Highways to a War (65 page)

“Aubrey and I once tried to get Jim Feng to help us in the same way,” he says. “But Jim would never do it. He was friendly; but he never gave us anything. Some correspondents are like that. They worry about their integrity.”

“And what about Mike?” I ask. “What did Mike worry about?”

“Mike wasn’t political, if that’s what you mean,” Mills says. “And as I’ve said, he wasn’t in it for the money.”

“What, then?”

“I think you’d have to say idealism.” His thin mouth turns down further, as though tasting something sour. “I suppose you’d say he was patriotic, when he was young. That was always a help, in our game. Yes, Mike was an idealist. And the nature of the idealist is that he never learns—right?” He swallows most of his whiskey; then looks across at me again. “Are you married, Ray?”

Divorced, I say.

“Thought you’d be the type who’d stay married. Steady. Well, join the club. My marriage went years ago: it didn’t go with the game. Seldom does. The woman doesn’t know who she’s married to.” He picks up the bottle again, looking accusingly at my near-full glass. “Jesus, Ray, you’re not much of a drinking man. Down the hatch. We’ve got a lot more talking to do.”

“It must be an odd sort of life—intelligence-gathering,” I say. “Difficult to maintain normal relationships.”

I’ve expected him to dismiss this ploy; but the invitation works better than I could have hoped for. The expression Mills wears now is like that of a man whose sexual tastes are eccentric, and who sees that you may understand. He sits back in the armchair, and seems to search for words.

“You lose your personality, in the end,” he says. “For an operative, the day comes when he’s not quite sure who he is. And everyone you know becomes recruitable. You understand? The Law must be nice and simple, compared with that.”

I’m surprised that he’s talking to me like this; yet when I analyze it, I realize that so far he’s told me nothing of any importance. But I still sense that he will. He gives the impression of being inwardly destabilized; of some huge rift having opened in his life. I only have to wait, and he’ll display it.

I resign myself to a headache in the morning.

He’s very drunk indeed now. Hands in pockets, legs extended, he stares in front of him, eyes wide and fixed, looking down an endless tunnel. I’m certain that for minutes at a time he forgets that I’m here. Behind him there’s a window protected by a wire grille: it frames night sky, the swaying tops of trees in the still-thundering rain, and a line of blue lamps on a distant freeway. A red neon spells out
Mitsubishi,
and lightning flashes over it. The hot, elemental excess out there is unreal, watched from this air-conditioned chamber: an image on a cinema screen.

“No life after Intelligence,” Mills says suddenly. His voice is dragging but deliberate; he clearly has a remarkable capacity for liquor. “And no life outside it,” he says. “That’s what they made you believe when they recruited you, those old British Empire types like Aubrey. He would have made Mike feel like that. When I was young, training with MI6 in London, I felt I’d gone into a world where anything was possible; above and beyond anything the average poor bastard could imagine. A life where dullness didn’t happen: a big ride through the air.” He shakes his head with drunken deliberateness. “Well, it was: a big ride,” he says. “And now here I am: on the ground.”

His tone attempts irony, but emerges instead with a fleeting note of regret: even of sentimentality. The emotionally cold live in a sort of vacuum, I imagine, noses pressed to the window of life; sentimentality must be the closest they get to the warmth that’s denied them.

“You probably imagine espionage work to be cold-blooded,” he says. “Bullshit: it’s the reverse. There’s a lot of feeling. Love, even. A case officer identifies with his agents
deeply.
They’re like his creations, Ray. That’s how it was between Mike and Uncle Aubrey. He thought Mike was his, in the early days: more his than a son.”

He picks up his glass again; then points a finger at me.

“Want you to grasp this,” he says. “Are you listening? The hardest thing of all for an old intelligence operative is to quit. And Aubrey Hardwick really was one of the great operatives of his generation. So you can perhaps understand. Losing contact with the goodies of the Western intelligence system—cut off from the distribution list—that’s an intelligence officer’s greatest nightmare. The distribution list is Uncle Aubrey’s life-blood. It means more to him than his Thai boyfriends, or his collection of Chinese scrolls, or the bloody knighthood he’s chasing. That’s why he did what he did.”

I wait. I don’t need to prompt him.

“I’m talking about the girl—Ly Keang,” he says. “She’s why Mike went back in: you must have worked that out. Ly Keang was Aubrey’s stay-behind.”

The term’s unfamiliar to me, but still I say nothing. I’m afraid to remind him I’m here.

“Everyone put stay-behinds in place, before Phnom Penh fell,” he says. “Locals who’d report on the new regime. The CIA had quite a few of them. All of them were lost, of course—every bloody one. And when Ly Keang went missing, the old bastard used her as a bait.”

Suddenly I have the sensation that the air-conditioning’s become too cold. “I’m not with you,” I say.

“No,” he says. “You’re not with me, Ray. You’re a lawyer from Launceston.” His tone is drunken and brutal. “But you will be.” Once again, he waves a hand at the darkened office behind the counter. “No witnesses, right?”

He’s made me aware of how silent and empty the place is. Despite the rain on the glass and the distant hum of traffic, the sound of his swallowing as he finishes his whiskey is quite distinct. I’ve finished my own drink now, and he leans and pours for me as well as for himself. The bottle’s almost done.

“Langford introduced her to Aubrey,” he says. “Another idealist, that girl: another patriot. And while Mike was in Saigon in that early part of April, Aubrey persuaded her to stay, if Phnom Penh fell. He told her to keep her newspaper job when the Khmer Rouge took over, and then to hang on for a month or so—to send him reports on the new regime.” He breaks off; drinks; wipes his mouth. Then he laughs under his breath, his eyes empty. “Report on the Khmer Rouge: can you imagine? He had her all set up as an agent. The radio he gave her was state-of-the-art: a favor from his mates in the CIA. Looked like an ordinary set: undetectable. Transmissions went out on a special band. They reached us in Aranyaprathet, up on the border.”

He closes his eyes for a moment, and sits quite still. When he opens them, the whites are bloodshot, and his lids droop. “Under any other regime, she could have done it,” he says. “It’s done all the time. And Aubrey told her she’d be brought across the border. He had agents there who’d look after it: Cambodian sleepers.” He expels breath. “And this was a man who claimed to be an expert on the Khmer Rouge. Well, the CIA made the same mistake.”

He’s not looking at me; he’s staring down his tunnel again, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, clasping his glass. Then he imitates a plummy voice. “‘People we can deal with,’ ” he says. “ ‘Left Bank Marxists.’ Jesus. There are still Foreign Affairs dickheads who believe that stuff. Well, we don’t know much about what’s happening in there now, but we do know they’ve driven the whole population into the countryside. We do know that the cities are stone bloody empty. Back to basics: no Western technology, no money, no cities. Pure. A true Communist society, all in camps, all obeying orders, where you’d have to get permission to sleep with your wife. So there was nowhere for a stay-behind to hide. You see?
Nowhere.
It was all settled in a few days. If you were middle-class, if you were educated, if you even wore spectacles, you were dead. So how was a young woman like that going to function? How was she going to disguise herself? Where was she going to hide? Can you picture it?”

He looks at me for a moment, then closes his eyes again. When he opens them, he says: “Aubrey was full of regrets, of course.” He imitates the plummy voice again. “‘A lovely girl. Intelligent; brave. Ly Keang was like a niece to me. A niece lost to the sharks.’ ”

I decide to prompt him. “You said she was a bait.”

He looks at me; then looks away again. He has no expression. “Aubrey had a strong link with one of the Khmer Rouge leaders,” he says. His voice is thick, but his delivery remains lucid. “One of his chums from the old days in Phnom Penh. This guy wanted to defect; to come over the border. Do you know what that would mean? If Aubrey could get this man out and debrief him, we’d have our first real insight into the regime and its leadership. London and Washington and Canberra would kneel and adore Aubrey, and his MI6 and CIA mates would revere him forever. And he’d never retire. He’d be in his glory. He’d get everything he’s always plotted for and dreamed about. And guess what that is?” He blinks at me, and points a finger at my chest again. “To write the definitive history of the
service.”

I laugh involuntarily, but he doesn’t smile. “Try and understand,” he says. “That would mean an office and a desk and a travel budget in his old age: perks forever. And more: much more. The most secret files open to him: the files
no one
sees. Now do you get it? Aubrey the old master; Aubrey the historian, presenting top case studies to young recruits. The ultimate ex-operative. A senior intelligence officer’s paradise.”

He sets his glass down on the table, slowly and with great care. “So that’s why he sent Langford over,” he says.

I stare, probably stupidly. He looks up at me, seeming to read my question.

“Aubrey didn’t have an ASIS agent who was capable, under the circumstances,” he says. “Suicidal, to go over that border. So he wanted Langford to use his influence with the Free Khmer, and take two or three of them as guides. You probably know about Mike’s buddy, Colonel Chandara. The colonel would do anything for Langford, and he made men available. The plan was to go about ten kilometers inside the country, not far from the refugee camp run by the Free Khmer. It was all set up. The Khmer Rouge cadre would be waiting at a prearranged meeting place outside a particular village. He wasn’t prepared to try for the border on his own; he couldn’t be sure the locals wouldn’t betray him, and he was no good in rough country. An intellectual, right? The Free Khmer knew their way about the area, and Aubrey gave Mike a map and a compass. It should have been all right; but they never came back.”

“But why would Mike do it? Was he really that involved with you people?”

Mills shakes his head. “He didn’t give a stuff about ASIS any more,” he says. “He hadn’t given Aubrey or me anything for years.”

“Then why?”

Now he examines my face wonderingly, as though seeing me for the first time. “Oh mate, you really have led a sheltered life,” he says. “He went because he was told Ly Keang would be there too. Aubrey told him that she’d come through on the radio again. He said she was up there near the border.”

I’m still staring at him, and he seems now to focus on my face, and actually to register its expression. He raises his eyebrows at whatever it is he sees, shrugs, and sighs. “I only found out about this after Mike had gone in,” he says. “Want you to have that clear, Ray.”

I’ve drunk too much of his whiskey; my head’s begun to swim. “Isn’t it possible it was true? Maybe she survived after all,” I say.

He sinks back in his armchair, lying almost prone, legs extended, hands in his pockets. He’s stopped drinking, and when he speaks, his voice has dropped so low I have to strain to hear it.

“No,” he says. “No. I was up there, Ray, at Aranyaprathet with Aubrey, waiting for her to come through on the radio in those first few days after the Yanks pulled their embassy out: before the Khmer Rouge came into Phnom Penh. She only contacted us twice. The first time was when they were still waiting for the Khmer Rouge, and there wasn’t much to report. She asked Aubrey to get a message to Mike in Saigon, and Aubrey said he would. But he didn’t: I only found that out later. He didn’t want Mike to know he’d recruited her. He got me to lie about it too. The second time she made contact—”

He stops, and for a moment he doesn’t go on.

“The second time was when the Khmer Rouge had come into town,” he says. “Her voice had changed; she was frightened.” He draws a hand across his mouth, not looking at me. “What she said was: ‘We’re all being ordered out—out of Phnom Penh. Even the sick have to leave the hospitals. It’s not like you said it would be. The soldiers are very frightening. They’re going to every house in this street. They’ll be here at my uncle’s in a few minutes. What should I do?’ ”

He pauses.

“Guess what Uncle Aubrey said? ‘Trust your judgment, my dear. Get through to us again when you can.”’ Suddenly, and with startling crudity, Mills spits sideways on the floor. “I won’t forget what she said then. Wish I bloody could. ‘You’re a fool, Mr. Hardwick. You understood nothing. They’re here. They’re here.’ Then there was some kind of banging noise, and she went off the air. She never came back on again.”

The rain still lashes the window. We stare at it: our phantom cinema. Then Mills says: “When a certain kind of man’s losing the life he wants, there’s nothing he won’t do to save it. That’s Uncle Aubrey.”

I find I’m not able to speak. I’m looking at the far-off highway through the window, its blue lights strung across a country of which I know nothing.

The Telenews car is a new BMW: roomy, air-conditioned and almost soundless: one of Jim’s perks as bureau chief here. It rolls free of the suburbs of Bangkok in the predawn dark. Out through the windscreen, an occasional house light glimmers.

It’s still only five o‘clock, and Jim and I are silent, entangled in the last threads of sleep, sitting in the back. Daeng, the Thai driver, is a stocky man of middle age; he lights his first cigarette now, hissing as he draws in smoke, his face reflecting the soft glow from the dashboard. He puts the pack down beside the hand brake, jerks his head at it, and turns half towards us, speaking in a voice that’s hushed in deference to the hour. “Always I have kept a pack there for Mike, when he came up to the border. That way, I would not run short.” He chuckles, and Jim joins in.