Quiller's Run

3 Ducks

'Perfectly true. Absolutely.'

Floderus grabbed the strap as the cab lurched past a bus. He'd asked me for a mobile rendezvous with maximum security and I'd picked him up in Carlton Street. Last night on the telephone he'd kept the conversation down to careful monosyllables; now he was more relaxed, though not much.

'I offered it to him because this is something we can't possibly touch ourselves, since we're government. So is the Bureau, of course, What on earth made you -'

'The Bureau can't touch it either?'

'Absolutely not. But what made you leave?' I went on looking out of the window. Floderus tugged a sleeve back, shooting cuff. 'Sorry. Not my business. Coming in with us?'

'Not bloody likely.'

A brief laugh. 'Things aren't that bad, you know. We leave the top level people more or less alone, and you'd be one of them, naturally, I personally run Chepping and Shahan, among others. They're pretty wild.'

The cab slowed as a troop of the Household Cavalry rode past, plumes bobbing, sabres bared, breastplates flashing in the pale sunshine. In a moment I asked, 'Have you seen him recently?'

'Who?'

'Pepperidge.'

'Not for a month or two. Why?' His horn-rimmed glasses caught the light as the cab swung into Piccadilly, and for a moment I couldn't see his eyes.

'He wants to give me the mission.'

Floderus watched me thoughtfully. 'You could do it, of course. It's rather' – head on one side – 'exotic. But why not come in with us and do something we could help you with? I'd look after you personally.'

'Nice of you.' Floderus was the assistant chief of his department, and notoriously choosy about the people he ran. 'But your operations don't go near enough to the brink.'

'We try to please,' he said drily.

'It's a different kind of field. I need' – I shrugged – 'you know what I need.'

'You'll get yourself killed, one day.'

'I don't want to the in bed.' I gave it a moment. 'Which foreign power is involved?'

He clasped his thin pale hands and stared down at them, the shadows of leaves in the early light washing over them as we neared the park. Then his head came up suddenly. 'Look, if you want to take this one on, you'll have to do it exclusively through Pepperidge. He's -'

'With your sanction?'

'Absolutely. It's there for anyone to pick up. Anyone of your capability. But we've got to keep right out of it. Our department. It's the kind of thing the UK daren't get involved in – or be seen to get involved in.'

'What makes it so sensitive?' I wanted to get as much out of him as he'd let me. He was the source.

He glanced round to make sure the dividing window was shut, then leaned closer. 'It's not only because there's an element of drug-running and the international armaments trade. Southeast Asia is terribly complicated politically, and what you would be doing, Quiller, would be making an attempt to remove – or render neutral – certain elements threatening the balance of power in that region, including the potential risk of a confrontation between Western and Soviet forces in Thailand. We -'

'An armed confrontation?'

'In these days,' he said bleakly, 'nothing is impossible, after the disastrous failure of the summit conference. This isn't just the cold war any more: it's the freeze.'

'Potent stuff. Where did this thing come from?'

'My department was approached by a foreign power in that region via the diplomatic bag. You would be working for that power, but the success of the mission would benefit the UK, and, of course, our ally the United States. Not to say world peace.' He leaned back.

'It doesn't sound like my kind of operation. It's too geopolitical.'

'The background is a geopolitical, yes, but that wouldn't concern you operationally. In fact it's very much your kind of thing – the very careful, clandestine infiltration of a major opposition network.' He tugged a sleeve back. 'But why don't you go and talk to Pepperidge again before you decide? I'm due at the Travellers' in ten minutes, and you'll want to be on your way.' He turned to the window to find out where we were, and slid the glass panel open. 'Driver, you can put me down anywhere here.' He turned back to me and said softly, 'We haven't made contact, as I'm sure you understand.'

'I've booked you out,' Pepperidge said, 'on Singapore Airlines Flight 297, change at Bombay, first class.' He threw another crust for the ducks. 'All expenses paid, though not by me. The hotel in Singapore isn't very posh, but there's a good reason. It's tucked away in one of the market streets, and you might want to make it your base.'

Crouching beside him, I held the paper bag while he dug for another crust. A light wind came across the lake, ruffling the surface; in the distance the flags above St James's Palace made patches of crimson and gold against the gunmetal clouds.

'Not that one, you silly little bugger, you'll choke yourself. Wait till it soaks a bit.'

'What about cover?' I asked him. 'Access, liaison, comunications?' I was instantly sorry, but couldn't take it back. This wasn't the Bureau sending me out. This was just the remnant of a once-talented shadow executive, shrugging off a mission he couldn't handle himself. 'Never mind -'

'I'm rather afraid,' he said quietly, 'you'll be pretty much on your own, old boy, this time.'

'Of course.'

Take a little getting used to.' A thin smile.

'Yes.' I'd got a dozen passports and visas and border-franked papers in the safe and I could work out my own access once I was in the field, if I decided to take this thing on at all.

'The cover I'd suggest,' Pepperidge was saying, 'would be either import-export or some kind of weapons specialist. You'd get a briefing on that, locally.' He tossed the last crust at a pretty emerald-winged mallard and crushed the empty bag into a ball, stuffing it into his pocket. 'As to access, they'll come to you, don't worry. It's all in there.' He'd given me a sealed oblong envelope when we'd met. 'As far as liaison goes, you'll have to pick a few people yourself, if you can find anyone you can trust.'

He stood upright, and I noted the stiffness in his legs. He was out of training, an old man, for God's sake, and not yet forty… 'I can't promise anything,' I told him.

'Of course you can't. Just go and see them, and listen to what they have to say. If you don't like it, you're not committed – I gave them no guarantee.' I caught a note of wistfulness. 'You've nothing to lose: this trip's on them. Enjoy yourself.'

I met Pepperidge again two days later, over a coffee in a Wimpey along the Edgware Road. As we came out on to the street I told him I'd drop him off on my way to the airport. 'Not to worry, old boy; I feel like a walk, do me good.' He stood with his hands buried in the pockets of his mac as it flapped against his legs; a spring wind was buffeting through the streets, reeking of diesel fumes. 'And listen, I' -his thin mouth tightened suddenly, then he made himself go on – 'I haven't had a drink since the day before yesterday, and that's how I'm going to go on, if you take this thing over. I just' – a slack hand emerged, making a throwaway gesture – 'just wanted you to know. And you'd better have this.' He offered a card. 'I'm renting a cottage in Cheltenham not far from the GCHQ mast. The pubs around there are full of interesting info, of course, and if I pick anything up that might help you I'll pass it on. That'll be my number. Not my name, you see, it's the owner's, but just make a note of the number. I'll put in an answering machine, all right? You can always leave a signal on it if I'm out sweeping for data in the pubs.' One of his wintry smiles. 'Tonic water and Angostura, that correct? God, not a festive prospect, I must say.'

A double-decker swung past, blotting out the sky, its exhaust drumming against a dress-shop window. 'I've got friends,' Pepperidge said, 'in Cheltenham, of course.' A tone of pride redeemed. 'If necessary I could possibly get a signal 2) you over the mast itself, through the British High Commission in Singapore.' He looked away for a moment, Then his yellow eyes came back to rest on mine, squinting against the wind. 'Not quite the service you're used to. Sorry.'

An hour and fourteen minutes later, at 17:51,1 got out of my cab at the Singapore Airlines departure point at Heathrow. Another one pulled in behind and I checked the single pass-eager as a matter of routine.

Flight 291 taxied to Runway 9 half an hour later and then got held up while an executive jet came in. We were cleared by the tower at 18:24 and got airborne seven minutes after the scheduled departure time. The evening sky was almost clear, with a scattering of cumulus along the southern horizon and the windsocks hanging limp.

Nine hours later in Bombay, waiting to change flights, I picked up a copy of the Times of Singapore and found a seat in the departure lounge. In Kuala Lumpur a top National Front leader had called for an end to unbalanced pro-Malay government policies and urged Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad to crack down on corruption. In Bangkok, Thailand's new military commander, General Chovalit, had ordered the army and its nationwide radio and television networks not to play politics in the coming general ejection. In Singapore, a government minister had accused police officers of being too strict, and suggested they should mix more freely with the public they served. Fights among teenagers in coffee-shops and at wayangs were becoming more violent, following the increasing practice of 'staring down' in order to provoke attack, which had yesterday led to a twelve-year-old boy's ear being severed by a knife.

There was nothing in the paper to do with drug-running or the armaments trade. After twenty minutes I left my seat and picked up a copy of Glitz at the gift shop and went aboard Flight 232 for Singapore at 08:36. I was almost the last on.

During the flight I re-read the instructions Pepperidge had given me, memorised their main points and went forward to the toilet, tearing the three sheets of feint-ruled paper into small pieces and flushing them in the pan. As I went back to my seat a stewardess was pulling the curtain closed between the first-class and coach sections after pushing a drinks cart through. I notched my seat back a little and relaxed, slipping from beta to alpha waves.

There were a couple of moles, of course, digging away in SIS. It could be that.

'Would you like some champagne?'

Almond eyes, heavily shadowed; an exquisite silk hanbok, ochre shot with emerald, pattern of white cranes, a few stitches gone at the shoulder seam.

I shook my head. 'Are we running on schedule?'

She glanced at her thin jade-faced watch. 'Ten minutes early. We should land in Singapore in about three hours from now, at 1 p.m. local time. Is there anything I can bring you, sir?'

'Nothing.' Patchouli on the air as she passed behind me.

It hadn't been Floderus who'd told me about the moles: everyone along the grapevine knew it and a lot of them couldn't sleep at night. They were having a swine of a time trying to find them, and until they found them they couldn't tell how much damage was being done. So it could be that. One of the moles had caught wind of the mission Floderus had been offered. Or Pepperidge had talked too loudly, in a pub or somewhere.

I wasn't totally surprised. Even at the clearance and briefing stage of any given mission there could be vibrations picked up and passed on for what it was worth, however tight the security. Last year they'd got on to me very fast indeed, moving in and having a go at me before I even left London, smashing my car against the Thames embankment and putting me into hospital. This time they'd picked me up almost as fast, but this was just low-key passive surveillance, one man with a black dress-bag for camouflage. I hadn't been looking for anyone; I'd just been checking the environment as a matter of routine, and the Asian with the bag – the one who'd got out of the cab behind mine at Heathrow – had turned away a couple of times in the departure lounge in Bombay, avoiding eye contact, and I'd followed up at once, heading for the men's toilet and fading before he got there. He'd panicked right away, checking the toilet and coming straight out again, not terribly professional.

At the moment he was somewhere back there in the coach section.

There was no actual problem. He wasn't strictly a tag: he wasn't trying to find out where I was going – you can't shadow someone and hope to get a seat on the same flight at the last minute if that's where he takes you. This man had just been told to make sure I got to Singapore without changing flights and finishing up somewhere else, where they'd never find me again. I couldn't shrug him off until we landed, and in any case I knew now that there'd be others, waiting at the baggage claim: they wouldn't leave it to one man to keep track of me through terrain as tricky as Singapore.

Action later.

Sticky heat struck the face as we went through the walkway, then there was the cool of the air-conditioning again. I behaved precisely on cue at the baggage claim, checking no one, taking my time, chatting up a nice little American girl and helping her pull her two streamlined cases off the carousel.

In the cab outside I told the driver to take me to the Marina Bay area, and when we were moving along Fullerton Road I leaned forward on the seat.

'What's your name?'

'Ahmad.' A big grin. 'How are you?'

I passed him a US $50 bill. 'Let me have your card. And head for Chinatown.'

'This money not enough. Hundred dollar fare.'

'Listen carefully, Ahmad. I'm going to leave my bags in your care. Drop them at your office and make sure they're kept safe. I'll pick them up there in an hour, and then you get another fifty.'

'A hundred. I can't -'

'Ahmad. Look at my eyes in the mirror. Do I look like someone you can bullshit?'

His eyes met mine, then he looked away. 'What place you want to go?'

'Keong Siak Street.'

'Okay.'

When we got there the other cab was still close behind us but I hit the door open and dropped, pitching between two fish stalls and ducking under a bead curtain, scattering birds near a grain merchant's cart, the wet noon heat against my skin and the smell of sandalwood on the air, sandalwood and lamp oil and fish and curry and incense, a voice yelling out in Malaysian as I dodged past a medicine man and under a flower stall, finding an alley and lurching among bicycles and cane-work and dustbins, coming out into New Bridge Road and stopping the first cab.

'Chong Street, off Boat Quay.' I slammed the door shut. 'Not this way – through Cross Street. When's it going to rain, for Christ's sake?'

'Maybe tonight, cool things off.'

'Jolly good show.'