Quiller's Run

'You'll be all right,' Pepperidge was saying, 'at Chen's. I'll vouch for him personally. But you'll have to be careful from now on. Kishnar won't be called off.'

'Nothing's changed, except that I'm now clandestine.' Wouldn't be going to the Thai Embassy or the Red Orchid or anywhere else above ground, wouldn't be meeting anyone, my only exposure the need for transport, a plain van, a risk that had to be taken.

'Can I do anything for you?' Pepperidge asked.

'No. You can turn in now.'

'Pissing down, here.' He was trying to make light of the Veneker thing for my sake, but he'd be taking it hard: I knew a first-class man when I saw one and Veneker had measured up – bright, brief, reliable and concerned.

'How long had you known him?'

'Who?'

'Veneker.'

'Oh.' Couple of beats. 'Did a job with him once. He wouldn't have wanted to die in bed.' Another pause. 'Don't worry, old boy.'

'I'd give anything.'

'I understand.' He cleared his throat. 'You still haven't come across a Colonel Cho out there?'

'No. That's C-H-0?'

'Yes. I've been doing some work on him, but it's not easy at this distance. It'd be an idea for you to ask Johnny Chen. He might know about him. I'll talk to him myself, if you like.'

'He's not here.'

'When you see him, then. Cho could be very important.'

'All right.'

'What we need to find,' Pepperidge said, 'is her exposed flank. I mean Shoda's. And Cho might tell us.'

Katie had said much the same thing: I suppose what you need most is to know her Achilles' heel.

'It'd show me the way in,' I told him. 'And if I don't find it soon I think we've had it.'

There were two dangers but I didn't spell it out for him. Shoda's fury would now be intensified and she'd make my death an ambition – the very powerful were like that: any show of opposition came as a personal affront and they couldn't rest until it was destroyed. The second danger was that I was now in a rage of my own and ready to take uncalculated risks to get at her because I didn't like being stalked through the bloody streets and forced into a foxhole and I didn't like the way they'd wiped out Veneker, a man who'd saved my life with his own.

And there was the voodoo factor and I didn't know how long I could stand up to it because at the Red Orchid last night I'd felt a degree of vulnerability I'd never known before and it had worried me in the background of my mind – I'd almost accepted the foregone conclusion that Kishnar would make his kill, inevitably, and all I'd been doing was running around the place like a rat in a trap, working out the escape mechanisms I couldn't have hoped to trigger once he was inside the building. It had been unnerving and it was still on my mind, the sense of oncoming doom. 'Say again?' Pepperidge. 'If we don't find a way in, I think we've had it.'

'Any specific reason? I mean apart from Kishnar.'

'I just think I'm outnumbered. Outgunned.'

'I'm sure you do.' A different tone, sharper. 'And I'm sure you're not. Take any mission and there's a time when you can't see the light at the end of the tunnel. It gets dark in there – I've been down it a good few times. You need to rest up for a bit, that's all, restore the nerves. If it's any help, old boy, I'm working hard at this end and I'm in constant signals with people in London and the field.' The sharp tone had faded, taking on a hint of false comfort. But what else could the poor bastard do but try to rally the ferret he was running?'

'Yes,' I told him, 'that's a help. It's all I've got.'

'Jolly good show. Keep in touch.'

She pulled the gun out of the drawer and checked the safety catch with the movements of a trained marksman and I wondered whether she'd picked it up in the refugee camps or from Johnny Chen. She went to the door and down the open-slatted wooden steps and stopped on the landing halfway down and waited, watching the iron door in the side of the wharf.

The beeper had sounded a minute ago and she was quick to react but not flustered. I watched her from the top of the steps and the minutes went by and Chu-Chu turned and came up again and put the gun away and looked at me and made a figure on the top of the desk with her hand, three fingers and thumb down and a finger sticking out in front, an animal walking along.

'Dog?' I said.

She walked her hand close to the jade paperweight and lifted her thumb, dog, yes, peeing. The alarm was triggered by an infra-red ray and angled too low, or of course it could be Kishnar down there or any one of the surveillance team, but I'd have to watch thoughts like that because I'd taken infinite care to get here clean and there was no way they could find me.

They found you at the Red Orchid.

Because I'd been walking in and out of the place, that was why – I hadn't been clandestine.

'Dog,' I nodded to the girl, but she didn't repeat it.

She spent the morning cooking some food and washing the bare wooden floor while I rested on the divan between phone-calls, drifting into alpha and working a few things out. One of them worried me: I didn't know how long it would be before Shoda found out I was still alive. The Toyota had been totally burned out when I'd left the hotel an hour later, going over the wall at the other side where it was dark, though the surveillance team had broken up and moved away by then, assuming I was dead. Veneker might have been carrying papers but they could have been under a cover name; in any case they were now probably ash. The metal figures of the number plate would have been decipherable and the police would have run them through their computer and gone to the Hertz office. I'd used my cover name and address, and that would have sent them to the hotel. But A bitter smell had come into the air and I opened my eyes. Chu-Chu was sitting at the small rickety table by the lamp with the dragon shade; the ruby Chen had given her was on it, glowing in the light like a drop of blood. She was gazing at it, her eyes lost in its colour as she inhaled the tendril of smoke rising from the tin ashtray in front of her, where she'd lit a slug of opium.

I closed my eyes again. At the hotel, then, the police would have checked the register and Al would have said yes, a Martin Jordan was staying there, but he hadn't seen him since a few minutes before the explosion had sounded. He would have said this because the instant I'd realised what had happened I'd kept strictly out of sight. So I would be down as a suspected victim, but they'd also go on checking, trying to find out where the man named Veneker was, and why he'd registered and left a bag behind the desk and disappeared.

But had Veneker used his own name when he'd registered? Pepperidge might know. I didn't have enough data to give me a fix on the deadline – the time when Shoda would find out I was still alive. But it would be some days at least before they could identify Veneker's body through the dental records — if any existed in Singapore.

Gimme a kiss, honey.

Some days. Perhaps that was all I would need.

In the afternoon there were some phone-calls and I made notes for Chen. Three of them were from people who didn't leave their names, or use his.

We didn't make it. The strip was waterlogged after the rain and we put down in Chiang Mai. You better tell them aver there -you know? – we'll try again in a few days.

Two calls in Chinese, the Hokkein dialect, which I didn't understand. Then another American-accented Asian.

The price is right, but they want guarantees. Can we make them? Get back to me as soon as you can – Blue Zero.

In the evening I phoned Chen in Laos, using the number he'd given me. A woman answered in a tongue I didn't understand, but I kept on repeating his name and she got him for me.

'How's it going?'

'I've got some messages for you. Do you want them now?"

'Sure.'

I read from the notes. 'The rest I didn't understand. There were four.'

'Okay, What else?'