Cambodia.

'Get it again,' I said.

He asked for a repeat. You can't make a phrase out of a place name, so they'd sent Kmbdia. Now they put it in full: 26358193.

'Are you reading?' Rumori asked me. His narrow dark head had been turned to look at me because I was sitting on the floor now with my eyes half closed.

'Yes.'

They stayed on the air for another six or seven seconds and he only asked for two repeats. Contact was to be made at the British Embassy with the second cultural attache and I was to retain my cover: I would be in Phnom Penh to liaise with a Berlin correspondent of Europress in an attempt to get the final stories from wealthy merchants fleeing the capital. By the phrasing I suspected that the Berlin correspondent of Europress was probably a replacement for Heinrich Fogel, because Europress doesn't actually exist and this presented the man as a shadow figure and the only shadow figure around would be in the opposition: I was proceeding solo and wouldn't have a local director. But reading between the lines of a signal exchange that's taking place in one-second flashes can be difficult and I shut my eyes and let it go.

Of course there was a lot of data that didn't appear in the stream of coded digits: it looked as if Heinrich Fogel was being replaced within hours of his death and it looked as if he'd been feinting his travel pattern by landing in Rome because the two places were a hell of a distance apart, considering the Kobra people were assumed to be zeroing in for a rendezvous. Further indications: Kobra now realised their operation was being surveyed (by the unnamed journalist in the Italian press) and might even be penetrated, but they weren't intending to call the whole thing off and go to ground and come up somewhere else. London wouldn't send me to Cambodia unless they had a strong lead, because Egerton was running this one and he didn't like shifting his executives around lime pawns. He was sitting there in Signals with the pattern spread out on the board as far as it was known: he was pouncing and missing and he'd pounced on Rome and missed Fogel and now he was pouncing on Phnom Penh and with luck I'd make a hit.

'Shut down?' Rumori asked me.

'Yes.'

Q — 15 — 000

He cut the switch and swung the tableau of bric-a-brac into place and got off the stool and stood looking down at me with his head on one side.

'You need medical attention,' he said reflectively. 'We have the services of a highly-'

'It's delayed shock, that's all. But you can get me some air tickers.' Phnom Pehn would be like a beehive someone had kicked over and the last scheduled airliners had stopped operating five days ago. 'Get me as close as you can, all right? Then I'll try cadging a lift on a U.S. Air Force chopper or whatever's available.'

'It will be very difficult,' Rumori shrugged.

'It'll be close to bloody impossible, but I've got to get in there. You heard what London said.'

A storm of dust whirled up, blotting out most of the airport building at Pochentong, and the pilot left the rotor spinning as the doors were thrown open.

'Whaddya want to come back here for, buddy?'

He sat loosely at the controls, a cigar jutting out of his stubbled face and his eyes red from fatigue as the armed escorts began dropping through the doorways.

'I'm here to get a story,' I called back above the noise.

'That right? Listen' — he poked a thick gloved finger at me — 'there's only one story about this goddamn place. we're gettin' out, and we shoulda stayed, okay? Tell 'em that from me!'

I nodded and someone gave a yell and we all crouched, waiting. Dirt flew up fifty yards away and the debris pattered across the windscreen of the helicopter. They said the airport had been under mortar fire for the past five days, and as I dropped through one of the doorways I saw a big 3-130 standing keeled over near the end of the runway with its tail blown off. The Communists had pushed a unit within a mile and a half of Pochentong and I could feel a series of thumps under my feet as the mortars kept up their fire.

'Okay, let's get goin'!' a man yelled and we spread out as we ran through the dust, half-blinded. Dirt fountained again on our left as the transport vehicles started from the main building towards the helicopter, packed with refugees. A line of US Marines were strung out towards the road, holding back a crowd of Vietnamese civilians; and blobs began darkening in the sky as the next wave of choppers came in from the carriers lying off the coast. Somewhere a siren was screaming an alert, as if no one could hear the mortars or see the earth flying up.

A military jeep was making a close turn on the tarmac with a bunch of Europeans clinging on, so I grabbed one of the hand-grips and got some kind of a purchase as it gunned up and headed for the roadway past the line of Marines.

'Where's this thing going?'

The US Embassy!' someone shouted back.

I got a better grip and hooked one leg inside and relaxed and felt the throbbing in my head take on a slower rhythm. Maybe there'd be time to get a rest, somewhere along the line: at the moment I wasn't physically mission-ready and if London threw me anything serious to do I didn't know how I was going to do it.

The British Embassy wasn't far from where the jeep dropped me off, and I walked there in the hot sun with my jacket sticking to my back and the glare of the sky in my eyes, trying to think of even one good reason for an international terrorist being holed up in this place on his way to the Kobra rendezvous. One possible answer could be that he wasn't in fact an international terrorist: he could be any kind of contact with connections London wanted me to use. His cover was Europress but he wasn't on the Bureau staff because they would have told me, and if he were in fact a Berlin correspondent for anyone there were possible links with Heinrich Fogel and Baader-Meinhof.

I went through the doors of the embassy, 'Are you looking for HE?'

'No,' I said.

The thin youth turned away and said to the girl at the reception desk: 'Then who was looking for HE?'

'Pretty well everyone,' she said, tucking a curl in. 'He's at lunch anyway, so you won't get near him.' She turned to me with a direct stare and said: 'Can I help you?'

'I'd like to see the second cultural attache.' I dropped my Europress card on her desk but she didn't look at it 'Have you been hit?'

'No. I always look like this.' I was getting fed up.

She gave a sudden bright laugh and ducked and waited, looking away from me. Something like a wall went down, not The US Embassy still is,' he said, 'obviously.' One of the files hit the floor and he picked it up, turning it the right way round. 'We got all our people out five days ago,'

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 attache, 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?'