The Chinese Assassin (43 page)

Scholefield
freed himself
from Bogdarin’s grasp at that moment and struggled upright. He swung his left
foot high
and
brought the heel down squarely
across
the f
a
llen Russian’s
throat.
The knife flew from his
hand,
slithered
across
the steel
gantry and
fell over the side into the
darkness between
the
foundation piles.

Scholefield spun round to see
K
etterman
foldi
n
g up slowly over
the
top guard
rail
He
was coughing and clutching
at
the centre
of a large
and
growing blood
stain
spreading over his lower ribs.
E
ven though he
was bent
practically double he
still
stared helplessly aghast at
Razduhev,
who
was continuing
to advance on him holding
the tiny gun
at
arm’s length.

In desperation Scholefield threw the only
thing that was
to
hand and
B
o
gdarin’s
pick-lock
tool
caught
the Russian a
glancing
blow on the
cheek
before clattering
to
the
floor
of the
steel gantry
and dropping away into
the
darkness. Sc
h
olefield followed
in
fa
st
behind
the
throw twisting
sideways
and aiming
a
high,
two- footed yoko-tobi-geri at the
Russian’s gun hand.
The gun recoiled
soundlessly
the moment before Scholefield’s feet struck
and the
second lead pellet hit
Ketterman
in
the
left
shoulder
three
inches
from his
jugular vein.
The impact
knocked
him to his knees
and
the top half of his
body slipped
slowly
sideways through the first and
second bars of the safety
rails.

Scholefield
’s double kick broke Razduhev’s arm
and
his gun flew into the air
in
a high arc.
Scholefield
ducked closer
and
chopped hard at his throat
with
the
edge
of his right hand. The
Russian
took the full force of the blow
directly
on the
Adam’s
apple,
staggered two
steps
and
toppled backward over the
rails.
The
strangled
shout of
pain and shock ceased
abruptly as he
hit
the dirt
floor
of
the foundation chamber twenty feet
below.

Scholefield flung himself
to
the floor
and grabbed
the tails of
Ketterman’s
jacket
in tune
to
prevent
him slipping
over the
edge. When he
had untangled
him from
the
railings,
and
dragged him into a
sitting position
he
was still coughing and flecks of
blood
had appeared
at
the
corners of his mouth. He
stared wide-eyed
at
Scholefield
. ‘Christ
Al
mig
h
ty, Dick ...‘
His voice
was barely
a
croak and
he
was unable to manage
anything further
before his eyes clouded with pain and
he began coughing again.

Scholefield
bent and got his shoulder under the American’s armpit and half-carried and half-dragged him off
the
gantry. He stepped over the unconscious body
of
Bogdarin and struggled with K
e
tterman as far as
the
ranger’s offices. He broke the door open with his foot and stretched Ketterman
on the
floor while he used
the
telephone.

Four and a half minutes later
the whoop of sirens
and
the blue glow of
revolving lights announced
the
arrival
of
police
and an
ambulance
at the foot of the
Memorial steps. But by that time Harvey Ketterman was
dead.

22

The blue and white Boeing 707
of the Civil Aviation
Administration
of
China
throt
tl
ed back
its engines as
though
pausing
for one
last deep breath, then
plunged
its
nose
into
the sea of
stagnant
cloud
pressing
on
the flat plain beneath
it. A clammy grey
fist
clutched
immediately
at the
tilting aircraft and
from
his window
seat inside it,
Scholefield
watched
glistening pearls
of moisture grow
quickly
on
the leading wing-edges. As
it lost
height they
began to tear
themselves free and
explode in
translucent streaks
of
light across
the
outside
of the
windows.

The
Boeing
sank slowly
through
to the bottom of the grey fog
and gradually the ancient,
shad
ed
patchwork of the
landscape
below began to reveal
itself in fleeting, distorted glimpses
through
the
scarred Perspex.
Scholefield
watched this
disfigured
image of China glide slowly up towards him for a
full minute, then turned
his eyes away. Flight CA
922
from Tokyo
was three-quarters
empty. It
carried
only a delegation of twenty Japanese businessmen in
charcoal
grey
suits,
a handful of
Chinese
government cadres in
their
high-buttoned
uniforms and
a group of
European
diplomats
and
wives returning to
their Peking base
from a long
weekend in Japan.

During
the flight
Scholefield
had
studied all their faces
carefully. None of them
had been
on
the
plane from New York. He’d watched embarking passengers
carefully
at Anchorage but
no one had seemed to take any special interest in him. Nobody had
approached
him in
fact on
either aircraft although
he
had been constantly
prepared for a
surreptitious
contact

The
Chinese stewardesses in dark
blue boiler-suit jackets
and ballooning trousers, were hurrying to finish
cl
earing
the last remains of a
savoury buff
e
t they had of
fe
red with Chinese beer and
erh-kuo t’ou, the
local
red wine. They
had
treated everybody
with a polite correctness, taking
obvious care not to show
any
signs of
obsequiousness to the
foreigners. Their
best smiles they reserved
for the
Chinese
government cadres on-board.

Scholefield
had be
e
n looked after all the
way
from
Tokyo by a tall
skinny girl
with a pinched-looking face.
Her
blue boiler-suit
hung about
her bony
frame like a collapsed tent and
her mouth
had remained set in a thin, unsmiling line
throughout the
flight
she
had acknowledged his ‘hsieh
h
sie
h
ni
’s’ only with curt nods of the
head. As she lea
n
ed close across
him now to remove his tray he noticed that more
had disappeared than just
the red silk jackets he
had seen
on China’s smart air girls when he’d first flown into Peking in 1959. The
crimson ribbons, with which
they
had
decorated their long glossy
braids then,
had now been replaced by
functional
elastic bands doubled several times over
their
short
bunches
of
carelessly cut hair. Ten
years
after
it
erupted,
he reflected, the
Cultural
Revolution
was still demanding
a
heavy
toll in proletarian
drabness.

Outside, die evening light
beneath the
clouds
had become grey and luminous. One wing
of the
plane dipped
suddenly
and
it
banked
to the right
giving
Scholefield
a distant glimpse of paved runways. As
its engines throttled back a match
of
subdued
conversation
reached him from the
two
nearest
Japanese businessmen.
Scholefield
leaned dose to his window trying to identify, in the village below, the
tunnel entrances
they
were discussing.

China and
Japan had fought a
great battle in the
Second World
War
here
in the Shunyi
district, a
middle
aged man was explaining to a younger colleague. Chinese peasants
had
continued a fierce,
unyielding resistance in tunnels linking the villages and
the
internatio
n
al airport had been
built dose to
this
old
‘underground battlefield’. But
it
was better
to make no mention of the fact, he
advised the young man earnestly—not even
in
praise to their hosts who
would
nicer them on the
runway.

The thin stewardess chose her moment carefully, waiting until Scholefield had turned his head to look at the Japanese who was speaking. He giggled in sudden embarrassment at Scholefield as though realising, too late, he had been overheard by someone who spoke his language. At that instant the stewardess dropped the blue canvas holdall onto Scholefield’s lap. He turned back in surprise but by then she was moving away along the aisle, reaching down coats and parcels for other passengers from the overhead racks.

He half rose to hand back the case but the stewardess swung round in the aisle and stood looking meaningfully at him. She neither nodded nor shook her head. Her face remained expressionless but she held his gaze long enough to make it clear the case had not been given to him inadvertently.
Scholefield
settled back into his seat and pulled open the zip.

The note tucked inside on top of a khaki cotton jacket instructed him to go immediately to the lavatory compartment at the rear of the aircraft before the seat-belt sign was switched on. He looked up to find the thin stewardess watching him impatiently from the front of the cabin. He rose from his seat immediately and hurried to the rear of the aircraft. As the door closed behind him the stewardess gave a signal to the pilot behind her and straight away the illuminated seat belt signs came on above each seat to the accompaniment of a single warning chime from the airliner’s intercom system.

Inside the lavatory Scholefield bolted the door and took out the white card. The unsigned note had been handwritten in English. On the back, a further message instructed him to dress in the clothes contained in the bag and put his own suit and shoes inside. He was then to wait where he was, the note said, until his name was called in English through the door.

From the curtained rear seat of a dun-coloured Public Security Bureau Warszawa, Tan Sui-ling watched the Boeing float slowly down, stretching its undercarriage with a blind man’s caution towards that first invisible moment of contact with the ground. She wore an official dark blue tunic suit now and her long hair had been cut and scraped close to her head beneath a soft-peaked worker’s cap. Opaque green curtains of elasticated nylon were stretched across the rear and side windows of the car so that she and
the
two men sitting on either side of her in Public Security cadre’s uniforms
could watch the plane’s
arrival
from an impenetrable, submarine gloom.

The hollow-chested croupier from
the
Soho cellar, sitting on her
left,
shot a quick sideways glance at her as the airliner’s undercarriage brushed the runway, then
settled and
took weight
‘Hao,
hen
hao,’
she
said
softly
and
gave a little nod of satisfaction as the now
earthbound
Boeing rushed smoothly towards where they were parked on the
taxiing
apron.

The
man
on her other ‘side
was
taller
than
the average Chinese. He stared straight
ahead through
the windscreen,
watching the
plane
slow
down,
the
top of his
cap brushing
the
plastic-lined
roof of the Warszawa. When he moved, his
heavily
muscled
arms and shoulders
bulged
under
the thin jacket,
stretching
it tight
across
his broad back.

The
driver
of the
ten
year-old Warszawa
started
the
engine and
moved the
car
dose to the
bottom
of the disembarkation
steps
as they were rolled up against
the stationary
Boeing. But nobody got out. From the shadowy
interior
they watched the
Japanese
delegation
descend
to be met by half a dozen Peking officials of the foreign trade ministry. The Japanese
bowed and
giggled
and
pumped hands for
several minutes
before letting the
Chinese
whisk them away in
shiny black official Hung Chi
cars
.
By then the last of
the
foreign
diplomats and their families
had disappeared inside the single
terminal building and the
pilots of the Boeing
and their
cabin crew
had
departed on a
rickety
transport bus

Tan Sui-ling
watched the baggage gang emptying the aft hold. When
she saw
the
last
piece of luggage
thrown
onto the
open truck she nudged
the hollow-chested
man
beside her. He
climbed
out quickly
and
without
hesitation
plucked
a
brown leather
suitcase
tagged with Scholefield’s
name
from the rear
tailboard.
When he
had
stowed it
in
the boot of the
Warszawa she
nodded to the big man beside her
and
he got out and followed the smaller
man
briskly up
the
steps
into
the fuselage of the Boeing.