The war was not even a bonus any longer for those who covered it. The Press briefings told of new offensives, so many hundred KIA, VC infrastructure penetrated, hamlets secured and re-motivated: all reduced to perhaps two paragraphs of agency reports. For as the war escalated, its news value shrank. The real thing — the blood and mud and grief and trails of homeless people trying to rescue their ducks and rusted bicycles from some ravaged village while their children scrounged peanut butter and cream-crackers from perplexed GI’s — this story had been done, and done again, and news editors were bored too and wanted other angles. The fact that a small medieval country with a peasant economy and an ancient, fragile culture was being pounded and perverted by the richest nation on earth had been thoroughly reported, and accepted, and it had made many people very angry. But those many people were not angry or imaginative enough to realise that this was only part of the story. Murray had also seen some of the mass graves of civilians in Huế — after the Viet Cong had discovered that not all the Vietnamese felt quite as much in sympathy with the Communist cause as the flag-waving, Mace-groggy demonstrators in the world outside. And the Viet Cong had murdered these civilians with their hands behind their backs, burying them in great shallow pits by the River of Perfume. But this had provoked no demonstrations. It was not the Vietnam the world cared to hear about.
Murray had once written a story on the Saigon Zoo where there was a horse in a cage, which was a great attraction with the children. That was the other Vietnam. Like the business of British tracker-dogs that had caused such an outcry back in the House of Commons because Britain was contributing to the wicked Vietnam war effort by selling six hundred Alsatians to the Americans, who had paid gratefully for them and then given them to the Vietnamese Army who had promptly eaten them.
He sat up quickly. The telephone was purring by the bed. A woman’s voice, crisp and American, said, ‘Mr Murray Wilde, Hotel Continental Palace? Tiger exchange here — one moment please. Your party’s on the line.’
Jacqueline Conquest’s voice cut in: ‘Murray — c’est toi?’
‘When did you get here?’
‘Yesterday. We came back suddenly. Maxwell’s been looking for you since last night. Where were you?’
‘Up in Biên Hòa looking at corpses. What does he want?’
‘I don’t know. I want to see you too. Hello! You’re still there?’
‘I’m still here,’ he said, hauling his legs off the bed. ‘Any time?’
‘Tomorrow at 12.30. At the Cercle Sportif — the bar by the swimming pool. Are you a member?’
‘No. Only American generals are members these days. Why the Cercle?’
‘It’s agreeable, isn’t it?’
‘It’s about the last place here that is. You’re a member, I suppose?’
‘Bien sûr. If I’m late, I’ll leave a message at the gate for them to let you in. All right?’
‘All right.’ The line clicked dead. He looked at his watch. Nearly ten to five. Just time to catch the Five o’Clock Follies, the daily Press conference held just across the square in the reinforced, sandbagged JUSPAO building.
He took a quick shower, savouring with mixed feelings the separate attentions of Mr and Mrs Conquest. The husband probably meant bad news; as for the Cercle, ancient enclave of the Empire French whose select membership had shifted from colons and opium pirates to the American military elite, there were certainly worse spots in Saigon in which to continue the adulterous fieldwork of sleeping his way by proxy towards General Virgil Greene’s Red Alert button.
He went out into the high corridor, past the rows of dark-stained teak doors to the cage-lift with its wrought-iron gates that clanked down the well of a stone staircase. One of the last of the old Saigon hotels to resist the antiseptic onslaught of the New World. Even in the downstairs terraced bar, where fans churned the thick sweet air among the potted palms and marble tables, there were not even any anti-grenade screens because it was thought impossible that the Viet Cong would commit an outrage against a French hotel.
Just outside the lift a voice whispered close to Murray’s ear: ‘M’sieur Wilde?’ He was a thin crooked-cheeked man in a grey shirt and faded blue trousers standing in the shadow of the stairs. Murray recognised one of the hotel boys — the mongrel French word applying in this case to a middle-aged Vietnamese with one blind eye, milky-white like a burnt-out flashbulb, who was usually to be seen lurking about the passages offering to change piastres on the black market. He had solicited Murray on a number of occasions and had always been refused.
Murray said briskly, in French, ‘What do you want?’
‘Someone was asking for you today, M’sieur Wilde. He came twice.’
‘Who was it?’
‘He was an American.’
‘He spoke to you?’
‘Only to reception. He left no message.’ The man stood quite still, fixing Murray with his one narrow black eye; and there was something in his manner, usually so obsequious, that was now assured and faintly sinister.
Murray said: ‘What has this to do with you?’
The man inclined his head a fraction, and even in the poor light Murray thought he detected the gleam of a smile in that one good eye. ‘I notice things, m’sieur. Many things. The American was from the police.’
Murray did not move. He had never thought the Vietnamese — even the humblest of them — a stupid or unsophisticated race; but there was an unexpected authority here that was very unsettling. This man was no friend of Murray’s, and certainly owed him no favours. ‘Why do you tell me this?’
The boy inclined his head a little further, with a tiny shrug — more a movement of the wrists than of the shoulders. ‘I believed it would interest you, M’sieur Wilde.’
‘Thank you.’ For a moment he considered tipping him fifty piastres, but at once thought better of it: the role of common hotel-tout had been dropped entirely, and Murray decided to play along with him. The man’s French had been remarkably good, he reflected, as he crossed the noisy dust-choked square to the JUSPAO building — Joint US Public Affairs Office, set up in what had once been a cinema, its pale stucco walls now covered with a new hide of breeze block, the pavement outside ringed off with drums of solid concrete guarded by helmeted U.S. Marines, their rifles with fixed bayonets resting on their thighs like flagpoles. He flashed his MACV Press card to the Marine at the desk inside, and wound his way through the old cinema foyer which had been divided up into a maze of hardboard partitions, fresh and cold, full of short sleeved men in drip-dry slacks sitting over telephones and the mutter of electric typewriters. He was at the nerve-centre of the Vietnam Public Relations war machine. He shivered a little from the air-conditioning.
The Five o’Clock Follies had already begun and about half the four hundred-odd seats were taken. On the stage stood four maps mounted on blackboards showing the military Corps areas of Vietnam, each with red arrows stuck on to mark the latest offensives, black bombs to mark air-strikes. Today the maps were relatively bare. Any one of those plastic cut-outs could represent tragedy for perhaps hundreds of people — people in some jungle hamlet, Mid-West town, tenement in Watts, a WASP family in Calvary, Georgia. Otherwise it looked like a dull day.
Murray collected the stapled Xerox handout, listing all operations conducted during the last twenty-four hours in the Republic of South Vietnam, and took his seat near the back, while an elderly bespectacled colonel ran through the items. Below him sat a stenographer and a young Negro working a tape-recorder for posterity.
The colonel was giving details of Operation Openhand, a Civic Action effort to assist the Montagnard tribesmen in the Central Highlands with the problems of hygiene and medicare. ‘U.S. interpreters have been dispatched into the area to facilitate co-ordination with the local PAT’s — Pacification Action Teams,’ the colonel intoned, as a hand shot up from one of the front rows of reporters and an adenoid voice cried: ‘Hey Chuck, are these interpreters bilingual?’
The colone
l paused. ‘I’ll check that out, Jo,’ he said, beginning to turn to the wings of the stage, then frowning as laughter rippled down the hall. ‘They are qualified interpreters, Jo,’ he said steadily, referring back to the Xerox sheet in his hand.
A moment later another hand went up. ‘Chuck, on Item 47 here it’s stated — and I quote — “At 0200 hours this morning the camp at Dak Phuoc was attacked and overrun for two hours. Friendly losses were heavy in both equipment and personnel.” Can you elaborate on this incident? Any U.S. casualties?’
‘Negative, Tom. It was an Arvin post.’
‘Was Dak Fook wiped out?’ Jo cried.
‘It was not wiped out. It was overrun for two hours when Army gunships, assisted by Skyhawks, relieved the position using rockets and napalm.’
‘Can you give us any run-down on the casualties, Chuck?’ another voice called. ‘How many KIA?’
The colonel rifled through some pages, sounding cautious. ‘As of this time, we have fifteen Regulars, twelve Irregulars, and two local Militia.’
‘All killed?’
‘Correct.’
Pause. ‘Colonel.’ It was a slow weary voice belonging to a senior Washington columnist: ‘What was the original strength of the post at Dak Phuoc?’
The colonel wrinkled his brow. ‘It was a platoon, sir.’
‘And what is the strength of a South Vietnamese Army platoon?’
The colonel peered up over his bifocals. ‘The garrison was at U.S. platoon strength, sir.’ And Jo’s adenoids whined gleefully: ‘What’s the full strength of a U.S. platoon, Chuck?’
‘Thirty men, Jo.’ The laughter had begun again. The Washington columnist sounded almost sorry for the older man.
‘Correct me if I’m wrong, Colonel. But as I have it here, you stated that the KIA at Dak Phuoc was fifteen Regulars?’ — the colonel nodded gravely — ‘twelve Irregulars, and two Militia?’ The colonel stood on the stage and stared at his audience vacantly, resigned.
‘According to my arithmetic that makes twenty-nine men killed,’ the Washington columnist went on. ‘And you still say the camp was not wiped out? So what happened to the one man, Colonel?’
As the laughter died down, and the colonel promised to check the matter out with his MACV superiors, a voice at Murray’s elbow said softly: ‘Mr Wilde sir.’ He was a big freckled young man in a uniform the colour of dried mud. ‘Would you please mind stepping outside for a moment, sir?’
Murray followed him out of the hall, down one of the hardboard passages to a door marked Leroy — Joint Liaison Officer MACV. The American knocked and opened it in almost the same gesture, then stood back to let Murray through. Inside, on an olive-green swivel chair, was Maxwell Conquest.
‘Afternoon, Mr Wilde. Will you sit down. This is Mr Sy Leroy, my associate.’
The second man sat dangling his legs from a desk — a dark man with crimped charcoal-grey hair and a rubbery, slightly simian jaw. When he smiled, the crinkles round his eyes showed white against his tan. ‘Glad to meet you, Mr Wilde. I’ve read some of your stuff. I liked it.’
Murray sat down in another swivel chair. ‘What’s all this about?’
Maxwell Conquest paused, getting out a buff folder from a pile beside him. ‘You stopped over in Bangkok on your way in here, I understand. Have a good time there?’
‘I wasn’t there long enough.’
Conquest nodded. Sy Leroy was still smiling. ‘You meet a man called Charles Pol while you were in Bangkok, Mr Wilde?’ Conquest’s voice was lowkey, very casual. ‘Big Frenchman with a beard?’
‘Yes, I met him.’
‘Why did you meet him?’
‘Why are you asking me?’
Conquest looked at him deadpan. ‘You were booked out of Bangkok on the same plane with this man Pol two days ago. Right?’ Murray nodded. ‘Notice anything funny at the airport?’
‘What sort of funny?’
‘I’m asking you, Mr Wilde.’
‘The plane left on time, if that’s what you mean.’ And Sy Leroy’s smile widened. Conquest opened the folder, took out a big glossy photograph and handed it to Murray. It was full-face of a chubby bald man. ‘Recognise him?’
‘Should I?’
Conquest took the picture back and looked at Leroy, who sat forward on the desk, his palms pressed to his knees.
‘Mr Wilde,’ Leroy began, ‘that man there was killed at Bangkok Airport at about the precise time you and this Frenchman were boarding your plane. Now you still say you saw nothing odd?’ He had a gentle Southern voice, a touch of the Virginian gentleman about him, all velvet-gloved and still smiling. Murray looked back at him, at the tight black hair and rounded jaw and wondered if sometime, generations back, great grandad might have split black oak down there on the ole plantation.
‘Yes,’ he said at last, ‘there was some kind of disturbance. Someone taken ill, I think. At the bar. I didn’t see too clearly, because we were just leaving.’
Leroy leant back and nodded. ‘And what was this man Pol doing at the time?’
‘He was leaving too.’
‘Had he gone to the bar first?’
‘He had a drink, yes. But what is all this? Who was this man who’s been killed?’
‘He was a USOM officer working up in North-East Thailand,’ said Conquest. ‘Name of Amos Shelton. He was killed with a prick of amethine-cyanide, a highly sophisticated poison that can be administered with just a scratch anywhere on the skin and produces almost instantaneously the symptoms of a heart-attack or seizure. And we have reason to believe that Shelton was killed in just such a way by this Frenchman, Charles Pol. We also believe that you can help us, Mr Wilde.’
‘Oh? And just how?’
‘By telling us what your business was with Pol. Telling us about your meeting with him in Bangkok. How and why.’
Murray sat back. ‘I’m doing a story on Cambodia. Pol works in Cambodia, where I first met him, and he’s promised to get me an introduction to Prince Sihanouk. O.K.?’
‘Not O.K. at all, Mr Wilde.’ Conquest was watching Murray with icy calculation. ‘You ever meet someone called George Finlayson?’
‘Yes.’
‘A Britisher living in Vientiane. Murdered four days ago.’
‘I read the papers too.’
‘We think he was also killed by Charles Pol — or on orders given by Pol.’
Murray shrugged. ‘Sounds as though this man Pol’s a right villain!’
‘We don’t like him, Mr Wilde.’
‘We don’t like him at all,’ said Sy Leroy, and for the first time his smile was gone. ‘We have no immediate authority to arrest the man at this time, but we think you may be able to supply us with some of the relevant information that can get him arrested.’
‘I don’t see how.’
‘What was your business with George Finlayson?’ said Conquest.
‘I didn’t have any business with Finlayson. I just met him.’
‘You had dinner with him in Vientiane.’
‘So I had dinner with him. What of it?’
Conquest’s face tightened. ‘Let me be quite frank with you, Mr Wilde. You dine with a man a couple of days before he’s killed, then you fly out and spend the day with the man who had him killed, and are actually with this man when he kills a second person. And then when you’re asked about it, you say, “What of it?” I’ll tell you what of it, Mr Wilde. I tell you it stinks.’
‘All right, it stinks,’ said Murray. ‘And now you tell me how you know George Finlayson was killed by Pol.’
It was Leroy who answered: ‘We picked up Finlayson’s house-girl. Vietnamese from Hanoi. She was the one who let the killer in. She broke down and told everything.’
‘To you — or the Lao police?’
‘She was interrogated by Lao Security,’ Leroy said gently. ‘Maxwell was there, and so was a member of the British Embassy. It was all quite correct.’
‘I’m sure it was,’ said Murray, thinking hard. ‘And who did she
let in to kill Finlayson?’
‘North Vietnamese, name of Than Thuoc Vinh. Licensed to kill, as the story-books say.’
‘Or to terminate with extreme prejudice — like your man Amos Shelton?’
‘What does that mean?’ Conquest snapped.
‘Someone tried to kill Pol the day I saw him. Sent him up a fancy bottle of brandy, only the brandy turned out to be plastique. He seemed to think it might have been one of your boys.’ He met Conquest’s dry grey eyes as he spoke, but Conquest did not look away.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. But you go on making those sort of accusations and you can get yourself into a lot of trouble.’
‘You mean the CIA might sue me for slander?’
Conquest swung back in his seat and gave an exaggerated sigh. ‘Let’s just understand each other, Mr Wilde. You’ve got a job to do here — we appreciate that. We also appreciate you may have to meet people who are not necessarily desirable. On the other hand, there’s a war on in this country. And if we find out you’re in any way — even the most indirect way — aiding the enemy in this war, we’re going to come down on you and break you. We’re not going to pull you in, because we can’t do that, but what we can do is make sure you don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of going on making your living in this part of the world.’
‘How? By leaning on the South Vietnamese and getting them to revoke my visa? It won’t make you very popular when it gets out that the CIA are vetting foreign journalists out here, and banning the ones they don’t like.’
‘We’re not popular anyway,’ said Conquest. ‘But we’re not sensitive about it either.’ For a moment he almost smiled.
‘All right, so what do I do to be a good boy?’
‘Tell us all you know about Charles Pol.’
‘There isn’t much I do know. He eats like a pig, drinks like a fish, sweats like a sponge, uses expensive perfume and works as some sort of adviser to Prince Sihanouk. But then so do plenty of other people — including a former British diplomat. You want me to check on them too?’
The Tale of the Lazy Dog Page 19