‘You might ask why some bright boy in Ancient Rome didn’t invent gunpowder or the Greeks think of the typewriter. It’s true that in Vietnam they’ll steal anything and sell anything. Weapons, whisky, cigarettes, petrol, spare parts, trucks, jewellery — even furs, if they wore them out there. From time to time you may get a million dollar PX racket, or some joker like the American quartermaster down in the Delta recently who went and got a hundred grand timber contract for Army billets, and spent the lot building a string of brothels. But it’s still small short-term stuff. There’s a war on, and everyone in a war like this — except the motivated idealists — grabs what he can while the going’s good. No one thinks of the real big time. Like selling aircraft carriers that don’t exist’ — he nodded deferentially at Ryderbeit, who nodded back — ‘because that sort of crime is out of focus in a war, it’s in the wrong league. Really big organised crime’s a peacetime occupation. It needs leisure and stability. In war people just don’t have time to think of it.’
Ryderbeit nodded, still gazing out of the window. ‘And you’re the genius who has?’ He suddenly spun round, his thin strong fingers flexed at his sides, and took a step forward. ‘You’re a bloody conman, Murray Wilde! You’re smart and full o’ fancy shit, but you haven’t told me one thing. Nothing but a spew o’ gossip from some pissed little sergeant in a B-bar in Bangkok.’
Murray braced himself against the bolster, half watching the immobile form of No-Entry Jones by the door, preparing to deal Ryderbeit a fast kick in the groin the moment he came within range. ‘So what else do you want to hear?’ he asked, with feigned weariness.
‘How you propose to walk on to the most heavily guarded airfield in the world and hijack a planeload of one billion dollars, without some M.P. saying “Excuse I…”’
‘We’ll be the M.P.’s,’ Murray said quietly. ‘My sergeant friend has already offered to show me round — unofficially. He’s even agreed to lend me an M.P. helmet and gun and take me out to the hut where it happened. You’re quite right about Tân Sơn Nhất being the most heavily guarded airfield in the world — but it’s guarded against the Viet Cong, not against people like us. No Vietnamese is going to have a chance in hell of getting within a mile of that money. But that’s just the beauty of the thing. They don’t put the stuff in an armoured compound, which is just inviting a V.C. rocket attack or a suicide raid. They put it in some shed out in the back, and nobody bothers. As for us, a journalist or Air U.S.A. pilot can wander in and out of that airfield, just flashing his card at the gate. And dressed up as M.P.’s we can probably get right up to the plane. The only problem is finding out the exact time and place of that plane.’
‘And how do we do that?’ Ryderbeit still stood tensed and aggressive, but he had moved no closer.
‘I’m working on it.’
‘Through old George Filling-Station?’ he sneered. ‘Or your Frenchman down in Cambodia?’
‘Perhaps — if you give them time.’
‘I see. So your sergeant friend’s all ready to risk his stripes smuggling you round his precinct impersonating an M.P.? That doesn’t sound like any M.P. I ever heard of.’
‘So perhaps he feels he owes me a few drinks. He’s also got a grudge against his superior officers. When we last met I suggested a little scheme by which I and a couple of journalist friends try to stay on the airfield patrolling the perimeter after curfew — just to see how good the security is, and write it up afterwards. My friend liked the idea — thought it might make a good story, at the expense of H.Q.’
‘Like hell it would. And while we’re patrolling the pitch, we just happen to stop at a plane with one billion aboard and tell the crew to step down?’
‘You got any better ideas?’
Ryderbeit sighed and sat down again. ‘Gimme the brandy.’ Murray threw it to him and he took a long drink. ‘It’s crazy. It’s so bloody crazy it might just work. We grab the plane and get it off the ground — and then what? You think they’re not goin’ to have their whole air-screen up there lookin’ for us?’
‘That’s another thing we’re going to have to work on,’ said Murray. ‘But the Cambodian border’s less than fifty miles direct flying from Saigon. They’re going to have to move fast.’
‘Did your sergeant mention what sort o’ plane they use?’
‘A Caribou.’
Ryderbeit nodded. ‘Beautiful plane. With a full payload, top speed of around a hundred and eighty to two hundred knots. That’s goin’ to give us about fifteen minutes from take-off. And then what? We land at Phnom Penh and declare it all to Customs?’
‘We fly up to Vientiane. You know the Nam Ngum dam just twelve miles north of the city?’ Ryderbeit nodded. ‘It’s the perfect spot. About five hundred feet long, and just about wide enough to take a heavy plane — with a bit of luck and a bloody good pilot. If you can land and pull up in time, there’s a whole range of earth-moving machines and tip-trucks right there to shift the cargo, and bulldozers to push the plane into the reservoir. And that’s the most important part. We’ve got to keep that plane hidden for at least forty-eight hours. And the reservoir up there looks deep and dark enough to hide it for maybe weeks.’
Ryderbeit was sitting very still. Murray knew he had his interest now, completely.
‘We load up a ten-ton truck and drive it down to the airport
