The Mandarin Cypher

Flower should have been on to me by now but he was looking straight ahead as he cleared the lights and I made the turn and fell in two cars behind, beginning to worry because he'd looked so young: the top security departments were taking them straight out of school these days and letting them loose too soon.

A right into Garden Road and past the Hilton and left again and slowing, taking the smaller streets: she knew her way and didn't hesitate, any more than Nora Millicent Tewson ever hesitated, I was beginning to think, about anything.

The Hillman tried to stop in time to pull in somewhere behind her when she began slowing but there wasn't enough room so he went on past and left her looking for a slot. I backed up and couldn't find one and put the Capri under a Strictly No Parking sign and found cover and waited. There were a few people about and Flower wasn't far behind her when she came into view and crossed the road and went into the Orient Club. I gave it ten minutes and followed.

'You are a member, sir?'

All smiles but standing right in my path.

'No.'

'Would you care to take out a membership?'

'Please.'

He went on talking while I signed the form, nothing more than a formality of course, police regulations, licensed as a private club, many apologies for the necessity, so forth, one hundred Hong Kong dollars.

Imperceptibly he had moved out of my path as I reached for my wallet, and I was ushered between heavy curtains into the traditional ambience of incense and candlelight, not a large place but pretty full, the tables mostly in alcoves, the waitresses Eurasian and topless, the men mostly in white suits and DJ's, the women discreetly glittering, some of them wives. Imported floor-show, Edwardian vaudeville, half a dozen long-legged girls kicking their net stockings out, those were the days and all that.

They got me a table and I began working, picked her out over there near the band, still alone at a table for three, watching the floor-show, smoking, smoking rather hard and sometimes looking around, the earrings catching the light, not looking for anyone, but at them. Flower was nowhere near her but perched at the far end of the bar looking bored. When I was sure I asked for a telephone and a girl came and plugged one in.

'Directory Enquiry — can I help you?'

'Please. I'd like the Orient Club.'

'Which club?'

'The Orient.'

'Just a moment'

Across in the alcove she was lighting another cigarette, looking up, looking around, but not at people coming in through the curtains: she wasn't waiting for anyone. They were bringing her first drink, no cherries or anything fancy for Nora Tewson: it looked like straight Scotch.

Enquiry gave me the number and I dialled.

She began on the drink straight away, she's still very cut up, Macklin had told me.

'Orient Club.'

'I'd like to speak to Mr Flower.'

Had to repeat it, then had to spell it 'He is a member?'

'Yes.' He'd come straight in.

It wasn't the kind of place where you went up to lonely-looking women and asked them for a dance but someone was doing it, an elderly and elegant Chinese. She was shaking her head a little too emphatically and he took a step back, bowing quickly, dissembling. I suppose he'd thought that by her looks she had more breeding, not a very good judge.

'Mister Fowler not here, sir.'

So I spelt it again and said he should be there because he'd asked me to telephone him. There were probably a hundred people here, a lot of them on the small dance-floor now the girls were taking a break, and they didn't want to go and look, I quite saw their point. In five minutes they got him, and the bartender showed him the phone in the corner, just inside the curtains.

'Hello?'

'I'm from London,' I said. 'I came in on Flight fifty-three.'

The code-introduction for the first to the fifteenth was to throw in a random number and listen for two below and four above, world-wide, all missions, it saved trouble.

'That's how we missed each other,' he said. 'I was on three seven.'

He was turning round slightly, just enough to keep his eye on Nora Tewson. I asked him:

'When did they start the tag?'

He turned his back on the room again, blocking his free ear because of the band.

'When did they what?'

I suppose he wanted it straight from the book: maybe he was college-trained, Norfolk. 'When did the subject come under opposition surveillance?'

He didn't say anything for a bit and I began getting worried because it wasn't possible for me to tell whether he couldn't hear properly or whether he was having to think something out. There wasn't anything for him to think out: I'd asked him a perfectly simple question.

'D'you mean,' he said, 'she's being — '

'Don't look round.'

I said it sharply because he'd begun turning his head the other way and for a second I didn't believe it. He turned back to face the wall and I hoped he'd begun sweating as hard as I was. In a minute I said:

'You mean you didn't know?'

There was a short silence, then he said: 'Oh shit…'

It was about all he could say because he was obviously straight out of training so they'd given him the simplest job on the list and London had sent him a top-ranking shadow-executive all the way to Hong Kong to tell him he'd mucked it up, I felt for the poor little bastard but that wasn't the point, he was dangerous.

I looked for a waitress and let my eyes pass across the table for two on the far side from the bar. The man hadn't moved. He glanced at the Tewson woman every five seconds, away to the dance-floor, back to the woman, every five seconds, police-trained, possibly Special Branch, but Macklin had told me the enquiry into Tewson's death had been closed. I was waiting for him to look across, just once, at Flower. He was the thin tubercular Chinese with glasses I'd noted in the lobby of Jade Imperial Mansion and again in the four-door Honda that had been three cars behind Flower when we'd turned into Gloucester Road and again when I'd been waiting in cover across the street from here.

'Shut up,' I told Flower. He was trying to talk.

I gave it another full minute. The man was like a robot, every five seconds and never varying, never interested in anyone else, never looking at Flower, a professional amateur with precise instructions — don't let her out of your sight — and doing his job to the letter.

'Flower.'

'Yes, sir?'

'You're off the hook. They haven't seen you.'

He said bitterly: 'That isn't my fault.'

Give him credit at least for knowing what he'd done. But he'd been lucky and that was what made it potentially dangerous: if that little police-trained robot had got on to him he wouldn't have stood a chance — they could have roped him in and put him under intensive questioning and blown his cover, finis. Worse, they could have tagged him to any rendezvous that he and I might have made, putting surveillance on me and forcing me to show my hand by throwing them off. Of course there were built-in fail-safe factors and even if they'd caught him and put him under the lamp he couldn't have exposed the Bureau or anything to do with it because he'd never been there; they don't let a raw recruit go anywhere near the place till he's proved he's safe. And I hadn't on principle gone near him myself when I'd seen him stationed outside Jade Imperial, any more than I'd gone near him when I'd come in here. But it doesn't matter how hard you try to keep the safety mechanism operative: you can make a mistake or have some bad luck and then all you need is someone like Flower and the whole thing's going to blow.