"What?" I asked them, and-found the sun blinding in my eyes and their hands dragging me upright: I'd just gone straight out with exhaustion. They shoved the barrel of the long blue Remington into me, like poking a pig with a stick, until the pain overwhelmed the urge to go on lying there, freed of the dead-weight load. "Oh shuddup," I told them, "don't be so fucking impatient." I suppose they didn't take it kindly that I'd dumped their friend so unceremoniously, well that was tough luck, he shouldn't have put those bloody bullets quite so close to my head.
They humped him onto my back again and I stood there trying to adjust to the load while bright red spots dripped from me onto the stones; they'd broken the skin somewhere with that thing.
Off we go, then, yes, my friend and I, not much of a conversationalist, you can say that about him. One foot in front of the next through the throbbing heat of the day. And out of a job, by the way: it had been worrying me. They would have written me off by now, because I hadn't sent another signal.
Eagle to Jade One, my present situation extremely hazardous, will report if possible, so forth. Been no report, had there, it didn't look very jolly, one more ferret bitten the dust, it happens all the time. But I bet they don't send Youngquist in; he'd looked too intelligent to let London shove him into a shut-ended shambles like this one.
Stay on your feet.
On my feet, yes, but not your bloody business.
If you keep on falling down they'll shoot you.
Shuddup. Snivelling little bloody organism worried about dying, plain bloody suburban.
They're going to shoot you up there at the monastery.
Well, I didn't think they were going to offer me a franchise in a car wash, for Christ's sake.
Stones swimming. One foot in front of the other.
Gun at my back, prodding.
His arm was swinging again, the arm of my inert and unconversational friend. It was irritating, and after a mile or ten miles or fifty miles in this blinding heat I thought about grabbing his hand again to keep him still, and then I thought now wait a minute, this kind of pendulum motion might be an advantage, because every time his arm swings forwards it helps me keep moving, bloody clever, yes, but every time it swings back, quite, not bloody clever, you're losing your nut, you know that? You're going stark raving bonkers.
A possibility, just a bare possibility, that if I could manage to centre the psyche for a while and then fall down deliberately and land with him on top of me as a shield against the rifle, and at the same time grab the ankles of the man in front and bring him down, you've got no energy left, you bloody fool, I know, but you've got to think about something.
Gun hit my spine.
Get on, yes.
Sound of my breathing, like sawing wood, sawing slowly through a huge tree trunk, in, out, in, out, while the muscles blazed, thirsting for more oxygen, more oxygen all the time, legs staggering with the knees locked, otherwise fall, fall down, ought not to do that, wouldn't take kindly, no.
Blinding sun and streaming stones and his swinging arm and the pain of the gun prodding, on and on, until there were roofs curving against the sky and a bell somewhere, tolling like a brainstorm in my skull, my legs lurching left and right, my feet shuffling like a cripple's and the whole of my body burning under the weight of the man, the weight of the sun, the weight of the sky. Stop.
Several men, coming onto the courtyard, one of them talking in Russian, asking what had happened.
Stood swaying, then no good, went down like an avalanche and hit the stones, man saying in Russian, Put him against a wall and shoot him.
21: Ki
His eyes were dark stones.
A thin tendril of smoke climbed from the bowl of incense under the lamp, reminding me of the room where I'd met Spur.
What did they do to that snake? I wanted to ask him.
His eyes were so dark in the hollows of his face that they seemed to disappear sometimes, becoming shadows in the low light of the lamp; but I knew he was watching me all the time, with that reptilian ability to go on watching with such stillness that you forget there's a brain behind these eyes, thinking about you.
He was sitting on his heels in the meditation position, his back erect and his thin yellow hands folded on his thighs. It might have been that he was trying to hypnotise me, and I took care to study him, noting everything I could to keep the conscious occupied: the intricate pattern of his kimono with its gold dragons and hieroglyphs, the wisp of white beard at the point of his chin and the sharp ears that had the bone yellowness of ivory carving, the fine chiselling of the nose.
Tung Kuo-feng.
A Chinese, Spur had said, scion of a family traceable to the early Ch'ing dynasty. Tung isn't a young man any more; I'd put him at sixty. But extremely fit; lots of ki, you know, the real thing. If those bastards in London are putting you solo into the field with Tung Kuo-feng, you don't stand a chance. Not a chance in hell.
A current of air met the tendril of smoke and twisted it into a spiral; from somewhere outside I could hear distant chanting, to the sound of wooden clappers; it must be sundown. The man in front of me didn't speak; perhaps he was silently joining in the prayers.
What would he pray for? He should pray for the souls of the departed; this man had killed Sinclair, the British Secretary of State, the American Ambassador, Jason, Spur, Soong Yongshen and his sister, Soong Li-fei, their necks bared under the sword. Let him pray for them. And for himself, if I had a chance to close in.
We sat facing each other in the low light of the lamp. My back burned from the bruising of the gun; my legs were still trembling from the strain of the five-hour march with the man on my back. I was close enough now to Tung Kuo-feng, and I could probably move with at least half my normal speed; but he would have had reports of me from his team of hit men, and would be wary; he wouldn't allow me this close to him without some kind of protection, and his hands, lying so peacefully on the folds of the black and gold silk, probably concealed a ninja weapon. Or was he counting on the fact that out there in the courtyard he had saved my life?
I wasn't ready for him yet, in any case. We want you to talk to him, Ferris had said.
The chanting and the clack of the wooden clappers died away, and a gong boomed; then there was quiet.
"Who are you?"
His voice was quiet, but the tone had an extraordinary harshness, sounding as if it weren't coming from a living body but from a recorder that was distorting it, giving it a metallic flatness.
"Colonel West, British Army, attached NATO defence force, Asian theatre."
The assumed rank of colonel came under routine instructions in the event of the executive's decision to use a military cover; it was the only one I had: you don't do a night drop with a black chute into the Korean mountains to look for geological specimens.
"You feel," he asked me, "that is the best you can do?"
"That's my true identity."
His English was correct and educated; when I'd been sprawled on the big grey flagstones out there a few hours ago, he'd spoken Chinese and an interpreter had put it straight into Russian; I'd understood only the Russian side, as Tung had repeated with unyielding authority that I was not to be killed until he had questioned me.
"What brought you to the mountains?"
"I was on a night exercise.
"With what objective?"
"Survival."
"I realise that your training as a secret agent requires you to explain as little as possible, but we must not waste time. I have to go through the formality of questioning you, since those were the terms of your reprieve; I must therefore know your cover story, so that I can prove later if necessary that I have indeed questioned you. Let me at this point make it clear that while I carry a certain degree of authority, the person in ultimate command here is Colonel Sinitsin of the KGB, whom you saw briefly, I think, when you arrived. In other respects I am, like yourself, a prisoner."