Thai Horse (36 page)

SMOKE

A pale, dyspeptic, extremely nervous young under-under- under-secretary named Lamar Pellingham, Jr., greeted Sloan at the entrance to the embassy and immediately confided that this was his first
experience
with death on a foreign shore.

‘It’s impossible, absolutely impossible. Forms, forms, forms,’ the pasty-faced man groaned. ‘I’ve never seen such red tape.’

‘Yes, I know what a problem these things are,’ Sloan agreed solicitously. ‘You’d think t
h
ey’d be glad to get rid of the remains instead of making it
s
o difficult.’

‘Yes. Right. Of course,’ the dip
lom
at answered, somewhat startled by Sloan’s noncha
l
a
n
ce. ‘Uh, the maids packed up everything
—
that is, ev
er
yt
h
ing but what was in his desk. We sealed that room,
l
eft
—
the desk, I mean
—
alone. You know, in the event ther
e
was, uh.
. .
classified material there.’

He spoke every word as though
i
t
were a hot coal he was spitting out of his mouth. It wa
s
obvious he found the entire matter repellent.

‘Excellent decision,’ said Sloan. I’ll check it out.’

‘Have you seen the police?’

‘Not yet. I came straight here after checking into the hotel. Do you have the police reports?’

‘No, the investigator, a major, Ngy, wouldn’t give anything up. A real mean one, he needs it for the investigation,’ Pellingham
stammered
quickly. ‘But I have the other things. Come with me,
please
.’

The nervous junior diplomat led Sloan back through the ornate passages of the Thai
embassy
to his office, a cheery but small cubicle near the back of the building. He riffled through a stack of folders in his
‘H
old’ box and handed Sloan an envelope marked, ‘Porte
r
.
Final Papers. Confidential.’

‘Everything’s in there,’ Pelling
ham
said. ‘All the forms, his insurance papers, even his last
ex
pen
s
e report.’

‘Interesting. I’ll just take these
along
,’ Sloan said. ‘Perhaps I should, uh, make a copy?’ Pellingham stammered, rubbing his cheek wit
h
the palm of a sweaty hand and turning what started as a statement into a question.

Sloan smiled his reassuring smil
e
. ‘If it would make you more comfortable,’ he said, ‘a copy
w
ill be fine.’

‘They say it’s, uh, a case of innocent bystander, killed more or less by accident, if
‘
possible for someone to be murdered
by
accident.’
He he
s
itate and, when Sloan made no response, added, ‘Not ex
ac
tly a hero’s death. But
I suppose it’s best for our purposes. I mean acceptable under the circumstances.’

‘Acceptable,’ Sloan said. ‘An excellent way of putting it. I can see why you picked the diplomatic service.’

‘Well, thank you, sir,’ Pellingham responded. ‘I meant for the family and all.’

‘Of course. I know exactly what you mean, and I agree,’ Sloan said, trying to put the young man at ease. ‘Look here,’ he went on, ‘no need to worry about this any further. I’m here now. It’s in my han
d
s.’

‘But...’

Smiling, Sloan handed the enve
lo
pe back to Pellingham. ‘Why don’t you make your copy while I check out Porter’s things.’

‘Yes, yes, good idea. You, uh, kn
o
w where to ship the remains and his effects?’

‘It’s all arranged.’

‘Oh, thank God,’ the neophyte diplomat said with relief.

‘Just show me Porter’s suite while you’re copying the report, hmm?’

‘Right, right.’

The young man watched as Sloan entered Porter’s suite, wondering whether he should accompany him. But Sloan closed the door and he stared at it for a full minute before scurrying off to the copy machine.

An hour’s search produced nothing .of value to Sloan but a five-by-seven leather-bound, three-ring notebook. Porter’s diary, a veritable autobiography f the man beginning in January of that year. Sloan stuffed it in his briefcase. He checked over everything else and found nothing else related to the Cody-Wol Pot case. After getting the copy of the Porter documents, he headed back to his hotel.

He peeled off a soggy shirt, pulled a table under the ceiling fan and spent the rest of the afternoon going through the diary. Porter had certai
n
ly been keeping a wary eye on the little Thai. The notebook was complete up to the day Porter died. The expense account meticulously included
fifty
cents for a Coke at a place called the American Deli in Patpong ‘while performing surveillance.’ Porter had turned into the ultimate bureaucrat.

Then the need began gnawing at Sloan. He became distracted and finally closed the file folder and the notebook. As the sun began to set he stared out the window at the city of golden spires and domes, shimmering in the dying rays of the sun, watched as they got dimmer and dimmer until finally they winked out like dying candles. The need was in him and the night lured him out of the room, down to the crowded main street.

A two-seater with a wiry, energetic little driver waited near the entrance of the hotel, ‘Sir, sir,’ the little fellow said, trotting beside Sloan as he walked toward the row of taxis at the door. ‘Got good
tuk-tuk,
best price in town. Very fast.’

Why not, thought Sloan. There were hundreds of the noisy machines in the city. It would be impossible to trace his movements.

‘All right, lead on,’ Sloan said.

‘My name is very complicated,’ he said. ‘You can call me Sy, my American friends call
m
e Sy.’

‘Right,’ Sloan said, settling back in the somewhat uncomfortable seat, and gave him an address in the waterfront district.

The trip across town took only fifteen minutes, but Sloan’s heart was already a thundering drum in his chest by the time they got there.

The place had not changed, would never change. The tart smell of the river gave way to a much sweeter odor. It attacked his brain and intoxicated his spirit as he went down the narrow stairs, which creaked and groaned underfoot. As he descended the odor got stronger, headier.

The master waited as usual at a desk near the door. This one was new, but they all looked alike. Wrinkled, bowed old men with faded eyes and sunken faces, they were the dream masters, the killers of nightmares and assassins of pain, and the guides to the Elysian Fields. As he followed the old man back through a narrow passageway, Sloan began to feel a little light-headed. They entered a long narrow room lined with drab canvas cots. Silk screens stained by age and misuse separated the beds. A gray veil of smoke clung to the ceiling. It was like walking through hell.

Sloan followed the dream master to the third cubicle. He lay on his side on the bed, got comfortable, watched as the old Thai tamped the black cube into the bowl of the long pipe, lit it with a taper, and sucked
fire
into the cube until it glowed. Then he held the thick stem against Sloan’s lips. The colonel took a deep breath, felt the oily smoke as it surged into his lungs, invaded his bloodstream, streaked up to his brain.

As the opium took effect, Sloan felt electrified. His body hummed, then became numb. Old bruises and wounds were healed. Pain vanished, stress evaporated. The doom diminished. The old Thai shrank before his eyes and slowly vanished in a golden mist.

Sloan groaned and rolled over on his back.

He let the haze envelop him, embraced it, walked through to the other side.

To a place of green fields and flowers
-

A deep blue sky was overhead and the sun warmed him.

Somewhere nearby, the sea crashed on rocks.

He lay down in cool grass.

His anxieties were washed away by the caressing breeze that wafted over him.

Here there was no death. No cries of pain, nor enemies nor dirty jobs to be assigned. No nightmares.

There was only
tranquility
.

It was the only place left where Sloan could find peace.

THE TS’E K’AM MEN TI

Hatcher and company left two hours before dawn, sneaking past the harbor patrols and customs boats in the Bujia Ngkou, the bay at the mouth of the Beijiang River that becomes Hong Kong harbor, and then heading west into south China along one of the many tributaries of the jungle-choked Xijiang River. By the gray wash of dawn they were thirty miles upstream.

They came in two boats. The
fi
rst was a long, narrow snakeboat, heavily powered, with a thatched cabin near the rear. Behind it was a thirty-foot 600 hp Cigarette boat, capable of skimming the water at sixty miles an hour. Hatcher, Daphne, Cohen and Sing, who doubled as helmsman, and another gunman, Joey, were in
the
first.
There were four Chinese gunmen in the second, on ‘loan’ to Cohen from a friendly Chiu Chao triad known as the Narrow Blade Gang, as backup in the event the Tsu Fi got in trouble. They all felt comfortable, since Daphne’s intelligence had reported that Sam-Sam was farther upriver and was not expected back to the Ts’e K’am Men Ti stronghold until the next day.

Early in the trip, before they got to the river, everyone had been tense and wary, on the lookout for harbor patrols and customs boats. Now they relaxed as the long wooden boat cruised quietly along the river, hugging the bank to avoid being too obtrusive and followed by the impressive Cigarette.

Cohen was a strange sight, dressed
in a
cheongsam
with
a pistol belt around his waist, sitting like a crown prince on his canvas lawn chair, staring ahead into the darkness, muttering a continuing monologue questioning his sanity, Hatcher’s, Daphne’s
—
in fact, the whole damn trip. He had insisted upon arranging for the boats and the gunmen.

Finally Hatcher growled, ‘Listen, China, nobody stuck a gun in your ear and ordered you to come. It was your idea to round up the guns, get your beach chair there and come along for the ride.’

‘Well, I couldn’t talk you out of it,’ Cohen answered.

‘What’s that got to do with it?’

‘You know what I mean,’ Cohen said. ‘What the hell’s so special about this guy Cody anyway?’

‘I told you, we went to school together.’

‘That doesn’t float,’ Cohen said with disgust.

‘Hell,’ Hatcher said, ‘maybe I wanted to do one last job that had
. . .
some sense of.
. .
humanity
. . .
honor maybe.’

“War, he sung, his toil and trouble; honour but an empty bubble,” Cohen intoned.

‘Dryden,’ Hatcher replied. ‘How about “Mine honou
r is my life; both grow in
one; Take
honour from me, and my life is done.”

‘Richard the Second,’ Cohen answered, and after a moment’s meditation added, ‘I hope to hell all this poetry’s worth the trip.’

‘Don’t we all,’ answered Hatcher.

‘Let me tell you something may
b
e you don’t know about Sam-Sam,’ Cohen said, starting a rambling monologue that eventually had a point. ‘First time I ever met him was when I saw you, when the Ts
u
Fi sent me up here to Chin Chin land the first time. Sam- Sam was kind of the new kid on the block, okay? He came down from Peking because he was an ardent capitalist at heart, which didn’t go over well in Peking. This was about six months before that time I met him. I don’t know what he did in Peking, but whatever it was, he had developed the most blasé attitude about killing I’ve ever seen. I mean he would just as soon put a bullet in your brain as step on a bug.

‘I was dealing mainly with Joe Cockroach, he was like the agent for everything. You made a deal with Joe and he got it all together
—
one price, one guy to pay. It was a comfortable way to do business. Also I trusted Joe. I knew him before in Hong Kong when he was in the import business. So maybe the third time I go up there, Sam-Sam comes up to me and says from now on
its
him and me doing business. He’ll make a better offer, he says. And I tell him, “Sam-Sam, I can’t do that because I’ve been dealing with Joe for too many years and, besides, things don’t work like that up here at the Ts’e K’am Men Ti.”

‘So Sam-Sam walks out on the deck
—
we were in this barge and I was in Joe’s office, Joe is outside doing something
—
and Sam-Sam walks out the door and next thing I know I hear two
shots,
pu
m
f, pumf,
just
like that, and I dash to the door and look out in time to see Sam-Sam with the gun still smoking and he grabs a handful of Joe’s shirt and lifts him up with one arm and throws him in the river. And he looks over at me and he smiles and he says, and this is a quote, he says, “Now it is not a problem anymore.” And he laughs. Six months later he controlled the whole damn river.’

‘I know all that stuff, China,’ Hatcher said with a sigh.

‘Yeah, but here’s what you don’t know,’ Cohen said rather elegantly. ‘Joe Cockroach came to Hong Kong from China. He did this and that, nothing very successful, then he went up to Chin Chin land and got in the smuggling business. Then he sent for his brother to come down. His brother was Sam-Sam Sam.’

‘Sam-Sam isn’t going to be around,’ Hatcher said gruffly.

‘Yeah, right, that’s what we’re all hoping,’ Cohen intoned. ‘That Sam-Sam won’t be around.’

They fell silent again and Cohen began to doze, his head bobbing, then woke up suddenly, but drifted off again. In the eerie twilight before dawn he looked like some ancient Chinese philosopher.

Daphne and Hatcher sat beside him on the hardback benches provided in the snakeboat. Hatcher was leaning back, his long legs stretched out in front of him. Daphne reached out and slipped her hand in his. He squeezed it gently and held on to it as they peered straight ahead into the waning darkness.

She leaned over him and said softly in his ear, ‘You like this, don’t you, Hatch? Living with your heart in your mouth.’

‘It can become addictive.’

‘Did you ever marry, Hatcher?’ Daphne asked.

‘Nope.’

‘Is that the reason?’

He thought for a moment, and said, ‘Maybe.’

‘Ever thought about it?’ she asked.

‘No,’ he said immediately, and was surprised at his answer. ‘The thought never occurred to me.’

‘Why not?’

Hatcher did not answer immediately. He thought of all the stereotyped reasons.

‘I live day to day,’ he said finally. ‘Marriage is also yesterdays and tomorrows.’

He turned and looked back at her. ‘Or maybe I’ve just been too damn selfish all my life to think about anyone else. Why? Is this a proposal?’

They both laughed softly in the darkness.

She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I’m not the marrying kind either.’ She paused for a moment and then asked, ‘Do you ever worry about dying?’

‘Nah,’ he said quickly, ‘I gave that
u
p a long time ago.’

The river broke up into a dozen twisting streams and creeks that coursed through the thick jungle. This was the northern rim of the Southeast Asian rain forest. A few miles to the north, trees gave way to foothills and then mountains, but here the jungle was still fresh and verdant. Chinese patrol boats, limited in number, ignored the area, which was like pirate Jean Lafitte’s stronghold in the early 1800s, a drifting, lush green empire of assassins and privateers who could vanish in an instant up one of its many creeks and ri
ver
s or disappear into jungle hideouts defended by mines and booby traps. It was a sprawling black market, its barges and boats of contraband protected by nature and by the brigands who called themselves the Ts’e K’am Men Ti, the Secret Gate Keepers, and dominated with vicious authority by th
e
ruthless Sam-Sam Sam, and his henchmen, the SAVAK killer Batal and the Tonton assassin Billy Death.