All the Husqvarnas are beautiful but the finest they make is the 561. It is a .358 Magnum center-fire, with a three-shot magazine, 25x/2 inch barrel, hand-checkered walnut stock, corrugated butt-plate and sling swivels. The fore-end and pistol-grip are tipped with rosewood. The total weight is 7% pounds and the breech pressure is in the region of 20 tons p.s.i., giving a high muzzle velocity and an almost flat trajectory with a 150-grain bullet.
A rifle is no better than its sights, so I had chosen an exemplary Balvar 5 by Bausch and Lomb with an optical variable from x2 to x5. Its feature is that as the magnification power is increased the crosshair reticle remains constant in size and does not therefore tend to obscure the target.
The report and recoil of a big gun are fairly massive, and I went to the range partly to learn the Husqvarna's characteristics and align the high overbore scope-sight, and partly to condition my nervous system to the unaccustomed shock effect. The eye must get used to the close-up shrouding of the sight-mounting and the figures on the lens; the ear must learn to ignore the heavy percussion of the report; the shoulder must accept the blow of the recoil; above all the perfect marriage must be made between the index finger and the trigger so that, shot after shot, the automatic memory of the finger muscles takes over from the forebrain and provides a confident pull through the double springs that will not deflect the aim.
In two hours I put in fifty or sixty shots, taking time and taking care, checking the target and resetting the alignment of the scope, gradually allowing the negative feedback data to correct the aim until I was bunching a dozen inside the ten-ring. Then I stopped. The flinch that had accompanied the first shots had been exorcised; the right shoulder throbbed but had got the measure of the recoil; the eye was so used to the reticle that as I walked back to the clubhouse the after-image was superimposed on my vision, true to Emmert's Law.
True to my own law I was ready for Kuo.
It had been unsafe to ask anyone at the club to deliver the Husqvarna: there was no one to receive it at the condemned building or the kite warehouse and I had no other reliable port of call. I therefore took it with me in the Toyota as far as the new car park just off Rama IV near the Link Road and walked from there, rounding three blocks to make sure of security.
Bangkok is a city whose temples have towers of gold and there are men of subtle style who must choose gold cloth for the adornment of their ritual.
I made my way to the condemned building like an unsuccessful salesman, a roll of cheap carpet under my arm.
11 The Schedule
My last meeting with Loman before the day of the action took place at midnight on the 28th. He was much affected by the news that had gone out on the radio a few hours earlier.
In the sultry heat of the warehouse he looked cold, and as he talked to me his white face floated against the colors of the hanging kites. His eyes were bright but the rest of the polish had gone: it had been rubbed off, over the days, by the gradual realization of what he had set in train when he had first proposed to the Bureau in London that he should personally direct an agent to combat the assassination threat, and that the agent should be myself.
Loman had handled big operations involving the life and death of men who worked for him, and the fact that three of his agents had lost their lives under his direction was to his credit: a less brilliant officer would have suffered greater losses in the achievement of similar ends. He had taken risks – personal and physical risks – in the actual field and had proved his ordinary courage, as distinct from the extraordinary courage of responsibility to those men whom he sent out on missions known to be grossly dangerous.
But he had never exposed himself to the risk of failing in a mission that had to be carried through in the glare of international limelight, and that concerned the safety of a man whose death would grievously shock the whole of the civilized world.
The effects of even a big intelligence operation are never dramatic except to those who are immediately involved. The public reads that a Russian-Canadian wheat deal has fallen through, that the U.S. has withdrawn one of her nuclear submarine bases from Spain, that General X has resigned his post as Co-ordinator to the Combined Services Division. The public is not told that such events are often the outcome of intelligence missions and that the success of a given mission had depended upon the illegal duplicating of a certain document, or a journey by an unknown man across a certain frontier with a microdot apparatus strapped beneath the chassis of his car, or the placing of a bang-destruction unit inside the cupboard where a certain Foreign Office messenger keeps his dispatch bag.
It may happen that the unknown man crossing the frontier is arrested, searched and detained, and is subsequently shot dead trying to escape. A bang-destruction unit has twice been known to start a major fire and burn the building down. Small beer: the world goes on with its turning.
The mission inaugurated by Loman was unique. Worse, he was in the field with it. Worse still, he had persuaded the Bureau to let firm mount a routine operation that really belonged to other parties and had then been himself persuaded by a wildcat agent to sanction homicide as the mainspring of 'the most sensitive operation he had ever been presented with.'
The polish was gone. The shine was off the plum and the fruit was bitter.
His own fault.
'Have you been tuned-in?' he asked me somberly.
I said I had. Since yesterday my intelligence sources lad been implemented by a pocket-size transistor and I had sat with it in the quiet of the condemned building with the volume turned right down and the speaker-grill pressed against my ear. There was an hourly broadcast every day until midnight giving the latest details of the official arrangements, and there were clues to be had. No plans were 'as yet definite' (the Home Office was still obviously worried), but there were some significant pointers buried among the handouts: the staff of the Children's Hospital were looking 'very spruce in their new uniforms as a result of the Charity drive'; Butri and Kaewsanan, two of Thailand's champion boxers, had been engaged in 'an entertaining series of training fights' for the past few days. A visit to the Children's Hospital would include Rajvithit Road; a stop at the Lumpini Boxing Stadium would take in part of Rama IV.
It was bad security on the part of the authorities and I was grateful. I still had to know the itinerary before we could be certain the set-up would work.
The main item of news had come in at 9:30 P.M. tonight.
Prince Udom had been taken ill.
'What's your reaction?' Loman asked me.
'Does it make any difference?' Prince Udom was to have accompanied the Person in the motorcade, sitting at his side in the Cadillac. 'Either he's got cold feet or the Government's put pressure on him to keep out of danger, since he's a Minister and the strong man of the Cabinet.'
'In either case the Palace fears an attempt.'
I looked at him in the dim light. 'You must be pretty far gone. The Palace fears an attempt? We're better informed. I've seen the gun delivered and located the sniping post and got a picture of the man who's going to do the job. Are you worried because the Palace fears what we know?'
'I mean,' he said bleakly, 'that it won't make things easier for us if the general alarm sets in. They might decide to change the itinerary.'
'There'd be some point to that if we knew what the itinerary was.'
'We know.'
'Come on, then.'
'It will go via the Link Road.'
'Thank Christ.'
So it was on. The set-up would work. The rendezvous was safe. The temple, the condemned building, Kuo, the Husqvarna – the gold cloth and the cheap carpet and the flowers and the crowd and, with luck, the overkill. I asked him, 'How did you get it, Loman?'