It was not really a town at all — even less than An Loc. The trees thinned a little; there was a stream, a patch of dark rice paddy, a small lake with huts crouched along the edge. A solitary light winked at them from the porch of one of these huts. Ryderbeit swung the great machine on to the verge of the track, cut the throttle and they bumped to a halt. Murray climbed off, stiff and bandy-legged, into the sudden silence. He pulled down the neck of his sweater and stretched the muscles of his face, flexing his fingers which were curled stiff from gripping Ryderbeit’s leather suit.
Two men — Vietnamese in flimsy black pyjama-costumes — appeared from the edge of the track. Both held Chinese AK 47 machine-pistols level with their hips. One of them flashed a torch into Ryderbeit’s face, muttered something, and the second walked round them both, frisking them professionally under the arms, round their waists and down their legs. He removed Murray’s passport without a word, putting it in a jacket pocket. The first man now led them along a slippery track towards the light.
It was a single hurricane-lamp set on a table. A number of men, also in black pyjamas, sat on rush-matting round the walls. There was a thick cloying smell of smoke, paraffin and rotting fish. The lamplight seemed very strong. Murray stood for a few minutes, blinking through his bruised eyelids. Ryderbeit had stripped off his scarf and pushed his goggles up on to his forehead, peering quickly round the walls.
‘Friends of yours?’ Murray said softly.
‘Friends o’ friends.’ Ryderbeit took a step forward towards a wattle door, but one of the two guides motioned him back with his AK 47. They waited.
‘They look like Victor Charlies,’ Murray murmured. ‘Some sort of joke by old Pol?’
‘They’re members of the Cao Đài. Know ’em?’
Murray nodded, with some surprise. In these days, when all the excitement was about escalation and phoney peace talks, one rarely heard any more of the Cao Đài, that legendary gangster-religious sect, who — along with the more notorious Bình Xuyên and the Hòa Hảo, both little more than licensed bandits — had long controlled what had then been Cochin-China, now South Vietnam. The Cao Đài, headed by warlords and its own self-appointed saints and prophets, had controlled most of Saigon’s gangsterdom and vice. It had also been closely connected with the long struggle against the French, even been allied with the Viet Minh themselves, and went on wielding enormous political power until President Ngo Dinh Diem finally suppressed them in the fifties.
‘How the hell did you get involved with them?’ he whispered.
Ryderbeit grinned: ‘I was ordained last week, soldier. I’m one of their priests — one of the beholders of the Cao Đài — the Supreme All-Seeing Eye.’
‘It sounds wonderfully psychedelic,’ Murray said sourly, wondering if it could all be worth a brand new Honda and a ride through death to the edge of nowhere. Ryderbeit went on: ‘My non-Asian saints are Victor Hugo, Sir Winston Churchill and Joe Louis. All fully recognised spiritual leaders of the sect.’
‘And where does Charles Pol come in?’
‘He’s a priest too. Has been for some time. This is the contact, y’see?’
Murray shook his head: ‘I don’t see, Sammy. You mean we’re now in alliance with the Cao Đài?’
But before Ryderbeit could reply, the wattle door swung open and a very thin Vietnamese with a spine curved like a spoon came in bowing gracefully. ‘Messieurs!’ He motioned them through towards the door.
It was a square windowless room, dark except for another oil lamp with the wick turned down so low that it was guttering. Two men sat on cushions on either side of a round table laid with small metal cups, a pointed teapot, and an array of rubber piping, needles and shallow bowls. There was also a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label, almost full and stoppered.
One of the two men was Pol, reclining Roman-style on a heap of cushions. ‘Salut Murray! Tout va bien?’
Murray nodded, looking at the second man. It was hard to tell at first whether he were European or Asian. A pair of slit, pouched eyes peered up at him out of a face that looked like a contour-map of the Mekong Delta. He was dressed in a white silk suit and an expensive, discreet tie. Three points of a handkerchief peeped from his breast-pocket, just below the unmistakable rosette of the Legion of Honour.
‘Let me introduce Monsieur Banaji, my compatriot,’ Pol began. ‘Monsieur Banaji is a Vietnamese citizen, but is of French origin. He used to be one of the great racehorse owners of Saigon.’
The shrivelled contours of M. Banaji’s face stretched into a smile: ‘Ah, that was in the old days,’ he murmured: ‘Before the Japanese came, when my horses were stolen or poisoned by my enemies. Please sit down.’
Pol waved his hand at the whisky bottle: ‘Or perhaps you would like to smoke? The two do not mix though.’
‘I would advise you to smoke.’ Banaji’s voice was soft and bored, his face without expression. ‘The Cao Đài do not admit alcohol, except to their most honoured members.’
Murray glanced at Pol and shrugged. ‘I’ll smoke,’ he said. Banaji now spoke to the Vietnamese who had showed them in, and who now knelt by the table and began the elaborate preparations for the pipe.
