Sad Wind From the Sea - Jack Higgins [7]
She smiled tightly. 'My mother. They killed my mother. Father and I had been out for the day. We got home just as three Communist soldiers were leaving. My father had an automatic rifle. He shot them.' She gazed away out over the water, into the past. 'He did it very expertly. He must have had quite a hard war.'
'Finish your drink,' Hagen told her. 'Brandy is the best pick-me-up I know.'
She gulped the brandy too fast, choked and made a wry face. After a moment she continued. 'Dad couldn't forgive himself for not getting us out sooner. You see he'd been preparing for quite some time. He had a thirty-foot launch hidden in a nearby creek and we were going to go down-river to the coast and then south to Hanoi.'
'Why had he delayed so long?' Hagen demanded.
She traced a delicate pattern with a finger in a pool of spilled brandy. 'Because he'd promised to take something with him and it wasn't ready.'
Hagen swallowed some of his brandy and said, 'Was it all that important?'
'If you'd call a quarter of a million dollars important,' she said calmly.
Hagen finished his brandy and put the glass down very carefully. 'How much did you say?'
She smiled. 'I'm not exaggerating. A quarter of a million - in gold. There was a Buddhist monastery near the plantation. The gold was theirs. They knew that sooner or later the Communists would arrive to loot the place. They decided that they'd rather see their treasure doing good in the hands of some relief organization than swelling the war chest of Ho Chi-minh.'
'Did you say in gold, angel?' Hagen asked.
She nodded. 'Gold bars. That's what caused the delay. They melted down some statues. It was the only safe way of transporting the stuff.'
'What happened?' Hagen demanded. 'What did your father do with it?'
She fiddled with her glass for a little while. 'Oh, he had it loaded into the cabin in boxes and we set off. There were just three of us. The deck-hand was our Malayan house-boy, Tewak. We reached the coast and ran into a gunboat. There was a fight. I remember my father ramming the other boat and throwing a hand grenade. I don't know, really. It's difficult to recall these things clearly. It was confused - and besides, he was badly hit.' She brooded for a moment and then looked up suddenly. 'Do you know the Kwai Marshes, just over the border from Viet Minh into China?'
Hagen nodded. 'I know it. It's a pest hole. Hundreds of miles of channels and reeds, lagoons and swamp. Rotten with disease.'
She nodded. 'That's the place. That's where Dad took the boat. She was leaking badly. He ran her into the Kwai Marshes. She sank in a little lagoon surrounded by reeds.' Hagen waited for the end. She sat back suddenly and said briskly: 'After that it was simple. My father died the next day. It took Tewak and me three days to get out of the marshes. We went down the coast to Haiphong and from there to Saigon. Luckily I had a little money in a bank there.'
'What about the gold?' Hagen said. 'You told the French authorities, I suppose?'
'Oh, yes,' she said. 'I told the French. They weren't interested in sending an expedition into Communist China to retrieve a mere quarter of a million dollars. It wouldn't keep the war going for ten minutes.'
'I see,' Hagen said carefully. 'So the gold is still there?'
She nodded. 'Still there. I've tried to get a boat to take me back to the marshes. At first people were too scared to take the risk. Now, I've not got enough money to pay. That's why we came to Macao.'
'We?' Hagen said.
She explained. 'Tewak. He's stayed with me the whole time. He has friends in Macao. We came here because it was our last hope. He's been trying to borrow a boat for the past three weeks.'
Light suddenly dawned on Hagen. 'It was Tewak who rang you last night?'
She nodded. 'That's right. He asked me to get a taxi at once and meet him where you found me. When I got there he wasn't to be seen. After the taxi had left those two men appeared.'
Hagen said, 'It looks as though the Reds don't intend to let that gold slip through their fingers.'
'Not