Quiller's Run

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.