Quiller's Run

Perhaps I shouldn't be wary of men in any case, but of women – women in black track-suits. She might use women exclusively in her death squads. But I glanced across the two men over there at short intervals. And others: the short Burmese standing with his back to the rail with the river behind him and his head turning in this direction every so often, and the two thick-necked Mongols on the far side of the' flower stalclass="underline" they weren't anything to do with it because they never spoke to the merchant; it was just good available cover.

The skin crept at the nape of the neck. Aftermath of the near-death experience. Discount. But don't discount entirely.

'Well, that was how I felt, you see, when he told me the same thing – Stephen. Only I didn't throw up. I just turned and walked across the street and nearly got killed by a taxi, and do you know' – she was watching me hard with her eyes narrowed to make sure I was listening – 'do you know the thought that flashed into my mind as the thing came hurtling so close to me that it tore my dress? I was hoping I was going to the because then he'd be tortured with guilt for the rest of his life.' She shrugged, and her thin shoulders came forward. 'So I suppose I must have loved him, to hate him that much.'

'How long ago was it?'

'Three months. Three months and two days.'

'And how d'you feel now?'

'Better for having got it off my chest for the thousandth time to a virtual stranger.' She puffed out a laugh. 'You're a patient man.'

'I'm glad I could help.'

'Can I have some more sake?'

I got her some from the stall. The two men in track-suits were leaving, not looking back. They could have been looking at Katie, fair-haired and slender.

When I sat down again she said, 'The reason why I was so terribly upset that night, you know, the night when you helped me at the Thai Embassy, was because I realised later that when I slammed the door on you like that I was leaving you to go to your death, or damned nearly. I would've been almost the last person in this world you'd have spoken to. It gave me the willies – I didn't sleep much afterwards.' She put her hand on mine for a moment. 'I'm so glad you're all right. Who are they, anyhow?'

'I don't know. No one I recognised.'

'So you don't know why they attacked you?'

'No.'

The Burmese was a plain-clothes man. I'd got his attitude down now, his movements. He was watching a group of Chinese at another table, not me.

'You must have some idea,' Katie said quietly. 'Was it to do with your Thai connection?'

She'd only seen me twice, but each time it had been at their embassy. 'Possibly.' It was time to see what she could give me, apart from the pain of a smashed marriage. 'You asked me just now who I was. I'm a weapons specialist.'

'I know. Representing Laker Foundry.'

'You checked with Immigration?'

'We certainly did, after what happened to you.'

She'd become quiet, attentive. Maybe this was her real self, intelligent, serious, now that she'd got the Stephen thing off her mind.

'So it could have been Shoda,' I said. Either she'd pick it up or she wouldn't.

Her eyes were suddenly intense and she straightened on her chair. 'Mariko Shoda?'

'Yes.'

'Why should she want to kill you?'

'Have I got your confidence?'

'You can take my word, for what it's worth.'

'How much is it worth?'

'It's priceless.' She wasn't smiling.

'All right. We've found a leak at the factory. One of our ultra-special weapons has been reported missing. In fact, twenty or thirty prototype models. We put out immediate feelers, and our friends in the Thai government said they'd seen this particular weapon being used on a target range in Laos.'

I waited. I'd given her enough to get a lot more back, if she wanted to talk.

'Whose target range? Which rebel group?'

'The Thais don't know, but they think it could be one of Shoda's.' I was using some of the briefing Pepperidge had given me, and some of what I'd heard from Kityakara, but from now on I'd have to feel my way.

She sipped her sake. 'Are you selling this weapon to the Thais?'

'We're negotiating terms, one of which is that we don't sell it to anyone else in Southeast Asia.' Whatever I said, Krtyakara would back it up if necessary: that had been agreed.

'If it's so special, Mariko Shoda would certainly want to get at it.' She toyed with her heavy gold chain. 'The people who attacked you were women, weren't they?'

'Except for the driver.'

'She uses women for her bodyguards, I know that.'

'What else do you know?'

'About Mariko Shoda?'

'Yes.'

'Not a great deal. But I might be able to find someone who does. I mean' – she levelled her blue-grey eyes at me with that characteristic stillness – 'you're going to need all the help you can get, aren't you? She won't just leave it at that.'

I was watching a short, compact woman now, not in a track-suit but a chongsam. She looked too athletic to be wearing silk, too butch. She'd glanced across me two or three times from fifty feet away, near the sushi bar. But it was just my nerves: if there were any kind of surveillance on me it'd be from behind.

'The kind of help I need,' I told Katie, 'is information.'

She turned her head to watch a Greek freighter moving past the docks on the river, her eyes narrowed in thought. 'What I know most about is the drug trade. It's part of my job to keep tabs on it for London – we're trying to help cut off the supplies. But look, if you think your special weapon – what's it called, or is it classified?'

'The Slingshot.'

Pepperidge had said it was already in the press.

'All right, if you think it's reached Laos illegally, what are you doing in Singapore?'

'They wanted to meet me here.'

'The Thais?'

'Yes.'

The woman in the chongsam was making distance-contact with someone else, someone I couldn't see, lifting her head slightly, her gaze oblique, oblique in this direction. In the language of the trade it could mean several things, but one of them was He's over there.

The Greek ship gave a blast and the sound brought sweat out on me.

•Are you all right, Martin?'

'Relatively.' Katie didn't miss much.

'You must still be a bit sore. You smell like an operating theatre.'

'Doesn't turn you on?'

'No. But everything else does.' Her thin shoulders came forward again as she folded her arms on the table, looking down for a moment, thinking, then raising her head to look at me. 'Aren't you absolutely scared out of your mind?'

'Fraction edgy.'

'God, I've never been so close to so much drama.'

I said quickly, 'I don't think you're in any danger, Katie. I'm the one they want.'

'I don't really think I care.' She was looking over my shoulder now. 'In my job, life is so bloody -'

I waited, but she left it, looking down again. 'You really ought not to have any more sake' I said.

She blew out a soft laugh. 'It's always my undoing at lunch time. But it never makes me say things I don't mean. Now look, if you want to know about the weapons trade out here you'll have to know about the drug scene too. They're sort of interlocked. The game's the same in South America and Turkey and everywhere else – drugs for money for guns. Only here, of course, it's on a massive scale. Do you want this now, or some other time?'

'When d'you have to be back?'

'This is my day off – I was just delivering a note to the embassy. So, to put the whole thing into a nutshell, the power of the drug traders is just too big for anyone to break them. We're talking about half a trillion US dollars in annual sales – I said trillion. And the alliances between the dealers and the drug-producing countries are equally unbreakable. The dealers – the big ones – have got more money than most of the governments in the world, and they've got their own shipping fleets, air transports and even their own armies. And the governments of the drug-producing countries can't be got at either. I can give you a whole file on this from my office, if you like – I mean Xeroxed, but I'm just trying to -'