One Of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing by David Forrest Page A

“In all probability, it weighs ten thousand pounds. But, Comrade Leader, I have a further suggestion based on information I have gathered.” He paused. “On your orders, of course.” “Take care that you do not suggest yourself into oblivion,” warned Lui Ho. “Also at my orders.”
    Sam Ling blinked away a bead of perspiration running onto his left eyelid, crossed his fingers behind his back, and continued. “I am basing this suggestion on an idea of your own, Comrade Leader. You are so filled with wondrous ideas that we, of lesser thinking capacity, have difficulty in remembering all the great things you devise. But, by racking my poor memory, I remember something you said ... ‘let the enemy work for us.’ “ Sam Ling began to wonder if he’d get a permanent twist in his crossed fingers. “The nanny-ladies are themselves planning to take the dragon . . . er, the fake dragon, out of the museum. I believe you will want us to let them succeed in their plan. And you will want us to let them take it away to the hiding place they will have prepared. And then we’ll take it from them. This idea of yours would seem less risk for us.” “And why should they take the fake dragon?” asked Lui Ho.
    “Because, in their amateurish way, they have already searched it for the message. And I suspect the agent hid a microdot in a crack in one of the bones, and perhaps even plastered over it.”
    “So ...” said Lui Ho. “Yes, you are correct, my idea is a sound one ... based ...” he added swiftly, “based on the thinking of our beloved leader, Chairman Mao Tse-tung.” He saluted the two portraits on the shelf. “We will let the enemy help us. They will steal the fake dragon. We will take it from them and examine it at our leisure.”
    “Send it back to China,” corrected Sam Ling.
    “Yes, as I was saying, we’ll examine it at our leisure, in China.”
     
    For an ice cream barrow, it was extremely hot inside. Sam Ling sat, jammed between two ice cream cylinders, his legs hunched beneath him. He was adjusting the tape recorder monitoring the nannies’ conversation. The cart bumped and shuddered as Chou-Tan pushed it toward the nannies, sitting on their usual park bench.
    Sam Ling breathed out and tried to make himself smaller, so that he could peer out through the holes drilled in the front of the barrow. He twisted his arm above him and rapped on the low roof.
    Chou-Tan lifted the lid of the front ice-cream container and squinted down. “Yes?”
    “Not too near,” ordered Sam Ling, looking up through the dummy cylinder, and getting a distorted underneath view of Chou-Tan’s artificial Italian moustache. “And try to stop the wheels squeaking. They’re being picked up on the recorder.”
    Chou-Tan nodded at the container.
    Sam Ling pulled on his earphones. Not that he needed them for checking the tapes. It was just that the genuine container of ice cream was giving his left ear frostbite, while the rest of him was being pot-roasted in the confined space. He could hear the nannies’ voices clearly transmitted from the small listening bug drilled into the back of the park bench.
    “They’re amazing,” he heard one of them say. It was Una, as she held a sheet of white paper up to the sunlight. “The only difference is the watermark.”
    “I couldn’t manage that,” replied Emily. “Otherwise, I don’t think it’s a bad match for a photocopy.”
    “Let us see.” Hettie reached out a hand for the reproduction Buckingham Palace notepaper. It was really very good. It took a close examination to spot the difference. There were no signs that it was anything but a genuine piece of Buckingham Palace notepaper bearing the royal signature.
    “Here’s the one I’m sending.” Emily pulled an envelope from her handbag and extracted another sheet of notepaper. This had a letter, neatly typed, above the royal name.
    “I’ll read it to you,” she said. “It’s addressed to the Director of the Museum.”