'So where's Ricardo now, sport? Got to find him, see. Promised my paper I'd have a word with him. Can't disappoint them, can we?'
Charlie Marshall's sleepy eyes had all but closed. He was sitting in a half-trance, with his head against the seat and the brim of his hat over his nose.
'What that, Voltaire? You speak at all?'
'Where is Ricardo now?'
'Ric?' Charlie Marshall repeated, glancing at Jerry in a sort of wonder. 'Where Ricardo is, Voltaire?'
'That's it, sport. Where is he? I'd like to have an exchange of views with him. That's what the three hundred bucks were about. There's another five hundred if you could find the time to arrange an introduction.'
Springing suddenly to life, Charlie Marshall delved for the Candide and slammed it into Jerry's lap while he delivered himself of a furious outburst.
'I don't know where Ricardo is ever, hear me? I never don't want a friend in my life. If I see that crazy Ricardo I shoot his balls right off in the street, hear me? He dead. So he can stay dead till he dies. He tell everyone he got killed. So maybe for once in my life I'm going to believe that bastard!'
Pointing the plane angrily into the cloud, he let it fall toward the slow flashes of Phnom Penh's artillery batteries to make a perfect three point landing in what to Jerry was pitch darkness. He waited for the burst of machine-gun fire from the ground defences, he waited for the sickening free-fall as they nose-dived into a mammoth crater, but all he saw, quite suddenly, was a newly assembled revetment of the familiar mud-filled ammunition boxes, arms open and palely lit, waiting to receive them. As they taxied toward it a brown jeep pulled in front of them with a green light winking on the back, like a flashlight being turned on and off by hand. The plane was humping over grass. Hard beside the revêtement Jerry could see a pair of green lorries, and a tight knot of waiting figures, looking anxiously toward them, and behind them the dark shadow of a twinengined sports plane. They parked, and Jerry heard at once from the hold beneath their penthouse the creak of the nose cone opening, followed by the clatter of feet on the iron ladder and the quick call and answer of voices. The speed of their departure took him by surprise. But he heard something else that turned his blood cold, and made him charge down the steps to the belly of the plane.
'Ricardo!' he yelled. 'Stop! Ricardo!'
But the only passengers left were the old couple clutching their pig and their parcel. Seizing the steel ladder, he let himself fall, jolting his spine as he hit the tarmac. The jeep had already left with the Chinese cooks and their Shan bodyguard. As he ran forward, Jerry could see the jeep racing for an open gateway at the perimeter of the airfield. It passed through, two sentries slammed the gates and took up their position as before. Behind him, the helmeted flight-handlers were already swarming toward the Carvair. A couple of lorryloads of police looked on and for a moment the western fool in Jerry was seduced into thinking they might be playing some restraining role, till he realised they were Phnom Penh's guard-of-honour for a three-ton load of opium. But his main eye was for one figure only, and that was the tall bearded man with the Fidel Castro hat and the AK47 and the heavy limp that sounded like a hard-soft drumbeat as the rubber-soled flying boots hobbled down the steel ladder. Jerry saw him just. The door of the little Beechcraft waited open for him, and there were two ground-crew poised to help him in. As he reached them they held out their hands for the rifle but Ricardo waved them aside. He had turned and was looking for Jerry. For a second they saw each other. Jerry was falling and Ricardo was lifting the gun, and for twenty seconds Jerry reviewed his life from birth till now while a few more bullets ripped and whined round the battle-torn airfield. By the time Jerry looked up again the firing had stopped, Ricardo was inside the plane and his helpers were pulling away the chocks. As the little plane lifted into the flashes, Jerry ran like the devil for the darkest part of the perimeter before anybody else decided that his presence was obstructive to good trading.
Just a lovers' tiff, he told himself, sitting in the cab, as he held his hands over his head and tried to damp down the wild shaking of his chest. That's what you get for trying to play footsyfootsy with an old flame of Lizzie Worthington.
Somewhere a rocket fell and he didn't give a damn.
He allowed Charlie Marshall two hours, though he reckoned one was generous. It was past curfew but the day's crisis had not ended with the dark, there were traffic checks all the way to le Phnom and the sentries held their machine pistols at the ready. In the square, two men were screaming at each other by torchlight before a gathering crowd. Further down the boulevard, troops had surrounded a floodlit house and were leaning against the wall of it, fingering their guns. The driver said the secret police had made an arrest there. A colonel and his people were still inside with a suspected agitator. In the hotel forecourt, tanks were parked, and in his bedroom he found Luke lying on the bed drinking contentedly.
'Any water?' Jerry asked.
'Yip.'
He turned on the bath and started to undress until he remembered the Walther.
'Filed?' he asked.
'Yip,' said Luke again. 'And so have you.'
'Ha ha.'
'I had Keller cable Stubbsie under your byline.'
'The airport story?' Luke handed him a tearsheet. 'Added some true Westerby colour. How the buds are bursting in the cemeteries. Stubbsie loves you.'
'Well thanks.'
In the bathroom Jerry unstuck the Walther from the plaster and slipped it in the pocket of his jacket where he would be able to get at it.
'Where we going tonight?' Luke called, through the closed door.
'Nowhere.'
'Hell's that mean?'
'I've got a date.'
'A woman?'
'Yes.'
'Take Lukie. Three in a bed.'
Jerry sank gratefully into the tepid water. 'No.'
'Call her. Tell her to whip in a whore for Lukie. Listen, there's that hooker from Santa Barbara downstairs. I'm not proud. I'll bring her.'
'No.'
'For Christ's sakes,' Luke shouted, now serious. 'Why the hell not?' He had come right to the locked door to make his protest.
'Sport, you've got to get off my back,' Jerry advised. 'Honest. I love you but you're not everything to me, right? So stay off.'
'Thorn in your breeches, huh?' Long silence.
'Well don't get your ass shot off, pardner, it's a stormy night out there.'
When Jerry returned to the bedroom, Luke lay on the bed in the foetal position staring at the wall and drinking methodically.
'You know you're worse than a bloody woman,' Jerry told him, pausing at the door to look back at him.
The whole childish exchange would not have caused another moment's thought, had it not been for the way things turned out afterwards.
This time Jerry didn't bother with the bell on the gate, but climbed the wall and grazed his hands on the broken glass that ran along the top of it. He didn't make for the front door either, or go through the formality of watching the brown legs standing on the bottom stair. Instead, he stood in the garden waiting for the clump of his heavy landing to fade and for his eyes and ears to catch a sign of habitation from the big villa which loomed darkly above him with the moon behind it.