Quiller's Run

by Adam Hall

  ‘Okay. So what’s the deal, Jordan? You want to know if Little Kiss-of-Steel has this weapon you’re talking about?’

  ‘Very much.’

  ‘If she doesn’t have it, she’d sure as hell maim it.’

  ‘Have you ever seen one?’

  ‘No.’ He toyed with the chamois bag. ‘But I’ve seen some of the specs. I’d say if that thing got into the wrong hands in Southeast Asia we could see the whole damn place go up. It can knock choppers out of the sky, right?’

  ‘Any aircraft up to 30,000 feet.’

  The bag hit the desk with a soft thump. ‘Thirty thousand, Jesus Christ. And hand-held? That’s more than the Stinger can do.’

  ‘By a factor of three.’

  He thought for a while, his eyes down; then he pulled another black cigarette out of the packet and lit up and looked at me through the smoke. ‘How long have you known Katie McCorkadale?’

  We had lunch.’

  ‘You must have impressed her.’

  ‘Perhaps she’s just a good judge of character.’

  ‘I guess. I mean, when Katie tells me I can trust somebody, it’s for real. She’s never been wrong.’

  ‘That’s why you had a gun in my back.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were from Katie.’ He picked some tobacco from his lip. ‘So I’ve told you what kind of woman this Mariko Shoda is. You still want to meet her?’

  ‘It’s why I came.’

  ‘Thing is,’ he said, watching me obliquely, ‘she doesn’t want to meet you, right? Weren’t you the guy in the limo, few nights ago? There wasn’t anything in the news, but there’s a whole bunch of grapevines in Singapore.’

  ‘She got the wrong impression,’ I said. ‘I don’t mean her any harm.’ That too was for the grapevine.

  ‘Then you’re pretty unusual.’ He straightened on the bamboo chair and picked up the phone, dialling. ‘Couple of months back,’ he told me, ‘someone dive-bombed a monastery where she stays sometimes, blew it apart. She wasn’t home.’ On the phone he asked for Sam. ‘That gal has so many people who want her dead, she’s kind of jumpy. I guess that’s why she gave you the grief in the limo. Sam? How’s things? Listen, do something for me. I believe there’s a guy named Lafarge in town from Bangkok. He’s due out of the airport sometime in the next few days but I don’t know which flight. I know he’s made a reservation because I picked it up when I was coming through Anna Siang’s office. Can you hit the computer for me?’ He dropped ash into the jade bowl on his desk. ‘Okay, get back to me, Sam.’

  He put the phone down and crossed his spider-thin legs.

  ‘Like I was starting to say, I was up in Phnom Penh a while back and took a chance and checked out an illegal airstrip out of the city. We have to do that, the flyers. We need to know where the strips are and how to get in there if ever we have to - and you never know when. There’s hundreds, see - make it thousands. Anyway, I happened to see some troops drawn up in some kind of a training camp, place was thick with barbed wire but you could catch a glimpse of what was going on. The guys were being reviewed by their colonel, as best I could see, a tiny little guy but absolutely impeccable, like they all were. Even from that distance I could see they were all officer rank, by the uniform. Then I kind of put a few things together - the location of the camp and the obviously elite performance going on, see, and then I got it. That tiny little guy was Mariko Shoda, because, believe me, there isn’t another female colonel around in this neck of the woods. I mean, just to see the salute she snapped up - even at that distance I knew I was in the presence of real style. So that’s Shoda too, she’s -‘

  The phone rang and he picked it up. ‘Yes? Sure.’ He pulled a scratch pad towards him and got a pen from a drawer. ‘OK. I have that, Sam. And listen, I never asked you about this guy, okay? I didn’t even call you up. With the you-know-what connection, if there’s any trouble it’s going to be my ass. Or head.’

  He asked about someone called Lee and said give him my best and rang off, tearing the top sheet from the pad and giving it to me. ‘Okay, Dominic Lafarge is a French-born naturalised Thai subject and he’s booked out on that flight in the morning. He got himself naturalised because he works for Shoda and she calls the shots. From the grapevine I use, Lafarge has lived in Thailand for the past ten or eleven years and at present he’s the major source of the weaponry flowing into Shoda’s hands and out again to the rebel forces in Indo-China.’ He pressed his cigarette butt into the bowl. ‘I don’t know what he’s doing in Singapore and I don’t know why-he’s flying to Bangkok in the morning, but if you asked me to make a bet I’d say he’s very likely visiting his boss, because that’s where she is right now.’ He got a fresh cigarette. ‘Make any sense?’

  ‘This grapevine. How reliable is it?’

  I hadn’t expected this amount of luck, so early. I was desperate for access, because once I found a way in to Shoda and her organisation I could leave the deadly environment of the open ground and go clandestine and that would give me a tenfold chance of survival. And it would give me the mission.

  ‘The grapevine I use,’ Chen said, ‘is better than most. What I’ve just told you about Lafarge is true, vouched for. I’m in the arms trade, okay? I therefore make it my business to know the others. So if you aim to tag on to this guy tomorrow you’ll at least know he’s the right guy. But what’s going to happen to you at the other end of that flight, God knows - and don’t hold me responsible. You’ll be moving in to Shoda’s territory.’

  I got up and walked around and looked at the photographs and the black lace glove and the dried monkey’s head and the cigarette packet with the bullet hole in it and then came back to talk to Johnny Chen and took a risk so big that my skin crawled.

  ‘If I took that flight, I wouldn’t want you to tell anyone.’

  He got up and crushed out a butt and stuck his thin hands into his hip pocket and shrugged. ‘It’s your ass, Jordan, if anything goes wrong. But if anyone finds out you’ve got plans to take that flight, it won’t be from me. I don’t want your death on my hands.’

  I cleaned my face up in the small sandalwood-scented bathroom before he showed me out through the back way, down some stairs and across a freight-storage hangar and through a door leading into an alleyway stacked with emptied crates and rubbish bins and oil drums, with only one high yellow lamp at the corner of the warehouse.

  ‘Happy landings,’ he said, and went back inside.

  I spent thirty minutes checking the riverside environment before I walked into the open street and kept to whatever cover I could find, trying to talk myself out of the half-knowledge that I was driving myself into a trap and talk myself into believing that I’d got access - access to Shoda, and that tonight the mission had started running.

  CHAPTER 8

  FLIGHT 306

  Will Mr. Martin Jordan please pick up the nearest paging phone?’ I didn’t move.

  It could only be Chen.

  If I took that flight, I wouldn’t want you to tell anyone.

  I don’t want your death on my hands.

  So it could only be Chen because only Chen know I was here, except for the airline staff, and they wouldn’t have me paged: they’d phone the gate desk. It could only be Chen, but the sweat had started running because I’d spent the last two hours securing the whole of the environment here - the checkin counters and the telephones and the snack bar and the gate area - because Gate 10 could be my way out of continuous and hazardous exposure above ground and my way into the safety of clandestine operation, and I had to go through it clean.

  All I could do now was use the soft-eyes technique and let the immediate scene come into the brain unfocused and ask the memory to alert me to any change. There aren’t many situations worse than finding yourself ten paces away from the break-off point between overt and clandestine and then have your cover name called out over a public address system. I took my time, half a minute, but couldn’t pick up any. significant change in the movement around me: no on
e turned on their heel within seconds of the PA call; no one had started to move towards me; no one was going to a telephone.

  So I moved now because if I didn’t they’d repeat the call and I didn’t want that. I picked up the phone.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Is that Mr. Jordan?’

  Ice along the nerves. It wasn’t Chen. It was a woman’s voice. And that was impossible. Correction: not impossible, no.

  He’d blown me.

  ‘Please, is that Mr. Jordan?’

  A young woman’s voice; Asiatic, Japanese inflection.

  I was still watching, but with hard eyes now, focusing, remembering. They were my friends here in this small comfortable area, my good friends. The three Australians over there were booked to play in Bangkok in the Royal Thai Tennis Championships; one of them had just had a row with his wife and wished he’d had time to make it up before he flew: he didn’t like flying. The party of four people near the snack bar were from Milwaukee; they’d done Hong Kong and they’d done Tokyo and now they were going to do Bangkok, including the Phrakaeo Wat and the Royal Palace and the Reclining Buddha, and Elmer had said if they didn’t take home a half-ton of souvenirs he’d never let them set foot in the Kawani’s Club again. The two nuns by the gate were almost enveloping the teenage French girl in their black habits when I’d passed close to them twenty minutes ago; Maman had died at a hospital in Singapore yesterday and they were escorting her to Bangkok, where Papa was waiting for her; the body had been flown out last night.

  I knew a great deal about the rest of the passengers gathered here in the small comfortable area at Gate 10, enough to know that they were my friends, my good friends, if only because none of them was here to trap me into a shut-ended situation and set me up for the kill. The only one here who wasn’t my friend was the voice on the paging phone.

  ‘It is very urgent, please. Are you Mr. Jordan?’

  I didn’t answer. I needed time. If I said no, or just hung up, I wouldn’t learn anything, and what I might learn could save me. If I said yes they’d get here as fast as they could and they might not be far away.

  ‘We are now boarding passengers on Flight 306 for Bangkok. Will passengers for Bangkok please board at Gate 10.’

  Things I didn’t understand. The woman was phoning because she believed, they believed, I was here. Then why didn’t they come here for me physically? Because they weren’t certain, or there hadn’t been time. Time since when? Since Chen had blown me. As far as liaison goes, you’ll have to pick a few people yourself, if you can find anyone you can trust.

  Chen. Katie McCorkadale.

  But I’d known yesterday the risk I was taking when I’d asked Chen to keep total security on my taking this flight, and here was the moment of truth. There wasn’t a lot of choice. If I dropped the phone and got out of the airport I might not be in time before they came in, and I wouldn’t learn anything, anything this soft Asiatic voice on the telephone might tell me. If I stayed here and said yes, this is Mr. Jordan, I could be doing precisely what they wanted me to do: let her keep on talking to give them time to close in.

  But this was a public place.

  ‘It is very urgent, please. Are you Mr. Jordan?”

  This was a public place and there wouldn’t be anything they could do until I tried to get clear at the periphery and there was a chance, a thin chance.

  ‘Yes.’

  There was an echo, but not on the line, in the psyche.

  ‘Mr. Martin Jordan?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I began watching the walkway area, where they would have to come.

  ‘ Will passengers on Flight 306 please board at Gate 10. We are boarding now for Bangkok? I saw Lafarge going through with his two bodyguards. I’d seen them when they’d come into the gate area: Lafarge, dark, elegant, his initials on his pigskin briefcase, the case chained to his left wrist; his guards, unobtrusive, shut-faced, tough, trained. Others followed: the two nuns with the little girl; the Americans.

  I watched the walkway, not taking my eyes away for an instant. They would not be my friends, when they came.

  ‘Mr. Jordan, you must not board that plane.’

  A man came running, a man in a track-suit with a flight bag, running towards me along the walkway, and I felt my nerves set, ready for preservation.

  ‘Mr. Jordan, do you understand? You must not take Flight 306.’

  Running hard but not towards me now, veering for the group at the gate - ‘Hey, Charlie, tell ‘em to wait? Or they’ll start the tennis match without you, my son.

  So I mustn’t take this flight. Why not, you little bitch? Sweat running.

  ‘All passengers must now board Flight 306 for Bangkok at Gate 10. We are leaving in five minutes’

  It tallied with the figures on the departure screen.

  ‘Mr. Jordan.’ She didn’t sound impatient. She sounded concerned, emphatic. ‘Please tell me that you understand what I am saying. It is very urgent.’

  Not very. I’ve got five minutes.

  I asked her: ‘Who are you?’

  ‘It is not important, Mr. Jordan. I have information that concerns your welfare. There will be an accident, do you understand?’

  ‘What kind of accident?’

  To the plane. To Flight 306.’

  ‘Then you’d better tell someone. The pilot might be interested.’

  The timing was becoming critical, and I began watching the walkway half the time and the departure gate half the time. I didn’t know if I could learn anything more from the soft, urgent little voice on the line, or whether this was all: that someone - Shoda? — was trying to stop me boarding the flight for Bangkok. The time gap was narrowing quite fast now and the best way I could use it would be to stay here on the line in the hope of learning something more, and wait until the girl at the gate began closing it - then get there, get on the plane. If anyone came along the walkway who looked dangerous I could go through the gate anyway and they wouldn’t be able to follow: if they came here for me at all they’d be in a hurry, getting here while the woman kept me on the line.

  ‘This is the final call for passengers on Flight 306 for Bangkok.’

  Two more people went through and the girl looked around the gate area for stragglers, checking her passenger list and finding one missing. There was nothing she could do about it. All she could see was a man using a paging phone.

  ‘Are you still there, Mr. Jordan?’

  ‘Yes. What is the source of your information?’

  ‘It is reliable. I am your friend, Mr. Jordan. Please listen to me. There will be no survivors on Flight 306. You must not take it.’

  ‘All right, I’ll go and warn the crew.’

  ‘They would not believe you.’

  ‘Any more than I believe you.’

  For the first time her voice had a note of impatience, the hint of a sigh. Not impatience, exactly. Resignation. ‘If you wish to live, Mr. Jordan, you must not take the plane. That is all I can do for you.’

  Maybe if I told the girl at the gate I was officially working for the Thai government and showed the laissez-passer that Prince Kityakara had given me she’d at least tell the captain, but I still had no source to offer except a voice on a telephone.

  ‘What kind of accident will it be? Is there a bomb on board?’ If I could give them any details they might listen.

  ‘I must go now, Mr. Jordan. I am sorry. There will be no survivors?

  The girl at the gate was giving herself a manicure, one pantyhosed leg crooked, her head tilted in concentration.

  ‘I am going now,’ the voice on the line told me.

  There was something getting through to me but I didn’t know what it was; it was simply a feeling. There wasn’t time to work out the dozen or so explanations for this call on the paging phone. A decision had to be made and it had to be made now and there was absolutely no reason to think that this wasn’t a crude last-minute attempt to keep me here in Singapore and on treacherous open ground instead of go
ing to the gate and apologizing to the girl and slipping through to the safety of clandestine operations, but I listened to the voice - not hers, not the voice on the line, but the one in my head, in the primitive brain stem, the seat of intuition.

  ‘I’m taking the flight,’ I said, on the principle that if you change direction you must cover your tracks. Then I put the phone down and went over to the gate and showed my Thai Government credentials and told the girl that I’d learned from an unidentifiable source that Flight 306 to Bangkok was compromised.

  She phoned the agent at the other end of the runnel and I was put on to the captain direct as I watched the starboard wing moving slowly past the window; the 727 was backing under tow and over the phone I could catch the co-pilot going through the routine checks with the tower. The captain asked me the expected questions and I hadn’t got any answers. I told him that to satisfy myself I wanted him to know that an unidentified woman’s voice on a paging-phone had told me that his aircraft would ‘have an accident’.

  Two of the airline’s officials came along to the gate and talked to me but there wasn’t anything I could add and they finally told me that the security checks at this airport were the most sophisticated in the world and that I’d probably been the victim of a hoax. My name was noted and I was thanked for my concern.

  Eleven minutes later I watched Flight 306 turn heavily at the end of the taxiing road and line up with the runway and wait for the green and then gun up and start rolling. It was airborne at 10:17, on schedule.

  It was then that I knew that because of touchy nerves I’d let Shoda set me up, and that my chances of seeing nightfall would have been infinitely greater on Flight 306 than here on the ground in Singapore where she knew how to find me.

  She swung round on the staircase.

  ‘Martin?

  Framed by the light from a high window, her hair was still moving, her lips parted, her eyes wide, shadowed.

  I said hello.

  She came down slowly, not looking away from me, one foot faltering in its high-heeled sandal, her thin hand sliding down the banister-rail as if she were feeling her way. When she came down the last step she was still watching me, mesmerised; then she just look a pace and leaned against me with her head on my shoulder and stayed perfectly still. In a whisper, ‘Oh, thank God?