21
Kuo Yuan-ching looked cautiously across the desk, head to one side in what Charlie had come to realise was an habitual pose.
‘I’m intrigued at your visit,’ said the Chinese.
‘You shouldn’t be,’ said Charlie. It would be wrong to let this man imagine any superiority.
Kuo let an expression reach his face, but refused to respond directly to the remark. Instead he said, ‘Everything would seem to have been resolved far better than you had hoped.’
‘And you’ll get your court denunciation.’
‘It would seem likely,’ admitted Kuo.
‘It’s inevitable,’ predicted Charlie. ‘Especially now that John Lu wants to save himself by turning Queen’s evidence.’
‘Then we’re both satisfied.’
‘No,’ said Charlie. ‘I’m not satisfied at all.’
‘Not with having saved?6,000,000!’
‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘What, then?’
‘I know what happened,’ announced Charlie.
Kuo remained expressionless, hands resting lightly on the table top.
‘Doesn’t everybody?’ he said.
‘No, Mr Kuo. Hardly anybody.’
The man shook his head, raising his hands in a gesture of bewilderment.
‘You baffle me,’ he protested condescendingly.
‘For a long time, you baffled me,’ said Charlie. ‘And then I thought of the incredible help and all the concern about Lu being publicly denounced. And then I remembered what Mr Chiu told me, as we were going to Peking.’
‘What was that?’
‘“People who bring disgrace to China never go unpunished,”’ quoted Charlie.
Kuo nodded, seriously.
‘That’s true,’ he agreed. ‘We’re sometimes a vindictive nation.’
‘I’ve often been accused of the same fault. Perhaps that’s how I finally realised the truth.’
‘Is vindictiveness necessarily a fault?’
‘It’s taken me a long time to recognise it,’ admitted Charlie. Too long, he thought.
‘I’m still waiting to be surprised,’ prompted Kuo.
‘Apart from the fact that I should have been wounded by the knife, the border attack was very convincing, even to the suits your people wore. Just like Lu’s men. But not to use the knife was a mistake…’
‘Our people!’ echoed Kuo.
‘Your people,’ insisted Charlie. ‘No one except the Chinese authorities knew when I would be returning across the border, with the statement implicating Lu. So it couldn’t have been anyone else, could it?’
There was a disparaging expression upon Kuo’s face.
‘But why should we steal from you an affidavit we went to such enormous trouble to ensure you obtained?’ he said.
‘To guarantee, even if it meant murder, the public disgrace of Lu,’ said Charlie. ‘A disgrace that I couldn’t guarantee, not even with the statement.’
‘A very wild flight of fancy,’ said Kuo mildly.
‘No,’ argued Charlie. ‘Not wild at all. Just a sensible interpretation of Peking’s determination to maintain its rapport with America… a rapport important enough to risk the death of an American agent… an agent whom you took particular care to let know the facilities I’d been given and whom you knew would make an effort to retrieve incriminating evidence if enough people pointed him to it. And enough people did…’
Charlie paused.
‘Which was why I wasn’t knifed,’ he accepted. ‘I had to set the bait, didn’t I?’
Kuo pushed his chair slightly away from the table, making a small grating sound.
‘It actually removed the risk of having to snatch him off the streets, with all the problems of failure that that might have created, didn’t it? All you had to do was follow him, until he got to Lu’s house?’
‘People who know more about it than I said you were extremely clever, Mr Muffin,’ said Kuo conversationally. ‘But I don’t think any of us believed you’d work it out as far as you have. You really are a surprising man.’
Charlie sat motionless, numbed by the identification.
‘Why bewilderment, Mr Muffin? You’d expect Peking to have extensive files on all American and British operatives, wouldn’t you?’ said Kuo, still casual. ‘Just as they have files about our people.’
Charlie still couldn’t respond.
‘It was little more than a routine cross-reference with your picture, almost as soon as you arrived in the colony to question the fire, that gave us your identity,’ said the Chinese.
He had assumed control, decided Charlie.
‘And you were right,’ continued Kuo. ‘We had far more reason than any British insurance company to expose Lu. So nothing could be left to chance.’
The almost constant impression of surveillance, remembered Charlie. So his instinct wasn’t failing. He felt the relief of a man fearing blindness who is assured that all he needs are reading glasses.
‘Your coming really fascinated us,’ admitted Kuo. ‘Particularly as your file had you marked as dead.’
He leaned forward across the desk.
‘And such an interesting file,’ he said. ‘We could easily appreciate why London and Washington would want you killed.’
Russia would have leaked the humiliation of the British and the Americans, Charlie knew; they’d seen it from the beginning as a propaganda coup. He was not surprised that Peking knew the details.
‘You made very full use of me, didn’t you?’ he said, at last.
‘As much as we possibly could,’ conceded Kuo. ‘The arrival of the man Jones made it perfect for us.’
‘Otherwise mine would have been the body found in Lu’s lounge?’
Kuo’s face opened with the obviousness of the answer.
‘It would have had to be, wouldn’t it?’ he said. ‘And you would have had as much reason to try to retrieve the document as the American. More maybe.’
‘But I’m not being allowed to escape, am I?’ guessed Charlie.
‘Escape?’
‘Within twenty-four hours this colony will be inundated with men from Washington, investigating the death of one of their operatives,’ predicted Charlie. ‘To point them towards me would round the whole thing off very neatly, wouldn’t it?’
‘You’re a very suspicious person, Mr Muffin.’
‘I have to be.’
Kuo nodded.
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘Of course.’
‘Do you intend exposing me?’ demanded Charlie.
Kuo sighed, a man facing an unpleasant duty.
‘It’s very unlikely that they’d see the flaw you recognised. No one was as completely involved as you, after all. But there’s always the outside possibility. And as I’ve said, we can’t leave anything to chance.’
‘So to be handed me might deflect their curiosity?’
‘You must admit,’ said Kuo, ‘Washington would be very interested.’
Moving slowly, so the man would not misunderstand, Charlie put his hand into the inside pocket of his jacket and took out an envelope.
‘As interested, perhaps, as they would be in these?’ he said.
Kuo’s control was very good, thought Charlie. There was not the slightest indication of emotion as the man went carefully through the photographs.
The first showed quite clearly Harvey Jones bypassing the alarms at Lu’s house. There were more, of Chinese this time, at the same spot on the wall. The picture of the American’s apparently unconscious body being bundled into the lounge was slightly blurred because of the distance from which it had been taken, but Jones was still recognisable. There were several pictures of a car. with the number plate clearly identifiable.
‘The registration would prove it to be the vehicle assigned to this legation, wouldn’t it?’ asked Charlie.
‘Oh yes,’ agreed Kuo. He looked up. ‘Infra-red photography?’
‘I was professionally trained,’ said Charlie. ‘I actually entered the department because of it.’
‘They’re very good,’ said Kuo, as if he were admiring holiday snapshots.
‘The only difficulty is the need to keep the film refrigerated until just before use and then getting it developed as soon as possible afterwards,’ said Charlie. ‘Fortunately in a place like Hong Kong I had no difficulty buying an 0.95 lens.’