The Chinese Assassin (27 page)

The
two
plainclothes men on
the
front steps of
the
hospital inspected his State Department
pass
then
allowed him
in
after
checking on an
internal
telephone. He encountered no other guards on the
stairs
or in the corridors, but at the entrance to the ward on
the fourth
floor a
uniformed policeman
barred his way. Through a glass panel in the ward
door
he could see the civilian
security
guard he’d glimpsed from
the taxi standing
by the window. High green screens stood all round
the bed in
which
Yang was
lying. A doctor
and a nurse
emerged from
behind
them as be watched
and
began walking towards the door. ‘Nobody at all is allowed in, Sir, unless
carrying
express
written
permission signed by Mr. Percy Crowdleigh of the Cabinet Office.’

Ketterman
shrugged as the
policeman returned his pass. While
he waited for the doctor to emerge, he
st
u
died the
duty roster for
the
ward
nurses
on the
wall behind
the
policeman.
When the doctor
came
out
through
the door, he held out his
pass.
‘I
was
present in
the
room where
the
explosion occurred tonight, doctor.’ He
indicated
the
bruise
on his face. ‘I
was
one of the lucky
ones.
Can you tell me how Mr. Yang is?’

The doctor looked from the
pass
to Ketterman’s bruised face,
then
at the policeman. ‘I suppose there’s no harm in your
knowing
that Mr. Yang has had a very fortunate escape. He suffered considerable lacerations which have now been stitched. He may have a perforated ear drum
and
he’s had a small blood transfusion. He’s under
sedation and
observation, of course,
because
he’s
still
in shock. But
otherwise
it was a rather remarkable escape. It’s a miracle more people weren’t
killed.’

The doctor returned Ketterman’s
pass
a
nd
hurried away down
the
corridor. The policeman stolidly motioned for
Ketterman
to follow.

The
American
gave the policeman a
friendly smile and
complied. But once out of sight he deliberately took a wrong
turning and
hurried
downstairs
to the
third floor
at the back of the building. He peered out into the dusk through an emergency exit leading onto
the
iron
landing
of a
fire
escape. Through the
dusty
windows he could
see
the dim
street
lamps
illuminating
the cobbled mews below. He checked that
the
corridor
behind him was
empty before quietly easing open the latch on the door. Then without hurrying he retraced his steps and took the lift down to
the ground floor.
He strolled slowly past the X-ray section making a mental note of
its
location
and
walked out of the front door into the
stifling
night air. He nodded a
n
d smiled at the Special Branch guards then went slowly dow
n
the steps and sauntered back along Knightsbridge to the Berkeley Hotel, whistling softly to
himself
as he went.

11

The pale blue five-ton
pick-up
truck with ‘New Savoy Hotel
Laundry’
stencilled on
its
sides rolled slowly down the Strand past Chasing Cross
Station
and halted at the westward-facing
traffic
lights in an almost
deserted
Trafalgar Square. It didn’t attract a second glance from the routine police patrol car parked by
the
base of
Nelson’s Column. Its driver,
the
young American
with shoulder-length hair,
leaned casually
out of his open window to look
back
at the illuminated blue
and
gold
dock
face on the tower of St.
Martin-in-the-Fields.
I
t showed
three-twenty.

‘When
the
lights
changed, the
driver eased the truck smoothly away into Pall
Mall so as
not to
unseat the six Chinese crouching
uncomfortably
inside
on
narrow benches
that
had been fitted
on either side of a stretcher
trolley.
They wore white gauze masks, dose-fitting head covers
and surgical gowns
down to
their
ankles. The
interior
of the
truck was equipped
with a comprehensive array of casualty
treatment aids, including oxygen cylinders
and
blood
plasma bottles
rigged
on racks
ready for use. Johnny
F
e
i and
the
five other
men
sat
staring expressionlessly
at each other
across
the empty stretcher, listening only for
sounds from outside.

The truck drove slowly into Pall
Mal
l
and
past
the anonymous windows
of
the British
World
Affairs Institute.
There
was
no
outward
sign of the explosion that had wrecked
its
basement lecture
room nine hours
earlier. Because the royal boulevards of the Mall and Constitution Hill are permanently forbidden to commercial
vehicles
the driver had to t
a
ke the long slow climb up St. James’ to Piccadilly. By three twenty-five the truck was dipping down right on schedule into the mouth of the Hyde Park Corner underpass. A minute later it resurfaced from the
Knightsbridge
end of the tunnel and immediately swung left across the road into the narrow
cul-de-sac
of Old Barrack Yard.

There it stopped
and turned, and
backed up to the shuttered outlet of the Berkeley Hotel laundry chute. The driver switched off
the engine
and headlights, jumped down from his cab and walked slowly out onto Knightsbridge. He lit a cigarette and stood for two minutes on the pavement smoking and looking carefully
in
both
directions.
The only vehicles on the road were isolated taxis and occasional long-distance transports making a long
dash through
the
heart
of the
sleeping city.
When he was satisfied the
street was deserted, he signalled towards
the
darkened
truck with
an
urgent upraised
thumb.

Immediately the slatted back of the truck flew up. The
white-
gowned
figures slipped out and ran silently on
pli
m
solled
feet
to the
white,
creeper-covered wall protecting the end of Grosvenor Crescent Mews.
Finding
the
tiny door already locked, they swarmed quickly
over the top. By the time
the
driver returned to the truck they had all disappeared. He took a crowbar from the cab, crossed to the wall and quietly broke open the door. As he eased it ajar he caught a glimpse of the last man scaling the wall round St. George’s Hospital at
the
other end of the mews. One had separated from the others and was crouched by an ambulance parked
in
the bay on
the other side of the lane, working on its locks.
He watched until he saw the last of
the
five
climbers
swing from the top of the wall onto the
iron
fire-escape. Then he ran back to the
truck, restarted
the engine and reversed across the yard, positioning the open back end of the mobile surgery
flush
against the open
doorway
in the wall. When he’d switched off the
engine
he opened a panel
behind
the driving
seat and climbed though into
the back. He picked a
sawn-off
shotgun from a rack on one
wall
and
settled
down on the
cud of
the stretcher trolley, holding the gun
across his knees.

At the other end of the
mews
the
cream-painted
iron
fire- escapes
on the
western wall of the hospital were in deep
shadow.

But Fei made all his
men wriggle up the steps on their stomachs so they
couldn’t be seen above the
balustrades.
Outside the
third
floor emergency exit
unlocked
earlier by Ketter
m
an he produced a
knife and
slipped it
in the crack
between the door
and its
lintel. It came
open without resistance and
the five men
slipped
quickly
through, still
bent double on
hands
and knees. Because of this, the men from the
Russian
embassy
watching
from
the
closed television
repair
vans on the other side of Grosvenor
Crescent
saw nothing at all of their entry.

Inside,
the five men immediately split
tip.
Fe
i and
one other went openly up the
stairs
to the fourth floor,
two began searching
for a stretcher
trolley, and
the
last
man
remained
crouching in the shadows by
the
emergency exit.

As he neared the last
blind junction
on the fourth
floor
leading to Yang’s ward, Johnny
Fe
i produced a clipboard and
pen
from under his white gown. He made a
quick
gesture to his accomplice to hang back out of sight,
and
strode confidently on around the corner. Without breaking his stride he nodded formally to the policeman, now seated somnolently on a
chair
at the side of the
corridor, and
pushed open the ward door. Most of the lights were out
and
only the
faint muffled sounds
made by sleeping patients
disturbed the
silence. Swinging his clipboard in his hand the Chinese walked
briskly
down the darkened ward towards the
tall
green
screens.

The policeman had
risen uncertainly
to his feet
and
was
still staring
indecisively after him through
the
glass
panel of the ward door when the s
e
cond
Chinese ran
silently round the corner of the corridor and clamped a hand over
his
mouth from behind.
In
the same moment he hit him in the side of the neck with the heel of his other hand. The Chinese used the momentum of his
fall
to drag the policeman bodily into the ward sister’s empty ante-room. Footsteps sounded immediately outside in the corridor
and
he looked up to
see the other
two Chinese arriving
at
the
door with the stretcher
and
trolley.

Inside the shadowy ward, the Special Branch guard at Yang’s bedside rose to
his feet with a friendly
nod as he
saw
the man in a doctor’s gown approaching
with
a clipboard. ‘We’ve decided to do a final set of
investigatory
X-rays right away,
just
to be on
the
safe side,’ said Fei quietly in
perfect,
unaccented English. ‘So we’ll
need to have him in the X-ray department on the ground floor for half an hour.’

The guard’s face clouded. ‘In the middle of the night, doctor?’ He spoke in a whisper and glanced down incredulously at his watch. ‘
I
t’s half past three. And besides, he’s under sedation, for God’s sake.’

The Chinese nodded briskly and signalled towards the door. ‘All the better for him. X-ray is quiet now.
I
t’s got to be done— as a precaution.’

The men advancing down the ward pushing the trolley kept their heads bent to hide their features. They pulled the screens quietly aside
and
aligned the trolley with the bed. They had begun to lift the unconscious form of Yang onto the stretcher before the guard spoke again.
‘If you’re
going down to X-ray,
I’d
better
come too,
doctor.’

The
Chinese was already starting
away down
the
ward. ‘Of course, of course, you must come,’ he
said
quietly over his shoulder. At
the end
of the ward he opened the
doors and
waited
as
his
two
assistants approached,
pushing
Yang on the
trolley.
He held them
open
long enough for
the guard
to
pass
through,
then followed him
into the corridor.

The
Special
Branch man stopped in his
tracks when he saw
the empty
chair
where the
uniformed policeman
should have been sitting. He turned suddenly, an expression of alarm spreading
across his
face.
‘What
the hell’s
going
on
h
ere?’

Fei lifted a warning
hand and opened his mouth as though to explain. In that
moment the door of
the ward sister’s room opened and the other Chinese
leapt at the guard’s back, his
arms raised high
above his head. He
chopped viciously downwards with both hands
and the double blow delivered at the
base
of the neck collapsed the detective to the floor without a
sound. Between them they dragged him into
the ante-room
and dumped him beside the unconscious policeman.
Without hurrying they
locked
the door behind them
and ‘walked calmly
to the lift. The other
two
men
had
already moved Yang inside on the trolley and they all descended to the
third
floor.