The 9th Directive

He knew in addition that the only good contact I had ever had in this city was dead, because that evening on Rama IV Road in the poor light they had mistaken him for me.

Pangsapa wanted to talk and I let him.

'I remember when your Princess Alexandra made a visit here a few years ago. It went off marvelously. Everyone loved her on sight and we coined a new title for her – the Gentle Ambassadress. She's having the same success with her current excursions; and last year she went over wonderfully in Tokyo. It's so intelligent for the British to send interesting people abroad as a change from those dreary diplomats with rumpled waistcoats and Derby winners' teeth.'

I hadn't told him why I had come. Loman must have given him a hint. I had only one question for him: Where were the professionals? But he wanted to go on talking.

'You may think it odd that I hold such an affection for members of the British royalty. After all I was born in poverty. I remember very clearly the time when I was beaten by a merchant for thieving – my choice was to steal or starve in those days. It happened when I was ostensibly watching a state procession on the river, with the Royal Barge and all the trimmings. Have you ever seen that barge, the Sri Supanahongs? It's quite enormous and covered entirely with pure gold leaf. The bag of rice I was filching at the time from one of the market canals was half soaked in filthy water, but it kept me alive for six days.' He smiled wistfully. 'It wasn't likely to endear me to the monarchy, my own or any other. But events happen so quickly. My father – or the man I believe to be my father -was toying with a certain hazardous operation in cahoots with a ship's captain not long afterwards, and the wind was fair. Five years later I was at Oxford, of all places.'

He sat with remarkable stillness and his smile was seraphic. 'My degree is in economics. But I cherish far more the spiritual experience the life of your country vouchsafed me. It was in those years that I learned to bear a certain love for complete strangers – I'm talking again of the monarchy.'

He leaned toward me an inch and his lisp became more pronounced. 'I would be sorry if anything happened in a few weeks' time on the 29th.'

'You might be able to prevent it.'

'I would welcome the chance.'

'All I want to know is where the professionals are. If any of them are here. In Bangkok.'

'The professionals?'

I got up from the cushions to walk about. Maybe he hadn't been briefed fully enough. 'Did Loman come to see you?'

'I don't know that name.'

'Who told you I was coming?'

'No one.'

I stopped and stood looking down at him.

'You didn't expect me?'

'Not before you telephoned.' He sat like a small dark effigy, only the light in his yellow eyes showing that he was alive.

I said: 'All right, Pangsapa. What was all that about your undying love for the monarchy?'

Patiently he said: 'You forget that the whole city is preparing for this important visit on the 29th. The police and security branches are very active, and it is obvious that trouble is expected – specific trouble. What else could you have come about? You seek information.'

I said: 'You've never seen me before.'

'You have been in Bangkok before.'

I accepted that. He'd been given to me as a source of information and no source of information was much good if it had never heard about my job here two years ago. I pressed him, though.

'Have you ever been in contact with us before?'

'I know a man called Parkis.'

'All right.' Parkis was in London Control. 'Let's talk about the professionals. I want to know their travel patterns.'

He looked perplexed. 'I'm not quite sure what you mean by the "professionals." '

'I mean Vincent, Sorbi, Kuo--'

'Ah, yes

'Quicky the Greek, Hideo, the Mafia boy, what's his name?'

'Zotta.'

'That's it – Zotta.'

I relaxed again. He hadn't denied knowing Zotta. The Mafia channelled most of their stuff from Bangkok through Naples to Recife now that the Buenos Aires route was blocked following the death of Primero, and it was Zotta who did the bump. Pangsapa would know about that. It was his business.

'Zotta is in Recife,' he said. 'You can forget him.' He stood up suddenly and without effort, without even taking his hands from the folds of his robe.

'Vincent?'

'He's in prison in Athens. They're getting him out, of course, but that will take longer than three weeks because his people are disorganized.'

'Sorbi?'

His hands appeared, pale against the black robe. Who ever knows where Sorbi is?'

'Kuo? Hideo? The Greek?'

'When I have had a little time,' he said, 'I will get in touch with you. I know that the information would be valuable to you.'

'It depends.' London is precise on this. When you go shopping you have to do a bargain when you can.

'We can arrange it later.' He shrugged. 'Where can I find you?'

Takchong Hotel.'

As we went toward the door, I noticed the water in the tank was clear again, changed by the filter-flow system. The fish swam alone, a six-inch compact rainbow-colored killer. A professional.

In two days I was ready to tell Loman the mission was refused. It was a security job and that wasn't in my field. The place was slopping over with security people anyway and any one of them could handle this thing better than I could: they knew the formula and they were trained to work with it.

I had gone to see Pangsapa because I might need him one day if a real mission ever brought me back to Bangkok. There'd been no point in not sounding him on the travel patterns of the professionals: I always like to know where people are. But if his sources were as good as Loman believed, he would have contacted me by now even if only to report on their whereabouts. He would know that London would cough up a little even for negative information. But he obviously couldn't get any.

It was no go. The thing had no shape. I was drifting about the city without even a decent cover or a cover story, and every time I checked for tags there weren't any because no one wanted to know where I went or what I was doing.

I knew why Loman had called me in. It was typical of him. He hadn't given any real answer when I'd asked him who roped the Bureau in. He'd done it himself: sold this abortive scheme to Parkis and the others and chosen me for the field. He must have talked well. His whole project was based on the spurious premise of a threat. Anyone planning an assassination would never put out a threat before the attempt; all it would do would be to alert the security forces, and that was precisely what it had done. Security was geared to combat any action by a psychopath, reasonably enough: there were always psychopaths in the crowd whenever a VIP did the rounds. The Pope's visit to New York in 1965 put eighteen thousand city police on special duty, with bomb squads combing the route and riflemen manning the rooftops simply because of a few letters from anonymous religious eccentrics.

This was routine work. The Bureau never took that kind of thing on: it was set up to promote specific operations. Why the hell had they listened to Loman?

I tried contacting him through Soi Suek 3 but he hadn't shown up since the day I flew in so I went to the Embassy and asked for Room 6. He had said it was all right for me to do that.

The young man looked nervous.

'Room 6?'

'Yes.'

'That will be Miss Maine, won't it?'

'Will it?'

'If you'll just take a seat.'

I watched him making tentative hops toward the next office. He hadn't even asked for my name.

If Loman was in Room 6 I would tell him I knew why he'd roped in the Bureau and why he'd roped me in, then watch his face.

The Harrow type came back and took me along the passage into another room. The door said 'Cultural Attache.' I was alone five minutes and a girl came in, a woman, I never know their ages.