The Chinese Assassin (42 page)

Ketterman’s eyes
widened suddenly. ‘Jesus!
And
they missed him at the
mortuary
too, even though they
saw
me switch
him!’

‘What?’
Scholefield
gazed at
him
mystified.

But Ketterman was
staring
distractedly towards the
Memorial
again. He turned back and opened
his
mouth as if to say something
more
then seemed to change
his mind.
‘Let’s
discuss
it
later.’
He glanced at his watch and there was an
uncomfortable
silence for a moment. Then the American looked unaccountably
embarrassed.
He
gazed down
suddenly at
his
shoes. ‘Look Dick,
Katrina
was
just kidding
me, wasn’t she? She’s a helluva kidder, you know. The best
thing
is to ignore her, not encourage her, not give her
any satisf
a
ction, am
I
r
ight.’
Scholefield
didn’t reply.
After
a moment Ketterman looked up at him, with his eyebrows
still raised
in mute enquiry.

‘Before I answer that, Harvey, just give me one
piece of useless information first,’ said
Scholefield slowly.
‘Just
to prove you
have
a single
redeeming
feature.’

Ketterman glanced impatiently at his watch again
and
nodded absently as if he really
wasn’t listening.

‘Tan
Sui-ling
is probably
our Chinese
lady-friend’s workna
m
e, right?’
Ketterman
nodded again. ‘What’s her real
fa
mily name?’

Ketterman
shrugged carelessly.
‘Li Kwei-min,
why?’

Scholefield shrugged too.
‘Just
curiosity, Harvey,
just curiosity.’

The American waited a moment
then
nodded his head impatiently. ‘Well, okay, Dick, okay, you got
your
answer. Now
tell
me,
Katrina was just horsing
around back
there
without her clothes, right?’

Scholefield
stared
straight at him for a long moment.
Then
slow
l
y he shook his head.

Without another word
Ketterman
spun round and marched away towards the steps
leading
up to
the
Memorial. Scholefield stood watching
him
go. The American’s broad
shoulders
were hunched around his ears in a curiously defensive attitude, his tall,
angular
body a stooping silhouette against the bright glow of the marble temple. As Scholefield turned away he saw him slip
between
a row of tourist buses
and begin running across
the circular approach road.

Razduhev
saw him
running
too,
from his concealed position at
the
foot of one of the giant Doric entrance
columns
high above the road. He watched
him
trotting up
the
steps beneath him then stepped back quickly out of sight. He walked inside, checking his watch as he went, and stopped and gazed up at the second inaugural address, chiselled into
the
stone of
the north wall.

The
twenty-foot
marble
figure
of Lincoln, massive
and
craggy-jawed on
its
great stone throne, faced out towards
the distant
floodlit rotunda of the Capitol above
the trees,
dwarfing Razdu
h
ev
and the
swarm of midnight sightseers to
tiny
match- stick figures. Flashguns on the tourists’ cameras flared constantly but as Ketterman toiled up the last few steps most of the
milling
crowd were
beginning
a ragged
r
etreat from
the
awesome scale of the god-figure down towards
the small
acceptably
mundane
buses
that
had brought them. Ketterman stopped at
the top
to get his breath and let the crowd pass by.
Immediately he spotted Razduhev and walked
over to him. ‘While
the first inaugural address was being delivered from
this place,’ he whispered over his shoulder
reading
from the
quotation, “insurgent
agents were in the city
seeking
to destroy it without
war—seeking
to dissolve the union
and divide effects
by
negotiation.”
Is that your
favourite American quotation, Yuri,
huh?’ He grinned
and banged Razduhev heartily
on
the back with
his right
hand
while he
slipped
a key into a pocket of the
Russian’s
jacket
with
the other. ‘No offence,
Yuri,
no
offence meant, f
e
llah.’

Razduhev looked at him contemptuously for a moment then
brushed by
him and
walked away. He
paused, gazing
up at the
mural
depicting an
angel freeing
a slave above
the Gettysburg Address
on the
south
wall, then he turned
and slipped
abruptly into the shadows beyond
the
Tonic columns
flanking the statue.

Ketterman scanned
the faces
of the few
remaining tourists
carefully
and
when he
was satisfied
that nobody
was
paying him
any
attention, he turned
and sauntered casually
into the
shadows after Razduhev, making
for the lift in the
east
wall. He pressed the
call
button
and the
door opened immediately. Only
when
he was sure
the doors had closed behind Ketterman did
Bogdarin step out
from
the deep shadow in the
three-foot
gap
behind
the
base
of the
Lincoln statue and
follow in
the same direction.

When
the
muted bell announced
the
arrival
of
the lift
Bogdarin moved quickly inside before
the doors
were fully
opened.
At
the bottom
he stepped out
and glanced
to the right along
the
passageway towards the
rangers’ offices. They
were silent and deserted.
Inside the lift
shaft the
groaning
of the lif
t
motor
indicated
it
was rising
again. Bogdarin
edged
along
the
wall
and
peered round the side of
the
spectators’ window
that
gave a view of
the massive
concrete bowels of the monument. A concrete walkway
with
steel handrails linked the great
square
concrete piles that
had been
driven sixty-five
feet into
the
earth
to
hold up
the thousands
of tons of
marble
overhead.
Heating and
air conditioning ducts snaked among them
and
Bogdarin could see
Razduhev and Ketterman standing
on the
gantry in
the
shadow
of the ducts, absorbed in a heated conversation.
Razdu
h
ev’s face was
purple
with anger and
he
was gesticulating
fiercely with one
hand as
he spoke. Bogdarin dropped to his knees
and
crawled bent double beneath the
window as far as
the door
to the men’s washroom. Inside he tried the
handle
of the
maintenance
door that opened onto the
gantry
but found it had been
carefully
secured by
Ketterman
from inside. Bogdarin
drew
a picklock from
his
pocket and began working
silently
on the door. As he worked he heard the lift motor
whirr into life again.

The
raised voices of the two
men inside penetrated faintly - through
the door as their argument grew more acrimonious.
Thirty seconds
later Bogdarin
grunted
‘with
satisfaction
as the lock tumblers yielded. He reached
inside
the waistband of his
trousers and
drew out a short-bladed knife and began to turn
the handle
at the same moment that the
faint ‘ping’
of
its bell
announced
the arrival of the lift once more.

A moment later Richard Scholefield,
still breathing
heavily from his run up
the steps
of the
Memorial,
opened
the door
to the
washroom
to
find
Bogdarin hunched in a half-crouch with the
knife
clutched
in his
free
hand.
The Russian already had the
maintenance
door half open but he remained frozen
in
a moment of
indecision looking
at Scholefield, his eyes wide with the apprehension of discovery.

Scholefield
began
moving towards
him
immediately in a reflex action and at the
same
instant caught sight of Ketterman
and
Razduh
e
v. The American’s back
was
still turned towards the door and the
hum
from the ducts
and
the lift motor had clearly covered
the
sounds of the door
opening
behind him.

‘Watch your back, Harvey!’

Scholefield screamed
the
warning and lunged towards the Russian’s
knife
hand at the same moment. Bogdarin tried to fend
him
off
with his free hand
but slipped
and
fell to
his
knees. Ketterman
swung
round, his face suddenly white
with alarm,
to
find
Scholefield
and
the
Russian writhing
in the open doorway
in a desperate contest
for the knife. He turned back but although he began to duck away as
soon as
he
saw
the silenced .22 hand
gun in
Razduhev’s right fist, he was too late to avoid
its
first shot. The
Russian had
aimed for the heart but because of his sudden movement,
Ketterman
received the
tiny
slug between his second and third ribs, low down on the
right
side of his
chest.
He staggered back towards the doorway clutching the wound
with
both
hands, staring
at Razduhev
in
disbelief. The
Russian extended
the
gun
in front of him to make more sure of his aim—and as he moved slowly towards Kette
rm
an, cursing him
softly in his
native
tongue.