The phone rang and he picked it up. 'Yes? Sure.' He pulled a scratch pad towards him and got a pen from a drawer. 'OK. I have that, Sam. And listen, I never asked you about this guy, okay? I didn't even call you up. With the you-know-what connection, if there's any trouble it's going to be my ass. Or head.'
He asked about someone called Lee and said give him my best and rang off, tearing the top sheet from the pad and giving it to me. 'Okay, Dominic Lafarge is a French-born naturalised Thai subject and he's booked out on that flight in the morning. He got himself naturalised because he works for Shoda and she calls the shots. From the grapevine I use, Lafarge has lived in Thailand for the past ten or eleven years and at present he's the major source of the weaponry flowing into Shoda's hands and out again to the rebel forces in Indo-China.' He pressed his cigarette butt into the bowl. 'I don't know what he's doing in Singapore and I don't know why-he's flying to Bangkok in the morning, but if you asked me to make a bet I'd say he's very likely visiting his boss, because that's where she is right now.' He got a fresh cigarette. 'Make any sense?'
'This grapevine. How reliable is it?'
I hadn't expected this amount of luck, so early. I was desperate for access, because once I found a way in to Shoda and her organisation I could leave the deadly environment of the open ground and go clandestine and that would give me a tenfold chance of survival. And it would give me the mission.
'The grapevine I use,' Chen said, 'is better than most. What I've just told you about Lafarge is true, vouched for. I'm in the arms trade, okay? I therefore make it my business to know the others. So if you aim to tag on to this guy tomorrow you'll at least know he's the right guy. But what's going to happen to you at the other end of that flight, God knows – and don't hold me responsible. You'll be moving in to Shoda's territory.'
I got up and walked around and looked at the photographs and the black lace glove and the dried monkey's head and the cigarette packet with the bullet hole in it and then came back to talk to Johnny Chen and took a risk so big that my skin crawled.
'If I took that flight, I wouldn't want you to tell anyone.'
He got up and crushed out a butt and stuck his thin hands into his hip pocket and shrugged. 'It's your ass, Jordan, if anything goes wrong. But if anyone finds out you've got plans to take that flight, it won't be from me. I don't want your death on my hands.'
I cleaned my face up in the small sandalwood-scented bathroom before he showed me out through the back way, down some stairs and across a freight-storage hangar and through a door leading into an alleyway stacked with emptied crates and rubbish bins and oil drums, with only one high yellow lamp at the corner of the warehouse.
'Happy landings,' he said, and went back inside.
I spent thirty minutes checking the riverside environment before I walked into the open street and kept to whatever cover I could find, trying to talk myself out of the half-knowledge that I was driving myself into a trap and talk myself into believing that I'd got access – access to Shoda, and that tonight the mission had started running.
8 Flight 306
Will Mr Martin Jordan please pick up the nearest paging phone?' I didn't move.
It could only be Chen.
If I took that flight, I wouldn't want you to tell anyone.
I don't want your death on my hands.
So it could only be Chen because only Chen know I was here, except for the airline staff, and they wouldn't have me paged: they'd phone the gate desk. It could only be Chen, but the sweat had started running because I'd spent the last two hours securing the whole of the environment here – the check-in counters and the telephones and the snack bar and the gate area – because Gate 10 could be my way out of continuous and hazardous exposure above ground and my way into the safety of clandestine operation, and I had to go through it clean.
All I could do now was use the soft-eyes technique and let the immediate scene come into the brain unfocused and ask the memory to alert me to any change. There aren't many situations worse than finding yourself ten paces away from the break-off point between overt and clandestine and then have your cover name called out over a public address system. I took my time, half a minute, but couldn't pick up any. significant change in the movement around me: no one turned on their heel within seconds of the PA call; no one had started to move towards me; no one was going to a telephone.
So I moved now because if I didn't they'd repeat the call and I didn't want that. I picked up the phone.
'Yes?'
'Is that Mr Jordan?'
Ice along the nerves. It wasn't Chen. It was a woman's voice. And that was impossible. Correction: not impossible, no.
He'd blown me.
'Please, is that Mr Jordan?'
A young woman's voice; Asiatic, Japanese inflection.
I was still watching, but with hard eyes now, focusing, remembering. They were my friends here in this small comfortable area, my good friends. The three Australians over there were booked to play in Bangkok in the Royal Thai Tennis Championships; one of them had just had a row with his wife and wished he'd had time to make it up before he flew: he didn't like flying. The party of four people near the snack bar were from Milwaukee; they'd done Hong Kong and they'd done Tokyo and now they were going to do Bangkok, including the Phrakaeo Wat and the Royal Palace and the Reclining Buddha, and Elmer had said if they didn't take home a half-ton of souvenirs he'd never let them set foot in the Kawani's Club again. The two nuns by the gate were almost enveloping the teenage French girl in their black habits when I'd passed close to them twenty minutes ago; Maman had died at a hospital in Singapore yesterday and they were escorting her to Bangkok, where Papa was waiting for her; the body had been flown out last night.
I knew a great deal about the rest of the passengers gathered here in the small comfortable area at Gate 10, enough to know that they were my friends, my good friends, if only because none of them was here to trap me into a shut-ended situation and set me up for the kill. The only one here who wasn't my friend was the voice on the paging phone.
'It is very urgent, please. Are you Mr Jordan?'
I didn't answer. I needed time. If I said no, or just hung up, I wouldn't learn anything, and what I might learn could save me. If I said yes they'd get here as fast as they could and they might not be far away.
'We are now boarding passengers on Flight 306 for Bangkok. Will passengers for Bangkok please board at Gate 10.'
Things I didn't understand. The woman was phoning because she believed, they believed, I was here. Then why didn't they come here for me physically? Because they weren't certain, or there hadn't been time. Time since when? Since Chen had blown me. As far as liaison goes, you'll have to pick a few people yourself, if you can find anyone you can trust.
Chen. Katie McCorkadale.
But I'd known yesterday the risk I was taking when I'd asked Chen to keep total security on my taking this flight, and here was the moment of truth. There wasn't a lot of choice. If I dopped the phone and got out of the airport I might not be in time before they came in, and I wouldn't learn anything, anything this soft Asiatic voice on the telephone might tell me. If I stayed here and said yes, this is Mr Jordan, I could be doing precisely what they wanted me to do: let her keep on talking to give them time to close in.