‘The best — when he’s not drunk. The trouble is, he’s just got the sack from Air U.S.A.’
‘That’s no problem. We can’t use him anyway for the second flight. That will have to be a regular, scheduled rice-drop, everything above board. Two other pilots, and a team of kickers. Otherwise they’ll immediately smell a rat.’
Murray swung up on one elbow, staring hard at him: ‘Two more pilots? And where the hell do we find them?’
‘I’ll find them. Don’t worry, my dear Murray, Air U.S.A. doesn’t employ men of such great integrity, as you know yourself. There are pilots — and pilots.’
‘And the kickers?’
Pol shrugged an enormous shoulder. ‘Thai paratroopers, aren’t they? Mercenaries — nothing more. For a small consideration — a few dollars — they will be persuaded to walk back home. By the time they arrive, we shall be away — home and dry. But tell me more about this Rhodesian and his navigator. Are they reliable?’
‘They’re mercenaries — like the kickers. They’ll do it for money.’
‘Bien! And when say they’re good pilots, how do you know?’
‘They brought us back out of the mountains over North Vietnam on one engine in a storm, with no radar or a radio-compass, and crash-landed us safely in a field.’
‘North Vietnam?’ Pol jerked his head up several inches off the bench. ‘You did say North Vietnam?’
‘That’s right. We strayed over the border. But it wasn’t the pilots’ fault — the plane was overloaded and missed the drop zone.’
Pol’s girl was finishing his massage now by pulling out each of his finger joints with a slippery snap that made Murray wince. ‘Does anyone know about this?’ Pol asked.
‘Only myself and the two pilots. And a girl.’
‘A girl?’ The Frenchman’s voice had hardened as the masseuse knelt down and started on his toes — sh-nick, sh-nick! ‘What girl?’
Murray shrugged, seeing little point in lying at this stage. ‘A French girl who’s married to one of the CIA chiefs presently working in Laos, otherwise Saigon.’
Pol had sat up very quickly and was staring beady-eyed at him — a bearded Buddha who was not afraid of a bomb in a brandy bottle, but was now deeply disturbed by the wife of a CIA man in an obscure corner of the earth. ‘My dear Murray.’ His voice had dropped several notes. ‘This is not a joke?’
‘No. I don’t have a gallows humour either.’ Pol’s girl had stood up and went over to run him a bubble bath. ‘She’s an amateur photographer, and just happened to come along for the ride.’
‘Just happened?’ Pol’s tone was rich with Gallic irony: ‘Just happened to be there when you made contact with the two pilots?’
Murray sighed wearily. It seemed he had been through this scene once before. ‘It’s not quite like that at all. For a start, she doesn’t love her husband.’
‘Oh?’ Pol cocked an eyebrow under his kiss curl. ‘You know her very well?’
‘I spent a night with her in Luang Prabang. I know her.’ He used the verb savoir, and Pol chuckled as he lowered his weight on to the duckboards and waddled like some monstrously inflated baby over to the bath.
‘There’s another thing,’ Murray called: ‘She happens to work as secretary and factotum to General Virgil Luther Greene — the boy who’s in charge of Saigon security.’
‘And her husband?’
‘I don’t think she tells him much. She didn’t even tell him she was going on the drop.’
Pol lowered himself into the bath with a great splash. ‘And you think she might co-operate?’
‘I think so.’ He tried to recall those last private moments with her, chasing after her down the main street of Luang Prabang with the lame broken words of a lovers’ quarrel, or the petty pay-off to a one-night stand.
Pol seemed to have regained his good humour, grinning again as he sank under the bubbles. ‘You seem to have been well amused during your stay in Laos! And what about the other job?’
‘The other job was fine. I found just the place. As perfect for security as anything in the whole of South-East Asia.’ He began to describe the dam, the reservoir, the heavy digging machines — his enthusiasm gaining on him, then draining away with a sour twinge like the memory of a great passion run dry. It had been so perfect, so unbelievably beautiful — until Finlayson.
‘You’ll be all right,’ he said sadly. ‘There aren’t even any proper guards up there — just two men, a Lao and a disgruntled American. The Lao goes off at night, and the American could no doubt be persuaded to take a little promenade through the jungle — if we made it worth his while.’ He realised he was still speaking in the present tense, without even the uncertain use of the French subjunctive. ‘A perfect set-up,’ he added. ‘Except that it won’t work. They’ve killed Finlayson, and now they’re on to you. They’ll either kill us all first, or they’ll catch us. And I’m an invincible coward, Charles. I want to go on living.’
Pol was climbing out of the bath, the soap-suds clinging round him like an incandescent gown of candyfloss. ‘Ah mon cher, il y a toujours des problèmes, bien sûr!’ He came trundling back to Murray’s bench, and there was now a bright cunning in his eye — a dry little porcine eye that showed through the wasted fat and gravy-bile a glimpse of the real Pol — hard and dangerous. He stood naked above him, balancing on a pair of small, surprisingly well-shaped feet. ‘You must not despair over a small contretemps, mon cher! You do not know that the person who killed our friend Finlayson is necessarily the same person who sent me
