As they came to a bend, McCue had reached round and fired three shots into the blackness. Nothing. So he had moved on. The tunnel straightened out and came to a dead end. A slight earth-fall betrayed the presence of an overhead trapdoor. As he reached it, sweat running in clear rivulets down his blackened face, the trapdoor slid into place. The VC was right above him. His mouth dry, he had raised his pistol, ready to fire, and pushed the trapdoor up. Something fell, almost into his lap. ‘Grenade!’ he screamed, and started scrambling back along the tunnel. The explosion ruptured one of his ear drums, and his legs were peppered with grenade fragments. The second Rat had dragged the bleeding and half-conscious McCue back along the tunnel. It had taken nearly an hour to get him to the surface.
The smell of cooking came to them from the back of the house. Outside, the cicadas kept up an incessant chorus and the murky waters of the klong lapped constantly at the stilts. Slattery passed round cigarettes and the three men sat smoking in silence for some minutes. At length McCue looked at Elliot and broke the silence. ‘You were responsible for the Aden massacre.’
Slattery glanced at Elliot anxiously, but the Englishman was impassive. ‘It’s what they said at the court martial.’ He stared back at McCue, unblinking.
‘Apart from that, I don’t know anything about you,’ McCue said.
‘No one does, Billy boy, no one does,’ Slattery said cheerfully. ‘But he’s the chief. And take my word for it, a handy man in a scrap.’
McCue’s eyes never left Elliot. ‘What’s your experience in south-east Asia?’
‘Nam.’ McCue raised an eyebrow, and Elliot answered the unasked question. ‘Freelance.’
A flicker of distaste crossed McCue’s face. ‘A headhunter.’
‘I only counted them.’ It wasn’t a defence. Just a statement of fact. In the early days in Nam, some of the mercenaries had been paid by the head. Literally. Elliot had not been squeamish about it. Just practical. Heads were bloody and cumbersome. He knew McCue was weighing him up, and he liked that. Soldiers who thought before they acted stood a better chance of survival. He had already decided that McCue was in.
McCue said, ‘When do we go?’
And Elliot knew that he, too, had passed muster. ‘Ten days. My fixer in the UK has set us up a contact here in Bangkok. He’ll provide arms, kit and supplies. We’ll make contact tomorrow. He’ll also provide passes to get us into selected camps along the border. I want to do a recce, talk to some of the refugees. And we’ll need a guide. Someone to get us across the border. Then we’ll be on our own. Initial planning meeting in a week.’
Lotus brought in half a dozen bowls of steaming food on a tray and laid it on the floor beside them. With a careful, elegant precision, she knelt down and placed each of the bowls on the floor in the centre of the small circle of men. McCue described each dish. ‘Kaeng jeud, soup with vegetables and pork. Khao phat muu, fried rice with shrimp. Phat siyu, noodles and soy sauce. Plaa priaw waan, sweet and sour fish. Phat phak lai yang, stir-fried vegetables. Yam neua, hot and sour grilled beef salad.’
‘Jesus, that’s some spread, Billy. Tell the little lady it’s much appreciated.’
She nodded, unsmiling. ‘Thank you.’ She passed them each a bowl and chopsticks.
‘Tuck in, chief. Thailand’s finest. All cooked in lovely klong water, that right, Billy?’ McCue inclined his head in acknowledgement. ‘Wash, shit and cook in the stuff.’ Slattery glanced at Elliot. ‘But don’t worry, chief, suck it and see. You’ve had your cholera booster, ain’t ya?’
On the way back Elliot was silent. The hot air battered against his face as their driver, now glazed and unreachable, drove their hang yao through the myriad waterways with a reckless disregard for the safety of anyone. Slattery hung on to the side of the boat grinning maniacally, eyes on fire. ‘Fantastic, chief! Absolutely fantastic!’ They had consumed enough Mekong, a distilled rice concoction, to leave them with as much disregard for their safety as their driver.
Elliot was miles away. McCue’s total commitment to his child had touched a raw nerve. However little he cared for himself, or even his wife, he was prepared to die to provide the chance of a better future for his son. Elliot had a picture in his head that wouldn’t go away. Of a young woman in a churchyard, all in black, lifting her veil and looking at him without recognition. Somehow that had been more painful than the years of denial. He had known her at once, felt he would have known her anywhere. And he had provided for her, hadn’t he? After a fashion? He shook his head. It was the Mekong talking, not his conscience. He had no conscience, or if he had it had never offered him guidance, only pain, somewhere deep inside, buried away from public gaze.
‘I could do with a real drink,’ Slattery shouted above the roar of the engine.
Elliot looked at him. ‘What age do you reckon McCue is?’
Slattery frowned. ‘I dunno. About thirty? Why?’
Elliot shrugged. ‘Doesn’t matter.’
‘So what about that drink?’
‘Why not.’ Elliot felt like getting drunk.
Chapter Ten
Lisa opened a small, white-painted wooden gate and started down the path through the trees towards the house. It was a mock Tudor building, white with black-painted cross-beams and latticed windows. The garden was extensive and well kept, a path leading round the side to a large lawn at the back which sloped down towards the river’s edge. The weather had changed overnight. It had been bitterly cold, threatening snow for Christmas. But today it was unseasonably mild, an almost springlike warmth in the sun that slipped out periodically from behind the scudding white clouds that raced across the winter sky.
She was apprehensive, but the passing days had blunted hope and she expected nothing. She had returned several times to the mews house, but always there had been no one there. If this proved another dead end, she had resolved to put it all behind her, return to college after the holidays and try to build a new life for herself. She would tell herself that, after all, her father really was dead as her mother had always told her. In time she might even grow to believe it. She would probably marry David, raise children and lead a normal life. Normal! Whatever that was.
She knocked on the door and waited, praying that at least someone would answer, even if only to tell her she had the wrong address. Not knowing was the worst. The sun slipped behind a cloud and a shadow fell over her like fading hope. She knocked again and was about to turn away when the door opened abruptly. A grey-haired man in a green pullover, baggy trousers and tennis shoes peered out at her. She hesitated, not quite sure now what to say. ‘Yes?’ the man asked.
‘Sergeant Samuel Blair?’ she stammered, aware of the colour rising on her cheeks. He frowned, eyeing her suspiciously.
‘Who wants to know?’
‘I’m Lisa Elliot,’ she said.
Blair was at a loss for words. He had figured her for some young reporter trying to dig up an old story. It happened from time to time. But he saw now that she was too young, her face flushed with uncertainty.
‘You’d better come in,’ he said at length.