Pressing his hands down, Chong, everything's under control, his breath clouding on the raw morning air as the light in the east took on more colour, pouring gold along the horizon.
'Do they want the subject,' Pepperidge asked, 'or what he's got in his head?'
Not after facts now, simply tapping me for what he could get, for what I could give him, because London would ask these questions and he'd need answers. 'If all they wanted was information,' I said, 'they'd have gone for me, not him.' Information on Bamboo, the information I'd been forced to give Xingyu to keep him from running home to Beijing.
'So what do they want him for?'
I had to think, but it wasn't easy, the cold was like a clamp, numbing the body, numbing the brain, not cold so much as fatigue, been a hard day last night. 'They want him,' I said, 'for bargaining, perhaps. As a hostage.' There were a lot of possible scenarios with Xingyu Baibing as the catalyst, brought forward to bring political pressure, a guarantee, a bargaining chip, a martyr to bring the weight of the people against the Chinese government.
'They can't do anything with him here.'
'No. They'll have to take him to Beijing.'
'But they can't do that.' His voice kept fading, coming back. 'Any more than we could have, now that he's being actively sought. In a moment, 'What is your situation?'
'Ground. Chong's still in support.' I told him about the roadblocks, the sergeant.
'Can you still use the truck?'
'Yes.' The sergeant wouldn't have seen it distinctly enough from the roadblock to identify it as a green Jeifang, and the most he would've said to anyone would have been that there was a vehicle on the move down there, he'd go and check it out.
'If they were searching vehicles,' Pepperidge said, 'it couldn't have been a coincidence. Someone must have told them you were going to him.' A beat. 'They're very close, aren't they?'
I didn't say anything. I'd thought about that before but it hadn't got me anywhere, simply confirmed that we had a private cell dogging my shadow, infiltrating Bamboo, driving me to ground.
'I'll have to signal,' Pepperidge said, 'of course.' The line cracked, and I waited. Chong came through the gates, standing inside, his back to me, stamping his feet, gloved hands rammed into the pockets of his coat. An engine was rumbling and I watched the gates; they were heavy timber, with gaps at the hinged ends, a gap in the middle. 'I will relay,' Pepperidge's voice came again, 'what you've told me. They'll want to know what your plans are.'
That had been the reason for the silence on the line: he'd been thinking out how to put it, because this was going to be rough.
In a moment I said, 'To find the subject?'
It was an army vehicle, a camouflaged personnel carrier; I watched it through the gaps in the gates, past Cheng's motionless figure. It was loaded, the carrier, Chinese troops in battle dress. It was going slowly, toward the centre of the city.
'Yes,' Pepperidge said, 'your plans are to find the subject, of course. But London will ask for details.'
Either they were coming down from the intersections in the north, the roadblocks, or they were moving into the town from an outlying base, to begin a house-to-house search for Xingyu Baibing.
'Tell London they can't have any details,' I said into the phone.
The carrier had stopped, not far from the big green Jeifang, and Chong turned and stood facing me now, his mouth working on the chewing gum, his eyes blanked off. We'd agreed, on our way south through the night, that we would go on using the truck as our base, at least for the first hour or two of theday, that it wasn't a risk, wouldn't call attention. There were hundreds of these things in the city and around it and along the roads to Chengdu, Golmud, Kathmandu, most of them painted green like this one. The only man who could have recognized it as ours was dead.
But perhaps we were wrong, because boots were hitting the ground as men dropped from the carrier. Or their citywide search was going to start here, at the truck depot.
'It's like this, you see' — Pepperidge — 'I've got every confidence in you, and I think you've got as good a chance as anyone of bringing this thing home.'
The mission. As good a chance of bringing it home as any other executive they might fly out here to take over and do what he could to go in cold and try pulling something else out of the wreckage.
'The only point,' I said, 'in getting someone else out here would be that he could work at street level.' Unknown to the police and the PSB, unknown to the private cell.
Boots on the outside. I watched the gates. The engine on the personnel carrier was still running; it hadn't moved on.
'What they'll say' — Pepperidge — 'is that while I have total confidence in you, they cannot share it. Unless you can give me any idea of where you plan to go from here, they may well instruct me to send you out of the field.'
He hadn't liked saying that. He would have done anything not to say it.
'I quite understand.'
Best I could do, put him out of his misery, take it like a man, so forth, as I watched the gates and saw coming over to them, three soldiers.
Chong didn't move. He was standing twenty feet away between me and the gates, facing them now, perfectly still. There were trucks standing in the depot, a dozen or more, most of them big Jeifangs, adequate cover.
On the far side was a low wall, and that was the way I would have to go. And this is the problem of going to ground: you can be forced at any minute to run, and keep on running. There's no base anymore that you can work from, no stability; the sands are shifting all the time under your feet.
You can see their point, can't you, in London, quite understand.
Shivering in the first pale light of the new day, shivering under the warm padded coat, the one I'd taken from the man in the temple, first his life and then his coat, uncivil of me, I will admit, shivering despite its warmth as the soldiers came to the gates and started banging on them.
'Da kai!'
Chong didn't move, shouted back at them — 'Zher hai mei ren.'
Pepperidge: 'I can only obey their instructions, of course.' London's. 'If they-' he broke off, 'was that someone shouting?'
'Yes.'
'Are you pressed?'
'Not really.'
'Tamen shenme shihou dao?'
Crackling on the line. 'Who is shouting?'
'Chong. He's all right, but I might have to ring off. If I do, I'll get through to you again from somewhere else.'
In a moment, 'Don't leave anything too late.'
Chong hadn't moved. 'Jiu dian!' Shouting at them.
He would give me time, I knew that. If they started forcing the gates he'd turn and give me the signal and we'd separate, make our own way out, if they didn't start shooting first.
'Look,' I said, 'they can't get him out of Lhasa. He's still here somewhere. I'm going to find him.'
Soldiers banging at the gates.
Chong standing perfectly still, shouting at them.
'Lihai zher ba. Jiu dian huilai!'
Pepperidge on the line, worried by the noise. 'I'd be happier if you'd ring off and look after things there.'
'He's still in this town,' I said, 'and I'm going to find him. Tell them to give me a bit more time. A few hours.'
Banging at the gates.
'That's all I'm asking. A few hours.'
Chapter 21: Dog