'When?' I asked him.
'Nearly three hours ago. And the decision of those concerned is that there is to be no air strike against the forces of the Khmer Rouge.'
In a moment I said, 'Did that surprise you?'
He looked at me, his smile acid. 'No.'
Pringle cleared his throat; he didn't easily handle tension.
'You mind if I sit down?' I asked Flockhart.
'What? Oh, my dear fellow, please.'
Still his dear fellow: beware. I dropped into one of the bamboo chairs. I'd been on my feet half the bloody night with that gallant young captain in front of me, hero of the new holocaust that no one in London or Washington or anywhere else could think how to stop. Or wanted to.
'What were your expectations?' I asked Flockhart. 'From the bureaucrats?'
He didn't want to sit down, watched me with something shadowing his eyes, pain, I could believe. 'Extremely low,' he said. 'But you knew that, didn't you?'
'It was such a long shot, and so late in the day.' I didn't look at him, didn't want to watch his suffering. 'At one time, I thought you were simply playing me along for some reason, not signalling London at all.'
'Did you now.'
I gave it a beat. 'Were you?'
He looked at me in surprise, and then remembered. 'Of course, you don't trust me, do you? But no, I was in fact conducting a rather desperate bid for military intervention, and I did indeed hold out some slight hope of success. The prime minister was not entirely unsanguine.'
'My condolences.'
I wasn't being sarcastic. He'd just lost something he loved: Cambodia. Nor was I myself unaffected: Gabrielle had come immediately into my mind again when he told me the news. Whatever happened I wouldn't be leaving here without her, or without making sure she'd be safe.
'Thank you,' Flockhart said.
Pringle sat down and pulled the pad out of his briefcase and got a ball-point ready. 'Is it urgent?' he asked me.
My need to debrief. 'I don't really know. It's probably academic at this stage.' I looked at Flockhart. 'For what it's worth, I've got the schedule of events planned by the Khmer Rouge.'
He looked suddenly alert, which surprised me: he'd led me to believe that to his mind all was lost. 'Have you indeed?'
I'd forgotten that neither he nor Pringle had known I'd mounted any kind of operation during the night. My last signal had been to the effect that I was simply keeping surveillance on General Kheng.
'There's a new deadline,' I told them. 'It's for sundown tomorrow, and this is the schedule: General Kheng is to fly at first light to the base camp in the jungle, where he'll complete preparations for the missile attack on the capital at six this evening. Armoured troop transports and six medium tanks will start rolling soon afterwards, at nightfall, heading for the city. They should arrive before midnight. At the same time, the troops based here in the foothills will also be moved into the capital to assist in taking over the government, seizing King Sihanouk and rounding up the civilian population for immediate transport to labour camps.'
Pringle was making notes, and I had the chilling sense that reason had slipped away, that since there was to be no air strike we were like actors still walking the stage with the play over and the curtain down and the audience long gone home.
'There's to be no ultimatum?'
'No ultimatum.'
Control still wouldn't sit down, paced steadily as I filled in the few details I'd managed to get from my source.
'How certain are you,' Flockhart asked me at last, 'that these facts are correct?'
'My informant was beyond knowing how to lie.'
End pain, he'd kept saying when I pushed him for more answers, more facts, pushed him to the brink, no more pain, but it had been his own bloody fault, for Christ's sake, I'd told him that.
'Is he still alive?' This from Pringle.
'Technically. Symes is looking after him.'
Flockhart had been giving me his whole attention up to this point, but now he looked away. I don't think it was anything to do with the fate of my 'informant' — Control was familiar enough with interrogation techniques and would have been quite happy to hear I'd used thumb screws on any member of the Khmer Rouge.
'You did rather well,' he told me at last.
I didn't say anything.
I wanted sleep now, to get the face of that bloody thing out of my mind, the nothing thing, you gotta do whatcha gotta do, right, but you also gotta live with it until it's had time to silt over like the rest of the rotten by-products of this bloody trade.
Pringle asked me some things he needed to know, would have to take action on: where could the van be picked up and had I got the ignition key, had I told Symes to get medical attention for my informant and had there been significant loss of blood, things like that. Then Control put some questions, did I know the troop strengths of the Khmer Rouge base and the camp in the foothills near Pouthisat, how many missiles were to be fired on the capital, would General Kheng lead the ground assault or fly ahead of his forces to confront Sihanouk and demand his surrender?
I didn't have information on things like that, or I would have told him already, debriefing is debriefing, you don't leave anything out, he should know that, knew that. He still wasn't looking at me, just listening with his head half-turned as he kept up his bloody pacing, getting on my nerves.
Then he stopped, as if he'd picked it up, and stood with his back to the plaster wall, moving his shoulder blades against it rhythmically, unconsciously, like a bear scratching itself.
Pringle looked up to ask him something but didn't, changed his mind, saw something in Flockhart's eyes, perhaps, I don't know, all I wanted was sleep, get in a few hours so that tomorrow I'd be fit for whatever had to be done, a long tussle with Gabrielle, for one thing — she'd want to hold out here, shoot as many KRs as she could before the capital went up in flames and the survivors were driven into the killing grounds, she herself among them if I didn't make absolutely sure she listened to reason, run like hell and fight again another day, so forth, make sure she was on the last flight out of Phnom Penh before the whole thing blew.
My eyes closing, opened them again, wondered how much time had gone by, Pringle still sitting there with the pad in front of him, Flockhart still scratching himself on the wall, probably not that exactly, more like thinking things out, trying to get his mind to accept that there was nothing else he could do, anyone could do, or trying, like a well-seasoned control in a trade where we accept nothing we don't like until we're actually dead, to find a way out, dream up a last-ditch eleventh-hour nil desperandum sauve-qui peut circus act that in the final analysis would count as a success of sorts because it would at least leave the battlefield strewn with the corpses of the well-intentioned, never say die and all that, go down with banners flying, I think — I've thought more than once, you know — that your Mr Flockhart is that kind of clown, a closet romantic beneath the trappings of the steely espion.
Sleep, listen, get me some sleep now.
'Is there an airstrip at the base camp?'
'Is there a what? '
'I didn't see one. There's nothing on the film. Only a chopper pad.'
My eyes fully open again because here we are, the control and the DIF and the executive in the field convened for debriefing, a time to keep awake if only for the sake of appearances.
'A helicopter pad?' Flockhart.
'Yes.'
'General Kheng, then,' his shoulders coming away from the wall, his head swinging to look down at me, 'will fly there by helicopter. Is that so?'