Honourable Schoolboy (37 page)

‘Ah discipline. That kind of discipline!’ Mr Hibbert resumed his plainer style.

He knew the answer exactly. What else had he and Nelson to talk about in their English lessons - apart from the Communist gospel, he asked - but Nelson’s own ambitions? Nelson’s passion was engineering. Nelson believed that technology, not Bibles, would lead China out of feudalism.

‘Shipbuilding, roads, railways, factories: that was Nelson. The Angel Gabriel with a slide-rule and a white collar and a degree. That’s who he was, in his mind.’

Mr Hibbert did not stay in Shanghai long enough to see Nelson achieve this happy state, he said, because Nelson did not graduate till fifty-one -

Di Salis’s pen scratched wildly on the notebook.

‘- but Drake, who’d scraped and scrounged for him those six years,’ said Mr Hibbert - over Doris’s renewed references to the Triads - ‘Drake stuck it out, and he had his reward, same as Nelson did. He saw that vital piece of paper go into Nelson’s hand, and he knew his job was done and he could get out, just like he’d always planned.’

Di Salis in his excitement was growing positively avid. His ugly face had sprung fresh patches of colour and he was fidgeting desperately on his chair.

‘And after graduating - what then?’ he said urgently. ‘What did he do? What became of him? Go on, please. Please go on.’

Amused by such enthusiasm, Mr Hibbert smiled. Well, according to Drake, he said, Nelson had first joined the shipyards as a draughtsman, working on blueprints and building projects, and learning like mad whatever he could from the Russian technicians who’d poured in since Mao’s victory. Then in fifty-three, if Mr Hibbett’s memory served him correctly, Nelson was privileged to be chosen for further training at the Leningrad University in Russia, and he stayed on there till, well, late fifties anyway.

‘Oh, he was like a dog with two tails, Drake was, by the sound of him!’ Mr Hibbert could not have looked more proud if it had been his own son he was talking of.

Di Salis leaned suddenly forward, even presuming, despite cautionary glances from Connie, to jab his pen in the old man’s direction. ‘So after Leningrad: what did they do with him then?’

‘Why, he came back to Shanghai, naturally,’ said Mr Hibbert with a laugh. ‘And promoted, he was, after the learning he’d acquired, and the standing: a shipbuilder, Russian taught, a technologist, an administrator! Oh, he loved those Russians! Specially after Korea. They’d machines, power, ideas, philosophy. His promised land, Russia was. He looked up to them like -’ His voice, and his zeal, both died. ‘Oh dear,’ he muttered, and stopped, unsure of himself for the second time since they had listened to him. ‘But that couldn’t last for ever could it? Admiring Russia: how long was that fashionable in Mao’s new wonderland? Doris dear, get me a shawl.’

‘You’re wearing it,’ Doris said.

Tactlessly, stridently, di Salis still bore in on him. He nothing now except the answers: not even for the notebook open on his lap.

‘He returned,’ he piped. ‘Very well. He rose in the hierarchy. He was Russian trained, Russia oriented. Very well. What comes next?’

Mr Hibbert looked at di Salis for a long time. There was no guile in his face, and none in his gaze. He looked at him as a clever child might, without the hindrance of sophistication. And it was suddenly clear that Mr Hibbert didn’t trust di Salis any more and, indeed, that he didn’t like him.

‘He’s dead, young man,’ Mr Hibbert said finally, and swivelling his chair, stared at the sea view. In the room it was already half dark, and most of the light came from the gas fire. The grey beach was empty. On the wicket gate a single seagull perched black and vast against the last strands of evening sky.

‘You said he still had his crooked arm,’ di Salis snapped straight back. ‘You said you supposed he still had. You said it about now! I heard it in your voice!’

‘Well now, I think we have taxed Mr Hibbert quite enough,’ said Connie brightly and, with a sharp glance at di Salis, stooped for her bag. But di Salis would have none of it.

‘I don’t believe him!’ he cried in his shrill voice. ‘How? When did Nelson die? Give us the dates!’

But the old man only drew his shawl more closely round him, and kept his eyes to the sea.

‘We were in Durham,’ Doris said, still looking at her knitting, though there was not the light to knit by. ‘Drake drove up and saw us in his big chauffeur-driven car. He took his henchman with him, the one he calls Tiu. They were fellow crooks together in Shanghai. Wanted to show off. Brought me a platinum cigarette lighter, and a thousand pounds in cash for Dad’s church and flashed his OBE at us in its case, took me into a corner and asked me to come to Hong Kong and be his mistress, right under Dad’s nose. Bloody sauce! He wanted Dad’s signature on something. A guarantee. Said he was going to read law at Gray’s Inn. At his age, I ask you! Forty-two! Talk about mature student! He wasn’t, of course. It was all just face and talk as usual. Dad said to him: How’s Nelson? and -’

‘Just one minute, please,’ Di Salis had made yet another ill-judged interruption. ‘The date? When did all this happen, please? I must have dates!’

‘Sixty-seven. Dad was almost retired, weren’t you, Dad?’

The old man did not stir.

‘All right, sixty-seven. What month? Be precise, please!’

He all but said ‘be precise, woman’, and he was making Connie seriously anxious. But when she again tried to restrain him, he ignored her.

‘April,’ Doris said after some thought. ‘We’d just had Dad’s birthday. That’s why he brought the thousand quid for the church. He knew Dad wouldn’t take it for himself because Dad didn’t like the way Drake made his money.’

‘All right. Good. Well done. April. So Nelson died pre-April sixty-seven. What details did Drake supply of the circumstances? Do you remember that?’

‘None. No details. I told you. Dad asked, and he just said dead as if Nelson was a dog. So much for brotherly love. Dad didn’t know where to look. It nearly broke his heart and there was Drake not giving a hoot. I have no brother. Nelson is dead. And Dad still praying for Nelson, weren’t you, Dad?’

This time the old man spoke. With the dusk, his voice had grown considerably in force.

‘I prayed for Nelson and I pray for him still,’ he said bluntly. ‘When he was alive I prayed that one way or another he would do God’s work in the world. I believed he had it in him to do great things. Drake, he’d manage anywhere. He’s tough. But the light of the door at the Lord’s Life Mission would not have burned in vain, I used to think, if Nelson Ko succeeded in helping to lay the foundation of a just society in China. Nelson might call it Communism. Call it what he likes. But for three long years your mother and I gave him our Christian love, and I won’t have it said, Doris, not by you or anyone, that the light of God’s love can be put out forever. Not by politics, not by the sword.’ He drew a long breath, ‘And now he’s dead, I pray for his soul, same as I do for your mother’s,’ he said, sounding strangely less convinced. ‘If that’s popery, I don’t care.’

Connie had actually risen to go. She knew the limits, she had the eye, and she was scared of the way di Salis was hammering on. But di Salis on the scent knew no limits at all.

‘So it was a violent death, was it? Politics and the sword, you said. Which politics? Did Drake tell you that? Actual killings were relatively rare, you know. I think you’re holding out on us!’

Di Salis also was standing, but at Mr Hibbert’s side, and he was yapping these questions downward at the old man’s white head as if he were acting in a Sarratt playlet on interrogation.

‘You’ve been so very kind,’ said Connie gushingly to Doris. ‘Really we’ve all we could possibly need and more. I’m sure it will all go through with the knighthood,’ she said, in a voice pregnant with message for di Salis. ‘Now away we go and thank you both enormously.’

But this time it was the old man himself who frustrated her.

‘And the year after, he lost his other Nelson too, God help him, his little boy,’ he said. ‘He’ll be a lonely man, will Drake. That was his last letter to us, wasn’t it, Doris? Pray for my little Nelson, Mr Hibbert, he wrote. And we did. Wanted me to fly over and conduct the funeral. I couldn’t do it, I don’t know why. I never much held with money spent on funerals, to be honest.’

At this, di Salis literally pounced: and with a truly terrible glee. He stooped right over the old man, and he was so animated that he grabbed a fistful of shawl in his feverish little hand.

‘Ah! Ah now! But did he ever ask you to pray for Nelson senior? Answer me that.’

‘No,’ the old man said simply. ‘No, he didn’t.’

‘Why not? Unless he wasn’t really dead, of course! There are more ways than one of dying in China, aren’t there, and not all of them are fatal! Disgraced: is that a better expression?’

His squeaky words flew about the fire-lit room like ugly spirits.

‘They’re to go, Doris,’ the old man said calmly to the sea. ‘See that driver right, won’t you, dear? I’m sure we should have taken out to him, but never mind.’

They stood in the hall, making their goodbyes. The old man had stayed in his chair and Doris had closed the door on him. Sometimes, Connie’s sixth sense was frightening.

‘The name Liese doesn’t mean anything to you, does it, Miss Hibbert?’ she asked, buckling her enormous plastic coat. ‘We have a reference to a Liese in Mr Ko’s life.’

Doris’s unpainted face made an angry scowl.

‘That’s Mum’s name,’ she said. ‘She was German Lutheran. The swine stole that too, did he?’

With Toby Esterhase at the wheel, Connie Sachs and Doc di Salis hurried home to George with their amazing news. At first, on the way, they squabbled about di Salis’s lack of restraint. Toby Esterhase particularly was shocked, and Connie seriously feared the old man might write to Ko. But soon the import of their discovery overwhelmed their apprehensions, and they arrived triumphant at the gates of their secret city.

Safely inside the walls, it was now di Salis’s hour of glory. Summoning his family of yellow perils once more, he set in motion a whole variety of enquiries, which sent them scurrying all over London on one false pretext or another, and to Cambridge too. At heart di Salis was a loner. No one knew him, except Connie perhaps and, if Connie didn’t care for him, then no one liked him either. Socially he was discordant and frequently absurd. But neither did anyone doubt his hunter’s will.

He scoured old records of the Shanghai University of Communications, in Chinese the Chiao Tung - which had a reputation for student Communist militancy after the thirty-nine forty-five war - and concentrated his interest upon the Department of Marine Studies, which included both administration and ship-building in its curriculum. He drew lists of Party cadre members of both before and after forty-nine, and pored over the scant details of those entrusted with the takeover of big enterprises where technological knowhow was required: in particular the Kiangnan shipyard, a massive affair from which the Kuomintang elements had repeatedly to be purged. Having drawn up lists of several thousand names, he opened files on all those who were known to have continued their studies at Leningrad University and afterwards reappeared at the shipyard in improved positions. A course of shipbuilding at Leningrad took three years. By di Salis’s computation, Nelson should have been there from fifty-three to fifty-six and afterwards formally assigned to the Shanghai municipal department in charge of marine engineering, which would then have returned him to Kiangnan. Accepting that Nelson possessed not only Chinese forenames which were still unknown, but quite possibly had chosen a new surname for himself into the bargain, di Salis warned his helpers that Nelson’s biography might be split into two parts, each under a different name. They should watch for dovetailing. He cadged lists of graduates and lists of enrolled students both at Chiao Tung and at Leningrad and set them side by side. China-watchers are a fraternity apart, and their common interests transcend protocol and national differences. Di Salis had connections not only in Cambridge, and in every Oriental archive, but in Rome, Tokyo and Munich as well. He wrote to all of them, concealing his goal in a welter of other questions. Even the Cousins, it turned out later, had unwittingly opened their files to him. He made other enquiries even more arcane. He despatched burrowers to the Baptists, to delve among records of old pupils at the Mission Schools, on the off-chance that Nelson’s Chinese names had, after all, been taken down and filed. He tracked down any chance records of the deaths of mid-ranking Shanghai officials in the shipping industry.

That was the first leg of his labours. The second began with what Connie called the Great Beastly Cultural Revolution of the mid-Sixties and the names of such Shanghainese officials who, in consequence of criminal pro-Russian leanings, had been officially purged, humiliated, or sent to a May 7th school to rediscover the virtues of peasant labour. He also consulted lists of those sent to labour reform camps, but with no great success. He looked for any references, among the Red Guards’ harangues, to the wicked influence of a Baptist upbringing upon this or that disgraced official, and he played complicated games with the name of KO. It was at the back of his mind that, in changing his name, Nelson might have hit upon a different character which retained an internal kinship with the original - either homophonic or symphonetic. But when he tried to explain this to Connie, he lost her.

Connie Sachs was pursuing a different line entirely. Her interest centred on the activities of known Karla-trained talent-spotters working among overseas students at the University of Leningrad in the fifties; and on rumours, never proven, that Karla, as a young Comintern agent, had been lent to the Shanghai Communist underground after the war, to help them rebuild their secret apparatus.

It was in the middle of all this fresh burrowing that a small bombshell was delivered from Grosvenor Square. Mr Hibbert’s intelligence was still fresh from the presses, in fact, and the researchers of both families were still frantically at work, when Peter Guillam walked in on Smiley with an urgent message. He was as usual deep in his own reading, and as Guillam entered he slipped a file into a drawer and closed it.