‘The final distress signal,’ he continued, ‘will be sent on a false frequency, indicating that the plane is preparing to make a forced landing on an airfield about two hundred kilometres to the west. Vientiane Control will receive no further messages. This, we calculate, should give us at least three hours to exchange the cargo.’
He paused, and Murray’s pipe bubbled in the silence. Monsieur Banaji did not sound a fool.
‘You must understand, however, that from this moment the cargo will have to be conveyed by the hands of my friends? They are men of professional experience. The money will be transported from Laos to India. You will each of you be paid at a slightly later date — I do not anticipate more than two months — in either gold or any foreign currency you desire. The transaction will be perfectly honourable.’
‘Why?’
Banaji’s eyes were sunk deep in his wrinkled, ruined face. ‘Because for this amount of money it would be foolish to be anything that was not honourable, Monsieur Wilde. On the airfield we shall take out thirty million dollars. That will be sufficient for ourselves and the porters.’
Murray began to laugh: ‘And the rest? You know how much the rest is?’
‘They don’t want to know.’ It was Pol who spoke, with his impish smile: ‘It would make them unhappy — greedy — they would not know how to digest such a sum.’
Murray nodded: ‘So they just help themselves to thirty million dollars — in bundles of Centuries, I suppose — leaving us with the rest?’
Pol’s smile grew wistful: ‘Isn’t it enough?’
‘It’s enough, if that’s all they want. But how do we know that’s all they want?’
‘Again, you must ask Monsieur Banaji.’
Banaji lifted his head from the pipe. ‘We are satisfied, Monsieur Wilde. But if you are not, then the arrangements must be annulled. We do not have the time to argue.’
Ryderbeit’s hand closed hard round Murray’s arm: ‘Accept, you bastard! They’re serious. These boys don’t fool around. And they’re not leaving us an alternative.’
Murray took the pipe again and this time lingered over it before passing it to Ryderbeit. ‘How do you propose destroying the second plane?’ he asked finally, turning back to Banaji.
‘It will be burnt and buried. There will be nothing left.’
‘And what about the airfield? They’ll be searching every inch of landing space in South-East Asia.’
‘That is true. Only they will not find the plane. We will make quite sure of that.’
‘And the substitute pilots? Who will they be?’
‘Men of our choice,’ said Banaji softly. ‘They will be our concern — paid for by us.’
‘And the real pilots?’
‘That will also be our concern.’
Murray smiled. ‘Listen, Monsieur Banaji. Half the American Air Force, and their entire external security forces, are going to be looking for us. They’re going to be looking for that plane — for an Air U.S.A. rice-drop plane that took off without the correct crew, sent a phoney mayday signal, then vanished. They’ve half caught us already.’
‘Have you a better plan, Monsieur Wilde?’
The first sticks of high explosive landed a second later. The hut shuddered, the oil lamp almost went out. ‘Ah, the B 52’s again,’ Banaji murmured. ‘Another few thousand dollars’ worth of bombs, and what do they achieve?’
The floor began to bounce in a curious, regular rhythm. They were all quiet for a moment, listening to the steady rumble that seemed to go on and on with the rocking floor, the flickering lamp, as Banaji offered the pipe again, once round the table, while Pol sipped his Scotch as it trembled and slopped over his lips.
‘I don’t like it,’ said Murray. ‘Why not pay off real Air U.S.A. pilots and have them just disappear?’
‘Air U.S.A. pilots,’ Pol chimed in, ‘are employed by the Central Intelligence Agency. They are not to be trusted — at least, not at such short notice.’
‘And Sammy here? They employed him too.’ His words were gone in the long rolling explosion, creeping towards them now across the mountain tops, as the lamp guttered again and went out. They lay for a moment in pitch dark. ‘Sammy is one in a million,’ Pol said. ‘You found him yourself, Murray. You want to waste valuable time trying to find someone like him?’
There must be others like him, Murray thought: wild men scattered across half the earth, on airfields in dark spots of Africa, doing the leapfrog run into Biafra, Angola, gun-running in the Middle East, South America. Probably a few like him, anyway — or who thought they were like him. And just eleven days to find them — a ready-made crew like Ryderbeit and No-Entry Jones.
The Vietnamese had the lamp going again, and the bombs began their thundering pattern very close now, with the wick of the lamp turned right up and the shadows flickering wildly round the low bare walls.
‘And what happens to the real pilots?’ Murray shouted: ‘Do we take them with us?’
‘They will be provided for,’ Banaji replied, with ominous simplicity.
‘Dead or alive?’ said Murray, and Pol made a clucking noise like a hen: ‘Ah, my dear Murray, you have a morbid mind!
