Murray nodded: ‘So something goes wrong?’
‘I mean to say, old boy, what are your actual plans to date in this matter? I know Pol’s behind it, probably putting up the cash and so on. But what are your plans?’
‘I need two pilots,’ said Murray. ‘The best two pilots in South-East Asia, with a lot of nerve and not too many scruples. I want two pilots who can get a medium-sized transport plane — Caribou or C 123 — off the ground in a hurry, in darkness and flying several hundred miles at treetop level without radar or a radio compass, and can land it under the same conditions — blind.’
‘And what about you?’ Finlayson did not sound worried, just healthily suspicious.
‘Me?’ Murray grinned and finished his wine. ‘I’m just the ideas man — a displaced intellectual. If it all falls through, don’t worry about me. I won’t blackmail you to the IMF. I’ll just write it up afterwards — as fiction. It ought to make a good yarn. But for the moment I’m the only one of us — as an accredited journalist — who can walk in on Air U.S.A. and ask to go on a rice-drop; who can wander on to an airfield with no special permit; cross frontiers without too many tricky questions being asked; get thrown out of unauthorized areas without arousing too much suspicion. All right?’
Finlayson nodded, signalling for the bill. ‘Let me just ask you one thing, Wilde — if it doesn’t sound impertinent. What did you do before you came out to Asia?’
‘Lived off a rich wife.’
Finlayson nodded again, without comment. The pilots at the bar had made up their quarrel and were bawling for more drinks. As Murray and Finlayson passed them on their way out, the one who had come up to their table turned on his stool and shouted, ‘Cheer-io Gee-orge old chep!’ in a grotesque mimic of the English accent.
‘Good night to you all,’ Finlayson answered, with resolute lack of aggression. The rest of them watched with glassy grins — a row of big, well-scrubbed, all-American boys of forty-five who’d seen it all, resting now on their wide wallet-bulging butts, pissed and far from home.
Christ, thought Murray, as he stepped out into the tepid black night: No wonder they flew into mountains! He wondered if they got danger-money as well.
CHAPTER 4
‘Hi there, we’re in luck, sir!’ Luke swung his long legs off the desktop and sat forward with his boyish grin. ‘You’re off the launching pad — got you fixed for a drop tomorrow morning at sunrise. Weather permitting of course.’
Murray sat down opposite, buttoning his jacket against the icy air-conditioning. The room was of bare weatherboard, with a physical contour map of Laos and North Vietnam covering most of one wall. A framed photograph of the U.S. President watched over both of them with a look of funereal responsibility.
Luke had managed to get his pipe going at last and it was giving little puffs like a toy steam-engine. ‘You have to check in at the airport, Air U.S.A. Gate Two, at five-thirty tomorrow morning. Take-off’s scheduled for six. It’s a two and a half hour flight north of here, and the weather begins to get bad about mid-morning, so take-off has to be timed so you reach the drop zone around when the sun’s burned off the mountain fog. O.K. with you?’
‘Fine. Where is the drop zone?’
Luke spun round in his chair and jabbed at the top of the map with his pip-stem. ‘It’s a numbered grid reference, but we won’t know what it is till just before take-off. All I can tell you is it’s way up north, not far from the North Vietnamese border. It’ll be rice and cornmeal, in triple-sacking, for the use of anti-Communist cadres among the Meo tribesmen. It’s all here in our leaflet.’ He spun back and thrust a heavy folder across the desk marked KINGDOM OF LAOS — YOUR INFORMATION KIT. ‘And here’s your clearance pass. You hand that to a Captain Gaccia at the Air U.S.A. traffic manager’s office. Anyone’ll tell you where it is when you get inside the gate.’
‘Any trouble getting through the gate?’ Murray asked casually.
Luke shook his head, laughing: ‘No, no, we’re everyone’s friend here in Laos! Dropping rice is the way to win ’em. You know we even drop whole school kits? — blackboards, textbooks, even the funnies with the captions translated into the local dialect. That’s the way to victory — words, not guns!’
And so say all of us, thought Murray, as he stood up and shook hands across the desk. Luke followed him to the door, stepping with him into the aching afternoon glare. ‘Remember to wear something warm,’ he called: ‘couple of newspapers and an extra undershirt. It can get darned cold up in those planes. And don’t forget your passport — just in case.’
‘Thanks.’ Murray waved cheerfully, thinking, Nice helpful Luke, we ought to cut him in, give him something for his trouble. But Luke Williams did it for love — love of liberty and a brave new world where mountain tribes read ‘Peanuts’ and ate rice that fell from heaven.
Murray walked away to where he had left the hired Willys jeep, parked in the shade of a mouldy phallic-shaped wat, out of sight of the Embassy compound. The canvas flaps were drawn shut on both sides, and he was just climbing in when he saw the girl come round the wall of the temple. She was wearing trousers again, with a dark Chinese tunic buttoned to the throat and a conical straw hat that covered her face in a pool of shadow. She paused
