Quiller Salamander

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?'

'Only at the source, and even if you found it and blew it up, the KR would simply go to any one of a hundred other sources and start again.'

In a moment Pringle tilted his head down again and said, 'We don't seem to have many options, do we?'

'I told you, we'd need a battalion.'

'Do you believe Pol Pot would actually turn Phnom Penh into a fireball?'

'He likes to kill, and by the million. So I think that's what he'll do, yes, if the king ignores his ultimatum.'

Shots came, a burst this time and more distantly, no return fire. I thought of Gabrielle.

Pringle folded his topographic map, his pale hands deft with the creases. 'I need to know where you are,' he said without looking up.

I told him. I didn't trust either him or Flockhart, but they wouldn't blow me to the opposition: I was working for them.

'I'll signal Control again,' he said, 'on the debriefing. After he's taken whatever action seems indicated, he'll get back to me. At that time it's possible he'll want to speak to you personally, and I'll send a contact to fetch you. But it won't be at least until morning. Suppose, then' — looking up now — 'you make yourself available at your safe-house from nine o'clock onward?'

'Will do.'

'I'll be taking the call here in this office.' He stood up, tucking the map into his pocket.

'Code designation for the contact?'

He suggested one, and at the door I said, 'Perhaps you ought to put a peep on Slavsky, see if he goes anywhere interesting. But it'd have to be someone very good. If he sniffs any smoke he'll go to ground.'

'There are two people in Phnom Penh I could use, if — '

'No one local; we need a real pro.'

'Symes is in Bangkok.'

'If you want to fly him over, yes, he's first class.'

'I'll do that.' He opened the door and waited for me to go out first, but I held back.

'I need to make sure you're clear.'

'Oh yes, of course.' As if he'd forgotten. He hadn't. It had just been another subtle gesture of deference to the executive they couldn't afford to lose, and I noted it, I noted it well.

Someone was screaming in the distance, the sound shrilling in the heat of the night; perhaps there'd be another little red dot for the map tomorrow. I stood watching Pringle's thin figure receding as he walked away, his shadow trailing him and then moving ahead as he passed under a lamp, and the unnerving thought flashed into my mind that if he were suddenly attacked I might not feel inclined to save him.

'I shot first, you see,' Gabrielle said.

She watched me from the low bamboo couch, perched on her haunches, naked, her arms across her knees, her body lit and shadowed by the lamp, the wide bandage around her like a sash. I wondered if she always made love like that, so desperately, despite her wound, or whether it had been because she'd thought it might be for the last time, life in this place being so cheap. I'd come to the mission to thank her for helping me with Slavsky, that was all, but she'd asked me to stay.

I pressed the plunger of the big plastic water dispenser and poured her a glass of Kristal Kleer from Michigan, Illinois.

'Then he shot back?' I asked her.

'Yes. Then it was my turn again.' She took the water and drank, her face silvered with moisture, her lashes casting shadows on her ivory cheekbones, the surface of the water sending reflections flashing softly across her forehead and the wall behind. She lowered the foam cup at last and I took it from her.

'And you made a hit?'

She nodded. 'Yes.'

So those were the three shots I'd heard when I'd been debriefing to Pringle in the burned-out bus. 'How long have you been doing this?'

She turned her head, watching the stars through the open window, faint in the heat haze. The moon had swung down towards the west by now: it had bathed us in its light as we'd made love, less gently than I'd wanted to because of her wound, but I'd been unable to calm her.

'Oh,' she said, 'for quite a while. He was the seventh.'

I drank some water and went back to the couch to be with her, and the bamboo creaked. God knew what Sister Hortense must have thought, earlier; she'd been the nun who'd let me into the mission, as Gabrielle had asked her to if I came by at whatever time.

'Seven,' I said, 'isn't a bad score.' I realized now why she hadn't shown any particular emotion when she'd told me at the hospital that the man who had wounded her was dead.

'That's a man's way of killing, isn't it? Keeping score, treating it like a game; I never thought I'd understand that. The thing is, I'm going to go on doing it until there aren't any left, or they kill me.'