The Chinese Assassin (52 page)

29

The sweat running
down his forehead into his eyes forced Scholefield to stop writing. He laid his pen
aside
and
wiped the back of his hand across
his
face. As he did so he caught sight of
his
watch. It
was three-forty.
The only sound
in
the room
was the buzz
of the
faulty
fluorescent tube in the ceiling. He
stared
round at the unrelieved greyness of
the
concrete walls for se
v
eral seconds then unscrewed
the
plastic cup on
the
thermos flask
and
filled it to the brim. But the
boiling
water
scalded his
mouth
and
he flung the beaker against the
wall
with a curse. He watched it fall to the floor
and
roll slowly into a corner before
turning
back to
his
open notebook. He
ran his
eye over what he had written and for a moment
his
brow furrowed
in
thought. Then slowly
his
eyes
dosed and
he began massaging both temples wearily with the tips of his fingers. He
sat like this
for perhaps a
minute, his shoulders
hunched around his ears.

Then suddenly
his
head jerked up out of his hands. He rose to his feet,
knocking
the
chair
backwards
with
a crash,
and
stood
staring
wide-eyed at the blank
wall in
front of him. But he saw nothing of the grey concrete. Instead, for the first
time, in
a star-
burst
of realisation, his
memory
was matching
the
retina-image of the sudden blaze of savage hope
hi
Yang’s eyes a few
minutes
before as he gazed at
Tan
Sui-ling’s
retreating
back in
the
depths of
the
tunnel.
Greatly magnified
in intensity,
it
had
mirrored what
he now knew was the f
ier
ce
joy
of
recognition, quickly stifled, that he had first seen in the shadow of the Soho
k
iosk! Li Tai-chu and
L
i Kwei-
m
in!
Brother and
sister?
Cousins? It didn’t matter which, the intimacy of intent in their fleeting facial signals was indisputable.

Other elusive inconsistencies tumbled into place with a rush like a picked lock yielding of a sudden all its secret resistance. The false Russian attempts to kill Yang at the Institute and
the
mortuary that made
it
seem so highly desirable for him to be
saved by the White House for
Peking, the otherwise senseless
killing of Ketterman when he had
just
stumbled
across this
logic
—they
only made sense
if the folios and the
revelation in London of a plan to kil
l
Mao bad not been ends in themselves, but the
very
means
of moving
the assassin who had announced his own inte
n
t
into
place
for his kill!
Scholef
i
e
ld
shook his
head
quickly in wonderment. And the final fake confession in the torture cellar had taken Yang over die last barrier into his victim’s presence. Desire for revenge by Lin’s admirers had bee
n
harmonised by the Kremlin with their
ambition to thwart the
radical successors to Mao.
Evidence
implicating them would
no doubt be
pressed
on the
Western outsider whom the Chairman had been persuaded to summon by
his murderess! Yang’ had presumably concealed
his
real identity
to avoid
identification with his cousin-
b
ut
in
a weak moment, haunted
by
th
e
fear
of
an
anonymous death bef
o
re
the
plan had been carried through, had he scribbled his real name on the Ch
’
ing
scroll
in
London?

Scholefield
looked round
frantically, picked up the fallen chair and darted across
the room. He swung it
wildly
against the flimsy wooden
panels
of the
door
and let out a high,
keening scream.
One of the upper panels
shattered under his
assault
, and outside
in sudden
dose-up he saw the shocked, alarmed faces of his two guards.
Scholefield
backed
off quickly, then ran a few
quick
steps before
jumping
into a
two-footed
yoko-tobi-geri
which
shattered the remaining panels of the flimsy door. He landed on all fours in the tunnel outside
in
a storm of splintering wood, sending o
n
e of the guards sprawling to the concrete floor under the impact of his rush. He flailed the shattered chair-back at the head of the other guard, st
un
ning him, and was r
u
nning fast along the tunnel fifty yards away before either of them scrambled to their feet.

* *
*

Yang
did not allow
himself
t
h
e luxury of raising his bowed head until he had hobbled as far as the edge of
the
cir
cl
e of light cast by the single lamp. Then he looked up for the first time
at
the shrivelled, waxen face sunk into the snowy pillow. His shackles ceased
to rattle as he
s
topped and stared, transfixed. The eyes of the man
he
had
come so
far to kill fixed
on him
with a feverish
i
ntensity
as
he
raised
his
head
from
the
pillow
on
the
wasted
stalk
of his
neck.

‘This is
the
loyal
servant of Li
n
Piao.’ Tan Sui-
li
ng made
the
introduction in a
flat
detached voice, giving no emotional weight or colour to any of her words. As she spoke she moved quietly forward until she was standing between the couch and the emergency call button on the edge of the desk.

The burning eyes of the dying man swivelled frantically in their sockets and he gazed at her for a moment in stupefied disbelief.
She had deliberately omitted the ritual adjectives of vituperation that should have accompanied any reference to Li
n
! His
lower jaw sagged
suddenly
and a dribble of
saliva ran
out of his mouth
and down his
chin.
The pitiless
mask of her
features
had confirmed for him beyond
any
doubt the shock of
betrayal
After a moment of total silence he turned his head and stared at Yang as though
hypnotize
d
.

‘
F
or
five long years in the wastes
of Mongolia and in my Moscow “prison” I dreamed of this moment’
Yang whispered
the words
I
n
a
shaking
voice ‘I served Marshall
Li
n
Piao loyally for
many years and was powerless
to
prevent
you
destroying him, as
you destroyed a host of
other great men
loyal to you
and
your
ideals.’
His voice
died
away
and his face
contorted as though in pain. He raised his
manacled hands and clenched his fists. ‘I
have come here
not to
seek atonement
but
to avenge the
countless good men of China
on whom you have rained ruin and
destruction.’

The
chief
night
supervisor
of the
Party Communications Centre in
the Great
Hall
of the People looked up in alarm as Wang
Tung-hsing
sent the
door
crashing back on its hinges and
lunged past
him towards
the nearest
telephone switchboard. He ran
across
and
asked if
h
e could be of assistance but Wang
ignored
him, snatched an operator’s headset from
a
hook beside
the
board and dialled a single
digit
His shoulders rose and fell convulsively as he fought to regain his breath.. When the general outside the leaden door came on the line be had contro
l
led his breathing sufficiently to speak and he tried to snake his enquiry sound casual. ‘How is
the Chairman?’

‘He is rested,
now,’
said the general warily. ‘He interrupted his talk with the foreigner in order to rest.’

Wang’s face twisted into
a
scowl
‘Is be
alone?’

‘No, the
personally authorised audience
of
the prisoner Yang and Comrade Tan
of the Central External
Liaison Department has just
begun.’ The general paused
and
his voice took on a faint
note
of alarm. ‘You were aware of these privately-arranged visits, Comrade—’

Wang’s reply
was
barely audible. ‘Of course.’ He closed his eyes. ‘Permit no further visits of
any
kind. I shall be there
in less
than
two
minutes.’ He
flung
the head-set
to
the
floor and
turned
and dashed out into the
passageway.

The clamour
of the two
guards shouting
for
him
to
halt echoed along the confined
passageway behind him
as Scholefield came
out at the top of
the
steeply
pitching ramp leading
to the maximum
security areas under the
Forbidden City. He tugged the letter from his pocket
as
he ran,
and when
he
rounded a curve in the downward tunnel
he slowed
and
held it
out towards two guards manning the first wooden barrier. ‘I have been
ordered to return
immediately!’
he
yelled
in
Chinese,
pointing beyond the barrier.

The
same
soldiers had been on duty when he.
was escorted
through
earlier
and they
recognised
him
and the
letter
immediately
.
They hesitated for a moment and Scholefield,
taking
advantage of their
indecision, accelerated
past them, hurdled
the
low barrier
and
rushed on
down
the slope.

The next
guard
point was two hundred yards further
on
and
although the
curve
of the tunnel
hid
him from his
pursuers, as
he
ran
he heard the
shouts
of the guards
growing
louder behind him.
Then
a volley of shots
rang
Out
and die whine
of
bullets
ricochetting along the smooth walls filled the
tunnel
There
had
been
enough
time for a
warning
to
be
telephoned
ahead
to
the next
checkpoint
and
when
Scholefield
rounded the last bend in
the tunnel
he found four armed guards confronting him before
the barrier.
He
ran
straight at
them and
leapt
feet first in another side-jumping kick, striking
out
simultaneously
right
and
left
with the flattened blades
of
both hands. One man went down
under the
onslaught
but the other three
used
their
rifle
butts to block the blows
and
crowded him
quickly
to the
ground.