ADAM HALL - The Mandarin Cypher

Oh Christ don't you start.

Very well. In the morning you will be escorted to Pekin.

Down the long narrowing tunnel.

The silhouette left the window and I got off the bunk again and picked up the twist of newspaper and lit the end and held it to the air extractor. The grille was getting sooty: this was the fourth time and there didn't seem to be much reaction. I shut my eyes, standing there with my arm raised. My eyes wouldn't stand the light of the flame.

The night was quiet. I listened but the night was quiet.

Don't you face it, hope in hell.

The heat of the flame on my fingers.

I blew it out but didn't take it away till the last of the smoke was drawn through the grille. There was another twist of paper ready because I'd found I could light two within the five-minute period when the guard was absent. I lit the second one and the light of the flame pushed into my skull through the eye-sockets. I could smell the paintwork burning around the grille.

O Jesus Christ you're in a locked room and the guard's armed and there are four others out there, at least four others, you saw them last night and you'd get fifty yards in the sea if the drop didn't kill you, fifty yards before they started firing and you wouldn't even float because of all the lead so what are you doing here lighting bits of bloody paper off your rocker or something?

Heat on my fingers.

Sleep.

Bells.

Quite loud bells, don't you go to sleep on your feet, I'm warning you. Bit of action to wake you up. Whole place full of bells, more noise out there than a fleet of fire engines. They must have smelt smoke somewhere.

I hadn't really expected it to work and it took a second or two to get the brain-think going again. The ball of newspaper was in the corner with the cheap cardtable over it, three-ply, go up a treat.

I lit the newspaper.

There were voices outside. A lot of shouting. Time I went.

It wasn't really a refinement. The thing had to be credible and if I'd just started a fire in here and banged on the door they'd see what I was doing, trying to get out. But if the alarm system went off they'd take it seriously. So I broke the window and shouted and went to the door and started hammering and the place filled up with smoke and the heat was on my back and I began wondering if he'd get here and open up before the fumes knocked me out. I didn't want to try the window till there was nothing else for it, because it was so bloody narrow that I might get stuck halfway and the whole thing would turn into a barbecue.

Eyes running and the fumes burning in my throat, table was crackling, some sparks flying off. I kept on hammering but I couldn't shout any more, couldn't breathe. Everything red behind me now and roaring.

Then the door fell down and I went on top of it and the flames came blowing in the air rush as he got me by the wrists and dragged me across the deck. Hands beating at my back, slapping my shoulders, got me there I suppose, the flames had got me there. Bells.

Bells and feet running and the clang of a fire bucket Shouting.

They dropped me against the bulkhead below the derrick and I let my head sag. One of them had got the hose from the nearest point and they were in business now and I watched them but you haven't got time to watch them, couldn't see too well because eyes streaming and everything blurred but come on for Christ sake come on !

They were forming a group, watching the blaze, some of them bringing another hose, and I crawled as far as the iron ladder and got on my feet and knew I couldn't do it and then did it, still there where I'd left it but sweet Jesus be careful, be careful .

Thing weighed a ton.

One of them was coming now and when he saw I was on my feet he pulled his gun and I brought my arms up high, lifting the thing above my head, ready to throw it.

He stopped.

And the man behind him stopped.

The man behind him was naked to the waist, just out of bed.

He was my interrogator.

'Tell the guard,' I said, 'to drop his gun.'

He stood still, staring above my head.

The thing weighed a ton but only because I was so bloody tired. Normally it wouldn't take a lot of lifting, a lot of holding up.

'Tell him — ' but my throat was too sore.

So I brought it forward suddenly and he made a shrill sound to the guard and repeated it and the guard dropped his gun. I raised my arms again to make it easier to hold there. The big deck lamp was behind me and I could see the shadow, enormous, with the horns sticking out from its sphere. They'd be gleaming quietly in the light above my head, copper coloured, copper red. I couldn't see them.

The shouting had died away.

It sounded as if they'd got the fire under control: there wasn't much in there that'd burn. The walls and ceiling and floor were iron. This whole thing was iron. The deck here was iron, and the gun had made a dull ringing when it fell. Even if I couldn't make it, even if it got too heavy, even if my legs just crumpled and I fell forward, the thing would detonate on the iron deck.

He knew that. And he didn't want to die.

'Bring Colonel T'ang here,' I told him. ' No! ' as he moved. 'I want him brought here. Send someone. And be quick because I don't know how long I can hold this.'

He didn't do anything right away so I let one leg buckle at the knee and the big round shadow moved on the deck, the horns swinging. He spoke sharply to the guard and the guard began running.

I'd asked Tewson who was in charge of the rig. T'ang, he'd told me. I wanted to know about him. Army colonel, honorary rank, actually a physicist, their top missile man, big in Pekin. He'd do. That was what had changed my mind. I'd unscrewed this thing from the turnbuckle and brought it up here last night in case I could use it for a last-ditch get-out, chuck it at the fuel tanks and drop overboard while everyone was busy, swim to the island and make the rendezvous. But Tewson might not have been game, didn't look like a swimmer.

With a man like T'ang on the hook we could do it with a bit more style provided I didn't drop this bloody mine and someone didn't shoot me.

Back on fire. I could swear those bastards hadn't got the flames out. They were just standing there gawping, stink of wet charred bedclothes coming out of the cabin, water all over the place. I could hear the rest of the crew coming on deck, some of them asking what was going on, three fast shots banging into the girders behind me and a shrill voice but not in time to stop the fourth one and it bit into my ribs and I staggered and the voice of the interrogator shrilled out again and they started dropping their guns where they stood.

Then he was staring above me again.

I think he was praying.

Been a shock and I brought the mine down, holding it against my chest like a medicine ball, ready to throw, I suppose some stupid prick had panicked, well, this wasn't the most stable situation, anything could happen.

' Listen ,' I said, ' get T'ang here! '

Could feel the blood under my tunic, warm on the skin. No particular pain and nothing coming into my mouth, smashed a rib with any luck but oh Jesus Christ I was tired, I was tired.

The Colonel was a short man, very straight-backed, epaulettes on his white tunic, pyjama pants, comic opera if it hadn't been so bloody deadly, I said what I wanted him to do.

He looked at me for a long time.

It was incredibly quiet. Thirty or forty men on deck in a semi-circle and the big lamp throwing shadows.

The bells had stopped and the hydrants were shut off and all I could hear was someone whispering and someone telling him to shut up.

Colonel T'ang stood in front of me.

He hadn't said anything yet.