Down from Plern Chit into Vithayu and through to Lumpini southward, driving slowly, checking the mirror, taking time at lights in getting away, giving them a chance at every fifty yards. The midafternoon traffic was heavy along Rama IV and a jam was piling up near the Link Road. The sun's heat pressed down; its light shimmered across the facades of buildings.
The hum of engines was a soporific; my eyes were hypnotized by the wink of the sun on glass; exhaust haze hung mauve along the street's canyon. The jam began clearing and I changed from first to second and kept to the slow lane and heard the faint tinkle of glass breaking somewhere near me, somewhere inside the car – something had flashed but I didn't know what – it wasn't a gun.
The animal brain was already at work, anxious for explanation. The forebrain went into the routine: check environment and note essentials. Then the body took control as the first fumes of the cyanide reached the lungs. The throat blocked and the diaphragm contracted and I was fighting to keep the car in a straight line as the tears began blurring the vision and the lungs gaped for oxygen and the throat remained blocked because the brain knew there was no oxygen, no air, only a cockpit full of colorless cyanide gas – the quick one, the deadly one, C2N2 the one the Germans had chosen for the Jews because it was the most efficient.
Metal shrieked and someone called out and a front wheel bounced against the curb and I had the door open as the handbrake dragged the treads along the tarmac, slowing the car to a stop.
Doubled up on the pavement, blinded by tears, hands at the stomach, the first clean air soaring into the lungs through the inflamed throat and pushing out again. The smell of walnuts from the fumes still clinging to my clothes.
People gathering. Voices. 'Taken sick… Only the lamppost, . . Telephone… A doctor?… Going slowly… Nearly hit--'
I lurched across the curb and got between them and the open window of the car in case they went too close.
Even whispering was painful. 'All right now. Please go away. I'm better now. Go away.' The tears kept on streaming and I saw the people through them, their faces distorted, a woman pulling a child away, a man nodding encouragement as I straightened up. 'Please go away – I'm all right now.'
The air was dragged in, forced out, dragged in, as the lungs hungered for it. The body could look after itself: it was the brain I was more concerned with, because we'd pulled off the trick, I knew where they were now, I knew where they were, we'd pulled off the bloody trick.
It took fifteen minutes to clear the cockpit, using the door as a slow fan, standing with my breath held and my eyes shut, moving away to breathe at intervals, coming back to proceed with the fanning until it was safe to get in.
The front wing had clipped the lamppost and there were skidmarks but that was about all. The fragments of the glass bulb were in the footwell. They had taken their chance, waiting for the traffic jam to clear and then accelerating past, lobbing the gas bomb through the open window on the other side and speeding up without a hope in hell of my following.
It didn't matter. The forebrain routine had been running automatically, checking environment and essentials. Three were significant: the driver of the Honda alongside had his head turned away from me; he had accelerated fast into the gap ahead; and the car had diplomatic plates.
Loman was wrong.
The Kuo cell had not set up an alternative plan for holding the Person immediately after the snatch. They had been confident of getting him clear of the city in the ambulance. When my call to Room 6 had stopped their run they had made for the only place available to them, the only place where they would be admitted without question and sheltered in absolute secrecy, the only place in Bangkok that stood on Chinese soil. The Chinese Embassy.
I drove there now, leaving the E-type at the top end of Soi Som Kit and walking into Phet Buri Road, going into the Maprao Bar and using the telephone. The time factor was critical now because they might think the gas bomb had worked, and if it were for some reason essential to kill me before they left the city they would make their break as soon as the Honda returned to base. It would now have done that.
I couldn't see the entrance of the Chinese Embassy from where I stood at the telephone but I was near enough to be on hand if anything happened. I didn't know what was likely to happen because it depended on Loman. I thought he would probably signal Ramin and get a cordon round the place. That was all right; it would take the pressure off me. Two of the shrapnel wounds had broken their stitches and my jacket was stuck to the shoulder blade; the left hand felt tender and the cyanide had inflamed the throat. I'd located the Kuo base and the police could take it from there. The only thing that mattered was getting the Person to safety and stopping the exchange and it made no odds who did it.
The line to the British Embassy was engaged and I tried another one, watching the street, watching every face that passed, listening to the ringing tone and the raised beat of my pulse in the eardrum.
The line opened and I asked for Room 6.
The late afternoon sun fell obliquely across the street and cast strong shadows opposite. A Chinese came into the bar and I checked him but he wasn't one of the cell. Embassy staff.
Vinia came on the line and my thoughts tripped fractionally as they always would whenever I heard her voice again.
'Loman,' I told her. 'Urgent.'
'He's talking to the Ambassador – shall I get him?'
'Please. Fast.'
I waited.
She wouldn't wear it again because the legend was ended. Her thigh would lose the disfiguring mark it had made and her mind would lose the disfiguring mark left by the memory of what they had done to him and the way they had done it.
You shouldn't think about anything but the mission, every day, hour, minute, second – because you can miss a trick if you even blink.
I nearly missed it but not quite.
Dropped the phone and threw a note on the bar and got out and walked fast, but not too fast, to the top of Soi Som Kit – not too fast because if they'd left a cover he'd be on to me and drop me with a shot because now they were serious and it was the breakout.
It was a black Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow that had passed the window and it was flying the British Embassy pennant at the wingtip and there were only two things wrong with that: Cole-Verity's official vehicle was a Humber Imperial, and the pennant would be flown only when he was riding in it. At this moment he was at the Embassy talking to Loman.
There was a series of one-way streets in the area and 1 had to go left and left again down Soi Chitlom, and left again along Plern Chit Road, wanting to drive fast but having to think it out because the chances were that they'd be coming south down Asoke Lane – there wasn't an exit from Phet Buri to the north and they could only come south from it.
My hands were trembling on the thin rim of the wheel because this was an all-or-nothing run and I couldn't get to a telephone again without losing them.
If I found them.
I found them. They came south by Asoke and I was waiting for them in Plern Chit on the east side of the lights. They swung westward and against the fierce clamor of the hunting instinct I forced myself to wait until there were three other cars between us before I drew out and followed.
24 The Trap
Procedure remained well-ordered for thirty minutes.
The Silver Shadow kept a steady medium pace within the 30-40 sector and for most of the time I managed to fit in a couple of cars between us. Nothing showed up permanently in the mirror. Two or three police patrols overtook us and the Shadow got a salute in passing. Kuo would be pleased by that. They had meant to use the Lincoln but when the grenade didn't work they decided to change the image. They were pushed for time and couldn't find a Humber Imperial and settled for the Rolls-Royce because it had a British-enough profile and the Union Jack at the wingtip made the finishing touch.