answered an unasked question. ‘It’s a whorehouse,’ he pronounced. ‘He calls it a clinic but it’s more like a whorehouse.’
‘Thanks for your help,’ I said.
‘Don’t get snotty – you wouldn’t want me telling you what to say in your reports.’
‘That’s true,’ I admitted.
‘Certainly it’s true. It’s a whorehouse that a lot of the Embassy people use. Not just our people – the Americans, etc., use it.’
I said, ‘Straighten me up. Is this just a case of one of our Embassy people getting some dirty pictures back from Datt? Or something like that?’
The courier stared at me. ‘I’m not allowed to talk about anything like that,’ he said.
‘Don’t give me that stuff,’ I said. ‘They killed that girl yesterday.’
‘In passion,’ explained the courier. ‘It was part of a kinky sex act.’
‘I don’t care if it was done as a publicity stunt,’ I said. ‘She’s dead and I want as much information as I can get to avoid trouble. It’s not just for my own skin; it’s in the interests of the department that I avoid trouble.’
The courier said nothing, but I could see he was weakening.
I said, ‘If I’m heading into that house again just to recover some pictures of a secretary on the job, I’ll come back and haunt you.’
‘Give me some coffee,’ said the courier, and I knew he had decided to tell me whatever he knew. I boiled the kettle and brewed up a pint of strong black coffee.
‘Kuang-t’ien,’ said the courier, ‘the man who knifed the girl: do you know who he is?’
‘Major-domo at the Chinese Embassy, Datt said.’
‘That’s his cover. His name is Kuang-t’ien, but he’s one of the top five men in the Chinese nuclear programme.’
‘He speaks damn good French.’
‘Of course he does. He was trained at the Laboratoire Curie, here in Paris. So was his boss, Chien San-chiang, who is head of the Atomic Energy Institute in Peking.’
‘You seem to know a lot about it,’ I said.
‘I was evaluating it this time last year.’
‘Tell me more about this man who mixes his sex with switchblades.’
He pulled his coffee towards his and stirred it thoughtfully. Finally he began.
‘Four years ago the U2 flights picked up the fourteen-acre gaseous diffusion plant taking hydro-electric power from the Yellow River not far from Lanchow. The experts had predicted that the Chinese would make their bombs as the Russians and French did, and as we did too: by producing plutonium in atomic reactors. But the Chinese didn’t; our people have been close. I’ve seen the photos. Very close. That plant proves that they are betting all or nothing on hydrogen. They are going full steam ahead on their hydrogen research programme. By concentrating on the light elements generally and by pushing the megaton instead of the kiloton bomb they could be the leading nuclear power in eight or ten years if their hydrogen research pays off. This man Kuang-t’ien is their best authority on hydrogen. See what I mean?’
I poured more coffee and thought about it. The courier got his case down and rummaged through it. ‘When you left the clinic yesterday did you go in the police van?’
‘Yes.’
‘Um. I thought you might have. Good stunt that. Well, I hung around for a little while, then when I realized that you’d gone I came back here. I hoped you’d come back, too.’
‘I had a drink,’ I said. ‘I put my mind in neutral for an hour.’
‘That’s unfortunate,’ said the courier. ‘Because while you were away you had a visitor. He asked for you at the counter, then hung around for nearly an hour, but when you didn’t come back he took a cab to the Hotel Lotti.’
‘What was he like?’
The courier smiled his mirthless smile and produced some ten-by-eight glossy pictures of a man drinking coffee in the afternoon sunlight. It wasn’t a good-quality photograph. The man was about fifty, dressed in a light-weight suit with a narrow-brimmed felt hat. His tie had a small monogram that was unreadable and his cufflinks were large and ornate. He had large black sunglasses which in one photo he had removed to polish. When he drank coffee he raised his little finger high and pursed his lips.
‘Ten out of ten,’ I said. ‘Good stuff: waiting till he took the glasses off. But you could use a better D and P man.’
‘They are just rough prints,’ said the courier. ‘The negs are half-frame but they are quite good.’
‘You are a regular secret agent,’ I said admiringly. ‘What did you do – shoot him in the ankle with the toe-cap gun, send out a signal to HQ on your tooth and play the whole thing back on your wristwatch?’
He rummaged through his papers again, then slapped a copy of L’Express upon the table top. Inside there was a photo of the US Ambassador greeting a group of American businessmen at Orly Airport. The courier looked up at me briefly.
‘Fifty per cent of this group of Americans work – or did work – for the Atomic Energy Commission. Most of the remainder are experts on atomic energy or some allied subject. Bertram: nuclear physics at MIT. Bestbridge: radiation sickness of 1961. Waldo: fall-out experiments and work at the Hiroshima hospital. Hudson: hydrogen research – now he works for the US Army.’ He marked Hudson’s face with his nail. It was the man he’d photographed.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘What are you trying to prove?’
‘Nothing. I’m just putting you in the picture. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’
‘I’m just juxtaposing a hydrogen expert from Peking with a hydrogen expert from the Pentagon. I’m wondering why they are both in the same city at the same time and especially why they both cross your path. It’s the sort of thing that makes me nervous.’ He gulped down the rest of his coffee.
‘You shouldn’t drink too much of that strong black coffee,’ I said. ‘It’ll be keeping you awake at night.’
The courier picked up his photos and copy of L’Express. ‘I’ve got a system for getting to sleep,’ he said. ‘I count reports I’ve filed.’
‘Watch resident agents jumping to conclusions,’ I said.
‘It’s not soporific.’ He got to his feet. ‘I’ve left the most important thing until last,’ he said.
‘Have you?’ I said, and wondered what was more important than the Chinese People’s Republic preparing for nuclear warfare.
‘The girl was ours.’
‘What girl was whose?’
