Murray shrugged. ‘Sounds as though this man Pol’s a right villain!’
‘We don’t like him, Mr Wilde.’
‘We don’t like him at all,’ said Sy Leroy, and for the first time his smile was gone. ‘We have no immediate authority to arrest the man at this time, but we think you may be able to supply us with some of the relevant information that can get him arrested.’
‘I don’t see how.’
‘What was your business with George Finlayson?’ said Conquest.
‘I didn’t have any business with Finlayson. I just met him.’
‘You had dinner with him in Vientiane.’
‘So I had dinner with him. What of it?’
Conquest’s face tightened. ‘Let me be quite frank with you, Mr Wilde. You dine with a man a couple of days before he’s killed, then you fly out and spend the day with the man who had him killed, and are actually with this man when he kills a second person. And then when you’re asked about it, you say, “What of it?” I’ll tell you what of it, Mr Wilde. I tell you it stinks.’
‘All right, it stinks,’ said Murray. ‘And now you tell me how you know George Finlayson was killed by Pol.’
It was Leroy who answered: ‘We picked up Finlayson’s house-girl. Vietnamese from Hanoi. She was the one who let the killer in. She broke down and told everything.’
‘To you — or the Lao police?’
‘She was interrogated by Lao Security,’ Leroy said gently. ‘Maxwell was there, and so was a member of the British Embassy. It was all quite correct.’
‘I’m sure it was,’ said Murray, thinking hard. ‘And who did she let in to kill Finlayson?’
‘North Vietnamese, name of Than Thuoc Vinh. Licensed to kill, as the story-books say.’
‘Or to terminate with extreme prejudice — like your man Amos Shelton?’
‘What does that mean?’ Conquest snapped.
‘Someone tried to kill Pol the day I saw him. Sent him up a fancy bottle of brandy, only the brandy turned out to be plastique. He seemed to think it might have been one of your boys.’ He met Conquest’s dry grey eyes as he spoke, but Conquest did not look away.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. But you go on making those sort of accusations and you can get yourself into a lot of trouble.’
‘You mean the CIA might sue me for slander?’
Conquest swung back in his seat and gave an exaggerated sigh. ‘Let’s just understand each other, Mr Wilde. You’ve got a job to do here — we appreciate that. We also appreciate you may have to meet people who are not necessarily desirable. On the other hand, there’s a war on in this country. And if we find out you’re in any way — even the most indirect way — aiding the enemy in this war, we’re going to come down on you and break you. We’re not going to pull you in, because we can’t do that, but what we can do is make sure you don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of going on making your living in this part of the world.’
‘How? By leaning on the South Vietnamese and getting them to revoke my visa? It won’t make you very popular when it gets out that the CIA are vetting foreign journalists out here, and banning the ones they don’t like.’
‘We’re not popular anyway,’ said Conquest. ‘But we’re not sensitive about it either.’ For a moment he almost smiled.
‘All right, so what do I do to be a good boy?’
‘Tell us all you know about Charles Pol.’
‘There isn’t much I do know. He eats like a pig, drinks like a fish, sweats like a sponge, uses expensive perfume and works as some sort of adviser to Prince Sihanouk. But then so do plenty of other people — including a former British diplomat. You want me to check on them too?’
‘They’re not killers,’ Sy Leroy said drily. ‘Besides, it’s not Sihanouk we’re after. He’s no friend of the U.S., to be sure, but that’s a State Department affair. It’s this man Pol that bothers us. The fact that he’s killed an American is bad enough, but when he’s able to hire a professional killer from North Vietnam who can terrorize the house-girl through her family back in Hanoi, then kills an official of the IMF and disappears back into North Vietnam — well, that begins to worry us a lot, Mr Wilde.’ There was a meaningful pause. ‘So we’d appreciate it if you could find out just what this man Pol is up to. Who else he works for. And what exactly he’s doing in Cambodia.’
‘And if I don’t find out?’
‘We don’t want to be vindictive, Mr Wilde. And I think we’ll know if you’re holding back.’
‘So when do I report?’
‘Only when you’ve got something. Have you planned to meet Pol again?’
‘Nothing definite. Perhaps I’ll be going to Phnom Penh — in two or three weeks’ time,’ he said carefully. ‘Who do I report to?’
Conquest answered: ‘Mr Leroy is here every day till five-thirty except weekends. If there’s anything really urgent outside those hours you call this number.’ He thrust a card at Murray with the name of Major D. Curry, and a telephone number, then stood up, nodded at Sy Leroy and left without another word.
Murray began to stand up too, as Leroy slid gracefully from the desktop and laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘You must excuse Maxwell. He’s dedicated, and he’s good, but sometimes I wonder if the FBI oughtn’t to have had him, and that he just got mixed up in the shuffle. No offence, Mr Wilde?’
‘Not so far. Did you mean that about getting me kicked out?’
‘Blackmail’s a dirty word and all that. But you must admit, your associations with this man Pol look, to say the least, rather too coincidental?’
