Quiller Salamander q-18

by Adam Hall

  'It's going farther away,' she said. The vehicle.

  'Yes.'

  But the next one, minutes later, sounded less distant, and we stood listening again.

  The moon was below the tops of the sugar palms now, throwing them into stark relief against a skein of cloud nearer the horizon. There was no other sound louder than the droning of the vehicle, still distant but nearing by degrees.

  'Perhaps this one,' Gabrielle said quietly. I thought it might simply be a police patrol or a merchant bringing in goods for the market, but in a moment she hitched the Remington higher and said, 'Yes. This one.' By now she was experienced in this kind of work, would have acquired specific instincts.

  Light flowed suddenly across the wall of a building as the vehicle turned in the distance, its sound loudening; then within seconds the light went out and the engine note decreased.

  We had rehearsed things already, but for the sake of security Gabrielle said again, 'If there are two of them I will shoot one immediately and go for a kill. The second one I will drop without killing if I can, before he returns my fire. If I succeed, he's yours. Don't leave cover until you're sure there's only one of them still alive, because I might have to fire twice. If only one man gets out of the vehicle, he's yours until you signal me.'

  'Understood.'

  I left her and moved along the street, keeping to the cover of a dry-stone wall until I reached the school. There was an arched gateway and I went through into the playground, dropping out of sight from the road.

  I could now identify the vehicle by its sound: I'd heard these things before. It was a Chinese-built jeep, bouncing over the potholes on stiff springs, the slack timing-chain sending out a distinctive clatter from the engine. It was still running blacked-out, and the only light in the street was from the moon.

  I could have operated alone tonight, moving from one potential hot zone to another, but I knew only a few words of Cambodian and unless the target spoke French or English I would have drawn blank.

  The jeep neared, moaning in low gear. I couldn't see it from where I was, had only its sound to go by.

  Carbon monoxide drifted on the air; tyres crackled over stones; and now the canvas top of the jeep was visible, sliding beyond the dry-stone wall. Then it stopped, and the engine idled for a moment, was switched off.

  There were no voices.

  Smell of tobacco smoke.

  Then movement, and I went on waiting. The ring of a spade as he unstrapped it from the rear of the jeep: I could see the top of his head. Only one man, then.

  If only one man gets out of the vehicle, he's yours until you signal me.

  The gate swung open.

  He was carrying the spade and a small wooden crate. He was carrying the crate carefully.

  I expected him to start digging a hollow below the archway, but perhaps people were used to that now and either put the main entrances to schools out of bounds or had them swept every morning by one of the mine-detection services, because the man was coming into the playground without stopping, and when he was four or five feet away from me I moved and closed the distance and took him down with a knee sweep and a sword-hand to the carotid artery, a medium strike to stun while I looked after the crate. The spade clattered onto the ground and I left it there and checked his belt for a weapon, found none: these people were more comfortable with submachine guns and assault rifles, and he'd left his in the jeep, hadn't expected to find anyone here.

  He was young, strong, snapped out of the syncope within seconds.

  'Parles-toi francais?'

  He didn't answer, didn't want to stand here talking, swung a routine kindergarten-level fist and I blocked it and paralyzed his arm with a centre-knuckle strike and followed with a pulled hammer-blow to the temple to get his attention. 'Parles-toi francais?' I asked him again.

  Some Cambodian came out, sounded ungracious.

  'Do you speak English?'

  Worked on his arm, the median nerve.

  More Cambodian, so I whistled twice and Gabrielle came trotting across the road with her gun and began talking to him instead.

  'He's just cursing,' she said.

  'Then make him afraid.'

  She raised the Remington and held the muzzle against the middle of the man's forehead and spoke to him again, getting something out of him this time.

  'He's just asking me not to shoot him.'

  'Then start a count-down. What does he know about Pol Pot?'

  I waited. The man stank worse than the pig in the mine-detection place — garlic, tobacco smoke and now sweat.

  'He knows nothing,' Gabrielle told me.

  At least it was an answer, of sorts. 'How far did you come down to?'

  'Six.'

  That was quite good: he was breaking early.

  'Keep going. I want to know if Pol Pot is in good health, and also where he is now.' The intelligence the monk had passed on to me could have been simply rumour.

  The barrel of the gun ran silver in the monlight as she shifted it a little as a reminder, prodding the man's brow, talking to him again, her tone quiet, professional: she understood that a raised voice shows lack of confidence, would have lessened the authority of the gun.

  The man was starting to shake as Gabrielle brought the count lower, perhaps as far as three. A snuffling sound was coming from him: with the muzzle of the gun against his head, against his brains, he'd started thinking of his mother. Then as she went on counting he broke into sudden, jerky speech.

  'Pol Pot is a sick man,' Gabrielle said.

  'Is he still in command of the Khmer Rouge?'

  'No.'

  'Who's in command?'

  'He doesn't know.'

  'Tell him he knows, and you're going to shoot on a count of two.'

  She prodded with the gun.

  'General Kheng is in command.'

  'Where is he now?'

  'He doesn't know.'

  'On a count of one.'

  The man brought his hands together in prayer, shaking badly again, speech of a kind coming out of him.

  'He still says he doesn't know. He's begging for mercy.'

  I looked at Gabrielle in the starlight, saw the sheen of sweat on her face, her narrowed eyes.

  'Give him his last chance,' I told her, 'on a count of one.' A snuffling sound again, some words in it, his hands together. 'He swears in the name of the Lord Buddha he doesn't know where General Kheng is now.'

  'Ask him what's going to happen on the nineteenth.' It took time, and she had to repeat the question. 'There will be bloodshed in Phnom Penh.'

  'A palace coup, or what?'

  She prodded with the gun. 'The revolution.'

  'Led by General Kheng?'

  'Yes.'

  'How will it be launched?'

  He didn't know, stood shaking, his eyes squeezed shut. Gabrielle asked him again, and again he said he didn't know. I thought this was possible: security on the subject of the nineteenth would be tight, and this man had no rank, was simply a saboteur, hiding his little toys for the children to find in the sacred name of the cause.

  'Try once more.'

  His voice became light, like a woman's, a soft scream, desperate for us to understand that he couldn't answer the question.

  'That's all,' I told Gabrielle.

  'No more questions?'

  'No.'

  She spoke to him tersely, made him turn round, goaded him through the archway with the gun at his spine, steered him to his jeep, made him find his flashlight. I followed them, bringing the little crate.

  There were four mines, crude, flat, pressure-sensitive models, sitting there like toads. Gabrielle spoke to the man, pointing to them, asking him something, her voice low, expressionless, a monotone.

  I stood off a little. He was hers now; this had been agreed. She got some rope from the back of the jeep and lashed him to the steering-wheel, dipped a rag into the fuel tank, came up with nothing, tied another one to it and pulled it out streaming.

 
She looked at me in the bleak pale radiance of the flashlight.

  'Will you wait for me over there?'

  I walked across the road to our Rambler and got in, starting the engine. After a little while there was a single shot, too good for him, I thought, for the toy-hider, but I suppose her manners were better than mine. As she came walking slowly across the road, tripping once on a stone, the flames took hold inside the jeep, but she didn't turn round, just kept on coming. The silhouette of her slight figure against the blaze was slack with despair, and she walked with her head down as if she didn't want to know where she was going, or where she'd been. The explosions began as I turned the Rambler, and the glare fanned against the side of the barn as we drove clear with Gabrielle curled up on the seat beside me, her eyes closed and her face wet, like a child who had cried herself to sleep.

  23: DEADLINE

  'How's London?'

  'Rather pleasant,' Flockhart said, 'or it was when I left. The twilights are drawing out.' He looked carefully round the room, the way a dog makes a couple of circles on strange ground before it will lie down.

  The place was palatial by average Cambodian standards: four or five bamboo chairs and a round table, a couple of Chinese rugs, an ornate brass lamp hanging from the ceiling, a chart of the seven major chakras on the wall, but no window — this was the basement of the house, and we'd come down a flight of steps cut into the bare earth and supported with redwood boards. There was no fan, either, and the early-morning air was already sticky in here. But there were two telephones, a scrambler and a Grundig short-wave transceiver.

  Pringle had followed us down and was standing just inside the door, hands behind his back in a posture deferential, I thought, to his master's presence. A short wispy-bearded Cambodian stood on the other side, in a dark blue sampong and sandals.

  'This is our good host,' Flockhart told me, 'Sophan Sann.' The man came forward and shook hands, his eyes lively in the lamplight as he appraised me; it was an honour for him to meet anyone introduced by Mr Flockhart — this was my impression. But for a formal rendezvous like this I could have done without a stranger here, however good a host he was said to be.

  Some bottles of soda on the table, a litre of Evian and a plate of quartered lemons; incense was burning somewhere, uncharacteristically, perhaps as a gesture of welcome to Sophan's guests. A salamander clung to the plaster near a bamboo grille set high on the wall, the only means of ventilation that I could see.

  'How was the flight from Kuwait?' I asked Flockhart. I wanted him to know that until we were alone he'd get nothing from me but small talk.

  'Too long,' he said and took one of the bamboo chairs. 'But then any flight's too long when time is of the essence, don't you agree?'

  Talking about the deadline.

  I sat down and Pringle followed, putting a thin worn briefcase on the table in front of him. We were here for the executive's debriefing to Control.

  'I'm told,' Flockhart said, 'that you suffered a snake bite.'

  'Yes.'

  'A nasty experience, I can imagine.' He looked at me for the first time since we'd come down here, his eyes concerned. When I'd talked to him in the Cellar Steps, his eyes had been full of rage, barely concealed. I wondered what had happened to it. 'Are you still feeling any ill effects?' he asked me.

  'I'm a hundred op.' A hundred per cent operational, which was what he really needed to know. If I had to go into anything difficult I could do it fast and successfully, given a clear field and not too much shooting.

  'Splendid.' He brought out a black notebook and put it carefully onto the bamboo table. 'Splendid.'

  'If we're going to do any business,' I said, 'I'd rather — '

  'Sann,' Flockhart said straight away, looking up at the Cambodian, 'we've kept you long enough.'

  Sophan gave a brief bow and looked down at me. 'It was a pleasure to meet you.' Absolutely no accent, possibly Oxford.

  'The pleasure was all mine.'

  His sandals flapped up the steps and we heard him close the door at the top. From habit I listened for it to open again quietly but it didn't. Call it paranoia, but when Control flies out from London without warning to debrief the executive in the field himself it means the mission has either started running very hot indeed or it's hit a wall, and I would have felt much easier debriefing somewhere with better security, say the top of a mountain.

  'Don't worry,' Flockhart said gently. 'This was actually to have been your safe-house. Sophan Sann affords us total security here.'

  'He's Bureau?'

  'No. But I enjoy his unqualified loyalty. I once had the opportunity of saving his life.'

  'Out here?'

  'During what they call the holocaust — I was observing for the British Mission at the time. He was a young man then, of course, and so was I, and together we dug out this room as a concealed chamber to shelter whole families.'

  The Cambodian connection. At our first meeting I'd asked Pringle what was really behind this mission — Is it something personal, with Flockhart? And Pringle had said, I don't know. Perhaps he simply wants to save Cambodia.

  'But tell me,' Flockhart was saying, 'why didn't you accept this place as your safe-house?' To Pringle: 'I'm sure it was offered?'

  'Of course, sir.'

  Control's head swung back to me.

  'I didn't trust you,' I said.

  He nodded briefly. 'So Pringle informed me, after your first contact in Phnom Penh.'

  'I didn't express my feelings.'

  'But of course not, my dear fellow — he was simply aware of the undercurrents.'

  I was warned by the 'dear fellow' bit: Pringle had been stroking me tenderly ever since the mission had started running, and now Control had come all the way out here to help him. But there is nothing your control can't ask of you in perfectly plain terms, however dangerous, even suicidal, knowing that you've got the right to refuse. When he chooses to steal up on you with quiet charm instead then you'd better make bloody sure you stay awake because once the trap springs shut you're done for.

  Holmes, and I quote: Remember that one must handle Mr Flockhart with the tender care demanded by — shall we say — a tarantula.

  'I still don't trust you,' I told him. I wasn't being offensive. If Salamander was running hot and we were going to try bringing it home in some kind of last-ditch operation I needed to know more than I did now. If it was classified, okay, but I didn't think so.

  'I appreciate your honesty,' Flockhart said, didn't fake a hurt smile, no theatrics. 'It's going to be to our advantage, because events are moving apace and we need to understand each other. But tell me why I don't invite your confidence, if you will.' Had avoided the word 'trust', didn't like it.

  'As I told Pringle at the airport, I'm out here on an operation that hasn't got official support or a signals board or any access to London through the normal channels. You're running this thing entirely on your own and I assume for your own purposes. How would you feel if you were the executive?'

  'I would have felt like declining the mission in the first place.'

  'I'd been out of the field too long, you know that. I'd have taken anything on, you knew that too.'

  'And now you have regrets?'

  'None whatsoever. I just want to know if we're on an official footing yet, with the Bureau informed and in charge.'

  A beat, but he didn't take his eyes off me. 'And if I said no, the Bureau is neither informed nor in charge, would you withdraw from the mission?'

  It threw me and I got up, took a turn round the room, needing time. Pringle coughed, couldn't quite take the tension. When I was ready I stood looking down at Flockhart.

  'No.'

  'Thank you.' It was said formally, carried weight. 'And I must confess myself unsurprised. According to my research, you don't take kindly to officialdom.'

  'Look' — I sat down again, interested — 'I've never done this before, that's all. I've never worked for a rogue control, if you'll forgive the term — '
r />   'I like it.'

  A spark had come into his eyes and suddenly I knew why there'd been so much rage in them at the Cellar Steps. 'So the Bureau turned you down?'

  He looked away, looked back. 'Yes.'

  'Why?

  'I was told that my ultimate goal would be impossible to achieve.'

  Very interested now, and I leaned forward. 'And what is your ultimate goal?'

  'To save Cambodia.'

  'For personal reasons?'

  Flockhart shifted in his chair, looking away again, and I think I regretted pressing him at this point, but I had to. For the first time I wasn't simply the shadow executive assigned to the next mission on the books under the official aegis of the Bureau, a role I'd played throughout the whole of my career. I was working for one man, and responsible to him alone.

  'For personal reasons,' Flockhart said, 'I would like to save Cambodia, yes. But few civilized people, surely, would stand by and watch the massacre of another million souls in a second potential holocaust if they could prevent it.'

  'But you couldn't persuade the Bureau.'

  'That was hardly the argument I presented.'

  'They're not the Salvation Army.'

  'Quite so. The argument I offered was geopolitical, though admittedly rather contrived. I said that if the Khmer Rouge seized power again Pol Pot might embroil North Vietnam and North Korea and bring about a resurgence of communism in the region, to the obvious advantage of China.'

  'Was that why the Bureau turned you down?'

  'I was advised, as I say, that the goal of saving Cambodia for whatever reason would be impossible to achieve, now that the United Nations has pulled out.' He looked at me, tilting his head. 'So I made a direct approach to the prime minister, who was interested enough to contact the UN and the United States. I have since had meetings with the ambassadors to both.'

  'Suggesting an air strike.'

  'Of course. It's the only possible step, in military terms.' He leaned forward, his hands flat on the table as I'd seen them on his desk in London. Take it as a gesture of frankness or leave it. 'Provided, obviously, that we could locate the main forces of the Khmer Rouge with absolute certainty. And you have done that.'