The Mandarin Cypher

… but heroin's their worst problem, even the schoolkids have started using it…

… they're not really poor, darling, I think they just like living on boats…

… the prettiest girls in Asia, Joe, and I'm not kidding…

Warmth underfoot across the tarmac and the air clammy against the face, the end of a long day's heat, the sinuous flicker of her cheongsam ahead of us as she led the way against the frieze of ponderously moving shapes, Swissair, Lufthansa, Transworld, and beyond them a curtain of jewels across the harbour as the island began burning in the dusk.

'Taxi?'

'Cathay Hotel.'

'Take ferry?'

'No, tunnel.'

The Cathay because in the_ dossier of Nora Millicent Tewson her present address was given as 403 Jade Imperial Mansion, ten minutes' walk away. Besides, if I chose anything more than seventy dollars a day those arthritic old tarts in Accounts would bust a corset.

The place was near Cat Street and there was a boy outside roasting a duck over charcoal, with a woman already waiting. The clatter of a mah-jong game sounded from a doorway farther along, where a letter-writer sat with an upturned keg for her table.

I passed the shop twice, wanting to familiarize myself with its environs, and then went in. The place was full of snakes, a hundred of them, I can't stand the bloody things.

'Mr Kwan?'

'No, Younger Born. I am Mr Chiang.'

He came out from behind his jars of snakes and stood with his hands together, short and at first glance fat, then if you looked again, muscular.

'Will it rain, Mr Chiang?'

'It has rained.'

'Will the typhoon come?'

'It has gone.'

'How many brothers have you?'

'Seven.'

'And sisters?'

'Seven thousand.'

'What is the goose?'

'It is gold.'

I showed him the scar under my wrist and he nodded, going to the door of the shop and closing it and coming back. The sizzling of the duck was no longer audible but the clack of the mah-jong pieces came faintly through the walls.

'Don't these bloody things ever get out?'

'They have no wish. They are fat now, and ready soon to hibernate. That is when the price will be high.'

'I'm happy for you.'

He led me through the bead curtain and up some pitch-dark stairs to a room under the roof, the air heady with herbs. There was dust everywhere from the sacks filling the shelves, except on the radio, which was as clean as if he polished it every day.

'What are your main stations, Mr Chiang?'

'Pekin and of course Taipei.'

'The Embassies?'

'Your Embassy in Pekin, your Consulate in Taipei.' He went over to the set, soft-footed and eager to please. 'You wish to make contact?'

'Not now.'

He was disappointed, stepping back but still looking at the set as if it had suddenly stopped working.

'When did you come to Hong Kong?'

He swung his large head to look at me. 'A long time ago.'

'From the mainland?'

He looked away, and in a moment went down the steep flight of stairs ahead of me, his stubby hand on the rail. 'Yes, from the mainland. We swam across Deep Bay, one night. But I reached the shore alone.'

'Who was with you?'

'My wife.'

One of the snakes rose heavily as our shadows passed over it, and spiralled round the big glass jar; I could hear the dry scuffing sound of its skin as it moved. Mr Chiang stood with his short black shoes neatly together.

'That is all?'

'Yes, Elder Born.'

He unbolted the door and I left him. The duck was done but the boy and the woman were arguing about the price. On the other side from where the letter-writer sat there was a jeweller's and I went in and asked if I could use the phone. Mr Chiang's number was among those I'd memorized from the briefing material and dialled it.

'Wai?'

'Lee seen-saang hai-shue ma?'

'Nee-shue mo yon sing Lee.'

'Doei m-jue. Ngaw daap chaw seen.'

I hung up and put a dollar on the counter but the girl shook her head so I circumspectly picked it up and thanked her and turned left outside the jeweller's so as not to pass the snake-shop again. When London sets up a safe-house abroad it doesn't fool around because the whole mission can sometimes be thrown in jeopardy by an unreliable contact and of course blown up if he's a double, and they know that, they've known it for so long that a lot of us still survive. It was just a reflex that made me do it and anyway it wasn't conclusive because if he'd wanted to phone anyone to say that Wing had arrived in Hong Kong he needn't have done it within three minutes of my leaving the place: but that was when he'd be most likely to do it. I'd lowered my voice and all he knew was that one of the thirty thousand foreign devils in Hong Kong speaking atrocious Cantonese had got the wrong number.

And all I knew was that for a period of ten seconds during the critical three minutes when he'd been most likely to inform a contact that Clive Wing had arrived on the island his phone had been innocently disengaged. Most of us work on the principle that if you've got the time and the chance to check every step of the way, it's worth doing. It's a bore checking the ignition wires for tampering every time you get back into your car after you've had to leave it in a suspected area and I must have done it a couple of hundred times, including the time in Calcutta when I found they'd rigged a bomb.

I picked up a dark-blue Capri from Fleetway Rent-a-Car in Watson Road and took it past the Cathay and found some shadow where the trees in the park hid some of the light from the lamps. Jade Imperial Mansion was one block distant and I went there on foot and saw him sitting in a Hillman with the visor down but I didn't stop because this was completely unknown territory and I needed to feel my way in.

I didn't stop at the board in the lobby either because there were people about and I noted them. There was enough light on the board to confirm in passing that 403 was on the fourth floor and I took the lift to the top and went down seven floors by the emergency exit stairs, finding the back entrance and going through the service complex and coming out by the park and getting into the Capri, putting the window up to leave a reflection and checking the time, 8.44. The parking slot for 403 was on the far side of the building but there was only one exit and at 9.21 I heard the Hillman start up and a minute later the Jensen came through the gates and turned west and then north and then west again into Gloucester Road and we were in business, the traffic fairly thin because most people were in the theatres and restaurants and supper-clubs at this hour, and the only one I didn't like was the Taiwan-registered Toyota and I took a right and a left and a left and came up on the lights at red and watched him go past, no reaction whatsoever, too far behind the Hillman to be tagging that, but it had been worth the risk of losing the Jensen and having to find it again because the opposition-in-place in whatever city are very watchful and you can pick up ticks just by stopping to tie your shoe-lace.

In six blocks I came up on the Hillman again and this time overtook it, slotting in behind the Jensen and noting the ash-blonde Peter Pan head that never turned to look sideways, the occasional glint of emerald below her ear, the way her eyes flicked obliquely upwards at the mirror and down again, once the flash of a gold lighter, her movements deft and her driving calculated as we ran into Harcourt Road and bore left along Cotton Tree Drive. At the next set of lights I went past her and got a clear visual impression in profile, thin, bony, rat-faced attractive, her head not turning, the flash of an emerald ring as she used the ashtray, then I was past and put three private cars and a taxi between us before I peeled off and made a U-turn and came back to wait.