His co-pilot had returned, settling down with a sigh, and Ryderbeit leant over with his arm round the Negro’s scrawny neck: ‘Isn’t that right, No-Entry? We have seen the reports and we are not afraid! We do our sacred duty for the honour of peace and freedom in this best of all possible worlds.’ He smiled at Murray with a double row of very sharp white teeth. ‘Mister Wilde, let me introduce you to No-Entry Jones, one of the unsung heroes of the struggle against Communism!’ He shook the older man in a rough affectionate way, still watching Murray with his leering stare; and suddenly Murray recognised the accent — slightly distorted, like that of so many expatriates, but still unmistakable. South Africa.
He sighed, thinking, That’s all I need! Mad white mercenary and a middle-aged Negro who looked as though he had a hangover: both armed with Napoleon brandy at 5.30 in the morning, all ready for a flight over high mountains near the Chinese and North Vietnamese borders. He decided that either Air U.S.A. were out of their minds, or that Sammy Ryderbeit and No-Entry Jones must be very good pilots indeed.
Ryderbeit, after their first encounter, had now become surprisingly genial: ‘Mr Wilde, do you know why they call this old soldier here No-Entry?’ — and Jones shook himself free and growled, ‘Aw come on, Sammy, give us a break!’
‘No, no, I’m telling Mr Wilde. After all, his life’s going to be partly in your hands, No-Entry.’
Murray looked at his watch: only about twenty minutes left for the loading.
‘Jones was doing a reconnaissance flight in an L 19 spotter-plane down over the Plain of Jars last year — one of these flights we’re not supposed to talk about out in Laos, Mr Wilde, because the Security Council would get all hot and bothered, because it’s naughty you see —’
‘Ah shut up,’ Jones groaned, but without effect.
‘Anyway, the Pathet Lao took a pot-shot at him, and because an L 19’s got a floor like paper and old Jones was being careless and not sitting on his groin-protector, he got a bullet through his guts.’ He clapped his hand back round the Negro’s neck, who seemed too exhausted to resist. ‘And because this old soldier here does not believe in dyin’ nor fadin’ away, he floated that little plane down over the mountains and brought it in at Luang Prabang, so perfectly no one knew anythin’ was wrong till they pulled Jones out and the floor of that plane was sloppin’ an inch deep in blood — not countin’ what must’ve already dripped through the floor. And you know, Mr Wilde?’ — he leaned closer to Murray, still shaking the grizzled Negro beside him — ‘when they got Jones to the hospital they found an exit wound in his belly the size of this coffee cup.’ He gave a sudden ferocious cackle: ‘But the funny thing was they couldn’t find the entry wound. They searched and they searched — but that Pathet Lao bullet went up and out of old Jones and it left never an entry wound.’
His co-pilot muttered, ‘Aw leave it, Sammy, it’s an old story.’
Murray smiled and stood up. ‘How about a look at the rice loading, Mr Ryderbeit?’
Ryderbeit rose slowly, supple and sneering half-humorously: ‘Don’t worry about the loading, soldier. It’s the unloading that should be troubling you.’
Outside the light was coming up fast. Ryderbeit climbed into an Air U.S.A. Mini Moke parked outside. ‘You’re bloody keen, I must say,’ he said, starting the engine. ‘Not many journalists would bother to get on a rollercoaster for the first time, then worry about the loading. Any ulterior motive?’
He drove very fast across the wide empty apron towards the arc-shaped hangars on the far side that showed through the dawn like superstructures out of science fiction. Murray glanced at him sideways, and found to his consternation that Ryderbeit was doing the same.
‘Eh soldier?’
‘I don’t quite follow you.’ Murray was worried by Ryderbeit — far more than by the prospect of the rice-drop ahead. ‘I’m doing a story.’
Ryderbeit’s cackle carried even above the drone of the Moke. ‘Come on, soldier, I’m not an infant in arms, and nor are you. I read, you know — and more than just the local rags.’ He nodded at the bundle of Bangkok Worlds Murray was still gripping foolishly under his arm. ‘You’re a serious writer. I know your type — you want to record history in the making, witness a rice-drop, get all the details down in your notebook — bit of experience off from the usual bloody little chores of going to Press conferences and hearing about poor sods getting sliced in half by fifty-calibre machineguns while they’re walking through elephant grass. Two paragraphs, O.K.?’
Murray sat very still, watching the gaping rear-ends of the transport planes forming out of the gloom. His fists lay clenched in his lap; it did not seem a good idea to punch his pilot on the snout before they’d even taken off.
Ryderbeit had turned the Moke left, driving under the wing-tips that swished over them like a fan. ‘I’m not trying to be rude or anythin’,’ he added, ‘I just want to know why you want to see a lot o’ bloody rice being loaded off a truck on to a bloody plane?’
They had stopped. The plane ahead was not one of the high-tailed modern transports, but a stout clumsy-looking machine with its tail near the ground and a big open side-door through which the rice was being loaded off a forklift truck by two khaki-clad Laotians.
‘Recognise her?’ said Ryderbeit: ‘C 46 — one of the veteran warriors of World War Two and still flying. Like the old Dak she’s about the toughest plane ever built. Only she’s well past middle age now, and like all the Daks she’ll have to go sometime.’
‘Don’t you use any of the modern ones — C 123’s or Caribous?’
‘Not on a high drop. I tell you, that old crate there wouldn’t fetch much, even as scrap metal. They can’t afford to lose the modern ones.’
Murray nodded, watching the tip-truck move out from one of the hangars, back up against the forklift and deposit its load of sacks with an almost soundless slither. The forklift then slid forward, raising its flat spatula lift like a great spoon and pushing the sacks through the side-door of the C 46, where the two Laotians rolled them away on a track of steel rollers, up into the belly of the aircraft.
‘You lose a lot of those planes?’ he said at last.
‘We lose ’em, but it’s not policy to talk about it. Not to journalists, anyway. I don’t know how much I can trust you — do I, soldier?’ He was sitting behind the wheel, watching Murray with a funny crooked smile. Murray wondered if this was just his usual way of welcoming inquisitive journalists — or whether there were something more conspiratorial in his manner? He decided to change the subject. ‘You’re from South Africa?’
‘Rhodesia. A bloody rebel.’
‘They ran you out?’
Ryderbeit started the engine. ‘Soldier, they’ve run me out o’ practically everywhere. Jo’burg, E’ville, Brazzaville, Rio, Caracas, Genoa — you name it, and you’ll find three dirty words — Samuel David Ryderbeit. South-East Asia’s about the only place that’ll still have me. Here, Bangkok, and old Saigon.’ He was driving back, more slowly this time, towards the snack bar. ‘Funnily enough, one of the few places I haven’t been thrown out of is Rhodesia,’ he added. ‘I’m right behind old Smithie, don’t get me wrong! I may be a Jew, but I’m not one o’ your soft-bellied white liberals. No-Entry back there’s about the only kaffir I’ve ever had any time for. Anyway, he’s only small part kaffir. His grandfather came from a very old Welsh family.’
‘So what happened in South Africa?’
‘Trouble. Domestic trouble — twice. You married, Mister Wilde?’
‘Not anymore.’
Ryderbeit gave his low cackle: ‘I’ve been married three times — the only man in the world who makes wedding bells sound like an alarm clock! And all three times to real rich bitches. First one divorced me after six months for extreme cruelty. Second one lasted nearly a year, then again I got the bounce — same thing again, hit the bullseye. That time I got out and made for the Congo. Third wife was the richest of ’em all — Venezuelan oil up to her nostrils, and lovely with it. It
was third time round the track for me — but it wasn’t that that worried her. Trouble is, y’see, I’ve only been divorced once.’
Murray grinned: ‘So you came out here? Where did you learn to fly? Rhodesian Air Force?’
‘Who else? Taught me to touch down a Piper on a cricket pitch and take off again without knocking off the stumps. That was a good place, Rhodesia — except it’s too small, too many bloody little cocktail parties round swimming pools. Know what I mean?’
‘I haven’t been there, but I think I know.’
Ryderbeit had pulled up in front of the Hi-Lo Snack Bar and opened the door of the Moke, taking out a clipboard of weather charts. He paused. ‘I think you know a lot o’ things, Mister Wilde. What I want to know is why a celebrated scribbler like you should be so interested in some little old rice-drop over north Laos?’ He slammed the door and walked away towards the snack bar.
Murray sat for a moment, wondering if this was what George Finlayson meant by ‘finding two of the best pilots in South-East Asia’. With growing doubts he began to follow Ryderbeit into the shed, then stopped dead.
No-Entry was sitting where they had left him, opposite a figure whose back was turned to both of them — a figure in a loose leopard-spotted combat tunic, sitting over a cup of coffee, drinking with both hands. She turned as they came up, smiling briefly at them both, with no surprise at all.
CHAPTER 2
Murray and Jacqueline Conquest sat side by side, strapped into the canvas-webbed hammock seats just inside the open door. The eight tons of rice, in three layers of sacking stamped ‘Donated by the United States of America’, lay piled along the roller-tracks that ran up the aircraft floor like a miniature railway, round and back again, ending at the open door.
From the roof hung a number of parachute harnesses. The six ‘kickers’ — handpicked Thai paratroopers on loan to Laos — sat on top of the rice bags, wearing quilted uniforms but no safety belts. The inside of the aircraft was dim and oily and smelled of hot oven plates. It was impossible to talk above the rattling roar of the two massive prop-engines, as Sammy Ryderbeit and No-Entry Jones manoeuvred the machine round and lined her up at the end of the runway.
Great gusts of smoke blasted back past the door. Murray caught a glimpse of the three Ilyushin bombers — part of Russia’s ambitious aid programme in the early sixties, later abandoned when the spares failed to arrive — their gutted brown carcases lying in the long grass at the edge of the airfield. There were a few violent jolts, the port engine in front of the door coughed a couple of times like a huge beast in pain; the whole plane shuddered, howled, then began the lumbering run for the take-off.
The girl beside him sat calm and upright, eyes front on the dangling rubber boots of one of the ‘kickers’ sitting up on the rice sacks. Murray had recovered from the shock of seeing her. At first he had stood in the Hi-Lo Bar and gaped at her, while Ryderbeit wasted several minutes’ flying time leering solicitously and offering her his brandy flask, which she had declined. Murray was now trying to work out the implications. The reason for her being here was simple enough: she fancied herself as an amateur photographer, had heard from Luke at the Embassy yesterday that there was a fairly hairy rice-drop fixed up, and having nothing else to do, had decided to come along for the ride. Murray should have recognised the type earlier. South-East Asia was full of them — bored girls trailing round the trouble-spots, all rigged out in man-sized paramilitary kits, working off their various neuroses by being right there where the action was.
The only difference was that this girl, apart from being a great deal more attractive than most, was married to a man in the Central Intelligence Agency. And this, on Murray’s present mission, was something that could — to say the least — prove embarrassing.
They were off the ground at last, wheeling over the town, away from the great looping brown river, the sun coming up over the rim of the earth, glinting off the mosaic of rice fields that looked like fragments of a shattered mirror. The Thai paratroopers began to smoke — one of them offering his packet of king-size filter-tips to Jacqueline Conquest, but she shook her head with a small artificial smile. A girl that didn’t drink or smoke or smile, thought Murray. What did she do? The camera in her lap was a massive Japanese device, with telescopic lens and grip-handle like a miniature bazooka. He noticed that she carried no extra clothing, and her combat tunic, open at the neck, showed only bare lightly-tanned skin. The slip-stream from the door was no longer warm. He unfastened his safety belt and began unwrapping his extra sweatshirt, then paused, considering whether to offer it to the girl. There would be complications here, with the six Thai paratroopers watching them with inscrutable intensity. Instead he offered her the two Bangkok Worlds, shouting to make himself heard.
She accepted, and began unbuttoning her tunic without any ostentation, folding the newspapers across her flat belly, under an amply-filled unboned bra of white silk, while the six kickers went on smoking and watching, expressionless.
A moment later Murray’s attention was distracted by the appearance of the Nam Ngum Dam passing far below in a great fold of rainforest — the scarred earth and tiny yellow machines scattered about like the playground of some bored child. The reservoir, hidden beneath the slanting sun, was as black as ever. Nothing would ever show in that water, he thought — unless it were floating. He stood in the open doorway, one hand gripping one of the parachute-lines, the other snapping away at the Leica slung round his neck. They were flying at perhaps four thousand feet, climbing hard. The dam was gone and he sat down again, shivering.
‘What do you hope to get out of this trip?’ he yelled at the girl in French: ‘A few souvenir photos of the Chinese border?’
She shrugged: ‘We don’t go that near China.’ She spoke less loudly, leaning very close to him, and for the first time — above the oily stench and icy slip-stream — he caught a drift of delicious perfume. ‘I should ask the same of you,’ she added. ‘You’re not a photographer, are you? So why does a well-known writer want to take pictures of one of these rice-shits?’
The phrase, shiage-de-riz, surprised him; but not as much as the content of what she said. And he thought, Here we go again! First this frightful Rhodesian Jew, and now this unsmiling graceful-limbed French wife of a CIA man, both wanting to know what an Irish journalist was doing bumming a ride on a rackety rice-drop over north Laos. He wondered if he had been just unlucky. Most of the time a journalist could wander round this country and no one asked a question from one day to the next. Perhaps he was being over-suspicious — as well he might. He shouted back at her: ‘I illustrate my own articles. American magazines pay money.’
‘Are you interested in money?’
‘Like everyone else. Aren’t you?’
She shrugged again, with that curious disdainful boredom he had noticed at the reception in Vientiane; then leaned back against the canvas webbing and closed her eyes.
It was getting very cold in the aircraft. Murray put on the extra sweatshirt under his jacket and began to pick his way up between the rails of rice-sacks to the pilots’ cabin. It was much warmer here than in the body of the plane, with ventilators under the seats pumping out blasts of hot metallic air that joined with the rich fug of Havana leaf from a Romeo y Julieta cigar jammed between Ryderbeit’s teeth. Everything in the cabin seemed very old and worn and dirty; there were cigarette ends and crumpled paper cartons on the floor, and a lot of naked dangerous-looking wire spilling out of a panel in the wall like a bunch of entrails.
No-Entry was at the main controls, still wearing his dark glasses as he held the stick back, climbing over ridges of jungle into a mauvish mottled sky. Ryderbeit glanced up at Murray. ‘And how’s our lovely fellow-passenger?’ he cried, taking off the earphones.
‘Asleep.’
Ryderbeit shook his head: ‘We got her up too early — out o’ bed with that sodding husband of hers!’
‘You know him?’
‘Too bloody right I do! I once had a fi
ght with the bastard. Accused me of being arseholed after a crash — I’d raised the undercarriage before take-off. He was right. I had been drinking a bit — but it wasn’t my fault. The contraption folded up because of hydraulic failure. Could happen to the soberest of us.’
‘And where was Maxwell Conquest?’ Murray asked, wondering how much of the pigskin flask had been drunk this time since take-off.
‘Conquest was on the plane. It was a two-seater job and I was supposed to fly the sod up on one of these hush-hush missions to one of the U.S. forward bases near the Ho Chi Minh trail — where officially the only Yanks are seed-experts trying to diversify the local agriculture, or some such cock-rot. Some bloody seed-expert is Maxwell Bloody Conquest — unless you count what he does to that lovely lady we have in the back!’ He broke off with his wild cackle. ‘Anyway, we went down on the runway with rather a bump and Maxwell hurt his arse somewhat — bruised his coccyx, I think it was. But that didn’t stop him telling me I was a crazy alcoholic, or words to that effect, which didn’t really disturb me too much — I’ve been called lots worse than that in my time. But then, when I’m helping the bastard out, he says he’s going to report me and see I lose my pilot’s licence. And that’s the kind of talk that Samuel Ryderbeit has to take rather seriously. So I hit the little shit a kind o’ mild slap across the chops, and he has the impertinence — even with his bruised bum — to hit me back. It appears he knows some rather nasty tricks in the unarmed combat line. Anyway, I lost two teeth and he broke my cheekbone, which was just as well, because I was able to lodge a complaint against him with the American Embassy — G.B.H. with an offensive weapon, namely karate — and I even got a personal apology from the Ambassador. I also kept my licence.’
‘Conquest should be delighted you’re taking his wife up on your flight.’
‘Yeah, it worries me a bit too. If I’d known I wouldn’t’ve let her on the plane. I just hope nothin’ happens on this ride.’
The Tale of the Lazy Dog Page 6
