Quiller Salamander

by Adam Hall

  'But of course you are.' He dropped the magazine he'd been reading and got up and went across to a dented metal filing cabinet and hit it with the palm of his hand to get the top drawer open. 'The same with all of us, isn't it? Always in a hurry. How's Daisy?'

  'She's fine.' I'd got it now: he hadn't just been chatty: he'd been fishing around for a code introduction because I hadn't given him one. And he wouldn't give me the envelope marked David Jones until I'd done that. 'Arthritis still bugging her,' I said. Not quite your traditional code intro, but it was telling him I knew my way around that rotten dump in Whitehall and must therefore be strictly kosher.

  Why hadn't Flockhart given me a code intro to use? Because Salamander was so ultra-clandestine that the normal routines didn't apply? But that was plain bloody dangerous.

  The man started whistling tunelessly as he went through the top drawer and fished out a manila envelope and came back and dropped it onto the counter. 'Jones, David.'

  'Thank you.'

  'When were you out here last?'

  'Couple of years ago.'

  'Things have changed for the worse since the UN cleared out, if that sounds possible, but the basics are still there. Don't drink the water or go with the girls or eat anything raw, and if you need medical attention keep clear of the hospitals, they still haven't heard of sterilization and if you ever needed an operation you'd have to take along a can of diesel fuel to run the generator for the lights.' The telephone began ringing again, and again he ignored it. 'We've still got one doctor for twenty-seven thousand people, so the thing is to play it safe. And watch out for trip mines, the Khmer Rouge are still blowing up whoever they can find - military, civilians, women and children, you name it, they'll kill it.' He gave a sudden bright smile. 'Enjoy your stay in exotic, sunny Cambodia.'

  I stowed the manila envelope into my flight bag and walked down the steps into the street.

  The black cloud cover was still spread across the sea to the west, but above the mountains there were starfields clinging to the night sky. The air was pale gunmetal blue as the lingering heat of the day pressed down across the boulevards, and I felt the tension here in Phnom Penh, dangerous and oppressive, as I splashed through the puddles to the Peugeot 604 that Flockhart had left for me to pick up at the airport. I pulled a door open and threw the flight bag in.

  'Did you come through Bombay?'

  'Yes.'

  'I have friends there.' She gave the menu a token glance. 'It never changes, the food in this place.'

  Her name was Gabrielle Bouchard, and the most notable thing about her was her dark, deep-water blue eyes. Flockhart hadn't mentioned them in his instructions. When you reach the Royal Palace Hotel, ask for the room number of Gabrielle Bouchard, a French photo journalist from Paris, and phone her to say you 're there. Then let the evening take care of itself. She is a friend, but ignorant of my work, therefore maintain strict cover.

  'What will you have?' she asked me.

  'Anything with shrimps.'

  She looked for them on the menu. I suppose she was early thirties, efficient-looking in her paramilitary khaki slacks and tunic, short sleeves above thin bare arms, the muscles of the left one a degree more developed, presumably because she carried her cameras on that side. French nationality, perhaps, but her looks were Eurasian, had the best of both worlds.

  'Sizzling shrimp cashew with lobster sauce?'

  'Fine.' She'd asked me to have dinner with her; she was in Mr. Flockhart's debt, she said.

  There were thirty or forty people in here, most of them in the dining section, the rest lining the long canvas-canopied bar on bamboo stools. Two of the ceiling fans were wobbling on their brackets, and if we'd been sitting under either of them I would have suggested moving. All the serving boys wore rubber-soled flip-flops, and they made the loudest sound in the room as they moved among the tables. There was a television set at one end of the bar but the volume was turned right down; I couldn't see the screen from this angle. Even at the bar there was no talking above a murmur; it was as if someone had just died. They had, of course, somewhere or other in the city. And watch out for trip mines, the Khmer Rouge are still blowing up whoever they can find.

  Gabrielle ordered in Khmer, rapidly and with ease, and the boy took the menus away, his eyes dull, distracted by things on his mind.

  'You speak Khmer?' the Frenchwoman asked me.

  'Please, thank you and your prices are too high.'

  'You've been here before?'

  'Yes.'

  'As a tourist?'

  'Yes.' Or sort of, but I hadn't been able to look at the temples the last time I was here because I'd been trying to locate three of our agents-in-place who'd disappeared after a small hotel had been blown up and the left hand of one of them had been taken along to the police station for identification, a signet ring still on a finger. I'd signalled London, Wilson got it.

  'Mr. Flockhart is well?' Gabrielle Bouchard asked me.

  'In very good form.' The smell in this place was obtrusive, a mixture of rotten fish, kerosene, mangoes and disinfectant. 'He sends his best regards.'

  'I took some pictures for him in Paris, and he was generous. He told me you were to arrive here and asked me to settle you down.' She meant settle me in; I'd started speaking to her in French when we'd met in the lobby, but she preferred English, perhaps for practice.

  Well now, that had been nice of Mr. Flockhart to ask Gabrielle Bouchard to look after me, but in point of fact there must be more than one agent-in-place and a sleeper or two in Phnom Penh who could brief me on local conditions if I needed that; it wouldn't normally be left to a Parisian photojournalist who wasn't Bureau.

  The thing was, then, he didn't want even the local AlPs or the sleepers to know I was here.

  Invisible man.

  Who do you work for?' I asked Gabrielle.

  'L 'Humanite.'

  'Are you covering anything specific for them?'

  I got a very direct look from the dark blue eyes, as if I'd said something offensive. 'Just Phnom Penh,' she said.

  'What have you got so far?'

  'Nothing. I am waiting. We are all waiting.' She looked away, around the big shabby-ornate room, as a boy brought the sodas she'd ordered from the bar. In a moment she squeezed the lemons into them, her thin strong hands moving automatically, her eyes abstracted. 'But meanwhile' - her mouth tightened - 'I might be lucky and get a shot of a little girl being blown to pieces in the sunshine, something like that. Something to make the world pay attention, if it will ever open its eyes.' She passed me one of the sodas. 'Where is your identity bracelet?' She'd followed the thought train from the little girl.

  'I'm getting one made.' The bracelet she wore on her left wrist was stainless steel, the standard issue, fireproof and even percussion proof, within limits.

  'But you've had your shots?'

  'Yes.' My medic in London had thrown the book at me: tetanus, diphtheria, meningitis and gamma globulin.

  'It's very important,' Gabrielle said, 'in this –' she broke off as the bulbs in the grimy-looking candelabra in the centre of the ceiling flickered for a bit and went out.

  'Is the power station under attack?' I asked her.

  'No. The power station does not work very well.' The serving boys were lighting small kerosene lamps, one of them giving a giggle as he hung his lamp back on the wall; the sound was as shocking as laughter at a funeral. As the flames burned brighter the room took on an unearthly glow. 'You are in the media?' Gabrielle was asking.

  'No. I'm on a roving commission for Trans-Kampuchean Air.'

  A man came up to our table and dropped a Kodak bag in front of Gabrielle. 'Et voila! '

  'Jacques, to es un ange, mais vraiment!' She reached up and he stooped to receive a kiss, tall, painfully thin, his stubbled face ravaged and his eyes deep in their shadowed sockets, his long mouth creased in the pleasure of the moment.

  'Pour toi, n'importe quoi ...' He straightened up, the clown's smile lingering as he di
pped his head to me and walked away, one shoulder drooping.

  Gabrielle took some of the small yellow boxes out of the bag, turning them over to read their printing in the dim light of the lamps. 'Fast film, 1,000 ASA - almost impossible to find in Phnom Penh ...' She followed the leaning Don Quixote figure for a moment with her eyes. 'He has been here for twenty years, and has seen terrible things. He saw the Killing Fields.' She put the boxes back and pulled the drawstring tight at the neck of the bag.

  'He's a photographer too?' I asked her.

  With a quick, tight laugh - 'Jacques is many things, but yes, he takes brilliant pictures, frightening pictures.' The draught from the ceiling fans was fretting at the wicks of the small kerosene lamps, and shadows fluttered across her face. 'He goes sometimes into the jungle, for days on end.'

  When the food arrived we stopped talking for a while and Gabrielle forgot my existence, eating only occasionally and without appetite, deep in her thoughts; in this light she looked as if she slept little, and not well. I took the chance to glance around the room; most of the people here were men, Cambodians; most of the rest were Chinese and Vietnamese, with only a few Westerners in plaid shirts and jeans or crumpled white tropical suits, one or two in khaki with shoulder flashes ripped away.

  'C'etait bon?' I heard Gabrielle asking.

  'Excellent. How was yours?'

  'Pas mal.'

  'Would Jacques liked to have joined us?' He was at the bar, his untidy head touching the fringe of the canopy.

  'No. He never joins anyone.' She looked for the boy.

  The lights came on again, flickering and then steadying, and I said, 'Is Pol Pot expected to make a final try for power?' It had been in the news for a while.

  Gabrielle's eyes had widened at the sound of the name. 'Everyone thinks so, here. Everyone is afraid.' 'But you're more informed than most.'

  'I think the same as everyone does. It is not just fear, although we all feel that. From my ... sources of information, yes, I believe he will make a final attempt to seize power, now the UN has left. And if he does that, we'll have the Killing Fields all over again.' Our serving boy came for the dishes, and it occurred to me that Gabrielle preferred not to use French in public places because it was the second language, though English was catching on fast among the students. 'Would you care for some li-chee?' she asked me.

  'Just coffee.'

  She told the boy, and when he'd gone I said, 'You believe Pol will launch an armed attack on the city?'

  'Perhaps, but no one knows. The UN took their intelligence services with them.'

  'Has the Khmer Rouge got a base here in Phnom Penh?'

  'Yes, but we do not know where it is any more. Pol has moved it, and taken it underground. But we know it is still here. We see his agents.'

  She'd turned her head as she said that, looking towards the tables near the grandiose archway of chipped plaster and gilt that led to the hotel lobby.

  'One of them is over there?' I asked her.

  'Yes.' She turned her head back. 'The man at the corner table, sitting alone.'

  I'd noticed him earlier, simply because I knew his type, recognized the attitude, his body language, his stillnesses, the way he moved his head, always slowly, his eyes moving with it, passing across the target without stopping, passing back. I had also identified the target, the man he was keeping under surveillance.

  'You know his name?' I asked Gabrielle.

  'No. I only know he is an agent of the Khmer Rouge.'

  The boy put down two small gold-crested cups and poured coffee for us; I could smell the kerosene on his hands. He looked very young, was probably not long out of school, was possibly still at school, one of the children Gabrielle hoped to photograph one day being blown to pieces in the sunshine, so that the rest of the world would wake up.

  'And who is the man sitting near the far end of the bar?'

  'With the gold-rimmed glasses?'

  'Yes.'

  'He is the Minister of Defence, Leng Sim.'

  'It's safe for government officials to move around in public?'

  'Not very. But he is known for that. He openly defies the Khmer Rouge. There are others like him, but not many, now the UN has gone.'

  'Do they blame the UN for pulling out?'

  She gave a little shrug. 'The UN began its peacekeeping operations with good intentions, and the conference in Tokyo was also well intentioned, but no one wants to go on protecting a country like this one, where there is no oil, no industry, no economy after twenty years of war and bloodshed at the hands of the Khmer Rouge - a country where poverty and disease and pollution have brought down the average life expectancy to thirty-six years, even without a shot fired. But we have to get help from somewhere, from someone. That is why I take my photographs.' She leaned towards me, her small, calloused hands clenched on the table. 'I have the blood of these people in my body. My grandfather was an administrator here as a young man under the French rule, and he married a Cambodian girl. So I understand them, from a source deeper than the intellect. I feel for them. I cry for them in the night. And I have to believe that if I and people like myself - like Jacques - work hard enough we can stir the compassion of the rest of the world, so that our little world out here won't be bled to death again in the Killing Fields.'

  She leaned back, toying with her coffee, not meeting my eyes any more, regretting, I thought, having given herself away like that, exposing her fears, her anger - this was my impression. As a photo journalist in what amounted to a wartime theatre she was expected to keep her nerve, control her emotions, let nothing show but what she intended to show through the lens of her camera. But what she'd told me explained her colouring: she would be called by the people here - her own people, to a degree - a 'round-eye', but she had the raven black hair and the ivory skin of a native.

  'You say Pol Pot has moved his base in Phnom Penh,' I said in a moment, 'and gone underground. What about his guerrilla forces?'

  'He has moved those too. They used to be in the south-west jungle, near the Thai border, but they've gone from there, according to reports.'

  'Reports or rumours?'

  She gave a shrug. 'One cannot always tell the difference. The reports often come from long-term foreign aid workers in the outlying provinces, but no one in the capital can really trust their word - Pol is quite capable of spreading disinformation, old Soviet style, without their realizing.'

  The Minister of Defence over there was paying his bill.

  'Poi's forces are well armed?' I asked Gabrielle, and turned my head slightly the other way. The Khmer Rouge agent was beckoning to his boy, also wanting to pay.

  'Very well armed. He rebuilt his forces after the government attacked his jungle hide-out in August.'

  I finished my coffee and looked at my watch.

  'It's late,' Gabrielle said.

  It was just gone eleven. 'I've got to make a phone call,' I told her, 'that's all. It's four o'clock in London.'

  'I'm going up anyway. I need sleep. How is the jet lag?' She got out a black snakeskin wallet.

  At the edge of my vision field I saw the minister leaving his table and moving across the room. 'It doesn't seem to affect me. You've been very kind,' I told her, and took her hand. 'Au plaisir?'

  'Mais oui. Au plaisir' I left her paying the bill.

  The Khmer Rouge agent was going through the lobby and I held back for a moment to keep my reflection out of the glass doors and then followed him into the night.

  Chapter 4

  MAH-JONG

  There was no moon, but the streets had the stark look of a lunar landscape, with patches of glaring neon and black shadows between where the lamps had gone out. Through the windscreen of the Peugeot I could see the curved roof of a temple, decorated with the great eye of a god outlined in red with a gilded pupil.

  Nothing moved in the street; it was more than an hour after curfew. The air pressed down from a hazy sky, its sticky warmth moving through the open windows of the car; it mus
t still be eighty degrees across the city, less than an hour before midnight.

  They were waiting in the Russian Zhiguli that was parked nearer the main street, Achar Hemcheay, where it ran diagonally across the centre of the town. The agent I'd followed from the Royal Palace Hotel had got into the front passenger's side of the Zhiguli; the driver had already been there behind the wheel.

  The Minister of Defence had got into the black Chevrolet at the comer, nearer the hotel, less than a minute ago. His driver had started the engine and I saw the lights come on. The agent's driver in the Zhiguli had had decent enough training: he'd stationed it between two other cars and facing away from the Chevrolet, relying on the mirror to keep it in view; there was quite enough room available for a U-turn.

  I was out here, really, just to keep my hand in after six weeks' absence from the field; there'd been an obvious surveillance set-up in progress so I thought I'd move into it and practise the routine. I knew now what that man Flockhart had sent me into Cambodia to do, but he must be clean out of his mind. I would have signalled him from the hotel after I'd left Gabrielle, and told him to pull me out of the field, but I wanted to go through with this little exercise now it had started.

  It was going to be distinctly tricky because there wouldn't be much traffic to afford cover; there'd be nothing on the streets at this hour except for police, military, or Foreign Aid Service transport. There were some lights crossing the intersection at 136 Street now, but I couldn't see what kind of vehicle they belonged to.

  The agent was armed. I'd seen him adjust the holster strap under his jacket when he'd got up from his table in the restaurant.

  The Chevrolet was in motion now, pulling away from the kerb. The Zhiguli started up but didn't move until the target vehicle was nearing the intersection; then it made its U-turn and took up the tag. I waited ten seconds and fell in behind at a distance of fifty yards with the lights off, turning at the intersection and rounding the Central Market and taking a side street parallel with theirs, gunning up quite a lot to come abreast until I could see their lights and keep station.