Murray climbed in beside him and the car started with a long wheeze. ‘So Oum Rattiboum’s engaged in an opium war up north — besides the other war, of course?’
Finlayson shrugged, jarring the gears. ‘Anybody’s guess. No one really knows what goes on in this country — not even the generals. The Royal Lao Army’s supposed to be fifty-thousand strong. All balls of course. Lucky if it’s got fifteen thousand. Oum and the other generals simply draw pay for thirty-five thousand non-existent troops,’ he added, as they accelerated away in a swirl of dust and gravel.
‘So there’s no trouble bribing them?’
‘Bribing them? More difficult offering sweets to a child!’
They had reached the gate between the stone elephants, driving on the wrong side of the track, when a long black car flying the Royal Lao flag swept round in the opposite direction, missing them by inches. Murray realised that had either car been on its correct side there would have been a head-on collision.
Finlayson drove with disconcerting calm, the car clanking and careering over the potholed mud along the margin of the broad dark river. After a moment Murray said: ‘Do you know Mrs Jacqueline Conquest?’
‘Jackie? But of course! Lovely creature, isn’t she? Poor fish.’
‘Oh?’
‘Out of water, old boy. Married to the CIA, so what can you expect? You met the husband?’
‘I didn’t talk to him.’
‘Not Vientiane’s most engaging citizen. Fortunately he’s going back to Saigon soon. You’ve come from there yourself, haven’t you?’
‘Via Phnom Penh.’
Finlayson raised his eyebrows: ‘I didn’t think journalists were allowed into Cambodia? — ever since one of your chaps wrote up Sihanouk’s mother as running all the brothels?’
Murray smiled, watching the track curving away in the headlamps. ‘I’ve got “University Professor” down in my passport.’
Finlayson nodded: ‘Ah yes, I think Charles Pol mentioned it. You lectured in Vietnam — up at Huế, didn’t you?’
‘That’s right. Reading, writing, and rioting.’
‘What made you pack it in for journalism?’
‘I didn’t. The university packed it in after the Tet offensive. They closed the Foreign Language Faculty.’ Finlayson swerved violently to avoid a dog — a mangy, crouching creature — and for a moment Murray was back on that morning in the low damp streets of Huế when they’d just mortared the university buildings and he’d run out, dodging, limping, his buttocks torn by shrapnel, and been driven away in a jeep through the warm rain by a white-faced Marine corporal who’d gone on mouthing the same prayer over and over again, with the streets crackling with gunfire and Murray sitting up beside him, awkward and bloody, when they turned a corner and came on the dog, lean as a greyhound, ribs clear through the skin, its head down gnawing at the belly of a corpse — swollen Vietnamese in wet grey trousers, one hand flung out in the mud like a bunch of over-ripe bananas. Then the smell had reached them, cloying sweet and sour in Murray’s throat with the taste of bile clinging to his hair and clothes, while the Marine drew up and shot the dog with one burst from his M16, swearing with tight-lipped puritan anger, as Murray leant out and vomited into the mud.
‘So you’re a chum of Charles Pol?’ Finlayson said suddenly, and Murray shook himself back to reality. ‘How’s he getting on in Cambodia?’
‘He makes a living. When did he get in touch with you?’
‘About ten days ago. Said you needed someone to show you round, make contacts, meet people — that sort of thing.’
‘Hence the reception? Couldn’t we have met in some quiet bar instead?’
‘There aren’t any quiet bars in Vientiane at night, old boy. Much better to have it out in the open. And you did get the chance to meet Luke Williams and Buchbinder — not to mention Mr and Mrs Conquest.’
Ahead a light glimmered through some trees and Finlayson swung the car off the road, up on to a sandy verge beside a low brick building with a verandah and a red neon sign: ‘La Cigale — Genuine Cuisine Française’. Finlayson led the way in, his gold bracelet glinting like handcuffs under the light.
It was still fairly empty inside, with candles on the tables and rows of multicoloured bottles behind the bar. Finlayson chose a table in the corner and began to consult a large handwritten menu. ‘They do very good deep-fried prawns,’ he said. ‘And there’s a wine that’s surprisingly good — young and very fresh.’
Murray let him order from the waiter, noticing that he spoke French with the same colloquial ease as Hamish Napper; and in the same way as with Napper, this oddly altered his character, making him seem more serious, less the comic Englishman abroad — a man of substance, yet of some mystery. He ordered Ricard as an aperitif, fish soup, white wine and river prawns; then sat back facing Murray, solid, complacent, filling his whole chair. ‘Ah well. So you met old Charles Pol down in Cambodia? You don’t mind telling me how?’
‘He didn’t tell you himself?’
‘Not the details. Only the more important matters. But the details are important too, I think — if we’re to be entirely in each other’s confidence.’
‘Quite so. Well, I was down in Phnom Penh last month, on a sort of unofficial working holiday, and ran into him in a restaurant. It was a late lunch — we were the only Europeans in the place — and he asked me to join him for a drink.’
‘And you confided in him then?’
‘No. Not until a couple of
