Quiller Salamander

22: TOYS

'Snake bites man,' Leonora called across the hospital ward, 'but that ain't big news around here.'

I suppose she'd seen a lot of these, could recognize them from a distance. She pulled a needle from the arm of the withered European lying on the bed and dropped it into a red-tagged bag and dropped the bag into a chipped enamel bin and came over to me and lifted my hand and looked at it.

'Now that,' she said, 'is for real! Kiss of death from a genuine hanuman, yet!' She was studying my face now. 'But I guess you didn't follow the instructions. How long ago?'

'I'm not really sure.'

'Lot of fever, yeah, hallucinations, Jeeze, you are one tough cookie! But you look like shit if you don't mind me puttin' it that way, so I'll get to you in a minute, honey, give you some magic potions, okay?'

'No drugs,' I said. 'Just a dressing, if you think it needs one.'

'Hey, mister, the patients don't call the shots around here, they just get the shots' — a big grin, pleased she'd thought of it — 'but maybe we can make a deal. Wanna visit with your girlfriend while you're here?'

I looked along the ward. 'Where is she?'

'Back there in Outpatients. Don't worry, she's fine, I just have to change her dressings. You go an' show her your trophy of the chase and I'll be right there, honey — and congratulations, any reasonable man would've been good an' dead by now.'

Gabrielle was photographing a child in rags, blood on her face, three years old, four, the flash freezing her for print, her eyes wide, accepting of whatever next would happen to her.

'How did you know I was here?' Gabrielle asked me.

'I just came in for a dressing.'

She looked at my hand, wanted to know how it had happened; I just said I'd been careless, trekking in the jungle. She looked thinner, I thought, even after such a short time, and there were shadows under her eyes.

'You're working too hard,' I said.

She cupped the child's head against her thigh as she looked at me. 'I have to catch up. I should have started sooner.'

'You're losing sleep,' I told her. And when she slept, her dreams would be full of the killing.

'I catch a few hours during the day.' We were both studying each other as if it had been a long time, or as if we weren't going to see each other again. 'Has Leonora looked at you yet?'

'Just for a minute.'

'What does she say?'

'I had some fever, that's all.'

Then the nurse came in and picked up the child. 'Where are the parents?'

'I don't know,' Gabrielle said. 'I found her wandering in the street, but I don't understand Vietnamese.'

'I'm going to give her to the night nurse to look after, then I'll be back real soon.'

When Leonora had gone I asked Gabrielle, 'Are you working tonight again?'

'Of course. Every night.'

'Can I go with you?'

'Why?'

'I need some information.'

Crickets were strident in the silence as we sat in the jeep, waiting. The full moon hung above the frieze of palms along the southern horizon; the air clung to the face like a web, humid after the rain; shadows were long.

We had been moving through the town for three hours, ever since midnight, stopping and starting and waiting and drawing blank, and now Gabrielle pulled the map out of the glove compartment of the jeep again and opened it, switching on the overhead lamp.

'We could try the new school just south of here, on the road out of the town, and then perhaps the temple on the road east to Krakor. I am not going to sleep until we find one.' She switched the lamp off and put the map away. 'Sometimes it is like this, and one must be patient. But it's very late now — would you like me to drop you off at your — wherever you're staying?'

I said no. When I told Flockhart about General Kheng tomorrow he'd want to know where he was: it could be crucial.

Gabrielle drove the jeep three or four blocks, passing the hotel where Slavsky was staying and turning south, rolling to a halt in the cover of a barn and cutting the engine. I could sense the tension rising in her again as she took her short-barrelled Remington from the rear seat and checked it. Whether or not I got the information I wanted, she would make the kill: that had been agreed on.

'We'll give it an hour,' she said softly. 'Yes?'

'Whatever you decide.'

She'd told me how she operated, and what she'd learned. 'They always arrive in some sort of vehicle, and switch off their lights when they near the area they've chosen, slowing down. That's why they like moonlit nights, unless there are street lamps not far away.'

I remembered what she'd also said, earlier, about her childhood: I knew I'd never want to do anything else but paint flowers, all my life long.

'Sometimes there are two of them, but they usually work alone, perhaps to conserve manpower and place more mines. It only takes one man, after all. He is always armed, of course, and takes care not to be seen or heard: there are police patrols, and sometimes military as well if a curfew is ordered. But that applies more to Phnom Penh.'

We left the jeep, walking together as far as the narrow street; then the waiting began, in the cover of bamboo, and I heard rats among the fallen leaves, disturbed by our arrival. Water was running somewhere, a cistern overflowing after the rain; its sound brought the illusion of peace to the night.

'It won't always be like this,' Gabrielle said softly. 'There won't always be killing.'

'No. Everything will change.' And come full circle, as it always did; the trick was to be somewhere else when it happened. 'You should go to Paris,' I said.

'When?'

'Tomorrow. Paris or anywhere. Get out of here.'

'You still think something will happen on the nineteenth?'

'I think it's very likely.'

Unless there was an air strike. That would be the last chance.

'I have to stay,' Gabrielle said.

'And take photographs?'

'Of course. It's my job, and whatever happens will have to be recorded. But it's more than that.'

I didn't answer, didn't want to think about it. If there were to be another million dead in the Killing Fields she would be one of them this time.

The rats rustled in the leaves of the bamboo.

'Will you be here,' Gabrielle asked, 'for a while?'

'In Cambodia?'

'Yes.'

'I work under instruction. I don't know where I'll be at any given time.'

There was some kind of vehicle on the move in the distance, beyond the airfield. We stood listening to it.

I was working under instruction, yes, but if I was ordered out of Cambodia before the nineteenth the reason would have to be fully urgent: I'd want to stay on to help Gabrielle, keep her from getting caught if the Khmer Rouge launched the second holocaust.

'It's going farther away,' she said. The vehicle.

'Yes.'

But the next one, minutes later, sounded less distant, and we stood listening again.

The moon was below the tops of the sugar palms now, throwing them into stark relief against a skein of cloud nearer the horizon. There was no other sound louder than the droning of the vehicle, still distant but nearing by degrees.

'Perhaps this one,' Gabrielle said quietly. I thought it might simply be a police patrol or a merchant bringing in goods for the market, but in a moment she hitched the Remington higher and said, 'Yes. This one.' By now she was experienced in this kind of work, would have acquired specific instincts.

Light flowed suddenly across the wall of a building as the vehicle turned in the distance, its sound loudening; then within seconds the light went out and the engine note decreased.

We had rehearsed things already, but for the sake of security Gabrielle said again, 'If there are two of them I will shoot one immediately and go for a kill. The second one I will drop without killing if I can, before he returns my fire. If I succeed, he's yours. Don't leave cover until you're sure there's only one of them still alive, because I might have to fire twice. If only one man gets out of the vehicle, he's yours until you signal me.'

'Understood.'

I left her and moved along the street, keeping to the cover of a dry-stone wall until I reached the school. There was an arched gateway and I went through into the playground, dropping out of sight from the road.

I could now identify the vehicle by its sound: I'd heard these things before. It was a Chinese-built jeep, bouncing over the potholes on stiff springs, the slack timing-chain sending out a distinctive clatter from the engine. It was still running blacked-out, and the only light in the street was from the moon.

I could have operated alone tonight, moving from one potential hot zone to another, but I knew only a few words of Cambodian and unless the target spoke French or English I would have drawn blank.

The jeep neared, moaning in low gear. I couldn't see it from where I was, had only its sound to go by.

Carbon monoxide drifted on the air; tyres crackled over stones; and now the canvas top of the jeep was visible, sliding beyond the dry-stone wall. Then it stopped, and the engine idled for a moment, was switched off.

There were no voices.

Smell of tobacco smoke.

Then movement, and I went on waiting. The ring of a spade as he unstrapped it from the rear of the jeep: I could see the top of his head. Only one man, then.

If only one man gets out of the vehicle, he's yours until you signal me.

The gate swung open.

He was carrying the spade and a small wooden crate. He was carrying the crate carefully.

I expected him to start digging a hollow below the archway, but perhaps people were used to that now and either put the main entrances to schools out of bounds or had them swept every morning by one of the mine-detection services, because the man was coming into the playground without stopping, and when he was four or five feet away from me I moved and closed the distance and took him down with a knee sweep and a sword-hand to the carotid artery, a medium strike to stun while I looked after the crate. The spade clattered onto the ground and I left it there and checked his belt for a weapon, found none: these people were more comfortable with submachine guns and assault rifles, and he'd left his in the jeep, hadn't expected to find anyone here.

He was young, strong, snapped out of the syncope within seconds.

'Parles-toi francais?'

He didn't answer, didn't want to stand here talking, swung a routine kindergarten-level fist and I blocked it and paralyzed his arm with a centre-knuckle strike and followed with a pulled hammer-blow to the temple to get his attention. 'Parles-toi francais?' I asked him again.

Some Cambodian came out, sounded ungracious.

'Do you speak English?'

Worked on his arm, the median nerve.

More Cambodian, so I whistled twice and Gabrielle came trotting across the road with her gun and began talking to him instead.

'He's just cursing,' she said.

'Then make him afraid.'

She raised the Remington and held the muzzle against the middle of the man's forehead and spoke to him again, getting something out of him this time.

'He's just asking me not to shoot him.'

'Then start a count-down. What does he know about Pol Pot?'

I waited. The man stank worse than the pig in the mine-detection place — garlic, tobacco smoke and now sweat.

'He knows nothing,' Gabrielle told me.

At least it was an answer, of sorts. 'How far did you come down to?'

'Six.'

That was quite good: he was breaking early.

'Keep going. I want to know if Pol Pot is in good health, and also where he is now.' The intelligence the monk had passed on to me could have been simply rumour.

The barrel of the gun ran silver in the monlight as she shifted it a little as a reminder, prodding the man's brow, talking to him again, her tone quiet, professional: she understood that a raised voice shows lack of confidence, would have lessened the authority of the gun.

The man was starting to shake as Gabrielle brought the count lower, perhaps as far as three. A snuffling sound was coming from him: with the muzzle of the gun against his head, against his brains, he'd started thinking of his mother. Then as she went on counting he broke into sudden, jerky speech.

'Pol Pot is a sick man,' Gabrielle said.

'Is he still in command of the Khmer Rouge?'

'No.'

'Who's in command?'

'He doesn't know.'

'Tell him he knows, and you're going to shoot on a count of two.'

She prodded with the gun.

'General Kheng is in command.'

'Where is he now?'

'He doesn't know.'

'On a count of one.'

The man brought his hands together in prayer, shaking badly again, speech of a kind coming out of him.

'He still says he doesn't know. He's begging for mercy.'

I looked at Gabrielle in the starlight, saw the sheen of sweat on her face, her narrowed eyes.

'Give him his last chance,' I told her, 'on a count of one.' A snuffling sound again, some words in it, his hands together. 'He swears in the name of the Lord Buddha he doesn't know where General Kheng is now.'

'Ask him what's going to happen on the nineteenth.' It took time, and she had to repeat the question. 'There will be bloodshed in Phnom Penh.'

'A palace coup, or what?'

She prodded with the gun. 'The revolution.'

'Led by General Kheng?'

'Yes.'

'How will it be launched?'

He didn't know, stood shaking, his eyes squeezed shut. Gabrielle asked him again, and again he said he didn't know. I thought this was possible: security on the subject of the nineteenth would be tight, and this man had no rank, was simply a saboteur, hiding his little toys for the children to find in the sacred name of the cause.

'Try once more.'

His voice became light, like a woman's, a soft scream, desperate for us to understand that he couldn't answer the question.

'That's all,' I told Gabrielle.

'No more questions?'

'No.'

She spoke to him tersely, made him turn round, goaded him through the archway with the gun at his spine, steered him to his jeep, made him find his flashlight. I followed them, bringing the little crate.

There were four mines, crude, flat, pressure-sensitive models, sitting there like toads. Gabrielle spoke to the man, pointing to them, asking him something, her voice low, expressionless, a monotone.

I stood off a little. He was hers now; this had been agreed. She got some rope from the back of the jeep and lashed him to the steering-wheel, dipped a rag into the fuel tank, came up with nothing, tied another one to it and pulled it out streaming.

She looked at me in the bleak pale radiance of the flashlight.

'Will you wait for me over there?'

I walked across the road to our Rambler and got in, starting the engine. After a little while there was a single shot, too good for him, I thought, for the toy-hider, but I suppose her manners were better than mine. As she came walking slowly across the road, tripping once on a stone, the flames took hold inside the jeep, but she didn't turn round, just kept on coming. The silhouette of her slight figure against the blaze was slack with despair, and she walked with her head down as if she didn't want to know where she was going, or where she'd been. The explosions began as I turned the Rambler, and the glare fanned against the side of the barn as we drove clear with Gabrielle curled up on the seat beside me, her eyes closed and her face wet, like a child who had cried herself to sleep.