‘You’ll be all right, he’s going back to Saigon next week — and taking his wife with him.’
Ryderbeit gave his crafty leer: ‘I might try looking her up some time — when her husband’s not around.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I’m going down to Saigon myself next month.’
‘You mean you operate out of there too?’ said Murray, as a number of thoughts began flashing through his mind — and none of them to do with Jacqueline Conquest.
‘Sure I do — part of my contract with Air U.S.A. We’re a busy international airline, Mr Wilde. As the ads might say, we provide safe and reliable service to the latest three States of the Union — Laos, Thailand and South Vietnam.’
‘It doesn’t worry them, you’re not being an American citizen?’
‘It doesn’t worry ’em in the least. None of the hush-hush flights carry any markings on their planes, and if I go down and fall into unfriendly hands, no one knows anything about me. That’s the one advantage of holding a Rhodesian passport. What do the Reds do? Kick up one hell of a fuss at the UN, parade me through the streets of Hanoi? And what do the Yanks do? Shrug their shoulders and say I’m just another poor white African outcast, shot down on some smuggling run over South-East Asia. And there are enough of us doing it, I can tell you — boys out o’ the Congo, Algeria, the Yemen, Biafra. Now Vietnam. All the fun-spots of the world!’
‘And you do it just for the money — four hundred dollars a week?’
Ryderbeit looked up, frowning: ‘You seem to be very well informed?’
‘It’s the going rate, isn’t it?’
‘More or less. Sometimes more, for the hush-hush ones — the spotter-flights over the Ho Chi Minh trail where No-Entry here got it up the rear passage.’
The co-pilot, his grizzled head encased in earphones, did not hear. Ryderbeit’s voice had suddenly lost its matiness: ‘You’re anglin’ for somethin’ out here, aren’t you, Mr Wilde? Now come on, quit stallin’. I’ve been talkin’ eagerly enough — too bloody eagerly to a journalist, for that matter. But since I’ve got a pretty keen idea you’re not goin’ to write any of this, I’m prepared to oblige. Now how about you returnin’ the compliment?’
Before attempting to reply, Murray did some rapid thinking. Unless Ryderbeit had a sixth sense, or was pathologically suspicious, it seemed almost inconceivable that he would have been talking like this, had he not been tipped off. There was also the matter of Air U.S.A. The activities of this airline were ambiguous, to put it mildly. It was a registered commercial company, operating largely on a charter basis; but it was no secret that most of its custom, as well as backing, came from the CIA. And if Murray were to quote even half of what Ryderbeit had just been saying, the Rhodesian’s job would be worth about as much as a post-dated cheque after a poker game with strangers on a train. And Ryderbeit — unless he were mentally deficient, or slightly mad — must be well aware of this.
There could be only one disturbing explanation: Sammy Ryderbeit knew what Murray was doing in Laos. He had been told. And the only two people who could have told him were George Finlayson and Charles Pol. Murray was just wondering why either of them would have done so, when the plane began a violent shuddering. No-Entry was easing back the stick as high coils of cloud climbed darkly above the windows.
‘How long till the drop?’ Murray asked, playing for time now.
‘Long enough.’ Ryderbeit unfastened his belt and stood up, taking Murray by the arm. The floor was sloping dangerously and Ryderbeit’s fingers, which were lean and supple like the rest of him, felt very strong. ‘Let’s go back and have a little chat, soldier.’
Jacqueline Conquest was sitting up again, staring out into the cloud. Ryderbeit shouted some gallantry at her, in fluent appalling French, then signalled Murray into one of the hammock seats a few feet away from her along the wall. Murray was beginning to regret having given her both his Bangkok Worlds. Ryderbeit, on the other hand, gave no sign of feeling the cold, which was becoming intense. Instead he took out his flask, offering it to Murray who accepted gratefully this time, then took a long drink himself, smacked his lips and grinned: ‘Well, what’s it all about, soldier? There can’t be much loot in working for a few crappy newspapers.’
‘I do all right, thanks.’
The Rhodesian shook his head: ‘Don’t waste my time, Murray Wilde, sir. What’s the game? Gold, guns, opium? Come on, you wouldn’t be the first to try and con a poor innocent Air U.S.A. pilot into running an unscheduled flight over some remote territory where the rule of law’s not too strong, and drop a few rice-bags that don’t necessarily have to contain rice, n’est-ce pas?’ And he gave Murray a hard slap on the knee.
‘I’ll have some more of that brandy,’ Murray said, as the floor began another series of shuddering bumps.
‘Don’t drink it all. We may need it before we’re down.’
Murray drank, screwed the top back on and waited. It was now quite clear how things stood. Finlayson, having sounded him out that first evening at the Cigale, and presumably been impressed, had acted swiftly; having found out that he was planning to go down on a rollercoaster, he had managed to arrange — probably through the obliging Luke Williams — that Murray’s chief pilot should be this Rhodesian mercenary, who gave every promise of being prepared to do anything for anybody, providing the price was right.
When Ryderbeit continued to say nothing, Murray decided it was time to get the matter settled, one way or the other. ‘You’ve been talking to George Finlayson?’
‘Old-Filling-Station! Well o’ course I know him. Vientiane’s a small place. Everybody knows Filling-Station.’
‘What did he tell you?’
‘Ah now!’ — he raised his forefinger as though administering an oath — ‘I quote the Fifth Amendment on that one. On the grounds that it might incriminate our good friend George Finlayson. Shall we just say, he dropped a number of oh-so subtle hints? Filling-Station, as you may have already realised, Mr Wilde, is an English gentleman. At least he tries bloody hard to be. And in his imaginary armchair in White’s or Boodle’s — or wherever the British banking aristocracy still hole up in these dark days of Socialist rule — George Finlayson insinuated that you, an honourable British writer with a commendable career behind you at a Vietnamese university, might be interested in a certain business venture. O.K.?’
The floor slumped sickeningly like a lift going down too fast. Ryderbeit said, ‘Better strap yourself in — I’m going back to give Jones a hand. The drop’ll be coming up soon.’ He glanced across at Jackie Conquest and murmured, ‘I suppose that beauty realises there’s no toilet on this crate? We just hang on out of the door holding on to the parachute-lines. She might find that a bit awkward.’ His grin darkened to a frown: ‘What’s she doing on this plane, anyway?’
‘You tell me. Joy-riding, I should think. At least I hope that’s all it is.’
Ryderbeit stood considering Mrs Conquest with more than his usual lecherous leer. ‘Yeah, I hope so too.’ He paused. ‘We’ll have our little business talk later. Be seeing you, soldier!’ He turned and said something to the Thai kickers, who put out their cigarettes and began clambering off the sacks.
Sammy Ryderbeit walked back up to the cabin.
CHAPTER 3
Murray and Jackie Conquest hung over the edge, their wrists wrapped securely round the parachute-lines, and watched northern Laos move slowly below them. It was a landscape that changed with disconcerting rapidity, one moment a rumpled carpet of rich green mohair, suddenly moulting into bone and gristle carved with deep crevices and waterfalls spouting from immense heights. And now cloud — freezing, drifting through the door like smoke, leaving little beads of moisture on the metal fittings and parachute buckles. Then suddenly it would be clear again, but with a diffuse yellow light that gave the ground a strange shadowy effect, like looking down from a bathyscope on to the floor of the ocean — deep-green rocks overgrown with seaweed, full of hollows of purple dark
ness. The height — or depth — was also disconcerting. One moment they seemed to be flying at several thousand feet, then a shelf of mountain swept up so close that they could see the leaves on the treetops, a jumble of tiny huts, a path hacked out of the jungle.
The time was 8.40. They had been airborne for just over two hours. One of the kickers had a clasp-knife out and was slicing through the ropes that fastened the first batch of eight sacks to a wooden sledge, which the others now began to ease up towards the door. Murray and the girl stood back. The sledge reached the sharp bend in the roller-tracks; the Thais braced themselves, holding the load at the very edge of the floor while one of them wedged a block of wood between the sledge and the rollers. They were small men, but immensely strong. The load must have weighed nearly half a ton. The plane was now banking steeply, turning round the side of the mountain until the trees seemed to be growing outwards, almost horizontally. Murray saw the jumble of huts again, and the yellow track on the mountain top. More cloud, for a moment so dense that he could hardly see the girl leaning back against the inside of the door; and when it cleared he recognised the beginnings of an excited fear in those dark sullen eyes.
The same mountain top came round again, for the third time. A bell rang just above his head, with startling shrillness. One of the Thais screamed something and whisked the wood from under the sledge. The others heaved all at once, and the whole load of sacks went over the edge, very fast, tumbling, then slowing, it seemed, as they drifted out towards the ground. Murray could see figures moving out of the trees like ants. The sacks fell in a straight line along the edge of the track. The Thai paratrooper who had given the shout, and was obviously in command, looked up with a grin and made a thumbs-up signal to Ryderbeit, who was peering back down the length of the plane.
The second sledge-load was already being wheeled into position. The operation began again. This time it took four turns before the drop could be made. Twice the cloud closed in, and the third time the kicker was just a fraction late; but he had the wit to hold his hand and wait for the fourth run. Murray caught his eye and for a moment thought the little man was going to burst into tears. On the fourth turn, the sacks again fell in the same straight line just outside the trees, the rice protected from spilling by the three layers of sacking.
Murray was beginning to get the hang of it now. The track was not a marker-zone, but a dangerously short airstrip, suitable only for a helicopter or the tiniest one-engined aircraft. If the sacks landed near the middle, their impact could put the strip out of action for perhaps several hours. On the other hand, if the load fell into the trees, the branches could split the triple-sacking and that would be the end of several hundredweight of rice — or anything else that happened to be inside.
What Sammy Ryderbeit and No-Entry Jones were doing — in an antiquated aircraft, and in bad weather — was the equivalent of low-flying, high-precision bombing. At these heights, in strong wind, a parachute drop would be less accurate: the rice could be blown off-course and fall miles away, down into some inaccessible gulley that would take days to retrieve.
A freefall drop required skill. A not unbelievable skill — there were plenty of pilots in the world who could no doubt accomplish the same feat without much difficulty. But they might not be the kind of pilots that Murray had in mind.
On the fourth drop the last few sacks hit the trees. It was only a marginal miss — perhaps a gust of wind, a split-second error of judgment — but Murray saw the sacks explode in little white puffs. The head kicker gave Ryderbeit the thumbs-down signal this time, then gestured Murray and the girl back to their seats, and told them to strap themselves in.
During the next few minutes the ride became much rougher. Half the load had now gone, and the rest of the sledges were being rolled down the floor from behind the cabin and jammed with extra wooden slabs. Murray realised they were climbing steeply, his ears cracking with pain. It became very dark in the aircraft. He wondered for a moment about oxygen masks. There were none in evidence. He shouted fatuously at the girl, ‘Ça va?’ but she said nothing. The plane began a new swaying motion, followed by a change in the engine pitch. Even to Murray’s untrained ear, he knew they were losing power. The first flashes of lightning came a moment later. Ryderbeit had appeared in the door of the cabin and was yelling, ‘Cut loose! — the bloody lot!’
The Thais went into action again, slicing the ropes of the remaining sacks, rolling the last half-dozen sledges down the floor at terrifying speed; but this time there was no question of wedges, calculating the drop, waiting for the bell. The sledges tippled out of the door, one after the other, and vanished into cloud. Almost at once the pitch of the engine improved, and there was a slight, perceptible lift.
The six kickers — still moving with a panic-free precision that would have aroused the admiration of the roughest British paratroop sergeant — took their seats along the wall and for the first time began strapping themselves in. Murray also noticed that at least two of them were sweating — no more than a delicate row of beads across the brow — but his experience of the East had taught him that Orientals do not sweat easily, particularly in a temperature barely above zero. And these men were hardened paratroopers. They knew the form, and the form was not good.
Fifteen minutes passed. It was almost 9.30, but there was no sign of the sun burning off the mountain mists, as Luke Williams had predicted. The sun showed only at long intervals, in an ugly crepuscular glow that had nothing to do with daylight. Thunder crashed distantly through the weakening roar of the engines. Lightning lit the oily darkness inside the plane. It was like the studio effects of some horror film.
Murray found himself gripping Jackie Conquest’s hand in a spontaneous gesture which was reciprocated. The port engine had begun to cough again; but this time it was a long angry sound, as though desperately trying to clear something from its twin-throated exhausts. Murray gave the girl’s hand a last squeeze, then unclipped his belt and started to climb precariously towards the pilots, ignoring the vague gestures of warning from the row of kickers.
It seemed quieter up in the cabin, like a dim cramped office with the instrument panel glowing behind greasy dials. Ryderbeit was back behind the main controls, while the Negro co-pilot worked on a soiled one-millionth-scale cloth map with the contours drawn in mauve for red night-sight reading, occasionally mumbling into the mouthpiece of the R/T set in front of him and jotting down figures with a wax crayon on a celluloid chart. Suddenly the floor keeled over and Murray nearly fell across Ryderbeit’s lap. The dials began spinning crazily and the cabin was suddenly filled with light. He looked up. There was something wrong.
The cloud had broken, too late. They were flying down below the level of the mountains, as though into a cave. Mist hung from the banks of jungle like shrouds, coming closer and closer — suddenly racing past, and Ryderbeit was making a number of rapid movements that were at the same time curiously delicate, like a pianist executing a complicated trill. Or a surgeon. A surgeon slicing quickly, ripping at the entrails of the aircraft, tearing it apart — thousands of hours of stress-torn machinery howling as the mountains came rolling over towards them and the cloud burst round them again, and Murray found himself lying on the filthy floor among the cigarette ends and the crumpled paper cups.
Ryderbeit had pulled off his earphones and they were dangling down from his seat, giving out a squawking crackle of voices that Murray found all too familiar. Jones was talking into his mouthpiece when Ryderbeit suddenly shouted, ‘Cut that out, you bloody idiot — cut it out!’
No-Entry switched off the set in front of him and slowly removed his dark glasses; his eyes were small and raw, his face like clay.
Murray got to his feet and picked up the earphones, recognising now a few garbled words and numbers — ‘nah-cha-bam-quouc-lim-chi-quouc…!’
‘Understand it?’ Ryderbeit yelled, not moving his eyes from the instrument dials, which seemed to have settled down slightly.
Murray nodded: �
�Vietnamese.’
‘North Vietnamese,’ said Ryderbeit.
‘Who are they?’
‘Dien Bien Phu control tower. They’ve got a military airfield there. We’re getting a direct signal. According to my calculations we’re at least ten miles inside the border.’ He gave a savage laugh: ‘Ten miles inside North Vietnam, soldier. That’s trouble.’
CHAPTER 4
‘What happened?’ Murray asked.
‘We missed the second drop zone,’ Ryderbeit told him.
‘Second?’
‘They gave us two — second one at the last moment, even after the weather reports had come in and I told ’em I couldn’t lift four tons o’ rice an extra thousand feet through a probable flamin’ occluded front. But don’t let’s get too technical. We missed the pass, that’s all. I couldn’t get her over before we had time to jettison the load. The bastards’ll probably try to eat my arse for getting rid of it — but if I hadn’t we’d have crashed.’
‘Where are we?’ The altimeter was wobbling at around eight thousand feet — which was still not above the highest mountains. Ahead there was again nothing but dull yellow cloud.
Ryderbeit said: ‘We’re heading due north for a second pass that should get us back into Laotian airspace. If not, we’re screwed.’
‘How far is that?’ The speedometer showed only about two hundred knots.
‘Five, six minutes,’ said Ryderbeit. ‘We’re flying blind now — I daren’t try for a radio bearing or they may pick us up — and what’s more, the NVA have got radar down there. Only while we’re still in the mountains there’s just a chance they won’t spot us.’
‘What’s the worst that can happen?’
Ryderbeit grinned: ‘You’re a bloody optimist, aren’t you! The worst is several things. They can blow us out of these filthy skies with a SAM — Surface-to-Air Missile. Or they might have Migs down there — but I doubt even those little buggers would try to chase us through this muck. Or we can just crash.’
The Tale of the Lazy Dog Page 7
