The entire staff paused, heads upturned, transfixed by the flickering grey actors, the ringing shots, crescendos of music. ‘Will all members of Hotel Company, Jackdaw Division, please report to Gate Five!’ a Negro master-sergeant in a smart. Army suit was intoning through a hand-loudhailer.
Outside, a silver double-decker troop-carrying B 76 jet of the U.S. Air Force crept slowly past the plate-glass windows. Pol was elbowing his way towards the bar, sweat flowing in rivulets out of the folds of his neck, his jacket buttoned crookedly so that one flap hung lower than the other, covering his trouser pocket with the gun. He made a tragically vulnerable target, thought Murray: a sneak shot from any one of a hundred angles — crack of a small calibre, another .22 perhaps, lost in the whine and jabber of aircraft and loudspeakers, synchronised with the endless TV battle — and they wouldn’t even need a silencer. The crowds were no help either: if anything they made the killers’ job easier. Murray wondered what Pol had meant by saying they wouldn’t choose a public place, like the hotel. Or was the hotel not quite public enough?
The only thing to do was keep moving. For unless Pol had a very good idea who it was who was after him, he was in bad trouble. The long string of his life, he’d said: he’d pulled it so many times and still couldn’t feel the end. Was he pulling it now? He looked magnificently unruffled, pressing up close to the bar, a huge saffron bandana flourished in his free hand, mopping his face and brow, careful not to disarrange the kiss curl. ‘You want a drink?’ he called back to Murray.
‘Brandy and soda,’ Murray said. The TV screens were flashing up another bulletin: Garuda Airlines, Flight 360 to Singapore and Djakarta, now boarding at Gate 9. And a nasty thought came to him: Would they perhaps try for the plane? — another neat little device slipped aboard among the last-minute luggage — a phial of acid eating through a wire while the aircraft put on an extra thrust, climbing away from the mainland over the sea, with a bright flash, smoke curling downwards, metal ripping like paper — mangled machinery, seats, flesh, clothes, bones, luggage — tumbling down in a ball of blazing high-octane fuel, all over in a few seconds, lost under the South China Sea.
He looked round at the faces of his fellow passengers and felt a small ripple of comfort. If the people who were after Pol were those Murray thought they were, they wouldn’t go for a plane-load of American Government officials. No, Pol had chosen his airline with intelligence — or perhaps luck?
Pol pulled him closer: ‘Is anything wrong?’
Murray laughed grimly: ‘Nothing at all, mon vieux! It’s just —’ and he lowered his voice, even while speaking French — ‘I’m worried about the codename.’
‘The what?’ Pol had called for two brandies.
‘Codename Lazy Dog. It’s ominous. You know about “Lazy Dog”, the weapon?’
‘You told me about it. Eh bien?’
‘It was a disaster. Heat-seeking missile designed to be fired from a thousand metres on to a lighted cigarette. Trouble is, the Viet Cong don’t smoke. It used to zoom around and find some poor American platoon about five miles away, busy lighting up their Salem filter tips.’
Pol chuckled, handing him a brandy in a warm glass. ‘I find it a good omen, my dear Murray — a non-motivated weapon!’ A man on the TV screen, with a long scarred face, was reloading his rifle. The crowd along the bar stood watching. All but Murray, who was watching Pol hoist his drink over the head of a little man beside him. Pol was still holding his bandana. Murray looked at the little man and their eyes locked like magnets. He felt his mouth drying up. The man had taken off his porkpie hat and his head was as bald as a stone.
Pol slipped and fell against the American, splashing some of his brandy over him, his bandana flapping for a moment round the man’s neck and down over his shirt. Three horsemen on the screen fired a volley of shots, the scarfaced man grimaced and began to fall, and the bald man at the bar opened his mouth, staring at Murray with a face the colour of wet sand.
Pol had grabbed Murray’s arm, as the TV cut to a flight schedule: AVN Flight 247 — Boarding Gate 6. ‘Let’s go!’ he said, moving with surprising speed despite his leg. Behind them, bald porkpie hat had disappeared behind a crowd of heads. Over the staccato shots and yells from the TV, someone called, ‘Hey get a doctor!’ There was a flurry of movement, a closing in round the bar. ‘Kiss o’ life!’ someone shouted, as a Thai policeman hurried across the hall, hand on his big white holster.
Pol was still gripping Murray’s arm as they reached the gate, handed out their boarding cards, passed through the plate-glass doors into a blast of kerosene and hot damp air, their clothes flapping in the slip-stream of a Boeing taxiing up to the Arrivals gate.
They reached the steps into the tail of the Air Vietnam Caravelle. Pol did not even glance back at the terminal as he began to heave himself up into the cool belly of the aircraft, where a slender girl in a flowing áo dài awaited them with a tray of hot scented towels.
‘All right,’ said Murray, when they were seated and the engines beginning to scream to life: ‘How did you do it?’
‘Do what?’ said Pol, unfolding the steaming towel across his face.
‘The little American at the bar — the one who followed me out
