The Chinese Assassin (29 page)

12

Harvey Ketterman, wearing a black tie of mourning with his sober Ivy League suit, was standing at an upstairs window of a house in North Audley Street at ten o’clock when a plain white van with ‘Ambulance’ painted in red on its sides drew up at the kerb. Another undertaker would have recognised the windowless vehicle im
m
ediately for what
it
was—a collecting van for the newly-dead, disguised to save the feelings of those inmates of hospitals and old people’s homes still fighting the battle to stay out of
it.

When Ketterman saw Arthur Cooper climb from behind the wheel, he started quickly down the stairs to the front door. Cooper, who was dressed in the same shiny black suit he’d been wearing the night before, waited obediently while an empty ta
x
i drew up behind the van. When the negro driver in the tartan cap who’d been his shadow for the past twelve hours alighted, he unlocked the rear doors of the van and together they lifted out a maroon fibre-glass collecting coffin. Fastened with two snap clips clamped to the lid,
it
looked like the carrying case for some grotesque musical instrument. They hoisted
it
quickly to their shoulders and hurried across the pavement to the front door of the house which Kette
rm
an was by this time holding open.

In an upstairs bedroom he watched them lift out the pale
shrunken
body
of an man with bushy grey
hair. ‘First one in this morning, Sir,’ said
Cooper cheerfully. ‘Died
during the night.
Cardiac
arrest.’
As they
positioned the body on the
bed,
the young American, his
shoulder-length hair
now cropped
short,
entered
carrying a flash camera
in one hand and a new, garishly- coloured
American shirt still
sealed in
its
Cellophane packet in
the
other.

Ketterman pointed to the shirt
and
nodded to Cooper. ‘Put that on the corpse
and
prop
him
up as naturally as you can in that chair by the bed. Hold his head from
behind.
We can lose your
hands.’
He handed the little undertaker a
pair
of
horn-rimmed
spectacles from
his
pocket.
‘And
put those on
him
too, it will help the retouchers with his eyes.’

Ketterman
walked over and stared out of
the
window into the
sun-drenched
street while
the
photographs were being taken.
When
the
flashes ceased
he turned round
and
took a worn American passport from his pocket. He held it out towards the
fair-haired man. ‘Fix
the retouched photograph in there.
And
be back
in half an
hour.’

When he’d gone Ketter
m
an took a new
pair
of pyjamas from a chest of drawers
and
Cooper and the negro between them
manhandled
the dead
man
between the sheets. Ketterman watched uneasily as Cooper
dressed
the body in the pyjamas as if it
was a
stuffed doll, then
pushed
it down under the bedclothes.

‘Wait here please, Cooper.’
K
e
t
terman
motioned to
the
negro driver and they went out of the room
and
down
the
stairs leaving
the
undertaker alone
with the
body. He
sat
down obediently by
the
bed,
staring
at
nothing and
listening to the
hum
of the
traffic
in the hot
street
outside. Twenty minutes later be heard the front
door
open
and
the voice of the young
man
who’d taken the photographs floated up the
stairs as
he
talked
quietly
with
Ketterman. At exactly
half
past
ten
the doorbell rang
and
moments later Ketterman led a corpulent, arrogant-looking man dressed in striped
trousers and
black jacket into the bedroom.

He scarcely glanced at the
passport
of
Marshall
Symonds which Ketterman
handed
him. The undertaker, looking over the doctor’s shoulder, saw that the retouched photograph of the bushy-haired corpse lying dead in
the bed had already been inserted
open-eyed
and
bespectacled in the travel
document.

Keeping his eyes averted
from
both Cooper and Ketterman
the doctor put his
bag
down by the bedside table
and
clipped a stethoscope
behind
his neck. Then he shot his cuffs with great deliberation before
searching
irritably wider the
sheets
for the
dead
man’s wrist. He gazed blankly at
the ceiling
with his mouth clamped shut, breathing noisily
through
his nose as he went through the motions of searching for signs of a
pulse.
Then he dropped the
arm
carelessly back
o
nto the bed
and
unbuttoned
the
corpse’s pyjama jacket. When he’d taken several careful soundings he
returned
wordlessly to the
table
where his bag
was standing and
took out a pad of
death certificates.
Details
had already
been entered in the top one
and Ketterman
saw the doctor
switch
his gold-plated ball-point
pen
into his left
hand
before completing the final
flourish
of a
signature.
He replaced the stethoscope in the bag with elaborate care then slipped
the
certificate between
the
pages of
the passport and
handed it
to Ketter
m
an.

‘You’ve been most helpful.’
Ketterman smiled fixedly,
but
the
doctor was
already
on
his
way towards the
door,
the stiffness of his posture making it clear he
had
not
the
slightest interest in the American’s remarks. Ketterman followed him out and in the hall below the doctor stopped
and
turned a severe
gaze
on him.

‘Within
the hour I shall
report
to the police the
discovery
of a break-in overnight at my surgery.’ He nodded to the passport in Ketterman’s hand. ‘If attention is ever attracted to that death
certificate
for
any
reason whatsoever, I shall remember
that
the pad from which it
was extracted was
among articles missing in the burglary
and
denounce the signature which is
sloped
left
-
handed as a deliberate forgery.’ He stood
waiting
in a pointed silence until
Ketterman
took a bulky envelope from inside his jacket, then accepted it without a word of thanks He
didn’t speak
or even look at
Ketterman
again. When he’d put the envelope in
his
medical
bag
he walked stiffly down
the
steps to the pavement
and
hurried away in the
direction
of Oxford Street without looking back.

Five
minutes
later Ketterman opened the door to welcome a
harassed
-looking middle-aged
American,
who arrived from
the
direction of Grosvenor Square. He shook
him
briefly by the hand
and
took him straight up to the bedroom.

‘Hello, Sir!’ Cooper smiled eagerly at the newcomer
and stood up. His manner had become enthusiastically professional again. ‘Done a lot o’ jobs together for the embassy, haven’t we?’

The newcomer nodded distractedly and peered anxiously towards the bed.

‘Mr. Cooper is going to get Mr. Marshall Symonds embalmed super-fast and shipped to Washington tonight on Pan Am,’ said Ketterman lightly. He handed the passport and the death certificate to the consular officer. ‘Go with him now to Canon Hall to register the death and he’ll be back in your office within the hour with the Coroner’s export certificate and all the other documents for you to sign and seal.’

The diplomat took a slow breath and looked down at the dead man’s f
a
ce, comparing
it
with the picture in the passport. Then he closed the passport and glanced uneasily from Cooper back to Ketter
m
an. ‘I don’t know what’s going on here Mr. Ketterman. I hope you know what you’re doing, that’s all.’

Ketterman ignored him and opened the door. The negro driver reappeared and together he and Cooper lifted the body into the fibreglass case which had been hidden under the bed. The fair- haired man was already behind the wheel of the mock ambulance when they came out through the front door, and as soon as the coffin was loaded he drove away. The negro led Cooper and the consular officer to his taxi to drive to Caxton Hall and Ketterman ran back upstairs for the last time to check the bedroom.

He picked up the now discarded new shirt and its wrappings, retrieved two fallen packing pins from the carpet, dropped all the bits and pieces
into his briefcase, then, after a final glance round the room, ran back downstairs. He locked the front door, and dropped the bunch of keys into a stout envelope that was addressed to an estate agent and already contained a cheque for a week’s rent. Be posted
it in
a pillar box twenty yards along the street before flagging down a bona fide taxi. Two minutes later he was heading past the gold and concrete frontage of the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square on his way once more to St. George’s Hospital.

MOSCOW, Saturday—The plane carrying Lin Piao, his family and comrades, was heading back towards China when
it
crashed in Mongolia last September, killing all on board, according to a new’ theory here. At the last minute, the theory says, someone on the plane decided to return to China and changed his mind about seeking refuge in Mongolia or the Soviet Union.

The
Observer,
6
August
1972

13

At eye level outside the open third-floor windows of St. George’s Hospital the four black horses of war on the Wellington Arch seemed, to beat frantically at the burning sky with their raised hooves. To Richard Scholef
i
eld, as he lay with his bandaged head propped against a broad wedge of pillows, they looked as though they were fighting vainly to stir the scorched, stagnant air around them into a cooling breeze. He dabbed at his own damp forehead with a paper tissue and turned his gaze slowly away from the windows as he heard footsteps approaching his bed.

He saw Harvey Ketterman’s sweating face set in an enquiring expression of earnest concern. The bruise on his cheek was multi-coloured and edged now with a rim of jaundiced yellow. Instead of shaking hands he squeezed Scholefield’s limp forearm considerately in a gentle gesture of greeting.

‘How are y’feeling today Dick?’

‘Concussed—in a word.’ Scholefield raised his eyebrows ruefully as a substitute for a smile. ‘I like your black eye. It reaches down to your chin.’

Ketterman grinned and peered
anxiously
into his face. ‘No bones broken though, huh? You’re all of
a
piece, right?’

Scholefield
nodded.

‘Thanks be to God and the solid British craftsmanship of that pro-war oaken dais at the Institute!’ Ketterman and Scholefield both turned at the sound of the voice of the bald, bespectacled Cabinet Office diplomat who’d sat in the front row at the meeting the previous night. He marched pompously to the bedside and patted Scholefield on the shoulder, causing him to wince momentarily. He swung a visitor’s chair away
from
the wall and lowered himself heavily into
it,
mopping his brow with his handkerchief. He wore striped grey trousers and a black jacket but despite his efforts to sustain his usual airy manner, his face was pinched and pale from the after-.effects of shock. He continued breathing heavily even after he’d sat down.

Scholefield
looked at Ketterman. ‘Harvey, do you know Percy Crowdleigh?’

The American stood up and offe
r
ed his hand. ‘Only by reputation until now.’

Crowdleigh offered a perfunctory handshake without looking directly at the American and without getting up. Instead his eyes stayed on Scholefield’s face. ‘Richard, you’ll be relieved to know Matthew’s now at home safe and sound. None the worse for wear either.’ Scholefield stared at him as though he’d suddenly recalled something temporarily forgotten.

‘1 wish in heaven’s name you’d told us about
it.’
Crowdleigh removed his glasses and dabbed with his handkerchief at eyes shrivelled small by powerful lenses.

‘I thought
it
best to do things the way I did.’
Scholefield
’s voice had taken on a note of irritation. ‘Where was he found?’

Crowdleigh breathed on his spectacles and polished them carefully with his handkerchief. ‘He was brought back and dropped off in a street close to your ex-wife’s home with his nanny—about eight-thirty last night. They’d spent the afternoon locked up in some house in North London. Fed, allowed to watch television, well treated apparently. Several dif
fe
rent people all of Chinese appearance involved.’ Crowdleigh tipped his head forward and glowered suspiciously round the ward over the top of his spectacle frames. When he was satisfied with his survey he let his’ eyes come to rest steadily on the American’s face for the first time. ‘But that’s not all I came to tell you. There’s a D-notice on all this, of course, from the explosion onwards. That’s why you haven’t got wind of
it
from the papers. If the press had got hold of it,
it
would be all over the front pages now’ paused and drew a long breath. ‘Because Yang’s gone!’

Kette
r
man cocked his head in puzzlement. ‘Gone? You mean he’s died?’

Crowdleigh’s eyes never left the
American’s
face. ‘No, Mr. Ketterman.’ He spoke very slowly and. deliberately. ‘He was abducted from this hospital at three thirty precisely this morning.’

‘By whom, for chrissakes?’ Ketterman’s eyes had widened in amazement.

Crowdleigh studied the American in silence for a long time, ‘We don’t know. He’s disappeared without trace.’

‘But what happened to his guards?’ asked
Scholefield
incredulously.

‘They were overpowered by a group of men of—’Crowdleigh hesitated, choosing his words pedantically—’of Asiatic appearance. Yang was spirited away down a fire-escape into the mews behind the hospital and driven a short distance hi an ambulance. He was then passed through a wall into another unidentified vehicle which proceeded to disappear into the bowels of London.’

Ketterman whistled. ‘So it looks like a Chinese embassy job?’

‘I’d prefer not to advance into the realms of speculation at present,’ said Crowdleigh shortly. ‘Even though a man of Chinese race was found dead by the abandoned ambulance with four bullets in his chest.’

‘From the embassy?’

‘They say not. They hotly deny all knowledge in fact. And the police think he might have been a member of one of the Soho Triads.’

‘The Hong Kong heroin gangs?’
Scholefield
’s voice rose in disbelief.

‘The modem descendants of a Chinese secret society fifteen hundred years old,’ said Ketterman crisply. ‘And frequently in their long history, you might remember, they’ve mixed political intrigue with their more orthodox criminal activities.’

‘Who killed him then?’ asked
Scholefield
quickly. ‘The police?’

Crowd
l
eigh closed his eyes and clutched both hands round one knee. ‘The abduction was organised and executed so quickly and efficiently that it attracted no police attention beyond Yang’s ward on the fourth floor. Both guards there were overpowered.

The police think there
might have been
another group of “persons unknown”
disputing
for possession of
Yang in the
mews below.
This
could have
resulted
in the Asian’s
death.
Some commotion was heard by people
living
in the area.’

Ketter
m
an lowered himself slowly into a
sitting position
on the
end
of
the
bed
and
stared
distractedly
out of
the
window.

‘Who in hell’s
name
is trying to do what to who?’

‘I suppose what we’re meant to think,’
said
Scholefield
reflectively, ‘is that the Peking moderates have smuggled out survivor Yang. Although the folios I showed you before
the
meeting don’t
name
names specifically,
and
neither
did
Dr.
Stil
l
man, the clear
implication is that Mao’s
radical
supporters led by his wif
e
are
now fighting to
secure their
right to
succeed
him. We’re
being presented with
what appears to be
first-hand
“proof” that they were thinking along
these lines as
long as five years ago
and that
they
murdered Lin Piao. Yang’s
the
moderates’ trump card to
smear the
radicals and
stop them
taking
over.’

Ketterman turned
back slowly from the
window. ‘If Yang’s
batting now for the moderate “good
guys”
then by an
extension
of that
theory
it
would
be
the radical
bad guys who
tried to
blow him up last night,.
along with
the
rest
of us at the Institute, to shut him up.
And having
failed to kill him publicly,
presumably
they would want to snatch
him—and finish him off
somewhere quietly,
wouldn’t
they?’
Ketterman looked
from Crowdleigh to Scholefield
and
back again
seeking
support.

‘Using a strong arm squad
of the Triad drug
smugglers?’
Crowdleigh’s tone
was
offensively
sarcastic.
‘The
Chinese
do happen to
make
some pretty clear
distinctions
about who they regard as
true
revolutionaries. Some of the best organised crime gangs in the world gorging themselves on
the carrion
of
capitalism
haven’t been among them so
far.
Or
hadn’t
you noticed, Mr. Ketterman?’

Ketterman scowled.
‘They’re all
goddamned Chinese,
remember.’

‘I wonder,’
said
Crowdleigh dryly, ‘why you
are turning your
face deliberately away from the more
obvious
explanation?’

A wary look
came
into the
American’s
eyes
and
he
sat straighter
on the bed.

Crowdleigh folded his
arms and this added a new pedagogic rigidity to his demeanour. ‘Richard used a felicitous phrase just
now. He said, “What we’re meant to think”. It was probably subconscious, but let’s consider who would have the most to
gain
from humiliating the radical group in Peking. They’re
steeped
in Mao’s extremer creeds,
aren’t they? They
would make
China
more independent, more xenophobic, more of an isolated rogue elephant on the
international
scene. More dangerous to
those
whom Mao dislikes.
And
who does he
dislike
more
than anybody else?
The
great unloved neighbour with four thousand miles
of common frontier, who made the
historic mistake
of
patronising him!
So who would have most to
gain if these anti-
Soviet acolytes of Mao lost out in the
power struggle after
the old man dies?’

The other
two men watched Crowdleig
h
in silence,
waiting
for
him
to
answer his own rhetorical
question. ‘The
Russians!
So who is it that is most
likely
to
have regurgitated an imaginary survivor
from
Lin Piao’s long-lost Trident that
crashed into the
mists
of history five
years
ago?’ With
slow deliberation
he
unfolded his arms and placed his hands palms
downward on his
knees.
‘No
ideas
at all? Our old
friends in Department “A”
of
the First Directorate
of the KGB in
Moscow.
The
“dezinformatsiya”
fiction
writers!
Those folios Comrade Yang gave
Richard
the other night may be
their
best bit of creative writing ever.
And
Stil
l
man’s report
and
his involvement could as easily have been fabricated by the same people.’

Ketterman dabbed
at
his
forehead with his handkerchief,
wincing as
he touched a tender area of the bruise around his left eye. ‘Okay—but that
still
doesn’t
tell us
who bombed out Yang at
the Institute, and
why.’

‘Speculative
discussion
about such short term imponderables
as
who planted the bomb on
Yang
is futile at present,’ Crowdleigh
paused and
looked deliberately again at Ketterman. ‘Or
indeed
who
has
kidnapped him—although
in
both cases the obvious
scapegoats
to choose would be the Peking radicals. What for me
is
beyond question
is
the unmistakable style of the
initial
operation. Taking Matthew
hostage, putting
vicious pressure
on Richard here
and
the whole
sly
backdoor method of
trying
to
filter
out disinformation through
respected
Western
academics, specialist writers and what have you
. I
t all reeks far too powerfully of something cooked
up in the
rancid cauldrons
of
the Kremlin’s
K
itchen. Especially the stuff
about
the Mao death
plot. The
Chinese
don’t really have enough
international self-confidence in
the
twilight
zone to do things
quite
that way. It’s a too otherworldly for them.
And
that’s
exactly
the
kind
of
blind
spot which always
gives the Kremlin
away. It didn’t occur to them
that it was
all too sophisticatedly
cynical
for Peking to have conceived
it.
The
Chinese
simply think
and act differently.’