A Lotus For Miss Quon (7 page)

He entered the sitting-room and turned on the light. It was while he was putting the nearly-full bottle of whisky into the holdall, after a quick drink, he became aware of the sound of voices in the street.

Hastily zipping up the holdall, he stepped to the window and peered through the shutters. What he saw gave him a paralysing shock.

Under the dim light of the street lamp, standing close together and looking at the villa, was Haum's fiancée and a policeman.

The girl was pointing to the sitting-room window and Jaffe realized they could see the light coming through the shutters. The girl was talking excitedly, making chopping movements with her left hand while she continued to point with her right.

The policeman slouched at her side, his thumbs hooked into his gun belt, looking from her to the villa and back to her again.

Jaffe watched them, his heart now pounding violently. For some minutes the girl continued to talk, but Jaffe, watching the policeman, realized she wasn't making any headway. This wasn't surprising, Jaffe thought, slightly relaxing. She was urging this little man to enter property belonging to an American and the policeman was thinking this could spark off an international incident with him on the receiving end of trouble.

Suddenly the policeman turned on the girl and began to jabber fiercely at her. Jaffe could hear his harsh voice raised in anger, but he had no idea what he was saying.

His words, however, had a startling effect on the girl. She cowered away from the policeman and by her gestures, Jaffe guessed she was trying to excuse herself. The policeman continued to berate her until with a further outburst of words, he motioned her violently to go away.

She looked once more at the villa, then turning, she began to walk reluctantly down the street while the policeman, nibbling at his chinstrap, glared after her.

Jaffe drew in a long breath of relief. He watched the policeman pull out his notebook and begin to write laboriously in the book. Having completed his notes, the policeman stood on the edge of the kerb and stared at the villa.

Jaffe wondered what Nhan was doing. He had now been gone over twenty minutes. He hoped she wouldn't panic and show herself. How long was this goddam monkey going to stand staring? Suppose he walked up the street, spotted the tail-lights of the Chrysler and poked his head into the car? He would give Nhan such a scare, she would probably have hysterics, and he would guess something was wrong.

Jaffe was just wondering if he should slip out the back way, climb the wall and get to Nhan through his neighbour's garden when the policeman seemed to lose interest in the villa, and turning, he slouched off down the street, following the direction of the girl and going away from the Chrysler.

Jaffe snatched up the holdall, turned off the light and let himself out into the dark garden. He locked the front door, then went cautiously to the gate and looked down the road. He could just make out the white figure of the policeman still moving away from him, and opening the gate, he ran silently to the Chrysler.

Nhan was standing in a tense attitude beside the Chrysler, looking towards him as he rounded the corner. He waved her back into the car, but she waited until he reached her.

"It's okay," he said, tossing the holdall into the back of the car. "Sorry I was so long. Come on, get in. We've got to get moving."

"I thought something terrible had happened to you," she said in a quavering voice as he bustled her into the car. "Oh, Steve! I'm frightened! If only you would go to the police! I'm sure . . ."

"Don't start that again!" he said as he started the car. "I know what you're doing. I've got to get out of Vietnam!" He drove fast down the street, heading out of town. "Do you think I can trust Blackie Lee to help me? You know him better than I do. Would he be likely to give me away to the police?"

She wrung her hands.

"I don't know. I don't know anything about him!"

Exasperated, he thought: why should she know anything about anything that could possibly help me? She's just a beautiful brainless doll! Damn it! I might just as well ask advice from a child!

Immediately he realized the injustice of this. Wasn't she taking him to a hiding place and wasn't she returning Wade's car? Without her he would be in a hell of a fix.

He put his hand down on hers and patted it.

"Relax, kid. It'll work out all right. In a couple of months when we are in Hong Kong, we'll be laughing about it."

"Oh no! We'll never laugh about it. Never!"

"There's one important thing you have to watch out for, Nhan. When the news breaks, Blackie will remember you spent this night with me. He'll probably question you. There's just a chance even the police will question you. You are to say I drove you to the river and talked to you for a couple of hours. You know that place where we go sometimes: where that old sunken junk is? That's where we went. I drove you home around eleven and left you. Will you remember that? It's a story they can't check."

She nodded. She was twisting a rag of a handkerchief in her fingers, and glancing at her, Jaffe thought despairingly: she will make a hopeless liar. No one will believe her.

"For God's sake, Nhan, don't let them trap you into telling them where I shall be hiding," he said roughly.

"I'll never tell anyone! Never!" She stiffened and spoke fiercely. "No one will ever make me tell!"

"And another thing; you mustn't tell anyone about the diamonds; not even your grandfather. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"You're sure your grandfather will help me?"

"He is wise and kind and he would never do anything to make me unhappy," she said proudly. "When I tell him we love each other, he will help you."

Jaffe thought irritably: if he's all that wise, he'll guess you're my mistress and he'll probably hate my guts and run to the police.

As if reading his thoughts, she said quietly, "It will be necessary to explain to him that shortly we are going to be married. When we arrive in Hong Kong, it is better for us to be married, don't you think, Steve?" This rather jarred Jaffe. He had never seriously thought of marriage after his first unhappy experience. He had been perfectly content to have Nhan as a mistress, but it had never occurred to him to marry her. Once he had sold the diamonds, he would be rich and he would be returning to America; a Vietnamese taxi dancer could be a hell of a hindrance in America, especially if she were his wife, but there was time to think about that: damn it! He wasn't in Hong Kong yet! He hadn't sold the diamonds yet!

But he realized it might be fatal to his plans if her grandfather wasn't told they were going to be married so he said lightly, "That's right, Nhan. You tell him that, but I want to explain to him personally the trouble I'm in. You just tell him I want shelter. I'll explain why. Do you understand?"

"Yes." She leaned against him, resting her small head on his shoulder. "I'm not so frightened now. Perhaps after all it will be all right."

She remained silent as if lost in a dream while Jaffe uneasy with his conscience, drove along the winding road where the rice fields, the odd thatched farmhouse on stilts and the occasional buffalo wallowing in swamp mud appeared and disappeared in the fast moving headlights of the Chrysler.

Four days previous to Jaffe's discovery of the diamonds, three peasants, dressed in their working black with grimy rags tied around their heads as protection against the sun, squatted in a semi-circle before a little brown man, wearing khaki shorts and shirt who sat on the stump of a tree and talked earnestly to them.

This man had come silently out of the forest and had entered the screened patch of ground where the young rice seedlings were sheltered from the wind. The three peasants who were working there had joined him immediately with a mixture of fear and excitement. They had seen him several times before. He was the leader of a guerrilla band of Viet Minh communists whose work was to spread alarm and despondency among the Vietnam farming community. Whenever he appeared, these three peasants, Ho Chi Minh sympathizers and indoctrined with a hatred for the Vietnam regime, knew he had a job for them.

The little brown man told them it had been decided to stage a demonstration of power as close to the Vietnam capital as possible. No undue risks were to be taken and as few lives as possible should be lost. This was a demonstration, not an operation, but it was necessary to shake the authorities in Saigon out of their complacency, and this could only be done if the demonstration was staged alarmingly close to the capital. The farm of the three peasants was situated in a rice field a half mile from the Saigon-Bien Hoa highway. The little brown man reminded them that they were conveniently placed to make an attack on the police post at the Bien Hoa — Thudaumot road junction.

This police post was to be destroyed and with it the three policemen who guarded the post. The demonstration was to take place on Sunday night at fifteen minutes past twelve. The day and time had been selected to ensure no passers-by nor vehicles would suffer.

The three peasants, he went on, must work out for themselves how the job was to be done. It was a perfectly simple demonstration, but they were to remember the timing was important.

When he had disappeared once more into the forest, after eating a bowl of rice with them, he left behind him a string bag containing six hand grenades.

It so happened that Jaffe, driving the Chrysler, approached the police post a few minutes before the attack was due to take place.

The three peasants lying in a ditch within fifteen yards of the police post saw his approaching headlights and looked blankly at each other: uncertain what to do. They had been lying in the damp ditch for over half an hour, and this was the first car they had seen on the road.

The three policemen, playing a form of Fan Tan with matches, also saw the approaching headlights and immediately got to their feet. While one of them swept up the matches, the other two snatched up their rifles.

The senior member of the three stepped into the road and began to flash a torch fitted with a red lamp.

Seeing the red light flashing some two hundred yards ahead of him, Jaffe slowed down, cursing under his breath. He hadn't expected to be stopped. He had hoped he would have been able to drive past the police post, the C.D. plates giving him immunity, but it now looked as if he would have to stop.

Questions would be asked if the police saw he had had a Vietnamese passenger and to avoid complications, he told Nhan to squat on the floor.

He reached over the back seat and pulled his holdall on top of her, screening her from sight. He was rattled, and without considering the consequences, he took the gun from the holdall and pushed it under his thigh nearest the door.

By now, the car was barely moving. The powerful headlights lit up the policeman who was pointing his rifle at the car.

As Jaffe pulled up, the luminous hands of the cheap watch being studied by one of the hidden peasants showed exactly fifteen minutes past twelve..

The other two policemen came out of the post and separated: one standing at the head of the car, the other at the tail. Both of them levelled their rifles at Jaffe who could feel the sweat running down his face and hear the heavy thud of his heartbeats.

As the policeman with the torch began to move towards Jaffe, one of the hidden peasants with an indifferent shrug of his shoulders, pulled the pin from the grenade he was holding and lobbed it through the open window of the police post.

He had been told to make the attack at exactly twelve-fifteen, and no one now could accuse him of disobeying an order.

The grenade dropped on to the table at which the three policemen had been gambling and exploded. It went off with a blinding flash and a bang that woke many of the farm workers, sleeping in their thatched huts in the neighbourhood.

A fragment of the grenade sliced into the neck of the policeman with the torch, cutting his jugular vein. The force of the explosion sent another of the policemen reeling against the shattered wall of the post. It also splintered the windshield of the Chrysler and knocked Jaffe half silly.

The remaining policeman at the rear of the car, although shaken, threw himself face down in the road and began to crawl under the car.

One of the peasants seeing this move, rolled his grenade along the road and into the policeman's face. The grenade blew the policeman's head from his shoulders and shrapnel tore the back tyres of the Chrysler to ribbons.

The third grenade was lobbed into the police post, killing the third policeman who had darted in there for cover and completed the destruction of the jerry-built building. Stunned and bleeding from a cut in his forehead from a flying stone, Jaffe sagged in his seat, too dazed to realize what had happened.

The three peasants had risen cautiously, from their hiding-place and were surveying the scene in the bright moonlight with satisfaction mixed with apprehension. They were pleased to see the grenades had done their work so well, but it seemed that the European driver of this big American car had also suffered, and that would be a bad thing for them once the little brown man heard about it.

Motioning the other two to stay where they were, the peasant with the watch who was the leader of the band moved forward cautiously.

Jaffe saw a dark shape coming towards him. Keeping still, he eased the gun from under his thigh and as the peasant came within six feet of him, Jaffe lifted the gun and fired at him.

The .45 soft-nose bullet smashed into the peasant's face and he went over backwards like a shot rabbit. He lay in the glare of the car's headlights so that his two companions saw with horror the brains, bone and blood: all that was left of his head and face.