‘I can change in town. You can buy me some new clothes.’
‘I buy you clothes? While you run out — when everything’s going so well!’
‘It’s going too well, Jackie. The alert and then the attack together — that phone call you got before our lunch at the Cercle in Saigon.’
‘I don’t understand. What’s all that got to do with us now? We’ve got the money, haven’t we? We’ve got fifteen hundred million dollars — and now you begin complaining! And it was all your plan in the first place. I just don’t understand you.’
‘It was my plan. But other people are taking over now. It’s no longer in my hands.’
‘What other people?’
‘I don’t know, Jackie.’
She looked at him, slowly, almost brutally, no tenderness or understanding now in those big dark eyes. ‘You want my money?’ she said, touching one breast. ‘You can have it all. But not me. I’m not running.’
He looked wearily back at her, listening to another tiny plane taking off far across the field. ‘Listen, Jackie. With twenty-five thousand dollars we can start all over again. You don’t even have to get rid of your husband now — thanks to Sammy.’
She wrinkled her nose with a sly little smile as she took his arm. ‘Viens, tu dis des bêtises! All nonsense! You talk as though we’re going to be caught. By who? By those little spotter-planes up there? What are they going to find?’
Ryderbeit came over, drawing on a cigar and grinning hugely. ‘Well children? Oh what a beautiful morning — and everything’s coming our way!’
Murray smiled bravely back. ‘When’s the take-off?’
‘In about ten minutes. Ribinovitz has just gone up to start the props.’
‘You’re happy about those two boys, Sammy?’
Ryderbeit shrugged. ‘Well, if you’re happy about Pol, then I’m happy about the pilots. They’ve done all right so far. Why?’
‘No reason,’ said Murray. One of the C 46 engines grunted and swung to life. The forklift was moving back for the last load now. Taylor was climbing up through the cabin door. Murray suddenly felt very, very tired. I’ve had too much bloody whisky, he thought: too much whisky, too much worry. I should be like Ryderbeit, enjoying a king-size cigar at five-thirty in the morning. Or like No-Entry Jones — cool and calm and able — a man who can roll with the punch. He looked at Pol, who had come over to share the Johnny Walker with Ryderbeit, both drinking from the bottle. Jackie had lit a cigarette and stood quietly watching.
Perhaps this is the moment of truth, Murray thought — or the moment before the truth. The misty airfield with the dead brown Ilyushins in the grass beside them and the little ‘Bird-dogs’ droning up half a mile ahead; while less than twenty yards away was a planeload with fifteen hundred million dollars in rice-bags.
Ryderbeit yelled, ‘Right, children, all aboard!’
CHAPTER 4
Murray was half-asleep in his hammock-seat when the plane took off. He dreamt of a tomb of black water where the corpses of two pilots floated slowly about in the casket of a sunken aircraft — of a chateau in France with tall stone walls and a row of Citroën police cars drawing up at the gates — the officer saluting graciously, apologising to madame for the inconvenience…
He woke to see Ryderbeit embracing each of Jackie’s well-stacked bosoms, shouting between kisses, ‘It’ll be the biggest balloon ever built, darling! Cruising speed of over a hundred miles an hour — and a gondola big enough for three hundred people. Bars, casino, nightclub, sunken baths, bedrooms with gold-leaf for wallpaper…’ He looked across at Murray and laughed. ‘You’ll be on the maiden flight, soldier! You and Jackie and Charlie boy here, and we’ll be flyin’ anywhere you like to go. Though I have to be a bit careful where I put foot, on account o’ my troubles. Most o’ the time it’ll just be flyin’ — nice and gentle like, over the Alps, Himalayas, Andes — just where you say, soldier!’
Pol sat opposite them, solemn-faced with the shotgun on his knees and the whisky bottle between his feet. He raised a smile when he caught Murray’s eye, and Ryderbeit shouted, ‘What about you, Charlie? What are you going to do?’
‘I shall get drunk,’ said Pol. ‘Then maybe I shall find an alias and creep into Les Halles at four in the morning and find a bottle of Montrachet and two dozen oysters.’ But there was no joy in his voice, no light in his eye. Perhaps he was just tired too.
‘Where are we?’ said Murray. It was nearly an hour since they’d taken off from Vientiane.
‘Another ninety minutes,’ said Pol.
‘And what about you, No-Entry? What great plans have you got now you’re a multi-millionaire?’ Ryderbeit yelled.
The Negro, who had been dozing behind his dark glasses, stirred up in his seat. ‘I’m a modest man, Sammy. I’ll buy meself a farm maybe — somewhere like in Spain or Mexico where I can breed animals and have a pool-room and a gymnasium, with maybe a boxing ring where I can train a few young fighters. Just strictly a quiet life for me, Sammy.’
Murray fell asleep again. And this time his sleep was heavy and dreamless, unbroken even by the violent jolts and drops as they climbed into the high mountains. Only once, when he was on the point of waking, did he have a sudden electrifying image. He saw the pilot Taylor, with his slack mouth and button nostrils, at a diplomatic reception in Vientiane, wearing shelves of epaulettes on a dove-grey uniform that hung badly on him as though it
