‘How d’yer mean, through?’
‘The roof collapsed. A gimcrack Vietnamese job where they’d watered down the cement. The usual story. Anyway, he just turned to me in this bar — a kid of about twenty-two who’d had a few drinks over the top — and showed me his foot. It was still in plaster after his fall. That’s what had got him his R-and-R. Then he said, “You know what I fell on to?” And I said no and he said “Four feet of money.”’
He paused. Neither of the other two said anything.
‘I asked him what sort of money and he said greenbacks — just like that. I asked him in what denominations and he said, “All of them — fives, tens, twenties, up to C’s.”’
‘He had time to count ’em?’
‘Only a few packets. But enough to see what was inside.’
‘So how did he know it was all greenbacks? Did he check it all? How was it packed?’ Ryderbeit was sitting forward now, greedy and impatient.
‘In packages of waterproof paper. His boot went through one of them, which was all twenties.’
‘Used?’
‘Used. Then he got curious, even with a broken ankle, and slit open a couple of others, and it was all good U.S. currency, mostly in high denominations — fifties and hundreds — and again mostly used.’
‘He was taking a risk, this boy, opening ’em all?’
‘He said some of them were torn anyway, from the roof falling in. And his fellow M.P.’s were more concerned with getting him out of the hut than checking what was inside.’
‘And how much did he help himself to?’
‘Nothing — so he said. There were too many other men there. And they could always have searched him.’
‘Did they?’
‘No. In fact he told me he was pretty sick he hadn’t. The stuff was packed as thick as dictionaries and he didn’t think Uncle Sam would miss just a few inches of it.’
‘And how much was there?’ Ryderbeit’s breath was coming in short gasps, his fingers gripping his knees. ‘How much?’
‘Four or five tons. It had to be moved out on a forklift truck, and they loaded it on a plane that night and flew it to Guam in the Philippines. Then it was shipped back to the States. From there on it’s all high finance.’
‘How high? Just how much in the kitty?’
Murray stared at the ceiling. He had only the sergeant’s word for it — and the gossip that had followed in the M.P.s’ guardroom. ‘About one billion,’ he said slowly: ‘With a big B. That’s to say, an American billion — one thousand million in good legal Treasury bills.’ He closed his eyes. ‘Give or take a few million,’ he added. And Ryderbeit, through his broken lips, gave a stiff laugh: ‘That’s very nice, soldier. Very nice indeed! Except how does this young sergeant pal o’ yours know it was a billion, unless he counted it?’
‘He just looked at it. He said that after a bit you get an eye for these things. Just a month before he’d been on guard one evening at the central traffic complex when a Ford panel-wagon drove up and two Treasury guards got out and told him to keep an eye on the truck while they went and got a cup of coffee from the canteen. The doors weren’t even locked, and while they were away he took a look inside. The floor at the back was piled with stacks of greenbacks, all new this time, and still in their bank wrappings. When the guards came back he asked how much was there. And they told him — eight million dollars.’
Ryderbeit gave a long whistle: ‘It sounds as though they got a security problem on that airfield.’
‘He said they handle money like that every day of the week. And it was no more than the equivalent of one suitcase full. But in that hut there was enough for at least a hundred suitcases.’
Ryderbeit sat with his dark hooked face set back in shadow now. ‘One billion,’ he breathed: ‘Holy Moses!’ There was a long pause. ‘Holy Moses in hell!’ he cried, ‘they’d never have that amount in the country at one given time — it’s crazy!’
‘Not crazy at all. They were getting rid of the stuff — what they call a “flush-out”. Total currency recall. They work it in any country where there are too many Americans and too little economic stability — two things that often go together. And what certainly go together are American troops and American dollars. You can bring in all the currency regulations you want — circulate military Scrip money, make the possession of greenbacks illegal — but the greenbacks are always there.’
‘Like lovely spring weeds,’ Ryderbeit murmured, ‘shooting up in all the wild places of the world. Flush-out — currency recall. Yeah, I’ve heard of it. I’ve even dreamed about it. Every few months you gather in all the cash from all the bank vaults and private safes in the country and ship the whole load back to the States, print the equivalent in Scrip, and hope the black market and the rackets stop.’ He was leaning forward again, pressing his hands together, giving his swollen smile. ‘But they never do, do they? Like the old problem of disease versus antibiotics. In Vietnam it’s the same with Scrip and the black market as it is with penicillin and the clap. And you know how bad the clap’s got in that poor bloody country? — so bad you hardly dare masturbate.’ He began to sway back and forth as though in a rocking-chair. ‘But one billion U.S.’ He shook his head: ‘That’s too much. Too much even for my imagination.’
‘Why? Just forget your home-spun venereal philosophy, Sammy, and look at
