Death Trance

by Graham Masterton

  Randolph tucked away the bill. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘At least you’re honest. On another airline, they might have taken the money and spun me ten minutes of hooey. But…let me put it this way … if you do happen to catch anything that gives you a clue as to who they are and what they’re doing here … well, it’s a long way to Manila and I don’t have any place to spend this hundred dollars except on this plane. I might as well try to get my money’s worth.’

  He felt more than a little embarrassed, particularly since the flight director had rebuffed him so politely, but Wanda seemed to be impressed. ‘I never thought I’d ever catch you trying to bribe somebody,’ she smiled. Then she turned around to see if she could catch a glimpse of the four men in fatigues. ‘And anyway, why did you ask him who those men are?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s the way they’ve been looking at me, I guess. I have this peculiar feeling that they’ve been following us.’

  Dr Ambara looked up from his magazine. ‘The East always seems more mysterious than the West. You are beginning to see conspiracies where none exist. Those men are not following you. They simply happen to be travelling to Manila on the same flight.’

  However, the next time Randolph went to the rest room, the flight director lifted a finger and beckoned to him as he passed the galley. Randolph stepped into the niche and the flight director drew the curtain behind him. One of the stewardesses was perched on a fold-down seat and eating a belated breakfast but she ignored them. The flight director fixed his attention on Randolph’s right shoulder and said between almost immobile lips, ‘From Manila, they are flying on to Djakarta.’

  That’s what I’m doing. Are they travelling by Merpati?’

  ‘They don’t have any choice. That’s the only airline available.’

  ‘Do you know when they booked their flight?’

  The flight director picked up his clipboard and checked through the passenger roster.

  ‘Monday morning. The seats were booked through from Memphis.’

  Randolph resisted the temptation to peer over the top of the clipboard. ‘Does it say who booked the tickets?’ he asked.

  ‘I shouldn’t tell you that,’ the flight director said flatly. He kept his eyes on Randolph’s shoulder.

  ‘What if I double the previous arrangement?’ Randolph suggested.

  The flight director thought for a moment and then turned his clipboard around so that Randolph could read it. There were four names, each booked at the same time.

  Ecker, Richard. Heacox, James T. Louv, Frank. Stroup, Robert Patrick. Their seats had been booked through MidAmerica Travel of Monroe Street, Memphis, and the billing address was the Brooks Cottonseed Corporation.

  Without a word Randolph handed the flight director two hundred-dollar bills, noting that the man accepted them with that extraordinary sleight-of-hand at which many who serve the public become skilled.

  ‘They haven’t been talking very much,’ the flight director added, turning his clipboard around again. ‘The one called Ecker doesn’t speak at all. Mute possibly, or deaf-mute. His friends order his drinks and his meals for him. They’re not on vacation though, I can tell you that much. They’re working, and they’re travelling on expenses.

  I heard one of them complaining that they would have to stay at the Hotel Keborayan in Djakarta. He said the Hotel Keborayan stunk and that they never would have stayed there if he’d had anything to do with it.’

  Randolph nodded and then passed the flight director another hundred. The flight director said with undisguised surprise, ‘Do they mean that much to you?’

  Randolph said, ‘I’m not sure. It’s possible. But let’s just say that I like to know who I’m flying with.’

  ‘Well, any time,’ said the flight director. ‘How about a drink?’

  When Randolph returned to his seat, Wanda was listening to music. He signalled that she should remove her earphones and then he leaned over and said, Those four men … I think I was right. Their tickets were booked by Brooks Cottonseed.’

  ‘You mean that they’ve been sent to follow us to Indonesia?’

  ‘It seems like it. Maybe Orbus Greene thinks I’ve discovered a new source of cottonseed oil and wants to keep tabs on it. Maybe he just wants to know what I’m doing. I always did make him nervous.’

  Dr Ambara, who had overheard this, said with a frown, ‘You would have thought that if they were doing nothing more than keeping an eye on us, they would have sent somebody less conspicuous. They look more like mercenary soldiers than private detectives.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s the whole point. Perhaps Orbus wanted us to find out who they are.

  Perhaps he was deliberately trying to intimidate us.’

  ‘Are you intimidated?’ Wanda asked.

  ‘Of course not,’ Randolph told her.

  ‘Well, then,’ put in Dr Ambara, ‘if it really was his intention to intimidate you, he has failed. Is it conceivable that he had something else in mind? Something more positive? After all, it could not have been inexpensive to send four men executive-

  class to Djakarta. It is not the sort of excursion anyone would pay for unless he was expecting to reap some tangible benefits from it.’

  ‘I’m not sure of what you’re getting at,’ Randolph said.

  ‘Neither am I,’ Dr Ambara replied. ‘But - since we are obviously being kept under close surveillance - I suggest that we conduct ourselves with extreme caution.’

  Randolph had been thinking the same thought ever since he had first seen Richard Ecker staring at him so intently. What had Jimmy the Rib told him? There’s four or five of them, not always the same guys. The only name I heard is Reece, and he’s supposed to be some spaced-out veteran from Cambodia or someplace like that, a frightening man from what I hear tell.’

  Was it possible that the man calling himself Ecker was really the man whom Jimmy the Rib had called Reece? There were distinct similarities. Reece was supposed to be a veteran and Ecker certainly dressed like one. Reece was supposed to be employed by the Cottonseed Association and Ecker’s tickets had been bought through Brooks. Yet Randolph was reluctant to make the final assumption that would have made his guesswork complete. Reluctant because it was too neat. And reluctant because the implications of it were too frightening to think about. He felt almost paranoid, as if he were beginning to suffer delusions that he was at the centre of a dark and complicated conspiracy. But it seemed to be too much of a coincidence that Ecker-Reece was flying on the same plane on the way to Djakarta with three henchmen in combat fatigues.

  Jimmy the Rib had actually suggested that Reece might have been responsible for killing Marmie and the children. The thought that the same man was sitting here now, within thirty feet of him, made Randolph feel tight and cold all over, as if he had been suddenly plunged into icy water. But it made terrible sense of Ecker’s presence here if Ecker were really Reece. Ecker-Reece had slaughtered the wife and the children.

  Now he was after the father.

  There was no proof of course. Ecker might have been doing nothing more sinister than flying to Djakarta on one of Orbus’s overseas engineering programmes. He might have caught the same plane as a matter of coincidence. But Ecker had been booked on this flight after Randolph had made his travel arrangements, and there was no doubt in Randolph’s mind that he and his men were showing more than a passing interest in him.

  Randolph scribbled a note on one of the back pages of his diary, tore it out and passed it over to Dr Ambara, who read: ‘I believe these men may have been sent to kill us. I have no cast-iron evidence but it will probably be safer if we can manage to shake them off our tail. Perhaps we can manage it when we reach Manila?’

  Dr Ambara studied the note carefully, then passed it back. Wanda read it, too, and looked at Randolph with alarm.

  ‘I can’t understand why anybody at the Cottonseed Association should want to get rid of you so badly,’ she hissed. ‘Surely you couldn’t have upset Orbus Greene that much, that he should want
to kill you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Randolph replied soberly, tearing the note into confetti and cramming it into the ashtray beside him. ‘I don’t understand it either. Maybe we’ve been hurting them more than we’ve realized. After all, Brooks lost six per cent of the market share last quarter while we gained eight and a half per cent.’

  ‘But to kill you - to kill your family - that’s just insane!’

  ‘I agree with you. But ever since that fire out at Raleigh, people have been telling me that Orbus Greene and Waverley Graceworthy and all the rest of the good old boys have been determined to finish me off. I never thought they could be capable of murder … but, well, maybe I’ve been too naive. Maybe I’ve failed to realize what a dog-eat-dog world it is out there.’

  Wanda touched his arm. ‘I’m frightened,’ she said.

  Randolph took her hand. ‘Don’t you worry. We know a lot more about what’s going on than the Cottonseed Association seems to think we do. If they had known what Jimmy the Rib told me … well, they wouldn’t have sent Ecker or Reece or whatever his name is to follow us.’

  ‘Randolph,’ Wanda said, ‘you ought to tell the police.’

  Tell the police what? That the highly respected chairman of the Memphis Cottonseed Association has sent a team of veteran killers to rub me out all over a couple of cottonseed-processing contracts?’

  ‘You’re friends with Chief Moyne. Perhaps you could call him.’

  ‘Maybe. But I’m going to need something a little more substantial before I start bothering Chief Moyne.’

  ‘He’s a friend of yours.’

  ‘He’s also a friend of Orbus Greene’s.’

  For the remainder of the flight to Manila, they said little. But they kept their eyes on the man called Ecker and his companions, and there was no doubt that whenever Ecker passed Randolph in the aisle or at the galley, he stared at him as coldly as a striking snake. In a strange way, Randolph found it fascinating that this man might have been paid to kill him, fascinating and frightening. But Dr Am-bara had assured him that once they reached Manila, they would be able to lose their entourage for sure. They would have to rearrange their flight schedule to Djakarta, but that would present no difficulties. Oddly, Dr Ambara seemed to find the idea of being pursued from Memphis to Djakarta quite unsurprising. Perhaps it was his philosophical Oriental mind. But Randolph found it unreal, and his sense of unreality was heightened by the twelve-hour time difference between Manila and Memphis as well as by the change in climate and culture.

  They landed in Manila early in the afternoon, right after a rainstorm. The humidity was even more oppressive than it was in Memphis and Randolph was soaked in sweat by the time he claimed their baggage for the flight to Djakarta. Wanda was feeling jet-lagged and groggy, mainly because she had been dozing for the last two hours of the flight. Dr Ambara, however, now that he was nearing his native Indonesia, was almost ebullient and kept telling wry jokes. Randolph did not understand any of them but was polite enough to grunt and smile.

  They asked the porter to take them across to the Air Merpati desk. Randolph, glancing around, saw Ecker and his three associates still waiting for their baggage by the carousel. Ecker was wiping the back of his neck with a handkerchief but he kept his eyes fixed on Randolph, who had no doubt by this time that the man was Reece and that he had been sent by the Cottonseed Association either to keep a close watch on him or to make sure that he never returned from Indonesia alive.

  Dr Ambara said to the Indonesian girl behind the Air Merpati desk, ‘Hold these bags for now. We have business here in Manila. We may not get back to the airport in time to make today’s flight. But make sure nobody knows that we haven’t checked in.

  If anybody asks about Mr Clare and his party, say they will certainly be leaving for Djakarta this afternoon. Do you understand that? It is a business matter, very confidential.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the girl assured him. ‘We thank you for choosing Air Merpati.’

  Randolph went to the Pan Am courtesy lounge and while Wanda and Dr Ambara sat at the bar and drank cocktails, he called Neil Sleaman in Memphis.

  ‘Neil? This is Randolph Clare. I’m calling from Manila. No, the flight for Djakarta doesn’t leave for two hours yet. Listen, Neil, can you hear me? Good, because it seems like we have a difficulty here. There are four guys travelling on the same flight with us, all of them dressed in combat gear, very hard-looking characters indeed.

  Their names are Ecker, Heacox, Stroup and … I forget the fourth one. But the point is that their tickets were booked by Brooks and they almost exactly fit the descriptions Jimmy the Rib gave me. They’ve been keeping a close watch on us, too close. Well, of course I’m concerned. If there was only half a grain of truth in what Jimmy the Rib had to say, they could be the men who killed Marmie and the children, which would mean that Orbus Greene and Waverley Graceworthy are prepared to do just about anything to put me out of business, including homicide.’

  Neil said, ‘Perhaps I should talk to Chief Moyne. He could do some investigating.

  You know, check to see if any known criminals have left the city in the past twenty-four hours.’

  ‘I think you ought to leave Chief Moyne out of this for the moment. All I want you to do is make sure that security at the plants is double-tight, and keep pushing Orbus Greene for an answer on Sun-Taste. He makes optimistic noises but I have a strong feeling he’s going to say no. Maybe he’s stringing us along until his hired maniacs can dispose of me altogether. Maybe I’m misjudging him badly and he doesn’t mean to do me any harm at all. But keep an open mind. And, please, do whatever you can to get Raleigh back into production as soon as possible.’

  Neil said calmly, ‘Okay. Everything’s under control. We should be back up to seventy-five-per-cent production by the end of the week.’

  ‘Well, try for more,’ Randolph urged.

  ‘I’ll do my best, sir. Have a good flight.’

  ‘I’ll call you from Djakarta, although we may be leaving here tomorrow instead of today. I’d very much like to get those four hired gorillas off our backs.’

  Neil said disparagingly, ‘I shouldn’t think they’re anything but wartime veterans, sir, making a pilgrimage. It’s the tenth anniversary of the fall of Saigon, remember.’

  Randolph hung up the phone and went out to join Wanda and Dr Ambara at the bar.

  ‘What’s the plan?’ he asked Dr Ambara.

  ‘Well,’ the doctor said, ‘I personally believe it would be wiser to wait here in Manila for one night. There is another Air Merpati flight tomorrow, straight to Djakarta. If these men really are pursuing us, as you say, they will be obliged to return to Djakarta airport tomorrow and wait for us and by doing so, they will show their hand.’

  They took a taxi out into the clamorous streets. The sky was dark red, like freshly spilled blood, and the high-rise buildings of Manila stood black and skeletal on either side. There was a strong smell of tropical mustiness, exhaust fumes, charcoal-grilled pork and sewage. Taxis hooted, bicycle bells jangled and lights streamed along the city streets. The taxi driver leaned back on his worn-out vinyl seat and asked, ‘Hotel Pasay?’

  That’s right,’ said Dr Ambara firmly.

  ‘Hotel Pasay is not for American,’ the taxi driver remarked.

  ‘Just go there,’ Dr Ambara insisted.

  ‘Maybe you make a mistake. Maybe you want to go to Manila Hilton. Also Hotel Bakati is first class.’

  ‘Either you take us to the Hotel Pasay or I call a policeman,’ Dr Ambara told him.

  ‘All right, buddy,’ the taxi driver told him in an odd Filipino-American accent. ‘Your funeral.’

  The centre of Manila, as they drove through, was noisy and crowded and jammed with traffic. Although, after Dresden, Manila had been the second-most-devastated city of the Second World War, it had not been rebuilt on Utopian lines. Instead, it had become an architectural portrait of the desperate social divisions between its rich inhabitants and its poor. Behind the gua
rded walls of Forbes Park and Makati stood some of the most opulent mansions in the East. Around the walls, within sight of the mansions’ balconies, clustered derelict tenements, squatters’ shacks and some of the most squalid slums Randolph had ever seen. Even in its worst days, Beale Street had been nothing like this. And over the whole city, reflecting the scarlet neon and the glaring street lights and the dangling lanterns, hung the haze of air pollution -

  the exhaust fumes of thousands of taxis, buses, Datsuns and worn-out Chevrolets - mingling with the foggy pall that rose from the South China Sea.

  They drove past rows of modern stores advertising Sony televisions, hot dogs, ‘authentic’ souvenirs. Then they were jouncing into a run-down suburb with stalls lining the streets, and peeling buildings, and lanterns hanging on every corner.

  Eventually they reached a narrow-fronted building painted in vivid pink and with a hand-painted sign reading ‘Hotel Pasay, All Welcome, Icey Drinks.’

  They climbed out of the taxi and Dr Ambara paid the driver. Randolph looked up at the hotel dubiously. Wanda discreetly made a face. The night was hot and smelly and they were tired. Three small children were teasing a mangy dog on the hotel steps. A blind man with eyes as white as ping-pong balls was sitting on a nearby wall whistling monotonously. Two sexy little Filipino girls in red satin mini-skirts and ruffled white blouses were bouncing up and down on the saddle of a parked motorcycle.

  ‘Nice neighbourhood,’ Wanda remarked. ‘Did I hear that it was on the way up?’

  Dr Ambara took her arm. ‘You will be safe here, that is the important thing. This is not a rich neighbourhood but the people here are friends. Come up and meet one of my cousins.’

  ‘You really think we’re safe here?’ Randolph asked.

  ‘For now,’ replied Dr Ambara.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Manila

  Dr Ambara’s ‘cousin’ turned out to be a handsome, motherly Javanese woman who had fled from Djakarta when General Suharto came to power. Her husband had been arrested and shot for his pro-Soekarno politics. Apparently Dr Ambara’s father had helped her escape to Manila and had lent her enough money to buy the Hotel Pasay, where she catered to whores, schoolteachers and a motley assembly of Indonesian refugees.