Quiller Salamander

'Oh really?'

He didn't answer for a moment, hearing the acid tone. The streetlamp flickered again and this time went out, and we could see nothing now through the filth-covered windows of the bus. That was all right: it worked both ways. It's always a strain when the local director and his executive are holed up at a rendezvous, and tonight I was a distinct risk to Pringle: I'd been seen at the Khmer Rouge camp yesterday and was recognizable, even though my two executioners manques were no longer a threat. I couldn't show myself at the Hotel Lafayette or invite Pringle to my safe-house either, and the bus was the best place I could find; it was in deep shadow and didn't interest anybody at night, though in the daytime it was a playground for children: there was a small rubber flip-flop in the gangway, and a broken toy gun — of course, we must train them young — on one of the ripped stained seats.

'You located the opposition's base,' Pringle said in a moment, 'and infiltrated it, bringing out valuable information as to personnel and equipment. In addition — ' he broke off as three shots sounded in the distance from two different guns, some kind of shoot-out, par for the course in exotic Pouthisat. 'In addition,' Pringle went on, 'you confronted a high-ranking officer of the Khmer Rouge and can recognize him again. I think Mr Flockhart would certainly wish me to signal him.'

An apple for the teacher — he sounded just like that bastard Loman. 'I found the camp,' I said, 'but I'd imagine quite a few people in this town know it's there, other than the Khmer Rouge. They know how to keep secrets in this place.'

'Possibly so,' Pringle's voice came from beside me — we were sitting in the pitch dark now — 'but despite their ability to keep secrets, we know the camp is there now, and that's rather more important.'

Had a point but I wasn't in the mood to admit it; he was so bloody reasonable, wouldn't give me a chance to spill my guts — some directors are like that, they don't realize the shadow needs to debrief what's on his mind as well as the information he's picked up.

'Then tell Flockhart,' I said, 'make his day. You'd also better tell him there are two more down.' I hadn't said anything in my debriefing about getting clear of the camp: it wasn't usable information; but we're always expected to report it if we put someone down.

'Very well,' Pringle said, and I heard him move, crossing his legs or something. 'This was in self-defence?'

'Call it that.'

In a moment, 'Was it? Or was it not? I'm sorry to — '

'The first one, yes, I couldn't have done anything if I hadn't put him down right away — they both had loaded assault rifles. I could have got away from the second one by knocking him cold, but I'm not sure he would've thanked me — with no surgeons in this place his legs would've been paralyzed for life.'

'I see. But during the confrontation, he had been attempting to kill you, is that right?'

'Yes.'

'Then London will be perfectly satisfied.'

It was no big deal, but the hierarchy upstairs starts worrying if any particular shadow reports too many people down during the course of his mission: for some among us the taste of blood can become addictive, though I've never fancied it myself.

'Well and good,' I said.

'And I understand perfectly.' He didn't.

'Look, they were soldiers, weren't they? Aren't soldiers expected to give their lives for the cause?' My voice hadn't got louder; it just had an undertone and I couldn't do anything about it.

Pringle shifted slightly on the seat towards me. 'Mr Flockhart — not to mention the Minister of Defence in London and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington — would be delighted if you were to put down the entire Khmer Rouge army in Cambodia, so I wouldn't fret too much about the two you dealt with yesterday.'

So he did understand — he'd looked at my profile on the files in London rather carefully. Even in this most inhuman of all trades I've never taken a man's life without feeling another scar forming on the psyche, and this time I'd been able to sleep only because of the long black hairs caught in the bamboo, guilt relieved by rage.

In a moment I said, 'In any case, London won't know, will it?' Pringle had just said that London would be 'perfectly satisfied'. The streetlamp flickered into life again, and I turned my head to look at him. 'Or has that changed?'

'It was a generic term. I meant Control, not London, But since you ask, it may be that the Bureau will be brought into things, somewhere along the line.'

Ohreally. I'd thought we were meant to be a one-man show, with Flockhart pushing a single pawn across the board towards the enemy lines. 'Why?' I asked Pringle.

'Let me clear up a few aspects of the debriefing,' he said, 'before we get to that. Do you mind?'

Kid gloves, and I didn't like it. At a debriefing the director calls the shots.

'No, but I'm not going to forget the question.'

'I'm quite sure. But in the meantime, tell me why you think the Khmer Rouge has established a camp in this area, not far from the town?'

'If they're planning some kind of assault on the nineteenth — or at any time — it'd give them a springboard.'

'An assault on Pouthisat?'

'On Phnom Penh. This is the nearest airfield from the capital to the west, where the main camp is supposed to be. And by road it's only a couple of hundred kilometres from the camp to Phnom Penh, if they want to transport troops en masse and by night.'

Pringle uncrossed his legs again, crossed them the other way.

I didn't like it that he was so restless; he hadn't been like this at the airport when we'd first met. But perhaps he was sitting on an exposed seat-spring, as I was.

'Do you believe an assault is imminent?' he asked me. 'As close as the nineteenth — in five days' time?'

'The men I saw at the camp were active, wearing battledress, moving vehicles around. But it could've been simply because Colonel Choen was there.'

'By «there», do you mean paying a visit? Making an inspection? Or do you think he's based there?'

'I couldn't tell.'

'Make an educated guess.'

'I'd say he's visiting, just as he visited the people in Phnom Penh. Going the rounds, tightening security near the capital.'

'And then he'll report back to Pol Pot, in the west?'

'Just a gut feeling.'

'You've no actual — '

'Look, you asked me for an educated guess and you've got it.

Not at my best, no, but what do you expect, I'd done nothing useful yesterday, nothing, it didn't matter what Pringle said, he was just eager to signal Control with something, to show we were in business, but we weren't, not on any effective scale. Listen, what actually happened? I'd located a camp that half this town probably knew about and I'd got spat on by a street urchin in uniform and then led like a lamb to the bloody slaughter, and if it hadn't been for my training and experience this whole thing, Salamander, would have gone straight down the drain, finito.

'I'm sorry,' Pringle said. 'You're perfectly right.'

'Next question?'

He uncrossed his legs. 'I rather think that's all. Now tell me, have you any — '

'Why is it possible,' I asked him carefully, 'that the Bureau will be brought into things, somewhere along the line?'

'Ah, yes.' As if he'd quite forgotten. He hadn't. The street-lamp flickered and went out again, and I sensed that he was glad of it, didn't want me to see his eyes when he spoke. 'Nothing has changed, actually, no. Or not yet. We are still running a totally clandestine operation — not only vis-a-vis the Khmer Rouge but also the Bureau itself. But if you succeed in getting closer still to Pol Pot — to the man himself — your further actions might well involve the highest military authority in London and Washington.'