The 9th Directive

6 Blank

So I had learned him and lived with him and now I knew him as I would know a brother and in a strange and terrible way I missed him. He had always been there in the intimate round window of the 8 x 60 Jupiters and now it was blank.

I went on working until midnight, taking a trajectory across the town from the Lotus Bar to the Residence Florale (where he had an apartment) to the Thai Room at the Plaza (where he always had Peking duck) to Nick's No. I and the Shangrilla and the Sbai-thong in Rajprasong and the Roulette Room at the Vendome. And he wasn't in any of them. His two favorite maisons privees. Blank. The opium house near the Phra Chao. Blank. The hermaphrodite show at the Emerald Gate. Blank. All the way to midnight, drawing blank.

Loman was waiting for me in my room at the Pakchong – I had signaled the safehouse, fully urgent.

He took it very well.

'The police lost him too, and they were in strength. It was a difficult assignment, very.'

He didn't look so well-groomed tonight. Bags under the eyes. I asked: 'What are they doing about it?'

'Very little, oddly enough. Kuo isn't their chief interest. The last wave of arrests brought in a well-organized subversive group under orders from Peking. They think the real danger was there. They think one of their number defected recently and sent the threat to London. They're working on it now with some of our Security people giving them a hand – after all, we hold the actual written evidence.'

I knew why he said that. Security were having trouble with the Thai Home Office; there were too many of them, a good half dozen. The written evidence of the threat was their only card.

'Doesn't your air conditioner work?' Loman wanted to know. His pink skin was gleaming.

'I told them to switch it off. All day in the heat of the street and a few hours up here with that thing on and you've got pneumonia.' I sounded like an old man fretting about his health. 'Then what are they doing about Kuo? Nothing?'

'Routine search, of course.'

'They won't find him that way.'

'How will they find him?' He was standing in the middle of the room looking at me hard in the eyes. He wasn't sure of me, not sure how seriously I was taking this thing.

'By keeping out of my way. And out of his way. I don't know if the Kuo cell is on to me. I've worked in strict hush for six days but then I had to show my hand by combing the town – the Lotus Bar and all the other places. But if they're not on to me I've still got a chance.

I know the whole cell now – two bodyguards and four operatives. He works with a team like a matador with a cuadrilla, always has. I can recognize any one of them and God knows I can recognize Kuo. If the police lay off they'll show themselves sooner or later; then it's a question of time.'

'Thirteen days.-'

He was standing there sweating like a pig.

'I want you to know something, Loman. This job didn't appeal to me when it was sprung on me cold, but I finally took it on and now I'm in deep and I'm not backing out. I know what's happened. I've lost the adverse party and he's gone to ground and nothing can stop him setting up the kill. The Person isn't safe any more. Don't think it doesn't mean anything to me.'

I was too tired to think of the right words but he must have caught the tone because he drew a breath and nodded.

'I'm quite sure you realize the extreme gravity of the situation.'

For the first time I felt sorry for the poor bastard. Even his bow tie wasn't straight. He wished he'd never roped in the Bureau and he wished he'd never chosen me for the running boy and now it was a bit too late to do anything about it.

I turned away from him and looked down from the open windows, the only open windows in the whole hotel. The air was like cotton wool against the skin. The street was still sliding past in a gold stream down there, bumper to bumper, colored lanterns flowering right across the park, a pulse of Occidental way-out rhythms rising from late-night garden rooms, people dancing under the lights, under the leaves. No one wanted to sleep.

'How is it going,' I asked him, 'in Room 6?'

'Everyone is very occupied, of course.' His pedantic phrases sounded thin now, running on like a ticker tape oblivious to the crash it was announcing. 'The Ambassador takes the chair himself when he can. There are continual telegrams exchanged with London but they mostly concern the security situation as such.'

'Does the P.O. know what we're doing?'

'I can't say, of course. All I can do is send our own regular signals and leave it to Control whether or not to inform the Minister. The first confidential press conference was held yesterday.'

'Christ,' I said.

'I realize that's a contradiction in terms, but they are being cooperative, and of course we don't have to give them everything – they have been given nothing about us. I don't like press conferences at a time like this, don't like them at all. One has to show that one isn't -um--'

'Screaming with fright.'

'That one isn't worried. Yes.'

I stared down at the flow of lights, mesmerized, a sleepy calm creeping over the jangle of nerves, the way-out music from the leafy gardens stifling my own inner scream of fright. It was time to shut everything down.

'What are your immediate plans?' he was asking me, coming toward the windows.

'Sleep,' I said. 'For twelve hours. And God help anyone who tries to stop me.'

The Maltz system of psycho-cybernetics breaks new .round in that it likens the subconscious to a computer to which the forebrain submits problems for resolution. some of its concepts derive from accepted disciplines Deluding that of the sleep processes.

The dreams I experienced during the next twelve hours were variations of the same dominant theme, and the only clear memory of them was summarized in a repetition of what Loman had told me a week ago:

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.

The data was fed to the computer in the form of images: the Person, hands tucked behind him, the eyes quizzical – a quick laugh as he got the point an instant before the others, a tilt of his chin as he turned and moved on beside his companion. And Kuo: strong, short-bodied and well-tailored, placing his feet with deliberation, his Asiatic features made half anonymous by the smoked glasses. And Loman: smoothly shaven, the mind cold behind the hard bright stare.

The images merged as the computer collated the data:

Kuo with his deliberate steps taking him past the shop window where the photograph looked out with quizzical eyes – and suddenly the crowds and the flags and the flowers and the crosshairs of the telescopic sight bearing on the moving target and the crash of the shot with Loman's face distorted by the long-drawn scream of fright. The kill.

It's going to be your fault – your fault alone.

The data wasn't new; it had been going into the computer since the day I had accepted the mission; but in sleep there were no distractions and the subconscious was totally engaged.

The sleep curves had shallowed out by noon of the next day, and I woke and spent an hour getting clean and drinking coffee and thinking about nothing. Then I began looking for Kuo.

The streets were more festive every day and there were flags everywhere, and flowers. People began cheering the Ambassador's car when they saw the standard. The florists along Plern Chit Road competed with one another, making immense displays round the gold-framed photograph – red and white flowers, blue ribbons.

I was a specter at the feast, haunting the streets, the stubble growing again, the Toyota taking me through the city in a maze of my own making and spinning out a travel pattern that somewhere and sometime must coincide with his.

Loman wanted me to make contact every day but I kept clear of him when I could because there was nothing to report. On the sixth day of the hunt he intercepted me in the lobby of the Pakchong.

'I may have to tell London to advise the Minister,' he said.

I stood looking at him, aching for sleep.

He said: 'We have five days more. I've tried to convince Police Colonel Ramin that we are on to the Suggest danger – Kuo. It's a case for a dragnet. He won't hear of it.'

'He was keen enough before. Never left the bastard alone.'

'Ramin believes the only danger was from the subversive group he rounded up. He's already taking credit for having cleared the city. There are rumors that Kuo has left Thailand.'

'Naturally. He's circulating them himself.'

He asked me: 'What do you think of your chances?'

'It's a question of time. I told you before. If the police have stopped looking it's a help – I've got a clear field.'

The Person is due here in five days and--'

'You don't have to keep--'

'I'm not just rubbing it in – don't misunderstand me. I mean simply that the Visit can't be called off at the last minute. It's a very big affair. There has to be time to announce the diplomatic cold. At least two days. So we have three days left – it's no longer practical to call it five.'

I thought he'd begun swaying on his feet but the trellis archway into the fountain court was swaying too.

'All right. Three.'

'I would like you to report daily from now on.

'I'll report.'

He nodded. 'You need some sleep now.'

'How did you know?' I said, and went up the stairs, leaving him standing there.

It was no go the next day. I took long loops through the city, checking and rechecking the points where the Kuo cell had shown itself, finding myself again and again in the temple and Link Road area. It was the psycho-cybernetic computer sending me there, correcting my course with negative feedback data. It had the answer. The Phra Chula Chedi. Perhaps it was right. I didn't know.

For the third time I drove out to the airport across the unending rice fields, vetting the few buildings and trying to arrange a set-up that Kuo might use if he meant to kill early and make sure of it before the security net could stop him. There were only a dozen or so buildings that would allow less than a 90-degree shot, and only two of these were placed on a curve in the road or at an angle that would bring a car head-on in the sights.

The airport looked very gay, decked out with flowers filling the main terrace. It looked welcoming. I wondered whether he would come, and if he came, whether he would live.

The duotone Chevrolet in the main parking area was moving forward as I turned toward the gates and I suddenly got fed up and made a quick full circle and forced it to a stop against the fence, leaving my own car and climbing into the back of hers. She just sat there, not turning her head but giving me her steady direct gaze in the mirror as I said:

'I want to know what you're doing here and why you've had me tagged for the last fifteen days. Just straight answers, beginning now.'