Murray watched her in the striped light from the shutters — her short pretty features almost buried in hair, the deep curving profile of her back rising steeply into the wide-spread buttocks. He said, ‘All right, we’ll forget about Maxwell.’
‘He won’t forget us.’
‘We’ll have others besides him. We’ll have them all.’
‘And you still think you can get away with it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘It’s crazy — you know that? You can’t steal all the money in Vietnam and think they will let you keep it. This Frenchman you tell me about — this Pol, I’ve heard his name before. Maxwell doesn’t usually talk about his work with me, but he did ask me about Pol because I’m French and my father might have had some dealings with him in Algeria. I told him the truth — I had never heard of a man called Pol. Then I asked him why, and you know what he said? He said, “Because the bastard’s working for Charlie Cong, like all the goddam French!”’ (She spoke these last words in English, with a distorted American accent, smiling to herself in the half-dark.) ‘He said it as though I were no longer French, but one of those horrible patriotic American wives — that I would necessarily hate this man Pol because he worked for the Liberation Front.’
‘He works for Sihanouk,’ said Murray thoughtfully. ‘But that’s about the same thing to a man of Maxwell’s political subtleties. Did he say anything about me?’
‘No. But I had the impression that he deliberately avoided talking about you. I think perhaps he suspects something between you and Pol.’
‘Do you know a man called Sy Leroy?’ Murray added after a pause.
She turned her head, beginning to frown: ‘A Jew who poses as a MACV liaison officer?’
‘Jew, part-Negro, Southern gentleman — some kind of social outcast.’ He grinned. ‘That’s the one. He and your husband questioned me about Pol yesterday afternoon.’
‘What did they want?’
He told her, concealing nothing he had not concealed from her husband and Leroy: he did not tell her of his discovery of Finlayson’s body, nor that Pol had been responsible — only that Maxwell suspected that Pol had done it. When he was through, she said: ‘You should be very careful of this man, Leroy. I don’t know him well, but I do know he works for the National Security Agency. He would not have questioned you unless he considered you very seriously.’
For a moment Murray said nothing. The CIA was one problem, the NSA quite another. Jacqueline was no fool in appraising her husband’s outfit and its rivals. While the CIA might be a rich, elaborate, devious freelance government-within-a-government, hatching plots, toppling regimes, tampering with the mechanics of international affairs, the NSA was a soberer, more compact, and ultimately more dangerous organisation. It had the ear of the President’s closest advisers and its computerised intelligence data was treated with less scepticism than its rival’s. But the even more sinister implication was that it dealt primarily with matters of internal security rather than foreign affairs. Murray supposed that his name, along with Pol’s, would almost certainly have been flashed to Washington where they would join the ‘grey list’ — that twilight zone of suspects somewhere between the Immigration blacklist and the FBI files. The portents for the next twelve days, and the even more crucial ones that would follow, were not good.
He said: ‘Jackie, when you meet the others, I don’t want you to say anything about this man Leroy. Don’t even mention your husband’s conversation with me. It may not be important in the long run, but I’d prefer no-one knows.’
‘You’re mad,’ she said. ‘The Americans will know that you and Pol have done it. And then there’s that crazy man Ryderbeit. You really think you can trust him — trust any of them?’
He paused. ‘I wouldn’t trust them with a million New Francs. But this is rather different — rather more like seven thousand million.’ He found himself repeating, even believing, Ryderbeit’s own thesis for mutual trust in a venture like this — that the sum was so vast that no sane man would be tempted to try to increase his own share by cutting out someone else’s. He was not so sure, though, that Jacqueline Conquest saw it quite this way. She had rolled again on to her side facing him, her long legs pulled up under her chin, her eyes open, almost unblinking. ‘Tu es fou, chéri,’ she said at last.
‘You won’t do it?’
‘Do it? You mean look at General Greene’s top secret air traffic control schedules for Sunday the fifteenth, then send the alarm? Yes, I’ll do that — that’s no problem.’
‘So?’
‘You can steal this money, and perhaps Ryderbeit is clever enough to land the plane on this dam. Pol may even arrange to get it out of Laos — perhaps into India. And then what? You think you will ever be free? Even with all that money, you think you can ever live a happy life?’
‘Ah merde!’ he cried. ‘Jackie, you talk like a bad woman’s novelette. You think any of us are interested at this stage in the morals of money? All right! We’ll become wicked, spoilt, selfish rich shits with big cars and fancy clothes and we can be rude to anyone who matters, and even doesn’t matter. Or perhaps we’ll be just lonely old Gatsbys living in the big house which no one wants to go to — except for parties.’
She squeezed him close against her. ‘You won’t be like that. I don’t want my share, anyway. Perhaps a little of yours.’ She smiled. ‘But only a little. Enough to buy a chateau on the Loire — somewhere between Chenonceaux and Blois. With a high wall and a moat to keep strangers out. And we’d drive to Switzerland through the Bourgogne country and drink the very best wine on our way to see our bankers once a month.’
‘Our bankers will come and see us,’ said Murray. ‘But we could buy the vineyard, and even the chateau with it — except that we’d probably have Pol living bang next door.’
She wriggled her nose into his neck and was suddenly still. She felt no guilt nor shame with Murray, just a satisfied, dangerous happiness; she had come to him and run amok with him because she was lonely and bored and looking for adventure. But this adventure was altogether too outrageous, too tantalising for her mind to grasp seriously. Mais alors je m’en fous! she thought: almost anything was better than life in this drab, sandbagged, boorish city where the pavement cafes had long been closed and even the trees on the boulevards were shrivelled by fumes or bulldozed into turnpikes.
She said softly, without moving: ‘I’ll do anything you want, Murray. Anything.’
She was in the bathroom when the knock came. Murray got up, wrapping a towel round him, and called through the outside door: ‘Qui est là?’
A quiet cackle reached him through the panelled teak: ‘Caught yer on the job, Murray boy?’
He unlocked the door and stared into the dark passage. Ryderbeit was dressed from chin to toes in black leather; his black suede flying-boots were replaced by leather ones, strapped across and buckled, with steel caps and heels; there was a mauve silk scarf at his throat and a pair of goggles dangled round his neck. In his hand was a crash-helmet. ‘Can I come in?’
Murray stood back. ‘And what in hell are you doing? Going to a fancy-dress ball as Marshal Ky?’
Ryderbeit stepped in and stood leering round him. ‘Is the lucky lady who it ought to be?’ he whispered, with a glance at the bathroom door, as the shower came on with a loud hiss. Murray told him, and added: ‘Can it wait?’
‘Not more than a quarter of an hour, it can’t.’
‘I’ll talk to you downstairs.’
‘Bring your passport and something warm to wear. And make sure you don’t have any American or Vietnamese documents on you — Press cards or anything else. Just your passport with that lovely Irish harp.’
‘What’s up?’
‘We’re goin’ on a trip.’
‘Where?’
‘I’ll tell you downstairs.’ He nodded again at the bathroom. ‘Doin’ all right?’
‘All right,’ said Murray, showing him back to the door.
‘But don’
t spend all day kissin’ her goodbye. We haven’t got a lot o’ time.’
Murray closed the door and locked it, turning back to the bathroom where the shower had stopped. He went in and told her bluntly what had happened. She nodded, standing naked with her back to him, scooping her hair up in front of the mirror. ‘And he didn’t even tell you where you’re going?’ she said finally.
‘He’ll tell me downstairs. I’m sorry, but I’ll have to go.’
She shrugged rather too obviously. ‘You go. I can’t see you in the evening anyway. It’s nearly five now. I have to be back at the villa before six.’
He left her and began to dress in the bedroom. Remembering the rice-drop, he wore three sweatshirts this time, and took a couple of newspapers and a polo-necked wool sweater he’d bought last winter when he was up in the Central Highlands. She came out and dressed rapidly beside him, without a word.
‘The chateau,’ he said; ‘the vineyard in Bourgogne. It’s not all a castle in the air, you know.’
She smiled faintly. ‘It’s amusing to build castles in the air, don’t you think?’ She’d built several in her time — playing games that could never be won. She’d already decided to play this one as long as it lasted, even if she did lose all in the end. She kissed him quickly on the mouth and he unlocked the door again.
‘I don’t know how long I’ll be away — probably not more than a day. I’ll ring you when I get back.’
‘Yes,’ she said, and was gone.
He found Ryderbeit down in the terraced bar drinking whisky at one of the marble tables. ‘All wrapped up nice and warm, soldier? I didn’t see Mrs Conquest leave.’
‘She’s discreet. Now where are we going?’
‘Little place called Dong San. Up near the Cambodian border — a hundred and sixty miles north-west of here.’
‘Never heard of it.’
‘Be surprised if you had. It’s not on most reference maps. In an insecure zone, as they say. Drink the rest o’ my whisky — you’re goin’ to need it. And put your sweater on — we got to leave right away.’
‘From here?’
‘From right outside,’ he said, snapping his fingers for the bill.
Murray still carried the sweater and newspapers as he walked, uncomprehending, out into the steaming heat where Ryderbeit was shooing away a small crowd, mostly children and youths, who had stopped to admire a huge motorcycle perched on the kerb. Ryderbeit pushed his way through them and called back at Murray: ‘Get that bloody sweater on — and pull the neck up over your mouth. This beast really travels!’
Murray examined it. A 750-c.c. Honda — the whole machine painted fire-engine red except for the wheel-spokes and twin exhaust-pipes on either side, like four silver trumpets. The speedometer registered some horrible, impossible speed. ‘We’re not going to the Cambodian border on this?’ he said, almost laughing.
‘Don’t argue. I’ve lined up some most important people for us to meet — not the least of them, your friend Pol. He’s an amusing bastard, I’ll give him that. I don’t like his politics, mind, but he’s a sound drinkin’ companion — and that’s somethin’ I never quarrel with. Now get dressed and let’s be movin’!’ He yelled some obscenities at the last of the crowd, as he climbed astride the broad red leather saddle.
Murray said wearily, ‘Look, Sammy, I know my Vietnam. There’s no road to the border. There hasn’t been since 1963.’
‘There are two roads, you bastard. French roads — Biên Hòa up to Tây Ninh, then on up past An Loc. And don’t tell me they’re closed because no one, except for a few slow bloody armoured patrols, have ever been daft enough to try ’em. But we’re not goin’ to let a little thing like a war stop us now, are we now, soldier?’ And he leant down grinning and patted the fat red petrol tank between his leather thighs. ‘All fuelled up and ready to fly!’
Murray looked at him and thought: Jacky’s right. The man is crazy. He tried a last query, playing for time: ‘Where did you get this monster anyway? Is it hired?’
‘Bought. By courtesy of Filling-Station — with his pocket money.’
‘A bit extravagant, isn’t it — if you’re only going to be here for twelve more days?’
‘Recklessly extravagant. But we’ve got to get into the habit, haven’t we? Now get aboard and put your arms round me, lover boy, and hold on bloody tight!’ He had pulled on his helmet and goggles and was fastening the scarf across his mouth. Conversation from now on would be impossible. Murray gave up and took off his jacket, folding the newspapers across his chest and pulling the sweater down over them. Then he climbed on the pillion and Ryderbeit kicked at the starter pedal.
The machine started first time, with a powerful snarl as they drifted away from the pavement, straight into the evening rush-hour. Murray closed his eyes. He didn’t open them again until they were at the end of Tu Do Street where they swerved left along the river bank with their ankles almost grazing the ground; zipping past the old mercantile buildings of Saigon; shooting the lights right, again almost on their sides, swinging up on to the wide Tinh Do Bridge where Murray grabbed hard at Ryderbeit’s belly, pressing himself forward against the hunched leather back, biting into the neck of his sweater, his watering eyes stretched half-open with the gritty slip-stream.
They stopped only once — on the outskirts of the city, at a dead railway line where Ryderbeit was forced to pull aside for a convoy of tanks. Murray’s ears were numb, his groin aching; and as they waited for the tanks to pass over the level-crossing, he looked down the line, its tracks eroded by rust like strips of brown sponge, its sleepers long ripped up, the tracks warped, leading nowhere — the severed arteries of a country paralysed by war.
The last tank had clanked and scrabbled its way past them; and suddenly his spine felt as though it were being snapped in two as his hands locked again across Ryderbeit’s stomach and they swept forward, zig-zagging out on to the great highway north-east to the town of Biên Hòa. The orange ball of sun was hanging low under flat clouds; then came the first dusk of the forest trees, the howl of the engine rising, becoming part of his body, part of the spine-jarring, numbing pain, his fingers frozen senseless even through the woollen sleeves of his sweater. Once he began inching his head up over Ryderbeit’s shoulder to glance down at the speedometer; but when he tried opening his eyes they almost rolled up inside his head. The tears stiffened on his cheeks, the corners of his mouth dragged back under the neck of the sweater.
They reached the outskirts of Biên Hòa, twenty-eight miles from the centre of Saigon, in just under twelve minutes. So far the road had been secure. Ryderbeit now swept round the outer perimeter of the vast U.S. airbase there, with its attendant shanty town, and in less than five minutes they were back under the high trees, zooming down what the maps showed as a single green line — green as distinct to black, meaning temporarily secure as against secure. The red line for insecure would come soon.
They passed a couple of jeeps — no more than fleeting brown blobs in the shadow of the trees. Impossible to tell whether they were American or Vietnamese. Ahead, through his tears, Murray could just see the road straight and narrow like one of those roads in northern France, but lined with rainforest instead of poplar trees, passing in the monotonous crescendo of wind and machinery. They were swaying about rather less now, and he tried again to get a glimpse of the speedometer, but Ryderbeit’s helmet was now almost level with the handlebars and covered the clock completely. Murray had the curious sensation that the top of his head no longer existed.
They were coming close to the edge of ‘D’ Zone, and the ‘Iron Triangle’ — the Viet Cong’s deepest, most impregnable stronghold north-west of Saigon, where even the eight-engined B 52’s could make little impact, pattern-bombing with delayed-action 1,000-pounders through the two-hundred-foot trees. They passed another patrol — a confused blue shadow that might have been one or two vehicles — and Murray wondered what kind of report the troops would send when they got back to base. Red motorcycle w
ith black-clad rider, like some bat out of hell, heading straight into the most insecure corner of Vietnam.
The road was becoming eaten away at the edges now, its surface humped and blistered, rotted by rains, gnawed by insects — the remnants of a fine French road which few vehicles had touched for years. They were ten minutes out of Biên Hòa — almost twenty-five miles — but now there was another danger. Murray knew it well, as did anyone who had been any time in Vietnam. The question was whether Ryderbeit knew it.
Even back in the Viet Minh days it had been a favourite trick: to take a strip of highway deep in the jungle and dig it out a metre deep and a metre wide. Any vehicle travelling at a reasonable speed would jam its front wheels, snap its axle and lie prone. Then the ambush. Only Ryderbeit and his Honda were not going at a reasonable speed.
Using the top of his head as a windshield Murray began to examine the tarmac under his feet. Nothing happened for several minutes. He had seen such Viet Cong booby-traps before, up on the road from Qui Nhon west to Pleiku where the treacherous trenches had been filled in with fresh-packed sand and stones like raw scars. Then suddenly he saw it, on a sharp turn as they slid over on their sides, slowing enough for him to see the gap fly past under them without even a tremor. He wondered if there were men there among the trees, crouching one-eyed over their gun-sights in the deepening dark. But not even a crack marksman would have stood a chance.
It was the only such trap they did see, for night was coming fast now and Ryderbeit was finally forced to flick on the headlamp, its pencil-beam swinging giddily round the candle-like tree trunks. Giant trees that rose into dim-veined patterns like the roof of a Norman cathedral, the roar of the engine sounding like the toneless dirge of an organ, speed now meaningless, the invisible enemy as suddenly remote yet immediate as God to a small congregation.
The Tale of the Lazy Dog Page 21