'Ah to hell,' said Keller, suddenly bored. 'Let's go home.' His English lordling's voice: 'The people and the noise,' he explained. They returned to the Mercedes.
For a while they were stuck in the column, with the lorries cutting them into the side and the refugees politely tapping at the window asking for a ride. Once Jerry thought he saw Deathwish the Hun riding pillion on an army motorbike. At the next fork Keller ordered the driver to turn left.
'More private,' he said, and put his good hand back on the girl's knee. But Jerry was thinking of Frost in the mortuary, and the whiteness of his screaming jaw.
'My old mother always told me,' Keller declared, in a folksy drawl. 'Son, don't never go back through the jungle the same way as you came. Hun?'
'Yes?'
'Hun, you just lost your cherry. My humble congratulations.' The hand slipped a little higher.
From all round them came the sound of pouring water like so many burst pipes as a sudden torrent of rain fell. They passed a settlement full of chickens running in a flurry. A barber's chair stood empty in the rain. Jerry turned to Keller.
'This siege economy thing,' he resumed, as they settled to one another again. 'Market forces and so forth. You reckon that story will go?'
'Could do,' said Keller airily. 'It's been done a few times. But it travels.'
'Who are the main operators?'
Keller named a few.
'Indocharter?'
'Indocharter's one,' said Keller.
Jerry took a long shot. 'There's a clown called Charlie Marshall flies for them, half Chinese. Somebody said he'd talk. Met him?'
'Nope.'
He reckoned that was far enough. 'What do most of them use for machines?'
'Whatever they can get. DC4s, you name it. One's not enough. You need two at least, fly one, cannibalise the second for parts. Cheaper to ground a plane and strip it than bribe the customs to release the spares.'
'What's the profit?'
'Unprintable.'
'Much opium around?'
'There's a whole damn refinery out on the Bassac, for Christ's sakes. Looks like something out of Prohibition times. I can arrange a tour, if that's what you're after.'
The girl Lorraine was at the window, staring at the rain.
'I don't see any kids, Max,' she announced. 'You said to look out for no kids, that's all. Well I've been watching and they've disappeared.' The driver stopped the car. 'It's raining and I read somewhere that when it rains Asian kids like to come out and play. So, you know, where's the kids?' she said. But Jerry wasn't listening to what she'd read. Ducking and peering through the windscreen all at once, he saw what the driver saw, and it made his throat dry.
'You're the boss, sport,' he said to Keller quietly. 'Your car, your war and your girl.'
In the mirror, to his pain, Jerry watched Keller's pumice-stone face torn between experience and incapacity.
'Drive at them slowly,' Jerry said, when he could wait no longer. 'Lentement.'
'That's right,' Keller said. 'Do that.'
Fifty yards ahead of them, shrouded by the teeming fain, a grey lorry had pulled broadside across the track, blocking it. In the mirror, a second had pulled out behind them, blocking their retreat.
'Better show our hands,' said Keller in a hoarse rush. With his good one he wound down his window. The girl and Jerry did the same. Jerry wiped the windscreen clear of mist and put his hands on the console. The driver held the wheel at the top.
'Don't smile at them, don't speak to them,' Jerry ordered.
'Jesus Christ,' said Keller. 'Holy God.'
All over Asia, thought Jerry, pressmen had their favourite stories of what the Khmer Rouge did to you, and most of them were true. Even Frost at this moment would have been grateful for his relatively peaceful end. He knew newsmen who carried poison, even a concealed gun, to save themselves from just this moment. If you're caught, the first night is the only night to get out, he remembered: before they take your shoes, and your health, and God knows what other parts of you. The first night is your only chance, said the folklore. He wondered whether he should repeat it for the girl but he didn't want to hurt Keller's feelings. They were ploughing forward in first gear, engine whining. The rain was flying all over the car, thundering on the roof, smacking the bonnet and darting through the open windows. If we bog down we're finished, he thought. Still the lorry ahead had not moved and it was no more than fifteen yards away, a glistening monster in the downpour. In the dark of the lorry's cab they saw thin faces watching them. At the last minute, it lurched backward into the foliage, leaving just enough room to pass. The Mercedes tilted. Jerry had to hold the door pillar to stop himself rolling on to the driver. The two offside wheels skidded and whined, the bonnet swung and all but lurched on to the fender of the lorry.
'No licence plates,' Keller breathed. 'Holy Christ.'
'Don't hurry,' Jerry warned the driver. 'Toujours lentement. Don't put on your lights.' He was watching in the mirror.
'And those were the black pyjamas?' the girl said excitedly. 'And you wouldn't even let me take a picture?'
No one spoke.
'What did they want? Who are they trying to ambush?' she insisted.
'Somebody else,' said Jerry. 'Not us.'
'Some bum following us,' said Keller. 'Who cares?'
'Shouldn't we warn someone?'
'There isn't the apparatus,' said Keller. They heard shooting behind them but they kept going. 'Fucking rain,' Keller breathed, half to himself. 'Why the hell do we get rain suddenly?'
It had all but stopped.
'But Christ, Max,' the girl protested, 'if they've got us pinned out on the floor like this why don't they just finish us off.'
Before Keller could reply, the driver did it for him in French, softly and politely, though only Jerry understood.
'When they want to come, they will come,' he said, smiling at her in the mirror. 'In the bad weather. While the Americans are adding another five metres of concrete to their Embassy roof, and the soldiers are crouching in capes under their trees and the journalists are drinking whisky, and the generals are at the fumerie, the Khmer Rouge will come out of the jungle and cut our throats.'
'What did he say?' Keller demanded. 'Translate that, Westerby.'
'Yeah, what was all that?' said the girl. 'It sounded really great. Like a proposition or something.'
'Didn't quite get it actually, sport. Sort of outgunned me.'
They all broke out laughing, too loud, the driver as well.
And all through it, Jerry realised, he had thought of nobody but Lizzie. Not to the exclusion of danger — quite the contrary. Like the new glorious sunshine which now engulfed them, she was the prize of his survival.
At the Phnom, the same sun was beating gaily on the poolside. There had been no rain in the town, but a bad rocket near the girls' school had killed eight or nine children. The Southern stringer had that moment returned from counting them.
'So how did Maxie make out at the bang-bangs?' he asked Jerry as they met in the hall. 'Seems to me like his nerve is creaking at the joints a little these days.'
'Take your grinning little face out of my sight,' Jerry advised. 'Otherwise actually I'll smack it.'
Still grinning, the Southerner departed.
'We could meet tomorrow,' the girl said to Jerry. 'Tomorrow's free all day.'
Behind her, Keller was making his way slowly up the stairs, a hunched figure in a one-sleeved shirt, pulling himself by the banister rail.