The Russian connection.
I still hadn't got things worked out. I hadn't been fully conscious when I'd arrived, and the incoming data had gone into the memory in its raw state for later analysis, if I lived. I had seen several Europeans looking down at me and at the body of the Korean, two of them in grey formal suits and polo-necked sweaters; it was one of these who had told the Koreans to put me against a wall and shoot me, speaking in Russian to an interpreter. Other men had been there: Koreans again, wearing track suits with the insignia of the Olympiad; behind them there'd been the terraced roofs of the monastery, part of it in ruins, and the roof of a temple nearby, and two large shapes under camouflage nets, one of them with a rotor poking out; above one of the roofs there had been an omnidirectional radio antenna.
I'd had time to do a rough analysis of all this data while I'd been recovering in the cell where they'd thrown me: originally, I suppose, a monk's personal quarters, a narrow cubicle with a grilled window and a crude wooden bed. The most obvious thing was that Tung Kuo-feng hadn't sought refuge here, as the blind priest had thought; he was here to conduct or participate in what looked like a minor military operation. There were always several track-suited guards in sight, and from watching them I'd become more and more convinced that they were at least para-military and professionally trained.
"Where are your papers?" Tung asked me tonelessly.
"I lost track of them when I came down. It was a bad landing."
"Your flying suit was also lost?"
"I took it off when the sun came up; it was too hot."
"And 'lost track of it'."
"That's right."
I sensed movement at the edge of my vision; there were two grilled apertures on one wall of the chamber, showing a lamplit arch beyond; I assumed someone was passing there, outside, or had stopped to watch us, and listen.
"No one else here," Tung said, "understands English." I felt suddenly chilled; he was reading my mind. "It is important for you to know that when you and I converse, even in the company of others, it is in secret. What other languages do you speak?"
"A bit of army French."
He fell silent, waiting for me to say more. I didn't. "You say you were on an exercise in survival. Who else was with you?"
"No one."
"You chose to be alone?"
"Yes. I was getting fed up sitting around with nothing to do. There's nothing here for a defence force to defend. So I asked permission to do a one-man survival course over the weekend. I've done it before, quite a few times, in England. Were you educated there? Your English is pretty good."
He said: "When will they begin searching for you?"
"They won't need to. I can use the radio here to tell them I'm okay." I left a slight pause, as he'd been doing, but he didn't ask what radio. "There'll be some trouble for those Koreans, though. That fellow was doing his damnedest to shoot me dead. I suppose you know that."
Two seconds, three. "I have told you we must not waste time. I know that you are an agent in the British Secret Service and that your assignment was to enquire into the death of your Secretary of State in Pekin. You have resisted efforts on the part of my own agents to eliminate you. You are here in the hope of eliminating me, since it is believed I was responsible for the two political assassinations in Pekin, and might be in the process of ordering others, as indeed I am. For your information, TWA Flight 232 from Pekin sustained an accident on take-off early this morning, killing more than fifty people including an American football team; they had been visiting the People's Republic of China on a goodwill mission with the aim of furthering the interests of international sport."
I think he wasn't quite finished, but I got up at that point and did a bit of walking about to ease the leg muscles. "Look, you ought not to be telling me things like that at this stage, before the trial. You've just made some pretty hefty confessions."
His small grey head was turning to watch me. "As you know, the Americans are as fanatical about sport as the English. The object of the sabotage action was to further incense the Americans and strain their new relations with China."
"All I can say is, I've given you fair warning."
It was like having two conversations going on, but we both knew what we were doing, and we both knew that we knew.
I kept on walking, five yards one way and five back, while he sat there like a carved Buddha. I didn't pass either of the two grilled apertures.
"You realise," he said evenly, "that you have no chance of leaving here alive."
"Possibly not, but it's my duty to warn you that if I don't get a message to my unit by radio then you'll have to suffer the consequences. They'll certainly start a search for me after forty-eight hours, because they know exactly where I came down and I told them I'd telephone them from the village to report progress."
"I am going to correct what I just told you. Your only chance of leaving here alive is to give me your confidence."
And blow my own cover.
"That's what I'm doing."
His head turned again to follow me. "There will be a point in our conversation when you will realise that your cover is less important than the proposition I shall make. You might find yourself in a position to prevent the assassination of the next three people on the list. The dates of these events are already fixed, and the first is to take place in two days' time — unless you are prepared to cooperate."
I got impatient with him. "But surely you realise that the moment I rejoin my unit you'll be hunted down and arrested?"
He ignored that, as I knew he would; my remark was simply there for the record as part of my cover. It might not be true that he knew who I was or that we were the only people here who understood English or that he was a prisoner at the monastery; the chances were that there was someone on the other side of these apertures in the wall with a microphone, or that Tung had one concealed in his hand for that matter.
But now I understood something about the Russian connection. Not all, but something. It concerned Chinese-American relations.
"I must tell you," he went on, "that the assassination of the British Secretary of State was a mistake, and that I deeply regret it. The one responsible has already forfeited his life."
Soong Yongshen.
"That hardly helps the late British Secretary of State, does it? You bloody terrorists don't care whom you wipe out. You know that man had a family?"
"I mention the incident so that you shall be conversant with the overall situation. And the situation is this. A short time ago I received a proposal from the Soviet KGB that I should assist them in a certain endeavour, the object of which would be the severance of diplomatic relations between the United States and China, and with it, the end of the so-called triangle diplomacy involving those two powers and Japan. The threat to the Soviet Union presented by the growing recognition of China is seen by the Kremlin as intolerable. The four thousand miles of frontier common to Russia and China and the constant military skirmishes across it are of deep concern to the Soviets; in addition, China is close to developing a nuclear missile with a range of eight thousand miles, capable of reaching Moscow. It is my personal opinion that the severance of relations between China and the United States may be a preliminary to a Soviet attack on China, with a view to pre-empting a nuclear-armed, American-supported attack by China against the Soviets. To you and to me, such fears on the part of the Russians may seem extreme; but you must remember these people are xenophobic to a dangerous degree."