The boy I'd engaged to survey Suite 9 was scraping the candle-grease from a brass tray near the stairs, looking up quickly at anyone who passed him. I kept clear of him and crossed the area in front of the desk at a fair distance, just close enough to make sure mere was no message-slip in the niche for 91: with the lift out of service I didn't want to rely on a written message being sent to the ninth floor. It could come from only one person: the boy I'd engaged.
I went out through the front entrance and round to the courtyard, using the emergency stairs. The boy was watching everyone on the main staircase very efficiently and if he saw me I doubted if he'd recognize me, any more than my driver had done; but there was a risk and I didn't want to take it. This was normal procedure and right out of basic training: five hundred dels can buy you a friend but a thousand from someone else can buy you an enemy. I'd engaged the services of two mercenaries and then changed the image and from this point I would stay clear of them unless I needed the Citroen. The bell boy could contact me indirectly, by the room telephone or through the embassy, so at this precise point in the Phnom Penh phase of the Kobra mission the state of security was one hundred per cent On the ninth floor I made another routine audio check at the door of Suite 9, noting the acrid scent of a Gauloise and the clink of a glass. There were voices but they were too low to penetrate a door this thick. A telephone rang once and was immediately answered; then the voices took up again. They were unintelligible but one was speaking in educated German: I'd heard it before, when I'd listened here on my way down the emergency stairs ninety minutes ago. I assumed it belonged to Erich Stern.
I turned away and went along to Room 91 near the end of the passage and put the key in the latch and stopped moving.
In most trades people develop a sixth sense appropriate to the work they do. In my trade we call it mission-feel. The instincts of man have become blunted and distorted by technology and habit: he will breathe carbon monoxide fumes for extensive periods in a traffic jam and accept them as normal, even though he knows they are lethally toxic in concentration; whereas a wild creature, scenting the first whiff of smoke, will run for safety. In the nervy business of active intelligence the instincts remain sharp in the almost constant presence of danger; and even in the early phases of a mission these instincts can approach the refinement found in the wild creature. The intention of the organism is to survive.
Incoming data was fairly banal as I stood at the door with the key in the lock and my fingers on the key. Visual and aural perception didn't give me anything of interest: the door was unmarked by any sign of a forced entry and the latch bore no scratches: there was no sound coming from the other side of the door. The subtler senses gave me nothing either: no vibration in the key or movement of air against my skin; no smell but the lingering scent of the Gauloise; nothing to taste.
There was only mission-feel.
Think.
Fact: if there were nothing of interest in the incoming data, it must be in the past, in the recent memory: because that was where the information existed now. In the memory. The eye had seen something; the ear had heard something; or my fingers, pushing the key into the lock, had felt something; and alarm arousal had taken place.
Remember.
Try to remember.
But it was difficult because the information had been presented so subtly that it had been barely on the conscious level.
There is an area of the eye that has no vision. But it detects movement, right at the periphery of the retina, and signals the motor nerves to turn the head and look in that direction. The ear is as sensitive, and even a microscopic shift of the eardrum will be recorded consciously: when the basilar membrane shifts through a distance of less than one hydrogen molecule a tonal sensation results. But other sights and other sounds, being grosser, overlay these refined experiences: the light in the window at the end of this corridor; the vibration of the mortars in the distance.
I turned my head slowly to the right, then to the left, remembering the flight of the bee. There was nothing, no one.
I left my fingers where they were: on the key.
Changes were taking place in the organism: the pituitary gland was being stimulated hypothalamically, promoting the release of adreno-corticotrophin; these and other sympathetic physiological changes were preparing to protect the organism against the effects of stressors.
The intention was to survive.
Consider possibility of psychological imbalance: I'd been with him when the thing had smashed his head open and it had been a shock and the shock still lingered and I might be standing here in front of this door in a dead funk because the nerves were still on edge and if that were the case then I'd better get a grip on myself and turn this bloody key and go in there.
Don't.
Wait.
Think.
Fact: shock doesn't induce hallucinations. I hadn't imagined anything. I hadn't seen anything or heard anything that wasn't there.
Touched anything?
The key.
My fingers were still on the key and I left them there because I didn't want to move. The organism was queasy, ready to start whining about ail this, I don't like it, there's something here I don't understand, I — .
Shuddup.
Bloody well concentrate.
The tactile area was a strong possibility because the visual and aural environs had no particular interest. It could be something to do with the key, the way it had felt when I'd pushed it into the lock. Or it could be something to do with the door. Some kind of movement or lack of movement:, something unusual.
Think of everything.
Perhaps just the nerves. The aftermath of the Chepstow kill.
Listen for Christ's sake I know what I'm doing, I've taken on most things in this trade that'd kill a man if he didn't know how to operate and get away with it time after time, get away with his skin. There's nothing dramatic about it: you've just got to be cautious, that's all. Push your luck a bit now and then, but not right out of the window.
Faint voices.
Not from inside this room: they were coming from Suite 9. The city was in flight and this hotel would be deserted if it weren't for the few people staying on to the end: the brave, the stupid, the loyal, the ostrich-brained and the handful of international opportunists who were backing their chances of cleaning up by doing a deal with the Communists when they took over the place. But they weren't many, and most of the rooms in the Royal Cambodian Hotel were gathering dust; on the ninth floor only Suite 9 and Room 91 were taken, and none of the skeleton staff felt like climbing this high to turn down the beds.
For this reason the voices coming from Stern's quarters were audible to me, and a new hazard was presented. These voices had only just become loud enough for me to hear and the immediate explanation was the simple and obvious: in human congress the volume of sound during greeting and farewell is higher than during normal speech, since the parties concerned are at a greater distance from each other: they begin their speech when moving closer and continue their speech when drawing apart, raising their voices slightly.
Assume present visitor is taking his leave of Erich Stern.
Make a decision.
Not easy because vital factors unknown. I didn't want to go into this room: my whole instinct was against it. But I didn't want to be seen here in the corridor because Stern himself might emerge with the other man. When you are surveying an objective you will succeed only to the point when you are yourself seen: then you're blown because there's too big a hole in security and the next time the objective sees you he'll recognize you. Finis.
Once seen, you have to take so many precautions that the thing breaks down: you find yourself driving ten vehicles behind the objective instead of two, with ten chances of losing him instead of two; you get to the point when you have to go down a wall ledge by ledge over a sheer drop because if you take the stairs or the lift he'll see you for the second time and recognize you for what you are: an amateur. Some, people do it — or try it. In a minor operation it doesn't add up to anything because the situation isn't loaded but if you're on a major kick and the phase is sensitive and you chance your luck on a thing like that you'll muck it up. Conway tried it, near the end-phase of the Bombay assignment when he was cut off from signals and directives and escape lines and had to keep on going or get out: and he kept on going and they saw him twice at the wrong time in the wrong place and some kid found his head on a rubbish heap when he was looking for cast-off shoes, Dusseldorf, 1973.