Quiller's Run

'Not really.'

'Their genius,' he said, 'is in the way they know their shadow executives.' He talked quietly, and I could hear Loman's voice out there on a phone, caught the name Croder. 'You've been working under their direction,' Pepperidge told me, 'since the day you came out here. You know that now. But what I like,' he put a hand on my arm, 'is the way they just gave you the clues and let you run. It's how you work best, and they're well aware of that. Take the Kishnar situation.'

I didn't want to think about the Kishnar situation because the depression was still haunting the psyche but the left brain was catching onto something and I took a look at it and said, 'Jesus Christ. Was that briefing?'

Faint smile. 'Yes, old boy.'

All right. First class. First class direction in the field and not from Pepperidge, not from Loman, but from the Chief of Control, London, Croder, because only he had the authority to push the executive for the mission right to the brink and leave him there.

Unless you can think of a quicker way.

Pepperidge, at the clinic. And I'd said I could. And when he'd left there last night he'd known almost for certain that I was going to do the only thing that could be done at this phase of the mission because whatever new direction they found for me I wouldn't be able to take it until Kishnar was off my back and out of the way. It had been the first action conceivable and they'd known I'd see that and they'd left me there at the brink to make up my mind and that was why Pepperidge had set up a new safe-house – this place – and had it ready for me and got Loman here waiting to put the whole thing on the line.

'First class,' I said.

Pepperidge gave a brief nod. 'I rather hoped you'd say something like that. Because it was.'

Something else they'd done, but I didn't want to think about that.

'Look,' I said, 'I need some sleep now. Is there any kind of bed in this place?'

'I'll show you.'

He shepherded me through the rooms, solicitous, avuncular, which was what a good local director ought to be, hit a shoulder on a doorway going through, not him, I mean I did, hand on my arm.

'Been a busy day,' he said. 'There's a registered nurse here, by the way, if you need any attention.'

'She pretty?' Fell on the bed and slept.

'No. But you should leave that to us.'

Damn him.

She went on soaking the blood away.

I'd simply asked him if there were any news of Katie.

'How are you feeling, old boy?'

Pepperidge, on the couch, looking taut, confident. He'd got a ferret to run and felt ready.

'Operational.'

'I'm so glad.'

Understandable: Loman was going to handle the main briefing in very close liaison with Croder in London but when the final action phase began it'd be Pepperidge who'd have to judge whether I was fit enough to go in.

I was. I'd slept well, nearly seven hours, woke once to find Kishnar bending over me – shadow on the wall, that was all – then it was morning and Flood brought me some coffee, life beginning again, I'd come close to losing it.

'I want to assure you,' Loman said, 'that there'll be no repercussions regarding what occurred last night. Briefly, neither the UK nor Singapore want to see the stability of Southeast Asia compromised and they're more than willing to protect the clinic from bad publicity and order the police to hold off. The media never even caught a whiff.'

The rest of the dressing came away and she dropped it into the bowl. Same nurse as last night and obviously Bureau or she wouldn't be here.

'I've arranged to have the body of Manif Kishnar delivered in a plain coffin to the house in Saiboo Street. I deemed this not only courteous, since he was in effect an adversary defeated in the field, but also a gesture of the greatest possible provocation to Shoda personally, since she apparently came here to claim your head, not his.'

Yes, she'd get the point.

Bitch!

He could have killed me.

'Hurt?'

'What?'

'Sting?'

'No.'

Bloody iodine, felt like razor blades.

She began on the dressing.

'You should also know,' Loman said, 'that early yesterday morning Shoda had the radio station in Laos dive-bombed.'

I had to give it a beat.

'Is he dead?'

'Yes.'

Cho.

Os, Sempai, His head lowered over the chipped, grimed shelf of the radio console, a tear falling from his riven cheek to lie there glistening.

He is my father. Sayako, her soft; hesitant voice over the phone at the clinic.

I let out a breath.

'Hurt now?'

'No.'

Yes. Hurt now.

In a moment: 'I thought General Cho wasn't a threat to Shoda any more?'

'She didn't think so, until you went to see him. She heard about that.'

'How?'

'From the grapevine in the village there.'

'You got this from Johnny Chen?'

'Yes.'

'If she knew I was there, why didn't she put a hit on me?'

'She tried, but it was too late: you'd flown out.'

I'd flown out, leaving Cho with his last few hours to live. First Veneker, now Cho.

Sometimes I hate this trade.

'The important thing,' Loman said, 'is that this is yet another indication of the effect you have on Shoda, the increasing influence you're developing over her.' He stopped pacing and looked down at me, hands tucked behind him, his eyes intent. 'Let me tell you something, Quiller. You frighten her.'

I thought about that.

'Aren't you putting it a bit strong?'

'We don't think so.' A glance towards the couch. 'Pepperidge has given me a very clear picture of the relationship between you and Shoda – which is the fundamental axis of the mission, you understand that? – and I believe it to be absolutely true: you've got her frightened.'

Pepperidge had put it in a different way, debriefing me at the clinic. I think we've found her Achilles' heel, and it's you.

Loman began pacing again, motes of dust rising from the plum-red Chinese carpet as his polished shoes turned in a beam of morning light. 'Let me offer you a picture of our opponent. She wields, behind the scenes in Southeast Asia where much of the economy and political infrastructure is centred on the drug trade, a great deal of power. She is also a psychotic. Because of her childhood experiences she is on the one hand consumed by hatred of men to the point of pathological obsession and on the other hand fearful of them to the same degree. This knife-edge aspect of her personality engenders a strong element of superstition, far beyond her orthodox Buddhist faith.' He stopped once and looked down at me. 'And if this sounds like a psychiatric diatribe, it is. I am giving you a distillation of the expert opinions of three London psychiatrists of the highest reputation, whom Mr Croder consulted after we'd received a composite picture of Mariko Shoda's behavioural record over the past five years.'

Done their homework. Dr Israel had said at the clinic: 'One can be obsessed about so many things, but the real obsessions are focused on abstracts – hate, revenge, life, death, sex, sickness, health.'

'So our opponent,' Loman said, on the move again, 'is a classic type in world history, a powerful, dangerous megalomaniac embarked on a sacred crusade. Think of her as an Idi Amin, a Gaddafi.'

Loman stopped again, standing close, his feet neatly together. 'That is the situation, then, in terms of your personal mission and its personal target: Mariko Shoda.' He didn't glance across at Pepperidge, but I caught a feeling he was doing that. Pepperidge was looking carefully at nothing at all. 'Since you elected to undertake this mission otherwise than under the aegis of the Bureau, I was unable to inform you of the various aspects involved. You should now be told that Mr Croder has a second unit in the field, under the local direction of one of our most talented people.'