The bee could have come for me.
'One more please, yes?'
The boy pointed upwards, 'Yes.'
We climbed again.
One of the answers I had to work out concerned Chepstow. I didn't know who he was: I only knew what he'd been doing. He could have been in Liaison 9 like Steadman in Nice or he could have been nosing around for DI6 or any one of the overseas intelligence branches with or without the Bureau's knowledge. But somewhere along the one the Bureau had got a fix on him. It hadn't been done here in Phnom Penh while the forces of the Khmer Rouge were threatening the city: it had been done in London while the dustmen's strike was on. Egerton or one of the other directors had picked it up in a pub or a club or a Turkish bath: a word here, a word there, a raised eyebrow and a glance away, the talk becoming quieter and suddenly more disciplined. Erich Stern was in Phnom Penh and the second cultural attache was surveying him: was this of any use? It was. Egerton had gone to a telephone and within two minutes the signal was filed on readiness for Q-15, Rome, to be received against the distant background of arpeggios.
I knew what Chepstow had been doing but I didn't know exactly how he'd been doing it. Not very well. He'd got in their way and they didn't like it and I needed a change of clothes.
'Please.'
'How good is your English?' I asked the boy.
'Pretty good.' He put the key in the door and opened it for me. 'Pretty good English, all time speak slow, yes?'
I tried him on French and got a blank look and went back to pretty good English. 'Listen. Here is money. I pay more if you work well, understand?'
He hesitated, I think because he'd never seen five hundred riels before, all in one wad. 'Yes. Work for you.'
'Right. A man named Mr Erich Stern is staying here in Suite 9.' I made him repeat. Then I gave him the rest: not to watch Mr Stern's room too closely but to warn me at once if the gentleman looked like leaving. If I weren't in the hotel, find out where Mr Stern was going and telephone the British Embassy and ask for me, so forth. And tell no one, repeat no one, repeat no one.
Then I sent him away and took a look round Room 91 and noted doors, windows, catches, locks, extreme angles of view from each window, hazardous aspects and areas, auditory factors (pile carpet in the corridor), ballistic vulnerability (the door panels were half-inch teak, judging by weight), escape patterns. No bugs under the telephone or behind the sandal-wood plaque or in the television set or anywhere obvious. The chances of a permanent set-up in a random room of this hotel were acceptable and I ignored.
Within half an hour I'd checked the various closets, lift-shafts, and — alcoves on the eighth, ninth and tenth floors and noted five people go into Suite 9 and four come out: two Europeans, the rest Asians. None of them saw me.
Then I went down the emergency stairs at the rear of the hotel and pushed open the door on the ground floor and waited, checking the environs and checking particularly the skyline where the tops of the buildings were broken here and there by the heads of the palm trees. A sniper works from ground level only when he is certain that no obstacle will cross his line of fire, and this courtyard had vehicles parked against the walls, one of them backing out and turning for the gates.
Two further checks: one halfway across, one at the gates to the street. Blank.
The three cars parked behind the cab I was using were all empty. So were the two in front. My driver was squatting on the pavement beside his battered Citroen, making a pair of porter-thong sandals.
'Remember me?'
He got up quickly and I watched his eyes. He hadn't been got at while I was away: I would have known. Only a poker player could have kept it hidden, or a trained spook. This boy was a cab driver.
I told 'him I wanted kitting out and he took me north towards Central Market and found one of the army surplus stores that had been springing up in the past few weeks and taking anything the refugees and troops couldn't carry out of the city. To change the image I chose a para-military bush jacket and slacks with outside pockets and a sheath on the belt.
'Have you got any sunglasses?'
'Comment?'
'Lunettes fumees.'
'Par ici, m'sieur.'
Through the narrow doorway I kept my driver in view. I had to watch everyone, everything. The 'scope-sight had passed across my image and settled on Chepstow before the finger had squeezed because Chepstow had been the target and not me. The marksman had been the paid employee of a private operator or the hit-man for an intelligence cell and there'd been nothing personal involved; but he would have reported that his target had been sitting with a companion who wasn't from the embassy and who hadn't been seen before, and it was conceivable that his report would be followed up, even though it didn't sound significant: Chepstow could have had a hundred friends and acquaintances. And if the report-were followed up it could become, in the end, significant: my objective was Erich Stern and the closer I went to him the higher the risk of drawing his attention and the parallel became obvious — Chepstow had got in his way and they didn't like it, and the next time the 'scope-sight moved across my image it might well move back, and centralize.
Nothing personal but this was why I had to watch everything and everyone including the man squatting over there by his battered Citroen, making his sandals.
'Combien je vous dois?'
'Allons voir, m'sieur.'
He made the total and I paid him in cash and told him to wait for five minutes and then go across to the man with the Citroen and tell him I wanted him parked outside the Royal Cambodian Hotel, the side entrance opposite the jade emporium. Then I made my way between the rows of clothing and glass beads and sandalwood carvings and soup-kitchens and left the place by the rear entrance and walked three blocks to the cabstand I'd noted on the way up.
The sunglasses had a slight distortion in the frame and halfway to the hotel I took them off and bent one of the side-pieces, tilting them up a little and then down before I put them on again. The metalescent-grey Peugeot 404 turned off at the next intersection, taking its reflection with it. Discount.
The Citroen was already parked opposite the jade emporium when I went into the hotel by the side entrance. I passed close enough to driver to make him look up from his leather-work but he didn't recognize me and I felt a bit more comfortable.
Another tremor came from the distant 81-mm mortars and the people in the foyer froze for a moment in an impromptu tableau, and voices trailed off. I think they were listening for the actual volume of the sound, trying to tell whether the Khmer Rouge were closer now to the city. Apparently they weren't, because everyone began talking again and moving about as they'd done before: there was no particular mood of apprehension. Most of the voices were French, as they'd been at the restaurant: the man in the surplus store had told me that several hundred had decided to remain in Phnom Penh as the insurgents closed in.