He joined her on the terrace, carrying a cup of room-service coffee. They were staying in a corner suite, so that one side of the terrace looked out on the ancient Chao Phraya River while the other was directly above the Riverside Hotel’s elegant courtyard. The wind blew in from the river, pungent with the smells of lilies, gasoline, and musk. The Riverside was a nice enough hotel, and from their room they had a splendid view. But for Van, who had never before been out of Viet Nam, it was as massively ostentatious as the palace at Versailles.
On the river a caravan of five barges laden with tons of rice cut slowly through the chalky water, pulled along by a creaky old steamer. A family sat on the steamer’s fantail, eating breakfast as that day’s laundry flapped above their heads like circus pennants. Little boats cut up and down the river, powered by long-stemmed outboard motors. At the dock just below them, the Riverside Hotel’s ferry was loading up for its fifteen-minute journey upriver to the famed Oriental pier. And all along the river, as far as they could see, clusters of tall, modern buildings jutted up against a crisp blue sky.
‘Welcome to paradise,’ he said dryly, standing next to her. ‘The river is polluted, and there’s so much chlorine in the swimming pool that it will flake your skin.’
‘But look at the buildings and the boats and the temples!’ she said. ‘They are glorious, Cong Ly. New and shiny, so modern! And the people seem so happy, not like Viet Nam!’
He put a hand on her shoulder, amused. ‘I think you should give it at least another day.’
One day in Bangkok had created in Van’s mind a fanciful, even poetic vision of another world. Despite its dirt and traffic, the city’s pleasures and promises had grabbed her like a vise from the moment she exited the aircraft. ‘I don’t ever want to leave this place.’
He chuckled cynically. ‘And she hasn’t even seen Hong Kong.’
‘Is it better?’
‘That depends on what you’re looking for. It’s thick with buildings, crammed with people. But they live far better.’ His arm swept before him in an arc as he spoke. ‘If this were Hong Kong we would be looking out at the harbor into the sea. Ships of all sizes. Mountains over there. Narrow streets packed with shops that make Bangkok look like – like a starving stepsister.’
Her eyes were transfixed with the magic of these new and sudden possibilities. ‘Then I want to go there too. Let’s go!’
‘You would need a new visa.’
‘I could get one! You could pay the bribe at the Vietnamese embassy here, Cong Ly! Everything is possible with the bribe. Ca phe ca phao!’
He shook his head. ‘Not very likely. Anyway, I don’t want to go to Hong Kong. I don’t even want to be in Bangkok any longer than I have to. I have a job to do, Van.’
She gave him a look that bordered on amazement. ‘You would rather be in Viet Nam than here, I think?’
‘Actually, yes.’
‘Why?’
He laughed. The Why thing again. ‘Why do fools fall in love?’
‘I don’t understand you.’
‘In a world of five billion people, what makes two people develop the chemistry that causes them to single each other out and fall in love, Van?’
‘I don’t know.’ She watched him carefully, as if he were asking a trick question. ‘Why do they?’
‘I don’t know either.’ He waved to her, leaving the terrace. ‘And I don’t know why I’d rather be in Viet Nam. I only know it’s true.’
* * *
Hanson Muir and Paul Archer were waiting for him at a table in the Riverside Garden Cafe. The large cafe was crowded with western tourists of all ages and stripes, from a few sassy young American backpackers to a large group of loudly dressed older Germans who obviously were part of a tour. A uniformed flight crew from Air New Zealand milled among the tourists, catching a quick meal before a bus took them to the airport.
Muir stood and waved as Condley entered the cafe. Plates and bowls from a huge buffet breakfast lay scattered on the table in front of him and Archer. Condley teased the ample scientist as he took a chair at the table.
‘Getting your money’s worth, huh, Professor?’
‘A simple but ample meal, Brandon. I was famished! After the usual spy-infested omelettes of the Rex Hotel, not to mention weeks of airline food, I’m beginning to wonder if this isn’t simply a plot to make me lose weight.’
‘The Brandon Condley Diet,’ joked Condley. ‘Keep the boy on the road.’ He rolled his eyes slightly, looking at Muir’s bright-orange shirt. ‘You just can’t get rid of that luau fashion statement, can you?’
Muir waved a huge arm into the air. ‘I’m perfectly at home here, Brandon. Look around you.’
‘Yeah, all those I-went-to-Asia shirts hurt my eyes. It’s like they all stole the same tablecloth.’ Condley pointed, sharing a quiet chuckle with Paul Archer. The fortyish, graying CIA agent had shown up in a coat and tie. ‘Now, look here, Professor. This is the way a self-respecting government employee dresses in Bangkok.’ He had not yet met Archer, and now he extended his hand. ‘Brandon Condley.’
‘Take a look at yourself, Brandon,’ said Muir as the two shook hands, pointing to Condley’s casual sport shirt and blue jeans. Then he caught himself. ‘I know, I know. I won’t even finish that thought. So this is Paul Archer from the American Embassy.’
‘Your reputation precedes you, Mister Condley,’ grinned Archer. ‘I’m told you’ve spent a bit of time over on this side.’
‘I was a knuckle-dragger for a while,’ said Condley. ‘Up-country and in Laos, mostly. Did some corporate security work after that. I had a few friends around here, but there was never much to do around Bangkok except get laid.’ He thought about that. ‘Not that I have ever been opposed to getting laid.’
Archer laughed. ‘Like I said, your reputation precedes you.’
‘If you didn’t see it with your own eyes, it’s a lie!’ bantered Condley.
‘Plausible deniability. That’s exactly what they predicted you’d say,’ quipped the CIA agent.
Hanson Muir gestured to a manila folder lying on one edge of the table. ‘Mister Archer did a very thorough job going over the materials we faxed him, but I’m afraid he doesn’t have much to tell us.’
‘Are you the station chief?’ asked Condley.
‘No, but I’m a lawyer as well as a’ – Archer looked briefly around at the other tables – ‘State Department employee. And I do a lot of work with Interpol.’
‘According to a fax I received from a friend of mine at Cinc Pac, your colleague in Moscow, Skip Rogers, seemed to believe you could help us,’ said Condley, keeping things deliberately vague.
‘I’d like to, but there’s only so much I can do off-line,’ said Archer, shrugging hopelessly. ‘I looked at your stuff and had a few quiet talks with some of our long-time Asia hands, but that’s it. And if we’re talking about the official position of the embassy, there’s really not much that we can do on this at all. Let me explain. Realistically, you’ve got a set of military charges that are now thirty-four years old – one for murder, and another for desertion after the murder. There’s no statute of limitations on either of these two crimes. Murder because it’s a capital offense. Desertion because it’s continuous, meaning that the crime doesn’t end until the desertion does. But I would emphasise that these are military charges, at least at this point, under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. In addition, they’re very old and we have no suspect. We don’t even have a set of regular criminal charges from a host nation. First, South Viet Nam doesn’t exist anymore, and second, we never allowed the South Vietnamese government to prosecute our military people anyway.’
‘What about the murder of an Australian national in 1971?’ Condley asked idly.
‘Get me an indictment,’ said Archer. ‘We do have strong circumstantial evidence, given the dog tags and the severed hand, but you guys haven’t even officially shared this information with our own government, much less made it public. If I had something of
that sort that was official, I could put it into the international system. But even then…’
Archer shrugged, not finishing the sentence. Condley reached across the table into a bread basket, stealing one of Muir’s muffins. ‘We sent you that fax three days ago, Paul. I expected to walk in here and put the cuffs on Deville this morning.’
‘Cuffing him would be the easy part,’ Archer replied. ‘If he’s alive, that is. And in Bangkok. And discoverable.’
‘I think he’s here,’ insisted Condley. ‘If he’s still alive.’
‘Is there a basis for that thought?’ asked Archer.
‘Invincible optimism.’
‘Optimism is commendable but a rather fragile reed to lean on when it comes to invoking the powers of government.’ Archer gestured toward the manila folder that Muir had brought to the breakfast table. ‘Your materials are interesting. No, let me say that they are fascinating. But they don’t establish anything. And I mean nothing at all. What do we know about this man as it connects to Bangkok? All we have is an assumption that he would have escaped from Sai Gon – if he ever did make it from central Viet Nam back to Sai Gon – by using Mathew Larkin’s passport And a further assumption that he would have come to Bangkok because a flight to Bangkok would raise the least amount of suspicion, given the visa stamps that were in the passport. Or at least that some drunken Russian veteran claims were in there. We don’t know for sure that this man Deville ever escaped from Viet Nam. We don’t know for sure that he came here. We don’t know that he would have stayed here or anywhere else in Thailand if he did come. We have no fingerprints that match his, although that’s a long shot in a place like Thailand, anyway. And to be blunt, thirty years leaves us a pretty cold trail. No, let me change that estimate. A pretty dead trail.’
Condley continued to chew slowly on Hanson Muir’s lost muffin, holding Archer’s gaze. ‘So, tell me some good news.’
‘Well, the Redskins are favored in the Super Bowl,’ panned Archer. ‘And oil just went down to twenty-five dollars a barrel.’
‘Twenty-five dollars? No kidding? Remind me to adjust my portfolio.’ Condley took an empty cup and poured some hot coffee from a pot the waiter had left on the table. ‘Let me tell you why I’m optimistic. And you’re right, we don’t really know much of anything, at least past the point where our man killed Larkin and stole his identity. But we do know he did that. He left his dog tags around Larkin’s neck and he cut off his hand. There’s no question there.’
‘Fine,’ said Hanson Muir, nudging Condley along as if he were the moderator on a panel discussion. ‘We do know that, Brandon. So tell Mister Archer why you are optimistic. Although optimism is a rather odd term to use when one contemplates the implications of your happy mood.’
‘Put yourself in this guy’s shoes,’ said Condley. ‘You’ve been on the run inside Viet Nam for four years, doing everything you can to keep from being caught by the American authorities. You killed a guy in cold blood over a blown drug deal before you went AWOL. You rendered aid and comfort to the enemy, probably in order to survive. And you killed another guy in cold blood so you could steal his identity and finally get the hell out of the war zone. Once you’re out of the war zone, the last thing you’re going to do is take the kind of risk that will cause you to be recognised by western authorities. What are your priorities? Not getting caught, that’s your first and maybe only priority. No airports, no crossing the border into new countries, and no getting into any trouble where western police or diplomats are going to be called upon for assistance. Not only that, but you’ve been in the jungle or on the run for four years. You want to unwind. In other words, you’re going to burrow in and hide for a while. Celebrate your escape, learn the new terrain, choose how you’re going to operate in it.’
‘You stay in Bangkok,’ said Muir.
‘You definitely stay in Bangkok. Particularly in the early seventies, when there is still a steady stream of American GIs flying in and out of Bangkok from Viet Nam for R and R, not to mention the Air Force weenies who are in and out of here all the time from their bases at U Tapao and U Dorn. Unplugged young Americans in Bangkok aren’t anything unusual. You can float along the edges of the underworld, live for almost nothing, and nobody pays you any never-mind.’
Archer nodded slowly, again and again, alternating his look from Condley to Muir. ‘Logical,’ he said. ‘Actually, more than logical. Visceral. I would have to agree with your instincts. But unfortunately, the fact that he was very likely here thirty years ago still means nothing when it comes to how I conduct my work.’
‘So you’re saying there’s nothing you can do?’ asked Muir. From his expression, Condley sensed that the professor was actually relieved, as if the entire journey might now, thankfully, be over and he could return to his quiet world of skeletons and DNA.
‘I respect you gentlemen, please understand me. But it’s almost like you’re on more of an archaeological dig than a criminal investigation. I’ve got my hands full with real-life problems.’
Archer checked his watch. ‘Traffic is a fire-breathing dragon in this city.’ Reaching into his briefcase, he pulled out a small black leather folder and opened it, taking out two business cards. He stood, handing one to each of them. ‘In any event, happy hunting, gentlemen. And if you find somebody to charge with a crime, I’m only a heartbeat away.’
Hanson Muir watched as Archer walked away from them, disappearing into the lobby. ‘Traffic is a fire-breathing dragon,’ he mimicked. ‘What an absurd metaphor. Traffic is a broadly based condition, like fire ants or the flu. How can something that happens all over a city be a dragon?’ He glanced over to Condley. ‘I guess we’ve run out of luck, Brandon.’
‘Wrong. I know this city pretty well,’ said Condley.
‘Yes, and you never saw Deville in it, did you?’
‘I didn’t say I knew everybody in it.’
‘So what are we going to do, start going door to door? Let’s see, at six million people, at a rate of perhaps – shall we say ten doors an hour, and working eight hours a day – and figuring that an average of four people live in each home, that means 1.5 million homes.’ Muir’s brows furrowed as his mind calculated furiously. ‘OK, I’d say, just under two hundred thousand days, which means, let’s see… we could have this wrapped up in about five hundred years. Depending, of course, on the population growth in the meantime.’
‘No,’ said Condley. ‘We call Ted Simolzak.’
‘Great,’ groused Muir. ‘He can cover half the houses and we’ll be finished in two hundred fifty years.’ He watched Condley for a moment. ‘Who is Ted Simolzak?’
‘He’s a private dick out here. I’ve known him forever. Came here from California toward the end of the war after he finished his time in the Air Force. Fell in love with the place and never left. He knows everybody, and he knows just about everything about everybody. He’s the reigning encyclopedia of the city when it comes to expats. We did some things together in the late seventies and early eighties. Maybe even the late eighties.’
‘Maybe even the nineties,’ grinned an obviously envious Muir.
‘Maybe the early nineties.’
‘Probably some pretty beautiful things?’
‘Stop drooling, Professor. In fact, some very beautiful things. Simolzak throws a hell of a party.’
‘Yes, but you’ve brought your own party with you,’ said Hanson Muir with exaggerated propriety.
‘Oh, I’ll bring my party to his party. But you need to see his party.’ Condley became serious. ‘If Deville left any tracks at all in this city, Simolzak will know where and how to follow them.’
‘So you’re telling me I can’t go home yet?’
‘You can go home whenever you want.’
‘I know that.’ Muir sighed. ‘Brandon, if you knew about Simolzak, why did you let me contact Archer?’
‘Archer could have been helpful, but I’ve been out here long enough to know that something’s holding him back. Probably int
ernal politics inside the embassy, if I had to guess. But he’ll still be useful, Professor. If the embassy gets any third-party reports from out in town, he’ll be our fire wall. They’ve been briefed in on what we’re up to, more or less. I didn’t mention General Duncan’s name, but they know that we have support at some level at Cinc Pac, which should slow them down. So even if Archer doesn’t help us directly, he’ll keep them from filing a bunch of diplomatic cables asking what the hell we’re doing.’
‘You do know Bangkok,’ nodded an impressed Muir.
‘Yes, I do,’ agreed Condley, rising from his seat.
‘So we won’t see Archer again?’ asked Muir as they headed toward the restaurant door.
‘If we call, he’ll come,’ said Condley. ‘But they’ve basically kissed us off for now. They’ve got their hands full with other problems, and they think we’re on a hopeless ghost chase. So they’ll leave us alone.’
Chapter Thirty
Ted Simolzak was a man of routines. He worked out with weights and on a treadmill every morning at the Oriental Hotel’s exercise club. He kept meticulously regular work hours, operating a successful business as a private investigator from an office with two secretaries who made detailed lists of his calls and carefully filed his correspondence. He lunched every noon at the Royal Yacht Club, methodically rotating his guests to ensure continuing access to information and power. He kept no less than two and no more than three young Thai girlfriends, even now that he had passed the age of fifty, always treating the women well, even mentoring them in their professional desires, but never allowing any of them close enough for a truly serious relationship. In late afternoons he liked to treat his favorite clients and sources to tea or drinks at the Regent Hotel, where he had become a semi-famous regular in the luxurious outer lobby.
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