Quiller Salamander q-18

by Adam Hall

  I fetched more water for her, and didn't ask her any more about the Khmer Rouge she was killing off by night, didn't need to tell her how dangerous it was: she knew that, and must have found solace in it. Taking pictures of crippled children for her editors in Paris hadn't been enough, in the end, and she'd needed to get involved.

  'I don't want to talk about it any more,' she said.

  'Then we won't.'

  'I want to make love again, while there's still time.'

  We slept, afterward, with her head buried against me and her knees drawn up, and sometimes a nightmare jerked her awake and she had to get her breath before she pulled me tightly and fiercely against her and slept again, sighing like a child.

  Soon after dawn there was thunder in the hills, and by eight o'clock, rain. I was soaked by the time I'd walked to the safe house, and so was the contact who came for me soon afterward, telling me I was needed at the place of the pig, the code designation Pringle and I had agreed on.

  17: ZERO

  'You did rather well.'

  'Apparently not,' I said.

  Flockhart favoured me with one of his pauses. The line was full of squelch: this was coming through Moscow's Intersputnik — Pringle had told me the Australian satellite was on overload.

  'How so?'

  'My friend here,' I told him, 'feels you might not agree I've produced anything all that conclusive.' 12°3′N x 103°l0'E.

  Pringle was watching me attentively, silhouetted against the rain-slashed window.

  'That is to be seen,' Flockhart said. 'But I'd prefer not to pass it on to our people or Washington at this stage, or for that matter the crowned head.'

  'Our people' presumably being the UK Ministry of Defence, who would brief the prime minister; 'Washington' presumably being the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who would brief the president; and the 'crowned head' being King Sihanouk. Because this was the only possible action anyone could be expected to take if they were ready to rely on Boris Slavsky's map: an air strike.

  'However,' I heard Flockhart saying, 'you've certainly made a good start.'

  I left that.

  'We simply require to take things a little further.'

  I realized he had to watch what he said on a satellite line, but Flockhart also had a penchant for the cryptic, as I'd learned when he'd first talked to me at the Cellar Steps. They get like that, the controls, after years of pushing the pawns across the board in the signals room: they end up talking like a cipher grid. I waited again. He'd go on when he was ready.

  'We can't see the wood at the moment, you understand, even by satellite. What we need is to confirm the evidence, physically.'

  I didn't answer. He was out of his bloody mind.

  'Then everyone would know that action could be taken on a sound premise, and would therefore succeed.'

  'Yes, but there isn't time. Not if that deadline is real.' The nineteenth.

  'You would require, what? Twelve hours?'

  Or less, but he was talking about a suicide run, a low-level chopper survey with telescopic cameras. 'We can't see the wood' translated as 'we can't see the Khmer Rouge camp for the trees', even with Landsat, since it was in deep jungle. I understood that, and I understood that neither the UN nor the US would order a strike based solely on a map position. The problem was more local: I didn't see how Salamander could keep on running with a dead executive.

  I asked Flockhart, 'Have you ever put your hand into a beehive?'

  A squeal came from the room next door — I suppose someone had picked up Little Stinker and he wanted to be put down again.

  'What was that?' Flockhart asked.

  'A pig.' Over the line it must have sounded like an interrogation cell near closing time.

  'Given adequate magnification,' Flockhart said in a moment, 'you wouldn't have to go in as close as that.'

  'You can hear a fan at five miles, for Christ's sake.' Too late to edit that: I'd slipped, showing the nerves, and he would have noticed. It was this that should have warned me.

  'Speed,' Flockhart's voice came persuasively, 'would be of the essence, of course. Speed and surprise.'

  A night sortie with infra-red cameras — he'd got it all worked out. But he wouldn't be sitting in the chopper when it got blown out of the sky.

  The pig squealed again and it plucked at the nerves. That should have warned me too. 'You'd never find anyone to do it,' I said.

  'We're thinking of you, of course.'

  'Look, I haven't got more than fifty hours behind me in one of those things.' The only training we get at Norfolk is just enough to give us a chance if the pilot suffers a heart attack.

  'But you've used them before, and most effectively.'

  The rain drummed on the roof of the building, and a trickle had started below the door, dark on the scarred concrete. Pringle had moved his foot out of its way, was watching me again with his cool grey eyes. I didn't think he could hear what Flockhart was saying, but he could hear me all right and he'd know what was on. Flockhart would have briefed him on it in any case while the contact was on his way to fetch me. We need him to agree to this, and I want you to do all you can at your end to persuade him.

  But there wasn't anything Pringle could do: I didn't trust him, didn't respect him. Flockhart I would listen to; he was a major player, was seasoned, had authority. I didn't trust him either, but yes, I would listen.

  'For this job,' I said, 'you'd need an ace.' We were working with a deadline and there was another rainstorm in and we couldn't wait for it to clear, would have to fly half-blind to the target, and if the rain was still coming down when we reached it there wouldn't be any point in even turning the cameras on.

  'We have one,' I heard Flockhart saying.

  'An ace?'

  'Yes.'

  Covered himself, in case I said no.

  'He's tired of life?'

  'He is not unsanguine.'

  'I know him?'

  'It's unlikely. But he's world class.'

  And a Cambodian, he must be, burning with the holy fire of love for his country, ready to do or die. No one else would touch this one.

  'What's the state of preparedness?' I asked Flockhart.

  'Launch zero.'

  Oh, Jesus, he'd been working through the night, he and Pringle, finding a pilot and a machine and putting them on stand-by at the airfield over there, locating the cameras, setting them up. Or had they done it days ago? The first time I'd met Pringle at the airport in Phnom Penh he'd told me that the first objective for Salamander was to get information on Pol Pot. I was close to doing that, had found him on the map, would have to follow up, make certain, get close to him with the cameras, take his bloody picture and send it to London, wish you were here, the weather's marvellous.

  The weather was ten-tenths shit and I was standing here with the phone slippery with sweat because of the heat in this stinking hole and because I should have been warned when the pig had squealed and my nerves had jumped, should have been warned even then that I was going to do what he said, what Flockhart said, because I was already committed to putting my neck on the block in the name of the salamander, whatever the chances were of coming out of it with anything to show, of coming out of it alive; chances? surely you must be joking, they'll have weapons out there, never mind about the leaves overhead blocking their view, they can send up a square mile of fire power in a single blast the moment they hear the rotors, I wish to God they wouldn't keep that stinking pig in here.

  'Do you have any questions?'

  Flockhart.

  'Yes. Who's going to replace me, if I come unstuck?'

  Another of his bloody pauses. I suppose he was a bit surprised, the brave little ferret in the field had actually agreed to getting himself blown into Christendom without too much persuasion.

  'No one would replace you.'

  Bloody liar. The control always lines up a replacement when he sends his executive on a suicide run; I'd been one of them myself on half the missions I'd
worked, walking in a dead man's shoes.

  'There's no replacement?'

  'You must take it how you will,' Flockhart said, 'but for this undertaking you are irreplaceable.'

  Pringle was watching me, probably saw the reaction in my eyes: you don't blank everything off when you're with your director in the field, you're supposed to trust him.

  'You mean this is a one-shot thing?'

  Silence, then: 'Yes. You are our only chance. Surely you realized that.'

  'Why should I?' Then I understood. 'Where is the Sacred Bull?'

  It's what we call the Bureau, we the beleaguered minions in the field.

  'Nowhere,' Flockhart said.

  So he was still running Salamander solo, without a signals board, without support in the field, even without a replacement for the executive, going over the heads of Administration and reporting directly to the prime minister. Only four people, then, were privy at this stage to the mission: the PM, Flockhart, Pringle and I. Until they brought in Washington, until they had to, if an air strike was to be ordered.

  'When will that change?' I asked Flockhart carefully. The stakes seemed suddenly rather high with only four players in the game.

  'At some time in the future.'

  Shouldn't have asked.

  Pringle watched me as the trickle of water spread across the concrete, as the pig in there squealed again and the rain hit the window aslant in the wind and the leaves of the sugar palms out there shone steel-bright under the storm as I stood there looking for more questions to ask, for more information, some kind of reassurance that I wasn't expected to go into this phase of the mission with too much left to chance. But there weren't any questions left; Flockhart had briefed me as far as he needed to, had already set the whole thing up, pilot, chopper, cameras, and had given me the score: launch zero.

  'We've got a rainstorm going on here,' I told him. 'We'll have to wait till it stops.'

  'Of course.' His voice was almost gentle. 'Whenever you're ready.'

  18: FLAK

  'My two sons were killed,' the man perched on the oil drum said in local French, and lit another Gauloise from the stub of the last. 'They were in the Fields.'

  He was Captain Khay of the Cambodian Air Force, and he'd been seconded by his squadron to fly me to 12°3′N x 103° 1 0'E. The Sikorsky S-67 was standing behind us in the hangar, squat, matt black, ugly as sin.

  Khay stared out at the rain as it came slanting across the open doors of the hangar, stirring the bright grey puddles into boiling steel. The sun was still in the sky somewhere, but low now and drowned in the haze; the light across the airfield was bleak, electric, looking as if someone had forgotten to switch it off.

  'So I am doing this,' the captain said, 'for my sons, for the king, and for my people.'

  'Doing this?'

  Khay looked at me with a jerk of his head. 'This sortie.'

  'You wouldn't fancy it,' I said, 'otherwise.' And listened carefully.

  'How do the Americans say?' He tried out his English, 'You must do a thing — ' then shook his head.

  'You gotta do whatcha gotta do.'

  'That is right, yes!' The smile didn't reach his eyes; they simply narrowed. His eyes had never lit, I would have thought, since his sons had died. 'That is why I do it.'

  'Did you volunteer?' I asked him.

  'No. I am chosen because I am the most experienced pilot in the service, with the helicopters.' He flicked ash off his Gauloise.

  'What happened to your hand?'

  'Oh' — he looked at it — 'it is snake bite, long time ago. Cobra.'

  'You must be pretty fit.'

  He shrugged. 'One simply has to relax. Western people drink whole bottle of whisky, sometimes works. Meditation best. So why do you do this?'

  'Why am I making this sortie?'

  'Yes.'

  'You gotta do whatcha gotta do.'

  The grimace. 'I think that is what you will say.'

  He got off the oil drum and walked towards the curtain of rain at the entrance to the hangar, looking at the sky. At the mine-clearing unit they'd said the storm was going to last another twelve hours, but Pringle had ordered me down here to meet Khay, who said it could clear by midnight. The sun must be down by now; the sugar palms were lost in the haze and the terminal building was marked only by its lights.

  In a moment Khay turned and came back, pulling a map from his jump suit and spreading it across the oil drum. 'We will go soon,' he said. 'Maybe another hour — the wind is shifting. But if we run into any more rain we will simply fly around it. If that is not possible, then we will put her down and wait it out, maybe here, or here, somewhere between the mountains. We have rations and water for three days, and enough fuel for 400 kilometres. We can sleep in the machine if we need to. Have you any questions?'

  'What's your ideal schedule?'

  'My ideal schedule is that we go in and take the photographs within an hour, maybe ninety minutes, and get out again' — he glanced up at me — 'if they let us.' He folded the map. 'I do not want to have to fly this thing in the daylight. The identification numbers are false and we could be challenged by radio; there are so many factions, you see, suspicious of each other, quite apart from the Khmer Rouge. This is not an air force machine, with that identification, but it is obviously assigned to night flying, and that could raise questions.' He lit another Gauloise, his hand not quite steady — not, I thought, because he was worried about the flight but because his nerves had been under strain ever since Pol Pot had taken over the country. I'd noticed it in others; the people here lived in the constant fear that it could happen again.

  'Is this aircraft armed?' I asked him.

  Khay shrugged. 'Normally we carry 30mm barbette-mounted cannon, but it was taken off before I assumed command.' He dropped his cigarette and flattened it against the concrete with his flying-boot. 'In any case we are not going to hang around the target area long enough for them to send up a helicopter. We go in, we come out, and if the camera does not jam we get some pictures.'

  This was at 19:00 hours, and by 20:00 we saw a drenched moon floating in the night sky as the wind shifted again and then died, leaving the airfield steaming. There was still a light rain coming down at 21:15 but Khay said it didn't worry him, and climbed onto the seat of the work-horse and pulled the Sikorsky out to the tarmac.

  We took off twenty minutes later into dead air with the rotor blades churning the puddles into mist as we became airborne and headed south-west towards the sea.

  He'd had this helicopter standing by for days, Pringle, on instructions from London; for a week, ever since I'd made contact with him for the first time at the airport in Phnom Penh. He must have.

  Because Flockhart was smart.

  'ETA ten minutes,' I heard Khay calling above the crackling of the rotors.

  'Roger.'

  Flockhart was smart enough to know that if I took Salamander on at all I would hit the first objective before long: information on Pol Pot. And he'd known it might have to be confirmed by air reconnaissance, and so had made overtures through Sihanouk's intelligence arm to secure an aircraft and have it put on readiness. Flockhart, I was beginning to understand, left nothing to chance, providing he had control. But he was in London now, with the buds of the daffodils just beginning to show in the pale March sunshine at three in the afternoon as the buses rumbled past the black iron railings, and here it was different, as we skated across the crests of the mountains below a reef of cloud, the land dark below us and the clock on the instrument panel flicking the minutes away to zero; here Flockhart hadn't the slightest control, and could only wait by the telephone for whatever Pringle might signal. My evaluation of this sortie hadn't changed: this was a suicide run.

  'Nine minutes,' Khay told me, and took us down to three thousand feet as the mountains gave way to jungle. 'If there is any wind still blowing down there it will be from the west, and so I am going to turn now a little and approach the target from the east, so they will not hear us s
o soon.' With a shrug — 'It will make only a very slight difference, but we need all the advantage we can get.' His eyes studied my face. 'And how are you feeling, mon ami?'

  'Everything's set up.'

  I'd checked the camera three times on our way here, for something to do. It was a 1,000-frame Hartmann-Zeiss with a twenty-five degree omnidirectional sweeping capacity, and I'd set it at base maximum, which was where we'd start taking pictures.

  'It is not what I mean,' Khay said, still with his eyes on me. 'I ask you how you are feeling.'

  'Oh. Quite confident.'

  That wasn't what he meant either but it was all he was going to get. The guards down there in the camp would start picking us up acoustically very soon now, and we'd be on a collision course governed by our airspeed and the time it took the Khmer Rouge to man their guns. So how would you feel, for God's sake?

  Khay looked away and checked his instruments.

  'Seven minutes.'

  The moon was behind us now, and I thought I could see our shadow crossing the jungle below, but it must have been an illusion: at this altitude it would be too far ahead of us, nearing the camp, a ghostly harbinger.

  'You have other children?' I asked Khay. 'Daughters?'

  He turned his head. 'No.'

  'Still have a wife?'

  He looked away. 'She is missing. She is missing since fifteen years.'

  I shifted in my seat, getting more control of the camera, pressing the button, shooting a few frames, watching the counter running, shutting down again.

  'You have children?' I heard Khay asking.

  'No.'