Quiller Salamander

by Adam Hall

  There was a problem after a minute or two because the streets converged and I was directly behind the Zhiguli again and none too distant. I'd switched on my lights when some other vehicles had shown up - two military jeeps and a van with Catholic Mission on the side - but they were out again now. The Chevrolet had taken a couple of side streets as a matter of routine and come back to the main thoroughfare - a government driver would know the rudiments of evasive action and this one might even suspect the Zhiguli by this time - and we were keeping station roughly two intersections apart, and it was now that I saw the gun.

  The lights of the Zhiguli were out at the moment and it was silhouetted against the bright street background, and from the movement inside it I saw that the agent on the passenger side was reaching into the rear and bringing the gun across the scat, a heavy short-barrelled assault rifle.

  Not surveillance, then. They were running a hit.

  I was still forty or fifty yards behind the Zhiguli and the distance was increasing now because it was gunning up suddenly with a squeal from the rear tyres to close on the minister's car and I did the same with the Peugeot and felt it shift through the gears and hit what speed it could with the throttle wide open and the rear wheels whimpering as we shortened the distance and the Zhiguli pulled out to overtake the minister's car to give the agent a steady target at close range.

  I was right behind the Zhiguli by now and took the Peugeot to the offside and swung in again and rammed the rear quarter of the Zhiguli and sent it skewing and rammed it again as the driver over-corrected and lost control and tried to get it back in a rag-tag action to kill the momentum but didn't manage it, lost the whole thing and hit the kerb and bounced once and rolled as a burst of shots came and some glass flew into a glittering kaleidoscope as the Zhiguli skated on its roof until it smashed against a wall and ended its run.

  The minister's car was in the distance now and I let it go and gunned up again and took the first side street to get my rear number plate out of sight. I didn't know whether the agent had tried to make a last-chance hit with that burst of fire or whether he'd triggered it by accident while the Zhiguli was doing its loop, but anyway I wasn't all that interested, the thing now was to get clear of the scene.

  It was just gone one o'clock in the morning here in Phnom Penh when I telephoned Flockhart.

  I'd driven the Peugeot ten kilometres out of the city and left it on a smashed vehicle dump and ripped the number plates off and dropped them into the river and got a lift back in a Foreign Aid Service jeep. The police might take the trouble to look for a recently-damaged car in the morning if one or both of those people in the Zhiguli had finished up in a hospital, so I didn't want to leave the Peugeot standing outside the Royal Palace Hotel and I didn't want to take it back to the auto-rental because they'd want to know why the front end was smashed in.

  The line opened and I heard Flockhart's voice.

  'Yes?'

  'Salamander.'

  'Good evening.'

  In London it was still six o'clock yesterday. The call had only taken a couple of minutes to put through because we were going via the Intersputnik satellite link-up in Moscow.

  I told Flockhart, 'I'm pulling out.'

  In a moment: 'Why is that?'

  'You'd need a whole battalion, you know that.'

  It wasn't only because he wanted me to operate out here in total isolation, unknown even to the local agents-in-place, that he'd asked Gabrielle Bouchard to meet me and ‘settle me in’.

  He'd also known she was a fierce supporter of the Cambodian people and would tell me what was on her mind, exposing me to the mood of terror that was leaving this city numbed. And him message was quite clear: the objective for the mission was the leader of the Khmer Rouge guerrilla forces, Pol Pot.

  Flockhart was off his bloody rocker.

  He didn't comment on what I'd just said about needing a battalion; he just asked me, 'How are things out there at the moment?'

  'Fairly quiet.' This was an open line but we weren't using speech-code, just not dropping names. 'Power station's up the pole, that's all, and we've had a bit of rain.'

  I didn't mention the brush with the Zhiguli. I didn't want hint to know I'd done anything at all against the Khmer Rouge since I'd got here, even en passant. It wasn't my job, wasn't in any case a job, God only knew, for one man.

  'How was your evening?' Flockhart asked next.

  His tone was quiet, his questions riddled with innocent didn't trust him, I tell you I did not trust this man.

  'Delightful.'

  'A rather attractive young lady,' he said. 'I wanted you to start enjoying things as soon as you got there.'

  Bullshit.

  When the silence had gone on for a bit he said smoothly; 'Our friend is on his way out there as we speak. Would you feel like meeting him when he lands? I told you he'd contact you when he arrived, but it's been difficult to fix up transport.' He meant Pringle, of course.

  'I'll be gone,' I said, 'by then,' The next long-haul flight wouldn’t be in until the afternoon.

  There were voices in the corridor outside my room, and I watched the thin line of light below the bottom of the door. It was dark in here; I'd pulled the shutters back and opened the window on the warm night air.

  'Surely,' I heard Flockhart saying, 'you wouldn't object to amusing yourself for a few hours more, now that you're there. I'd rather like you to listen to what our good friend has to say - I really think you'd be interested.'

  The voices loudened outside the room and shadows moved across the line of light; then things were quiet again and a door opened somewhere farther along. I was perfectly secure here; I'd come into Phnom Penh under impeccable cover and there'd been no witnesses to the Zhiguli thing, none, anyway, who could have got a good look at my face inside the car.

  'Is our friend,' I asked Flockhart, 'bringing a battalion for me?'

  It sounded like gentle laughter on the line, a sound designed to assure me that he knew I was joking. 'Wouldn't it be frustrating for you,' he said, 'to come all the way home and have me prove to you that you'd missed the chance of a lifetime?' His tone was silky, more dangerous than steel. He could have reminded me that I'd undertaken a mission for him and that he wasn't going to have me backing out before I'd even started. But that wasn't how he was going to play me, and I sensed he'd done an awful lot of clandestine research in the Bureau files on my track record and personality profile after we'd parted company in the Cellar Steps that night.

  The chance of a lifetime. Oh, the bastard, he'd got me rising to the fly. The chance of a lifetime for an active shadow executive means the chance of bringing home a mission that will go down in the archives of the Bureau as one of the really momentous operations in its history, a model for all others to come, the equivalent, if you like, of the Nobel Prize, except of course that no whisper of it would ever pass through the walls of that phantom fortress of intelligence in Whitehall. He was appealing, Flockhart - as they all do, those bloody controls - to my vanity.

  In a moment I asked him, 'What flight?'

  He affected surprise, didn't miss a trick. 'He'll be covering the final leg with Lao Aviation from Saigon, Flight 47. The ETA is 18:53, local time.'

  I said I'd be there.

  The Antonov AN-24 hit the runway in heavy rain, bouncing a lot and settling in its run with its lights flashing in the haze and the blast of its reverse thrust booming back from the terminal building.

  Pringle had only one bag and went straight into Customs and Immigration without going through the baggage claim. They only kept him twenty minutes so he must have been swinging a lot more clout than I had - it had taken me an hour yesterday - and this didn't endear him to me. But then, the director in the field is expected to wield the maximum clout available, and it has sometimes saved the executive's hide for him and brought him back alive. It was simply that nothing about Pringle was likely to endear him to me, because he was working for the smoothest con-man in the business, and if I didn't
love Flockhart I could hardly love his dog.

  'It's good to see you,' Pringle said as he came into the main hall. 'I hope I didn't keep you waiting too long.'

  He wanted to shake hands and I obliged; he was young and of the new school, liked conducting the social side of the business as if it were a cocktail party, even though the social side of this clandestine trade is traditionally comparable with the scene in an underground lavatory, where the glance is carefully averted on the understanding that nobody else down here actually exists.

  I took him along to the small bleak coffee-shop where not too many people go because when it's raining the leak in the roof tends to flood most of the floor, making the place look like a sinking ship. I dropped the newspaper onto the table, the one I'd seen on the stands.

  Pringle put his suitcase on a chair and ordered two soda kroch chhmars and sat back with his hands folded on his lap and gave me his steady gaze, a faint socially-pleasant smile on his mouth. He had the looks of a junior barrister, already adept at disarming a jury with a display of visible charm; but his cool grey eyes were watchful within the smile, and I was aware of being carefully appraised. That was all right; I expected to be. If we ever decided to start Salamander running we'd need to know each other as well as we could for the sake of the mission, perhaps for the sake of its executive's survival. But I didn't think we had a chance of starting anything running at all, with Pol Pot as the objective.

  I was here, we may remember, simply by reason of vanity, and one of the problems with vanity is that it can be lethal.

  'Mr. Flockhart,' Pringle said in a moment, 'has briefed me that you feel your services would be inadequate for this particular mission. Is that right?'

  'It's one way of putting it.' I didn't like his opening move: it was obviously intended to rile me.

  'How would you put it?'

  'I told Flockhart that if you want to stop Pol Pot you'll need a battalion. Forgive my stating the obvious.'

  'It would depend on how it was done. And perhaps we should be wary of using names in public.'

  There were only two Chinese in here, sitting in a far corner, and they'd been there when we'd come in and the rain drumming on the roof made perfect sound cover, so I'd thought it safe enough to drop the Pol Pot name to see if it bothered Pringle, I was glad it did: it should have. He'd run a few missions but he'd never been my DIF and I needed to know his standard in tradecraft.

  'How d'you expect me to stop him,' I asked Pringle, 'without a battalion?'

  'By gaining information about him for others to use.' He left it at that while the boy came up with his blue rubber flip-flops splashing across the floor and put our two sodas and half a lemon onto the table.

  When he'd gone I asked Pringle, 'So the specific objective for the mission is information on that man?' Pol Pot.

  He squeezed some lemon juice into my soda. 'That about right?'

  I nodded.

  'Yes,' he said, 'in the first instance.'

  He was so bloody smooth, this man. 'I don't know how many times you've directed in the field,' I told him, 'but you can't have an objective for any mission in the first instance. The objective is the final goal, shit or bust.'

  In a moment he squeezed some juice for himself and put the lemon carefully back into the little lotus-pattern ceramic bowl and looked up at me with his very open gaze and said, ' I directed Thurson in Switchblade, among others. I also directed MacKinley in Whiplash.'

  'MacKinley's in a nursing home now.'

  'But I got him back.'

  I left it. They'd been two of the more notable missions, one in Moldavia and the other in Beijing, where the police had given MacKinley the works. But yes, if Pringle had run those two he wasn't a novice.

  'If I decide to do anything here,' I told him, 'for Flockhart, I'd need a specific objective, no bullshit about first instances.'

  Pringle picked carefully at the label on his soda bottle. 'This is an operation, you see, like no other. I'm sure that has become clear to you. You'll be responsible to one man alone: to Mr. Flockhart. This means' - he looked up at last to get my reaction - 'that you won't have the usual bureaucratic red tape to worry about. Whatever you want - support, aircraft, smoke screens, money - you'll get immediately, since Mr. Flockhart won't need to go through the normal formalities. We can promise you immediate attention.'

  Watching me for my reaction, not seeing anything because in this trade you've got to keep it all behind the eyes, rage, fear, surprise, the emotions we're so familiar with after our first ten or eleven missions that we can deny them, blank them out on demand. But Pringle knew how very attractive he was making things sound, knew, I'm certain, that I don't suffer gladly those fools upstairs in Administration.

  'So you must he prepared to play this one by ear. Your first objective is to gain information on that man. We don't think it's a lot to ask. You've operated in jungle terrain before and proved equal to its demands.'

  'I'm a round-eye in a slant-eyed country.'

  'There are quite a few of them here, what with the various Foreign Aid Services and Catholic missions and the remnants of the world media still hanging on. And you've got an impeccable cover.'

  'I don't understand the Khmer language.'

  'You've worked several missions without understanding the language - in Thailand, Czechoslovakia, as it then was, Tibet. Rather successfully.'

  He'd done his homework. I thought it was time I put a question that had been on my mind since I'd talked to Flockhart in the Cellar Steps.

  ' The world in general,' I said, 'doesn't seem all that interested in a very minor state that's economically on its knees. There wasn't much help for Cambodia at the time of the Killing Fields - the rest of the world stood by and said what a bloody shame it was. So why is Flockhart interested in helping these people'?'

  Another plane came in, shark-shaped through the dirty window panes, its lights colouring the rain out there. Our soda bottles vibrated on the iron table and the PA system began putting out its tinny message, first in Khmer, then in French: Flight 19 from Hanoi had arrived.

  'I don't know,' Pringle said at last.

  'If you knew, would you tell me?'

  I think he would have liked to look down, or away, but didn't allow himself. The expression in his cool grey eyes was just shut off for an instant. 'If the progress of the mission demanded it.'

  That could mean anything.

  'Is it something personal, with Flockhart?' I wasn't letting it go, at least not yet. Because why had Flockhart been in such a seething rage when he'd talked to me in the Cellar Steps? Whose photograph was it on his desk, the one he'd thrown the papers over when I'd gone into his office? And why had he sent this very smooth operator here to pull me deeper into the quicksands?

  'I don't know,' Pringle said again. 'Perhaps he simply wants to save Cambodia.'

  I let it go. He wasn't being offensive, didn't believe I'd take him literally; it was just his way of telling me to shut up about Flockhart's motives - they were to remain under wraps.

  The rain drummed on the roof, splashing around the broken tile and sending a constant trickle onto the concrete floor. The two Chinese over there had started playing mah-jong.

  'Have you any other questions?' Pringle asked.

  'Yes. Put yourself in my place for a minute. Why –'

  'Questions concerning the mission.'

  'I am the bloody mission! So put yourself in my place - why would you take on an operation that simply stinks of tricks before we've even got off the ground, that doesn't have official backing or a signals board or access to London except through a rogue control working on his own and for his own clandestine motives?'

  The passengers from Flight 19 began straggling through the main hall past the doorway to the cafe.

  'Because you gave Mr. Flockhart your word,' Pringle said.

  'I didn't have all the facts. I still don't.'

  I needed time, that was all. If I took on this job the first of the lives that we
re going to be saved out here in this stinking hole was going to be my own, and that might prove difficult if Flockhart's intention was to throw me into a fire to see if I came out cooked. To use me, in other words, for his own purposes, and certainly not the Cambodians'.

  The rain hit the roof, splashing around the gap in the tiles Why didn't someone put a new one in? Was it because you couldn't expect to live, as a Cambodian, for more than thirty-six years even without a shot fired, as Gabrielle had told me? Or was it because the photographs of your mother and two sisters on the wall of your tumble-down little room were simply the photographs of some people who were there in the Killing Fields, raped and then clubbed to death because of the shortage of ammunition? Perhaps, yes, it was because of things like that. With a broken life, how would you find the interest in mending a broken tile?

  They crowded past the doorway - merchants, women with infants in their arms, soldiers not six weeks out of school, a little girl trailing a worn stuffed tiger. They would have photographs, those people. They would have photographs too.

  'In London,' I heard Pringle saying, 'you told Mr. Flockhart that you accepted the mission. He was a little put out when you changed your mind, but felt that after I'd given you a preliminary briefing in the field you might reconsider.'

  Two schoolmasters or government clerks, proud of the status their glasses gave them as intellectuals, the glasses that would mark them for death if Pol Pot took over the country again and began his political cleansing.

  A gaggle of young girls, twittering like birds, gaudy paper flowers in their hair.

  'I need,' Pringle said, 'to signal Mr. Flockhart tonight with your decision.'

  'Do you,' I said.

  Two more merchants, their canvas bags clinking with tin Buddhas and cheap brass pagodas, then two cripples helping each other along with only one crutch between them, two of those who got away with it the last time but wouldn't have a hope of running fast enough the next.

  A pale unkempt woman walking alone, a red plastic comb in her hair and her eyes permanently frightened, going home to look again at her photographs.

  Then I saw the doll.