18 Salamander by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

‘Make an educated guess.’

‘I’d say he’s visiting, just as he visited the people in Phnom Penh. Going the rounds, tightening security near the capital.’

‘And then he’ll report back to Pol Pot, in the west?’

‘Just a gut feeling.’

‘You’ve no actual –’

‘Look, you asked me for an educated guess and you’ve got it.

Not at my best, no, but what do you expect, I’d done nothing useful yesterday, nothing, it didn’t matter what Pringle said, he was just eager to signal Control with something, to show we were in business, but we weren’t, not on any effective scale. Listen, what actually happened? I’d located a camp that half this town probably knew about and I’d got spat on by a street urchin in uniform and then led like a lamb to the bloody slaughter, and if it hadn’t been for my training and experience this whole thing, Salamander, would have gone straight down the drain, finito.

‘I’m sorry,’ Pringle said. ‘You’re perfectly right.’

‘Next question?’

He uncrossed his legs. ‘I rather think that’s all. Now tell me, have you any –’

‘Why is it possible,’ I asked him carefully, ‘that the Bureau will be brought into things, somewhere along the line?’

‘Ah, yes.’ As if he’d quite forgotten. He hadn’t. The streetlamp flickered and went out again, and I sensed that he was glad of it, didn’t want me to see his eyes when he spoke. ‘Nothing has changed, actually, no. Or not yet. We are still running a totally clandestine operation - not only vis-a-vis the Khmer Rouge but also the Bureau itself. But if you succeed in getting closer still to Pol Pot - to the man himself - your further actions might well involve the highest military authority in London and Washington.’

‘They’d give me the battalion I asked for?’

‘It’s not quite like that.’ He hitched himself towards me a little. ‘Neither the CIA in the States nor DI6 in London is officially interested in what happens in Cambodia at the present moment. There are too many other turbulent theatres of unrest engaging their attention both in Europe and Asia. But if it were known with certainty that Pol Pot means to make a final attempt to seize power again, and has the capacity, there might be a decision by shall we say - the more covert factions of government in Washington, London, Tokyo, Bonn and Paris to stop him - with or without reference to the United Nations.’

‘By military force?’

‘I suggest we leave that to them. The point is that when I say, “If it were known” that Pol Pot has this ambition, I clearly mean If you can find out. All we are asking you for, you see, is information, as I told you at the airport in Phnom Penh.’

‘You don’t think it’s asking just a little too much,’ I said, ‘for one solitary spook to stand in for the CIA and DI6 because they’re busy?’

‘I also suggest we leave that to Mr Flockhart.’

‘What you want first,’ I said as the streetlamp flickered into life again, ‘is the precise position of the main Khmer Rouge camp in the jungle, somewhere west.

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