The 9th Directive

14 Shock

Burnt cordite reeked in the room and my head still rang from the explosion.

When I looked down from the window they were still screaming and the change in their sound was terrible; seconds ago they had been calling his name and now they cried out in agony.

It was impossible to focus on details, but the overall scene had the dreadful clarity of a slow-motion picture: the vanguard escort of ten motorcycle police had rounded the 150-degree curve in the road but the royal car had run straight on to plunge into the crowd, and the wall of living bodies had been breached before its momentum was arrested.

The long white Cadillac was halted now in the midst of the swaying people. The vanguard escort was wheeling and coming back. The motorcycle police on the left flank of the procession were sliding to a stop; the first of these, surprised by the course of the royal car, had swung their machines flat onto their sides in an attempt to avoid ramming the crowd. Gasoline had spilled, and a spark from the friction of metal against flint had fired a tank and the rider was rolling on the ground to put out the flames that had caught his uniform.

The right flank of the escort was halting and turning back, two of the patrols colliding. The second and third convertibles had slowed to a stop and the rear guard of fifteen police was pulling up.

Stretcher-bearers had already driven a lane through the stricken crowd from the ambulance near the curve and the ambulance itself was backing in their wake with both doors held wide open.

An intermittent buzz began on the floor beside me and I ignored it. Loman was trying to call me up on the two-way radio but there was nothing to tell him, nothing that would make sense.

The police were first attacking the gasoline fire, dragging the overturned machines clear before another tank went up. Other riders were pressing their way along the front of the crowd and trying to force them back from the flame area – but the crowd was helpless, cut off from escape by its own mass. The ministers and equerries were getting out of the two convertibles to help the police.

Sirens began sounding from the distance beyond the temple as the nearest fire-fighting unit was called into action.

The sun made everything bright and the colors of the crowd were gay – flags, flowers, women in silk, the flutter of parasols. The screams still came.

Even from the top floor of the condemned building I could not see what was happening around the royal car because it lay buried in frenzied movement.

It seemed a long way to the elevator, a long time tearing the carpet down from the door and wrenching at the handle, the empty passage, the metal gates. I came back running, knocking the glasses by accident against the door and lunging for the window, kneeling there to focus them and swing the white Cadillac into the center of the lens.

Loman kept on signalling.

They had put out the flames. Fire foam smothered people and frothed across the roadway. The chapter of Brahman priests had made their way across and were helping the police. Only two men were still inside the royal car, the driver in the front sitting motionless, the other man slumped on the floor at the back. Even through the x8 Jupiters I could not distinguish the white-dress tunic of Prince Rajadhon because the uniforms of the police were also white and the first of them had now reached the royal car.

The crowd was spilling through the broken guardropes and the roadway was inundated but for the lanes kept open for the bringing out of the injured. Two ambulances of the Thai Red Cross were thrusting their way to the central area.

The screams had died away. There was no more fire.

I picked the thing up and flicked the switch:

'Loman?'

He asked: 'What were those sirens?'

He had been listening to them from the distance, trying to get through to me.

I told him: 'The car left the road and hit the crowd.'

He said something I couldn't catch – just 'God,' or something like that. I went on talking. 'A gasoline fire started but they've got it dealt with. A lot of injured and some dead – it went straight into them. There was an ambulance near the spot and it's just leaving. I can't see much detail.'

When I cut him in he asked: 'What happened to Kuo?'

'He's dead.'

The smell of the cordite was still in the air.

Loman was silent. There was a question he had to ask and it wanted courage.

It is always agreeable to make your report at the end of a successful mission. The risks have been taken and the dangers are past and nothing can go wrong any more and you are still by luck alive. In the sight of your director and the whole Bureau you have scored a point; in the sight of whatever paltry gods you call your own you have smashed a hand into the amorphous face of the enemy (whose name is the fear of failure) and earned a perch in whatever far heaven you can fleetingly believe in till it all begins again and your hand – still bruised and bleeding – must smash again into the same face and the same fear and show that the day… for another day… is yours. Yea, even in your own sight, the one that counts the most.

No go.

'From where you are,' Loman put his question, 'can you see the Person?'

'No.'

Another short silence. 'I'll get down to the Link Road. Contact later.'

When I cut the switch I knew that the mission was over and that it had failed.

So the dog had eaten dog and to no purpose. It crouched here licking its wounds.

In the small high room I could have stayed for a long time, trying to think, to piece together the smashed bits of a mission manque and set the record straight. No one would have found me until they came to knock the building down. But there were some bits missing and I had to go and pick for them among the rubble.

I put everything into the elevator with the rest – the field glasses, cheap carpet, tripod, gun, the tools of my trade. And went down by the stairs.

It is difficult to walk without thinking; the body's movement stirs the mind. A few thoughts came: there had been no accident. But why had they taken so much trouble, made it so elaborate? Perhaps to be certain. Only in the midst of a dense crowd made powerless by shock could they be absolutely certain of getting to him at close hand and killing him before his protectors could reach him. Eight bodyguards and thirty-seven armed police, cut off from him by the living and the injured and the dying and the dead, by one massive psychological barrier: shock. Hadn't they been, then, certain of Kuo, of one straight shot from a master killer?

So many questions. Kuo would answer them.

It wasn't far to the Phra Chula Chedi, the temple with the golden dome. The crowd was greater now because the Link Road was filling from both ends; of the two masks, humor has less appeal for the human heart than tragedy.

I picked and pressed my way – broken parasols and a crushed bouquet, a child crying, a lost shoe, a priest praying, a torn paper flag. Vehicles moved through the narrow lane that had been the road; the sirens had begun again and bells rang for gangway. A crowd is a fever and will not abate until its course is run.

Magnolia blossoms hung across the gates of the temple and the leaves gave shade. The tall doors were open and there was no one inside. The steps began near the great golden Buddha and followed the curving wall, and I climbed them through the cool shadows, reaching the platform that spanned the base of the dome. A spiral staircase twisted upward from the center and I climbed again. Sunlight lay in gold bars across the dark trellis ironwork of the stairs; the murmur of the crowd was loudening as I neared the ring of oriels.

At every tenth stair I stopped and listened for any sound from inside the temple because they might come for him soon, not knowing he was dead and unable to join them.

The sunlight struck in from the oriels and for a moment blinded me. I had reached that part of the gallery that faced Lumpini Park, and had to move round past five oriels before coming to the one that was directly opposite the condemned building.

Then I looked down at the floor.

In compliance with the rules of international warfare the military bullet is manufactured with a full metal shield so that the lead tip is not exposed and so that no expansion occurs on striking the target. The idea is that unnecessary pain should be avoided. I had used a game bullet, a high-velocity load with a blunt nose. This type kills quickly by expanding on impact; it provides greater shocking power and will drop an animal at once if accurately placed. The disadvantage of a heavy-caliber expanding bullet is that it will spoil the meat (in the case of a boar) or spoil the hide (in the case of a tiger).

I had used a 150-grain game bullet to ensure a quick kill and this had been achieved, but the effects of the expansion had left the face unrecognizable.

At the last minute before raising his gun he had taken off the smoked glasses; they were folded neatly on the ledge of the oriel. The sunshine fell across the light gray alpaca jacket and the polished shoes; it was only the face that was out of character with so fastidious a man. Perhaps this was his true face, bestial and bloodied, the face of a jungle soul no longer disguisable by the tricks and artifice of civilized dress. Let it be said: a soul not unlike my own; it was only that our laws were different.

Stepping over him to look at the gun I noticed that the gold cufflinks were missing. The sleeves had ordinary buttons. It was therefore becoming clear to me even before I took up the gun and examined it, and the need to think and think straight was suddenly urgent.

The gun was a cheap thing, a six-shot Yungchow carbine with a redwood butt.

There was no time now to listen for any sound that might come from inside the temple and I bruised a shoulder on the top rail of the spiral staircase as I swung into it and dropped with my feet touching every third step and my hand hitting at the rail. The beams of sunlight flashed across my eyes and the framework shivered under me until I reached the platform and ran for the curving steps that followed the wall below the dome.

The temple was still deserted but three priests in yellow robes stood at the gates in the shade of the magnolias and one of them stepped toward me, thinking perhaps I was a thief disturbed but I ducked clear and reached the road still at a run and made for the bar on the other side, seeing the telephone before there was need to ask for it.

All three lines were busy and I began re-dialing the numbers without a stop so that the moment a call ended I'd get my chance, but it took a dozen go's and I had to stand there thinking about the mission, reviewing the whole thing, getting it into perspective – his mission, not mine, Kuo's mission, the one I'd never guessed at, the one that he'd so beautifully brought off.

You light your lamps as you go… picking your way through the dark… There are patches of dark and you skirt them, have to, because your lamps are too small to show you everything… everything.

A line cleared at the Embassy.

'Room 6,' I told them. 'Give me Room 6.'