The 9th Directive

'Can I help you?'

'Do you know where I find Room 6?'

She looked at me a long time. I didn't mind. The staffs of Embassies always need a few days to put one thought after another. It's almost relaxing.

There's nobody there at the moment. Perhaps I can help you.'

'Are you the Cultural Attache?'

'His secretary.'

'Well that schoolboy hasn't got his sums right. I want Room 6. If that doesn't mean anything I want to see a man named Loman.'

'Mr Loman isn't here.'

'Oh for the Lord's sake. Well if you ever see him just tell him I've tried contacting him all the afternoon and now I'm taking the night plane on the London run.'

Undisciplined behavior. Tell it to the Lowry.

'Just a moment, please.'

She walked well and had a calm clear voice. I found it mollifying. Maybe that's what she was here for, to stop people blowing up about the malorganization.

A man came in next and she wasn't with him. He shut the door and offered his hand. 'Have a chair?'

'All right,' I said, 'they're all yours.' I dropped my papers onto the desk. With the flap on about the 29th they were probably security-checking the Ambassador himself every time he came back from the lavatory.

Now I knew why no one had asked for my name. Names don't mean a thing.

He gave the papers a quick run-through. 'You're based in where… exactly?' He peered at page 2 as if he couldn't read the writing. I said:

'Whitehall 9. Liaison Group. Lovett sees to me.'

'Ah, yes. Lovett. How is he these days?' He pushed a cigarette box across. 'Like to smoke?'

'He's very well.' To save time I went through the lot. 'He was in Rome last week on the Carosio thing and Bill Spencer took over in London. Your boys were Simms and Westlake. They--'

"That's all right, yes. But I thought you were there too.'

'It says Paris on my passport, doesn't it?'

He pulled back the cigarette box, took out a cigarette and lit it. 'Are you going to be in Bangkok long?'

'No.'

'No?'

'I'm flying out tonight unless Loman turns up.'

'He won't be here until tomorrow.'

'Then give him my love.' I stood up and held out my hand for the papers. He said with a wrinkled smile, 'I'm surprised you're not staying.'

'You don't need me here. You'll do all right.'

'If you don't mind I'll ask Miss Maine to show you out.'

'I know my way.'

It was stinking hot in the street and I took a trishaw back to the Pakchong, trying not to think about Loman. When you're meant to be directing someone in the field you don't slide off and subject him to security checks.

At the hotel twenty minutes later the desk called me and said my visitor would not give a name, so I went down. I don't like nameless people in my room.

The lobby of the Pakchong has one of those beautiful trellis arches at the entrance to the fountain court and she was standing framed by it, her lean body sideways on, her throat shadowed by the angle of her head as she looked across to the staircase, her eyes regarding me coolly as they had before. A shantung suit, tan shoes, no jewelry.

Only her head moved as I crossed the mosaic. The place was very quiet and she pitched her voice low.

'May I use your name?'

'Nobody knows it,' I said.

'Your cover name.'

'Who cares?'

'I came to apologize, Mr Quiller. I should have recognized you at the Embassy.'

'I'm not often recognized by the secretaries of Cultural Attaches. Yehudi Menuhin's more their type.'

'I wasn't far from Rama IV two years ago.'

Now that I was close to her I could see that something had happened to her face on the left side. It didn't quite balance. The skin was perfect but someone – someone very good – had done a job on it.

'What are you?' I asked her. 'Mil. 6?'

She didn't answer, didn't seem interested. I said:

'Not Security.'

'No.' She changed the slim tan bag into the other hand. 'I just came to apologize. You can't be used to the indignity of security checks.'

I didn't quite laugh. 'You'd be surprised at the indignities I'm used to.' Along with Dewhurst and Comyngs my cover name on file had the 9-Suffix Reliable Under Torture. 'Will you have a drink?'

'I can't stay. They say you're leaving tonight.'

'Yes.'

'Have a good trip.'

I watched her cross the mosaic. Not many women can walk like that when they know a man's watching them. Not many women can walk like that anyway.

I went up and,finished packing. To apologize? She couldn't have thought that one up for herself; she was too intelligent. Why had they wanted to know that I was physically and in all truth at the Pakchong Hotel? They could have checked on me in a dozen better ways.

Blast their eyes, I was on Flight 203.

The only other thing that happened that day was a phone call from Pangsapa, asking me to go along there.

It was dark but most of the shops were still open and some of them were already redressing the windows with colored bunting and gold-framed photographs of the Person.

I had the trishaw drop me some distance from the house in Klong Chula Road and walked along the river in the evening heat. Pangsapa received me straightaway and said:

'The information I have for you is worth something in the region of fifty thousand baht.'

It was too late but I didn't say so. It would be amusing to milk Loman's expense account and let them fry him when he got back to London.

'Fifty thousand,' I said. 'All right.'

'You can guarantee that sum?'

'Verbatim.'

'Your word is quite sufficient.'

I knew now that I shouldn't have come. It was a lot of money and it would be a lot of information and I didn't want it, didn't want to be involved.

Pangsapa said softly: 'Three days ago one of the "professionals" crossed over the Maekong River from Laos into Thailand and tonight he arrived in Bangkok.'

'Which one?'

'Kuo the Mongolian.'

So there was nothing I could do about it now.

4 The Specialists

They are specialists and each has his own method.

Sorbi is a strangler but never uses his hands: it is nearly always a nylon stocking, infrequently a cord. He is a lecher and runs with the night-club set in European capital cities, finding most of his work there. He calls himself a 'private' operator: half his kills are women and he is offered his work by rich men or men of high position who cannot afford exposure. Sorbi was behind the 'Blue Room Mystery' of the June 1964 Paris head-lines (Madame Latrelle-Voisin) and the 'Autostrada Angel Case' in Milan, 1965, which entrained the resignation of three members of the Italian Government. Sorbi's client was not of course implicated.) This operation brought Sorbi into touch with politicals and be is now said to hold himself available for political work, the fees being very high.

Quicky the Greek uses the knife and has made only two killings, but both were important and both political and so well-arranged that in one case (the leader of the 'Interim' Bolivian Cabinet) the record still shows a verdict of suicide. The Greek never asks for money but for deeds of title, and he is said to own fifteen thousand acres of land in the key development areas of the Argentine and Venezuela. He may not live long to enjoy his possessions, as Pangsapa himself told me that Quicky is hooked on snow.

Vincent works wild and nobody trusts him, though he is so persistent that once a name is given to him the man of that name can be considered as dead. Vincent will use anything – a gun or a knife, poison, a bomb or his bare hands. Also he is cheap, and they say he would work even for nothing. (He was behind the coup d'etat in Egypt when Lieutenant-Colonel Ibrahim was found locked in his Cadillac at the bottom of the Nile – a dredger had struck the obstacle.)