Pagoda, page 2
“Here.” Nash shoved the money into his hands. “Get a doctor; take care of him.”
“Yes, yes.” The plump man blinked solemnly. “More money, please.”
Nash peeled off two hundred more and handed the bills over. Stooping, he lifted the wrecked bicycle and carried it to the edge of the road. When he tossed it into the ditch, there was a sudden cry of pain from the shadows below, so he knew someone must have been sleeping there. My God, he thought irritably, they’re everywhere, under every damn rock and tree.
Going back in his car, he saw that several of the bystanders were carrying the inert form away. They’ll leave him, thought Nash. They’ll rob him and dump him by the road and let him die; and the stout gent who got my six hundred will go pigeon-toeing off to get a girl, or a pipe.
After he had parked his car, he went upstairs to the apartment. The accident had nearly sobered him up. Ugette was sitting on the rug in the living room, eating lichee nuts. She stared at him bleakly, letting him know she was still angry. As he threw his hat on the table, one of the nuts popped between her strong teeth.
“Fix me a drink,” he said harshly, but she did not move. He was still fluttery in the belly from having hit the cyclist, so he started for her. Can’t even use the furniture, he thought savagely; has to squat cross-legged on the floor. One less generation and it would have been betel nut, instead of lichee.
He meant to rough her up, and she must have seen it in his face; she went crabbing backward across the rug. With her back to the wall, she looked ready to spit at him. Shaking his head, Nash stopped.
It was too much trouble. If I belt her, he thought dismally, and she goes, then I won’t have anything left. She’s not much, except at night, but at least I’ve taught her to bathe and play tennis. She’s my family. That thought was shocking, even after four years. He walked by her and poured himself a drink.
“Did anybody call?” he asked, the whisky burning in his throat.
“Captain Varley, twice. A woman, too, but I hung up. I think it was Mrs. McNally.” Ugette was still hunched against the wall, and she spoke sullenly.
When he relaxed and beckoned, she got up like a cat, with sinuous grace. She came toward him, and he reflected that he had never seen her make a clumsy motion. Her kiss knifed through the headache and the stale taste of Scotch and the sleepy feeling, as it always did. It was a shock, like grabbing a hot wire.
“You’re a savage,” he said to her smooth cheek.
“But no animal.” She kissed him again, and caressed the scratches on his cheekbone.
“Wrong,” he murmured. “All of us are animals.”
“Not me, Gid,” she insisted angrily, doubling her fists behind his head and kissing him again as though she wanted to stop his breathing. They were braced against each other when the door buzzer sounded. Nash jerked his face away from hers, and looked over her shoulder. A beef about the bicycle boy? A drunk pilot looking for a party? A report on the Macao gold shipment?
“I’m not here,” he whispered, and stepped into the shadowed bedroom. Ugette opened the door, and a man’s voice, very British, asked for Captain Nash. Ugette said he was not at home, but might be found at the Peninsula Hotel. There was a crisp “Thenk you veddy much,” and the door closed again.
“Who was it?”
“I don’t know.” She started sliding back into his arms, but he shoved her away.
“British?”
“No. A small man.” She watched resentfully as he crossed to the phone. After giving his number, he waited several seconds.
“Pappy?”
“Yea, Nash. The man came.”
“So?”
“We’re in, I think. He said they’d cable it tomorrow.”
“That’s great, Pappy. From here, or—”
“Now listen to me!” Varley’s voice was urgent; it grated along the wire. “Everything swings on this Gall. He’ll have real pressure stacked on him, and we don’t have time to check all the angles. But one thing: I want you to send Ugette over to his room.”
“Look, Pappy—”
“You look! All the other twists I know would sell us out for thirty annas. Give her some tech manuals on the Cats; make it look legit. So I sent her. Then she plays him hard. Understand?”
“I guess so,” said Nash slowly, scowling over the mouthpiece. In his ear, Varley grunted and went on.
“This Gall killed his wife, remember. Got back to the States with two years of the Hump under his belt, and found her with some defense-plant jerk. He beat them both to death with a table-model radio.”
“Sharkey told me,” said Nash morosely. “He was back there when it happened. My God, how do you kill people with a radio?”
“It ain’t hard,” answered Varley. “Them little plastic ones got some good handholds on ’em. After the grand-jury nobilled Gall, he drifted around. Was fired from two freight lines for turning up blind, and got to be a lush. Then he quit both of them cold, it says here in fine print. You get the picture? Anyway, he took a couple of stiff jolts with us tonight, so send Black Beauty over.”
“All right,” said Nash, and hung up. The dark girl was sprawled negligently on the couch. When he called, she straightened eagerly, her arms out. Nash shook his head. “Get dressed, chickadee,” he said. “You’re going hunting.”
Gall was lying on the bed in his room, reading the Hong Kong Standard. There was a faint rap on the door, and he knotted the cord on his pajama pants and got up. He opened the door, not wide.
“Mr. Gall?” the girl asked. She was dark and young, bareheaded. Her glistening hair was gathered into a loose knot at the nape of her neck. The tailored suit was severe, and a worn leather brief case was tucked under one arm. “I’m Miss LeBlanc. Captain Varley sent these papers over.”
“Come in,” Gall said, and stepped back. Too dark to be Anglo, he thought, but smells like one. They never spare the perfume, and this one must have bathed in it. She stacked the technical reports and flight maps on the center table.
“I don’t understand them,” she remarked, “but Captain Varley said you would.”
Gall nodded politely. “You French?”
“Partly. Born in Hanoi.” Zipping the brief case closed, she smiled at him. “What you Yanks call the tar-brush variety, I think.” The smile was distant and secretarial. “I’ve heard George Fong talk about you.”
“Have you?” Gall rubbed at his chin. “Georgie was quite a boy.”
“He was fun. I knew him in Peiping, before the war.”
“Oh?”
“Yes.” She saw that the bottom button on his pajama coat was gone, and flicked the sprig of thread with a scarlet fingernail. “You’re a bad housekeeper.”
“None at all.” Gall smiled, and stood looking at her steadily. Her teeth were white against the dusky skin, and only the fullness of her lower lip was out of symmetry.
“It’s a long trip back,” she said. “Could I have a drink?”
“Naturally.” Gall crossed to his battered suitcase and rummaged in it. “Varley always work you this late?” he asked, bent over. She crackled into French and subsided into English. The gist of it was that Captain Varley was a slave-driving monster; he never stopped working.
“Must be very tiring.” Gall straightened. “You’ll have to take water.”
She nodded and sat down, crossing her legs. They had the drink and talked about Varley and Hong Kong and Shanghai, before Mao. That led to the Hump route and CNAC, and the pilots; mostly dead but some still living, and where the hell were they, anyhow. It meant Dinjan and Kunming and Hammell’s bear, who had been unfairly deprived of four Distinguished Flying Crosses. It meant the celebrated Jimmy Scoff, and all the gold strewed across the Himalayas that no one would ever find now. And it meant another drink, of course.
Gall was propped against the head of the bed, and Ugette was lounging in the chair. This one is really stupid, he reflected. She’s mentioned everybody I ever knew out here except Gideon Nash; but he didn’t refer to the omission, and they recalled the time the Kittapore Docks had been bombed, in Calcutta, and how the limey fighters had not even gotten off their maiden runways before the Mitsis were gone again. Ugette spoke idiomatic, even pungent English, and Gall smiled at some of her phrases. It was like sauntering through the blackout streets again, past the dim braziers of Calcutta.
They had a drink for the road, and had even taken one for the small path that lies beyond when Ugette stood up. Putting her glass down, she announced that she was a dancer, and that she would now dance for him. Gall did not comment, and she twisted out of the tailored jacket. After a few whirling steps, she pirouetted across the room and fell on the bed beside him. Laughing, she pulled his head down and kissed him.
“Don’t you think I’m a good dancer?” she asked huskily, and Gall nodded.
“And Minsky is the only true prophet,” he murmured. Her blouse was disarrayed, and she smoothed her hair back with both hands as she sprawled beside him. Leaning forward, he slapped her sharply across the hip. She sat up, astonished.
“Very nice,” he added. “Only time I ever got documents delivered with a floor show. Now beat it.”
“You don’t like me?” Ugette swung her legs slowly over the side of the bed and straightened the seams of her stockings.
“I like you fine,” he said. “Tell Nash hello for me.”
She looked faintly startled; then, getting up, she made a soundless motion of contempt with her mouth, and stalked out of the room. The door slammed, and Gall reached for a cigarette. Very obvious, he thought. They must think I’m real stupid. Now if they’d only sent me hard-boiled eggs or coconuts, something you can’t drench with perfume, I might have bought it.
But there are minor agonies even in being right, so Gall twisted restlessly on the bed. When he had finished the cigarette, he took another shower, brushed his teeth, and went back to bed. His sleep was heated and uneven, invaded by dusky houris.
At the sound of the buzzer, Nash swore and groped his way out of bed. He toed into slippers and went shuffling toward the front door, his anger mounting. He thought it was Ugette, that she had forgotten her key. Therefore he was not prepared when he jerked the door open and saw the little man bowing.
“Captain Nash?”
“Yes.” Nash nodded curtly, and the man removed the Western hat that made him look like a coolie.
“Do you remember me, Captain?”
“Not your name,” answered Nash. “You were at the ambassador’s garden party, in Bangkok, a couple of years ago.”
“Right.” The man shifted and glanced down the dark hall. “May I come in?”
Nash stood aside, and the visitor crossed to the couch and sat down. “I am called Bo Hla,” he said easily.
“Also Colonel Hla.” Nash sat down.
“What else do you recall, Captain?”
“Oh, let’s see. You went to Japan with the Bogyoke, trained in the Japanese War College, and you’re a Karen leader. How’s that?”
“Capital!” said the colonel. “You have a fine memory.”
“That stupid rebellion.” Nash reached for a cigarette. “You still do it?”
Colonel Hla turned the battered hat in his hands. “Yes, we still do it. We still think democracy is a good thing.”
“It might be,” agreed Nash affably, squinting over the match flame. “Somebody ought to try it. Can we creep up on the point, Colonel?”
“Yes, sir. Mr. Varley is sending four planes to Rangoon this week. They will, of course, be used against our forces. We want a detailed report of what these planes are doing, and such a report would be worth money to us.”
Nash nodded. “What is money?” he asked lazily.
“In this case, $500 U.S. a week, for at least two months.” Colonel Hla was still looking down at his hat. “After that, we may be forced to make payment in sterling. We do not have many dollars.”
“That’s money,” admitted Nash. He clicked his teeth together thoughtfully. “Couldn’t you make it Swiss francs, instead of sterling?”
“No.” The visitor shook his head regretfully.
“All right.” Nash glanced at the Karen colonel. “First, there are two things you should know. I am an officer in Varley Airways, but I do not make the decisions. We have brought a man in from the States to handle operations. I will be in Rangoon, but only as an assistant. Second, I could not handle your deal unless you paid the dollars in advance.”
“We accept the conditions.” Hla nodded his head. His hair was cropped, beginning to silver. “We operate our own air force, of course, but it is vitally necessary that we know what the government planes are doing.” Taking a Manila envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket, he began to pull bundles of American currency from it.
The two men were sitting there, with Hla counting softly, when the front door opened and Ugette walked into the apartment. Nash raised his head and looked at her steadily.
“Well?” he asked harshly. She shook her head and moved past them into the bedroom. Colonel Hla resumed the interrupted count. After the money had changed hands, he and Hla began to scrawl duplicate sets of notes. The procedure was complicated, involving names, ciphers, and addresses. It took some time.
Joe Gall was washing nylon shorts in the bathroom when he heard the knock. Wringing the shorts out hurriedly, he went to the door. Varley stepped inside, nodded briefly, and sat down on the end of the bed. He watched as Gall went back to hang up the glistening shorts.
“Ought to raise your pay, maybe,” said Varley. “Why the home laundry?”
“No trouble.” Gall came out of the bathroom. “They dry in twenty minutes.”
“Don’t do it any more,” said Varley. He was dressed in white, and there were liverish patches under his eyes. A vein was pulsing on the right side of his tanned neck.
“Now look, Chief,” said Gall. “You got an airline operations job for me, and I’ll try to do it properly. How I do my laundry is my own business.”
“No,” answered Varley, “you’re wrong. You’ve been away from the Orient too long. There’s a room boy out in the hall who knows every damned thing you do. So you will not even blow your nose unless I say so. Take it like that, or I’ll have a police escort put you on the next plane to Manila.”
Gall looked Varley over carefully. His jaw jutted and he started to speak, but Varley interrupted.
“You’re getting five grand a month. As my operations manager, you got maybe a million bucks of my money on your back. You will sign a contract with a foreign government, for me, and call on a prime minister, as my representative. So I don’t want you washing your own underwear. It makes me look cheap.”
“All right.” Gall relaxed and nodded. “I can see it. I was wrong.”
Varley grunted and lighted a cigarette. “You leave tonight, for Rangoon, by way of Haiphong, in one of our Dougs. The biggest suite in the Strand Hotel is waiting for you, and I want you to scatter cash like a drunken hill raja. In two days I’ll send you another Doug and two Cats. When the War Office gives you the nod, fly everything at absolute maximum.”
“A fine thought,” said Gall. “It takes crews and mechanics, especially good crew chiefs. Mostly, it takes parts.”
“Some of it on your ship, the rest comes later.” Varley’s hands were never still; they arabesqued constantly, touching his thinning pate, his froggish mouth, and the pearl buttons on his jacket. “A friend of mine, Dan Marino, will meet you at the airport. He’s a big wheel in Burmese politics, and he’ll help until I get down there.”
“What is he, Italian?” asked Gall. He was facing the bureau mirror, looping a tie around his neck.
“No. Englishman.” Varley crushed his cigarette out. “We’re getting paid 1,800 rupees an hour on this operation.”
“How much?” Gall wheeled around from the mirror.
“That’s right.” Varley’s smile was tight. “Over $500 an hour.”
Gall fingered the collar of his shirt, computing. “My God, you could make—”
“That’s right.” Varley’s tone was grim. “You could make. I’ve been hanging on around here a long time, paying the cumshaw and taking the shake. Now I’m going to get well.”
“You sure as hell are!” Gall turned back to the mirror. “But there’s still a phony angle. You’re paying everybody too much, even at that price. I don’t want to be impolite, but it don’t square with what the boys in the back room say about you.”
Varley smiled. “You’re smart, Joe. That’s why I sent for you.”
“Not that smart.” Gall met Varley’s eyes in the mirror. “This hotel is crawling with unemployed pilots, some of them with 10,000 hours on heavy stuff. I ain’t been in an airplane in four years, but you jerk me out of the States. You bring in a lot of Filipino mechanics. Why?”
“You’re not running one airline, Joe. You’re running two,” said Varley quietly.
“I don’t get it.”
“Simple. Next week, in addition to the Rangoon fleet, I’m sending two more Daks and two more Cats into Burma. They’ll come in from the Assam side, and land at Toungoo.” Gall stopped tying his tie, and the faint hum of the air-conditioning unit was loud in the room. Varley put another cigarette between his lips, and Gall lit his slowly; his scar line stood out whitely.
“Toungoo. That’s rebel headquarters, isn’t it?”
“The main Karen base is there, yes.” Varley waited, passive as an Occidental buddha in his fresh white clothes. Cigarette smoke plumed toward the ceiling.
“You’re flying for both sides?”
“I contract charter flights,” said Varley crisply. “Two of my clients happen to be fighting each other.”
“Sure, sure.” Gall nodded, smiling mirthlessly. “With me in the middle, and both sides ready to blow my head off. Right?”
“You could get killed,” admitted Varley. “No question about that. But you might not. The planes are paired, even interchangeable. Same registration numbers painted on each pair; even got minor damage in the same place.”
Gall stared at Varley, a wry smile of unbelief pasted across his mouth. “How long could we get away with a thing like that?”
