Quiller Salamander q-18

by Adam Hall

  My eyes closing, opened them again, wondered how much time had gone by, Pringle still sitting there with the pad in front of him, Flockhart still scratching himself on the wall, probably not that exactly, more like thinking things out, trying to get his mind to accept that there was nothing else he could do, anyone could do, or trying, like a well-seasoned control in a trade where we accept nothing we don't like until we're actually dead, to find a way out, dream up a last-ditch eleventh-hour nil desperandum sauve-qui peut circus act that in the final analysis would count as a success of sorts because it would at least leave the battlefield strewn with the corpses of the well-intentioned, never say die and all that, go down with banners flying, I think — I've thought more than once, you know — that your Mr Flockhart is that kind of clown, a closet romantic beneath the trappings of the steely espion.

  Sleep, listen, get me some sleep now.

  'Is there an airstrip at the base camp?'

  'Is there a what? '

  'I didn't see one. There's nothing on the film. Only a chopper pad.'

  My eyes fully open again because here we are, the control and the DIF and the executive in the field convened for debriefing, a time to keep awake if only for the sake of appearances.

  'A helicopter pad?' Flockhart.

  'Yes.'

  'General Kheng, then,' his shoulders coming away from the wall, his head swinging to look down at me, 'will fly there by helicopter. Is that so?'

  'The only way,' I said, 'without a strip.'

  He looked at Pringle, their eyes holding for a moment before Pringle looked down.

  'I did in fact have in mind,' Flockhart said, 'an alternative move, if there were to be no air strike.'

  What did I tell you? Here was his last-ditch sauve-qui peut trick coming out of the bag before your very eyes.

  'It would succeed,' he was saying, 'only if you were prepared to take the ultimate risk, to achieve the ultimate goal.'

  Pringle was staring down at the table, thin shoulders hunched a little as if he expected fallout from somewhere.

  I got out of my chair, fed up now, I didn't want to hear about it, I was going, been a hard day last night.

  I was halfway to the steps when I heard Flockhart saying from behind me, 'I am asking you to assassinate General Kheng.'

  26: SAKO

  'What the hell do you take me for, a hired gun?'

  Pringle was on his feet too, couldn't sit still. This was the fallout he'd been expecting: he'd known what Flockhart was going to ask, known what I would answer.

  'You mean you refuse?' Flockhart, pale suddenly with rage.

  'Of course I refuse.'

  He stared at me, his eyes murderous, swung away and showed me his back, shoulders lifting as he took a deep shuddering breath and got some of his fury under control before he turned again and faced me, his voice icy, the sibilants honed. 'I know your principles on this subject, of course; they are well documented. But you were prepared to kill once, were you not? In Bangkok?'

  'I was. The man I was trying to protect was close to the queen.'

  'That's right. I rather admired you for that. For once you chose to set aside your principles.'

  The word came whittled from his tongue. 'You haven't much time,' I said, 'for principles?'

  'Of course. But wouldn't there be a place somewhere in yours for the consideration that if you were to fire one shot you could save a million people?'

  'There's no — '

  'Or is it that they haven't the privilege of being close to the queen?'

  Watching me, his eyes frozen.

  'You should have given this,' I said in a moment, 'a lot more thought.'

  'I gave it six weeks.'

  I began listening carefully. 'Six weeks?'

  'Ever since you got back from Meridian. The Chief of Signals had two new missions for you during that time, but I asked him to keep you on stand-by. I didn't tell him why. I just assured him it was important.'

  'You kept me off two missions?' Prowling those bloody corridors with my nerves losing their tune while this bastard was pushing me around the board behind the scenes.

  'I wanted,' Flockhart said, 'to line things up over here. I also wanted to bring you to the point where you were ready to take on anything. Anything at all.'

  Bastard. 'Then you were wasting your time.'

  He shrugged. 'There was also that man in the train, wasn't there, in London? The Soviet.'

  'He'd gone back on his word and killed a woman, one of my couriers.'

  'How romantic.'

  'That was the only time I've ever killed except in self-defence, you know that, you've done your research. And i f I ever do it again it'll be on my own decision, not because I was conned into it.'

  'Shall we rather say coerced?'

  'All other things apart,' I said, 'I do this — even if it's possible — and then what? You send me after Saddam Hussein? Ghadafi? Zhirinovsky? I'm an intelligence officer, not a hit man.'

  'Your records show — '

  'My records show everything but the man himself. And that's what you're up against now.'

  'As an intelligence officer you are of course first class. The information you brought in tonight is without price.' His head went low and his voice was so quiet that I only just caught what he said. 'Could be without price.'

  His rapid switch of mood made me think for an instant of manic-depression as stillness settled into the room. Pringle hadn't moved for a long time, was standing with his arms folded and his eyes nowhere.

  In a moment I said, 'Flockhart, what got you into this Cambodia thing?'

  His head came up and he looked at me with a flash of hate. I think he just didn't like the way I'd put it, and perhaps he had a point, mea culpa.

  'I became involved in the fate of the Cambodian people,' he said in a low voice, 'when I was here in the late seventies, during the holocaust. I was here as a clandestine observer for the Bureau. Even at that time there was the feeling in London that someone should do something to stop the bloodshed.' He moved suddenly, as if wanting to free himself of memories. 'To have been here during that time was to be changed by it, if one had any feeling at all for one's fellow humans, whatever the colour of their skin or the language they spoke.'

  That was understandable, but I thought there must be more: a more personal motive for turning himself into a rogue control, for mounting a rogue mission.

  Then intuition flashed, and I paid immediate attention. 'When I went into your office,' I said, 'in London, you made a point of hiding a photograph on your desk.'

  He looked away. 'I did.'

  The room was quiet again. Perhaps I shouldn't have asked him about it, but I needed to know. 'Whose is it?'

  It took him time but I waited, not pushing, and at last he gave me the answer.

  'It is a photograph,' he said, 'of my daughter Gabrielle.'

  There was the faint sound of music coming from the top of the steps, a thin Chinese voice, a woman's, singing to a stringed instrument. I listened to it, letting the mind explore what had just been said.

  Then I said, 'She told me her father was the French consul here.'

  'Yes.' Flockhart spoke in a monotone, his back to the wall again, perhaps symbolically. 'He was a good friend of mine. Two days after his wife was reported missing he was hit by a stray shot, and died in my arms. I was in his house at the time, and so was his five-year-old child, Gabrielle.'

  'You adopted her?'

  'Of course. I took a young Cambodian woman out of the country to care for her, and later saw that she was educated in Paris, as her father would have wished.'

  'I'm glad.'

  He turned his head. 'You've been seeing her, she tells me. She's rather fond of you.'

  'We've been thrown together, you could say.'

  'I didn't expect you to feel anything for the people of this country, so my hope was to arouse your compassion through Gabrielle. Your record in the archives does in point of fact reveal a little of the man. You are s
tated not to be uncompassionate, and to have a high regard for women.' I didn't say anything. 'Don't blame her' — he took a step towards me — 'for what she told you when you arrived in Phnom Penh. I briefed her to say what she did.'

  'Of course I don't blame her. She wants to save this country too. She'd also make a first class intelligence officer.'

  'I think so, yes, though it's hardly a pursuit I'd wish for her.'

  'At the moment she's playing with fire, did you know?'

  He closed his eyes for a moment. 'Yes. And of course I've tried to dissuade her, but she knows her own mind. Let us hope — ' he shrugged.

  'Amen.' I took a turn, needing to think, needing more answers.

  'What was Fane doing in Paris?'

  He was the man getting blown up on the steps of the hotel when Gabrielle had been shooting footage.

  'I was lining things up at that time,' Flockhart said, 'as I mentioned. Fane was to have directed you in the field here, but there was a leak in security.' A beat. ' I imagine you enjoyed the film.' Knew about Murmansk.

  'Not really.' All men are brothers. I took another turn. 'You didn't give me the final objective for Salamander in London for the simple reason that you knew I wouldn't touch it. Isn't that right?'

  'Perfectly.'

  Moving his shoulders against the wall again, restive as a caged bear, nothing but his veiled rage to thrive on, his rage against General Kheng and the shadow executive who refused to put him in the cross-hairs. 'So what makes you think I'll touch it now?'

  'I rather think we've discussed that. It concerned compassion.'

  'All right, I feel compassion for these people — anyone would. But that doesn't override my principles — and they're not only mine. Who else in the Bureau would have taken this on? Wellman? Locke? Thorne? They'd have turned it down flat and you know that. We're not hired guns, any of us, we don't kill in cold blood. And who, anyway, would take the risk?'

  Flockhart turned his head. 'Of firing a single shot?'

  'Of firing the shot and getting it wrong, of being shot himself before he could get clear. I told Pringle that for a single executive in the field to take on the Khmer Rouge is a suicide run, one man against an army of twelve thousand. How could anyone go in there — '

  'No,' Flockhart said and came away from the wall and stood in front of me, hands in motion, chopping the air — 'No, it's not like that. You don't have to engage twelve thousand men. You have to destroy only one, and from a distance, and with a gun.'

  'Where?'

  'Wherever you can reach him.'

  'He'd have to be isolated.'

  'Isolated, then.' Staring at me, fire in his eyes.

  "Then find someone to do it for you. Ask Bracken. Ask Symes. Ask one of the agents-in-place in Phnom Penh, or one of the sleepers.'

  'Oh come, they're not marksmen. You brought home the Queen's Prize two years ago at Bisley.'

  'That was another reason, was it, why you picked me out for this one?'

  'But of course.'

  'You knew it'd come down to one final shot if all else failed?'

  'I believed so. Destroy the leader of a rebel army and the ranks will be left in total disarray. History is clear on this point.' Head on one side: 'I thought perhaps it might tempt you, in the last hours of your mission, to be offered a task that even the United Nations is powerless to take on, for whatever reason.'

  He waited, sweat beading his face, his eyes locked on mine.

  'An appeal to my vanity,' I said. 'That's in my records too?'

  'You're known for undertaking operations that others might well refuse because of the difficulties. Rather, I would call it pride.'

  'Bullshit.'

  But he was right: he'd given this thing a lot of thought. I'd been the perfect candidate — a single man with no one and nothing to lose and a feeling for women and a streak of vanity that'd come close to getting me killed a dozen times, be this admitted. But Flockhart was finally trying to goad me into an operation I couldn't take on because of the one personal factor he hadn't believed would make any difference.

  He turned away and I saw Pringle look up, look down again. Then he swung back to me: 'Having refused to complete the mission, would you at least set up the end phase, in case we can find someone else to bring it home?'

  'Not if you put it like that.'

  Anger flashed again in the cold blue eyes. He was a major control, very high in the echelon, and I, a lowly ferret in the field, wasn't expected to speak my mind in so forthright a fashion. Our good Pringle, yonder, was clearing his throat again.

  'How, then,' Flockhart asked, his voice hushed with control, 'should I put it?'

  'I'm not refusing the mission. I'm refusing to kill in cold blood.'

  'Even for the most urgent and compelling reasons.'

  'They're yours, not mine. You'd have to give me a reason I could call my own.' I looked across at Pringle. 'Have you got that map you made?'

  While he was getting it from his briefcase I told Flockhart, 'You wouldn't have a chance of hitting Kheng at the airfield here in Pouthisat when he takes off at first light' — I looked at my watch — 'in four hours from now, four hours and nineteen minutes. There's no cover, only the freight sheds, and nowhere to run clear except into the six-foot chain-link perimeter fence, make a perfect target. Your only hope is to get Kheng when his chopper lands on the pad you saw in the film — if that's actually what it is — and shows himself in the doorway. I imagine there'll be a big welcome from the troops because this is D-day, so he'll do his photo-op pose in the doorway, giving your man five seconds or more to line up his sights. Be an oblique shot, partly across the lake — Kheng won't be seen face on, but he'll present a full enough target profile for a body shot.'

  Flockhart had moved to the bamboo table, stood looking down at Pringle's map. 'Where would he be?'

  'The sniper? I'd put him here, at the edge of deep jungle, perfect cover. You said you were going to send Bracken out there on surveillance. Did you?'

  'He signalled an hour ago,' Pringle said, 'from the village.'

  'By radio?'

  'Yes.'

  'What kind of reception?'

  'Adequate, some squelch but no actual breaks.'

  I looked down at the map again. 'All right, this is the way it could go. Assuming you could find a chopper from somewhere, you'd have — '

  'I'm sorry,' Flockhart cut in, and looked at Pringle. 'My compliments to the officer commanding, Phnom Penh, and would he despatch a helicopter to Pouthisat immediately, highest priority. If there's any problem, contact General Yang, the king's military aide. Apologize for waking him and ask him to expedite matters if necessary — again, this is red alert. Then signal Symes to meet the aircraft and have him ask the pilot to stand by for further orders, with the likelihood of immediate take-off at any time, carrying a passenger.' He turned back to me.

  'Please excuse the interruption.'

  Pringle picked up the red telephone and I told Flockhart, 'All right, you'd fly your sniper out there at least one hour before first light, and the pilot would be told to put down somewhere here, two kilometres east of the village. Bracken would guide him in with lights or flares or whatever he's got available.'

  Pringle was talking on the telephone behind me. Control had hotline access, then, to King Sihanouk and his army commanders, presumably through the good offices of the British prime minister. I would have expected that.

  'The pilot,' I went on, 'would stand by at the landing point while Bracken drove the sniper — by this track here — to within a mile of his attack position. He would cover that mile on foot and by moonlight — '

  'Following the shot,' Flockhart said, 'he'll have to run back over that mile, to — '

  'No. When Bracken hears Kheng's chopper coming in he can use its sound cover to move his vehicle right up to the sniper's position and turn it round, leaving the engine running. It's deep jungle here, but the track runs through it to the camp.' I shrugged. 'It's not perfect, but I'
ve cut down on the risk factors all I can.'

  In a moment, 'This is how you would proceed?'

  'Give or take a few changes according to how things were going.'

  'Excuse me, sir.' Pringle.

  Flockhart turned to him.

  'Compliments of the officer commanding, Phnom Penh. The helicopter is lined up and the ETA Pouthisat is forty-five minutes from now.'

  'Thank you.' Flockhart looked at his watch. In profile his face showed the stress that he managed to blank out when he looked at people.

  'The deadline you've got to work with now,' I told him, 'is 0400 hours. Your aircraft will have to take off at that time, one hour before first light, to give the sniper time to reach his position.'

  Flockhart nodded, not looking at me, didn't want me to see the frustration in his eyes, the anger. He'd flown out from London to push this mission personally into the end phase and the objective was attainable, almost in his hands, except for this obstinate bloody executive who valued his principles more than the lives of a million people, I could see his point, could feel for him, the man was a saint, could be a saviour if he could only find the instrument he lacked: a man with a gun and the will to fire it.

  'Why not ask the army for a sniper?' I asked him.

  Impatiently — 'That's out of the question.'

  I just thought he might have taken a chance, that was all. It's perfectly clear in the book of books in London: No person, civilian or military, shall be entrusted with the ultimate sanction in any operation of any kind directed by an officer of this organization unless he is himself an accredited officer of the same organization with a specific assignment in the field.

  Flockhart was running a rogue mission but he was still an officer of the Bureau and it must have been tempting for him to break the rules — at this stage with so much on the line. But perhaps he too had his principles.