"Quiller Bamboo" - читать интересную книгу автора (HALL ADAM)

Chapter 4: Incense

They circled continuously over the dead.

'And how is London?'

'Cold.'

Here in Bombay the evening was mild, a little humid.

'I miss London.'

We were on a veranda overlooking a courtyard full of frescoes and eroded statuettes and frangipanis, with only a boy in sight, white-robed, watching.

'Not everything, of course,' Sojourner said, 'happens in London. One has to peregrinate.'

They were black against the sky, images cut from black crepe and thrown to the azure heights above the Parsee Towers of Silence on Malabar Hill, where they dived and rose and circled in the lowering light. They worried me.

'One can hardly stay all one's life in one place,' Sojourner said, 'even London.'

I was becoming interested in seeing how long he could keep talking without actually saying anything. But he wasn't just trying to make small talk at our first meeting. He was, I thought, assessing me very carefully, watching for gestures, alert to the tone of voice.

I didn't answer, and he listened to that too.

'You flew straight out?' he asked me.

'Yes.'

'And shall you be flying straight to Hong Kong?'

'I don't know.'

It was the first time he'd looked at me directly. Up to now he'd been like a headmaster questioning a schoolboy, studying his nails, eyes averted, stripping the boy of his identity, listening as if to a liar. But now Sojourner looked up, but couldn't make contact: I was watching the boy down there, slender in the white robe, his eyes jeweled in the shadows as he stared up at the veranda. He hadn't been in the courtyard when I'd arrived, but had come through the crumbling stone archway soon afterward.

Sojourner looked away from me, and down at the boy. 'Door wo ja-"o', Patil. Chalah ja-'o'.'

The boy slipped through the shadows, not glancing back.

'You don't know?' Sojourner asked me. About flying straight to Hong Kong.

'No.'

I looked upward again. They worried me, those bloody birds. In the five towers the dead would be lying on stone slabs in three concentric circles, the men on the outside, then the women, with the children in the middle. They would be picked clean before dark.

'I see,' Sojourner said, and left it at that. The implication was that he would certainly find out, and I wished him luck. You may trust Sojourner. You may trust him completely. Hyde. But I make my own rules in the field.

There wasn't anything to dislike, particularly, about Sojourner, except perhaps for the rather cloying cologne he used, or the slender grace of the boy in the robe. To look at he was unremarkable, a smooth well-shaven face, heavy thick-lensed glasses, decent enough suit, a lawyer, to look at, or a scientist, one of the brilliant younger men searching cleverly through the subatomic particles for the Nobel Prize. And I disliked, of course, his arrogance, because arrogance is a dangerous trait in the netherworld of subterfuge where an inflated ego can prove fatal. But I suppose it was understandable in this man, because Hyde had said the whole operation was his idea in the beginning, and he'd naturally feel he was running the show.

'Ba-ai-ra,' he called, and our server came, moving quietly through the gap in the shutters, smelling faintly of body oils. 'Hum kuche order kerna cha-ha-thi hy.'

'Sahib.'

'What do you think?' Sojourner asked me. 'They do curries well here, of course, or do you prefer something European?'

I said I'd have whatever he was having, and we watched the last of the sated vultures drift away from the hill to the trees below as the light lowered.

Later the server touched the wicks in the brass openwork lamps with the flame of a Bic lighter, and as the darkness was pressed back, Sojourner began talking, wanting to show me, I think, how well versed he was in the world's affairs, perhaps even trying to make me see that I could trust him, because of his openness.

'The idea is not actually to save China,' he said, 'but to save Hong Kong, as you have probably realized. China is very resilient, and if all those people are content to live with a bowl of rice and a bicycle all their lives then it's their right to choose, and they've chosen the form of government they want, in the broader sense. We are committed, nevertheless, you and I and certain others, to bringing about a form of government that only a few thousand of them want, and with the grace of God we shall see that they get it. But that's not the real focus. The real focus is Hong Kong.'

Below the veranda, people moved through the courtyard, mostly in white tunics and saris, their sandals scuffing across the cobblestones. I wasn't worried about the people in the courtyard; I'd checked the environment with the strictest attention on my way here from the airport, and the only danger was if Sojourner hadn't also covered his tracks. I assumed he would have.

'There are of course great opportunities for trade between China and the West. Ten years ago the trade figures were in the region of two billion U.S. dollars, and it's now five times bigger. But what these bright-eyed and bushy-tailed captains of industry don't realize is that a trade boom fifty times that big would come into being given a democratic government in China. But no one had time to squeeze the present government out of Beijing with a quick and effective stranglehold of sanctions and embargoes in '89. It would have been easy enough — the top people had already begun transferring massive amounts of cash into Swiss and Hong Kong bank accounts as soon as the uprising started, and they had a Chinese Air Force transport plane standing by in Beijing with an escort of MiG fighters to get them out of the country. Success for the democracy movement was that close, but big business had its nose stuck fast in the bookkeeping. Is the patatchi all right?'

I said it was very nice.

Some kind of argument had started down there on the far side of the archway; a man in a rumpled white suit was apparently trying to get into the hotel. Sojourner watched for a moment and then lost interest.

'But in Hong Kong it was different,' he said. 'It couldn't apply sanctions, as the West could have done. Moreover, it was told by Beijing that any real signs of support for the democratic movement would deny it the continuance of a capitalist economy after the takeover in 1997. But there were things it could do, by virtue of its unique political and economic position. Politically, it can do pretty well what it likes, since it's responsible to no one — it is not, for instance, a world leader required to set a shining example in everything it does. Economically it has great power and many friends among the giant corporations.' As the twilight bled from the sky the lamps along the veranda held back the dark, but shadows came close, and I could no longer see Sojourner's eyes: his thick horn-rimmed glasses had become a mask, showing only reflections. 'Hong Kong also has enough cold cash,' he said quietly, 'to buy up the People's Republic of China, and that is why we are here now.'

He looked down into the courtyard again. Someone had called a policeman, but the man in the rumpled white suit was still protesting, pointing up at the two-story hotel. I had thoughts again about security. I was also having new thoughts, of course, about Sojourner. He was a great deal more than just a coordinator.

'What's happening?" I asked him.

'The man says his wife is in the hotel, and he wants her to come home. Presumably he means with the money, though he doesn't understand that she has to finish what she's doing before she can be paid. When I say to "buy up" the People's Republic of China,' turning his masked face to watch me again, 'I mean of course to pay for the ousting of the doddering octogenarian clique at present in power and for the installation of a young and enlightened intellectual administration eager to embrace the capitalist way of life.' He was leaning toward me a little now, I believed, though in the shifting shadows it could have been an illusion. But what I was quite certain about, as I went on listening, was that he wasn't talking so freely to me in order to give me information, but in order to celebrate his own ingenuity. 'In ten years from now,' he said softly, 'Beijing will still be the capital of China, and Hong Kong will be its flourishing commercial center, closely comparable, if you will, with Washington and New York.'

He waited until the server had taken away the plates. 'Some fruit? Some preserves?'

'Not for me,' I said.

'Main kuche phal pasen karta hoo,' he told the man, 'shaaid ek a-am.'

A bell had begun tolling from a temple some way off, its bright-edged sound cutting through the softness of the voices in the street beyond the archway, and the scuffing of sandals and shoes.

'It amuses me,' Sojourner said, 'to think that the remarkable changes about to take place in China — if you'll forgive the understatement — will have been initiated by the aforementioned doddering clique of octogenarians at present in power. It was they, after all, who announced m the People's Daily in 1989 that not engaging in activities to overthrow the Chinese government was a precondition for allowing Hong Kong to retain its capitalist system following its adoption. Warning enough, don't you think? Mr Szeto Wah put it rather well when he said, "The force of the wind tests the strength of the grass." That was when it happened. That was when Hong Kong realized that in a few years from now it could become either an impoverished little island with the rubble of abandoned commerce littering the streets, or the economic hub of a new world power. You must have realized this yourself; you saw the papers like everyone else, and read between the lines. It was there for all to see, but no one did anything. Now we are to do something, and within a few days. You must surely feel… excited to be playing a part in all this.'

'I do my job,' I said.

He dipped a glance across the courtyard. 'You do your job. Well, that's all we ask of you.' Then he was watching me again in the gloom. 'And what have you been told, specifically, to do?"

'I've been told, specifically, to do what you require of me.'

He let it go, but it worried me. If he'd had any experience in intelligence he would have known he shouldn't ask me questions like that. The only confidence I had in this man was based on Hyde's telling me I could trust him. It wasn't enough.

In a moment Sojourner said, 'When the time is right, you will be put into contact with a certain general of the People's Liberation Army, through his aides. This general was one of those who refused to have his troops fire on the civilian population — one of the few, in fact, who recognize that they are members of the People's Army. Others of like mind were shot for refusing to attack the students in 1989, and three, to my certain knowledge, preempted retribution by taking their own lives when they refused orders to use arms against unarmed civilians. It was my good fortune,' he said carefully, 'to have been in personal touch with our particular general a little time before the uprising of last week. Sensing the color of his inclinations, I made one or two trips to Hong Kong, where some of my friends have access to the top executive officers of the big American, Japanese, and Hong Kong corporations. Then I went back to the general. Have you ever played chess, by any chance?'

'Do it all the time.'

'Then you'll understand my gratification that I was fortuitously in the right place on the board, at the right time, with the right people.'

'And were offered the right money.'

The light flashed across his glasses as he looked down quickly, interlacing his fingers and putting his hands palm down onto the tablecoth. It had sounded rude, I suppose, but I wanted to know where this man's loyalties lay. It was important, because if money were his only incentive it could be dangerous, and I'd have to signal London and tell them I was dropping the mission if they couldn't find another coordinator. I didn't expect Sojourner to be an altruist, but he'd have to show at least a degree of personal commitment to the Bureau, and to me. Mercenaries can change sides at the drop of a doubloon.

In a moment he raised his head. 'Are you looking for a cut?'

'Not really.'

'You don't imagine I'm sticking my neck out for the sake of a few million Chinese peasants, I hope.'

I noticed he'd forgotten his studied manner of speech, and knew it was his guard coming down. This too was worrying: I hadn't said much to provoke him. How would he stand up to Chinese intelligence, if they asked any questions?

'The price you put on your services,' I told him, 'doesn't concern me, though I imagine it's in the region of ten or twenty million U.S. dollars, which is very nice. What concerns me is whether you might at some time sell yourself to the opposite camp for a higher figure and leave me swinging in the wind.'

'They couldn't possibly afford it,' he said. I think it was meant to be a joke. 'But surely your desk officer told you I could be trusted?'

'He may have.'

He turned his head, and I saw that the boy Patil had come back into the courtyard. He was leaning against the wall under a lamp, watching the veranda.

'So what are you going to do about it?' Sojourner asked me.

'Take a few precautions.'

In a moment, 'Precautions.'

'Don't worry, you won't notice them.'

'I've often considered,' leaning back now, needing more distance, 'that you people think rather — oh, I don't know — rather boyishly. Cloaks and daggers and so on.'

'Have you now.'

'But I'd expected you to be like this. It doesn't disturb me.'

'Jolly good show. But it disturbs me a bit that you might have been followed here tonight, and sitting in your company I might be at risk, and that Patil down there might be working as an informer. Boyish, I know, but it happens. I can show you the scars.'

He didn't answer for a while, and as I sat there among the restless shadows and the oil lamps flickered to the movement of the moist night air I felt a sense of foreboding. Beyond the courtyard the night pressed down across the city, the few visible stars half lost in the haze. Voices out there in the street sounded hushed now, and I thought I heard the fluting of a snake charmer near the marketplace. The smell of incense came from the dining room through the doors behind us, sweet and heavy and oppressive. It wasn't a case of nerves, this: I was out of London and halfway to the field, and the jitters had gone. I was reacting on a level of the psyche infinitely more sophisticated than the nerves, to vibrations in the moist and perfumed night, a trembling of the spirit's gossamer web.

'I think,' Sojourner said at last, 'that you exaggerate the circumstances. For someone as experienced as I'm told you are, this isn't a very dangerous operation.' Clasping his hands, spreading the fingers, 'No one is likely to get killed.'

'Ambassador Qiao probably thought the same.'

He looked down again, not knowing he didn't have to, not knowing I couldn't see his eyes behind the glasses. 'In all probability,' he said, 'the poor chap was marked down by Beijing.' Looking up at me suddenly, 'He had a brother, you know, mixed up in the event of last week, and they arrested him. Talked too much, wouldn't you say, about Qiao?'

Instant chill.

The poor chap had been totally false, totally out of character, and he'd looked up like that so suddenly, almost jerking his head as he realized he'd have to face me if it were to ring true, this thing about Qiao; and when he threw in the placatory wouldn't you say? I didn't have any doubts left, none at all. I've lied myself so often in the field, lied to save my life, and I know how difficult it is to do well.

And there was the other thing, when we'd first met this evening — How is London?… I miss London… Not everything happens, of course, in London. One has to peregrinate…

'I'm sure you're right,' I said.

Signal to Control: I believe Sojourner was in London and either killed Ambassador Qiao or arranged it.

'And after all,' he was saying, 'it suits our purpose rather well, don't you feel? One grieves, of course, but what if Qiao had been got at by the people on his staff at the embassy, and grilled? We wouldn't have had any operation left.'

I said, 'That's true.'

He seemed satisfied, and looked away again, down into the courtyard, and gave a slight nod. The boy in the white robe came away from the wall and into the hotel.

'The purpose of our meeting,' Sojourner said in a moment, 'was to become acquainted.' He was back to his mannered speech patterns, feeling relieved, reassured that his lies about Qiao's death had appeared to stand up. 'And I think we've accomplished that.' He pulled a folded sheet of paper from his pocket and straightened it out. 'You've had your instructions from your desk officer and I've told you that you'll be in contact eventually with «our» general through his aides. They'll tell you precisely when we need Dr Xingyu flown back into Beijing, and that will be your responsibility. It might help you to know that we don't anticipate any major problem, once the general's task force has moved into the Great Hall of the People and placed the Chinese leader under restraint. That will be arranged to take place at a time when he is due to appear on nationwide television in order to vilify the intellectuals for their insurrection last week. Instead of doing that, he will be obliged to make the following brief announcement, at gunpoint — though the viewers will not of course see the gun.' He tilted the sheet of paper to catch the light.' "A military detachment has this evening moved into Tiananmen Square to establish control there while certain negotiations proceed between my government and a spokesmen for those intellectuals seeking reform. I ask the people to remain calm. There must be no demonstrations and no disorder in the streets that might cause bloodshed. You will be informed as the situation becomes clarified. Meanwhile I will repeat: there must be no provocation offered the security forces. Calm must prevail."'

He folded the paper and put it away. 'Do you have any questions?'

'It's going to need careful timing.'

'Very careful timing, yes. We need senior leader Deng Xiaoping, Premier Li Peng, and Communist Party chief Jiang Zemin together in the Great Hall of the People at the same time as our general moves his tanks into the square and Dr Xingyu Baibing is brought forward under close protective escort to take over from Deng Xiaoping in front of the TV cameras. But I envision no difficulty. It's a matter of efficient coordination.'

'Do I fly Xingyu into Beijing?' I'd been briefed on this but I wanted Sojourner to think I didn't know. I wanted him to think I knew as little as possible.

'No. You'll hand him over to a special military escort that will land at whatever location you designate to pick him up. He'll be met at Beijing by a stronger contingent, which will escort him to the Great Hall of the People.'

'Understood.'

I asked him a few more questions and then he put some notes on the bill the server had left and we got up and went through the main dining room to the hall.

'Just a word,' Sojourner said, and lowered his voice. 'You'll only make things difficult for yourself if you don't decide to trust me. Your people have checked me out quite thoroughly, as you must know. I wish you a pleasant night.'

It was not quite eleven and I took a turn in the courtyard for a while and then went upstairs to my room. I had the key in the door when the screams came and I took the passage at a run and heard where they were coming from and found the door locked and broke it open and saw Sojourner writhing on the floor half erect and the naked and terrified boy flattened against the wall and on the bed the cobra with its black hood spread.