Twisted the cap of the fuel tank open and made sure none of the stuff spilled onto me, dipped the belt in and pulled it out again and flicked the wheel of the lighter and flung myself clear and hit the jungle floor and burrowed through the undergrowth as the Sikorsky blew like a sunrise, kept on burrowing through the cool darkness of the leaves, the monkeys screaming now.

  I suppose I had come three or four miles, burrowing at first and then getting onto my feet and stumbling through the dark entangling undergrowth, tripping many times on creeper, going down and smelling the fibrous soil against my face, rich and moist from the recent rain.

  Now I was leaning against a palm trunk, watching the glow in the distance as Khay’s funeral pyre burned low. He would have wanted cremation, according to Buddhist custom, and would have enjoyed the fact that torching the Sikorsky had given them something to focus on, the men in battledress, to hold their attention while I got clear. He would have left nothing for them in the ashes, no metal badge or insignia; he had known our sortie would perhaps bring us into direct contact with the Khmer Rouge.

  Black smoke hung in a cloud above the trees, sometimes smothering the moon and then clearing again as the night air flowed, drawing out the smoke in skeins. I still listened for voices, for the clink of weaponry, but heard nothing, saw nothing of any light.

  After a while I moved on again, heading east towards the nearest bullock track, and it was when I was tripped again by jungle creeper and went down with my hands spread out in front of me to break the fall that I felt a squirming beneath one of them, the left one if I remember, and then the rapid and repeated shock of the strike against my wrist, and when I hit the thing away I saw a long thin trickle of green against the jungle floor, and remembered what Gabrielle had said.

  20 : SKULLS

  There are snakes in the river.

  My spine arched again to a spasm and I lay like that, curved against the earth with my face to the sky, lay like that for I didn’t know how long, the sweat pouring from me.

  They swim across at night - the light attracts them, and the rats.

  I slumped again like a drawn bow snapping, and the fever began. I had been expecting it.

  Especially the hanuman - do you know it? The bright green one, quite small but more deadly thane cobra, even the king cobra.

  Another spasm struck and I became arched, drawn taut, powerless to move, to relax the muscles. It was beginning to be difficult now to breathe, so I dragged at the air, sucked at it, but nothing happened. If the voluntary muscles were to be affected, so would the involuntary muscles, including those of the heart. I waited, with the moon swimming in the slits between my lids, and then the drawn nerves snapped again and my shoulders hit the earth.

  Were there more of those things here? Did that one have a mate, and if so, how far was it from where I was lying? I couldn’t do with more, with more than one. They are more deadly than the cobra.

  One simply has to relax. Khay, the late Captain Khay. Western people drink whole bottle of whisky, sometimes works. Meditation best.

  Soon after this - hours? I didn’t know - the shaking began, and the delirium.

  There were nine moons when the storm came roaring into the jungle and I counted them as the trees bent low under the force of the whipping wind, nine in a circle, circling, a giddy-go-round of white-lit moons, spinning in the night as the head rolled, lolled, shaking itself, was shaken by the fever as the sweat sprang and I shouted something, shouted at the storm, shuddering, hands, fingers clawing at the soft moist fibres, bringing them to the mouth to eat, hungering for remembered motions, eating, running - staggering up and lurching and then crashing down again, singing like a drunk as the storm howled through the leaves and blew away the circle of moons and there was just the dark and I lay blinded, whirled in the deep spinning vortex of the night.

  Pain was there, and this comforted me: the nerves were not yet numbed, could still serve the organism. The pain was in the left hand, wrist, arm, burning, as if I’d plunged them into fire. I got onto my feet again and flayed my arm around, filling the dark with flames, touching the trees until they too took fire and the storm sent sparks flying, seized the flames and hurled them in hot bright banners as I stood dazzled, reeling under the heat, the eyes seared, the mouth open and filled with coals, roaring like a dragon, bellowing flames.

  Meditate, he, the man with the unremembered name, had said.

  Crashing to the earth with the legs buckling, lying across a creeper, a long thin - oh Jesus Christ I can’t do with more of - a thin, unmoving creeper, let go then, and meditate, fear nothing and fear not fear, reach for the silence, the stillness, the domain of the unified field, of universal consciousness and love, let go, let go, and drift into the void where everything is nothing, and nothing everything, let go.

  But this halcyon respite has not been for long, has it, our good friend, for we are running again - running? - lurching, we mean, lurching and staggering and hitting trees, pitching down and crawling until the thought of the thin green hanuman catapults us to our feet again and we reel onward through the crashing dark, the moon down now, the nine moons down, is this venom always lethal? tell us, pray, are we a goner, done for, is this the Styx we’re drowning in as we goad ourselves through the jungle night? Then for what purpose, for God’s sake?

  To find the bullock track.

  A ray of sanity there, my masters, there’s thought left somewhere in the fevered brain, squealing like a rat on fire for attention, the bullock track, yea, verily, in the name of the salamander: the bullock track and the road to Pouthisat and London, you must be out of your bloody mind, the veins are full of that thing’s venom and the nerves are running riot, never mind the salamander, the first thing is to perpetuate life, carry this charred and ember-bright organism through the burning dark, east by the polar star glimpsed here and there through the endless canopy of leaves; listen to the thoughts still left in the smouldering consciousness and let them be thy guide, world without end as we fall again, fall down again, and this time we do not, we can not get up, so destroyed are we in this unholy fire, a shred of blackened bone and gristle and hollow, echoing despair, God rest ye here, my most unmerry gentleman, and offer the relics of thy substance to the earth.

  Skulls grinning at me, into my face as the cold light creeps through the sugar palms. Skulls, lined up in orderly rows, in serried ranks of bone-white laughter.

  But these are real.

  I know this.

  And then there is darkness again, and in the darkness movement, a lifting, a bearing away, and in the wan light of morning a face leans over mine, smiling. An arm raises my shoulders, and a voice sounds.

  ‘Drink.’

  21 : KHENG

  ‘What were those skulls?’

  The monk closed his eyes, opened them. ‘They were my brothers.’

  I remembered stone columns, ancient, laced with creeper. ‘It was a temple?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Sometimes he spoke French, sometimes English, his language scholarly in both.

  ‘That was a long time ago,’ I said, more as an exercise than anything, testing the memory, finding it sound.

  ‘It was yesterday.’

  He meant it still seemed like yesterday. It would have been twenty years ago, when the Khmer Rouge were scouring the countryside, hunting for intellectuals, monks, school-teachers, village scribes.

  I finished the bowl of soup or whatever it was, perhaps herbs; it had tasted brackish, of roots.

  ‘Did you carry me here?’

  ‘Yes. You were in the helicopter, I assume.’ He had a smile like the Dalai Lama’s; the sweetness of his spirit lit his eyes, humbling me, my brute calling.

  ‘You heard it fly over?’ I asked him.

  ‘Yes.’

  Quick - ‘When?’

  ‘The night before last.’

  ‘Today is the seventeenth?’

  ‘By your calendar.’

  Two days to the deadline. Call it two minutes, then, there’s no bloody difference.

  ‘It was a hanuman?’ I heard the monk asking.

  ‘What? I think so. Green.’

  Gently he turned my wrist over, studying the blackened flesh. ‘You are a very strong man,’ he said. ‘You were already over the worst of the fever when I found you. The bite of the hanuman is usually fatal.’

  ‘You go there to pray?’

  ‘To be with my brothers.’

  This was a cave we were in, draped with tapestries from the temple; a Buddha sat in a niche the monk must have carved from the rock; a small oil lamp flickered in the depths of the cave, and I saw an owl perched there, staring with bright obsidian eyes, its shadow huge against the rockface.

  ‘You must sleep again now,’ the monk said.

  ‘How far are we from Pouthisat, overland?’

  ‘A hundred and forty kilometres.’

  On Pringle’s topographic map it was a hundred by air. ‘Sleep?’ My capacity to think linearly was still not back in shape. ‘No. I need to reach Pouthisat.’

  The monk hitched his threadbare robe around him, watching me with curiosity. ‘You flew here from Pouthisat?’

  ‘ Yes.’

  ‘I heard you disturbing the Khmer Rouge. Was that deliberate?’

  ‘It was on the cards.’

  ‘You were accompanied?’

  ‘Yes. My pilot didn’t survive.’

  ‘He was in the conflagration?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We shall pray for him, my brothers and I.’ In a moment he said, ‘You were pulling the tail of the tiger. Of Saloth Sar.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘It is the real name of Pol Pot.’

  ‘He’s there now, at the camp?’

  ‘Yes. But he is ill.’

  Oh really. ‘How ill?’

  ‘He has ceded his powers to General Kheng.’

  ‘His second in command?’

  ‘So it is said.’

  ‘Who says? How do you know this?’ I stood up and fell down again, knees buckling, he wasn’t quick enough to catch me, hadn’t expected me to do anything so bloody silly.

  ‘You must rest,’ he said, his eyes amused. ‘You are among those who goad themselves through life. That is not the way.’

  ‘Who told you about General Kheng?’ It sounded slurred. This was perfect, wasn’t it, listen, within two days I had to get this film into Pringle’s hands a hundred and forty kilometers away overland and he had to get it to London for the British and American and UN brass to look at and they had to go into joint session and if they decided on an air strike the bombers would have to be airborne in time to make the hit by dawn of the nineteenth, the day after tomorrow, and at the moment, at this very moment when I should be kicking the whole thing into action my speech was slurred and the cerebral cortex was still deep fried and when I stood up I fell down again, this was perfect, so what is, what is to be done, my good friend, in this rather sorry situation?

  ‘Anger does not assist in recovery,’ I heard the monk saying gently. ‘Rather should we relax, and let our karma resolve our predicament for us.’

  ‘Right.’ I sat up, arms around my knees, letting my head hang loose, rolling the neck muscles. ‘You’re damn’ right. Excuse me. Who told you about General Kheng?’

  ‘It is known in the village. The peasants bring me offerings of food and the bare necessities. Look!’ He held up a tin frying pan, a real work of art, copper rivets and everything. ‘They also bring me news of the Khmer Rouge, for what it is worth.’

  Do they indeed. I lifted my head and looked at him. ‘And what are the immediate plans of General Kheng, do they know?’

  ‘They have not spoken of plans.’

  ‘What do they say about him?’

  The monk moved, blowing on some charcoal and pouring water from a pitcher into a black iron pot. ‘That he is young, power-hungry and ambitious.’ He took some dried herbs from a shelf, broke their stalks and dropped them in. ‘He has said he will restore power to Saloth Sar when he is well again, but it would surprise me if such a thing came about.’

  I got onto my haunches, swaying like a drunk, pulling myself upright with my hands on the rockface for support, I am not proud, you must understand, when the need is urgent, and if there is only one way to do a thing then that is the way I will do it, so go to hell.

  ‘No plans, then,’ I said. No news of the nineteenth.

  ‘No. The peasants do not hear everything, I would think; it is simply that the soldiers talk a little to them when they come into the village for their needs.’ He stirred the pot with a wooden spoon, his face lit with concentration.

  I wasn’t surprised, as I stood with my hands away from the rockface now, that nothing about the nineteenth had been heard in the village: security on that subject would be tight. I took a few paces, needing to touch the wall only once.

  ‘Is General Kheng at the camp now?’ I asked the monk.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Then I would have to find out. ‘How far is the village?’

  ‘From here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Two kilometres, perhaps less. I will go with you.’ He turned his sweet smile on me. ‘Then when you lose consciousness again I shall be there to carry you back.’ He resumed his stirring, the pot beginning to steam.

  ‘How far is the camp from the village?’

  ‘Perhaps fifteen kilometres.’

  ‘So the soldiers use motorized vehicles all the way?’

  ‘Yes. Usually jeeps.’

  I shuffled to the mouth of the cave, one hand along the wall until I could hold onto the peeling bamboo curtain, the skull of a bird watching me from the hook where it hung; it looked like an owl’s, perhaps was the owl’s brother. When I felt ready I made my way back, no support this time, progress.

  The sun was burning its path through the palm trees towards noon when the monk said, ‘Seeing you were in no mood to rest, I prepared this concoction for you. It will give you strength for your journey.’

  It tasted of embers and sent fire through my veins, and when I’d finished it we began walking along the bullock track through the trees, none too fast in the rising heat of the day but I didn’t fall down and the monk didn’t help me, let me go it alone as he knew I needed to.

  ‘Do other vehicles come to the village,’ I asked him, ‘from the road to the east?’

  ‘Sometimes. Foreign Aid Services, some of the Catholic missions, and of course the Mine Action units.’ We stood in the shade of a barn on the eastern border of the village, where the huts gave way to rice fields and the road ran through a bamboo grove to the horizon.

  ‘Where should I wait?’

  ‘I will show you.’

  He took me to the house of a blind man, saying that I would be safe there for as long as I wished to stay, but soon afterwards I managed to get a lift from an Australian mission truck as it was leaving the village, and by dusk I was in Pouthisat.

  ‘I had to.’

  Pringle waited. I wasn’t playing games, making him drag it out of me; to bring death is an intimate act and I didn’t want to talk about it, that was all.

  ‘His neck was broken,’ I said.

  We were in the Trans-Kampuchean Air Services shed on the airfield: I’d phoned Pringle the moment I reached Pouthisat and he’d brought along a film projector and rigged it up. We hadn’t run it yet: there was the debriefing to do first.

  ‘But he was still alive,’ Pringle said.

  ‘Yes. But he wouldn’t have stood a chance even if I could have got him into an ambulance right away, and only a doctor could have done that, under morphine.’

  ‘And you couldn’t let the Khmer Rouge find him.’

  ‘No. They would have grilled him until he was dead.’

  ‘An act of kindness, then,’ Pringle nodded.

  ‘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.