James clavell

Suslev was standing in the sleazy Kowloon apartment that was one of Arthur's safe houses, his heart still thumping from the suddenness of the call. There was a damp, musky, soiled smell of ancient cooking in the room and he stared down at the phone, furious with Jacques deVille. Stupid motherless turd. Jacques is becoming a liability. Tonight I'll tell Arthur what should be done with him. The sooner the better! Yes, and the sooner you calm down yourself the better, he cautioned himself. Angry people make mistakes. Put away your anger!

With an effort, he did just that and went out onto the dim, paint-peeled landing, locking the door behind him. Another key unlocked Ginny Fu's door next to his.

"You want vodka?" she asked with her saucy smile.

"Yes." He grinned back, pleased to look at her. She was sitting cross-legged on the old sofa and wore only a smile. They had been kissing when his phone had rung the first time. There were two phones in her apartment. Hers and the other one, the secret one in the cupboard that only he used and answered. Arthur had told him it was safe, bootlegged, unlisted and impossible to bug. Even so, Suslev only used the other apartment and its phone for emergencies.

Matyeryebyets, Jacques, he thought, still edgy from the sudden shrilling of his private phone.
"Drink, tovarich," Ginny said, offering the glass. "Then drink me, heya?"

He grinned back, took the vodka and ran an appreciative hand over her cute little rump. "Ginny, golubushka, you're a good girl."

"You bet! I best girl for you." She reached up and fondled his earlobe. "We jig-jig heya?"

"Why not?" He drank the fiery liquid sparingly, wanting it to last. Her tiny nimble fingers were undoing his shirt. He stopped her for a moment and kissed her, she welcoming his kiss and returning it equally. "Wait till clothes off, heya?" she chuckled.

"Next week I go, eh?" he said, holding her in his bear hug. "How about you coming too, eh? The holiday I've always promised you?"

"Oh? Oh truly?" Her smile was immense. "Wen? Wen? You no tease?"

"You can come with me. We'll stop in Manila, our first stop's Manila, then north and back here in a month."

"Oh a real month... oh Gregy!" She hugged him with all her might. "I make best ship's captain girl all China!"

"Yes, yes you will."

"Wen go... wen we go?"

"Next week. I'll tell you when."

"Good. Tomorrow I go get passport th—"

"No, no passport, Ginny. They'll never give it to you. Those viblyadoks'll stop you. They won't ever let you come with me... oh no, golubushka, those dirty police will never let you come with me."

"Then wat I do, heya?"

"I'll smuggle you aboard in a chest!" His laugh was rich. "Or perhaps on a magic carpet. Eh?"

She peered up at him, her dark eyes wide and brimming and anxious. "True you take me? True? One month on your ship, heya?"

"At least a month. But don't tell anyone. The police watch me all the time and if they know, you won't be able to come with me. Understand?"

"All gods bear witness not tell a weevil, not even my mother," Ginny swore vehemently, then hugged him again with the vastness of her happiness. "Eeeee, I get huge face as captain's lady!" Another hug and then she let her fingers stray and he jerked involuntarily. She laughed and began to undress him again. "I give you best time, best."

She used her fingers and her lips expertly, probing and touching and withdrawing and moving against him, concentrating on her task until he cried out and became one with the gods in the Clouds and the Rain. Her hands and lips stayed on him, not leaving while the last tiny fraction of pleasure remained. Then she ceased and curled against him and listened to the deepness of his breathing, very contented that she had done her job well. She, herself, she had not experienced the Clouds and the Rain though she had pretended to several times, to increase his pleasure. Only twice in all the times that they had pillowed had she reached the zenith and both times she had been very drunk and not really sure if she had or if she had not. It was only with Third Nighttime Sandwich Cook Tok at the Victoria and Albert that she would zenith every time. All gods bless my joss, she thought happily. With one month holiday and the extra money Gregor will give me, and, with joss, one more year with him, we'll have enough money to open our own restaurant and I can have sons and grandsons and become one with the gods. Oh how lucky I am!

She was tired now for she had had to work hard, so she curled more comfortably against him, closed her eyes, liking him, thankful to the gods that they had helped her to overcome her distaste for his size and his white, toadlike skin and his rancid body smell. Thank all gods, she thought happily as she wafted into sleep.

Suslev was not sleeping. He was just drifting, his mind and his body at peace. The day had been good and a little very bad. After meeting with Crosse at the racetrack he had returned to his ship, appalled that there could be a security leak from the Ivanov. He had encoded Crosse's information about Operation Dry Run and all the other things and sent it off in the privacy of his cabin. Incoming messages told him that Voranski would not be replaced until the next visit of the Sovetsky Ivanov, that the special psychochemical expert, Koronski, was available to arrive from Bangkok at twelve hours' notice, and that he, Suslev, was to assume direction of Sevrin and liaise with Arthur directly. "Do not fail to obtain copies of the AMG files."

He remembered how a chill had gone through him at that "do not fail." So few failures, so many successes, but only the failures remembered. Where was the security leak aboard? Who read the AMG file apart from me? Only Dimitri Metkin, my second-in-command. It could not be him. The leak must be from elsewhere.

How far to trust Crosse?

Not far, but that man's clearly the most priceless asset we have in the capitalistic camp of Asia and must be protected at all costs.

The feel of Ginny against him was pleasing. She was breathing softly, a tiny jerk from time to time, her breast rising and falling. His eyes went through the doorway to the old-fashioned clock that stood in a niche of one of the untidy kitchen shelves among all the half-used bottles and tins and containers. The kitchen was in an alcove off the living room. Here in the only bedroom, the bed was huge and almost filled the room. He had bought it for her when he had begun with her two, almost three years ago. It was a good bed, clean, soft but not too soft, a welcome change from his bunk aboard.

And Ginny, she was welcome too. Pliant, easygoing, no trouble. Her blue-black hair was cut short and straight across her high forehead, the way he liked it—such a contrast to Vertinskaya, his mistress in Vladivostok, her with her sloe, hazel eyes, long wavy dark brown hair and the temper of a wildcat, her mother a true Princess Zergeyev and her father an insignificant half-caste Chinese shopkeeper who had bought the mother at an auction when she was thirteen. She had been on one of the cattle trucks of children fleeing Russia after the holocaust of '17.

Liberation, not holocaust, he told himself happily. Ah, but it's good to bed the daughter of a Princess Zergeyev when you're the grandson of a peasant off Zergeyev lands.

Thinking of the Zergeyevs reminded him of Alexi Travkin. He smiled to himself. Poor Travkin, such a fool! Would they really release the Princess Nestorova, his wife, to Hong Kong at Christmas? I doubt it. Perhaps they will and then poor Travkin will die of shock to see that little old hag of the snows, toothless, wrinkled and arthritic. Better to spare him that agony, he thought compassionately. Travkin's Russian and not a bad man.

Again he looked at the clock. Now it read 6:20. He smiled to himself. Nothing to do for a few hours but sleep and eat and think and plan. Then the oh so careful meeting with the English MP and, late tonight, seeing Arthur again. He chuckled. It amused him very much to know secrets Arthur did not know. But then Arthur holds back secrets too, he thought without anger. Perhaps he already knows about the MPs. He's smart, very smart, and doesn't trust me either.

That's the great law: Never trust another—man, woman or child—if you want to stay alive and safe and out of enemy clutches.

I'm safe because I know people, know how to keep a closed mouth and know how to further State policy purely as part of my own life plan.

So many wonderful plans to effect. So many exciting coups to precipitate and be part of. And then there's Sevrin...

Again he chuckled and Ginny stirred. "Go to sleep, little princess," he whispered soothingly as to a child. "Go to sleep."

Obediently she did not truly awaken, just brushed her hair out of her eyes and snuggled more comfortably.

Suslev let his eyes close, her body sweet against him. He let his arm rest across her loins. The rain had lessened during the afternoon. Now he noticed it had stopped. He yawned as he went into sleep, knowing the storm had not yet ended its work.
47

6:25 P.M.: Robert Armstrong drained his beer. "Another," he called out Wearily, feigning drunkenness. He was in the Good Luck Girlfriend, a crowded, noisy Wanchai bar on the waterfront, filled with American sailors from the nuclear carrier. Chinese hostesses plied the customers with drink and accepted banter and touch and watered drinks in return at high cost. Occasionally one of them would order a real whiskey and show it to her partner to prove that this was a good bar and they were not being cheated.

Above the bar were rooms but it was not wise for sailors to go to them. Not all of the girls were clean or careful, not from choice just from ignorance. And, late at night, you could be rolled though only the very drunk were robbed. After all, there was no need: sailors were ready to spend everything they had.

"You want jig-jig?" the overpainted child asked him.

Dew neh loh moh on all your ancestors, he wanted to tell her. You should be home in bed with some schoolbooks. But he did not say it. That would do no good. In all probability her parents had gratefully arranged this job for her so that all the family could survive just a little better. "You want drink?" he said instead, hiding that he could speak Cantonese.

"Scottish, Scottish," the child called out imperiously.

"Why not get tea and I'll give you the money anyway," he said sourly.

"Fornicate all gods and the mothers of gods I not a cheater!" Haughtily the child offered the grimy glass the waiter had slapped down. It did contain cheap but real whiskey. She drained it without a grimace. "Waiter! Another Scottish and another beer! You drink, I drink, then we jig-jig."

Armstrong looked at her. "What's your name?"

"Lily. Lily Chop. Twenty-five dollars short time."

"How old are you?"

"Old. How old you?"

"Nineteen."

"Huh, coppers always lie!"

"How'd you know I'm a copper?"

"Boss tell me. Only twenty dollar, heya?"

"Who's the boss? Which one's he?"

"She. Behind the bar. She mama-san."

Armstrong peered through the smoke. The woman was lean and scrawny and in her fifties, sweating and working hard, keeping up a running vulgar banter with the sailors as she filled the orders. "How'd she know I was a copper?"

Again Lily shrugged. "Listen, she tell me keep you happy or I out in street. We go upstairs now, heya? On house, no twenty dollar." The child got up. He could see her fear now.

"Sit down," he ordered.

She sat, even more afraid. "If I not pleeze she throw m—"

"You please me." Armstrong sighed. It was an old ploy. If you went, you paid, if you didn't go, you paid and the boss always sent a young one. He passed over fifty dollars. "Here. Go and give it to the mama-sen with my thanks. Tell her I can't jig-jig now because I've got my monthly! Honourable Red's with me."

Lily gawked at him then cackled like an old woman. "Eeeee, fornicate all gods that's a good one!" She went off, hard put to walk on her high heels, her brassy chong-sam slit very high, showing her thin, very thin legs and buttocks.

Armstrong finished his beer, paid his bill and got to his feet. At once his table was claimed and he pushed through the sweating, shouting sailors for the door.

"You welcome anytime," the mama-san called out as he passed her.

"Sure," he called back without malice.

The rain was just a thin drizzle now and the day growing dark. On the street were many more raucous sailors, all of them American—British sailors had been ordered out of this area for the first few days by their captains. His skin felt wet and hot under his raincoat. In a moment he left Gloucester Road and the waterfront and strolled through the crowds up O'Brien Road, splashing through the puddles, the city smelling good and clean and washed. At the corner he turned into Lochart Road and at length found the alley he sought. It was busy, as usual, with street stalls and shops and scrawny dogs, chickens packed into cages, dried fried ducks and meats hanging from hooks, vegetables and fruits. Just inside the mouth of the alley was a small stall with stools under a canvas overhang to keep off the drizzle. He nodded at the owner, chose a shadowed corner, ordered a bowl of Singapore noodles—fine, lightly fried vermicelli-like noodles, dry, with chilli and spices and chopped shrimps and fresh vegetables—and began to wait.

Brian Kwok.

Always back to Brian Kwok.

And always back to the 40,000 in used notes that he had found in his desk drawer, the one he always kept locked.

Concentrate, he told himself, or you'll slip. You'll make a mistake. You can't afford a mistake!

He was weary and felt an overpowering dirtiness that soap and hot water would not cleanse away. With an effort he forced his eyes to seek his prey, his ears to hear the street sounds, and his nose to enjoy the food.

He had just finished the bowl when he saw the American sailor. The man was thin and wore glasses and he towered over the Chinese pedestrians even though he walked with a slight stoop. His arm was around a street girl. She held an umbrella over them and was tugging at him.

"No, not this way, baby," she pleaded. "My room other way... unnerstan'?"

"Sure, honey, but first we go this way then we'll go your way. Huh? Come on, darlin'."

Armstrong hunched deeper into the shadows. He watched them approach, wondering if this was the one. The man's accent was Southern and sweet-sounding and he was in his late twenties. As he strolled along the busy street he looked this way and that, seeking his bearings. Then Armstrong saw him spot the tailor's shop on one corner of the alley that was called Pop-ting's Handmade Suits, and, opposite it, a small, open-faced restaurant lit with bare bulbs and with a crudely written sign nailed to a post: WELCOME TO AMERICAN SAILORS. The bold column of Chinese characters over the door read: "A Thousand Years' Health to Mao Tse-tung Restaurant."

"C'mon, honey," the sailor said, brightening. "Let's have a beer here."

"Goddamnit we're having a beer here." He went into the open shop and sat at one of the plastic tables, bulky in his raincoat. Sullenly she followed. "Beer. Two beers! San Miguel, huh? You savvy huh?"

From where he sat, Armstrong could see them both clearly. One of the tables was filled with four coolies who noisily sucked noodles and soup into their mouths. They glanced at the sailor and the girl briefly. One made an obscene remark and the others laughed. The girl blushed, turning her back to them. The sailor hummed as he looked around carefully, sipping his beer, then stood up. "I gotta use the can." Unerringly he went to the back through the flyblown string curtain, the counterman watching him sourly. Armstrong sighed and relaxed. The trap was sprung.

In a moment the sailor returned. "C'mon," he said, "let's get outta here." He drained his glass, paid, and they went off arm in arm again the way they had come.

"You want more S'pore noodles?" the stall keeper asked Armstrong rudely, his hostile eyes just slits in his high-boned face.

"No thanks. Just another beer."

"No beer."

"Fornicate you and all your line," Armstrong hissed in perfect gutter Cantonese. "Am I a fool from the Golden Mountain? No, I'm a guest in your fornicating restaurant. Get me a fornicating beer or I'll have my men slit your Secret Sack and feed those peanuts you call your treasure to the nearest dog!"

The man said nothing. Sullenly he went to the next street stall and got a San Miguel and brought it back and set it on the counter, opening it. The other diners were still gaping at Armstrong. Abruptly he hawked loudly and spat and put his cold blue eyes on the man nearest him. He saw him shiver and look away. Uneasily the others went back to their bowls too, uncomfortable to be in the presence of a barbarian policeman who had the bad manners to swear so colloquially in their tongue.

Armstrong eased more comfortably on the stool, then let his eyes range the road and the alley, waiting patiently.

He did not have long to wait before he saw the small, squat chunky European coming up the alley, keeping to the side, stopping and peering into the storefront of a cheap shoe shop behind the street stalls that crowded the narrow roadway.

Ah, he's a professional, Armstrong thought, very pleased, knowing the man was using the glass as a mirror to case the restaurant. The man took his time. He wore a shapeless plastic raincoat and hat and appeared nondescript. His body was hidden for a moment as a coolie swayed past him with huge bundles on either end of the bamboo pole on his shoulders. Armstrong noticed his knotted calves, varicose-veined, as he watched the feet of the other man. They moved and he walked out of the alley, covered by the coolie, and did not stop, just continued up the road.

He's very good, the policeman thought admiringly, still having him in sight. This bugger's done this before. Must be KGB to be this smart. Well, it won't be long now, my fine fellow, before you're hooked, he told himself without rancour, as a fisherman would seeing a fat trout teasing the bait.

The man was shop-watching again. Come along, little fish.

The man was acting just like a trout. He made several passes and went away and came back but always very carefully and without attracting attention. At last he went into the open-faced restaurant and sat down and ordered a beer. Armstrong sighed again, happy now.

It seemed to take the man an interminable time before he, too, got up, asked where the toilet was, walked through the few diners and went under the bead curtain. In time he reappeared and went for his table. At once the four coolie diners fell on him from behind, pinioning his arms and holding him helpless, while another strapped a stiff high collar around his neck. Other diners, real customers, and not undercover SI police, gaped, one dropped his chopsticks, a couple fled and the others froze.

Armstrong got up from his stool leisurely and walked over. He saw the tough-looking Chinese behind the counter take off his apron. "Shut up, you bastard," the fellow said in Russian to the man who cursed and struggled impotently. "Evening, Superintendent," he added to Armstrong with a sly grin. His name was Malcolm Sun, he was a senior agent, SI, and ranking Chinese on this 16/2. It was he who had organised the intercept and had paid off the cook who usually worked this shift and had taken his place.

"Evening, Malcolm. You did very well." Armstrong turned his attention to the enemy agent. "What's your name?" he asked pleasantly.

"Who you? Let me go... let go!" the man said in heavily accented English.

"All yours, Malcolm," Armstrong said.

At once, Sun said in Russian, "Listen you mother-eater, we know you're off the Ivanov, we know you're a courier and you've just picked up a drop from the American off the nuclear carrier. We've already got the bastard in custody and you'd bet—"

"Lies! You've made a mistake," the man blustered in Russian. "1 know nothing of any American. Let me go!"

"What's your name?"

"You've made a mistake. Let me go!" A crowd of gaping, gawking onlookers was now surrounding the store.

Malcolm Sun turned to Armstrong. "He's a ripe one, sir. Doesn't understand very good Russian. I'm afraid we'll have to take him in," he said with a twisted smile.

"Sergeant, get the Black Maria."

"Yes sir." Another agent went off quickly as Armstrong went closer. The Russian was grey-haired, a squat man with small, angry eyes. He was held perfectly with no chance of escape and no chance to put a hand into a pocket or into his mouth to destroy evidence, or himself.

Armstrong searched him expertly. No manual or roll of film. "Where did you put it?" he asked.

"I no understand!"

The man's hatred did not bother Armstrong. He bore him no malice, the man was just a target who had been trapped. I wonder who shopped this poor bugger who's frightened to death, rightly, who's now ruined with the KGB and with his own people forever and might as well be a dead man. I wonder why it's our coup and not old Rosemont's and his CIA boys? How is it we're the ones who knew about the drop and not the Yanks? How is it Crosse got to know about this? All Crosse had told him was the where and the how and that the drop was going to be made by a sailor from the carrier and intercepted by someone off the Ivanov.

"You're in charge, Robert, and please, don't make a balls up."

"I won't. But please get someone else for Brian K—"

"For the last time, Robert, you're doing the Kwok interrogation and you're seconded to SI until I release you. And if you bitch once more I'll have you out of the force, out of Hong Kong, out of your pension and I hardly need remind you Si's reach is very long. I doubt if you'd work again, unless you go criminal, and then God help you. Is that finally clear?"

"Yes sir."

"Good. Brian will be ready for you at six tomorrow morning."

Armstrong shivered. How impossibly lucky we were to catch him! If Spectacles Wu hadn't come from Ning-tok—-if the old amah hadn't talked to the Werewolf—if the run on the bank—Christ, so many ifs. But then that's how you catch a fish, a big fish. Pure, bloody, unadulterated luck most times. Jesus Christ, Brian Kwok! You poor bugger!

He shivered again.

"You all right, sir?" Malcolm Sun asked.

"Yes." Armstrong looked back at the Russian. "Where did you put the film, the roll of film?"

The man stared back at him defiantly. "Don't understand!"

Armstrong sighed. "You do, too well." The big black van came through the gawking crowd and stopped. More Sis got out. "Put him in and don't let go of him," Armstrong said to those holding him. The crowd watched and chattered and jeered as the man was frog-marched into the van. Armstrong and Sun got in after him and closed the door.

"Off you go, driver," Armstrong ordered.

"Yes sir." The driver let in his clutch easing through the crowds and joined the snarled traffic heading for Central HQ.

"All right, Malcolm. You can begin."

The Chinese agent took out a razor-sharp knife. The Soviet man blanched.

"What's your name?" Armstrong asked, sitting on a bench opposite him.

Malcolm Sun repeated the question in Russian.

"D... Dimitri Metkin," the man muttered, still held viselike by the four men and unable to move a finger or a toe. "Seaman, first class."

"Liar," Armstrong said easily. "Go ahead, Malcolm."

Malcolm Sun put the knife under the man's left eye and the man almost fainted. "That comes later, spy," Sun said in Russian with a chilling smile. Expertly, with a deliberate malevolent viciousness, Sun rapidly sliced the raincoat away. Armstrong searched it very carefully as Sun used the knife deftly to cut away the man's seaman's jersey and the rest of his clothes until he was naked. The knife had not cut or even nicked him once. A careful search and re-search revealed nothing. Nor his shoes, the heels or the soles.