'Oh for God's sake, stop mucking about and give me the guts of the thing so I can make up my mind. I don't know a bloody tenth of what's going on, do I?'
But I knew more now than he'd told me. I knew why he'd arrived with his nerves in the upper register: this kind of mission wasn't in his line. He is a specialist in short-range penetration operations with a disciplined cell and planned access and good communications – not such a pushover as it sounds, if the opposition is the best. He is brilliant at it: five adverse agents neutralized in the European area and two on home ground sent down for a fourteen-year stretch (the Kingston net), all in the past eighteen months.
Why had Control sent him out here on a lark like this?
He was still smiling gently. He knew I was angry because I was interested and therefore afraid of being coerced into this mission. Someone had said in that room with the Lowry: 'He won't fall easily for this one unless we can sting him up. Send someone out there he doesn't like, someone who'll get his goat.'
Loman was perfect casting.
'Let me give you the other nine-tenths,' he said equably. This is of course a job for Security and a few people have been flown out here quietly to help take care of the threat and its implications. The Thai Home Office is being very cooperative and--'
'Wait a minute. What sort of threat was it?'
'It was sent by ordinary letter to London, written in English. It said simply that if the Person came to this city he wouldn't leave it alive. Of course the Yard has taken the letter apart in Forensic and sent a couple of people out here to confer with the Thai CID. They are working on it now.'
'All right.'
'As I say, the Home Office is being very helpful and all the routine inquiries and searches are under way. The U.K. is well represented, unofficially.'
'Who roped in the Bureau, then?'
'The Bureau was not roped in,' he said stuffily. 'Certain information came in and it was decided that action was indicated. No fewer than eight directives were planned and examined before the decision was formalized. This is the ninth, and it has now become a definite mission. Because the Bureau thinks -1 do hope you feel they are right – that we should do something to ensure that nothing happens on the day. They consider the Person to be – how shall I say? – rather valuable.'
I mentally blasted him and his ninth directive to hell and got a clean glass and began on the whisky. This approach of Loman's was deliberate: I was meant to feel frightfully un-British if I didn't immediately choke with rage at the thought of anything happening to our Valuable Person. The Bureau could have spared a minute in sober thought: I always like a clear field to work in and I work best alone, and if they were sending me into a mission where the U.K. was already 'well represented' I could risk fouling up the whole operation by getting in the way.
The only thing to do was to let him go on giving it to me until I had the complete picture and then say yes or no.
'Of course,' he said smoothly, 'you will be working alone. Quite alone.'
They'd sent the right man, give them that. He knew me to the bone.
This isn't a joint operation, you see. How could it be? The Bureau doesn't exist. It never has. No, the idea is very simple. Unless they're unlucky, the security branches will make quite certain that nothing happens on the visit. They are planning every conceivable precaution. But there may be a thousand-to-one chance that the adverse party will organize a plan that will come off. A plan so efficient that there is no countermeasure possible. A plan – as I suggested to Control – that only you could devise.'
He began walking about, talking as if there would be no interruption. Perhaps he was trying to convince himself of the mechanics of this thing before he could successfully sell it to me.
'This isn't blandishment, you see. Your work in Egypt, Cuba and Berlin has proved that if you're left on your own when things are sufficiently hot you are capable of pulling off a certain kind of operation at which a dozen better men or a hundred better men would fail, simply because it's an operation requiring one man working alone and requiring the kind of man who works best alone. That is why you were chosen.' He stopped in front of the display case and stared at the moonstone until his feet couldn't keep still any more. He came back to stand in front of me. 'There is nothing else I can tell you until the information starts coming in from the Foreign Office. You'll be in on every conference at the Embassy here and we shall--'
'This isn't in your field, Loman.' I was suddenly fed up with him. 'And it's not in mine. It's no go.' 'You need time to think.'
'I've thought. This is a police job. I'm a penetration agent--'
'If you want to play with terms--' 'It's no go. Tell them they've made a mistake.' 'I don't think they have. I chose you myself.' 'Then it's your own mistake.' 'I don't think it is.' 'Tell them to pull Styles out of Java.' 'No, it's you I want for this one, Quiller. You.' He wasn't smiling any more and all the polish had gone to his eyes. They were very bright.
'Let's get it over with,' he said. 'It would take too long for you to tell me what you think of me and it wouldn't affect the issue because I'm mud-proof. In my unfortunate experience you've proved yourself an agent who is obstinate, undisciplined, illogical and dangerously prone to obsessive vanities and wildcat tactics, very difficult to handle in the field and an embarrassment in London whenever you choose to report there in person. If you accept this mission – and you will accept it – I shall be your director and will be responsible for everything you do, so there's nothing in this for me but a filthy time of it the whole way through and I settle for that here and now. That is my position. This is yours: 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.'
He gazed at me with his eyes shining and I knew I had never hated him more than I did then. In a minute he half turned, fiddling about on the table, saying:
'I see you've hogged the last of the ice. That's typical.' He banged the bell. 'So you can't refuse this mission. I knew that when I left London. You can't refuse. When that man arrives in Bangkok you'll be here with him right in the thick of it. So you'd better lay into me and then we'll have another drink and then I'll brief you. We haven't long.'
3 Kuo
The English word 'assassin' is borrowed from the French but stems originally from the Arabic hash-shashin, meaning 'hashish-eaters.'
There were two good reasons why Loman had given me Pangsapa as a possible informant. Modern man will take great risks for money and greater risks for sex; but when he has need of drugs he will hazard himself the most fearfully. Driven beyond all caution he will expose, sell and surrender himself to the despotic sovereignty of men like Pangsapa.
Pangsapa was a narcotics contrabandist and would therefore know people who were prepared to kill for a fix of snow, or who were prepared to expose the most sacrosanct confidences of friends and inform on them.
We wanted information and we wanted information about assassins, so Loman had sent me here.