Quiller Salamander q-18

by Adam Hall

  I remembered stone columns, ancient, laced with creeper. 'It was a temple?'

  'Yes.'

  Sometimes he spoke French, sometimes English, his language scholarly in both.

  'That was a long time ago,' I said, more as an exercise than anything, testing the memory, finding it sound.

  'It was yesterday.'

  He meant it still seemed like yesterday. It would have been twenty years ago, when the Khmer Rouge were scouring the countryside, hunting for intellectuals, monks, school-teachers, village scribes.

  I finished the bowl of soup or whatever it was, perhaps herbs; it had tasted brackish, of roots.

  'Did you carry me here?'

  'Yes. You were in the helicopter, I assume.' He had a smile like the Dalai Lama's; the sweetness of his spirit lit his eyes, humbling me, my brute calling.

  'You heard it fly over?' I asked him.

  'Yes.'

  Quick — 'When?'

  'The night before last.'

  'Today is the seventeenth?'

  'By your calendar.'

  Two days to the deadline. Call it two minutes, then, there's no bloody difference.

  'It was a hanuman?' I heard the monk asking.

  'What? I think so. Green.'

  Gently he turned my wrist over, studying the blackened flesh. 'You are a very strong man,' he said. 'You were already over the worst of the fever when I found you. The bite of the hanuman is usually fatal.'

  'You go there to pray?'

  'To be with my brothers.'

  This was a cave we were in, draped with tapestries from the temple; a Buddha sat in a niche the monk must have carved from the rock; a small oil lamp flickered in the depths of the cave, and I saw an owl perched there, staring with bright obsidian eyes, its shadow huge against the rockface.

  'You must sleep again now,' the monk said.

  'How far are we from Pouthisat, overland?'

  'A hundred and forty kilometres.'

  On Pringle's topographic map it was a hundred by air. 'Sleep?' My capacity to think linearly was still not back in shape. 'No. I need to reach Pouthisat.'

  The monk hitched his threadbare robe around him, watching me with curiosity. 'You flew here from Pouthisat?'

  ' Yes.'

  'I heard you disturbing the Khmer Rouge. Was that deliberate?'

  'It was on the cards.'

  'You were accompanied?'

  'Yes. My pilot didn't survive.'

  'He was in the conflagration?'

  'Yes.'

  'We shall pray for him, my brothers and I.' In a moment he said, 'You were pulling the tail of the tiger. Of Saloth Sar.'

  'Who is he?'

  'It is the real name of Pol Pot.'

  'He's there now, at the camp?'

  'Yes. But he is ill.'

  Oh really. 'How ill?'

  'He has ceded his powers to General Kheng.'

  'His second in command?'

  'So it is said.'

  'Who says? How do you know this?' I stood up and fell down again, knees buckling, he wasn't quick enough to catch me, hadn't expected me to do anything so bloody silly.

  'You must rest,' he said, his eyes amused. 'You are among those who goad themselves through life. That is not the way.'

  'Who told you about General Kheng?' It sounded slurred. This was perfect, wasn't it, listen, within two days I had to get this film into Pringle's hands a hundred and forty kilometers away overland and he had to get it to London for the British and American and UN brass to look at and they had to go into joint session and if they decided on an air strike the bombers would have to be airborne in time to make the hit by dawn of the nineteenth, the day after tomorrow, and at the moment, at this very moment when I should be kicking the whole thing into action my speech was slurred and the cerebral cortex was still deep fried and when I stood up I fell down again, this was perfect, so what is, what is to be done, my good friend, in this rather sorry situation?

  'Anger does not assist in recovery,' I heard the monk saying gently. 'Rather should we relax, and let our karma resolve our predicament for us.'

  'Right.' I sat up, arms around my knees, letting my head hang loose, rolling the neck muscles. 'You're damn' right. Excuse me. Who told you about General Kheng?'

  'It is known in the village. The peasants bring me offerings of food and the bare necessities. Look!' He held up a tin frying pan, a real work of art, copper rivets and everything. 'They also bring me news of the Khmer Rouge, for what it is worth.'

  Do they indeed. I lifted my head and looked at him. 'And what are the immediate plans of General Kheng, do they know?'

  'They have not spoken of plans.'

  'What do they say about him?'

  The monk moved, blowing on some charcoal and pouring water from a pitcher into a black iron pot. 'That he is young, power-hungry and ambitious.' He took some dried herbs from a shelf, broke their stalks and dropped them in. 'He has said he will restore power to Saloth Sar when he is well again, but it would surprise me if such a thing came about.'

  I got onto my haunches, swaying like a drunk, pulling myself upright with my hands on the rockface for support, I am not proud, you must understand, when the need is urgent, and if there is only one way to do a thing then that is the way I will do it, so go to hell.

  'No plans, then,' I said. No news of the nineteenth.

  'No. The peasants do not hear everything, I would think; it is simply that the soldiers talk a little to them when they come into the village for their needs.' He stirred the pot with a wooden spoon, his face lit with concentration.

  I wasn't surprised, as I stood with my hands away from the rockface now, that nothing about the nineteenth had been heard in the village: security on that subject would be tight. I took a few paces, needing to touch the wall only once.

  'Is General Kheng at the camp now?' I asked the monk.

  'I don't know.'

  Then I would have to find out. 'How far is the village?'

  'From here?'

  'Yes.'

  'Two kilometres, perhaps less. I will go with you.' He turned his sweet smile on me. 'Then when you lose consciousness again I shall be there to carry you back.' He resumed his stirring, the pot beginning to steam.

  'How far is the camp from the village?'

  'Perhaps fifteen kilometres.'

  'So the soldiers use motorized vehicles all the way?'

  'Yes. Usually jeeps.'

  I shuffled to the mouth of the cave, one hand along the wall until I could hold onto the peeling bamboo curtain, the skull of a bird watching me from the hook where it hung; it looked like an owl's, perhaps was the owl's brother. When I felt ready I made my way back, no support this time, progress.

  The sun was burning its path through the palm trees towards noon when the monk said, 'Seeing you were in no mood to rest, I prepared this concoction for you. It will give you strength for your journey.'

  It tasted of embers and sent fire through my veins, and when I'd finished it we began walking along the bullock track through the trees, none too fast in the rising heat of the day but I didn't fall down and the monk didn't help me, let me go it alone as he knew I needed to.

  'Do other vehicles come to the village,' I asked him, 'from the road to the east?'

  'Sometimes. Foreign Aid Services, some of the Catholic missions, and of course the Mine Action units.' We stood in the shade of a barn on the eastern border of the village, where the huts gave way to rice fields and the road ran through a bamboo grove to the horizon.

  'Where should I wait?'

  'I will show you.'

  He took me to the house of a blind man, saying that I would be safe there for as long as I wished to stay, but soon afterwards I managed to get a lift from an Australian mission truck as it was leaving the village, and by dusk I was in Pouthisat.

  'I had to.'

  Pringle waited. I wasn't playing games, making him drag it out of me; to bring death is an intimate act and I didn't want to talk about it, that was all.
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  'His neck was broken,' I said.

  We were in the Trans-Kampuchean Air Services shed on the airfield: I'd phoned Pringle the moment I reached Pouthisat and he'd brought along a film projector and rigged it up. We hadn't run it yet: there was the debriefing to do first.

  'But he was still alive,' Pringle said.

  'Yes. But he wouldn't have stood a chance even if I could have got him into an ambulance right away, and only a doctor could have done that, under morphine.'

  'And you couldn't let the Khmer Rouge find him.'

  'No. They would have grilled him until he was dead.'

  'An act of kindness, then,' Pringle nodded.

  'Right. Put me down for a fucking halo.'

  Pringle made a note. He was sitting behind the trestle table that served as a desk in here: he was like that, couldn't drop into one of the bamboo chairs, had to look like a bloody lawyer, you know Pringle by now.

  'Go on,' he said, 'when you're ready.'

  How kind of him. 'Pol Pot is ill,' I said. 'A General Kheng has taken over the army, believed to be Pol's second in command. Young, ambitious, power-hungry.'

  Pringle was watching me now, surprise in his eyes that he thought wasn't showing. 'Source?'

  I told him about the monk.

  'Is Kheng at the camp now?'

  'We don't know.'

  'Can you find out?'

  'Probably. It'll take time.'

  'We don't have a great deal.'

  'Oh really?'

  He looked away. 'I was just talking to myself.'

  I knew what the deadline was, for Christ's sake, it was staring us in the face. Hand throbbing a lot, the arm still numb to the elbow, I should have let them see it at the hospital but I wanted to watch the film, find out if we'd got anything or if the Hartmann-Zeiss had jammed or something.

  'Any other business?' Pringle asked me.

  'No.'

  He put away his debriefing pad and I got myself some tepid Evian water from the tank while he slapped the cassette into the projector and switched off the light.

  Just the jungle down there at first but good resolution, we could see some of the breaks in the trees; then we went down and there was a rush of leaves and I began looking for anything I hadn't seen live — jeeps, half-tracks, tanks, saw nothing.

  They were holding their fire?' Pringle asked me.

  They weren't even out of the sack at this point.'

  The image swung as we made the turn at the end of the initial run, then the first shots sounded above the beat of the chopper and the tracers started coming up and by the time Khay had turned again to make the perimeter run it was a firework show, God knew how we'd stayed airborne as long as we had.

  'Run it again,' I said, 'will you?'

  He rewound and started again and I watched for the lake and when it came up I said, 'Hit pause. No, back a bit first. I want the lake. Right. That looks like a chopper pad there, on the east bank. Some trees have been cleared at some time, what do you think?'

  'I agree. And I doubt if a satellite would pick that up. You need more?'

  'No.'

  He rewound and switched the light on again and pulled the cassette out of the projector. 'Congratulations. The whole thing is rather conclusive.'

  'I hoped you might think so.' I got some more water, still dry as a husk from the fever. 'How soon can you get it to London?'

  'It won't be going to London,' Pringle said without looking at me, 'at least until Mr Flockhart has seen it. He arrived in Phnom Penh from Kuwait last night and he'll be here on the first plane in the morning.'

  22: TOYS

  'Snake bites man,' Leonora called across the hospital ward, 'but that ain't big news around here.'

  I suppose she'd seen a lot of these, could recognize them from a distance. She pulled a needle from the arm of the withered European lying on the bed and dropped it into a red-tagged bag and dropped the bag into a chipped enamel bin and came over to me and lifted my hand and looked at it.

  'Now that,' she said, 'is for real! Kiss of death from a genuine hanuman, yet!' She was studying my face now. 'But I guess you didn't follow the instructions. How long ago?'

  'I'm not really sure.'

  'Lot of fever, yeah, hallucinations, Jeeze, you are one tough cookie! But you look like shit if you don't mind me puttin' it that way, so I'll get to you in a minute, honey, give you some magic potions, okay?'

  'No drugs,' I said. 'Just a dressing, if you think it needs one.'

  'Hey, mister, the patients don't call the shots around here, they just get the shots' — a big grin, pleased she'd thought of it — 'but maybe we can make a deal. Wanna visit with your girlfriend while you're here?'

  I looked along the ward. 'Where is she?'

  'Back there in Outpatients. Don't worry, she's fine, I just have to change her dressings. You go an' show her your trophy of the chase and I'll be right there, honey — and congratulations, any reasonable man would've been good an' dead by now.'

  Gabrielle was photographing a child in rags, blood on her face, three years old, four, the flash freezing her for print, her eyes wide, accepting of whatever next would happen to her.

  'How did you know I was here?' Gabrielle asked me.

  'I just came in for a dressing.'

  She looked at my hand, wanted to know how it had happened; I just said I'd been careless, trekking in the jungle. She looked thinner, I thought, even after such a short time, and there were shadows under her eyes.

  'You're working too hard,' I said.

  She cupped the child's head against her thigh as she looked at me. 'I have to catch up. I should have started sooner.'

  'You're losing sleep,' I told her. And when she slept, her dreams would be full of the killing.

  'I catch a few hours during the day.' We were both studying each other as if it had been a long time, or as if we weren't going to see each other again. 'Has Leonora looked at you yet?'

  'Just for a minute.'

  'What does she say?'

  'I had some fever, that's all.'

  Then the nurse came in and picked up the child. 'Where are the parents?'

  'I don't know,' Gabrielle said. 'I found her wandering in the street, but I don't understand Vietnamese.'

  'I'm going to give her to the night nurse to look after, then I'll be back real soon.'

  When Leonora had gone I asked Gabrielle, 'Are you working tonight again?'

  'Of course. Every night.'

  'Can I go with you?'

  'Why?'

  'I need some information.'

  Crickets were strident in the silence as we sat in the jeep, waiting. The full moon hung above the frieze of palms along the southern horizon; the air clung to the face like a web, humid after the rain; shadows were long.

  We had been moving through the town for three hours, ever since midnight, stopping and starting and waiting and drawing blank, and now Gabrielle pulled the map out of the glove compartment of the jeep again and opened it, switching on the overhead lamp.

  'We could try the new school just south of here, on the road out of the town, and then perhaps the temple on the road east to Krakor. I am not going to sleep until we find one.' She switched the lamp off and put the map away. 'Sometimes it is like this, and one must be patient. But it's very late now — would you like me to drop you off at your — wherever you're staying?'

  I said no. When I told Flockhart about General Kheng tomorrow he'd want to know where he was: it could be crucial.

  Gabrielle drove the jeep three or four blocks, passing the hotel where Slavsky was staying and turning south, rolling to a halt in the cover of a barn and cutting the engine. I could sense the tension rising in her again as she took her short-barrelled Remington from the rear seat and checked it. Whether or not I got the information I wanted, she would make the kill: that had been agreed on.

  'We'll give it an hour,' she said softly. 'Yes?'

  'Whatever you decide.'

  She'd told me how she operated, and
what she'd learned. 'They always arrive in some sort of vehicle, and switch off their lights when they near the area they've chosen, slowing down. That's why they like moonlit nights, unless there are street lamps not far away.'

  I remembered what she'd also said, earlier, about her childhood: I knew I'd never want to do anything else but paint flowers, all my life long.

  'Sometimes there are two of them, but they usually work alone, perhaps to conserve manpower and place more mines. It only takes one man, after all. He is always armed, of course, and takes care not to be seen or heard: there are police patrols, and sometimes military as well if a curfew is ordered. But that applies more to Phnom Penh.'

  We left the jeep, walking together as far as the narrow street; then the waiting began, in the cover of bamboo, and I heard rats among the fallen leaves, disturbed by our arrival. Water was running somewhere, a cistern overflowing after the rain; its sound brought the illusion of peace to the night.

  'It won't always be like this,' Gabrielle said softly. 'There won't always be killing.'

  'No. Everything will change.' And come full circle, as it always did; the trick was to be somewhere else when it happened. 'You should go to Paris,' I said.

  'When?'

  'Tomorrow. Paris or anywhere. Get out of here.'

  'You still think something will happen on the nineteenth?'

  'I think it's very likely.'

  Unless there was an air strike. That would be the last chance.

  'I have to stay,' Gabrielle said.

  'And take photographs?'

  'Of course. It's my job, and whatever happens will have to be recorded. But it's more than that.'

  I didn't answer, didn't want to think about it. If there were to be another million dead in the Killing Fields she would be one of them this time.

  The rats rustled in the leaves of the bamboo.

  'Will you be here,' Gabrielle asked, 'for a while?'

  'In Cambodia?'

  'Yes.'

  'I work under instruction. I don't know where I'll be at any given time.'

  There was some kind of vehicle on the move in the distance, beyond the airfield. We stood listening to it.

  I was working under instruction, yes, but if I was ordered out of Cambodia before the nineteenth the reason would have to be fully urgent: I'd want to stay on to help Gabrielle, keep her from getting caught if the Khmer Rouge launched the second holocaust.