The Mandarin Cypher

Because you don't need a capsule, you know, when it comes to the crunch. That's just the most convenient way. You don't even need drain cleaner or exhaust gas or a knife or a gun or a high window without bars or a rope: you just need your nails and an artery — and their belief that you want to stay alive. That bit's important because if they think you're going to try switching off they'll start watching you and that's a bore.

I'd do it because I don't like tunnels: I'm claustrophobic.

I wouldn't want to go through with the intensive interrogation phase and the increasingly restrictive incarceration and the final mind-bending sessions in Pekin because they'd break down the psyche to the point when I didn't think the Bureau was important any more and then I'd give them the lot. And I wouldn't mind.

But I minded now.

So I hadn't got much to lose if I tried to get the objective out of the target zone and failed, even if it killed me. A lot would depend on Tewson.

He was saying something but I couldn't hear.

'What?'

'Bloody noise!' he said with his quick white laugh. 'They're doing repairs!'

'Just like the Strand,' I said, 'always got the road up!'

We laughed about this, nodding together.

The Chinese in front of us hadn't turned round so the chance was wide open and I went over the whole thing in the next two seconds to make sure I got it right.

I had to blow my cover.

But only to Tewson: not to the opposition. They'd told him, or they would later tell him, that I was an intelligence agent sent to Hong Kong to find him and take him back to London; and I'd have to say something to him that would cut right across their story. It must be something he couldn't repeat to the opposition without endangering himself. And it must carry the name of a sponsor to give it high credibility, but a sponsor he couldn't contact openly for confirmation. And finally it must be short, because at any next second the din of the riveter could stop and leave me without aural cover.

All I had to do was light a fuse. A short-burn fuse in his mind.

'Tewson.' I waited till he'd turned his head, then pitched my voice against the background noise. 'Nora says she's found out you're expendable. They're going to kill you the minute you've done this job, for their own security. She wants me to tell you to get out of this as soon as you can.'

Chapter Seventeen: COVER

'When?'

'Last night.'

'What time?'

'I've told you I can't remember what the time was!'

'You told me nothing!'

'Oh for Christ sake 'Who are your employers?'

'I'm not going to tell you!'

'Because you are lying!'

'If you say that again I'll — '

'Where are they now?'

'Who?'

'Your employers.'

'They're — oh Jesus, are you off your fucking rocker? How many times have you asked me that one?'

He'd been at me for two hours without a break but he wasn't very good. Thin chap with a wide jaw and a short haircut, Mao tunic, some kind of insignia, worker's merit medal or something. He'd started sweating because of the heat of the lamp.

They'd given me the smallest cabin on the whole rig: one narrow bunk set in the wall like a niche at the crematorium where you put the urn, cheap cardtable and picnic chair, army mirror on a chain, tin-washbasin, no loo. There was only one lamp and it was high on the wall and they'd put a two hundred watt bulb in it and he was getting as much of the glare as I was, but I suppose he thought he should do this thing like they did it on the flicks.

'What is the name of the yacht?'

'The Isabella. Look, wouldn't it be better if you played that thing back a few times?'

'Where is the yacht now?'

'That's the third time. What's the point of leaving that thing running when all you can do is ask the same bloody questions like a record player?'

I'd begun looking at him sideways a bit in the last half-hour: the cover demanded that I should react with increasing exasperation and finally begin to doubt his sanity. He hadn't tripped me on anything yet because he wasn't capable. This was the best interrogator they had in Hong Kong and he'd been immediately available as a member of the local cell so they'd flown him in right away in the helicopter and now he was doing his stuff but his stuff consisted of the repetition-to-attrition technique and not much else: the idea is that if you shout the same question at the subject fifty times he'll finally tell the truth. It's meant to work on the principle that every time they shout the question you feel a bit more guilty about lying, and in the end you hear your own subconscious throwing up the right answer.

It's not funny when it happens because you start thinking it's your sanity that's begun to slip. Then you're strictly on the skids and if they didn't find the capsule in the lining you'd better get it out and don't let them see you till you keel over. But I didn't think this man could do any good because he wasn't fully trained: he wasn't alternating with the correct mood changes that made you think he believed you and trusted you, so that the guilt mechanism produced more power the next time you lied.

'Where were you diving?'

'In the bloody sea.' I wiped the sweat off my face and tried to slide back the small metal window again to make him think I'd forgotten they'd jammed it solid: the first thing an interrogator looks for is the onset of memory lapse and it'd make him feel good and when you start feeling good you've got one foot on the soap. You shouldn't feel anything. In first category interrogation — no kicks, no shocks — you don't really talk. You question or you answer. Anything like conversation is discouraged because it decreases the tension.

'Where were you diving?' he asked me again.

His eyes were a bit pink-rimmed under the light and I wondered how long he could keep it up. Two hours is a long time.

'Listen, I'm going to tell you the whole thing again and you make sure you get it all down on that tape. Then if you ask me just one more question again I swear I'll throw you straight through that fucking door. Okay?'

I didn't expect an answer because that one's in the book. The interrogator has to keep up the theme of repetition, and anything else he says will ease the monotony and he doesn't want to do that.

'Right. My — '

'What is your name?'

He wanted it his way: if I told him 'the whole thing again' the ball was going to stop in my court. It had to be question, answer, question, answer, wearing you down.

'Harry Cox.'

'Why did you come to Hong Kong?'

'To do some diving.'

'Why?'

'Some people gave me a job.'

'What job?'

'Look for a wreck.'

'What wreck?'

'Now don't start asking me that one again. I've told you, a boat went down with a private collection of gold coins on board, and my present employers — '

'Who are your employers?'

Question 9.

'I gave them my word I wouldn't reveal their names. Listen, you let a thing like this get around and you'll have the whole of the Hong Kong fishing fleet out here looking for that boat, it stands to reason.'

'What is the boat's position?'

What depth, did it Wow up, was there a collision, so forth. I gave him the answers again, there wasn't any problem. But now and then I told him he was a stupid clot and asked him if he'd gone off his rocker, routine cover approach but helpful to relieve the tension in me. He could throw me this stuff till he had to bring in a relief and it wouldn't worry me but it was what they were doing outside this cabin that was starting to give me the shakes because I was a bit farther inside the tunnel at this stage and going deeper and I didn't want to go on.

The man they were going to give me in Pekin would be different from this one. For the first few days I'd respect his skin and admire his techniques and then he'd start getting close and I'd have to fight back till he blew me and when he'd blown me he'd begin on the real stuff: the Bureau.