by Adam Hall
The windshield was only a few degrees raked and the fascia-board reflection across the lens of my field glasses was not serious. I had Kuo in them at x8 magnification as he came down the steps.
We started from there.
For six days he made no attempt, absolutely no attempt, to hide his movements. This worried me. He as too accommodating. I didn’t like his display of confidence. I knew - and he knew, he must have known - that he was never let out of sight by the Thai Special Branch. I had trouble in keeping out of their way; it meant a lot of long-distance surveillance with the field glasses (this was why I had asked Loman for a pair) and meant giving the little Toyota the gun on a cold engine then Kuo came out of somewhere after a long stay. It meant risking, time after time, losing him altogether.
There was no particular travel pattern emerging; his excursions were haphazard and his timing flexible. He made vague sightseeing tours of the city: a motor-boat trip along the Chao Phraya and the market canals, a look at the Monastery of the Dawn and the Emerald Buddha in the Wat Phra Keo, doing the rounds, taking his time, enjoying himself while I had to sit with the AO Jupiters focused at a hundred yards and one foot over the clutch, one hand on the starter switch, the gear already in, one eye on the mirror so that I didn’t smash someone up if I had to take two seconds to get out of a parking gap it had taken twenty minutes to find. One morning I had to spend over an hour watching them grab the king cobras and squeeze the venom out of their fangs at the Pasteur Snake Farm because Kuo was so interested.
The only reward I had was the certain knowledge that Kuo was behaving out of character. He was in character as a tourist; but he wasn’t a tourist. He’d been in this city before. (He is still reported as having been in Bangkok on June 9,1946 when King Ananda was found shot dead with a revolver near his body. Suicide has never been established and that verdict is still unacceptable by certain members of the Royal Household.)
During the six days of Kuo’s sightseeing tour the only incident was when he stopped his Hino Contessa 1300 for too long outside the Royal Palace at the main Sanam Chai Road gates. Four men in neat suits got out of the car that had pulled up behind his and spoke to him through the window. Then they got him out of his car and put him in theirs, driving off. I had to wait two hours outside Phra Ratchawang police station near the river before I could pick up the tag. The information filtered to me through Loman the next day; they’d grilled him, searched him and taken the film from his camera.
This was an unnecessary move. He had known they’d been shadowing him and they didn’t have to show their hand. Nor could they have hoped to find any excuse for either keeping him under the key or escorting him across the frontier. They could have done that anyway without an excuse. Their very evident object was to let him run loose and keep him in sight and hope he would set up the machinery for a kill on the 29th and then scotch it at the fifty-ninth second so that he couldn’t make a break and set up a reserve operation.
This was my object too, but I couldn’t see why they’d shown their hand. The snatch outside the Palace was the equivalent of my going up to him on the steps of the Royal Thai Athletic Association gymnasium and telling him that if he didn’t watch out I was going to tread on his face. There was no point. The only thing I could suppose was that the patrol crew had panicked, seeing a professional sitting in the dim interior of a car parked within easy range of the open windows of the Palace, and had roughed him up a little to justify their interest in him.
They couldn’t have been serious about it. Two of the known internationals - Zotta and Vincent - never openly cross a frontier into the country where they have killing to do; sometimes they are never seen in the country at all; it is only the manner and pattern of the killing that identifies them, much too late. But Kuo has style and will wave his passport at the immigration officers on his way in; perhaps he likes the fuss it causes; perhaps he likes it to be assumed that whenever he crosses a frontier the life of the president is suddenly in hazard, though ninety per cent of his journeys are made simply to watch the Olympic Games or take in a world-championship fight.
If they had been serious about him this time they could have fixed the interrogation at Phra Ratchawang police station and got him out of the country. They didn’t want to do that - didn’t want to lose him, because he would at once cross into Thailand again incognito from Laos or Cambodia or Burma and go straight to ground. If he went to ground they might just as well shoot the target VIP themselves because the outcome would now be certain: Kuo would hole up only if he had business to do.
So they had probably panicked. It wasn’t pleasant for them. With the highest orders to ensure safety they were watching a known professional assassin touring their city at a time when colored lanterns were being strung across the bridges and flags were going up across the facade of almost every building in readiness to greet a most important visitor thirteen days from now.
I thought of contacting Loman to ask one question: had they in fact panicked or were they changing their tactics? He might not even be able to find out. We had no liaison. We didn’t exist. They would have to make their own plan; we would make ours.
Kuo came out of a restaurant when I was blocked in by a solid jam of traffic for five or six minutes and I had to balk an ambulance and take a one-way street in the wrong direction, clearing two blocks and cutting across the end of the street where Kuo was pointed, before I could backtrack in a square series and get behind him. I must have caned the Toyota to the limit. Would it amuse Control if I sent a signal tonight? Am slowly wrecking Compact Hire machine. Suggest a discreet check for damage due to misuse be tendered to them on surrendering vehicle.
On the sixth day I managed to get a city paper and read some of it while Kuo was in the Turkish Baths in Sukhumvit Soi 21. There were one or two interesting items:
A second wave of arrests by the Bangkok Metropolitan Police Command had rounded up more than five hundred suspects and seized stolen property valued at some ninety thousand baht. It was referred to as a ‘drive against crime,’ and there was no mention of any action against subversives or political undercover agents. The front page reported ‘considerable difficulty’ being encountered in choosing the best itinerary for the motorcade through the city on the 29th of this month. (It was the first public announcement that the actual tour would take place on the day of the Person’s arrival.)
Loman had told me that the exact itinerary would be kept secret until as late as possible and that at least five routes would be announced during the few days prior to the tour so that no one could get a solid fix on it.
There was nothing else in the paper about the threat situation (the receipt of the threat in London had been reported by the Bangkok Press ten days ago but had since been played down), so I took out the Kuo travel pattern I had logged and tried to read some kind of significance into it again. Certainly there were pointers but they didn’t add up to much: five visits to Phra Keo (the royal chapel), three to the Lumpini Polo Grounds, three to the Pasteur Snake Farm, two trips along the river by motor launch (privately hired) and one half-hour stop in the parking lot on the new Link Road parallel with Rama IV. Only the chapel and the Lumpini visits had any bearing: the chapel was close to the royal palace and a polo game had been arranged for the 30th.
Among several one-shot visits in the Kuo pattern were Government House (almost certain to be on the final itinerary of the motorcade), the James Thompson Thai Art Exhibition (almost certain to be a stopping-off point) and the Phra Chula Chedi, a temple overlooking the Link Road near Rama IV.
There was only this one relationship in the whole pattern: the temple and the new road.
I had begun resenting the police shadows. They could take it in shifts and I was on what amounted to a twenty-four-hour tour of duty - six days of it so far -with biscuit crumbs trodden in on the floor of the Toyota because there was no chance of proper meals, and a jaded reflection in the windshield under the street lamps because there hadn’t been time for more t
han snatched intervals of sleep. The work was more difficult because I had to keep clear of the police patrols and still hold the tag on Kuo, and since they were tagging him too it took a lot of doing. Loman had been firm on this: the Director General of the Police Department knew we were operating but had made it clear that if we got in the way we’d be told to pull out.
I didn’t know how much power Loman had as the director of the only agent in the field. If pushed (that is, if the police decided to warn me off) I believed he could stir up London, but it might mean official telegrams from Ambassador to Foreign Secretary to cover unofficial requests and permissions, and we didn’t have time for that. I had one single preliminary mission: to keep Kuo in sight. To tag him till his travel pattern showed significance or until he made a move that would give us a clue to his intentions. (The mission Loman had first handed me - to ‘arrange for the assassination’ - had been dealt with as we went along. After three days of tagging Kuo I had drawn up two foolproof alternative set-ups for a long-distance shot and given them to Loman. I had selected those streets that were nearly certain to be on the itinerary; they were major roads in the area of a triangle formed by the Royal Palace, British Embassy and Lumpini Park. One set-up included the Phra Chula Chedi temple and the Link Road.)
Twice Loman had brought me to the point of a brawl. He had used the same polished Junior Conservative Society phrase each time: ‘I needn’t impress on you the fully urgent necessity of keeping Kuo in sight.’ The first time I had diluted the adrenalin with a quick drink and the second time I had said, ‘Look, I’ve been keeping myself alive for five days on a gutful of biscuits and something like a dozen hours of sleep and I’ve torn the tires off the Toyota and changed it for a new one, so if you think I’m not impressed with the fully urgent necessity of keeping that bastard in sight you must be off your bloody head.’
He gave a smooth smile and said that he expected I felt better now. I probably did. I wouldn’t have minded so much if he wasn’t always so beautifully shaved: I’d been keeping the stubble down by quick jabs with a clockwork thing in the car.
On the evening of the sixth day Kuo and his two bodyguards went into the Lotus Bar in the Indo-Chinese quarter not long after seven o’clock. I took the chance and stretched my legs, noting a police car standing off and the two-man shadow patrol taking up station on the far side of the bar. We were comfortably within habitual patterns: Kuo always picked somewhere to drink at this hour and stayed for an average of thirty minutes; then he would go somewhere else to dine. The thirty minutes took us to 7:40. By 7:55 I was back in the car and fretting a bit and by 8:151 was worried. At 8:301 got out of the car, crossed the road and went into the bar; he wasn’t there so I knew I had lost him. Kuo had gone to ground.
Chapter 6
Blank
So I had learned him and lived with him and now I knew him as I would know a brother and in a strange and terrible way I missed him. He had always been there in the intimate round window of the 8 x 60 Jupiters and now it was blank.
I went on working until midnight, taking a trajectory across the town from the Lotus Bar to the Residence Florale (where he had an apartment) to the Thai Room at the Plaza (where he always had Peking duck) to Nick’s No. I and the Shangrilla and the Sbai-thong in Rajprasong and the Roulette Room at the Vendome. And he wasn’t in any of them. His two favorite maisons privees. Blank. The opium house near the Phra Chao. Blank. The hermaphrodite show at the Emerald Gate. Blank. All the way to midnight, drawing blank.
Loman was waiting for me in my room at the Pakchong - I had signaled the safehouse, fully urgent.
He took it very well.
‘The police lost him too, and they were in strength. It was a difficult assignment, very.’
He didn’t look so well-groomed tonight. Bags under the eyes. I asked: ‘What are they doing about it?’
‘Very little, oddly enough. Kuo isn’t their chief interest. The last wave of arrests brought in a well-organized subversive group under orders from Peking. They think the real danger was there. They think one of their number defected recently and sent the threat to London. They’re working on it now with some of our Security people giving them a hand - after all, we hold the actual written evidence.’
I knew why he said that. Security were having trouble with the Thai Home Office; there were too many of them, a good half dozen. The written evidence of the threat was their only card.
‘Doesn’t your air conditioner work?’ Loman wanted to know. His pink skin was gleaming.
‘I told them to switch it off. All day in the heat of the street and a few hours up here with that thing on and you’ve got pneumonia.’ I sounded like an old man fretting about his health. ‘Then what are they doing about Kuo? Nothing?’
‘Routine search, of course.’
‘They won’t find him that way.’
‘How will they find him?’ He was standing in the middle of the room looking at me hard in the eyes. He wasn’t sure of me, not sure how seriously I was taking this thing.
‘By keeping out of my way. And out of his way. I don’t know if the Kuo cell is on to me. I’ve worked in strict hush for six days but then I had to show my hand by combing the town - the Lotus Bar and all the other places. But if they’re not on to me I’ve still got a chance.
I know the whole cell now - two bodyguards and four operatives. He works with a team like a matador with a cuadrilla, always has. I can recognize any one of them and God knows I can recognize Kuo. If the police lay off they’ll show themselves sooner or later; then it’s a question of time.’
‘Thirteen days.-‘
He was standing there sweating like a pig.
‘I want you to know something, Loman. This job didn’t appeal to me when it was sprung on me cold, but I finally took it on and now I’m in deep and I’m not backing out. I know what’s happened. I’ve lost the adverse party and he’s gone to ground and nothing can stop him setting up the kill. The Person isn’t safe anymore. Don’t think it doesn’t mean anything to me.’
I was too tired to think of the right words but he must have caught the tone because he drew a breath and nodded.
‘I’m quite sure you realize the extreme gravity of the situation.’
For the first time I felt sorry for the poor bastard. Even his bow tie wasn’t straight. He wished he’d never roped in the Bureau and he wished he’d never chosen me for the running boy and now it was a bit too late to do anything about it.
I turned away from him and looked down from the open windows, the only open windows in the whole hotel. The air was like cotton wool against the skin. The street was still sliding past in a gold stream down there, bumper to bumper, colored lanterns flowering right across the park, a pulse of Occidental way-out rhythms rising from late-night garden rooms, people dancing under the lights, under the leaves. No one wanted to sleep.
‘How is it going,’ I asked him, ‘in Room 6?’
‘Everyone is very occupied, of course.’ His pedantic phrases sounded thin now, running on like a ticker tape oblivious to the crash it was announcing. ‘The Ambassador takes the chair himself when he can. There are continual telegrams exchanged with London but they mostly concern the security situation as such.’
‘Does the P.O. know what we’re doing?’
‘I can’t say, of course. All I can do is send our own regular signals and leave it to Control whether or not to inform the Minister. The first confidential press conference was held yesterday.’
‘Christ,’ I said.
‘I realize that’s a contradiction in terms, but they are being cooperative, and of course we don’t have to give them everything - they have been given nothing about us. I don’t like press conferences at a time like this, don’t like them at all. One has to show that one isn’t -um—‘
‘Screaming with fright.’
‘That one isn’t worried. Yes.’
I stared down at the flow of lights, mesmerized, a sleepy calm creeping over the jangle of nerves, the way
-out music from the leafy gardens stifling my own inner scream of fright. It was time to shut everything down.
‘What are your immediate plans?’ he was asking me, coming toward the windows.
‘Sleep,’ I said. ‘For twelve hours. And God help anyone who tries to stop me.’
The Maltz system of psycho-cybernetics breaks new .round in that it likens the subconscious to a computer to which the forebrain submits problems for resolution. some of its concepts derive from accepted disciplines Deluding that of the sleep processes.
The dreams I experienced during the next twelve hours were variations of the same dominant theme, and the only clear memory of them was summarized in a repetition of what Loman had told me a week ago:
You now have information that a man revered in his own country and respected abroad is going to have the guts to expose himself to a threat of death because he won’t refuse his duty. You also know that if the very elaborate machinery for his protection breaks down and if this valuable life is lost because of your own petty feelings against me as your director in the field, it’s going to be your fault - your fault alone. And you won’t be able to live with it.
The data was fed to the computer in the form of images: the Person, hands tucked behind him, the eyes quizzical - a quick laugh as he got the point an instant before the others, a tilt of his chin as he turned and moved on beside his companion. And Kuo: strong, short-bodied and well-tailored, placing his feet with deliberation, his Asiatic features made half anonymous by the smoked glasses. And Loman: smoothly shaven, the mind cold behind the hard bright stare.
The images merged as the computer collated the data:
Kuo with his deliberate steps taking him past the shop window where the photograph looked out with quizzical eyes - and suddenly the crowds and the flags and the flowers and the crosshairs of the telescopic sight bearing on the moving target and the crash of the shot with Loman’s face distorted by the long-drawn scream of fright. The kill.