15 Bamboo Read online

‘No one,’ Tilson said from across the desk, ‘at your level.’

  Hyde: ‘If necessary, Mr Croder would direct you in the field.’

  Croder. He was Chief of Signals. I was beginning to feel the size of this thing.

  One of the phones rang and Tilson took it and said all right and rang off and looked up at Hyde. ‘They’re on their way over there now.’

  Hyde angled his watch to the light. ‘Very well.’ He turned to me again. ‘Have you any further conditions?’

  Silence in the room.

  We can always refuse a mission. It can be in a locale too far away for our liking, or too hot, too cold, too hostile, too dangerous. Or we can simply be too tired, too exhausted after the last time out; or we can feel the tug of intuition not to take it, this one, not to risk it. We grow old, in this trade, before our time; we grow canny, cunning, cynical, steeped in subterfuge, versed in stealth.

  We grow obstinate, difficult; we grow intractable. And we grow afraid.

  Their eyes on me, Tilson’s, Hyde’s, in the lamplight, in the silence of the room.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘there are no further conditions.’

  Hyde broke his stare. ‘You accept the mission?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Then we must be going,’ he said. ‘We’re to meet these people at the Foreign Office as soon as we can get there. Did you come in your car?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Will you take me there?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Taxis are so laggardly. Tilson, will you set everything up? I’ll brief Quiller as soon as we’re back, then you can put him through Clearance.’

  On our way down Whitehall in the car, Hyde sat with his bulk hunched against the passenger door, watching the road and sometimes watching me as he talked.

  ‘Go right here.’ I turned into Victoria Street. ‘Keep going,’ he said.

  ‘Not the Foreign Office?’

  ‘We just said the Foreign Office, but actually no. Too many moles. This matter, you see, is rather important, and we don’t want people listening. Since you are now committed, I can give you the whole thing in a nutshell. If all goes to plan, we should be able to overthrow the Communist regime in Beijing and establish a democratic government within a matter of days.’

  2 Underground.

  There was the smell of burned metal from the high voltage contacts, and the black mouth of the tunnel was lit intermittently by the flash of a welder’s torch; I suppose there was a night crew along there, working on the rails. Here on the platform the scene was more formal: most of the people were in dark overcoats and two of them had rolled umbrellas. I was in a polo sweater and padded bomber jacket, since they’d got me out of my flat in such a hurry.

  There were some men hanging around the mouth of the tunnel and the archway to the escalators; on our way down here, Hyde had told me the scene was protected by plainclothes police. ‘We mustn’t be disturbed, you see. I suppose it’s odd,’ he’d said, ‘that in order to avoid any moles we’re going underground.’

  It looked as if we were the last to arrive, and someone came forward to meet us.

  ‘This is Mr Jones,’ Hyde told him, and the other man shook hands with me and said:

  ‘I’m Barstow, Private Secretary. Come and meet people.’

  Another flash lit the tunnel, and there was the crackle of the welding flame.

  Barstow took us over to the group and made the introductions. ‘His Excellency Qiao Dejian, Ambassador from the People’s Republic of China. The Right Honourable James Jarrow, Secretary of State for the United Kingdom. Mr William Glover, MI6. Mr Hou Jing, Chinese embassy counselor. This is Mr Hyde, and Mr Jones. Shall we go and sit down?’

  There was a holdup because the Secretary of State wanted the Chinese ambassador to go into the coach first, and little Qiao couldn’t possibly allow it, so Barstow managed to shepherd them discreetly side by side through the sliding doors and the rest of us shuffled after them, with Hyde and me in the rear. Hyde’s official capacity hadn’t been mentioned and ‘Mr Jones’ is generally understood among the diplomatic crowd to be a cover name for some kind of agent.

  There was another holdup inside the coach because Ambassador Qiao wouldn’t sit down until the Secretary had, but Jarrow finally took his seat halfway along the coach and everyone else followed suit and someone pulled the sliding doors together manually and took up guard duty on the platform outside. I noticed that Qiao was looking deathly tired and the Secretary of State wasn’t looking particularly tired but certainly tense. The Chinese counselor sat with a heavy black briefcase on his knees, clutching it with gloved hands.

  Barstow, our Private Secretary, looked at his boss, and Jarrow nodded, but then there was another holdup while Ambassador Qiao got a handkerchief out and blew his nose and asked us to excuse him because he’d caught a cold. His English was perfect, I would have said Cambridge.

  The scene was a degree surrealistic, and I think it put the Chinese off, being in a train underground instead of a nice formal office. The hand straps hung down above our heads like tiny gibbets in a row, and we could see our faces on his side reflected behind the people opposite, under the dim ceiling lights. The doors had been shut on us with a definitive thump and we looked as if we’d been thrown together in purgatory, without knowing where the train was going to take us, to heaven or hell.

  Jarrow pulled out a gold cigarette case and asked if anybody minded and no one spoke so he lit up, and Barstow started talking.

  ‘So that we all know what’s going on, I’ll recap the main points for you.’ He sat forward on the seat, hands on his knees and feet together, looking from one face to the next and giving each of us a precisely allotted share of his cool blue eyes. ‘Ambassador Qiao came to us two days ago and told us that after the democratic uprising in Beijing of last week, he feels he no longer wishes to represent the Communist regime at present in power there. His intention was to defect, and he asked us for asylum. His counselor, Mr Hou Jing, has identical feelings. We conferred with MI6, who agreed it would be far more useful for all concerned if the ambassador remained at his post and made himself available to us as a source of information.’

  Qiao sat slumped on the seat, but I didn’t think he was going to doze off. A lot of his fatigue must have been due to stress: a couple of days ago he’d been a bona fide ambassador and now he was in effect an intelligence agent working for the West. He didn’t look the type who’d commit an act of betrayal too easily.

  ‘He and his counselor declared themselves willing to do this,’ Barstow said, his eyes resting on mine and passing on to Hyde’s. ‘The ambassador would probably like me to point out that in the present circumstances he regards his action as simply a shift of loyalties, from the Chinese government to the Chinese people.’

  No one spoke, though I thought we should have clapped or something. Jarrow flicked ash from his cigarette, looking at nobody.

  ‘Ambassador Qiao,’ the Private Secretary went on, ‘has conferred with the Prime Minister, who is therefore acquainted with the situation, and who has pledged her assistance in any way possible with the ambassador’s proposals. Mr Hyde and Mr Jones were called upon, and have declared themselves ready to implement those proposals by whatever means are open to them. I need hardly say, gentlemen, that the most extreme discretion must be used by all those present, when we are no longer protected by the security measures we enjoy at the present time.’

  If those measures, of course, were adequate. Maybe I was paranoid, but the fact remained that if this meeting had taken place a few years ago, the Foreign Office could have been represented here by Kim Philby.

  ‘Before Ambassador Qiao presents his ideas, are there any questions?’

  ‘What’s going to be our timing?’ Hyde asked him. ‘How quickly have we got to move?’

  ‘Almost immediately, as far as I can gather, but we’ll have a more precise idea from Ambassador Qiao.’

  It was getting stuffy in here, and I took off my bomber jacket. There was also a certain amount of heat generating from the nerves: Barstow had said we’d have to move almost immediately and by tonight the Bureau could have catapulted me straight into Beijing, and I didn’t feel ready for that.

  ‘If there are no questions, I’ll ask Ambassador Qiao to take over.’

  The Chinese got out his handkerchief again and when he’d finished he said with a note of apology, ‘I hope that the proposals I’m about to give you will offer a chance for my country to free itself of its present onerous regime, and at the same time break down the barriers between China and the rest of the world. But there are risks. There are very grave risks.’ He shifted to the edge of the seat and leaned his elbows on his knees, his small pale hands hanging loose; the light glinted across his glasses as he turned his head sometimes to look at us, though mostly he looked down. He didn’t have the air of a renegade storming the barricades, but that was obviously what he was going to do, and as I watched his face, hollowed by fatigue, I felt something that doesn’t often get through the scaly carapace of suspicion and distrust that forms around us in this dirty trade. It was compassion.

  ‘In one sense,’ Qiao said, ‘the recent uprising is already causing more anguish than the one in June 1989, when the reaction by the government was confused and at first indecisive, and when the ensuing bloodshed evoked, at least, the attention and the sympathy of the rest of the world.’ His head was lowered now and there was an edge to his tone that cut through the silence when he spoke again. ‘This time there was immediate reaction by the government; there was almost no media coverage of the event; there was almost no bloodshed, since the security forces were quick to move in; and very little news has leaked out from Beijing. Let me tell you, gentlemen, that this new uprising has in effect proved an infinitely greater tragedy than the last one, since most of the participants were intellectuals of high standing, with more chance and more hope than before of combating and ousting the government, only to see that hope shattered within days. And instead of visible bloodshed in the streets, we have a secret and most sinister operation under way that is bringing the intellectual elite from their homes in the thick of the night, torn from their families and thrown into the torture chambers and finally to the execution squads of this merciless regime and if you feel, gentlemen, that I am resorting to the idiom of cheap journalism’ - his head swung up to look at us -‘in order to get your sympathy, it is not the case. These people, the most enlightened intellects behind science and industry and education, are indeed being taken from their homes and tortured and finally shot to death, as we sit here now. My brother is one of them.’

  The silence hit us in the face and then I heard someone say ‘Oh, Jesus,’ under his breath.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Jarrow, Secretary of State.

  ‘But what is more important,’ Qiao said quickly, ‘is that whereas the uprising of 1989 slammed the door on our hopes of democracy in the People’s Republic of China, the recent flare-up of dissension has locked and barred it and drawn chains across it that we shall not, I think, see broken in our lifetime.’ He took his glasses off and wiped them, and I noticed the edge of his eyelids glistening. ‘Unless of course we can succeed in what I shall propose.’

  I had questions but couldn’t ask them. Were these tears for his brother or for China? How much had his personal tragedy pushed him into betrayal and defection, into bringing us down here tonight to listen to him? Hyde would know. He knew the whole thing: he’d probably been at the conference at No 10 with Qiao, because the Bureau is responsible directly to the Prime Minister. He’d known enough, at least, to set up the mission and select me for the field and get me down here tonight, privy to information that would rock Beijing if it got out: I need hardly say, gentlemen, that the most extreme discretion must be used by all those present, yes indeed.

  Qiao was using his handkerchief again; I didn’t think it was really a cold; it was because of the cable he’d had, the signal to the embassy in Portland Place: Regret to inform Your Excellency that your brother has been arrested and his whereabouts are not at present known, or words to that effect. It could have been only hours ago when he’d heard it, perhaps even less.

  ‘There is one man,’ he said, ‘who has so far escaped the firing squad. His name is Dr Xingyu Baibing, our most renowned astrophysicist and the most popular intellectual in the country, since his outspoken criticism of the present regime has brought it home to the people, and especially to his fellow intellectuals, that oppression by the ruling clique and corruption within it do not necessarily have to be endured for all time. This man became a popular figure in 1987, when he was ousted from the Communist Party for making speeches on behalf of democracy and inciting student rebellion. His standing with both the Chinese intellectuals and the people in the street is comparable with that of Lech Walesa in Poland. Today Dr Xingyu has been branded by the Communists as a traitor and - I quote - among the scum of the nation. He is accused of committing crimes of counter-revolutionary propaganda and instigation, and his immediate arrest has been ordered.’

  The young counselor, sitting next to him, unzipped the heavy briefcase and brought out some papers, but Qiao motioned them away. ‘The night before last, Dr Xingyu sought refuge inside the British embassy in Beijing, and he is there now as a guest of the British government and under its protection.’

  Reflected in the windows opposite I saw Hyde turn his head to look at me. I didn’t look back. I watched Qiao. In his last few words he’d focused the whole thing for us, like a zoom lens moving in.

  ‘We should not, of course, expect that the Communists in Beijing will necessarily respect international laws designed to protect foreign embassies. We should remember the sacking of the US embassy in Tehran, and the torching of the British embassy in Beijing itself by Mao’s Red Guards. The safety of Dr Xingyu cannot be guaranteed, since it is in inverse proportion to his importance to the democracy movement. He endangers the regime by his very existence, and the British government is under great pressure by the Chinese, as you can imagine, to turn its guest out of the embassy into the hands of the militia now waiting outside the gates.’ He glanced across at Jarrow, the Secretary of State.

  ‘That, yes, is the position,’ Jarrow said. ‘Her Majesty’s Government is of course resisting the belligerent demands of the Chinese and will continue to do so.’ He looked as weary as Qiao and his counselor, or maybe it was the dim yellowish lighting; but for the last two nights he would have been in late and exhaustive sessions with Thatcher and her advisers. ‘I should tell you, however, that we are working out a plan on the highest diplomatic levels to obtain an undertaking from the Chinese that if we were to release Dr Xingyu from our embassy - that’s not quite the word, of course, since he’s a guest and not a prisoner - if Dr Xingyu were to leave the embassy at his own request, he would be allowed free passage to the airport.’ He passed a hand over his eyes, squeezing them shut for a moment. ‘The exchange has been going on pretty intensely, of course, and the good ambassador and I have not had too much sleep - nor indeed has the Prime Minister. On the one hand, my government is trying to persuade the Chinese that since we intend to continue our hospitality to Dr Xingyu for as long as he wishes - for years, if it comes to that - it might be better for them to throw him out of the country and into exile, where he couldn’t do much harm. On the other hand, they’re very keen to get him under their control and brainwash him and push him in front of the television cameras to confess his sins and declare himself reformed, putting him through, politically speaking, a frontal lobotomy and rendering him harmless to the regime. From our side, we are of course offering certain trade concessions to give our argument a little weight. Look,’ he said to Barstow, ‘do you think those chaps outside could rustle up some tea?” That was 3.30 a.m.

  It had got smoky in here by now and the MI6 man had gone along the coach pulling the little windows open. Most of us had got through our first cup of tea and were on the second one: the police outside had brought a whole urn, piping hot, with a boxful of plastic cups.

  The Chinese ambassador was talking about the People’s Liberation Army.

  ‘There is a schism in the military that reflects the political scheme in Beijing. There are bones of contention among the commanders and their troops. As you know, some of the armies surrounding the capital in 1989 showed sympathy for the students in Tiananmen Square, and many officers were shot for refusing to fire on the people. At least fifteen generals are still in prison awaiting court-martial. In the uprising of last week there was, as you know, no military action called upon, though a readiness alert went out to all commanders in the vicinity of Beijing. While the old guard is still loyal to the Communist Party, the young and educated officers now rising from the ranks are impatient for reforms that would turn the PLA into a modern, more professional military machine, with new weapons and new technologies that the United States and other Western countries would be prepared to offer them, once a democratic government was in power.’

  Light flashed from the tunnel as the welder used his jets. The plainclothes police on the platform stood at ease with their hands behind them, not moving about very much. Smoke curled from Jarrow’s cigarette, fanning out under the ceiling lamps. The MI6 man got himself another cup of tea from the urn and went back to his seat. I didn’t think it was likely that anything that could be said in the stale confines of this railway coach buried deep underground in London could have the power to change the lives of a billion people on the far side of the planet.

  Dead wrong.

  ‘I will put it simply for you,’ Ambassador Qiao said. ‘Despite the present unrest among the People’s Liberation Army, and despite the growing sympathy of many of its generals for the intellectuals in their underground fight for democracy, I do not believe that any spontaneous military action could be expected in defiance of the government in Beijing. We cannot hope for armed support for any future uprising, based solely on the sympathy of certain generals, But I do believe that given new inspiration, given a leader who could offer himself to the people and lend them his power as a figurehead, we could indeed incite the armed counterrevolution that is needed to bring down the Communist regime.” He paused, I think to make sure he was getting our attention. ‘Dr Xingyu Baibing could give us that power, if he could leave your embassy unmolested by the security forces.’