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Smith found that he couldn't leave her completely alone. He held her two hands and looked straight into her eyes as he talked to her.

"Okay, Rose. I've been thinking about your situation a little bit. Here's the germ of an idea. Suppose that you had failed to get the package back from me. Suppose that I had walked out of the airport with it and gone and booked-in at a hotel. You phone up and tell Miller I've still got it. What happens then?"

"Are you serious? He would come after you, of course. He'd kill you if it was necessary to get it back. Without hesitation."

"But I suspect he won't move about very much in the daylight. Am I right?"

"Probably. I've only ever seen him after dark."

"Then that's a way we can buy a few hours. And it would get Miller out into the open, here at the hotel. Do you think he would come alone?

"I don't know. He might if I played it right. I could try. But what would we do when we got him here?"

"I'm not sure yet. We would have to set-up some kind of sting. I don't think we could do it by ourselves. We would have to have a few policemen that we could trust at least."

"Other people have tried it. If you try to fight Miller, you come up against a wall of silence. People are too frightened to touch it. The police who aren't on his payroll are scared of the ones who are. Nobody knows which are which."

Smith thought hard. There was at least one group of people he could think of who had a perfect reason to hate Miller.

"Tell me about these 'snuff movies'. The people who get killed - where do they come from?"

Suavarose obviously found the question distasteful. She didn't like to have to admit that she knew anything of such things. "They're mostly children," she said with sadness in her voice, "street children. Or children he's enticed to come here from the country. You see there are people in this part of the world who are so poor they'll more or less sell their children. Not ask too many questions about what's going to happen to them. They think they're going to be adopted by rich families in the West, or going into domestic service, or... well, service of another kind. He has agents who do all that kind of thing for him. Sometimes he just kidnaps them - from perfectly good families."

Smith found that he was more shocked than he expected. Maybe he wasn't quite the seasoned man of the world that he had believed himself to be. "And.. these people," he said hoarsely, "doesn't anybody ever miss them? Don't they have friends and family who come after them?"

"Of course. There's a missing persons organization here in the city that has been around for years - they do their best, but you have to understand what it's like here. It isn't like England. It's a mass of corruption. Everybody is afraid of everybody else. Nobody will say anything. Nobody will give evidence. There's no way to get to a man like Miller. He's invincible."

"This missing persons organization. Can you take me to it?".

O

It was close to closing time when Smith and Suavarose pulled-up to the door of the building that housed the Missing Persons Bureau. Rose waited to pay the taxi-driver while Smith hurried up the stairs, afraid that he would be too late to talk to anybody. To his relief the door was ajar and there were two people in the room, an oldish man of Oriental appearance standing by the table and a young European-looking woman seated behind it. Some typewritten papers were scattered before them, prominent among them a picture of a little girl, possibly the man's granddaughter, aged about five or six. She was smiling in a lovely unselfconscious way at something to the left, out of camera-shot. Smith went straight in without knocking.."

"Sorry to interrupt," he said awkwardly, "but it's desperately important, and I haven't very much time. Do you speak English?" They both nodded, the man turning to face him.

"Have you heard of a man named Miller?"

The girl started as though he had shouted an obscenity at a prayer-meeting. "I'll take that as a yes. If I could get him to show himself, on his own, is there anything you could do about it? Are there any police officers you can trust?"

The girl swallowed hard and got up and shut and locked the door before she answered. "Who are you, Sir?" she asked in a hushed tone.

"I really don't think that matters. What's the answer? Can you help me or not?"

The girl stood in front of him, her lips trembling. She was too frightened to speak. Instead the man spoke, collecting-up the papers from the table as he did-so. "Perhaps I can help you. Unlike the young lady, my life is quite close to its natural end."

"You mean you know some honest policemen," Smith demanded eagerly, "people we can trust to arrest Miller?"

"Yes," the old man assured him, nodding his head gravely, "if you can get Miller into the open, the way you describe, I can arrange everything else." A smile spread across Smith's face. This thing might not be quite as tough as he had feared.

O

Smith lounged on a comfortable chair in a quiet corner of the hotel bar. On his lap he had his Company's newly-issued lap-top computer. He pretended to type but in reality it was displaying only a collection of little colored icons against a blue field. The computer was window-dressing. On the floor beside him the black hold-all rested against his feet. On a similar seat, at a table a few meters away Suavarose sat quietly reading a novel, and occasionally sipping a gaudily-colored cocktail that she would normally have enjoyed but which now tasted bitter and unappetizing. The old man from the Missing Persons Bureau sat at the same table, a glass of beer at his hand, idly playing with Smith's new cam-corder, balancing it on the table and staring down at the little viewfinder-screen whose tiny but crystal clear picture of the room seemed to hold endless fascination.

Smith did not know in detail where the police were concealed, it was better that he did not, but he was confident that this aspect of the meeting had been fully organized. As he pretended to type, he watched the little digital clock on the computer-screen. Midnight twenty-one. He knew that it wouldn't be very much longer. His heart pounded. What in heaven's name had inspired him to get involved in this, he wondered. There was no need for him to be here. No need for him to do this. It was just because he couldn't get Rose out of his thoughts. A girl he had never laid eyes upon before that day. A girl who had tricked him into drug-smuggling. He must be stark raving mad, he decided. Or in Love? Was there a worthwhile distinction between those two states?

His thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of a tall, rather elegant and well-dressed man in his early middle-age. He was clean-shaven with dark, slightly graying hair and carried a business briefcase. He seemed to be heading straight for where Smith was sitting. Smith's heart skipped a beat.

"Ah, good to see you," said the new arrival cheerily in a Southern States American accent, "I don't think you know me, but...."

He did not finish the sentence. He would never utter another. As he got to that point in what he wanted to say there was the sound of a muffled gunshot and blood spurted from the left side of the man's chest. It was particularly shocking because Smith realized that what he was seeing was the exit-wound. The man had been shot from behind.

As the bar became totally silent, and Smith too found that he had lost the power of speech, the old Asian man walked casually around to where the man lay with his eyes still open, his dying gasps still spluttering from his mouth, and produced the photograph of the little girl from his breast pocket. "This is my granddaughter, Mr. Miller," he said quietly, "I think you may remember meeting her." With that he held the gun with its large silencer to the man's forehead, "You will be pleased to know that I am filming this," he said equally quietly, and pulled the trigger. This time there was an explosion of blood that splattered Smith's computer screen, as well as his suit and his black hold-all.

"I'm afraid I didn't get around to telling the police, Mr. Smith," said the man quietly, "I rather wanted to see Mr. Miller alone."

"But... it's murder," Smith managed to rasp breathlessly.

"No, Mr. Smith. Murder is the killing of a human being. This man's membership of the human race was no longer current."

The man returned to his seat as though nothing had happened and put the gun away. In the most surreal way, like a tape-recording that had been paused and then started-up again, the sound of people talking, and even laughing, recommenced all around the little tableau. People got up from where they were sitting and gathered around to look at the body, still chattering in a very normal sort of way, as though the shooting had formed part of an entertaining floor-show. The man sat back in his seat and seemed to relax. He took a sip from his glass and a faint smile flickered across his face. Suavarose whispered something in his ear and he got up very calmly and turned to leave. She hugged him once and squeezed his hand. Then the crowd parted to let him through and he quietly left.

Smith began to feel as though he were in a dream. He got up and seemed to float light-headed over to where Soavarose was standing. She was pale, but was actually smiling.

"What did you say to him?" he whispered.

"I said: 'Today you have done a good day's work. It is time for you to go home and rest'. It's a line from an old folk-song. The next line goes: 'If you stay any longer in the paddy fields it will be dark, and the cobras will come out to bite your ankles'."

He found that he was shuddering slightly and he put his arms around her for comfort.

"Why don't you put your things away," she said quietly, "and... in the morning... I'll take you to meet my sister."

AN END

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