Quiller Salamander

23: DEADLINE

'How's London?'

'Rather pleasant,' Flockhart said, 'or it was when I left. The twilights are drawing out.' He looked carefully round the room, the way a dog makes a couple of circles on strange ground before it will lie down.

The place was palatial by average Cambodian standards: four or five bamboo chairs and a round table, a couple of Chinese rugs, an ornate brass lamp hanging from the ceiling, a chart of the seven major chakras on the wall, but no window — this was the basement of the house, and we'd come down a flight of steps cut into the bare earth and supported with redwood boards. There was no fan, either, and the early-morning air was already sticky in here. But there were two telephones, a scrambler and a Grundig short-wave transceiver.

Pringle had followed us down and was standing just inside the door, hands behind his back in a posture deferential, I thought, to his master's presence. A short wispy-bearded Cambodian stood on the other side, in a dark blue sampong and sandals.

'This is our good host,' Flockhart told me, 'Sophan Sann.' The man came forward and shook hands, his eyes lively in the lamplight as he appraised me; it was an honour for him to meet anyone introduced by Mr Flockhart — this was my impression. But for a formal rendezvous like this I could have done without a stranger here, however good a host he was said to be.

Some bottles of soda on the table, a litre of Evian and a plate of quartered lemons; incense was burning somewhere, uncharacteristically, perhaps as a gesture of welcome to Sophan's guests. A salamander clung to the plaster near a bamboo grille set high on the wall, the only means of ventilation that I could see.

'How was the flight from Kuwait?' I asked Flockhart. I wanted him to know that until we were alone he'd get nothing from me but small talk.

'Too long,' he said and took one of the bamboo chairs. 'But then any flight's too long when time is of the essence, don't you agree?'

Talking about the deadline.

I sat down and Pringle followed, putting a thin worn briefcase on the table in front of him. We were here for the executive's debriefing to Control.

'I'm told,' Flockhart said, 'that you suffered a snake bite.'

'Yes.'

'A nasty experience, I can imagine.' He looked at me for the first time since we'd come down here, his eyes concerned. When I'd talked to him in the Cellar Steps, his eyes had been full of rage, barely concealed. I wondered what had happened to it. 'Are you still feeling any ill effects?' he asked me.

'I'm a hundred op.' A hundred per cent operational, which was what he really needed to know. If I had to go into anything difficult I could do it fast and successfully, given a clear field and not too much shooting.

'Splendid.' He brought out a black notebook and put it carefully onto the bamboo table. 'Splendid.'

'If we're going to do any business,' I said, 'I'd rather — '

'Sann,' Flockhart said straight away, looking up at the Cambodian, 'we've kept you long enough.'

Sophan gave a brief bow and looked down at me. 'It was a pleasure to meet you.' Absolutely no accent, possibly Oxford.

'The pleasure was all mine.'

His sandals flapped up the steps and we heard him close the door at the top. From habit I listened for it to open again quietly but it didn't. Call it paranoia, but when Control flies out from London without warning to debrief the executive in the field himself it means the mission has either started running very hot indeed or it's hit a wall, and I would have felt much easier debriefing somewhere with better security, say the top of a mountain.

'Don't worry,' Flockhart said gently. 'This was actually to have been your safe-house. Sophan Sann affords us total security here.'

'He's Bureau?'

'No. But I enjoy his unqualified loyalty. I once had the opportunity of saving his life.'

'Out here?'

'During what they call the holocaust — I was observing for the British Mission at the time. He was a young man then, of course, and so was I, and together we dug out this room as a concealed chamber to shelter whole families.'

The Cambodian connection. At our first meeting I'd asked Pringle what was really behind this mission — Is it something personal, with Flockhart? And Pringle had said, I don't know. Perhaps he simply wants to save Cambodia.

'But tell me,' Flockhart was saying, 'why didn't you accept this place as your safe-house?' To Pringle: 'I'm sure it was offered?'

'Of course, sir.'

Control's head swung back to me.

'I didn't trust you,' I said.

He nodded briefly. 'So Pringle informed me, after your first contact in Phnom Penh.'

'I didn't express my feelings.'

'But of course not, my dear fellow — he was simply aware of the undercurrents.'

I was warned by the 'dear fellow' bit: Pringle had been stroking me tenderly ever since the mission had started running, and now Control had come all the way out here to help him. But there is nothing your control can't ask of you in perfectly plain terms, however dangerous, even suicidal, knowing that you've got the right to refuse. When he chooses to steal up on you with quiet charm instead then you'd better make bloody sure you stay awake because once the trap springs shut you're done for.

Holmes, and I quote: Remember that one must handle Mr Flockhart with the tender care demanded by — shall we say — a tarantula.

'I still don't trust you,' I told him. I wasn't being offensive. If Salamander was running hot and we were going to try bringing it home in some kind of last-ditch operation I needed to know more than I did now. If it was classified, okay, but I didn't think so.

'I appreciate your honesty,' Flockhart said, didn't fake a hurt smile, no theatrics. 'It's going to be to our advantage, because events are moving apace and we need to understand each other. But tell me why I don't invite your confidence, if you will.' Had avoided the word 'trust', didn't like it.

'As I told Pringle at the airport, I'm out here on an operation that hasn't got official support or a signals board or any access to London through the normal channels. You're running this thing entirely on your own and I assume for your own purposes. How would you feel if you were the executive?'

'I would have felt like declining the mission in the first place.'

'I'd been out of the field too long, you know that. I'd have taken anything on, you knew that too.'

'And now you have regrets?'

'None whatsoever. I just want to know if we're on an official footing yet, with the Bureau informed and in charge.'

A beat, but he didn't take his eyes off me. 'And if I said no, the Bureau is neither informed nor in charge, would you withdraw from the mission?'

It threw me and I got up, took a turn round the room, needing time. Pringle coughed, couldn't quite take the tension. When I was ready I stood looking down at Flockhart.

'No.'

'Thank you.' It was said formally, carried weight. 'And I must confess myself unsurprised. According to my research, you don't take kindly to officialdom.'

'Look' — I sat down again, interested — 'I've never done this before, that's all. I've never worked for a rogue control, if you'll forgive the term — '

'I like it.'

A spark had come into his eyes and suddenly I knew why there'd been so much rage in them at the Cellar Steps. 'So the Bureau turned you down?'

He looked away, looked back. 'Yes.'

'Why?

'I was told that my ultimate goal would be impossible to achieve.'

Very interested now, and I leaned forward. 'And what is your ultimate goal?'

'To save Cambodia.'

'For personal reasons?'

Flockhart shifted in his chair, looking away again, and I think I regretted pressing him at this point, but I had to. For the first time I wasn't simply the shadow executive assigned to the next mission on the books under the official aegis of the Bureau, a role I'd played throughout the whole of my career. I was working for one man, and responsible to him alone.

'For personal reasons,' Flockhart said, 'I would like to save Cambodia, yes. But few civilized people, surely, would stand by and watch the massacre of another million souls in a second potential holocaust if they could prevent it.'

'But you couldn't persuade the Bureau.'

'That was hardly the argument I presented.'

'They're not the Salvation Army.'

'Quite so. The argument I offered was geopolitical, though admittedly rather contrived. I said that if the Khmer Rouge seized power again Pol Pot might embroil North Vietnam and North Korea and bring about a resurgence of communism in the region, to the obvious advantage of China.'

'Was that why the Bureau turned you down?'

'I was advised, as I say, that the goal of saving Cambodia for whatever reason would be impossible to achieve, now that the United Nations has pulled out.' He looked at me, tilting his head. 'So I made a direct approach to the prime minister, who was interested enough to contact the UN and the United States. I have since had meetings with the ambassadors to both.'

'Suggesting an air strike.'

'Of course. It's the only possible step, in military terms.' He leaned forward, his hands flat on the table as I'd seen them on his desk in London. Take it as a gesture of frankness or leave it. 'Provided, obviously, that we could locate the main forces of the Khmer Rouge with absolute certainty. And you have done that.'

'You've seen the footage?'

'Yes, the moment I got off the plane from the capital. It's completely convincing, of course. The prime minister had told me earlier that he'd accept my word alone, so I telephoned him immediately. Meanwhile the film itself is on its way to him, with copies to the Ministry of Defence, the United Nations and the Pentagon, time being critical.'

'They can't act that fast,' I said. 'They're bureaucrats.'

Flockhart looked down. He did it often, and I noted it. 'My only hope is that by the grace of God they will.' To Pringle: 'Let me see your debriefing notes, will you?'

Pringle unzipped his briefcase and Flockhart studied the three sheets, sometimes brushing back his wisps of greying hair, sometimes dropping a word or two that neither of us could understand, weren't, perhaps, expected to. For the first time it occurred to me that Flockhart was a man driven by inner fires, no longer enraged by the Bureau's indifference but transferring his rage to a galvanic energy; I also sensed that he was committing himself to something conceivably beyond even his powers to achieve, and that he knew it. I couldn't see it in his square, bland face, or in his pale eyes. I could simply detect, on the subtlest level, a smell of burning.

'I congratulate you,' he said at last, looking up at me, 'on having made a safe return from your ordeal in the jungle. Also on having brought back the film, which of course is now the key element in this enterprise.'

Stroking me. I didn't like that, didn't answer. I didn't like the word 'enterprise' either, we weren't bloody buccaneers; the errand of an intelligence agent is to gather intelligence.

'Should we rely on this rumour about Pol Pot, that he's ill?'

'I got it confirmed last night,' I said, 'when I questioned a KR rebel. I can guarantee he was telling the truth — as far as he knows it.'

'I see. And where might Pol Pot be sequestered, as an invalid?'

'I've no idea.'

'Probably Bangkok,' Pringle said, 'under medical supervision.'

'Then I wish him the least speedy of recoveries.' Flockhart's tone was hushed: perhaps he was over-correcting. I thought that if he ever found himself within touching distance of Pol Pot he would kill him with his bare hands, and not quickly. 'Pringle,' he said to me in a moment, 'has sketched a rough map of the area embracing the Khmer Rouge camp and the village, according to your description.' He spun the sheet of paper around for me. 'Does it look accurate?'

'As accurate as he could make it, from what I told him.'

'The village is approximately fifteen kilometres from the camp, is that correct?'

'It was the monk's estimate.'

Flockhart's finger traced its way across the sketch. 'The road would be more or less straight?'

'It'll be a bullock track, not really a road. But probably straight, yes — the area's just flat jungle, so it wouldn't have to go around any hills.'

'A track — but it's used by motorized vehicles?' He was glancing at Pringle's notes.

'According to the monk.'

'And frequently.'

'Yes.'

'In terms of acoustics, how close would you think one could take a motorized vehicle to the camp, with complete security?'

'In deep jungle like that I'd say a mile, coasting in neutral over the last hundred yards and depending on wind-direction and the type of vehicle used, the type of engine and exhaust system.'

Flockhart turned to Pringle. 'Do we have anybody here who could do that?'

'Bracken's available in Phnom Penh. I could fly him here in an hour, by daylight. Another three hours from here to the village' — glancing at me — 'which is the time it took you to get here, coming the other way. Is there any difference in elevation?'

'Not much. The track runs through valleys most of the time.'

Flockhart got out of his chair, I thought a little wearily. He wouldn't have slept much on the flight from London through Kuwait; this burning energy of his would have kept him restless. He began pacing, hands dug into his pockets, and on the wall the salamander trickled towards the grille.

'Do you think we should put a vehicle there, a mile or so from the camp, concealed in the jungle and manned round the clock?'

He wasn't looking at either of us so I waited for Pringle, who gestured with a hand, giving the question to me.

'On principle,' I said, 'yes.' Flockhart was going by the book: having located the opposition it's good practice to set up surveillance.

Control looked at Pringle: 'Bracket is what, a sleeper or an AIP?'

'Bracken, sir. Actually he's stand-by support.'

Flockhart looked down at him. 'Better still. Is he married?'

I liked him for that. Doing a peep single-handed on an encampment of twelve thousand armed men was a short-fuse assignment.

'No, sir.'

'He's experienced?'

'He led the support group for Cobra in Pakistan.'

'Indeed. You did well to have him available.'

'Thank you, sir.' Liked being stroked. But in fact he'd done well, yes, because he'd not only had to bring the man in but he'd had to keep him from getting assigned to the next official mission to hit the signals room.

'I suggest we send Bracken out there,' Flockhart told him, as soon as we're finished here. You have a radio available?'

'Yes, sir. We can receive on this one.'

'Give it to him.' To me, with a swing of his head — 'How are you off for sleep?'

Either it showed or he was simply assessing my resources, had something lined up for me.

'I need a few hours.'

'Get them.' He took another turn and came back and stood with his hands on the back of a chair. 'Then as soon as you can, I want you to locate General Kheng. There can be no hope of a decision from London, obviously, until we know for certain where he is; an air strike at his forces alone could well fail if he remains at large. The moment you have any information I can contact the prime minister direct on his hotline from here. Will you need any kind of back-up?'

'No.'

'Have you any questions?'

I looked at Pringle. 'Did you mount a peep on Slavsky?'

'Yes, with a contact in support.'

'I think that's it,' I told Flockhart.

'Very well.' He hesitated, looking at neither of us as he went on quietly, 'We should keep it in mind that if in fact General Kheng intends to launch a missile attack on the capital on the nineteenth, we have only until midnight to stop him.'