‘His neck is broken?’ said Murray.
Ryderbeit shrugged. ‘Jones did it. But it could’ve happened in a crash, I s’pose.’ He began unbuttoning the Treasury man’s smart grey-green tunic, while Murray went to select two packets of hundred-dollar bills. When he got back Sanderson was lying like a drunkard, head sagging sideways in the dim light, his tunic stripped open to reveal a pathetic string-vest, the inside of the coat fitted with deep pockets with button-down flaps that might have been tailor-made for the job in hand. Ryderbeit unfastened the flaps, then paused as he looked at the money, and a nasty cunning look came into his eye.
‘There must be at least fifty thousand there, soldier.’
‘At least.’
‘The fishermen’ll get ’em, even if the fish don’t.’
‘What of it?’
‘It’ll be days before they catch up.’
‘We’re wasting time, Sammy. They’re new notes anyway — in serial numbers.’ He tried not to look at Sanderson’s twisted head as he slipped the packets into each of the pockets, buttoning up the flaps, then the tunic-front. ‘Now the raft.’
He went over and swung the lock of the door, stepping back at the chilling howl of the slipstream. The weather was clear, and below them the water shone under the moon like hammered steel. Ryderbeit punched the raft inflator and the oval tubes swelled stiff with a quick burping hiss. ‘Lower him in,’ said Murray.
Ryderbeit rolled Sanderson face-down on to the bottom of the raft. Murray threw in the pilots’ helmets, papers, logbook, charts, the two lifejackets. And together they slid the load through the door into the wind.
They watched it hit the water in a spray of silver, the raft settling the right way up with the dollar bundles still attached, but without the body. They could just see a few papers, together with the lifejackets, floating some way off.
Ryderbeit stared slowly after them and shook his head.
‘They’ll never find him. They’ll have to drag the whole bloody lake!’
‘They’ll drag the lake, don’t worry — but he’ll probably get caught in one of the nets before morning.’ Murray was glad to see Sanderson laid to rest. He went back and picked up the tool-kits, first-aid and spare parts, shouting to Jones, ‘This is the last lot — then take us up north!’
He hauled the heavy kits to the door and let them go, down into the shallows where the fishing nets were spread out in long delicate skeins of bamboo mesh, with clusters of sampans lying far to their left, their lights glowing like fireflies across the smooth water. ‘At least we’ve got the weather,’ he muttered. ‘Let’s just hope it holds over Laos!’ He slammed the door and turned the lock.
Ryderbeit had gone back up the steps into the cabin and was scooping something from the floor with an oil-rag. He came back grinning. Murray saw that the rag was soaked in drying blood from the pilot who had been stabbed. ‘Just for a bit o’ extra polish!’ Ryderbeit said, tossing it down the latrine and unzipping his flies. Then as he urinated he reached in his jacket and took out his ‘illegal’ Rhodesian passport, dropping it carefully down the chute, following it with his Air U.S.A. card.
‘That’ll give ’em something to think about,’ he said, turning with a solemn laugh. And Murray smiled back. There was good logic in Ryderbeit’s final abandonment of his official personality: the Americans must know by now that he was involved, and the fun-loving Cambodians would have plenty of scope here for teasing the CIA, even when the search was called off.
Jones now turned the plane north, still heading low over the rice fields, up towards the high jungles of Central Laos. About three hours’ flying time, and just about the same till first light. But it was one of the virtues of this war in South-East Asia that the enemy held no air threat, and so almost no effective ground radar system existed anywhere in Laos, except in the immediate vicinity of the main air bases, like Pakse and Savannakhet. These they carefully avoiding, choosing the higher, wilder country closer to the Vietnamese border — using the Caribou’s short-range radar now, keeping down frighteningly close to the mountain tops, but with the moon to help them and the plane’s many landing flaps to carry them like a switch-back over the peaks, down into the valleys.
The R/T crackled with the quaint chirping of Cambodian voices, but none of them sounded unduly concerned. From the American wavelengths they now learned, with a certain gratification, that a high-priority transport Caribou had been skyjacked and lost, last known heading into Cambodia — that all available aircraft in South Vietnam and Thailand were to stand by to intercept, and if necessary to destroy this aircraft. There was no mention of Laos. For the Kingdom of Laos remained mercifully inside that No-Man’s-Land of international politics.
CHAPTER 2
Pol lifted his head from his wet sleeves and peered at his watch. Light was coming up behind the sealed windows where the jungle was waking with a noise that almost drowned the high flat whine of the VHF in the corner. He shook his head and blinked across the table. The dead American engineer had slid to the floor and his chair had toppled back against the refrigerator. No one had touched him.
Pol looked at the two
