Quiller Salamander

'This is the gist of what I'm getting so far. The man in authority is Colonel Choen. He is visiting the Phnom Penh cell of the Khmer Rouge in order to give its agents their latest orders from General Kheng San.'

I remembered the man in the photograph I'd seen on the wall of the villa, his name below it, a general's insignia on his battledress.

Have you heard of him?' I asked Gabrielle.

'General Kheng? No.' She waited for another question but I left it. 'The local cell appears excited about something they're planning to do in Phnom Penh — or something they've been ordered to do. But Colonel Choen is telling them to hold on, to wait for the right time. This is the gist, as I've said, and I'm trying hard not to jump to conclusions of my own.'

'I understand that.' It wasn't easy for her: given a snatched word here and there, and her imagination would start inventing scenarios, and that would amount to unintended disinformation, could take us dangerously off track. 'Have you done any intelligence work before?' I asked her.

She turned her head. 'No.'

'You're a natural.'

'Thank you.'

Then suddenly I thought it might have sounded patronizing, and wished I hadn't said it; she didn't need anyone to grade her homework; she was a world-class photo journalist working in a flashpoint theatre of operations. I decided to leave it, didn't apologize, it could make things worse.

'There's a date,' Gabrielle said, 'that's come up three or four times. The nineteenth.'

'Of?'

'I don't know.'

'This month, then.' Today was the twelfth.

'Perhaps. Colonel Choen says they must all wait for the nineteenth.'

'Big day.'

'Perhaps.'

White light flushed the walls of the wharf again and I watched it, some kind of vehicle on the move, sending shadows funning out until they vanished into the peripheral dark. Then a glare came suddenly on the windscreen of a parked truck, throwing reflections like silver fish flickering along the walls. I could hear the engine now, a small one, maybe a jeep's. There'd been no vehicle coming as close as this to the ferry station while we'd been here.

'I heard another name,' Gabrielle said. 'Leng Sim, the Minister of Defence. The colonel was — '

'If this is a police patrol,' I said quietly, 'I'll just do the usual thing and pay them off. If it's anyone else, and there's any problem, I want you to get down low as soon as I start driving out. Understood?'

She turned her head to look at me for a moment, her face lit and shadowed, her eyes deep. 'Yes.'

I found my seat belt and snapped the buckle, and Gabrielle did the same.

There was a narrow gap ahead of us between a gantry and the corner of the warehouse, and I'd parked the Mercedes in line with it. That was our point of exit from the scene: the gap. Beyond it was an alleyway wide enough to take the Mercedes, provided I didn't need the outside mirrors any more, and I didn't, because in a night escape you don't need to see behind you: all you need to do is watch for your own shadow on each side of your headlight beams on the turns, see how it swings across the buildings, see how close the tracker is and which way he's moving and how far away he is and whether he's gaining or falling back.

Echoes were coming in as the engine of the vehicle was revved a little, pulling away from a corner. The light was bright now.

At the other end of the alleyway was a stack of crates and a blind T-section, and if I managed things right we could go in fast enough to lose the rear end of the Mercedes in a side-swipe and bring the crates down behind us and provide an instant barricade. I'd arrived ten minutes early for the rendezvous and looked around, simply as a matter of routine procedure, and set up an escape route in case we needed one.

Light very bright now.

'The Minister of Defence?' I said. 'Oh yes, he was the one they tried to wipe out.'

'The one whose life you saved.'

'So what were they saying about him?'

'I don't know. I just heard his name mentioned.'

'Do you think he was the target of the orders they'd received? They're mad keen to try it again and get him this time? And the colonel's telling them to wait, be patient?'

'I don't know. That is absolute conjecture.'

The light burst from the far end of the warehouse and flooded the environment as the jeep went bouncing across the intersection and vanished behind the buildings, its engine note fading.

In a moment I said, 'Right, absolute conjecture, but I'm just trying to put things together, to see if some of the gibberish you're hearing suddenly makes sense. Sometimes it works.'

'It's very dangerous.'

'Yes, it's very dangerous. And if it doesn't sound patronizing, I'll say it again: you're very good.'

She rested her hand on my arm and said with quiet intensity, 'I just want to be sure I don't make any mistakes, that's all, any mistakes that could put you in harm's way.'

'I can look after myself.'

'Touche.'

The lights of the jeep flashed in the far distance as it turned a corner, then the darkness came down again.

'Do you think,' I asked Gabrielle, 'that is as much as you've got, so far?'

'Yes.'

Three names, a date, and a brief scenario: Colonel Choen was in the capital to stop the local cell from jeopardizing some kind of action timed to go off on the nineteenth, a week from tonight. Not a great deal, not even enough to debrief to Pringle, but if that date were important it would mean we had a deadline, and that would affect things: whatever Flockhart wanted me to do out here would have to be done within a week.

And honour was mine again: it had been worth it after all, the trick I'd pulled at the villa tonight. We

Nothing can excuse what you did

Shuddup.

Colonel Choen was barking again as Gabrielle started the tape. She gave it five minutes and started rewinding, her eyes closed as she listened; then she switched it off.

'That was a little better. You were nearer, then.' Right, edging the Sony as far as I could along the balcony, watching for a boot to show. 'Colonel Choen is flying to Pouthisat in the morning,' Gabrielle said. 'I think he could be meeting General Kheng there, or someone else — all I can hear is that he'll be «talking» to him, so it could mean by telephone, though I doubt it: the lines are pretty bad everywhere.' I think she was waiting for me to make notes, but I didn't need to; I could keep what little we'd got in my head. 'I heard King Sihanouk's name mentioned, but couldn't get the context. I think Colonel — '

An orange flash bloomed in silence across the river, spreading against the dark, and in a second or two the sound reached us, a deep thudding cough. Faint cries came keening, leaving echoes among the wharves.

'More funerals tomorrow,' Gabrielle said softly, 'more flowers.'

''That was bigger than a mine.'

'Sometimes they rig bombs in vehicles, when they're left unattended. Their aim isn't specifically to kill people, but to keep up the atmosphere of terror in the city. They do it very well.'

The blaze had caught the timbers of the ferry station over there, and a siren began wailing.

Gabrielle closed her eyes. 'I think Colonel Choen is flying on to somewhere else, when he leaves Pouthisat.'

'Somewhere other than Phnom Penh.'

'Yes.'

I didn't ask her where: if she'd caught it, she'd have told me. She pressed the play button again and we sat listening to the tape as another siren started up across the river.

'Colonel Choen is cautioning the two women agents particularly against precipitate action. They sound excited, and he's getting angry with them.' She started the tape again, and there was half a minute of voices and then a break and the sound of wood splintering and then nothing much more until the shot. I hadn't had time to switch off the Sony when I'd gone over the balcony rail.