The Kobra Manifesto

As soon as London came in I reported arrival and asked for directives. There was an awful lot of static, partly because of aircraft movement; and someone was trying to jam us but not very successfully: Crowborough was seven-tenths audible and we didn't talk for long because London didn't have anything new for me. I was to survey and report on the objective until the situation was critical and I had to leave the city. The key contact was still the second cultural attache. I thought of questioning this because Chepstow didn't seem as if he could help me much, but that was possibly because he wasn't sure of me yet, and the fact that I was in signals with the number three station on the secret log should give him a lot more confidence than a passport.

'Any repeats?' the man at the console asked me.

'No.'

'Addenda?'

'No.'

'Shut down?'

'Yes.'

Chepstow came away from the window, still stooping a little and with his hands dug into his pockets. Possibly he'd banged his head on some of the doorways here in the native quarter. I couldn't make out his attitude and it worried me: he seemed too abstracted to take more than a half interest hi anything that was going on around him. He seemed to be waiting for something.

'Was that satisfactory?'

'Mustn't grumble,' I said.

'I'm going off duty now. Want to have a coffee with me?'

'All right.'

The mortars had stopped by the time we were out in die street, and he looked around him with a certain pleasure, as you do when you realize the rain has stopped.

'About time,' he said, and took me across to a battered little Hillman with some sticking plaster across the rear window and one front tyre almost flat. 'Can't get anyone to repair it,' he said in lost tones, 'so I have to keep putting more air in. Look at these blisters — ' he showed me his palm. 'One of those hand pumps, you know the kind? Spare's flat too, but I didn't know till I looked at it.'

We turned into a courtyard where a few other cars were parked at all angles, as if it didn't matter any more. This poor old thing's only got to last me a few more hours anyway, with a bit of luck. That goes for the whole city, as you can see for yourself — whole place is on its way out'

There were some small bamboo tables under the fan-palms, with half a dozen people sitting there over coffee. Most of the conversation I could hear was in French. Chepstow nodded to a huge man with a tiny glass of cognac in front of him.

'Still here, Francois?'

'Not for long, mon ami!'

He raised the little glass to us.

They've got Turkish,' Chepstow told me. 'You like it?'

I said I did.

'Black as sin,' he nodded with a wan smile, 'about the only good thing left in this bloody dump.'

He didn't talk again until the coffee was brought 'All right — this chap Stern,' he said.

'Who?'

'Erich Stern.' His tall body drooped over the coffee cup. There's a «von» in it somewhere, big deal. Anyway, he's your man. That's what you came to me for, isn't it? I mean, to get all the information you can on him?'

I said it was.

'Right' He looked around him again, at the balconies that vanished and reappeared among the palm trees. I was beginning to get a fix on his attitude: Phnom Penh was a place that meant something to him, and he was losing it Worse still, he was having to watch it die before he left. This could explain my impression that he was waiting for something: he was waiting for this place to become nothing.

Three American ambulances went past the courtyard and left dust drifting across our table in the sunshine. Chepstow raised his head to watch them and then looked down again.

'I'm on a plane out,' he said conversationally, first thing in the morning. If there is one.' He sipped his coffee, but it was too hot 'How are you getting out, Wexford?'

'I haven't made any arrangements.'

He gave a weak laugh and stared at me.' Then you'd better make some, hadn't you? ''

'Tell me about Stern,' I said.

He shrugged his thin shoulders. 'All right. You can find him at the Royal Cambodian Hotel. Just ask for him. He doesn't see people by appointment — you have to get in the queue.'

'What does he do?'

He looked up, surprised again. 'Don't you know? He's selling visas. Five thousand US dollars a go, minimum. He got seven members of the government on to a plane when the panic first started, then he took on industrialists and the odd prince or two, anyone with enough cash.'

'Is he alone?'

He frowned. 'How d'you, mean, alone?'

'Never mind.'

Another shrug. The best way in for you,' he said, 'is to tell him you want to get a girl out. A local girl, of course. You want me to go with you?'

'I don't know, yet.'

The leaves of the palms stirred to a breath of wind, and their shadows moved across the bamboo table.

'The best thing,' he said reflectively, 'is for me to point him out to you, from a distance. Don't you think?'

'I don't know.' I was getting fed up because he hadn't been trained to give information and he'd only got half his mind on it anyway. 'Listen, give me a few facts, will you? When did Stern arrive in Phnom Penh? Was he alone when he arrived? Did he have any contacts here? Let me have everything you've got.'

'Do my best,' he said.

He lifted his cup to take another sip, and that was what I remember particularly: the way the way the cup stayed in the air for an instant as his skull shattered and he pitched back with his legs flying up and one foot kicking the table over.

Chapter Seven: KEY

The ambassador was on the telephone when the girl took me in.

That is not my concern, Colonel. One of my staff has been brutally murdered and I demand a full and immediate enquiry.'

The young man Who'd been complaining about the lack of tin hats came in with a bundle of letters and stood listening.

'Full and immediate, regardless of other considerations.'

'Have you got any money left here?' I asked the girl.

'Money?' she asked vaguely. Her face was white.

'I want five thousand riels in cash, for traveller's cheques.'

'The best of luck,' she said.

'Thank you, Colonel.'

The ambassador dropped the receiver and looked up.

'What the devil can they do? One foreigner gets killed in the middle of a minor war. Who's this man?'

'Wexford,' I said, 'correspondent for Europress. For your-'

'Keep all journalists out of here,' the ambassador told the girl, 'until I change the instructions.'

'For your information,' I said, 'the bullet was fired from the block of apartments called Les Palmiers, at the rear of the restaurant.'

He began looking at me with more attention.

'How do you know?'

'I was there.'

He went on studying me, a short grey-haired man with crooked white teeth and slight blood-pressure. By the look of his eyes I could believe he'd been working twenty-four hours without a break.

'Is that blood on your clothes?' he asked me.

'Probably. I haven't had time to look. I came here to-'

'What do you mean, you were there!'

He got up from behind his desk and came close to me and stared at me with his eyes screwed up in fatigue and suspicion and frustration. 'What else do you know about this?'

'Nothing.'

'Is that his blood?'

'Probably. It's not mine.'

I heard toe girl say oh God, very softly.

'If you have any more information, Welford, I shall ask — '

'Wexford, and listen. I've given you all I know. Now I want something from you: five thousand riels in cash, for t.c.s, and a message for BL-565 Extension 9. You can add it on to the one you're sending on the subject of Chepstow.'

I tried to think of anything else I wanted from him but there were mental blocks forming because I'd got out of that courtyard very fast and gone to ground and surveyed the block of apartments corridor by corridor in the hope of locating the sniper before I'd drawn blank and got a lift from a street-cleaning lorry crammed with refugees on their way to the airport, The mental blocks were forming because of other things too: mostly the need to reassess the situation in the light of what had happened. There were a lot of things I didn't know and would have to find out but the thing I knew for certain was that London had manoeuvred me into the Kobra mission and set me running and it hadn't been done with a directive: it had been done with a bullet.