'Perhaps they can find it,' he said. 'There aren't many Lincolns. But they won't pass it to the Metropolitan for a general search – you know Special Branch sensitivities, the world over.' He turned away and asked, 'You didn't report the casualty?'
'No.' It is always left to the discretion of the intelligence director in the field whether a killing is reported or not. Circumstances vary. 'You mind holding off, Loman?'
'Reason?'
'There's some more to do in that area and I'd like it kept clear for a bit. Give it a few hours.'
He considered. 'Very well.'
He was playing me softly today because we looked like losing the mission and he didn't want to stack up any blame for wrong decisions. He was leaving things as much as possible to me: it was the only lesson he'd learned. I liked working alone and he knew he'd have to let me. But he still thought we were going to lose.
I looked at my watch. They'd had an hour and a half.
'I'll report as necessary.'
'If Pangsapa has anything for you… ?'
'Have you a lead, Quiller?'
'Straight run or a dead end, one or the other.' There was nothing for him to do but give me the overall score. 'We have something like forty-eight hours,' he said. That is the period within which they can get Huang Hsiung Lee from Durham to London and by air to the Chinese frontier. The Kuo cell will know this. They will know that the deal is going to be accepted and that no one must waste any time in getting both parties to the exchange point. Kuo will make an all-out attempt to leave Bangkok today or tomorrow.' He came with me as far as the door. 'The feeling in England is still one of shock and grave anxiety. The general public knows only that the Person is missing and in danger. That is of course still true. Among those few in Whitehall who know of the exchange offer there is an added anxiety -that the exchange will have to go through and that we shall hand over, with Lee, a weapon of awesome potential to a Communist state.'
I said: 'Forty-eight hours. You can do a lot in that time. But we'll want some luck. Christ, we'll want some luck.'
I took a cab there and got out near the warehouse and walked as far as the door in the alley. I didn't hope for much but it had to be tried. The Chinese had told the chauffeur that he would be back at base in an hour. Thirty minutes ago they would have begun to worry. It would take another thirty to convince them that he'd got fouled up somewhere. If they could stand the strain of not knowing, they'd forget him. I didn't think they could stand the strain in their present situation: they had to find out for certain that he hadn't been grabbed, that he wasn't being grilled by professional police interrogators after the potassium-cyanide pill had been forced out of his fingers in time. They had to know if they were still safe, that their base wasn't quietly being ringed around with police in depth at this precise minute.
They would have to pick a lock or break a door and I didn't know which door they'd go for so I'd have to be inside when they came. I didn't have a gun because there wouldn't be any necessity: if they came at all they wouldn't even know I was here. The operation would begin when they left, and tried to get back to base without my tagging them there.
If I could do that…
The alley was clear. I had gone the whole way round the warehouse, cat's-eyed. Now I went in, using the keys and locking the door after me because that was how they'd expect to find it. Then I turned round.
The dead Chinese had gone.
I stood very still.
Small pool of blood still on the boards, darkening. Kites motionless. No sound.
The nerve-chill was creeping down my spine but I made myself stand and watch the big paper kites for two minutes. They were excellent cover because of sound absorption, but anyone taking a single step from behind any one of them would set it moving, however slightly.
They hung dead still.
Findings: Chauffeur reported situation but Kuo had not waited, had been worried that Chinese was alone with adverse party even though in control. A man ordered here straight away to ensure security. Body found and removed.
I was a little too bloody late.
Very quiet in here. Five minutes to look around. A lot of self-anger, frustration, contempt churning up in the stomach while I tried to think, tried to hope there was still a chance, that they still hadn't gone.
But they'd gone, and I unlocked the door and went out and caught sight of sudden movement at the edge of the vision field. I plunged into a run that pitched me down a dozen yards from the door as the blast came and the shrapnel tore at my clothes and my ears were blocked by the explosion.
22 Bait
Reaction time covers three phases: time required to sense the signal, to decide on the correct response, and to respond. Affective factors: age, state of health, fatigue, alcohol, caffeine, so forth. Greatest artificial influential factor: training (i.e. habit formation).
The typical reaction time of a jet pilot receiving a visual signal (unexpected approach of another aircraft) is 1.7 seconds, this total comprising 0.9 seconds to sight, focus and evaluate visual signal, 0.5 seconds to reach decision (evasive action), and 0.3 seconds to respond (move controls). A period of intensive training by ground simulation (bombardment of spasmodic signals) will reduce the reaction time to less than half, and such training – even after a lapse of years – will continue to effect reduction to a smaller extent.
Stimuli in descending order of speed: sight, sound, touch, smell, taste.
In the fastest group (sight) another speed factor comes into play. A signal appearing in the twelve o'clock sector of the vision field (at the top) will produce the fastest reaction. (One is quicker to move when something approaches from above – a falling rock – than from below – a leaping dog.)
It was to my advantage that when I came out of the warehouse into the alley the signal was visual and in the top sector – both fast-group stimuli. But my biggest advantage was in the residual effects of training. It was two years since my last refresher at the house in Norfolk known as the Box of Squibs, but good habits were still operative. (They lob soot bombs at you and top marks go to the cleanest face.)
The result was that my prone body was sliding face-down against the wall a fair distance from the burst when the thing went off, and that I finished up in the correct attitude pointing away from the explosion with my face protected and my legs together with the soles of my shoes acting as a shield.
The three phases went like this. 1) Sighting of signal and interpretation. A man on the roof opposite the warehouse was raising one arm and his hand looked big. Interpretation: the 'bigness' was probably a grenade. 2) Decision. Evade the danger specifically relevant to an explosion. (It was a special type of decision, leading automatically to the next phase: response. The decision to avoid a bullet would lead to a different type of response, because a bullet could reach my body infinitely faster than a grenade.) 3) Response. In this case the response factor took far longer to operate than in the case of a pilot taking action to avoid another aircraft, because all he has to do is hit the controls. To respond to the threat of a grenade-burst the subconscious has to evaluate a mass of data: the angle of the thrower's arm, which governs the time period from the beginning to the end of the throw; the size (and thus the weight) of the grenade – data which affects the time taken to throw it (the heavier the slower) and the degree of explosive force; the distance of the thrower to the intended point of impact; the height of the thrower above that point (gravity aiding momentum); and all factors pertaining, which include mass, inertia, trajectory, air resistance, so forth.
Response passes to action: the body moves. But it must know how to move. Data evaluated has advised that the thrower's hand will take something like one second to swing back, jerk forward and release the grenade, and that the grenade will take longer than one second (as long as 1.5) to travel to the intended impact point, and will take a further second to fire and disintegrate (according to the type of mechanism). The response thus takes one of two almost opposite forms: with less than one second available for the evasive action the target will simply drop flat and try to swing his body away from the direction of the throw; but with more time available he will try to put distance between himself and the explosion.