‘Sorry,’ said the voice. ‘No one of that name stay here. Very busy now. Thank you. Goodnight.’ And the line went dead.
‘Fuck!’ David slammed the receiver back into its cradle.
‘The Vietnamese have taken Phnom Penh,’ the reporter opposite said.
David frowned at him. ‘What?’
‘Came in on the wires early this morning.’
‘So what the hell’s that got to do with me! She’s in Thailand, not bloody Cambodia!’ The reporter shrugged again and turned back to his screen as David lifted the phone and dialled an internal number. He waited impatiently.
‘Library.’
‘David Greene, reporters. I’m looking for a file from nineteen sixty-three.’
The pages of history, enshrined in celluloid, jerked across the screen in a blur as David turned the microfilm impatiently through the plate. Increased American involvement in Vietnam; 16,000 US military ‘advisers’ now attached to South Vietnam ARVN forces; Soviets withdraw nuclear missiles from Cuba; Buddhist monk sets himself alight in Saigon street; Beatlemania. He paused momentarily. November 22 — Kennedy assassinated in Dallas.
He had a vague recollection of squatting in short-trousered uniform in a seedy scout hall, a boy running in flushed with excitement, shouting, ‘The President’s been shot! The President’s been shot!’ He had been eight then. He turned the film through more pages, days, weeks. Then, 13 December 1963 — Aden Massacre: Court Martial Opens. He stopped, adjusted the focus, and squinted down the tight columns of copy looking for names. But his mind wandered again.
There was another name that hovered, infuriatingly out of reach, somewhere in the back of his mind. A name Lisa had told him the night she flew out to Bangkok, one that the sergeant had given her. An odd name. But he hadn’t paid much heed at the time, and now it simply wouldn’t come back. Tun, Tan, Tok — for a moment he wondered why the hell he was bothering. If Lisa had wanted to phone him, presumably she could. Perhaps she’d lied to him. But he discounted that, and for all his increasing ambivalence, he couldn’t shake off the feeling that something was wrong, something bad must have happened to her.
He turned his gaze back to the screen. There were several references to the young Lieutenant John Elliot who had ordered his unit into the village. The full list of the accused didn’t appear till further down the story. David ran his finger lightly down the screen to stop at the name of Elliot’s NCO. Sergeant Samuel Robert Blair. He drew a deep breath of satisfaction and wrote the name down in his notebook. If Lisa could find him, then so could he.
II
The lights from across the river, reflecting on the water, danced brokenly on its wind-ruffled surface. Blair gazed out beyond his dark reflection in the glass and heard the wind among unseen trees on the embankment. Behind him, a tiny reading lamp lit a corner of the room. Newspapers detailing the triumphant progress of the Vietnamese army in Cambodia lay strewn across the floor. He sipped pensively at a glass of iced water turned faintly amber by the merest splash of whisky. His mood was one of melancholy, laced with a hint of anger. Anger at himself. He could, he knew, have done more to discourage Elliot from his Cambodian enterprise. It was madness and he had known it. But then, so had Elliot. Would he even have listened? Blair smiled a humourless smile and shook his head. He doubted it.
He turned back into the room and eased himself down into his well-worn armchair, then placed his glass on the floor and lifted a gnarled and blackened pipe from an ashtray balanced on the arm of the chair. He tapped out the dottle from the bowl, and began refilling it from a soft leather pouch.
Elliot was a resourceful man, he told himself. If anyone could pull it off, it would be Jack. He paused suddenly, catching his thoughts, and sighed. He knew it was a false optimism he was trying to kindle, and there really was no point. He struck a match and sucked several times at the stem of his pipe, drawing the flame down through the tobacco. He listened to it crackle and then tamped down the glow with a blackened, calloused forefinger. Thick blue smoke drifted lazily upwards through the light cast by his reading lamp. His only regret was that Elliot hadn’t taken him along. If he had been ten years younger...
The sound of the doorbell startled him. With a tut of annoyance, he laid his pipe in the ashtray and heaved himself stiffly out of his chair. He flicked a switch in the hall and blinked in the cold yellow light that invaded the peaceful gloom of the early evening. It was chilly out here, and he shivered as he opened the door to find a tall young man with a startling mane of windblown red hair standing on his doorstep. His face, in the reflected light of the hall, was pale, almost pasty. His eyes, screwed up against the sudden flood of light, had a hunted look. He wore a dark suit under a long beige overcoat, the knot of his tie pulled down from an open collar. Blair cast a wary eye over him.
‘Yes?’
‘Samuel Blair?’ the young man asked. ‘Sergeant Samuel Blair?’
Blair tensed. ‘Who wants to know?’
‘My name’s David Greene. I’m a friend of Lisa Robi—’ He paused to correct himself, ‘Elliot.’
‘Never heard of her.’
The young man’s mouth set. ‘Look, Mr Blair, I don’t have time to play silly buggers. I know all about your part in the Aden Massacre, your subsequent career as a soldier of fortune, and latterly your role as a kind of freelance quartermaster for other mercenaries. Now, either you invite me in and we talk sensibly, or you can read all about it in the national press.’
Blair looked back at him steadily. ‘You’re playing a dangerous bloody game, laddie.’
A little of David’s confidence evaporated. ‘Only because the stakes are so high,’ he said.
‘What stakes?’
‘A girl’s safety, maybe even her life. A girl you sent to Bangkok to look for her father.’ He ran out of steam. ‘Look, she’s been there for well over a week. She hasn’t called, she’s not at the hotel she was booked into, and they claim they’ve never heard of her.’
Blair made a decision. He stood to one side and flicked his head towards the interior. David stepped into the hall and turned as Blair closed the door behind him. His initial impression of a shambling, rather frail-looking old man completed its transformation. Beneath the shock of white hair, Blair’s eyes were flinty hard, his old jumper and baggy trousers disguising a lean, fit physique. He was a powerful presence in the confined space of the hall and David felt intimidated by him. ‘You some kind of newspaper man?’ Blair asked.
‘It’s what I do for a living. But it’s not why I’m here.’
‘Then a piece of advice, laddie, and it’s yours for free. Don’t ever threaten me unless you mean it. And if you do, be prepared for the consequences.’
‘I’m sorry,’ David said feebly. ‘I didn’t know what else to do. I’m worried about her.’
Blair waved an arm towards the sitting room. ‘Go through.’
David walked uncomfortably into the room and stood nervously as Blair crossed to his chair and picked up his pipe. It had gone out, and he dropped it back into the ashtray with annoyance. He stooped to pick up his drink. ‘You’d better tell me, then.’
David shrugged uncertainly. ‘Well — I already have.’
‘When did she leave?’ Blair was clearly impatient.
‘About ten days ago. I saw her on to the plane myself. She was booked into the Narai Hotel, Bangkok. She said you’d given her the name of a contact.’
Blair pursed his lips. ‘And you haven’t heard anything?’