Killmaster 28 - The Red Guard by Nick Carter

Author:Nick Carter [Carter, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: det_espionage
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

They remained in their luxurious hole for three days. During this time they ate when they pleased, slept when they pleased, made love when they pleased — and got a lot of work done. Killmaster had the feeling that if more of the world's movers and shakers, the planners of what passed for civilization, would only conduct their work in like manner they would all be much happier — and the plans better and more realistic.

When he told Fan Su of the first, very tentative AXE plan — he and Hawk had worked out no details — she had laughed in disbelief. They were in bed, even she was spent at last, and the bed was littered with paper, pencils, clip boards and maps.

"Mei yu fa tzu," she said scornfully. "It can't be done." "No Westerner, no round-eye, can walk around China for long without being arrested. It would be especially impossible for you, Nick. You are too big, your beard is wrong, you do not speak the right dialects — a hundred things would give you away."

Nick admitted that she was right. He had known it in any case. Chinese security was very tight, a built-in security that was centuries old. It had been originated by the old Emperors, by the landlords and taxgatherers, and it still worked. It was called pao-chia. The phrase meant something like "guaranteed armor" and the general idea was that for every ten families there was a headman who was in turn responsible to the local officials. It made every man his brother's keeper — and a potential informer. No man wanted his head chopped off, or a firing squad, because of what his brother did. The Mongols and Manchus had had great success with the system, and the ChiComs had not changed it.

"Not only is there the pao-chia," Fan Su said, "but things are especially dangerous now because of the Red Guards. They are everywhere, pushing their noses into everything. Everyone is terrified of them. Another thing, darling, is the sheer physical impossibility of the thing. Look again." She put a small finger on the map that lay on the bed.

"Getting you safely into Shanghai and hiding you for a few days might be done. I think I can do it. That will be dangerous enough. But to go from Shanghai by land, across country, across the whole of South China to the Chumbi Valley in Tibet — that is sheer madness. Why, that's about two thousand miles — six thousand Chinese li! Bad roads or none at all, no trains to speak of, bandits perhaps, and certainly the Red Guards! Rough country, too, and with winter coming on." She leaned to kiss him and lapsed, as she did at times, into French. "Impossible, mon petit! They would have us before we got fifty miles from Shanghai."

"We?"

Her eyes widened. "You certainly do not think you can do it alone? You must have someone with you at all times, because you are going

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