The Chinese Agenda (3 page)

He cleared his throat and stared hard at Jacques, who finished pouring the brandy. The Belgian picked up the glass and drank it down quickly, then with a half-smile, nodded knowingly.

'I have much work to do, as we leave shortly. Bon soir, monsieur. I know that you will excuse me?'

Phan inclined his head to Jacques' half-bow, but remained silent, and Jacques turned away and pushed out through the curtain. Gillon sank wearily back into the chair and picked up a cigarette package from the table. He lit one and tossed the pack down in front of Jones. Jones eyed him, but said nothing. Àll right, now that you have put me properly in my place, can we get down to business?'

Gillon snorted without looking up.

`There is a group of Chinese Nationalist agents in western Sinkiang Province, very near the Soviet border. ...' Jones began.

Gillon looked up in disbelief. 'For God's sake, what is this? Sinkiang?'

Jones leaned across the table and smashed his fist down hard, making the half-full glasses of brandy jump.

'Shut your damned mouth and listen to what I have to say, then you can make all the wise-ass remarks you want, but by God, you hear me out V

Gillon put the cigarette back into his mouth and sat back, not at all impressed with Jones'

s outburst.,

'All right,' he said in a controlled voice. 'Go ahead, but keep it to the point.'

Jones nodded and sank back down into the chair. At least Gillon would listen to what he had to say, he thought. He had gained that much.

'There is a team of Chinese Nationalist agents in Sinkiang,' he said again. 'There has been at least one such team in Sinkiang since the Communist take-over in 1949. They are parachuted into the area in twenty-man teams, stay for two years, then head south and make their way out through Afghanistan . . . those of the teams that are left. Every so often, Taiwan manages to arrange an airdrop of supplies, but other than that, they can do little more.

'These teams are in there in the hopes . . . or so Taiwan says . . . that if the counterrevolution ever comes, they can provide the nucleus of a trained striking force in the West, where the Chinese are the most vulnerable to guerrilla operations. Since the Peking Government has become solidly entrenched and Taiwan has lost hope, active support for the strike teams has been

failing. So, in the last few years, it seems that the teams have been more inclined to banditry than espionage.

'The team in there now apparently takes their job very seriously. It seems they have come onto something very big and now they are yelling for help to get it out.

'What?' Gillon asked carefully.

`We'll talk about the what later,' Jones replied, his voice brusque. 'Right now, we have other problems. They asked for help through their radio contact, which happens to be Mr. Phan's department in Laos. He relayed their message on to Taiwan as Usual but this time, there was great deal of messaging back and forth. Just about the time we decoded the messages, the Nationalist Chinese took us into their confidence.'

'Nice of them,' Gillon interjected acidly.

'Yes, it was, and no, it wasn't. They really had no other choice. They had to give their strike team some kind of help and they had neither the resources nor the methods of doing so. The strike team wanted their find out of China, but they could not take a chance on trying to bring it out the usual way. This stuff had to get out fast and it had to get out with a high assurance of success.'

Jones paused and mopped his brow. The humidity, excessive at any time, was almost unbearable in the closed-in room.

`So the Nationalists asked the good old U.S. of A. for help, knowing that you were probably stupid enough to give it?'

'Something like that,' Jones acknowledged. 'As soon as we found out what they had, we were more than willing to help . . . but we couldn't pull it off by ourselves either.'

Gillon pulled another cigarette from the pack and lit it, grinning all the while. He exhaled the first deep puff and chuckled at Jones. 'That's not in the code of the West, podner. There's no such word as can't.'

Jones ignored the sarcasm this time and continued. 'The data they had to bring out were of concern to more than us alone . . . the U.S.S.R. was equally involved.'

At that Gillon broke into laughter. 'How about that?' he chortled. 'The U.S. and the U.S.S. R. both needing

help from each other. That's never happened before. No . . . no . . .' Gillon pushed himself upright in the chair and waved his cigarette at the two men. 'I take that back. They have needed each other before. Without the one, the other couldn't have kept these stupid little wars going, so that they would have someplace to dump their obsolete weapons and recoup some of the money they've wasted in the past twenty-five years.'

'And no one to employ your unique talents, Colonel Gillon.' Phan eyed Gillon across the table, his lips pursed.

'Right you are, Mr. Phan, or whatever your name is; no one to keep my paychecks coming in. This war, I

-forget which side is picking up my bill ..

'All right, Gillon,' Jones said, his voice tired. 'Knock it off. I'm not going to debate political philosophy with you. If you'll keep your mouth shut for a little while longer and let me finish, we can all get some sleep.'

Gillon nodded, grinning. 'Pray, continue.'

Jones took a deep breath and plunged ahead, even though he was certain it was hopeless by now. He was more than ever convinced that Gillon was a total washout. There wasn't enough of anything left in him to appeal to . . . except his cynicism and, try as he might, he could see no way to use that to his advantage.

'The Nationalists were totally opposed to Russian intervention in the beginning.' He went on quickly to forestall the expected comment from Gillon. 'But they had no other choice. There is no other way into Sinkiang than through Siberian Russia and that clinched it. The problem was presented to the Russians in Moscow the day before yesterday and they agreed to a joint venture. They would supply two team members, transportation and the jump-off zone; we would supply the equipment, four team members and the key.'

'Key?'

'The strike team lives on the ragged edge as long as they are in Sinkiang, or they don't live at all. They trust no one including their own government. They insist on calling the shots and since they could just as easily turn what they have back to the Red Chinese to buy immunity, we are being very careful to do exactly as they ask.'

'All right,' Gillon said, and leaned forward to clasp his hands on the table. 'You've done enough talking in riddles. Let's have it with no more nonsense. It's been a big night and a bigger tomorrow.'

Jones and Phan exchanged looks and Phan nodded.

`The data they have,' Jones said without preamble, `contain photographs and microfilmed documents describing the results of the latest series of the Chinese ICBM nuclear warhead tests completed last month. As best we can tell, the data are authentic.'

Gillon nodded. He was not greatly impressed, but acknowledged the possible importance of this information to Jones.

'The strike team has no way to get this information out quickly. They can't transmit by radio for any length of time or, no matter how much they move around, the Chicoms would be able to pin-point their location. So they want someone to come in and pick it up. Taiwan, in turn, has asked if we are interested enough to go and get it.. As you can guess, the data would be of marginal value to the Nationalists for anything other than trading purposes. Since they can't get to it, they figure that they have more to gain by playing the good guy and giving us a crack. I suppose they also feel if we are stupid enough to involve the Russians, then that's our lookout. And since we too have no other choice, the Russians are involved.'

'Okay, the United States has to go in and get the data. So what's holding you back? Your people have had plenty of experience with this sort of thing.'

`The key, Gillon, the key. That's what's stopping us and that's why we are sitting in the middle of this lousy jungle, getting shot at. The key, Gillon,' he repeated, having lost his temper completely. 'You, damn it, are the key to the whole stupid situation. You've got to come along with me to find this ridiculous team out in the boon-docks and we'll probably get our heads shot off while we're at it.'

'Me . . .' Gillon stuttered in surprise. 'Me . . . like hell, buddy. I'm not going . . The pay is good,' Jones said wearily. 'One hundred stinking thousand tax-free dollars for a week's work .. . think about that before you say no, and think about this too,' he added as Gillon got to his feet, still shaking his head. 'An old friend of yours, Jack Liu, is the leader of that strike team. He told us in no uncertain terms that there is only one person in the whole damned world that he would trust in the situation he is in now. No one, absolutely no one else, and that's why you, buddy boy, are the key.'

'Jack . . .'Gillon sat back down, clearly stunned. He stared at the table for a long minute before he murmured, half to himself, `So that's where he disappeared to.'

Jones watched him carefully, knowing that he had struck the right nerve, but wondering if it would prove tender enough to provoke the right response.

`Yeah, and when he heard that the Russians have to be in on it as well, we almost lost him. You are the only one he trusts and that's that.'

'And so they sent you out here to get me to go along on your hike into Sinkiang ... complete with a hundred grand in bribe money . . . you poor bastard,' Gillon finished softly.

'That may very well be,' Jones replied. 'But I'm trying anyway. I'm not going to give you the patriotic pitch, and I'm not going to tell you how vital that information is to preserving peace. You know all that nonsense as well as I do. I'm saying that I need your help, that the pay will be damned good and that your friend Jack Liu asked for you, specifically. Right now, the Red Chinese know that he has this information, they know that he has made radio contact with someone outside China. The bets in Washington, Taiwan and Moscow afe that he can't stay far enough ahead of the Chicom hunting parties to actually deliver. But he knew that when he sent out the first message. Unless we can get in there, get that data and get him out at the same time, he's dead and for nothing. Now, I don't know what there is between you two, but I do know that he said that he would hand the data over to you and only you . . . otherwise we wouldn't be trying to convince a two-bit broken-down mercenary that we need his help.'

Jones finished this last savagely, but Gillon wasn't listening any longer. Jones may not have known what was between him and Jack Liu, but Gillon certainly did and he cursed Liu for calling the debt in this way. Even in the intensely humid room, seven thousand miles from Laos, the taste of dirt, the hammer-like sun grinding down on his back, the rotten jungle-smell of decaying vegetation and the pain in his chest where the grenade fragments had lodged and the rifle butt that rose and fell with monotonous regularity on the backs of his legs were as sharp and intense as that day, three years agog when it had happened.

'Well ...' Jones broke into his reverie. Gillon brought himself back into the hot room with an effort and stared at the two men across the table. 'Where exactly is he?' he asked, his voice hoarse and dry as if suddenly full of that red, powdery dust once more. Jones smiled in puzzled delight, not quite believing that he had heard correctly. right, all right, that's more like it!' he chortled. Still grinning, he snatched a thin brief case from the floor and extracted a map and spread it open on the table. Gillon glanced at Phan but found him watching Jones's movements with the same bland expression that. he had worn since Gillon had entered the room. But, tired as he was, Gillon thought he detected the least bit of relaxation in his posture, as if this were as close as he would ever come to an expression of any kind.

Gillon saw that the map that Jones had opened was a composite assembled from carefully matched aerial photographs. Contour lines had been superimposed and details accentuated. After a moment's study, he identified Lake Alma Ata and, once oriented, traced the Kazakhstan/Sinkiang border. Jones pointed to a mark some sixty miles west of the border and south of the Dzungarian Plain, roughly two hundred square miles in area.

'Liu is somewhere in this-area,' Jones said.

The flight from Conakry had been uneventful after the helicopter flight from the interior at dawn. They flew due north at thirty thousand feet, straight over the African bulge. The terrain below turned gradually from the deep-green rain forest to the lighter green of savanna grasslands and then to the grayish-brown of rocky, scrub covered uplands. By the time they had been in the air three hours, the land had faded into the sere brown, barren wastes of the Sahara.

Jones spent most of the flight forward in the cockpit while Phan slept. Gillon, although dead tired, had been too tense to manage more than catnaps during the long flight. It wasn't until the azure Mediterranean was visible as a thin line along the horizon that Jones came back to tell him that the next stop was Rome. He apologized for having left him alone for so long, but he felt that sleep would be much more beneficial than company. He then led Gillon aft to a small lavatory, pointed out clean clothes and shaving necessities and left him to luxuriate in a long, hot shower and shave. The Jetstar swept in over the clean, blue and white vista of Rome at 1100 hours, local time, banked steeply north of the city and followed the traffic into Campagnano International Airport. As they turned off the taxi strip, Jones noted with obvious relief that a NATO staff car was streaking toward them as the 'follow-me' jeep led them to a remote part of the field. He got out of his seat and walked back down the aisle to where Gillon, freshly shaved and in clean clothes, looked as if he felt 100 per cent better. Gillon glanced up at him then and pointed with his thumb at the NATO staff car now pacing them.

'Is that our welcoming committee?'

Jones dropped down into the seat. 'Yeah, the first of the grind, I'm afraid. We get a mission briefing here before going on. They'll bring us up to date on the political situation and tell us what our jump-off point inside the Soviet Union will be.'