‘He was taking a risk, this boy, opening ’em all?’
‘He said some of them were torn anyway, from the roof falling in. And his fellow M.P.’s were more concerned with getting him out of the hut than checking what was inside.’
‘And how much did he help himself to?’
‘Nothing — so he said. There were too many other men there. And they could always have searched him.’
‘Did they?’
‘No. In fact he told me he was pretty sick he hadn’t. The stuff was packed as thick as dictionaries and he didn’t think Uncle Sam would miss just a few inches of it.’
‘And how much was there?’ Ryderbeit’s breath was coming in short gasps, his fingers gripping his knees. ‘How much?’
‘Four or five tons. It had to be moved out on a forklift truck, and they loaded it on a plane that night and flew it to Guam in the Philippines. Then it was shipped back to the States. From there on it’s all high finance.’
‘How high? Just how much in the kitty?’
Murray stared at the ceiling. He had only the sergeant’s word for it — and the gossip that had followed in the M.P.s’ guardroom. ‘About one billion,’ he said slowly: ‘With a big B. That’s to say, an American billion — one thousand million in good legal Treasury bills.’ He closed his eyes. ‘Give or take a few million,’ he added. And Ryderbeit, through his broken lips, gave a stiff laugh: ‘That’s very nice, soldier. Very nice indeed! Except how does this young sergeant pal o’ yours know it was a billion, unless he counted it?’
‘He just looked at it. He said that after a bit you get an eye for these things. Just a month before he’d been on guard one evening at the central traffic complex when a Ford panel-wagon drove up and two Treasury guards got out and told him to keep an eye on the truck while they went and got a cup of coffee from the canteen. The doors weren’t even locked, and while they were away he took a look inside. The floor at the back was piled with stacks of greenbacks, all new this time, and still in their bank wrappings. When the guards came back he asked how much was there. And they told him — eight million dollars.’
Ryderbeit gave a long whistle: ‘It sounds as though they got a security problem on that airfield.’
‘He said they handle money like that every day of the week. And it was no more than the equivalent of one suitcase full. But in that hut there was enough for at least a hundred suitcases.’
Ryderbeit sat with his dark hooked face set back in shadow now. ‘One billion,’ he breathed: ‘Holy Moses!’ There was a long pause. ‘Holy Moses in hell!’ he cried, ‘they’d never have that amount in the country at one given time — it’s crazy!’
‘Not crazy at all. They were getting rid of the stuff — what they call a “flush-out”. Total currency recall. They work it in any country where there are too many Americans and too little economic stability — two things that often go together. And what certainly go together are American troops and American dollars. You can bring in all the currency regulations you want — circulate military Scrip money, make the possession of greenbacks illegal — but the greenbacks are always there.’
‘Like lovely spring weeds,’ Ryderbeit murmured, ‘shooting up in all the wild places of the world. Flush-out — currency recall. Yeah, I’ve heard of it. I’ve even dreamed about it. Every few months you gather in all the cash from all the bank vaults and private safes in the country and ship the whole load back to the States, print the equivalent in Scrip, and hope the black market and the rackets stop.’ He was leaning forward again, pressing his hands together, giving his swollen smile. ‘But they never do, do they? Like the old problem of disease versus antibiotics. In Vietnam it’s the same with Scrip and the black market as it is with penicillin and the clap. And you know how bad the clap’s got in that poor bloody country? — so bad you hardly dare masturbate.’ He began to sway back and forth as though in a rocking-chair. ‘But one billion U.S.’ He shook his head: ‘That’s too much. Too much even for my imagination.’
‘Why? Just forget your home-spun venereal philosophy, Sammy, and look at some simple arithmetic. The Americans are fighting an expensive war out there. About thirty billion dollars’ worth a year, on the recent average. So what’s so odd about finding three per cent of that money circulating inside the country itself?’
No-Entry interrupted suddenly from his motionless place by the door. ‘Mr Wilde, any G.I. serving in Vietnam who’s found with even one George Washington on him goes straight to the stockade.’
Murray nodded. ‘Quite so. On the other hand, in nearly two years in Vietnam I’ve never played in a poker school with American troops where I wasn’t offered the option of being paid my winnings in greenbacks, if I asked for them. They’ve all got greenbacks, because outside the PX nobody’s interested in anything but dollars — and that goes for everyone from the Prime Minister down to the shoe-shine boys. You know that even the B-girls down Tu Do Street won’t take anything but greenbacks now — even in tips?’
Ryderbeit shook his head: ‘Poor bloody soldiers. But half a million G.I.’s can’t account for one billion dollars.’
‘It’s not the G.I.’s that have to account for it. I’m thinking of big business — U.S. construction corporations getting some of the fattest engineering contracts in history, building airfields and artificial harbours and whole new towns, all with a ten per cent kickback from the Federal Government. And those boys don’t get paid in piastres or Scrip, or any other kind of Monopoly money. Then there are the other companies — French, British, Thais, Japs, Indians, Chinese, Aussies — not to mention the gold traders and opium smugglers, and those patriotic Vietnamese with numbered Swiss bank accounts, all busy making an indecent, dishonest living till the referee blows the whistle in Paris and the war’s over. Don’t worry, there are probably more greenbacks at this moment in Vietnam than in any other part of the world, outside America itself. And as far as the U.S. Treasury’s concerned, a dollar bill’s a dollar bill — even a dirty one.’
‘Even if Mao Tse Tung’s wiped his arse on it,’ Ryderbeit said, standing up suddenly and fingering his wounded face. ‘But one billion — that’s about four hundred million Sterling. By my reckoning one hundred and sixty times more than your Great Train Robbery. And those poor sods are rottin’ away in jail for thirty years, and all they did was pick up the petty cash!’ He stood in front of the half-shuttered window, staring at a corner of the hot little town outside. ‘I suppose, according to the legal computer, we ought to get about five hundred years each? Under British justice, that is. Or even American justice. Only it wouldn’t be American, would it?’
‘I haven’t consulted senior counsel on the matter. It might be a tricky point in international law.’
‘And rather an important one too — if we look on the gloomy side o’ things. For instance, if we were arrested here in Laos —’ He turned, still stroking his jaw, but smiling now: ‘You know there was a big dollar heist at Vientiane Airport about a year ago? A gang o’ Frenchies grabbed three million bucks as it was bein’ loaded on to one of our Air U.S.A. planes for Bangkok. But they made the mistake of not bribin’ the local police and got picked up at a roadblock. They were tried by Lao law, and d’yer know what they got? Three years each, with permission to go out at weekends — providin’ they don’t leave town. You can sometimes see ’em drinking in the Bar des Amis. Not a bad life — considerin’ half the money still hasn’t been recovered. I mean, if we did get caught, it would be a help if it was out here —’ He had turned back to the window, his voice trailing into thought. ‘What puzzles me though, is why these Yanks are so bloody keen to ship all this money back to the States. Why don’t they just burn the stuff — like Filling-Station does in his back yard?’
Murray had been worried by this too, until Charles Pol had given him the answer. ‘It costs a lot of money to reissue four tons of cash — especially when it’s an international currency. If it was in thousand dollar bills there wouldn’t be so much problem, because they’re al
l registered. But not fifties and hundreds. Far cheaper and easier to spare one plane and a cargo fee to San Francisco.’
‘And riskier.’
‘So maybe the U.S. Treasury are just mean? Sammy, you and I were both married to rich girls, and you know that rich people have funny ideas about little details. They’ll think nothing of a few Rollses and Renoirs, then they go and economise on cheap sherry.’
Ryderbeit’s face was still turned to the window, but his shoulders were hunched in a curious way so that Murray could see he was laughing silently. ‘I like your reasoning, soldier. It’s so bloody fantastic it might just be true. But what I’d like to know is how many other journalists has this Yank sergeant boy o’ yours told?’
‘He said I was the first journalist he’d ever met.’
‘All right, so he talked to some of his mates in the Military Police, and they talked to their mates, so now it’s all round town — several towns. Bangkok, Saigon, Hong Kong, Vientiane — probably even Tokyo and L.A. and the Bronx. So why haven’t we heard about it before?’
Murray shrugged. ‘Maybe it’s classified information. Maybe he didn’t talk about it.’
‘He talked to you about it.’
‘He’d had too much to drink.’
‘And how often does he have too much to drink?’
‘How would I know? Maybe he’s talked about it before and nobody took much notice. Maybe they were too busy worrying about the war.’
‘To hell with the war! If this sergeant wasn’t just shootin’ his mouth off, and there really is this kind ’o money passin’ through Saigon, why hasn’t some genius thought of knockin’ it off before?’
‘You might ask why some bright boy in Ancient Rome didn’t invent gunpowder or the Greeks think of the typewriter. It’s true that in Vietnam they’ll steal anything and sell anything. Weapons, whisky, cigarettes, petrol, spare parts, trucks, jewellery — even furs, if they wore them out there. From time to time you may get a million dollar PX racket, or some joker like the American quartermaster down in the Delta recently who went and got a hundred grand timber contract for Army billets, and spent the lot building a string of brothels. But it’s still small short-term stuff. There’s a war on, and everyone in a war like this — except the motivated idealists — grabs what he can while the going’s good. No one thinks of the real big time. Like selling aircraft carriers that don’t exist’ — he nodded deferentially at Ryderbeit, who nodded back — ‘because that sort of crime is out of focus in a war, it’s in the wrong league. Really big organised crime’s a peacetime occupation. It needs leisure and stability. In war people just don’t have time to think of it.’
Ryderbeit nodded, still gazing out of the window. ‘And you’re the genius who has?’ He suddenly spun round, his thin strong fingers flexed at his sides, and took a step forward. ‘You’re a bloody conman, Murray Wilde! You’re smart and full o’ fancy shit, but you haven’t told me one thing. Nothing but a spew o’ gossip from some pissed little sergeant in a B-bar in Bangkok.’
Murray braced himself against the bolster, half watching the immobile form of No-Entry Jones by the door, preparing to deal Ryderbeit a fast kick in the groin the moment he came within range. ‘So what else do you want to hear?’ he asked, with feigned weariness.
‘How you propose to walk on to the most heavily guarded airfield in the world and hijack a planeload of one billion dollars, without some M.P. saying “Excuse I…”’
‘We’ll be the M.P.’s,’ Murray said quietly. ‘My sergeant friend has already offered to show me round — unofficially. He’s even agreed to lend me an M.P. helmet and gun and take me out to the hut where it happened. You’re quite right about Tân Sơn Nhất being the most heavily guarded airfield in the world — but it’s guarded against the Viet Cong, not against people like us. No Vietnamese is going to have a chance in hell of getting within a mile of that money. But that’s just the beauty of the thing. They don’t put the stuff in an armoured compound, which is just inviting a V.C. rocket attack or a suicide raid. They put it in some shed out in the back, and nobody bothers. As for us, a journalist or Air U.S.A. pilot can wander in and out of that airfield, just flashing his card at the gate. And dressed up as M.P.’s we can probably get right up to the plane. The only problem is finding out the exact time and place of that plane.’
‘And how do we do that?’ Ryderbeit still stood tensed and aggressive, but he had moved no closer.
‘I’m working on it.’
‘Through old George Filling-Station?’ he sneered. ‘Or your Frenchman down in Cambodia?’
‘Perhaps — if you give them time.’
‘I see. So your sergeant friend’s all ready to risk his stripes smuggling you round his precinct impersonating an M.P.? That doesn’t sound like any M.P. I ever heard of.’
‘So perhaps he feels he owes me a few drinks. He’s also got a grudge against his superior officers. When we last met I suggested a little scheme by which I and a couple of journalist friends try to stay on the airfield patrolling the perimeter after curfew — just to see how good the security is, and write it up afterwards. My friend liked the idea — thought it might make a good story, at the expense of H.Q.’
‘Like hell it would. And while we’re patrolling the pitch, we just happen to stop at a plane with one billion aboard and tell the crew to step down?’
‘You got any better ideas?’
Ryderbeit sighed and sat down again. ‘Gimme the brandy.’ Murray threw it to him and he took a long drink. ‘It’s crazy. It’s so bloody crazy it might just work. We grab the plane and get it off the ground — and then what? You think they’re not goin’ to have their whole air-screen up there lookin’ for us?’
‘That’s another thing we’re going to have to work on,’ said Murray. ‘But the Cambodian border’s less than fifty miles direct flying from Saigon. They’re going to have to move fast.’
‘Did your sergeant mention what sort o’ plane they use?’
‘A Caribou.’
Ryderbeit nodded. ‘Beautiful plane. With a full payload, top speed of around a hundred and eighty to two hundred knots. That’s goin’ to give us about fifteen minutes from take-off. And then what? We land at Phnom Penh and declare it all to Customs?’
‘We fly up to Vientiane. You know the Nam Ngum dam just twelve miles north of the city?’ Ryderbeit nodded. ‘It’s the perfect spot. About five hundred feet long, and just about wide enough to take a heavy plane — with a bit of luck and a bloody good pilot. If you can land and pull up in time, there’s a whole range of earth-moving machines and tip-trucks right there to shift the cargo, and bulldozers to push the plane into the reservoir. And that’s the most important part. We’ve got to keep that plane hidden for at least forty-eight hours. And the reservoir up there looks deep and dark enough to hide it for maybe weeks.’
Ryderbeit was sitting very still. Murray knew he had his interest now, completely.
‘We load up a ten-ton truck and drive it down to the airport before dawn. From then on you know the form. We swap the cargo over into rice-sacks, load them on to one of your Air U.S.A. charity flights, and take off just like we did this morning. Only we don’t come back.’
Ryderbeit’s face cracked into a painful grin. ‘I like it, soldier. I like it a lot.’ He looked round at Jones. ‘What d’yer think, No-Entry?’
The Negro nodded. ‘I think it has great potential, Mr Wilde.’ Somewhere in the distance they heard a dull clapping noise.
‘That sounds like our helicopter,’ Murray murmured; but no one moved.
‘So we disappear on a rollercoaster up north,’ Ryderbeit said at last. ‘Another crew of poor bloody Air U.S.A. boys written off without mention. Then what?’
‘We’re in wild country up here. Where there’s not too much rule of law — to use your own words this morning. We could try a lot of things — providing we make sure the price is right. The opium trails, for instance — through Burma and down into India. With that sort of money we cou
ld buy the whole Burmese Government. How much do you think U Thant gets paid?’
Ryderbeit chuckled softly. ‘Yes, I like it. More and more. I suppose your French friend’s got some ideas in that line?’
‘He’s working on some. All you’ve got to worry about is flying that plane.’
‘And landing it in five hundred feet. Let’s just hope to hell it is a Caribou. With a plane like that I’m happy. They call it the “flying wing” — it’s got so many flaps I’ve seen one land across the width of a runway. But if they’re using something heavier —’ He shook his head and looked at his watch. ‘Well, children, time for the chopper.’ He stood up and came across to the bed, smiling. ‘No ill feelings, soldier? Because I’ve enjoyed our little chat. A lot more than I thought I would.’ He took Murray by the arm and led him past No-Entry Jones, who held the door open for them both, closing it behind them. ‘In fact,’ Ryderbeit added, as they started down the stairs, ‘I think we can consider ourselves in business.’ He squeezed Murray’s arm. ‘A fifth share of one billion U.S. — that’s what I call a couple o’ bob to be gettin’ on with!’
CHAPTER 3
They had some explaining to do at USAID headquarters, in the little water-logged French square where the rain had just started, and they were already fifteen minutes late. The helicopter had struggled all the way up from Luang Prabang to get them out, and the pilot, an elderly man with a balding crewcut, was silently furious that they were not there on time.
Their appearance did not help. Wedgwood was aghast, clearly imagining some terrible incident with the local populace with whom his job was to live in peace and harmony until his year was up. But Ryderbeit’s explanation was so disingenuously true as to be totally disarming. They’d had a touch too much of Wedgwood’s bourbon which had led to a slight fisticuffs in which Murray Wilde had come out the winner. (This was just plausible, since Murray’s injuries were abdominal rather than facial.)
The Tale of the Lazy Dog Page 10
