James Chase: A Lotus for Miss Quon

The Colonel drew in a deep breath.

“He is there now?”

“Yes.”

The Colonel leaned closer, his little eyes gleaming. He whispered so no one but Nhan could hear him. “He has the diamonds with him?”

“Yes.”

The Colonel straightened.

“Come,” he said to Lam-Than. “I’ve wasted enough time already. I’m going to Dalat immediately.”

Lam-Than was looking at Nhan.

“She may be lying to gain time,” he said.

The Colonel’s face darkened.

“She wouldn’t dare! If she lied to me I would cut her to pieces!” He caught hold of Nhan’s arm and shook her.

“Listen to me!” the Colonel snarled. “Are you lying? You’d better tell the truth. If I find you are lying, you will regret it.”

Nhan shook her head weakly.

She forced herself to say in a quavering voice, “It is the truth. He is in Dalat.”

The Colonel pushed the little man away.

“She isn’t lying,” he said. “She has had enough. She has been a fool to have resisted so long.” He started towards the door, then paused to look at the two little men. “Give her water and let her rest. Turn off the light. I will return in about ten hours. I’ll decide then what is to be done with her.”

Nhan began to sob convulsively. Ten hours! With ten hours rest and only another sixteen hours to endure: surely she could hang on?

Back in his office, the Colonel told Lam-Than to call Inspector Ngoc-Linh.

“He and I will go to Dalat,” the Colonel said. “When we have killed the American and I have the diamonds, I will get rid of the Inspector. The American will have shot him, and in trying to protect the Inspector, I will have been forced to kill the American.”

“You may not find the American there,” Lam-Than said. “I still think she could be lying.”

“He will be there,” the Colonel snarled. “Your pessimism bores me. She was not lying.”

Lam-Than bowed. He wasn’t convinced. He went away to fetch the Inspector.

IT took five hours of difficult driving to reach Dalat. The road wasn’t good, and although the Colonel kept urging the Inspector to drive faster, the Inspector was handicapped by the darkness, and the surface of the road.

They arrived at the Dalat railway station at two o’clock a.m. It took the Colonel a little over half an hour to convince himself there was no house near the station with a red roof and a yellow gate.

The violence of his fury when he realized that Nhan had lied to him made the Inspector recoil from him. It was fortunate for Nhan that his maniacal rage made rational thought impossible. His only desire was to get back to Saigon as fast as he could and get his hands on this woman who had dared to have sent him on a wild goose chase. If he had paused to think, he would have gone to the police post and telephoned Lam-Than telling him to re-commence torturing Nhan immediately, but he was past thinking.

He got back into the car and screamed at the Inspector to return to Saigon. The Inspector drove as fast as he dared, but it wasn’t fast enough. The Colonel suddenly yelled at him to stop and get out of the driving-seat. He got under the wheel himself, and for the next twenty miles the Inspector sat stiff with fear as the car roared madly down the winding road at a speed that invited disaster.

It wasn’t long before the accident happened. Coming out of a sharp bend at an impossible speed, the car suddenly skidded, the off-side tyre burst and the car slammed into the face of the mountain.

Although both men were severely shaken, neither of them were injured. It took them some minutes to recover. On inspection, the car was found to be wrecked beyond repair.

The accident had happened on a lonely stretch of the road. The Inspector knew there was no chance of any car passing at this time in the morning. The nearest police post was thirty miles away. There was nothing to do but to sit by the side of the road and wait for the first car to come from Dalat.

The two men waited seven hours before an old, dilapidated Citroen, driven by a Chinese peasant, came panting up the mountain road. The time now was ten o’clock and the heat of the sun had made the long wait unpleasant.

The Colonel hadn’t spoken a word to the Inspector during the wait. He had sat on a rock, smoking cigarette after cigarette, his cruel yellow face set in an expression that chilled the Inspector’s blood.

It took them another two hours to crawl to the police post in the panting Citroen. The Inspector telephoned for a fast car to be sent immediately.

The Colonel sent no message to Lam-Than. He wished now to deal with Nhan personally. Nothing else could satisfy the vicious fury that boiled inside him.

He arrived at Security Police Headquarters at half past one. He dismissed the Inspector, and then went to his private quarters where he took a shower, and changed his uniform. He had lunch. The atmosphere from his pent-up rage and the expression on his face terrified his servants.

Lam-Than, hearing that his master had returned, came into his room while the Colonel was eating his lunch.

The Colonel looked up. With his mouth crammed with food, he snarled, “Get out!”

Startled by the mad gleam in the small bloodshot eyes, Lam-Than hurriedly backed out of the room.

At twenty minutes past two, the Colonel finished his meal. He got to his feet. With thick, unsteady fingers, he undid the glittering buttons of his tunic which he took off and tossed on a chair. Then he went to the door, opened it and walked with a heavy measured tread down the passage, down the stairs to the room where Nhan still lay strapped to the steel table.

The two executioners were squatting patiently either side of the door. They stood up when they saw the Colonel. “You will wait here,” he said, “until I call you.”

He opened the door and went into the room, closing the door behind him. His hand groped for the light-switch and turned it on.

Nhan was blinded for some seconds when the violent cruel light beat down on her. Then she saw the Colonel standing looking down at her. The expression on his face turned her sick.

Steve! Steve! she thought wildly. Come and save me! Please; come and save me!

But she knew Steve wasn’t coming. This was the moment she had waited for when she had lain in the dark, knowing it would come. This was the moment she had gained time for, to gain strength to keep silent.

She stiffened her will.

He won’t make me talk, she said to herself. Whatever he does to me, I will keep silent. I want Steve to get away. I want him to be happy with his money. Oh, Steve, Steve, Steve, don’t forget me. Think of me sometimes. Please, please don’t forget me.

Then as the Colonel bent over her and put his hands on her, she began to scream.

Outside the room, the two executioners had squatted down again. It was cool and restful in the passage. There was nothing to disturb them for the room into which the Colonel had entered was sound-proof.

At half past two, the Dakota from Phnom-Penh arrived at the Saigon airport.

Blackie Lee sat in his car waiting for his brother to pass the Customs and Immigration barriers. He had to make a conscious effort not to look across the car park “where the black Citroen was parked. The car had followed him from the club. He had now identified the two detectives in the car. He knew they were from Security Police Headquarters.

He wasn’t unduly alarmed although he found it a little unnerving to be followed wherever he went. If they had a case against him, he argued to himself, they wouldn’t be wasting time following him. They would arrest him. Since he had survived so far, he didn’t intend to be stampeded into flight. He had, at first, thought that he would go with Charlie and Jaffe in the helicopter, but it would mean not only leaving his club, but also Yu-lan. There was too much money tied up in the dub to run away at the first sign of danger.