Quiller's Run

'Nothing by phone. The alarm sounded about midday, but Chu-Chu said it must have been a dog.'

'That thing's too low. I'll fix it when I get back.'

'Is this girl safe with a gun?'

'What's she doing?'

'She went to the stairs with it, when the alarm beeper sounded -'

'Oh, sure, yeah. She's trained.'

'All right. She's also using opium.'

'So what else is new?'

'Different viewpoints.'

'She doesn't have long, Jordan. She's been on coke for two years. Thing is to show her some kindness while she has the time left, okay? That's why I took her in.'

'Understood.'

I could smell cooking. Housekeeper, concubine, gun-handler, drug addict and soon to die. Chu-Chu, fourteen.

'Signing off,' I told Chen.

'Sure. Take care.'

The phone rang again in twenty minutes and I went for the note pad.

This is Katie. Do you know where Martin Jordan is? If he contacts you, let me know, mil you? I'm worried about him. Look after yourself too. Bye.

To avoid it seeming like a coincidence I didn't do anything for an hour, not because I didn't trust her but because this was a safe-house and I didn't want her involved: I didn't want her to get in too deep, where the waters were dangerous. Then I took the parrot cage off its hook and took it into the bathroom and shut the door and came back and phoned her.

'Martin?

'Yes.'

I heard her let out a breath. 'You sound all right.'

'I'm fine.'

'Where are you?' Then she said, 'Sorry. As long as you're all right.'

'Yes. How are you?'

Her fair hair swinging as her shoulders came forward; the fan turning slowly under the ceiling; cushions all over the floor; the taste of zabaglione.

'I'm all right too,' she said. 'And I've been working hard for you. Is it safe to talk?'

'Yes.'

'All right, well listen, darling, there's a man you ought to see if you possibly can, although I'm told it's difficult. But he could be terribly important to you. His name is Colonel Cho.'

I didn't say anything.

'Martin?'

'Listening.'

'I thought you'd gone.'

'I was thinking. The spelling is C-H-O?'

'Yes.'

'Is he in Singapore?'

'No. I don't exactly know where he is, but Johnny Chen does. So will you phone him, and talk about it?"

'Yes.'

'All right. Well that's – all. God, I wish I could see you, darling.'

'Soon.'

'Yes. Please.'

Later I shared the food that Chu-Chu put on the table, rubbing my stomach to tell her it was good, and pointing to things and naming them for her, as if she had time left to learn a new language. Then, when she lit another slug of opium, I found a couple of wooden slats from where the crates were stored, and got some string and made a rough cross, propping it against the wall while she watched me. I bent over the little tin ashtray and made a gesture of inhaling, then went and lay down with the cross above my head, doing it three or four times and pointing to Chu-Chu, knowing she'd seen enough of Western customs to know what a cross meant.

She got it at last, and just nodded, knowing that too; then her eyes opened wide and she pointed at me, saying something quickly, a question, and its meaning came to me – she was asking me if I meant that I were going to the under a wooden cross; and the atmosphere in the room, the vibrations, the malevolent scent of the opium and the eyes of this doomed child that had already seen too much of life brought a sudden tremor and tightened my scalp, and I picked up the cross and broke the string and threw the bloody thing into the corner.

18 Moon Drop

Dropping through the dark. 'He's half crazy,' Chen had said. 'Have you met him?'

We were talking about Colonel Cho.

Pepperidge: He could be very important. What we need to find is her exposed flank. I mean Shoda's. And Cho might tell us.

'I haven't met him,' Johnny Chen told me, 'no.' He'd got back late on Tuesday night. 'Nobody ever meets that guy. He's holed up in a burnt-out rebel radio station in the jungle in Laos and, like I say, he's half-crazy. There were two guys who tried to get near the place earlier this year, and the dogs got them. He has killer-dogs around.'

Let's have a snort!

Dropping through the dark.

Chen was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall and one thin leg drawn up, his arm hooked across his knee; he looked tired, drained, the fine lines in his face deepend by the light and shadow, his almond eyes strained, looking beyond their focus, seeing, I thought, his dead friend.

'So I'd forget it,' he said, and swung his head to watch Chu-Chu, a spark of light coming into his eyes now. She was kneeling in front of a garishly-costumed Xieng doll that he'd brought back for her; she seemed to be greeting it, formally, according to some kind of custom, giving it hardly perceptible bows, her hands – not much bigger than the doll's – placed together, steepled.

I didn't like disturbing the silence, their thoughts.

'It's necessary,' as quietly as I could, 'for me to see him.'

In a moment Chen swung his head in my direction. 'Then you're half-crazy too.'

'How was your trip?'

'My trip? Okay, I guess.' He seemed to be coming back to some kind of present. 'She look after you?'

'Yes, very well. She's an accomplished lady.'

'Cooks good. Thai Suki. I taught her that. She give you Thai Suki?

'Yes.' I didn't know what it was called.

He lit a black cigarette, squinting through the smoke. 'She likes you. Said you think you're going to die, is that right, made some kind of a crucifix?'

'I was just doing some mime for her. Trying to tell her she's going to die if she keeps on with that stuff.'

'She knows that.' He shrugged. 'We all know where death is, out here. It's all in the same place, in the poppy fields. Why's it so goddamned necessary for you to see this goon?'

'I've been told he might have some information I need.'

'You have any connection? Some kind of introduction?'

'No.'

He blew out a stream of smoke with a whistling sound. 'Jesus, have you ever seen the front end of a war-trained Doberman that never gets anything to eat?'

'There are ways of handling dogs.'

'Oh, sure. You shoot their ass off and the next thing you know is your own's gone up in smoke. Cho is real mean, but you don't seem to be getting the message.'

Dropping through the dark, the lines hissing.

'What else do you know about him, Johnny?'

'Not much.' He was watching the child again. 'You look cute, sweetheart. Cute.'

She looked up, knowing the word sweetheart. It wasn't quite a smile that came into her eyes, but a lessening of melancholy, the most, I knew now, that she'd ever be able to give him.

'He was chief of intelligence' – to me now – 'of an insurgent group affiliated with Shoda's organisation., He was clever, but he wanted to handle things his way, and she didn't like that. She had him arrested and slated for execution, but he got away with it somehow, with a head wound you'd never believe.'

A current of air drew the smoke beneath the dragon lamp and upwards through the shade, quickening as it reached the heat of the bulb, making me think of ectoplasm, of ghosts, hers, mine, his.

'Who's with him there?' I asked Chen in a moment.

'At the radio station? He's on his own. Been there a couple of years, maybe more, I doubt anyone really knows – he's become a kind of legend, I guess. But if you want cold facts, the cold facts are that he doesn't like anyone going near him, which is why, understandably, he's holed up in a remote place like that in the jungle, thirty or forty kilometres from the nearest village, which is a narcotics centre anyway, buried out of sight. I've made a few runs in there; otherwise I wouldn't have picked anything up on the guy. Ask me to guess, I'd say there's damn few people in the whole of Indo-China who know about him, just the villagers and fliers like me who go there.'