He struggled to his feet, wincing for a moment with the pain in his leg. ‘You are all packed and ready to go? And you have your international driving licence with you? Perfect! It is now half past three. Our plane leaves at five-thirty, so we must be at the airport by five. Business hours start again at a quarter to four. Now, when you leave here I want you to go out of the hotel and up to the corner of the block where there’s a hire-car firm. You will be in no danger — remember it is me they are after, not you — and in any case, they are very unlikely to know that you have been visiting me.
‘You will hire a car — something small and not too conspicuous — and drive round and park just a little way up the street behind the hotel entrance, facing Kitchburi Avenue. I shall leave at precisely four o’clock, in a taxi. That will give us a good forty minutes to reach the airport — with ten minutes to spare for any eventualities on the way. When you see me leave, you will start up as well, at a discreet distance. You do not have to keep up with me — just follow towards the airport. I don’t think they’ll try anything as I leave the hotel — it’s too public. The most likely spot is the beginning of the autoroute out to the airport. There I will tell the taxi to stop and dismiss him. Then I shall wait for you. If our friends are going to act, that will be their opportunity.’
‘And if they do?’
‘I shall try and kill them.’
‘With a two-two pistol?’
Pol grinned: ‘With something rather better. Now, everything is quite clear? All you have to do is watch for my taxi, and follow at a reasonable speed towards the airport.’
‘Why bother about a taxi — why not come in the hired car?’
Pol stood for a moment tugging at his lower lip. ‘I thought of that,’ he said at last. ‘But two of us might distract them — or him, as it may be. We want to draw whoever it is out into the open, now or never! Better to have two cars — it gives us more of an element of surprise.’ He spoke suddenly with the mischievous glee of a schoolboy planning a daring and ingenious prank. As he led Murray to the door he stopped and took out an enormous wallet, counting out a number of crisp twenty-dollar bills. ‘You’ll need something for the deposit on the car,’ he added: ‘The rest is for the inconvenience.’
This time Murray took the money without arguing; it wasn’t like taking money off a dead man. Not quite, anyway. Pol had taken out his little gun and stood back behind the door. ‘Merde!’ he whispered.
‘Merde,’ said Murray, and opened the door.
CHAPTER 4
The corridor was empty. Murray walked to the end, round the corridor, reaching the two lifts: neither of which were at the floor. He touched both heat-sensitive call-buttons and waited. His watch said 3.37. Easy. Plenty of time.
One of the lifts stopped and slid open. It was empty. He stepped in and touched the button for the ground floor. Piped music clinked softly round him. The door began to close and a man squeezed in — a tubby little man in a porkpie hat. They started down.
‘Pretty humid,’ the man said cheerfully: an American.
Murray nodded. If there was one day in the year in Bangkok that wasn’t humid, it was worth a paragraph in the papers. The lift itself was distinctly chilly. Murray disliked lifts; he felt the same sense of exposed privacy in them as in a public lavatory. He stood watching the floor numbers lighting up, with irritating slowness, along the panel above the door: 6-5-4 —
‘You American?’ said the man in the porkpie hat.
‘No,’ said Murray. ‘I’m an Irish bum waiting for a break.’ The lift stopped. ‘And a good day on yah!’ he added, leaving the little man gaping after him.
The lobby was less crowded now, with a dozy afternoon lull. No one even looked at him. The same clerk was on duty at the desk. Murray gave him ten baht and collected his camera and grip-bag; then at the last minute turned and started back up the open stairway to the Rama Cocktail Lounge. At the top he almost bumped into the tubby little American from the lift. The man smiled sheepishly, steering clear of him, round towards a wall of telephone booths.
Murray went into the bar and spent a few minutes sucking a long brandy-and-soda through a straw; then started down again, with his camera and holdall, across the lobby and out into the sticky, storm-heavy afternoon. Hot gusts of wind stung his eyes as he hurried up to the corner of the block. The rain would begin at any moment.
He spent an irritating five minutes waiting while two pale American youths on Rest-and-Recuperation argued with the car hire reception girl about the relative merits of five cents per mileage for a Toyota sedan, against ten cents a mile for an American convertible. Murray had finally hustled in and told them to finish their discussion while he arranged his own deal, because he was in a damned great hurry. The boys had gawped at him, mumbled their apologies and stood aside. He had felt bad about it almost at once; they looked nice innocent country boys, perhaps battle-weary after many months
