London was no help.
The ambassador had left the embassy when I'd got there and the wireless operator was on the point of destroying the set in accordance with instructions. The jamming by the Khmer Rouge had been pretty bad by that time but we put through a few words in formal code for the mission: objective no longer under survey, request directives. It had taken them nearly twenty minutes to make up their bloody minds and there was only one directive and it didn't tell me anything except a change of phase: reservation made Fit 373 Pan Am 21:00 today Taipei-Washington.
I didn't think they meant it.
'Get you another drinkie, old boy?'
I thought they meant it for a feint-jump in the travel pattern or some kind of rdv in transit. They wouldn't throw a complete change of phase at the executive's head without any local briefing. In any case I couldn't reach Taipei by 21:00 hours today.
'No,' I said, and opened my eyes.
'One for the road,' Burroughs grinned, his eyes still frightened. 'They say Foxtrot's coming up any time. Cheers.'
'Cheers.'
I suppose I should have told them about the bang but it had got stuck in my throat because it's bad enough losing the objective without letting yourself get into a terminal situation you could have easily avoided. I wouldn't have heard the last of it because this is the kind of fishwives' gossip that goes around the Caff while the tea's getting cold: what, that old bastard couldn't even sniff out a booby-trap! Jesus, what are things coming to?
All right, I should 'have told London anyway because they ought to know about any attempts by the opposition to knock out the executive: it helps Control to work out the next moves. But my answer to that was that if they imagined I could operate close to the objective in a place like Phnom Penh without getting the same attention that Harrison had got in Milan and Hunter had got in Geneva then they weren't thinking straight.
In this case Egerton was Control and Egerton always thinks straight and he would have realized that the minute I landed in this city I'd be in a red sector.
'Can't think why they're so bloody slow,' Burroughs said.
The windows began vibrating as another wave of helicopters passed overhead towards Pochentong. There'd been very little mortar fire today but we'd heard rockets in action while I was at the airport. The insurgents were reported to be at the outskirts of the city but it didn't seem to affect the evacuation programme: there were still several hundred US Marines protecting the operation at the embassy. At the airport they'd checked my papers and said the foreign-national journalists were holed up in the breakfast-room of the Hotel Le Phnom with walkie-talkies, so I'd got a lift here on a fire-tender ferrying medical supplies from Pochentong to the downtown area where some mortar-bombs had hit a skyscraper.
Four zero Alpha. This is F Foxtrot.
'That's us, old boy!'
Please assemble your group at my location.
'In God we trust,' Burroughs said and drained his glass and hitched his tape-recorder and began lurching to the doors.
Then the whole thing began falling into place and I knew Control didn't mean it for a feint-jump in the travel pattern because as soon as the Foxtrot group was put down on the flying deck of the USS Okinawa I was sent for by the second-in-command and accorded an interview.
'I don't know who you are, Mr Wexford, and maybe that doesn't happen to be my business anyway.' He broke off and looked down across the flying deck as another wave of choppers began spiralling in. 'I'll just give you the instructions I've received through Washington, and you should be informed these instructions are classified. You will be flown from this ship by helicopter to one of our bases in Thailand, which presently will not be named. You are requested to report to the commander of that base immediately on arrival. You will then be out of my hands, but for your information you will be flown from there to Taipei, Taiwan, under classified cover of a one-flight military exercise. Is that understood?'
'I think so. Very good of you.'
It wasn't a feint-jump because with the deck cluttered with choppers they probably couldn't put a medium-range machine into the air. From Thailand to Taiwan there couldn't be any kind of rdv in transit because I'd be in a military plane, but there could possibly be some degree of local direction from Taipei across the Pacific or from the transit point across the North American continent.
Egerton had been thinking very fast: I could reach Taipei by 21:00 hours today providing there was no holdup at the US base in Thailand. There were two other considerations and they were both major.
I'd only blown the phase in Phnom Penh, not the mission.
There was an American connection.
Add: Kobra was still running.
'Were these instructions duplicated, Captain?'
'Duplicated?'
'You've got more than one carrier standing off this coast.'
'Oh.' He folded his hands behind his back. 'No, we began checking on you in Phnom Penh. That's why you were assigned to the Foxtrot group: it was directed to this ship.' He studied me for three seconds. 'Do you need any food before you take off?'
'I don't think so.'
'Protein tablets, medical supplies or attention, any personal comforts?'
He was signing a form at his desk, 'Not a thing, thank you.'
'Okay. Your escort's waiting for you outside and I'll have him take you down to the flying deck. Just report to the senior officer of operations there and 111 alert him by phone so he'll expect you. It's been my pleasure to have you on board, Mr Wexford.'
'You've been most hospitable, Captain.'
He came to the door with me. 'What's it like over there?'
'In Phnom Penh?'
'Yes.'
'Bit of a shambles.'
'Uh-huh. How are those Marines making out?'
Inter-service rivalry is universal and I knew he wanted me to say they were making a balls-up.
'Bloody marvellous,' I told him and went out to join my escort.
Taipei Airport, Taiwan, 19:15 hours.
A hot damp wind blowing off the sea.
They cut up a bit rough in Customs: they didn't like a British journalist getting out of a US Air Force plane without any luggage but I couldn't help that. When they finally let me out I spent thirty minutes going through the main hall and drew blank. It wasn't really necessary because the only place where anyone could have picked me up was the tarmac itself and the only people who knew I was arriving at Taipei Airport tonight were the US Navy and Air Force and the operation was down as classified.
But I wanted to get it right this time. In Phnom Penh I'd assumed security was total and then I'd opened a door and got a wall in my face and it had sobered me up a little and I didn't want anything like that to happen again, because one of the most terrifying moments in the life of an active executive in the field is when you make a mistake twice in the course of a single mission and begin to wonder whether you've been in this trade too long, whether you're getting too old, whether you'll have the nerve to take on a new assignment if you get out of this one alive.
So this time I wanted to get it right.
Findings at the end of thirty minutes: it was a clear field, except for the man in the mackintosh.
Absolute certainty in this situation is of course impossible. If an opposition cell has set up surveillance for your arrival you can't assess their significance until they've seen you. There could be a dozen people here in the main hall on the peep for a given objective: but that objective didn't have to be me. Those two plain-clothes men at Fiumicino hadn't been looking for me: they'd been looking for Heinrich Fogel. Until they've seen you, it isn't possible to know who they're looking for; but once they've seen you they'll start giving themselves away because they can't help it: if they're going so keep you in their sights they'll have to look in your direction from time to time, especially if you move near a doorway or behind some kind of cover. So all you have to do a survey the field and look for someone watching you.