It was beginning to seem conceivable that Flockhart, my control in London, wasn't totally out of his mind. He needed — for whatever reason — information on Pol Pot, and the only way he could normally expect to get it was by forming his own little army of military. intelligence troops and sending them in — and they would have to be Asian, ideally Cambodian or Vietnamese. But the Bureau hasn't got any Asian troops, nor is it equipped to recruit any, administratively, economically or politically.
The driver was lighting his fourth cigarette from the butt of the third, dragging the smoke in deep and holding it, not a man, you would say, with enough oxygen available to his muscles to afford him much endurance, if he were, for example, attacked.
But then of course he had his Chinese-made assault rifle, if you were slow enough to let him use it.
The Bureau, moreover, hasn't got even one Asian on its shadow executive staff, or he would have been the obvious choice for Salamander. All Flockhart had had when he dined with me at the Cellar Steps was a standard model ferret bored out of his gourd after six weeks without a mission, someone who would take anything on simply to keep his nerves in tune.
And Holmes had known that, when we'd sat in the Caff drinking Daisy's undrinkable tea.
You know Mr Flockhart? He's quite good. Some people find him a bit on the enigmatic side, doesn't give much away. He also comes and goes, runs a mission or two and disappears for a while.
For a control like that — senior, with the ability to pick and choose — I had been the perfect choice: seasoned enough to work an operation where a single shadow could conceivably get through to the objective while a whole battalion might fail, and desperate enough to take it on.
So I found it comforting, as I watched the Khmer driver chain-light his fifth cigarette in the mirror, to realize that Flockhart might not simply have chosen to set me running in a manifestly doomed mission just to find out if I had a chance in a thousand of bringing it home.
We seek comfort, my good friend, we the stalwart ferrets in the field, where we can find it.
The sun's weight pressed down on the canvas top of the jeep; its light shimmered along the bonnet and sent reflections fanning against the wall of the storage shed; the day staggered under the burden of the afternoon sky. No one was moving in the narrow angle of the street that was all I could see through the windscreen.
Three women had passed, minutes ago, their sarongs clinging to their stick-like bodies, their faces dark and featureless in the shade of their raffia hats as they pushed their cart along, piled with junk — to them, presumably, treasure, the sum of their worldly goods. People were leaving the cities, Gabrielle had told me, hoping to find safety in the countryside, in the mountains, in the rice fields, before whatever was to happen to Cambodia cut short their lives.
A cyclo driver had followed them, minutes later, bowed over his rusting handlebars half-comatose, a gaunt dog lurching after him, one eye lost beneath a black cluster of flies.
The Khmer driver lit another cigarette, took a turn, kicking the baked mud of the street with his boot, hitching his assault rifle higher, took a turn back, then looked suddenly up at the steps of the two-storey building.
One fifty-seven, and Colonel Choen came down to the street with his escort and climbed into the car.
Sweat cooled on my shoulders as I sat up straight and put my fingers onto the ignition key, watching the mirror, waiting. The staff car was facing away from the town, from the airfield, and if it was going to turn back it would take the next side street and turn left again and come past the storage shed. That was all right: I wouldn't by then be visible below the windscreen; there would simply be a jeep standing here.
If the staff car kept on going in the same direction I. would need to catch up, but at a distance. That was all right too, but less easy: it would need noisy bursts of acceleration in the silence of the siesta hours.
I started up and waited for thirty seconds, forty, fifty, heard the sound of the staff car fading and moved off and took a right and a right and a left and saw it ahead of me, bouncing across potholes in the distance, and we settled down at five hundred yards, heading out of the city and then taking a road south with the foothills forming along the horizon and the sun high and in front of us, casting short shadows.
There was no other traffic and I dropped back, letting the staff car increase the distance to a mile and checking the mirror, hoping for moving cover, but there was nothing coming up behind.
A bullock cart lay on its side near the road, the beast still harnessed, lowing and kicking; I couldn't see the driver. Egrets crossed the skyline in a black skein against the glare of the sun, dipping towards water somewhere. A girl sat on a pile of rice bags near a track to a farm, nursing an infant, her round raffia hat shading it from the sun. A snake, crushed by wheels, lay across the road in the shape of a question mark.
In fifteen kilometres we were among the foothills and I closed the distance between us, reaching behind me for the bottle of Evian and draining it in gulps and dropping it back behind the seat as the road began twisting between outcrops and I had to close up again, this time to within three or four hundred yards of the staff car, less, too close, too close for comfort, dropping back again, letting its profile shrink into the distance.
Potholes suddenly, and the jeep shuddered, the tyres skating across the surface, and I had to let the speed die, couldn't touch the brakes. The sun swung to the right, to the left, to the right again and then steadied as the road straightened and I saw it running ahead, empty now, no staff car.
I didn't think they'd seen me and increased their speed. They wouldn't do that. If they saw me and wanted to know why I was on this road behind them they'd just slow and block my path and stop and ask questions; these were the Khmer Rouge.
They'd turned off somewhere, at a time when they'd been out of sight past an outcrop.
I swung the jeep in a U-turn and gunned up.
Access of a sort, providing I didn't lose the target. A hundred kph on the clock and then slowing through the hills, seeing nothing, the sun swinging behind me now, bringing relief from the glare.
Target not seen.
The stretch of potholes again and I hit the brakes in time and let the jeep skitter across them, one of the headlights shattering to the vibration, glass tinkling against the bodywork in the slipstream.
Target still not seen but there was a track to the left, hidden by boulders until I was almost on it, had to use the brakes and let the rear end swing through the U as I gunned up to get the traction back and then turned to follow the track, baked mud and loose stones, the surface natural, the way ahead formed simply by the passage of wheels over the passage of time.
A small leopard vaulted a rock and turned to watch the jeep go past.
Target.
The sun flashing across its rear window as it turned in the distance ahead and below me among the hills as the track descended, stones rattling under the chassis.
We were in a ravine, with rocks rising on each side, their shadows on the right, sharper now, the air less humid. I let the speed die again, losing the staff car from sight but not worrying.
There wouldn't be another track leading away from this one: the terrain was too steep, too rocky.
Flash and I saw the target again, much smaller now. But even at this distance 1 wouldn't be safe if they looked back and saw the jeep; this wasn't a public road, and any vehicle on it would belong to the forces of the Khmer Rouge. This was their private territory. It wouldn't have been possible to get even this far if I hadn't chosen a camouflaged vehicle, but that wouldn't help me if they took an interest and brought me to a stop.