The 9th Directive

9 The Oriel

Bangkok is a city whose temples have towers of gold and whose hotels rise alabaster from emerald palms. Here fountains play in marble courts and women walk in silk with jeweled hair; the air is heavy with the perfumes of all Araby. It is a paradise expressly fashioned for the beguilement of princes; by day the sun spills rose light along private paths and the blue of night is webbed about with music.

The tramp curled up on his sleeping mat in the corner of the duty floor where flakes of plaster fell softly from the walls with a dead-moth flutter. Mildew smelled on the air: water from the last rains had leaked from fissures in the roof and was rotting the ceiling battens. It would never dry out; the hammers would be here first, felling the whole edifice like a beast in the abattoir.

Loman had worked fast, say that for him. Taylor-Speers had rallied to the flag and this rotting hulk was my lair for the last of its days. The ghost had moved in early, his nose quick for the smell of a death.

Sometimes I slept but waked often on a thought that had to be examined (Who was she, and was it important to know? Was there a parallel operation mounted? By Mil. 6 or some other group? If so it couldn't be by coincidence. By what, then? What design?)

Loman had also found me a darkroom in the next block and I had permission to use it as required. He had even convinced the Palace Security of his bona fides and we had been fetched in a police car. Our papers were checked by guards at two points in the private grounds before we reached the Royal garages.

It was an interesting vehicle: a Cadillac Fleetwood Eldorado in ivory white with gold metal fittings and amber hide. The 340 horsepower engine would push the two-ton gross weight to 120 miles per hour. The coach-work had been converted to provide six seats, two of them folding into the mid-squab, the main rear seat being raised nine inches for a better view. Four aerials gave radio linking with outriders and the command security vehicle. Steel-reinforced side platforms dressed with ribbed white rubber provided foothold for a guard if he had to perform his prime duty – that of getting his body between the bullet and the man he is protecting. Special equipment included a built-in police siren, emergency lights, fire extinguishers, medical kit and bulletproof tires.

There were five dismountable roof sections, one of sheet steel, four of bulletproof transparent plastic.

I had told Loman: 'It's important to know which sections are going to be mounted – if any.'

'That may be difficult. It's nobody's particular decision. Our Security people and Thai Security will ask for all the plastic sections to be put «p. The Person himself will opt to dispense with all of them, because that is his character. Prince Udom will be in the car with him and the Palace directive is almost certain. Nobody here wants it to be demonstrated that one can travel safely through Bangkok only by virtue of bulletproof shields.'

'Find out what you can, that's all I ask.'

It was important. -These shields formed part of a pattern that comprised a lot of factors: distance, trajectory, trigonometry, ballistics. Take one shield away and it would affect the whole set-up. It could even shift the location of the sniping post. And we had to work on the premise that whatever we knew, Kuo could find out.

Kuo wasn't just a thug with a gun for hire. He wouldn't be in the crowd at the edge of the route hoping to get in a chance shot and run before they lynched him. Hope and chance weren't in his reckoning: he was a professional. In a way he was like Loman: he worked best with a disciplined cell and good communications. Since Kuo had come to this city he had been directing his cell with precision and they would have gone out ' hard for information. They had to know the defense pattern and they had to find its weaknesses. They had to break it before they could kill.

Assume they know everything. Everything.

Except that I am where I am, curled on the floor like a dog in its den, waiting the chance to eat dog.

135 x 2 x 8 = 2,160.

The tilt of the planet itself was a factor.

Framed in the window of my small high room was the Phra Chula Chedi, magnificent in the morning sun. The walls were white and had no apertures except for the immense golden doors half-seen among the temple gardens. Above the walls rose the dome in a half globe of shimmering gold, supporting the slender tower. Between dome and tower was a ring of small unglazed openings, and only from these oriels could a marksman sight the Link Road.

At a range of some two hundred yards I could look directly into them at eye level – but it was summer and the sun was high and they were at all hours in shadow. The field glasses couldn't beat this light factor. No optical lens of whatever magnification could define detail inside the ring of oriels. It could be done only with a camera.

A camera, set for time exposure, can produce a detailed image of a room so dark that objects in it are barely visible to the human eye. The camera is a light-gathering device.

The place Loman had found for me in the next block didn't sell much equipment because they were mainly in business for processing and the highest magnification they could offer was x!2. There was a shop half a mile down Rama IV but I was holed up and didn't want to show myself in the street more than I had to. They let me take my pick from what they had on the shelves and I came up with a compromise: a Pentax X-15 35-millimeter single lens reflex with a 135-millimeter lens that took a x2 Auto teleconverter and a stock adapter for my Jupiters. 135 x 2 x 8 (lens plus converter plus field glasses) gave a total focal length of 2,160 millimeters and a magnification of sixteen times.

I set it up on a tripod with a turret mounting that was

rigid enough for the weight, but the building was old and the traffic would cause vibration, so I played safe

with a Pan Plus-X, 36 frames. The depth of field wasn't critical because seen through the Jupiters the wall inside the middle oriel appeared to be less than six feet back from the aperture. To-cut through the heat haze I used in H4 Vivo yellow filter; to mask out the glare of the fold dome a makeshift hood was essential and I had brought one of the three-foot cardboard cylinders they had at the shop for mailing blow-ups.

The gates of the temple gardens were hidden by a cloud of magnolias and only the top half of the doorway itself was visible; the doors were some fifteen feet high and priests and worshipers would pass into the temple without my seeing them. I had therefore to concentrate on the ring of oriels.

It was two hours before movement showed there and I ran off half a dozen frames at one-fiftieth, varying the aperture from f/2.8 to f/11 and using a cable release against vibration because of the slow speed and extreme focal length.

He showed twice again before noon and 1 took a further ten, speeds from one-half to one-thirtieth, same f/stops. The haze was worse now as the heat mounted in the street so I left it at that and went down to the shop and spent half an hour in the darkroom. Even the wet negs looked promising, three of the frames being sharp. It was worth staying on: I wouldn't get better than these today because of the haze. In two hours the sharpest blow-ups were hanging up to dry. Of the sixteen essays five were successful and one perfect: a head-and-shoulders pose framed in the oriel; even the shape of the smoked glasses was recognizable – rather flat at the top with the sides tapering downward, a metal nosepiece almost level with the top of the lenses.

This one was all I needed, and from this moment there came the onset of nerves. There was no doubt left. If the protection officers failed because they were too few in number, and if the Bangkok organization failed because Colonel Ramin believed wrongly that he had covered every contingency, the shot would be fired from there, from the middle oriel of the Phra Chula Chedi, a shrine to a god who held life sacred. And it would make no difference that I could afterwards present, as evidence, a portrait of Diabolus.

The onset of nerves began now because I was committed by certainty and because a rendezvous had been established between the two of us and nothing must stop my keeping it. The date was the 29th – in three days' time. The hour was not precise but it came to a matter of seconds: there would be a period of some ten seconds in which I would have to operate.

Loman had said: 'It is the most sensitive operation I have ever been presented with.'

The portrait had begun curling at the bottom corners as it dried on the clips. The face looked out from the frame of the oriel, confident, authoritative. The face of a professional. I hung two more clips at the bottom and left it there; it wouldn't matter if anyone saw it but it would matter if someone took it away, so I put the heat-dried negatives in my pocket and went into the street.

It took half an hour to reach the gun shop a mile away – three blocks on foot and checking for tags, a trishaw and another block on foot to check again – because absolute security was now essential.

I was alone and I had to stay alone and when I came to climb to the top floor of the condemned building in three days from now to keep the rendezvous, no one must know I was there.

The shop had a first-class stock and I made my choice. It was a superb instrument and Kuo himself would have approved.