Dead and Kicking (11 page)

Jack’s first move after having a coffee was to take the barbecue tongs off me. Now he stopped, holding the marinated half-chicken he was turning in mid-air.

‘Okay, I’ll bite,’ he said, carefully putting the chicken back over the coals with the rest of the meat.

‘An army marches on its feet,’ Cartwright continued,’ and those feet need to be in boots and you need socks to go with them. And to stay alive you need a rifle and ammunition and a bayonet and a helmet. On day one at any military boot camp they don’t just give you a haircut and a ham sandwich – they give you the gear, all the crap a soldier needs to be a soldier. And all that gear they give you comes from where?’

‘The quartermaster.’

‘Correct. And with all the millions of pieces of gear coming and going at any one time, an officer in the Quartermaster Corp with their own private agenda has ideal cover for all sorts of mischief. In ’69 I was called in by the US Army to get close to a quartermaster who someone thought was looking a bit dodgy.’

‘And was he?’ I asked.

‘Depends on how you define dodgy, I reckon. Being in bed with a Hong Kong gangster in an operation to process opium from the Golden Triangle into heroin in a mountain village with its own laboratories and airstrip, and then shipping the heroin via military transport aircraft into Hong Kong and the US could probably come under that definition.’

‘Could do, I suppose,’ I said.

‘I got roped into the situation by a US military investigator – I did counter-insurgency training with his brother at a camp near Vung Tau. The thinking was that since I was from outside the Yank military, and had a bit of an awkward history with the police before I joined up, they could sell me as someone who might be into making some money on the side, no questions asked.’

‘And it worked?’ I asked.

‘Smooth as silk. They set me up to bump into the Chinese gangster – a guy called Peng – while I was on R and R in Honkers and I managed to get a lot of good background, including the location of the village where they were running this opium-refining operation. I was moving in with a company of Vietnamese Rangers to raid the village and gather evidence for a court martial when the quartermaster somehow got wind that his cover was blown.’

‘How’d that happen?’

‘I never found out, but somehow he must have twigged and decided it was time to pull the plug.’

‘Which involved?’

‘My men had the village staked out, doing surveillance on the operation, taking photographs, all the usual stuff. One afternoon a bunch of Hueys and a couple of C-123s flew in from Saigon. Place was chock-a-block with bad guys for what looked like a high-level management meeting. Everyone was there, apart from this quartermaster geezer and the Chinese gangster.’

‘Which was pretty convenient for you,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘Almost too good to be true. Everyone together in a neat little package and all I had to do was tie up the bow. I guess I should have seen it coming. An hour later, the village, the couple of hundred people in it, the heroin-processing plant, the bad guys and my rangers were all gone.’

‘Gone?’

‘Off the face of the earth. You can’t see or hear B-52s on a high-level strike and a three-plane cell can dump over three hundred 500-pound bombs in one go. One moment it’s all kids laughing and playing, women hanging clothes out to dry, dogs barking, pens full of pigs and chickens, and the next it’s hell on earth and you’re praying to God to take you somewhere, anywhere else.’

Apart from the sound of the water splashing in the fishponds, there was silence.

‘From what I was able to piece together,’ Cartwright continued, ‘the rock formation under the mountaintop was limestone and the concussion from the first bomb hitting the village cracked open a fissure. I dropped straight into it, and out of harm’s way. I don’t know how far I fell but I had a broken shoulder and a couple of cracked ribs, or so they told me.’

‘You were the only survivor?’

Cartwright nodded. ‘I staggered out of the hills about a week later and I guess I was a pretty scary sight – naked, sunburned, still half-deaf, covered in dried blood and talking gibberish. A buffalo boy found me and led me back to his village. The people there could have easily turned me in to the NVA but they’d already lost most of their young men, conscripted by the South Vietnamese Army or the VC, and I guess they figured they could patch me up and use me as a workhorse. They turned me over to a young girl whose husband had been conscripted by the ARVN and killed somewhere down south.’

‘Lucky break,’ I said, ‘for you I mean, not him.’

‘Definitely was, as it turned out,’ Cartwright said. ‘I was totally off the planet for a long time, shell-shocked, I guess, and it wasn’t until a year or two later that stuff started to slowly come back. By that time the Americans were already scaling back their involvement and the writing was pretty much on the wall. And there I was in a tropical paradise with a bit of a weak shoulder, in love with a beautiful woman who was in love with me, and with a kid, a dozen fishponds, a comfortable hut and my very own water buffalo.’

‘Sounds like heaven. So no interest at all in going back to your old life?’

Cartwright smiled. ‘None whatsoever. I was pretty happy with what I had going so I stayed. It was home. First real one I’d ever had, outside the army.’

You couldn’t argue with that.

‘Plus there was a complication. The army investigator who’d organised for me to infiltrate the quartermaster’s drug operation, and knew what was going on, had got himself shot dead in a cyclo outside the old Continental Hotel in Saigon a couple of days after the bombing.’

‘Those cyclos can be bloody dangerous,’ I said. ‘But that sounds like a convenient coincidence.’

‘For the bad guys maybe, but not for me,’ Cartwright said. ‘The military inquiry into the shooting concluded it was a random VC assassination. But in any event, the bloke wasn’t around to back up my story of what I’d really been doing, if anyone wanted to start slinging mud.’

‘So you decided to let sleeping dogs lie.’

‘In the case of these particular dogs, it seemed like a good idea. Peng and the quartermaster, a man called Captain Crockett, went on to bigger and better things.’

‘Would that be Peng of the Peng casino interests in Macau?’ Jack asked.

Cartwright nodded. ‘You know him?’

‘VT and I live in Macau,’ Jack said, ‘and you hear the Peng family name a lot there.’

‘Old Peng, they called him,’ Cartwright continued, ‘even back then when he was young, because he was the head of the clan. A seriously nasty piece of work was Old Peng, let me tell you. People who crossed him usually lost a finger or a hand or their head, depending on the level of the transgression. Bastard moved into Macau, using his drug profits to bankroll a casino. A few decades on, he’s rich and respectable and revered for his charitable good works, support for the arts and the all-you-can-eat buffets in his casino.’

‘Story going around Macau is that Old Peng had a major stroke a while back,’ Jack said. ‘He’s stuck in a wheelchair and pretty much off with the pixies, I’ve heard, which is some kind of justice I suppose. His son Playford is running the casino now. But what happened to this Captain Crockett character?’

‘Vaughan Crockett left the military and used his share of the loot to build himself a nice little empire in construction and transport – what people now like to call logistics. In the eighties he got himself elected to the US Congress for a couple of terms, which was reasonably easy for a guy with no scruples, a ton of money and a chest full of medals, even if they were for clocking-in on time and meritorious distribution of Kool-Aid and toilet paper.’

The medals bit sounded about right. I’d actually met a Yank soldier who’d been tasked with printing a unit newspaper when his CO in Vietnam found out he’d been a graphic designer before being drafted. The bloke ordered a printing press, which turned up in its own shipping container with a ton of ink and paper, plus a complete darkroom with cameras and film and chemicals. So he ordered three more presses and when they showed up he linked them together and set to work. This bloke earned himself a medal for being the first soldier to produce a full-colour newspaper in a combat zone.

‘Crockett bailed from government service two steps ahead of some awkward questions about his involvement with lobbyists, and used his contacts to expand his construction and transport empire. He also set himself up a contracting business, supplying mercenaries called the Black Falcon Group. Did very well out of Iraq.’

‘And this would be the same Vaughan Crockett …?’ I asked.

‘Yep. The Honourable, or I guess not-so-honourable to those in the know, Vaughan Tyrone Crockett, United States Ambassador to Australia, and according to rumour on several political blogs, a possible candidate for vice-president to the next occupant of the White House.’

‘That would seem to be a man with many, many things to hide,’ VT said.

And he’d need to hide them well. The vetting process for a potential US vice-presidential candidate entails his own party ripping his life apart, looking for anything embarrassing – like did he pay his taxes on time or bonk the nanny or smoke dope and molest sheep or his roommates while in college? Then, once he was nominated, the media would get stuck in, looking for even the slightest hint of scandal – not, of course, in the interest of the American voter’s right to know and make an informed choice, but rather because scandal is guaranteed to increase circulation and raise ratings.

‘Crockett has become very adept at hiding things over the years,’ Cartwright said. ‘Anyone who gets even close to the real story is taken down by his spin machine at MB&F.’

‘Markham Barkin & Fargo handle his PR?’ I asked.

‘Yep,’ Cartwright replied, ‘and they’re bloody good at it. Crockett actually owns the operation. MB&F haven’t met a tin-pot despot, crooked politician or corrupt corporation they didn’t like. And if you threaten any part of Vaughan Crockett’s idyllic little life or his business interests, the fine folks at MB&F will dig up a twenty-year-old parking ticket and creatively infer you got it when you left your car illegally parked for five minutes while picking up some hookers, drugs or kiddie porn. Or all three.’

‘Nice people,’ I said.

‘Plus, for the things that MB&F can’t manage to spin there are a lot of other people on call to do Crockett’s really dirty work.’

‘I would guess we’ve met some of them recently,’ Jack said.

I nodded. ‘I think that’s right, Jack, and I think I may have been the one who arranged the introductions.’

Over lunch, I filled in Jack, VT and Cartwright about my encounter with Brett Tozer in the lobby of the Indochine Luxe Royale.

‘I guess he mentioned our conversation to head office, and someone decided the best solution was to make the problem go away, permanently, starting with Brett.’

‘Poor bastard probably never knew what hit him,’ Jack said. ‘Talk about shooting the bloody messenger.’

‘Yeah, literally,’ I said. ‘I figure Brett was looking out for Crockett’s interests on the film and reporting any unusual developments back to MB&F, without really knowing why. Cushy job for him – a couple of months on a movie set in Asia and then Australia with excellent catering, accommodation and a nice per diem.’

‘Lousy termination package, though,’ Jack said.

‘You’ve got that right. Then after Brett gets eliminated, I find a bunch of goons waiting for me down a dark alley-way in a Russian jeep, a .45-calibre welcoming committee in Chiang Rai, and Jack and VT have problems in the Huey.’

Cartwright nodded. ‘Plus my recent nocturnal visitors.’

‘That new plasterwork by the front door?’ Jack asked.

So I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed.

Cartwright nodded. ‘Last night while we were out looking for you, three men with submachine guns and an RPG launcher came visiting. They got through the perimeter wire without being spotted but the bastards didn’t make it closer than a hundred yards to the house, my people took care of that.’

‘Did Crockett send them?’ I said.

‘They didn’t say. Didn’t say much of anything, really. They’re somewhere out in the coffee plantations fertilising next year’s harvest.’

I’d been about to get myself another cup of coffee but I changed my mind.

‘As I said,’ Cartwright continued, ‘a man with Crockett’s connections has a lot of people to do the real dirty work, like late-night visits or bringing down a chopper.’

‘And speaking of that,’ I said, ‘from what was on the TV news, that crash didn’t look like something you guys could’ve walked away from. What happened?’

‘Booby-trap,’ Jack said. ‘Some bastard blew up a perfectly nice chopper, and almost took us with it.’

VT put down his knife and fork. ‘We went north from Saigon in short hops, necessary given the Huey’s limited range. Our plan was to hand the helicopter back to the People’s Air Force in Hanoi and then rent a car and drive down this way. Jack was determined to track you down, Peter, and he had discovered that this place was listed as the headquarters for Tranh Fisheries and Aquaculture Enterprises.’

‘But when we hit Hanoi we still had a day to spare,’ Jack added, ‘so I figured we could fit in a quick side-trip to check out Dien Bien Phu valley.’

‘We got to Dien Bien Phu Airport late,’ VT continued, ‘so we decided to spend the night in town. I went through the shutdown checklist and then made sure the ship was tied down securely for the night. I also had the fuel topped off as we intended to make an early start next morning. During the evening my sister’s granddaughter, Miss Hoang, you remember her, Alby? The policewoman …?’

I nodded. Boy, did I remember Miss Hoang.

‘She called me,’ he continued, ‘and told me what had happened to you and suggested that we be cautious. It was cold the next morning, and as I did my pre-flight checks I could smell fuel. I noticed some spillage around the fuel filler cap, like an overflow. Then, when I crawled under the ship to use the tap that bleeds off any water condensation from the fuel lines, I found this.’

He pulled a shiny metal object from his shirt pocket. It was a circular piece of steel, like a large key ring, and there was a split pin attached to it. He handed it to Cartwright.