Quiller Salamander

'However,' I heard Flockhart saying, 'you've certainly made a good start.'

I left that.

'We simply require to take things a little further.'

I realized he had to watch what he said on a satellite line, but Flockhart also had a penchant for the cryptic, as I'd learned when he'd first talked to me at the Cellar Steps. They get like that, the controls, after years of pushing the pawns across the board in the signals room: they end up talking like a cipher grid. I waited again. He'd go on when he was ready.

'We can't see the wood at the moment, you understand, even by satellite. What we need is to confirm the evidence, physically.'

I didn't answer. He was out of his bloody mind.

'Then everyone would know that action could be taken on a sound premise, and would therefore succeed.'

'Yes, but there isn't time. Not if that deadline is real.' The nineteenth.

'You would require, what? Twelve hours?'

Or less, but he was talking about a suicide run, a low-level chopper survey with telescopic cameras. 'We can't see the wood' translated as 'we can't see the Khmer Rouge camp for the trees', even with Landsat, since it was in deep jungle. I understood that, and I understood that neither the UN nor the US would order a strike based solely on a map position. The problem was more locaclass="underline" I didn't see how Salamander could keep on running with a dead executive.

I asked Flockhart, 'Have you ever put your hand into a beehive?'

A squeal came from the room next door — I suppose someone had picked up Little Stinker and he wanted to be put down again.

'What was that?' Flockhart asked.

'A pig.' Over the line it must have sounded like an interrogation cell near closing time.

'Given adequate magnification,' Flockhart said in a moment, 'you wouldn't have to go in as close as that.'

'You can hear a fan at five miles, for Christ's sake.' Too late to edit that: I'd slipped, showing the nerves, and he would have noticed. It was this that should have warned me.

'Speed,' Flockhart's voice came persuasively, 'would be of the essence, of course. Speed and surprise.'

A night sortie with infra-red cameras — he'd got it all worked out. But he wouldn't be sitting in the chopper when it got blown out of the sky.

The pig squealed again and it plucked at the nerves. That should have warned me too. 'You'd never find anyone to do it,' I said.

'We're thinking of you, of course.'

'Look, I haven't got more than fifty hours behind me in one of those things.' The only training we get at Norfolk is just enough to give us a chance if the pilot suffers a heart attack.

'But you've used them before, and most effectively.'

The rain drummed on the roof of the building, and a trickle had started below the door, dark on the scarred concrete. Pringle had moved his foot out of its way, was watching me again with his cool grey eyes. I didn't think he could hear what Flockhart was saying, but he could hear me all right and he'd know what was on. Flockhart would have briefed him on it in any case while the contact was on his way to fetch me. We need him to agree to this, and I want you to do all you can at your end to persuade him.

But there wasn't anything Pringle could do: I didn't trust him, didn't respect him. Flockhart I would listen to; he was a major player, was seasoned, had authority. I didn't trust him either, but yes, I would listen.

'For this job,' I said, 'you'd need an ace.' We were working with a deadline and there was another rainstorm in and we couldn't wait for it to clear, would have to fly half-blind to the target, and if the rain was still coming down when we reached it there wouldn't be any point in even turning the cameras on.

'We have one,' I heard Flockhart saying.

'An ace?'

'Yes.'

Covered himself, in case I said no.

'He's tired of life?'

'He is not unsanguine.'

'I know him?'

'It's unlikely. But he's world class.'

And a Cambodian, he must be, burning with the holy fire of love for his country, ready to do or die. No one else would touch this one.

'What's the state of preparedness?' I asked Flockhart.

'Launch zero.'

Oh, Jesus, he'd been working through the night, he and Pringle, finding a pilot and a machine and putting them on stand-by at the airfield over there, locating the cameras, setting them up. Or had they done it days ago? The first time I'd met Pringle at the airport in Phnom Penh he'd told me that the first objective for Salamander was to get information on Pol Pot. I was close to doing that, had found him on the map, would have to follow up, make certain, get close to him with the cameras, take his bloody picture and send it to London, wish you were here, the weather's marvellous.

The weather was ten-tenths shit and I was standing here with the phone slippery with sweat because of the heat in this stinking hole and because I should have been warned when the pig had squealed and my nerves had jumped, should have been warned even then that I was going to do what he said, what Flockhart said, because I was already committed to putting my neck on the block in the name of the salamander, whatever the chances were of coming out of it with anything to show, of coming out of it alive; chances? surely you must be joking, they'll have weapons out there, never mind about the leaves overhead blocking their view, they can send up a square mile of fire power in a single blast the moment they hear the rotors, I wish to God they wouldn't keep that stinking pig in here.

'Do you have any questions?'

Flockhart.

'Yes. Who's going to replace me, if I come unstuck?'

Another of his bloody pauses. I suppose he was a bit surprised, the brave little ferret in the field had actually agreed to getting himself blown into Christendom without too much persuasion.

'No one would replace you.'

Bloody liar. The control always lines up a replacement when he sends his executive on a suicide run; I'd been one of them myself on half the missions I'd worked, walking in a dead man's shoes.

'There's no replacement?'

'You must take it how you will,' Flockhart said, 'but for this undertaking you are irreplaceable.'

Pringle was watching me, probably saw the reaction in my eyes: you don't blank everything off when you're with your director in the field, you're supposed to trust him.

'You mean this is a one-shot thing?'

Silence, then: 'Yes. You are our only chance. Surely you realized that.'

'Why should I?' Then I understood. 'Where is the Sacred Bull?'

It's what we call the Bureau, we the beleaguered minions in the field.

'Nowhere,' Flockhart said.

So he was still running Salamander solo, without a signals board, without support in the field, even without a replacement for the executive, going over the heads of Administration and reporting directly to the prime minister. Only four people, then, were privy at this stage to the mission: the PM, Flockhart, Pringle and I. Until they brought in Washington, until they had to, if an air strike was to be ordered.

'When will that change?' I asked Flockhart carefully. The stakes seemed suddenly rather high with only four players in the game.

'At some time in the future.'

Shouldn't have asked.

Pringle watched me as the trickle of water spread across the concrete, as the pig in there squealed again and the rain hit the window aslant in the wind and the leaves of the sugar palms out there shone steel-bright under the storm as I stood there looking for more questions to ask, for more information, some kind of reassurance that I wasn't expected to go into this phase of the mission with too much left to chance. But there weren't any questions left; Flockhart had briefed me as far as he needed to, had already set the whole thing up, pilot, chopper, cameras, and had given me the score: launch zero.