miss an appointment unless the sky's caved in and this time it's poor old Talbot, or you see two of the escape-crew couriers going into Debriefing as white as a sheet and that's either Fitzroy or Crocker and you don't ask anyone which.

This time they'll know it was you.

The sun was striking into the cave mouth, sending light dappling the rocks. Now that the helicopter had reached the end of its loop a mile away it was quiet in this stretch of water and I could hear voices from the power launch. When I sighted along the surface I saw three of the crew standing in the stern and watching the cave where the dinghy was. The men in the dinghy were armed and carried something heavy and chromed: I'd just seen the shape of it and the flash of the sun when they'd gone in there and it had looked like a portable searchlight taken from the launch.

There weren't any ledges in this cave, in this one where I was trapped. There wasn't a hollow where I could have crouched or a loose rock I could have used as cover. There was nothing.

And nothing I could do when they came. The divers weren't just making a random search of the rockface below water: they were keeping precise station, on watch for anyone swimming out of a cave when the search party went in.

All I could do was wait.

What's wrong with Egerton today?

Who?

Egerton.

Oh, his mission got blown.

Christ. Who was he running?

Dunno. Quiller, I think.

You never think it could be you and then one day you find out you're bloody well wrong and when I heard the splash of their oars I pushed with my feet and floated out of the cave face down so that they could see it wasn't anything worth shooting at.

'I've got it,' I said, 'Redhill Golf Club!'

'It could have been.'

'You were a member there!'

'For a year or two.'

'You used to play at lot with — ' I clicked my fingers, trying to remember the name — 'Harry Foster! Not Foster, no — ' I clicked my fingers again — ' Chester ! That's it — Chester !'

'That's right,' he said.

'Well I'm damned — it really is a small world, isn't it?' I looked around, lowering my voice. 'You know I left there under a bit of a cloud, I suppose?'

'Did you?'

'Well, chucked out, practically. Pro's little wife, remember her? Wow.' I gave a rueful grin. 'Can't help it, y'know — I've just got an eye for the girls.'

He laughed quietly, his teeth very white in contrast to his brick-red face. He was one of those Englishmen who never tan: they just get redder and redder. He looked suddenly serious, the laugh dying abruptly as he peered at me through his thick-lensed glasses.

'You know why I left the club?' he asked.

'No?' I thought quickly and began laughing. 'Oh God, not for the same — '

'No. I got behind with the fees.'

'Is that all? Of course I always paid up right on the dot — the only trouble was the cheques always bounced!'

We laughed again.

'How are you feeling now?'

'Oh,' I said, 'not bad.'

'You've had a rough time of it.'

The girl put the needle in and we watched it.

'It was a shock, that's all. Upset me, I can tell you.'

'I expect it did,' he said. 'What happened, exactly?'

She went on pressing the plunger. I hardly felt it.

'Well,' I told him, trying to think back, 'I must have drifted here, pretty well unconscious. Then I saw this chap coming for me with his knife, and — well, I had to do something. Woke me right up, I can tell you. He was a real bastard , came at me — ' I broke off and looked around at the young nurse and the man standing by the door and the other one sitting on a stool near the sterilizing unit. 'Do these people understand English, old boy?'

'It doesn't matter,' he said.

'Well, I mean I wouldn't like to upset anybody, but quite frankly, after what that — that chap did to me down there I'm pretty annoyed. Wouldn't you be?'

'I certainly would.'

Someone else came in, looking at my hand without touching it, saying something to the nurse in Chinese and then slipping a white gown on and taking some surgical gloves from a sterile packet.

'He's the doctor,' Tewson told me.

'Good afternoon,' I said cheerfully, but the man didn't seem to hear me. I hoped he was good at his job, that was all: my hand was looking like a not-terribly-well-done steak.

'Go on,' said Tewson.

'What? Oh. Well I mean there it was. That Chink came at me with his knife out and it woke me right up, as you can imagine. I'm pretty strong, and I know a thing or two about looking after myself, and — well, I suppose I must have been in a flaming temper, or of course I wouldn't have been so rough with him.' I looked down for a moment, a bit ashamed of myself. 'Poor little sod. But I mean he shouldn't have — ' I broke off and shrugged with my right shoulder, 'Well, it's done now, I suppose.'.