The thing had been done with the semblance of a ritual. Kuo the Mongolian was a man short in the body and with a deliberate gait, his face disguised by smoked glasses; but he would be more accurately described as a man who would do this thing in this way. Here was his whole character expressed in one gesture. He was Diabolus.
So Loman's misgivings didn't count with me.
He was standing over my chair again and I opened my eyes. He said almost pettishly: 'You know perfectly well that in any case I can't sanction homicide.'
'I'm not asking you to.'
'But the entire operation hinges on--'
'For God's sake, Loman, we're wasting time.' I got out of the chair, fed up with him. 'One of them's going to die, isn't he? Which d'you want it to be?'
He started off again, fretting up and down till I stopped him and made him talk and go on talking. In half an hour we reached a deadlock and it took another half an hour to break it. Talking had helped him, helped us both. We were getting used to the operation and it didn't scare us any more.
'We are always up against the same difficulty, Quiller.
Lack of peripheral support. We haven't any junior agents to do the general background work – tagging, guarding, manning a courier line. All chiefs and no Indians. That's why you lost Kuo at the Lotus Bar – we didn't have a man on the other exit. We can't ask for assistance from any police department; as I've told you, Colonel Ramin will have nothing to do with me. For this reason we have very little information. Plenty of raw intelligence but nobody who can analyze it for us and give us a complete picture. Therefore we know practically nothing of what plans the Bangkok Metropolitan people have in mind – or even what our own Security is doing. Their responsibility is very high and they're jealous of it.' He took a couple of turns and came back, giving me a hard bright stare. 'By which I mean that if we launch this operation we shall be on our own. Entirely on our own.'
I said, 'It's the only way I can work. You know that.' I [had to sell him this point. The mission suited me but it [didn't suit him: he specialized in operations with a well-organized cell, established access and first-class communications. This wasn't in his field. It hadn't been mine until the Kuo pattern had shown me the way in. There was no point now in telling Loman that he had roped in the Bureau and me with it and that it was his own responsibility. He had to be sold my operation by positive, not negative, argument. I told him:
'Lack of peripheral support isn't a difficulty in this case. It's because we're on our own that we can work as we like. We're responsible to Control for results and the means don't count. No one is responsible to us – there aren't any junior agents to get caught in the blast when we light the fuse. That's the whole idea about the Bureau, isn't it? You've said it yourself: we don't exist. It lets us do things that no other department can do.' I stood close to him. 'You can't lose, Loman. With a bit of luck and some good organization, the Security people sent out with the Person are going to give him all the protection he needs. If they can't stop Kuo then the local networks will – the Thai Home Office, Special Branch and Metro Police. With luck. But if he gets through them all… and if all the luck runs out… we'll be there, you and I, plugging the hole.' We stood so close that I could see my own reflection in his hard bright eyes. I need do no more than to murmur. 'And we can bring it off. And if we bring it off, who's going to ask how we did it? Control? Control never asks. It would never keep an agent if we had to account for our methods. So we're in the clear and we're on our own and the set-up's waiting.'
I moved away from him and gave him five seconds to think. He had to have those few seconds without my eyes on him so that he could look into himself for his own counsel – but I gave him no more than five because the final shot had to go in timed to exactitude:
'And it's a beauty… isn't it?'
Sensitive, elegant, simple, brutal and just. A classic. Dog eat dog.
It was absurd. He'd spent so long, before, talking me into this mission. Now I'd had to sell it back to him.
'What do you need?' he asked.
And I knew it was a deal.
'Three things. A base. A darkroom. A look at the car.'
'Nothing else?'
'Your general supervision. I'm out of sleep. I could make a mistake. There won't be much time for sleep, I've got your direction in any case. I'm all right, Jack -how are you?'
He asked me: 'What kind of base do you need?'
He spoke with the dulled tone of a punchdrunk. He had committed himself and had no time to think about it yet, I wished him joy in the small hours of the night.
There's an office block at the intersection of the Link Road and Rama-IV facing east with the name Taylor-Speers on a board. They're demolition contractors and the work doesn't start till the middle of next month because they're held up with their schedule: they've wrecked an electric main under the tram terminal sheds they've just pulled down. It's a British outfit and you'll find them in the book. I want any one of the top-floor rooms at the front and no one's to know I'm there.'
He didn't like it.
'Colonel Ramin,' he said, 'tells me that the police will be checking upwards of three hundred uninhabited rooms overlooking the motorcade route on the morning of the 29th. They are already working on the lists of residents of several thousand other rooms.'
'I can deal with that. I've been in there.'
He still didn't like it.
'Taylor-Speers are bound to let their workers into the building on that day to watch the motorcade. It's declared a national holiday and it would be natural for them to do that.'
I said, 'That's what I want fixed. No one goes into that building on the day except the police. It's a British firm and you've got a set of official credentials – pick any one. This is a big chance for Messrs Taylor-Speers to demonstrate their steadfast loyalty to the country whose ancient soil, so forth.'
'I'll do it in my own way,' he said stuffily.
'That's our motto – the means don't count.'
'What kind of darkroom do you need?'
'Nothing special. Somewhere lightproof enough to use an enlarger in the daytime. Somewhere as near the condemned building as you can find. I don't want to show myself in the open street.'
'Camera gear?'
'I'll choose it myself.'
'When do you want to look at the car?'
'As soon as you can fix it.'
Our voices sounded hollow. Everything we said now, every small word, took us nearer the thing we were going to do.
'I shan't waste any time,' he said.
'I know you won't.'
He went first to the door. I would wait five minutes. That was the routine. 'One thing I forgot, Loman.' He turned to look at me. 'Can you get me a guest membership card at the Rifle Club? I need a couple of hours on their 1000-yard range. We're working on a long-shot and we don't want to miss.'
9 The Oriel
Bangkok is a city whose temples have towers of gold and whose hotels rise alabaster from emerald palms. Here fountains play in marble courts and women walk in silk with jeweled hair; the air is heavy with the perfumes of all Araby. It is a paradise expressly fashioned for the beguilement of princes; by day the sun spills rose light along private paths and the blue of night is webbed about with music.
The tramp curled up on his sleeping mat in the corner of the duty floor where flakes of plaster fell softly from the walls with a dead-moth flutter. Mildew smelled on the air: water from the last rains had leaked from fissures in the roof and was rotting the ceiling battens. It would never dry out; the hammers would be here first, felling the whole edifice like a beast in the abattoir.