‘Again, you must ask Monsieur Banaji.’
Banaji lifted his head from the pipe. ‘We are satisfied, Monsieur Wilde. But if you are not, then the arrangements must be annulled. We do not have the time to argue.’
Ryderbeit’s hand closed hard round Murray’s arm: ‘Accept, you bastard! They’re serious. These boys don’t fool around. And they’re not leaving us an alternative.’
Murray took the pipe again and this time lingered over it before passing it to Ryderbeit. ‘How do you propose destroying the second plane?’ he asked finally, turning back to Banaji.
‘It will be burnt and buried. There will be nothing left.’
‘And what about the airfield? They’ll be searching every inch of landing space in South-East Asia.’
‘That is true. Only they will not find the plane. We will make quite sure of that.’
‘And the substitute pilots? Who will they be?’
‘Men of our choice,’ said Banaji softly. ‘They will be our concern — paid for by us.’
‘And the real pilots?’
‘That will also be our concern.’
Murray smiled. ‘Listen, Monsieur Banaji. Half the American Air Force, and their entire external security forces, are going to be looking for us. They’re going to be looking for that plane — for an Air U.S.A. rice-drop plane that took off without the correct crew, sent a phoney mayday signal, then vanished. They’ve half caught us already.’
‘Have you a better plan, Monsieur Wilde?’
The first sticks of high explosive landed a second later. The hut shuddered, the oil lamp almost went out. ‘Ah, the B 52’s again,’ Banaji murmured. ‘Another few thousand dollars’ worth of bombs, and what do they achieve?’
The floor began to bounce in a curious, regular rhythm. They were all quiet for a moment, listening to the steady rumble that seemed to go on and on with the rocking floor, the flickering lamp, as Banaji offered the pipe again, once round the table, while Pol sipped his Scotch as it trembled and slopped over his lips.
‘I don’t like it,’ said Murray. ‘Why not pay off real Air U.S.A. pilots and have them just disappear?’
‘Air U.S.A. pilots,’ Pol chimed in, ‘are employed by the Central Intelligence Agency. They are not to be trusted — at least, not at such short notice.’
‘And Sammy here? They employed him too.’ His words were gone in the long rolling explosion, creeping towards them now across the mountain tops, as the lamp guttered again and went out. They lay for a moment in pitch dark. ‘Sammy is one in a million,’ Pol said. ‘You found him yourself, Murray. You want to waste valuable time trying to find someone like him?’
There must be others like him, Murray thought: wild men scattered across half the earth, on airfields in dark spots of Africa, doing the leapfrog run into Biafra, Angola, gun-running in the Middle East, South America. Probably a few like him, anyway — or who thought they were like him. And just eleven days to find them — a ready-made crew like Ryderbeit and No-Entry Jones.
The Vietnamese had the lamp going again, and the bombs began their thundering pattern very close now, with the wick of the lamp turned right up and the shadows flickering wildly round the low bare walls.
‘And what happens to the real pilots?’ Murray shouted: ‘Do we take them with us?’
‘They will be provided for,’ Banaji replied, with ominous simplicity.
‘Dead or alive?’ said Murray, and Pol made a clucking noise like a hen: ‘Ah, my dear Murray, you have a morbid mind! What would we do with two dead American pilots?’
‘Don’t be damned stupid,’ Murray growled: ‘We’re not going to leave them lying around Vientiane Airport with their hands tied behind their backs!’
They waited for another stick of thunder to roll off into the hills. ‘Murray.’ Pol’s voice reached him now from what seemed a great distance: ‘I wonder sometimes if you are really interested in this money?’
The pipe came round to him again and he said slowly: ‘I don’t want them to find the plane — either plane. The plane or the pilots. They must be kept hidden.’
The earth heaved with a great roar. The lamp went out again and Murray’s head was soft on the cushions, watching the darkness which was full of coloured circles swirling within triangles. There was silence now in the little hut. The air was hot and sweet with the opium, and M. Banaji’s white silk arm was close to his head as he asked, in his low impassive voice: ‘The girl, Monsieur Wilde. The French girl. Is she to be trusted?’
‘She will do as I ask her.’ He heard Pol chuckle in the dark. ‘She will tell me exactly where the plane will be, and when it is scheduled to leave. Then she will send the alert. Sammy and his navigator will pretend to be my photographers. We will be doing a feature story on Tân Sơn Nhất airport. This young friend of mine in the Military Police has agreed to help me out — lend me a jeep and uniforms and take us all on an unofficial conducted tour of the airfield perimeter. All straight and above board. He’s a nice simple boy who doesn’t ask too many questions. Besides, like all Americans in Vietnam, he has orders to offer maximum co-operation to the world Press. And that’s just what he’s going to be doing on the night of the flush-out.’ He yawned.
‘It is very simple and very clever,’ said Banaji. ‘It must not go wrong.’
Murray lay on his back and smiled at the roof. The bombing was over now. The giant planes would be wheeling back down the margin of airspace just outside the Cambodian border, probably heading for an undisclosed base in Thailand.
The night was full of peace and quiet.
CHAPTER 2
Banaji was gone, as they sat on the verandah in the clammy grey dawn and sipped strong sweet tea. Murray’s head felt soft as a sponge, with a dull incipient ache behind his eyes and at the back of his skull. He and Ryderbeit took a nip from Pol’s Scotch, but it made them feel no better. Pol watched them, red-eyed and grinning. ‘You look sick, mes enfants!’ Ryderbeit cursed him and spat on the wooden floor.
‘This thirty million,’ said Murray: ‘Do we really let them take it on this secret airfield? Collect it and count it there, then let them disappear with the whole load into the jungle, without even an I.O.U.?’
‘There will be an I.O.U.,’ Pol said smiling.
‘Oh yes?’ Ryderbeit sneered.
‘I am the I.O.U.,’ said Pol. ‘I am your guarantor, your laissez-passer after we reach the airfield in Laos. I am one of the Cao Đài. It is an honourable sect. We do not betray each other, or betray our friends. We have rules — morals.’
‘Morals!’ Murray began to laugh, wincing with nausea. ‘Morals of the Mafia, Charles. At least let’s not be frivolous.’
Pol simpered through his beard. ‘I am very serious, my dear Murray, I promise you. One does not joke about fifteen hundred million American dollars.’
‘Less thirty million for you Cao Đài,’ Murray put in.
‘So what is thirty million? A pourboire, no more!’
‘You yourself said we weren’t to mention the total sum — because Monsieur Banaji and his boys might get greedy. Why did you say that, Charles?’
Pol belched luxuriantly. ‘Mon ami, Banaji is an old man now. He has great experience, he has seen two whole generations of Indo-China pass in violence, without hope. He is no longer interested in money. For him money is merely the pieces of a game — symbols of whether one wins or loses. He has no interest in a fortune.’
Ryderbeit was eyeing Pol with a nasty leer. Murray watched him carefully too, wondering for a moment whether he were in fact talking more of himself than of his compatriot. ‘No interest in money — be screwed!’ Ryderbeit snarled under his breath. ‘That bastard’s as interested as the rest of us. Why don’t we tell him?’
‘Because he will feel obliged to tell others — those who are perhaps greedier than he is, Sammy. One must allow for some small sensibilities, after all.’
‘It doesn’t sound sensible to me!’ Ryderbeit cried, misunderstanding Pol’s French. ‘Looks as
though I risked my neck on this trip for a bloody con! You think those boys — those porters, as he called them — are goin’ to ride off with one and a half billion U.S. in sacks, and not even take a little peep inside? You think they’re goin’ to count out their nice little thirty million and leave it at that? Don’t make me wet my pants laughin’! I’m not a bloody infant in arms!’
Pol glanced at Murray for enlightenment; Ryderbeit had spoken in English, which Pol understood poorly. Murray said: ‘Sammy’s right, Charles. It’s all very fine after half a dozen pipes, but in the light of dawn it doesn’t look nearly so rosy. What happens to the porters — and to the money?’
Pol heaved a great sigh, his fat little fingers digging deep in his thighs. ‘So you want to forget the whole story? Is that what you really want?’
‘Come on, you know what we’re trying to say,’ said Murray. ‘There’s no security in this deal, Charles — no security, no guarantee, nothing. Just a host of crooks waiting for us to take all the risks, deliver the goods, then disappear. You’ve got to do better than that.’
‘Me? But I shall be with them, my dear Murray! I shall accompany the porters, I shall supervise them, command them. There will be no question of a betrayal. My interests are your interests. Why should there be a conflict?’
‘Why indeed? Because you’re European? A nice honourable man with a white skin who’s not going to do down a couple of madcap adventurers you’ve bumped into in South-East Asia?’ He shook his head. ‘Still not good enough, Charles.’
Pol gave another sigh and filled their teacups to the brim with Johnny Walker. ‘You forget that I am a member of the Cao Đài!’
‘Cao Đài — Hòa Hảo — Bình Xuyên — experienced religious gangsters!’
‘They are part Confucian, Buddhist and Catholic,’ Pol said evenly. ‘And they are experienced, certainly. But they are not gangsters — at least, not in our sense. They have run these countries for more than a century. Just because they do not have the ear of the great powers — the Communists and the Americans — does not meant they are not to be trusted. You think you could trust the Viet Cong or the Americans more?’ He leant forward and patted Murray’s knee. ‘The Cao Đài are professional businessmen — but they are also honourable men. Not like some of our great Capitalist gentlemen in the West. The Supreme All-Seeing Eye is not a piece of oriental chicanery. It has virtues, standards. You talk very easily of gangsterism. But even our own gangsters — even the most humdrum of the criminal world — have their standards, their codes of honour. They have no contracts that can be signed and legally enforced, my dear Murray. It is the world of lawyers and bankers and middle-men that is often far more dishonourable. The Cao Đài are men of honour.’
Murray sat for some time sipping his whisky, watching the damp swamp that reached out to the elephant-grass and the scorched, misty hills beyond. Ryderbeit, who had listened only half comprehending, looked angry and dispirited. ‘All right,’ Murray said at last: ‘Tell me about the bombing of the Cercle Sportif in Saigon yesterday.’
Pol looked up quickly, almost startled. ‘What of it?’
‘Who did it?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You know what happened. The place was blown to bits. They were supposed to have been after General Greene. Perhaps they were. But a little fellow called Colonel Luong, one of the rougher lads in the Arvin, just happened to be having lunch opposite at the time — and General Greene was late. What’s more, his secretary — none other than Mrs Conquest — got a phone call a few minutes before it happened, warning her to keep away from the place. How they got her number, and knew she was going, God knows — unless someone’s been monitoring my calls at the hotel. What’s more, they warned me too. Not directly — an old Vietnamese boy in the hotel told my cyclo-driver to take a long way round.’
‘So?’ Pol was looking no longer startled, but worried.
Murray gave a lame smile: ‘Come on, Charles, was it the Cao Đài, the VC, or somebody we don’t know about?’
‘I don’t know, Murray.’
‘Is Colonel Luong a member of the Cao Đài?’
‘I don’t know Colonel Luong.’
Murray nodded wearily and reached for his drink. ‘So who warned me and Mrs Conquest?’
‘I have no idea, Murray. I have absolutely no idea.’
They sat for some moments in silence. It was Ryderbeit who broke it: ‘When do we get out of here?’
‘This evening,’ said Pol: ‘By the same means you came.’
Ryderbeit grinned: ‘That’s what I like to hear. You go back the cushy way, through the border into Cambodia, and we hit the hard road back to Saigon.’
‘If you insist —’ Pol began.
‘I don’t insist, Mister Pol. I did that run once — I can do it again.’ He gave a sidelong leer at Murray. ‘One thing I would like, though. More of this Scotch. Because I’m going to get thirsty before this evening.’
Pol heaved himself out of his chair.
‘So, what do you think, Sammy?’
Ryderbeit curled his lip over his teeth. ‘I think we’re bein’ bloody suckers, soldier.’
‘We’re in Pol’s hands.’
‘You bet we’re in Pol’s hands!’
‘Think of anything better?’
‘Nope.’
The insects started up in the falling afternoon light. ‘He said the Cao Đài are honourable men.’
‘Like hell. Perhaps they are. They got to be, with all that bloody money!’
‘Sammy.’ Murray gazed across the swamp. ‘Do we have to go for so much? Does it have to be the whole damned whack in one swoop?’
‘What d’yer mean?’
‘Over one million quid each. What are we going to do with it? What can anyone do with that much loose cash?’
‘You mean, cut them in for more? For extra insurance? Don’t be bloody daft! If those little bastards are goin’ to act straight, they’re goin’ to do it for thirty million, or they’re not goin’ to do it at all!’
‘Why not try to be more moderate? Try for something a little more practical — manual?’
‘Manual?’
‘Something handy — like a few bundles of Centuries that we can carry out in a suitcase, for instance. Then the only problem’s going to be Customs.’
‘Screw the Customs. You know your trouble —’
‘I think too much.’
‘Think too much, and not greedy enough.’
‘And you? What are you going to do with a hundred million plus?’
‘A lot o’ things. I can think of a whole dictionary o’ things to do with it. It may look trouble to you, soldier, but not to me. Certainly not to Samuel D. Ryderbeit!’ He gave a soft cackle in the dusk: ‘You got problems, soldier. You got a hunger problem — back to front!’
PART 9: FLUSH-OUT
CHAPTER 1
SAIGON, Billion Dollar Day Minus Two
Wet afternoon heat down Tu Do Street. Children doing a brisk trade along the pavements — five-year-old boys shining Army boots; little girls running on tiptoe to pick the hip pockets of ambling G.I.’s; old men playing hopscotch in the shade of the bars and ‘nite-clubs’.
Murray entered ‘The Four Aces’, pausing to accustom himself to the cold dehydrated darkness. A big notice inside read: ALL WEAPONS TO BE EMPTIED AND SURRENDERED AT THE DOOR. BY ORDER U.S. PROVOST MARSHAL. A girl sat at a counter underneath, busy knitting. Crew-cut men sat musing along the bar; girls in unbecoming miniskirts waddled among them, whispering pidgin promises. He found his man alone at a corner table. ‘Hello Don.’ He was a tall callow youth with spiky blond hair and a bad outbreak of barber’s rash under his chin like a smear of red caviar.
‘Hi!’ The boy almost spilled his beer standing up. ‘I was early. What yer have?’
‘Let me get it,’ said Murray, sitting down. ‘Another beer? Or bourbon?’
‘I’ll have beer.’ He leant over as Murray turned to one of the miniskirted hostesses.
‘These girls, Murray, they been pesterin’ me mad. One buck for a glass o’ that goddam tea they drink. One buck!’
Murray smiled falsely. ‘That’s Saigon for you, Don. You ought to know your way around by now.’
‘Ah sure. Sure I do. Why d’you think I resisted so long?’
‘What would you say to a few more bucks?’
‘Huh?’ The boy’s jaw dropped open and Murray replied with a conniving wink: ‘I’ve got a little deal I’d like to set up with you. Sure you won’t have a little bourbon?’
‘Well — I guess no great harm —’
‘You’re off-duty, aren’t you, sergeant?’
Wace hesitated, then grinned sheepishly. ‘Guess I am — till curfew o’ course.’
‘Now listen, Don.’ Murray placed both elbows on the table, his face very close to the young M.P.’s and his voice hushed, even above the intermittent blare of pop music. ‘We have a small problem. About Sunday night.’
‘You mean it’s not on?’
‘Oh it’s very much on. Photographers — big coverage prepared — the real treatment. My editor’s very keen, Don. He’s even prepared to pay you for it.’
‘Aw now! I mean, Mr Wilde —’ Wace glanced up at a rouged bow-legged girl who was laying two small beer glasses in front of them. Murray paid with a fresh twenty-dollar bill from the bounty that Pol had entrusted to him after the visit to Son Lan.
‘On Sunday night you’ve got official clearance for me and my photographers to tour the perimeter of the airfield? Correct?’
‘Correct.’
‘Don.’ He spun the glass between his fingers, drank it down in one and sat back smiling. ‘Don, I need your co-operation on this. We’ve talked about it a lot of times — about the airfield security and so on — and my newspaper wants to get a really full, unprejudiced story on this.’
‘Unprejudiced?’
Murray nodded slowly. ‘That’s to say, we are not keen on a story that is obviously inspired from official sources. You follow me?’
The sergeant looked dubious. ‘But it’s sure hard to swing without official clearance, Murray.’
The Tale of the Lazy Dog Page 23
