by Adam Hall
The phone rang and he jumped slightly.
‘No,’ he said into it. ‘I can’t. Not now.’ He put it down.
‘Is your cypher room still manned?’ I asked him.
He looked at me quickly, ‘The telex is open, if that’s what you mean.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t.’
He considered this, half-listening to the mortars and perhaps wondering if there was going to be a plane left to take him out. I was getting a bit annoyed because this contact had been lined up for me by Control and he didn’t seem to know what the situation was. The telex was no use to me: I had to get into signals because one of the routine directives received in Rome was to report my arrival in Phnom Penh.
‘You’re the second cultural attaché, is that correct?’
‘Yes.’ He tried to concentrate. ‘Have you got a passport I can see?’
I showed it to him and he gave it a quick glance and said: ‘Fair enough. Sorry, but things have been a bit confusing here for the last few weeks. Mind telling me the name of your editor?’
‘Frank Wainwright.’
He nodded, swinging the case off the desk and dumping it into a corner. ‘I’ll take you along.’
The cypher room was at the end of the passage on the floor at the top of the building, where all embassy cypher rooms are if they’re located with an eye on security.
Chepstow introduced me to the man at the console and said he’d vouch for me, though he didn’t sound too certain. The man gave me a stuffy look and said he couldn’t send anything for the press, and I told him the station and asked him to do it through Crowborough. He went rather shut-faced because the station I’d given him was number three in the secret log and I doubt if he’d ever made contact before.
‘When you’re ready,’ he said.
The thing was an ordinary diplomatic wireless and hadn’t got a scrambler so we used speech-code while the second cultural attaché stood listening near the window, sometimes turning round and then turning back.
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 attaché. 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 anymore. 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 7
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 immedia
te 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.
When they’d killed Harrison in Milan he’d been alone and when they’d killed Hunter in Geneva he’d been alone but when they’d killed Chepstow I’d been there and for the first time Control had a senior executive in the field to take over. Egerton had been pushing me into one phase after another, trying to connect me with the action before I got bored and took on a mission for Parkis or Mildmay or Sargent instead, and it hadn’t worked in Istres and it hadn’t worked in Rome but it had worked in Phnom Penh and I had an immediate objective: Erich Stern.
Kobra was mine now, exclusive.
‘Who the hell are you?’ the ambassador asked.
‘It doesn’t matter who I am,’ I told him. ‘All you need to know is why you should give me assistance. Tell your wireless operator to put through a special facilities request to BL-565 Extension 9, and you’ll get the point.’
There was a distilled-water dispenser in the corner of the room and I went over and filled one of the .waxed cups and drank, shutting my eyes for a moment and trying to forget. He’d looked surprised, in the instant before he was hit, but at the time I didn’t understand. Conceivably he’d seen the bloody thing hi the last few yards of its travel, the sun shining on it and its configuration growing larger with the passing of each microsecond. Just a look of surprise-not fear or anything. Perhaps he’d thought it was a bee.
I supposed they’d cable her: the pretty girl in the twin-set with the sun in her eyes.
‘I imagine you know,’ I said as I dumped the cup, ‘what that particular station is?’
‘I don’t happen to work in the cypher room, Mr. Wexford.’
He was still standing bolt upright in the middle of the office, perhaps wondering if he could get me arrested for anything.
‘Good point,’ I said. ‘For your information it’s the secret log designation for No. 10 Downing Street and the special facilities request I’m making will go direct to the Prime Minister’s secretary. For Christ’s sake,’ I said reasonably, ‘I’m not asking for troops or a destroyer or anything, so let’s get it over with, shall we?’
He stood there for another five seconds and then went back to his desk.
‘You intelligence people are a damned nuisance,’ he said and picked up the intercom phone. ‘Give me mat number again - the signals number.’
So I gave it to him and he got on to the cypher room and I waited till he’d told the operator what was wanted, then. I said: Tell them they can get a message through to Q-15, Asian theatre, till you shut this place up and go. With your permission, of course.’
He began talking into the phone again.
‘Who was it?’ the girl asked me.
‘What?’
‘Who shot Brian?’
‘I don’t know.’
She was staring at me, through me, with her eyes like ice.
‘Jesus Christ,’ she said, and her voice faltered, ‘I’d give a lot to find out.’ She turned away suddenly and went back into the hall and I heard her sobbing out all the four-letter words she could think of, as quietly as she could. Then I remembered that people can look a lot different in photographs, especially if the sun’s in their eyes.
‘As soon as you can,’ the ambassador said, and put down the phone, pinching the bridge of his nose. ‘I shouldn’t think we’ve got five thousand,’ he said, ‘or anything like it. We’ll need some for ourselves, to bribe our way through difficulties, if I know anything about it.’ He got up and took the portrait of the Queen and Philip off the wall and began fiddling with the knobs on the safe. ‘Poor little devil. If you know anything else about this terrible affair, I think it’s your duty to tell me.’
‘Nothing else. Nothing at all.’
He swung the door of the safe open and turned to look at me for a moment, his eyes weary.
‘I suppose he was mixed up in some sort of intelligence work too, was he? That’s why they -‘ he shrugged with one hand, and didn’t finish.
‘It’ll be easier all round,’ I said, ‘if he’s remembered as the second cultural attaché. Full stop.’
The driver shook his head and said no good, no good, so I got in and gave him five hundred dels in denominations of fifty and told him he was my driver for the rest of the day and I wanted to go to the Royal Cambodian Hotel just as fast as he could do it. It was between the US Embassy and the Presidential Palace and we had to make a detour round the evacuation zone near the Bassac River, where three or four hundred Marines were protecting the operation.
The ambassador had only been able to let me have a couple of thousand so I’d have to go easy with it. Most of the services were breaking down in the city and there didn’t seem to be much of a future, so that hard cash was the only remaining key to a lot of things.
The hotel looked abandoned when we got there but I found a last-ditch skeleton staff in the foyer with a French-speaking Eurasian supervising at the desk.
‘J’ai un ami chez vous - Monsieur Erich Stern. II n’est pas parti, j’espere?’
He slid a perfectly-manicured finger down the page of the register, glancing up as the sound of light bombardment began vibrating in the air, then glancing dow
n again.
‘Monsieur Stern est toujours la, m’sieur. Suite 9. Vous voulez lui telephoner, ou -‘
‘Plus lord. D’abord, je voudrais une chambre pour moi-meme.’
He gave me Number 91, asked about luggage, and glanced a second time at my clothes without comment. My passport said ‘press correspondent’ and that explained a lot of things in a place like this, including the bloodspots and the bandage on my wrist they’d given me in Rome and the fact that I wanted a room at the best hotel in Phnom Penh when most people were getting out of the place in a hurry. I’d had to leave my suitcase behind when I’d got the lift in the helicopter because the pilot had been bringing troops in and the weight was critical.
He called for a boy to take me to my room.
A different vibration was in the air and I identified it as the throb of chopper blades as a new wave came across to the airport from one of the carriers.
‘Please?’
I followed the boy. The lift wasn’t working because some of the power lines had been hit last evening, which explained the candles everywhere in bowls and saucers. We took the stairs and the boy gave little bows on each landing and pointed upwards again. There was a suite on each floor and that was why I’d asked for a room on the ninth: Erich Stern was the immediate objective and I was going to stay as close to him as I could; but I didn’t think there was any point in trying to see him about getting a girl out of the country until I’d got a few answers worked out in my head because this place had become a red sector for me when that bullet had made a hit: the ‘scope-sight must have passed across my image as the sniper had lined up his shot.
There was a certain degree of trauma still lingering, on that subject. The ideal mission is when London knows enough to brief you on the whole thing: objective, access, timing, so forth. The minute you leave Whitehall you know where you’re going and you know what you’ve got to do and all you ‘have to work out is how to do it. It doesn’t often happen like that. Most of the time it breaks suddenly, and nearly always with a burst of signals from an agent-in-place or a Curtain embassy or just someone who’s bust a code and exposed an operation the Bureau might want to penetrate: there isn’t always time to London-brief an executive and work out his access before he’s sent in. This was the kind of thing that was happening now: I was being pitched into the mission with London only one jump ahead of me at any given phase, and no director in the field. We don’t mind that: it keeps us flexible; but it’s dangerous because there hasn’t been enough ground-work done and you can suddenly find yourself sitting in the cross-hairs of a telescopic rifle sight without even knowing it and that was why I’d hit the ground and bounced into a zig-zag run from cover to cover among the tables and the palm-trunks till I was inside the restaurant with nothing to show for it but grazed hands and the trauma that lingered in me now.