Bleeding in Black and White

by Colin Cotterill

  “Look,” said the policeman. “Obviously these men — these men that only this emotionally unstable girl saw — are not from around these parts. All our soldiers are accounted for. If they exist, they’re probably travelers long gone from the province.”

  When the translation reached her, Mrs. Rogers laughed. “Are there really so many European tourists wandering around the jungles of war-torn Western Annam? I’m surprised nobody else saw them.”

  “Of course, without investigating we can’t be sure they weren’t seen by somebody else,” said Henry with unhidden aggression in his voice. “But, until then, it would appear this was an isolated incident.”

  The sound of the royal jeeps returning along the lake road intruded upon the tense atmosphere in the room. Stephanie glared at the Vietnamese coordinator. He’d already had a royal visit this week so he was in a spot. “No.” He said. It was one of the few Vietnamese words the Frenchmen in attendance had bothered to learn.

  The Inspector looked at him in disbelief. Were his ears deceiving him or did this clerk just contradict him? “I beg your pardon?”

  Duc looked again at the American woman, then at Tran. He spoke a basic French that was good enough to do his job. But the buffer of having Tran there, expressing Duc’s thoughts more eloquently than he could himself, gave him the confidence he needed to drop his bombshell.

  “This wasn’t an isolated case.”

  “What do you mean?” Dupré asked.

  “Sir, in the last three weeks, thirteen Montagnard women have vanished.”

  “What?” Dupré sat up.

  “Probably went off to earn better money in Madame Ving’s brothel,” Captain Henry joked but didn’t elicit any laughter.

  “No,” Duc continued. “They were all married women. Most had children. Either they didn’t return from the fields or they disappeared from their homes at night. The two other girls from this house were also married.”

  “Why hasn’t anyone reported this?” Dupré yelled. They were momentarily distracted by the sound of a jeep pulling up at the outer gate, and the guards shouting.

  “We reported each incident to the police,” Duc continued. “You can check the files.”

  “Well?” He turned to Henry.

  “It may be true. But these are Moi matters. If there’s a Moi dispute, we refer it to the army.”

  “So, Captain Faboir,” Dupré asked. “Did you already know about these cases?”

  “I didn’t hear anything personally about it, Administrator. I’d have to check the files to see whether we received a complaint.”

  “Then I suggest you do so immediately, Captain. We can’t just lose thirteen Moi. Saigon would view that as gross negligence. I won’t have any Moi from my district vanishing. Do you understand me?”

  “I’ll look into it.”

  “And I expect…”

  The atmosphere in the room was suddenly changed by the arrival of a new guest. Standing in the doorway with an armed guard at his back, was a large man with a scabby nose. Every face in the room turned toward him, nobody knowing what to say.

  Stephanie was a little stunned at first but she leapt to her feet and went to Bodge. She was in her Mrs. Rogers disguise so there was nothing athletic about her approach.

  “Bobby. Bobby,” she cried. “I’ve been so worried about you. Thank the Lord. Thank the Lord.”

  “Good afternoon,” the man said with a friendly smile and impeccable French.

  “May I know who you are, sir?” Dupré asked.

  “Certainly, I’m Reverend Rogers,” said the new missionary as his wife took his hand. Bodge looked around at the confused faces. “I believe this is one of my houses.”

  “We were led to believe you wouldn’t be coming,” said the administrator.

  “Ah, yes. Well that is a very long story,’ Bodge said, and hoped he wouldn’t be asked to tell it. He hadn’t yet made it up after all.

  33.

  “And what’s he like?” Monique asked, jabbing at the fish on her plate.

  “Like? What are all missionaries like? Single-minded, superior, boring. But, at least, this one can speak. I have to confess I was impressed with his French. He’s the first yank I’ve met who could string together a sentence.” Dupré threw back the remaining wine from his goblet and refilled it. The traumas at the Lac villa had left him with no choice but to get pickled over supper. With the wine and the candlelight and Debussy on the phonograph, he considered this a particularly romantic setting. His young, virtually untouched bride sat opposite him with her slinky housecoat fairly clinging to her breasts.

  “No, I mean, physically. Petit said he was absolutely a giant.”

  “I’d hardly call him a giant.”

  “Fat?”

  “No.”

  “So what then?”

  “Honestly, what does it matter what a missionary looks like? I admit I was expecting him to be completely different.”

  “Really? Well, as nobody here seems to want to tell me how he looks, I’m not actually in a position to share your surprise, am I now?” She attacked a Vietnamese turnip with her knife.

  “It’s just that his wife is so…matronly. She’s fat and greasy-haired, and simple looking.”

  “Whereas he…?” She wielded her knife like a conductor.

  “Whereas he’s more attractive, and…It’s hard to say.”

  “Try.”

  “Well, it was more like he was her brother than her lover. She hadn’t seen him for months yet she hesitated to greet him. And then it was as if her embrace was more for our benefit than his. I get the feeling they aren’t a very physical pair. But I imagine religion has that effect on people. It encourages you to look beyond the outer coating and fall in love with the soul within, or so I’m told. That inevitably draws some peculiar people together. Not like us.”

  Monique looked up. “And what kind of people are we?”

  “Oh, there were probably some personality traits that contributed, but ultimately it was the physical that drew us together.”

  “It was?”

  He smiled, his cheeks burning from the wine and the memory. “Don’t pretend our evenings in the back of my car didn’t influence your decision to become mine.”

  She kept her smile to herself. “You’re probably right.”

  Lac Lake

  It was early and Bodge lay naked beside his fake wife looking through the open window, overwhelmed by the silence. Outside, lofty cranes untangled themselves from the reeds with small-fry in their beaks and flew off to their nests. Bats, no bigger than inkblots, dived back and forth across the bloated moon and, one by one, the drunken moths were drawn into the oil lamps on the balcony and cremated as penance for their addiction to light. In the distance, lightning slithered a warning across the horizon. All this happened in complete silence.

  “Not sleeping?” Stephanie asked.

  “Can’t stop my head from thinking.”

  “It’s what they do, heads.”

  “It drives me nuts when I don’t have answers. I’d kind of hoped I’d get here and you’d solve all my mysteries for me.”

  “Sorry about that.”

  “Could you go over it again?”

  “What?”

  “What happened.”

  “Bodge it’s three in the—”

  “Just once more and I promise I won’t ask you again. Every little detail.”

  She sighed and eased herself up on her elbows. “You’re annoying. You know that?”

  “It’s just—”

  “Okay. Okay. I’m driving your piece of shit convertible into the city. It’s seven something and I have to be at records by eight to start getting the visas and passports sorted. I get the urge for a coffee so I stop at Chucky Chicken. I go by the restroom and do a number one cause my lady’s parts were still aching from all the—”

  “That’s more information than I need.”

  “You asked for details. I get a hot coffee and a donut that cost me eighteen
cents for the two and I’m on my way back out to the car when the thing blows sky high. I even had time to think how pretty the explosion looked before the blast sent me flying backward ass over tit across the parking lot. Next thing I know I’m surrounded by a flock of nurses asking me how I feel. I’ve got a bump on my head the size of Boston so I ask for pain killers and they pump me full of something that knocks me out again.

  “When I come round I’m better able to grasp what happened. It occurs to me I must have put enough in the collection plate that Sunday cause, by rights, I should have been in little bits at that stage. Then it hits me that I was in your car and it should have been you in little bits, not me. So I staggered to the phone and called the Casually Yours people.

  “Then things went kind of fast. The cop at the end of my bed was replaced by a guy in a necktie who wouldn’t tell me zip. Then Palmer arrives and asks me when I’ll be well enough to travel.”

  “When was that?”

  “The evening of the explosion.”

  “So I’d already been through the homosexual inquisition and was at the safe house. Did he tell you anything?”

  “Just that they suspected there was a time bomb — probably planted under the seat of your car — that you were safe and that there were serious concerns about security. He hinted there was probably something a lot deeper going on but he couldn’t tell me about it. In fact, he didn’t seem to have a clue. He wanted me out of DC as quickly as possible so within twenty-four hours I was on a flight. Said he’d be here soon to explain stuff. He gave me the impression you mightn’t make it here.”

  “So why did he send me tickets?”

  “Beats me.”

  “Something happened to keep me in limbo for another month.”

  “So it seems.”

  “And the only one who can explain all this is Palmer.”

  “Wherever the hell he is.”

  Bangkok

  Some said the human depression that had squatted on Southeast Asia for the past six months somehow worked its way up into the heavens. They said it made the gods so sad they began to cry, and that was why the rains came early. There had to be an ethereal reason, because the meteorologists couldn’t explain it. It was unprecedented. After a week of thunder and lightning that promoted the forthcoming spectacular like a move trailer, the skies finally opened and sent a torrent of water onto the dry earth.

  Thailand’s capital had been a city of canals. But in the built up areas they’d started to fill in the water courses to make streets. A modern city had to have streets. But the rain didn’t respect the dreams of the city planners. With nowhere to escape, water flooded whole suburbs, damaged property and dragged all kinds of vermin up out of the sewers.

  This, the first rainy season for the new luxury Santhi Hotel, showed the owners their folly in building slightly below street level. The reception area was a pond. Plants drowned in their pots. The expensive furniture stood in great sculptures, piled one piece on top of the next.

  The bellboy’s trousers were rolled up above his knees. He waded to the night manager’s desk.

  “Got any stamps, Khot?”

  The night manager was a third-year student from Chulalongkorn University and one of the few people around who could speak English. The owners insisted on English-speaking staff. Khot was reclining on top of the desk like some Roman Emperor reading a magazine. He reached down to the drawer.

  “How many do you want?”

  “America. It’s pretty heavy so I’d say about eight baht. Better make it ten.”

  The young manager tore the stamps from the sheet and exchanged them for the banknote. He put it in the money tin, locked it, and put the key underneath the tin. “Who’s up writing letters this time of the morning?”

  “Him, the suit guy, 310. He’s drunk as a fart.”

  “Again? I hope he doesn’t trash the room.”

  “Nah, he’s not the violent type. He’s probably just—”

  The internal phone rang on the desk behind Khot. The light on the console showed them this was the third floor hall phone. Being a very modern hotel, each floor had its own telephone. “I wonder if I could get electrocuted using this thing with all the water around. Hello? Yes, speaking. What can I—? What? Right, I’m coming up. Don’t touch anything.”

  The bellboy noticed how the color had suddenly drained from the young man’s face. “What is it?”

  “That was the woman from 308,” he said, grabbing the master keys. He jumped down into the water and splashed across to the stairwell. “She said there’s been a shooting in the room next door. It woke everyone up. That’s your guy with the suit.”

  “But he’s on his own in there.”

  “Then it sounds like he’s done himself in.”

  34.

  Lac Lake to Ban Methuot

  The rains that lashed the continent quickly filled the paddies and swelled the rivers. The lake at Lac rose four feet in a week and Bodge seemed to understand the confusion of the birds whose migratory patterns had been thrown into chaos by the premature loss of summer.

  Bodge and Stephanie decided to move to the Ban Methuot house before the road became difficult to pass. They shuttered the villa and took Bet, the servant, into town in the Land Rover. Their town house was a two-story French chateau with a steeply sloping tile roof and trails of morning glory clinging to the walls. There was an outhouse for the servants and a backyard where vegetables presently lay submerged in water. The border of the property was marked with a white, picket fence clogged with ivy like a vegetarian’s smile.

  Over the porch was a hand-carved sign with House of the Pearly Gates engraved in gothic script.

  “See? I knew I’d get here eventually,” Stephanie smiled.

  “Should I use the key or wait for St. Peter to answer the door?” Bodge asked. They laughed.

  “That’s the last sacrilege I want to hear from you, Reverend.”

  There was indeed something heavenly and unreal about the interior. On their way there they’d passed shanties where water and mud formed the floor and urchins sat in puddles. They’d seen families foraging through the bins out back of the Expatriate Club, and Montagnard begging from soldiers. But they were living in a small medieval castle. Their place was expensively furnished and oils of European landscapes took up most available wall space.

  “Actually, I like it,” Stephanie said, exploring the drawers and cupboards. “It’s brazen.”

  “I wonder if my Aunt Helen in Arizona knows her missions’ contribution has gone toward a Queen Anne occasional table. It’s obscene.”

  “You’re right. Let’s sell all this stuff, give the money to the poor, and live a Spartan existence.”

  “Hey, I didn’t say I couldn’t learn to live with it. I just had some perverted idea about how the poor missionaries were suffering. I thought they were in the bush living on insects.”

  “You having second thoughts about leaving, Bodge?”

  “No, but if I can’t get away, I don’t feel quite so bad about staying.”

  They’d reached the top landing where a large comfortable chair stood at the window. The house was on the edge of town just a short walk from the French jail. From this window the exercise yard was visible behind barbed wire that topped the walls. The rear gardens of a dozen or so Vietnamese huts abutted the perimeter wall, and at the end of the row stood a peculiar building.

  “Stephanie, what does that look like to you?” She came to join him at the window. Directly ahead was what looked like a small motel. It was painted in gory pink. A slim bamboo flag pole rose from its roof, but it certainly wasn’t a flag that stood there at its top.

  “Isn’t it a leg?” she asked.

  “Sure looks like one.” At the top of the pole was a shapely store-mannequin leg. It wore a red high-heeled shoe whose stiletto pointed to heaven.

  “Probably a shoe store,” she laughed, and went back to her ferreting.

  “If you’re right it appears our predecessor had
a fetish for shoes.” Bodge sat in the chair and had a mental picture of Reverend Cornfelt looking down like God at all the sinners in Ban Methuot.

  “Now this is beautiful,” said Stephanie sliding down the curved shutter of a writing desk. Bodge went over to see. “I love these things.” She started to feel inside the drawers and under the lid.

  “You hoping the Cornfelts left their life savings in there?” Bodge asked, walking into the master bedroom.

  “These things are a spy’s delight. They always have secret compartments and hidden drawers. I’ll find one.”

  Bodge was exploring the main bedroom and its on-suite bathroom. A large yow tree weighted down by the rain cut out the light through the window. There came the faintest of clicks from behind him.

  “Gotcha.” Stephanie had found her compartment.

  “Anything in there?” he asked.

  “Only this,” she said, producing a clunky German Lugar.

  “Wow. Is it loaded?”

  From the way she handled and inspected the weapon, Bodge could tell his new wife had been around guns. He was starting to believe she was much better at this covert life than he was.

  “Yup.”

  “You suppose the Cornfelts ever used it?”

  “The missions are strict about us not using guns. I doubt they even knew it was here.”

  “Rules or not, it makes me feel better to have something lethal to fight off the Viet Minh. I couldn’t see me beating them back with my Bible.” He held his ever-present holy book before him and fought off an imaginary invasion. “Until now, we were the only two people in the entire country who weren’t armed.” He saw her raise her eyebrows and whistle. “We weren’t armed, were we Stephanie? Steph?”