Quiller Salamander

Pringle had followed us down and was standing just inside the door, hands behind his back in a posture deferential, I thought, to his master's presence. A short wispy-bearded Cambodian stood on the other side, in a dark blue sampong and sandals.

'This is our good host,' Flockhart told me, 'Sophan Sann.' The man came forward and shook hands, his eyes lively in the lamplight as he appraised me; it was an honour for him to meet anyone introduced by Mr Flockhart — this was my impression. But for a formal rendezvous like this I could have done without a stranger here, however good a host he was said to be.

Some bottles of soda on the table, a litre of Evian and a plate of quartered lemons; incense was burning somewhere, uncharacteristically, perhaps as a gesture of welcome to Sophan's guests. A salamander clung to the plaster near a bamboo grille set high on the wall, the only means of ventilation that I could see.

'How was the flight from Kuwait?' I asked Flockhart. I wanted him to know that until we were alone he'd get nothing from me but small talk.

'Too long,' he said and took one of the bamboo chairs. 'But then any flight's too long when time is of the essence, don't you agree?'

Talking about the deadline.

I sat down and Pringle followed, putting a thin worn briefcase on the table in front of him. We were here for the executive's debriefing to Control.

'I'm told,' Flockhart said, 'that you suffered a snake bite.'

'Yes.'

'A nasty experience, I can imagine.' He looked at me for the first time since we'd come down here, his eyes concerned. When I'd talked to him in the Cellar Steps, his eyes had been full of rage, barely concealed. I wondered what had happened to it. 'Are you still feeling any ill effects?' he asked me.

'I'm a hundred op.' A hundred per cent operational, which was what he really needed to know. If I had to go into anything difficult I could do it fast and successfully, given a clear field and not too much shooting.

'Splendid.' He brought out a black notebook and put it carefully onto the bamboo table. 'Splendid.'

'If we're going to do any business,' I said, 'I'd rather — '

'Sann,' Flockhart said straight away, looking up at the Cambodian, 'we've kept you long enough.'

Sophan gave a brief bow and looked down at me. 'It was a pleasure to meet you.' Absolutely no accent, possibly Oxford.

'The pleasure was all mine.'

His sandals flapped up the steps and we heard him close the door at the top. From habit I listened for it to open again quietly but it didn't. Call it paranoia, but when Control flies out from London without warning to debrief the executive in the field himself it means the mission has either started running very hot indeed or it's hit a wall, and I would have felt much easier debriefing somewhere with better security, say the top of a mountain.

'Don't worry,' Flockhart said gently. 'This was actually to have been your safe-house. Sophan Sann affords us total security here.'

'He's Bureau?'

'No. But I enjoy his unqualified loyalty. I once had the opportunity of saving his life.'

'Out here?'

'During what they call the holocaust — I was observing for the British Mission at the time. He was a young man then, of course, and so was I, and together we dug out this room as a concealed chamber to shelter whole families.'

The Cambodian connection. At our first meeting I'd asked Pringle what was really behind this mission — Is it something personal, with Flockhart? And Pringle had said, I don't know. Perhaps he simply wants to save Cambodia.

'But tell me,' Flockhart was saying, 'why didn't you accept this place as your safe-house?' To Pringle: 'I'm sure it was offered?'

'Of course, sir.'

Control's head swung back to me.

'I didn't trust you,' I said.

He nodded briefly. 'So Pringle informed me, after your first contact in Phnom Penh.'

'I didn't express my feelings.'

'But of course not, my dear fellow — he was simply aware of the undercurrents.'

I was warned by the 'dear fellow' bit: Pringle had been stroking me tenderly ever since the mission had started running, and now Control had come all the way out here to help him. But there is nothing your control can't ask of you in perfectly plain terms, however dangerous, even suicidal, knowing that you've got the right to refuse. When he chooses to steal up on you with quiet charm instead then you'd better make bloody sure you stay awake because once the trap springs shut you're done for.

Holmes, and I quote: Remember that one must handle Mr Flockhart with the tender care demanded by — shall we say — a tarantula.

'I still don't trust you,' I told him. I wasn't being offensive. If Salamander was running hot and we were going to try bringing it home in some kind of last-ditch operation I needed to know more than I did now. If it was classified, okay, but I didn't think so.

'I appreciate your honesty,' Flockhart said, didn't fake a hurt smile, no theatrics. 'It's going to be to our advantage, because events are moving apace and we need to understand each other. But tell me why I don't invite your confidence, if you will.' Had avoided the word 'trust', didn't like it.

'As I told Pringle at the airport, I'm out here on an operation that hasn't got official support or a signals board or any access to London through the normal channels. You're running this thing entirely on your own and I assume for your own purposes. How would you feel if you were the executive?'

'I would have felt like declining the mission in the first place.'

'I'd been out of the field too long, you know that. I'd have taken anything on, you knew that too.'

'And now you have regrets?'

'None whatsoever. I just want to know if we're on an official footing yet, with the Bureau informed and in charge.'

A beat, but he didn't take his eyes off me. 'And if I said no, the Bureau is neither informed nor in charge, would you withdraw from the mission?'

It threw me and I got up, took a turn round the room, needing time. Pringle coughed, couldn't quite take the tension. When I was ready I stood looking down at Flockhart.

'No.'

'Thank you.' It was said formally, carried weight. 'And I must confess myself unsurprised. According to my research, you don't take kindly to officialdom.'

'Look' — I sat down again, interested — 'I've never done this before, that's all. I've never worked for a rogue control, if you'll forgive the term — '

'I like it.'

A spark had come into his eyes and suddenly I knew why there'd been so much rage in them at the Cellar Steps. 'So the Bureau turned you down?'

He looked away, looked back. 'Yes.'

'Why?

'I was told that my ultimate goal would be impossible to achieve.'

Very interested now, and I leaned forward. 'And what is your ultimate goal?'

'To save Cambodia.'

'For personal reasons?'

Flockhart shifted in his chair, looking away again, and I think I regretted pressing him at this point, but I had to. For the first time I wasn't simply the shadow executive assigned to the next mission on the books under the official aegis of the Bureau, a role I'd played throughout the whole of my career. I was working for one man, and responsible to him alone.

'For personal reasons,' Flockhart said, 'I would like to save Cambodia, yes. But few civilized people, surely, would stand by and watch the massacre of another million souls in a second potential holocaust if they could prevent it.'

'But you couldn't persuade the Bureau.'

'That was hardly the argument I presented.'

'They're not the Salvation Army.'

'Quite so. The argument I offered was geopolitical, though admittedly rather contrived. I said that if the Khmer Rouge seized power again Pol Pot might embroil North Vietnam and North Korea and bring about a resurgence of communism in the region, to the obvious advantage of China.'