‘And what was your impression of him?’
‘Fat.’
Finlayson chuckled: ‘Yes, my God he’s fat!’
Murray thought Pol probably the fattest man he had ever seen: the Michelin man alive, tyres of fat squeezed into a damp ill-fitting silk suit with huge thighs sagging over the edges of his chair — a flamboyant, garrulous gourmet of a man with a goatee-beard and a preposterous kiss curl plastered down over one eye; his talk, erudite but funny, punctuated by a shrill, almost girlish laugh.
At first Murray had likened him to one of those joke-professors in a nineteenth-century farce; but over the next couple of hours of that first meeting — and the best part of a bottle of excellent cognac — he had learnt that Charles Pol had fought as an Anarchist in Spain, had been a double agent for the Free French during the war, and two decades later had reappeared in North Africa during the death-throes of Algérie Française, working for the Gaullist secret service against the O.A.S.
Pol had refused to specify what he was doing in Cambodia; but from a few unguarded hints Murray guessed that he was working as some kind of ‘adviser’ to Cambodia’s volatile ruler, Prince Norodom Sihanouk — the all-purpose dictator, film director, actor, clarinet-player, poet, pop-singer, and political one-man band who went so far as to edit his own opposition newspaper in which he attacked himself once a week. Murray approved of Sihanouk, and he was intrigued by Pol. He had decided to stay close to the Frenchman for the next few days, which was one of the reasons why he had joined him on that trip to the ruins of Angkor Wat.
Finlayson, who had the habit of breaking off the conversation and relapsing into long silences, was now busy lapping up his soup. Murray finished his Ricard and tasted the wine, thinking: How fitting that it should have been in Angkor that the whole idea had taken root — that vast sunless place full of temples of leprous stone rising out of the jungle like some deranged Versailles. For here, resting on a terrace overlooking a lake of dead water, Murray had told Pol the story. He hadn’t thought it particularly important at the time — just an interesting anecdote out of a war that was full of anecdotes, funny, brutal, absurd. This one had been a straight recitation of fact as told him by a lonely American boy over too many drinks in an R-and-R bar in downtown Bangkok. Murray had repeated it just as he had been told it himself; but the Frenchman had been panting and sweating so much that Murray thought he hadn’t been fully listening.
Only later, as they drove back through the darkening countryside, did Pol bring the subject up again. And what he said had brought Murray bolt upright in his seat, hardly knowing whether the Frenchman were joking or not. Of course he was joking — it was madness, a fantasy inspired by the weird wonders of Angkor, followed by too much wine at the tourist hotel. But somehow there had been something in Pol’s manner — some hint of secret authority, of hard practical ruthlessness — that gradually made it seem neither mad nor fantastic. From that moment Murray had thought of little else. At work, in bed, in restaurants, aircraft, talking, drinking, doing nothing, his mind had been turning over, exploring every possibility, probability, until gradually the whole crazy scheme had begun to come alive with a dangerous reality, like suddenly finding oneself living — in detail — an obsessive, recurring dream. He only wondered how much Pol had confided in George Finlayson. And if he had, just how seriously Finlayson had taken it?
The banker was now getting to grips with his plate of deep-fried prawns. Murray took a drink of white wine and said: ‘And how did you get to know Charles Pol?’
Finlayson sat chewing thoughtfully. ‘My business takes me down to Cambodia from time to time,’ he said at last. ‘I ran into him first at the Cercle Français in Phnom Penh.’
‘What exactly does he do in Cambodia?’
‘He didn’t tell you?’
‘He was evasive, shall we say?’
Finlayson shook his head glumly. ‘He’s a cagey devil. To tell the truth I’ve never fathomed the French. They’re all for wine, women, good food, the intellectual life — then you scratch the surface and what d’you find? Cloven hoof and hairy heel, that’s what. Anyway, I’ve never been able to trust a man with a beard.’
‘He trusts you.’
Finlayson’s eyes bulged across the table, solemn and slightly puzzled. ‘Go on.’
‘He was the one who put me on to you. I don’t know how much he’s told you, but he wouldn’t have even mentioned your name if he hadn’t had a good deal of confidence in you.’
Finlayson paused, his fork in mid-air. ‘Yes, I must admit, in one way and another Charles and I’ve got to know each other pretty well. White men sticking together, you might say — especially when it comes to doing business with these Asians. They can be damned slippery sometimes.’
‘I thought you said you didn’t trust him?’
‘No further than I could throw him — and that wouldn’t be far!’ He allowed himself a faint smile. ‘But you can’t always work on your own — trust yourself and no one else. Can you?’ He thrust his face forward, his brown-stained moustache twitching as though to communicate some message of special significance. ‘I have to confess,’ he added, ‘I’ve done a couple of deals with old Pol. When
