It was the decoy's photograph I had taken, unless he had shown himself in the oriel only within the final hour before the motorcade when Kuo had had to make for his own post. Care would have been taken that there was a reasonable likeness; the smoked glasses were the finishing touch; the heat haze was taken into account, also the range.
Question: How had Kuo known my set-up? Loman had told me not to worry about that one; he would look after it.
Question: Why had a distinguished VIP been chosen for the exchange? An ordinary businessman -Wynne – had been a good enough swap for Lonsdale. Answer: It was getting too easy. If the practice of exchanging captured agents were to become common it would give rise to a grossly dangerous situation: agents would take absurd risks to get hold of information, knowing that (in the U.K.) a fourteen-year sentence would be cut short the moment a candidate for exchange was available. The greater the risk taken, the greater the chances of seizing the information required. On these terms every major power-would be tempted to build up and maintain an exchange pool so that the moment an agent was caught he could be flown home – with his valuable information fresh in his head or in microdots smaller than a grain of rice concealed on him. Innocent tourists would no longer be safe in any country whose exchange pool was running low: a trumped-up charge of 'suspicious behavior' would be enough to hold a man indefinitely as a future exchange candidate.
In the case of Huang Hsiung Lee, it was known that he had gained access to material of the highest value to a potential enemy, and for this reason Peking had been forced to extreme measures. Their candidate had to be someone for whom the U.K. was prepared to surrender even such a prize as the Hare-Fadieman Project discovery.
Question: How could any government admit that it had ordered the blatant abduction of a distinguished person and had entrained the slaughter of innocent citizens during the operation? It was a deliberate act of violence. Greville Wynne and others had been held on charges of espionage. Abduction of a person against whom no such charge could be made – even falsely -was a new dimension.
The thought persisted, uncertain of itself: this couldn't be on government level. But Loman and Vinia both knew more than I.
Loman: 'Who can afford a sum like that? Only a government,'
Vinia: 'I thought you might be getting on a plane… You can't cross into China.'
Vinia again: 'If they can't get him to the frontier, they'll get you.' She had meant the Chinese frontier.
End of questions. They weren't important. The mission was still running. Target: Locate the Kuo cell and get the Person out of their hands with a whole skin before the U.K. was forced into an exchange that would spring Lee and surrender a super weapon to a Communist state that would turn it immediately, against the free world.
Sounds rose from the street through the insect screens at the windows: a car pulling up, challenged by a patrol. It was cleared and drove off.
One question above alclass="underline" Where was Kuo? Somewhere in this city, in this trap. Making his plans to get out and take his prisoner with him. Kuo the Mongolian, being a professional, had pulled off a major snatch in full daylight and in the presence of massed police and bodyguard protection. A simple roadblock wouldn't stop him now.
'Is it morning?'
The sound of the car had wakened her or she had been awake for some time and I hadn't known.
'It's nearly four,' I said.
She slid from me and stood for a minute looking down, and in the faint light from the street I saw that she was smiling. 'It feels like morning. It feels like the morning after a lifetime.'
I put the lamp on before she came back from the bathroom. She saw the gun in my hand.
'It's not for show,' she said quietly.
I had picked it up to admire it, never having seen a gun so flat. It was an Astra Cub, a twelve-ounce miniature with a three-inch barrel, potent at short range. The special holster was exquisitely designed, adding no more than one-eighth of an inch to the thickness.
'I don't imagine so,' I said, and gave it to her.
'It's for killing.' Clipping it "against her thigh she looked up at me through the silky fall of her hair. Her voice had gone cold and I knew that before we had made love she wouldn't have told me this but that she was going to tell me now. 'I want to apologize, Quill.'
I said nothing.
The little gun was beautiful but against her slim thigh it was a hideous disfigurement.
'I said his name aloud,' she told me. 'I remember doing it. At those times we… often say things. It was because you were so… magnificent. I forgot where I was, who you were.'
She began dressing. I said:
'I never heard you.'
She glanced her thanks. 'His name was Richard and I was with him when they shot him dead through both his eyes.' She spoke very fast, very softly. 'I don't know who "they" were – they were just the enemy -but they could have done it some other way, couldn't they – not through the eyes. Of course it's not really important – you remember people as they were, not as they were when they died. But they needn't have done it in front of me – and they needn't have done it like that.'
Her dress was on and she lifted her hands, drawing back her hair, shutting her eyes for a second to blot out the scene she had made herself remember; then her hands came down and smoothed the dress over her lean hips. 'Look,' she said softly. 'Nothing shows. But it's there, and it's for killing.'
And suddenly I remembered. It was one of those stories that do the rounds – you hear it first in a pub in the Strand and a different version in a Paris boite and a different version again in a Cairo bar, until you recognize it for what it is: an amusing legend that you pass on or leave alone. The trade is full of them and most are invented – we take the Mickey out of ourselves with tales of exotic spies.
But this one was about a woman called Halfmask, a beauty born of the Devil, too deadly for any man to touch. She wore a mask that covered only half her face, so that she could disguise herself by simply turning her head. And any man, the legend ran, would be a fool to take her to his bed, because she carried death between her legs.
Legends survive; their source is forgotten or sometimes never known. We touch wood to placate Pan, the god of the trees. To every legend a truth, though we seldom see it.
She turned to the mirror, getting a comb. She was right: the line of the dress was perfect. Nothing showed. She said:
'You thought it was something Freudian when you saw it. Envy. It isn't.' I could hear the electricity crackling in her hair as she used the comb. 'One day… one fine day I shall get the chance I need. I won't know who they are – they'll be the enemy. They will just be "they." The people who did that to him.'
I still said nothing. She'd wanted me for a listener.
'You weren't just a stand-in, Quill.'
She was still by the mirror when I came back from washing. I got into my clothes and before we opened the door we kissed, just our fingers touching, for what I knew was the last time. Then we went down to the street and she got into her car.
Through the window I said, 'There's a legend about you, did you know?'
She laughed softly, looking up at me. 'Is there? It must be incomplete. One day I'll write the ending. One fine day.'
The telephone rang just before dawn.
Pangsapa said, 'Please listen carefully, Mr Quiller.'
His tone was utterly calm, I said:
'If it's important, we should meet. It would be safer.'
Kuo was holed up and in no position to bug the line but we keep to the rules. A rule is a fail-safe mechanism.
'It is important,' said Pangsapa, 'but there is no time for us to meet. Listen, please. I have had some of my people at work constantly and one of them has just reported to me by telephone. Can you recognize the man I sent with you to the gymnasium?'