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.
10 Husqvarna
The place was cavernous and light came dimly from somewhere high under the roof. It was very quiet. As soon as I came in I saw the thing in the gloom, a full-sized male of the species, a chula, rearing taller than a man and with livid colors streaking its head. There must have been a hundred of them in here, male and female.
I stood listening. There was no sound but the faint rush of the traffic along Rama IV, a vibration underfoot. The light had been on when I had come in and I felt it might be dangerous to look for switches and try them.
Then he came out of the shadows, his eyes brighter than the rest of him.
'It's the best I could do,' he said.
'How safe is it?'
'Safer than the gem shop. Nobody comes in here.'
We approached each other under the vast roof, like two people meeting on a railway station, the last train gone.
'What about exits?' I wanted to know. I don't like big places. The smaller the place the quicker you can get out.
He pointed. 'One door there, another one in the far corner. I've got the keys to two of them. Here are yours.'
I took them. He hadn't done badly. The place was within three minutes' walk of the condemned building and I had reached the first door through an alley where cover was fair – several entrances and some kind of fuel-oil tank on timber props.
My eyes had now accommodated and I took a final look around. The kites were hung from horizontal poles in orderly rows so that even if they were set moving by a draft their fragile paper wouldn't be damaged. The male chulas were barbed; the female pakpaos had long tails and were smaller. Many had painted faces; some bore the design of a dragon. Empty crates littered the floor.
'When is the fight?' I asked Loman.
'On the first of the month. Nobody will be here to fetch them until after the motorcade.'
I'd had no time to watch the papers but there would obviously be a kite fight organized during the Visit. Loman was being very efficient.
'Did you have any success?' he asked me, and I showed him the print.
'It's not fully dry.'
He got his pocket lamp and the face, with the smoked glasses stared back. He said:
'And you are one hundred per cent certain.'
'And I am one hundred per cent certain.'
He took a slow breath and I knew that he felt as I had when this picture had slowly appeared from the sodium sulphite. We were committed.
I asked him: 'What about the itinerary?'
Nobody knows yet.'
'We've got to know.'
He looked up sharply because of my tone. It was going to be trickier than ever now to keep patience with
each other because of the nerves.
'I am watching the situation,' he said as evenly as he 'could. 'It is difficult, very. I have to take care not to provoke them into shutting every door on me – my efforts to interest Colonel Ramin in Kuo have already annoyed him--'
'Can't they find out at the Embassy?'
'As soon as the Ambassador knows, I shall know.'
I was nervous about two things: that there was a rendezvous and that there might not be one. 'Look,' I told him, 'either Kuo has got his information and he knows the route--'
'There may have been a leak--'
'A leak or his agents have done their job well – it doesn't matter a damn, does it? Either he knows the route or he's setting up more than one gunpost so that he can use any one of them at the last minute. He could even be training his cell to man several posts at the same time so they'll be certain of a kill. So we've got to know.'
When I'd had a minute to cool down he said:
'What do you think? What do you really think?'
'All right, but there's a risk – you know that. I think he's got the information.' Because of the roll of gold cloth. Because of the ritual. If Kuo hadn't found out the exact and final itinerary of the motorcade he wouldn't have made such a show of personally handing the weapon to the priest at the temple: that had been the act of a man who is certain of what he is doing.
It was all I had to go on: my intimate knowledge of the man and his character. But I knew him like a brother.
'From the inquiries I have made,' Loman said, 'there seems very little doubt that whatever the final route, it will include the Link Road. There are several good reasons – the new hospital is the subject of some pride in the city and the Person will want to see it; it is easier to control large crowds lining the route along the Link Road than along that section of Rama IV which is the only alternative. It is virtually certain that the itinerary will run from the Royal Palace northward, turn east to take in the British Embassy, then south to the Lumpini Polo grounds, then westward, back toward the palace. The single major thoroughfare from Lumpini to the railway station – en route for the palace itself – is Rama IV; and the only possible deviation from Rama IV is through the Link Road. It may be, of course, that Kuo is working on the same theory--'
'He'd be a fool not to. I agree with all your reasons, but for God's sake get some definite information for me – tell the Ambassador to get off the bloody pot. What the hell is he for?'
'He is not,' Loman said with viciously quiet pauses, 'under any obligation to us. We do not exist. He knows me simply as a member of the Special Services. If I were to ask him point blank for information he would merely tell me to liaise with the other groups – Mil. 5, Mil. 6, the Special Branch overseas unit and Security.'
'Tell him he's indirectly responsible for the safety of the Person while he's here.'
'He is well aware of that.' He began walking about to get rid of his frustration and his footsteps padded without echoes despite the size of the place; the big paper kites hung as thick as clothes in a crowded wardrobe and muffled the acoustics. 'The Ambassador is a worried man.' He stopped in front of me from time to time in case I wasn't listening. 'The situation at the Embassy is extremely sensitive. Quite apart from the normal rivalry between the Special Services there is an added reluctance to acknowledge each other. I have never seen security so tight – and of course it's natural, you must see that. Every group feels that it alone is chiefly responsible for the safety of the Person and that if it gives any information at all to another group, that other group may jump the gun and wreck the most carefully made plans. And it is the Person whose life is in danger.'
'Do what you can,' I said. It wasn't really meant to rile him. He was doing all he could and I knew it. But I had the set-up on ice now and it was all I could think about. I was scared that something would bust it up -something like a last-minute decision by the Bangkok security people to take the Link Road off the itinerary.
It wouldn't worry Kuo. He had a cell of four picked marksmen and he would just shift the pattern so that whatever route the motorcade used it would come under fire from one of them, with Kuo himself manning the most likely area. There is only a given number of main streets in any city where a public procession can be run: you cannot, in London, send it up and down Curzon Street and Half Moon Street to avoid Piccadilly.