“It was a more strenuous walk than I’d expected,” I said. “Your advice was good. I’ll take a cab next time I wish to sample the night life.”
I went to the desk to get my key, and the clerk said, “Good evening, Mr. Philco. A gentleman just came calling for you. I told him you were out, and he said he would wait in the bar for a while. I believe he is still there.”
“Did the gentleman leave his name?”
“Gutman, he told me. Kaspar Gutman.”
What the hell is this? Am I supposed to deliver the Maltese falcon? First a mugging and then an encounter with a mysterious stranger. The life of an investment banker held more adventure than I’d ever dreamed possible.
The Second Part of the Story
I entered the bar and scanned around, and what else? Stocky build and a broad, unremarkable face topped with straw-blond hair—Emil Grotesqcu, my perennial KGB shadow, taking his ease on a stool at the bar. He was leaning back against it, amusedly surveying the chattery tete-a-tetes that occupied most of the tables. A tumbler a third filled with what I presumed to be vodka rocks sweated on a coaster beside his elbow. Other than being blatantly Eastern European he looked right at home in his short sleeved tropical shirt and cotton trousers. “Mr. Gutman, I presume?” I said.
“As I live and breath—Jack Philco!” he exclaimed. “It’s been a long time. Last we met, as I recall, was in a Phnom Penh shop house back in, what was it, 1975?” He pumped my hand with enthusiasm. “A sight for sore eyes, yes indeed. It’s been far too long. What say we go somewhere we can catch up on old times?”
“It’s a nice night for an ocean-front stroll, if you don’t mind the occasional mugging,” I said. He nodded assent, stubbed out his cigarette and drained his drink, and we went through the lobby out into the evening. Again the doorman made to get me a cab, and again I waved him off. Once we were out of his earshot I said, “Kaspar Gutman?”
“I thought a Humphrey Bogart fan like you would get a kick out of that. By Gad, sir, you are a character, that you are. There’s never any telling what you’ll say or do next, except that it’s bound to be something astonishing,” he said with a passable Sidney Greenstreet intonation.
“That’s your cover name in Manila?”
“No, that was by way of a little titillation for a dear old friend. I’m at the Intercontinental Hotel, registered as Evgeny Grotelov, exporter of fine Russian vodka, here in Manila to drum up business. Since I’m here anyway, they expect me to peddle vodka. Russia needs the dollars. Matching Reagan’s defense ramp-up is costing my government a lot of money, so budgets are tight for us.” Then he veered serious. “Jake, I must apologize. It’s been preying on my mind for months. What happened to you in Calcutta mortified me. I never intended that you should wind up a near-carcass requiring ICU treatment. It was just a prank gone terribly wrong, that’s all it was. It was all my fault.”
“I couldn’t figure it out. I’m still at a loss. What was going on?”
EMIL GROTESQCU’S STORY
“You must remember that, after all that muss and fuss we endured criss-crossing India, we reached that train station and I persuaded you to head for Calcutta as your safest exit point? What I hadn’t told you was that I’d gotten squared away with my people, and they’d arranged to extract me, which they did after we parted company. I figured you’d be okay once you arrived in Calcutta and talked to the American consulate, and I could use the Communists’ political influence in Bengal to grease the skids with the local authorities. So I took the opportunity to pay you back for that elephant stampede in Cambodia—all in good fun, you understand. I gave you that bogus $100 bill and that cock-and-bull story about owing my life to a Calcutta beggar, thinking that when you bestowed it on one of them, the rest would follow you around like fruit flies behind a banana cart, pestering and pawing at you wherever you went for the rest of the day. I didn’t foresee that one of them would spot the bill for a phony and the mob would riot.”
“Why counterfeit money? I don’t get it.”
“We always use counterfeit American bills in Third-World countries. Why waste good hard currency on them? Usually there’s no problem. We cover our expenses with it, and pretty soon the bills wind up in the hands of their corrupt rulers. They send them to Switzerland, where the bankers catch them, pluck them out and subtract them from their balances before they stash it in their numbered accounts. The despot won’t live long enough to spend all the money he’s stolen, so it makes no difference to him. In the end, nobody comes out a loser. “
“Russia prints phony U.S. currency. You spend it for stuff in a foreign country. A Swiss bank confiscates it and destroys it. So money that never existed buys real things and then disappears, and nobody loses? I don’t follow the logic of that, and I’m supposed to be an investment banker,” I said.
“Don’t even try, Jake, don’t take money too seriously. I mean, you should take it seriously in the sense that you always want to have enough of it, but don’t try to understand it. Where does it come from? How much is it worth? Where does it go? How does it circulate? It’s all a big con game predicated on faith. As long as everybody believes money is worth what the world’s Central Bankers say it’s worth, it is. Every now and then a Central Bank overplays its hand and spews out too much currency. The suckers lose confidence, the country ramps up the printing presses even higher to cover its escalating obligations and you get hyperinflation and economic collapse. But usually the system chugs along. Press any economist or finance guru far enough concerning the essence of money and he finally has to admit that it’s basically a matter of faith. The experts, I mean. Your average economist doesn’t have a clue, believes what they told him in university, and if you probe too deeply with them they’ll take refuge in railing and ranting about gold reserves, exchange rates, scientifically-based monetary controls and the like.”
“I’m glad to hear you didn’t get me mob-stomped on purpose, anyhow.”
“Jake, such a possibility never entered my mind—live and learn. As I’ve told you before, you’re my iron rice bowl. I’m running a KGB desk devoted to thwarting Jake Fonko, CIA Super Agent. You’ve gotten me promotions. They’ve raised my budget on account of you. You’ve saved me from assignments on some terrible KGB missions. Well, the reports I submit to my superiors about your exploits are a factor. What you accomplished in Iran, Northern Ireland, Cambodia and Grenada was genuine, but I window-dressed it a bit to suit my own needs.
“I might as well come clean on that India fiasco,” he continued. “The whole thing originated in KGB internal politics. I work in counter-intelligence, and we do our best to keep our activities in strictest secrecy. Now, there’s an old Russian story about peasant Boris, who has a goat, and his neighbor, Igor, who doesn’t. Igor finds a bottle, he rubs it, a genie appears, and he offers Igor one wish. Igor says, ‘I wish Boris’s goat would die.’ So sadly typical of Russia at all levels. One of my rivals in counter-intelligence was jealous of my sinecure, because he couldn’t figure one out for himself. He therefore went to someone he knew in the India section with a brilliant plan. He’d stolen a peek at the reports I’d written. He told them of legendary Jake Fonko, of how this CIA Super Operative had eluded the KGB for nearly a decade, how he had foiled us time and again. So his plan was to lure you to Amritsar, where frictions between the Sikhs and the government had worsened to the point that Sikh rebels had taken control of the Golden Temple. If we could get you to touch off a civil war, then our propaganda machine would go into high gear and paint the whole thing as resulting from CIA subversion of Indian political affairs.
“Your corpse was to be the evidence. After you left your hotel on that fateful day our operatives broke into your room and stole your belongings. As you’d gone there under your own name, they had all the proof they needed. You see the beauty of it? The India section scores a coup, the KGB pulls a thorn out of its side, and Boris’s goat dies—I’d lose my cush
y racket. The scheme unfolded as conceived until you made your break, slipped out of the Temple and escaped the trap. Then it was every man for himself. Only then did I learn of the plot. I sped straightaway to India to help you out of your jam. You led me on a merry chase before I caught up with you.”
“With so many people pursuing me, I wasn’t taking chances. But we barely got started when you wound up in that Gwalior jail.”
“My rival’s doing. He learned I’d high-tailed it to India and had his friend in the India section rat me out to Indian security as a Russian infiltrator. God, the filth of that cell! The rats weren’t even the worst of it. I’d about given up hope when you broke in and sprang me.”
“You can thank the Bandit Queen. We got word of a Russian in prison. She checked it out, determined it was you. Her gang took care of it. It wasn’t the first jailbreak they’d pulled. Mostly I think they did it the old fashioned way, a few bucks to the guard. I thought your tipping them a Benjamin was a nice gesture.”
“Are you sure she was the Bandit Queen? Phoolan Devi was in custody at that time.”
“She said she was a bandit queen, and she commanded a gang of thugs. There might be more than one bandit queen in that screwed up country. Once we got you out, I was glad to get away from her. I mean, we had some fun trying out Kama Sutra positions, but the guys in her gang were real swine. Another thing I can’t figure out—why didn’t you try harder to get us out of there? You had cash and contacts. Wasn’t there some way?”
“The situation was clogged up because of KGB office politics, and not only did you have no documents, but mine were left behind when you sprung me—and the Indians are sticklers about documents. Also, I hoped maybe you could do something noteworthy to clear your name and provide me with fodder for my after-action report. I thought we had a good one in Agra when we came across that Sikh plot to blow up the dome of the Taj Mahal, but then the police caught us as we were taking the explosives out of the space between the inner and outer masonry shells. They assumed we were putting them in, and from then on we were wanted for that, on top of everything else.”
“What a disaster that was,” I put in. “So close to getting clear, and then we had to backtrack with the Indian Army at our heels. I thought we’d at least found some breathing space in Srinigar among those lotus-eaters on the houseboats, but those floating carpet peddlers blew our cover to the Pakistani terrorists and we had to beat it.”
“Sheer genius, rigging that sail with a bedsheet,” Grotesqcu continued. “You got us all the way across the lake in the dead of night. Too bad we had to scuttle the houseboat to throw them off our tracks; it was an elegant piece of craftsmanship. Those harrowing weeks that ensued, scuffling our way from Kashmir to New Delhi! If we’d reached there in time to prevent Indira Gandhi’s assassination, that might have gotten us clear, but just our luck to arrive a hair too late and get the blame for that, too. Thank goodness for the ineptitude of the Indian authorities, but it was a close call.”
“Not so close, thanks to your hot-wiring that armored car.”
“Nothing to it,” Grotesqcu said. “It was a knock-off of a Russian make, and luckily the gas tank had enough fuel in it to reach the Chinese border. Then those sirens went off and the guards on both sides opened fire, and we had to abandon it and head back south. At times I feared we’d never manage to get home. If that flight crew hadn’t left their transport plane unattended with engines idling for a tiffin break, we might still be lurching back and forth, dodging pursuers and living by our wits. I thought we’d made our way free, until Pakistan scrambled their jets and chased us back over the border.”
“Oh well,” I said, “here we are, hale, hearty and alive to tell the tale.”
“And what a Munchausen-esque tale it turned out to be, “Grotesqcu marveled. “I doubt any fiction writer venturing to invent such an odyssey out of his imagination would have the genius to succeed.”
“After my little war, all I wanted was to go home. But that’s behind us, just water under the dam now. How about you? Things work out okay?”
“I’m sorry to say that my KGB rival met with an unfortunate fate. Someone blew up his apartment building—we usually blame Chechen terrorists for such happenstances—and, alas, he and all his family perished. The poor fellow was honored with a hero’s burial. At that point my fortunes reversed. Office politics cleared up, freeing my department to smooth things over with the Indian authorities. That done, I could safely send you on your way. The whole episode was a gigantic cock-up, beginning to end, but at least we got out alive. So, what brings you to Manila, Jake?”
“You’re a professional spy. Earn your pay and find out for yourself.”
“Ha ha. I suppose you’re going to deny as usual that you’re here on CIA business?”
“No, I won’t deny it.”
“Now you’re getting cagey. What was that you said earlier about occasional muggings?”
“Some punks jumped me on my way over to the bright lights and good times in the Ermita district, an annoyance, nothing more.”
“Doesn’t surprise me. Manila reeks with crime, from the streets all the way to the top.”
“Does that open opportunities for the Communists?”
“Here? No, we’ve never had much luck; they lack the ambition even to aspire to Communism. How does that aphorism go? First the Spanish came to the Philippines and taught the natives to be lazy. Then the Chinese came and taught them to be corrupt. Then the Americans came and taught them to be spendthrift. Consequently, the masses have never risen to the level of a proletariat. There’s a Communist Party of the Philippines, the CPP, and we have our usual people in the schools, the labor unions, the media and the intelligentsia, of course. A smattering of useful idiots here and there …“
“What about the New People’s Army? Aren’t they on your side?”
“Our vaunted ‘armed wing’? If you call World War Two Garands and rusted Crag rifles ’arms’? Their numbers have grown since Marcos declared martial law in 1972, from maybe 1,000 then, up to more than 10.000 now. They’re hardly in a position to overthrow Marcos. They stage sporadic hit-and-run raids out in the islands—this is a wild and wooly country—but Filipinos are notoriously hard to organize. When America thrashed the Spanish in 1898 they inherited the Philippines, up ’til then a Spanish colony. The Filipino rebels, led by General Emilio Aguinaldo, had the naive notion that independence from Spain meant independence for the Philippines, and disabusing them of that fantasy was a long, bloody struggle. At one point the Americans had 4,800 men stationed in the town of San Fernando. Aguinaldo surrounded the town with his entire force of 7,000, broke it up into small groups so as to avoid detection, and ordered all groups to converge on the town at three in the morning. They could have captured the entire American garrison at a single stroke, except that none of his commanders appreciated the point of simultaneous attack. They went in when they felt like it, some units not arriving until the battle was long over. Consequently after the first attack the Americans simply wiped out each group as they came in.
“Don’t get me wrong—Filipinos can be brave and determined fighters. Your .45 automatic pistol was inspired by this country. The Filipino insurgents ambushed American patrols, charging at them from the bushes with their bolo knives and inflicting terrible damage before they were subdued. The army needed a side-arm that would stop a man in his tracks at close quarters, hence the Colt M1911.”
We’d reached the waterfront and strolled a way down the Bayside. It was one of those languid tropical nights where the sea breeze stirred the muggy air enough to keep the heat from settling down over the land. Emil and I turned around and sauntered back, catching up on things, swapping notes on recent world events—Palestinian terrorists had just hijacked a cruise ship, the Achille Lauro, in the Mediterranean Sea and tossed an old man in a wheel chair overboard—an act disgusting even to a KGB agent. We passed packs of loit
ering young men, but they must have picked up lethalness vibes, for none paid us more than cursory attention. Back at my hotel’s portal the doorman waved a cab over. Grotesqcu handed me a business card and said, “Mr. Philco, I hope I’ve made my case for Russian vodka. We perfected it, and the competition can’t compare. I’ll be in Manila for a while, so don’t hesitate to ring me up if I can be of service.”
“Thanks, Mr. Grotelov, I’ll do that, and you know where to find me. Enjoyed the evening.”
“By the way, Jack,” he said under his breath, “I don’t mean to meddle in your love life, but that girlfriend of yours, the blonde that flew to Calcutta for you? She’s a keeper. Don’t let that one get away. Ciao.”
The doorman closed the cab door on him, and Grotesqcu took off. Damn. I was growing to like the sonofabitch.
The Filipinos were too lazy even to be Communists? What kind of threat was that to Marcos?
*
During the next two days I interviewed a newspaper publisher, executives with the country’s largest sugar company and an economics professor at the University of the Philippines. They covered the same dot-points I’d heard in my previous interviews: the future was bright, the economy was sound, the country was solidly behind Marcos, the population was content, the loans would bring the people jobs and much needed improvements, etc, etc, etc. The spiel didn’t jibe with what I saw on the ground. Anti-Marcos demonstrations and posters? Street crime? A high-living elite and a piss-poor population? Granted, Manila had a first rate airport, a well-functioning seaport, a city center boasting modern buildings and a lot of conspicuous consumption. Granted, there were problems that an infusion of capital would help solve. But the place had an unsettling feeling to it. Were I here to loan anyone money, I’d be marking bond ratings down at a rapid rate, but I’d been sent to backstop the Marcos regime. I hoped getting to know them would clarify matters.
The Jake Fonko Series: Books 4, 5 & 6 Page 29