The 9th Directive

by Adam Hall

  He wasn’t scared by the car that was coming because he knew about it and had been waiting for it and was already moving to the edge of the pavement as it slowed under quiet brakes. I watched it until it stopped, then took ten paces toward the entrance of the gardens and held myself ready.

  It was a Lincoln sedan: a seven-seater executive-style transport, flat-sided, massive in black and discreet steel fittings. The chauffeur was alone. He leaned nearer the Chinese and they spoke together and then the Chinese opened the rear door and climbed into the car and I did the only thing possible.

  If I lost sight of them the fragile thread would snap and I might never see them again - the Chinese, Kuo, the Person. I had to follow them and the only transport I could use was theirs. The great Lincoln was gathering speed past the entrance of the gardens when I judged correctly and got the rear door open and lurched inside, pulling the door shut behind me as the chauffeur screwed his neck round and called something, slowing.

  The Chinese told him: 'Keep driving.’

  He was a young man, younger than Kuo but not unlike him, slim-hipped and wide at the shoulder and with the calm eyes of a top athlete who had dedicated his life to challenge. His control of the situation was perfect. He had made successful contact and the nervous strain of waiting was over and his tone was as calm as his eyes.

  ‘Be careful, please.’

  The arm rest was down and between us and I looked at it. The barrel lay along it, a few inches from my liver.

  The sole advantage of the spring-gun is silence. It is more silent than any powder gun, however heavily baffled. Even at medium range - six feet and over - it is inefficient if it has to fire through clothing. Even at four feet an overcoat will shield the body from most of the impact. The spring-gun can kill through light clothing at any range below two feet providing it can be aimed to strike a vital organ without hitting bone. As a useful weapon it has value only if its limitations are known and allowed for.

  It would take its natural place among those weapons carried by a cell such as Kuo - a professional marksman - controlled. The sound of a gunshot in a city patrolled by massive police forces on the watch for anything even slightly unusual would provoke immediate alarm. The man beside me carried a spring-gun against the necessity of having to threaten or shoot while he was in the open and cut off from his base, and it was simply his good luck that this necessity had arisen in the confines of a closed car.

  There would be another gun on him, for use in extreme circumstances and at longer range. At present the spring was the perfect weapon.

  It was aimed well within killing distance and the needle point steel dart could pierce a vital organ - the liver - without risk of hitting the bone of hip joint or lower rib.

  The Chinese spoke again to the driver in Mandarin with a Shanghai accent. ‘Make for the park and circle it.’

  The Lincoln turned down Phayathai Road toward Rama IV. We had begun heading away from their base. That was inevitable. They would be embarrassed by having to look after a second prisoner at a time when they were desperate to move the first one to a safer place. My only hope had been to get the upper hand and either force them to reveal the location of their base or give them to the police after making sure they had no access to a death pill. It was still my hope.

  He asked me in good English: ‘Where is the woman?’

  The Lincoln had a bench-type front seat that was solid from pillar to pillar and immovable. The leather seat at my back was luxuriously cushioned and would indent up to a good six inches.

  ‘At the safehouse,’ I told him.

  It was natural for them to think we were in the same group. They had seen us together in the streets when she had been tagging me. They had possibly seen us, singly, entering or leaving the British Embassy.

  His immediate idea was two birds, one shot.

  Six inches was sufficient. The barrel of the spring-gun would be aimed past the front of my diaphragm by the time he fired.

  ‘Where is the safehouse?’ he asked me.

  We were turning left along Rama IV and heading for Lumpini Park. The kite warehouse was nearer than the gem shop and there would be more room to move about in there and a chance of doing some work on him.

  ‘In Soi Narong 9,’ I told him, and took a breath and kicked hard at the front seat to jack-knife and press back into the cushion to give him the six-inch clearance that would send the steel dart wide as I brought my right hand down in a strong chop for his gun wrist.

  ‘Be careful, please,’ he said.

  Blood began trickling from the edge of my hand.

  There had been only a slight phutt from the gun. Its barrel had swung up a degree to meet my hand and the dart had ripped flesh away.

  A trained athlete reacts as fast as a cat, and muscle obedience to the motor nerves is almost instantaneous.

  He said to the chauffeur: ‘Go to Soi Narong 9. Drive at a moderate speed.’

  A police car overtook us and the crew raked us with a long hard glance and the barrel bit into my side as a reminder and I sat still and watched the police car slot in between us and the car ahead; then it pulled out and we lost it.

  ‘What number, in Soi Narong 9?’

  ‘The warehouse,’ I told him.

  He spoke again to the chauffeur.

  Slowly, and looking at the Chinese, I moved my hand forward so that the blood could drip onto the carpet instead of my trousers. He smiled, nodding.

  When we reached the warehouse he asked: ‘Which door do you use, please?’

  ‘The one in the alley.’

  He told the chauffeur to reverse the Lincoln as far as the first door. That was normal procedure because the alley was a dead end and he had seen as much and wanted the car to be pointing in the right direction in case anything happened. It wasn’t because he was nervous, and this fact worried me. He showed no emotion. At close quarters I like the adverse party to feel something, preferably fear, though hate is as useful. The category matters less than the degree: the stronger the emotion the more it will blur his thinking.

  He showed none. That one word - ‘please’ - was an indication of his absolute confidence. He was a man typical of Kuo’s choice: the brain and sinews of a cat, the heart of a machine.

  The car stopped and I had three or four seconds to review the chances. They didn’t look very good. With an ordinary thug I could have guaranteed success, even though there were two of them, because there was so little room to move: the Lincoln blocked the alley, and both the door of the car and the door of the warehouse had to be opened and shut. Lack of the freedom to move is an asset when the adverse party is toad-slow to react. Fast reactions, such as I would get from this man, were dangerous at close quarters. This was why I had chosen to take him into the warehouse and avail myself of elbow room, and why nothing could be done until we got inside.

  The throb of the V-8 engine was loud in the narrow passage.

  In Mandarin: ‘When I have left the car, drive to the place. Tell them I will be there in an hour.’ In English: ‘Is the door locked?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘You have the keys?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Go in there. And be careful, please.’

  They watched us come in - the big male chulas with their livid coloring, the female pakpaos with their slender tails. They hung motionless: the morning was airless and the opening of the door made no draft.

  I heard him shut it behind us. The throb of the Lincoln rose and then died away. In the cavernous shed there were no echoes; his footsteps were muffled; their sound told me that he was backing away four paces, five. I knew why.

  ‘Turn to face me, please.’

  He had changed weapons. At five paces the spring-gun was ineffective. He held a .38 automatic and it had a silencer.

  ‘Silencer’ is a misnomer. No gun can be made silent. A full baffle will absorb a lot of noise but it will also cost a lot of impact and can make the difference between a kill and a maiming wound - and a
man with a maiming wound can run and can even fight and can even close in before the second shot comes. This was a half baffle designed to cut down the noise without costing too much fire power. It would be heard in a building or a street. It would make noise in here but no one outside would hear it because the kites were themselves a massive silencer. Seeing them, and noting the acoustics as we came in, he had changed weapons with the instinctive judgment of a professional.

  ‘Where is the woman?’

  Sunshine fell from the skylights; we stood on our own shadows. At five paces I could do nothing: he would pump the stuff into me as I leapt for him. There was the chance only of selling him a reason for taking me out of here, for taking me to his base so that Kuo himself could question me.

  ‘She’s not here,’ I said. Time was needed. I had to think of a reason to sell him.

  ‘You told me she was here.’ It was a flat statement, made without surprise. He looked around with small and precise jerks of his head, allowing me less than half the time I needed for a spring. ‘But I cannot wait for her to come.’ He faced me fully again. ‘My orders are to kill you on sight if possible. It is possible. The same for the woman. But she is not here. I cannot wait for her.’

  My spine had begun crawling. It wasn’t a human being inside that suit of clothes but a little killing machine set ticking by a specialist: Kuo.

  ‘They’ve got a plan,’ I said. ‘The police.’

  It was the only reason I could sell him.

  ‘The police?’

  It was going to be difficult because he was a machine set for the kill and the ticking could not be stopped: a clock won’t stop if you shout at it.

  I felt the blood gathering at my fingertips, congealing as the flow became slower, like wax congealing on a candle. The wound was closing by infinite degrees; the body had set up the automatic process of healing itself. Given two weeks it would do it, even without medicaments. There was no point. It would not be given two minutes.

  ‘They’ve got a plan ready for action,’ I said. ‘It will leave you absolutely no chance of getting out of the city, with or without your prisoner. I know the details of their plan. I helped them with it.’

  He wasn’t listening. With small jerks of his head he studied the area immediately around me. I said:

  ‘When their plan is put into action, and Kuo is caught, he’ll realize that I knew the details and could have told him in time. He’ll realize that in killing me you allowed him to walk into the trap they have set. What will he do to you?’

  The processes of my body congealed the blood to staunch the wound and preserve life. The processes of my brain worked to the same end. But I knew I had begun to die.

  ‘Stand by the box, please.’

  He jerked the gun, indicating the nearest of the long crates. It was to my left. He was a strong youth and could easily lift my dead weight into the crate, but why should he? One dislikes shifting garbage.

  ‘In front of the box, please. At this end of the box.’ The gun jerked again.

  I said: ‘I value my life, like most people. Take me to Kuo and I will guarantee his. And yours.’

  ‘Quickly, please,’ he said.

  The sweat began and I was suddenly angry. It had always worked before: I’d thought my way or fought my way out of corners worse than this; there were scars on me but they were living tissue, that was what mattered. Final appraisal of situation: If I didn’t move over to the box he would shoot. If I moved over to it he would shoot. If I tried to go on talking he would shoot. If I leapt for him I would leap against the first bullet and the second and the third would go into me as I dropped. No go. I turned my head and looked down at my coffin.

  ‘Move, please,’ he said and there was a slight shrillness in his tone. Not command. Worse: impatience.

  One always thinks, if one thinks of it at all, that when it comes to the point there’ll be a fighting chance or at least a dog’s chance, however big the odds, and that one’s many gods will at least allow that one is not led into the dark like a beast into the abattoir.

  I moved over to the box, not in obedience but because it would prolong my life by a few seconds, and in those few seconds something might happen that would allow a fighting chance, or at least a dog’s chance.

  Standing in front of the box I looked at him. The anger had gone and my thoughts were clear and I was even interested in what he would do with my remains. He had allowed himself an hour to return to his base, so my remains must be concealed temporarily to prevent any alarm being raised. He would probably unhook one of the kites and lay it across the box, and go.

  A bizarre enough shroud.

  His hand moved fractionally into the killing attitude, pressing the gun against his side to cushion the recoil.

  He said, ‘If you wish, you may close your eyes.’

  I said, ‘I thank you for your courtesy. I prefer to leave them open.’

  ‘Very well.’

  Because of the silencer the report of the gun was not very loud, though the fragile paper kites shivered to the vibration.

  Chapter 21

  The Negotiators

  There were three people in Room 6 with Loman and he got rid of them as soon as I came in, but the telephone rang and he did a lot of listening, sometimes looking across at me without any expression.

  Then he hung up and said tartly: ‘I have been trying to contact you.’

  ‘You got some news?’

  ‘Yes.’ He looked at my hand again. ‘I have some news. What happened to you?’

  ‘Nothing useful. Is it official, then? The swap?’

  He went shut-faced and I got fed up with him because he never liked people knowing more than he did. I stuck one haunch onto the edge of the table and waited. He couldn’t stop himself asking.

  ‘How did you know it was an exchange?’

  For snatch read abduction. For swap read exchange. Never a bloody spade. I said: ‘Mil. 6 told me.’

  ‘How did they know?’

  ‘They’ve known all along.’

  He stared at me brightly. He looked very polished this morning, like a balloon at bursting point.

  They can’t have,’ he said flatly. ‘They would have done something about it.’

  They heard there was a swap coming up but they didn’t think the Person was in the running. They thought it was me.’

  His small hands flew in the air. That is the stupidity of inter-Services rivalry! They knew there was an attempt going to be made against the Person. If we had shared information we would have put two and two together and pulled off a joint mission. Why don’t—‘

  ‘Christ,’ I said, ‘have we got time to reorganize Whitehall now? Just give me the news.’ My day had begun badly and I didn’t want it to go on like that. I didn’t even know how I could face Pangsapa: he’d given me a chance in a million on a plate and I’d mucked it.

  Loman span a sheet of paper toward me across the table. ‘Read that.’

  There was no heading; it was just a plain typewritten original hastily done.

  Précis of Release No. 34/33/L202. Official approach made through Ambassadorial channels as follows. The Republic of China informs the U.K. that certain parties at present unidentified have offered to negotiate the immediate transfer of the Person to Chinese territory against payment of the sum of Eighty Million Hong Kong Dollars. While the Republic of China has no interest in this offer it appreciates the grave anxiety felt by the United Kingdom over the situation in Bangkok and is willing to effect the safe release of the Person by such payment, given an undertaking that the U.K. will release a patriot of the Republic, by name Huang Hsiung Lee, at present under detention in Durham Prison, England, and will escort him to whatever place agreed upon so that proper exchange of the two parties can be made. The Republic of China would demand full reimbursement, at the same time, for the sum paid out. The offer is made as a gesture of amity among nations and in recognition of the inviolable rights of man.

  Loman was watching me with
impatience.

  I said: ‘So.’

  He exploded with talk. ‘The approach was made in the early hours of this morning and it is of course being given priority consideration. There is no question of declining the deal because no one can be sure of finding the Person before he is harmed or even killed. I am told that the exchange will in fact be made and that the arrangements are now being planned - in parallel with the intensive search currently mounted. It is thus a question of time. The exchange will take place within days from now; public anxiety in England is exerting enormous pressure on the situation - and the public will not be informed of the exchange until it has been effected, for obvious reasons.’

  He was walking about and I stopped watching him. My hand was throbbing and I savored the pain; it was the pain of a living body and I hadn’t expected to feel such a thing again.

  One more answer to one more question had come in: this thing was on government level, although I had never thought it could be. China had it made. The snatch had been done by ‘unidentified parties’ - not by the Chinese. It had been done in Thailand - on territory that was not Chinese. It had been done for the simplest of motives: ransom. It was a motive quite unconnected with a Chinese agent under detention. But … as a gesture of amity among nations - and since there was in fact a Chinese agent under detention - why couldn’t we all get together and live happily ever after?

  Even commercially it was a neat set-up. China would pay Kuo 80,000,000 Hong Kong dollars for the snatch and would get it back from the U.K. Huang Hsiung Lee was being bought for nothing. Thrown in was an item of scientific data that would enable Communist China to build a weapon capable of challenging the whole world East and West.

  ‘A question of time,’ said Loman again.

  ‘How long, precisely?’

  ‘We don’t know yet. But the moment the Person is known to be on Chinese soil I am assured that the offer will be officially accepted. I am told that Huang Hsiung Lee has already been released from Durham and is on his way to London Airport. That will give you some idea as to how fast things are happening. I have been on the direct Embassy line to the Bureau twice in the last hour and the orders are specific: locate the Person and bring him to safety before the exchange can be made.’