Ryderbeit let out a great sigh and sat back. ‘I bet they are! The U.S. Navy’s goin’ to be really popular tomorrow down in Trang Bang. Murray boy, let’s take a look at a few more of those greenbacks — big ones. I want to touch ’em, stroke ’em, kiss ’em. Jackie darling, you did beautifully! The Red Alert went out sweet and loud and right on time.’
‘Too bloody well on time,’ said Murray. ‘It was only a couple of seconds late.’
‘Late? What d’yer mean?’
‘You didn’t notice? There was a major VC attack going on down there — and those boys don’t let off their Russian rockets just for fun.’
Jones interrupted: ‘Steer east-south-east — one-seventy.’
‘You haven’t told me what you’re getting at,’ Ryderbeit went on, moving the controls as he spoke.
‘You think the attack and the alert just coincided?’
Ryderbeit jerked round in his seat, looking straight at Jackie. ‘You did send that alert?’
‘Bien sur.’ She began to frown: ‘You don’t think I’ve earned my passage?’
‘She sent it all right,’ said Murray. ‘Only somebody also tipped off the Viet Cong — just to make it seem all the more convincing perhaps. I’m just wondering who — and why.’
PART 10: HAPPY LANDING
CHAPTER 1
Pol sat on the swivel chair, elbows on the desk, streaming with sweat despite the air-conditioner which was turned up full. In front of him were two glasses and a bottle of Johnny Walker three-quarters empty, standing beside his double-barrelled shotgun.
It was a small low-ceilinged room with sealed windows, filing cabinet, wall-safe, refrigerator, a nude calendar pin-up and a big two-way VHF set in the corner. It might have been any cheap, run-down office in any big American town — except that outside the jungle kept up its ceaseless shout against the empty night.
Across the table from him were three men. Two of them wore the silver-grey flying suits of Air U.S.A. and all were about the same age, in their early fifties. One was a tall man with a face like a pickaxe, eyes slanting above a high-peaked nose and a rigid but slightly sardonic mouth. The other pilot was short, heavy-shouldered, with wide flat features and massive eyebrows curling up from a button-nose.
The third man was slumped in the far corner from Pol, his rheumy eyes open with a pained, faintly puzzled expression, his big red face already taking on a sunken look, one short-sleeved arm in a checkered shirt flung out across the table, the other hanging at his side. He had been dead for about three minutes. It would take an experienced doctor — and there were few in the Kingdom of Laos — to separate the symptoms of death due to cardiac failure from those resulting from amethine-cyanide administered with a scratch from a sharp point just behind the left ear.
Pol poured himself another Scotch. He did not offer any to the pilots. ‘I want it understood again,’ he said, speaking slowly in French, ‘that there is to be no unnecessary violence. No shooting, no trouble of any kind. All quiet and normal.’ The two pilots nodded together. ‘A perfectly routine flight according to the book. There is no reason why anything should go wrong.’
He sighed. It had been a long exhausting thirty-six hours since he had left Cambodia: crossing the border at an unofficial and uncomfortable point, making his way up to Champasak, then joining a sampan with an under-powered motor which had struggled against the heavy current of the Mekong up as far as Thakhek where he’d taken a crowded local bus to just south of Vientiane, to be picked up by the two pilots in the Land Rover which was now parked outside.
‘All three men will be armed,’ he went on, his eyes flicking from one man to the other. ‘And at least two of them know how to shoot. The third, the Irishman, also has a knowledge of the Vietnamese language, so it is essential he has no chance to converse with the others.’
‘It is all perfectly understood, Monsieur Pol,’ the tall pilot said, speaking fluently, but with a thick accent. ‘Unless any of these men makes problems, there will certainly be no problem from us. It will, as you say, be a normal flight.’
‘I hope so,’ said Pol. He looked again at the dead engineer from Pittsburgh whose life had been all washed up, with a broken marriage, one dead son in a car smash and no idea where his daughters were — a depressing man whom they’d listened to for nearly an hour, just long enough to get half a pint of whisky inside him, before Pol had killed him. He’d done it with a rare twinge of conscience, because the man had been an innocent, a sad stupid bit of flotsam washed up in Asia with the tide of a slow war. Someday, thought Pol, someday I may finish like that.
He looked at his watch. ‘We have about an hour,’ he said, nodding at the VHF set in the corner. ‘We’ll turn it on only at the last minute. If all has gone well, there’ll probably be a full alert even here.’ But he might have been talking to himself; the two men seemed to have heard it all before. He finished the whisky, wondering for a moment if he were becoming nervous. Or perhaps just getting too old?
The Treasury Caribou came down low over the great shallow lake of Cambodia’s Tonlé Sap, which is really no more than a swollen river, flooding on either side more than twenty miles of some of the richest rice and fish country in the world.
No-Entry Jones was at the controls now, holding their speed down to a hundred knots, at a height of only fifty feet above the water, while Murray and Ryderbeit unfolded the inflatable life-raft and Jackie began snipping the wire bindings round the dollar packages with a pair of clippers from the cabin locker.
‘Leave the hundreds, darling!’ Ryderbeit called: ‘Just the small stuff.’
‘We’re putting in the hundreds too,’ said Murray. ‘There’s going to be no penny-pinching now. We can flush the Washingtons and a few fives down the toilet — but the raft has to have the big stuff. They may not be convinced, but we’ve got to get them suspicious at least — otherwise what’s the point of coming down this far in the first place? We’re going to be cutting it pretty fine as it is, if we want to make it by dawn.’
Ryderbeit stared at him bleakly. ‘Oh you bloody thinking bastard!’ Then he saw Jackie bringing out three of the neatly wrapped packs of notes from La Banque de L’Indo-Chine. ‘These are twenties,’ she said; and Ryderbeit cursed her softly in Afrikaans. ‘I need a drink.’ He caught Murray’s eye and scowled. ‘And don’t start tellin’ me that drink blunts the reactions! The only thing that ever blunted mine was knowin’ I couldn’t get one.’
He pulled out his pigskin flask and took a moderate swig, handing it to Murray. ‘I can’t watch the price of a big lovely country house in England go right out o’ that bloody door without shedding a small alcoholic tear.’
Murray lifted the flask and tasted good French cognac. ‘I didn’t know you were sentimental about English country houses, Sammy?’
‘I’m sentimental about anythin’ that costs money.’
Murray nodded. ‘Now let’s get going.’ He put the flask back in his own pocket, and they began tying the wired waterproof packages to the rubber straps of the still deflated raft. ‘And we need a corpse,’ said Ryderbeit. ‘Sanderson’ll do.’
‘Sanderson, with a wad of Centuries buttoned up tight inside his pocket,’ said Murray. ‘Because that’s one person you can be sure they are going to suspect, besides us — the Treasury official in charge of the operation who disappears with the plane and all the loot.’
‘But why does he have to have hundreds on him?’ Ryderbeit moaned.
‘Because that’s just the kind of thing they’re not going to expect from a load of villains like us. Dump a life-raft and a few slicks of oil to throw the scent — O.K. They might even expect us to toss down a few bundles of small change. But throw in a corpse carrying several grand in Centuries — that’s something that may make them bite. And we need them biting, Sammy. We need the time. We need them combing this lake in Cambodia before they start up on that dam in Laos.’
Ryderbeit spread his hands. ‘Why not make it fifties, soldier? Just for me.’
‘Those bastards. They’d better turn up trumps. And that fat Frenchman too.’
‘Coming down over the fishing beds!’ Jones called from the cabin.
Murray lifted one of the heavy two-foot-square packages containing mixed bundles of ones and fives from near the bottom of the stack, and started squeezing himself between the piles of money to the back of the aircraft where they had already stowed a couple of five-litre cans of oil next to a heap of emergency spare parts, tool and first-aid kits, life-jackets, the two dead pilots’ helmets and papers, the Caribou’s logbook and charts for its flight programme to the Philippines.
‘The oil and greenbacks go away first,’ he said to Ryderbeit, who stood almost weeping, watching him rip open the package, carrying the money loose in his arms over to the open latrine just behind the drop-door under the tail. Jackie, who had followed them back, sat down on the edge of one of the dollar piles, lit a cigarette and watched impassively.
‘This is criminal, soldier. Bloody criminal!’ Ryderbeit pleaded.
‘Bring over one of the cans,’ said Murray. Ryderbeit lifted the first oil can and stood peering down the open-ended tube below the toilet seat, the draught coming up cool and fresh off the water. ‘Let it go,’ said Murray.
Ryderbeit poured the can empty. Then Murray put the first wad of twenty-dollar bills down, watching them swirl round like water going out of a bath, and Ryderbeit said: ‘Do you want me to crap after them?’
‘Just the other can, Sammy.’ While Ryderbeit was going back for it Murray let loose another stack of George Washingtons, beginning to feel the idle fantasy of it all now — the fragility of the monetary system, the waste, the sheer masochistic delight of defecating this money down an open toilet into an alien lake in a far-away country. ‘There’s still plenty more where it came from,’ he grinned at Ryderbeit, whose eyes looked tortured as he brought over the second can, pouring it sadly down the chute, while Murray stood with the last bundles ready. Enough to buy a couple of Rolls-Royces, he reckoned — holidays in the sun, jewels, girls, cars, clothes… It was all quite unreal. Ryderbeit had emptied the second can and Murray lobbed the whole stack down, thinking for a moment that Ryderbeit was going to be sick.
‘Now the raft,’ he said. ‘We’ll inflate it by the door.’
They slid the big rubber envelope, with its tied ballast of notes in their waterproof packing, across the top of the cargo packs, setting it up against the rear door. ‘Now Sanderson,’ said Murray. He felt completely in command; Ryderbeit had become a mute, sulky subordinate as he went back and hoisted Sanderson’s limp body over his shoulders, shuffling his way back between the money, dropping the corpse rudely on its back, the head clonking like a coconut against the steel hull. Jackie watched and lit another cigarette.
‘His neck is broken?’ said Murray.
Ryderbeit shrugged. ‘Jones did it. But it could’ve happened in a crash, I s’pose.’ He began unbuttoning the Treasury man’s smart grey-green tunic, while Murray went to select two packets of hundred-dollar bills. When he got back Sanderson was lying like a drunkard, head sagging sideways in the dim light, his tunic stripped open to reveal a pathetic string-vest, the inside of the coat fitted with deep pockets with button-down flaps that might have been tailor-made for the job in hand. Ryderbeit unfastened the flaps, then paused as he looked at the money, and a nasty cunning look came into his eye.
‘There must be at least fifty thousand there, soldier.’
‘At least.’
‘The fishermen’ll get ’em, even if the fish don’t.’
‘What of it?’
‘It’ll be days before they catch up.’
‘We’re wasting time, Sammy. They’re new notes anyway — in serial numbers.’ He tried not to look at Sanderson’s twisted head as he slipped the packets into each of the pockets, buttoning up the flaps, then the tunic-front. ‘Now the raft.’
He went over and swung the lock of the door, stepping back at the chilling howl of the slipstream. The weather was clear, and below them the water shone under the moon like hammered steel. Ryderbeit punched the raft inflator and the oval tubes swelled stiff with a quick burping hiss. ‘Lower him in,’ said Murray.
Ryderbeit rolled Sanderson face-down on to the bottom of the raft. Murray threw in the pilots’ helmets, papers, logbook, charts, the two lifejackets. And together they slid the load through the door into the wind.
They watched it hit the water in a spray of silver, the raft settling the right way up with the dollar bundles still attached, but without the body. They could just see a few papers, together with the lifejackets, floating some way off.
Ryderbeit stared slowly after them and shook his head.
‘They’ll never find him. They’ll have to drag the whole bloody lake!’
‘They’ll drag the lake, don’t worry — but he’ll probably get caught in one of the nets before morning.’ Murray was glad to see Sanderson laid to rest. He went back and picked up the tool-kits, first-aid and spare parts, shouting to Jones, ‘This is the last lot — then take us up north!’
He hauled the heavy kits to the door and let them go, down into the shallows where the fishing nets were spread out in long delicate skeins of bamboo mesh, with clusters of sampans lying far to their left, their lights glowing like fireflies across the smooth water. ‘At least we’ve got the weather,’ he muttered. ‘Let’s just hope it holds over Laos!’ He slammed the door and turned the lock.
Ryderbeit had gone back up the steps into the cabin and was scooping something from the floor with an oil-rag. He came back grinning. Murray saw that the rag was soaked in drying blood from the pilot who had been stabbed. ‘Just for a bit o’ extra polish!’ Ryderbeit said, tossing it down the latrine and unzipping his flies. Then as he urinated he reached in his jacket and took out his ‘illegal’ Rhodesian passport, dropping it carefully down the chute, following it with his Air U.S.A. card.
‘That’ll give ’em something to think about,’ he said, turning with a solemn laugh. And Murray smiled back. There was good logic in Ryderbeit’s final abandonment of his official personality: the Americans must know by now that he was involved, and the fun-loving Cambodians would have plenty of scope here for teasing the CIA, even when the search was called off.
Jones now turned the plane north, still heading low over the rice fields, up towards the high jungles of Central Laos. About three hours’ flying time, and just about the same till first light. But it was one of the virtues of this war in South-East Asia that the enemy held no air threat, and so almost no effective ground radar system existed anywhere in Laos, except in the immediate vicinity of the main air bases, like Pakse and Savannakhet. These they carefully avoiding, choosing the higher, wilder country closer to the Vietnamese border — using the Caribou’s short-range radar now, keeping down frighteningly close to the mountain tops, but with the moon to help them and the plane’s many landing flaps to carry them like a switch-back over the peaks, down into the valleys.
The R/T crackled with the quaint chirping of Cambodian voices, but none of them sounded unduly concerned. From the American wavelengths they now learned, with a certain gratification, that a high-priority transport Caribou had been skyjacked and lost, last known heading into Cambodia — that all available aircraft in South Vietnam and Thailand were to stand by to intercept, and if necessary to destroy this aircraft. There was no mention of Laos. For the Kingdom of Laos remained mercifully inside that No-Man’s-Land of international politics.
CHAPTER 2
Pol lifted his head from his wet sleeves and peered at his watch. Light was coming up behind the sealed windows where the jungle was waking with a noise that almost drowned the high flat whine of the VHF in the corner. He shook his head and blinked across the table.
The dead American engineer had slid to the floor and his chair had toppled back against the refrigerator. No one had touched him.
Pol looked at the two pilots and nodded at the radio. ‘Still nothing?’
‘Nothing,’ said the tall pilot.
Pol moved his short fat arms about and yawned. ‘They should be with us in a few minutes. Coming in from the north over the Plain of Jars to avoid any radar. We won’t hear them until they’re about ten kilometres away. Anything from Wattay?’
The tall pilot rose and switched the radio on to the UHF beam. After a few seconds of static they got an American voice, brisk but untroubled, intoning a weather report: ‘…holding fair to middle cloud over central and east Phongsaly — north by north-east clear to cloudy — winds moderate south two-to-three…’
‘Are we keeping a check on those reports?’ said Pol, suppressing another yawn.
‘The weather is satisfactory,’ the pilot said, sitting down. ‘If there are complications, our control will inform us.’
Pol nodded gloomily at the empty bottle of Scotch. He disliked feeling no longer his own master — reflecting that if he’d had his own way he’d have chosen a more sympathetic pair. ‘Any more news of the plane?’ he asked.
‘Nothing from Air U.S.A. direct,’ the pilot said. ‘But while you slept we picked up several more shortwave messages from north Thailand. There is a full alert. The plane is still reported over Cambodia.’
Pol mopped his face with a damp handkerchief. ‘As long as the weather stays with us,’ he muttered. ‘We’re gambling on the weather now — and the stakes, my God!’
The tall man arched his eyebrows. ‘You’ve never done it before?’
‘Oh I’ve done it before,’ Pol said shrugging, and reached behind him into a plastic bag, lifting out a fresh bottle of Johnny Walker. ‘We’re also gambling on that pilot of theirs,’ he added, unscrewing the top and pouring a generous couple of inches into his glass. He breathed deeply. ‘Are the flares all set?’
The Tale of the Lazy Dog Page 27