CHAPTER 5
He was a heavy man with a bare red face under a safety helmet painted the same bright yellow as the digging machines.
‘Excuse me, sir.’ The voice was slow and not impolite, but his arm — thick and short-sleeved, covered in pale hair and mottled brown like tea stains — still held him just above the elbow, and only a few inches from the edge of the dam. ‘Whatcha doin’?’ he said again, harsher this time, as Murray lowered the Leica with his free hand.
‘I’m taking pictures,’ he said, beginning to lean against that hairy grip.
‘You been takin’ one awful lot o’ pictures,’ the man said, suddenly releasing him. ‘Who are you?’
Murray was careful not to hurry. He stepped away from the edge and took out his wallet with its folder of Press cards. The man studied these with a frown, then nodded: ‘O.K. You’re a newspaper man, that’s all right by me. But you’re supposed to get a permit to come up here. We got a security problem.’
‘Problem?’ Murray said innocently, edging still further from the dam.
‘Commies. The whole country’s crawling with ’em.’
‘And you think I look like a card-carrying Pathet Lao?’
The American shook his head. ‘I don’t mean gook commies. Plenty o’ those around, but they don’t bother us. I mean guys like Polaks, Rooshans — come up here snoopin’ with cameras, and you can’t tell the difference till you challenge ’em.’
‘Any reason why they shouldn’t come up and take a look round? It’s a fine piece of construction you’ve got here.’
‘It’s government property.’
Murray forced a smile: ‘Whose government? And whose property?’
For a moment he thought the man was going to hit him; but instead he smiled, hangdog but friendly: ‘Aw hell! Want a beer?’
‘I could do with one,’ Murray said, genuinely grateful, as they walked back to the building next to the guardhouse where the Lao sentry still stood, staring at them without expression.
‘That little bastard should’a checked you,’ the American said, nodding angrily at the toy soldier who nodded back and grinned. ‘I don’t mean no offence,’ he added, kicking open the door and releasing a blast of cold stale air; ‘but I got my instructions.’ He waved Murray to a plastic-covered swivel chair and walked over to a refrigerator, taking out two cans of Schlitz beer. ‘Personally, mind, I don’t give a sweet motherin’ hell if they come and steal this whole dam piece by piece and take it into China. Chicoms’ll most likely get it anyway in a year or two.’
As he talked Murray ran his eye quickly round the room. Desk with telephone, filing cabinet, wall-safe, pin-up calendar of a dusky Polynesian girl with breasts like swollen gourds — although the nipples looked suspiciously pale for the rest of her colouring. No doubt some tactful adman not wanting to upset the sensibilities of these randy defenders of the Free World, he thought, noting the VHF set in the corner, battery-operated.
His host had slumped down in the chair opposite and began cranking open the beer cans. ‘Name’s Tom Donovan. You’re British, aren’t you?’
‘Irish — at least most of me is. Born in Ennis, County Clare. Murray Wilde. Here’s to you, Tom!’
The American gave a mighty grin, and soon the two of them were deep in shop-soiled blarney about names and places and whose ancestors had gone where, and what great Irish names had done what to where; then Murray was treated to most of Tom Donavan’s pitiable history — Pittsburgh engineer, Marine Corps, Sicily, Naples, bad conduct discharge for a minor currency infraction, divorced, three children, two grown-up girls and no idea where they were, his son dead in a car smash. And here he was ‘out in stinking Asia helping Uncle Sam build a dam in a country that wouldn’t know the Aswan Dam from its goddam arsehole!’
At the end of half an hour Murray had managed, by a combination of patient listening and careful prompting, to find out as much as he could about the Nam Ngum Dam without arousing Donovan’s suspicions. Ninety per cent of the labour was Lao, and ninety per cent of that was mostly absent or stoned on pot or the local firewater, known as lao-lao or ‘white lightning’. No, there were no U.S. guards — the country’s neutrality forbade that — there was just the local sentry, and he went off at sundown. If anybody really so cared, he could come and help himself to just about as much loose supplies as he wanted. Only most of the time there weren’t any supplies. He thumped his furry paw on the desk: ‘Five weeks now I’ve had in orders for a new turbine shaft. Does it come? Shit. This place is even worse than Veetnahm — here the stuff gets stolen even before it gets into the country! Three years we’ve been working our arses off for these Laotians, and for what? They don’t have no use for a dam — most of ’em don’t even have use for a toilet seat!’
‘I was told it would be finished in about three months?’ said Murray.
‘Three months — horseshit! We’ll still be working on it when the Chicoms get here.’
Outside there was the sudden drumming of rain. Murray got up to go.
‘Any time, Mr Murray, it was a pleasure! I’m here most days ’cept weekends. And I tell you, it gets mighty lonesome up here. But there’s always beer in the icebox if you’re passing again.’
Murray thanked him and ducked out into the rain, running with his head down towards the jeep. The lone Lao sentry had disappeared, as he turned the jeep round and started back to Vientiane.
PART 3: THE DROP
CHAPTER 1
Murray drew up outside Gate
