The Chinese told him:'Keep driving.'
He was a young man, younger than Kuo but not unlike him, slim-hipped and wide at the shoulder and with the calm eyes of a top athlete who had dedicated his life to challenge. His control of the situation was perfect. He had made successful contact and the nervous strain of waiting was over and his tone was as calm as his eyes.
'Be careful, please.'
The arm rest was down and between us and I looked at it. The barrel lay along it, a few inches from my liver.
The sole advantage of the spring-gun is silence. It is more silent than any powder gun, however heavily baffled. Even at medium range – six feet and over – it is inefficient if it has to fire through clothing. Even at four feet an overcoat will shield the body from most of the impact. The spring-gun can kill through light clothing at any range below two feet providing it can be aimed to strike a vital organ without hitting bone. As a useful weapon it has value only if its limitations are known and allowed for.
It would take its natural place among those weapons carried by a cell such as Kuo – a professional marksman – controlled. The sound of a gunshot in a city patrolled by massive police forces on the watch for anything even slightly unusual would provoke immediate alarm. The man beside me carried a spring-gun against the necessity of having to threaten or shoot while he was in the open and cut off from his base, and it was simply his good luck that this necessity had arisen in the confines of a closed car.
There would be another gun on him, for use in extreme circumstances and at longer range. At present the spring was the perfect weapon.
It was aimed well within killing distance and the needle point steel dart could pierce a vital organ – the liver – without risk of hitting the bone of hip joint or lower rib.
The Chinese spoke again to the driver in Mandarin with a Shanghai accent. 'Make for the park and circle it.'
The Lincoln turned down Phayathai Road toward Rama IV. We had begun heading away from their base. That was inevitable. They would be embarrassed by having to look after a second prisoner at a time when they were desperate to move the first one to a safer place. My only hope had been to get the upper hand and either force them to reveal the location of their base or give them to the police after making sure they had no access to a death pill. It was still my hope.
He asked me in good English: 'Where is the woman?'
The Lincoln had a bench-type front seat that was solid from pillar to pillar and immovable. The leather seat at my back was luxuriously cushioned and would indent up to a good six inches.
'At the safehouse,' I told him.
It was natural for them to think we were in the same group. They had seen us together in the streets when she had been tagging me. They had possibly seen us, singly, entering or leaving the British Embassy.
His immediate idea was two birds, one shot.
Six inches was sufficient. The barrel of the spring-gun would be aimed past the front of my diaphragm by the time he fired.
'Where is the safehouse?' he asked me.
We were turning left along Rama IV and heading for Lumpini Park. The kite warehouse was nearer than the gem shop and there would be more room to move about in there and a chance of doing some work on him.
'In Soi Narong 9,' I told him, and took a breath and kicked hard at the front seat to jack-knife and press back into the cushion to give him the six-inch clearance that would send the steel dart wide as I brought my right hand down in a strong chop for his gun wrist.
'Be careful, please,' he said.
Blood began trickling from the edge of my hand.
There had been only a slight phutt from the gun. Its barrel had swung up a degree to meet my hand and the dart had ripped flesh away.
A trained athlete reacts as fast as a cat, and muscle obedience to the motor nerves is almost instantaneous.
He said to the chauffeur: 'Go to Soi Narong 9. Drive at a moderate speed.'
A police car overtook us and the crew raked us with a long hard glance and the barrel bit into my side as a reminder and I sat still and watched the police car slot in between us and the car ahead; then it pulled out and we lost it.
'What number, in Soi Narong 9?'
'The warehouse,' I told him.
He spoke again to the chauffeur.
Slowly, and looking at the Chinese, I moved my hand forward so that the blood could drip onto the carpet instead of my trousers. He smiled, nodding.
When we reached the warehouse he asked: 'Which door do you use, please?'
'The one in the alley.'
He told the chauffeur to reverse the Lincoln as far as the first door. That was normal procedure because the alley was a dead end and he had seen as much and wanted the car to be pointing in the right direction in case anything happened. It wasn't because he was nervous, and this fact worried me. He showed no emotion. At close quarters I like the adverse party to feel something, preferably fear, though hate is as useful. The category matters less than the degree: the stronger the emotion the more it will blur his thinking.
He showed none. That one word – 'please' – was an indication of his absolute confidence. He was a man typical of Kuo's choice: the brain and sinews of a cat, the heart of a machine.
The car stopped and I had three or four seconds to review the chances. They didn't look very good. With an ordinary thug I could have guaranteed success, even though there were two of them, because there was so little room to move: the Lincoln blocked the alley, and both the door of the car and the door of the warehouse had to be opened and shut. Lack of the freedom to move is an asset when the adverse party is toad-slow to react. Fast reactions, such as I would get from this man, were dangerous at close quarters. This was why I had chosen to take him into the warehouse and avail myself of elbow room, and why nothing could be done until we got inside.
The throb of the V-8 engine was loud in the narrow passage.
In Mandarin: 'When I have left the car, drive to the place. Tell them I will be there in an hour.' In English: 'Is the door locked?'
'Yes,' I said.
'You have the keys?'
'Yes.'
'Go in there. And be careful, please.'
They watched us come in – the big male chulas with their livid coloring, the female pakpaos with their slender tails. They hung motionless: the morning was airless and the opening of the door made no draft.
I heard him shut it behind us. The throb of the Lincoln rose and then died away. In the cavernous shed there were no echoes; his footsteps were muffled; their sound told me that he was backing away four paces, five. I knew why.
'Turn to face me, please.'
He had changed weapons. At five paces the spring-gun was ineffective. He held a .38 automatic and it had a silencer.
'Silencer' is a misnomer. No gun can be made silent. A full baffle will absorb a lot of noise but it will also cost a lot of impact and can make the difference between a kill and a maiming wound – and a man with a maiming wound can run and can even fight and can even close in before the second shot comes. This was a half baffle designed to cut down the noise without costing too much fire power. It would be heard in a building or a street. It would make noise in here but no one outside would hear it because the kites were themselves a massive silencer. Seeing them, and noting the acoustics as we came in, he had changed weapons with the instinctive judgment of a professional.
'Where is the woman?'
Sunshine fell from the skylights; we stood on our own shadows. At five paces I could do nothing: he would pump the stuff into me as I leapt for him. There was the chance only of selling him a reason for taking me out of here, for taking me to his base so that Kuo himself could question me.