Quiller's Run

29 Treble Think

She came in quietly, soon after Loman had finished his main briefing. I didn't see her until she was quite near us, because I'd had my back to the doors, talking with Pepperidge.

'Good morning.'

Loman turned. Pepperidge got off the couch. She slung a leather bag from her shoulder; it looked like a diplomatic pouch, probably was.

'The tapes,' she said, and gave the bag to Loman.

'All of them?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Would you care for some coffee?'

'Please.'

Then she looked at me for the first time, just a little swing of her head as if she'd had to make an effort; but the blue-grey eyes were quite steady.

Flood had come in earlier with the message, the 'glad tidings' as Pepperidge had called it, going on with the charade for the sake of appearances, because no one could now admit the truth.

'She phoned her office,' he'd said, 'at the High Commission. Her aunt was taken ill yesterday morning, appendicitis, that's why she rushed off without telling anyone where she was going.' Loman hadn't been watching him as he'd told us; he'd turned away to do a little pacing. 'She stayed at the hospital till her aunt was out of danger.' Rueful smile. 'All that tra-la for nothing.'

Not to embarrass him, I'd said I was relieved.

Facing me now she said very quietly, 'Hello.'

'How's your aunt?'

'She'll be all right.' With a swing of her fair hair, 'I – hope you weren't worried about me.'

'No.'

She looked down, swallowing. 'Then I'm glad.'

'I knew there wasn't any need.'

She looked up quickly, then glanced across to where Loman and Pepperidge were sorting out the tapes, then back to me. 'Oh.' Puffing out a little laugh, shrugging. 'I think I've lost the score.'

'It doesn't matter. The game's over now. I'll go and plug in the thing, you like it white, don't you?'

'Yes. Your hand's all right?'

'Everything's fine.'

I went over to the percolator and plugged it in. There were lines under her eyes and she looked as if she hadn't slept too well, which probably meant that she'd been briefed about my blowing the safe-house, and why. Otherwise she might have gone along to the clinic and walked right into the surveillance team, and I didn't want to think about that.

The thing started singing and I called out to Flood, asking him for another cup. Loman was slotting a tape into the stereo recorder. Katie sat down at one end of the couch, slim in her khaki shirt and slacks, the heavy gold chain at her throat.

It had been treble-think, and Loman and I had worked together like partners in a tennis double, each leaving the ball for the other when that was the next move. He'd been certain I'd want to stay with the mission but couldn't do that, now I knew the Bureau had conned me into it after I'd resigned, so he gave me a way of saving my face and told me that Katie was missing. It was a lie and I knew that, and he knew I knew, but I went through the motions of believing it, and agreed to the deal and stayed with the mission. Treble-think, and in case you've forgotten, that's the trade we're in.

'We've boiled them down,' Loman said now, 'to the bare essence.'

The Shoda tapes.

I went over to him. The recorder was on the floor and we sat around it while Katie poured some more coffee.

'These are all translations from the Thai or Cambodian except the one where she's speaking English, presumably to someone whose only language it is. If you want to put questions I'll stop the recorder.

He pressed for play.

I want to stress that we are not mounting a series of isolated revolutionary actions designed to bring in the rabble with us. These are planned as military actions and they will be launched simultaneously as soon as the consignment has been received, evaluated, deployed in the field and readied for use, 'These transmissions,' Loman said, 'have been put onto a single tape. There's no continuity – they are separate recordings made at different times.'

I will repeat that this agent must be located and dealt with before we can launch our operations. It would be fatal if we ignored his influence and allowed him to infiltrate our intelligence and jeopardise our plans. There can be no action in any theatre until he is removed.

'I need hardly tell you' – Loman – 'that we for our part are using every endeavour to monitor and harass the various units now searching for you. In point of fact, by midnight last night, London had called in sleepers and local contacts from Hong Kong, Saigon, Hanoi and Bangkok, and they are now working in the field, liaising with Mr Croder personally through the British High Commission here in Singapore. There is a great deal going on in your support, Quiller, a great deal.'

Translated: You should never have left the Bureau: look at the resources we have.

Said nothing. He pressed the button.

Our entire action now depends on Kishnar. Until I learn that he has accomplished his assignment there can be no furtherance of our project. Tomorrow I shall go to Singapore and await this information.

'The day before yesterday,' Loman said, and lifted the pause button.

The preparations I spoke of are now set up, but our proposed action must await news of an unhampered environment. We must not underestimate the British-Thai intelligence operations mounted against us.

Loman played three more tapes, but they were mostly a distillation of the background political aspects of the revolutionary groups deployed throughout Indo-China, some of them under Shoda's command.

'This one,' Loman said finally, 'is where she is speaking either to an Englishman or an American or at least to someone who doesn't have her various Asian languages. We're trying to find out who he is.'

I am told that, pending the now imminent arrival of the consignment, every tactical element is now in place, but there is still no news from Kishnar, and I am now on my way to Singapore. If you need to reach me I shall be airborne at 5 p. m. and you can use the radio-phone.

It was the first time I'd heard her speaking in English. It was clear and almost without an accent. The sibilants were silky and attenuated, as I remembered from hearing her voice in the radio station, and it had the same energy; but there was something in her tone that hadn't been there before; it was a degree of tension, of strain. I had the sense that the world of Mariko Shoda wasn't any longer spinning the way she wanted it.

Loman shut the thing off. 'Do you have any comments?'

I got off the floor, wanting movement.

'I hadn't realised things were so close.'

He didn't answer, and suddenly I knew why. Things were close only if they could hit me between now and when the Slingshot consignment arrived.

'All right, her operation can't start unless I'm out of the running, so she's going to be throwing the whole thing at me now. She's got no more time to try doing it by stealth, trying to keep it discreet – one man with a bit of wire. If they see me, they'll just shoot, from anywhere – right?'

'That's why we've asked the Singapore police for their help, through diplomatic channels. That's why this place is under guard.'

'But, for Christ's sake, you can't just keep me cooped up in here so that she's got to put her operations permanently on ice. She might easily lose patience and risk it and have a go regardless.'

Loman didn't answer. And nothing from Pepperidge. They'd got things worked out and they wanted to know what my attitude was, because I was the key factor and they'd have to plan according to what I was prepared to do. This was routine direction in the field and that was all right but I couldn't see which way we could make a move, or if there were any way at all.

'Have you got any more briefing for me?' I thought he had, but was holding it back for some reason. Pepperidge was looking into the middle-distance again and I noted it.

Loman started walking around suddenly: it was like a bloody zoo – we all felt caged up in this place.

'Perhaps you should be informed,' he said in a moment, 'that in support of your assumption that Shoda will now do everything in her power to "remove the British agent", two charter plane loads of so-called tourists have arrived in Singapore this morning, one from Cambodia and one from Laos. Our contacts are reasonably certain that they've been brought in to support the surveillance teams.'

Meant hit teams.

'All right. At least we know the score.'

I felt Katie's eyes on me. She was Bureau and she'd probably worked with shadow executives before and she knew what we were going to have to do to get out of the shut-ended situation we were in: we were going to have to take one hell of a risk in the hope that it'd come off and leave this little ferret still alive – bloodied, perhaps, but still with its whiskers on, and listen, I'm putting it lightly as I'm sure you've noticed, because at this particular moment I'd started feeling scared and it wasn't very long since the Kishnar thing and my nerves were on a roller-coaster and there wouldn't be a chance of getting them off it until something conclusive was done, something terminal, finis, one way or the other, Shoda or me.

It all came down to that.

And everyone knew it: Loman, Pepperidge, Katie, and halfway round the world in London, Croder, Chief of Control.

However, nil desperandum, so forth, try a few more knee-bends, rough on the left thigh but we need to keep the adrenalin down.

'How long will it be,' I asked Loman, 'before you hear that your second unit has found the Slingshots and taken them over? If they can, in fact, do that?'

'We shall be informed at once.' He seemed surprised.

'Not through London?'

'Either through London or direct, or both. Why?'

'I'm not absolutely sure.' He came and looked down at me; I was at the bottom of a knee-bend, bouncing on the muscles. 'But I think it's very important.' Sounded lame, but the left brain had started working on something and this was one of the components. 'It's important,' I tried again, 'that we should know as soon as possible if and when that consignment has been seized – that's to say, has been removed from any danger of Shoda's getting hold of it. That's important.' I got up and moved around. 'It's also very important that if the Slingshots are made safe and brought out of Shoda's reach, she doesn't know about it until she and I are face to face.'

I listened to the echo of what I'd just been saying and tested it out and found some flaws and tried patching them up and ran it through again, sensing I was getting close to some kind of overkill action but not quite knowing what it was or how it would work.

When I stopped and looked around I saw they were all watching me, not moving.

'There's a time thing,' I told Loman, 'that's got to be thought about. There's a narrow margin of time involved.'

In a moment Loman asked over-casually, 'Have you got anything potentially constructive in mind?'

'What the fuck does that mean?'

Quite a long silence. Yes, I know what potentially means and I know what constructive means but I'd been way out in the right brain and words like those lose most of their meaning because they're so bloody long that you've got to stop and think what they're trying to say.

'Sorry.'

'Not at all.'

Toujours la politesse and all that, but you know I do wish that little snit would speak the queen's bloody English when we're all trying to think out how to destroy the objective.

'Let's start from this,' I said. 'I can't make a hit.' Silence again. They needed more data. 'I'm not a hired gun, you know that. The only time I killed anyone in cold blood it was because he'd betrayed a woman and she was trapped and shot dead. I'm not -' I found myself staring at Loman, wanting the little bastard to get the point – 'I'm not a hit man for the Bureau. Is that understood?'

'Of course.' Tone icy.

'So what I've got to do is destroy the objective, Shoda, without killing her. The mission you're running is aimed at the destruction of the Shoda organisation and I'm the executive in the field' – began walking around again – 'and we've got our faces shoved right up against the end-phase and we haven't got a bloody clue as to how we're going to bring this thing off.'

In a minute Pepperidge said very quietly, 'I rather think you have, old boy.'

'What?' I swung round. 'Possibly. A very small one. I'm just thinking aloud, trying to get feedback.'

I went across and poured some more coffee and put it down again without drinking any because we were in the extreme end-phase of the mission and I was on a collision course with a woman who'd got a small army out there waiting for me and I didn't want to be caught at the wrong end of a caffeine curve; that sort of thing can kill you.

'Another thing' – and I was, yes, thinking aloud but that was good – 'is that I can't confront Shoda without getting her isolated somehow.' And I knew when I said it that it was a key word, isolated, though I didn't know why. 'I don't mean separated from her bodyguards, I couldn't hope for that. I think I mean away from the public somewhere, in case people get hurt. It's not going to be a tea-party.'

Long silence, but this time useful, potentially constructive, so forth. And something had got through.

I 'Isolated,' Pepperidge said. He got off the couch and stood with his hands shoved into his pockets, looking through the wall. 'Not in her house.'

'No. I'd never get in there alive.'

Loman was staring into the middle distance too but he didn't say anything for a minute, couldn't hit on anything. Then he turned and started walking again and said, 'We've got the full cooperation of the Singapore police, but there's nothing they can do against Shoda. She's politically untouchable. Diplomatically. She could bring almost any democratic government down in Asia simply by hitting its economy or exposing any one of the half-dozen corrupt officials in high places.' He gave me a direct look. 'We can't help you there.'

'I understand that.'

In any case I couldn't see us going into the end-phase with any kind of police action. They couldn't touch Shoda. The government couldn't touch her. It wasn't a question of an operation; it was a question of infiltration, very focused, very specific, just one man going in.

'Would anyone like some lunch?'

Katie.

Loman stopped pacing as if he'd hit a wall and stared at her as if he didn't understand the word. Perhaps she should have said luncheon.

'Good thinking.' Pepperidge.

'Some kind of protein?' I said.

She passed close to me on her way out, saying softly, 'and a little zabaglione?' And left her scent on the air, my God, there's nothing like a woman's presence to bring the tension down, she doesn't even have to touch you.

'Look,' Pepperidge said, and didn't finish it because Flood came through the doors just then and told Loman there was a call from one of the contacts in Cambodia and Loman went out to take it and from that minute the final action of the end-phase started running and we were pitched into it headlong.