ADAM HALL - Quiller Salamander

'Right. Put me down for a fucking halo.'

Pringle made a note. He was sitting behind the trestle table that served as a desk in here: he was like that, couldn't drop into one of the bamboo chairs, had to look like a bloody lawyer, you know Pringle by now.

'Go on,' he said, 'when you're ready.'

How kind of him. 'Pol Pot is ill,' I said. 'A General Kheng has taken over the army, believed to be Pol's second in command. Young, ambitious, power-hungry.'

Pringle was watching me now, surprise in his eyes that he thought wasn't showing. 'Source?'

I told him about the monk.

'Is Kheng at the camp now?'

'We don't know.'

'Can you find out?'

'Probably. It'll take time.'

'We don't have a great deal.'

'Oh really?'

He looked away. 'I was just talking to myself.'

I knew what the deadline was, for Christ's sake, it was staring us in the face. Hand throbbing a lot, the arm still numb to the elbow, I should have let them see it at the hospital but I wanted to watch the film, find out if we'd got anything or if the Hartmann-Zeiss had jammed or something.

'Any other business?' Pringle asked me.

'No.'

He put away his debriefing pad and I got myself some tepid Evian water from the tank while he slapped the cassette into the projector and switched off the light.

Just the jungle down there at first but good resolution, we could see some of the breaks in the trees; then we went down and there was a rush of leaves and I began looking for anything I hadn't seen live — jeeps, half-tracks, tanks, saw nothing.

They were holding their fire?' Pringle asked me.

They weren't even out of the sack at this point.'

The image swung as we made the turn at the end of the initial run, then the first shots sounded above the beat of the chopper and the tracers started coming up and by the time Khay had turned again to make the perimeter run it was a firework show, God knew how we'd stayed airborne as long as we had.

'Run it again,' I said, 'will you?'

He rewound and started again and I watched for the lake and when it came up I said, 'Hit pause. No, back a bit first. I want the lake. Right. That looks like a chopper pad there, on the east bank. Some trees have been cleared at some time, what do you think?'

'I agree. And I doubt if a satellite would pick that up. You need more?'

'No.'

He rewound and switched the light on again and pulled the cassette out of the projector. 'Congratulations. The whole thing is rather conclusive.'

'I hoped you might think so.' I got some more water, still dry as a husk from the fever. 'How soon can you get it to London?'

'It won't be going to London,' Pringle said without looking at me, 'at least until Mr Flockhart has seen it. He arrived in Phnom Penh from Kuwait last night and he'll be here on the first plane in the morning.'

'Snake bites man,' Leonora called across the hospital ward, 'but that ain't big news around here.'

I suppose she'd seen a lot of these, could recognize them from a distance. She pulled a needle from the arm of the withered European lying on the bed and dropped it into a red-tagged bag and dropped the bag into a chipped enamel bin and came over to me and lifted my hand and looked at it.

'Now that,' she said, 'is for real! Kiss of death from a genuine hanuman, yet!' She was studying my face now. 'But I guess you didn't follow the instructions. How long ago?'

'I'm not really sure.'

'Lot of fever, yeah, hallucinations, Jeeze, you are one tough cookie! But you look like shit if you don't mind me puttin' it that way, so I'll get to you in a minute, honey, give you some magic potions, okay?'

'No drugs,' I said. 'Just a dressing, if you think it needs one.'

'Hey, mister, the patients don't call the shots around here, they just get the shots' — a big grin, pleased she'd thought of it — 'but maybe we can make a deal. Wanna visit with your girlfriend while you're here?'

I looked along the ward. 'Where is she?'

'Back there in Outpatients. Don't worry, she's fine, I just have to change her dressings. You go an' show her your trophy of the chase and I'll be right there, honey — and congratulations, any reasonable man would've been good an' dead by now.'

Gabrielle was photographing a child in rags, blood on her face, three years old, four, the flash freezing her for print, her eyes wide, accepting of whatever next would happen to her.

'How did you know I was here?' Gabrielle asked me.

'I just came in for a dressing.'

She looked at my hand, wanted to know how it had happened; I just said I'd been careless, trekking in the jungle. She looked thinner, I thought, even after such a short time, and there were shadows under her eyes.

'You're working too hard,' I said.

She cupped the child's head against her thigh as she looked at me. 'I have to catch up. I should have started sooner.'

'You're losing sleep,' I told her. And when she slept, her dreams would be full of the killing.

'I catch a few hours during the day.' We were both studying each other as if it had been a long time, or as if we weren't going to see each other again. 'Has Leonora looked at you yet?'

'Just for a minute.'

'What does she say?'

'I had some fever, that's all.'

Then the nurse came in and picked up the child. 'Where are the parents?'

'I don't know,' Gabrielle said. 'I found her wandering in the street, but I don't understand Vietnamese.'

'I'm going to give her to the night nurse to look after, then I'll be back real soon.'

When Leonora had gone I asked Gabrielle, 'Are you working tonight again?'

'Of course. Every night.'

'Can I go with you?'

'Why?'

'I need some information.'

Crickets were strident in the silence as we sat in the jeep, waiting. The full moon hung above the frieze of palms along the southern horizon; the air clung to the face like a web, humid after the rain; shadows were long.

We had been moving through the town for three hours, ever since midnight, stopping and starting and waiting and drawing blank, and now Gabrielle pulled the map out of the glove compartment of the jeep again and opened it, switching on the overhead lamp.

'We could try the new school just south of here, on the road out of the town, and then perhaps the temple on the road east to Krakor. I am not going to sleep until we find one.' She switched the lamp off and put the map away. 'Sometimes it is like this, and one must be patient. But it's very late now — would you like me to drop you off at your — wherever you're staying?'

I said no. When I told Flockhart about General Kheng tomorrow he'd want to know where he was: it could be crucial.

Gabrielle drove the jeep three or four blocks, passing the hotel where Slavsky was staying and turning south, rolling to a halt in the cover of a barn and cutting the engine. I could sense the tension rising in her again as she took her short-barrelled Remington from the rear seat and checked it. Whether or not I got the information I wanted, she would make the kill: that had been agreed on.

'We'll give it an hour,' she said softly. 'Yes?'

'Whatever you decide.'

She'd told me how she operated, and what she'd learned. 'They always arrive in some sort of vehicle, and switch off their lights when they near the area they've chosen, slowing down. That's why they like moonlit nights, unless there are street lamps not far away.'

I remembered what she'd also said, earlier, about her childhood: I knew I'd never want to do anything else but paint flowers, all my life long.

'Sometimes there are two of them, but they usually work alone, perhaps to conserve manpower and place more mines. It only takes one man, after all. He is always armed, of course, and takes care not to be seen or heard: there are police patrols, and sometimes military as well if a curfew is ordered. But that applies more to Phnom Penh.'