'I've told you,' I said, 'I'd do it for the postman.'
His bright eyes came at me again, 'But it's a matter of consequences, isn't it? You must have given it some thought.'
'All right, you tell me. You've got one foot in the Embassy and the other in London. What are the consequences if we miss? Another Sarajevo?'
'I don't know.' Almost petulantly he said, 'I've never worked in an area of which I've known so little.'
'We'll know a bit more tomorrow.'
His mouth quivered silently, blocked by a rush of too many words. He was really very cross with me. He finally managed to speak. 'I wish I had your limited view, Quiller.'
'My view's limited by crossed hairs in a circle. Someone's got to concentrate on that. You look after the consequences while I pop the weasel. Then there won't be any.'
•'How much,' he asked me as if I'd never spoken, 'do you think Kuo will be paid? If he succeeds?'
'He doesn't work that way. The cost of a dead body is a few bob and the cost of a bullet is a few pence. It's the set-up that's expensive and the fee's already in his pocket. I'd put it at five hundred thousand pounds.'
Loman nodded. 'Who can afford a sum like that? Only a government. That's why I can't ignore the question of consequences.'
I turned away from him. He could stay awake all night if he wanted to. I had to be fresh for the job.
'Worry it,' I said, turning again and watching him from a little distance. 'Worry it out. I've got my limited view. All I need to know is that the consequences of crooking the index finger are a hole in a skull.'
He didn't answer. I shall always remember him standing there among the colored kites, fearful and bright of eye, wondering what he'd got into and wondering how to get out. It was easier for me and my terms were simpler. A dog hungered for dog.
'Goodnight, Loman.'
It was the last time I saw him before the kill.
12 The Set-Up
One of the vital duties of an intelligence officer is to see that the agent he is directing in the field is left unworried by every aspect of the mission that does not directly concern him.
Thus Loman had angered me because he had broken this rule and tried to saddle me with considerations of the consequences. But I knew that subconsciously he was rationalizing and that the real basis of his fear was more personal, more intimate and more closely concerned with my precise operation than any general thoughts on wide scale repercussions. He was worried because:
I had to kill.
I might fail to kill.
I might kill for nothing.
And whichever way it went he was going to lose: because one of those things was going to happen.
That was why he had immediately refused to sanction my proposed operation when I put it to him in our room in Soi Suek 3, and why I had to work on him so hard to make him finally agree. He knew at the outset that one of those three things was going to happen and his real struggle had been to decide whether it was worth it.
I don't think he ever reached a conclusion. He reached a decision – to sanction my proposal – but he was never certain how much it would be worth letting me do what I wanted. He brought me to the day of the 29th in the hope – and nothing more than the hope -that we would be proved right in allowing the mission to swerve into this new and very dangerous direction.
That was why he had talked about consequences, the last time I saw him before the action. But I think he meant the consequences to us, not to the broad Southeast Asian scene.
My proposal could not have been more simple. It comprised seven factors with two corollaries.
1)Although there was a threat to assassinate a British subject the responsibility for his protection rested with the Thai Government.
2)Those few British groups who were able to set up collateral protection (whether officially recognized in that role by the Thai Government or not) were the Special Branch protection officers, Security, Mil. 6 and fringe departments at the British Embassy, Bangkok. And they would work on their own according to the long-established tradition of inter-Services rivalry.
3)Loman and I could not – even through our Bureau in London – convince either the Thai Security forces (Colonel Ramin) or the British groups, of the danger to be expected from Kuo, because it would imply lack of efficiency on their part. Further, we did not exist; therefore it would be similar to an unknown herbalist seeking to advise a panel of Harley Street surgeons.
4) For the same reasons – that the Bureau does not exist – we could do nothing officially. We could not warn, advise or call upon anyone at all, anywhere.
5)Supposing for a moment that we could warn Colonel Ramin of the danger expected from Kuo, he might feel disposed to hunt him and arrest him on suspicion. But from my intimate knowledge of Kuo, gained during many days of observation and conclusions, it would then be left to one or more of his cell to proceed with their plans for the assassination – and Colonel Ramin would not even concern himself, since the chief danger would seem to have been eliminated by Kuo's arrest.
6)Therefore, we had no hope of invoking Colonel Ramin's co-operation to any useful effect. It was point less to insist that he take action against Kuo because if he took action the danger would remain.
7)It was to be hoped that the Thai Home Office departments – Security, CID and Metropolitan Police – plus the small British groups offering collateral protection, would succeed in stopping an assassination attempt. But if they failed we would try to prevent it by a last-ditch action.
The two corollaries were:
1) Loman's ability to sanction homicide was by virtue of the fact that the Bureau does not exist. Discipline within its own walls is uncompromising, but it is not officially responsible to any department or minister. It can operate only on the understanding that it fills a gap in the intelligence complex, that it takes no action without the most serious pre-thinking, and that if an action falls outside the dictates of national and international law, it will guarantee to face the consequences in the event of exposure and will involve no one else. There are many reasons why the existence of the Bureau is officially denied, but the most important reason is that it sometimes resorts to illegal methods for the sake of expediency. These include homicide.
2) Given that Loman, as my intelligence director, was able to consider sanctioning an act of homicide, it could not take the form of random murder. On the principle that we suspected Kuo to have arrived in Bangkok for the purpose of assassination, I could have killed him out of hand before now. Up to the time of his going to ground there had been many opportunities. But Loman had rightly made the proviso that if we were to kill a man we must kill him in the very act of attempting the thing we had to prevent. Otherwise we would never be sure of our moral right to do it. There was only one time, then, and one place where he should be killed: at what I had now come to think of as the 'rendezvous' – a word expressing both a time and a place. (There was another reason why we could not kill Kuo at any time prior to the 29th, It would have been as useless as Colonel Ramin's arresting him: the danger from the Kuo cell would remain. For the record, this was not our chief reason for holding fire. The Bureau follows the tenets of jungle justice.)
Summarizing: My proposal to Loman was that if all else failed and it was up to us to stop an assassination, we must let Kuo plan his set-up"and perfect it, so that once his finger was on the trigger there would be no time for him to put a reserve plan into operation. It was feasible that he could post a guard inside the doorway of the temple, so that even if Colonel Ramin decided to search the place and arrest Kuo at the fifty-ninth minute, as the motorcade entered the Link Road, the guard could make a prearranged signal to a reserve marksman in the area who was briefed to shoot in those circumstances. That would be a professional set-up, and Kuo was a professional.