The road now opened on to two strips of steaming concrete leading to the horizon. The rain was letting up and a dim sun seeped down across the fields. He saw the Chevrolet about a quarter of a mile ahead, pulled up on the mud verge. It was alone, closed, no one in sight. Murray slowed into the inside lane, watching carefully in his mirror. He let a couple of fast cars and an oil tanker roar past, his view blotted out for several seconds by their spray. When it was clear again he turned the Volkswagen abruptly off the road, swinging it round a few feet in front of the taxi, and stopped.
It was suddenly very quiet outside. A car swished past down the opposite carriageway and was gone. Murray was just about to get out, when he heard the snap of a door handle. A huge short leg appeared with a tiny shoe, a hand pointing the rolled-up raincoat at the Volkswagen, as Pol’s head crept out under the Chevrolet door, his great body following, lowering the raincoat and reaching back into the taxi for his black attaché case. The Thai driver got out at the same moment and went round to the boot.
Pol came across and Murray opened the door for him, pushing the passenger seat forward to make room first for the two suitcases in the back. ‘You’re early,’ Pol said through the window.
‘I thought I’d better keep close. Nothing’s happened?’
‘Nothing.’ He looked almost disappointed. ‘And you?’
‘There was another taxi. It passed me about three miles back.’ The taxi driver was putting the cases in the back, while Murray described the incidents with porkpie-hat. Pol nodded and squeezed himself in with a wince of pain. ‘American, you say? Ah merde! You couldn’t have chosen something bigger than this German insect?’ He pushed a twenty-dollar bill through the window at the driver, who stared at it with a big smile. ‘Was he alone?’
‘Alone. You know him?’
‘Possibly. Start the engine, but don’t move for a moment. Give the taxi time to go.’ He shifted his mighty rump, cradling the rolled-up raincoat in his lap, and burped gently. The Chevrolet started up with a roar and squelch of mud, cutting straight across the road and bouncing up on to the grass verge dividing the carriageways, doing a swift U-turn as it headed back towards Bangkok. Pol watched it almost laconically.
‘So we get moving?’ said Murray.
‘Give it a couple more minutes.’
‘The American’s well ahead by now,’ Murray said, feeling impatient, nerves overwound, cramped with anti-climax. He glanced again in the mirror. Several big American cars stole up and hissed by, without incident. He nodded down at Pol’s raincoat. ‘And what have you got there?’
The Frenchman unrolled it with a mischievous grin. Inside lay a double-barrelled twelve-bore shotgun, sawn off about a foot from the breach. The mechanism was modern, unembroidered, of blue-black steel set in light varnished wood. It looked well-oiled and new. He broke it open and eased out the two cartridges. One bore a well-known British trademark — Number One Shot, the heaviest birdshot on the market. The other was an American brand, and of metal, with a blunt hard-nosed bullet that can blow a man’s head off at thirty yards. Pol snapped it shut, patting it affectionately. ‘My little gangster toy.’
‘You still plan to use it?’
He gave a grandiose shrug that made the car sway. ‘Ça dépend! If they had planned something on the road, they would have already done it.’ He looked at his watch. ‘We should be getting on to the airport.’
Murray put the Volkswagen into gear and jerked her quickly back on to the road. ‘And then?’
‘If they intend anything,’ Pol said evenly, ‘they will try it at the airport. It will be their last chance.’ He rolled the shotgun back inside his coat.
The first call for passengers on Air Vietnam, Flight 247 to Phnom Penh and Saigon, had already gone out. Pol was limping heavily between two tiny porters, with Murray hard behind, carrying both the attaché case and his own grip-bag, leaving Pol with the raincoat under his arm, both hands free. A blast of birdshot would be unthinkable in these crowds; his only hope now would be the .22.
They passed quickly through the Air Vietnam checking-in counter and joined a long line of American civilians — grave, loose-jowled men with the rumpled baleful look of those who spend their lives between airports and hotels.
Murray studied them more closely. These were no soldiers, no leathery acne-raw veterans of the Marine Corps or First Cav., no flint-eyed Special Forces — those ‘warriors for the hearts and minds’ — no pale draftees with five days’ R-and-R behind them and the nagging doubt of venereal disease. No sir. These men on AVN Flight 247 were strictly civilians: Government employees, agents of USOM, USIS, JUSPAO, cost-efficiency experts, public relations officers, functionaries, fixers, desk men. The clerks of war.
Spooks? he wondered, as they shuffled through Customs and Immigration, where their cases and luggage were chalked without comment. It was a heavy afternoon and the officials were drowsy. They passed into the crowded chaos of the departure hall. Would they dare try here? Noise, swelling confusion, porters, police, miniature high heeled girls with slit skirts and clipboards, elegant finger-snapping Thais with white smiles and white holsters, bored American M.P.’s with black and white helmets, old women with pails and mops, young airmen in unzipped flying-suits chewing gum like athletes between events.
At the end of the hall a vast air-conditioner howled like a vacuum cleaner. The confusion was heightened by the TV screens, hung at regular intervals from the
