by Adam Hall
Only her head moved as I crossed the mosaic. The place was very quiet and she pitched her voice low.
‘May I use your name?’
‘Nobody knows it,’ I said.
‘Your cover name.’
‘Who cares?’
‘I came to apologize, Mr. Quiller. I should have recognized you at the Embassy.’
‘I’m not often recognized by the secretaries of Cultural Attaches. Yehudi Menuhin’s more their type.’
‘I wasn’t far from Rama IV two years ago.’
Now that I was close to her I could see that something had happened to her face on the left side. It didn’t quite balance. The skin was perfect but someone - someone very good - had done a job on it.
‘What are you?’ I asked her. ‘Mil. 6?’
She didn’t answer, didn’t seem interested. I said:
‘Not Security.’
‘No.’ She changed the slim tan bag into the other hand. ‘I just came to apologize. You can’t be used to the indignity of security checks.’
I didn’t quite laugh. ‘You’d be surprised at the indignities I’m used to.’ Along with Dewhurst and Comyngs my cover name on file had the 9-Suffix Reliable Under Torture. ‘Will you have a drink?’
‘I can’t stay. They say you’re leaving tonight.’
‘Yes.’
‘Have a good trip.’
I watched her cross the mosaic. Not many women can walk like that when they know a man’s watching them. Not many women can walk like that anyway.
I went up and finished packing. To apologize? She couldn’t have thought that one up for herself; she was too intelligent. Why had they wanted to know that I was physically and in all truth at the Pakchong Hotel? They could have checked on me in a dozen better ways.
Blast their eyes, I was on Flight 203.
The only other thing that happened that day was a phone call from Pangsapa, asking me to go along there.
It was dark but most of the shops were still open and some of them were already redressing the windows with colored bunting and gold-framed photographs of the Person.
I had the trishaw drop me some distance from the house in Klong Chula Road and walked along the river in the evening heat. Pangsapa received me straightaway and said:
‘The information I have for you is worth something in the region of fifty thousand baht.’
It was too late but I didn’t say so. It would be amusing to milk Loman’s expense account and let them fry him when he got back to London.
‘Fifty thousand,’ I said. ‘All right.’
‘You can guarantee that sum?’
‘Verbatim.’
‘Your word is quite sufficient.’
I knew now that I shouldn’t have come. It was a lot of money and it would be a lot of information and I didn’t want it, didn’t want to be involved.
Pangsapa said softly: ‘Three days ago one of the “professionals” crossed over the Maekong River from Laos into Thailand and tonight he arrived in Bangkok.’
‘Which one?’
‘Kuo the Mongolian.’
So there was nothing I could do about it now.
Chapter 4
The Specialists
They are specialists and each has his own method.
Sorbi is a strangler but never uses his hands: it is nearly always a nylon stocking, infrequently a cord. He is a lecher and runs with the night-club set in European capital cities, finding most of his work there. He calls himself a ‘private’ operator: half his kills are women and he is offered his work by rich men or men of high position who cannot afford exposure. Sorbi was behind the ‘Blue Room Mystery’ of the June 1964 Paris headlines (Madame Latrelle-Voisin) and the ‘Autostrada Angel Case’ in Milan, 1965, which entrained the resignation of three members of the Italian Government. Sorbi’s client was not of course implicated.) This operation brought Sorbi into touch with politicals and be is now said to hold himself available for political work, the fees being very high.
Quicky the Greek uses the knife and has made only two killings, but both were important and both political and so well-arranged that in one case (the leader of the ‘Interim’ Bolivian Cabinet) the record still shows a verdict of suicide. The Greek never asks for money but for deeds of title, and he is said to own fifteen thousand acres of land in the key development areas of the Argentine and Venezuela. He may not live long to enjoy his possessions, as Pangsapa himself told me that Quicky is hooked on snow.
Vincent works wild and nobody trusts him, though he is so persistent that once a name is given to him the man of that name can be considered as dead. Vincent will use anything - a gun or a knife, poison, a bomb or his bare hands. Also he is cheap, and they say he would work even for nothing. (He was behind the coup d’état in Egypt when Lieutenant-Colonel Ibrahim was found locked in his Cadillac at the bottom of the Nile - a dredger had struck the obstacle.)
The Japanese, Hideo, is a technician and one hundred per cent efficient. He always uses a cyanide spray, possibly impressed by the clinical success of the KGB agent Bogdan Stashinski who in 1961 acknowledged the killing of Rebet and Bandera (leaders of the Ukrainian emigres) in Munich, 1957. Hideo has three major political assassinations on record, including that of the Turkish Ambassador to the United Kingdom (the ‘Gold Pencil Murder’ - the finding of the victim’s gold pencil on the pavement in Curzon Street led to the discovery of his body in an abandoned taxi in Wallace Mews). Hideo the technician has the most elaborate model railway in Japan.
Zotta is the son of a member of one of the Mafia’s original ‘Murder Inc.’ groups and his specialty is the miniature bomb. He claims that his weapon is ‘personalized’ and that accurate placing will ensure a quick clean kill with no danger to anyone else in the vicinity of the victim. This is probably true: Sherman Wills, president of the Charter and Equity Bank, was opening his pen in the board room at the start of a meeting (New York, 1963) and nobody else was hurt. A year later the half-brother of King Riyadh Ali switched on his electric shaver in the royal yacht standing off Damascus and the stateroom windows remained unbroken. Zotta is a technician like Hideo, but far less stable. When he dies there will be a woman there who will not grieve.
They are all specialists and each has his own method.
Kuo uses the gun.
Pangsapa was very good. He sent someone with me - a small nervous Hindu, half-scared of himself or of someone, perhaps of Pangsapa - to find Kuo the Mongolian and look at him.
He was watching the professional karate training bouts in the gymnasium of the Royal Thai Athletic Association, not far from the Lumpini polo grounds. A fight was in progress and we chose a seat on the side of the main entrance. The place was air-conditioned but smelled of embrocation, resin and sweat. My guide sat for a few minutes idly watching the spectators and suddenly looked down, murmuring, ‘He is in the second row up, halfway along on the right side. He is the one in smoked glasses.’
By his tone I knew that it was Kuo he was scared of.
I slowly raised my eyes.
‘You can go now,’ I said. ‘If you are certain.’
‘Yes. I knew him well once.’
I looked down again at the fighters until the Hindu had gone, in case his movement was noticed. Then I looked across again at Kuo. Even if my guide had not pointed him out I would have known him for what he was: a man of authority, a man of affairs. He was in European clothes, a white Tergal suit impeccably cut and worn with indifference, a dark blue tie with a gold motif, small gold cufflinks. His authority was in the way he sat, in the angle of his body and the poise of his head. Nothing of this was deliberate; he was engrossed in the fight. On each side of him sat a bodyguard, dressed also in Western clothes. Their deference was as explicit as his authority.
I wished I could see his eyes. I would have to recognize him later, recognize him immediately, even at a distance, even in bad light. The eyes are so important - the eyes and the walk. I would have to stay until he left, so that I could see him walk.
The feet of the karate fighters stamped. You could hear their breath. They were the Thai champions and would fight here during the Visit. Their shadows fought on the resined boards under their feet, sharply thrown by the grouped lamps.
Kuo was sometimes tense and I remembered Pangsapa watching the fish; sometimes he tilted his compact head and laughed to one of the bodyguards. He was enjoying himself.
I watched him for an hour, every gesture, every movement of his head. When some people came into my row I got up and sidled between the seats with my back to the arena and made my way round the end of the gymnasium, finding a seat above and to one side of Kuo so that I could impress his back view on my Memory: tomorrow I would begin to follow him, to live with him and learn him until I knew him as if he were my brother.
When he left the gymnasium I watched him walk across the clear space at the end where there were no seats. It was a good walk; his arms swung easily, the hands relaxed; he placed his feet with deliberation, his head half-turned attentively as one of his men spoke to him. He could have been a president leaving the conference hall. He reached the doors and I let him go. If he did not come here again tomorrow Pangsapa could find rum. Then I would take over.
First thing in the morning I telephoned Varaphan and told him I wanted the bloodstone ready as soon as possible. Loman rang me within the hour and I went down to Soi Suek 3. He looked wary.
‘They said you were flying out.’
‘I’m not,’ I said.
‘What changed your mind?’
‘Do you know who arrived in Bangkok yesterday?’
‘Pangsapa told me.’
‘What made you see Pangsapa? I thought you meant to keep clear.’
‘I meant to, yes. Then I heard you were restive so I wanted to know if he’d turned anything up.’
‘I was getting bloody tired of trying to contact you and I didn’t like being vetted at the Embassy. Who’s that woman they’ve got there?’
He said curiously, ‘There are quite a few women.’
‘She’s in the Cultural Attaché’s office. Is she Mil. 6 or Security or what?’
‘You mean Vinia Maine, I think.’
‘She is our group?’
‘Oh no.’
‘Well, tell her to keep out of my way. She had me checked and then followed me. I don’t like her. Listen,’ I said, ‘I’m accepting the mission but on my own terms. This job isn’t in your field but you roped in the Bureau the minute you caught wind of this thing because there’s the chance of a tin medal, isn’t there?’ I was watching his face. ‘If anything comes unstuck on the Visit and it’s left to me to stop Kuo there’ll be credit owed in high places and you know what I think of medals - but someone’s going to cop for one and you’re ready at the head of the queue, the Bureau’s director in the field who pulled the whole thing off.’
His eyes were very bright and he kept perfectly still, looking me back, shining with hate.
I said: ‘That’s all right. All I want you to get quite clear is that I’m not working for you. I’m working for him. Because I don’t like to think of a decent man with a wife and kids getting shot in the guts and I don’t care if he’s the postman or the King of Hong Kong. Now I’ll tell you my terms.’
He moved away and put both hands on the glass top of the display case, leaning on it and looking in at the gems. But he was listening.
‘You, said there’ll be conferences at the Embassy. Count me out. I’m working alone. But I’ll need up-to-the-minute information from you that I won’t have time to get for myself - arrival schedules on the 29th, program and final itinerary for the tour of the city, stopping-off points, so forth. If things get hot I want to be put into contact with you at a minute’s notice whether it’s here or a new safehouse. Unless there’s any change of plan I want to be left alone.’ He stood for a while leaning on the case and then turned to me and asked: ‘Is that all?’ ‘Yes.’
‘What have you in mind?’ His tone was even. I was a louse and he was interested in lice and wanted to know how they worked.
“Kuo. That’s all I’ve got in mind. You know his reputation: he’s top in his class as a long-range rifleman and he’s never been known to miss.’
He nodded. ‘Pangsapa tells me he has come to Bangkok simply to watch the karate fights - they’ll be putting on a very special show, of course, and he’s a keen aficionado. It may be true. We shall just assume he’s here to attempt an assassination and work on that.’ ‘You’ve briefed me to make the arrangements and give you the set-up and that’s what I’m going to do. First I’ve got to learn the man and try getting his local travel patterns. If I’m in luck I might even get a lead on his arrangements - they’ll be more efficient than mine, he’s done it before.’
‘I suppose,’ he said carefully, ‘you have been giving some thought to the threat - the actual threat received in London.’
‘It wasn’t from Kuo. It wasn’t from anyone who means to have a go. I’m not interested.’
‘Of course it was valuable to us. We wouldn’t have been alerted. We wouldn’t be here now, you and I.’
With no rancor I said: ‘What a bloody shame.’
He smiled quickly. He’d swallowed the hate. It was still there all right and one fine day he would catch me wide open and slam me down or try to.
‘You’ll need to know the security picture,’ he said. ‘It’s not easy for me to get information in that area. We don’t exist and we’ve no official access or liaison. Also they’re cagey by nature. But I know this much: they’re keeping three suspects in view. One is of course Kuo himself, but they don’t rate him very highly. Kuo is respected and the moment he crosses a frontier they double the security guard round every head of state as a matter of routine. On the other hand he travels a great deal even when he’s - shall we say - off duty. Providing he remains in view and doesn’t at any time go to ground they’ll be content to keep a routine watch on him. If he goes to ground they’ll try to find him but they’ll use routine methods and it might be too late. But you will have been concentrating solely on him and with any luck you’ll know where he’s gone.’ He gave me one of his bright stares. ‘Don’t ever lose him, will you?’
‘And I won’t eat too many sweets.’ They were all like that, the London mob. Talked to you like a governess.
‘Remember,’ he said in precisely the same tone, ‘that the Thai Home Office and Security departments have been told of the threat received in London and are giving our people unlimited facilities. King Aduldej has been kept informed and has made it very clear that he expects every conceivable effort to be made for the protection of his guest. Quite apart from anything else he is jealous of his capital city’s reputation as a place where one can walk in the streets unharmed.’
When Loman wasn’t talking like a governess he was talking like an official spokesman for the Junior Conservative Society. I went on listening.
‘The city police are already mounting a dragnet operation to round up all known or suspected agitators and subversives. The first wave of arrests will take place in two days’ time. Routine checks are already going on at Don Muang Airport, the Royal Palace and the major stopping-off points along the route the motorcade will take. All mail and messages addressed to the Person to await his arrival are being given the infra-red, and there is a permanent police guard in the Palace kitchens and garage. The guest suite now being prepared is—‘
‘Look,’ I said wearily, ‘it’s up to them what they do. There’s a dozen ways - prussic acid in the caviar, the parcel bomb, the snake-in-the-mattress trick. But you’ve told me yourself that we’ve got to assume that Kuo has been sent in to do this job, so let me concentrate on him. As far as I’m concerned it’s going to be the classic method, the one that’s most difficult to stop - the long-range shot. A public execution.’
Chapter 5
To Ground
A simple rule of mnemonics is that if a face is to be remembered it must be forgotten in its absence. Attempted reca
ll in the absence of the image is dangerously prone to distort it.
A man of sour disposition and small stature may have a short gray beard and high skin coloration; these two features are easily accepted on sight by the memory. But later, in the absence of the image, the memory will concentrate on the only data in its possession and exaggerate it: the beard will become longer and whiter, the face rosier. Small additions to the image then build up, since the need to remember flogs the mechanism that must do it; the eyes are now remembered as being light blue, the figure as large and lumbering - and the man is now certain to be remembered the next time he is seen.
In fact he is not even recognized. In place of the almost wholly fictional image of Santa Claus’s twin brother is the real thing: a small, irascible man with brown eyes and a tobacco-stained gray beard.
Most instances of poor memory are examples of retroactive interference producing qualitative changes: the memory, goaded into conscious service, begins making things up. If left alone, the initial neural traces will remain absolutely clear, and will recognize the image immediately the next time it is seen - because no change has taken place.
Kuo the Mongolian was a difficult image, partly because he was Mongolian and partly because his features were not typically Mongoloid. He could have passed for a Manchurian, a Sikhote Alinese, a Kunlunese or even a Cantonese. So I made no attempt to remember him after establishing the initial image in the gymnasium. There was thus no remolding of the recall process.
Recognition was immediate the next day just before noon when he came out of the gymnasium. I knew there were training fights each morning and evening of this week and I was waiting for him.
The machine I had chosen from Compact Hire was tailor-made for the work in hand: a small 1500 Toyota Corona with a 90 miles-per-hour peak and 19.7 quarter-mile standing-start acceleration performance. Being small it could cope with even a New Road rush-hour tangle; being fast it could keep most other cars in sight along the exurban fringe highways, even if they were trying to slip the tag.
