The 9th Directive

16 Newsbreak

I went on staring at him.

'Now! But it's over, for God's sake. They've made a perfect snatch.'

He turned away with distaste. 'In view of the Person's standing I do wish you would refer to it as an abduction.'

My laugh exploded, unreal, like the squawk of a mechanical doll. 'Abduction…' I said. 'Abduction…' trying to make sense of the word. 'Listen, what would they want me for? Bumping that thug – the decoy? He was just a hired tool, a live dummy set up as a target for me. You think he meant anything to Kuo? There must have been ten killed in that crowd and the decoy meant as little to Kuo as any one of them.'

'Do you really believe' – he swung round on me suddenly – 'that they would have set up such an elaborate device to prevent your defeating their mission unless someone had given the most express orders that your life was not to be taken? Haven't you admitted that they could have killed you time and time again?'

'All right, but now?'

He didn't answer and I had time to think. It had all gone so damned fast and there were things I hadn't been able to see – things in the background that had formed the overall pattern while all I could think of was getting my eye in the Balvar sight and my finger on the tit.

'Listen to me, Quiller.'

The room seemed to have gone cold and my head was clearing as if a fever were dying out. The thing had looked so big because someone as big as the Person was involved. Beyond it was there something bigger? This was why the Bureau made it a rule: the intelligence director tries to ensure that his agent in the field is left free of all information that doesn't directly concern his mission. The ferret is sent into the hole and he is not told about the dog at the other end.

'Listen to me,' he said again. 'You have been concentrating on a very limited and very calculated operation. You have had no time to think beyond the simple mechanics. That is understandable. But before long you'll realize there's a very big question left in the air: Why has the Person been abducted?'

I'd never thought about it; he knew it and left me hooked on it because it was important for me to get it into my head, or he wouldn't have sprung it. After a bit he went on.

'I have made little or no contact here with the official Embassy staff or with the fringe groups operating under its aegis. Vinia Maine has told me nothing about her cell or about her mission. But one picks up signs here and there and for your information I would say this: Mil. 6 is running a special operation, the subject of which is yourself. You have been under close observation and protection since you flew in from Paris. You will remain under observation and protection until the Kuo mission is completed, and that won't be until the Person has left Thailand – still under restraint and duress. The Kuo cell has taken great pains to see that you stay alive and they haven't done that for humanitarian reasons. Or do you think so?'

I thought of the water cart busily cleaning up.

'Not really, no.'

He suddenly began speaking softly and urgently:

'The Ambassador is now back from the Link Road, as you know. He was on the spot when the Person was abducted and he will by now have heard that your signal to Room 6 has warned the police into action. He will follow that up very hard. Further, in a few hours when the new blackout is lifted, the bombshell will burst over England – the news that the Person is missing and believed to be in danger. Enormous pressure will be brought to bear on Thailand to redeem its failure in protecting a most distinguished visitor. The hunt will be mounted on a vast scale.'

He paused and I said nothing. My head was now perfectly lucid: the feverish residue of a concentrated, inept and mucky operation had found its own level and my subconscious would have to deal with it as best it could. Brain-think was again available.

Loman's bright stare was on me and his hands beat the air like trapped birds as he drummed into me the importance of what he was saying.

'Kuo will know what he is up against. He won't have come to Bangkok without having made the most meticulous plans to get out again – with his prisoner. His mission will be completed only when the Person has been transferred from Thailand to the soil of the country which mounted that mission and hired Kuo to perform it. He will almost certainly have to lie low in a prearranged place, here in this city, with his cell and with his prisoner, for days or even weeks while the hunt passes overhead. That will have been an alternative plan.'

He turned away and when he spoke again I knew why. He didn't like buttering lice to their face.

'It will console you to know that I call it an alternative plan because he had probably counted on fast and immediate clearance, which is no longer open to him. It is unlikely that anyone would have realized that one of the "dead" bodies taken to the ambulance was in fact the Person's. There would have been ample time for that ambulance to reach a private airfield and take off for the frontier. Your call to Room 6 prevented it. Ambulances carry radio and this one – which was almost certainly stolen – would have monitored the police-patrol radio system. They will have already heard of the search and will have gone to ground as the prearranged alternative to flying out.'

He made a tour of the room and came up behind me. I didn't turn round so he had to pass me and turn himself and face me again. The compliments were over and we were both pleased.

'The point is this, Quiller. Until such time as the Kuo cell can get their prisoner to a frontier their mission is still running. And your situation is unchanged. From the signs I have picked up I think you'll remain under the observation and protection of Mil. 6, so that their mission is still running. They are a rival group but we know they are far from idiots.'

Watching me, he began nodding and his tone lost its headlong urgency. 'You already see the point. The Kuo cell has so far left you alone and left you alive – though of course I'm not saying you couldn't have survived any attack, as an experienced agent should be able. But up to now Mil. 6 has thought that there is good reason for your having been – shall we say – preserved. And as long as you are of interest to the Kuo cell and to their operations, our mission is still running. And it won't finish until we know why the Person has been abducted, and why you appear to be linked with him as a subject for preservation. It won't finish until we can restore him to safety if everyone else fails. Or until we too fail.'

He left me again, going to the windows.

Vaguely I listened to the sounds outside the room: bells, doors slamming, voices. They were sounds of disorderliness and I was angry because I could have prevented all this and the bombshell that would soon break over England and the mess that the water cart had been clearing away.

'How much did you already know, Loman?'

His short body looked black, silhouetted against the glare of the window. He didn't turn round.

'I had a lot of pieces, but they wouldn't fit. They would have fitted the theory of an abduction, but we didn't consider that. Why should anyone abduct him?

But now most of it fits. Most of it.'

'One thing I want to know. How did they find out my set-up? How did they know I was going to try for an overkill?'

That is not for you to worry.'

I thought of Pangsapa again. It didn't add up. Pangsapa had given us the motorcade route and he had told us that a seventh man had joined the Kuo cell. I might even have seen the light: a seventh man could mean a decoy.

The telephone had started to ring and Loman answered it. I looked round the room again, seeing things I'd missed before: two desks, a typewriter, tape recorder, wall safe.

'I will see,' he said, and pressed a switch for one of the internal lines. 'Miss Maine? There's a call for you.'

Before she came in I said, 'I thought they were blocking incoming calls.'

'Mil. 6 has a special line.' He began moving toward the door and I thought it would be a good thing when the Bureau realized that an important facility for any mission is a decent Local Control. I was getting fed-up with gem shops, kite sheds and rooms we had to be chucked out of whenever the phone rang.

She came in and looked at Loman, not me.

'Please stay. I shan't disturb you for more than a few minutes.' She went to the telephone.

Loman hesitated. I asked him:

'What is Room 6?'

He decided it would be difficult to shepherd me out. 'It's a clearing-house for those groups not on the official Embassy staff, but for all practical purposes it belongs to Mil. 6. Hence the number.'

All she was saying on the phone was yes and no. They were doing the talking. I asked Loman: 'Why the hell should Mil. 6 lend us a facility?'

Patiently he said: 'Is there a better way of making sure they can maintain contact with us, since you are the subject under their protection?'

'Why did you let them do it?'

'When an organization of good repute offers protection to one of my agents I don't refuse. You may one day profit from that.'

He was listening to her too but there was nothing useful. She must have known what kind of call it was or she wouldn't have asked us to stay while she took it.

I looked at her once and in that same second she looked back at me. To break it up I asked Loman: 'Why isn't the Cultural Attache ever in his office?'

'He's there most of the time but he lets Miss Maine bring people through there so that they can be vetted when necessary.'

'He must spend a lot of time in the lav.'

'Don't forget,' Loman said, 'that Mil. 6 have more facilities than we do. They exist.'

When she put the phone down we weren't talking.

She said: 'The first news has just gone out over Radio Thailand.'

Loman was attentive. 'Then it's a worldwide release.'

She smiled faintly. 'It had to happen sometime.' With an oblique glance at me she said: 'The ambulance has been found abandoned. It was reported as having a radio fault about an hour before the motorcade left the Palace – no one could get an acknowledgement. Half an hour later it was reported stolen. Now it's been found. The crew had their uniforms taken, then they were trussed up unconscious in a sampan on Klong Maha Nak.'

She was moving round so that the left side of her face was away from the windows. Loman asked:

'Is there a search mounted?'

'Oh yes.' She looked at him as if he ought to have known. 'Everyone's in – the Metro Police, Special Branch, CID, Auxiliary Services, Crime Suppression Division radio and anti-riot units. Even the Army – the King issued an emergency decree. Commando units are recalled to barracks.'

She was repeating what they'd been telling her on the phone and I got fed-up and said: 'Look, is your outfit going to keep on getting in my way?'

Loman looked upset and I felt better.

She moved toward me a bit, head poised at an angle on the slender neck. The eyes still flickered sometimes but she didn't look at me any more as if I were Frankenstein's pet.

'We don't want to lose you,' she said.

'You'll have to. I'm going to ground.'

I don't know what I would have said if Loman hadn't been with us. Other things. Or the same thing in other ways.

She said quietly, 'We shall still do what we can to hold you. It's important.'

It wasn't clever and I shouldn't have tried it but I couldn't stop halfway once I'd started. 'Any particular reason?'

I saw Loman go poker-faced.

She said, 'Yes. We know why the abduction was made. Do you?'