Loman hadn't answered. He had gone off on one of his therapeutic walks around the empty crates to get his anger down. I was sorry for him. I had once seen him briefing five crack operators at the Bureau, giving them a mission as complicated as an electronic computer -access, courier lines, letter drops, radio hook-up, cover stories, timing factors, liaison patterns and the whole picture, all within one hour because there was a plane waiting and the complete operation depended on moonlight. It was a masterpiece and nothing went wrong.
But he was out here on the far side of the world from his natural base with only an Embassy to work on instead of fifty official departments and reference sources and with one single bloody-minded agent who'd sold him a set-up that had shocked him to the guts.
Next time he'd choose someone else and amen to that.
'One thing I want to know,' I said when he came up to have another look at me. 'You're trying hard to get information out of the security people at the Embassy. How hard are they trying to get information out of you?'
He was suddenly interested. It was just a flicker of the eyes but even in the poor light I caught it.
'Everyone is trying to keep information from the other groups, as I have just said. It's just as natural that everyone is also trying to get it.'
'I'm still waiting, Loman.'
He said obliquely: 'It's part of my task as your director to attend to every fringe aspect of the mission and leave you to concentrate on the actual--'
'The one that's trying the hardest is the Maine girl, correct?'
'I really can't expose you to problems that--'
'She's outside now, did you know? She tagged you here.'
His face went stiff. 'But I took every possible--'
'Look, it was bound to happen. The minute you sanctioned my operation I cleared out of the hotel and went to ground and she lost me for the first time in fifteen days and it must have sent her hysterical. You're my only contact and she knows it because I asked for you by name at the Embassy the first time I met her there, so she's had you tagged since she lost me – must have. She needs me badly and all I want to know is why. And all you have to do is tell me.'
He didn't provoke me by asking if I were certain she was there outside. It was my job to know where people were. He hadn't sensed the tag because he wasn't an agent in the field – he was an executive who did most of his work at a desk. But I had checked him for tags every time we had met since I'd left the Pakchong Hotel and tonight he wasn't clean: she'd been using one of the cover availabilities I'd examined in the alley – the fuel-oil tank on the timber props.
'I am very disturbed to--'
'It doesn't matter,' I said. 'You're not expected to know the drill. That's why I always make sure you're the first to arrive. Just tell me what she wants.'
'I don't know.' He said it quite spontaneously and I knew he wasn't lying. It always had to be watched: a good intelligence director will tell his agent precisely what he chooses, precisely what is good for him, and will lie his way out of any risk that his agent will be worried or confused by anything that he does not specifically need to know. An agent is sent like a ferret into a hole and he is not told if there is a dog at the other end. It's Control that takes care of the dog.
I said: 'You don't know? But you must have some ideas. I'm in a red sector now, Loman. I can't trust in Local Control Bangkok to deal with fringe aspects for me while I'm in the field because Local Control Bangkok is one man: you. And it isn't your field.'
He said nothing, but he compromised: he didn't walk away. I knew he was worried about loss of face because he hadn't sensed the tag but he could worry about it some other time when I didn't need him. I said:
'She's trying to milk us, isn't she? Her group's been following me ever since I took the mission over. I do the work, they get the results. If they want to protect the Person they'll have to do it on their own and in their own way. You know the danger – if they balk me now it can spoil my aim and we'll miss. You know the risk. Call it a national tragedy.'
He studied my face for a bit and then broke a rule because he had to, because he was Local Control Bangkok and one man wasn't enough to keep an agent alive in a red sector.
'They're not concerned,' he said, 'with protecting the Person.'
'Is that an idea or do you know for certain?'
'I've told you, I don't know anything. You asked for my ideas. The Maine group isn't trying to get information about the Person, from me or anyone else. They're not interested in the official arrangements or the itinerary or the Kuo set-up.' To prove his worth as a director and save some of his face he said parsonically: 'That is why I made no comment when you twice asked me about the woman. My conviction was that her group was not running a mission similar to yours and was therefore unlikely to get in your way. That is still my conviction and I still believe it's my duty to tell you simply to forget it and concentrate on your operation.'
But I knew he was ready to talk so I didn't waste time on persuasion. I told him:
'Stick to principles and you'll have a death on your hands. His. And maybe mine. If they're not on a protection mission what's their field?'
'They are on a protection mission.'
'But you said--'
'Their mission is not to protect the Person. It's to protect you.'
I shut up because I had to think.
It checked. They had been tagging me – the woman herself and the two men, the thin one and the one with the splayfooted walk – and no one else. They had seen that I was logging the Kuo travel pattern but they had never switched their attention from me to him, and when I lost him they went on tagging me: they weren't interested in Kuo. And the woman had been there at the airport 'in case I took a plane.'
The kites had begun moving.
We are too old, too animal, to let ourselves become lost in thought, lost in our environments. Our environments are the jungle. A draft from the street had begun moving the kites and they danced grotesquely, the big male chulas and the female pakpaos. Someone had opened a door, so I spoke more loudly:
'Then tell them to get out of my field.' Loman composed his face in suffering, thinking I had raised my voice merely in anger. 'Go out and pick up Scarface and tell her to mother someone else's chick – I'm a big boy now. The only protection I need is from her. I'm relying on you to do that for me, Loman, strictly urgent.' I took the photograph from him and turned away. 'Ten minutes be enough? Then I'm leaving. Clean.'
It would be no good putting the Rifle Club's 1000-yard range anywhere else, because Bangkok is surrounded by rice.
The heat shimmer spreading from the rice fields grows steadily worse as the day advances, and makes for a distortion factor with telescopic sights. I therefore drove eastward out of the city early enough to put in a couple of hours on the range while the air was stable.
There had been no time to catch the light after leaving the kite warehouse the previous afternoon. I had gone to ground in the condemned building as soon as the area had been checked for tags. I had seen neither Loman nor the girl outside the warehouse: he must have snatched her or scared her off.
This morning the air was cold and nothing showed in my mirror, but I selected a couple of harmless-looking saloons and kept between them to make it difficult for anyone to raid me either with a shot or a smash.
My membership card got me straight through to the suits and for the first hour I was alone with the Husqvarna. The dealer had sent it to the club for me on my instructions, with the scope sight already mounted. My needs had been for a big-bore rifle capable of long-range accurate fire with a heavy, compact bullet achieving high velocity and killing power. It was thus necessary to choose a bolt-action, which is the slowest of all repeaters for follow-up shots; but it is the most reliable.