by Adam Hall
The telephone had begun and he had the receiver to his ear before the second ring.
‘Speaking.’
He jerked his head to me and I went over and took the line. Her voice was cool and slow and all she said was: ‘I have a call for you.’
Now I would have to face it.
‘Were you successful?’ He didn’t give his name.
‘No.’
‘What happened?’
‘I lost the chance.’
We couldn’t say anything much in case the line was bugged. He asked evenly:
‘It was not the fault of our contact?’ He meant the Hindu.
‘No. He was very efficient. It was my own fault.’
Loman was staring at me and I looked away.
‘It is difficult for you. They are desperate now. I hope for further information. If I obtain it I shall need to pass it to you without any delay. Can you hold yourself immediately available?’
‘Yes. Rely on that.’
‘I shall do so.’
Someone was banging at the door and Loman went over to it as I put the receiver down. It was one of the Embassy staff and Loman spoke to him and turned back to me. ‘Important?’
‘Fishmonger.’
‘Will it wait?’
‘Yes.’
He nodded and went out. We had given Pangsapa that cover name because of the tank with its blood-red water.
I was alone and wanted to pick up the phone again and ask her was she all right but there was no point. She was all right. All I really wanted was to hear her voice again, just because it was possible, as the pain in my hand was possible.
The police surgeon had put five stitches in and asked some questions, but I told him I’d caught it in the lavatory seat and he’d shut up and got on with the job.
The strangeness had lingered because of the big paper kites and because of the close companionship to death in the final second: imagination had flared up. One of the kites had been directly behind the Chinese as he stood there with the gun held in the killing attitude, and the kite was one of those with a face painted on it, so that I saw their three faces in succession.
The face of the Chinese was impassive in the instant of the gun’s firing, then it opened in surprise as he began falling. He fell slowly, and as he fell he revealed the second face, the face of the paper kite, fierce-eyed and cruelly fanged. She moved from the edge of the kite to watch him fall and her face, the third face, was squeezed in a grimace of loathing as she stood looking down. Then it cleared and she closed her eyes, and her face had the calm of a sleeping child.
The Chinese hadn’t moved. Blood came from the hole in his neck. She had shot for the third vertebra in the cervical region, smashing it and severing the nerves. It was a surgically accurate shot, consideration having been taken of the limitations of so small a gun.
The fumes rose from the little barrel, gray in the sunshine that fell from the skylights. She opened her eyes and I stepped over the body and took the gun from her. She wouldn’t want it any more. This was her one fine day and the legend of Halfmask was ended.
We walked to the Embassy, taking our time. The park was on our way and we walked slowly under the magnolias like lovers. I didn’t speak because she had the trauma to deal with but she felt like talking and she talked about ordinary things.
‘Lawson phoned me soon after dawn and said you’d flushed him near Telephone House, so we put out the usual alert. He went back to your hotel and Green was sent to cover Soi Suek 3. I took the warehouse. It was just the way things went - it could have been any permutation.’
She reached once for my hand, quickly and suddenly, and I felt the tremor shaking her. She had killed because of what they had done to Richard: I had given her the excuse, that was all. It would take time for her to justify and forget.
Her fingers moved and I let them free. She said:
‘I saw the car backing up - the Lincoln - so I went in by another door in case there was something I could do.’
I knew that her group had the keys to the place; she had opened a door there before, the night she had tagged Loman.
‘He would’ - and she had to get a breath and have another go - ‘he would have killed you, wouldn’t he? Otherwise?’
‘In the next half second.’
Justify and forget.
‘I don’t mean—‘
‘I know,’ I said.
‘I’d have done it anyway, one day, for any reason. I’m glad it was you.’
The magnolias floated their leaves on a sky bluer than I had ever seen it; we walked through gold light. I said, ‘I’m not complaining.’
She began laughing softly but it went on and turned strident and I said sharply, ‘Cut that out.’ She was all right after that and I put her into a cab and told the driver the British Embassy, and walked on to the Police Hospital a few blocks away to get the hand fixed up.
Loman came back in ten minutes and didn’t say why he’d been called away: they like playing it big when they’re in the field with the agent—‘I have been on the direct Embassy line to the Bureau twice in the last hour.’ That sort of thing.
‘What did Fishmonger want?’
‘Requests availability.’
‘He is a very good man,’ Loman said. ‘Don’t underestimate his resources as an informant.’
‘Christ, I know that. He gave me a lead this morning and it could have been good - damned good.’
He stood absolutely still, listening.
‘Well?’
‘No go. I got myself cornered. One dead.’
He nodded. ‘Do you need any smoke out?’
‘No.’ It was like that with Loman. Just when you wondered how much longer you could stand him he said something nice. He should have stood on my face for losing a good lead when we were desperate for one.
He was halfway to the phone when I stopped him. ‘I passed it to local SB from the hospital when I was waiting for them to fix my hand. Black Lincoln, Bangkok registered, number and everything, spring-gun dart lodged in the rear door, inside - if they ever get the chance to look for it.’
He asked me about directions, coming and going, so forth, and I told him the essentials. He didn’t ask about the bump: providing I didn’t need smoke out he was satisfied.
‘Perhaps they can find it,’ he said. ‘There aren’t many Lincolns. But they won’t pass it to the Metropolitan for a general search - you know Special Branch sensitivities, the world over.’ He turned away and asked, ‘You didn’t report the casualty?’
‘No.’ It is always left to the discretion of the intelligence director in the field whether a killing is reported or not. Circumstances vary. ‘You mind holding off, Loman?’
‘Reason?’
‘There’s some more to do in that area and I’d like it kept clear for a bit. Give it a few hours.’
He considered. ‘Very well.’
He was playing me softly today because we looked like losing the mission and he didn’t want to stack up any blame for wrong decisions. He was leaving things as much as possible to me: it was the only lesson he’d learned. I liked working alone and he knew he’d have to let me. But he still thought we were going to lose.
I looked at my watch. They’d had an hour and a half.
‘I’ll report as necessary.’
‘If Pangsapa has anything for you … ?’
‘Have you a lead, Quiller?’
‘Straight run or a dead end, one or the other.’ There was nothing for him to do but give me the overall score. ‘We have something like forty-eight hours,’ he said. That is the period within which they can get Huang Hsiung Lee from Durham to London and by air to the Chinese frontier. The Kuo cell will know this. They will know that the deal is going to be accepted and that no one must waste any time in getting both parties to the exchange point. Kuo will make an all-out attempt to leave Bangkok today or tomorrow.’ He came with me as far as the door. ‘The feeling in England is still one of shock and grave anxiety. Th
e general public knows only that the Person is missing and in danger. That is of course still true. Among those few in Whitehall who know of the exchange offer there is an added anxiety -that the exchange will have to go through and that we shall hand over, with Lee, a weapon of awesome potential to a Communist state.’
I said: ‘Forty-eight hours. You can do a lot in that time. But we’ll want some luck. Christ, we’ll want some luck.’
I took a cab there and got out near the warehouse and walked as far as the door in the alley. I didn’t hope for much but it had to be tried. The Chinese had told the chauffeur that he would be back at base in an hour. Thirty minutes ago they would have begun to worry. It would take another thirty to convince them that he’d got fouled up somewhere. If they could stand the strain of not knowing, they’d forget him. I didn’t think they could stand the strain in their present situation: they had to find out for certain that he hadn’t been grabbed, that he wasn’t being grilled by professional police interrogators after the potassium-cyanide pill had been forced out of his fingers in time. They had to know if they were still safe, that their base wasn’t quietly being ringed around with police in depth at this precise minute.
They would have to pick a lock or break a door and I didn’t know which door they’d go for so I’d have to be inside when they came. I didn’t have a gun because there wouldn’t be any necessity: if they came at all they wouldn’t even know I was here. The operation would begin when they left, and tried to get back to base without my tagging them there.
If I could do that …
The alley was clear. I had gone the whole way round the warehouse, cat’s-eyed. Now I went in, using the keys and locking the door after me because that was how they’d expect to find it. Then I turned round.
The dead Chinese had gone.
I stood very still.
Small pool of blood still on the boards, darkening. Kites motionless. No sound.
The nerve-chill was creeping down my spine but I made myself stand and watch the big paper kites for two minutes. They were excellent cover because of sound absorption, but anyone taking a single step from behind any one of them would set it moving, however slightly.
They hung dead still.
Findings: Chauffeur reported situation but Kuo had not waited, had been worried that Chinese was alone with adverse party even though in control. A man ordered here straight away to ensure security. Body found and removed.
I was a little too bloody late.
Very quiet in here. Five minutes to look around. A lot of self-anger, frustration, contempt churning up in the stomach while I tried to think, tried to hope there was still a chance, that they still hadn’t gone.
But they’d gone, and I unlocked the door and went out and caught sight of sudden movement at the edge of the vision field. I plunged into a run that pitched me down a dozen yards from the door as the blast came and the shrapnel tore at my clothes and my ears were blocked by the explosion.
Chapter 22
Bait
Reaction time covers three phases: time required to sense the signal, to decide on the correct response, and to respond. Affective factors: age, state of health, fatigue, alcohol, caffeine, so forth. Greatest artificial influential factor: training (i.e. habit formation).
The typical reaction time of a jet pilot receiving a visual signal (unexpected approach of another aircraft) is 1.7 seconds, this total comprising 0.9 seconds to sight, focus and evaluate visual signal, 0.5 seconds to reach decision (evasive action), and 0.3 seconds to respond (move controls). A period of intensive training by ground simulation (bombardment of spasmodic signals) will reduce the reaction time to less than half, and such training - even after a lapse of years - will continue to effect reduction to a smaller extent.
Stimuli in descending order of speed: sight, sound, touch, smell, taste.
In the fastest group (sight) another speed factor comes into play. A signal appearing in the twelve o’clock sector of the vision field (at the top) will produce the fastest reaction. (One is quicker to move when something approaches from above - a falling rock - than from below - a leaping dog.)
It was to my advantage that when I came out of the warehouse into the alley the signal was visual and in the top sector - both fast-group stimuli. But my biggest advantage was in the residual effects of training. It was two years since my last refresher at the house in Norfolk known as the Box of Squibs, but good habits were still operative. (They lob soot bombs at you and top marks go to the cleanest face.)
The result was that my prone body was sliding face-down against the wall a fair distance from the burst when the thing went off, and that I finished up in the correct attitude pointing away from the explosion with my face protected and my legs together with the soles of my shoes acting as a shield.
The three phases went like this. 1) Sighting of signal and interpretation. A man on the roof opposite the warehouse was raising one arm and his hand looked big. Interpretation: the ‘bigness’ was probably a grenade. 2) Decision. Evade the danger specifically relevant to an explosion. (It was a special type of decision, leading automatically to the next phase: response. The decision to avoid a bullet would lead to a different type of response, because a bullet could reach my body infinitely faster than a grenade.) 3) Response. In this case the response factor took far longer to operate than in the case of a pilot taking action to avoid another aircraft, because all he has to do is hit the controls. To respond to the threat of a grenade-burst the subconscious has to evaluate a mass of data: the angle of the thrower’s arm, which governs the time period from the beginning to the end of the throw; the size (and thus the weight) of the grenade - data which affects the time taken to throw it (the heavier the slower) and the degree of explosive force; the distance of the thrower to the intended point of impact; the height of the thrower above that point (gravity aiding momentum); and all factors pertaining, which include mass, inertia, trajectory, air resistance, so forth.
Response passes to action: the body moves. But it must know how to move. Data evaluated has advised that the thrower’s hand will take something like one second to swing back, jerk forward and release the grenade, and that the grenade will take longer than one second (as long as 1.5) to travel to the intended impact point, and will take a further second to fire and disintegrate (according to the type of mechanism). The response thus takes one of two almost opposite forms: with less than one second available for the evasive action the target will simply drop flat and try to swing his body away from the direction of the throw; but with more time available he will try to put distance between himself and the explosion.
The decision made for me by instinct was to respond according to the second form, but the responsibility of the instinct did not end there. I was to run, but must be in a prone position in the instant of the explosion. Instinctual commands to the motor nerves were thus elaborate: I must run as fast and as far as possible but allow time for my body to drop flat and draw its legs together a millisecond before the grenade burst.
Three psychological factors were helpful: I was under the influence of mixed emotions - shock at the discovery that the body of the Chinese had been removed, anger because I had arrived too late, and fear that it was a trap set for me. The nerves were therefore prestimulated and conditioned to fast action.
During the full period of three and a half seconds conscious thought was uninvolved. The instinctive animal processes took over complete control in a spontaneous attempt to protect the organism. It was successful.
The blast wave ripped the jacket from my back and shrapnel fragments hammered into the soles of my shoes. Masonry broke into chips and fluted through the air. Something crashed down near my head and broke up. As the eardrums were relieved from the sonic pressure of the explosion I heard the scream of sirens. Half a minute later there was the sound of running feet as police approached from one end of the alley.
I began slowly to get up, and they helped me.
Two hours later I telephon
ed the British Embassy and asked for Room 6 and got Loman.
‘Look, I’m stuck in a private ward at the Police Hospital and they want to ask a lot of bloody questions. Get me out, will you?’
Slight pause. ‘This road?’
‘Yes. Do something soon. I’m fed up.’
He said he would come. It was less than five minutes’ walk.
The surgeon had had me on the operating table for fifty minutes: shrapnel lacerations left calf, both shoulders, back of skull; abrasions and contusions both knees, elbows, rib cage; stitches in left hand opened up. He was the same one who had fixed the hand this morning and I told him I’d fallen down a lift shaft, but this time he was annoyed and said the injuries weren’t consistent. He reported ‘wounds inflicted by foul play’ and satisfied himself that the Special Branch knew about me.
They were on to me anyway, because the explosion had shaken everyone up and they thought it might be connected with the abduction crisis. Three of their people were round my bed when Loman came. I told him:
‘I can’t give them anything, Loman. A man slung an egg and then took off and that’s all I know. For God’s sake get them out of here so I can think.’
They understood English perfectly and didn’t like it and Loman had to promise them a full statement as soon as I was fit enough to prepare one for them.
When we were alone I gave him a quick breakdown on the whole thing: Lincoln sedan, scene in warehouse, return to warehouse, body-snatch, grenade attempt. I didn’t name Vinia but said it was someone who happened to be handy. He knew it must have been one of the Mil. 6 group but it was safe enough: rivalry and friction is rife between all hush services but there is a tacit law that I have never once seen flouted. Nobody sneaks.
Loman said conclusively: ‘It was a trap.’
