The 9th Directive

8 Diabolus

The whole thing nearly came unstuck.

It was typical of our relationship: we'd known from the beginning that we weren't going to get on together; we'd known also that somehow we would have to. But this time it wasn't personal; it was on a question of policy.

'I can't sanction it.' That was his first reaction.

He spent most of the time walking about and I had to suffer his long silences while he stopped to stare at the rosewood Buddha and the moonstone and the Pan-Orient Jewel Company calendar on the wall.

'I cannot see how I could sanction it.'

After a bit I just sat down and shut my eyes except when he came up to talk to me. Even then he was talking half the time to himself, playing it aloud, trying to get a grip on it. I was hard up for sleep and would have dozed off in the chair if I hadn't been sitting on a bomb.

'It is the most sensitive operation I have ever been presented with.'

I could hear by his footsteps that he was standing in front of me again so I opened my eyes and said:

'You asked me for a set-up. It's the only one that can work. There are plenty of others but they're all chancy. You've thought of them and I've thought of them and there's something wrong with all of them except this one, so don't let's waste time going over--'

'Everything is wrong with this one.'

'And everything is right.'

I sat watching him struggle. Certainly there was a lot to this operation that would put the fear of Christ into a seasoned agent – the whole set-up was pivoted on a needle point. But it had advantages, big ones, bigger than any of the other plans could give us. He wanted to launch it; he would give a great deal to see it run; he was an intelligence director of long experience and this thing excited him, fascinated him. It was sensitive and it was elegant. What he was doing, as he shifted about and stared at things he didn't see, was trying to talk himself into saying yes.

I let him struggle with it while I sat there with thoughts of my own. I had already made my decisions: if he agreed to directing this operation I would set it up and push through with it win or lose. If he couldn't sanction it I would sign off the mission and get out of Bangkok. No half measures: if he tried to talk me into one of the other plans it was no go.

The second reason (the first was the Maltz mechanism) for the strong homing of my instincts on the temple near the Link Road was that it was one of the alternative set-ups I had given Loman some time ago. It was the feature of one of the 'assassination arrangements' he had first asked me for. The Phra Chula Chedi, with its white-frescoed walls and golden tower and beautiful gardens, was a perfect vantage point for Kuo. It was a gun sight commanding the whole length of the Link Road.

It was to the temple that Kuo himself had taken the roll of gold cloth, consigning it to the safekeeping of the man garbed as a priest. There had been people about, passing along the pavement. It didn't matter. Gold cloth-tapestries, sacred draperies – were common enough in the city temples. This one had been something over three feet long and its weight – judging by the way they had handled it – had been ten or twelve pounds. Gold fiber is heavy: the cloth itself would weigh in the region of five or six pounds.

It didn't matter that people had been passing along the pavement there in full daylight and had seen the gold cloth. In another way, it did matter. It was Kuo's hallmark: stylishness. He had taken a braggart pleasure in bringing to this sacred place, in view of the people of this city, the instrument of Cain that would send this city – and all England – into mourning.

The thing had been done with the semblance of a ritual. Kuo the Mongolian was a man short in the body and with a deliberate gait, his face disguised by smoked glasses; but he would be more accurately described as a man who would do this thing in this way. Here was his whole character expressed in one gesture. He was Diabolus.

So Loman's misgivings didn't count with me.

He was standing over my chair again and I opened my eyes. He said almost pettishly: 'You know perfectly well that in any case I can't sanction homicide.'

'I'm not asking you to.'

'But the entire operation hinges on--'

'For God's sake, Loman, we're wasting time.' I got out of the chair, fed up with him. 'One of them's going to die, isn't he? Which d'you want it to be?'

He started off again, fretting up and down till I stopped him and made him talk and go on talking. In half an hour we reached a deadlock and it took another half an hour to break it. Talking had helped him, helped us both. We were getting used to the operation and it didn't scare us any more.

'We are always up against the same difficulty, Quiller.

Lack of peripheral support. We haven't any junior agents to do the general background work – tagging, guarding, manning a courier line. All chiefs and no Indians. That's why you lost Kuo at the Lotus Bar – we didn't have a man on the other exit. We can't ask for assistance from any police department; as I've told you, Colonel Ramin will have nothing to do with me. For this reason we have very little information. Plenty of raw intelligence but nobody who can analyze it for us and give us a complete picture. Therefore we know practically nothing of what plans the Bangkok Metropolitan people have in mind – or even what our own Security is doing. Their responsibility is very high and they're jealous of it.' He took a couple of turns and came back, giving me a hard bright stare. 'By which I mean that if we launch this operation we shall be on our own. Entirely on our own.'

I said, 'It's the only way I can work. You know that.' I [had to sell him this point. The mission suited me but it [didn't suit him: he specialized in operations with a well-organized cell, established access and first-class communications. This wasn't in his field. It hadn't been mine until the Kuo pattern had shown me the way in. There was no point now in telling Loman that he had roped in the Bureau and me with it and that it was his own responsibility. He had to be sold my operation by positive, not negative, argument. I told him:

'Lack of peripheral support isn't a difficulty in this case. It's because we're on our own that we can work as we like. We're responsible to Control for results and the means don't count. No one is responsible to us – there aren't any junior agents to get caught in the blast when we light the fuse. That's the whole idea about the Bureau, isn't it? You've said it yourself: we don't exist. It lets us do things that no other department can do.' I stood close to him. 'You can't lose, Loman. With a bit of luck and some good organization, the Security people sent out with the Person are going to give him all the protection he needs. If they can't stop Kuo then the local networks will – the Thai Home Office, Special Branch and Metro Police. With luck. But if he gets through them all… and if all the luck runs out… we'll be there, you and I, plugging the hole.' We stood so close that I could see my own reflection in his hard bright eyes. I need do no more than to murmur. 'And we can bring it off. And if we bring it off, who's going to ask how we did it? Control? Control never asks. It would never keep an agent if we had to account for our methods. So we're in the clear and we're on our own and the set-up's waiting.'

I moved away from him and gave him five seconds to think. He had to have those few seconds without my eyes on him so that he could look into himself for his own counsel – but I gave him no more than five because the final shot had to go in timed to exactitude:

'And it's a beauty… isn't it?'

Sensitive, elegant, simple, brutal and just. A classic. Dog eat dog.

It was absurd. He'd spent so long, before, talking me into this mission. Now I'd had to sell it back to him.

'What do you need?' he asked.

And I knew it was a deal.

'Three things. A base. A darkroom. A look at the car.'

'Nothing else?'

'Your general supervision. I'm out of sleep. I could make a mistake. There won't be much time for sleep, I've got your direction in any case. I'm all right, Jack -how are you?'

He asked me: 'What kind of base do you need?'

He spoke with the dulled tone of a punchdrunk. He had committed himself and had no time to think about it yet, I wished him joy in the small hours of the night.

There's an office block at the intersection of the Link Road and Rama-IV facing east with the name Taylor-Speers on a board. They're demolition contractors and the work doesn't start till the middle of next month because they're held up with their schedule: they've wrecked an electric main under the tram terminal sheds they've just pulled down. It's a British outfit and you'll find them in the book. I want any one of the top-floor rooms at the front and no one's to know I'm there.'

He didn't like it.

'Colonel Ramin,' he said, 'tells me that the police will be checking upwards of three hundred uninhabited rooms overlooking the motorcade route on the morning of the 29th. They are already working on the lists of residents of several thousand other rooms.'

'I can deal with that. I've been in there.'

He still didn't like it.

'Taylor-Speers are bound to let their workers into the building on that day to watch the motorcade. It's declared a national holiday and it would be natural for them to do that.'

I said, 'That's what I want fixed. No one goes into that building on the day except the police. It's a British firm and you've got a set of official credentials – pick any one. This is a big chance for Messrs Taylor-Speers to demonstrate their steadfast loyalty to the country whose ancient soil, so forth.'

'I'll do it in my own way,' he said stuffily.

'That's our motto – the means don't count.'

'What kind of darkroom do you need?'

'Nothing special. Somewhere lightproof enough to use an enlarger in the daytime. Somewhere as near the condemned building as you can find. I don't want to show myself in the open street.'

'Camera gear?'

'I'll choose it myself.'

'When do you want to look at the car?'

'As soon as you can fix it.'

Our voices sounded hollow. Everything we said now, every small word, took us nearer the thing we were going to do.

'I shan't waste any time,' he said.

'I know you won't.'

He went first to the door. I would wait five minutes. That was the routine. 'One thing I forgot, Loman.' He turned to look at me. 'Can you get me a guest membership card at the Rifle Club? I need a couple of hours on their 1000-yard range. We're working on a long-shot and we don't want to miss.'