‘When did this arrive?’ he asked the girl.
She shrugged and slid off her stool, almost disappearing behind the bar, and went and whispered something to the boy. ‘Before yesterday,’ she said, coming back. ‘Monsieur Georges brought it.’
He nodded, conscious of a faint irritation. The fat French man in Phnom Penh was moving fast — perhaps too fast. Murray had come to Laos to make his own arrangements, in his own time — although he had to concede that a top diplomatic reception was not a bad place to start. Vientiane, administrative capital of Laos, was a small parish-pump town where the one sure way for a stranger to attract attention to himself was to lie low.
The girl had moved away to serve a little man who had just trotted in and ordered a Pernod. Murray put the envelope away and was picking up his grip-bag, when a voice, oddly familiar, cried: ‘Murray Wilde? Long time, no see!’
He blinked at the sunlight from the door. The man was short and bald with pebble-glasses and fluffy white hair round his ears; he looked and sounded like an English tradesman, slightly run to seed in a rumpled off-white suit and open-necked shirt.
‘I’m sorry —’ Murray began.
‘Napper,’ the man said: ‘Hamish Napper. Drink?’
‘Thanks — a beer.’ Murray climbed on to a stool beside him and was still trying to place him when, in a most untypical English gesture, the man shook hands. It was then that Murray remembered him. An awful evening just over a year ago in the garden of the British Embassy, his nerves shot to shreds, ill with no sleep and too much drink, the two of them propped up under a frangipani tree, arguing wildly about the war, Murray claiming recent experience, blind with rage and whisky, the old man gibbering with the wisdom of age and hindsight. He had been in Indo-China for more than twenty years, and now held some ill-defined post with the Political Section. It was said that he had once played football against Ho Chi Minh during the visit of the British Mission to Hanoi in 1954 — nine men a side, and Great Britain had lost, since no one had dared tackle the President for fear of upsetting the negotiations.
Murray had remembered him again because of his hands. For it was on account of the symptoms they betrayed that Napper’s career had hung in the balance. Now, in the half-darkness of the bar, the man’s touch was peculiarly repulsive: a moist swollen hand, with the cushions between the joints soft and puffed up like marshmallows.
‘So you’re still here?’ said Murray. ‘They didn’t give you the push?’
Napper gave a little throaty chuckle and shook his head. ‘Must have chattered a lot that night. We were both a bit under the weather, I think. Yes, I’m still here — though I’ve had to give up a few of the old habits. Weaned back on to the bottle, so to speak.’ He pushed his empty glass across at the girl. ‘Takes a bit of time though — and real hell for the first few weeks. The docs got me down to only two pipes a day, but the swelling in my hands and feet still hasn’t gone down.’
‘When are you leaving?’
‘End of the year. I’ll be at the statutory retiring age, y’see. I must say this, they’ve been damned decent about it at the Embassy — even joke about it, saying they can’t start sending old junkies back to the U.K. Bad for the Service.’
‘What will you do?’
‘Full pension — bungalow near Godalming — bit o’ fishing. Might even write my memoirs. I’ve got a few tales up here,’ he added, tapping his bald pate, ‘that would make a bit o’ hair in Whitehall stand on end. Trouble is, I don’t think I could do it.’
‘The Official Secrets Act, I suppose?’
‘Oh, bugger the Act. It’s just that when I sit down and try to write it, I can’t remember anything.’ He smiled into his cloudy drink. ‘What are you doing in Laos?’ he added suddenly.
Murray shrugged: ‘R-and-R. Rest and Recuperation, shall we say?’
‘I-and-I, I call it. Intercourse and Intoxication.’ Napper chuckled, sipping his Pernod. ‘On to any good stories?’
‘No. Should I be?’ Murray was wary now, remembering that behind that jaunty, short-sighted, rather sad little face was a mind that had once held a position of some delicacy and importance on behalf of Her Majesty in this corner of the world. He said casually: ‘Is there anything I should know? Any coups brewing?’
Napper shook his head. ‘They’ve actually banned the coup, you know that? Le coup d’état est inter dit au Laos. It’s an official Government decree.’
‘It’s a lovely country.’
‘The best,’ said Hamish Napper. ‘You get to love it — softens everyone, even the Russians. Everyone except these bloody Americans! Interfering buggers. First they had the casino closed because it was on the second floor of the girls’ lycée. And it wasn’t even as if there were any classes going on — it only opened in the evenings. And now you know what they’re trying to do? Get the Government to ban pot. Just think of it! About the only staple product this poor bloody country’s got, and they want to stamp it out, all because the families of these damned American military people are frightened their teenage brats — teeny-bops, I think they call them — are going to start getting hooked. And you know how many military attachés the American Embassy’s got in Laos at the moment? Eighty-five! Eighty-five military bleeding attachés!’ he cried, beside himself with rage. ‘And we and the Russians have only got two between us — officially. God rot the lot,’ he muttered, gulping
