So many questions. Kuo would answer them.
It wasn't far to the Phra Chula Chedi, the temple with the golden dome. The crowd was greater now because the Link Road was filling from both ends; of the two masks, humor has less appeal for the human heart than tragedy.
I picked and pressed my way – broken parasols and a crushed bouquet, a child crying, a lost shoe, a priest praying, a torn paper flag. Vehicles moved through the narrow lane that had been the road; the sirens had begun again and bells rang for gangway. A crowd is a fever and will not abate until its course is run.
Magnolia blossoms hung across the gates of the temple and the leaves gave shade. The tall doors were open and there was no one inside. The steps began near the great golden Buddha and followed the curving wall, and I climbed them through the cool shadows, reaching the platform that spanned the base of the dome. A spiral staircase twisted upward from the center and I climbed again. Sunlight lay in gold bars across the dark trellis ironwork of the stairs; the murmur of the crowd was loudening as I neared the ring of oriels.
At every tenth stair I stopped and listened for any sound from inside the temple because they might come for him soon, not knowing he was dead and unable to join them.
The sunlight struck in from the oriels and for a moment blinded me. I had reached that part of the gallery that faced Lumpini Park, and had to move round past five oriels before coming to the one that was directly opposite the condemned building.
Then I looked down at the floor.
In compliance with the rules of international warfare the military bullet is manufactured with a full metal shield so that the lead tip is not exposed and so that no expansion occurs on striking the target. The idea is that unnecessary pain should be avoided. I had used a game bullet, a high-velocity load with a blunt nose. This type kills quickly by expanding on impact; it provides greater shocking power and will drop an animal at once if accurately placed. The disadvantage of a heavy-caliber expanding bullet is that it will spoil the meat (in the case of a boar) or spoil the hide (in the case of a tiger).
I had used a 150-grain game bullet to ensure a quick kill and this had been achieved, but the effects of the expansion had left the face unrecognizable.
At the last minute before raising his gun he had taken off the smoked glasses; they were folded neatly on the ledge of the oriel. The sunshine fell across the light gray alpaca jacket and the polished shoes; it was only the face that was out of character with so fastidious a man. Perhaps this was his true face, bestial and bloodied, the face of a jungle soul no longer disguisable by the tricks and artifice of civilized dress. Let it be said: a soul not unlike my own; it was only that our laws were different.
Stepping over him to look at the gun I noticed that the gold cufflinks were missing. The sleeves had ordinary buttons. It was therefore becoming clear to me even before I took up the gun and examined it, and the need to think and think straight was suddenly urgent.
The gun was a cheap thing, a six-shot Yungchow carbine with a redwood butt.
There was no time now to listen for any sound that might come from inside the temple and I bruised a shoulder on the top rail of the spiral staircase as I swung into it and dropped with my feet touching every third step and my hand hitting at the rail. The beams of sunlight flashed across my eyes and the framework shivered under me until I reached the platform and ran for the curving steps that followed the wall below the dome.
The temple was still deserted but three priests in yellow robes stood at the gates in the shade of the magnolias and one of them stepped toward me, thinking perhaps I was a thief disturbed but I ducked clear and reached the road still at a run and made for the bar on the other side, seeing the telephone before there was need to ask for it.
All three lines were busy and I began re-dialing the numbers without a stop so that the moment a call ended I'd get my chance, but it took a dozen go's and I had to stand there thinking about the mission, reviewing the whole thing, getting it into perspective – his mission, not mine, Kuo's mission, the one I'd never guessed at, the one that he'd so beautifully brought off.
You light your lamps as you go… picking your way through the dark… There are patches of dark and you skirt them, have to, because your lamps are too small to show you everything… everything.
A line cleared at the Embassy.
'Room 6,' I told them. 'Give me Room 6.'
15 The Snatch
I didn't want to talk to Loman yet because he would have a lot of questions to ask and I wanted to be sure I knew the answers.
When I had given the signal to Room 6 I left the bar and walked along the Link Road. The crowd had broken up but the roadway was still full of people talking about the accident. The scene in the center was different now; the police had made a barrier and there was a water cart at work where the royal car had come to a stop. The last ambulance had gone. Steam rose as the sun began drying the water that streamed from the pavement onto the road.
The sense of shock still hung over the people and I passed women in tears, their husbands comforting them. Those near the scene of the accident would not easily forget. Reporters were interviewing people and photographers hurried about.
There was no one anywhere near the condemned building because the crowd was still attracting people to the scene at the curve of the Link Road, and I climbed to the top floor in the clammy heat.
Looking down from the window of my room I composed the whole picture in terms of geometry. Findings:
Kuo's mission had been to place the shot. Loman and I had known that. The shot was the pivot of the entire operation. But after the shot had been placed the course of his mission had changed completely, and this we had not known. Kuo was a professional and his intelligence was far beyond that required for the efficient handling of a rifle. As precisely and as carefully as a rifle is pieced together from its components he had dovetailed every part of his mission with my own, assembling a set-up in which I took my place as obediently as if I were under his direct orders.
His mission was a total success and all I had to show for weeks of work was the dead man in the Phra Chula Chedi, the seventh man that Pangsapa had told me about, a man who was not Kuo because he wore no cuff links and because his cheap Yungchow carbine was a weapon that a marksman of Kuo's caliber would never demean himself to use. All I had done was to kill a decoy while Kuo placed his shot.
Rage against one's own stupidity does no good but in the heat of the room I stood shivering.
There was a thumbtack stuck in the door of the kite warehouse so when I had dumped the useless tools of my trade I phoned Varaphan in Soi Suek 3.
'Is the bloodstone ready for me?'
'There has been so little time. Everyone is always in such a hurry. But you could make inquiries at our workshop if you are passing that way.'
I decided to walk instead of taking a trishaw because the rage was still burning and I had to deal with it before I met Loman. Cold thought was the only antidote.
There were five press vans parked outside the Embassy and I had to show my pass so that the police could get me through the pack of reporters. They flashed off pictures of me in case I was important. Caption: The Man Who Knew Too Little.