Quiller Salamander

I gave it some thought for a moment and Pringle left me to it, shifting slightly away in a symbolic gesture of withdrawal. Through the filthy window I watched a dog crossing the waste-ground, dragging something heavy, some kind of food it had seized from somewhere, perhaps, and wanted to hide, its ribs showing and its legs buckling sometimes, forcing it to rest, its jaws still locked on the trophy, the means of maintaining life for a few more days. I couldn't see exactly what it was but it was angled like a human foot, deep crimson, almost black in the acid light of the streetlamp as the dog got up and went on again, dragging its spoils through the rubble.

'Is the prime minister,' I asked Pringle when I was ready, 'being kept informed?' The Bureau is directly and exclusively responsible to the PM in all its activities. Hence its ability not, virtually, to exist.

'I'm not sure,' Pringle said.

'You mean you don't know? Or you think so, but you're not sure?' It was important. If the PM was already aware of Salamander then we were operating close to the 'highest military authority' Pringle had mentioned.

'Frankly,' he said, 'I don't know. But let me put it this way: the moment you achieve any kind of breakthrough, the prime minister will indeed be informed that we have a mission running, and told the nature of the objective.'

'And will you let me know when that happens?'

'You have my word.'

'I want assurance,' I told him, 'that I can eventually get support on an effective scale if I need it, since I'm taking on an army.'

'And with the prime minister in the picture, that would of course be guaranteed. I understand.'

He was very understanding, was our Mr Pringle, and he wore kid gloves and was stroking me with them. Why in God's name couldn't Flockhart have given me Ferris? Ferris or Pepperidge or even that bastard Loman, who at least has the grace to return my disregard. I don't like people who help me gently up the steps to the guillotine.

Pringle uncrossed his legs. 'Questions?'

'No. But you can get a couple of things for me. A Mine Action van and some field-glasses, 10 x 50s if possible, nothing less than 7.' He had a connection with Mine Action: they'd flown me out here from Phnom Penh.

'When do you need them by?'

'First light tomorrow.' I got off the seat and started down the aisle, and Pringle followed.

'May I ask what you have in mind?'

'I want to get close to Colonel Choen again — at the moment he's the only lead I've got. But this one's a long shot.' Pringle was waiting for me to tell him more, but I wasn't in the mood, didn't trust him yet.

As we dropped from the twisted step of the bus and kept to the shadow along the wall I heard him saying, 'Gabrielle Bouchard is in Pouthisat, did you know?'

I told him I didn't, and kept on walking. 'She's at the French Catholic Mission.'

'How is she?'

'Pretty well.'

I stopped just before the shadow of the wall came to an end.

'We break off here.'

'All right. So when do I expect a signal?'

'God knows,' I told him. 'As soon as I've got anything for you, that's all I can say.' Then I gave him the Church of Christ pamphlet the Caucasian woman had slipped through the open window of the Mazda. 'Get it to London for me. Wherever it can do the most good.'

Pringle looked at it briefly in the poor light. 'Oh, yes, we've all seen these. Unfortunately, it takes a political dissident's arrest to outrage the human rights groups. Driving children into brothels by the thousand doesn't worry them. But — ' he shrugged, putting the pamphlet away '- I'll see it reaches London, of course.' He melted into the night.

I would pass close to the French Catholic Mission on my way back to the safe-house, so I made a detour by a couple of turnings and found the place and knocked at the door and asked if Gabrielle was there, but the nun said no, she'd been shot in the street half an hour ago.

14: SNAKESKIN

'It could have been worse,' the black American nurse said. 'The bullet passed within a couple of inches of the liver, and this place ain't Bellevue, honey, there would have been nothing we could've done. C'mon in, this is what we call the intensive care unit, mostly for gunshot wounds and crashes and stuff, excuse the packing cases, we have to have something to sit on when our feet ache.'

An electric fan turned slowly overhead, fly-encrusted, wobbling, stirring the smells of blood, antiseptic and tobacco smoke. A young Vietnamese lay propped up on a dirty straw pillow, smoking — he was dying of tuberculosis, the nurse told me, so he was allowed two cigarettes a day to keep him from going crazy, and it smelled better anyway than most of the other things in this place. Her name was Leonora, she said, and she was from the Bronx.

'Fancy meeting you here,' I heard Gabrielle saying. She was in the end bed, half in shadow, her dark eyes luminous in her pale face, reflecting the kerosene lamp. She didn't smile, maybe couldn't.

'Don't do that!' Leonora told her as she tried to sit up. 'You can shake hands just the way you are, or kiss or whatever you have in mind.'

So I leaned down and kissed Gabrielle; her mouth was hot, moist, feverish. The nurse pushed a packing case across for me.

'I don't want you sitting on the bed, which is what you're dying to do. She has to keep still, you with me, honey?'

'Got it. How much blood did she lose?'

'Maybe a pint; we didn't have to give her any — not that we could have, none she would've wanted in her.'

'Did it go through?'

'How's that again?'

'The bullet.'

'Oh, right, yeah, clean through, which made it a whole lot simpler for me.'

'You're the surgeon?'

'RN. The only doc we got here is out on a mine accident. Jesus, did I say accident? But I sew real good, don't I, honey?'

'Real good,' Gabrielle said. She still didn't smile.

'Are you in pain?' I asked her.

'No.'

'You bet your sweet ass she's in pain,' Leonora said, 'but she refused anything, don't go for drugs, well okay, that's pretty smart so long as you can take it. Thing is, it keeps the fever going longer than I'd like.' She put a hand on Gabrielle's forehead, then looked at me again. 'I'm going to give you five minutes, honey, then she has to sleep if she can, you wanna cuss me out, I ain't listening.' She went down the aisle to talk to the dying Vietnamese.

'Was it the KR?' I asked Gabrielle.

'Yes.' She didn't sound angry. I would have expected her to.

'D'you want to talk about it?'

'I'd rather hear what you've been doing.'

'Nothing terribly interesting. Pringle told me you were in Pouthisat.'

'When?'

'Half an hour ago.'

'You went to the Mission?'

'Yes.'

'That was nice.' She reached for my hand. 'You remembered where I said I'd be.'

'Of course.'

'We could have had dinner somewhere.' She watched me steadily, her eyes deep in the faint light. 'I'll be out of here in the morning.'

'Not if it's up to Leonora.'

'It's up to me. There's so much infection here — tuberculosis, diphtheria, dengue fever; I don't want to take anything back to the Mission. And anyway it's only a flesh wound.'

'I can't be here in the morning. Do you want me to ask one of the nuns to come and fetch you?'

'They know,' she said. 'I've already asked them.' She tilted her head. 'How did you bruise your face?'

'I can't remember.'

She watched me in silence, then left it. 'I don't know where I can find you, and you wouldn't want me to.'

'I'll make contact when I can. I can't say when.'

'As long as it's sometime.'

'It will be.' I pressed her hand. 'I'm going now, so that you can sleep.'

'All right.'

I rested my mouth on hers again, this time for longer, and we didn't close our eyes, so that all I could see was the deep indigo blue, with her soul floating somewhere in its shadows, and I found myself wanting, very much, not to leave her.