The Chinese Assassin (20 page)

7

A long crooked
spear
of hot ash tumbled from the
end
of his
cigarette and
splashed across the lapels of his crumpled jacket as Doctor
Vincent Stil
l
man
stood up. He removed the glowing stub from his mouth
an
d
squashed
it in the
ash
tray beside
the lectern,
covering his mouth with his other List at the
same time
to smother the sudden rasp of his smoker’s cough.
When
he’d recovered he
pushed
his thick-framed
spectacles
up the bridge of his nose and
fixed
his eyes reflectively on a
point
above
and
behind the heads
of
the seventeen members of the East Asia Study Group.

‘Have you
any idea, gentlemen,
what sort of velocity would be required to break a
hair
from
the human
head
and
drive it
like
a javelin into a foamed plastic seat
cushion
to a depth of
two inches?’

The
rush-hour roar
of the
traffic streaming
past the
pillared
entrance of the
British
World
Affairs Institute in
Pall Mall
carried faintly
into
the stifling, windowless
basement
lecture
room
during the
long silence that followed.
The
front page of
an
evening newspaper on
the
lap of a
prematurely bald diplomat front the
Cabinet
Office sitting in the
front row,
announced
that it
was
now
officially
London’s
hottest July
of the
century.
The burning
sun
that was shrivelling the whole
country
had again pushed London’s
afternoon
shade temperature
into
the
middle
nineties—hotter, the newspaper’s
headline
shrieked,
than Biarritz, Malta,
Nice, Honolulu
and
Hong Kong.

But although some members of the
Fast Asia Study Group had resorted
to
shirtsleeves,
the Foreign Office
men present, as though
to emphasise
their
separate
and
exclusive experience, were stolidly defying
the
tropics
that had
now come to them on
their
home ground, by
retaining their
jackets
and
ties. Nevertheless, some faces in the audience were
beginning
to
betray heat-induced signs
of
short temper and irritation as Vincent Still
ma
n’s pause
for rhetorical
effect
lengthened.
Sensing
this he
leaned
forward suddenly over the
lectern.
‘Velocities, gentlemen, in the range of five
thousand
to
ten
thousand
feet per second—and
I think you’ll
agree it
would be difficult to conceive anything other than an explosive event
being
capable of producing
velocities
of
that
order.’

Richard
Scholefield, who
was chairing
the
meeting,
glanced
uneasily
along
the platform
to where
Yang sat beside Still
m
an.
He wore now
the high-buttoned tunic suit which Communist Chinese cadres since
1949 had made
their own official uniform, and
he
was scanning the
attendance roster that he
had
insisted on
receiving
from
Scholefield
before
starting
the
meeting.
It listed professors
and
doctors from Oxford
and
Cambridge, the
London
School of
Oriental and African Studies,
La Trobe,
Australia, Windsor Ontario,
senior members of the International Institute for
Strategic Studies and a smattering
of
London-based journalists
specialising in
China as well as Foreign
Office
and
Cabinet Office
diplomats.
Some members
had
not bothered to
conceal their irritation
when they
arrived
to
find
Scholefield declining to answer
questions
about the
nature
of the
speakers.
He
had
concealed the tension that had built up during a long
afternoon
on
the
telephone in
the
convenor’s office
behind a sharp brusqueness
of manner,
and
now he
sat
propping up his head
with
one
hand,
keeping his eyes averted
from
the faces in front of him.

Only one name
was
not on the
list. Nina had insisted on attend ·in as
Scholefield
’s guest after he confided the nature
of Yang’s
threat.
She
sat
a little apart from the main body of members at the end of the front row nearest the door. She
had dressed
soberly in a loose grey dress which concealed her figure and had tied a matching band of the
same material demurely
around her hair. She
sat
staring at the floor in front of her
‘with
her arms
folded,
trying not to let her anxiety communicate itself to those
around her.

‘To people who do my job, it’s a well known fact that
the best
places
to look for the
tiny fragments
of
metal
sent
flying in explosions are seat cushions—and deceased human bodies.’ Stillman
smiled vaguely round
the
room at
nobody in particular. ‘Since
a corpse wouldn’t do anything to sweeten the
already somewhat
foetid atmosphere in here, I’ve brought
along an
example of the former.’

He
reached under
the platform dais
and
lifted up a dust- coloured
slab
of foamed plastic.
‘Incidentally, gentlemen,
it
was much
hotter than this in Vietnam where I once
spent
a couple of
weeks examining fifty-seven
bodies for frag
m
ents
of metal
. The refrigerators broke down
and they
were all
decaying beautifully long
before I’d finished.’
Stil
l
man
smothered another cough
and
looked back
absently
at the plastic
cushion in his hand as
if he’d suddenly forgotten why he
was
holding
it. ‘But
of course
that’s another story.’

Scholefield
started in his seat
as
the door at the
side
of
the
platform
swung open suddenly. Several members glanced
up
irritably
at Harvey
K
etterman
as he stood
in
the doorway,
widening
his eyes in a silent,
theatrical
grimace of self-recrimination. He
cringed bent
double to a
rear
seat, took off his jacket
and
mopped his brow. He held up another copy of the
evening
paper.
‘Only hell’s
hotter today, Mr.
Chairman.
We’re dose to your
famous English “sticky
end”, now, I’d guess. My taxi boiled over on the way here!
Deepest apologies.’

He winked
exaggeratedly
then,
immediately serious, turned and peered through screwed-up eyes in
the
direction
of Yang
and Stil
l
man.
The
scientist was holding
up the seat
cushion
above
his
head
and gazing
myopically over the
heads
of his
audience
again.

‘This, gentlemen, is a
seat
cushion from
an
airliner. It
was
part of the
original furnishings
of a Trident IE purchased
initially
from the
British Aircraft Corporation
by the
Pakistan Air
Force
in
1967.’

The prematurely
bald man from
the
China section
of the
Cabinet
Office rose suddenly to his
feet with a snort
of exasperation.
‘Mr. Chairman, I feel I must intervene. We’ve been called
here
at
exceedingly short notice to listen to two people whom
you
have declined so far to identify for us beyond their fairly meaningless names. We have only your vaguest assurances
that
they’ve got some important revelations to make about the death
of
Lin Piao.’
He fanned himself
rapidly with his evening paper. ‘We know absolutely nothing of what qualifies these men to speak
on the
subject, which of course snakes
it
impossible
for us
to evaluate what they say. Since Li is believed to
have
died fully five years
ago, I fail to see what
urgency there can be in detaining us on one of the hottest afternoons London has ever known when we might be cooling off at home in our gardens with iced gin and tonics
in
our hands.’ He stopped and smiled wearily round at his
fe
llow members. ‘So before we hear any more f
r
om Doctor Stil
l
man about his,
I’
m
sure fascinating, seat cushions, I think we’d all be
grateful for a mite more
elucidation.’

Murmurs of agreement came
from
other
men in the
audience and
Scholefield stood up awkwardly. ‘I
fully
appreciate that most of you might
share Percy
Crowdleigh’s
feelings.
I would probably have reacted in the
same
way in your place, Percy.’ He spoke without
looking
at the
audience, staring
down
instead
at his hands
cl
enched
in front of him. ‘I
apologise
for having to ask you to bear with me down what might look at present rather
like a blind alley,
but—’ Out of the corner of his eye Scholefield
saw
Yang
stand
up.