Quiller's Run

She hesitated again, this time for longer.

I very much wish to talk to him. Please tell.

Click on the line.

'She rang off," I asked him, 'not you?'

'Right. She's protective.'

'D'you think I should phone her?'

'Yes. Unless she's got some kind of official status she can't have your number traced.'

There was the sound of shoes on the wet grass, then a woman's voice.

'I'm sorry, but it's nine o'clock.'

Curfew.

'Thank you,' Pepperidge told her.

The rectangle of lawn went dark before we reached the verandah; they'd switched off the main lights and now there were only pilot lamps going.

'Can we go along to your room?'

'Yes.'

'They don't allow visitors after curfew, but I'll fix that if necessary. The thing is, what Sayako said on the phone means quite a bit more, maybe, than you realise.' The corridors were quiet, and he brought his voice down. 'We've been hoping to find Shoda's Achilles' heel, and I think we've done that. And I think it can give us the mission.'

'It's the bug?'

'No. It's you.'

23 Obsession

I want his head. The smoke from Dr Israel's thin cheroot hung on the humid air, floating in the glow of the pilot lamp in soft grey skeins.

You have exactly twenty-four hours. I want his head, do you understand that?

Mine. My head.

'Tell me,' I asked Dr Israel, 'about obsession.'

He was quiet for a while. He'd had a busy day. There'd been two more suicide attempts during the evening and I'd seen three male nurses at a steady jog-trot along the north verandah twenty minutes ago, heading for the room where a woman was screaming.

• 'This isn't a rest home,' Pepperidge had told me earlier, 'it's in the front line. Try not to let it worry you.'

The place was quiet now, and Israel sat with his short legs crossed and his white jacket hanging open and the end of his little cigar glowing in the half-light. In front of us the expanse of lawn was dark.

'Obsession…" he said, and smiled. 'What can I tell you about it? Well, it's real. I mean' – he waved a thin, angular hand – 'people say their husband's got an obsession about golf, you know? Or they say their wife's got an obsession about her diet, something like that.' He shook his head. 'That is not obsession.'

Wanted to ask: what about heads? My head?

Didn't ask.

'It has an infinite number of presentations, you see. One can be obsessed about so many things, but the real obsessions are focused on abstracts. Hate. Revenge. Life. Death. Sex. Sickness. Health.' He shrugged. 'There was a man who was convinced he had cancer of the stomach, you see, and they gave him all the tests and they were negative. But he wasn't satisfied! He was sure he had cancer of the stomach. Why? Probably – we never found out – probably because his father had died of cancer of the stomach and this man had been unkind to his father so when the old man died the son felt so much remorse that he wanted to suffer the same fate, you see – not on a conscious level, of course, not at all.' Another weary smile. 'Not much of what we do is ever done on the conscious level. So* – another shrug – 'he walked into a telephone kiosk and called the hospital and pulled out a gun and shot himself in the stomach and told them to come and get him. They'd told him, you see, that he didn't need to undergo exploratory surgery, which he'd asked them for. So now he had to have surgery, and he knew they'd find the cancer.'

Soft shoes. 'Dr Israel?'

'Yes?'

'Is Mary all right?'

He didn't look round. 'Yes. Until she tries again. Don't let her try again."

Rustic of a skirt as the girl moved away.

'Did they find cancer?' I asked Israel.

'All they found was a bullet. That is obsession.'

'A killing disease.'

'Sometimes, yes. Often. A patient of mine was obsessed with his lack of attractiveness to women. He wasn't bad-looking and he was gentle with them and he was rich, yoy, isn't that attractive to women? But no, someone had said in his childhood that he was a little runt, something like that, it happens all the time – kids are cruel, brutal, to each other, sometimes. So this man spent all his money on screwing one woman after another to prove how attractive he was and finally he got AIDS and hung himself. That is obsession.'

The movement of a white coat in the gloom on the far side, a woman's soft laughter. Christ, how could anyone laugh in a place like this?

'It's something you can't stop,' I said.

'Yes.' He uncrossed his legs and crossed them the other way. 'It starts at ten miles an hour and gets to fifty and then to ninety and you can't stop it. You crash.'

Twenty-four hours. Her voice had gone onto the tape three hours ago. Twenty-one.

'But someone very powerful,' I said, 'someone clever, intelligent, authoritative, say, given an obsession, what you call the real thing – they can finally lose control, and crash?'

He blew out a curl of smoke. 'You have heard of Adolf Hitler?'

The smoke straightened into a long skein under the lamp.

Has Gunther been dealt with?

Not her actual voice: a translation, accented English.

'There was a man on the hit team,' I'd told Pepperidge, 'watching the Red Orchid, a European, Teutonic. He could have been the one who rigged the bomb. Gunther.'

Pepperidge had nodded, concentrating again, releasing the pause button.

Where is Kishnar? I want your report on him. Tell him I will give him twenty-four hours. 1 want that man's head.

The translator put emphasis on the last word.

'We have not found the body of the third agent, but his head was delivered to my office in a cardboard box.' Major-general Vasuratna, Thai Military Intelligence.

'Part of their culture,' Pepperidge told me, trying, I suppose, to make light of it.

'Once you're snuffed, you won't care where the bloody thing is.'

He switched off the recorder and ran the tape back. 'Bit poky, this room, isn't it?' Looking around, bed, chest of drawers, upright chairs, rush mat, lamp, small mirror and that was it. 'You want me to get it changed?'

'I shan't be spending any time in here.'

His yellow eyes brooded on me. 'So what I mean is, I think we've found her Achilles' heel, and it's you. Agree?'

'You mean she's obsessed?'

'Yes. That is exactly the word.'

'It's beginning to sound like it.'

This was why I'd got hold of Dr Israel later, to gen up a bit.

'As I told you,' Pepperidge said, 'I've been doing quite a lot of homework, some of it with Kityakara – personally, in view of a possible mole. He agreed that there was absolutely no need for Shoda to order the bodies of those agents sent back to the palace and the police headquarters and so on. She took it personally. He says it's because of her childhood experiences – she's intensely vulnerable to challenge.'

Also a clock, a tin clock by the bed, a loud tick, getting on my nerves. I tried to tune it out.

'She was absolutely incensed, you know, by your going into that temple to face her out.' Head tilted, 'why did you do that, exactly?'

'I thought it'd be useful to -' then I stopped because I'd caught what I was saying and we don't always do that; we trot out a convenient rationalisation and leave it at that, a stand-in for the truth we'd rather not talk about. I started again. '1 thought it'd be useful to try talking to General Dharmnoon, because he was the man Lafarge wrote to about the Slingshot, but that was just a reason I'd cooked up.'

After a bit I realised I hadn't finished, still didn't want to talk. Pepperidge was waiting patiently. 'I wanted to see Shoda,' I said at last.

Silence again.

'To "see" her.'

I started walking about, feeling trapped. 'I think it's becoming a bit obsessive on my side, too. Becoming personal. And I think it's because she scares the shit out of me, so I want to confront her, face the bitch.'