The Chinese Assassin (26 page)

Cooper’s eyes took on a haunted look. He raised
himself
on his toes
and
leaned close to
Ketterman. ‘Only
one of the four holds on the 747 is
pressurised, Mr. Ketterman.
Why must it go pressurised?’

Ketterman looked at him steadily bat
didn’t
reply.

Cooper stared at him in
growing alarm.
‘I have no control over what happens to the casket
after
I deliver it to
the
cargo bay, you see! They work out the cargo distribution by computer, so the weight’s evenly
sprea
d
The
cargo supervisor is
the one who does all that.’

Ketterman
placed a reassuring hand on Cooper’s sleeve.
‘We
are looking
after
the cargo
supervisor.’

‘But what’s going in
the
casket?’

‘Relax, Mr. Cooper. You’ll see—at
mid-day
tomorrow before you seal it for me.’
Ketterman
glanced through
the
open door as a taxi
with its
illuminated sign switched off and
pulled
up at the kerb. ‘Why not
take
this taxi home
and
get a good night’s rest?’

He took
the
little undertaker
firmly beneath
the
elbow
and
steered him through the crowd out onto
the
pavement. He opened the door of the taxi
and
helped him in. The driver, a black West Indian wearing a tartan
cap and dark
glasses, stared stolidly ahead
and didn’t
even turn his head to receive
directions.
As Cooper sank uncertainly onto
the
back
seat, Ketterman
leaned inside, smiling faintly. ‘You mustn’t worry, Mr. Cooper, if the doors
and windows
of the taxi won’t
open
from
the inside
on
the way
home. You may find your telephone at home isn’t working either. But we’ve only cut the
wire
as a precaution. My colleague here will spend the night with you to
see
you don’t leave home suddenly, or contact
anybody else.
He’ll escort you to pick up the
body
tomorrow
and
show you where to
bring it.
Sleep
well.’

K
etterman stepped back and slammed
the door as another
u
n
lit taxi pulled
up behind. He go
t
in
quickly and as the first
cab began to
pull away,
he
saw Cooper frantically trying the locked doors. Then
his white face
appeared
staring out through
the
smoked glass of
the
taxi’s rear window. His mouth
was
open wide
and
his tongue protruded
visibly
between his teeth. The expression reminded Ketterman of the futile snarl of some small furry animal—he couldn’t remember which one—suddenly
finding itself
helplessly at bay.

10

Ketterman
closed
his
eyes to shut out the sight of
Cooper’s
face
and
slumped back in the corner of the
taxi’s rear seat.
His driver, a young man with shoulder-length
fair
hair wearing a denim shirt
and jeans,
piloted the vehicle with
ostentatious care through
the light
traffic
on Wigmore Street
and
Baker
Street
then swung west onto Oxford
Street.
He drove as far as Marble
Arch, taking pains
to
observe strict
lane
discipline
be
f
ore turning south into Park Lane. Only when he was safely established at thirty miles an hour in the solid tide of cars rippling down the wide, grass- flanked
mile
towards
Hyde
Park Corner
did
h
e slide back his glass partition
and
address
Ketterman
over
his
shoulder.

‘I bought
the Pan
Am cargo supervisor for
two
thousand.’

His English accent had the
faintest trace
of Boston vowels.
‘Got
to him in a pub near
Hatton
Cross outside
the airport.
Told him we were an obscure Mormon sect who
didn’t
believe the soul departed from
the
body finally until forty-eight hours af
t
er the moment of death. He seemed to swallow it. Grabbed the cash
fast enough
anyway.’

Kette
rm
an
nodded his head wearily without replying. He lay back drinking in the cool air provided by the cab’s air conditioning.

‘I spent another
two hundred persuading
one of his loaders to let me work his shift tomorrow
afternoon
so I
can see
it
into
the
pressurised hold. Documents are copying his security pass for me now. Means I gotta get me a haircut.’ He laughed pleasantly.

‘Great work.’ Ketterman’s tired voice made the
remark almost sound
like a sneer.
He didn’t
pull
himself into a
sitting position
again until
the
driver
changed down
to allow the
cab
to be sucked smoothly into
the
swift
millrace
of
vehicles
that sweeps
dizzily
around Hyde Park
Corner
almost twenty four hours a day. Then he twisted in his seat to
stare
out
through
the rear window at the faded Georgian elegance of the
pillared
hospital standing
dark
against the fading
pink
of the
sky
along the
western edge
of the Corner. ‘Which room’s Yang in?’

The driver watched the skeins of
traffic
around him
intently
as
they
broke up to
skirt
the
walls
of Bucking
h
am
Palace along Constitution Hill and
southward to Victoria.
‘Fourth floor—the
tall lighted window between
the middle pillars
of the portico.’

Through the gathering gloom
Ketterman spotted the
silhouette of a
man standing
at the
edge
of a tall green
screen,
looking out into the night. ‘They’ve got a
guard
at his bedside.’

‘And two
on the front door below—on
the
steps. There’s another
two
at the
Casualty
entrance around the
corner in
Grosvenor Crescent. What they’ve got on
the
ward door
and in
the
corridors
we don’t know.’ The
driver leaned
on his horn
and
mouthed an explosive
American obscenity as a red TR
6
sports car
cut impudently across his bows. Then he swung to
the
inside lane to
begin his turn north
past the dilapidated pillared frontage of St. George’s Hospital. ‘The
Russians
are
using their two
television repair vans. Blue ones, parked on meters in Grosvenor Crescent, opposite
the
Casualty entrance. We
think
we’ve sported most of their pedestrians watching the window, too. They
cross
every few
minutes
around the Royal
Artillery
Memorial opposite the front steps.

Ketterman
glanced out of
the
taxi at
the
pale stone barrel of the stubby 9.2 howitzer guarded by massive-legged, black
metal artillerymen in First
World War rain
capes and
tin helmets. “Where are the
Chinese
staked out?’

‘Not sure yet, Sir. We’ve been watching a small furniture
van
in a residents’ parking bay in Be
l
grave Square. No movement in or out so far, though. Two
Japanese
“tourists” in plastic macs have been taking pictures of
the
Quadriga on the Wellington Arch all evening with very long telephoto lenses.
They’ve shot it nine times so
far from
different angles-always
with Yang’s window in
their view finders.’

‘Are
Scholefield
and the others in the same ward?’

‘No sir! Major
Accident Procedures in St. George’s
don’t run to clearing
wards
right down like, for example,
the Middlesex It’s
250
years
old, remember.
They
just absorb
the casualties into
other wards. Mr.
Scholefield
’s on the
third floor,
front.’

The taxi
crested the rise
at the
Knightsbridge
corner
and swung
towards
Piccadilly Circus. The driver nodded
out of the
window.
‘The
British
are
using
the Wellington Arch
police
office as a
reserve
area. They’ve got half a dozen
Special
Branch
men in
there, at
least, in walkie-talkie contact with
the man at the
bedside.’

Ketter
m
an could see the tiny lighted windows
of London’s most
discreetly disguised police
station
inside the base
of Wellington’s
triumphal arch.
High above, on
its summit, floodlights
had
already
come on
illuminating the prancing
horses of
war and
the angel of peace who, in an
ideal
world,
reined them
in. Below,
in
the
inner curve
of
the arch itself;
the
great,
black,
wrought-iron gates bearing
the
Queen’s arms
were
dosed. Ketterman
made out two or three
shadowy figures
watching the
windows
of St.
George’s through
the gaps in the decorative ironwork. He turned back to the driver. ‘Take a turn around Be
l
grave Square,
so
I ca
n
give the
rest
of the opposition the once over before I
visit
Comrade Yang.’

The ornamental Victorian wrought—iron
gas
lamps on both sides of
Constitution
Hill blossomed yellow
suddenly in
the
gathering darkness, turning the
summer foliage of the trees a pale,
translucent
green,
as
the driver completed a second
circuit
of the crowded Hyde Park
Corner
race
track
and
swung
round the side of the hospital into Grosvenor
Crescent
The two dark blue television repair
vans
were
still
standing back
to
back on
parking meters
opposite the Casualty
entrance.
Nobody
was
visible
behind
the blacked
out windows and Ketterman
scarcely gave them a second
glance.
He stared
across
the road
instead
into the cobbled
mews that ran
along the back of
the
hospital.
‘Is
anybody holed up there?’

‘No, sir.
It’s been checked out twice.’

Ketterman studied the
cream-painted wrought-iron fire escapes that ran down the side of
the
eighteenth-century hospital. ‘Drive up there.’

‘Grosvenor Crescent Mews is a blind
alley, Sir,’ warned the
driver as he swung the
cab
deftly across
the
road in
its own
length in a U-turn. ‘It’s al
s
o a private road of
the
Grosvenor Estate. They close that little
white metal
barrier at the
entrance
at
midnight.
I guess that’s why
our
Russian
and Chinese friends
aren’t
using
it.’

He
pulled
cautiously into the narrow cobbled lane and drove slowly between rows of vehicles parked outside motor repair workshops.
In
a side spur
two
empty
ambulances
were parked in a bay
reserved
for
the
hospital. A
hay
fork stood propped
against
yellow-painted double doors
further along the
mews beside a sign advertising
‘Hacking
in the Park—horses at livery.’ At the far end a white stone
wall, with climbing creepers hanging
thickly, closed off the mews. The
creepers almost
obscured a narrow door that gave
access
to pedestrians.

Ketterman leaned
forward,
staring
up the mews through
the
front
windscreen
while the driver reversed carefully
back
to the street again. Then he fell back into his
seat, deep in
thought. He
scarcely glanced
at the
suspect furniture van
that the driver pointed out in Be
l
grave Square
and
when he got out of
the cab
in
Knightsbridge
three
minutes
later he strode away towards St. George’s Hospital without another word.