But this was a public place.
'It is very urgent, please. Are you Mr Jordan?''
This was a public place and there wouldn't be anything they could do until I tried to get clear at the periphery and there was a chance, a thin chance.
'Yes.'
There was an echo, but not on the line, in the psyche.
'Mr Martin Jordan?'
'Yes.'
I began watching the walkway area, where they would have to come.
' Will passengers on Flight 306 please board at Gate 10. We are boarding now for Bangkok?I saw Lafarge going through with his two bodyguards. I'd seen them when they'd come into the gate area: Lafarge, dark, elegant, his initials on his pigskin briefcase, the case chained to his left wrist; his guards, unobtrusive, shut-faced, tough, trained. Others followed: the two nuns with the little girl; the Americans.
I watched the walkway, not taking my eyes away for an instant. They would not be my friends, when they came.
'Mr Jordan, you must not board that plane.'
A man came running, a man in a track-suit with a flight bag, running towards me along the walkway, and I felt my nerves set, ready for preservation.
'Mr Jordan, do you understand? You must not take Flight 306.'
Running hard but not towards me now, veering for the group at the gate – 'Hey, Charlie, tell 'em to wait? Or they'll start the tennis match without you, my son.
So I mustn't take this flight. Why not, you little bitch? Sweat running.
'All passengers must now board Flight 306 for Bangkok at Gate 10. We are leaving in five minutes'
It tallied with the figures on the departure screen.
'Mr Jordan.' She didn't sound impatient. She sounded concerned, emphatic. 'Please tell me that you understand what I am saying. It is very urgent.'
Not very. I've got five minutes.
I asked her: 'Who are you?'
'It is not important, Mr Jordan. I have information that concerns your welfare. There will be an accident, do you understand?'
'What kind of accident?'
To the plane. To Flight 306.'
'Then you'd better tell someone. The pilot might be interested.'
The timing was becoming critical, and I began watching the walkway half the time and the departure gate half the time. I didn't know if I could learn anything more from the soft, urgent little voice on the line, or whether this was alclass="underline" that someone – Shoda? — was trying to stop me boarding the flight for Bangkok. The time gap was narrowing quite fast now and the best way I could use it would be to stay here on the line in the hope of learning something more, and wait until the girl at the gate began closing it – then get there, get on the plane. If anyone came along the walkway who looked dangerous I could go through the gate anyway and they wouldn't be able to follow: if they came here for me at all they'd be in a hurry, getting here while the woman kept me on the line.
'This is the final call for passengers on Flight 306 for Bangkok.'
Two more people went through and the girl looked around the gate area for stragglers, checking her passenger list and finding one missing. There was nothing she could do about it. All she could see was a man using a paging phone.
'Are you still there, Mr Jordan?'
'Yes. What is the source of your information?'
'It is reliable. I am your friend, Mr Jordan. Please listen to me. There will be no survivors on Flight 306. You must not take it.'
'All right, I'll go and warn the crew.'
'They would not believe you.'
'Any more than I believe you.'
For the first time her voice had a note of impatience, the hint of a sigh. Not impatience, exactly. Resignation. 'If you wish to live, Mr Jordan, you must not take the plane. That is all I can do for you.'
Maybe if I told the girl at the gate I was officially working for the Thai government and showed the laissez-passer that Prince Kityakara had given me she'd at least tell the captain, but I still had no source to offer except a voice on a telephone.
'What kind of accident will it be? Is there a bomb on board?' If I could give them any details they might listen.
'I must go now, Mr Jordan. I am sorry. There will be no survivors?
The girl at the gate was giving herself a manicure, one pantyhosed leg crooked, her head tilted in concentration.
'I am going now,' the voice on the line told me.
There was something getting through to me but I didn't know what it was; it was simply a feeling. There wasn't time to work out the dozen or so explanations for this call on the paging phone. A decision had to be made and it had to be made now and there was absolutely no reason to think that this wasn't a crude last-minute attempt to keep me here in Singapore and on treacherous open ground instead of going to the gate and apologizing to the girl and slipping through to the safety of clandestine operations, but I listened to the voice – not hers, not the voice on the line, but the one in my head, in the primitive brain stem, the seat of intuition.
'I'm taking the flight,' I said, on the principle that if you change direction you must cover your tracks. Then I put the phone down and went over to the gate and showed my Thai Government credentials and told the girl that I'd learned from an unidentifiable source that Flight 306 to Bangkok was compromised.
She phoned the agent at the other end of the runnel and I was put on to the captain direct as I watched the starboard wing moving slowly past the window; the 727 was backing under tow and over the phone I could catch the co-pilot going through the routine checks with the tower. The captain asked me the expected questions and I hadn't got any answers. I told him that to satisfy myself I wanted him to know that an unidentified woman's voice on a paging-phone had told me that his aircraft would 'have an accident'.
Two of the airline's officials came along to the gate and talked to me but there wasn't anything I could add and they finally told me that the security checks at this airport were the most sophisticated in the world and that I'd probably been the victim of a hoax. My name was noted and I was thanked for my concern.
Eleven minutes later I watched Flight 306 turn heavily at the end of the taxiing road and line up with the runway and wait for the green and then gun up and start rolling. It was airborne at 10:17, on schedule.
It was then that I knew that because of touchy nerves I'd let Shoda set me up, and that my chances of seeing nightfall would have been infinitely greater on Flight 306 than here on the ground in Singapore where she knew how to find me.
She swung round on the staircase.
'Martin?
Framed by the light from a high window, her hair was still moving, her lips parted, her eyes wide, shadowed.
I said hello.
She came down slowly, not looking away from me, one foot faltering in its high-heeled sandal, her thin hand sliding down the banister-rail as if she were feeling her way. When she came down the last step she was still watching me, mesmerised; then she just look a pace and leaned against me with her head on my shoulder and stayed perfectly still. In a whisper, 'Oh, thank God?
I held her until in a minute she straightened up; her eyes were wet and she lifted a cupped hand, tilting her head, 'Oh bugger, can you help me? Bloody contacts, they always float loose when I cry.'
We found it in the palm of her hand and she got it back deftly on the tip of her finger, and I wondered how much practice she'd had, how often she'd cried, because of Stephen.
She looked at me steadily again. 'Why weren't you on board?'
I didn't answer. There was a lot to work out.