25

Marie leaped out of the chair at the shrill, jangling bell of the telephone. She ran, limping and wincing, across the room and picked it up. “Yes?”

“Mrs. Austin, I presume.”

“Mo?… Mo Panov! Thank God.” Marie closed her eyes in gratitude and relief. It had been nearly thirty hours since she had spoken to Alexander Conklin, and the waiting and the tension—above all, the helplessness—had driven her to the edge of panic. “Alex said he was going to ask you to come with him. He thought you would.”

“Thought? Was there a doubt? How are you feeling, Marie? And I don’t expect an answer from Pollyanna.”

“Going mad, Mo. I’m trying not to, but I’m going mad!”

“As long as you haven’t completed the journey I’d say you were remarkable, and the fact that you’re fighting every step of the way even more so. But then you don’t need any chicken-soup psychology from me. I just wanted an excuse to hear your voice again.”

“To find out whether I was a babbling wreck,” said Marie gently, making a statement.

“We’ve been through too much together for such a third-rate subterfuge—I’d never get away with it with you. Which I just didn’t.”

“Where’s Alex?”

“Talking into the pay phone next to me; he asked me to call you. Apparently he wants to speak with you while whoever it is he’s talking to is still on the line.… Wait a second. He’s nodding. The next voice you hear, et cetera, et cetera.”

“Marie?”

“Alex? Thank you. Thank you for coming—”

“As your husband would say, ‘No time for that.’ What were you wearing when they last saw you?”

“Wearing?”

“When you got away from them.”

“I got away twice. The second time was in Tuen Mun.”

“Not then,” interrupted Conklin. “The contingent was small and there was too much confusion—if I remember what you told me. A couple of marines actually saw you but nobody else did. Here. Here in Hong Kong. That’d be the description they’d start with, the one that would stick in their minds. What were you wearing then?”

“Let me think. At the hospital—”

“Later,” broke in Alex. “You said something to me about swapping clothes and buying a few things. The Canadian consulate, Staples’s apartment. Can you remember?”

“Good Lord, how can you remember?”

“No mystery, I make notes. It’s one of the by-products of alcohol. Hurry, Marie. Just generally, what were you wearing?”

“A pleated skirt—yes, a gray pleated skirt, that was it. And a kind of bluish blouse with a high collar—”

“You’d probably change that.”

“What?”

“Never mind. What else?”

“Oh, a hat, a fairly wide-brimmed hat to cover my face.”

“Good!”

“And a fake Gucci purse I bought in the street. Oh, and sandals to make me shorter.”

“I want the height. We’ll stick to heels. That’s fine, that’s all I need.”

“For what, Alex? What are you doing?”

“Playing Simon Says. I know perfectly well the State Department passport computers picked me up, and with my smooth, athletic walk even State’s warthogs could spot me in customs. They won’t know a damn thing, but someone’s giving them orders and I want to know who else shows up.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“I’ll explain later. Stay where you are. We’ll get there as soon as we can make a clean break. But it has to be very clean—sterile, in fact—so it may take an hour or so.”

“What about Mo?”

“He has to stay with me. If we separate now, at the least they’ll follow him, at worst they’ll take him in.”

“What about you?”

“They won’t touch me beyond a tight surveillance.”

“You’re confident.”

“I’m angry. They can’t know what I’ve left behind or with whom or what my instructions are if there’s a break in any prearranged phone calls. For them, right now I’m a walking—limping—megabomb that could blow apart their entire operation, whatever the hell it is.”

“I know you say there’s no time, Alex, but I’ve got to tell you something. I’m not sure why, but I have to. I think one of the things about you that so hurt and enraged David was the fact that he thought you were the best at what you did. Every once in a while, when he’d have a few drinks or his mind wandered—opening a door or two for him—he’d shake his head sadly or pound his fist furiously and ask himself, Why? ‘Why?’ he’d say. ‘He was better than that … he was the best.’ ”

“I was no match for Delta. No one was. Ever.”

“You sound awfully good to me.”

“Because I’m not coming in from the cold, I’m going out. With a better reason than I’ve ever had in my life before.”

“Be careful, Alex.”

“Tell them to be careful.” Conklin hung up the phone, and Marie felt the tears rolling slowly down her cheeks.

Morris Panov and Alex left the gift shop in the Kowloon railroad station and headed for the escalator that led to the lower level, Tracks 5 and 6. Mo, the friend, was perfectly willing to follow his former patient’s instructions. But, Panov, the psychiatrist, could not resist offering his professional opinion.

“No wonder you people are all fucked up,” he said, carrying a stuffed panda under his arm and a brightly colored magazine in his hand. “Let me get this straight. When we go downstairs, I walk to the right, which is Track six, and then proceed to my left toward the rear of the train, which we assume will arrive within minutes. Correct, so far?”

“Correct,” answered Conklin, beads of sweat on his forehead as he limped beside the doctor.

“I then wait by the last pillar, holding this foul-smelling stuffed animal under my arm while glancing through the pages of this extremely pornographic magazine, until a woman approaches me.”

“Correct again,” said Alex as they stepped down into the escalator. “The panda’s a perfectly normal gift; it’s a favorite with Westerners. Think of it as a present to her kid. The porno magazine simply completes the recognition signal. Pandas and dirty pictures with naked women don’t usually go together.”

“On the contrary, the combination could be positively Freudian.”

“Score one for the funny farm. Just do as I say.”

“Say? You never told me what I was to say to the woman.”

“Try ‘Nice to meet you,’ or ‘How’s the kid?’ It doesn’t matter. Give her the panda and get back to this escalator as fast as you can without running.” They reached the lower platform, and Conklin touched Panov’s elbow, angling the doctor to the right. “You’ll do fine, Coach. Just do as I say and come back here. Everything’s going to be all right.”

“That’s easier said from where I usually sit.”

Panov walked down to the end of the platform as the train from Lo Wu thundered into the station. He stood by the last pillar, and as passengers by the hundreds poured out the doors the doctor awkwardly held the black-and-white panda under his arm and raised the magazine in front of his face. And when it happened, he nearly collapsed.

“You must be Harold!” exclaimed the loud falsetto voice as a tall figure, heavily made up under a soft, wide-brimmed hat and dressed in a gray pleated skirt, slapped his shoulder. “I’d know you anywhere, darling!”

“Nice to meet you. How’s the kid?” Morris could barely speak.

“How’s Alex?” countered the suddenly bass male voice quietly. “I owe him and I pay my debts, but this is crazy! Has he still got both his oars in the water?”

“I’m not sure any of you do,” said the astonished psychiatrist.

“Quickly,” said the strange figure. “They’re closing in. Give me the panda, and when I start running, fade into the crowd and get out of here! Give it to me!”

Panov did as he was told, aware that several men were breaking through the straggling groups of passengers and converging on them. Suddenly, the heavily rouged man in women’s clothes ran behind the thick pillar and emerged on the other side. He kicked off his high heels, circled the pillar again, and like a broken-field football back raced into the crowd nearest the train, passing a Chinese who tried to grab him, dodging through pummeled bodies and startled faces. Behind him other men took up the chase, thwarted by the increasingly hostile passengers who began using suitcases and knapsacks to ward off the bewildering assaults. Somehow in the near riot the panda was put in the hands of a tall Occidental female who was also holding an unfolded train schedule. The woman was grabbed by two well-dressed Chinese; she screamed; they looked at her, yelled at each other, and plunged ahead.

Morris Panov again did as he had been instructed to do: he quickly mingled with the departing crowd on the opposite side of the platform and walked rapidly along the edge of Track 5 back to the escalator, where a line had formed. There was a line but no Alex Conklin! Suppressing his panic, Mo slowed his pace but kept walking, looking around, scanning the crowds, as well as those riding up on the escalator. What had happened? Where was the CIA man?

“Mo!”

Panov spun to his left, the brief shout both a relief and a warning. Conklin had edged his way partially around a pillar thirty feet beyond the escalator. From his quick, rapid gestures he made it clear that he had to stay where he was, and for Mo to reach him, but slowly, cautiously. Panov assumed the air of a man annoyed with the line, a man who would wait for the crowd to thin out before attempting to get on the escalator. He wished he smoked or at least had not thrown the pornographic magazine down onto the tracks; either would have given him something to do. Instead, he clasped his hands behind his back and strolled casually along the deserted area of the platform, glancing around twice, frowning at the line. He reached the pillar, slid behind it, and gasped.

At Conklin’s feet lay a stunned, middle-aged man in a raincoat, with Conklin’s clubbed foot in the center of his back. “I’d like you to meet Matthew Richards, Doctor. Matt’s an old Far East hand going back to the early Saigon days when we first knew each other. Of course, he was younger then and a lot more agile. But then, again, weren’t we all.”

“For Christ’s sake, Alex, let me up!” pleaded the man named Richards, shaking his head as best he could in his supine position. “My head hurts like hell! What did you hit me with, a crowbar?”

“No, Matt. The shoe belonging to my nonexistent foot. Heavy, isn’t it? But then it has to take a lot of abuse. As to letting you up, you know I can’t do that until you answer my questions.”

“Goddamn it, I have answered them! I’m a lousy case officer, not the station chief. We picked you up from a D.C. directive that said to put you under surveillance. Then State moved in with another ‘direct,’ which I didn’t see!”

“I told you, I find that hard to believe. You’ve got a tight unit here; everybody sees everything. Be reasonable, Matt, we go back a long time. What did the State directive say?”

“I don’t know. It was eyes-only for the SC!”

“That’s ‘station chief,’ Doctor,” said Conklin, looking over at Panov. “It’s the oldest cop-out we have. We use it all the time when we get in rhubarbs with other government agencies. ‘What do I know? Ask the SC.’ That way our noses are clean because no one wants to hassle a station chief. You see, SC’s have a direct line to Langley, and depending on the Oval Yo-Yo, Langley has a direct line to the White House. It’s very politicized, let me tell you, and has very little to do with gathering intelligence.”

“Very enlightening,” said Panov, staring at the supine man, not knowing what else to say, grateful that the platform was now practically deserted, and the pillar at the rear was in shadows.

“No cop-out!” yelled Richards, struggling under the pressing weight of Conklin’s heavy boot. “Jesus, I’m telling you the truth! I get out next February! Why would I want any trouble from you or anybody else at headquarters?”

“Oh, Matt, poor Matt, you never were the best or the brightest. You just answered your own question. You can taste that pension just like me, and you don’t want any waves. I’m listed as a pickup, a tight surveillance, and you don’t want to louse up a directive where you’re concerned. Okay, pal, I’ll wire back an evaluation report that’ll get you transferred to Central American demolitions until your time’s up—if you last that long.”

“Cut it out!”

“Imagine, being skunk-trapped behind a pillar in a crowded train station by a lousy cripple. They’ll probably let you mine a few harbors all by yourself.”

“I don’t know anything!”

“Who are the Chinese?”

“I don’t—”

“They’re not the police, so who are they?”

“Government.”

“What branch? They had to tell you that—the SC had to tell you. He couldn’t expect you to work blind.”

“That’s just it, we are! The only thing he told us was that they were cleared by D.C. on the top floors. He swore that was all he knew! What the hell were we supposed to do? Ask to see their driver’s licenses?”

“So no one’s accountable because no one knows anything. It’d turn out nice if they were Chin-Comms picking up a defector, wouldn’t it?”

“The SC’s accountable. We lay it on him.”

“Oh, the higher morality of it all. ‘We just follow orders, Herr General.’ ” Conklin employed the hard German G for the rank. “And, naturally, Herr General doesn’t know anything either because he’s following his orders.” Alex paused, squinting. “There was one man, a big fellow who looked like a Chinese Paul Bunyan.” Conklin stopped. Richards’s head suddenly twitched, as did his body. “Who is he, Matt?”

“I don’t know … for sure.”

“Who?”

“I’ve seen him, that’s all. He’s hard to miss.”

“That isn’t all. Because he is hard to miss and considering the places where you’ve seen him, you asked questions. What did you learn?”

“Come on, Alex! It’s just gossip, nothing set in concrete.”

“I love gossip. Tattle, Matt, or this ugly, heavy thing on my leg may just have to pound your face. You see, I can’t control it; it’s got a mind of its own and it doesn’t like you. It can be very hostile, even to me.” With effort, Conklin suddenly raised his club foot and pounded it down between Richards’s shoulder blades.

“Christ! You’re breaking my back!”

“No, I think it wants to break your face. Who is he, Matt?” Again, grimacing, Alex raised his false foot and lowered it now on the base of the CIA man’s skull.

“All right! As I said, it’s not gospel, but I’ve heard he’s high up in Crown CI.”

“Crown CI,” explained Conklin to Morris Panov, “means British Counter Intelligence here in Hong Kong, which means a branch of MI-Six, which means they take their orders from London.”

“Very enlightening,” said the psychiatrist, as bewildered as he was appalled.

“Very,” agreed Alex. “May I have your necktie, Doctor?” asked Conklin as he began removing his own. “I’ll replace it out of contingency funds because we now have a new wrinkle. I’m officially at work. Langley is apparently funding—by way of Matthew’s salary and time—something involving an ally’s Intelligence operation. As a civil servant under a like classification I should put my shoulder to the wheel. I need your necktie, too, Matt.”

Two minutes later, Case Officer Richards lay behind the pillar, his feet and hands tied and his mouth drawn taut, all accomplished with three neckties.

“We’re sterile,” said Alex, studying what remained of the crowd beyond the pillar. “They’ve all gone after our decoy, who’s probably halfway to Malaysia by now.”

“Who was she—he? I mean, he certainly wasn’t a woman.”

“No sexism intended, but a woman probably couldn’t have made it out of here. He did, taking the others with him—after him. He jumped over the escalator railing and worked his way up. Let’s go. We’re clear.”

“But who is he?” pressed Panov, as they walked around the pillar toward the escalator and the few stragglers forming a short line.

“We’ve used him occasionally over here, mainly as a pair of eyes for out-of-the-way border installations, which he knows something about, since he has to get past them with his merchandise.”

“Narcotics?”

“He wouldn’t touch them; he’s a top-notch jock. He runs stolen gold and jewels, operating between Hong Kong, Macao, and Singapore. I think it has something to do with what happened to him a number of years ago. They took away his medals for conduct unbecoming just about everything. He posed for some raunchy photographs when he was in college and needed the money. Later, through the good offices of a sleazy publisher with the ethics of an alley cat, they surfaced and he was crucified, ruined.”

“That magazine I carried!” exclaimed Mo as they both stepped onto the escalator.

“Something like it, I guess.”

“What medals?”

“1976 Olympics. Track and field. The high hurdles were his specialty.”

Speechless, Panov stared at Alexander Conklin as they rose on the escalator, nearing the entrance to the terminal. A platoon of sweepers carrying wide brooms over their shoulders appeared on the opposite escalator heading down to the platform. Alex jerked his head toward them, snapped the fingers of his right hand, and with the thumb extended, jabbed the air in the direction of the terminal’s exit doors above. The message was clear. Within moments a bound CIA agent would be found behind a pillar.

“That’d be the one they call the major,” said Marie, sitting in a chair opposite Conklin while Morris Panov knelt beside her, examining her left foot. “Ouch!” she cried, pulling back her crossed leg. “I’m sorry, Mo.”

“Don’t be,” said the doctor. “It’s a nasty bruise spread over the second and third metatarsals. You must have taken quite a spill.”

“Several. You know about feet?”

“Right now I feel more secure with podiatry than psychiatry. You people live in a world that would drive my profession back to the Middle Ages—not that most of us aren’t still there; the words are just cuter.” Panov looked up at Marie, his eyes straying to her severely styled gray-streaked hair. “You had fine medical treatment, dark-redhead-that-was. Except the hair. It’s atrocious.”

“It’s brilliant,” corrected Conklin.

“What do you know? You were a patient of mine.” Mo returned to the foot. “They’re both healing nicely—the cuts and the blisters, that is—the bruise will take longer. I’ll pick up some things later and change the dressings.” Panov got up and pulled a straight-backed chair away from the small writing table.

“You’re staying here then?” asked Marie.

“Down the hall,” said Alex. “I couldn’t get either of the rooms next door.”

“How did you even manage that?”

“Money. This is Hong Kong, and reservations are always getting lost by somebody who isn’t around.… Back to the major.”

“His name is Lin Wenzu. Catherine Staples told me he was with British Intelligence, speaks English with a U.K. accent.”

“She was sure?”

“Very. She said he was considered the best Intelligence officer in Hong Kong, and that included everyone from the KGB to the CIA.”

“It’s not hard to understand. His name is Wenzu, not Ivanovitch or Joe Smith. A talented native is sent to England, educated and trained, and brought back to assume a responsible position in government. Standard colonial policy, especially in the area of law enforcement and territorial security.”

“Certainly from a psychological viewpoint,” added Panov, sitting down. “There are fewer resentments that way, and another bridge is built to the governed foreign community.”

“I understand that,” said Alex, nodding, “but something’s missing; the pieces don’t fit. It’s one thing for London to give a green light for an undercover D.C. operation—which everything we’ve learned tells us this is, only more bizarre than most—but it’s another for MI-Six to lend us their local people in a colony the U.K. is still running.”

“Why?” asked Panov.

“Several reasons. First, they don’t trust us—oh, not that they mistrust our intentions, just our brains. In some ways they’re right, in others they’re dead wrong, but that’s their judgment. Second, why risk exposing their personnel for the sake of decisions made by an American bureaucrat with no expertise in on-the-scene deep-cover administration? That’s the sticking point, and London would reject it out of hand.”

“I assume you’re referring to McAllister,” said Marie.

“Till the cows come home from a field of new alfalfa.” Conklin shook his head, exhaling as he did so. “I’ve done my research, and I can tell you he’s either the strongest or the weakest factor in this whole damned scenario. I suspect the latter. He’s pure, cold brains, like McNamara before his conversion to doubt.”

“Knock off the bullshit,” said Mo Panov. “What do you mean in straight talk, not chicken soup? Leave that to me.”

“I mean, Doctor, that Edward Newington McAllister is a rabbit. His ears spring up at the first sign of conflict or off-the-wire lapses, and he scampers off. He’s an analyst and one of the best, but he is not qualified to be a case officer, to say nothing of a station chief, and don’t even consider his being the strategist behind a major covert operation. He’d be laughed off the scene, believe me.”

“He was terribly convincing with David and me,” broke in Marie.

“He was given that script. ‘Prime the subject,’ he was told. Stick to the convoluted narrative that would become clearer to the subject in stages once he made his first moves, which he had to make because you were gone.”

“Who wrote the script?” asked Panov.

“I wish I knew. No one I reached in Washington knows, and that includes a number of people who should know. They weren’t lying; after all these years I can spot a swallow in a voice. It’s so damn deep and filled with so many contradictions it makes Treadstone Seventy-one look like an amateur effort—which it wasn’t.”

“Catherine said something to me,” interrupted Marie. “I don’t know whether it will help or not, but it stuck in my mind. She said a man flew into Hong Kong, a ‘statesman,’ she called him, someone who was ‘far more than a diplomat,’ or something like that. She thought there might be a connection with everything that’s happened.”

“What was his name?”

“She never told me. Later, when I saw McAllister down in the street with her, I assumed it was he. But maybe not. The analyst you just described and the nervous man who spoke to David and me is hardly a diplomat, much less a statesman. It had to be someone else.”

“When did she say this to you?” asked Conklin.

“Three days ago, when she was hiding me in her apartment in Hong Kong.”

“Before she drove you up to Tuen Mun?” Alex leaned forward in the chair.

“Yes.”

“She never mentioned him again?”

“No, and when I asked her, she said there was no point in either of us getting our hopes up. She had more digging to do, was the way she put it.”

“You settled for that?”

“Yes, I did, because at the time I thought I understood. I had no reason to question her then. She was taking a personal and professional risk helping me—accepting my word on her own without asking for consular advice, which others might have done simply to protect themselves. You mentioned the word ‘bizarre,’ Alex. Well, let’s face it, what I told her was so bizarre it was outrageous—including a fabric of lies from the U.S. State Department, vanishing guards from the Central Intelligence Agency, suspicions that led to the higher levels of your government. A lesser person might have backed away and covered herself.”

“Gratitude notwithstanding,” said Conklin gently, “she was withholding information you had a right to know. Christ, after everything you and David have been through—”

“You’re wrong, Alex,” interrupted Marie softly. “I told you I thought I understood her, but I didn’t finish. The cruelest thing you can do to a person who’s living every hour in panic is to offer him or her a hope that turns out false. When the crash comes it’s intolerable. Believe me, I’ve spent over a year with a man desperately looking for answers. He’s found quite a few, but those he followed only to find them wrong nearly broke him. Dashed hopes are no fun for the one hoping.”

“She’s right,” said Panov, nodding his head and looking at Conklin. “And I think you know it, don’t you?”

“It happened,” replied Alex, shrugging and looking at his watch. “At any rate, it’s time for Catherine Staples.”

“She’ll be watched, guarded!” It was Marie who now sat forward in her chair, her expression concerned, her eyes questioning. “They’ll assume you both came over here because of me, and that you reached me and I told you about her. They’ll expect you to go after her. They’ll be waiting for you. If they could do what they’ve done so far, they could kill you!”

“No, they couldn’t,” said Conklin, getting up and limping toward the bedside telephone. “They’re not good enough,” he added simply.

“You’re a goddamned basket case!” whispered Matthew Richards from behind the wheel of the small car parked across the street from Catherine Staples’s apartment.

“You’re not very grateful, Matt,” said Alex, sitting in the shadows next to the CIA man. “Not only did I not send in that evaluation report, but I also let you get me back under surveillance. Thank me, don’t insult me.”

“Shit!”

“What did you tell them back at the office?”

“What else? I was mugged, for Christ’s sake.”

“By how many?”

“At least five teenaged punks. Zhongguo ren.”

“And if you fought back, making a lot of ruckus, I might have spotted you.”

“That’s the story board,” agreed Richards quietly.

“And when I called you, naturally it was one of the street people you’ve cultivated who saw a white man with a limp.”

“Bingo.”

“You might even get a promotion.”

“I just want to get out.”

“You’ll make it.”

“Not this way.”

“So it was old Havilland himself who blew into town.”

“You didn’t get that from me! It was in the papers.”

“The sterile house in Victoria Peak wasn’t in the papers, Matt.”

“Hey, come on, that was a trade-off! You’re nice to me, I’m nice to you. No lousy report about me getting clobbered by a shoe with no foot in it and you get an address. Anyway, I’d deny it. You got it from Garden Road. It’s all over the consulate, thanks to a pissed-off marine.”

“Havilland,” mused Alex out loud. “It fits. He’s tight-ass with the British, even talks like them.… My God, I should have recognized the voice!”

“The voice?” asked a perplexed Richards.

“Over the phone. Another page in the scenario. It was Havilland! He wouldn’t let anyone else do it! ‘We’ve lost her.’ Oh, Jesus, and I was sucked right in!”

“Into what?”

“Forget it.”

“Gladly.”

An automobile slowed down and stopped across the street in front of Staples’s apartment house. A woman got out of the rear curbside door, and seeing her in the wash of the streetlights, Conklin knew who it was. Catherine Staples. She nodded to the driver, turned around and walked across the pavement to the thick glass doors of the entrance.

Suddenly, an engine roaring at high pitch filled the quiet street by the park. A long black sedan swerved out of a space somewhere behind them and screeched to a stop beside Staples’s car. Staccato explosions thundered from the second vehicle. Glass was shattered both in the street and across the pavement as the windows of the parked automobile were blown away, along with the driver’s head, and the doors of the apartment house riddled, collapsing in bloody fragments, as the body of Catherine Staples was nailed into the frame under the fusillade of bullets.

Tires spinning, the black sedan raced away in the dark street, leaving the carnage behind, blood and torn flesh everywhere.

“Jesus Christ!” roared the CIA man.

“Get out of here,” ordered Conklin.

“Where? For Christ’s sake, where?”

“Victoria Peak.”

“Are you out of your mind?”

“No, but somebody else is. One blue-blooded son of a bitch has been taken. He’s been had. And he’s going to hear it first from me. Move!”