About a mile beyond the Monument he passed a forlorn signpost marked, RN 5. HANOI 579 Kms; and a few hundred yards on came another, almost equally futile: RN 13. LUANG PRABANG 224 Kms. From here the road began to deteriorate rapidly — a humped deep-rutted track raised slightly above the level of the rice paddies where water buffalo wallowed up to their necks and wattle-roofed huts squatted on their stilts, their doors crammed with naked children who waved and howled with pleasure as he passed. But Murray scarcely noticed them; his eyes were on the details of the road, noticing now the modern steel telegraph poles on one side, carrying just a single wire.
After another couple of miles he came up behind an elephant that filled the whole road, with two small boys on its back. He had the jeep grinding in bottom gear, his view dominated almost entirely by the slow-heaving wrinkled grey rump above him. The French map said the turning was some twenty kilometres out of town; he had gone more than half of that now, but the road was still too narrow to pass the elephant. The sweat was itching down his face, stinging his eyes, his shirt soaking against the seat. He tried hooting once, but the boys took it as a salute and returned it with waves and smiles, while the beast continued its dogged, lumbering pace. He kept cool, remembering that patience was the great secret, the supreme advantage of this country. Only the Americans stayed on the ball, keen and bustling, and there weren’t enough of them. At least he hoped there weren’t.
The rice fields had ceased. There was high jungle ahead, and Murray took advantage of a slight widening in the track to swerve round the elephant into the tunnel of trees. The road was climbing now, clogged yellow mud stamped with the deep-ridged tread of enormous tyres and caterpillar tracks, like the trail of some prehistoric reptile. The turning up to Nam Ngum, though unmarked, was unmistakable: the tracks turned abruptly to the right where the trees had been hacked down, their stumps half buried in banks of fresh mud pushed up by bulldozers; while ahead the old Route Nationale Treize to the north had shrunk to no wider than a footpath, soon swallowed up in bamboo forest.
Murray put the jeep into four-wheel drive and began the twisting climb towards the dam. The steel telegraph poles had turned with him — that single wire that even the most incompetent Pathet Lao guerrilla could have snipped through at almost any spot on the twelve-mile drive. But Murray was beginning to work on another idea: telephones could be confusing instruments, especially in a country like Laos.
He was thinking hard now, checking the time against distance — fourteen miles in just over fifty minutes, taking into consideration the elephant — all the time concentrating his sweat-stung eyes on the deep, deceptive shades of the jungle. Then suddenly he was there. A last steep turn and the track had flattened out on to a broad road laid with strips of steel mesh used for emergency airfields. He felt the dawning of great excitement.
The trees on one side had thinned to a screen of limp palms, drooping in the damp heat like broken parasols. Beyond them lay the chasm of the dam. Luke Williams had said it was nearly five hundred feet wide and two hundred deep. To Murray it now looked more — a slender curving span of marble-white concrete on one side, shelving away between cliffs of rainforest down into the uncertain darkness below the sunline.
He had stopped the jeep at the end of the steel road and got out, taking his Leica and notebook. Above the ticks and hummings and snuffles of the jungle he thought he heard the throb of an engine. Otherwise it seemed unnaturally quiet. He snapped several frames of the approach road to the dam wall, noting the spongy surface underfoot — how the mud squelched up through the mesh and over the soles of his shoes — coming to a guard-house on his left where the Lao sentry bobbed out and saluted, his helmet just a little too big for him, a child dressed up as a soldier. There was a second, larger building beyond, with an air-conditioner grill built into one of the sealed windows. Murray noticed that the telephone wire, which had followed him up from Vientiane, ended here on the roof. There was also a powerful radio-transmitting aerial.
On the right, just before the dark pit of the reservoir, a wide clearing had been made in the jungle — a terrace of churned mud cluttered with miscellaneous hunks of machinery: caterpillar tractors, tip-trucks, bulldozers, mechanical diggers and grabs, all like giant bright yellow toys, their wheels and flanks splashed a duller yellow by the mud — except for the sharp metal of the grabs and digging scuttles which flashed in the sunlight, their jaws hanging open with the mud lodged between their teeth like lumps of half-chewed meat.
He counted five trucks, each with a load of at least ten tons. And the bulldozers could shift a medium-sized house. The Americans didn’t do these things by halves, he thought. God bless America! He began to walk on up to the edge of the dam wall. Perhaps there was work going on somewhere — he thought he could hear the thump of the engine more clearly now — but otherwise there was this weird, shut-in stillness.
The last twenty yards of the approach road were of concrete, broad solid slabs laid out as wide as a three-lane highway. As he walked he went on snapping the camera, at various angles and speeds, until the film was finished. He paused, groping in his pocket for a new cassette. There was no barrier across the beginning of the wall, not even a parapet. And no sign of arc-lights, hurricane lamps along the edge of the dam — none of the essential paraphernalia for a crash-programme of night work to meet a deadline. At night, he decided, it would be as quiet as a sepulchre.
He reached the edge of the wall and looked down into the reservoir. At that moment a cloud passed in front of the sun and a deep shadow fell across the whole dam. Murray gave a little shudder. The reservoir was like some monstrous well. It sheered away into damp lichen-veined darkness lapped far below by water as black as ink, stirred by no ripples.
He took a couple of steps forward and aimed his Leica down at the water-level — calculating that it must be still at least a hundred feet below the top of the wall. But he never snapped the shutter. A hand gripped him from behind and held him.
CHAPTER 5
He was a heavy man with a bare red face under a safety helmet painted the same bright yellow as the digging machines.
‘Excuse me, sir.’ The voice was slow and not impolite, but his arm — thick and short-sleeved, covered in pale hair and mottled brown like tea stains — still held him just above the elbow, and only a few inches from the edge of the dam. ‘Whatcha doin’?’ he said again, harsher this time, as Murray lowered the Leica with his free hand.
‘I’m taking pictures,’ he said, beginning to lean against that hairy grip.
‘You been takin’ one awful lot o’ pictures,’ the man said, suddenly releasing him. ‘Who are you?’
Murray was careful not to hurry. He stepped away from the edge and took out his wallet with its folder of Press cards. The man studied these with a frown, then nodded: ‘O.K. You’re a newspaper man, that’s all right by me. But you’re supposed to get a permit to come up here. We got a security problem.’
‘Problem?’ Murray said innocently, edging still further from the dam.
‘Commies. The whole country’s crawling with ’em.’
‘And you think I look like a card-carrying Pathet Lao?’
The American shook his head. ‘I don’t mean gook commies. Plenty o’ those around, but they don’t bother us. I mean guys like Polaks, Rooshans — come up here snoopin’ with cameras, and you can’t tell the difference till you challenge ’em.’
‘Any reason why they shouldn’t come up and take a look round? It’s a fine piece of construction you’ve got here.’
‘It’s government property.’
Murray forced a smile: ‘Whose government? And whose property?’
For a moment he thought the man was going to hit him; but instead he smiled, hangdog but friendly: ‘Aw hell! Want a beer?’
‘I could do with one,’ Murray said, genuinely grateful, as they walked back to the building next to the guardhouse where the Lao sentry still stood, staring at them without expression.
‘That litt
le bastard should’a checked you,’ the American said, nodding angrily at the toy soldier who nodded back and grinned. ‘I don’t mean no offence,’ he added, kicking open the door and releasing a blast of cold stale air; ‘but I got my instructions.’ He waved Murray to a plastic-covered swivel chair and walked over to a refrigerator, taking out two cans of Schlitz beer. ‘Personally, mind, I don’t give a sweet motherin’ hell if they come and steal this whole dam piece by piece and take it into China. Chicoms’ll most likely get it anyway in a year or two.’
As he talked Murray ran his eye quickly round the room. Desk with telephone, filing cabinet, wall-safe, pin-up calendar of a dusky Polynesian girl with breasts like swollen gourds — although the nipples looked suspiciously pale for the rest of her colouring. No doubt some tactful adman not wanting to upset the sensibilities of these randy defenders of the Free World, he thought, noting the VHF set in the corner, battery-operated.
His host had slumped down in the chair opposite and began cranking open the beer cans. ‘Name’s Tom Donovan. You’re British, aren’t you?’
‘Irish — at least most of me is. Born in Ennis, County Clare. Murray Wilde. Here’s to you, Tom!’
The American gave a mighty grin, and soon the two of them were deep in shop-soiled blarney about names and places and whose ancestors had gone where, and what great Irish names had done what to where; then Murray was treated to most of Tom Donavan’s pitiable history — Pittsburgh engineer, Marine Corps, Sicily, Naples, bad conduct discharge for a minor currency infraction, divorced, three children, two grown-up girls and no idea where they were, his son dead in a car smash. And here he was ‘out in stinking Asia helping Uncle Sam build a dam in a country that wouldn’t know the Aswan Dam from its goddam arsehole!’
At the end of half an hour Murray had managed, by a combination of patient listening and careful prompting, to find out as much as he could about the Nam Ngum Dam without arousing Donovan’s suspicions. Ninety per cent of the labour was Lao, and ninety per cent of that was mostly absent or stoned on pot or the local firewater, known as lao-lao or ‘white lightning’. No, there were no U.S. guards — the country’s neutrality forbade that — there was just the local sentry, and he went off at sundown. If anybody really so cared, he could come and help himself to just about as much loose supplies as he wanted. Only most of the time there weren’t any supplies. He thumped his furry paw on the desk: ‘Five weeks now I’ve had in orders for a new turbine shaft. Does it come? Shit. This place is even worse than Veetnahm — here the stuff gets stolen even before it gets into the country! Three years we’ve been working our arses off for these Laotians, and for what? They don’t have no use for a dam — most of ’em don’t even have use for a toilet seat!’
‘I was told it would be finished in about three months?’ said Murray.
‘Three months — horseshit! We’ll still be working on it when the Chicoms get here.’
Outside there was the sudden drumming of rain. Murray got up to go.
‘Any time, Mr Murray, it was a pleasure! I’m here most days ’cept weekends. And I tell you, it gets mighty lonesome up here. But there’s always beer in the icebox if you’re passing again.’
Murray thanked him and ducked out into the rain, running with his head down towards the jeep. The lone Lao sentry had disappeared, as he turned the jeep round and started back to Vientiane.
PART 3: THE DROP
CHAPTER 1
Murray drew up outside Gate Two of Vientiane’s Wattay International Airport at a few minutes past 0500 hours. The sky was already like the inside of a seashell, the air calm and warm; but heeding Luke Williams’ advice, he wore two undervests and carried, besides his camera, a spare sweatshirt wrapped in two back-numbers of the Bangkok World.
No one challenged him. The wire-net barrier was already swung up under a brightly-lit billposter: AIR U.S.A. — HANDS ACROSS THE SEA. The airfield beyond was a vast pool of mist humming with distant engines. Murray followed a sign, Air U.S.A., Traffic Enquiries, to a door with an engraved plaque: Major W. Y. Gaccia — Traffic Manager. Please Enter.
A dark clean-shaven man in a floral shirt and blue slacks rose and held out his hand. ‘Morning sir! Mister Murray Wilde — I’m Bill Gaccia. Luke Williams sent me up your flight papers. You’re a little early.’
‘I thought I might get a chance to watch the rice being loaded. And get a cup of coffee. My hotel sleeps late.’
‘Sure thing, Mr Wilde. Let’s just get the formalities over.’
Murray handed him the pass Luke had given him yesterday, and Major Gaccia gave him the familiar Xeroxed slip for ‘notification of next-of-kin in case of accident’. As usual — or in want of anyone else — he filled in the name and office address of his literary agent in London, a pretty, alarmingly efficient young woman whom he had occasionally considered on his rare visits home since his divorce.
‘Right, I’ll take you through,’ the major said, leading him out into the corridor, and Murray wondered what the Y in his name could stand for (Yuri? Yorick?), as they entered a long, low-ceilinged room full of glaring neon and the chatter of teleprinters. It was bitterly cold. A number of casually-dressed men in early middle age, all looking very fresh and clear-eyed for the hour of the morning, strolled in front of maps fixed with coloured pins and plastic numbers. No one was in uniform, Murray observed: this was the generation that was past Korea and Vietnam, but still too young to drop the kicks, or the idealism.
‘We have two categories of rice-drop,’ Major Gaccia was explaining, ‘milk-run and rollercoaster. The first’s a cinch, just a fun-ride round the hills, but on the second — what we call the rollercoaster — you get into those high mountains, electrical storms, no visibility, and up there, sir, you keep your safety-belt fastened!’ He grinned: ‘You’re booked on the rollercoaster, Mr Wilde.’
On the walls were aerial photographs of some indefinable terrain; weather charts, a great sign IN GOD WE TRUST, and a smaller one by the door as they went out: ‘No transistor radios or battery-operated shavers to be utilized during any flight. Your safety is our safety. Thank you.’
‘How long does the loading last?’ said Murray. It was already 5.15 and scheduled take-off was for 6.30.
‘Shouldn’t take more than forty-five minutes. You’ve got time for a coffee and a chance to meet your pilots.’ They had entered what Murray recognised as the ‘Hi-Lo Snack-Bar’. It was again very cold, with soft piped music — Ray Conniff against the rising scream of a turbo-prop. Major Gaccia led him to a table where two men sat in flying-suits drinking black coffee.
‘Gentlemen, may I introduce Mr Murray Wilde, a writer and newspaperman from Great Britain. Mr Wilde, your chief pilot, Mr Samuel Ryderbeit. Your co-pilot, Mr Jones. Mr Wilde will be joining you gentlemen on Flight Applejack Six.’
The men at the table nodded without a word. Murray examined them both with the stirrings of misgiving. Unlike the men in the operations room next door, neither looked in the least fresh or clear-eyed. The co-pilot Jones, the older of the two, had not shaved and was wearing dark glasses. He was a grizzled pale-grey Negro with sunken, almost wasted cheeks and a hand that made the coffee lap over the edge of his cup.
The other man, Ryderbeit — perhaps because he was designated as chief pilot — was even more disturbing. A very tall man with a hooked, hairless face of slightly greenish hue and long yellow eyes of astonishing brightness, but with a hint of orange at the edges. He was wearing under his partially unzipped flying-suit a black silk turtle-necked shirt, and black suede flying-boots. Both men wore on their wrists identification discs of solid gold.
Major Gaccia was saying to Ryderbeit, ‘Sammy, Mr Wilde here is anxious to watch the loading. Perhaps you could take him out and show him, after he’s had his coffee.’
Sammy Ryderbeit nodded again, not looking exactly enthusiastic at being cast as Murray’s guide.
Major Gaccia turned and said, ‘I have to get back now, Mr Wilde — there’s another passenger due on your flight, c
hecking at my office at five-thirty.’
‘Who is it?’ said Murray.
‘Some photographer, I think. In your line of business, anyway.’
Damn! he thought: So it threatened to be a P.R. outing after all. He sat down opposite Ryderbeit and for a moment the two of them scowled at each other across the stainless steel table. Jones had loped away to an iced water tank in the corner where he was helping himself to a relay of paper cups.
‘You ever done this before, Mr Wilde?’
‘No.’
‘Takin’ pictures or writin’?’
‘Both.’ A Lao waitress had come up to him and he ordered black coffee.
‘You use a typewriter or work in long-hand?’ Ryderbeit said, leaning across the table leering.
‘Typewriter,’ Murray said blankly, and looked back into those yellow eyes, dilated like a cat’s — puzzled now by the man’s accent.
‘I once knew a scribbler,’ Ryderbeit went on: ‘Mad poet bastard — used to grow his fingernail long then slit it up the middle and use it as a quill. You ever heard of such a tactic in your trade?’
‘Never,’ said Murray, irritated that he could not place the accent. It was almost American, yet not like any American he had ever heard. Australian perhaps? It was a hard accent, aggressive yet curiously clipped, almost prim.
‘If you’re coming on our ride you better have some of this,’ Ryderbeit called suddenly as the waitress came back with Murray’s coffee. He had pulled a stout pigskin flask from inside his flying suit, and without asking permission, poured a generous spout into Murray’s cup. ‘That’s good Napoleon brandy! Don’t sneer at it, soldier. You’ll be glad of it in a couple of hours. You haven’t seen the weather reports. Not like me and No-Entry Jones here — we’re privileged.’
The Tale of the Lazy Dog Page 5