The 9th Directive

19 Halfmask

She had cried out, the first time, and afterwards the heat of her tears touched my hand. She had said his name -Richard – without meaning to, without knowing it.

Davis, Chandler, Browne. One of them.

God grant that the dead can be consoled.

We had both wanted the light, and then I had turned it off at last in the early hours of the morning. We had both slept but I was awake again.

The phosphorous dial said 3:21. The animal is easily satisfied; the encephalon is more demanding. My head felt clear and thought had begun streaming through it because questions had to be answered.

Question: Had the decoy known he was going to die? Doubtful. Suicide missions were a wartime phenomenon, even among Orientals. No, he had been put up like a clay pipe, expendable. Probable mechanics: he was recruited by cash and told that he was to be a reserve. His orders were to take over the sniping post set up by Kuo, to man it in readiness and to shoot into the royal car once it had passed the curve. If it passed the curve it would mean that Kuo had shot and missed or had jammed his gun or was for some reason holding his fire and leaving the kill for his reserve.

It was the decoy's photograph I had taken, unless he had shown himself in the oriel only within the final hour before the motorcade when Kuo had had to make for his own post. Care would have been taken that there was a reasonable likeness; the smoked glasses were the finishing touch; the heat haze was taken into account, also the range.

Question: How had Kuo known my set-up? Loman had told me not to worry about that one; he would look after it.

Question: Why had a distinguished VIP been chosen for the exchange? An ordinary businessman -Wynne – had been a good enough swap for Lonsdale. Answer: It was getting too easy. If the practice of exchanging captured agents were to become common it would give rise to a grossly dangerous situation: agents would take absurd risks to get hold of information, knowing that (in the U.K.) a fourteen-year sentence would be cut short the moment a candidate for exchange was available. The greater the risk taken, the greater the chances of seizing the information required. On these terms every major power-would be tempted to build up and maintain an exchange pool so that the moment an agent was caught he could be flown home – with his valuable information fresh in his head or in microdots smaller than a grain of rice concealed on him. Innocent tourists would no longer be safe in any country whose exchange pool was running low: a trumped-up charge of 'suspicious behavior' would be enough to hold a man indefinitely as a future exchange candidate.

In the case of Huang Hsiung Lee, it was known that he had gained access to material of the highest value to a potential enemy, and for this reason Peking had been forced to extreme measures. Their candidate had to be someone for whom the U.K. was prepared to surrender even such a prize as the Hare-Fadieman Project discovery.

Question: How could any government admit that it had ordered the blatant abduction of a distinguished person and had entrained the slaughter of innocent citizens during the operation? It was a deliberate act of violence. Greville Wynne and others had been held on charges of espionage. Abduction of a person against whom no such charge could be made – even falsely -was a new dimension.

The thought persisted, uncertain of itself: this couldn't be on government level. But Loman and Vinia both knew more than I.

Loman: 'Who can afford a sum like that? Only a government,'

Vinia: 'I thought you might be getting on a plane… You can't cross into China.'

Vinia again: 'If they can't get him to the frontier, they'll get you.' She had meant the Chinese frontier.

End of questions. They weren't important. The mission was still running. Target: Locate the Kuo cell and get the Person out of their hands with a whole skin before the U.K. was forced into an exchange that would spring Lee and surrender a super weapon to a Communist state that would turn it immediately, against the free world.

Sounds rose from the street through the insect screens at the windows: a car pulling up, challenged by a patrol. It was cleared and drove off.

One question above all: Where was Kuo? Somewhere in this city, in this trap. Making his plans to get out and take his prisoner with him. Kuo the Mongolian, being a professional, had pulled off a major snatch in full daylight and in the presence of massed police and bodyguard protection. A simple roadblock wouldn't stop him now.

'Is it morning?'

The sound of the car had wakened her or she had been awake for some time and I hadn't known.

'It's nearly four,' I said.

She slid from me and stood for a minute looking down, and in the faint light from the street I saw that she was smiling. 'It feels like morning. It feels like the morning after a lifetime.'

I put the lamp on before she came back from the bathroom. She saw the gun in my hand.

'It's not for show,' she said quietly.

I had picked it up to admire it, never having seen a gun so flat. It was an Astra Cub, a twelve-ounce miniature with a three-inch barrel, potent at short range. The special holster was exquisitely designed, adding no more than one-eighth of an inch to the thickness.

'I don't imagine so,' I said, and gave it to her.

'It's for killing.' Clipping it "against her thigh she looked up at me through the silky fall of her hair. Her voice had gone cold and I knew that before we had made love she wouldn't have told me this but that she was going to tell me now. 'I want to apologize, Quill.'

I said nothing.

The little gun was beautiful but against her slim thigh it was a hideous disfigurement.

'I said his name aloud,' she told me. 'I remember doing it. At those times we… often say things. It was because you were so… magnificent. I forgot where I was, who you were.'

She began dressing. I said:

'I never heard you.'

She glanced her thanks. 'His name was Richard and I was with him when they shot him dead through both his eyes.' She spoke very fast, very softly. 'I don't know who "they" were – they were just the enemy -but they could have done it some other way, couldn't they – not through the eyes. Of course it's not really important – you remember people as they were, not as they were when they died. But they needn't have done it in front of me – and they needn't have done it like that.'

Her dress was on and she lifted her hands, drawing back her hair, shutting her eyes for a second to blot out the scene she had made herself remember; then her hands came down and smoothed the dress over her lean hips. 'Look,' she said softly. 'Nothing shows. But it's there, and it's for killing.'

And suddenly I remembered. It was one of those stories that do the rounds – you hear it first in a pub in the Strand and a different version in a Paris boite and a different version again in a Cairo bar, until you recognize it for what it is: an amusing legend that you pass on or leave alone. The trade is full of them and most are invented – we take the Mickey out of ourselves with tales of exotic spies.

But this one was about a woman called Halfmask, a beauty born of the Devil, too deadly for any man to touch. She wore a mask that covered only half her face, so that she could disguise herself by simply turning her head. And any man, the legend ran, would be a fool to take her to his bed, because she carried death between her legs.

Legends survive; their source is forgotten or sometimes never known. We touch wood to placate Pan, the god of the trees. To every legend a truth, though we seldom see it.

She turned to the mirror, getting a comb. She was right: the line of the dress was perfect. Nothing showed. She said:

'You thought it was something Freudian when you saw it. Envy. It isn't.' I could hear the electricity crackling in her hair as she used the comb. 'One day… one fine day I shall get the chance I need. I won't know who they are – they'll be the enemy. They will just be "they." The people who did that to him.'

I still said nothing. She'd wanted me for a listener.

'You weren't just a stand-in, Quill.'

She was still by the mirror when I came back from washing. I got into my clothes and before we opened the door we kissed, just our fingers touching, for what I knew was the last time. Then we went down to the street and she got into her car.

Through the window I said, 'There's a legend about you, did you know?'

She laughed softly, looking up at me. 'Is there? It must be incomplete. One day I'll write the ending. One fine day.'

The telephone rang just before dawn.

Pangsapa said, 'Please listen carefully, Mr Quiller.'

His tone was utterly calm, I said:

'If it's important, we should meet. It would be safer.'

Kuo was holed up and in no position to bug the line but we keep to the rules. A rule is a fail-safe mechanism.

'It is important,' said Pangsapa, 'but there is no time for us to meet. Listen, please. I have had some of my people at work constantly and one of them has just reported to me by telephone. Can you recognize the man I sent with you to the gymnasium?'

The little Hindu.

'Yes.'

'He is waiting for you near the steps of the U.S.O.M. in Phet Buri Road. Go there very quickly. Show yourself at that place. If he doesn't appear, telephone me at once.'

'And if he appears?'

'He will tell you.'

He rang off and I knew there was some thinking to be done but I could do it on the way there because there was no question of not going. Pangsapa had said all that was needed and the situation was clear enough: the Hindu was tagging someone and would have to move on if the quarry moved on. That would mean that he wouldn't be able to show up when I reached the spot. He would keep up the tag and telephone Pangsapa the minute he had a chance and report his new position. Pangsapa would give me that position when I phoned in to ask where the Hindu had gone.

We call it Musical Chairs and any number can play. When the quarry stops we all sit down and with any luck there'll be a telephone within reach. If not we go on playing till there is.

It was a ten-minute walk so I walked, because patrols were stopping every car including taxis and the calmness of Pangsapa's voice alone had said hurry.

Two patrols lay north of Lumpini but I saw them first and worked round them wasting two whole minutes but saving five while they checked my papers. It happened again at the crossing of Plern Chit and Raja Damri by the Erawan Hotel and another two minutes got lost but I was nearly home.

He was still behind me and was working well. I had to waste another minute flushing him, using the side road past Telephone House. He was the one with the splayfooted walk and I'd seen him opposite the Pakchong just after she'd driven away: although she had been with me it was his shift and they weren't taking any chances. Good of them, but I wanted to go alone where I was going because Pangsapa had sounded businesslike and we could be in action again.

Flushed him, checked the flush and found it stood up.

Brain singing like a dynamo because the waiting might be over now and the waiting had been very uncomfortable, worse than could be admitted. The mission is still running,' Loman had told me, but all it meant was marking time and listening to the helicopters over the river and watching the patrols checking the fountain pumphouse and stopping cars while the subconscious kept up its rotten little signals. You fell for a decoy and watched them make the snatch and now you've lost him and he might not live. You used to be good. Getting old?

A patrol car turned down the street and I used shadow until it was past. Light was in the sky eastward but the lamps still burned outside the U.S.O.M. building.

I stood on the steps.

There was no traffic yet except for the police cars. The trishaws were late coming onto the streets. The city had faltered in its rhythm and the day was beginning hesitantly.

Somewhere a helicopter throbbed in the low sky.

I was counting automatically and the second minute was up. Give it another, then phone.

Movement caught my eye. On the other side of the road was one of the tiny public gardens that form oases among the streets of Bangkok. The movement was being made by two hands. The head and shoulders of a man were framed by the leaves of the oleanders; he stood facing toward me; his opened hands moved slowly in a gesture that I should go to him.

For some reason he could not come to me and I checked the street with great care before I crossed into the gardens. They were silent. The sun was touching the first blooms and gilding a temple's dome beyond the magnolia trees. Dew was still dark on the leaves where there was shadow. He stood alone in the gardens, waiting for me. It was the Hindu. He spoke very softly.

'I could not move from here,' he told me, 'in case he went.' He was looking through a gap in the leaves and I saw the man beyond them in the street that made a right angle with the one I had just crossed. The distance was some fifty yards and the gap in the leaves was no bigger than a spread hand but I recognized the man immediately.

He was one of the Kuo cell.