Four of them-at least four, because there were that number of exits from the square — had been positioned within sight of the wine shop, either in the street or at the windows of a tea house or a restaurant; they had seen me go into the wine shop and they'd seen me come out, and they'd started their routine looping action, one of them staying where he was and keeping me in sight while the others moved off to make quick detours round the streets where I walked, so that at all times there was one man watching me, standing still, as each of the others went ahead of me along a parallel street and took up his station.
I had used checks and cover all the way from the wine shop to the car to make certain I wasn't followed. But I was followed. The Datsun had been delivered to me, left parked outside the Jang Chung Gymnasium by a runner from the Embassy at Ferris's request, and when I'd taken it over I was unsurveilled; and when I'd driven it to Toegye Street the mirror had been clean all the way. They'd picked me up at the wine shop and let me lead them far enough from the area for Spur's death and mine to seem unconnected, and now the black Porsche was turning left when I turned left, and right when I turned right, because chain surveillance isn't possible when there are vehicles involved.
A flashy car, the Porsche, for an intelligence agency. But then, we weren't up against an intelligence agency of any prescribed type; we were up against something more mystical than that, more exotic, more deadly: the two men whose faces made a blur behind the windscreen of the Porsche weren't concerned that I knew they were there and were tailing me; wherever I would go they would go, until they were ready to make the kill.
Left, right, right again and left. The low curved snout of the Porsche heeled on the turns in the mirror, its gleaming body the shape of a shark.
9:17.
I took the street going west along the south boundary of Namsan Park and used the smaller streets through the blocks where the embassies were — Thai, Belgian, Indonesian — and twice hit the floor and changed down and got wheelspin and swung out past a taxi and a small truck, just as an essay. It was no go: they were professionals and they had a machine to beat mine if they tried hard enough. But already the pattern was changing ahead of me and at first I didn't believe it because they'd had so little time; then it became perfectly clear because every time I tried to pass the Chevrolet pick-up ahead of me it pulled nearer the middle of the street to block me.
This was the pincer, and a classic.
The elements of the evening fell into shape in my mind as I drove a dozen yards behind the pick-up truck, a dozen yards in front of the Porsche. Spur had infiltrated the Triad to get information for the Bureau, and he'd been discovered, and the information was now locked safely in the cold relic of his brain. Tung's agents had learned — from Spur himself or via a tapped signal — that the information was to have been passed onto me this evening; and they had moved in to follow me to a convenient place for the kill.
They would try very hard tonight. They'd been losing face: I'd defeated them in London, Pekin and this city on four occasions, but now they had me in their sights and this time they wouldn't let me go.
The Porsche and the pick-up must be using short-wave radio with concealed antennae, and there would be other vehicles in the area, called in to strengthen the trap. But in these short city streets with traffic lights prohibiting a long fast run, two vehicles were enough, if they went for the pincer technique. It was a classic because it seldom failed. Two Americans, McDonald and Buchelli, had been taken as hostages in Salvador in 1979 by this method, and their chauffeur killed. The technique has been used in Beirut, Mexico City, Stuttgart and Budapest, and the defensive driving course in Norfolk attempts to train us in defeating it; but there's not really much you can do. You can't speed up because the vehicle ahead will block you; you can't slow down because the one behind will keep you going; you'll be allowed to stop when they are ready, and then it's too late.
Tonight I tried playing the lights and took one on the yellow and led the Porsche through on the red in the hope that a police patrol would see it and give chase, but I was out of luck. Soon after turning south towards the Han River I hit the gear shift and put the ZX into a drift through the neck of a side street and made headway and drifted again at right angles into the next street and gunned up and pulled out to pass a Toyota and had to brake hard as it blocked me. Mirror: a dark blue Mercedes coming up fast and settling down as my own speed steadied.
Four vehicles. At least four, possibly six. I could have turned right instead of left and they knew that and would have been prepared. I suppose it was a compliment, but now I was afraid. There's something about a trap that works quickly on the nerves, perhaps because it's claustrophobic.
I tried again, bringing a thin howl from the gears and using controlled drifts that had the treads whimpering as I turned right and traversed the block and turned left and took up station immediately behind the Chevrolet pick-up again: they'd been sighting along the intersections and keeping pace.
Mirror: Porsche.
Sweat on the wheel-rim. Normal psychological reactions now: not afraid any more, but angry. Felt good, drowning in adrenalin; breathing deeper, faster; vision very clear as the pupils expanded.
Fight the good fight, and so forth.
Whatever else may come to me, let fear be never a stranger.
Bloody Spur, got what he wanted, died with the fear of Christ in him as that thing started contracting, I'd rather smash this banger straight into a wall than go the way he'd gone.
All right, try it again, a side street to the right and then left again, clouting the kerb and skinning past a taxi and pushing the lights through the red, but it was no go: a Ford station-wagon blocked me at once and the black Porsche came up on full gun in the mirror; it had done as I had done, making the same turns one intersection behind and keeping station.
Very well. Force my way out.
Lights.
We waited on the red with the station-wagon immediately in front of me. I couldn't see anything through the rear window because it was tinted. My foot was on the clutch and the gear shift was in first and I was ready to hit the gun if anyone got out of the wagon, smear them across the road if they came for me.
Watching all three mirrors, listening for the click of a door from the Porsche behind me: shoot the red if they came for me from behind.
Green.
We drove three more blocks due south and the pace was slow because there was more traffic here, approaching the Third Han Bridge. Then the station-wagon began slowing, making me brake. There was nothing ahead of it at this point: it had a clear run, but it was still slowing, forcing me to slow with it. In the central mirror the Porsche was closing up.
So they were going to do it here.
Light traffic. There has to be a steady traffic stream for the pincer to work; otherwise you can wrench into a U-turn and lose them if they're not quick enough. Tonight it wasn't possible.
The pincer technique is terribly simple: the leading car jams its brakes on and you hit the rear while the trailing car rams your tail hard enough to force the doors open before you can do anything about it and when they come running you've got the choice of getting out of the car and moving into their gunfire or sitting still behind the wheel and waiting for them to come and pour shot into you there, better than the constrictor trick but very sticky, a study in red.