Quiller Salamander

'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 stated 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?'