by Adam Hall
‘Not quite. They got there first, that’s all, and took away the body to make sure it gets proper burial - they’re Chinese, remember. Then Kuo thought I might possibly show up there to see if they showed up there when the man was missed, so he sent someone along with orders to kill on sight.’
‘Those orders,’ Loman said, ‘will remain in force. At a time when the Kuo cell is desperate to conceal its activities and leave the city, they alert the entire complex of police services in an attempt to kill you in the noisiest possible way, believing a grenade to be more certain than a bullet.’ He stood looking down at me, brooding. ‘They are quite determined on getting you, therefore, and when they realize they have failed they’ll try again.’
I didn’t want to talk anymore because my hearing wasn’t back to normal and the room was tilting about a bit: they’d shot some dope into me in the operation room. But it was important that Loman should know that he still had a useful agent in the field and I told him:
‘Of course they’ll try again. We can rely on that. This is our first real break - it’s probably the only break we’ll get before both candidates are taken to the exchange point and we lose the mission. We’ve got to find them, and the quickest way is to let them find me, so they can try again.’ The whole room tilted and I heard Loman say something but I shut him up. ‘Listen. Get me some clobber. I finished up in rags. You know my size. And fix me some transport, something fast, case I need it.’ His bright eyes shone through darkening mist and I cursed the dope and said: ‘You’ll do that for me, Loman, won’t you? Togs and a banger, soon as I come to. Only chance. Give the bastard? some bait. Put me on the bloody hook and swing it. Listen, Loman, do what I—‘ Blackout.
I slept for eight hours and it was night. It took an hour to get into the new clothes Loman had sent in for me and to argue the toss with the hospital superintendent, who didn’t want to release me without a medical clearance from the surgeon; but I forced a personal responsibility quit form out of him and signed it and left. 9 P.M.
The pain was coming back as the last of the dope drained out of the nerves and 1 was glad of it because it goaded me into resolve: they’d set up a decoy and taken me in; they’d done an all-time snatch under my nose; Pangsapa had given me a lead and I’d mucked it and they were still holed-up and ready to make their break for the frontier. Now I had a chance and it was the only one I’d get and I would use it.
The streets were empty except for police. They wouldn’t be much help because a marksman, if Kuo had set one up, could pick me off as I went down the steps of the hospital. There had to be risks. They’d try again. Loman knew it. I knew it. But if the risks didn’t stack up too high there was a chance of exposing myself and surviving and getting a sight of them as they got clear. It was all we needed.
They knew the danger of that. The man on the roof knew he could get clear even if I survived the grenade, because even if he missed I wouldn’t be in any condition to sight him and follow up: But they meant to finish me and they’d have to take chances because they wanted to do it before they left the city and they were in a hurry now.
I walked down the steps and into the red sector.
There was no one waiting for me. They hadn’t expected me to leave so soon. They might not even know I was still alive. I would have to show them that I was. The bait had to be fresh.
The Embassy was five minutes away but it seemed a long walk because one of the fragments had pierced a shoe and bruised the foot and because every movement in the whole of the vision field had to be checked. I wanted the pain to go on, life to go on.
Five minutes for thinking. There were several reasons why they had suddenly decided to kill me. 1) They thought I might have learned something from the Chinese before he was killed and might try to use it for a solo operation without telling the police. 2) They believed it now to be certain that they could get the Person out of the city and to the exchange point; I was therefore no longer a reserve candidate and had become expendable, so that any danger I might offer must be taken care of. 3) Vengeance: the Chinese had been valued by the cell.
Question: Were they so determined to kill me that one of them would be ordered to stay behind for that purpose when the main cell left?
I reached the British Embassy and went up the steps. I don’t like steps: they are placed at exits and entrances where a watch can be kept, and the target is raised and has no cover. I wanted to be shot at, not shot, and the fine distinction got on my nerves.
Loman wasn’t at the Embassy, but he’d left some keys for me and I went down to the street again and found the all-black hardtop E-type parked at the curb a little way along. I had told Loman something fast and he had picked a black one to be inconspicuous, with a hardtop in case I rolled it. He was good about details like that.
Assume the adverse party knew that the grenade had only injured me and that the nearest emergency medical post from the warehouse was the Police Hospital. They would look for me in three places: the Police Hospital, the British Embassy and the Pakchong Hotel. First two places negative.
I drove to the Pakchong Hotel.
And they tried again.
Chapter 23
Breakout
The Pakchong had taken on the chimerical quality of a Fellini film: people appeared from the shadows bearing candles, their faces floating in the light and vanishing as they turned away; gold leaf glimmered along fluted columns supporting invisible skies; voices piped through the gloom.
The concierge wreathed me in garlands of apologies: the mains had fused but there were electricians already at work. The elevator was inoperative but a page would of course escort me, lighting the way to my room. I said it was not necessary and took the proffered candle on a dish, going up by the stairs. More candles burned along the passages in bowls and basins on the floor, and my shadow leaped on me and sprang away as I passed them.
There was one of the usual Saraburi rugs in the alcove near the stairhead and I rolled it into ten or twelve thicknesses and held it in front of me as a shield before I kicked the door of my room wide open and went in.
Five shots, in rapid succession, heavily silenced.
At each shot I crumpled lower and brought the rug higher because the face always feels so vulnerable and you know the surgeon will have more room to work in the gross flaccid organs of the body if he can get at you in time.
But it’s not pleasant, even with some kind of shield: a bullet has a lot of force behind it and your stomach shrinks and feels knot-hard until it’s over.
The vague form had gone from the window by the time I was on the floor but I gave him a few seconds and lay there with the sweat breaking out and the fibrous smell of the rug against my face. The candle had gone out when it had fallen and the dish had made a crash on the mosaic.
It took half an hour to make sure I’d lost him: survey of balconies, adjoining rooms, fire escape, street. Then I went into the bar and drank a Greek Metaxa brandy, ashamed at the weakness and then angry with the shame, flinging up excuses; my brain had pushed my body into almost certain gunfire when I’d gone into that room because I never believe in a natural cause for a mains fuse in any hotel where I’m staying; and the grenade wounds were still fresh enough to make the body cringe at the thought of further punishment.
The bloody thing got its own back now; it wanted to sleep, brandy or no, so I just telephoned Loman and found him in and told him there’d been another party and then went upstairs again and dragged a blanket into the bathroom and locked the door. Went out like a light.
It was tricky the next day because they wanted to keep me under observation at the hospital when I showed up there to have the dressings changed, and it finished in a row. The medical staff was all right because as far as they were concerned there was a bed waiting for me and if I chose to trot about the town and burst all the stitches it was up to me, but it was a police hospital and they knew I was working on the snatch pitch and they were getting desperate for a lead: the warehouse area w
as still under hawk like surveillance on the typical police principle of shutting the doors after the horse, etc.
The close-knit Saraburi rug had absorbed all five shots because the silencer had cut down the fire power, and there was nothing to show on me. If the nurse had seen a new injury - especially bullet - she would have made a report and they’d have put me into a strait-jacket till Ramin came to grill me.
I had to send for Loman to help me with the row and he got me clear of the place. In the car outside he looked at me and said: ‘How long are you going to keep this up?’
‘Till they expose their location.’
‘Or until you push the risk too far.’
‘We haven’t started yet.’
‘I think I’m on the point of pulling you out.’
‘For Christ’s sake, Loman, you can’t stop me now. It’s our last chance.’
He went on watching me and I was fed up with it.
‘I’m responsible for you, Quiller. You’re nearing the stage when you’ll no longer be in operational condition mentally or physically.’
He would not speak English and it annoyed me and I said, ‘Listen, I know I look like a bit of dried shit on a doorstep but you can’t expect me to look like anything else, you know that. Pull me out now and the mission goes right up the spout.’
It worried me because he had the authority to do it. He never liked his people to get into a red sector. Typical governess. I said: ‘We’re using me as the bait, aren’t we? That’s our policy. Don’t start getting the wind up now that it looks like paying off.’
We went on for a bit like that and then I got rid of him by saying I was going to bed for a couple of hours at the hotel. He knew Mil. 6 was still on the job, watching the place, though I hadn’t seen Vinia. If I saw her I would tell her to clear out. It was getting dangerous now.
Loman went back to the Embassy and I took the E-type to the Pakchong and left it round the back; the Kuo cell knew I had it but I didn’t want to keep impressing it on their memory. Then I walked about in the area, and nothing happened, so I walked as far as the Embassy and back, giving them easy chances but not before checking and doubling so that if they missed I could try following up. Nothing happened.
After the grenade thing they’d found out fast enough that I was still alive: they’d sent a man to the Pakchong as soon as I’d left the hospital. Now they were being slow and it scared me because it looked as if they were concentrating on the final breakout and couldn’t waste any more time on me.
Loman had said we had forty-eight hours and half that period had already gone. While 1 was wandering uselessly round Bangkok, there was an airplane somewhere over the Near East land mass heading for the Chinese frontier with Huang Hsiung Lee sitting with two Special Service guards from London. The cable-lines would be crackling with coded signals detailing final arrangements for the exchange.
In the afternoon I decided to increase the risk. The main Kuo cell would be too busy setting up the break to spare more than one man to look after me. He might not be very good: a first-class marksman but not so good at tagging or static surveillance. He might have lost me a dozen times while he tried to set up a shot from a point safe enough to guarantee his getting away without alerting the police patrols.
A vehicle of known aspect provides a better image than a walking man. I got into the E-type and drove to the Embassy, leaving it right outside in the prohibited area for ten minutes, behind the Ambassador’s Humber Imperial, and then coming out again, taking the steps a bit quick and checking doorways, windows, parked cars.
I was willing them to shoot and the nerves were sickening for death: I could hear the discharge and feel the bullet breaking through the flesh, could taste the blood in the mouth.
The street was innocent.
Down from Plern Chit into Vithayu and through to Lumpini southward, driving slowly, checking the mirror, taking time at lights in getting away, giving them a chance at every fifty yards. The midafternoon traffic was heavy along Rama IV and a jam was piling up near the Link Road. The sun’s heat pressed down; its light shimmered across the facades of buildings.
The hum of engines was a soporific; my eyes were hypnotized by the wink of the sun on glass; exhaust haze hung mauve along the street’s canyon. The jam began clearing and I changed from first to second and kept to the slow lane and heard the faint tinkle of glass breaking somewhere near me, somewhere inside the car - something had flashed but I didn’t know what - it wasn’t a gun.
The animal brain was already at work, anxious for explanation. The forebrain went into the routine: check environment and note essentials. Then the body took control as the first fumes of the cyanide reached the lungs. The throat blocked and the diaphragm contracted and I was fighting to keep the car in a straight line as the tears began blurring the vision and the lungs gaped for oxygen and the throat remained blocked because the brain knew there was no oxygen, no air, only a cockpit full of colorless cyanide gas - the quick one, the deadly one, C2N2 the one the Germans had chosen for the Jews because it was the most efficient.
Metal shrieked and someone called out and a front wheel bounced against the curb and I had the door open as the handbrake dragged the treads along the tarmac, slowing the car to a stop.
Doubled up on the pavement, blinded by tears, hands at the stomach, the first clean air soaring into the lungs through the inflamed throat and pushing out again. The smell of walnuts from the fumes still clinging to my clothes.
People gathering. Voices. ‘Taken sick … Only the lamppost, . . Telephone … A doctor? … Going slowly … Nearly hit—‘
I lurched across the curb and got between them and the open window of the car in case they went too close.
Even whispering was painful. ‘All right now. Please go away. I’m better now. Go away.’ The tears kept on streaming and I saw the people through them, their faces distorted, a woman pulling a child away, a man nodding encouragement as I straightened up. ‘Please go away - I’m all right now.’
The air was dragged in, forced out, dragged in, as the lungs hungered for it. The body could look after itself: it was the brain I was more concerned with, because we’d pulled off the trick, I knew where they were now, I knew where they were, we’d pulled off the bloody trick.
It took fifteen minutes to clear the cockpit, using the door as a slow fan, standing with my breath held and my eyes shut, moving away to breathe at intervals, coming back to proceed with the fanning until it was safe to get in.
The front wing had clipped the lamppost and there were skidmarks but that was about all. The fragments of the glass bulb were in the footwell. They had taken their chance, waiting for the traffic jam to clear and then accelerating past, lobbing the gas bomb through the open window on the other side and speeding up without a hope in hell of my following.
It didn’t matter. The forebrain routine had been running automatically, checking environment and essentials. Three were significant: the driver of the Honda alongside had his head turned away from me; he had accelerated fast into the gap ahead; and the car had diplomatic plates.
Loman was wrong.
The Kuo cell had not set up an alternative plan for holding the Person immediately after the snatch. They had been confident of getting him clear of the city in the ambulance. When my call to Room 6 had stopped their run they had made for the only place available to them, the only place where they would be admitted without question and sheltered in absolute secrecy, the only place in Bangkok that stood on Chinese soil. The Chinese Embassy.
I drove there now, leaving the E-type at the top end of Soi Som Kit and walking into Phet Buri Road, going into the Maprao Bar and using the telephone. The time factor was critical now because they might think the gas bomb had worked, and if it were for some reason essential to kill me before they left the city they would make their break as soon as the Honda returned to base. It would now have done that.
I couldn’t see the entrance of the Chinese Embassy from where I stood at the t
elephone but I was near enough to be on hand if anything happened. I didn’t know what was likely to happen because it depended on Loman. I thought he would probably signal Ramin and get a cordon round the place. That was all right; it would take the pressure off me. Two of the shrapnel wounds had broken their stitches and my jacket was stuck to the shoulder blade; the left hand felt tender and the cyanide had inflamed the throat. I’d located the Kuo base and the police could take it from there. The only thing that mattered was getting the Person to safety and stopping the exchange and it made no odds who did it.
The line to the British Embassy was engaged and I tried another one, watching the street, watching every face that passed, listening to the ringing tone and the raised beat of my pulse in the eardrum.
The line opened and I asked for Room 6.
The late afternoon sun fell obliquely across the street and cast strong shadows opposite. A Chinese came into the bar and I checked him but he wasn’t one of the cell. Embassy staff.
Vinia came on the line and my thoughts tripped fractionally as they always would whenever I heard her voice again.
‘Loman,’ I told her. ‘Urgent.’
‘He’s talking to the Ambassador - shall I get him?’
‘Please. Fast.’
I waited.
She wouldn’t wear it again because the legend was ended. Her thigh would lose the disfiguring mark it had made and her mind would lose the disfiguring mark left by the memory of what they had done to him and the way they had done it.
You shouldn’t think about anything but the mission, every day, hour, minute, second - because you can miss a trick if you even blink.
I nearly missed it but not quite.
Dropped the phone and threw a note on the bar and got out and walked fast, but not too fast, to the top of Soi Som Kit - not too fast because if they’d left a cover he’d be on to me and drop me with a shot because now they were serious and it was the breakout.
It was a black Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow that had passed the window and it was flying the British Embassy pennant at the wingtip and there were only two things wrong with that: Cole-Verity’s official vehicle was a Humber Imperial, and the pennant would be flown only when he was riding in it. At this moment he was at the Embassy talking to Loman.
