Jaffe had shaken his head with a grimace.
“Not for me,” he said. “I don’t care for coloured women.”
Mayhew had laughed.
“I’ll tell you this: an Asian girl is far less complicated and demanding than a European girl. She is far less expensive and considerably more competent in bed. You must remember that Asian women have a tradition for pandering to the comfort and wishes of men, and that is important. You talk to Blackie Lee. He’ll find you someone. Not all his taxi girls are prostitutes, you know. He has quite a few who are very decent and hard-working. You talk to him. He’ll find you someone.”
“Thanks for the suggestion,” Jaffe said, “but not for me.”
Eventually, however, it was the boredom and the loneliness of the week-ends that finally drove Jaffe to the Paradise Club. He had been surprised by the friendly atmosphere of the place and equally surprised that the evening had passed so quickly. He had danced with a number of the girls and had found them amusing. He had spent some time drinking whisky with Blackie Lee and he had found the fat Chinese pleasant company. The evening didn’t cost him all that much either.
Jaffe began to go to the club regularly. It certainly solved the problem of what to do with himself in the evenings. A Month or Mater, Blackie Lee had casually suggested Jaffe should take a regular girl.
“There is a girl who could do with some help,” he had said. “She has a big family to support. I’ve talked to her, and she’s willing. It’s better to have regular girl. Do you want to meet her?”
“What’s this about a big family?” Jaffe had asked, frowning. “Do you mean she’s married with a string of kids?”
Blackie Lee had giggled.
“She isn’t married. She has a mother, three young brothers and an old uncle to support. I’ll send her over. If she suits you, tell her. I’ve fixed everything.”
“Well, I don’t know,” Jaffe had said, but he was interested. “Let’s see her anyway.”
It was while Jaffe was standing on the step ladder, carefully marking with a pencil the place where he was to drive the nail on which to hang the picture, that he recalled his first meeting with Nhan Lee Quon.
He had been sitting at a table well away from the noisy Philippine band. The dance floor was crowded. The lighting in the hall was so dim that it was impossible to distinguish the dancer’s features. It was impossible too to recognize anyone sitting within ten feet of you, and this obscurity gave him a sense of relaxation and isolation.
Nhan Lee Quon had appeared by his side, silently and unexpectedly. He had been looking down the aisle between the tables, hoping to catch sight of her before she reached his table, but she had approached him from behind.
She was wearing the Vietnam national costume. She had on white silk trousers over which was a rose-coloured tunic sheath of nylon. Her black glossy hair was parted in the centre of her small head and hung in soft waves to her shoulders. Her perfect skin was the colour of very old ivory. Her bridgeless nose, her lips, slightly thicker than the lips of a European woman, and her fine black eyes gave her a doll-like appearance. Her bone structure was so delicate that she reminded Jaffe of an intricate carving of ivory.
She smiled at him and he had never seen such strong white teeth.
His eyes moved curiously from her face to her throat encased in the high collar of her tunic and then down to the two mounds that thrust out the rose-pink sheath in a pathetic but defiant voluptuousness.
Jaffe had heard all about the deceptiveness of the Vietnam girl’s figure. Sam Wade who was something unimportant in the American Embassy had enlightened him when he had first come to Saigon.
“Look, fella,” Wade had said, “don’t let those curves kid you. These dolls are built like boys. They are as flat in front as they are behind. It was only when they saw Lollo and Bardot on the movies that they wised up to what they lacked. You take a walk through the market. You’ll see where they get those shapes. I reckon a set of falsies is the hottest sales project in this police ridden hell-hole of a city.”
“I am Nhan Lee Quon,” the girl had said as she sat down opposite Jaffe. She spoke excellent French. “You may call me Nhan.”
They stared for a long moment at each other, then Jaffe stubbed out his cigarette, aware of a sudden tingling excitement.
“I’m Steve Jaffe,” he said. “You may call me Steve.”
It had been as simple as that.
Jaffe reached down for the nail which Haum gave him. He positioned the point of the nail exactly on his pencil mark, then he accepted the hammer Haum handed up to him. He gave the head of the nail a sharp tap.
In this way, he found the diamonds.
2
Under the impact of the hammer against the head of the nail, a six-inch square segment of the wall collapsed in a flurry of plaster and dust, revealing a deep hole.
Jaffe, poised on the step-ladder, stared with consternation at the damage he had caused, then he said violently, “Oh, double hell!”
Haum, expressing himself in the Vietnamese manner of showing grief, laughed in a high cackle that infuriated Jaffe.
“Oh, shut up!” He exclaimed and put the hammer down on the top rung of the ladder. “Why goddam it, the wall’s made of paper!”
Then it occurred to him that the wall wasn’t made of paper but was at least the thickness of two feet, and the hole in the wall was a cunning hiding place: a hidden safe which probably had been there for a long time.
Cautiously, he dipped his hand into the dark opening. His fingers touched something. He lifted out a small leather bag, and as he did so, the rotten bottom of the bag disintegrated, and from it poured bright, sparkling objects that bounced on the parquet floor.
He recognized the tiny objects as diamonds. They made a disjointed pattern of fiery brilliance around the foot of the ladder. He stared down at their glittering magnificence. Although his knowledge of diamonds was no more than the average man’s, he knew these stones were worth an enormous sum of money. There seemed to be at least a hundred of them; the majority of them were the size of pea seeds. He felt his mouth turn dry and his heart begin to thump with excitement.
Squatting down on his haunches, Haum made a tutting sound with his tongue; a sound the Vietnamese make when they are excited. He picked up one of the diamonds and examined it.
Jaffe watched him.
There was a long pause, then Haum glanced up and the two men stared at each other. With some hesitancy because of Jaffe’s tenseness, Haum smiled, revealing his gold-capped teeth.
“These diamonds, sir,” he said, “belonged to General Nguyen Van Tho. The police have been searching for them for years.”
Very slowly, as if he were walking on egg shells, Jaffe climbed down from the ladder and squatted beside his servant.
Jaffe was an immensely powerfully-built man. He was over six feet tall. His shoulder span would have satisfied two averagely built Europeans. In his younger days, he had been a fanatical physical culture enthusiast. He had gone in for weight-lifting, football, boxing and wrestling. Even after a five year lay off, he was still in pretty good condition, and as he squatted down beside Haum, the physical difference between the two men was sharply contrasted. Beside Jaffe’s muscular bulk, the Vietnamese seemed like an undernourished pigmy.