'No,' Pringle said evenly, 'I don't actually know what kind of action Control is going to take. He keeps me less informed than some might suppose, as a matter of principle.'
What he was telling me was that I was forgetting that the director in the field is also at risk during a given operation, and that the less information he has in his head the less the opposition can get out of it when they start work with the burning bamboo sticks under the nails and so on. I hadn't forgotten; I just thought our smooth Mr Pringle knew more than he was ready to tell me. That was all right, provided he'd got good reason, but I didn't know what it was.
I let it go. 'What's that awful smell of pigs in here?'
'I really can't say.'
His favourite answer to whatever you asked him, you put the penny in and out it came. It was stifling in this place; the power station was on overload again so the ceiling fan wasn't working, and all we had for light was a kerosene lamp. Pringle had told me the building belonged to a volunteer mine-clearing unit; he knew them and had asked for the key, and this was also from the book — the executive and his director in the field never use the same rendezvous location twice unless it's considered secure. This place wasn't much more than a big shed, with mine detectors stacked against the wall and pairs of huge padded protective boots as big as snow shoes lined up on the concrete floor. Someone had started everything off with a flair for record-keeping when they'd set up shop: there was a map of the town on the wall with big red blotches on it and a sprinkling of little green dots; it looked as if they'd made a red dot every time a mine had exploded, and there'd been so many that the dots had become blotches, mostly around schools, bus depots, temples, where the most feet could be expected to pass. The green dots presumably marked the places where mines had been detected and brought here for defusing, but there weren't enough to become blotches yet.
Pictures on the wall, one of the queen, two of Charles playing polo, no Di anywhere. Photograph of three men and a woman, all smiling happily, black crosses above their heads, one of the men holding a small pig — that explained it — some words scrawled underneath the photograph with ornate serifs and curlicues to give them solemnity, They Did Their Job. A picture of the pig on its own with a red ribbon round its neck, caption, Little Stinker. A picture of a Cambodian girl, eleven or twelve, crutches, radiant smile, two men holding her in a bear hug, huge fatherly grins. On the wall opposite the cluttered desk was a dartboard with Pol Pot's face crudely painted on it.
'How do we know for certain,' I heard Pringle's cautious tones, 'that the position on the map in Slavsky's room indicates the main guerrilla base of the Khmer Rouge?' He was looking at the topographical map he'd brought with him.
'We don't.'
Bastard didn't like the look of my freshly-killed rat.
'How certain,' he asked, 'are you?'
'Put it this way. We think Pol Pot is ready to launch a new offensive, possibly on the nineteenth of this month. The only way he can do it is by remote control, because the Cambodian army is virtually on stand-by to counter any land operation. So we're talking about missiles.' The ceiling fan began turning again but the lights didn't come on: Pringle hadn't thrown the switch when we'd come in because the lamp was all we needed. 'Then I see Boris Slavsky, a known arms dealer — according to your briefing — land in a Khmer Rouge aircraft and Colonel Choen leaving him with an attache case full of Swiss francs, and we assume it's in payment for the missiles — or if you like it better, I assume. I assume also that the map was left with Slavsky to indicate the exact location where delivery is to be made. That location is buried in deep jungle, according to your topo, and even though it's not far from the coast there's a mountain range in the way with absolutely no roads — not even tracks — where any kind of transport can be used. If — '
'You studied the map thoroughly?'
Best left ignored. 'The nearest airfield,' I said, 'is at Phumi Tuol Koki on the coast, and the only access by sea is through a fishing village.' Pringle was leaning over his topo, following me. I didn't look at it, kept my eyes on the fly-encrusted ceiling fan, wanting him to know just how thoroughly I can look at a map when I'm searching someone's room for information. 'There's a minor road fifteen kilometres from the marked position, but fifteen kilometres of jungle is like fifty kilometres of open terrain, in terms of accessibility. So if the mark on Slavsky's map doesn't show the exact location of the main Khmer Rouge base, I can't think what else it could mean.'
I waited.
Pringle let a few seconds go by, possibly to show he'd noticed I'd ignored his question about my having studied the map, and was not pleased. That was a shame, because if he asked me another stupid question I was going to walk out of here — what precisely did he mean, had I studied the map? Did he think I was — steady now, yes, it's just the adrenalin talking, no need to go overboard.
'I think I agree with your assumption,' Pringle said, 'that we now know the exact whereabouts of Pol Pot. I'm just not sure that London will be convinced.'
Something tried to alert me when he said that, but I couldn't pin it down. He'd said Pol Pot, not the Khmer Rouge base. Was there a difference? I let it go.
'It's up to London,' I said.
'Of course. It's up to Mr Flockhart.' He went on staring at the map, then after a while folded it and turned his cool grey eyes on me, and I thought again how young he looked for this job, for running an executive through a field where the opposition was an army twelve thousand strong.
Was Pringle the only man Flockhart had been able to find for this one? The only DIF prepared to run the executive through the mission unknown to the signals room, unknown even to the Bureau itself? Or had Pringle been like me a week ago, prowling the corridors of that bloody building in Whitehall desperate for a job?
'You've no idea,' I heard him saying, 'how the assumed missiles will be delivered?'
'By air.'
'You discovered this?'
'I didn't have to. The only — '
'By the way,' he cut in, leaning forward slightly, his face earnest in the lamplight, 'I meant, of course, had you had time to study the map thoroughly.'
It took a second for me to realize what he was talking about. 'Oh,' I said, 'of course.' But Christ, had it been simmering in his mind all this time, until he'd had to blurt it out so that I'd know he hadn't wanted to give offence? Had Flockhart briefed him to be this careful with me? Make quite sure you don't offend the executive — he's touchy and we can't afford to lose him. So what made them think I might drop this one cold at any given minute and take the next flight home?
I could smell subterfuge again, acrid as brimstone, and when I got to the truth I would take, yes, the next plane to London.
'The only way they can deliver the missiles,' I said, 'is by air. There's no need for them to risk interception at sea or on the ground, if somebody finds out what they're doing, as in point of fact we have. Slavsky's going to move a helicopter in to mow the trees at nought feet and leave the radar screens totally blank. Given something like an SA 321L with an 8,000-kilo payload he can ship in fifty or sixty high-explosive and incendiary short-range ground-to-ground missiles, more than the KR would need to blast Phnom Penh into a fireball.'
Pringle leaned back, tilting his head and watching me along his nose. There was a shot from somewhere outside in the streets, and I saw his pupils expand a degree and contract again. 'You mean there's no way anyone can stop the delivery of missiles to Pol Pot?'