by Adam Hall
It would be no good putting the Rifle Club’s 1000-yard range anywhere else, because Bangkok is surrounded by rice.
The heat shimmer spreading from the rice fields grows steadily worse as the day advances, and makes for a distortion factor with telescopic sights. I therefore drove eastward out of the city early enough to put in a couple of hours on the range while the air was stable.
There had been no time to catch the light after leaving the kite warehouse the previous afternoon. I had gone to ground in the condemned building as soon as the area had been checked for tags. I had seen neither Loman nor the girl outside the warehouse: he must have snatched her or scared her off.
This morning the air was cold and nothing showed in my mirror, but I selected a couple of harmless-looking saloons and kept between them to make it difficult for anyone to raid me either with a shot or a smash.
My membership card got me straight through to the suits and for the first hour I was alone with the Husqvarna. The dealer had sent it to the club for me on my instructions, with the scope sight already mounted. My needs had been for a big-bore rifle capable of long-range accurate fire with a heavy, compact bullet achieving high velocity and killing power. It was thus necessary to choose a bolt-action, which is the slowest of all repeaters for follow-up shots; but it is the most reliable.
All the Husqvarnas are beautiful but the finest they make is the 561. It is a .358 Magnum center-fire, with a three-shot magazine, 25x/2 inch barrel, hand-checkered walnut stock, corrugated butt-plate and sling swivels. The fore-end and pistol-grip are tipped with rosewood. The total weight is 7% pounds and the breech pressure is in the region of 20 tons p.s.i., giving a high muzzle velocity and an almost flat trajectory with a 150-grain bullet.
A rifle is no better than its sights, so I had chosen an exemplary Balvar 5 by Bausch and Lomb with an optical variable from x2 to x5. Its feature is that as the magnification power is increased the crosshair reticle remains constant in size and does not therefore tend to obscure the target.
The report and recoil of a big gun are fairly massive, and I went to the range partly to learn the Husqvarna’s characteristics and align the high overbore scope-sight, and partly to condition my nervous system to the unaccustomed shock effect. The eye must get used to the close-up shrouding of the sight-mounting and the figures on the lens; the ear must learn to ignore the heavy percussion of the report; the shoulder must accept the blow of the recoil; above all the perfect marriage must be made between the index finger and the trigger so that, shot after shot, the automatic memory of the finger muscles takes over from the forebrain and provides a confident pull through the double springs that will not deflect the aim.
In two hours I put in fifty or sixty shots, taking time and taking care, checking the target and resetting the alignment of the scope, gradually allowing the negative feedback data to correct the aim until I was bunching a dozen inside the ten-ring. Then I stopped. The flinch that had accompanied the first shots had been exorcised; the right shoulder throbbed but had got the measure of the recoil; the eye was so used to the reticle that as I walked back to the clubhouse the after-image was superimposed on my vision, true to Emmert’s Law.
True to my own law I was ready for Kuo.
It had been unsafe to ask anyone at the club to deliver the Husqvarna: there was no one to receive it at the condemned building or the kite warehouse and I had no other reliable port of call. I therefore took it with me in the Toyota as far as the new car park just off Rama IV near the Link Road and walked from there, rounding three blocks to make sure of security.
Bangkok is a city whose temples have towers of gold and there are men of subtle style who must choose gold cloth for the adornment of their ritual.
I made my way to the condemned building like an unsuccessful salesman, a roll of cheap carpet under my arm.
Chapter 11
The Schedule
My last meeting with Loman before the day of the action took place at midnight on the 28th. He was much affected by the news that had gone out on the radio a few hours earlier.
In the sultry heat of the warehouse he looked cold, and as he talked to me his white face floated against the colors of the hanging kites. His eyes were bright but the rest of the polish had gone: it had been rubbed off, over the days, by the gradual realization of what he had set in train when he had first proposed to the Bureau in London that he should personally direct an agent to combat the assassination threat, and that the agent should be myself.
Loman had handled big operations involving the life and death of men who worked for him, and the fact that three of his agents had lost their lives under his direction was to his credit: a less brilliant officer would have suffered greater losses in the achievement of similar ends. He had taken risks - personal and physical risks - in the actual field and had proved his ordinary courage, as distinct from the extraordinary courage of responsibility to those men whom he sent out on missions known to be grossly dangerous.
But he had never exposed himself to the risk of failing in a mission that had to be carried through in the glare of international limelight, and that concerned the safety of a man whose death would grievously shock the whole of the civilized world.
The effects of even a big intelligence operation are never dramatic except to those who are immediately involved. The public reads that a Russian-Canadian wheat deal has fallen through, that the U.S. has withdrawn one of her nuclear submarine bases from Spain, that General X has resigned his post as Coordinator to the Combined Services Division. The public is not told that such events are often the outcome of intelligence missions and that the success of a given mission had depended upon the illegal duplicating of a certain document, or a journey by an unknown man across a certain frontier with a microdot apparatus strapped beneath the chassis of his car, or the placing of a bang-destruction unit inside the cupboard where a certain Foreign Office messenger keeps his dispatch bag.
It may happen that the unknown man crossing the frontier is arrested, searched and detained, and is subsequently shot dead trying to escape. A bang-destruction unit has twice been known to start a major fire and burn the building down. Small beer: the world goes on with its turning.
The mission inaugurated by Loman was unique. Worse, he was in the field with it. Worse still, he had persuaded the Bureau to let firm mount a routine operation that really belonged to other parties and had then been himself persuaded by a wildcat agent to sanction homicide as the mainspring of ‘the most sensitive operation he had ever been presented with.’
The polish was gone. The shine was off the plum and the fruit was bitter.
His own fault.
‘Have you been tuned-in?’ he asked me somberly.
I said I had. Since yesterday my intelligence sources lad been implemented by a pocket-size transistor and I had sat with it in the quiet of the condemned building with the volume turned right down and the speaker-grill pressed against my ear. There was an hourly broadcast every day until midnight giving the latest details of the official arrangements, and there were clues to be had. No plans were ‘as yet definite’ (the Home Office was still obviously worried), but there were some significant pointers buried among the handouts: the staff of the Children’s Hospital were looking ‘very spruce in their new uniforms as a result of the Charity drive’; Butri and Kaewsanan, two of Thailand’s champion boxers, had been engaged in ‘an entertaining series of training fights’ for the past few days. A visit to the Children’s Hospital would include Rajvithit Road; a stop at the Lumpini Boxing Stadium would take in part of Rama IV.
It was bad security on the part of the authorities and I was grateful. I still had to know the itinerary before we could be certain the set-up would work.
The main item of news had come in at 9:30 P.M. tonight.
Prince Udom had been taken ill.
‘What’s your reaction?’ Loman asked me.
‘Does it make any difference?’ Prince Udom was to have accompanied the Person in th
e motorcade, sitting at his side in the Cadillac. ‘Either he’s got cold feet or the Government’s put pressure on him to keep out of danger, since he’s a Minister and the strong man of the Cabinet.’
‘In either case the Palace fears an attempt.’
I looked at him in the dim light. ‘You must be pretty far gone. The Palace fears an attempt? We’re better informed. I’ve seen the gun delivered and located the sniping post and got a picture of the man who’s going to do the job. Are you worried because the Palace fears what we know?’
‘I mean,’ he said bleakly, ‘that it won’t make things easier for us if the general alarm sets in. They might decide to change the itinerary.’
‘There’d be some point to that if we knew what the itinerary was.’
‘We know.’
‘Come on, then.’
‘It will go via the Link Road.’
‘Thank Christ.’
So it was on. The set-up would work. The rendezvous was safe. The temple, the condemned building, Kuo, the Husqvarna - the gold cloth and the cheap carpet and the flowers and the crowd and, with luck, the overkill. I asked him, ‘How did you get it, Loman?’
‘From Pangsapa.’ He had an odd look in his eyes because of the way I’d spoken I’d sounded jubilant.
Why shouldn’t I? It was what I was here for. Kuo. ‘He made contact,’ Loman said. ‘He gave me the whole route.’
‘Anything else?’
‘One item. He reports that another man has joined the Kuo cell.’
‘Total of seven? Let ‘em all come.’ I should have given it thought. I didn’t. I was too busy feeling cocky, kicking my heels. ‘What was Pangsapa’s price?’
‘He didn’t ask for payment.’
‘Civil of him.’
Pangsapa had a nose for a bargain: it would pay him to keep in with us and share the success. It would cost us nothing but the slight trouble, afterward, of confirming officially that he had helped to safeguard the guest of his own beloved country. Loman wasn’t the only one eager for honors, but Pangsapa would use them to gain favor in high places. Inspection of his shipments would become perfunctory.
‘He urged me to keep him in contact with us,’ Loman said, ‘so that he can signal further information as soon as he has any.’
‘All right,’ I said, ‘but don’t lead him to me - don’t let him know where I am. Look out for tags - he hung one on me when I left his office two days ago and I had to flush him. Don’t let him crash the party. What about Scarface - did you warn her off me?’
‘She wasn’t outside when I looked for her.’
‘You bet she wasn’t.’
‘I found she was tagging me, as soon as—‘
‘You bet she was. Hoping you’d lead her back to me at some new place where we thought we’d be safe.’
‘I just led her to the Embassy.’ He added reflectively, ‘She’s with Mil. 6, you know.’
‘She’s what?’
‘Someone tipped me off.’
‘Mil. 6 is protecting the Bureau? From what? From precisely what?’
He said tonelessly: ‘We don’t know. That’s just it. We don’t know.’
‘Jesus Christ - the blind leading the blind!’ But something warned me. I was too jubilant, too cocky. Everything was set up: the rendezvous, Kuo, the Husqvarna - but there was this thing, this damned thing, that didn’t fit into any pattern at all. I don’t like mysteries.
The bounce had gone out of me. Like poor old Loman I was sobering up. ‘From Kuo?’ I asked him.
‘What?’
‘Does Mil. 6 think it can protect me from the Kuo cell?’
‘You are in no danger from Kuo. He is in danger from you.’
‘All right, what are they trying to protect me from?’
The colored kites hung motionless, muffling any echo, but it seemed my question echoed and I wished I could have bitten it back. I was getting too interested in my own skin, getting frightened because there was something I didn’t know about, couldn’t recognize, couldn’t fit in with known patterns. Stomach-think. Unhealthy. Let fear take over and you’re in the worst danger of all: danger from yourself.
There was only Kuo I had to deal with and he was a sitting duck.
Whatever it was that I didn’t know about wasn’t important. It seemed important just because I didn’t know about it. Turn the bloody thing inside out, make it make sense. Rationalize, brain-think it out and forget it.
There are always areas of the unknown in any operation. You start your mission and you light your lamps as you go, picking your way through the dark, making your journey from lamp to lamp and never looking back. But there are patches of dark and you skirt them, have to, because your lamps are too small to show you everything. They light only the way.
The kites hung without moving, their shapes strange and their colors garish and meaningless. Those nearest me were well-defined, identifiable. The others, gathered behind them in the deeper gloom, were the hosts of the unknown.
I must needs take comfort in the ancient lore of my trade. Fear springs from imagination and without imagination we cannot survive.
Loman hadn’t answered me. It didn’t matter. The question shouldn’t have been asked. I said:
‘Let’s have the dope. Schedule, people, so forth.’
‘Very well.’ He looked more confident. This was his home ground. The schedule remains unchanged. The Person will arrive in Bangkok tomorrow at 1150 hours in an aircraft of the Queen’s Flight captained by J.F. Wooldridge. On board will be Wing Commander G.M.G. Thompson, medical officer, Rear Admiral Charles Nixon-Thorpe, Superintendent Forsythe and Inspector L.W. Johns, Special Branch.’
Larry Johns. They’d blown up a River Police launch from under us on the Estuary thing in 1961. What was he doing shepherding VIP’s?
‘The plane will be met by the following: H.R.H. Prince Ruchirawong, Foreign Minister; Marshal Sumate Photicharoen, Governor of Bangkok; General Luen Punnaken of the Army; Air Marshal Gorinajdela; Admiral Suwannasorn; Sir William Cole-Verity, British Ambassador. Others present—‘
‘Will you be there?’
‘Of course.’
‘Is that when you start calling me up?’
He had sold me the idea of a two-way radio to keep me in touch with what went on. Since radios can become jammed inadvertently I had insisted on a fail-safe in Lumpini Park: a boy with a kite.
He said: They leave the airport at 1205, arriving at the Palace at 1300. That is when you’ll receive my introductory signal. Leaving the Palace after luncheon the Person arrives at the Embassy at 1525. He will stop there for fifteen minutes to congratulate the Ambassador’s staff on the success of British Week. He will therefore leave the Embassy at 1540 and take the shortest route to Rama IV by Lumpini Park, turning right toward the Link Road.’
‘No stops?’
‘No.’ He drew a breath and got it over quickly: The motorcade will arrive at the Link Road at 1550 or thereabouts.’
Ten minutes to four. The rendezvous. There’d be a bit of heat-haze but less exhaust gas than there was normally because traffic would have been stopped. It wasn’t a bad time of day for the job.
I looked at my watch.
‘Fair enough. Fifteen hours from now. Then you’re off the hook.’
‘The mission will be over,’ he replied thinly, ‘whichever way it goes.’
‘I’ll tell you which way it’ll go. You haven’t pushed me up and down every bloody street in this town for nothing. One fine day you’ll get your medal, Loman.’
He didn’t answer. His anxiety even inhibited anger. I asked him: ‘Only one thing left. What reactions have they been getting from the Person?’
‘They’ve had a lot of trouble with him, of course. He’s very difficult to handle in a case like this. He has refused to let them put any of the shields on the car.’
‘Rear plastic quarter-light’
‘Including that.’
It was important. The rear shield would cover a followin
g shot if for any reason at all Kuo failed to make a kill head-on. The oriels formed a ring round the temple and there was a gallery inside, and he could move round within a hundred and eighty degrees if he had to. No shield: no cover. I said:
‘Then I won’t have to miss.’
He looked away. The subject was distasteful to him.
Then he shouldn’t mix with the wrong people.
I said, ‘Why didn’t the Palace override his orders?’
‘They tried. The King had given instructions about shields but the Person got wind of it and wrote him a private letter. The gist of it was a reminder that His Majesty had been pleased to drive through the city of London in an open car at the time of his State Visit. The letter suggested that the rigors of an English April were surely more treacherous to the health than any inclemency to be expected in the city of Bangkok.’
‘Public Relations stuff?’
‘No. The letter was vouched for. You know how private a letter is, once the tenth secretary has passed it on for filing. Besides, it’s typical of the Person. He put his feelings in a nutshell for the Evening Standard when he said: ‘I want to be able to see the people, and some of them may want to see me.’ Behind the whole story is of course a very definite request: no shields. And behind that decision is his personal view of the situation - he feels he will best serve his country by demonstrating that anonymous threats are for the wastepaper basket.’ He looked down at his feet. ‘I rather wish we weren’t quite so responsible for the safety of quite so good a man.’
‘I’ve told you,’ I said, ‘I’d do it for the postman.’
His bright eyes came at me again, ‘But it’s a matter of consequences, isn’t it? You must have given it some thought.’
‘All right, you tell me. You’ve got one foot in the Embassy and the other in London. What are the consequences if we miss? Another Sarajevo?’
‘I don’t know.’ Almost petulantly he said, ‘I’ve never worked in an area of which I’ve known so little.’
