The Chinese Agenda (15 page)

that seemed half haunted. He slid back a parka sleeve to expose his watch and found it was close to 1600; he had been asleep for almost nine hours. Dmietriev came up to him and nodded and they stood for a moment without speaking, enjoying the comfort of each other's company in the lengthening shadows. Finally Dmietriev shivered, said good night and trudged off toward the snow-colored nylon mound of his tent. Looking around the tiny clearing, Gillon thought that anyone coming upon them would have to look hard to see the tents; bleached white as they were.

He stared about him once more, then crawled back into his tent and rummaged through the outside pockets on his pack for the Primus stove and the day's rations. Within minutes, he was sitting on the foot of his bag, crouched under the rain flap of the tent and watching the stove's almost colorless flame bring the double cup of water to a boil. He added the soup mixture, then sprinkled the contents of a package labeled beef stew into it. The soup was chicken noodle, or so the label read, but alone, or mixed with the beef stew, it would taste terrible. Gillon had yet to encounter a dehydrated food that tasted the way the label promised; all seemed to be chronically undercooked . . . as if manufacturers had never realized that at high altitudes water boiled at lower temperatures and what might taste fine in a sea-level laboratory was only so much overspiced, half-cooked mush at high altitudes. He put a second, double-sized cup of water on to boil as soon as the stew mixture had cooked to an edible, but lumpy paste and added a double portion of tea. That at least would make the meal worthwhile. And in spite of the taste, the appetite that high-altitude exertion always engendered in him was enough to cause him to wolf the food down. Gillon washed the cups out with snow, wiped them carefully and stuck them away in the pack. At these temperatures about the only thing he did not have to worry about was dysentery from greasy pans. He stuck a few candy bars into his pocket and pulled the sleeping bag outside, turned it inside out to air while he struck the tent and in a few minutes had everything repacked.

Jones awoke an hour later and stuck his head out of the tent. Gillon went over to him immediately.

'Back inside,' he grinned.

Jones grimaced, struggled out and got shakily to his feet. Gillon could not be sure in the fading light, but it looked to him as if Jones was worse. His face did have a definite grayish tinge and his eyes were screwed up with pain. What little he could see of the whites was badly bloodshot. Involuntarily, Jones brought a hand to his forehead, wincing.

'Have Rodek and Leycock come back yet?' His voice was steady enough but Gillon grasped his arm and forced him back into the tent. He pulled his pack over and dug out the first-aid kit and handed him the packet of aspirin.

'You get two of those down you before we talk about anything else.'

Jones started to argue, then changed his mind and accepted the packet. Gillon handed him the canteen and watched him down the pills. As Jones handed the canteen back, he grabbed his hand and forced it open. Two tablets were resting on his palm.

'For God's sake! You are a baby. Take those damn things before I cram them down your throat.' Gillon broke into laughter and handed the canteen back. , Jones grinned sheepishly, took the canteen and washed the tablets down. This time he opened his palm and showed it to Gillon, then opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue.

'See, Daddy . . . all gone like a good boy.'

Gillon chuckled.

'All right, now that you've played doctor answer my question. Did they come back yet?'

Gillon shook his head. 'Nope, and they have two more hours to go.'

'Everything else quiet?'

'Yes,' Gillon answered with exaggerated patience. 'If not, we would have awakened you and asked what to do.'

'Yeah, I guess so.' Jones laughed. 'I suppose, too, that I ought to take what rest I can. The next two days are going to be pretty damned rough.'

Gillon studied him for a moment, noting that his eyes

were so red, they appeared inflamed. 'DO you really think that you can make it?' he asked seriously. 'I'm betting that you've got a concussion and possibly a fractured skull.'

'I don't doubt the concussion,' Jones said soberly. 'My head feels like it's stuffed to the splitting point. I got a concussion once playing football when I was a kid and my head feels now just the way it did then.

`But I'm certain it's not a skull fracture . . . I think-I would feel a hell of a lot worse if it was.'

Gillon shrugged doubtfully.

'How about the others? What do they think?

`Think about what?

`Damn it, stop playing games. You know what, I mean.' `What makes you think they think anything at all?' he countered.

`Because,' Jones growled, 'they would have to be damned stupid not to ! Look, the only thing that I'm worried about right now is finishing this thing up and getting us all back in one piece.'

'If you don't get back inside that tent and get some more sleep, you won't get anybody anywhere. Look, I'll make a deal. If you take it easy now, I'll go over the situation with you.'

Jones thought for a moment, then nodded and, wincing -at the pain, crawled back into the tent. Gillon spread open the flaps and hunched down in the snow.

'Stowe is concerned about you. He thinks you do have a concussion and won't be able to make it.'

Jones snorted. 'Hell, that bastard just wants to run this operation.'

Gillon carefully refrained from agreeing and went on to describe the conversation they had held earlier in the day and Stowe's observation that they must head deeper into the mountains and call for the pickup aircraft to follow them in. Jones nodded soberly and Gillon knew that he had been thinking along the same lines. He finished with his own conclusion concerning Dmietriev.

Jones showed surprise at that. 'Dmietriev is supposed to be second-in-command of this idiot's delight. The Russians tried to hold out for direct command, but the Agency wasn't buying. If you're right, that sure doesn't sound like the kind of man they would send along.'

`Well, I don't know about the politics involved, but from what he's shown me, not only does Stowe have him buffaloed, but he couldn't lead his way out of a paper bag if the exit was marked in neon lights.' Gillon thought for a moment, then added, 'Of course, it could be the altitude ... maybe another day will make all the difference.'

Jones glanced at him sideways and muttered an obscene expletive. 'We'd better keep an eye on him in case he is cooking up something on his own. Anyway, it doesn't make a hell of a lot of difference, because I don't have a fractured skull.'

Gillon watched as he shifted-to a more comfortable position inside the dim tent. Any movement obviously caused him a great deal of pain, because he moved stiffly, carrying his head in such a way that as little strain was transmitted as possible. After a moment he asked:

`Just out of curiosity, why did you decide to come along? After I saw you bringing in that beat-up barge I would have bet any amount of money that nothing could have dragged you along. You looked like the orneriest bastard I'd ever seen.'

Gillon chuckled. Around them the trees were-blending into the soft darkness as the sun disappeared, submerging them in icy stillness. He could almost feel the temperature plummeting, as he had known it would.

After he had resigned from the service, he had never discussed the incident with anyone

– he still carried the scars on his legs and, he supposed without much heroics, on his mind as well. He knew now that it was not as simple a matter as having something to hate .. . Communism versus the American way. To him, it was the idea that certain groups of men were able to direct the activities of other men, were able to gain such power that they would manipulate people as if they were numbers, playing pieces in some cosmic game, completely repressing or ignoring the humanistic considerations, the fears and sufferings, the essence of humanity in short. Perhaps it was that more than anything else that had led him, as a mercenary, always to the ranks of those fighting to overthrow an established government, in some unconscious search for a better way to govern. He really did not know, because in the three years since that incident on the narrow trail in Laos, he had shied away from thinking about it too deeply, and so it had settled immovably into the suspicion that all governments, of any kind, were innately untrustworthy.

He owed a debt to Jack Liu, that was beyond question. Liu had asked his help and he was bound to give it. But beyond, he was not really sure himself. Ignoring his own intense dislike of Communism, Jones's request –and Liu's too, for that matter – could also be reduced to the struggle between competing power groups. Gillon was sufficiently a realist to know that such power groups, no matter what they were labeled, had always and would always exist. He had also deduced that allowing the United States and the Soviet Union to obtain the information Liu claimed to have would assist in maintaining a balance of power between three of the five strongest powers on the globe. Whatever else may have been among his faults, Metternich had logically foreseen the consequences of powerful governments. The best way to prevent a war was still to see that both sides – or in this case, the three sides – were evenly balanced. Allow one to gain the upper hand, and war was the result. But he did not know if he wanted to tell Jones that or not. Jones would probably believe him, but his job was to make sure the United States got the information first and foremost. Then, if circumstances permitted, the Russians would be brought into the balance pan. Dmietriev certainly must realize this, and if not, then his bosses in Moscow did. If he wanted Jones's trust – and he had a feeling that that trust was going to be of overriding importance before they were through – then he would only tell him about Jack Liu ...

Jones sat on the end of his sleeping bag, watching him, half lost in the darkness inside the tent.

Although Jones had promised himself that he would find out why Gillon had changed his mind so quickly that night, it was only an impulse that prompted him to ask Gillon then and there. As he sat in the semi-dark-ness, watching the play of emotion across his face, he knew that he was going to hear Gillon's reasons or, he amended to himself, what Gillon thought were Gillon's reasons. Perhaps he needed to, Gillon was concluding. The psychiatrist who had talked to him in hospital in Japan had said that some day he would have to and, when Gillon had laughed at him, he had merely grinned back, a grin full of knowing. As he had told Gillon that day, sitting on the end of the hospital bed with the room full of early summer sunshine, one of those rare days in Tokyo when Mount Fuji was not hidden in the smog and dust: '

What has happened to you is neither unique nor that disastrous. You spend a few days going the rounds in here with me and I'll show you cases where, although they look perfectly sane and healthy on the outside, they'll never leave a Veterans Hospital for the rest of their lives. These are just kids, too, most of them not even old enough to drink. But, out there, one wrong word, one negative response in the wrong situation and they'll either go catatonic or turn into murderous maniacs. You've got it good, buddy. Your legs will heal, and the scars will disappear in a few years. But you've got to let it out someday before it tears you apart. Are you a Catholic?' he asked suddenly.

'What?' Gillon replied, startled.

'Are you a Catholic?' the psychiatrist repeated patiently.

'No ... not since I was a kid anyway.'

'Too bad. The confessional is a clever gimmick . . . gives you a chance to bare your soul in relative anonymity. Sometimes you even get lucky and there's a sympathetic listener on the other side of the curtain. Maybe you ought to try it again .. it's good therapy if nothing else.'

Gillon had merely shaken his head.

Òkay, it's up to you. But when the occasion arises, let it out.'

And so he told Jones what had happened to him on that day, while the arctic wind whipped about them and flapped the sides of the tent. Gillon no longer felt the cold, only the heat and the dust and the pain in

his legs as he talked, not sparing any detail, and when he finished, Jones was silent. Gillon stared down at the snow for a while and then stood up and wandered through the trees a few yards in the direction of the pass. He was grateful that Jones had said nothing; at the same time he was surprised to find that he did not feel relieved of a terrible burden. At 1800, Rodek stumbled into the camp. In the light of Stowe's flash, his face was whipped and bleeding with the effort of the desperate dash down from the pass and through the forest in the darkness. Gillon helped him to Stowe's tent and wrapped him in the sleeping bag while Dmietriev got the Primus going to brew tea. Jones had fallen asleep again but the commotion awakened him and he joined them in the small circle of light pressed out of the darkness by flashlights.

Through chattering teeth Rodek spoke to Dmietriev in Russian for a long time. He waved away the tea Stowe brought until he was finished and as he talked, Dmietriev's face grew longer and longer. There was no hope for Gillon, Stowe and Jones; they had to wait out the end of the story. When he had finished, Rodek gulped the tea and sank back, exhausted.

Dmietriev poured himself a cup of hot water with shaking hands and sipped at it before starting; then he took a deep breath.

`Sergeant Rodek reports that a large force of Chinese ski troops are moving toward the pass. Leycock went down the pass to investigate. From what Sergeant Rodek tells me, Leycock almost ran into them but does not think he was caught or seen. He is sure that they will pick up our tracks because the winds have stopped blowing.' Jones swore viciously. 'Damn it, 'he finished. 'Wouldn't you know. All year long they blow . . . except when we need them.'

`Rodek came down to warn us,' Dmietriev continued, ànd Leycock stayed behind to keep watch. They estimate that the Chinese will be over the pass by midnight.'

'Are you sure it's riot just that damned caravan they saw?' Stowe muttered. Dmietriev started to retort, took a deep breath and asked Rodek another question instead.