Quiller's Run

30 Mr Croder

'Where?' Loman asked them.

We were in the smoking-room off the main salon, reproduction antique brass telephone and plush armchairs and gilt ashtrays and a thin Chinese nude on the wall with exaggerated nipples.

'When?'

Loman looked very calm. One of the things I dislike least about him is that when a mission's in a slow phase he's like a fart in a collander and he can drive you stark raving mad but when it swings into momentum again he quietens down and starts running like a well-oiled dynamo. Flood had told him the signal was from our second unit in Cambodia.

'What time tomorrow?'

Pepperidge was hitched on a bar stool, his yellow eyes deceptively sleepy. Flood was standing under a lamp, plaster cherub holding the shade aloft. Flood behaved like a subordinate and called me sir but that was just because he was a bit younger and he probably found the presence of a top control from London intimidating. But I knew who he was now.

I'd asked Pepperidge a bit earlier, 'Is this man Flood my replacement?'

Pepperidge had looked away, looked back again. 'Yes, old boy. But he'll never get the job, of course.'

It didn't actually bother me. In fact there was a certain comfort in the knowledge that if I got things wrong in the next few hours and bought the Elysian fields thing at least I'd know they'd got someone standing by to take over.

'Wait a minute,' Loman said, and blocked the mouthpiece I and looked at Pepperidge and me and said briefly, 'They've traced the consignment. It's on its way to Prey Veng by air.'

'Where's that?' Pepperidge asked him.

'Across the Mekong from Phnom Penh.' He looked at me now, waiting. Half the component of the mission was in place and I was the second half and he wanted to know if I had any questions. I did. This was a breakthrough.

'Can they open the crates and switch the contents?'

'Can they what?'

'Permission to talk to them.' Strictly formal, right out of the book, because he was a control and the final decision-making was going to be his or Croder's but I'd got the whole thing in my head now, the end-phase, ready to run, and the timing was so critical that we'd have to work by the minute all the way down to zero and that was why I was being formal with Loman because I didn't want to get his back up and put everything in hazard, not now.

He hesitated, then passed me the phone.

'Executive.'

'Salutations.'

My opposite number.

'Listen, this is fully urgent. Can you switch the contents of those crates and let them go through on schedule?'

Short silence. I hadn't made their end-phase any easier.

'You mean shove some pig-iron in them, or something?'

'Yes, whatever you can find. We want them to arrive at their projected destination and ETA as if they'd never been touched. That possible?'

Another silence, then, 'Like fucking things up, don't you?'

Meant yes.

'Christ,' I said, 'I wouldn't mind working with you again.' He'd got us this end of the mission.

'That's not mutual,' he said, 'because you've gone and pissed on the chips, but I suppose that's life.' His tone changed. 'All right, you want everything left intact, shipping labels, manifest, routing, the whole thing. Yes?'

'Yes.'

'And once the crates are there, our end's in the bag and we're completed, that right?'

'Except for getting the Slingshots to the Thai army.'

'Oh yes, we shan't be leaving those things around for the kids to play with in the park, don't worry. Look, can I have confirmation from your control?'

'Hold on.' I turned to Loman. 'You heard what I've asked them to do and they say they can do it and I've worked out our end-phase and it'll give us the only chance we've got, so are you prepared to give me full discretion over this?'

He stood there staring at me with his hands behind him and his feet together and his head on the tilt and I watched him computerising the whole situation including what would happen to him in London if it turned out that he'd let me screw up the mission and drive it into the ground.

Pepperidge had taken a step closer and he was watching me too, his eyes blanked off and his mouth a tight line because he'd catch some of the flak if he let his executive talk his control into a last-ditch spectacular fiasco.

Then Loman made a curt gesture and I gave him the phone and he said, 'Control. I am placing the completion of your operation into the hands of the executive here.'

Gave me the phone back.

'Thank you, sir.'

More than I'd asked for, more than I could have expected, much more – he was giving me immediate responsibility for the whole show.

I said into the phone, 'What's the ETA for that consignment in Prey Veng?'

'21:14 today.'

'Where are you going to make the switch?'

'In Phnom Penh.'

'At the airport?'

'Yes, in a holding warehouse.'

'Clandestine?'

'We've bought two customs people.'

'Not a lot of risk, then.'

'Not a lot. I'd say we've got, you know, around ninety per cent in our favour.'

I whipped through the main essentials to see if I were missing anything, didn't think I was.

'How long is it going to take them to unload the consignment and check on the contents, open up a crate?'

'I can't say, sir. I mean, it's up to them. But it wouldn't take more than a half hour to get the stuff off the kite and then all they'll need is a crowbar.'

So I'd be working inside a time bracket of thirty minutes minimum. But then they'd go through all the crates before they contacted Shoda.

'How many crates are there?'

'Twenty.'

Think. How long would it take to open up twenty crates and go through the whole contents, which was what they'd do before they got on the radio and informed Shoda? An hour. Say an hour. Time bracket, then, of ninety minutes minus an estimated – I looked at Pepperidge – 'From here to the airport, how long?'

'Forty minutes, with the escort.'

Minus an estimated forty minutes and another forty-five minutes for the Shoda jet to start up and taxi and get to the grid. Bracket of five minutes. Five.

Better than zero and I was having to make estimates and I might have longer than that and we still had a chance even if it were shorter below zero. So take the risk, go for it.

'All right,' I said into the phone, 'set it up. Any questions?'

'I don't think so.'

'Then keep in signals.'

'Roger.'

I put the phone down and went into the little lav just off the smoking-room and slurped some handfuls of water into my mouth and splashed my face and towelled it and went back and through into the salon and told Loman and Pepperidge what I wanted to do.

'She kill my father.'

There was a moth circling the lamp. 'I'm sorry,' I said. 'Thank you.'

Thank me… Mother of God, if I hadn't gone there to the radio station she wouldn't have sent the bombers in.

Bitch!

'You know he the?'

'Yes, Sayako-san.'

Moth round the lamp bulb, bumping into it, a powdering of gold dust coming down.

'Kishnar,' she said. 'What happen?'

'We sent him to Shoda, in a coffin.'

I heard her catch her breath. 'You do such a thing?'

'Yes.'

'Will make her afraid.' Silence came in and I waited. Gold dust floating down, are you out of your bloody mind, have you got to go on hitting the bloody thing?

Couldn't stay away, I suppose. Don't take this all the way to the brink.

'I live only now,' the soft voice came, 'till she the.' Meant, for her to the.

'I understand.'

'She very strong. Very hard. But like glass, one day break easily. You make her break, I think, one day.'

'Perhaps.'

I'd been wondering why she'd phoned but now I knew. More than anything in the world she wanted Shoda's death, and she thought I might bring it about for her. She'd wanted to talk to the instrument of her heart's most bitter craving.

'Will be graceful,' she said. I think she meant that to kill Mariko Shoda would bring grace upon me.

'If it happens, Sayako-san, you will know.'

'Yes.' Another silence, but for the soft sounds of her crying. 'When she the, my father be at peace.'

I said something consoling, I don't quite remember what, and then there was a click on the line and it went dead and I suppose she'd just felt she couldn't talk any more.

I went back into the salon and we took up where we'd left off.

'I don't like your extemporising?

Loman.

'It's the only way.'

'But surely the risk is high.'

'

'Not so high as if we just wait around till they locate me and wipe me out.'

Pepperidge was perched on the edge of a chair and hadn't said anything for a long time. I don't think he liked it. Flood was standing near the stained-glass windows with his feet apart and his arms folded, listening hard but not saying anything either. Katie was manning the phone whenever it rang, coming back to sit apart from us, her face strained. I wished she didn't have to be here with us but it was up to Loman.

Loman hadn't answered so I said it again, trying to sell it to him. 'This is the only way.'

I'd told them what I wanted to do and how it would have to be handled technically and I'd told Flood to get me what I needed and he'd done that and all we had to do now was wait for our contacts to ring us when Shoda left the house in Saiboo Street for the airport, and that would be when she got the news from Prey Veng that the consignment had arrived there.

Loman still didn't answer. I think he was simply stonewalling so that I'd have to keep on pushing him, and then if I said something wrong he could pounce on it. That was all right; that was his job. So I went on pushing.

'I know two things. When she moves, I've got to move, or I'll lose her. And we've got to isolate the confrontation, to keep the public out of danger.'

Loman was still silent. He didn't like this, any more than Pepperidge. A bit earlier Pepperidge had said to me quietly, hand on my arm, 'You really are taking this all the way to the brink this time.' Told him there wasn't anywhere else left for me to go.

Then Loman spoke.

'Very well.' He was sitting in the wing-chair with his hands along its arms and his polished shoes together, staring down at them. 'But, of course, I have serious reservations.' He swung his small head up and stared at me instead of his shoes and I knew what was on his mind: he could be looking at someone who'd started dying.

'If you can't give me a decision,' I told him, 'very fast indeed, I'd say we've had it. The Slingshot's out of her hands now but she's still alive and she's the target. You can't hope to go on protecting me even with half the Singapore police force because I've got to move into the open for the end-phase whatever form it takes and they'll simply pick me off with a telescopic rifle if they can't get any closer.'

This situation hadn't happened before: the executive, at present safe and supported by his director in the field and his London control, had a limited life span, and during that span he'd got to complete the mission.

'We are working on assumptions,' Loman said. 'We assume that when Shoda is told that the consignment has been landed she'll leave the house in Saiboo Street for the airport and take off for Prey Veng, confident that you'll be taken care of in her absence by her hit teams.'

'It's logical,' I told him. 'We're not taking wild swipes.'

'I agree. But you've narrowed down the time element to as little as five minutes.'

'The time gap's important but it's not critical. If she gets the news that she's lost the Slingshot before I can break it to her, we've still got a chance.'

He didn't answer.

There was the rustling of paper and I saw Katie clearing away the debris from the sandwiches she'd brought in for us. Flood went across to help her. He looked as if he hadn't been listening to anything but, of course, he had. He needed to know what kind of mess I might be leaving him to straighten out.

'How do you rate your chances, Quiller?'

Loman was still staring at me with his pale glass eyes.

'Look, if I start thinking in terms of life-and-death percentages it's going to sabotage my confidence. The thing is this. We've still got a mission running and the only way I can finish it is to get close to Shoda and this is the last chance we've got.'

Waited again.

I hate waiting.

The air was still like steam in here because they'd let the whole place run down and there wasn't any air-conditioning but there was a chill creeping through me as if winter had come.

They 're right. You shouldn't take the risk.

Now don't you start.

End-phase nerves. Normal, ignore.

You do in fact know what your chances are.

Shuddup and fuck off.

Then Loman said, 'I think this is for Mr Croder to decide.'

'If it doesn't take all day to get him.'

'He is near the signals console at all times.' Loman got up and gave his shoes another scrutiny. 'Will you talk to him or shall I?'

I thought that was nice of him. A top control in the field from London doesn't normally leave it to the ferret to contact the C of C and take part in the decision-making.

'Let me phone him right away,' I told him, and the feeling I had when I made my way round the chairs and tables and into the smoking-room was split right down the middle between total assurance that I could pull off a five-star spectacular and a numbing certainty that this was the day when I was going to the brink for the last time, and right over.

I asked for C of C.

'Yes?'

'Red Lotus, executive.'

I told him what I'd got in mind and he asked me to repeat it and I did that.

He said no.

'Sir, let me put it this way. If I come unstuck, you're not going to lose the mission, just the executive. My replacement's fully briefed and ready to take over.'

'He can't.'

I pictured Croder, thin, his face cut out of flint with a battle-axe, his black eyes showing nothing but the reflection of the telephone in his articulated metal hand.

'But he's the replacement, sir.'

No names.

'Yes, but from the information I've been given, you are in these circumstances unreplaceable. Your personal influence over the opposition is a special case.'

Voice like a knife being sharpened.

'That's my original point. I think it's strong enough to bring her down. Look, this isn't just a last desperate throw. I've given it a tremendous lot of thought. And you know my record, sir.'

Waited.

The thing was, this was something new. If I'd said I wanted to infilitrate a KGB operation or blow a checkpoint or bring a top-level defector across a frontier he'd have let me. But there was an exotic, untried element to the end-phase of Red Lotus, and its name was voodoo.

'Tell your control I'd like to talk to him.'

So I got Loman in and left him at the phone and went back into the salon and stood there with my arms folded and the chill seeping along the nerves because if Croder finally said no I'd lose the day and those snivelling little clerks in the records room would take a pen and fill in the blank space at the end of the operations report, mission unaccomplished, and if Croder finally said yes I'd have to go out there and face Shoda, alone and with no backups, no shields, no support and no escape route, no chance of getting out alive except the one I was ready to take and God knew what it was worth.

I could hear Flood, over by the stained-glass windows, whistling between his teeth. Katie was somewhere behind me; I didn't know what she was doing, I just knew what she was thinking. Pepperidge was standing quite still with his hands in his pockets, head down for a time; then he took a couple of steps towards me and stood close and said softly, 'Whatever we go into, old boy, I'll give you full measure.'

'I know.'

He turned away and gave me room, left me space to move in if I wanted to. I could hear Loman out there on the phone and thought, Jesus Christ, I should've stayed with him and insisted on him selling Croder my plan. On the other hand Loman would try and do that anyway because he wanted this mission finished so that he could take a plane back to London, of course the executive didn't have a chance of pulling it off until I vent out there, bloody tin medal for his sparrow's chest, he's always – no, that's unfair, he does a good job, don't needle the poor little bastard.

Nerves, last chance nerves.

'Would you stop that?'

I was looking across at Flood, didn't really know I'd been going to say it, whistling between his teeth, got on my nerves.

'Sorry, sir.'

But of course he'd got a lot to think about too because if I came unstuck he could be pushed into this mission within a matter of hours.

'Can I-'

Katie, close to me, somewhere behind me, but I never heard what she'd been going to say. Could she what? Get me anything, a drink? Could she ask me something and if so what, at a time like this? I never heard it all, would never hear it all, because Loman came in just then and we turned and looked at him.

'We have Mr Croder's approval.'

That was at 15:14 hours with the mid-afternoon sunlight slanting through the stained-glass windows, and we began waiting.

I went through the whole thing in my mind God knows how many times, testing it for faults and unnecessary risks and over-sanguine assumptions, testing it for possible surprises and unpredictable situations, breaking up the overall picture into bits and pieces and changing them around and putting them together again.

Long afternoon, it was a very long afternoon, with Flood manning the phone again, taking periodic calls from our people in the streets, the bell ringing in my guts every time, jangling along the nerves because we were now on a collision course with the deadline and the deadline was 21:14 plus a minute, two minutes for them to radio Shoda with the news that the Slingshots had landed in Prey Veng.

Tea, we had some tea, it revives you, nothing like a good hot cuppa, so forth, even in this stinking heat.

Then at 18:09 when the sun's light began dying in the stained-glass windows we got the signal from the second unit to say they'd flown to Phnom Penh and switched the contents of the twenty crates for obsolete typewriters and at 20:46 they signalled again to tell us the freighter was airborne on schedule from Phnom Penh and at 21:14 we got the final signal telling us it had landed on schedule in Prey Veng and seven minutes later our contacts in Saiboo Street reported that Shoda was leaving the house in a limousine with two escorts.

End-phase running.