The Mandarin Cypher

There'd been no tag from the Golden Sands and no tag from the Taunus. Either he was one of the people they'd drafted into the field to keep watch for me, or Chiang had blown me.

'Ferris.'

He looked up. I said:

'Has Chiang had recent screenings?'

'Oh, please be serious,' he said, and gave a token giggle, concentrating on the set again, trying to clear the signal identification bleep from the background noise.

I realized I must be in mild delayed shock because if that boy had been one of the people who'd been drafted into the field to watch for me he'd be doing it at the Hong Kong Cathay and the Mauritius and the Orient Club and places like that where I'd been sighted and identified, not here at the safe-house. No one had ever seen me come here: no one. Except him.

There was something I was missing and it wasn't anything to do with Chiang. When London sets up a safe-house it doesn't leave anything to chance because if one major operator gets blown at any given time and in any given place it can shake the whole of the network and do irreversible damage and we'd all know that and I'd forgotten and Ferris had reminded me.

I was forgetting too much.

'Ferris.'

He looked up again.

'I've got something for them,' I said.

'London?'

'Yes.'

'I'm holding open for them now. Can it wait?'

'If you like. But I know where Tewson went to.'

'Oh Jesus Christ,' he said and switched over to send.

I told him where the thing was, 114 X 22, and he began sending in cypher.

Forgetting too much, but some of it was corning back and I went down the stairs and found Chiang putting those bloody things into a canvas bag while Chih-chi swept the glass into a cardboard box marked Nestle's.

'Chiang, are there any more of those things loose?'

'Is all now,' he said, 'all home.' He was looking despondent and I didn't know whether it was because I'd finished off one of his most expensive delicacies or whether he was still annoyed with Ferris for not letting him screw the Bureau for a couple of thousand Hong Kong dollars.

I went behind the counter and bent over the boy and he stared at me with one eye as I found his wallet, checking it, yes, a picture of me, a copy of the one they'd found in their Western networks file, not so good as the one I had of Tewson but quite recognizable, some kind of minaret in the hazy background, it could have been a stray they'd shot while I was doing the Bangkok thing. I took the wallet upstairs for Ferris to go through, and put a match to the photograph and waited until he'd finished sending.

923-843-01 blank 267-783-14…the same as the one they'd given me, because that was the cypher for Mandarin. He was telling them about the boy downstairs while he was at it: no smoke necessary, contact will deal immediate, and dossier to follow. There might be something in the wallet he could send, but the boy was only a hit and wouldn't know anything about the Pekin cell, any more than Flower had known about the Bureau.

'An oil rig,' said Ferris, and swung round on the sack of herbs. 'Now there's a funny place.' He sniffed the air and looked at the curl of black ash. 'Your picture, was it?'

'Yes.'

'They must have it on file.' He looked up at me critically. 'Would you like a tetanus shot or anything?'

'Not really.'

'Are you ready to fill me in?'

'There's not much.' I slid my back down the wall and sat on the floor and told him everything I could think of. He broke in only when he wanted me to know something or when he wanted me to see that he already had the background… yes, his parents are flying out to take his body back home… yes, they sent me a microfilm on the lady Nora… all right, I'll deal with that, when you've told me what sort of damage they did… It took only ten minutes but by that time I'd formed a conclusion about Egerton: he was a worse bastard than I'd thought. Because Ferris had too clear a picture for London to have jumped him in from Pekin as a reflex action in the last twenty-four hours.

'When did they bring you in on Mandarin, Ferris?'

'Six weeks ago.'

'Did they tell you who you were going to direct?'

'They said they hoped to get you.'

'I bet it wasn't Egerton who said that.'

'No, it was — ' Then he broke off and looked at me and the faint crinkles began at the corners of his eyes. 'Did the Egg say he didn't have a director for you?'

'Macklin said so.'

'Macklin?'

'He's in Field Briefing.'

'Oh he is, is he? Well, we're not taking any instructions from him, old boy, he gets all his maps back to front. Oh I see,' he said suddenly, giving a soft whinny. 'The Egg thought you wouldn't take it on if he couldn't drop you straight into the action, is that it? Took you in, did he? Serves you right, you're always trying to pick and choose.' He was looking me all over with critical eyes. 'You feeling uncomfy, are you?'

'It was those bloody reptiles, I can't stand the things.'

'Oh really? I thought they looked rather jolly old fellows.'

He got off the sack like a stork taking off and went to the top of the stairs, waving a finger in the direction of the set. 'Keep an ear open, old boy.' Then he was shouting for Chiang, telling him he'd got some shopping for Chih-chi to do, poking his head back in the doorway. 'What are your measurements?'

'Which ones?'

I wished he'd shut up and settle down and let me think because I wanted to know how it happened. I suppose he was being very decent about it, giving me time to work things out: a director like Sargent or Loman would have slung the whole book at me for turning up at a safe-house for initial local briefing with a tag right on my back. It must have shaken him.

'Need a new suit,' he said. 'Get arrested if you went out of here in that one, blood all over it.'

I gave him my measurements and told him to change the image and felt an immediate fool because it was the first thing he'd think of. He pretended he hadn't heard. I sat watching the carrier level and tried again but all I came up with was another negative finding: they hadn't raided Fleetway (again) or if they had it didn't give them a lead because I'd put my address as the Hong Kong Cathay and I'd never been back there.

'Thing is,' Ferris told me as he came back and sat on his sack, 'there were only two characters who were ready to look at this job, but the Egg said he didn't want them because they probably wouldn't live. No names and all that, but they're a couple of clowns, knives in their teeth, that sort of thing.' Feldman, I thought, and Ptack, neither of them long enough out of middle Europe to develop style. 'They wouldn't have looked twice at the toothpaste, for instance, and you know what the Egg always says: "There are old agents and bold agents, but there are no old bold agents."'

There was a fly buzzing at the window and he got up and began stabbing at it with his long pale finger until I heard a light brittle crunch. He came back and sat down, wiping his finger on the sack, and I remembered him in Hanover and before that in Tangier, going out of his way to step on a beetle and coming back without any interruption in what he was saying. We don't know much about our directors but one thing I knew about Ferris was that he'd been sent into Brussels three years ago with express orders to hit a man who'd been turned, and he was back inside twenty-four hours and nobody asked anything or said anything but the next day the tin came round to all departments and we dubbed up for the widow. At the time we didn't know it was Ferris but we knew it was someone in the top echelon, active branch, and it didn't take some of us long to work it out.