The 9th Directive

2 Pangsapa

The two fish circled, their heads turned towards the center to watch each other.

The smaller was the more beautiful, its colors less diffuse, but both were caparisoned in the flowing splendor of their fins. They moved like rainbows through the pearly water. Faintly reflected in the glass was the face of Pangsapa, an enormous moon.

The strange sweet smell of opium was in the air.

The fish sped suddenly together dart-quick and murderous with the fins drawn close to the body as they met – a torn fin could unbalance them and bring almost immediate death.

The eyes of Pangsapa were unblinking in the great moon on the glass.

The fish circled near the sides of the tank with their colored raiment flowing, reminding of medieval war-horses on the battle field. The next charge was mutual and explosive – they closed, met, held and span in a whirlpool with their razor-teeth working for a kill. Three times they attacked and withdrew, and now the water was tinged with carmine and from the spine of the decent price on them. So far nobody's found out what he will not do for money.'

We had talked for another hour at the safehouse in Soi Suek 3, Loman and I. His bit about my making arrangements for the assassination had caught my interest at last, but I didn't say anything.

'I'm sure you get the point,' Loman said.

'I'm to make the arrangements and then give you the set-up so that you can take countermeasures against any similar plan.'

'That's right.'

'It's bloody silly. You can plan it a dozen ways.'

'We think your way would be the most efficient. We think we are up against somebody very clever. Don't misunderstand me: I am not buttering you up so that you'll cooperate.' His smile was smooth. 'You don't want this mission, or any mission with me as your intelligence director in the field. We don't like each other, do we? But I was asked in London to choose a man who could plan this kind of job – an assassination -so efficiently that it couldn't fail. I think you'll agree that there's more at risk than a few hard words between us if we do this job together. So I chose you.'

I said, 'You'll just have to go on talking. Get me out of the dark. I suppose there's been a threat, has there?'

'Of course.'

Then why don't they just call it off?'

'The visit? For the same reason that they didn't call off the Queen's visit to Canada. Your Anglo-Saxon doesn't panic easily. Also this visit is part, as I told you, of a larger itinerary in Southeast Asia. They can't leave out Bangkok because it's the most important stop. And they can't cancel the whole thing because of one threat in one place. Even if the Government decided to back out I doubt if the Person would let them – he's not quite the type. So we're all in it.' He drank off the rest of the lime in his glass and looked at me again and asked sulkily: 'Or aren't you included?'

'Oh for God's sake, stop mucking about and give me the guts of the thing so I can make up my mind. I don't know a bloody tenth of what's going on, do I?'

But I knew more now than he'd told me. I knew why he'd arrived with his nerves in the upper register: this kind of mission wasn't in his line. He is a specialist in short-range penetration operations with a disciplined cell and planned access and good communications – not such a pushover as it sounds, if the opposition is the best. He is brilliant at it: five adverse agents neutralized in the European area and two on home ground sent down for a fourteen-year stretch (the Kingston net), all in the past eighteen months.

Why had Control sent him out here on a lark like this?

He was still smiling gently. He knew I was angry because I was interested and therefore afraid of being coerced into this mission. Someone had said in that room with the Lowry: 'He won't fall easily for this one unless we can sting him up. Send someone out there he doesn't like, someone who'll get his goat.'

Loman was perfect casting.

'Let me give you the other nine-tenths,' he said equably. This is of course a job for Security and a few people have been flown out here quietly to help take care of the threat and its implications. The Thai Home Office is being very cooperative and--'

'Wait a minute. What sort of threat was it?'

'It was sent by ordinary letter to London, written in English. It said simply that if the Person came to this city he wouldn't leave it alive. Of course the Yard has taken the letter apart in Forensic and sent a couple of people out here to confer with the Thai CID. They are working on it now.'

'All right.'

'As I say, the Home Office is being very helpful and all the routine inquiries and searches are under way. The U.K. is well represented, unofficially.'

'Who roped in the Bureau, then?'

'The Bureau was not roped in,' he said stuffily. 'Certain information came in and it was decided that action was indicated. No fewer than eight directives were planned and examined before the decision was formalized. This is the ninth, and it has now become a definite mission. Because the Bureau thinks -1 do hope you feel they are right – that we should do something to ensure that nothing happens on the day. They consider the Person to be – how shall I say? – rather valuable.'

I mentally blasted him and his ninth directive to hell and got a clean glass and began on the whisky. This approach of Loman's was deliberate: I was meant to feel frightfully un-British if I didn't immediately choke with rage at the thought of anything happening to our Valuable Person. The Bureau could have spared a minute in sober thought: I always like a clear field to work in and I work best alone, and if they were sending me into a mission where the U.K. was already 'well represented' I could risk fouling up the whole operation by getting in the way.

The only thing to do was to let him go on giving it to me until I had the complete picture and then say yes or no.

'Of course,' he said smoothly, 'you will be working alone. Quite alone.'

They'd sent the right man, give them that. He knew me to the bone.

This isn't a joint operation, you see. How could it be? The Bureau doesn't exist. It never has. No, the idea is very simple. Unless they're unlucky, the security branches will make quite certain that nothing happens on the visit. They are planning every conceivable precaution. But there may be a thousand-to-one chance that the adverse party will organize a plan that will come off. A plan so efficient that there is no countermeasure possible. A plan – as I suggested to Control – that only you could devise.'

He began walking about, talking as if there would be no interruption. Perhaps he was trying to convince himself of the mechanics of this thing before he could successfully sell it to me.

'This isn't blandishment, you see. Your work in Egypt, Cuba and Berlin has proved that if you're left on your own when things are sufficiently hot you are capable of pulling off a certain kind of operation at which a dozen better men or a hundred better men would fail, simply because it's an operation requiring one man working alone and requiring the kind of man who works best alone. That is why you were chosen.' He stopped in front of the display case and stared at the moonstone until his feet couldn't keep still any more. He came back to stand in front of me. 'There is nothing else I can tell you until the information starts coming in from the Foreign Office. You'll be in on every conference at the Embassy here and we shall--'

'This isn't in your field, Loman.' I was suddenly fed up with him. 'And it's not in mine. It's no go.' 'You need time to think.'

'I've thought. This is a police job. I'm a penetration agent--'

'If you want to play with terms--' 'It's no go. Tell them they've made a mistake.' 'I don't think they have. I chose you myself.' 'Then it's your own mistake.' 'I don't think it is.' 'Tell them to pull Styles out of Java.' 'No, it's you I want for this one, Quiller. You.' He wasn't smiling any more and all the polish had gone to his eyes. They were very bright.

'Let's get it over with,' he said. 'It would take too long for you to tell me what you think of me and it wouldn't affect the issue because I'm mud-proof. In my unfortunate experience you've proved yourself an agent who is obstinate, undisciplined, illogical and dangerously prone to obsessive vanities and wildcat tactics, very difficult to handle in the field and an embarrassment in London whenever you choose to report there in person. If you accept this mission – and you will accept it – I shall be your director and will be responsible for everything you do, so there's nothing in this for me but a filthy time of it the whole way through and I settle for that here and now. That is my position. This is yours: you now have information that a man revered in his own country and respected abroad is going to have the guts to expose himself to a threat of death because he won't refuse his duty. You also know that if the very elaborate machinery for his protection breaks down and if this valuable life is lost because of your own petty feelings against me as your director in the field, it's going to be your fault – your fault alone. And you won't be able to live with it.'

He gazed at me with his eyes shining and I knew I had never hated him more than I did then. In a minute he half turned, fiddling about on the table, saying:

'I see you've hogged the last of the ice. That's typical.' He banged the bell. 'So you can't refuse this mission. I knew that when I left London. You can't refuse. When that man arrives in Bangkok you'll be here with him right in the thick of it. So you'd better lay into me and then we'll have another drink and then I'll brief you. We haven't long.'