The High Commissioner

by Jon Cleary

  Royston shook his head. “I’m afraid I’ve never heard of him.”

  “We have his body down at the morgue.” Denzil was matter-of-fact and patient. “We found it in a car parked outside the Chinese, the Red Chinese, offices in Portland Place.”

  Royston stiffened only slightly, his bent knee flexing. He picked up a ball-point pen and began to doodle on the blotter on his desk. He looked at Malone. “May I ask who you are, Mr. Malone?”

  “I’m from the New South Wales Police Force,” said Malone, inventing his own cover. “Attached to the Australian High Commissioner for special duty.”

  “Why are you so interested in Jamaica?” Royston addressed the question to both of them; then sat silent while Denzil told him everything they knew about the dead man. At last he said, “He didn’t tell you much, did he?”

  “Was he working for you?” Denzil asked.

  Royston shook his head. He seemed no longer interested in keeping up the pretence of being an investment counsellor; his dark eyes took on some light. “We knew he was here, but he wasn’t under our control. The ambassador knew nothing about him and neither did the rest of the staff. That was why they told you they’d never heard of him when you checked on him last night. He was working direct with Washington.”

  “He told you nothing?”

  Royston hesitated, then threw down the pen and sat forward. “I can’t tell you much, Superintendent because I don’t have the authority. You’d have to get on to Washington for that. All I can tell you is what he told me about this Madame Cholon. He rang me this morning, made an appointment to see me to-night. That’s why I’m here now, waiting for him.” He sat back, glanced down at the doodling he had done on the blotter. He bit his lip, then moved a newspaper over the scratchings; but not before Malone had recognised them as rough drawings of what could have been tombstones. “How much do you know about this Cholon woman?”

  “Nothing,” said Denzil.

  “Well, he got on to her about three months ago. She used to be one of the favourites of Bay Vien – he had not proof that she was one of Bay’s mistresses, but she knew him pretty well.”

  “Who was Bay Vien?” Malone asked.

  Royston looked at him, his politeness dropping from him for a moment. “You Australians have never really been interested in South-East Asia, have you?”

  “I only work for the government.” Malone’s own manners had a rough edge to them. “I don’t run it.”

  Royston said nothing for a moment, as if considering suggesting that the Australian security agency should follow the C.I.A.’s example and be its own government. But he thought better of it. smiled politely and went on to inform the ignorant Australian: “Bay Vien ran the Binh Xuyen sect in Saigon during the time of Bao Dai, the last Emperor. The Binh Xuyen had everything wrapped up in Saigon – the brothels, the dope traffic, the gambling, the lot. Bay Vien ran the police and no one could do anything in Saigon without his okay.”

  “How many were in the sect?”

  “About half a million. But their influence spread much wider than that. Then Ngo Dinh Them became President and he got to work on them. Whatever else he was and forgetting all about his brother and Madame Nhu, Them was a moralist. He wasn’t interested in any rake-off from the brothels or anything else that the Binh luyen ran. He set his troops on them and wiped them out.”

  “All half a million of them?”

  Royston smiled without much humour and shook his head. “Not all of them. You can’t find and kill half a million people, especially when they are out of uniform and look just like everyone else. You have to be Jewish to have that happen to you.” For the first time Malone was aware that the broken nose might once have been slightly hooked. Royston was not a Jewish name, but somewhere in his background there was a Jew; the dark opaque eyes had a sadness about them that held inherited memories of pogroms. “There are still a lot of the Binh Xuyen people around. Including Madame Cholon.”

  “There’s a man named Pallain, too. What about him?”

  “He knew Cholon in Viet Nam, but Jamaica had no proof he was working for her.”

  “What does Cholon want here in London?” Malone asked.

  “Jamaica was only guessing, but he thought she wanted to revive all the old rackets in Saigon. There’s millions in it for anyone who could get them going again. But she couldn’t do it if there is ever a stable government put in power. Either one backed by us or,” he smiled, “by the Communists.”

  “So if this conference reached a stalemate, was adjourned,” Denzil sucked his bottom lip, “she’d be in a position at least to get started.”

  “Not on a big scale, but enough to be profitable. And if things are allowed to drift, get worse out there, she’d be sitting pretty. Especially if she could get one or two of the local generals on her pay-roll. They’re not all on our side, you know, even though we’re paying them now. Some of them are only interested in Number One. They’d make deals with anyone who raised the ante high enough·”

  “What had Jamaica intended doing to stop Cholon?”

  “I’m not sure, but I think he was going to turn her over to you when he knew exactly what she was up to. When he called this morning he said he had something important he wanted to talk about – maybe he’d finally got something on her. But he was very cagey with us here, told me a couple times not to interfere.” Again he smiled, the opacity now melting in his eyes. “You think we’re very jealous about co-operating with you fellers, Superintendent. But we have our own little jealousies, too, right in the outfit.”

  Denzil nodded sympathetically. “You must come over to the Yard some time, Mr. Royston.” He stood up. “Did Jamaica tell you where the Cholon woman could be found?”

  Royston rubbed the bridge of his broken nose; Malone could imagine him doing it all the time, like a man trying to rub away a deformity. “I’m sorry. Like I said, these little jealousies—” He spread his hands. “She’s in my territory. I really ought to have overridden him.”

  “You’ll pardon me,” said Denzil, and somehow managed not to sound pompous, “Madame Cholon is in my territory.”

  Royston admitted his error; he was not without grace. “Sorry. I’ve just spent three years on a desk in Washington. Your perspective gets a little blurred there.” He stood up, shook hands with both of them. “I’ll get on to Washington, find out if Jamaica had filed anything else on her.”

  “Who was Jamaica?” Malone was curious. Despite their antagonism, the man had tried to help him. You should not bury a friend and ally without knowing something about him. “Where did he come from?”

  “He was from some small town in Georgia. He got out of the army right after Korea finished, never went back to the States. I gather he was pretty bitter then about conditions for Negroes down South, said he never wanted to go home again to being kicked around.” Royston picked up the pen again, began to doodle. “He could have turned Communist, he had enough provocation, I guess. But he didn’t.”

  “What happened?”

  “He got this silk business going in Bangkok, did pretty well out of it. But though he didn’t want to go home, he never stopped being an American. We approached him about three years ago. He refused at first, then one day he came to our control out there and said he’d work for us. He became one of our best men.” He threw down the pen again. He had been drawing long conical shapes: they could have been Klan hoods. “His mother still lives in Georgia. I guess he’s going to go home after all.”

  “Will you take care of his body?” Denzil said.

  “Well attend to it. How was he killed?”

  “Garrotted.”

  “Better make it a heart attack. We’ll accept that if you will.”

  “If we catch up with this Cholon woman, we might want to charge her with his murder.”

  “Do you have any evidence?”

  “None at all.” Denzil shrugged. He looked utterly weary, a fast bowler who had lost all his speed; he would have trouble to-night even re
membering the day he had bowled Wally Hammond. “Righto, heart attach it is then. I’ll get’a death certificate for you and you can ship the body back to America as soon as you like. We’d appreciate it if you kept all this as quiet as possible.”

  “That’s what we’re here for,” said Royston, and smiled again.

  Outside on the embassy steps, watched through the big glass doors by the Indian scout from the Mile End Road, Denzil looked at Malone. “Well, now all we have to do is find her.”

  “What then?”

  “I’ll have her watched so closely she won’t be able to turn round without our knowing it.” They got into the waiting car and he flopped back against the seat. “Women! They’re always the worst of the lot.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” said Malone, thinking not of Madame Cholon but of Sheila Quentin. “I’ve still got to find that out”

  III

  When Malone let himself into the house with the key he had been given, Edgar was standing in the hall examining his jowls in the big mirror. “I’m putting on weight. The harder I work and the more I worry, the fatter I get. What’s new on the security front?”

  Malone didn’t feel in the mood for long expositions. “We’re progressing. Where’s Coburn?”

  “In the library watching TV.” Edgar slapped his jowls and turned away from the mirror. “The boss told us about the dead Negro outside the Chinese office. He’s in there with some of the Yanks now.” He nodded towards the closed door of the drawing-room.

  “Has he told them about Jamaica?”

  “I don’t know. He’s got more on his mind right now than a dead Yank. He’s got three very hot-tempered live mes in there.” Malone could hear the sound of angry voices behind the door; someone swore in undiplomatic language. “I got out, left it to the boss and Phil Larter. Sometimes it pays to be the junior.”

  “What’s it all about?” Malone looked at himself in the mirror behind the broad bulk of Edgar. He wasn’t putting on weight: work and worry were acting on him like thet pills. He wondered where Sheila Quentin was and hoped she had not gone to bed. He looked at his watch and was surprised to see it was only a quarter to eight. Then he remembered they had not yet had dinner and all at once he felt hungry.

  Edgar cocked an ear to the voices, still sharp and awkward: then he looked at Malone and shrugged. “The Yanks – quite rightly, I think – are blowing their tops that everyone seems to know their business. They’ve been giving some of us inside information on what they’re planning and now some of it is getting back to them. They want to know where the leak is.”

  “Where do you think it is?”

  Edgar sat down on the narrow red plush settee beneath the mirror. The mirror reflected the back of his head, showed the white scalp beneath the thinning hair. Malone realised that, though Edgar was the junior man, he was probably at least ten years older than Larter. He would never make ambassador, would always be the man waiting in the hall outside. He sighed, put one arm along the back of the settee and let his belly relax. This is a night for everyone suddenly looking older, Malone thought; and looked at himself again in the mirror. If he did not look older, he certainly felt it.

  “It could have been a dozen places. Someone from their own delegation got careless – though I doubt that. Someone from the British crowd – they’ve never trusted British security after the Burgess-Maclean business. It could be a leak in the South Vietnamese lot. There’s so much rivalry inside among those blokes, everyone wanting to be the next boss in Saigon, I wouldn’t lay any bets against a little bit of skulduggery there.”

  There it was again: no one trusted the Vietnamese. So why are we fighting there? Malone asked. But he knew it was too simple a question, the sort asked when lazing on the beach at Bondi, the only barrage on the ears that of the rolling surf.

  “Who else is on the list?” Malone sat down beside Edgar. His light brown socks showed beneath the dark blue trouser-leg, but Edgar did not seem to suffer from any aesthetic revulsion. The new shoes no longer hurt Malone’s feet and he wiggled his toes comfortably in them. But the jacket of Quentin’s suit was still a tight fit, not helped by the holster in Malone’s armpit. “Do they suspect anyone else?”

  “Us.”

  “Who’d give away any information in our delegation?” Malone realised it was an embarrassing question: he was talking to one of the delegation.

  “Well, Phil Larter and I didn’t, for a start,” Edgar said with a grin. “And the boss is not the sort who makes unguarded remarks. We’ve had papers from the Yanks, but they’ve had top classification. Only the boss, Phil and myself, oh, and our military adviser – we’re the only ones who’ve seen them.”

  “Where are they kept?”

  “In a safe at Australia House. The boss probably brought them home to study, but he has a safe here that only he knows the combination to.”

  “I’ve seen it”

  “I’m sorry for the boss.” Edgar looked at the closed door of the drawing-room; he spoke with affection for the man in there. “He put a lot of faith in old-fashioned diplomacy with this one. Over the past couple of years there’s been too much of what I call market-place diplomacy. Everyone yelling their heads off in public, selling influence and compromise and all the rest of it as if we were conducting some sort of public auction. Too many so-called diplomats today forget or ignore the fact that the main object of diplomacy, it’s to get what you want without resorting to violence. That’s what diplomacy means – the art of negotiation.” Someone else has been looking up the dictionary, Malone thought But now other, newer definitions had been introduced that baffled Edgar. “There’s been too much diplomacy by television and press conference. So Quentin has been trying for trading behind closed doors.”

  “Doesn’t sound as if there’s much trading going on behind that closed door.” The voices were harsh and unintelligible, like jungle cries.

  Edgar nodded morosely, then stood up as the voices began to subside. “They shouldn’t be accusing him. He’s done more to keep this conference going than any half a dozen other men. And he’s not well, have you noticed that? In the past week – why, only since you arrived—” Malone waited to be accused himself; but Edgar was only naming when, not who and why. “He looks as if he’s aged ten years. He needs a rest. He was on the phone to the P.M. at lunch-time, I just caught the tail-end of the conversation as I went into his office. Sounded as if he wanted to go back home. Has he mentioned anything to you?”

  Malone stood up as the door to the drawing-room opened. “Just casually, that’s all.”

  Quentin and Larter came out with three men, one of them the thin balding man who had been there that morning. All five men were flushed; Quentin looked healthier than he had since Malone’s arrival. There were stiffly formal good nights and Edgar ushered the Americans to the front door. Quentin nodded at Malone and the latter took the hint; he said good night to Larter, who nodded at him cursorily, and walked along the hall to the library. He closed the door on the troubled voices behind him. He had enough troubles of his own without listening to international ones. Treachery between nations was another part of history; it was part of diplomacy, getting what you wanted without resorting to violence. But treachery between men: it was his profession to combat it, yet he would never grow accustomed to it.

  Coburn rose from one of the leather arm-chairs and turned down the sound on the television set in one corner of the room. He looked at the gyrating long-haired figures on the grey screen, then at Malone. “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? And there are some people campaigning to see hermaphrodites like that in colour! That bloke, I think he’s a bloke, he’s singing about wanting to be some bird’s man. A real cry from the crotch, but I think it’s biologically hopeless. When I was eighteen I wanted to look like Cary Grant or John Wayne. Now they all want to look like the Bride of Frankenstein.” He switched off the set and turned back to Malone. “Well, how did it go?”

  Malone told him everything they had learned at the American
Embassy. “Now all you blokes have to do is pick up Madame Cholon.”

  “I wonder what she’s cooking up in the meantime?”

  “I don’t think it matters if we can keep Quentin out of her way till Saturday morning. The conference should be over by then, maybe even to-morrow night.”

  “When are you going back?”

  “Saturday.”

  “Is Quentin going with you? I heard his wife say to him that she would have to start packing.”

  “Not that I know of,” Malone lied; he was instinctively still protecting Quentin. “Where is Mrs. Quentin?”

  “Upstairs in her room.”

  “Joseph back yet?” Coburn shook his head. “Lisa?”

  “I gather she’s working late at Australia House.”

  Good, Malone thought, I’m going to get that hour alone with the Quentins. He opened the library door and looked out; Larter and Edgar had gone and Quentin was slowly climbing the stairs. “Okay, I’ll take over now. You can go and have a word with your bird about purple ties.”

  “She said last night she wished I was younger, so’s I could have a Beatle haircut. I just wish she wasn’t such a dish, I’d walk out on her. Well, hooroo, mate,” he said with an attempt at an Australian accent. He stopped at the front door and looked back. “She’s got a sister. You wouldn’t be interested in a double date before you go back?”

  Malone shook his head, grinning. “I’ve got a wife and six kids back home. All with Beatle haircuts.”

  “How do you tell the boys from the girls?”