The cobra kill km 047, p.1
The Cobra Kill (KM 047), page 1
part #47 of Killmaster Series
The Cobra Kill (1969)
(The 47th book in the Killmaster series)
Version 0.9
Dedicated to The Men of the Secret Services of the United States of America
CHAPTER 1
I had come to Hong Kong to make love and had ended up making war. So far I was losing.
I had been in the Crown Colony less than two hours and already I had been fingered by a Chinese juvenile delinquent with the improbable name of Mycroft, seen a policeman murdered, had the yawl Semiramis blown up under me, been shot at, and gone for a swim in the not-so-fragrant waters of Hong Kong harbor. I had a strong hunch that the Red Tiger Tong was out to kill me and I knew the Hong Kong police were after me.
There really wasn’t much time to think about Frederica Masten-Ormsby, the unwitting cause of all this, the woman I had come to Hong Kong to see. She wasn’t even in Hong Kong.
The servant who answered Freddy’s phone said: “Gone away. Go Singapore for two weeks. Not know when she come back.”
It really didn’t matter. A minute after I hung up the stuff hit the fan, and I was in a great deal of trouble. It didn’t help much that I was sort of persona non grata with the Hong Kong police. Or that my boss, David Hawk, would go into convulsions when I told him about it. I had orders to go to the American Consulate and call Hawk on the scrambler phone. This I did as soon as possible after crawling ashore in Victoria Park looking like a half-drowned tomcat.
I was standing in the Consulate’s code room, alone, dripping on the State Department’s new Oriental. I had been given paper, pencils, a paper shredding wastebasket, a onetime pad and a cold look by the First Attache who said his name was Wilkins. Wilkins, Alistair Pembroke, was a supercilious type who had taken an instant dislike to me. Maybe it was something personal about me, or maybe he just didn’t like big damp characters that came over the back wall and entered his Consulate through the kitchen. He hadn’t wanted to believe my credentials at first, and it wasn’t until I had given him a certain code word that he conceded maybe I was AXE after all and had a right to use the scrambler phone. He didn’t seem to think much of AXE either, but that is nothing new.
Right off I explained to Hawk that I was in a bind.
“Freedom of movement?” He was snarling like an old tiger who has a big hunk of red meat and no teeth. Only Hawk
had plenty of teeth.
“Right now,” I told him, “it’s okay. I can still move around. But it’s chancy and I don’t know for how long.”
I didn’t exactly trust Alistair Pembroke Wilkins not to hand me over to the Hong Kong cops if they came looking.
Silence. I could hear the wires humming over all those thousands of miles. The old man’s cigar crackled at about a hundred bucks a crackle.
“You want to hear about it, sir?”
“Not now. Later, when I see you. I have a job for you. Priority EOW.”
End Of World! This was a big one.
“It is absolutely essential that you have freedom of movement,” Hawk said. “You’re no good to me otherwise. Can you get out of Hong Kong? Without using the Consulate? I don’t want State involved in this in any manner!”
I had been doing a little thinking along those lines myself.
“I can make it,” I told him. “I’ve got a connection here.” I wan’t as sure as I sounded, but in my spot it was the only game in town.
“But it will have to be fast,” I went on.
Hawk took the hint. “Then listen. I am going to put a certain gentleman on the line. Just listen and don’t interrupt, and then get the hell out of Hong Kong and do a job for me.”
He spoke in an aside to someone in his office. A deep pleasant voice came on the line, an educated voice speaking English with a slight accent. English English, not American.
“I am Dato Ismail bin Rahman. Does that mean anything to you, Mr. N3?”
“You are a doctor of something or other,” I said. “Probably not of medicine. You are probably in the Malaysian government.”
There was approval in the deep chuckle. “That is correct. In the Cabinet, to be exact. To be more exact I am a Minister without Portfolio.”
That meant security. Malaysian intelligence, either political or criminal.
The voice went on. “I understand that you have been in Malaysia, Mr. N3?”
“Very briefly.” It had been during a recent mission to Vietnam. The chase, and the final kill, had led me all the way to the Malay Peninsula.
“Do you speak Malay?”
“A little. I’m fluent in Cantonese, though.”
“Good. Very good. Although I expect this affair will take place in the jungle, where Cantonese will be of little use to you. I, that is, of course, my government, want you to kill a man for us. Your government has been most cooperative and has allowed me to work with your Mr. Hawk. He assures me that you are an expert in these matters and the best man for the job.”
I was getting a little tired of the frippery. The door of the code room had just opened an inch and Wilkins was glaring in. I pointed a finger like a dagger. Wilkins scowled and closed the door.
“What is the man’s name, sir? Who do you want killed?”
“His name is Lim Yang. Chinese. Until the Communist uprising in Indonesia—just three years ago today, Mr. N3— Lim Yang was the most powerful Communist figure in all of Indonesia. Under a cover, of course. But somehow, most unfortunately, he escaped the general massacre of the Communists after the uprising was put down.”
Code rooms and scrambler phones are marvelous inventions. Where else can you hear an official admitting that his Government had perpetrated a massacrel
Silence. I heard Hawk clear his throat in the background.
“Does the name of Lim Yang mean anything to you, Mr. N3?”
“Only vaguely, “sir. I have heard it, but until just now I couldn’t have placed it. I take it that this Lim Yang is now in Malaysia and causing trouble and you want him killed as quietly as possible. That about it, sir?”
I wanted to get the hell out of that Consulate!
“That is it, Mr. N3. Lim Yang is causing us a great deal of trouble, even though we have not yet officially admitted his existence. To do so would be bad for the tourist trade and for business in general. We want him killed, Mr. N3, and as you put it the operative word is “quietly.” My Government wishes this man simply to disappear. But now I see your Mr. Hawk making signs, and I understand that time is short. This I regret. I would have liked to have met you and briefed you face to face on this. Most regrettable that it cannot be so. Also most ironic that I should come all the way to Washington while you are, to use your American vernacular, right in my own neck of the woods.”
Hawk was having a coughing fit now. He would be blowing his top. If there is anything the old man can’t stand it is loquacity.
The door opened and Wilkins came in. I glared at him but he kept coming. I put a hand over the phone. Wilkins handed me a note scrawled in heavy black pencil.
My contact HK Police informs me officers enroute here now to make inquiries re you. Driving time, this hour, ten minutes.
I was surprised he hadn’t signed it. He gave me a frosty look and went out and banged the door. I gave him his due. I had misjudgd him.
Hawk was snarling into the phone. “What in hell is the matter? Why don’t you answer me?”
I told him why and that he had five minutes talking time.
He used it to advantage. When the pressure is on, the old man can be magnificent. He gave me a couple of contacts in Singapore and the promise of all the money I needed. I didn’t think it was the time to tell him that the U.S. government had just acquired one slightly damaged yawl at a cost of around two hundred thousand. There wasn’t any time. Hawk only used half his five minutes, and I was on my way out of the place.
Wilkins was waiting for me by a green baize door that led back to the kitchen and the servants’ quarters. He looked pettish, and he still wasn’t liking me or what I represented; but as I passed him, striding fast, he put a hand on my arm.
“Turn left when you go over the wall. There’s a lane. Mind the garbage. The lane will take you into Cash Alley and then into Snake Row. That’s an all-native quarter, and there won’t be any taxis, but you might be able to find a ricksha.”
I thanked him and kept going. He trotted along beside me. “The police will be here any moment now. I don’t like it at all. We have strict orders not to get mixed up with you people.”
I nodded and said thanks again.
He got a little desperate. “What shall I tell them? I don’t like to lie.”
I gave him a look. “Why not? You’re a diplomat.”
“I’ve got my own job to do here. I can’t afford to get in bad with the Colony police.”
I slammed through the kitchen and into a back entry full of garbage cans. None of the Chinese help paid us any attention. I knew they wouldn’t talk. Not unless the cops had an informer planted in the Consulate, which was possible but unlikely.
Wilkins was still with me.
“Play it smart,” I told him. “You never heard of me. Never saw me. Play the indignant bit. They won’t know anything. They’ll just be probing.”
He nodded, still frowning. “.All right. As you say. I never heard of you.”
“Good boy.”
Then he had to ham it up. He scowled at me and said, “Ah, if only it were so!”
I gave him a friendly smack on the shoulder and a salute. He wasn’t such a bad guy for a c ookie pusher. I left him standing there amidst the garbage cans. As I went over the back wall, I heard a bell clang somewhere in the front of the house.
CHAPTER 2
Most agents, especially those of my type who have to play on the rough side of the street, have their own sources of information and outside help. These are private, can be of life or death importance, and you hang on to them for yourself. You don’t share them with other agents, even in your own organization.
Hawk knew I had these people, of course, but he never asked about them. I wouldn’t have told him, for one thing, except under duress, and anyway he had his own sources. Far more than I had.
One reason, and not the least, for Kim Philby’s amazing success in staying under cover for years, and in penetrating the CIA and the British SIS the way he did, was his hoarding and use of these sources. He had hundreds of them and used them with great skill.
I didn’t have hundreds. In Hong Kong, at this time, I had only one reliable man. Reliable for a price. His name was Ben Thomson, no P, and he was an old Chicago newspaperman who had served time for killing his wife and her lover. I hadn’t seen Ben, or thought much about him, for a long time. I hadn’t needed him. Now I did need him. He would get me information and get me out of Hong Kong. So, going up to the Peak in a taxi, I thought about him.
Ben Thomson only served a small part of his sentence for murder. He had a lot of influential friends, and they went to bat for him, pulling wires under cover, the way those things are done. When Ben got out, he kissed Chicago goodbye and headed for the Orient. For a time he kicked around as a freelance newspaperman. This is a tough racket. A lot of men starve at it and eventually become drunks or dope addicts. Some drift into the espionage business.
I had heard that Ben had become a hell of a drinker, but that he certainly wasn’t starving. He had been in the Orient for about ten years now, and he had become a legend, the sort they talk about in the press clubs around the world when the booze is flowing. I had last seen Ben about three years ago, and had last heard of him one night at the Washington Press Club.
A guy like me hangs around a lot of press clubs. You can pick up some amazing things just by listening and buying a drink now and then.
You heard that Ben had bought himself an old mansion, a sort of castle, up on Lugard Road near the University. That Ben was taking himself a succession of young girls, mostly Chinese—but some Eurasian or white—and that he pensioned them off as soon as they reached twenty. Ben had his fingers in a lot of pies and knew where a lot of bodies were hidden. Anything you wanted, or wanted done and could pay for, Ben could do it or get it for you. Ben was rolling in money.
You heard stuff like that. Some of it was true, some false. Two things I knew for sure about Ben Thomson: he was no ordinary informer, and he had managed to become the most successful “China-watcher” in the business. Some people thought he had direct pipelines into Peking. Maybe so, maybe not. I knew that AXE had a file on Ben, but Hawk didn’t know that I knew Ben personally.
The taxi passed beneath a cable car drinding up the Peak Tramway. I lit a cigarette, American, that I had swiped from a table in the code room—my gold tips hadn’t taken so well to the dampness of the Hong Kong harbor—and thought about Ben and China-watchers in general.
China-watchers, generally speaking, are diplomats, scholars or institutional men of some sort. They all know a lot about the Orient and China in particular. They study the Chinese press intensively and they know how to analyze what they read. Mostly they will diffuse their opinions freely enough, but hardly any will admit to identification or personal publicity. This is probably the safest course.
Ben Thomson is the exception. He writes a column, “The View from Hong Kong,” and syndicates it himself. Owns it. It is only a weekly and the circulation is small—there isn’t much demand for Hong Kong gossip in Crabtree Comers— but some of his clients would surprise you. The New York and The London Times, to name two. I have read his column and seen Hawk reading it, and I know it is read in the States and Downing Street This gives Ben a certain amount of prestige, and also allows him to pack a certain charge of powder. He can, on occasion, do sub rosa favors for the VIPS of this world. They can do certain favors for him—like leaving him alone as long as his operations are discreet.
Ben had come a long way from a prison cell.
So I was thinking as I paid off the taxi and approached a gray stone gatehouse guarding a long macadamed drive. It was dark up here on the Peak, with a chill in the air. I shivered, still more than a little damp, and hoped Ben would have some Scotch and a coat I could borrow. If the stories were true, he was pretty sure to have the Scotch.
The big iron gate with a golden T scrolled in it was open. I heard snores as I approached the gatehouse. There was a Chinese kid asleep under a single low-wattage bulb, his arms crossed on a beat-up desk and his head lolling on them. He had a mop of shiny dark hair, wore a flowered sport shirt and looked about twenty. Ben’s security wasn’t so good. But then maybe it didn’t have to be.
I went up the drive past a swimming pool, a lily pond with a little bridge arching over it and a small stand of pine and Chinese banyan with some casuarine and camphor mixed in. A night hunting hawk plummeted into the woods as I passed, and I heard a little scream.
There were two lights in the house, one up and one down. For some reason a porch light was on. There was enough moon to see that the place really was a castle, four stories of gables and turrets and towers and castellations. A Victorian gothic horror in dirty limestone. I went up on the porch and punched a bell.
The door was opened by an old amah wearing a faded cotton cheongsam. She had her teeth out and mumbled at me. Beyond her I could see a shard of yellow light lying across a polished corridor floor.
I finally convinced the amah that I was not selling anything and wanted to see Mr. Thomson. She appeared puzzled that I had gotten past the fierce boy on the gate.
“Who say?”
“Mr. Arneson. Kenneth Arneson.” No point in telling the servants who I was.
“Missa Ornwaso. I tell.”
She shuffled back down the hall and pulled open a pair of old-fashioned sliding doors. A girl screamed lightly in surprise, not fear. Then the girl laughed. Ben Thomson, as gruff as ever, said something. The amah mumbled and came back to me.
“Not know you. You go now, please. Hubba.”
The doors were still open. I leaned past the old gal and called down the hall.
“You know this Arneson, Ben! From Chicago?”
The girl was laughing again. The certain kind of laugh that girls laugh at certain times. The laughter stopped abruptly and Ben Thomson came to the doors and peered down the hallway. I stood in the light so he could see my face.
Ben said: “Well, I’ll be a sonofabitch!”
He snapped something at the amah in what might have been Mandarin, it surely wasn’t Cantonese, and she took off. Ben started down the hall toward me. Behind him, caught squarely in the light from the room, I saw the girl cut around the comer and race after the amah. She was a little doll and she was, so help me, wearing baby doll pajamas! She had a pink madeup face and little lemon yellow breasts, one of which was hanging out I made her about eighteen, if that.
Ben waited until both the women were out of sight before he opened the door and led me down the hall to what was a big library-study. There were a lot of pillows on an antique opium bed and they were pretty rumpled. Ben slid the doors shut behind us. I grinned at him.
“You’re a dirty old man.”
He grinned back. He still had his teeth, though most of his mousy pale hair was gone. Ben must be pushing sixty now.
“And you’re the sort of bastard that comes calling on people without notice. Though I think I can guess why—but you sure picked a hell of a time!”
“That can wait,” I said. “I can’t.”
“Wait, hell! At my age, man, you have to do it when you can. It doesn’t always work.”
A fragrant log fire was dying in a brick fireplace. I moved the fire screen and draped my jacket over it. Ben was making noises with bottles and glasses.
“I didn’t come here to talk about your sex life,” I said.
“I know that. Not much of it to talk about, anyway. I keep trying. How did you get past the gate without being announced?”
