The 9th Directive

25 The Flare

The scene was strange because of the green light in the sky, and I had to make a series of small tests to prove that I was fully conscious: a finger moved when I directed it, the eyes could close and open, my head was capable of movement. The greenness did not go.

The smell of gasoline was sharp on the air; the tank of the E-type had burst. The fumes seared my throat and I breathed shallowly. I lay watching Kuo. He had turned and was calling to the group of men at the top of the bank. The Chinese dialect was unfamiliar to me but I thought he was talking about the green light, and he pronounced a name in the Thai tongue – Nontaburi. He was giving them orders of some kind.

They vanished from the skyline and I heard the Rolls-Royce starting up. Kuo came down alone and his face darkened slowly as the green light faded from the sky. He held the revolver loosely, confidently, but watched me as he came. I lay still and watched him back.

My brain was working by habit, just as the clock went on ticking inside the smashed E-type. I was aware that the pain would disallow the movement of my body unless there were extreme necessity: unless, by moving, there was a chance of perpetuating life. This wasn't conscious thought but the consciousness was aware of the findings.

Pure thought arrived at further information: Kuo was not yet ready to kill me, because he could have put an easy shot into me from the top of the bank, or ordered a fusillade from his men.

His shoes squelched across the flooded earth where the tender rice shoots stood in little blades, taller than the level of my eye. He stopped and looked down at me, the gun held ready in case I moved. His body looked enormous, standing over me.

Surely there was no chance, but an old dog is full of old tricks and I lay without blinking, holding my breath and letting only a little air seep in and out of my lungs. Blood was still gathering on me from the reopened wounds and a cheekbone had been skinned raw in the smash, and in the twilight I could pass for dead.

My heart beat, but he could not hear that. Only I could hear it, and feel the quiet ferocity of the body's ambition: that this heart should go on beating.

'Quiller.'

I had come to know this man so well but we had never spoken. He wanted to talk, but there could be nothing to say between us, because he had the gun.

He stooped over me suddenly, black against the sky.

'Can you hear me?' The accent was educated, authoritative. I lay without blinking, without breathing. His tone became hateful. Whether he spoke to the living or the dead he had to deliver himself of hate. 'Can you hear me, damn you? It was my brother you killed. Where they keep the kites. I want you to know. That was my brother.'

His voice shook and he spoke in his own tongue, cursing my spirit, saying the words softly like a prayer, saying them deliberately, reverently, ushering my shade into hell everlasting. Then he spat against my face and brought the gun up.

Pain shivered through me as I moved but I went on moving and the shot was deflected because I had gone for his wrist. Stooping above me and unprepared, his mind engaged with its hate for the thing that he thought was dead, he was easy to bring down arid I worked on him with the strength of the mad. Reason was not totally absent: with one arm locked round his neck I was forcing his head down until his face touched the flooded earth on which we churned. I worked for a drowning.

He was a strong man but the dying are more desperate. His face went under the film of water and a shrill bubbling came; his legs kicked convulsively and his left hand scrabbled to reach the gun, but I felt for the thumb and eased it back until it snapped and he screamed under the mud. Then I brought pressure to the neck-lock, freeing my other hand and feeling for the gun. His fingers were nerveless and I prised them away and jerked the gun clear; it splashed somewhere behind me.

As I fought him I sensed a strangeness in it: in engaging an opponent one reckons instinctively the degree to which he will oppose. Kuo was young, strong, cruel, a man without pity, yet there was a lack in him: courage. There was strength in him but no effort, and I knew why. He was a Chinese and vulnerable – like all his race – to superstition, and when he had spoken to me in his own tongue he believed that he cursed the dead.

My sudden attack had seemed monstrous to him and the terror had withered him: it was not a man but a spirit that rose up against him and he was powerless. The process is not intellectual: small mammals are frozen by the same terror in the mere presence of a snake. So it was with Kuo the Mongolian.

His paralysis had passed within a few seconds. As a man of sophisticated action he realized what had happened; I had used the oldest trick of them all, the possum trick. But it was too late. The strength that had been bled away by terror within an instant would take minutes to return.

Sometimes he moved and violently, his legs kicking, his body twisting, his empty gun hand crawling for purchase on me; but the lock I had on his neck was unbreakable. Sometimes his face came out of the mud and his lungs heaved for air, but he was choking now. Words came among the other sounds, at first in Chinese and then in English, and I listened to them.

He was asking me not to kill him.

Above us the last of the day's light was leaving the horizon. The young night was fragile, lit by the first stars, and very quiet. Mist came across the rice-field and covered us.

Another spasm of choking shook him and the words started again, asking me not to kill him. I wasn't surprised: the deepest cowardice takes shelter behind the gun, and the gun was this man's trademark. Not that it is cowardly to wish for life; it is cowardly to beg for it. Wish for it, fight for it to the last breath, but when you know it's going, let it go, don't beg like a bloody dog.

I wrenched his neck again and forced his nose and mouth under the mud and kept him like that because I wanted to weaken him, or that was my excuse. The crowd had screamed when the big car had gone into them and that sound was still louder to me than his frenzied bubbling.

Then I jerked his head up and waited till the choking was over, and gave him the edge of my uninjured hand at the side of the neck, a low-power chop to paralyze. It took a few minutes for him to rally, and by that time I was standing above him. I told him to get up, and we lurched together through the mud and crawled up the bank to the road, where Pangsapa was standing.

His dark figure stood between two others; they were one pace behind him in the attitude of bodyguards. It was only when he spoke and I heard his lisp that I knew who it was.

'I was uncertain of what was happening, Mr Quiller, or I would have sent assistance.'

A big American car stood behind the Honda. It must have come up when Kuo was choking, or I would have heard it.

It was difficult for me to stand properly and blood showed through the mud that smothered me, so for pride's sake I said, 'It wasn't necessary.'

Kuo moved and Pangsapa said to the two men: 'Cover the Chinese.' Kuo stopped moving. His breath sounded slow and painful. Pangsapa said to me, 'Let us go back to the city, Mr Quiller.'

I straightened up and tried to stop the onset of giddiness. 'I'm going on to Nontaburi. The roadblock. Stop them getting him through.'

'It is too late,' Pangsapa said.

'No. There's a chance.' As I began moving toward the Honda the first sounds came into the night from the north. Rifle fire, then machine-gun. Distance was a few miles, about where the roadblock was.

'It is too late, Mr Quiller. I'll take you back to the city. You need medical attention.'

I stood staring northward. There were flashes in the sky. Grenades.

Over my shoulder I said dully: 'Too late? Why?'

'Didn't you see the green light, ten minutes ago? The parachute flare?'

'Yes. I saw it.'

'It meant that the attack on the roadblock was about to begin. Sixty assault troops of the Vietcong were flown in earlier today from the Laos battle area. In a few minutes resistance will have been overcome, and the Rolls-Royce will pass through. The airplane is waiting at a private field three miles beyond.'

There were no more flashes. A single machine gun puckered the silence for a little time and then it stopped.

Vaguely I heard Pangsapa telling his men to take the Chinese into the car and guard him. Then he came up to me. 'You need to rest, Mr Quiller. There is nothing you can do now. The exchange will take place as arranged.'