Hit the button — 'Breaking, stay open, out.'
She was at a table in the far corner.
I could only just about see her: large luminous eyes set in a small pale face above the fur collar of her parka; something had gone wrong, I suppose, with one of the stoves in here, the cafe was thick with smoke. This was a bigger place than the one I'd gone to before with little Su-May and later Pepperidge; it was crowded, people hungry in the middle of the day. My stomach was empty but I hungered not, had ordered tea. Fear doth not prick the appetite, and Lord, I was afraid.
The oil lamps flickered against the walls like warning beacons across a foggy sea, and dark figures moved through the smoke, servers, customers, beggars, and monks; dogs darted between their feet and under the rickety bamboo tables and out again, seeking scraps for their hallowed stomachs.
They are sacred, she had told me, little Su-May, believed by some to be the reincarnation of departed monks, I think she'd said, believed by some but not by me, kicked at one of the little buggers and felt it connect, they'll start gnawing on your bloody ankle if you don't watch out, sitting with my hands around the cup of tea, nursing my nerves.
Because it had come to this. When a mission has crashed and the opposition has gained the field and there is nothing you can do, almost nothing, we will correct that, almost nothing you can do, there is always a last desperate play that you can consider using, and it has never failed. It will give you access again, a way in through the wreckage, and if you get it right you will once more confront the enemy, and with luck and the blessing of every saint in Christendom you may even, finally, prevail.
Men moved like shadows in this ghostly place, women too, I suppose, though it was difficult to tell because most of them were swathed in robes or skins or coats and big fur hats, the drab plumage of their winter hibernation here on the bleak roof of the world. Someone was coughing his heart up in the drifting smoke, and a door was banged open behind me to let some of it out.
There were no mirrors in here.
It's not in the book, the ploy I was talking about, even though it has never failed. You'd think a thing like that would be a dead ringer for the Manual of Procedures, which is the Bible rewritten for the shadow executives of the Bureau, and I've tried to get it put in, but their lordships of the hierarchy won't have it, and the best I can do is spell it out for the — neophyte spooks whenever I give an instruction class between missions at Norfolk.
She had been sitting alone, but now a man was joining her at the table, his black leather outfit gleaming in the shadows as the light from the oil lamps caught it. He looked young, athletic; he was an Oriental. I didn't think I'd seen him before, though I might have — no one in this smoke was easy to recognize. I hadn't known she'd come here to keep a rendezvous, but I'd thought it possible, by the way she'd checked the street outside the hotel, right and left, in the way they do, the amateurs, the unfortunates in this life who pass too close to the machinery, sometimes with the thought in mind of monetary gain or the perverse excitement of betrayal, sometimes just by accident — as in her case, I believed, little Su-May's — passing too close to the subtle and delicate machinery of international intelligence, fine as the web of that black widow we talked of, you and I, the machinery of subterfuge and treachery, deceit and untimely death.
They were talking, she and the young athletic-looking Oriental, their heads close. She hadn't seen me: I knew this. She would have reacted, would react if she saw me.
They won't allow it in the book, their lordships of the hierarchy, because although this last desperate play has never failed, it is deadly. It is lethal. It has killed.
At first I thought she was all she'd seemed to be, little Su-May, a refugee from the continuing oppression in Beijing, afraid for her father. Then I'd thought — had known — she was something more than that, perhaps working for the private cell that had moved into the field — not, certainly working for the police or Chinese Intelligence: she was totally untrained. Then I'd assumed that she had, yes, simply passed too close to the machinery, to become caught up, her loyalties compromised, fragmented, so that she was grateful to me for the message I'd sent to her father, impressed that I'd killed an agent of the KCCPC, the arch enemy, had protected me from the police in the cafe — perhaps on instructions — but had been working against me for the private cell and even then had become torn both ways and finally had warned me.
You must be careful. When you go down to the street, make sure you are not followed.
By the police?
No. By anyone.
All I knew of her now was that she might provide me with the only link there was to the opposition, to whatever agent or cell she was working for, and could conceivably lead me to Xingyu Baibing.
The man in black leather could have been one of the people who had gone into the monastery last night and seized Xingyu and killed the guard. I could be within touching distance of the subject, the messiah.
It was all that sustained me, this thought, all right, this straw I was clutching at. Without it, nothing could have made me leave the truck and follow this woman here through the bright streets of noon, totally unable to know if I myself had picked up a tag among the people of this place in their robes and skins and coats and big fur hats, their disguise if you will, because that's what it amounted to, totally unable to know if I had been followed here and being watched at this moment through the drifting smoke.
No mirrors, and a door wide open behind me, does that tell you anything? Normal security measures had gone to the dogs: I'd used no cover on my way here, hadn't even looked back, had walked into this place alone instead of waiting for other people to camouflage the image through the doorway, had sat down at a table in the middle of the room, my back to the door, breaking every single bloody rule in the book, chapter and verse, because that is what the ploy demands before it can work for you.
I took another swallow of tea; it was thin, bitter, sharp with tannin, but hot, scalding still from the big black insulated jug they carried from one table to the next; it warmed my hands, burned them, as I sat here with the skin crawling and the nerves flickering along their pathways like liquid fire, a lone spook cut off now from all support, contact, and communication, sitting here like a rabbit on a firing range, divorced from the mission, sequestered in a location unknown to my director in the field, offering myself body and soul to the opposition in the hope that all could be reversed as the hours mounted slowly through the day, to allow me at last a chance, however small, of finding him, Xingyu, Dr Xingyu Baibing, and of bringing him to safety.
You know what it is, the ploy.
She was standing up suddenly, Su-May, at the far table in the corner, still talking to the man in black leather, looking down at him, one hand resting on the tabletop, a bag of some kind slung from her shoulder.
You know what it is, my good friend, if you've soldiered with me before: it is a matter of getting in their way. If you cannot find them, let them find you. Let them see you, let them come for you, let them trap you, and if it becomes necessary let them do the most dangerous thing of all — let them take you.
Voila.