by Adam Hall
‘Yes.’
‘How long ago?’ I asked him.
‘A week. That’s why they sent me here.’
Wife and two kids killed in a car smash. He’d just picked up the phone and the police clerk had said, ‘Is that Mr. David Thomas, please?’
How do people stand it?
‘Feel any better?’ I asked him. ‘Any different?’
‘I suppose so. Thing is, when I get out of here, and go back to the house where we all -‘ He couldn’t go on.
‘Let it all come out, David.’
‘There’s nothing left in there.’
‘Hit the wall, then.’
‘It wouldn’t bring them back, you see.’
Nancy Chong was waiting for him and he looked up. ‘Excuse me,’ he said and followed her.
I was down as paranoid, suicidal tendencies, non-violent, general health good but traumatised following airline accident. Voluntary patient, agreed readily to curfew and confinement to clinic limits pending initial psychiatric evaluation.
‘The advantages,’ Pepperidge had told me in the car, ‘are manifold. Everything’s found for you there as a patient, so you won’t have to go into the open. You can also make and receive unlimited phone-calls, so that you’ll be in close and constant touch with me, either directly or through someone manning the phone, night and day.’
‘How did you get me in there?’
He was different, sharper than when I’d last seen him in London. Perhaps it was just that he’d knocked off the booze.
‘The clinic is British-managed, and I talked to the resident doc at the High Commission. Your cover will be simply that you’ve been through a tricky time and need to rest. They won’t ask any questions and you won’t be evaluated or given counselling or anything. Understood?’
‘Yes.’ Was it just the lack of booze? There was something else. He’d turned professional and was doing a good job, had got Katie out of her office and a car with CD plates: he would have needed first-class credentials for that.
‘So this little problem’s taken care of,’ he said, and pulled a copy of the Times out of his raincoat and slapped it onto my knees.
Front page: photograph of Veneker.
Following the car-bomb incident of last Tuesday night the police had identified the victim as James Edward Veneker, a British national. Enquiries being pursued with utmost rigour, so forth. It was the photograph that clinched it: the Shoda hit team wouldn’t think I’d just changed my cover name.
I gave him back the paper. ‘Do you know where Kishnar is?’
‘No. But you’ll be safe at the clinic.’ His yellow eyes watched me, clearer than they’d been before in London, his gaze direct. ‘Trust in me.’
‘I’m beginning to.’ He took it well, didn’t look down. ‘What brought you out here?’
‘We’ll come to that later.’
The Radison Clinic was in Pekin Street and Katie got us there without losing her way. As Pepperidge got out she looked back at me once.
‘You all right, Martin?’
‘Yes. You?’
‘I am now.’
Pepperidge was scanning the street and I waited.
‘All right,’ he said, and I touched Katie’s hand and got out and crossed the pavement with him.
When I’d signed in he took me to the small rectangle of lawn in the centre of the building and we sat in shadow on garden chairs still damp from the rain, the grass soggy underfoot. There were lamps along the verandahs, and people moved there, some in white coats. The air was steamy, oppressive.
‘What brought me out here,’ Pepperidge told me, ‘was partly that McCorkadale phoned me in Cheltenham and said she thought you’d hit on something important. She said you’d get access to some kind of electronic surveillance on Mariko Shoda. That right?’
‘Yes. She had your number in Cheltenham?”
‘I gave it to her a few days ago, the last time I phoned her at the High Commission. For an amateur, she’s extremely bright - I’m sure you’ve noticed.’
‘Yes. But I don’t want her to get too involved, now that Kishnar’s back in the picture. I don’t want her at risk.’
He thought for a moment, then said quietly, ‘She can look after herself, you know. Pretty accomplished.’
‘Just keep her well in the background, Pepperidge.’
‘Message understood.’
He was sitting more or less sideways on to me and I watched his profile, angular against the distant lights, pensive as he worked something out; then he faced me suddenly.
‘Look, we need to put this whole thing on the line. As I’ve told you, I’ve been doing a great deal of work in London, and a great deal more out here, through unimpeachable sources -particularly on Mariko Shoda and her background.’
He waited.
‘Are you here to brief me?’
‘No. I’m here to tell you that I’ve compiled a massive amount of raw intelligence right across the board, and I’m in the process of analysing it. When anything comes up that I decide you should know, I’ll tell you.’
He waited again but I let the silence go on, because I knew now what his drift was and I needed time to think about it.
‘Your mission, Quiller, is now at the stage where you can break right through and go for the objective. But you can’t do that without a director in the field.’
‘I know.’
‘Of course you do.’ He angled his head. ‘I’m putting myself up for the job. That’s why I came out here.’
I’d already had enough time. In London he’d looked like just another burnt-out spook and all he’d had were a few connections in the trade he was hanging on to, people like Floderus and a few chums down at Cheltenham with an ear at the mast, and if I’d known what it was going to be like to work in a distant overseas field without a director there I wouldn’t have touched the mission he’d offered me, I’d have turned it down flat; but I’d been smarting from the meeting I’d had with that bastard Loman at the Bureau and I was scared to death that I’d been out for the last time and was going to finish up training recruits or helping Costain with the industrial counter-espionage network he was trying to set up - industrial, Jesus, an armchair operation, the end of the bloody line and no future, no brink, so I’d done it without thinking, taken this one on and wished to Christ on half a dozen occasions that I’d left it alone.
But it was different now. Pepperidge had changed. He’d straightened himself out and got off the booze and established his credibility at the British High Commission and found me a safe-house at a time when I couldn’t have survived without one and now he was sitting here in the shadows watching me and waiting, and I knew he wouldn’t say another word until I’d made up my mind and told him yes or no. And the reason why it wasn’t an easy choice was that the relationship between director in the field and his shadow executive is close, circumscribed and demanding. If I said yes then I was going to put my life in his hands, my life and the whole of the mission, and he was going to have to move heaven and earth if necessary to safeguard them both. He’d have to feed me with info and provide for my welfare and get me contacts if I needed them, couriers, drops, signals facilities and local liaison, whatever I asked him for. He would also have to deal with my nerves, the accelerating risk of paranoia that always gets into the ferret when he’s down there in the dark and starts smelling blood - his own or someone else’s, theirs by the grace of God or the luck of the Devil, according to how you look at things.
Above all I knew that if I were going to take him on it wouldn’t have to be simply because there was nobody else — you can get killed that way. I’d have to do it because I wanted him, trusted him.
‘Have you ever directed in the field before?’
‘No.’ He didn’t look away.
‘I suppose there’s a first time for everything.’
He let out a breath.
‘Be a privilege,’ he said.
‘Mutual.’
He got up and took a
pace or two, watching the lighted windows, the people moving along the verandahs, not seeing them, I knew that. I also knew that it had suddenly hit him that he was taking something on that even a seasoned director like Ferris would have shied at, without the Bureau behind him.
Then he turned and took a slip of paper from his pocket and gave it to me. ‘My number. Round the clock.’
I memorised it and gave the slip back to him.
‘You’ve got your Thai papers?’
‘Yes.’
‘Any others?’
‘No.’
‘If you need any we can get them done here, overnight. You know Mayo Street?’
‘No.’
‘Reliable.’
He’d been out here two years ago on Flamingo, with Croder running him. That was a help: he knew the field.
He came and sat down again, sitting sideways to face me. ‘Debrief?’
‘All right. Thai Intelligence - did you do any more on mat?’
‘Yes, but I didn’t get anywhere. If there’s a mole, he’s down deep.’
‘At the embassy itself?’
‘You know what you’re asking.’
‘Of course.’ It was next to impossible to check out a government intelligence agency without months of work, and in place. ‘I’m still not easy on that score, so I’m not reporting to Prince Kityakara or anyone else for the moment, and they’re not pressing me.’
‘That’s fair enough. They gave you the job and you said you’d do it and you’ve only been out here for how long? Fifteen days. They’ve already been months trying to bring Shoda down and they couldn’t do it.’
‘That’s how I see it and that’s why I phoned Katie to ask her to get the Shoda bug monitored. It’s running now.’
He nodded quickly. ‘Incredible. It might give us all we need. Now what about the bug on Johnny Chen?’
‘It could have been put there by Sayako.’
‘The woman who’s been trying to protect you?’
‘Yes. It could have been the Singapore narcotics people who bugged Chen, but I think they’d have dropped on him by now. It wasn’t the Shoda hit team because they’d have heard me asking Chen to fly me out to the jungle and they’d have brought Kishnar in for the kill. But it could have been Sayako - and this is just an idea - because there’s a connection between her and Colonel Cho.’ I told him about Cho’s extraordinary reaction when I’d mentioned her name.
‘What is she? Wife, mistress?’
‘Or possibly his daughter.’
‘Married to a Japanese?’
‘Not necessarily.’
‘What’s the connection -‘ He looked up.
‘Mr. Jordan, please?’
Lee Siang, one of the doctors: I’d been introduced to him when I’d signed in.
‘Ah, right.’ Pepperidge got up and spoke close. ‘Dr. Siang, why not go and see admin about our friend here? Ask Mrs. Yih - she’ll explain.’
‘Need to make examination.” He tilted his clipboard to catch the light. ‘Mr. Martin Jordan, yes?’
‘She’ll tell you all you need to know, doctor. Mrs. Yih, all right?’
‘Oh. Very well.’ Big grin. ‘Not know about this. Excuse me.’
I got up too and we made the round of the lawn under the frangipani trees, the scent of their blossom heavy on the air.
‘They’ll take a bit of time,’ Pepperidge said. ‘So what’s the connection, with the Chen bug?’
‘It could be anything, but he flies into that airstrip regularly and it’s within forty kilometres of Cho’s radio station.”
‘We’ll see if we can get her to talk a bit more.’ He put a hand into his pocket again. ‘For you.’
He dropped it into my palm: a small, round plastic component like a black pill-box. The Chen bug.
“Thank you.’
‘Chen gave it to McCorkadale and she gave it to me. What do you want it for?’
‘I might need to talk to Colonel Cho some time, and this is the only way.’
‘Does he speak English?’
‘French.’
‘He was monitoring Chen?’
‘Not specifically. He was picking it up by chance across the wavelengths; he’s got a whole range of stuff going into those tapes, totally at random.’
I reported at length on Cho and it took half an hour; Pepperidge got out a mini-recorder and put it on the cassette. ‘The only two transmissions I heard in Shoda’s voice were in Cambodian, and Cho translated for me, so I got this bit at second hand - she was telling one of her army commanders to hold back on mobilising his forces until the arrival of a consignment of some sort. She said it was vital for him to stay in liaison with her other forces, to avoid precipitate action.’
‘Oh really.’ His voice was quiet. ‘A consignment of what?’
‘Cho didn’t know. I asked him that one, of course.’
He stood thinking. ‘We’ll be picking up some more about it as the material comes through; I’ll analyse it myself and give you the essence. At the moment it looks as if she was talking about the Slingshot, and I’ll pass that straight on to my people in London, see if they’re willing to do a little research for me. Go on, will you?’
I finished the debriefing and filled him in on the village out there in the jungle and the way it was run. Then I went over the whole of the material and found something I’d missed.
‘On the Chen bug, there’s something else that points to Sayako. I was at his place when he said I should take Flight 306, and the next day she got me paged at the airport to stop me going. At the time I couldn’t understand how she’d known.’
‘And now perhaps we do. I wonder,’ he said, ‘just horn useful Sayako could be to us, if we really explored the question? We’ve got her phone number now, by the way.’
Got my attention very fast.
‘How?’
‘She gave it to us.’ He pulled out the little recorder again and changed the tapes. ‘She phoned Chen today and gave him the number and asked him to pass it on to you. He didn’t know where you were, so he phoned McCorkadale with it and she contacted me. I phoned Sayako and taped it for you.’
He switched the thing on.
Yes?
My name is Pepperidge. Mr. Chen passed on your number to me, since I’m a close friend of Mr. Jordan’s. Can I give him any message?
Where is he now, please?
I’m not quite sure, but I shall be seeing him soon.
A break as she hesitated.
Very well. I wish to talk to him, if he wishes also. It is very important to me personally. Also he should know that Mariko Shoda is very angry because of car bomb happening, which allow .Mr. Jordan to escape Kishnar. She order execution of person who placed bomb. I will tell him more, if he wish to talk to me by telephone. Please tell.
I will. But he has my confidence, Miss Sayako, so you can tell me anything that Please? Confidence?
I mean, you can tell me anything that you can tell him. It is safe to do that.
She hesitated again, this time for longer.
I very much wish to talk to him. Please tell.
Click on the line.
‘She rang off,” I asked him, ‘not you?’
‘Right. She’s protective.’
‘D’you think I should phone her?’
‘Yes. Unless she’s got some kind of official status she can’t have your number traced.’
There was the sound of shoes on the wet grass, then a woman’s voice.
‘I’m sorry, but it’s nine o’clock.’
Curfew.
‘Thank you,’ Pepperidge told her.
The rectangle of lawn went dark before we reached the verandah; they’d switched off the main lights and now there were only pilot lamps going.
‘Can we go along to your room?’
‘Yes.’
‘They don’t allow visitors after curfew, but I’ll fix that if necessary. The thing is, what Sayako said on the phone means quite a bit more, maybe, than you real
ise.’ The corridors were quiet, and he brought his voice down. ‘We’ve been hoping to find Shoda’s Achilles’ heel, and I think we’ve done that. And I think it can give us the mission.’
‘It’s the bug?’
‘No. It’s you.’
CHAPTER 23
OBSESSION
I want his head. The smoke from Dr. Israel’s thin cheroot hung on the humid air, floating in the glow of the pilot lamp in soft grey skeins.
You have exactly twenty-four hours. I want his head, do you understand that?
Mine. My head.
‘Tell me,’ I asked Dr. Israel, ‘about obsession.’
He was quiet for a while. He’d had a busy day. There’d been two more suicide attempts during the evening and I’d seen three male nurses at a steady jog-trot along the north verandah twenty minutes ago, heading for the room where a woman was screaming.
‘This isn’t a rest home,’ Pepperidge had told me earlier, ‘it’s in the front line. Try not to let it worry you.’
The place was quiet now, and Israel sat with his short legs crossed and his white jacket hanging open and the end of his little cigar glowing in the half-light. In front of us the expanse of lawn was dark.
‘Obsession…” he said, and smiled. ‘What can I tell you about it? Well, it’s real. I mean’ - he waved a thin, angular hand - ‘people say their husband’s got an obsession about golf, you know? Or they say their wife’s got an obsession about her diet, something like that.’ He shook his head. ‘That is not obsession.’
Wanted to ask: what about heads? My head?
Didn’t ask.
‘It has an infinite number of presentations, you see. One can be obsessed about so many things, but the real obsessions are focused on abstracts. Hate. Revenge. Life. Death. Sex. Sickness. Health.’ He shrugged. ‘There was a man who was convinced he had cancer of the stomach, you see, and they gave him all the tests and they were negative. But he wasn’t satisfied! He was sure he had cancer of the stomach. Why? Probably - we never found out - probably because his father had died of cancer of the stomach and this man had been unkind to his father so when the old man died the son felt so much remorse that he wanted to suffer the same fate, you see - not on a conscious level, of course, not at all.’ Another weary smile. ‘Not much of what we do is ever done on the conscious level. So* - another shrug - ‘he walked into a telephone kiosk and called the hospital and pulled out a gun and shot himself in the stomach and told them to come and get him. They’d told him, you see, that he didn’t need to undergo exploratory surgery, which he’d asked them for. So now he had to have surgery, and he knew they’d find the cancer.’
