They'd listened to what I'd said and their rather bright stares had followed my gestures attentively: the language of mime is universally understood, even by children. They seemed to be waiting for me to go on, but I decided to leave it at that, as if I felt confident and didn't need to protest. It was quiet here, and we all stood perfectly still as we considered, in our divers ways, what should be done.
I thought I could neutralize one of them: the one with the gun at my back. It would take him a long time, relatively, to pull the trigger, because I would induce nervous trauma in him first. That's why I always disappoint those people in Firearms when they try to sell me their goods: I just don't trust the bloody things. They're heavy and awkward and unreliable and of course an absolute give-away, and I don't like the bang they make. When these ticks had hijacked me just now in the car I couldn't have used a gun even if I'd carried one, and they wouldn't have accepted my cover: they'd have known right away they'd pulled in the spook they were after. No go.
It takes time to pull a trigger because the chain of events is long and intricate. This boy would have fast reactions but that would only narrow the time gap: it wouldn't close it. Whatever move I made would surprise him because he was holding a gun and I wasn't and this gave him enormous confidence and left him wide open to surprise and all its hazards: he'd lose something in the region of a tenth of a second right at the outset because the flood of incoming data would be blocked off by the condition of shock. He wouldn't be able to think what I was doing because his ability to reason would be suspended until the shock phase was over. Added to this critical delay would be the normal physiological requirements in terms of time: the time needed to assess the data, decide on the appropriate action, envisage it, analyse the image, reach the decision to act, and order the action. The transmission of nervous signals would take very little time, the electrical impulse travelling at a hundred miles per second and in this case probably a little faster since the organism was trained in unarmed combat. But once his trigger finger had become active Under its muscle contraction he was going to run into a phase of gross delay in the overall operation: the flesh of his finger alone would absorb several minor fractions of a second, and the spring mechanism of the gun would then begin using up the greatest proportion of the total time demanded from initiation to completion.
They stared at me, at my rueful smile.
Somewhere inland the clock in the church ended its chimes.
None of us moved. None of us.
So maybe I could neutralize one of them: the one with the gun. But there was too much against it. I'd have to move sideways instead of forward and down, and even then his gun hand would follow until I could mount the blow. And if I brought it off there'd be one dead man and that was alclass="underline" there wouldn't be time to cripple him or put him out of action — it'd have to be a shikana, the force of both arms swinging the elbow in a murderous curve for the diaphragm, a rising blow that wouldn't call for sight, since I knew precisely where his diaphragm was at this instant.
But if I did it there'd be another death a second later because the nearer of the other two, the one with the blepharitis, would recognize the blow I was using and come for me with any one of the forward-killing kicks while my neck was exposed to him at the end of my own movement. He'd be too frightened to do anything else: because this is the way with the graduated belts — their powers are so deadly that they recognize the dangers of an equal.
So there wasn't a chance but you have to think of everything or you'll miss a trick and they'll go in there and switch the lights on and lock the door and pull your dossier out of the safe and drop it into the document destruction thing, just because you didn't think of everything.
'You're making a mistake,' I told them again.
They didn't understand and it worried them in case I was saying something they could use for their profit. They told me to shut up: I didn't know the word but I knew the tone. Then the thin one folded my papers and put them into the passport and I waited for him to hand them back to me and give a shrug and let me go, because the imperilled psyche becomes undisciplined and clutters the mind with false hopes, however you try to reason.
He said a word and the gun was pushed harder against my spine and we moved at last, the four of us, towards the station wagon. I was forced back into the driving seat and they took my wrists and put my hands on the wheel-rim. Then they all climbed in and slammed the doors and one of them tugged out the street map from the glove compartment and got it open and stared at it for a moment and finally stabbed his finger near one of the folds. 'Here.' He looked at me with his blank animal eyes to see that I understood. 'Go here.' The facia wasn't lit but there was a chemical glow from the quayside lamps and his finger was stabbing again at the point on the map: the corner of Statue Square, where the Bank of China stood with its great brass doors and its garrison of armed guards and interrogators, the place where they were going to take me and after a while make me wish to Christ I'd drawn a capsule.
Chapter Eleven: TARGET
'Have you seen this chart?'
'Yes,' I told him.
'Where?'
'On the launch.'
'What launch?'
'The narcotics boat.'
'Oh yes.'
He had it spread across the table: Chart 341 — China — South-East Coast — Approaches to Hong Kong-Islands South of Lantau.
'Have you studied it?' he asked me.
'Not in detail.'
His head turned slightly and he became very still for a second or two. Then he went across to the bulkhead and put his foot down and there was a light crunch and he came back.
'I wish to Christ you wouldn't do that,' I said.
He gave a titter but watched me with unamused eyes. 'Cockroach, old boy, the mariner's bane. How are you feeling?'
'Bloody awful.'
Physically I was all right but it had put an edge on my nerves, those three little ticks trying to get at me like that within minutes of final briefing.
'You've got three and a half hours yet,' said Ferris. 'Take it easy.' He leaned over the chart again, moving the lantern so that its light featured the bottom right-hand corner. This was the target zone, centred on Longitude 114 by east, Latitude 22 by north. The oil rig was two miles south of the San-men Islands and I saw he'd marked it in: I suppose he'd asked the Navy or someone where the thing was.
'Have you seen any other charts?'
'One or two.'
'On the narcotics launch?'
'Yes.'
I hadn't studied them. He got another one and unrolled it and spread it out and began topographical briefing while I sat in my track suit and tried to get my left eyelid to keep stilclass="underline" they could have wrecked the whole mission for me, those little bastards.
'Hong Kong is pretty well surrounded,' said Ferris, 'with these little islands, a couple of hundred of them belonging to the Colony and the rest of them garrisoned by the Communist Chinese.'
I didn't ask any questions yet but I was already wondering how the hell he was going to drop me into the target zone with any kind of security, even by night.
'You'll be going in by sub,' he said without looking up from the chart.
It wasn't telepathy: he was just a very bright director and keeping one step ahead of me. I let him go on talking, trying to get the other thing out of my mind.
They were probably dead.
'This group is perfectly barren, with the nearest garrison on this island here, five nautical miles to the north-east.'
I was beginning to steam now so I unzipped the track suit to the waist and let it hang open. Ferris had gone to fetch it for me from the Harbour Hotel, mustn't catch a cold he'd said with a whinnying laugh, and left me here on the junk with a towel round me. I hadn't dried off enough before I put the track suit on and that was why I had begun steaming.