Thai Horse (13 page)

Hatcher was out of the tub before Norgling was all the way down. He opened the towel c
lo
set and pulled out the green
body
bag he had stashed there earlier, grabbed Norgling by the hair, lifted his b.ody back to a sitting position and slid the bag over his head. He then let him fall backward, pulled the bag down the rest of the way and zipped it up. He slid it to the corne
r
of the bathroom, put on his slippers, cleaned up the bro
k
en glass and mopped up the wine with a towel, which he washed off in the tub. Then he went to the phone and punched out a number.

When the voice on the other end answered, Hatcher said, ‘Come get him!’ and hung up.

That was one of the few times Hatcher knew who his victim was and why he was executing him. Usually it was blind obedience. ‘Do it,’ Sloan would say and Hatcher did it. Not only did it, accepted it, believed in it. But now, looking back, Hatcher realized he could have been used. Perhaps Norgling was just a fugazi, a screw-up, and they needed to get rid of him, and they could have dummied up the tape, and

And perhaps it was 126, whispering in his ear, stirring thoughts that Hatcher had never stirred, never wanted to stir, before.

He
fl
ipped the dials of the combination lock on the Halliburton case and opened it. Inside was a thick sheet of Styrofoam cut to fit snugly into the case. Fitted into that were a half-inch video camera, two battery packs, a 400 mm. and a 200 mm. telephoto lens, a shoulder mount for the camera, four blank VHS tapes and several extension cords, carefully coiled and tied with plastic ties.

All were dummies.

Hatcher cleaned the gun thoroughly, then quickly broke it down into its three sections. He slid the barrel into the specially designed tubular hinge of the case and twisted a small screw cap on the end of the hinge. He popped open the dummy video camera, placed the trigger housing inside it and snapped it shut. Then he unscrewed the lens from the 400 mm. telephoto and slid the gun inside it. The two plastic magazines, each capable of holding thirty rounds, fit inside the two hollow batteries for the dummy video camera. He also had a short barrel, four inches long, which converted the weapon into a pistol. He secreted the short barrel in the 200 mm. lens. All the equipment fit easily into the case, which weighed less than twenty pounds.

The case also had a fake lining with a pocket, attached with Velcro to the inside of the lid.
He
peeled it back and put his money, letters and the fake passport into the waterproof pocket. Hatcher replaced
t
he phony lining and dropped several file folders in the pocket, then closed the case and spun the dials on the five-digit combination lock.

Broken down into its three parts and secreted in the attaché case, the Aug defied any detection device. Assembled, it was one of the most lethal and versatile weapons in existence, a killing machine without recoil or noise. The loudest sound the gun made was the trigger clicking. It was accurate to 450 yards. It was the
o
nly weapon Hatcher carried. The ammunition was
available
anywhere in the world, no problem.

He went back in the bedroom, swiftly packed the Gurkha bag, zipped it up and took
it
back to the living room. Then he returned to the bedroo
m
.

Ginia was still sleeping. He stared d
o
wn at her.

The past was tapping his shoulder. What the Chinese called the
ch’uang tzu-chi
,
the window to oneself, was open.

What ghosts were waiting back there to wring his soul?

Hatcher had thought Hong Kong and Bangkok were history. Upriver and the lair of the Ts’e K’am Men Ti.

The White Palm Gang and the Chiu Chaos. Tollie Fong, Sam-Sam Sam and White Powder Mama. Fat Lady Lau’s,

Cohen.

Bangkok.

And Daphne.

Names he had tried to forget and couldn’t.

He had tried to put them away,
b
ut they were all his yesterdays, the sum of his life.

Sloan had returned like the devil crawling up out of Hades, extending a long, bony finger to him, beckoning him back to the dark places that even 126 did not talk about, places seeded with hatred and death.

Going back really didn’t have muc
h
to do with Sloan, or with the names he’d dredged up
—
Buffalo Bill or Murph

Cody. It was time to go back, time to close out some unfinished chapters in his life. Time to pay the fiddler.

He sat down on the bed and began to rub Ginia’s back. She stirred and rolled over on her stomach. He got some moisturizer and began to massage her. For a moment the thought occurred to him that he was going to miss her, and the thought annoyed him because missing was like remembering. Hatcher had never missed anyone before in his life. It didn’t fit the pattern. It could be distracting, and that could be dangerous, screw up the old clicks, pull you out of the shadows into sunlight, where he knew he didn’t belong.

‘Attachments can be fatal,’ Sloan had said once. ‘They put your mind in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

Funny how often 126 and Sloan disagreed. What was it old 126 used to say? A man who has forgotten how to cry is dead inside.

He dismissed the thought, kneading his fingers into her shoulders and then up to her neck, moving along her arms to her finger-tips and stretching each one, massaging it with cream, then back to her sides and down to her hips. She groaned very faintly and spread her legs slightly. He put one leg between hers, pulled her down against it and, leaning forward into her, started to massage her neck again.

‘Hurry home,’ she whispered.

CIRILLO

Hatcher waited near the marina parking lot, listening to the night birds courting one another in the darkness, their melodies echoing across the broad, flat marsh. It was past midnight and the causeway leading to the mainland was almost deserted. Five miles away on the other side of the marsh, the lights of Brunswick twinkled like fireflies. He had one more task to finish before he left on his journey. He had said his good-bye to Ginia and now he waited in the dark, the briefcase sitting beside his leg.

A pair of headlights appeared far down the causeway and gradually grew larger as a car approached the docks. It turned off the narrow two-lane blacktop that connected the island with the rest of the world. The tan-and-brown police car, its tires crunching on t
h
e oyster-shell drive, stopped beside Hatcher. The door swung open.

Hatcher peered in at the beefy police officer in the brown uniform, a gold lieutenant’s bar twinkling on the open collar of his starched shirt. Jim Cirillo was a muscular man, deeply tanned, his black hair salted gray by time and sun. Powerful hands rested casually on top of the steering wheel.

‘You lookin’ to get busted for loitering?’ his deep voice drawled.

‘Yeah,’ Hatcher answered with a grin. He got in beside the cop. Cirillo dropped the stick into drive and wheeled out of the lot, turning back across the drawbridge and onto the island. Tall oak trees with Spanish moss hanging from their limbs like gray icicles arched the narrow roads. This was Cirillo’s time. He was a night person who preferred to sleep and fish in the daytime. They drove in silence for a few minutes.

‘Sloan found me,’ Hatcher finally croaked.

‘So? You don’t owe him,’ Cirillo answered with a shrug.

‘That’s right,’ Hatcher answered.

‘If anything, he owes you.’

‘Yeah.’

And Hatcher thought to himself, I owe you a lot, Jimmy. Cirillo had been surrogate father, friend, teacher and confidant, had even arranged his appointment to Annapolis.

A small mule deer hardly any bigger than a Great Dane darted across the road in front of them and dashed off into the woods.

‘Sloan wants me to do a job for hi
m
,’ Hatcher said.

‘No kidding,’ Cirillo snorted, slowing the car and shining his spotlight in the window of a tiny bait shack. Satisfied that the place was secure, Cirillo drove on.

‘I’m going to have to do it, Jimmy,’ Hatcher whispered in his strange cracked voice.

Cirillo drove for a few moments, then said, ‘Okay.’

‘It hasn’t got anything to do with Sloan,’ Hatcher went on.

‘Okay.’

‘A classmate of mine at Annapolis was supposedly killed in Nam in 1973. Apparently he’s turned up alive in Bangkok. It’s a touchy situation.’

‘And you’re the only one that can find him?’

‘I’m the only one who knows the subject
—
and who Sloan trusts.’

‘And do you trust him?’

‘Never again.’

‘You believe this story?’

‘Enough to find out.’

‘Lot of devils over there waiting to be dredged up,’ Cirillo said quietly.

‘Yeah,’ Hatcher answered.

‘Is that part of it, Hatch?’

They drove quietly. Hatcher thought about the question and said, ‘That’s part of it. Been off the wire too long, too.’

‘A real seductive lady, danger is.’

‘Yeah. Well you’re the one who introduced me to her.’

Driving through the overhanging moss, Cirillo was remembering that day on the mountain. ‘You looked pretty good that day,’ he said. ‘To tell you the truth, I never thought you’d do it. That was the day I decided you might turn into something.’

From Cirillo, Hatcher had learned a sense of obligation and duty, a simple code of honour, but a code easily exploited by a man like Sloan. The irony was that Cirillo had joined the Boston SWAT Squad at almost the same time Sloan had proselytized Hatcher. Like
fl
ies, both men were drawn into a web of violence that would shape their lives for years to come. Now both had come to this island to break the patterns.

Hatcher broke into both men’s silent reverie. ‘I need to check out the Aug, make sure it’s A-
1
.’

‘You need an Aug to look for a guy in Bangkok?’ Cirillo said, obviously surprised.

‘I’ve got a lot of enemies between here and Bangkok.’

‘So make your peace with them.’

‘It’s a nice thought,’ Hatcher said. ‘There’s only one way to make peace with some of these people.’

‘Then I guess you’ll have to do
that,
too,’ said Cirillo.

‘I hope not,’ Hatcher said. ‘You’ll keep an eye on the boat?’

‘I got the key. Any way I can reach you?’

Hatcher thought for a moment. “The Oriental Hotel in Bangkok. Just leave a message for me.’

‘Right.’ Cirillo paused and added, ‘You’re not a little too rusty for this kind of stuff, are you, kid?’

Hatcher thought for a few moments and shook his head. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said.

BUFFALO BILL

It was raining in Washington, a steady spattering downpour from a cold leaden sky that etched teardrops down the black polished face of the memorial. The rain collected in the shallow letters chiseled into the stone, overflowed and dribbled erratically down to the floor of the chevron scar in Constitution Gardens. There, memories of the fallen had been placed: a purple heart, a vase of daisies, the tattered photograph of a perfectly restored ‘56 Chevy, a now soggy worn teddy bear.

The rott
e
n weather had not discouraged visitors. There were dozens, standing like statues. staring at the vast granite slab, searching, discovering, reaching out, and touching the names of daughters, sons, lovers, fathers, husbands, best friends or college pal s, saying good-bye as the sky wept with them.

Hatcher knew a lot of names on that solemn roster. He had fought but not served in Vietnam; a civilian, he had done jobs so dirty even the military would not sanction or talk about them. There were no medals or commendations, not even any records kept, for the kind of work he had done, but he had been there, done his work, and watched friends and enemies die in every inhumane, ugly, loathsome, unspeakable way human beings can leave this earth.

Hatcher had never seen the monument before, had never wanted to see it. But now, looking down through the rain, he was awed by its simple eloquence. It stirred in him, for the first time, the thought that he might have returned to the World with the same scars, the same guilt and confusion, as everybody else who fought in Nam. In that particular operation he had been labeled a mercenary, and mercenaries do not share glory, do not march in parades or have holidays named after them. For them there is only winning or losing
—
or more simply defined
—
living or dying.

But here there was no politics, no arguing the endless, unresolved yeas and nays of that faraway war; there was simply an open grave and the good-bye list of a conflict that probably would be nothing more than a footnote in history books a hundred years hence
—
a paragraph without resolution. History deals
fleetingly
with events it cannot explain.

He would never have recognized the old warrior had it not been for the four stars on his shoulder. Buffalo Bill Cody was still ramrod-straight, but ten years and the worms gnawing at his insides had devoured his body, leaving behind a craggy, hollow-eyed sliver of a man with pain written in every crevice of his face. The tailored trench coat that accentuated his bony frame was a further reminder that even legends are mortal.

But a legend he was. While other military big shots were destroyed by the scandal of Nam, Cody had emerged with his reputation unscathed. A hero and a soldier’s general who somehow maintained a sense of dignity in the middle of chaos, Cody had become the acceptable military figure of the Vietnam war. Shy, almost self-deprecating, he avoided the spotlight and was admired by left, right and center, an ordinary man who had sacrificed a s
o
n to the conflict and who seemed to bring a sense of sanity
t
an otherwise totally insane endeavor. He was like the nation’s favorite uncle, over there watching out for the
kids.
Now he stood, between a hunched-over man in co
m
bat fatigues and a woman with a teenage boy, looking at the list. Nobody paid any attention to him. The place was like that. It made commoners of everyone.

‘He looks a hundred and ten,’ Hatcher croaked.

‘He might as well be,’ Sloan answered. ‘He’ll be lucky if he lasts six months.’

‘Do we have to stand out here in the rain?’ Hatcher asked.

‘He’ll be through in a minute. The ritual never changes.’

Hatcher huddled down deeper in his raincoat, watched the general, and inwardly marveled
at
Sloan’s remarkable ability at the big con. Yesterday Hatcher had considered killing him. Today Hatcher was standing in the rain, seven hundred miles from home, actually co
n
sidering doing a job he didn’t need, didn’t want and didn
’
t believe in. A hundred years ago, thought Hatcher, S
lo
an would have been hawking elixirs from the back of a wagon or selling shares in the Brooklyn Bridge. Now he sold dirty tricks with fictions of adventure and patriotism, seducing wide-eyed young men and women into the shadow wars, to become assassins, saboteurs, gunrunners, second-story men, safe crackers, even mercenaries, all for the glory of flag and country. Hatcher had met Sloan in the time of his innocence and had bought the lie.

The general finished his ritual and started back toward the street. Hatcher and Sloan watched Buffalo Bill slowly mount the steps, leaning heavily on a cane but avoiding the help of his assistant, a young major who had West Point inscribed in every move.