His body was in a coffin on a trolley draped in velvet-blue material. The man bowed, looked at his watch and said, ‘You have only fifteen minutes with him sah, Mr Martin is catching the nine o’clock flight.’
‘Thank you.’ I waited for the door to close and pulled a chair up beside the walnut-coloured coffin. There were golden hinges and latch on it. I undid it; surprisingly it had not been secured. I looked at my friend, his blonde, curly hair had been neatly parted in a style he wouldn’t have liked, so I scruffed it up a little. His eyes were shut as I’d left them. Skip was dressed in a cheap suit, courtesy no doubt of the British Embassy. It fitted evenly across his chest. Thank God the mortician had at least spared the Martins that sight, he must have had to push the ribs back into formation. I took his Jaws t-shirt out of my shoulder bag and draped it over him, as well as some of his clothes from his rucksack. Also I place a note in an envelope marked for Skip’s parents. Then I held his cold, dead hand in mine, squeezed it and spoke as if he was listening to me. ‘… I’m sorry pal, I’m really sorry. I’ll miss you… somehow I’ll find out who did this to you, I promise. Maybe one day we’ll talk about it.’
I didn’t want the oriental to come back in and catch me with the coffin open so I said goodbye, squeezed his hand a final time, kissed his forehead and bolted the latch. Twenty minutes later I stood in the Departures terminal on the third floor, watching through the tinted glass window as the planes queued up by the side of the runway. The sky was lavender, criss-crossed in a maze of illuminated pink aircraft fuel. It was fitting for my friend to be flying through a garden of sky flowers on his last journey. The Thai Airways jumbo finally taxied into view and took off. I swallowed, waved at my best friend, then left.
- 11 -
The sun melted into the horizon, and with it the last warmth of the October day. They sat listening to the dual song of crickets and mortars exploding in the west. Old friends they spoke little and sipped their pastis like true colons, occasionally studying one another’s faces,
‘Almost ten years.’ said Jacques.
‘More like twelve.’ Answered Leclos, a wiry Marseillian who’d remained in Vietnam after Dien Bien Phu to stake his claim in the family business. Jacques looked around, rocking on the wica chair, the cold glass in his hand swirling with chalk-green liquid. The lawns were manicured, at one end of the garden a plot of rose hued dragonfruit, at the other a small vineyard of grapes under gauze, and beyond this an endless stretch of rubber trees.
‘You’ve done well for yourself Louis.’
Leclos smiled warmly, ‘Not without a few sacrifices.’
‘What happened to that lovely merchant’s daughter from Hoi An?’
‘Oh, she left me… got tired of living with a drunken soldier in the middle of nowhere.’ He said flatly.
‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t be, we managed to have a son before her departure and he stays with me. He’s at school now.’
‘I’d like to meet him. One day perhaps I’ll have a son,’ said Jacques with a smile, thinking of Penelope on the other side of the world. ‘And he won’t be a soldier, he’ll have a real job.’
‘Being a father is much more fun than being a soldier I can assure you.’ Said Leclos. ‘I feel as if I’ve finally grown up.’
‘You think the yanks will take your business over?’ asked Jacques.
‘Let them try.’
‘And the men in black pyjamas, they visit?’
Leclos stiffened. ‘Is that a military question or one among friends?’
‘Touché. You really think if you tell me the VC are extorting money from you I’ll inform my American acquaintances? I don’t care for them.’
‘Then why are you working for them?’
Deschamps studied the propeller movement of the overhead fan; everything reminded him of the war he had no part in. Leclos patted him on the forearm, ‘There’s something wrong ami, what is it… you’re in some kind of trouble?’
Jacques sipped his drink, savouring the charm of the aniseed rushing against his taste buds. ‘Oh nothing much. I’ve got a price on my head… I beat someone I shouldn’t have, someone they call the Shark.’
‘An American?’ asked Leclos, ‘Did he deserve it?’
‘Definitely.’ Jacques smiled and tried to brighten the reunion, ‘Let’s not talk about war.’ His face brightened, ‘Louis, I met someone, an English girl.’
Leclos laughed and clapped his hands together, ‘English? That’s terrible! What happened to your patriotism?’
‘I’m going to marry her.’ He said seriously.
‘So the old dog has finally settled? I never thought I’d hear it.’
Jacques thought of Penelope hunched over her easel.
‘No more whores then?’
The night of the new rain, their first night with the Colonel in Da Nang a few weeks ago… Jacques remembered them stumbling down sodden streets toward the slop-house strung in paper lanterns. As they drew closer the lights looked like lurid faces in the sea mist, a precursor to the mask Carabas would wear the next night in the jungle. Each soldier was partnered with a whore. Carabas whispered something to the mamasan and grabbed her rump. A moment later a willowy girl no more than eighteen, appeared in a crimson silk kimono. Her skin was the colour of milk, her hands Jacques noticed, were calloused and deep brown from working in the rice fields. Moonlighting as a whore to feed her kids? She took his hand in her own and led him from the inner courtyard up a rickety stairway to a room distanced from the grunting noises of the other soldiers.
As he ascended he looked down on Carabas. The dead face looked up at him without expression, the black eyes with little whites around them. ‘I knew you couldn’t resist her Frenchman, don’t care how beautiful your Penelope back home is.’
How did the bastard know what she was called?
‘My name is Moi, you like me to become naked?’ she said shutting the door and bolting it.
‘Yes, but I’d also like you to keep your clothes on.’
She didn’t seem surprised. ‘You have a woman someplace?’
He nodded and smiled. ‘Perhaps a massage instead, or maybe a pipe?’
He sat on the bed as she prepared the opium, burning the ebony blob with an American Zippo. ‘Just one pipe each and then we’ll sleep together.’ Said Jacques. They smoked together as the rain fell, the green lanterns rustling in the oncoming storm.
‘You love this woman?’
He nodded and took the pipe. As the smoke rolled from his mouth he thought it looked like a flock of phantom birds rising toward the ceiling.
‘Then tonight we shall be companions.’ She said with an old pair of eyes.
He’d woken toward dawn, they lay together in their clothes, her pale thigh swathed in silk and the glove of his hand. On the table he left her the equivalent of a week’s wages and went to a café to write to Penelope.
‘Jacques?’ asked Leclos, his friend was miles away,
‘Sorry.’
‘So, where will you live with this English woman?’
‘I don’t know, I just need to work here long enough to get some money together so we can start a family. That’s the only reason I went to work for them, they’re paying me well.’
‘Come and work with me if you get stuck, I mean it.’
‘You already asked me.’
‘You still listen to jazz?’
‘Whenever I can.’
‘I have some Gillespie in the house …’ The grandfather clock inside rang seven times, on its final chime the voice of his friend trailed away and his face became anxious, ‘It is seven already?’ asked Leclos anxiously.
Jacques looked at his watch, ‘Oui.’
‘How long will you be in Da Nang?’
‘Oh a week - perhaps two. Why?’
‘Will you think badly of me if I ask you to leave, or cover your eyes and ears for a moment, out of sight.’
Jacques shook his head, confused. Leclos looked back at him uncomfortably, ‘I have a visitor Jacques, strange you should have come today, this afternoon of all times in the month. Allez, the black ferryman must be paid or my plantation will not make it across the river.’
Jacques finished his drink and stood up. ‘Organized aren’t they, that’s why they’ll beat us and waste millions of American tax payers’ money.’
‘We’ve already been beaten Jacques, just as the Coke boys will go the same way. Please, this won’t take long - go into the other room and shut the door… their man is always on time.’
As the bell at the front door rang, Jacques slipped into a wood-panelled room, leaving the door slightly ajar. Inside were bookshelves lined with photographs depicting the whole of his friend’s life; from his days as a boy at Jesuit school to sun-blasted days in North Africa as a legionaire. There was even one of Jacques, younger, fitter, a look of hunger in his eyes.
The men talked in low murmurs in the next room. He peeped through the crack in the door, Leclos and the Vietnamese were seated. Jacques noted the ramrod line of the VC’s back, the severe brown face and silver-grey hair. On the teak table was a manila envelope. It remained unopened. Jacques looked at his watch - he’d need to be back at base for seven-thirty.
Carabas had disappeared for extended periods leaving Jacques to his own devices. Perhaps he would not be invited to continue with his mission and would be in London with Penelope sooner than planned? He didn’t care - he was finished with the life. According to the contract he’d drawn up with Knowles he was to be paid for the agreed period, even in the event of it ending prematurely… but that didn’t cover dismissal.
He eased himself through the ground-floor window and followed the drive to the bottom of the plantation where he’d ditched the bike. The sun was a lost bracelet of purple on the horizon and the air had sharpened with a chill. As he climbed on the bike a hard voice addressed him from behind, ‘Bon soir, monsieur,’
Jacques turned around to face the VC collector. He had a pleasant face, crossed in lines like the threads of a net. Perhaps he’d been a fisherman before he became a ferryman in his new trade. ‘Good evening.’
The next morning he was on a Chinook flying over rice fields dotted with workers. On the ocean flats they could see the dirty, membranous sails of fishing junks. Half an hour later the helicopter was on the ground and they ran against the downdraught of the helicopter to a small ville on the side of some rice paddies. Beside him was Maybury, plus the platoon Jacques had accompanied three nights before. The sky was almost black, thunderheads hemorrhaging rain as the gunships punched through them.
Napalm fell upon the bamboo houses, the sound of screams mixed with the banshee song of the wind. From a house Jacques saw a child emerge in flame, her mother rushed toward her to blanket the fire with her own body but was cut down by the strafe of a passing Huey. He closed his eyes.
The Colonel’s poncho fluttered around him like a green cloak. He stood alone. As if in tune with the Frenchman he turned to look at him, ‘Puff the Magic Dragon, isn’t she beautiful?’ he said. ‘I hear you can use your fists, Frenchman. You know, the animal you put in the infirmary is an asylum creature? We didn’t invite you to fight us, you were invited to work with us.’
‘And I hear you’ve been to Laos, I thought we were supposed to be working together?’
‘What I tell you is on a need-to-know basis,’ he raised his voice against the cry of the wind and butchery around them, ‘we’re killing time till the spooks in Bangkok give us the go ahead, shouldn’t be long now.’
As they made their way through the knee-high wet rice field, Jacques heard the report of a rifle behind him. The soldiers dropped to the water below the waist-high crop.
‘Who fired that?’ snapped Carabas.
‘Sorry Colonel, it was me, think my sight’s fucked.’
Carabas waded over to the grunt, taking his gun and closing an eye as he centred the cross hairs of the scope on a distant target in the opposite direction of the village. Five hundred yards away, a rice farmer collapsed on the dirt road.
‘Stop harping - there’s nothing wrong with your sights. Sergeant?’ he called softly to a man with a face like a chimpanzee. ‘I’d like you to make a note that the lady I shot was running away… ok? Right, let’s move.’
The grunts followed him into the red and black fire. Written upon his gleaming head were their hopes of salvation. Here was a man who would not take it any more, a man to stand up and be counted against the Rules of Engagement; he wasn’t concerned with winning Hearts and Minds of Vietnamese, he wanted to frag as many as possible. Young or old, so long as they were yellow that was all that mattered.
Even the monsoon could not put pay to the flames. Within them Jacques heard their dying screams. Carabas held a long knife in his hands, the overbite in his jaw catching rain. He was the first to walk into the fire followed by his platoon. They passed through the village looking for trapdoors, arms cachés hidden beneath rice baskets. Jacques and Cockroach held back. Far away from this living hell the Frenchman could picture the crash of the South China Sea and with it the promise of a life elsewhere.
Bodies lay heaped like lumps of carbonized meat, steaming in the falling rain. In the flames soldiers ran about firing randomly, jabbing bayonets into dead bodies, screaming like Pawnee Indians. The smell of burnt wood and wet rain mixed with baked human flesh and cordite. In the centre of the burning huts within a well, they found a group of hidden people. A smoke bomb dropped inside… a moment later the tinny voices pleading, ‘Dong-la, dong-la!’
Eight bodies were dragged from the well. High in the slate-coloured sky a pair of vultures spiralled as Jacques watched the villagers stripped naked and questioned at gunpoint. His ears burning, he turned around and spotted the Colonel sat upon a ridge, his legs arranged in a meditative pose like the Buddha; mesmerised by the scene as if he were an orchestrator of anarchy. Within the dead eyes, Jacques could see the glimmer of madness.
War sickness twisted about the Frenchman’s gut like an unravelling snake and he bent down and vomited. If he was going to kill Carabas he would need to do it quickly.
- 12 -
The tuk-tuk rattled through the morning heat, and I wondered what temperature it was back home, the cold autumn light setting in, the first whisper of a drab English winter. Not that it made me feel any better about Bangkok. The address on the business card was toward the Weekend market, which didn’t engender much confidence; but Casbaron was the best chance I had of figuring out what was going on. Besides, what was the probability factor in the Thai thugs coming across me again? Maybe he knew something about the organization Maybury had been set up by - expats tend to have a wily eye on what’s going on around them, no matter how anodyne and blinkered they purport to be - it’s in their interest.
At least I knew I wasn’t a suspect, that my passport would shortly be returned to me and I’d be asked to go back to England. But after that it would be a dead trail; for all my limited journalistic tenacity, there’s not much you can achieve from the other side of the world. If I were to make any headway, it would have to be here, today. There wasn’t a minute to waste.
The bus station was crowded with women with baskets and bobbing chickens tethered together. A shrine with red joss sticks embedded in its altar smouldered on the pavement in the morning haze. I waited a half hour before I lost patience and decided it would be quicker to hail a cab. We rode through the backstreets past men in pyjamas lurking by doorways and half-dressed children eating sweets. All of them seemed to have t-shirts on that read Nike or Red Bull. On the horizon I could see a black pillar of smoke rising into the sky in the business district. The riot was still in earnest.
Soon
we were travelling beside a river with longtail boats loaded with fruit. Fifteen minutes later the driver looked at the address and stopped outside a metal fence. ‘This is the place, I think maybe it shut.’
The fence was tipped in razor-wire, an impressive looking sign read ‘FIREBIRD EXPORT’ in red and gold on the mesh gate with a garuda – a Hindu warrior bird - spreading its wings. Beyond it was a warehouse with oriental writing down the side. I couldn’t see the entrance. I figured Sammy Casbaron wouldn’t mind me turning up without an invitation. I’d rung the number on the card twice but an American voice – his voice - on the answer machine, said they were closed for business till the near future. And why shouldn’t I turn up, after all, he’d told me to call him if I was in trouble? And I was in trouble.
Since the entrance was locked and there was no-one around, I jumped the gate. The cabbie kept the tab going and started dozing no sooner than I left him. I walked toward the warehouse expecting a guard dog to jump out but there was nothing, just the relentless Thai sun burning the cement forecourt. Not much of an export business; no forklifts, no shouting foremen. To all intents and purposes it seemed as if the staff had taken the day off. I walked round the back to a loading bay, but it too was shut. There was an odd stench in the air, a little like the fetid smell you sometimes get in cages at a zoo. I went on around the building. There were no other warehouses besides this. We were in the middle of nowhere.
I was silently praying he’d stick his burnt face around the corner and ask me to come in, when I remembered he wasn’t partial to sunlight. Across the skyline I could see the high risers of the business district. I stopped in my tracks… somebody was moving around inside.
‘Hello?’ I shouted, ‘anyone in?’ But there was no answer. I kept close to the building as my heart began to pound and irrationally, my thoughts returned to Chattuchack, and the men with tattoos and guns. It sounded like a scratching sound in there - sounds – for there was more than one. Where the hell was Sammy when I needed an avuncular figure? The sounds seemed to dissipate and I jogged back toward the front and jumped the fence. The cabbie was still asleep listening to the theme tune from Titanic. So much for Sammy Casbaron: Veteran, racist, thong-wearing, Viagra-addled, charred pervert.
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