He began to walk down towards the river, shaking off the egregious cyclo-pousses, thinking now of Jacqueline Conquest. She had left him with a Saigon telephone number on the U.S. military exchange Tiger. As for her last week in Laos, she had told him only that she might contact him at the hotel. It had all sounded uncompromisingly vague. Perhaps she too was taking refuge in the fear of complications, the memory of a spontaneous, carnal, fruitless liaison.
He reached the corner of the street where there was a little French cafe with a couple of iron tables set out on the dirt pavement. There was only one person inside, besides the Laotian waiter. Hamish Napper. He stood with his back to the street, talking into a wall-telephone behind the bar; but at the moment Murray passed he turned and saw him. He spoke hurriedly into the phone and hung up, giving Murray his floppy wave. Murray went in.
‘Hello again!’ Napper cried. ‘So your chap didn’t turn up?’
‘What chap?’
Napper beamed up at him: ‘Thought you were waiting for someone just now?’
‘I told you I wasn’t,’ Murray said, trying to sound offhand. He smiled, nodding carelessly at the phone: ‘And what are you up to? Running out of the cat-house to tell tales?’
‘Now steady on, old boy.’ Napper stood wagging his bald pate: ‘I’m not that bad, y’know. As a matter of fact, I was just ringing the First Secretary to say I’d be a few minutes late for his dinner party tonight. You’re not going? Oh of course not — he wouldn’t have known you were going to be here, would he? Well, sorry we haven’t time for a drink.’ He started towards the door, then turned, with a suddenly sober, set expression. ‘Just one thing, Mr Wilde. That Rhodesian chap you were in there with just now. You want to go careful there. He’s a trifle tricky, from all I hear.’
‘In what way?’
Napper shrugged lazily. ‘Not the sort of chap you want to get involved with if I was you. I don’t know too much about him, but from what I do — well, you know —’
‘I don’t know,’ said Murray.
Napper looked at his watch. ‘Can’t stay talking, old chap. First Secretary’ll bite my head off. It’s just that while you’re not actually a British subject, you do, as an Eire national, come under our diplomatic charge out here. Our responsibility, you see — if you should get into any kind of jam, that is. I was just mentioning it. Well, so long. Take care.’ He crossed the room with his little shuffling hop, turning to wave from the door, then climbed into one of the cyclo-pousses that had followed them down from the ‘White Rose’.
Murray watched him lurch out of sight, then went behind the bar to the telephone where the waiter was already pumping up a stirrup-lamp in time for the nine o’clock blackout. Murray first dialled the number at the bottom of Finlayson’s notepaper. All he got was a long whine. After three attempts he tried the Bar des Amis. A girl’s voice chirped at him, first in Lao, then French. No, Monsieur Georges had not called — there had been no messages for Monsieur Wilde.
Just then the lighting in the cafe failed. He tossed some notes at the waiter and hurried out, breaking into a run up the last few yards to the ‘White Rose’, where he ducked under the bead curtain into the candlelight, elbowing his way through the T-shirts and naked flesh to the table in the corner. Ryderbeit was back, alone with a cigar and looking sour.
‘And where the hell have you been?’
‘Where’s Finlayson?’
‘You tell me. He didn’t show up, the idle bastard!’ He turned a jaundiced eye on Murray and grinned: ‘But I got my two thousand kips worth upstairs. These girls must have been trained by the French.’
Murray sat down. ‘Now listen, Sammy. I’ve got a feeling that things aren’t quite right.’
‘Huh? Just because Filling-Station stood you up?’
‘I just met Hamish Napper again up the street. He was making a phone call. It could have been nothing — he said he was ringing his First Secretary about a dinner-date. But then he warned me against you.’
‘Me? Cheeky old bastard. What did he say? Anything nice and slanderous?’
‘He told me not to get involved. Didn’t say how. Any ideas?’
‘Perhaps he thinks I’m bad company — doesn’t want respectable journalists associating with nasty white Rhodesians with illegal passports. Bad form and all that.’
‘Even worse form to have one of his flock getting involved in the biggest robbery in the world — especially if it’s been planned and executed on Napper’s home ground. He was warning me off, Sammy.’
‘Was he high?’
‘I don’t think so. He also seemed to think I’d been waiting in here for someone — someone who hadn’t turned up.’
‘Filling-Station?’
‘He didn’t mention any names — except yours.’
Ryderbeit stood up. ‘Let’s check on old Filling-Station.’
‘I’ve already checked. His FARC number’s out of order and he’s left no message at the hotel. Does he have any other number?’
‘Not that I know of. He said eight sharp in his note. It’s now gone nine. Let’s take a little walk round.’
Finlayson’s house faced on to the Mekong, about ten minutes’ walk from the ‘White Rose’. It was a low wooden building in the traditional Lao style, raised on stone piles for coolness and to keep out snakes and scorpions, with a wide roof like a chalet and a verandah behind windows of wire mesh. There were no lights — only a dim moon under which they could just make out the dark shape of Finlayson’s Mercedes parked inside the gate. The only sound
