‘And so we say farewell to the earthly paradise of Cahn Roc,’ Hunter intoned to the waving Vietnamese. ‘A city famed throughout the orient as a legendary seat of Marxist justice.’
Max forced his way to where Hunter stood at the rail. He looked down. Nan Luc’s face was lifted towards his. ‘Did you get it?’ he said to the Australian.
‘It’ll be where you asked for it. Five jerry-cans. It’s just cost you two hundred dollars, sport,’ he said. He, too, was looking down at Nan Luc. ‘But if I were asked I’d say it was worth every brass farthing.’
A low pink moon faded in and out behind a ragged mass of black cloud. From the reeds on the dark river bank a million frogs croaked and chortled. Fish flickered like quicksilver and splashed back into the water.
From where he stood in the deep shadow of the exposed roots of a mango, Max could see the outline of the city of Cahn Roc not half a mile away where the river formed a tiny Mekong Delta of its own as it broadened out in dozens of separate channels towards the sea.
So far it had gone smoothly. After telling the bus driver that he needed to get off to be sick, Max had plunged into the deep forest by the roadside and run until even the sound of Hunter singing ‘Waltzing Matilda’ as he blocked the driver’s way had faded into a mass of buzzing, trilling insects around his head. He knew the fever had not yet completely left him but as he had walked all afternoon through the dank, dripping forest paths, he had felt buoyed by what he was doing, by the prospect of escape with Nan Luc.
It had taken longer than he had thought to reach the river. No forest path ran straight and steering by the sun was not always possible in the green half-darkness of the afternoon. But by early evening he had heard voices and moving carefully forward, he was able to see a group of men stripped to their torn, muddy shorts, building a fish trap on the river bank.
It was dark by the time he had reached the point on the river where it bent back on itself towards the delta. Now, as his watch said ten minutes after midnight, he was already beginning to worry.
Another ten minutes elapsed before he heard a low crackling of bicycle wheels across the twigs and leaves on the path and saw the moonlit outline of Nan Luc riding towards him along the river bank. When he emerged from under the dome of mango roots she stopped and let the bicycle fall from her. He saw that, tied across her back, she carried a flat canvas pouch and felt a lump rise in his throat at the thought that this sack was enough to carry all her possessions.
‘Some fishermen were unloading on the river road,’ she said. ‘I had to wait until they were through.’
He took her hands and drew her into the shadow of the tree roots. ‘You’ve had time to think,’ he said. ‘You can still turn back.’
She shook her head. ‘The Cambodian border is less than ten miles from here,’ she said briskly. ‘Are you hoping we can cross it tonight?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Cambodia’s too dangerous. I think we can get away by sea.’
She shook her head. ‘There’s a coastguard cutter permanently stationed at Cahn Roc. In any case it would take weeks of planning to buy a boat. And then more waiting for a moonless night.’
‘We already have a boat,’ he said. ‘Fast enough to outrun the coastguard in a full moon.’
Deep in the shadowed creek the sharp white prow of Quatch’s launch gleamed in the moonlight. Behind it, across the lawns, the curved roofs and balconied windows of the administrator’s summer pavilion were visible among the great trees. Watching from the thick reeds Nan Luc and Max could see no lights in the house, no sign of guards in the grounds.
It had been a long bitter journey, struggling through the reeds and tree roots of the river bank, each dragging two five gallon jerry cans of fuel which Hunter had had hidden at a point where the river almost touched the road. It was obvious to Nan Luc that Max’s fever was barely being kept at bay. She had taken the lead, wading through the shallows, trying to choose a path where the floating roots were least tangled with the sharp bladed water grasses. Inexorably their rests had become more and more frequent until every five or ten minutes Max would slump forward across the top of a jerry can gasping for breath as the sweat poured down his face.
‘It’s three o’clock,’ he said. ‘If we can’t get under way in half an hour we’ll have to wait up until tomorrow night.’
She was kneeling in the shallow water beside him, watchful as the moon emerged from the ragged rain clouds. It was then that she had seen it. First as a hazy white fairy palace and then in sharper detail as Quatch’s shuttered summer pavilion, with the moored launch riding unattended in the creek.
Max knew that he was close to the end of his strength, at times even close to losing consciousness. As they dragged the heavy fuel cans the last hundred yards along the bank of the creek his pulse was thudding in his head and the burning salt from his own sweat blurred his vision to near blindness.
Beside the smooth whiteness of the launch they stopped to listen. Fighting the waves of weakness that came over him, Max sought to concentrate on the night sounds, the frogs and insects, the screech of birds and monkeys in the high trees.
‘Is it possible the whole place has been left unguarded?’ he whispered to Nan as they loaded the fuel into the boat.
She came to stand next to him, half supporting him. ‘In the country,’ she said, ‘there’s no real need for guards.’
‘What about servants? Would they have all been dismissed when Quatch was arrested?’
‘Perhaps. Or perhaps all but one or two.’
‘OK,’ he said. ‘We take our first big risk. If there’s a servant still at the house he’ll hear the engine start. I guess a phone call ahead to the coastguard at Cahn Roc is all he’d need to do.’
‘If we don’t start the engine, it won’t be heard.’ She crossed quickly to the bank and slid into the water. Standing up to her shoulders she looked up at him. ‘Throw me down the rope,’ she said.
‘You can’t haul this thing alone.’ He slipped the mooring. ‘If we’re going to get out of here we’re going to do it together,’ he said and slid down the bank into the water beside her.
There was still no sign from the house, no voices of guards, no barking of dogs. Inch by inch they dragged the launch along the creek, Nan Luc hauling on the bow rope, Max, part pushing, part guiding the sharp edge of the prow through the white tentacles of roots that reached out from the bank.
For Nan Luc it was no less a nightmare than it was for Max. Every few steps she picked through the tangle of roots and weeds on the river bed, every time she turned to haul on the rope, she was confronted by Max’s face, drawn, dark-eyed, exhausted almost beyond endurance, his teeth clamped against the waves of shivering that swept over him. But they both knew there was no stopping now. In half an hour the first dawn light would make it out of the question to run for the open sea. Hauling on the rope, watching the bow ease forward another foot or two, turning to see Max struggling for his balance, almost slipping below the black water, the nightmare continued.
For Max the anaesthesia of fever had already taken over. Each time he felt the launch move he gripped and pushed on the slippery woodwork. But he was no longer able to feel the ache in his legs or the sharpness of the broken roots as they flailed his shoulders. If he thought of anything his mind was drifting back to afternoons on the Charles River, rowing against Yale or Princeton, conscious of nothing but the numbed pain of the last few rhythmic strokes of a tight finish.
When he heard Nan Luc’s voice it was through what seemed a swirling fog, the words repeated twice before he understood. ‘We’re here, Max. We’re at the mouth of the creek.’