Thai Horse (24 page)

COMPLICATIONS

He awoke five minutes before eleven and lay on the floor staring at the shadows whirling on the ceiling above the fan, listening. Since Los Boxes, Hatcher’s hearing was acute; he could hear a cockroach as it scratched its way across the floor, Down the hail, he heard the elevator door open and close, the sound of two people walking along the carpeted hallway, heard the door to the adjoining room open, the rustling of hangers in the closet, the muffled dialogue with the bellhop, and the door closing.

He knew Sloan very well. He would order lunch
—
cold cuts and booze from room service
—
then take a shower before announcing his arrival. Sloan liked his booze and showers.

Hatcher waited until he heard the room service waiter come and go and the shower turn on, then got up, dressed and, using a set of hooked lock needles, picked the lock on the door between the rooms. When he entered Sloan’s room, Sloan was in the shower, humming to himself.

Hatcher crossed the room and reached under the pillow, took out Sloan’s .45, dropped the clip and ejected the shell in the chamber. He put the pistol back, went across the room and stood behind the bathroom door. He waited until Sloan was finished. The boxy man came out naked, toweling his hair. He strolled toward the bed, still humming some aimless tune.

Hatcher moved the door slightly so it made a creaking sound.

Sloan moved instantly, jogging slightly to his right, then switching directions before he dived for the bed.

‘Too late, you’re dead,’ Hatcher whispered.

Sloan sighed and slid down to the floor. He turned to Hatcher. The lopsided grin that was his trademark spread across his lips. It was like the old times, an old gambit, a game they had played through the years. But Sloan did not misread it. Hatcher had learned early in the game never to let personal feelings get in the way of the job; it clouded the judgment. This was Hatcher’s way of telling him that the job came first, regardless of how he felt about Sloan. It was not a sign that Hatcher had forgiven Sloan or that he trusted him, Betrayal was too high on Hatcher’s list of unforgivable sins for that.

Hatcher stepped out of the shadows and threw the clip and the round on the bed. ‘You’re not as quick as you used to be. And how many times have I told you, you’ve got to stop putting your piece under the pillo
w
. It’s like putting a diamond necklace under the mattress
.
It’s the first place anybody looks.’

Sloan reloaded his gun and replaced it under the pillow. ‘Reverse psychology,’ he said.

Sloan stopped drying his hair and wrapped the towel around his waist, went in the bathroom, came back and stood in the doorway, slowly brushing his short-cropped hair. ‘We got a problem, laddie,’ he said casually without
sacrificing
his smile.

‘What kind of problem?’

‘Somebody stuck a knife in Windy Porter the night before last,’ Sloan said bluntly. ‘He’s dead.’

‘What!’

Sloan kept talking as he walked to a room service table. The room was large, with a king-size bed, rattan furniture and pastel flowered wallpaper. A vase of orchids on the dresser added more color. The balcony, furnished with white wicker, overlooked the river. A ceiling fan stirred the air, which was already getting hot and sticky.

‘According to the police, he was trying to break up a fight, if you put any faith in the Bangkok police.’

‘What really happened?’ Hatcher’s hoarse voice asked.

‘I don’t know. Maybe it happened the way they say it did. I assume I’ll get the full story when I get over there.’

Sloan poured a cup of coffee and filled a water glass half full of scotch. He dropped a single ice cube in the glass and handed the coffee to Hatcher.

‘Where was he struck?’ Hatcher asked.

Sloan hesitated for a moment and, without losing his smile, said, ‘The neck. Base of the skull.’

‘Beautiful,’ Hatcher growled. ‘A classic triad hit. Breaking up a fight, my ass.’

‘I don’t think the White Palms are involved in this. What would their angle be?’ Sloan asked, sipping his drink.

‘How would I know?’ Hatcher answered. ‘I came over here looking for Cody, and now our only contact is dead and it looks like the triads are involved. Listen, Harry, you better not be playing games with me, I warned you back on the island
. .

Sloan’s smile broadened. ‘Hey, don’t be so damn paranoid. We don’t know for sure it was even a triad hit. It could be just a crazy fluke.’

‘In this business there’s no such thing as a crazy fluke.’

‘Well, there’s always the exception.
. . .‘
Sloan said, his attitude, as always, cavalier. ‘One thing I am sure of, nobody but Porter knew what was going on.’

‘Did they catch the killer?’

‘Killers,’ Sloan corrected and shook his head.

‘Can we assume Porter was tailing Wol Pot when it happened?’ Hatcher asked.

‘Who knows,’ Sloan said with a shrug. ‘Maybe he lost Wol Pot. Maybe Wol Pot ditched him. Maybe he took the night off.’ Sloan looked over his sideways grin. ‘The way I understand it, he got stabbed trying to break up a fight between a couple of slopes and a whore on one of the
klongs
. But if I were guessing, I’d say, yeah, he was tailing the little bastard when it happened.’

‘And Wol Pot was mixed up with the White Palm Triad.’

‘That’s what immigration
thinks.’

‘So the question now is,
i
s the Thai still alive? And still on our side?’ Hatcher said. ‘That is, if he was ever on our side to begin with.’ He stared out at the harbor for a moment and added, ‘And you called this a simple job?’

‘Come on, Hatch, don’t go jumping to conclusions. So we got a glitch in the program.’

‘We’ve got a man dead, that’s what we’ve got, and that’s
all
we’ve got. I’d call that more than a glitch.’

‘Shit,’ Sloan said, ‘we’ve been in the soup too long to let a thing like Porter’s death stop us,’

‘You’ve been in the soup,’ said Hatcher. ‘I was in Los Boxes.’

Sloan sighed. ‘Let’s keep it pleasant,’ he said, still smiling, still Mr Sincerity, ‘for old times’ sake.’

‘Old times’ sake got all used up.’

‘I was just doing my job.’

‘You were doing what a bunch of weasels in the White House basement told you to do.’

Sloan leaned closer to Hatcher, his fingers wiggling like those of a magician about to perform a trick, his smile so constant it might have been permanently implanted on his face.

‘That
is
my job,’ he said with oily finality.

Though his smile never faded and his voice was quiet and level, Sloan felt suddenly uneasy. There had been a time in all the years they worked together when he didn’t have to explain anything to Hatcher; when he laid out the parameters and Hatcher instinctively knew the program. Was Hatcher rejecting the whole concept of the brigade? That had not occurred to Sloan. He had assumed that Hatcher only felt betrayed.

Sloan, his eyes narrowing but the smile remaining, said quietly, ‘You getting religion on me, pal? You’re gonna get yourself wasted, you start worrying about the wrong things. I taught you better than that.’

‘Sometimes I get a little confused about just what the hell you did teach me. Besides,
it
was different then, there was a
war
on.
. .

Sloan threw back his head and laughed heartily.

‘For Christ’ sake, there’s always a war on someplace. You need a war? Shit, we got Lebanon, Israel, Iran, Nicaragua, Afghanistan. We got a whole supermarket full of wars, take your pick.’ He poured himself a stiff drink of scotch and dropped an ice cube in it. ‘Hell, we do what we have to do, Hatch. We got two choices on any given day
—
do it or don’t do it. If you don’t know the options going in, if you haven’t made the decision, they’ll get you. You don’t have time to figure the odds, that’s the way you get dead. All you got is clicks and reflexes. And if you don’t do it, they’ll do it to you. Have I ever told you any different? Was there ever any question in your mind about that?’

‘My whole bullshit
career
is questionable,’ said Hatcher. ‘I can’t even tell anybody what I did in the war.’

Still chuckling, Sloan said, ‘Is that it, you want to write about your war experiences?’

‘That’s not the point. There’s sixteen, seventeen years of my life that are blotto, like they never existed.’

‘You think I betrayed you, and that’s clouding your judgment,’ Sloan said softly. His tone had turned compassionate. Sloan had all the buttons. Push one, you got compassion. Push another, you got patriotic fervor. Push another, you got flattery. Hatcher remembered their first meeting, in a private room of the Occidental Restaurant in Washington where Sloan
—
as always, confident, almost fatherly
—
first outlined his personal gospel, describing the Shadow Brigade as a ‘golden opportunity, a chance to do something for your country that’s necessary, and which also offers a freedom of thought and action you don’t find in other branches of the service.’ No mention that this
‘
branch of service’ had no records or that it was privately funded and did not even exist officially. Hatcher, the wet-eared kid out of the academy, all full of himself, was stroked and sweet-talked and razzle-dazzled and bought the whole package, no questions asked. That lunch had changed Hatcher’s life forever.

‘It was more than betrayal, Harry. Hell, you were my mentor. You got it done. You got the mission done and I looked up to you for that.’ Hatcher stopped for a moment, got himself a cup of coffee. ‘All those years in Los Boxes, all I thought about was you burning inc for some bum in the State Department. It wasn’t
j
ust doing the time. I
trusted
you, Harry, and you turned me up. And you’re still doing it.’

‘You’re getting holy on me,’ Sloan said with a chuckle and a shake of his head. ‘What’s your way of doing it? Take the river pirates to court for running dope to our boys in Saigon? Let our double agents dance on our graves? Compromise with the triads? Shit. Let me tell you something, pal, we learned to fight in dirty wars. And that’s what we’re gonna have from now on, dirty wars. Well, you don’t win dirty wars with Marquis of Queens- berry Rules. You kick ass and go for the body mass.’

‘The way they do it in Brazil and Argentina?’

Sloan sighed. ‘You know your trouble, Hatch? You’re trying to equate morality and warfare. Totally incompatible. If the rest of the Army had fought the war in Nam the way we fought it, we wouldn’t’ve got our ass kicked out of there and you know it. We learned how to beat our enemies
from
our enemies. A soldier doesn’t need a uniform or a fancy title, all he needs is the will to get it done. I repeat, if you don’t do it, it gets done to you. That’s the law according to Harry Sloan and it’s kept me alive for a bloody long time and it did all right by you, too. You’re just thinking too much, Hatch. How many times’ve I told you, consideration gets a man killed.’

‘Harry, you’re living proof that it’s
possible
for a man to talk faster than he can think.’

‘Well, laddie, when your ass is in the sling, you better do it before you think about it or you’re history.’

But it was obvious that Hatcher’s reevaluation of the brigade worried Sloan, for he slipped back to the subject. ‘You do a thing and it’s over,’ Sloan said with a shrug. ‘Why agonize over all that. You never made any moral decisions, they were made for you.’

‘Maybe that’s the point. Maybe I should’ve. Maybe this is about drawing the line.’

‘Hah!’ Sloan said. ‘This is old Harry you’re talking to, remember. You giving me ideology? Before lunch! Let me tell you something, we never did a job wasn’t worth the doing. You want to get bug-eyed about methods, procedures, whatever, that’s your problem. But don’t belabor a beautiful morning with ideology, don’t give me slogans and posters. My ideology is reality, and the reality is, it’s us against them. You and me, we don’t lose, pal, it’s not in our vocabulary.’

‘You made moral decisions, so did I. Spur-of-the- moment moves
. .

‘Exactly. Exactly!’ Sloan said, interrupting him, his eyes twinkling again and the enthusiasm back in his tone. ‘Spur of the moment. There aren’t any moral decisions in warfare, Hatch, there’s winning and losing. God and country. Beyond that, it’s all superfluous.’

‘We got rules, Harry.’

‘Yeah, right.’

Hatcher said, ‘Anyway, this isn’t about God and country, as you put it. It’s about you and me. Just don’t ever back-stab me again. You do and
I’ll
. .

‘I know.’ Sloan leaned over closer to him, the smile getting broader, the gray eyes still twinkling. ‘You’ll put me where the fish can’t find me.’

There was no percentage in belaboring that subject any further. Hatcher knew he was blowing smoke at the moon. Sloan was a man impervious to insult or hurt, a man who believed what he did was right and necessary and morally justified.

‘Forget it,’ Hatcher said flatly, ‘I didn’t come here to do you any favors, anyway. I came to find Cody.’

Sloan nodded, his smile reduced to a wry grin. ‘Fair enough. So what have you got so far?’ he asked. ‘You sure been leading my boys a merry chase.’

Before Hatcher could answer, the phone rang. Sloan glared at it.

‘Now what?’ he said. He crossed, the room and picked it up. He talked with his back to Hatcher. His hair was still damp from the shower and beads of water twinkled on his undried back. The phone was plugged into a small black scrambler, its red light aglow.

‘Sloan,’ he said in his soft voice. ‘S12424. Jack be nimble, Jack be
. . .
Okay, we’re clear, I’m on the scrambler, what’s the problem? What?
What!
My God, when? Damn it, Spears, he had ten people guarding him!
. . .
I know what I said
. . .
No, don’t do that. I assume the media has this
. . .
I understand that. Uh-huh.
. .
uh-huh.
. .
No, you stic1 with the original story. Let the FBI handle it.
. . .
No, not the CIA, keep them out of it.
. . .
Hold on, let me think.
. .

He turned toward Hatcher and rolled his eyes and shook his head. His face seemed to be getting redder, although he kept his voice under control.

‘No pictures of Cosomil,’ he said into the phone. ‘Keep him under wraps right where he is. I ‘want you to leak a story to the media that he’s hiding cut in
. . .
uh
.

Hawaii
. . .
No, the Big Island, Kauai’s too small, yeah.
. . .
Right, let ‘em run around there for a week or two looking for him.
. . .
That’s fine. Thanks, Spears. If I’m temporarily out of pocket, check in with Flitcraft, he can always find me.’ He slowly cradled the phone.

‘Well, laddie, I got a new problem. Major,
major.
You want to hear the headline in tomorrow morning’s
New York Times?
“Mandrango Iron Man
Campon
Assassinated in Atlanta Disco.”

Hatcher’s mouth dropped open. It had been Campon’s coup in Madrango that had enabled Sloan to spring Hatcher from Los Boxes. Then six months later the Communist guerrillas had retaken the capital. The revolt had been seesawing for several years.

Sloan gave Hatcher a quick account of the murder of the deposed Central American dictator. ‘Our people are speculating that the assassin was disguised as a stork.’

‘A
stork!’
said Hatcher.

‘It was a costume ball. Three other people, including an innocent woman bystander, were killed. We got two more, her date and a waiter, in serious condition in the hospital.’