Honourable Schoolboy (61 page)

‘Why was this a problem?’ Ricardo had asked, not unnaturally.

Suppose, said Tiu, the country was Burma. Just suppose. In modern Burma, officials were not allowed to enrich themselves, nor could they easily bank money. In such a case, some other means of payment would have to be found.

Ricardo suggested gold. Tiu, said Ricardo, regretted himself: in the country he had in mind, even gold was difficult to negotiate. The currency selected in this case was therefore to be opium, he said: four hundred kilos of it. The distance was not great, the inside of a day would see Ricardo there and back; the fee was five thousand dollars, and the remaining details would be vouchsafed to him just before departure in order to avoid ‘a needless erosion of the memory’, as Ricardo put it, in another of those bizarre linguistic flourishes which must have formed a major part of Lizzie’s education at his hands. Upon Ricardo’s return from what Tiu was certain would be a painless and instructive flight, five thousand US dollars in convenient denominations would at once be his - subject of course to Ricardo producing, in whatever form should prove convenient, confirmation that the consignment had reached its destination. A receipt, for example.

Ricardo, as he described his own footwork, now showed a crude cunning in his dealings with Tiu. He told him he would think about this offer. He spoke of other pressing commitments and his ambitions to open his own airline. Then he set to work to find out who the hell Tiu was. He discovered at once that, following their interview, Tiu had returned not to Bangkok but to Hong Kong on the direct flight. He made Lizzie pump the Chiu Chow boys at Indocharter, and one of them let slip that Tiu was a big cat in China Airsea, because when he was in Bangkok he stayed in the China Airsea suite at the Erawan Hotel. By the time Tiu returned to Vientiane to hear Ricardo’s answer, Ricardo therefore knew a lot more about him even, though he made little of it, that Tiu was right-hand man to Drake Ko.

Five thousand US dollars for a one-day trip, he now told Tiu at this second interview, was either too little or too much. If the job was as soft as Tiu insisted, it was too much. If it was as totally crazy as Ricardo suspected, it was too little. Ricardo suggested a different arrangement: ‘a business compromise’, he said. He was suffering, he explained - in a phrase he had no doubt used often - from ‘a temporary problem of liquidity’. In other words (Jerry interpreting) he was broke as usual, and the creditors were at his throat. What he required immediately was a regular income, and this was best obtained by Tiu arranging for him to be taken on by Indocharter as a pilot-consultant for a year at an agreed salary of twenty-five thousand US dollars.

Tiu did not seem too shocked by the idea, said Ricardo. Upstairs in the stilt-house, the room grew very quiet.

Secondly, instead of being paid five thousand dollars on delivery of the consignment, Ricardo wanted an advance of twenty thousand US dollars now to settle his outstanding commitments. Ten thousand would be considered earned as soon as he had delivered the opium, and the other ten thousand would be deductible ‘at source’ - another Ricardo nom de guerre - from his Indocharter salary over the remaining months of his employment. If Tiu and his associates couldn’t manage this, Ricardo explained, then unfortunately he would have to leave town before he could make the opium delivery.

Next day, with variations, Tiu agreed to the terms. Rather than advance Ricardo twenty thousand dollars, Tiu and his associates proposed to buy Ricardo’s debts directly from his creditors. That way, he explained, they would feel more comfortable. The same day, the arrangement was ’sanctified’ - Ricardo’s religious convictions were never far away - by a formidable contract, drawn up in English and signed by both parties. Ricardo - Jerry silently recorded - had just sold his soul.

‘What did Lizzie think of the deal?’ Jerry asked.

He shrugged his glistening shoulders. ‘Women,’ Ricardo said.

‘Sure,’ said Jerry, returning his knowing smile.

Ricardo’s future thus secured, he resumed a ’suitable professional life-style’, as he called it. A scheme to float an all-Asian football pool claimed his attention, so did a fourteen-year-old girl in Bangkok named Rosie whom, on the strength of his Indocharter salary, he periodically visited for the purpose of training her for life’s great stage. Occasionally, but not often, he flew the odd run for Indocharter, but nothing demanding:

‘Chaing Mai couple of times. Saigon. Couple of times into the Shans visit Charlie Marshall’s old man, collect a little mud maybe, take him a few guns, rice, gold. Battambang, maybe.’

‘Where’s Lizzie meanwhile?’ Jerry asked, in the same easy man-to-man tone as before.

The same contemptuous shrug. ‘Sitting in Vientiane. Does her knitting. Scrubs a little at the Constellation. That’s an old woman already, Voltaire. I need youth. Optimism. Energy. People who respect me. It is my nature to give. How can I give to an old woman?’

‘Until?’ Jerry asked.

‘Huh?’

‘So when did the kissing stop?’

Misunderstanding the phrase, Ricardo looked suddenly very dangerous, and his voice dropped to a low warning. ‘What the hell you mean?’

Jerry soothed him with the friendliest of smiles.

‘How long did you draw your pay and kick around before Tiu collected on the contract?’

Six weeks, said Ricardo, recovering his composure. Maybe eight. Twice the trip was on, then cancelled. Once, it seemed, he was ordered to Chiang Mai and loafed for a couple of days till Tiu called to say the people at the other end weren’t ready. Increasingly Ricardo had the feeling he was mixed up in something deep, he said, but history, he implied, had always cast him for the great roles of life and at least the creditors were off his back.

Ricardo broke off, and once more studied Jerry closely, scratching his beard in contemplation. Finally he sighed, and pouring them both a whisky, pushed a glass across the table. Below them, the perfect day was preparing its own slow death. The green trees had grown heavy. The wood-smoke from the girls’ cookpot smelt damp.

‘Where you go from here, Voltaire?’

‘Home,’ said Jerry.

Ricardo let out a fresh burst of laughter.

‘You stay the night, I send you one of my girls.’

‘I’ll make my own damn way, actually, sport,’ Jerry said. Like fighting animals, the two men surveyed each other, and for a moment the spark of battle was very close indeed.

‘You some crazy fellow, Voltaire,’ Ricardo muttered.

But Sarratt man prevailed. ‘Then one day the trip was on, right?’ Jerry said. ‘And nobody cancelled. Then what? Come on, sport, let’s have the story.’

‘Sure,’ said Ricardo. ‘Sure, Voltaire,’ and drank, still watching him. ‘How it happened,’ he said. ‘Listen, I tell you how it happened, Voltaire.’

And then I’ll kill you, said his eyes.

Ricardo was in Bangkok. Rosie was being demanding. Tiu had insisted Ricardo should always be within reach and one morning early, maybe five o’clock, a messenger arrived at their love-nest summoning him to the Erawan immediately. Ricardo was impressed by the suite. He would have wished it for himself.

‘Ever seen Versailles, Voltaire? A desk so big as a B52. This Tiu is a very different human individual to the cat-scent coolie who came to Vientiane, okay? This is a very influential person. Ricardo, he tell me, this time is for certain. This time we deliver. ‘

His orders were simple. In a few hours there was a commercial flight to Chiang Mai. Ricardo should take it. Rooms had been booked for him at the Hotel Rincome. He should stay the night there. Alone. No drink, no women, no society.

‘ You better take plenty to read, Mr Ricardo, he tell me. Mr Tiu, I tell him. You tell me where to fly. You don’t tell me where to read. Okay? This guy is very arrogant behind his big desk, understand me, Voltaire? I am obliged to teach him manners.’

Next morning, someone would call for Ricardo at six o’clock at his hotel announcing himself as a friend of Mr Johnny. Ricardo should go with him.

Things went as planned. Ricardo flew to Chiang Mai, spent an abstemious night at the Rincome, and at six o’clock two Chinese, not one, called for him and drove him north for some hours till they came to a Hakka village. Leaving the car, they walked for half an hour till they reached an empty field with a hut at one end of it. Inside the hut stood ‘a dandy little Beechcraft’, brand new, and inside the Beechcraft sat Tiu With a lot of maps and documents on his lap, in the seat beside the pilot’s. The rear seats had been removed to make space for the gunny bags. A couple of Chinese crushers stood off watching, and the overall mood, Ricardo implied, was not all he would have liked.

‘First I got to empty my pockets. My pockets are very personal to me, Voltaire. They are like a lady’s handbag. Mementos. Letters. Photographs. My Madonna. They retain everything. My passport, my pilot’s licence, my money… even my bracelets,’ he said, and lifted his brown arms so that the gold links jingled.

After that, he said with a frown of disapproval, there were yet more documents to sign. Such as a power of attorney, signing over whatever bits of Ricardo’s life were left to him after his Indocharter contract. Such as various confessions to ‘previous technically illegal undertakings’, several of them - Ricardo asserted in considerable outrage - performed on behalf of Indocharter. One of the Chinese crushers even turned out to be a lawyer. Ricardo considered this particularly unsporting.

Only then did Tiu unveil the maps, and the instructions, which Ricardo now reproduced in a blend of his own style and Tiu’s: ‘ You head north, Mr Ricardo, and you keep heading north. Maybe you clip the edge off Laos, maybe you stay over the Shans, I don’t give a damn. Flying is your business, not mine. Fifty miles inside the China border, you pick up the Mekong and follow it. Thon you keep going north till you find a little hill town called Tienpao, stuck on a tributary of that very famous river. Head due east twenty miles, you find a landing strip, one white flare, one green, you do me a favour please. You land there. A man will be waiting for you. He speaks very lousy English, but he speaks it. Here is half one dollar bill. This man will have the other half. Unload the opium. This man will give you a package, and certain particular instructions. The package is your receipt, Mr Ricardo. When you return, bring it with you and obey all instructions most absolutely, including especially your place of landing. Do you understand me entirely, Mr Ricardo? ‘

‘What kind of package?’ Jerry asked.

‘He don’t say and I don’t care. You do that, he tell me, and keep your big mouth shut; Mr Ricardo, and my associates will look after you all your life like you are their son. Your children, they look after, your girls. Your girl in Bali. All your life they will be grateful men. But you screw them, or you go big-mouthing round town, they definitely kill you, Mr Ricardo, believe me. Not tomorrow, maybe, not the next day, but they definitely kill you. We got a contract, Mr Ricardo. My associates don’t never break a contract. They are very legal men. I got sweat on me, Voltaire. I am in perfect condition, a fine athlete, but I sweat. Don’t you worry, Mr Tiu, I tell him. Mr Tiu, sir, any time you want to fly opium into Red China, Ricardo’s your man. Voltaire, believe me, I was very concerned.’

Ricardo squeezed his nose as if it were smarting with sea water.

‘Hear this, Voltaire. Listen most attentively. When I was young and crazy, I flew twice into Yunnan province for the Americans. To be a hero, one must do certain crazy things, and if you crash, maybe one day they get you out. But each time I flew, I look down at the lousy brown earth and I see Ricardo in a wood cage. No women, extremely lousy food, no place to sit, no place to stand or sleep, chains on my arms, no status or position assured to me. See the imperialist spy and running dog. Voltaire, I do not like this vision. To be locked all my life in China for pushing opium? I am not enthusiastic. Sure, Mr Tiu’! Bye-bye! See you this afternoon! I have to consider most seriously.’

The brown haze of the sinking sun suddenly filled the room. On Ricardo’s chest, despite the perfection of his condition, the same sweat had gathered. It lay in beads over the matted black hair and on his oiled shoulders.

‘Where was Lizzie in all this?’ Jerry asked again.

Ricardo’s answer was nervous and already angry.

‘In Vientiane! On the moon! In bed with Charlie! What the hell do I care?’

‘Did she know of the deal with Tiu?’

Ricardo gave only a scowl of contempt.

Time to go, Jerry thought. Time to light the last fuse and run. Below, Mickey was making a great hit with Ricardo’s women. Jerry could hear his sing-song chattering, broken by their high-pitched laughter, like the laughter of a whole class at a girls’ school.

‘So away you flew,’ he said. He waited, but Ricardo remained lost in thought.

‘You took off and headed north,’ Jerry said.

Lifting his eyes a little, Ricardo held Jerry in a bullish, furious stare, till the invitation to describe his own heroic feat finally got the better of him.

‘I never flew so good in my life. Never. I was magnificent. That little black Beechcraft. North a hundred miles because I don’t trust nobody. Maybe those clowns have got me locked on a radar screen somewhere? I don’t take no chances. Then east, but very slowly, very low over the mountains, Voltaire. I fly between the cow’s legs, okay? In the war we have little landing strips up there, crazy listening places in the middle of badland. I flew those places, Voltaire. I know them. I find one right at the top of a mountain, you can reach it only from the air. I take a look, I see the fuel dump, I land, I refuel, I take a sleep, it’s crazy. But Jesus, Voltaire, it’s not Yunnan province, okay? It’s not China, and Ricardo, the American war criminal and opium smuggler, is not going to spend the rest of his life hanging from a hen-hook in Peking, okay? Listen, I brought that plane back south again. I know places, I know places I could lose a whole air force, believe me.’

Ricardo became suddenly very vague about the next few months of his life. He had heard of the Flying Dutchman, and he said that was what he became. He flew, hid again, flew, resprayed the Beechcraft, changed the registration once a month, sold the opium in small lots in order not to be conspicuous, a kilo here, fifty there, bought a Spanish passport from an Indian but had no faith in it, kept away from everyone he knew, including Rosie in Bangkok, and even Charlie Marshall. It was also the time, Jerry remembered from his briefing by old Craw, when Ricardo sold Ko’s opium to the Enforcement heroes, but got the cold shoulder on his story. On Tiu’s orders, said Ricardo, the Indocharter boys had been quick to post him dead, and changed his flight-route southward to distract attention. Ricardo heard of this and did not object to being dead.