by Adam Hall
The booby-trap had been set ineffectively: it should have been triggered to go off when i was going through the doorway and not when I opened the door. The work was probably done by a European because the Asians are subtle technicians: they invented explosives and know how to handle them.
Erich Stern hadn't known about the booby-trap: if he were running a cell or a hit-man and wanted me wiped out he would have ordered the work to be done in the open, as in the case of Chepstow. Stern wouldn't have wanted an explosion taking place so close to Suite 9: it could conceivably have damaged his own person and/or caused a fire that could have spread to Suite 9 before he'd had time to get out with his belongings. The kind of operator who sells freedom for a price when the buyer is desperate is a discreet man, working with one foot in the bank-vault and the other in the stirrup.
He doesn't like loud noises or any kind of confusion to disturb his quiet activities.
The question of mission-feel was also answered in part: I still didn't know which precise sense had alerted me but that was now academic. The door of Room 91 was no longer a normal door: it had been tampered with and rigged with an alien device and this had produced subtle changes, one of which had been noted at the level where the conscious merges with the subliminal — the slight movement of the door as I had pushed the key in, or the faint scent of the explosive material, recalling associations with similar devices I'd handled m the past.
I couldn't find any obvious answers to the other questions: M Erich Stern hadn't ordered the killing, who had? If Stern had left Phnom Penh, where had he gone? Had he been 'be objective of a single phase in the Kobra mission like Heinrich Fogel or was he the objective for the whole mission?; Put it another way: had I blown a local fuse or the whole [assignment?
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.
One exception. If they're surveying the field from cover it's not so cosy: in any given street there can be a hundred windows and there's nothing you can do about that except change the image radically or use a car and change that image too, as often as you can.
Tonight there was no problem. The field was clear except for the man in the mackintosh and he was watching the check-in counters most of the time, enough of the time to note every single person who entered the immediate area.
He hadn't seen me.
There weren't many people at the Pan Am counter because it was still more than forty-five minutes to the check-in limit so I went over there and asked for a non-smoker and picked up the ticket and turned to my left and kept on going, using the end door of the main hall and crossing the road to the nearest car park. He kept approximately twenty yards behind.
Then I stopped.
There was a pool of shadow here, thrown by one of the trees in a dead area between two of the lamps. The wind Hew moisture against my face, and the heads of the tall palms glistened with it.
He walked with a loping stride, leaning slightly forward and looking at the ground, the mackintosh flapping and the wind ruffling the sandy fuzz of his hair.
I waited in the shadow.
A big one went up, tilting suddenly off the runway and doping into the Pacific night, the fluting of the jets changing to a high thin whine as its lights winked smaller and then vanished into the cloud base. The stench of its burnt gases came into the air.
'I didn't think you'd make it,' he said as he came up.
I was checking behind him and to each side, in the distance. He was clean.
'Washington laid on a lot of transport for me,' I said.. He was studying my face, the plain lenses of his glasses glinting as they caught reflections, hiding his eyes. I looked away but it wouldn't do any good because Ferris is very sharp and he likes his executives to be in top form.
'Someone been treading on you, Quiller?'
'Oh for Christ's sake, what would you expect? Egerton didn't send me into a place like that to pick the bloody daisies.'
He gave a short laugh.
Ferris always gets my back up because you can't ever put anything across him and he won't let anything go.
'Where did you come from?' I asked him.
'Bombay. What happened to Chepstow?'
He was particularly quick tonight and I didn't like it because Ferris is one of the really crack directors in the field and he doesn't normally show his nerves.
It made me think something had happened in London.
'Single shot, medium range, international class marksman.'
'Where were you?'
'Having a cup of coffee with him.'
He looked around him for a moment, his hands stuck into the pockets of his open mackintosh. He always wore that thing and he never buttoned it up: he'd been a schoolmaster once and I think this was his gown, really, in a different form.
'They take a pot at you too?' he asked me.
'No.'
'They didn't?' He swung to look at me, his yellowish eyes now visible behind the lenses.
I knew what he meant. He thought I looked like this because I'd had to get out from under a long gun and it had left my nerves all over the place and of course it was partly true: the long gun is one of the less funny toys they play with when they really want you off the perch-once you know it's there, you can't even walk down a street without knowing that every next second, every next step, you can lose the whole thing and send five thousand roses to Moira.
'They rigged a bang,' I told him.
He wouldn't pass it on: there wouldn't be any sniggering in the Caff. In any case I knew I'd have to tell someone, some time, because Control does a lot of his planning by positive and negative feedback and even an unsuccessful attempt to wipe out the executive in the field is very negative feedback and he can correct the pattern and take more care.
'What sort?' asked Ferris.
He meant what sort of bang.
In his deadpan way he was showing a lot of surprise, so I knew he'd been in very close signals with Control because the executive normally reports an attempted wipe and London would have told Ferris about this one and obviously London hadn't and he knew there was only one reason.
I wished he weren't being so particular tonight: I didn't feel like it. I felt like getting some sleep because every time I started any kind of thought process that bloody wall came at me again.
They rigged something for me behind the door of my room at the Royal Cambodian Hotel,' I said carefully, because if I missed anything out he'd pounce and ask questions. 'I didn't know a lot about it once it'd gone off but there wasn't any retrograde amnesia. In any given five-star Asian hotel the doors are usually teak and quite thick and the lock's good quality, so you can normally count on something with a high-recoil slip-catch mechanism with a spear-type detonator and plenty of fudge, probably gelignite. For your information I walked into the bloody thing and now I'd like to start forgetting it if that's all right with you.'
He looked away.
'Happens in the best of families.' He paused two seconds. 'Why didn't you tell Control?'
'Didn't have the nerve.'
He looked at me quickly and gave another short laugh.
'The Egg wouldn't have said anything, old boy.'
'I know. If I could have relied on him to kick my arse I'd have told him. Listen, Ferris, are you going to be my director out here?'
'Yes. Out somewhere, anyway.'
'Well thank Christ for that. I haven't had one since Istres. You heard about Istres?'
'Yes.'
'I thought you were on the Tokyo thing.'
'They called me in.'
I took a bit of time to think about that. The Tokyo thing was one of the major assignments for this year and Parkis was handling it and if they'd called a top director like Ferris off a mission that big it either meant this one was bigger or something had come unstuck.
'What's gone wrong,' I asked him, 'in London?'
A pair of bright lights had come out of the cloud base towards the west and were lowering along the approach path, throwing fan-shaped beams through the haze. We stood watching them.
'Nothing's gone wrong,' he said in a mome
nt. 'We've run out of objectives, that's all.'
He wasn't looking at me. He was looking at the lights of the plane.
The hot wind took on a chill and I didn't say anything till I was ready. I doubt if Egerton has ever run a priority mission into the ground because he takes an immense amount of care in setting the thing up and picking the right operatives and getting the signals network phase-perfect before he hits the tit and gets it under way, but this time he'd picked up the executive while he was abroad on vacation and sent him in without a director and in the third phase he'd had to call in a top man like Ferris from another mission and set up an in-transit rendezvous that could easily have been missed because of conditions in Cambodia.
To date he'd lost Harrison, Hunter, Chepstow, and every one of his objectives. All he'd got left were two men in a car park in Taiwan watching a China Airlines flight making its final approach to the runway, as if they'd got time on their hands.
'It's like that,' I said, 'is it?'
'It's like that,' he said.
'Should've hung on to Erich Stern, shouldn't I?'
He turned his head quickly, hearing the tone of my voice.
'Don't start that.'
'Listen for Christ's sake, why didn't Control tell me I was the last bloody hope you'd got of making any — '
'Quiller, there's no point in — '
'Lost every bloody objective right along the line and left me holed up in the wrong end of a war with signals breaking down and only that poor little bastard Chepstow to — '
'I'm not interested in — '
'Oh really?'
But it stopped me.
He knew how to stop me.
The wind blew against our faces.
The lights silvered the palm trees and the roofs of the hangars and then the landing-wheels hit and sent smoke out and hit again and the thing was down, vanishing behind the control tower with the thrust reversing and sending up muted thunder.
'Sorry.'
'Any time.'
Sweat all over me. Because if Egerton had run a priority mission into the ground for the first time it had been my fault: the one single objective remaining under surveillance had been Erich Stern and I'd been warned the opposition was operating because of what they'd done to Chepstow and I'd been warned they were on to me next because the door didn't look right or feel right or smell right and I'd been thrown out of commission for eighteen hours while Erich Stern had quietly got out of the area, taking his time.