His head thumped painfully in time with his heartbeat. He had sat alone in his room late into the night. He had drunk perhaps three or four whiskies.
He got out of bed and stood unsteadily by the window. The bus which had taken the newsmen into Ho Chi Minh City last week now stood at its own slight angle on the square below him. Somewhere in the hotel he could hear voices speaking in English. He looked at his watch, registering slowly that the others had returned, wondering vaguely what sort of time they had had. The watch face showed two in the morning.
The night air on his body now seemed uncomfortably cold and he was aware that he was trembling. He turned back into his room and sat naked on the bed, the top sheet pulled half over his shoulders. The trembling seemed if anything to be worse. And yet he was not really cold.
He got up and poured himself a small whisky. The pain in his head surged forward and receded in a rhythm of its own but syncopated all the time by the beat of his heart.
He put on his robe and sat in the cane chair beside the table piled with trial notes. His face seemed to blaze with a heat of its own while his body shivered beneath the thin robe. He got up and stumbled to the bed. The damp seeped from the sheets through the robe. He could hear the fast rhythm of his breath soughing between his teeth.
As the fever deepened Max faded in and out of sleep, barely able to distinguish moments of wakefulness. Brief dreams of the courtroom and the trial were erased by other, more sickly images of Nan Luc, images in which he was no longer a spectator at her humiliation and fear but was the perpetrator himself rolling with her in the sheets of that bloodied bed.
At 7.30 a.m. Harold Bolson stood before him. ‘You can’t go to the court today,’ Bolson said. ‘For God’s sake you can hardly stand up.’
Max sat on the edge of the bed. He felt drained of energy but purged too, as if the fever was necessary to clear his mind. ‘How was the Big Apple?’
‘Quiet compared to the last time I was here. But we found a few places. Listen Max, take a shower and I’ll get someone to change the bed. Give today’s session a miss.’
‘I’m OK,’ Max said. ‘The fever’s passed.’
Bolson shrugged. ‘So what did you learn about the trial?’ he said, collapsing into the creaking cane chair by the table. ‘What did Nan Luc have to tell you?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You mean you spent five days with her and you didn’t ask her?’
‘No.’
Bolson raised his eyebrows in silent disbelief.
Within an hour the fever came surging back. When Bolson came to collect him for the sentencing session, which was to take place at the end of the afternoon, he stopped in the door.
Max looked up from his chair. ‘What is it?’
‘You,’ Bolson said. ‘I’m getting a doctor. Better than that, I’m taking you across to the hospital. They’ve still got a French priest there who did medicine at the Sorbonne.’
‘I can’t get across there,’ Max said, wiping sweat from his face with a towel. ‘Just let me rest here.’
‘They call this lotus fever,’ Bolson said. ‘It’s like everything else in Vietnam. Treacherous.’
Chapter Eighteen
‘Basically,’ Cy said, ‘a storm in a teacup.’
In the tourette room of the Meyerick Club George Savary eyed the fund president across the table. ‘I can’t agree,’ he said. ‘I can’t agree to continuing payments. I never liked the payments when I first heard about them…’
Cy held up his hand. His face was set. ‘I hope you take what I’m going to say as it’s intended, George. Perhaps you don’t appreciate the suffering of many millions of Vietnamese, oppressed by the regime. We should not be misled by any recent apparent liberalisation.’
‘Hear, hear,’ Hector Hand said loudly.
‘As from today,’ Cy said, ‘we can buy at source. Straight from the Vietnamese government.’
‘And what, in your view, are we buying?’
‘A secure passage from Cahn Roc for thousands of boat people. What we’re getting for our dollar is hope and opportunity.’
‘That’s not the issue,’ Savary said angrily. ‘The issue is whether or not a private charity should be making a deal of this nature.’
‘I think the rest of the committee is basically agreed,’ Cy said dismissively.
Savary shook his head. ‘I’d have to ask for a vote on that,’ he said. The trustees looked from Cy to George Savary. There was a long silence as Cy kept his eyes down on the papers before him. ‘I’d go further, Mr President,’ Savary said with deliberate formality. ‘I’d have to inform the committee that I would consider this a resignation issue.’
Cy’s head came up. He shuffled his papers brusquely. ‘OK, we’ll take a vote. I’m bound to say this will be the first vote of this committee which has not been a formality.’
‘Perhaps, Mr President, too much has gone by on the nod.’
The Anderson brothers permitted themselves a sharp intake of breath. Mary kept her eyes down on the table. She found her heart was thumping heavily.
‘Before I ask members to speak on this matter,’ Cy said, ‘I would like to remind you, George, that a resignation does not free you to speak publicly about our deliberations.’
‘I’m aware that that was one of the terms of my acceptance,’ Savary said. ‘I never for a moment thought the issue would arise.’
‘Maybe it won’t,’ Cy smiled spectrally, ‘if the vote goes your way.’ He sat back, his elbows on the arms of his chair, his fingertips interlocked under his chin. ‘I’d like to hear other members of the committee on this,’ he said.
‘You’re in favour of going ahead dealing with Hanoi?’ Arne Anderson said.
‘I am,’ Cy said decisively. ‘I’m not prepared to let these people stew.’ The Andersons nodded.
‘I feel very much that on something like this we should support our president,’ Mrs Rose said. ‘But I appreciate the colonel’s concerns. Surely this is an opportunity to get out of the distasteful end of the business. Of course I understand its purpose in the past and I have agreed. But now I would prefer to see us spending the splendid amounts Cy has raised in, well, a more conventional manner.’
The Anderson brothers pursed their lips.
‘Fin?’ Cy said.
‘It’s flakey,’ he said. ‘I think I’m for staying clear. Let’s get back to basics. Let’s spend the money here in the United States.’
Cy was counting. The committee at full strength numbered ten. Today, with Jason Rose absent, there were nine voting. No proxies, no abstentions, was a rule established by the founder. So a decision was inevitable. In favour: himself, Oliver Digweed and Hector Hand certainly. Three. And against: Savary, Mrs Rose, Fin. Three. That left the Anderson brothers and Mary. He looked towards the Anderson brothers but neither of them spoke.
‘OK,’ he said slowly, looking towards Oliver Digweed. ‘Let it be recorded in the minutes of the emergency meeting that a vote was taken on the president’s proposal. I’ll take your vote in turn. Colonel?’
‘Against.’
‘Fin?’
‘Against. Sorry, Cy.’
‘Helen?’
‘Against,’ Mrs Rose said. ‘With great reluctance.’
Cy nodded. ‘Oliver?’
‘For.’
‘Hector?’
‘Very definitely for.’ Cy lifted his head to the Andersons.
‘Against,’ one said.
‘For,’ the other said at almost the same moment. Cy smiled grimly. Four in favour of this motion. Four against.