James clavell

Kathy had been at his funeral and Ian had been there—in uniform, come home on leave from Chungking where he had been attached to Chiang Kai-shek's air force after he was shot down and grounded. She had wept on Ian's shoulder, wept for Lechie and wept for Scotty and wept for her Johnny. She was a widow then. Flight Lieutenant John Selkirk, DFC, another happy god of war, inviolate, invincible, had been blown out of the sky, torched out of the sky, the debris burning on the way to earth.

Johnny had had no funeral. There was nothing to bury. Like Lechie. Just a telegram came. One for each of them.

Oh Johnny my darling my darling my darling...

"What an awful waste, Ian dear, all of them. And for what?"

"I don't know, little Kathy," he said, still holding her. "I don't know. And I don't know why I made it and why they didn't."

"Oh I'm ever so glad you did!" She gave him a little hug and gathered herself. Somehow she put away her sadness for all of them. Then she dried her tears, took out a small mirror and looked at herself. "God, I look a mess! Sorry." His private bathroom was concealed behind a bookcase and she went there and repaired her makeup.

When she came back he was still staring out of the window. "Andrew's out of the office at the moment but the moment he comes back I'll tell him," he said.

"Oh no dear, that's my job. I must do that. I must. That's only fair." She smiled up at him and touched him. "I love you, Ian."

"I love you, Kathy."

Everything had been tagged.

Roger Crosse was alone in the room and he stared at the objects, fascinated. He picked up a piece of the newspaper. Each had been carefully smoothed out, most were tagged with a date and the name of the Chinese newspaper it had come from. He turned it over, seeking hidden information, a hidden clue, something that might have been missed. Finding nothing, he put it back neatly and leaned on his hands, lost in thought.

Alan Medford Grant's report was also on his desk, near the intercom. It was very quiet in the room. Small windows overlooked Wanchai and part of the harbour toward Glessing's Point.

His phone jangled. "Yes?"

"Mr. Rosemont, CIA, and Mr. Langan, FBI, sir."

"Good." Roger Crosse replaced his phone. He unlocked his top desk drawer and carefully put the AMG file on top of the decoded telex and relocked it. The middle drawer contained a high-quality tape recorder. He checked it and touched a hidden switch. Silently the reels began to turn. The intercom on his desk contained a powerful microphone. Satisfied, he relocked this drawer. Another hidden desk switch slid a bolt open on the door soundlessly. He got up and opened the door.

"Hello, you two, please come in," he said affably. He closed the door behind the two Americans and shook hands with them. Unnoticed, he slid the bolt home again. "Take a seat. Tea?"

"No thanks," the CIA man said. "What can I do for you?"

Both men were carrying manila envelopes. Rosemont opened his and took out a sheaf of good-quality eight-by-ten photos, clipped into two sections. "Here," he said, passing over the top section. They were various shots of Voranski running across the wharf, on the streets of Kowloon, getting into and out of taxis, phoning, and many more of his Chinese assassins. One photograph showed the two Chinese leaving the phone booth with a clear glimpse of the crumpled body in the background.

Only Crosse's superb discipline kept him from showing astonishment, then blinding rage. "Good, very good," he said gently, putting them on the desk, very conscious of the ones Rosemont had retained in his hand. "So?"

Rosemont and Ed Langan frowned. "You were tailing him too?"

"Of course," Crosse said, lying with his marvellous sincerity. "My dear fellow, this is Hong Kong. But I do wish you'd let us do our job and not interfere."

"Rog, we, er, we don't want to interfere, just want to backstop you."

"Perhaps we don't need backstopping." There was a sharpness to his voice now.

"Sure." Rosemont took out a cigarette and lit it. He was tall and thin with grey crew-cut hair and good features. His hands were strong, like all of him. "We know where the two killers're holed up. We think we know," he said. "One of our guys thinks he's pegged them."

"How many men have you got watching the ship?"

"Ten. Our guys didn't notice any of yours tailing this one. The diversion almost spooked us too."

"Very dicey," Crosse said agreeably, wondering what diversion. "Our guys never got to go through his pockets—we know he made two calls from the booth...." Rosemont noted Crosse's eyes narrow slightly. That's curious, he thought. Crosse didn't know that. If he doesn't know that, maybe his operators weren't tailing the target either. Maybe he's lying and the Commie was loose in Hong Kong until he was knifed. "We radioed a mug shot back home—we'll get a call back fast. Who was he?"

"His papers said, Igor Voranski, seaman first class, Soviet merchant marine."

"You have a file on him, Rog?"

"It's rather unusual for you two to call together, isn't it? I mean, in the movies, we're always led to believe the FBI and CIA are always at odds."

Ed Langan smiled. "Sure we are—like you and MI-5—like the KGB, GRU and fifty other Soviet operations. But sometimes our cases cross—we're internal U.S., Stan's external, but we're both out for the same thing: security. We thought... we're asking if we could all cooperate. This could be a big one, and we're... Stan and I're out of our depth."

"That's right," Rosemont said, not believing it.

"All right," Crosse said, needing their information. "But you first."

Rosemont sighed. "Okay, Rog. We've had a buzz for some time there's something hotting up in Hong Kong—we don't know what—but it sure as hell's got tie-ins to the States. I figure the AMG file's the link. Lookit: take Banastasio—he's Mafia. Big-time. Narcotics, the lot. Now take Bartlett and the guns. Guns—"

"Is Bartlett tied into Banastasio?"

"We're not sure. We're checking. We are sure the guns were put aboard in L. A.—Los Angeles—where the airplane's based. Guns! Guns, narcotics and our growing interest in Vietnam. Where do narcotics come from? The Golden Triangle. Vietnam, Laos and the Yunnan Province of China. Now we're into Vietnam and—"

"Yes, and you're ill-advised to be there, old chum—I've pointed that out fifty times."

"We don't make policy, Rog, any more than you do. Next: Our nuclear carrier's here and the goddamn Sovetsky Ivanov arrives last night. That's too convenient, maybe the leak came from here. Then Ed tips you off and we get AMG's wild-assed letters from London and now there's Sevrin! Turns out the KGB've plants all over Asia and you've a high-placed hostile'somewheres."

"That's not yet proved."

"Right. But I know about AMG. He's nobody's fool. If he says Sevrin's in place and you've a mole, you've a mole. Sure we've got hostiles in the CIA too, so've the KGB. I'm sure Ed has in the FBI—"

"That's doubtful," Ed Langan interrupted sharply. "Our guys are handpicked and trained. You get your firemen from all over."

"Sure," Rosemont said, then added to Crosse, "Back to narcotics. Red China's our big enemy and—"

"Again, you're wrong, Stanley. The PRC's not the big enemy anywhere. Russia is."

"China's Commie. Commies're the enemy. Now, it'd be real smart to flood the States with cheap narcotics and Red China... okay the People's Republic of China can open the dam gates."

"But they haven't. Our Narcotics Branch's the best in Asia—they've never come up with anything to support your misguided official theory that they're behind the trade. Nothing. The PRC are as anti-drug traffic as the rest of us."

"Have it your way," Rosemont said. "Rog, you got a file on this agent? He's KGB, isn't he?"

Crosse lit a cigarette. "Voranski was here last year. That time he went under the cover name of Sergei Kudryov, again seaman first class, again off the same ship—they're not very inventive, are they?" Neither of the two men smiled. "His real name's Major Yuri Bakyan, First Directorate, KGB, Department 6."

Rosemont sighed heavily.

The FBI man glanced at him. "Then you're right. It all ties in."

"Maybe." The tall man thought a moment. "Rog, what about his contacts from last year?"

"He acted like a tourist, staying at the Nine Dragons in Kowloon...."

"That's in AMG's report, that hotel's mentioned," Langan said.

"Yes. We've been covering it for a year or so. We've found nothing. Bakyan—Voranski—did ordinary tourist activities. We had him on twenty-four-hour surveillance. He stayed a couple of weeks, then, just before the ship sailed, sneaked back aboard."

"Girl friend?"

"No. Not a regular one. He used to hang out at the Good Luck Dance Hall in Wanchai. Quite a cocksman, apparently, but he asked no questions and met no one out of the ordinary."

"He ever visit Sinclair Towers?"

"No."

"Pity," Langan said, "that'd've been dandy. Tsu-yan's got a place there. Tsu-yan knows Banastasio, John Chen knows Banastasio, and we're back to guns, narcotics, AMG and Sevrin."

"No. He got to Taipei safely, then vanished."

"You think he's holed up there?"

"I would imagine so," Crosse said. But inside he believed him dead, already eliminated by Nationalist, Communist, Mafia or triad. I wonder if he could have been a double agent—or the supreme devil of all intelligence services, a triple agent?

"You'll find him—or we will—or the Taiwan boys will."

"Roger, did Voranski lead you anywhere?" Langan asked.

"No. Nowhere, even though we've had tabs on him for years. He's been attached to the Soviet Trade Commission in Bangkok, he spent time in Hanoi, and Seoul, but no covert activities we know of. Once the cheeky bugger even applied for a British passport and almost got one. Luckily our fellows vet all applications and spotted flaws in his cover. I'm sorry he's dead—you know how hard it is to identify nasties. Waste of a lot of time and effort." Crosse paused and lit a cigarette. "His major's rank is quite senior which suggests something very smelly. Perhaps he was just another of their specials who was ordered to cruise Asia and get into deep cover for twenty or thirty years."

"Those bastards have had their game plan set for so long it stinks!" Rosemont sighed. "What're you going to do with the corpse?"

Crosse smiled. "I got one of my Russian-speaking fellows to call the captain of the ship—Gregor Suslev. He's a Party member, of course, but fairly harmless. Has a sporadic girl friend with a flat in Mong Kok—a bar girl who gets a modest allowance from him and entertains him when he's here. He goes to the races, theatre, Macao gambling a couple of times, speaks good English. Suslev's under surveillance. I don't want any of your hotshots ponging on one of our known hostiles."

"So Suslev's regular here then?"

"Yes, he's been plying these waters for years, based out of Vladivostok—he's an ex-submarine commander by the way. He wanders around the fringe here, mostly under the weather."

"What do you mean?"

"Drunk, but not badly so. Cavorts with a few of our British pinkos like Sam and Molly Finn."

"The ones who're always writing letters to the papers?"

"Yes. They're more of a nuisance than a security risk. Anyway, under instructions, my Russian-speaking fellow told Captain Suslev we were frightfully sorry but it seemed that one of his seamen had had a heart attack in a phone booth at Golden Ferry Terminal. Suslev was suitably shocked and quite reasonable. In Voranski's pocket there 'happened' to be an accurate, verbatim report of the assassin's phone conversation. We put it in Russian as a further sign of our displeasure. They're all professionals aboard that ship, and sophisticated enough to know we don't remove their agents without very great cause and provocation. They know we just watch the ones we know about and, if we're really very irritated, we deport them." Crosse looked across at Rosemont, his eyes hard though his voice stayed matter-of-fact. "We find our methods more effective than the knife, garrotte, poison or bullet."

The CIA man nodded. "But who would want to kill him?"

Crosse glanced at the photos again. He did not recognise the two Chinese, but their faces were clear and the body in the background unbelievable evidence. "We'll find them. Whoever they are. The one who phoned our police station claimed they were 14K. But he only spoke Shanghainese with a Ningpo dialect, so that's unlikely. Probably he was a triad of some sort. He could be Green Pang. He was certainly a trained professional—the knife was used perfectly, with great precision—one moment alive, the next dead and no sound. Could be one of your CIA's trainees in Chiang Kai-shek's intelligence agency. Or perhaps the Korean CIA, more of your trainees—they're anti-Soviet too, aren't they? Possibly PRC agents, but that's improbable. Their agents don't usually go in for quai loh murder, and certainly not in Hong Kong."

Rosemont nodded and let the censure pass. He gave Crosse the remaining photos, wanting the Englishman's cooperation and needing it. "These're shots of the house they went into. And the street sign. Our guy couldn't read characters but it translates, 'Street of the First Season, Number 14.' It's a rotten little alley in back of the bus depot in North Point."

Crosse began to examine them with equal care. Rosemont glanced at his watch, then got up and went to the single window that faced part of the harbour. "Look!" he said proudly.

The other two went over to him. The great nuclear carrier was just rounding North Point heading for the navy yard, Hong Kong side. She was dressed overall, all her obligatory flags stiff in the breeze, crowds of white-clothed sailors on her vast deck, with neat lines of her vicious fighter jet aeroplanes. Almost 84,000 tons. No smokestack, just a vast, ominous bridge complex, with an eleven-hundred-foot angled runway that could retrieve and launch jets simultaneously. The first of a generation.

"That's some ship," Crosse said enviously. This was the first time the colossus had entered Hong Kong since her commissioning in 1960. "Pretty," he said, hating the fact she was American and not British. "What's her top speed?"

"I don't know—that's classified along with most everything else." Rosemont turned to watch him. "Can't you send that goddamn Soviet spy ship to hell out of port?"

"Yes, and we could blow it up, but that would be equally foolish. Stanley, relax, you have to be a little civilised about these things. Repairing their ships—and some of them really do need it—is a good source of revenue, and intelligence, and they pay their bills promptly. Our ways have been tried and tested over the years."

Yes, Rosemont was thinking without rancour, but your ways don't work anymore. The British Empire's no more, the British raj no more and we've a different enemy now, smarter rougher dedicated totalitarian fanatic, with no Queensberry rules and a worldwide plan that's lavishly funded by whatever it takes. You British've no dough now, no clout, no navy, no army, no air force, and your goddamn government's filled with socialist and enemy pus, and we think they sold you out. You've been screwed from within, your security's the pits from Klaus Fuchs and Philby on down. Jesus, we won both goddamn wars for you, paid for most of it and both times you've screwed up the peace. And if it wasn't for our Strategic Air Command, our missiles, our nuclear strike force, our navy, our army, our air force our taxpayers our dough, you'd all be dead or in goddamn Siberia. Meanwhile, like it or not I got to deal with you. We need Hong Kong as a window and right now your cops to guard the carrier.

"Rog, thanks for the extra men," he said. "We sure appreciate it."

"We wouldn't want any trouble while she's here either. Pretty ship. I envy you having her."

"Her captain'll have the ship and crew under tight wraps—the shore parties'll all be briefed, and warned, and we'll cooperate a hundred percent."

"I'll see you get a copy of the list of bars I've suggested your sailors stay out of—some're known Communist hangouts, and some are frequented by our lads off H. M. S. Dart." Crosse smiled. "There'll still be the odd brawl."

"Sure. Rog, this Voranski killing's too much of a coincidence. Can I send a Shanghai speaker to assist the interrogation?"

"I'll let you know if we need help."

"Can we have our copies of the tai-pan's other AMG reports now? Then we can get out of your hair."

Crosse stared back at him twisting uneasily, even though he was prepared for the question. "I'll have to get approval from Whitehall."

Rosemont was surprised. "Our top man in England's been on to your Great White Father and it's approved. You should have had it an hour ago."

"Oh?"

"Say again?"

"Kiernan's call. The second call he made."

"I don't follow you."

Rosemont explained.

Crosse frowned. "My people didn't tell me about that. Nor did Dunross. Now why should Dunross lie—or avoid telling me that?" He related to them exactly what Dunross had told him. "There was no reason for him to hide that, was there?"

"No. All right, Rog: Is the tai-pan kosher?"

Crosse laughed. "If you mean is he a one hundred percent British Royalist freebooter whose allegiance is to his House, himself and the Queen—not necessarily in that order—the answer's an emphatic yes."

"Then if we can have our copies now, Rog, we'll be on our way."

"When I've got Whitehall's approval."

"If you'll check your decoding room—it's a Priority l-4a. It says to let us have copies on receipt." l-4a's were very rare. They called for immediate clearance and immediate action.

Crosse hesitated, wanting to avoid the trap he was in. He dared not tell them he did not yet have possession of the AMG reports. He picked up the phone and dialled. "This is Mr. Crosse. Is their anything for me from Source? A l-4a?"

"No sir. Other than the one we sent up an hour ago—that you signed for," the SI woman said.

"Thank you." Crosse put the phone down. "Nothing yet," he said.

"Shit," Rosemont muttered, then added, "They swore they'd already beamed it out and you'd have it before we got here. It's got to be here any second. If you don't mind we'll wait."

"I've an appointment in Central shortly. Perhaps later this evening?"

Both men shook their heads. Langan said, "We'll wait. We've been ordered to send 'em back instantly by hand with a twenty-four-hour guard. An army transport's due now at Kai Tak to carry the courier—we can't even copy them here."

"Aren't you overreacting?"

"You could answer that. What's in them?"

Crosse toyed with his lighter. It had Cambridge University emblazoned on it. He had owned it since his undergraduate days. "Is it true what AMG said about the CIA and the Mafia?"

Rosemont stared back at him. "I don't know. You guys used all sort of crooks during World War Two. We learned from you to take advantage of what we've got—that was your first rule. Besides," Rosemont added with utter conviction, "this war's our war and whatever it takes we're going to win."

"Yes, yes we must," Langan echoed, equally sure. "Because if we lose this one, the whole world's gone and we'll never get another chance."

On the closed-in bridge of the Sovetsky Ivanov three men had binoculars trained on the nuclear carrier. One of the men was a civilian and he wore a throat mike that fed into a tape recorder. He was giving an expert, technical running commentary of what he saw. From time to time the other two would add a comment. Both wore light naval uniform. One was Captain Gregor Suslev, the other his first officer.

The carrier was coming up the roads nicely, tugs in attendance, but no tug ropes. Ferries and freighters tooted a jaunty welcome. A marine band played on her aft deck. White-clad sailors waved at passing ships. The day was very humid and the afternoon sun cast long shadows.

"The captain's expert," the first officer said. "Yes. But with all that radar even a child could handle her," Captain Suslev replied. He was a heavy-shouldered, bearded man, his Slavic brown eyes deepset in a friendly face. "Those sweepers aloft look like the new GEs for very long-range radar. Are they, Vassili?"

The technical expert broke off his transmission momentarily. "Yes, Comrade Captain. But look aft! They've four F5 interceptors parked on the right flight deck."

Suslev whistled tonelessly. "They're not supposed to be in service till next year."

"No," the civilian said.

"Report that separately as soon as she docks. That news alone pays for our voyage."

"Yes."

"Let's hope so. Then Voranski's death won't be so expensive."

"The Americans are fools to bring her here—don't they know every agent in Asia'll be tempted by her?"

"It's lucky for us they are. It makes our job so much easier." Once more Suslev concentrated on the F5's that looked like soldier hornets among other hornets.

Around him the bridge was massed with advanced surveillance equipment. One radar was sweeping the harbour. A grey-haired impassive sailor watched the screen, the carrier a large clear blip among the myriad of blips.

Suslev's binoculars moved to the carrier's ominous bridge complex, then wandered the length of the ship. In spite of himself he shivered at her size and power. "They say she's never refuelled—not since she was launched in 1960." Behind him the door to the radio room that adjoined the bridge opened and a radio operator came up to him and saluted, offering the cable. "Urgent from Centre, Comrade Captain."

Suslev took the cable and signed for it. It was a meaningless jumble of words. A last look at the carrier and he let the binoculars rest on his chest and strode off the Bridge. His sea cabin was just aft on the same deck. The door was guarded, like both entrances to the bridge.

He relocked his cabin door behind him and opened the small, concealed safe. His cipher book was secreted in a false wall. He sat at his desk. Quickly he decoded the message. He read it carefully, then stared into space for a moment.

He read it a second time, then replaced the cipher book, closed the safe and burned the original of the cable in an ashtray. He picked up his phone. "Bridge? Send Comrade Metkin to my cabin!" While he waited he stood by the porthole lost in thought. His cabin was untidy. Photographs of a heavyset woman, smiling self-consciously, were on his desk in a frame. Another of a good-looking youth in naval uniform, and a girl in her teens. Books, a tennis racket and a newspaper on the half-made bunk.

A knock. He unlocked the door. The sailor who had been staring at the radar screen stood there.