I didn't like that, and the sweat was prickling on me as the watch on my wrist pulsed indetectably; to hurry and to delay were both dangerous, and for the first time since I'd left London I wondered if I were losing my nerve. It can happen, during a chain-action mission when there's no time between phases to relax; stress is cumulative, and these people had been hounding me from the minute I'd seen Sinclair fished out of the Thames eight days ago; stress is also at its highest when there is frequent killing: the theory is that when we go into the field we know we're moving into hazard and we've done it before and we know how to cope and we're ready to kill if we have to, rather than not go home; but in practice it doesn't work like that: when they come at us and we get away with it there's no relief, but just the feeling of Christ, that was close, while the stress builds up in the nerves and that bloody little pest somewhere deep in the organism starts snivelling, we ought to go home now, raising the small and trembling voice that we learn to loathe because we know it's the voice of cowardice, and you can call it caution if you like but we know better — if we'd got any sense of caution in our souls we wouldn't be out here at all.
It's like that when they come at us and we get away with it: there's no relief. And when we've got to go for them and make a killing it's no different, because they are our opposite number and we understand them, sometimes more than we can understand ourselves, and underneath the scaly carapace that shelters us and our conscience we know we're brothers, and when we've got to do it to them we don't do it lightly; we do it with pain, however subdued, and the stress goes on building and there's no relief, just the feeling of Christ, there but for the grace, so forth, it could have been me, and in a way, it was.
Night thoughts.
Ignore.
Death thoughts.
Let them come.
Let 'em come, my brave lads, let nothing you dismay, the bugle's sounding and the flag's a-flutter in the wind, so let 'em come, my boys… but it's not like that any more and it's not like that when you're alone and the notes of the bugle fade and the colours of the flag grow dark in the shadows of night and all you can see is his squat foreshortened body and the barrel of the gun sticking out and the moon's light on his white clown's face as you wait and count off the time and then kick forward from the edge of the tiles, oh come on for Christ's sake it's quite simple but I might have got it wrong as I drop and go down and take my fear with me, ice in the gut, watching his gun, death on my breath, all the way down, all the way down.
27: Storm
Tung Kuo-feng sat perfectly still.
"My son is precious to me," he said in his toneless English. "Our line stems from the Ch'ing dynasty, and he is my oldest."
I said nothing.
"They knew that," he said with his night-dark eyes brooding on mine. "That is why they abducted him."
For an instant I saw a sinuous shadow moving towards him across the flagstones; then it was gone. This time it was not a dream.
The submachine gun lay in the corner of the small ornate room under a folded tapestry he'd taken down from the wall. The body of the Korean guard was among the rocks below the parapet; in the pocket of his tracksuit I'd found some bookmatches and a half-empty packet of cigarettes; they were all the tools I would need.
Tung had asked me nothing, a few minutes ago when I'd called his name through the grilled aperture and said I must talk to him. Seeing the gun and the empty courtyard he knew what must have happened. Now we were sitting facing each other in the lotus position on the Thai silk carpet. I asked him how much he valued his son's life, and he'd answered me.
"There's a chance I can save him," I said now.
"Was there a message?" He meant from Ferris, on the radio.
"There was a message," I said, "from Moscow."
"How do you know?"
He alone here spoke English, the only language he believed I understood. Only he could have told me there'd been a message from Moscow.
"It was the message we listened to in there, last night. It was about Tung Chuan, your son. Remember?"
He lifted his head, his back straightening slightly, and the movement was almost startling: it was like a reptile moving, after that total stillness. "You understand Russian?"
"Perfectly."
His eyes burned; he'd lost face: I'd deceived him.
"What did the message say?"
"That there's a chance I can save your son."
"What did it say, in words?"
I could feel the force in him, as I'd known I would. He was going to fight me on this issue of the message. I attacked at once.
"I'm not giving you the actual words, and if you try forcing them out of me in any way you'll lose the last chance of saving your son, because only I can do it, and only if I can work extremely fast."
He was silent, watching me. I didn't envy him the decision he had to make. If he could force me to give him the exact message he could signal his Triad and repeat it, using a speech-code of his own, and they could go straight to Kimpo Airport and wait for Tung Chuan to arrive. But how long would it take to make me talk, if he could do it at all?
"Why is time so important?" he asked me, his tone strident.
"At any minute they're going to find my cell unguarded. They'll tear the whole place apart, looking for me. Before that happens I must get away. Otherwise I can't save your son."
The air was trembling, and I wanted to close my eyes, but that would be dangerous: I mustn't give him ground.
"Where is my son?"
The air shuddered and I was appalled.
He'd made his decision: he would force me to talk and he'd do it without wasting time.
"I don't know."
If his Triad could free his son, he would never have to do what I was here to make him do. Jade One had become a double mission: it wasn't enough to halt Tung's operation; the damage to Chinese-American relations was already too great. We had to make him expose the instigators: the Soviets. I was here to do a deal with him.
Reptilian stillness, his eyes on mine, dark, shimmering with an inner light, the sound of soundlessness shaking the air and drumming softly against my ears as the force in him rose like a storm.
"Where is my son?"
"They're going to — "
Christ alive, don't let him do this.
"They are going to what?"
His voice came through the drumming air like a shaft of thunder aimed at my head and I shook it away, dragging in breath, my own prana, my own ki, you're not the only one, damn you -
"You're not the only one!"
"What are you saying?"
The gong on the wall vibrating, pushing out rings of sound, waves of brass vibration that boomed in my head while I sat there staring into the dark shimmering eyes, look away, his terrible stillness at the heart of the storm, look away -
"Where is my son?"
His voice crashed over me like waves over a rock and the rock shuddered and I was afraid, crouching under the onslaught of the force he was gathering in him and hurling against me, look away, yes, look away, the patterns on the Thai silk carpet, a sea of leaves with white beasts leaping, leaping but never moving, suddenly still, the air clearing, you'll lose your -