by Adam Hall
There was no one anywhere near the condemned building because the crowd was still attracting people to the scene at the curve of the Link Road, and I climbed to the top floor in the clammy heat.
Looking down from the window of my room I composed the whole picture in terms of geometry. Findings:
Kuo’s mission had been to place the shot. Loman and I had known that. The shot was the pivot of the entire operation. But after the shot had been placed the course of his mission had changed completely, and this we had not known. Kuo was a professional and his intelligence was far beyond that required for the efficient handling of a rifle. As precisely and as carefully as a rifle is pieced together from its components he had dovetailed every part of his mission with my own, assembling a set-up in which I took my place as obediently as if I were under his direct orders.
His mission was a total success and all I had to show for weeks of work was the dead man in the Phra Chula Chedi, the seventh man that Pangsapa had told me about, a man who was not Kuo because he wore no cuff links and because his cheap Yungchow carbine was a weapon that a marksman of Kuo’s caliber would never demean himself to use. All I had done was to kill a decoy while Kuo placed his shot.
Rage against one’s own stupidity does no good but in the heat of the room I stood shivering.
There was a thumbtack stuck in the door of the kite warehouse so when I had dumped the useless tools of my trade I phoned Varaphan in Soi Suek 3.
‘Is the bloodstone ready for me?’
‘There has been so little time. Everyone is always in such a hurry. But you could make inquiries at our workshop if you are passing that way.’
I decided to walk instead of taking a trishaw because the rage was still burning and I had to deal with it before I met Loman. Cold thought was the only antidote.
There were five press vans parked outside the Embassy and I had to show my pass so that the police could get me through the pack of reporters. They flashed off pictures of me in case I was important. Caption: The Man Who Knew Too Little.
I got shunted into the Cultural Attaché office again and the girl came in. I hardly recognized her. Everything was the same, beautiful walk, good clothes, an oddness to the left side of the face - but her eyes flickered to the aftermath of shock and her voice had lost its certainty. For the first time she looked like a woman instead of a mechanical goddess.
Maybe I had changed too: she took a few seconds to focus. We stood listening to distant sounds, phone bells and doors, the sounds of a complacent Embassy shaken to the core.
I said: ‘Room 6.’
‘Yes.’ She still didn’t move or look away. All the words she wanted to speak, all the questions she wanted to ask were held silent in the flickering of her eyes.
‘Did you manage to do anything?’ I asked her.
It was her voice that had answered my call from the bar on the Link Road when I’d told them to get me Room 6.
‘Yes.’ It came out in soft little jerks. ‘They’re making a priority search - it was reported missing about a half hour before the motorcade started - they needed a little persuading but I - persuaded them.’
She couldn’t even stand still. Her nerves had set the whole line of her lean body trembling. Loman had said she was with Mil. 6. They shouldn’t have kids like this in their outfit because things were bound to break them up. It was happening now.
I said: ‘Are they going to use helicopters? Calling the Army in?’
‘It’s for them to work in their own way - all I stressed was the importance of watching docks, airports and the land routes to the Laos frontier—‘
‘Laos?’
‘The quickest route to China.’
Loman might know. I would ask him.
I said: ‘What have you told Loman?’
‘Nothing.’
‘What has he told you?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Where’s Room 6?’
‘I’ll show you.’
It was an effort for her to look away from my face. I followed her out to the corridor and we saw Cole-Verity, the Ambassador, surrounded by flapping minions - a big man still in his ceremonial dress, decorations, gold epaulettes, ashen-faced and half-shouting at them, ‘Tell them it’s an emergency news blackout. Get that mob off the steps and block the switchboard - outgoing calls only. McMahon, come in here and bring Straker with you.’ They peeled off as he pushed open a door.
Loman had come up from the other direction and he had the same look in his eyes and I knew now what was wrong with the girl and some of the rage came back.
‘For Christ’s sake, someone’s got to do it, haven’t they?’
Loman took my arm and we went into Room 6 and he locked the door and I said: ‘Thank Christ she’s gone.’
They’re all the same, they don’t like it when they know there’s been a killing: even after two world wars they look at you as if it’s never been done before: even when they know there’s a bump on the program and you’re the louse that’s got to do it they look at you afterward as if you’ve just climbed out of a drain.
‘How did she know, Loman - how much have you told her? What’s a Mil. 6 trollop doing in our bloody woodshed?’
‘Sit down and control yourself.’
‘You couldn’t get rid of her, could you - is she your type or something?’
Stomach full of adrenalin, full of acid, sweating like a pig - a feeling of great age, responsibility, failure and defeat. Getting old, too old for it.
He went on waiting, leaning by the window looking down at his shoes. I went twice round the room looking at nothing and trying to think of a word, one word that would tell him what I thought of his talent as an intelligence director and what I thought of the crowd out there in the Link Road where the water cart was washing away the blood and what I thought of a mission that had run smash into ruins because we couldn’t even handle a monkey-sized Mongolian thug whose answer to everything was a bullet.
There wasn’t a word for all that.
‘When you are ready,’ he said.
His calm helped. The whole of the Embassy was rocking under us but he was calm.
‘Did you go down to the Link Road?’ I asked him. My voice sounded quiet, maybe the contrast, maybe I’d been shouting.
‘Yes.’
‘What did you see?’
‘I couldn’t get near anything, so I arranged for you to meet me here and came along to wait.’
‘So you don’t know anything.’
‘No. Perhaps you will tell me.’
‘It was a snatch.’
He came away from the window and by the look on his face I could see that he really hadn’t known. He said softly, ‘Do you mean the Person is still alive?’
‘I tell you, it was a snatch. He was never in the sights. It was the driver they shot.’
In the face of his surprise I felt suddenly in control and for the first time saw the room in detail and took an interest in it because I had to orientate, find bearings, relearn the familiar. White paint, frescoed ceiling, blue carpet, company-meeting table, chairs, telephone, ashtrays: a sunny room, hospital-clean, the kind of place you always hope you’ll be taken to after the accident. That was, in a way, the way it was.
‘Go on,’ he said.
‘I took action as soon as I knew. It was no good telling Ramin’s bunch so I got to a phone and asked for Room 6 and the girl answered. I told her to get a dragnet put out for the ambulance - anyone here could use more pressure than I could. They could make it an Embassy alert call—‘
‘Ambulance,’ Loman said.
It was difficult to remember that in the instant of firing the Husqvarna I had been as ignorant as he was now, and that it was only by going to look at the dead man in the Phra Chula Chedi that I’d been able to see the whole picture.
They got him away in an ambulance,’ I said. ‘Look, I’ll give you the set-up - his set-up, Kuo’s. He’s moved into the snatch game. The Person wasn’t down for killing. Somebody wants
him, don’t ask me what for. And they’ve got him. We worked on the premise that he was the target of the Kuo gun and he wasn’t. The target was the driver of the Cadillac and he was shot dead precisely where the road curved so that the car would just run straight on into the crowd. Then they did the snatch. You imagine the confusion? Three tons at twenty-five miles an hour ramming into living people. I saw the driver myself, still at the wheel, and a man slumped in the back - both dead.’
Loman asked: ‘How was the other man killed?’
‘I don’t know. It wasn’t with a second shot. Kuo shot once - I’d have heard a second shot. I didn’t hear the first one because it was covered by the sound of my own - bound to be because we were both operating within a period of a few seconds and it was a few seconds before I got my hearing back. Even if I’d heard his shot I would have thought it was an echo of mine.’
‘Where did he shoot from?’
‘Look,’ I said impatiently and hit the table with the flat of my hand, ‘here’s the temple. Here’s the condemned building. Link Road between them. Get out of your mind for a minute that the target was the driver. Suppose, as we did suppose, that the target was the Person. The car is running almost head-on toward the temple and it’s a perfect site for a marksman because the visual effective speed is about five miles per hour instead of twenty-five. From the temple you could shoot the Person because he was sitting in the back on a seat raised nine inches. You couldn’t shoot the driver because he was behind the windshield. You could only shoot someone in the back - over the windshield. I knew this - it’s simple geometry. I didn’t question it: but I would have questioned it if I’d known the target was the driver.’
‘He was here, then, Kuo?’ His polished nails flashed in the light as he tapped the table.
‘Somewhere in this area, near the condemned building. You could only shoot the driver from behind. Same data: car moving tail-on, visual effective speed five miles per hour instead of twenty-five - and no windshield in the way.’
He went back to the windows. Maybe it was all he wanted to know. It wasn’t all I wanted to tell him.
‘For God’s sake, Loman, if they’d meant to shoot the Person they’d have done it, shot him cold, and we couldn’t have done a thing about it, not a damned thing about it, can’t you get that?’
I’d lost it again and the room span and I heard him saying, ‘He’s alive and that’s what matters—‘
‘Shot him cold in front of our bloody eyes—‘
‘You’ll have to get over that.’ Voice coming closer, talked like a bloody governess. There are more things I want to know, Quiller. London will ask for a very full report. Who was the man you - who was the man in the temple?’
‘Pox on London.’ I’d knocked something over, bits on the blue carpet. An ashtray.
‘Who was the man in the temple?’
Eyes very bright.
The room steadied.
‘What? I don’t know. The seventh man. Pangsapa told us. A decoy.’
I’d have to watch it. Always a strain knowing you’ve got to do a bump even when you know it’s an overkill, and always a strain, by God, when you see the whole mission go smash for all the effort you’ve made. Brain’s got to go on ticking, or you’ve had it.
‘He wasn’t one of the original Kuo cell?’
I said, ‘No. Kuo uses picked men. He wouldn’t waste one. Look, I keep telling you—‘ I had to stop and think. ‘I haven’t told you. Listen, Loman. There are some bits I don’t understand yet. I don’t suppose they matter.’ I found I was sitting in one of the chairs. ‘They were on to me very early. Knew I was tagging them. For some reason they didn’t do anything about it - that’s one of the bits I don’t understand. Maybe it was orders from on high - that girl’s always talking about China - does that mean anything to you - China?’
‘You put his fee at five hundred thousand pounds,’ he said, ‘remember?’ He was down on his haunches, arms on his knees, hands folded together, perched in front of me, not letting me get away or think about anything else. ‘Only a government could afford that. But I don’t know anything about China particularly. They were on to you very early - well?’
‘They could have put me in the crosshairs a dozen times - I knew that, but when they missed the first few chances I didn’t worry any more: Christ, d’you think I’d have stood in front of an open window like that at the Pakchong Hotel with the light on and dark outside? I’d taken damn good care, believe me, before I knew they were letting the chances go. Look, I don’t mind what risks I take providing there’s—‘
‘They were on to you very early, you said.’
‘All right.’ I shut my eyes. They weren’t certain of me till Kuo went to ground - then I had to show my hand, went into the Lotus Bar, other places, all over the bloody town, brothels, the lot. Then they knew I was interested. But they still didn’t take a crack at me - you knew that, Loman. When you told me that Mil. 6 was protecting me I asked you what the hell they were meant to be protecting me from - Kuo? You said I wasn’t in any danger from Kuo. Dead correct. But I was being a nuisance to them so they began fitting the two missions together, his and mine. They let me pick up their track - gave me a man to tag, led me to a hotel, let me tag their car down Rama IV, made a show of being worried when I got into their mirror. I knew where they were going, where they were taking the roll of gold cloth, because I’d haunted the bloody place for days - the Phra Chula Chedi - and they’d seen me haunting it.
When I—‘
‘That isn’t sufficient.’ He got up from his crouch and walked about a lot. ‘You’re filling in gaps, making things fit—‘
‘All right. There’s a gap, a big one. But somehow they knew my set-up; they knew I was going for an overkill. I’ve tried till I’m sick to find out how they—‘
‘Don’t worry it, Quiller. We’ll find out. Go on.’
‘I’ve finished.’
‘No, you haven’t.’
‘Oh for God’s sake.’
I got out of the chair and fiddled with the telephone cord. ‘I suppose they knifed them, the man in the back. Driver was shot, man in the back was knifed, so was the other one, the other bodyguard. Gasoline on fire, people lying crushed under the wheels, you could have got away with anything—‘
‘They couldn’t have planned the fire.’
‘No, but the rest was enough.’ I twisted the telephone cord, garroting my wrist. ‘We don’t know how many dead do we? I think he’s a bit of a shit and I’m keeping my gun, the Husqvarna, never know your luck.’
He was standing close to me again. ‘I must ask you to make your report a little more precisely. You propose that the Kuo cell - six of them, four operators and two bodyguards - had an ambulance waiting at the spot and brought stretchers, ostensibly to remove the dead and injured, and that in the confusion knifed the two guards in the royal car, knocked the Person down—‘
‘Hit him behind the knees, rabbit-punch as he fell—‘
‘And took him to the ambulance with a blanket over him, and drove off.’
Tell me how else they did it.’ The cord had left a weal on my wrist.
‘It was probably like that. The police couldn’t have reached the scene - the immediate scene - in time to realize what was happening, and those in the car wouldn’t have gone on sitting there like dummies, with people all round them in agony - they would have climbed from the car to help, even knowing that their driver had been shot dead. It was a nightmare, the perfect setting for an abduction.’
The cell would have trained for weeks. He’s a professional. Listen, Loman, how much chance have we got of-'
‘What I would like you to do is to pick up where you left off. You say that they laid a false trail for you, letting you see the gun being delivered to the temple, and letting you see Kuo himself at the oriel more than once. I take you to mean that? You said they began fitting the two missions together.’
Tell me how else—‘
‘Oh, I accept most of what
you say. It’s glaringly logical. I am only trying to help you complete the picture.’
‘Well that’s it.’ His calmness was beginning to stink.
The mission was over and it had failed, but the Person hadn’t been shot dead so everything was all right now and Loman could go home and make his report.
Tell London,’ I said. ‘And don’t forget the cost of the thumbtacks or they won’t sleep.’
To continue,’ he said equably, ‘you believe they set up a decoy for you, a live dummy you could shoot at, the “seventh man” who joined the cell late. Why?’
‘To keep me out of their way - to stop me finding out their real set-up - to keep me busy fiddling while the whole of bloody Rome was burning down.’
‘Why? Why did they want to keep you busy - to keep you alive, instead of killing you off in the early stages?’
‘How the hell do I know?’ We were facing each other without meaning to, both of us wandering round the damned room looking at nothing, coming up against each other.
‘Perhaps you were wanted, too. As well as the Person.’
I stared at him.
‘Then why didn’t they come and get me?’
‘Perhaps they will,’ he said.
Chapter 16
Newsbreak
I went on staring at him.
‘Now! But it’s over, for God’s sake. They’ve made a perfect snatch.’
He turned away with distaste. ‘In view of the Person’s standing I do wish you would refer to it as an abduction.’
My laugh exploded, unreal, like the squawk of a mechanical doll. ‘Abduction …’ I said. ‘Abduction …’ trying to make sense of the word. ‘Listen, what would they want me for? Bumping that thug - the decoy? He was just a hired tool, a live dummy set up as a target for me. You think he meant anything to Kuo? There must have been ten killed in that crowd and the decoy meant as little to Kuo as any one of them.’
‘Do you really believe’ - he swung round on me suddenly - ‘that they would have set up such an elaborate device to prevent your defeating their mission unless someone had given the most express orders that your life was not to be taken? Haven’t you admitted that they could have killed you time and time again?’