I was in a chair and there were scissors at work on my shirt. 'Loman, you listening?'
'Yes.'
'Sometime before midnight, get it for me from the warehouse. You know where it is. The Husqvarna. Need it. You do that for me?'
'Yes.' He said something more but it all went fuzzy.
27 Dawn
At 0200 hours the next morning the police helped us across the pavement to the car in a storm of photoflash. There was no actual cordon because Loman had spent a lot of time with Cole-Verity and it was decided that the Thai Home Office should be told what was on. We now had permission to hold on to Kuo and to escort him out of the city.
We had him in the car with us; I had insisted on that. His broken thumb had been seen to and his clothes -like mine – had been given a brushing; they were crumpled and patches of dried mud still remained but we didn't look too bad.
After Loman had woken me I had privately told him the set-up. He didn't like it. He said it was a hundred to one against and there were risks. I said it was all we could do and if there were anything we could do we had to do it.
I hadn't said anything yet to Kuo because I wanted to spring it cold at the last minute so that he would have no time to think beyond the simple terms of the proposaclass="underline" life or death. He hadn't spoken once, except to thank the doctor. That was all right: it meant that he knew there was no get-out for him; otherwise he would have talked hard, putting up some kind of an offer. There was nothing he could offer us.
The Humber Imperial was fulclass="underline" the Charge d'Affaires, Third Secretary, Loman, Kuo, one armed guard and myself. The police car behind us was bringing Huang Hsiung Lee. I had seen him for a few minutes. Young, ascetic, dedicated, a lot of assurance: they might not have told him much but he knew he was up for a swap.
Soon after they'd woken me Loman had said:
'We've had a call come through. The Person landed on the other side of the frontier ninety minutes ago. He is being held ready for the exchange.'
'Thank God for that,'
Loman had said icily: 'I don't quite follow.'
'He's still alive, isn't he?' I had been worrying about the Nontaburi roadblock action: there'd been a lot of stuff flying about and the Rolls-Royce crew might have panicked and tried to push through too early.
All the way to the airport Kuo sat facing me on the tip-up seat. Sometimes he looked at me but there was no particular expression. He had the eyes of a nocturnal animal, the pupils large and black in the gloom. I had no feeling of being watched by anything human.
There was a Thai Air Force transport waiting for us at Don Muang and by 0300 hours we were airborne and heading east to the Laos frontier.
At Kemaraj the Maekong River is wide and the new bridge is substantial, tarmac-surfaced and with two traffic lanes. It was closed after the Vietcong had overrun the area on the Laos side and military posts were established at each end.
We reached the bridge just before dawn in a small Army convoy. The post was normally manned by a unit of Thai guards a dozen strong but today a special detachment had been ordered up from the military base near Ku-Chi-Narai, and immediately we arrived the commander reported to our Charge d'Affaires: he was to lend us all assistance in the event of difficulty, short of firing into Laotian territory on the far side of the bridge.
I wanted to look at things so I walked a little way from the car. It was very quiet. There were upward of a hundred armed troops standing at readiness here in the half dark; there would be as many on the other side; but it was quiet. A man coughed, a light flicked on and went out, metal made a ringing sound instantly silenced, and the quiet remained. It was the battlefield hush of the hour that comes before the attack.
In the stillness I could hear the mosquitoes whining in the glare of the lamps above my head. Beyond the lamps the sky was black, but in the east a crack of light showed. My watch said six.
Loman had not let me down. Walking was painful; it meant he hadn't allowed the doctor to dope me even with one aspirin. My head felt clear, with the super-awareness that comes from not eating. I was unhopeful; Loman's estimation of the odds seemed about right.
The new day came into the sky quickly and a car was started up at the far end of the bridge and there were, commands.
I went back to the military convoy and got into the camouflaged saloon where the guards had Kuo. The dawn light showed his face to be pale. He watched me steadily. I ordered the guards out of the car. Only a few of us knew what was going to happen: Loman, the Charge d'Affaires, the two Mil. 6 people. It was going to be tricky and we didn't want anyone else to know, especially the soldiers. One man, unnerved, might fire by accident and entrain wholesale bloodshed.
I had to bring the Person safely across to us without a shot. And send Lee back to England.
'Kuo,' I said carefully, 'you understand English perfectly, I think?'
'Yes.' His fear was revealed even in that one word: it came out on a breath. His fear was all I gambled on – his fear of dying. That was why I had not killed him in the rice-field. No weapon is so powerful as fear in the enemy.
Then answer my questions. Was the proposal made direct to you from Peking? The proposal to abduct the English dignitary?'
'Yes.' There was no hesitation. He was in my hand.
'What precise powers were you given over the military – Chinese and Vietcong – to help you mount the operation?'
'I do not quite understand.'
He watched me the whole time in the growing light that came into the car. We sat so close that I could hear his breathing, and feel his fear.
'For instance, you engineered the assault on the Nontaburi roadblock by signaling Peking from our Embassy. Is that right?'
'Yes. I was able to do that because Peking offered me facilities before I crossed into Thailand. I did not use them before the assault operation.'
'And have you papers giving you any kind of temporary authority over the military in general?'
He produced two guard passes and a special letter countersigned by the Commander-in-Chief of the Vietcong forces in Laos. I read this slowly, asking him for a translation of the words I didn't understand. The letter gave him access to the operational chiefs-of-staff of whatever area in which he found himself, and power to request armed assistance in strength according to the situation. It looked official and was obviously genuine but I didn't like its vagueness. I gave it back to him with the two passes.
'It should suffice.' I had to encourage him; it wasn't the time for doubts. 'Now listen to me carefully. You will have to make a choice. One alternative is that you are taken back to face your trial in Bangkok. You are certain to be convicted and executed. Perhaps you know the method of execution in this country. The religion is Buddhism, which is against the taking of life. The condemned man is therefore put behind a sheet of fabric on which a target is painted. The squad fires at the target, not at the man. But you will die just the same, and it seems a fitting death for a marksman.'
I watched his eyes and I was satisfied. The other alternative is that you walk to the middle of that bridge out there and make it understood to the Chinese officer, in charge of the exchange that you are replacing the agent Lee. You are the candidate to be exchanged for the English dignitary.'
There were engines being started up outside the guardpost. A party of soldiers went past the windows of the car. The lamps across the bridge had gone out and it was full daylight.
Kuo said on a breath: 'They will not agree.'
I turned back to face him. That is up to you. You can use your papers. Tell them you have received instructions from Peking at the last moment. Or tell them that you have spoken to Huang Hsiung Lee and that he wishes to return to England because he is about to gain certain information far more vital than the information he has now. Tell them that his memory is not sufficient to retain so many technicalities and that he has a chance of acquiring essential documentation from sources with a contact inside the prison. He urges you that if he is exchanged, it will cost the Republic of China the loss of scientific data that he could otherwise obtain, given a few more months in England.'