The Tale of the Lazy Dog

by Alan Williams

  THE TALE OF THE LAZY DOG

  Charles Pol Espionage Thrillers

  Book Two

  Alan Williams

  For my wife

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE: THE MAN ON THE ROOF

  PART 1: ‘IN A COUNTRY THAT NEVER WAS’

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  PART 3: THE DROP

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  PART 4: THE SERGEANT’S TALE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  PART 5: THE NIGHT OF SISERA

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  PART 6: THE FAT MAN

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  PART 7: DATE AT THE ‘CERCLE’

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  PART 8: BAT INTO HELL

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  PART 9: FLUSH-OUT

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  PART 10: HAPPY LANDING

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  ALSO BY ALAN WILLIAMS

  PROLOGUE: THE MAN ON THE ROOF

  Sgt Don Wace came on duty at 1900 hours, just as the rain started. Over the few yards between his canvas-hooded jeep and the shelter of the hut door he was already splashed to the skin. He stood loosening the strap under his jaw and tipped the black and white M.P.’s helmet forward, wiping his hand over his straw-coloured crewcut and around his sticky neck to the Adam’s apple that jumped in his throat like a yoyo every time he swallowed.

  After a moment he unslung his M16 carbine, snapping it on to semi-automatic, then settled the helmet back above his eyes and stood surveying the scene of his night’s vigil. Rows of breezeblock huts, skeleton shapes of watchtowers, rain bouncing off the mud-baked tracks and turning to steam in the hot stagnant air, thick with fumes of burnt kerosene and the long scream of jets that was like hundreds of feet of tearing paper.

  With the rain came darkness, as though the lights were being turned gradually down in a giant auditorium, and soon it was only by leaning out and peering through the vertical spears of water that Wace could make out the shapes of his two colleagues, each only fifteen feet from him at the corners of the hut. Wace himself guarded the doors — two broad double sheets of grey steel with the white stencilled words: U.S. GOVT PROPERTY — KEEP OUT.

  Wace was in a bad mood. He and his two colleagues were usually detailed to guard duty at the central air-traffic complex or the main gates, where there were canteens, PX facilities, plenty of action: streams of local girls on bicycles who had to be stopped and checked, sometimes even searched, as they left in time for curfew. There were even a few round-eyes with sallow skins and skirts half way up their thighs, who worked for the Military Assistance Command and knew all the M.P.’s by name.

  But this hut here was out in the boondocks. And like the others all around, it was locked and lifeless, with no windows. Wace’s geography of the airfield was muddled, even after several months of duty here. There were no stars to go by; but taking his bearings from the brownish glow to the south where the city lay, and the red-hot streak of after-burners across the sky to his left, where the fighter planes were taking off every few minutes from the military airstrips, he reckoned he was somewhere near the heart of the vast supply and ordnance depot to the east of the main traffic complex. And to his right, beyond the watchtowers and high-tension wire, he could just make out, against the arc-lights above the minefield, the rows of high-tailed, heavy-bellied transport planes — C 123s and Hercules, and the lighter twin-engined Caribou that can lift five tons of dead weight and land in just over three times its own length.

  Wace cursed again, wondering what the hell he was doing by this lone hut. If they were going to knock out anything, they’d go for the planes — as they always did, putting in mortars and rockets first, then sending in waves of human mine-detectors, screaming like monkeys and hurling satchel-bombs as the M.P.’s gunned them down at the wire. So what was so goddam important about this hut that he and his colleagues had to stand here wet and bored for four black hours without even the chance of a coffee?

  The rain was letting up and far out beyond the perimeter the flares began to drop, bursting in a neon glare that drifted slowly to earth, like phosphorescent shapes sinking through water. He watched them go out, when suddenly to his right a pair of headlamps swung into view, approaching fast down the waterlogged track. He straightened up with his carbine in both hands, holding it slightly upwards from his waist, its fluted muzzle tracking a line just in front of the lights, ready to jerk back and rake the vehicle from end to end — thirty rounds in one second, on fully automatic.

  It was a long black Fleetwood sedan with smoked windows so he could not see who was inside. He watched tensely as it bounced to a standstill in a whoosh of mud and an officer in combat fatigues leapt out, reaching him in two strides, his words coming in a breathless rush: ‘Sergeant Wace, detail from ATCO Three?’ Wace stood to rigid attention and saluted. ‘How many you got here, sergeant?’

  ‘Three men, sir.’

  ‘Only three? Christ!’ The man rubbed his hand over a sweaty dark-skinned face: ‘This the official detail from headquarters — just three men?’

  ‘That’s all they gave me, sir.’

  ‘What orders?’

  ‘Stand guard till twenty-two-thirty hours, sir.’

  The officer paused, working his jaw muscles as though trying to dislodge something from his teeth. ‘O.K.,’ he said suddenly, ‘you do just that till we come to move this stuff out to Number Four transport runway. We’ll be using a forklift truck for the job, and there’ll be an armed patrol under Colonel Miller. Codename Happy Hound. Got that?’

  ‘Yessir.’

  ‘Meantime I’m sending an extra detail. And I want you up on that hut roof with your eyes in the back of your head, Wace, and not let anyone near this place till the patrol gets here. Not anyone! O.K.?’

  ‘What about the extra detail, sir?’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘How do I recognise it, sir?’

  The officer looked at him sharply, then nodded: ‘I’ll be back with them myself. I’ll flash my lights twice at the end of the track. Now get on the roof!’ He turned and jumped into the jeep, and was already backing it round as Wace shouted, ‘McCulsky!’

  One of the men at the end of the hut came lumbering through the mud, not bothering to salute. ‘What’s the beef, sarge?’

  ‘You heard the man. They’re sending up an extra detail. Maybe they don’t trust us.’ He looked at the steel doors behind him and shrugged: ‘What the hell they got in there, anyway? He said a full colonel and a forklift truck to move the stuff! Must be something mighty special.’

  ‘Maybe it’s the latest issue of Playboy?’ McCulsky’s grin was invisible under his helmet.

  ‘Yeah, so why they flyin’ it out then?’ Wace said irritably. He glanced up at the roof: a good twelve feet high, with no parapet, no cover of any kind. Those motherin’ big brass-arses from MACV! he thought sourly. Someday he was going to get even with some of the officers that ran this airfield. He turned to McCulsky. ‘Help me up,’ he said, putting the gun on to safety and slinging it round his neck. McCulsky cupped his hands into a stirrup and Wace sprang on to his shoulders, almost snapping off a length of g
uttering as he pulled himself up over the edge.

  He knew at once that the roof was not safe. It was a rough concrete surface, slightly convex to allow the rain to drain off, but so badly built that more than half of it was under at least an inch of water; and as he took a step forward he felt the whole structure give under his weight like a diving board. Wace had lived long enough on a farm to take a simple pride in a job well done, and his anger switched now to embrace the whole local population. Good Federal taxes handed out in subcontracts to these goddam gooks! he thought. The concrete had been so watered down that it was more like plaster.

  He took another step and there was a dull cracking sound under his boot. He flung his arms out with a yell, as a great slice of roof came away with him, and he fell into darkness.

  He landed half upside down, looking up at McCulsky’s big helmeted face hanging above in the jagged frame of what was left of the roof.

  ‘What happened, sarge? You O.K.?’

  Another set of flares had burst in the sky, this time very much closer, and in the few seconds of livid purple light, Wace was able to sit up and take stock of his surroundings. His first impression was that the hut was empty, the rectangular walls of the same featureless breezeblock as on the outside, the floor spattered with loose concrete and a slush of rainwater.

  ‘You O.K., sarge?’ McCulsky called again.

  Wace made an effort to haul himself up, wincing with pain. ‘Get a light, will yer?’ he shouted, ‘I think I’ve gone an’ busted my foot.’ He sat back and began to swear, his legs stretched in front of him, his weight supported on his hands. ‘Motherin’ gooks!’ he groaned, listening to McCulsky scrambling down the wall outside. He looked down suddenly. His hand had slipped under a sheet of torn paper. The flares were dying slowly and in their flickering glow he noticed now that the whole floor seemed to be covered in paper — uneven black rectangles of it, stretching away like badly-laid flagstones. He examined the torn sheet under his hands. It was stiff and charcoal-grey with a slightly furry texture like sealskin, which he recognised as the waterproof wrappings they use for ammunition cartons.

  But these were no ordinary cartons that Wace was lying on. He had only a glimpse of what lay underneath, before the flares died altogether; and for several seconds he just sat there in the dark, his hand still holding the torn paper, his ears beginning to sing.

  A powerful torch beam came on above, dazzling him. Instinctively he pushed the flap back into place, as McCulsky called: ‘Can you make it to your feet, sarge?’

  Wace put his hand across his eyes. ‘Just drop the light.’ It fell a few feet from him, rolling away into a corner, and he began to crawl painfully after it, his fingers tracing the tight-packed edges under the paper, each about the size of a small brick. He was panting when he reached the torch and turned the small square of light on to the wrappings under his hands. ‘Hey sarge!’ he heard McCulsky cry, but the voice was a long way off. Wace’s fingernail was already sawing through the stiff silken paper.

  ‘Sarge, it’s the extra detail!’

  But this time Wace did not even hear. He was kneeling now, staring at the fresh slice he had just torn in the package under him. ‘Jesus,’ he muttered. ‘Jesus H. Christ on a bicycle!’

  PART 1: ‘IN A COUNTRY THAT NEVER WAS’

  CHAPTER 1

  Murray Wilde was almost the last passenger to leave the plane, followed only by an old woman with blue-black hair and a pig, which had spent the two-hour flight strapped upright with an extra seatbelt, its nether quarters wrapped in sackcloth.

  He was a long-limbed man of about thirty-five in a biscuit-coloured suit, carrying a canvas grip-bag and a Leica in a scarred case round his neck. The airhostess, bowing in her skin-clinging ankle-length sin, looked at him with more than usual interest. Westerners were something of a rarity on this airline: schedules erratic, safety record poor. (Its maiden flight had vanished without trace over the jungle, with the loss of all twenty V.I.P.’s.)

  Near the foot of the steps was some sort of policeman with plimsolls and a revolver, who was too preoccupied watching a dog licking its private parts to take much notice of Murray as he stepped out into the hard yellow sunlight and began ambling across the tarmac, but not immediately in the direction of the terminal.

  It was late afternoon and very hot. The windsock at the end of the runway drooped like a burst balloon. He passed two more Dakotas similar to the one he had arrived in, both bearing the name of the national airline in curly Sanskrit lettering. A tiny brown-faced mechanic, working on one with a hammer, looked up grinning as he strolled by. He went on past a row of white prefab huts and reached a shed with a sign: HI-LO SNACKBAR. OPEN 0500-2100 HRS. AIR U.S.A. PERSONNEL ONLY. KIPS ACCEPTED. He had crossed into alien territory. But still no guards, no floodlights, watchtowers, electrified fences, minefields round the perimeter. Just one lewd policeman and a happy mechanic.

  He paused, sweating. The airfield was more than a mile across, the far side lined with arc-roofed hangars and rows of silver transport planes drawn up on the shimmering tarmac like shoals of fish. Nothing stirred. Even the snack-bar seemed deserted. It was the lull before dusk, when the last flights would begin returning, and there would be a couple of hours’ busy activity while the planes were serviced and refuelled in readiness for the first missions at dawn.

  This was the quietest corner of the airfield — the part that handled only civilian traffic. The terminal looked like a provincial French railway-station; there was an old-fashioned clock on the control tower and a wrought-iron balcony for spectators, which was empty. A couple of black-clad women with pigtails squatted by the entrance, not even looking up as he passed inside, under a notice in four languages: ‘Hatred Never Ceases Save by Eternal Love’ — The Lord Buddha.

  The last passengers had already gone through Immigration. He went up to the desk where three very small officers with white piping on their shoulders pored over his green Irish passport, with the gilt harp and Gaelic lettering worn off, most of its pages stamped and overstamped with visas and immigration seals of four continents. They went into a huddle over the page listing his personal details, until one of them cried, ‘Professeur!’ and they all gave him wide smiles as they waved him through.

  In the Customs hall there was a noisy argument going on about the pig who, divested now of its sackcloth, had already fouled the floor in several places. The officials looked bored as they chalked Murray’s grip-bag without asking him to open it, and he walked out through the scrum of half-naked children fighting to carry the bag for him, under a notice across the door: 50 KIP PER BAGGAGE. MERCI.

  The taxi was a brand new Toyota, and its driver, in a drip-dry shirt with gold cufflinks, kept their speed up around a hundred kilometres an hour, driving in the middle of the road with his hand down on the horn. Streams of acrobatic cyclists flicked past; cars swerving to avoid them like dodgems through the dust; off the main airport road with its rows of shanty-huts raised on stilts above pools of stinking water, into the sudden shade of tall planetrees down an unpaved boulevard. Faded, rusting shop signs: Coiffeur de Paris, Le Jockey Tailleur, Cafe Tout Va Bien, Tiger Beer. The spell was momentarily broken.

  They crossed the only traffic light in town — still not working since his last visit here just over a year ago — and turned into the main street. Single-storied, open wood-frame shops heaped to the roof with the bounties of Big Power aid: American detergents, French cosmetics, Scotch, gin, bourbon, king-size cigarettes, cocktail biscuits, electric shavers and hairdryers, washing machines, watches, cameras, transistor radios, even portable TV sets, although the nearest transmitting station was more than six hundred miles away.

  And gold. Gold laid out like fruit on market stalls. Gold from pale yellow to deep bronze; slim bands, chunky signet rings, bangles, bracelets, earrings, pendants, chains, lucky charms, ornate statuettes, plates, cups, bowls, whole tea sets of gold.

  The taxi pulled up in front of one of the town’s most imposing establishments:
a three-storey stucco building with balconies and a red awning marked Bar des Amis. Just above, almost illegible on the peeling yellow paintwork, was the word HOTEL. Murray paid the driver one dollar, stepped over an uncovered drain and through the open door into the bar.

  It was very dark after the sunlight, with the air stirring from some unseen fan. A boy in a smart white tunic was behind the bar, doing the crossword from a French newspaper. Murray spoke to him and he nodded towards a girl sitting further along behind a cash register. She was small and plump. Murray went over and told her in French who he was — that he had cabled for a room from Phnom Penh.

  ‘Monsieur Wilde?’ She reached behind her and handed him a big iron key and a vellum envelope with no stamp, addressed in typescript to M. Murray Wilde, Hôtel des Amis, Vientiane, Laos. Inside was a gilt-edged invitation from the Canadian Embassy, one of the countries on the International Control Commission, asking him to a reception that evening to celebrate National Independence Day.

  He turned it over, frowning. It seemed his had not been the only cable from Phnom Penh warning of his arrival in Laos. On the back was scrawled: ‘See you there. G.F.’ He looked at his watch; almost five o’clock. The reception was for 6.30. They weren’t leaving him a lot of time.

  ‘When did this arrive?’ he asked the girl.

  She shrugged and slid off her stool, almost disappearing behind the bar, and went and whispered something to the boy. ‘Before yesterday,’ she said, coming back. ‘Monsieur Georges brought it.’

  He nodded, conscious of a faint irritation. The fat French man in Phnom Penh was moving fast — perhaps too fast. Murray had come to Laos to make his own arrangements, in his own time — although he had to concede that a top diplomatic reception was not a bad place to start. Vientiane, administrative capital of Laos, was a small parish-pump town where the one sure way for a stranger to attract attention to himself was to lie low.

  The girl had moved away to serve a little man who had just trotted in and ordered a Pernod. Murray put the envelope away and was picking up his grip-bag, when a voice, oddly familiar, cried: ‘Murray Wilde? Long time, no see!’