Quiller Salamander

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.

'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?'