1966 - You Have Yourself a Deal (2 page)

For the past ten years, Sadu had made a successful living from a small
boutique
which he owned on the Rue de Rivoli where he sold jade and expensive antiques to American tourists. He was a man lost without a woman. During the past year he had found, after several discards, a Vietnamese girl who called herself Pearl Kuo whose beauty completely captivated him as it was meant to captivate him. He discovered her hatred of America made his own bitter dislike a pale and flabby affair. She had lost her family and her home during an American air attack in North Vietnam. She had fled to Hanoi where she had become an agent working for the Chinese. They finally sent her to Paris. Before long she had persuaded Sadu that it was his duty to work also for the Chinese movement. Since he was in constant touch with Americans in his shop, she explained to him, he had the opportunity of picking up scraps of information which he was to pass on to Yet-Sen, an elderly Chinese who worked at the Chinese Embassy. Sadu found this amusing since it gave him the chance to damage American prestige. It was surprising how Americans talked when in a foreign country as if they imagined no one around them could understand English, and sometimes their indiscretions were startling. Sadu’s scraps of information helped to feed the Chinese propaganda machine. He felt he was doing something tangible towards levelling the score against his father who had died some ten years ago. What he didn’t realise was that he was being carefully groomed for more important and more dangerous work.

Pushed gently by Pearl and drawn carefully by Yet-Sen, Sadu was about to reach the point of no return.

This telephone call was to make him into a fully-fledged agent.

Pushing aside the screen, he walked to the telephone and picked up the receiver.

“Yes? Who is it?” he demanded impatiently, thinking of his cooling prawns.

“I am at your shop. Come immediately.” He recognised Yet-Sen’s guttural voice.

“I can’t come now. I. . .”

“Immediately,” and the line went dead.

Sadu cursed, then returned to his table. Pearl looked inquiringly at him.

“Yet-Sen,” Sadu said, his face dark with fury. “He wants to see me at once.”

“Then you must go, cheri.”

“I’m not his damned servant,” Sadu said, hesitating.

“You must go, cheri.”

Sadu was now so under her influence that he hesitated no longer.

“Well, wait for me here,” he said. “I shouldn’t be long,” and he left the restaurant.

It took him a little under ten minutes, driving his small red T.R.4 aggressively through the heavy traffic to reach his shop.

As he pulled up, a fat Chinese who had been staring sightlessly at the jade displayed in Sadu’s window turned and moved to the car, got in and said quietly, “Go somewhere where we can talk.”

Sadu edged the car out into the traffic and drove rapidly down the Rue de Rivoli. He battled his way around the Concorde and started down along the Quai.

Yet-Sen said, “This is an emergency. You have been chosen to handle it. It is a great compliment. Find space to park in the Louvre gardens.”

Sadu felt a qualm of uneasiness. He glanced at the fat man, sitting in his thick city suit, his yellow face blank, his small hands, like ivory carvings, folded across his bulging stomach. He drove into the gardens and found parking space, as it was lunch time, in front of the Ministre des Finances and turned off the car engine.

Yet-Sen took a copy of
France-Matin
from his hip pocket and handed it to Sadu. He tapped the badly reproduced photograph of a blonde woman.

“By tomorrow morning this woman must be dead,” he said. “We have every confidence in you. You will have all the necessary help, but you must arrange the details. At six o’clock this evening a man will call on you. He is the weapon . . . he has no brains. You are to be the brains. Now, please listen carefully . . .”

Sadu sat motionless, his thin, long fingers gripping the steering wheel of his car and listened. This became his moment of truth.

He suddenly realised that his petty hatred of America, the chip he had carried so long on his shoulder had finally come home to roost. He wasn’t certain whether to be pleased or dismayed by this sudden change in his status. But he instinctively knew whatever his reactions, the job would have to be done.

* * *

London’s Bond Street has a particular fascination for tourists.

Even when the shops are closed at the early hour of 5.30, people from all countries of the world will continue to walk down the traffic-congested street and shop-window gaze, admiring old prints, the leather bound books, the linen, the expensive cameras and the
de luxe
gifts displayed at Asprey’s.

Among the stream of people moving down Bond Street at the cocktail hour of 7 p.m. was a giant of a man wearing a shabby, foreign cut suit, scuffed shoes and a Marks & Spencer shirt and tie. This man had silver coloured hair, cut close, a square-shaped face, high cheekbones and flat green eyes. His age might be between thirty and forty, but not more. His muscular body was a shade under six foot five. His suntanned face was relaxed and expressionless. He walked easily with the light step of a trained fighter, his big hands thrust into his trousers pockets.

This man whose known name was Malik was Russia’s most successful agent. He had been in London now for a week. He had been told to look at the City, get the feel of it and to behave like a tourist. It was possible he might have work to do here.

So Malik was relaxing. He was staying at a small nondescript hotel in Cromwell Road. He was fully aware that M.I.6 was watching him. He was also aware that his own people had a man following him. All this Malik accepted with indifference. It was part of the game, and he regarded his job as a game, exciting, satisfying and which pandered to his sadistic instincts.

This evening, strolling down Bond Street, he was satisfying his suppressed longing for possessions. Every now and then, he would pause before a shop window and stare with his flat green eyes at the various luxury articles he longed for but knew he could never possess.

There was a portable roulette set that he would have liked to own. In another corner of the window, temptingly displayed, was a leather-embossed blotter complete with a silver and onyx pen set that beckoned to him the way an impossible-to-buy toy beckons to a child. He stood staring through the window of the shop, his face disciplined into a blank mask, his big knuckled fists clenched out of sight in his pockets.

Unwillingly, he moved on, walking slowly, fighting the temptation to stop and look again at things displayed so blatantly in the windows, but now mindful that there was someone following and watching him, ready to make a report, jealous of his reputation, more than willing to ruin him.

The faint sound of a touched motor horn made him look sharply towards a cruising Jaguar that had slowed to a crawl and was only slightly ahead of him.

A girl was at the wheel: blonde and smiling, not more than twenty-three, a mink stole around her shoulders, her eyes inviting, the lines around her mouth etched deeply in worldly awareness and sin.

Malik looked away. He walked on. He felt the blood move through his body. He had a sudden impulse to go with this whore and show her how a Russian can reduce a woman to a gasping, moaning animal, flattened beneath muscle and sinews. The urgent need to do this brought sweat beads out onto his forehead, but he kept walking, mindful of the unseen watcher, knowing every move he made, good or bad, would be reported, if not tonight, then later.

The Jaguar swung to the kerb as he passed and the girl said softly, “Why be lonely, darling? We could have fun.”

Malik kept on. The luxury articles in the shop windows had suddenly lost their fascination. He wanted now only to return to his hotel. Four walls, a curtained window and a locked door offered him the sanctuary he felt in need of, away from watching eyes.

The Jaguar gained speed and passed him. He watched it go with regret. As he reached Piccadilly, the electronic-pulser he wore on his wrist, disguised as a watch, began to throb. This was a signal that he was wanted. Immediately he became alert, the fleshy desires, the envy of luxury wiped from his mind. He touched the winder on the pulser to stop the pulse beat, then walked swiftly down Piccadilly to the Berkeley Hotel. Ignoring the stare from the top-hatted doorman, he entered and moved around the groups of chattering people, cocktails in their hands, to him overdressed and stupid looking, to the telephone booths.

He gave the attendant a number, again ignoring the man’s obvious disapproval of his appearance, then when the man pointed, Malik shut himself in one of the booths. It smelt of some expensive perfume and he thought for a brief moment of the blonde in the Jaguar. His big fists clenched. It would have been good to have shown her how a Russian takes a woman. The telephone bell tinkled and he lifted the receiver.

A man’s voice said, “Hello?”

“Four and two and six make twelve,” Malik said, using his own special identity code.

“You are to leave immediately for Paris,” the man told him in Russian. “You are booked on flight 361, leaving at 20.40 hours. Your things have been packed and are waiting for you at the Air Terminal. S. will be at Le Bourget. This is an emergency.” The line went dead.

Malik paid for the call and then, leaving the hotel, he picked up a taxi and was driven to the Cromwell Road Air Terminus.

A fat, suety-faced man who was known to Malik as Drina was waiting in the reception lobby. He had with him Malik’s shabby suitcase, his ticket and 300 French francs.

“You still have a little time,” Drina said. He spoke respectfully.

He was a great admirer of Malik, wishing he had the talent and the drive that had established Malik as the top agent. “Is there anything else I can do? I packed your things carefully. Smernoff will meet you at the other end. He would appreciate some duty free cigarettes.” The suety face grimaced into a smile. “I thought I could mention it.”

Malik hated this fat, dumpy man as he hated anyone connected with failure. He had had dealings with him before and his servile, fawning manner irritated him.

Wordlessly, he took the suitcase, the ticket and the money, then walked away. He knew the watcher was still watching. It wouldn’t do even to swear at Drina.

When he arrived at Le Bourget airport, he went through the police control without trouble. His false passport was in order.

He was travelling as an American subject on vacation. The police at the airport were used to Americans. They considered that America threw up an odd assortment of breeds. This Slav looking man was just another visitor, welcomed only for his dollars. Malik passed through the barrier and walked out into the big reception hall where Boris Smernoff was waiting. Malik was glad to see him.

Smernoff knew his job. He had the reputation of being the most clever and ruthless hunter of men and Malik had often worked with him. He was thickset, dark and heavily built with a bald patch, narrow, cruel eyes and a talent for accepting any difficulty without protesting. His philosophy was: if it is possible, it will be done; if it is impossible, it can be done.

A few minutes before Malik’s arrival, there had been a sudden scene of violence. Three young beatniks, dressed in leather jackets with dirty nondescript faces had appeared suddenly and had converged on a man who was sitting inoffensively by the barrier where the passengers from London would arrive. One of them had hit this man over the head with a gutta-percha cosh and then before anyone could act, they had rim out, bundled into a shabby Simca and had driven rapidly away into the rain and the darkness.

The assaulted man was one of M.I.6’s Paris agents, alerted by London that Malik was arriving. He had been taken away in an ambulance and Smernoff who had organised the assault was confident that there was no other watcher to see Malik arrive.

As Malik crossed the hall towards Smernoff, Smernoff’s thin lips moved into a smile.

“Did you bring me cigarettes?” he asked as the two men shook hands.

“You can poison your own self,” Malik said. “Why should I want to hasten your death?”

“You think of no one but yourself,” Smernoff said, shrugging, “I have never known you to do anyone a favour.”

Malik grunted.

But as they walked out of the airport, he found himself considering this remark. It irritated him to find it was true.

The two men got into a 404 Smernoff had parked in a parking bay. As Smernoff set the car in motion, he said, “This could be a tricky one. A woman has been found suffering from complete loss of memory. She is at the moment in the American Hospital. It is thought she is the mistress of Feng Hoh Kung. We have orders to take her from the hospital to a house already prepared at Malmaison. You have been selected to take care of the operation. American Security know who she is and they have already put a guard on the hospital. It is also possible in a few hours, she will be moved somewhere less accessible.”

“They think she has information?” Malik asked.

“They think she might have.”

For a few moments Malik sat in silence absorbing this assignment. It appealed to him. He liked action and walking into a hospital which was guarded and taking a woman out, then getting away, was the kind of job he knew he was good at.

“Have you done anything yet or have you waited for me?”

“The matter is urgent,” Smernoff said. “I have a man watching the hospital and reporting back every ten minutes. It seems to me the quickest way of getting her is to walk in and take her. We are lucky. An American General, in for a check-up, is on the same floor as she is. I have American Army uniforms, a Jeep and an ambulance at readiness. If you don’t like this idea, you will say so. This is your operation: not mine.”

Malik glanced at the hard, cruel face of his companion and his eyes glittered. Smernoff was his assistant. He took orders. Malik wondered how much longer that would continue if Smernoff began using his head. He had outlined a plan that Malik would have made. Malik knew this.

“You think like me, Boris. It is a pleasure to work with you. This is a good plan. It should work. I’ll see you get the credit.”