Quiller's Run

17 Crucifix

Rain on the roof. Underneath its sound I listened to the silence, tuning the rain out, listening to the silence. But even then I was picking up small sounds that came into the silence and faded: a distant voice on another floor of the hotel; a door shutting; the far faint note of a ship's siren from the river.

It was necessary, vital, to keep the steady drumming of the rain tuned out and to identify every small sound in the undertow of the silence, because he would come for me barefoot, and my only chance, here on the fifth floor, would be the ability to catch any slight sound he might make: the creak of a floorboard, the rustle of his sleeves as he brought his arms up in the final instant, the jerk of his breath.

Dark – pitch dark.

The lights had been burning when I'd reached here, halfway along the corridor, a minute ago, four dim bulbs under dusty silk shades with burn-marks on them. Now they were dark. The switch was not in the corridor, but round the corner by the stair well. That was how I knew he was there: he needed the dark.

Dead man's shoes.

In the last few seconds I suppose he'd make a rush and all I'd know about it would be the sudden change in the air pressure and the breath blocking in his throat and the hot sharp bite of the wire before I could She moved.

The rain drumming, louder here than in the other place, would Al find the bag behind the desk?

In a dead man's shoes, dear Mother of God.

Stirred beside me.

He came at me in a flash and I screamed The hands of a child, still.

'Fuckee, fuckee?'

Her small pointed breasts against me, the smell of her as she moved close and held onto me, not held me, held onto me, there's a difference.

'No,' I said and drew a long breath and lay still, listening to the only sound that had crossed the bridge of nightmare into reality: the rain on the roof, louder here because it was falling on corrugated iron, and maybe that was why she was frightened, and would also be frightened of thunder.

So I put my arms round her, bring her child's body curving into the arch of my own. She mistook me and opened her legs and began moving, and I whispered, 'No, Chu-Chu, no fuckee.'

'No?'

'You must sleep,' I said. She stopped moving and held me now in a different way, not dutifully like a prostitute but almost tenderly, for her: there'd been no tenderness for her to receive or express for a long time, I suppose, in the refugee camp, unless Chen had thought it necessary to teach her again, in between the fuckee.

At some time in the next few minutes she fell asleep, her head in the hollow of my shoulder, and I forgot about her and the rage came back, the self-rage, scalding, because when I'd walked out of the Red Orchid it had been in a dead man's shoes: Veneker's.

I hadn't been thinking.

It was like a dog-pack tearing at my throat, the guilt, I couldn't shake it off. Sleep was the only anodyne, and even then I saw it again, the white flash in the slats of the shutters, heard it again, the dull booming, and Al's voice, startled, what was that, for Christ's sake?

Veneker.

You be all right, will you?

He'd been thinking of me, of my welfare, knowing that I was in the middle of massive surveillance and knowing from Pepperidge that I was up against Shoda – he'd hesitated, hadn't liked leaving me there on my own, Veneker, a man used to helping people out, getting them through if he could, I'd known men like that and he was one of them and it was my honour, my everlasting privilege, and all I'd done for him was send him straight into a booby-trap and let him get blown apart, oh Mother of God have mercy on my soul.

Chen had seen the rage, felt it. 'So what happened?'

'Wheel came off.'

He'd told me to come in, shut the metal door and reset the alarm. 'A wheel came off?"

Bureau idiom. 'Someone got killed.' Very intense, and he stared at me with his lidless eyes and decided not to say anything more. He was tense himself, shut-faced, and I said, 'Sorry about your friend.' The co-pilot of Flight 306.

'You went out there, didn't you?'

'Yes.'

'What was – I mean did he look -' and I waited, then he said, 'what the fuck difference does it make? Come on upstairs.'

In the huge cluttered room he asked me, 'What did you come here for, Jordan?'

'Shelter.'

'From the rain?'

'From people.'

'Shoda's people?'

'Yes.'

'You mean you want a safe-house?'

'Call it that. For a few days.'

He angled his narrow head, thinking, watching me. 'I'm due out on a flight in an hour, but you can stay if you want. Guess you could use a shower. Hang your things over there – they'll be dry by morning; this place is watertight.'

When I came back he gave me a worn silk robe; it smelt of opium. 'Some things you'll have to do for me while you're here, okay?'

'Whatever you say.'

He was still watching me, considering. 'When that flight went down, you must have thought I was in on it, right?'

'It occurred to me.'

'I'll bet. Now you know different, or you wouldn't be here.'

'Katie told me about your friend.' Pepperidge had also cleared him: I've done the necessary homework.

Chen looked at the aircraft chronometer on the desk. 'Sure.' Head on ope side. 'You're putting a whole lot of trust in me, right?'

'I don't think it's misplaced.'

'But if it is, you're dead.'

'Correct.'

'There's no particular reason,' he said casually, 'why I should drop you in the shit, but if I find a reason that's what I'm going to do. You don't have anything to worry over so long as what you've told me about you is true. You're also okay by Katie.' He got one of his black cigarettes and lit up. 'Just spelling it out for you, because I have to trust you too, if you're staying here in my absence.' Blew out smoke, watching it. 'I'm not talking about little Chu-Chu, so long as you're gentle with her – she's only a kid. But feel free. I'm talking -'

'She'd have stayed here alone, if I hadn't come?'

'She's learned life the hard way. She can take care of herself 'Is anyone likely to come here?'

'Nope. If anyone rings the bell – that's just figurative -she'll deal with the situation. You won't be disturbed. What I was saying was, I'm going to trust you with one or two things you can do for me that wouldn't get done if you weren't here, because she doesn't speak English, maybe a couple of words.' We were sitting on two of the leather-covered tabourets, and a coin fell out of his pocket as he reached for a notebook; he picked it up and wrote in the book and tore out the page and gave it to me. 'That's where you can call me, in Laos. There's an answering-machine over there, and I want you to monitor calls, okay?'

'Okay.'

'There won't be too many, nothing social – this place is a kind of safe-house for me too, as I guess you know. But if there's anything that sounds urgent, call me.'

'Will do.'

He nodded. 'When did you eat?'

'God knows.'

Let's have a snort!

'They been giving you a hard time?"

'Not as hard as it could've been.' Another wave of guilt, hot and overpowering. The hard time had been for Veneker.

Chen left another telephone number with me; it was punched out on an embossed strip and stuck to the side of the Autocall machine.

'I should be back in a couple of days, Tuesday some time. If I don't show up by Wednesday, or haven't contacted you here, call this number and tell them I'm overdue, okay?' He was stuffing a Walther P38 into his airline bag. 'This trip I'm not sure what's going to happen.' He zipped the bag shut. 'If you want to leave here before then, that's okay. And she'll be fine on her own. Take care.'

That had been hours ago and now she rested like the child she was, curved against me with one thin arm around me, her breathing as soft as a young animal's. I slept again, and the next time I woke it was because of the silence. The rain had stopped and it was almost first light.

She stirred.

'Johnny?'

'No. He'll be back soon.'

She drew herself up against the pillows, and when it was light enough to see her face I said, 'Can you smell smoke, Chu-Chu?'

She watched me quietly, that was all.

'I can smell smoke,' I told her. 'I think this place is on fire.'

She didn't turn her head to look anywhere.

'Are there any extinguishers here, Chu-Chu? We don't want to be burned alive.'

She gazed at me with soft and uncomprehending eyes, and I knew it was all right to call Pepperidge.

'Veneker's dead.'

Short silence, and I heard something being knocked over, alarm clock or something. Over there it was eleven o'clock last night and maybe he was trying to conserve sleep in case I needed him.

'What happened?'

'They rigged a bomb. I should have thought of that.'

'Can't think of everything. You -'

lThen I bloody well should have.'

In a moment he said quietly, 'You've got a war on. We have to expect casualties.'

I got control again. 'He didn't know a thing, of course.' Desperate for consolation.

'Best way to go. But I don't understand. That doesn't sound like Kishnar.'

'No. It must have been one of the surveillance people. I'd left a car standing outside, and they assumed I'd use it again.'

'And he got in.'

'Yes.'

It had been a thin chance but any chance had been worth taking, so I'd worked it out: Veneker would get into the car without being seen and drive to the airport. They'd tag him there and when he was under the bright lights they'd see it wasn't me, but by that time it would be too late because they'd have been drawn away from the Red Orchid and I could have walked out when I wanted to, and that's what I'd done, but in a dead man's shoes.

'It was obviously a temptation for them,' Pepperidge said.

'They must have been mad.' Shoda had wanted absolute discretion and had sent a soft-hit agent to take care of me with no fuss and no trace and she'd have that man's life when she heard about this, have his neck under a sword, because this time it wasn't going to be kept out of the papers and Veneker would be identified and she'd know I'd got clear and gone to ground, have his neck, another little shred of consolation, an eye for an eye, so forth.

'True,' Pepperidge said. 'She won't like it. Where are you?'

'At Chen's.' I gave him the number.

'What sort of condition?'

'I wasn't anywhere near.'

Should have been. Jesus Christ, a simple letter drop and bang and he was dead.

'You'll be all right,' Pepperidge was saying, 'at Chen's. I'll vouch for him personally. But you'll have to be careful from now on. Kishnar won't be called off.'

'Nothing's changed, except that I'm now clandestine.' Wouldn't be going to the Thai Embassy or the Red Orchid or anywhere else above ground, wouldn't be meeting anyone, my only exposure the need for transport, a plain van, a risk that had to be taken.

'Can I do anything for you?' Pepperidge asked.

'No. You can turn in now.'

'Pissing down, here.' He was trying to make light of the Veneker thing for my sake, but he'd be taking it hard: I knew a first-class man when I saw one and Veneker had measured up – bright, brief, reliable and concerned.

'How long had you known him?'

'Who?'

'Veneker.'

'Oh.' Couple of beats. 'Did a job with him once. He wouldn't have wanted to die in bed.' Another pause. 'Don't worry, old boy.'

'I'd give anything.'

'I understand.' He cleared his throat. 'You still haven't come across a Colonel Cho out there?'

'No. That's C-H-0?'

'Yes. I've been doing some work on him, but it's not easy at this distance. It'd be an idea for you to ask Johnny Chen. He might know about him. I'll talk to him myself, if you like.'

'He's not here.'

'When you see him, then. Cho could be very important.'

'All right.'

'What we need to find,' Pepperidge said, 'is her exposed flank. I mean Shoda's. And Cho might tell us.'

Katie had said much the same thing: I suppose what you need most is to know her Achilles' heel.

'It'd show me the way in,' I told him. 'And if I don't find it soon I think we've had it.'

There were two dangers but I didn't spell it out for him. Shoda's fury would now be intensified and she'd make my death an ambition – the very powerful were like that: any show of opposition came as a personal affront and they couldn't rest until it was destroyed. The second danger was that I was now in a rage of my own and ready to take uncalculated risks to get at her because I didn't like being stalked through the bloody streets and forced into a foxhole and I didn't like the way they'd wiped out Veneker, a man who'd saved my life with his own.

And there was the voodoo factor and I didn't know how long I could stand up to it because at the Red Orchid last night I'd felt a degree of vulnerability I'd never known before and it had worried me in the background of my mind – I'd almost accepted the foregone conclusion that Kishnar would make his kill, inevitably, and all I'd been doing was running around the place like a rat in a trap, working out the escape mechanisms I couldn't have hoped to trigger once he was inside the building. It had been unnerving and it was still on my mind, the sense of oncoming doom. 'Say again?' Pepperidge. 'If we don't find a way in, I think we've had it.'

'Any specific reason? I mean apart from Kishnar.'

'I just think I'm outnumbered. Outgunned.'

'I'm sure you do.' A different tone, sharper. 'And I'm sure you're not. Take any mission and there's a time when you can't see the light at the end of the tunnel. It gets dark in there – I've been down it a good few times. You need to rest up for a bit, that's all, restore the nerves. If it's any help, old boy, I'm working hard at this end and I'm in constant signals with people in London and the field.' The sharp tone had faded, taking on a hint of false comfort. But what else could the poor bastard do but try to rally the ferret he was running?'

'Yes,' I told him, 'that's a help. It's all I've got.'

'Jolly good show. Keep in touch.'

She pulled the gun out of the drawer and checked the safety catch with the movements of a trained marksman and I wondered whether she'd picked it up in the refugee camps or from Johnny Chen. She went to the door and down the open-slatted wooden steps and stopped on the landing halfway down and waited, watching the iron door in the side of the wharf.

The beeper had sounded a minute ago and she was quick to react but not flustered. I watched her from the top of the steps and the minutes went by and Chu-Chu turned and came up again and put the gun away and looked at me and made a figure on the top of the desk with her hand, three fingers and thumb down and a finger sticking out in front, an animal walking along.

'Dog?' I said.

She walked her hand close to the jade paperweight and lifted her thumb, dog, yes, peeing. The alarm was triggered by an infra-red ray and angled too low, or of course it could be Kishnar down there or any one of the surveillance team, but I'd have to watch thoughts like that because I'd taken infinite care to get here clean and there was no way they could find me.

They found you at the Red Orchid.

Because I'd been walking in and out of the place, that was why – I hadn't been clandestine.

'Dog,' I nodded to the girl, but she didn't repeat it.

She spent the morning cooking some food and washing the bare wooden floor while I rested on the divan between phone-calls, drifting into alpha and working a few things out. One of them worried me: I didn't know how long it would be before Shoda found out I was still alive. The Toyota had been totally burned out when I'd left the hotel an hour later, going over the wall at the other side where it was dark, though the surveillance team had broken up and moved away by then, assuming I was dead. Veneker might have been carrying papers but they could have been under a cover name; in any case they were now probably ash. The metal figures of the number plate would have been decipherable and the police would have run them through their computer and gone to the Hertz office. I'd used my cover name and address, and that would have sent them to the hotel. But A bitter smell had come into the air and I opened my eyes. Chu-Chu was sitting at the small rickety table by the lamp with the dragon shade; the ruby Chen had given her was on it, glowing in the light like a drop of blood. She was gazing at it, her eyes lost in its colour as she inhaled the tendril of smoke rising from the tin ashtray in front of her, where she'd lit a slug of opium.

I closed my eyes again. At the hotel, then, the police would have checked the register and Al would have said yes, a Martin Jordan was staying there, but he hadn't seen him since a few minutes before the explosion had sounded. He would have said this because the instant I'd realised what had happened I'd kept strictly out of sight. So I would be down as a suspected victim, but they'd also go on checking, trying to find out where the man named Veneker was, and why he'd registered and left a bag behind the desk and disappeared.

But had Veneker used his own name when he'd registered? Pepperidge might know. I didn't have enough data to give me a fix on the deadline – the time when Shoda would find out I was still alive. But it would be some days at least before they could identify Veneker's body through the dental records — if any existed in Singapore.

Gimme a kiss, honey.

Some days. Perhaps that was all I would need.

In the afternoon there were some phone-calls and I made notes for Chen. Three of them were from people who didn't leave their names, or use his.

We didn't make it. The strip was waterlogged after the rain and we put down in Chiang Mai. You better tell them aver there -you know? – we'll try again in a few days.

Two calls in Chinese, the Hokkein dialect, which I didn't understand. Then another American-accented Asian.

The price is right, but they want guarantees. Can we make them? Get back to me as soon as you can – Blue Zero.

In the evening I phoned Chen in Laos, using the number he'd given me. A woman answered in a tongue I didn't understand, but I kept on repeating his name and she got him for me.

'How's it going?'

'I've got some messages for you. Do you want them now?"

'Sure.'

I read from the notes. 'The rest I didn't understand. There were four.'

'Okay, What else?'

'Nothing by phone. The alarm sounded about midday, but Chu-Chu said it must have been a dog.'

'That thing's too low. I'll fix it when I get back.'

'Is this girl safe with a gun?'

'What's she doing?'

'She went to the stairs with it, when the alarm beeper sounded -'

'Oh, sure, yeah. She's trained.'

'All right. She's also using opium.'

'So what else is new?'

'Different viewpoints.'

'She doesn't have long, Jordan. She's been on coke for two years. Thing is to show her some kindness while she has the time left, okay? That's why I took her in.'

'Understood.'

I could smell cooking. Housekeeper, concubine, gun-handler, drug addict and soon to die. Chu-Chu, fourteen.

'Signing off,' I told Chen.

'Sure. Take care.'

The phone rang again in twenty minutes and I went for the note pad.

This is Katie. Do you know where Martin Jordan is? If he contacts you, let me know, mil you? I'm worried about him. Look after yourself too. Bye.

To avoid it seeming like a coincidence I didn't do anything for an hour, not because I didn't trust her but because this was a safe-house and I didn't want her involved: I didn't want her to get in too deep, where the waters were dangerous. Then I took the parrot cage off its hook and took it into the bathroom and shut the door and came back and phoned her.

'Martin?

'Yes.'

I heard her let out a breath. 'You sound all right.'

'I'm fine.'

'Where are you?' Then she said, 'Sorry. As long as you're all right.'

'Yes. How are you?'

Her fair hair swinging as her shoulders came forward; the fan turning slowly under the ceiling; cushions all over the floor; the taste of zabaglione.

'I'm all right too,' she said. 'And I've been working hard for you. Is it safe to talk?'

'Yes.'

'All right, well listen, darling, there's a man you ought to see if you possibly can, although I'm told it's difficult. But he could be terribly important to you. His name is Colonel Cho.'

I didn't say anything.

'Martin?'

'Listening.'

'I thought you'd gone.'

'I was thinking. The spelling is C-H-O?'

'Yes.'

'Is he in Singapore?'

'No. I don't exactly know where he is, but Johnny Chen does. So will you phone him, and talk about it?"

'Yes.'

'All right. Well that's – all. God, I wish I could see you, darling.'

'Soon.'

'Yes. Please.'

Later I shared the food that Chu-Chu put on the table, rubbing my stomach to tell her it was good, and pointing to things and naming them for her, as if she had time left to learn a new language. Then, when she lit another slug of opium, I found a couple of wooden slats from where the crates were stored, and got some string and made a rough cross, propping it against the wall while she watched me. I bent over the little tin ashtray and made a gesture of inhaling, then went and lay down with the cross above my head, doing it three or four times and pointing to Chu-Chu, knowing she'd seen enough of Western customs to know what a cross meant.

She got it at last, and just nodded, knowing that too; then her eyes opened wide and she pointed at me, saying something quickly, a question, and its meaning came to me – she was asking me if I meant that I were going to the under a wooden cross; and the atmosphere in the room, the vibrations, the malevolent scent of the opium and the eyes of this doomed child that had already seen too much of life brought a sudden tremor and tightened my scalp, and I picked up the cross and broke the string and threw the bloody thing into the corner.