"No," the boy said in English.
"Well we won't do it in front of our visitor. Just leave him alone for the moment." He turned to me again. "It's absurd — we have to buy him frozen rats, when in fact he's here to clean up the real thing. There's a lesson there, my dear fellow — if you're too bloody efficient you risk losing your job. Tung," he said as he poured the tea into the rice-grain china, "has got some very superior people working for him, twelve at the latest count. He's —»
"Eleven," I said.
"What?"
"I ran across some of them in Pekin."
"Ah." His pale eyes studied for a second or two. "And one of them wasn't quick enough, yes. But they wouldn't have been Tung's people; they would have been hired for the rough work, you see. If you'd run across Tung's people, you wouldn't be here now. You ought to watch that. If those bastards in London are putting you solo into the field with Tung Kuo-feng, you don't stand a chance. And I know a good deal about you. Not a chance in hell. Lemon?"
"Yes."
He cut a slice for me. "Lapsang Souchong. They dry the leaves on wooden racks, and to protect the wood they soak it in tar. That's where a lot of the flavour comes from. Tung's people, you see, comprise a hit team, for the most part; but they're used for special operations, like the one in Pekin. And when they hit, they don't miss. They're utterly loyal to him, and regard him as a living Buddha. They began in the usual way: he trained them as terrorists, and as soon as they'd made their first kill they couldn't go back to their normal lives as students. One was a computer technician and three had got their PhD in social science at Pekin University; but, as you know, the creature man is not driven by his brain but by his emotions, which aren't all that different from those of a well-educated baboon."
He was maddeningly slow, but I couldn't hurry him. The information I wanted was coming on stream now and nothing must interrupt. He wasn't doing this for London; he was doing it for a fellow slave of the Sacred Bull, which is the name we have for the Bureau, the dispenser of so much sacred bullshit.
"Rumour has it," he said as he sipped his tea, "that Tung is peddling snow, though I rather doubt that. But I know he runs a Triad, and that it's very powerful. I'm sure you know that Triad societies were first organised in the 17th century, to combat by secret means the tyranny of the Manchus, who overthrew the Ming dynasty. Their original aims were therefore legitimate, but like the Mafia they deteriorated over the passage of time to become illegal gangs." With sudden emphasis he went on. "But don't misunderstand me. The people of the Triads are rather more sophisticated than our Sicilian friends; they are secretive, subtle and infinitely more dangerous. Such a man, then, is Tung Kuo-feng. Whether or not he's engaged in exporting heroin out of the Golden Triangle I don't know, as I say, but that bombing in Pekin carries his signature: it was decorative, ironic and effective. Tung to a T, if you'll forgive the expression."
I waited until I was sure he'd finished.
"Where is he now?"
"Don't move," he said softly. "Just keep absolutely still. It's all right."
I tensed, and felt slight pressure along my left leg as the bloody thing came gliding past me, its scales making a whispering across my shoe as it turned and came back, its head lifting and sensing me.
"He just wants to know who you are," I heard Spur murmuring, "and if you move too suddenly you'd frighten him, and he'd bite. Just keep still."
I could smell the thing now: a faint, bitter scent like something rotten. That was why Spur burned the incense in the corner there. The narrow head was lowering now, and the sinuous ten-foot body went gliding towards the bamboo basket by the wall, where it formed coils again.
"Everyone loves old Alexander," Spur said with his silent laugh. "He was the gift of a grateful Armenian whom I got off a murder charge in Calcutta. Of course I told him it was just what I wanted. And where, you were asking, is Tung Kuo-feng now? He's in South Korea, that much I know, I'll put out a few feelers and give you a buzz if I get any warmer." He put down his teacup gently. "Or perhaps you'd rather do the buzzing, would you?"
"Yes."
"And you don't want me to have you followed about any more, I quite understand. I hope you'll forgive my saying so, but the less we see of each other the more I'd like it; if you're going to be so foolhardy as to tackle a chap like Tung Kuofeng on his home ground, I'd rather stay in the clear. Sudden death has never appealed to me, even as a way of avoiding taxes."
The Chonju Hotel was halfway down a narrow street of small shops that sold jewellery, silk, lacquerwork and porcelain, one or two of them still open despite the moist wind that was rattling at the shutters and singing through the spokes of the bicycles that leaned everywhere against the walls.
I went into the lobby of the hotel and checked in, fetching the desk clerk away from his game of Jang-gi with an ancient Chinese under the leaves of a big potted palm.
No messages, either from Ferris in Pekin or the British Embassy here in Seoul; and suddenly I felt cut off and helpless to make a move. It was hard to believe that in London they'd opened up a plot board for this mission in signals, with a man sitting there at the console waiting for Ferris or our contact at the Embassy to feed in information and request instructions, while Croder stood by with his mouth tight and his black eyes hooded and that brilliant and complex brain of his keyed to the work of sending me through the dangerous intricacies of a mission that was blocked at the start by the will-o'-the-wisp elusiveness of the opposition.
Four men dead, within four days — Sinclair, Jason, the Secretary of State and the US Ambassador to Pekin — and I was holed up in a backstreet of Seoul with the monsoon fretting at the shutters and the lamplight flickering and no messages in the key-box, almost nothing to go on, while somewhere Tung Kuo-feng was planning his next move, playing his own game of Jang-gi with a fifth man on the board and ready for sacrifice.
Nerves. Discount. Nerves and the faint putrid smell of that bloody thing still in my senses, and the haunting memory of the death I'd brought to the boy in the alley, his tigerish fierceness stilled by my own hands as he lay under me with the blood filling his throat.
I went up the stairs, past grilled windows and a huge brass gong hanging from the wall; the corridor of the second floor was deserted as I walked to my room at the far end and opened the door.
Instant impressions: the sheen of dark silk and the scent of sandalwood, the glow of an emerald bracelet on a slender wrist, and in the ivory fingers with their lacquered nails the blue metal of a gun.
8: Li-fei
A gun at close quarters is always dangerous because of the unpredictable factors involved: the state of the opponent's nerves and the degree of his fear and the position of the safety catch and the distances and angles that will govern the trajectory of the shot if the gun is fired. Timing, above all, will decide the difference between success or failure.
She was only just inside the door and well within my reach so I hit for the wrist and the gun span across the floor as she cried out in pain and came at me with her lacquered claws, hooking for my eyes with the soft ferocity of a cat as her scent wafted over me and her face was held close to mine, the faint light from the street glowing in her eyes as she fought me, her breath hissing in fury.
She was hardly bigger than a child, but it took a few moments to subdue her, and even with both slender arms locked behind her back she still went on trying to struggle. I left things like that for a couple of minutes, giving her time to think; the Astra Cub.22 was lying on the Numda rug between the window and the bed and her dark head was turned in its direction; her breath came painfully in the quiet of the room as she began whispering to me in Chinese — to me or to herself or her gods, I couldn't tell.