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I was lying flat among boulders when the Khmer transport came storming past, and as soon as its lights had died away I stumbled down to the jeep. It had rolled twice, and one wheel was still turning slowly in the moonlight. I took the flashlamp out of its bracket and found the last bottle of water lying among the rocks and picked it up and took it with me as I moved higher, away from the track.

The moon was down, and in the east a pale flush of light threw the length of a mountain ridge into silhouette. Below and to the west the valley was lost beneath a veil of mist. A bird called, piping thinly in the silence.

I hadn't slept. The Khmer transport that had gone storming past the place where I had ditched the jeep had driven as far as the major road and turned north towards Pouthisat; after a while it had returned and plunged into the valley, following the track to the camp. Within thirty minutes the lights of a dozen vehicles had come swinging east towards the major road, half of them turning north and the others south to take up the hunt. It was long after midnight when I saw them again, threading their way through the valley back to the camp.

I had lain down, then, using the half-empty plastic bottle for a head-rest, listening to the silence that had now come down front the hills to rest along the valley floor. But sleep was out of my reach. Bruises from unremembered blows were throbbing now; injuries I had not been aware of were bringing pain, demanding my attention. And there were thoughts running wild in my head, disallowing peace, baying like hounds at the kill.

Later I would have to deal with them.

When the flush of light in the east became strong enough to cast shadows I finished the last of the water and left my shelter in the rocks to climb into the eye of the sun towards the road.

13: DEBRIEFING

'And your wife?' I asked the man with no teeth.

He looked down. 'She dead,' he said in halting French.

So I didn't ask directly about his sons, his other daughters.

'I'm sorry. There's just you and Cham?' It was short for Chamnan.

I had followed her home through the streets this morning, walking slowly. She was perhaps fifteen, though she looked more, hunger and shock and grief having wasted her small sharp-boned face. She was watching me now from the cramped little kitchen, her crutch leaning against the wall. By her eyes I saw she wasn't sure she wanted to share her home with a round-eye and his odd manners. I'd followed her because I needed a safe-house, and if she had a father or a mother they wouldn't favour the Khmer Rouge, wouldn't be informers. We'd had to pause several times, Cham and I, on our way here, because this one had gone off not long ago, maybe near her school, and she was still trying to get used to the crutch — it was rubbing under her arm, and the rag she was using to cushion it kept shifting.

'Yes,' her father said — there was just himself and Cham here in the house. It was on stilts and made of mud and bamboo, and he'd told me there were two rooms to spare and I could take either one. His sons, I supposed, or his two other daughters wouldn't be needing them any more.

'I don't want,' I told him, 'to be talked about. Do you understand that?'

He looked surprised. All the round-eyes he'd seen hadn't minded in the least being talked about; they'd come into his country with their good new clothes and stout boots and loud voices and treated him and his neighbours rather like children. I thought I'd better spell it out for him.

'I don't want anyone in the Khmer Rouge to know where I am.'

He frowned, then nodded quickly, looking across at Chain and saying something in Khmer, his tone emphatic. 'She understands?' I asked him.

'Yes. We not talk about you. She can keep secrets. All my people know how to keep secrets.'

'Of course.' I offered him 2,000 riel per day for my board, and he was pleased, glancing quickly around the room as if he'd never realized its value.

I slept through the heat of the day on the bamboo bed in the room I'd chosen; there was no other furniture in it except for a chest of drawers made from packing cases still with their Oxfam labels on them. This had been another daughter's room; there were long black hairs still caught in the split ends of the bamboo behind the straw-filled pillow, and even though I'd been awake all night, sleep didn't come easily, or soon. In none of the missions I'd so far worked had I felt anything in particular about the opposition: they had simply represented the target, the objective. The Khmer Rouge was different, and when the first wave of sleep came over me it was borne on a dark, tugging undertow of rage.

On a patch of waste-ground near the railway station there was a bombed-out bus with Kanipong Chhnang still readable on the side, and I stood in the shadows watching it. The streetlamp on the corner was flickering the whole time as the power station struggled to cope with the load. Voices came from the cafe down the street, and a Mine Action van turned the corner and came past, its lights throwing the rubble on the waste-ground into sharp relief. Then Pringle arrived, dead on the minute, not looking around him as he skirted the building on foot and got into the bus, experienced enough to rely on me to have screened the area beforehand.

'So we've got something now,' he said when I'd finished debriefing, 'for London.'

'Oh really?'

He didn't answer for a moment, hearing the acid tone. The streetlamp flickered again and this time went out, and we could see nothing now through the filth-covered windows of the bus. That was all right: it worked both ways. It's always a strain when the local director and his executive are holed up at a rendezvous, and tonight I was a distinct risk to Pringle: I'd been seen at the Khmer Rouge camp yesterday and was recognizable, even though my two executioners manques were no longer a threat. I couldn't show myself at the Hotel Lafayette or invite Pringle to my safe-house either, and the bus was the best place I could find; it was in deep shadow and didn't interest anybody at night, though in the daytime it was a playground for children: there was a small rubber flip-flop in the gangway, and a broken toy gun — of course, we must train them young — on one of the ripped stained seats.

'You located the opposition's base,' Pringle said in a moment, 'and infiltrated it, bringing out valuable information as to personnel and equipment. In addition — ' he broke off as three shots sounded in the distance from two different guns, some kind of shoot-out, par for the course in exotic Pouthisat. 'In addition,' Pringle went on, 'you confronted a high-ranking officer of the Khmer Rouge and can recognize him again. I think Mr Flockhart would certainly wish me to signal him.'

An apple for the teacher — he sounded just like that bastard Loman. 'I found the camp,' I said, 'but I'd imagine quite a few people in this town know it's there, other than the Khmer Rouge. They know how to keep secrets in this place.'

'Possibly so,' Pringle's voice came from beside me — we were sitting in the pitch dark now — 'but despite their ability to keep secrets, we know the camp is there now, and that's rather more important.'

Had a point but I wasn't in the mood to admit it; he was so bloody reasonable, wouldn't give me a chance to spill my guts — some directors are like that, they don't realize the shadow needs to debrief what's on his mind as well as the information he's picked up.

'Then tell Flockhart,' I said, 'make his day. You'd also better tell him there are two more down.' I hadn't said anything in my debriefing about getting clear of the camp: it wasn't usable information; but we're always expected to report it if we put someone down.