Quiller's Run

23 Obsession

I want his head. The smoke from Dr Israel's thin cheroot hung on the humid air, floating in the glow of the pilot lamp in soft grey skeins.

You have exactly twenty-four hours. I want his head, do you understand that?

Mine. My head.

'Tell me,' I asked Dr Israel, 'about obsession.'

He was quiet for a while. He'd had a busy day. There'd been two more suicide attempts during the evening and I'd seen three male nurses at a steady jog-trot along the north verandah twenty minutes ago, heading for the room where a woman was screaming.

• 'This isn't a rest home,' Pepperidge had told me earlier, 'it's in the front line. Try not to let it worry you.'

The place was quiet now, and Israel sat with his short legs crossed and his white jacket hanging open and the end of his little cigar glowing in the half-light. In front of us the expanse of lawn was dark.

'Obsession…" he said, and smiled. 'What can I tell you about it? Well, it's real. I mean' – he waved a thin, angular hand – 'people say their husband's got an obsession about golf, you know? Or they say their wife's got an obsession about her diet, something like that.' He shook his head. 'That is not obsession.'

Wanted to ask: what about heads? My head?

Didn't ask.

'It has an infinite number of presentations, you see. One can be obsessed about so many things, but the real obsessions are focused on abstracts. Hate. Revenge. Life. Death. Sex. Sickness. Health.' He shrugged. 'There was a man who was convinced he had cancer of the stomach, you see, and they gave him all the tests and they were negative. But he wasn't satisfied! He was sure he had cancer of the stomach. Why? Probably – we never found out – probably because his father had died of cancer of the stomach and this man had been unkind to his father so when the old man died the son felt so much remorse that he wanted to suffer the same fate, you see – not on a conscious level, of course, not at all.' Another weary smile. 'Not much of what we do is ever done on the conscious level. So* – another shrug – 'he walked into a telephone kiosk and called the hospital and pulled out a gun and shot himself in the stomach and told them to come and get him. They'd told him, you see, that he didn't need to undergo exploratory surgery, which he'd asked them for. So now he had to have surgery, and he knew they'd find the cancer.'

Soft shoes. 'Dr Israel?'

'Yes?'

'Is Mary all right?'

He didn't look round. 'Yes. Until she tries again. Don't let her try again."

Rustic of a skirt as the girl moved away.

'Did they find cancer?' I asked Israel.

'All they found was a bullet. That is obsession.'

'A killing disease.'

'Sometimes, yes. Often. A patient of mine was obsessed with his lack of attractiveness to women. He wasn't bad-looking and he was gentle with them and he was rich, yoy, isn't that attractive to women? But no, someone had said in his childhood that he was a little runt, something like that, it happens all the time – kids are cruel, brutal, to each other, sometimes. So this man spent all his money on screwing one woman after another to prove how attractive he was and finally he got AIDS and hung himself. That is obsession.'

The movement of a white coat in the gloom on the far side, a woman's soft laughter. Christ, how could anyone laugh in a place like this?

'It's something you can't stop,' I said.

'Yes.' He uncrossed his legs and crossed them the other way. 'It starts at ten miles an hour and gets to fifty and then to ninety and you can't stop it. You crash.'

Twenty-four hours. Her voice had gone onto the tape three hours ago. Twenty-one.

'But someone very powerful,' I said, 'someone clever, intelligent, authoritative, say, given an obsession, what you call the real thing – they can finally lose control, and crash?'

He blew out a curl of smoke. 'You have heard of Adolf Hitler?'

The smoke straightened into a long skein under the lamp.

Has Gunther been dealt with?

Not her actual voice: a translation, accented English.

'There was a man on the hit team,' I'd told Pepperidge, 'watching the Red Orchid, a European, Teutonic. He could have been the one who rigged the bomb. Gunther.'

Pepperidge had nodded, concentrating again, releasing the pause button.

Where is Kishnar? I want your report on him. Tell him I will give him twenty-four hours. 1 want that man's head.

The translator put emphasis on the last word.

'We have not found the body of the third agent, but his head was delivered to my office in a cardboard box.' Major-general Vasuratna, Thai Military Intelligence.

'Part of their culture,' Pepperidge told me, trying, I suppose, to make light of it.

'Once you're snuffed, you won't care where the bloody thing is.'

He switched off the recorder and ran the tape back. 'Bit poky, this room, isn't it?' Looking around, bed, chest of drawers, upright chairs, rush mat, lamp, small mirror and that was it. 'You want me to get it changed?'

'I shan't be spending any time in here.'

His yellow eyes brooded on me. 'So what I mean is, I think we've found her Achilles' heel, and it's you. Agree?'

'You mean she's obsessed?'

'Yes. That is exactly the word.'

'It's beginning to sound like it.'

This was why I'd got hold of Dr Israel later, to gen up a bit.

'As I told you,' Pepperidge said, 'I've been doing quite a lot of homework, some of it with Kityakara – personally, in view of a possible mole. He agreed that there was absolutely no need for Shoda to order the bodies of those agents sent back to the palace and the police headquarters and so on. She took it personally. He says it's because of her childhood experiences – she's intensely vulnerable to challenge.'

Also a clock, a tin clock by the bed, a loud tick, getting on my nerves. I tried to tune it out.

'She was absolutely incensed, you know, by your going into that temple to face her out.' Head tilted, 'why did you do that, exactly?'

'I thought it'd be useful to -' then I stopped because I'd caught what I was saying and we don't always do that; we trot out a convenient rationalisation and leave it at that, a stand-in for the truth we'd rather not talk about. I started again. '1 thought it'd be useful to try talking to General Dharmnoon, because he was the man Lafarge wrote to about the Slingshot, but that was just a reason I'd cooked up.'

After a bit I realised I hadn't finished, still didn't want to talk. Pepperidge was waiting patiently. 'I wanted to see Shoda,' I said at last.

Silence again.

'To "see" her.'

I started walking about, feeling trapped. 'I think it's becoming a bit obsessive on my side, too. Becoming personal. And I think it's because she scares the shit out of me, so I want to confront her, face the bitch.'

In a moment, 'I see.'

He didn't.

'I've been scared plenty of times. Life on the brink's like that – you know what I'm talking about; you've been there too. And I've been pretty certain I've had it, too, often enough. But this is the first time I've felt -' I couldn't find the right word, so I threw in something close, though it was appallingly melodramatic, 'the first time I've felt doomed.'

Pepperidge said nothing. The word hung around like a whiff of cheap scent. I began wishing to Christ he'd break the silence, say anything he liked to cover the ticking of the tin clock.

Finally I stopped pacing and stood looking down at him; he was sitting in one of the upright chairs with his feet together and the tape-recorder on his knees and his head tilted as he watched me, and I was suddenly looking at a new dimension in the man, and it shook me. It was as if the Pepperidge of the Brass Lamp in London had been an act.

'Doomed,' he said, because he knew what I'd seen and he wanted to cover it, not give it any attention.

I took a step away, a step back, touched by anger. 'I suppose you're playing straight with me, are you?'

'Yes,' at once and with emphasis. 'You and your mission are my total concern.'

He wasn't lying. I would have known.

'I've no choice,' I said. 'I've got to believe you.'

'Oh, you've got a choice, old boy. You could just tell me to fuck off, couldn't you?'

Deadly serious.

'I suppose I could.'

'But you're not going to, and of course you're perfectly right.' Tilted his head straight. 'Doomed, you were saying.'

I let out the tension on a breath. 'Yes, I mean, we've faced situations, you and I, in whatever mission, and we've had to deal with them and get them behind us and go on, since we're still alive. We've had periods of relief, in between, when we can breathe again.' I leaned my back against the wall, feeling its coolness in the warm room. 'It's different, Pepperidge, this time. For the last week I've begun to feel I've walked into a shut-ended operation that's going to be the death of me whatever I do.'

In a moment he said, 'I've never felt that, but I know what you mean.'

'Do you?'

Even his understanding would be something to grab and hold on to – but even that thought was a warning of how far gone I was. The room grew even smaller suddenly, the walls pressing in. It could just be this bloody place, all these poor bastards cutting their wrists and swallowing Valium, could just be the atmosphere here, the vibes.

It wasn't.

'I understand very well,' he said, 'what you're feeling. It's the effect Mariko Shoda has on people, particularly people she doesn't like. I've talked to a couple of them. They told me the same thing as you, in their different idiom – she scares the shit out of them.'

Cho was suddenly in my mind, the way he'd reacted when I'd spoken her name, Shoda's.

'So it's not just my… nerves,' I said.

'No.' He shoved the recorder into his side pocket and got up, going from wall to wall. 'I'll really have to get you a bigger room, you know. You need space. But we're doing some good work here, and I think you know that. Let me tell you' -stopping and standing in front of me, very direct – 'that I've been getting a very distinct picture of what this mission really is. I didn't see it at first, nor did you. This is a very different sort of job from the ones we've been used to doing – getting someone across, digging out papers or tapes or a hot product, cutting down an assassin, the usual things. This has turned into a duel. You agree?'

'On a psychological level.'

His eyes narrowed. 'You could even have said psychic. Because that's what she's like, and I know that now. And so, quite clearly, do you. Which is exactly why I asked you why you felt compelled to go into that temple and confront her, though I must say I didn't know you were going to take half the night to come out with it.' He looked at his watch. 'So how do you feel about the future?'

I took a minute to think.

'Bit keyed up.'

He was doing an extraordinarily good job as a local director, considering he'd spent most of his career life as a ferret in the field. He was critically concerned with what was going on in my mind, in my nerves, and this could be because he'd got some briefing set up for me that would push me right to the brink, but I didn't think so. He'd come out here because he'd sensed that if he'd stayed in Cheltenham I would have lost direction and run the whole of the mission into the ground, and now that he'd got here he was testing the ropes for slack and getting down to business, conning a safe house for me and tapping the High Commission for resources and debriefing me within hours of his landing in Singapore.

But now he wanted to know what condition the ferret was in, and how far I was prepared to go. And I didn't know. I hadn't had time to think. But I'd have to, and soon, because Shoda was putting a lot of pressure on and we'd have to react, push it back, before it became overwhelming.

'Keyed up,' Pepperidge nodded. 'That's understandable. But, I mean, how do you feel about Mariko Shoda herself, as an adversary?'

'Do I think she's too powerful for me to break?'

'Sort of.'

'It'll take a bit of doing, but I suppose anything can be done.' Didn't sound too sanguine, no. 'All right, then, yes, I know I can bring her down.'

'Given,' he said, 'a secure base and a director and immediate access to support, the whole works. I want you to think about that. You're not alone any more; you're not hunted, as long as you stay inside these walls. The thing is'

he checked his watch again – 'I think you're absolutely right: you can bring the Shoda organisation down, given enough support and briefing, and I'll get that for you.'

I could feel the nerves steadying.

'When?'

'At any minute, because it'll have to come from the tapes from the Shoda bug. We've got a window on her now and all we've got to do is watch. The critical factor is the Slingshot, as you know, because the minute she gets her hands on it then God help us all. Now, I'm meeting the Thai ambassador in half an hour, so why don't you phone Sayako before I leave here?'

He gave me the number and stuck a suction pad onto the side of the phone and plugged the lead into his recorder and I dialled.

Ringing tone.

'She said she wanted to talk to you,' Pepperidge murmured, 'about something personal, remember? She might have meant Colonel Cho, and that could be interesting.'

I nodded.

Ringing tone.

'If you can, persuade her to let you meet her. I'd like to know what other bugs she might have been putting around.'

Nodded.

Ringing.

'She's not there.'

'Then try again later, and put it on tape for me.' He dropped the recorder onto the night table. 'Anything interesting, give me a signal.'

I went into the main hall with him and he got me a laissez-passer from the night staff desk, so that I wouldn't have to keep to my quarters after curfew.

'Questions?'

'Yes.'

He knew very well I'd got a question and he'd been waiting for me to come out with it and I hadn't done that until now because it was so very important and I think I was scared of the implications.

He watched me steadily, his yellow eyes narrowed.

'If all further briefing,' I told him, 'depends on the Shoda bug and what it gives us, I might never be able to move out of this place. If the bug stops transmitting – if it's found and destroyed – we'll be working on a very thin chance.'

'True.'

He waited.

'And there's also Kishnar.'

Tilted his head. 'True indeed.'

This time I waited but nothing happened, and it was then that I knew what he was doing, and it was going to change the whole of the mission from this point onwards.

'How much discretion are you giving me, Pepperidge?'

He looked down, then away. In a moment, 'Let me put it like this. The Shoda bug and the other data we've got on her is in fact all we have to work with, and that could be compromised if someone finds the bug. And there's Kishnar.

But for the moment we'll have to let these things take their course, however long it needs.' Now his eyes came back to mine. 'Unless you can think of a quicker way.'

I could. But I didn't tell him that. He knew.

'Keep in touch, old boy,'

When I was back in my room I tried Sayako's number twice in the next thirty minutes and got no answer, but she was there the third time at 20:35 and among other things she told me that Mariko Shoda had just landed unexpectedly in Singapore.