'Thank you.'
16:21.
Pepperidge. I went down the stairs, the nerves going slack like the cut string of a cello, the legs without any strength in them, where the hell had he been all this time?
I picked up the phone and said hello.
'Mr Jordan?'
'Yes.'
'This is Sayako. Kishnar has just left Bangkok.'
Three hours' flight.
Countdown.
15 Whistling
Tequila Sunrise. Tote, Penang: $43, $19, $13. Fruit smells from the street. 'How do you know?'
'I know.'
In the third race, Saracen, Chacha Mambo, Honest Injun.
'Is he alone?'
Tote, Penang: $12, $5, $26. The winner 'He always alone.'
I took a slow breath, centring.
The trainer was Lint Hock Chan.
Radio.
'Sayako-san, you may be mistaken.'
It was an attempt to draw her out, that was all.
Tote, Singapore: $23, $14, $22.
Red plastic radio at the end of the bar.
'Not mistaken.'
Stink of sweat but the nerves steadying now.
In the fifth race, Mudlark II, Chankara, Bumble Bee.
I mentally tuned the thing out. The nerves were steadying because now it was certain, and all assumptions were blown away. Certain that he was coming.
'Mr Jordan?'
'Yes.'
'Also, your hotel is being watched.'
'I know.'
'Ah, so. It is then very difficult for you. In some way you must leave hotel.'
Trying to flush you from cover.
No. She saved my life, remember?
I said, 'All right.' No point telling her there wasn't a chance.
Be very cartful.
Oh, shut up. She warned me he'd been ordered to make the kill. Wasn't that in my interests?
'Listen, please, Mr Jordan. I will do what I can for you. But there are many watching.'
'Yes.'
I could see one of them through the window, the Chinese karateka.
'I wish for you' – there was a break on the line, or she'd hesitated – 'good fortune.'
Click, went dead.
Make a decision, then.
'How's about a drink?'
Al.
'Not just now.'
Not really in the mood.
Make a decision, yes. If we were going to do it here, here at the Red Orchid, I was ready. The kaleidoscope of images – staircase, skylights, roof-drops, escape routes – had coalesced, presenting me with a complete architectural blueprint for survival. There was nothing more for me to do here.
So I came round from behind the bar and walked through the archway and through the doors and out into the street.
'How much?'
'One dollar.'
Greedy bugger.
'Give me one of those plastic spoons.'
Messy to eat, but a guava, like life, is sweet.
They'd reacted fast – you should have seen them. Hadn't expected the little ferret to walk out of its trap and start stuffing guavas. The karateka had turned his head immediately and signalled the woman in the track-suit and she'd swung away from the corner and started down the street on the other side, leaving another one to move in and cover while she walked past the doorway of the herb shop, glancing in and moving on. Pawn to K4, so forth, they'd got it worked out.
But they knew I wasn't a bloody amateur either so I spent almost an hour going through the motions of spotting and evading and closing circuits and breaking out and doubling tracks, using three taxis and the alleyway giving onto New Bridge Road I'd used the night I'd arrived here.
I've got out of mobile surveillance traps in Moscow and Berlin and Warsaw but it was the first time I'd had to simulate getting clear. There was no chance, absolutely no chance of getting out of this one because it was massive – I'd counted fourteen of them at the end of the first half-hour. They weren't just trying to establish my travel pattern or see if I made a contact or dropped a signal for someone; they had to make sure I was set up for Kishnar when he came, because if they failed they were finished, a sabre blade across the first vertebra – they were responsible to Mariko Shoda.
What I had to do was establish the fact that I had a purpose in leaving the hotel – that I wasn't just making an attempt at getting clear and going to ground. They knew I was professional enough to have seen them in the street, and knew I hadn't a chance of getting clear with so many of them manning the trap, so I had to make them believe I was flawed, and thought I could work miracles. So when I walked into the Hertz office in South Bridge Road I didn't even glance behind me.
'What model do you prefer, sir?'
'Compact.'
Smaller windows.
Toyota Corolla.
Driving-licence, Amex, so forth. And this pretty smile, these almond eyes, the slight lift of the breasts beneath the silk blouse, are they the last I shall see?
'Will you please sign here, Mr Jordan?'
And the last signature?
With a flourish, then.
Outside in the car park I walked round the Toyota once to check the bodywork and then got in and started up and clipped the belt on without taking in the environment. In the first three blocks I picked out the taxi, a yellow and black Streamline three vehicles behind. There would be others closing in; I didn't look for them. It was tempting to try driving clear but it would mean risking lives – not theirs, I'd settle for that, but the lives of the innocent on their way home in the evening rush-hour. So I drove carefully, with due circumspection.
Countdown.
18:00.
He would be here in two hours.
There was an alley with a dead-end alongside the Red Orchid, where there would be deep shadow by eight o'clock. Al's Chevrolet was farther down and I'd be blocking him, but he never left the bar at this time in the evening. I parked the Toyota and locked the doors and went into the hotel by the front entrance, not looking back.
The last-chance thing.
But only if Pepperidge telephoned.
'Hi! Set it up?'
'Yes.'
Six drops.
'You invent this one?'
'Flash of genius.' Ask him. 'No calls for me?'
'Guess not.'
I took my drink across to the corner where I could sit with my back to the television screen: the optic nerve would have to adjust to the periodicy and tonight I wanted eyes like a cat's.
Do something for me, will you?
I could see part of the street from here but it didn't interest me now. They were out there, and I knew that.
For God's sake, if and when you can, pick up a phone and call me, so that I'll know things are still all right.
That was tempting too, to go across to the phone and hear her voice as she swung her long hair back from her eyes, Oh Martin, where are you calling from? but no, we couldn't meet, tonight or ever again, unless he telephoned, Pepperidge, and even then it was a thousand-to-one shot.
18:31.
Rain began soon afterwards.
'Here we go!' Al said from the bar.
The stalls and barrows had been cleared from the narrow street an hour ago, and the stones began taking on a sheen as the rain fell harder. People out there were hurrying, some of them with newspapers over their heads.
It wouldn't change anything.
19:00.
An hour to go. He would land in an hour.
The adrenalin began; I could feel it like a subtle vibration in the bloodstream, in the nerves. I centred at intervals of a minute, hearing the leather of the chair creak faintly as the tension came out of the muscles and the body sank lower. I would need the adrenalin later, but not now: it was too soon.
The rain steadied in the street, on the rooftops, closing us in, sequestering us in this small seedy hotel in Singapore as if we'd been washed up in an ark. They would be standing in the doorways now, taking shelter from the rain, not from the inexorable tolling of the minutes, as I was, the inescapable measurement of time moving towards the deadline an hour from now.