‘Nothing,’ said the tall pilot.
Pol moved his short fat arms about and yawned. ‘They should be with us in a few minutes. Coming in from the north over the Plain of Jars to avoid any radar. We won’t hear them until they’re about ten kilometres away. Anything from Wattay?’
The tall pilot rose and switched the radio on to the UHF beam. After a few seconds of static they got an American voice, brisk but untroubled, intoning a weather report: ‘…holding fair to middle cloud over central and east Phongsaly — north by north-east clear to cloudy — winds moderate south two-to-three…’
‘Are we keeping a check on those reports?’ said Pol, suppressing another yawn.
‘The weather is satisfactory,’ the pilot said, sitting down. ‘If there are complications, our control will inform us.’
Pol nodded gloomily at the empty bottle of Scotch. He disliked feeling no longer his own master — reflecting that if he’d had his own way he’d have chosen a more sympathetic pair. ‘Any more news of the plane?’ he asked.
‘Nothing from Air U.S.A. direct,’ the pilot said. ‘But while you slept we picked up several more shortwave messages from north Thailand. There is a full alert. The plane is still reported over Cambodia.’
Pol mopped his face with a damp handkerchief. ‘As long as the weather stays with us,’ he muttered. ‘We’re gambling on the weather now — and the stakes, my God!’
The tall man arched his eyebrows. ‘You’ve never done it before?’
‘Oh I’ve done it before,’ Pol said shrugging, and reached behind him into a plastic bag, lifting out a fresh bottle of Johnny Walker. ‘We’re also gambling on that pilot of theirs,’ he added, unscrewing the top and pouring a generous couple of inches into his glass. He breathed deeply. ‘Are the flares all set?’
‘Everything is prepared.’
Pol looked down at his shotgun, and on an impulse cracked it open, inspecting both breaches, then looked up at the two men with his impish smile. ‘One cannot be too careful in this game.’
The two did not smile back; for at that moment the radio came on with Murray’s voice speaking clear French: ‘Charles! Tu m’entends? — tu m’entends!’
The three scrambled to their feet, Pol reaching the radio in two pigeon struts. ‘Je t’entends bien, mon chou!’
‘Tout va bien?’
‘Tout va bien!’
‘Get ready then,’ Murray: ‘We’re coming in — three minutes away.’
Pol snapped off the radio, smiling through his sweat, and waddled out into the hot night, full of the shriek of birds and the black smell of the reservoir. The two pilots, carrying flashlights, had run ahead and were lighting the string of acetylene lamps along both edges of the dam wall. Pol waited by the yellow earth-moving machine, with its low slung toothed scuttle, which was drawn up in front of a bulldozer and ten-ton tip-truck — all three vehicles at the head of the steel-mesh road leading on to the dam, their ignition wires crossed, ready for starting.
There was no moon and a smell of rain in the air. Pol understood enough of flying to know that what Ryderbeit was about to do required enormous skill and a fair measure of luck, even in a plane as manoeuvrable as a Caribou. He was not sure that he had entirely liked Ryderbeit — his politics had seemed dubious to say the least — but he now experienced a solemn sense of affection, even affinity with the man up there somewhere in the dark grey dawn, feeling his way down towards this narrow curving strip of light in the heart of the jungle, risking his life for an illusory fortune.
Pol was not a cynic; and in this moment he was conscious of the dead hand of guilt, as he stood watching the two pilots coming back at a run between the two rows of harsh acetylene flares. He thought of the other man up there — the Irishman, Wilde, who’d picked that ridiculous fight with him in Bangkok, and then been so willing to help save his life. He’d liked Murray Wilde. There was something vulnerable and compassionate about him — unlike that mad Rhodesian who’d do anything for the promise of money. And then there was the girl — and a French girl too. He supposed she had been vital — the whole plan had finally depended on her — yet Pol was unhappy about her. His own wife had been shot by the Germans in Nancy in 1942. Even for money this was no game for a girl.
They saw the plane a moment later. It came in low over the far hills, throttles cut, making a smooth purring sound above the jungle, its landing beacons blazing on as it made a slow turn out to the left, speed dropping still further, disappearing for a moment over the trees behind them — then wheeling back in an amazingly tight circle, all flaps down, the undercarriage sweeping past twenty feet above their heads — hands over their ears, feeling the draught of the wings, port engine cutting to a whirring splutter as the slender high-tailed craft, silhouetted hard against its own lights, drifted down over the curving flarepath, forward-beacons bouncing as it made the touch-down, both props roaring into reverse and slowing it to a halt in less than half the distance across the dam.
The two pilots nodded gravely; but there was no time to lose in admiration of Ryderbeit’s flying skill. They turned to the heavy vehicles behind them, with Pol following the tall man up into the tip-truck which was parked with its back facing the dam. The short snub-nosed pilot had already started up the huge earth-moving machine with a shattering roar through the stillness of the morning. A moment later its caterpillar tracks were crawling out along the dam wall towards the Caribou. The truck, with Pol and the
