Question: Were they so determined to kill me that one of them would be ordered to stay behind for that purpose when the main cell left?
I reached the British Embassy and went up the steps. I don't like steps: they are placed at exits and entrances where a watch can be kept, and the target is raised and has no cover. I wanted to be shot at, not shot, and the fine distinction got on my nerves.
Loman wasn't at the Embassy, but he'd left some keys for me and I went down to the street again and found the all-black hardtop E-type parked at the curb a little way along. I had told Loman something fast and he had picked a black one to be inconspicuous, with a hardtop in case I rolled it. He was good about details like that.
Assume the adverse party knew that the grenade had only injured me and that the nearest emergency medical post from the warehouse was the Police Hospital. They would look for me in three places: the Police Hospital, the British Embassy and the Pakchong Hotel. First two places negative.
I drove to the Pakchong Hotel.
And they tried again.
23 Breakout
The Pakchong had taken on the chimerical quality of a Fellini film: people appeared from the shadows bearing candles, their faces floating in the light and vanishing as they turned away; gold leaf glimmered along fluted columns supporting invisible skies; voices piped through the gloom.
The concierge wreathed me in garlands of apologies: the mains had fused but there were electricians already at work. The elevator was inoperative but a page would of course escort me, lighting the way to my room. I said it was not necessary and took the proffered candle on a dish, going up by the stairs. More candles burned along the passages in bowls and basins on the floor, and my shadow leaped on me and sprang away as I passed them.
There was one of the usual Saraburi rugs in the alcove near the stairhead and I rolled it into ten or twelve thicknesses and held it in front of me as a shield before I kicked the door of my room wide open and went in.
Five shots, in rapid succession, heavily silenced.
At each shot I crumpled lower and brought the rug higher because the face always feels so vulnerable and you know the surgeon will have more room to work in the gross flaccid organs of the body if he can get at you in time.
But it's not pleasant, even with some kind of shield: a bullet has a lot of force behind it and your stomach shrinks and feels knot-hard until it's over.
The vague form had gone from the window by the time I was on the floor but I gave him a few seconds and lay there with the sweat breaking out and the fibrous smell of the rug against my face. The candle had gone out when it had fallen and the dish had made a crash on the mosaic.
It took half an hour to make sure I'd lost him: survey of balconies, adjoining rooms, fire escape, street. Then I went into the bar and drank a Greek Metaxa brandy, ashamed at the weakness and then angry with the shame, flinging up excuses; my brain had pushed my body into almost certain gunfire when I'd gone into that room because I never believe in a natural cause for a mains fuse in any hotel where I'm staying; and the grenade wounds were still fresh enough to make the body cringe at the thought of further punishment.
The bloody thing got its own back now; it wanted to sleep, brandy or no, so I just telephoned Loman and found him in and told him there'd been another party and then went upstairs again and dragged a blanket into the bathroom and locked the door. Went out like a light.
It was tricky the next day because they wanted to keep me under observation at the hospital when I showed up there to have the dressings changed, and it finished in a row. The medical staff was all right because as far as they were concerned there was a bed waiting for me and if I chose to trot about the town and burst all the stitches it was up to me, but it was a police hospital and they knew I was working on the snatch pitch and they were getting desperate for a lead: the warehouse area was still under hawk like surveillance on the typical police principle of shutting the doors after the horse, etc.
The close-knit Saraburi rug had absorbed all five shots because the silencer had cut down the fire power, and there was nothing to show on me. If the nurse had seen a new injury – especially bullet – she would have made a report and they'd have put me into a strait-jacket till Ramin came to grill me.
I had to send for Loman to help me with the row and he got me clear of the place. In the car outside he looked at me and said: 'How long are you going to keep this up?'
'Till they expose their location.'
'Or until you push the risk too far.'
'We haven't started yet.'
'I think I'm on the point of pulling you out.'
'For Christ's sake, Loman, you can't stop me now. It's our last chance.'
He went on watching me and I was fed up with it.
'I'm responsible for you, Quiller. You're nearing the stage when you'll no longer be in operational condition mentally or physically.'
He would not speak English and it annoyed me and I said, 'Listen, I know I look like a bit of dried shit on a doorstep but you can't expect me to look like anything else, you know that. Pull me out now and the mission goes right up the spout.'
It worried me because he had the authority to do it. He never liked his people to get into a red sector. Typical governess. I said: 'We're using me as the bait, aren't we? That's our policy. Don't start getting the wind up now that it looks like paying off.'
We went on for a bit like that and then I got rid of him by saying I was going to bed for a couple of hours at the hotel. He knew Mil. 6 was still on the job, watching the place, though I hadn't seen Vinia. If I saw her I would tell her to clear out. It was getting dangerous now.
Loman went back to the Embassy and I took the E-type to the Pakchong and left it round the back; the Kuo cell knew I had it but I didn't want to keep impressing it on their memory. Then I walked about in the area, and nothing happened, so I walked as far as the Embassy and back, giving them easy chances but not before checking and doubling so that if they missed I could try following up. Nothing happened.
After the grenade thing they'd found out fast enough that I was still alive: they'd sent a man to the Pakchong as soon as I'd left the hospital. Now they were being slow and it scared me because it looked as if they were concentrating on the final breakout and couldn't waste any more time on me.
Loman had said we had forty-eight hours and half that period had already gone. While 1 was wandering uselessly round Bangkok, there was an airplane somewhere over the Near East land mass heading for the Chinese frontier with Huang Hsiung Lee sitting with two Special Service guards from London. The cable-lines would be crackling with coded signals detailing final arrangements for the exchange.
In the afternoon I decided to increase the risk. The main Kuo cell would be too busy setting up the break to spare more than one man to look after me. He might not be very good: a first-class marksman but not so good at tagging or static surveillance. He might have lost me a dozen times while he tried to set up a shot from a point safe enough to guarantee his getting away without alerting the police patrols.
A vehicle of known aspect provides a better image than a walking man. I got into the E-type and drove to the Embassy, leaving it right outside in the prohibited area for ten minutes, behind the Ambassador's Humber Imperial, and then coming out again, taking the steps a bit quick and checking doorways, windows, parked cars.
I was willing them to shoot and the nerves were sickening for death: I could hear the discharge and feel the bullet breaking through the flesh, could taste the blood in the mouth.
The street was innocent.