It had been dangerous to come here, I'd known that; but Ferris had told me he'd try to get me another twenty-four hours and I'd have to hurry. I'd phoned the airport as soon as I'd left him, and they'd told me that Li-fei was at her house: her brother's body had been flown in late last night. I'd had to come here; there was no choice.
"It was Tung Kuo-feng," I told her, "who ordered your brother's execution. Your brother made a serious mistake."
A vertical band of candlelight was falling across the hall from the doorway, and she had moved into it when she'd drawn away from me; it lay half across her body, so that one of her eyes was lit by it, watching me without blinking.
"How do you know these things?"
"I know them."
The shadows on the ceiling were changing, as a man's head moved past the candles in the room of the dead; I listened to their feet shuffling, but still couldn't tell whether anyone else had come in. If one of the Triad were here, he might come through the doorway: Soong Yongshen had been an important figure among them, and entrusted to carry out the assassination in Pekin; the fact that he had made an unpardonable mistake, and had died for it, didn't mean the Triad wouldn't officially mourn him, for fear of his outraged spirit.
Li-fei turned her delicate head a degree, so that she could watch the narrow gap between the screen and the doorway; I could only watch the shadows.
"Yes," she whispered, "it was Tung Kuo-feng who ordered my brother's death." She watched the doorway. "Tung Kuo-feng," she whispered again, as if her tongue could be a dagger.
"Tell me where to find him."
She swung her head. "You want to find him?"
"Yes."
"What would you do?"
"Kill him."
Her one eye, lit by the candlelight, widened. "Why?"
"I've got my reasons."
"Who are you?"
"His enemy."
She watched me. I waited.
"I must know who you are."
"What difference does it make who I am?"
With sudden impatience she said, "Because of trust. There are those who trust me."
I would have to go the long way round, and go carefully.
"Did you know your brother was going to Pekin to carry out an assassination?"
She closed her eyes and in a moment said with a soft fierceness: "No. I would have stopped him." Her slender body had begun swaying slightly in the band of light, and she spoke in a kind of rhythm. "He said he was going to Pekin to do something very important. He said he'd been chosen as the one to do it; he said it was an honour for him; he said it with pride." I watched tears glistening at her eyelids now, and her voice had anger in it. "I knew he was with one of the Triads; but he was young; many young men like my brother go into the Triads, for the adventure of it; many are taken to prison when they're caught; the lucky ones lose their taste for crime, and come away, and find jobs. My brother didn't come away in time."
"Do you think Tung Kuo-feng should have killed him?"
"What for? Why should he want him killed?"
"He made a grave mistake. Your brother killed a man, too: the British Secretary of State, a diplomat trying to make peace in the world, a man with a wife and two daughters."
She half turned away from me, closing her eyes for a moment. "Yes," she whispered. "My brother killed a man for Tung Kuo-feng. There is no excuse for that. But he was my brother, and Tung Kuo-feng took his life away. I cannot forgive that."
"Tell me where to find him," I said.
The shadows were moving on the ceiling. I was standing within six feet of the doorway, close enough to make lethal contact if a man came through and recognised me and reacted; but he might not come alone.
"I don't know where he is," Li-fei said, her tone tormented.
"Someone must know where he is. Think."
"There is no time. I —»
"You must have heard your brother talking about Tung."
"No. The people in the Triads never talk about themselves to those outside."
"Who were your brother's friends?"
"I don't know which of them are in the Triad. They —»
"Think, Li-fei. I want to know where I can find Tung."
The shadows on the ceiling moved, one of them flickering as a man passed close to a candle. I watched them, waiting for a shadow to grow enormous, filling the doorway as the man came through.
"There is a priest," Li-fei whispered, "who might know."
"Here in Seoul?"
"No. But not far away. In Karibong-ni."
"What languages does he speak?"
"He speaks only Korean and Cantonese."
"Take me to see him."
She was silent for a while, and then said: "Very well."
The priest was at evening prayer and we waited for him outside the temple in the gathering dusk, while at intervals a small bell tolled, sending echoes among the walls of the garden.
"He tried to save my brother," Li-fei told me, "to stop him from joining the Triad; it was no good; nothing would have stopped him, and I shall never know why." Her light voice trembled; the ashes had been placed in the urn only an hour ago.
"How old was your brother, when you lost your parents?"
"He was five."
"It would have left him bereft. Perhaps he saw a father in Tung Kuo-feng."
"Perhaps."
We saw the priest coming, a thin and ancient man in a worn saffron robe, an acolyte leading him on each side until he was standing in front of us with his sightless eyes, his head tilted carefully to listen.
Soong Li-fei presented me to him, speaking in Chinese; then I interrupted her, asking her to send the two boys away; the priest didn't object, but they went only a short distance, out of earshot; they were obviously responsible for him. Lifei led him gently to a corner of the garden, where there were stone seats, then looked at me in the half-light.
"We need to know where to find Tung Kuo-feng," I told her quietly. Within a few minutes he realised that I was the questioner, not Li-fei, and he sat with his head turned towards me.
"What do you want with Tung Kuo-feng?"
"He is guilty of crimes," I told him through Li-fei. "He has caused men to murder."
She spoke for some time, answering questions without consulting me, except for a quick — "He wants to know how we are sure of this." I suppose she was telling him her brother had killed for Tung, and that it was too late to save him now. In the deepening gloom the old man turned his head more to Li-fei than to me.
"What do you want with him?" she asked me, translating that same question again.
"I want to bring him to justice."
Death would be justice, for Tung Kuo-feng.
"Who are you?"
I waited a moment, aware of the two young acolytes not far away, and aware that if any of the Triad put questions later to Li-fei she might not be clever enough to keep her secrets. The priest moved his head slightly towards me, alert to my hesitation. In a moment I said:
"I was responsible for the safety of the British Secretary of State in Pekin."
Li-fei told him, and he was silent for minutes, while the robed boys watched us from the shadows and the smell of incense came on the warm evening air from the temple doorway; and now I was aware that the future of Jade One rested here in this peaceful garden, and that one of the signals they were waiting for at the console in Whitehall, London, would have to come from the lips of this old man. Ferris had persuaded them to give me twenty-four hours, and there was no other way I could think of that would get me any kind of access to Tung Kuo-feng; even if I could find, and stalk, and interrogate one of the Triad in Seoul, I'd learn nothing; they'd keep their silence whatever I did to them; they were fanatics.