Quiller's Run

5 Yasma

'Here for long?'

'I'm not sure yet.'

'Come and see us at the Commission. Always something going on, lots of parties.'

'How nice.' I gave him a nod and turned away, finding a gap in the crowd and using it.

I'd left Kityakara half an hour ago and he'd wanted to give me an escort to take me back to the Red Orchid, but I'd said no. On the face of it the mission they had to offer looked feasible, and at this stage I didn't want to be seen around any more with security men. In any case I wanted to stay on a bit here and check out the guests to see if I knew anyone. Pepperidge: As far as liaison goes, you'll have to pick a few people yourself.

I'd already noticed Mason, DI6, backed up into a corner with a glass of champagne; he'd been doing a little reconnaissance work from time to time, moving in to some Arabs in the thick of the crowd and standing with his back to them, tuning in. He hadn't picked up much, by the look of things. A stringer for the Telegraph was near the staircase and I would have gone over, because the man had done me a good turn a year or so ago in Hong Kong; but he was deep in chat with a stunning young Eurasian girl and I didn't want to spoil his fun. There wasn't, in any case, all that much chance of finding anyone at an embassy party who'd be any use to me in this kind of mission, if I took it on. I'd need people I could trust with my life.

I'd asked Kityakara, 'What decided you to call on London?'

'It was a joint decision.' The Prince had asked the other two men to leave him in private with Mr Jordan. 'Major-general Vasuratna,' he told me, when they'd gone, 'has run some very successful operations in the past, but those three agents are on his conscience. Last week one of his aides found him sitting at his desk with a gun to his head.' He leaned forward on the edge of the brocade chair, his slight body at an angle. 'I have no one else capable of undertaking a task so critical — and so dangerous. To attempt to get anywhere near Mariko Shoda is like walking through a minefield. I want you to understand that.'

I gave it some thought. 'Did you know I was coming here personally?'

'No. We simply asked for someone of the highest capability.'

'How did you contact London, sir?'

'I approached the Foreign Office.'

'Directly?'

'No, through your ambassador in Bangkok.'

'In a personal meeting?'

'Yes.'

'Was there anyone else present?'

'No one.'

'Did he contact DI6?'

'I'm afraid I have no idea. I was told he would find someone if he could.'

I got up and went to the window. The rain had almost stopped, and there was only the sound of dripping from the flooded gutters under the eaves outside. There were things I didn't like about this whole setup. I'd moved into the field across dead bodies before, though I'd always taken a lot of persuasion because they might have messed things up when they were alive – in this case the opposition had been alerted three times already. I was still prepared to go in, if I could find some kind of access, but it worried me that I'd been offered this mission by sheer chance, and by a burnt-out spook with a gutful of worms.

I didn't like it. I didn't like it to the extent that as I sat facing Prince Kityakara in the silence of the little room I could feel the hairs rising on the back of my hands and that sour, familiar chill along the nerves.

'Why did you contact London, sir, instead of Washington, considering the background you've given me?'

'Major-general Vasuratna is well-versed in the international intelligence field.' He left his chair and limped to join me at the window. 'He told me that the CIA tends to work as a team, often with paramilitary support. He believes, despite our lack of success so far, that it's still a case for a single agent going in alone, without attracting attention. You people have a certain reputation for that approach.' He used his inhaler. 'Of course, that might not be accurate, and in any case I'm not pressing you for a decision immediately. Give it your consideration, Mr Jordan, for a day or two, and then let me know.'

'All right.'

'At this stage I'll simply tell you that since you would be working for the Thai government on private service, we would expect you to name your own fee. And of course you would have unquestioned access to personnel and facilities in our security and intelligence services.'

I'd stayed another ten minutes to let him end the meeting with some diplomatic small-talk, then shook hands with him and left him standing there in the ornate little room with a courteous smile and his eyes still hidden by his tinted glasses.

'Thompson, isn't it?'

'What?'

'Bill Thompson?'

'No.'

'Oh. Sorry.'

He weaved away, a pink hand wiggling in apology. By this time people were starting to bump into each other, spilling their drinks.

On my way through the marbled entrance hall I checked for company and saw none: I'd told Kityakara I didn't want any and he'd understood. He was obviously 'Could you help me?'

The girl in the green silk dress, her eyes dark, angry.

I stopped. 'How?'

'Just see me into a taxi, would you?' She was looking behind her, without turning her head.

'Of course.'

She took my arm and we walked out between the two uniformed staff and down the steps. The street was running with irridescent water under the lamps, and a boy was sloshing through puddles. Our feet were soaked and as I opened the door of the taxi for her she slipped quickly inside and began tugging a bright green shoe off.

'You'll be all right now?' But she just pulled the door shut and I stood back from the storm drain as the taxi pulled away. A last glimpse of her pale face through the window.

'Please excuse – Mr Jordan?'

A chauffeur in navy-blue uniform with the Thai insignia.

'Yes?'

'I have a car here, sir. Please this way.'

I followed him along the streaming pavement and got into the limousine. The driver closed the door and went round to the front.

Shoes off, yes, a good idea. They felt. Good evening, Mr Jordan.'

She was in the shadows, half-lost in the opposite corner, small, Asian, her voice childlike. Now she sat forward at attention, legs together, hands clasped on her lap, giving me a little bow. 'My name is Yasma.'

Asian hospitality.

I couldn't see her in detail even now; there was just the impression of liquid eyes set in heavy kohl makeup, the glow of ivory skin and the scent of jasmine.

'I'm happy to meet you, Yasma.' I leaned forward to tell the driver to pull up, because I didn't like women being used as toys; then I let it go. 'Where would you like to have dinner?' She'd be interesting to talk to for a while: she'd be informative on the local scene; then I'd get her a cab.

'Wherever it would please you, Mr Jordan.'

'Is the Siam Garden still going?'

'Yes.'

I told the driver and sat back. 'How pretty you are, Yasma. Were you born in Thailand?"

'Thank you. Yes, in Bangkok.'

'I was there once.' Hunched over a loaded Husqvarna with a man's head in the sights, showing faintly in the aureole of the temple across the square.

'My family is there,' she said softly. 'One of my sisters is a dancer, with the Royal Thai Junior Ballet.'

'You must be very proud.' An exchange of the niceties, while the car ploughed through the flooded streets. How can I get close to Mariko Shoda, can you tell me that? Not really.

'Yes,' she was saying later, 'but tomorrow we shall have sunshine again, though it will be humid, of course.'

'Sticky.'

She gave a little laugh, covering her mouth. 'Sticky, yes!'

I leaned forward again. 'Driver, the Siam Garden's in Mosque Street.'

'Yes, sir, but the direct way is flooded tonight. Always problem with storm drains there.'

We swung left, going south.

'You live in England, Mr Jordan?'

'In London, yes.'

'I have seen picture-cards. I would very much like to visit London.'

'You'd feel at home – it rains like this most of the time.'

The streets were narrower here, and the car stopped for a cyclo blocking our way.

'You are here in Singapore for long time, Mr Jordan?'

'Just a few days. It's an interesting -'

I broke her wrist like a dry stick but the knife had come close, ripping into my jacket and shirt and cutting the flesh before I'd caught the glint of steel in the gloom. Both rear doors came open and I shifted to my left because I was right-handed and could bring the force of my hip and shoulder against the attack from that direction but a hand locked round my throat from behind and I used a four-finger eye-shot across my shoulder and connected and heard a squeal of pain. I couldn't see much detail but there was the figure of a boy or a woman silhouetted in the open doorway on the left side and I got purchase for my hands on the pile carpet and thrust upwards with my right leg, feeling resistance and then the release as the target fell away. Kaleidoscopic glimpses of the interior of the car flashed across my retinae – the face of the driver above the seat-squab and the play of light through the open door from a street lamp and the eyes of the woman Yasma, as bright as the blade that was rising again, this time in her left hand. The only sounds were the voices of women, two of them in pain and another spitting out a vicious tirade in what sounded like Khmer as I blocked the knife and curled my wrist and got a grip on Yasma's hand and turned it, forcing the point of the blade into her small shadowed face and feeling it meet bone and then go through to the hilt as something flashed above me and I twisted on the floor and rammed my body against the rear seat and felt a slash of pain burning into my ribcage from the side.

The driver was angled across the front seat-squab and lunging down at me and I used a heel-palm with a lot of force and drove his nose-bone upwards into the brain and then twisted again and thrust my body through the doorway on the left side, hitting shallow water and stone and lurching clear of the car and starting to run, but they blocked me, two of them, their fine-boned faces etched against the lamplight as they came for me in their black track-suits, their hands bright with steel and their breath hissing, the bitter-sweet scent of blood on the air and a man standing a little way off, shouting something in English, the shuffling of feet as people hurried away, the slam of a door in the distance.

My hands were wet with blood, theirs and my own, theirs because I knew I'd killed, my own because the pain in my ribs was flaring as the air got to the wound. I had time to see a knife driving upwards at my face and time to block the woman's arm and force a strong flattened half-fist into the throat, seeing her pretty mouth come open and the lamplight glistening for an instant on her bright curved tongue as her eyes opened very wide to stare into the face of death as she came down like a puppet with the strings cut.

The other woman had turned and was running and I staggered up, slipping and lurching forward against a soft wave of resistance like deep water, my eyes losing focus and finding it again, seeing the woman's shadow fluttering along the wall this side of the street-lamp as she moved through the pool of light and merged with the darkness beyond. I kept going, driving my legs against the rising tide of resistance, my ears filling slowly with the high single note of a violin string, kept on going because I wanted to know who she was, who they were, and if I could catch her I'd make her tell me, but it was no go because the rising wave and the endless singing of the string were bringing information to me, blood loss, information that faded from my brain as the dark wave leapt and brought me down.

'Phone for you,' Lily said.

'I'll come down.'

They don't have telephones in your room at the Red Orchid, nothing so fancy.

I picked up the receiver in the bar and said hello.

'What sort of condition are you in?'

I froze. Pepperidge.

In a moment I asked him, 'Horn did you know?'

Some people came into the lobby and Al went to meet them. I checked them through the archway: two middle-aged Europeans with slept-in clothes and Air France tags on their luggage.

I checked everyone now. Things had changed.

'I told you," Pepperidge said, 'I'd keep tabs on you from here. The thing is, are you -'

'What was your source?'

Paranoia, perhaps. So be it. They'd come close to wiping me out.

'The High Commission, of course.' He sounded pained.

'The High Commission doesn't know a thing about it. Singapore put out immediate smoke – there was nothing in the press and nothing on the air.'

Short silence, then, 'You're not thinking, I'm afraid.'

Perfectly right. The Thai Embassy and Singapore had got in touch very fast because of the dead driver's uniform, and there'd been a British national taken from the scene to the hospital so they'd automatically signalled the High Commission.

'The thing is,' I heard Pepperidge saying, 'what sort of condition are you in?'

Stink of antiseptics.

'I'll need a few days.'

You had some luck. Dr Robert Yeo, surgeon. You had some luck, you know.

Good or bad? Lost on him.

They reached the radial artery. It was a good thing you were found and put into an ambulance in time.

Otherwise she would have picked up the telephone when it rang and they would have told her: It has been done.

Shoda.

The worst thing was the self-anger. Thrown into a hospital, for Christ's sake, with half my blood left behind me in the gutter before I'd even accepted the mission. It was just because this wasn't a fully-urgent five-star Bureau operation right off the planning table with all the pieces in place: access, communications, liaison and a director in the field like Ferris. I'd have been on my toes if London had set it up, I'd have been locked in to the approach phase with my nerves already running at mission-pitch – no, that was just an excuse and that was how far gone I was, making excuses for the inexcusable.

Anger seething in my blood. Major-general Vasuratna: This organisation is extremely capable of defending itself. The first of our agents was dropped off the tailboard of a truck outside the gates of the presidential palace, full of bullets. The second was dumped outside police headquarters with signs of having been mercilessly tortured. We have not found the body of the third agent, but his head was delivered to my office in a cardboard box.

But this time there'd been some luck, or the fourth man would have stayed there with the rest of his blood pumping into the storm drain and the ambulance wouldn't have used its siren on the way to the hospital.

Shoda. An eligible antagonist, certainly, for someone Kityakara had called 'of the highest capability', for someone who might one day get back on his feet and find enough savvy to give him a single chance in hell of getting anywhere near her, anywhere near Shoda, rocking a bit, I could tell by the way the ceiling was tilting, rocking a bit, You must expect to feel a little weak for a while, I could see his point, yes.

Lean against the bar.

'A few days?'

'What?'

'A few days to recuperate,' Pepperidge said, 'or to make up your mind?'

'I've made up my mind, but I've also had a bit of surgery.'

'What did they do?'

'Sewed up an artery.'

'Then you'll need more than a few days.' He sounded worried.

'That's my problem.'

There was a short silence. I watched the two Europeans giving their bags to a boy and trudging after him to the stairs.

'You said you've made up your mind.' He sounded cautious. 'You mean to do it?'

'If they'll still take me on.'

'Why shouldn't they?'

'I haven't made a terribly good start.'

'From what I was told, you did rather well. Four dead on the field, that right?'

7 walked straight into a fucking trap, don't you understand?''

In a moment, calmly, 'Steady as you go.'

I took the warning. Even anger could blow those delicate stitches around that tube.

I gave it a few seconds, trying to centre. 'I need some information. All I know that means anything at the moment is my objective for the mission.' A thought occurred to me. 'Do you know what that is?'

Short silence. 'Not objective. Target, actually. Yes, I do.'

'Can you tell me anything about her?'

'Bit of a bitch, so they say.'

'I think she's got someone inside the Thai Embassy.'

I heard a grunt of amusement. 'She's got people inside every embassy in Southeast Asia, old boy.'

'This one's in the Thai secret service.' The man on the flight out, the one I'd had to get rid of. I knew now that on the night of the embassy party he hadn't looked embarrassed when he'd seen me again: he'd just wanted to avoid eye contact with a man he'd set up for the kill.

'Are you going to tell them?' Pepperidge asked.

'No. I'll leave him intact.' If I blew the man he'd only go underground and work from there while the opposition sent in someone else whom I couldn't identify.

'Look,' Pepperidge said hesitantly, 'I could get you someone out there to protect the rear. I mean, she's going to try again, and next time she'll want to make sure. I don't like -'

'No shields.' They could be dangerous unless they were first class material and I didn't imagine this burnt-out spook could find me anyone like that.

'I know someone who's very good.'

He was catching my thoughts. 'It's safer for me to work alone. But I can use some information.'

''What sort?'

'Any kind of close-focus analysis of the Thai secret service. I think I know who set me up, but it could've been someone else in their ranks.'

'Just takes one little mole, doesn't it? I'll work on it for you. Anything else?'

'Nothing I can't dig up here.' I'd be doing a massive research job in the field as soon as I could find the right people to work with.

'Fair enough, old boy. Now take care, won't you? Take a lot of care.'

An hour later I set up the night defense system I'd worked out since I'd got back from the hospital, blocking one of the narrow beds against the door with the other one jammed sideways between it and the chest of drawers, clear of the only exposed vector through the window and across the alley where anyone could use a rifle from the rooftop.

It was too early to go to ground. Normally I would do that, drop into the shadows and operate from there, from safety. Pepperidge was right: they'd try again and the next time they'd want to make certain, driven by their pride and their Oriental fanaticism. I had a rough idea of what Mariko Shoda would expect of anyone who failed her – I'd heard in the hospital that a woman in a black track-suit had been brought in soon afterwards, found with a knife buried in the heart and her fingers still locked round the hilt. They'd come for me again, yes, but I'd still have to operate above ground until I'd got the information I'd need to reach the target. Until then I'd have to move through the open, exposed.

I'd be as safe here at the Red Orchid as anywhere. I'd spent the whole day sniffing the place out like a fox in a badger's burrow, going from floor to floor and onto the roof and down the fire-escapes and into the basement, memorising distances, blind spots, alcoves, dead ends, doorways, until I could go through the building at a run and with five seconds' head start get clear and survive, if they came for me here.

It was midnight before I slept, lying on my left side because of the long knife-wound that had slashed across my back from the right shoulder to the spine, the heel of the right hand swollen from the thrust to the driver's face, the other wrist throbbing under the dressings where the walls of the artery were slowly knitting, the blood pumping rhythmically through it to sustain the life in me that was already running out if she had had her way, Shoda.

A last thought before sleep, trying to betray me: Kityakara knew what had happened, and he wouldn't now expect me to take on the mission, so why not accept that, and go home, and live?

Because this was home, lying curled like a fox in the dark, unnerved and bloodied but with cunning still left for the morrow.