Mr. Fonko’s career (if one can call it that) has been anything but smooth. He has experienced many setbacks, tribulations and disappointments, and though he has never experienced failure or disaster, his adventures invariably turn out… different. I am pleased to report that Mr. Fonko appears none the worse for it. His lifestyle would be the envy of many, and his abilities on a surfboard belie his years. I take great pleasure in presenting the initial installment in the marvelous, not to mention inspiring story of Jake Fonko. To those who doubt his veracity, I cast down the gauntlet: Disprove it if you can!
To date this project has enjoyed no financial assistance, although grant applications are in preparation so that this vital work can proceed apace. I must express my deepest appreciation to: Bertha Sikorski, for her able assistance; department secretary Marjorry Magerk, for her superb typing; the campus librarians, who unflaggingly responded with great efficiency to my many requests for information and sources; colleagues Marshall Goldman and R. Roy Richards, for reviewing portions of this manuscript and honoring me with their brilliant suggestions and critiques; my wife, Sallye, and son, Justin, for patiently enduring the many late hours and days away from home this project required; and Mssrs. Jobs and Wozniak, for inventing their miraculous Apple Macintosh, without which my progress would have been far slower and my labours far more tedious. With all these and many others unnamed I humbly share the credit for whatever merit this book deserves. But of course the blame for any defects or errors must rest entirely on my own shoulders.
If you found Mr. Fonko’s Cambodian exploits engrossing, I cannot do better than to quote that late, great entertainer, Al Jolson: “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”
B. Hesse Pflingger, PhD
Professor of Contemporary History
California State University, Cucamonga
1My doctoral dissertation may provide a more graphic illustration of my interests: “Effects of increasingly containerized maritime commerce on the availability of plastic explosives to insurgent elements in Third World settings,” (California State University, Bolinas, 1988).
Book 2 | Fonko on the Carpet
Foreword
Professor B. Hesse Pflingger compiled his chronicle of Jake Fonko’s remarkable exploits over a period of several years, working from tape recordings and notes taken during lengthy conversations with Mr. Fonko. Professor Pflingger then added his own voluminous annotations, insights and interpretations, with an academic writing style to match. When he brought several boxes of raw manuscript to our offices it was apparent that some editorial effort would be required to make his work publishable. Alas, our first impression was a gross underestimate: getting Jake Fonko M.I.A. in shape for publication resulted in several resignations and a narrowly averted staff mutiny. But we did bring it out, and we are proud of what we accomplished.
With Fonko on the Carpet we diligently press on, for we are convinced that Jake Fonko’s story is one worth presenting to the public’s attention. Our aim is to capture the authentic voice of Jake Fonko, for who can better tell his story? Read on and be astonished.
1 | Malibu
If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything. Mark Twain had that right. Though it didn’t apply to me in quite the same sense he’d meant it. Thanks to a few innocent little fibs I passed on in Tehran back in 1978, some unsettling memories still haunt me. Not that they shock me awake on lonely nights with the screaming-meemies, dripping sweat and round-house swinging at hallucinatory assailants—despite all my misadventures, I’ve been spared that particular horror, thank God. But some of the things that happened to me in Iran, I’d sure like to wipe off the slate, if that were possible. And had I only stuck to the truth…
…but come to think about it, sticking to the truth might have turned out even worse, you never know. Nobody wanted the truth in those days, except the man who hired me, and I never lied to him. I shudder to think where I’d be now (like, pushing up daisies?) had I not been fascinated by Señor Wences on the Ed Sullivan Show when If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything. Mark Twain had that right. Though it didn’t apply to me in quite the same sense he’d meant it. Thanks to a few innocent little fibs I passed on in Tehran back in 1978, some unsettling memories still haunt me. Not that they shock me awake on lonely nights with the screaming-meemies, dripping sweat and round-house swinging at hallucinatory assailants—despite all my misadventures, I’ve been spared that particular horror, thank God. But some of the things that happened to me in Iran, I’d sure like to wipe off the slate, if that were possible. And had I only stuck to the truth…
…but come to think about it, sticking to the truth might have turned out even worse, you never know. Nobody wanted the truth in those days, except the man who hired me, and I never lied to him. I shudder to think where I’d be now (like, pushing up daisies?) had I not been fascinated by Señor Wences on the Ed Sullivan Show when I was little. What the hell, I survived it, even came out of it a millionaire, except that…well, we’ll get to that soon enough.I was little. What the hell, I survived it, even came out of it a millionaire, except that…well, we’ll get to that soon enough.
It took longer than I’d expected to clear Bangkok following my escape from the Khmer Rouge killing fields. Todd Sonarr, my erstwhile CIA boss who’d sent me into Cambodia on that half-assed fool’s errand, assured me I’d be heading back to Los Angeles “after a few days.” Typically, he neglected to specify which few days. The “few days” I went home after didn’t happen until several weeks had passed. I suppose I shouldn’t gripe. Having out of the blue been busted from captain down to E-7 platoon sergeant and then RIF’d from the Army, I had no special plans or program just then. In fact, between that, and the close calls I’d had with the Khmer Rouge, Emil Grotesqcu, and Clyde Driffter and his munchkin drug thugs, I felt pretty numb. Sonarr put me up in the Oriental Hotel on an open CIA tab, and the $5,000 he slipped me for pocket money kept me in beer and amusements and then some. I was still pissed off at Soh Soon, my Khmer Rouge lady-buddy, for trying to steal my diamonds the night the CIA shipped her out, and one thing Bangkok excelled at back then was temporary female companionship to distract a man’s mind from his woes. No, I had no grounds for griping, none at all.
I was pretty much on my own the last couple weeks of my stay in Bangkok. Standard Southeast Asian weather had settled in: soggy, steambath heat clamped down over the city with hardly a breath of breeze to stir it. I’d lost everything in my room at the Brinks when Saigon fell, so had to round up a whole new kit. When I wasn’t doing that, or wallowing in the hotel pool, or taking in the sights of exotic Bangkok, I was being pressured by Sonarr and his buddies to sign on full-time with the Company. Fraternity Rush Week was soft sell, by comparison. They’d swallowed Clyde Driffter’s Greatest Story Ever Told, hook, line and sinker, and convinced themselves that I was just the kind of guy the CIA needed for covert operations: tough, cunning, resourceful, indestructible, ruthless, able to charge in there and do the impossible. The perfect profile for a covert ops guy, from what I’d seen of them, but yours truly fell about 180 degrees shy of fitting it. One tour on the CIA payroll filled my plate and then some—those three ill-starred months would last me a lifetime (and damned near did). They wined and dined, wheedled, offered, threatened, cajoled, appealed and painted pictures of glory and heroism, but I held firm. I counted the wee hours, good-buddy drinking bouts as the worst of it—could those spooks swill down the hard stuff! I’d shake myself loose as soon as possible and hop a cab straightaway to Patpong, to unwind in a hot tub with a cute little naked Thai whore or two giving me a scrubdown and massage. Which never failed to put me in the proper frame of mind for the rest of the service. Count my blessings that the world hadn’t heard of AIDS in 1975.
Finally Sonarr and Company reluctantly accepted my resolute “no” for an answer, at least for the time being. He chopped my paperwork and booked me on a flight
home to L.A. Suited me—you can have too much of a good thing even in Bangkok, and I’d reached that point. I positively craved returning to civilization. I’d called ahead to Mom, who extended a surprisingly warm invitation to stay as long at her place as I needed to get things settled. I’d not spent much time in L.A. since my clouded departure when I joined the Army in 1968. Apparently bygones were bygones after seven years, as far as she and Evanston, my lawyer-stepfather, were concerned, and I’d never held any hard feelings about that incident. A familiar place to crash while I felt my way back into civilian life sounded good to me.
Todd Sonarr and his aide, Kevin /Ken, saw me off at the airport on a heavy, humid June evening. “Just promise me one thing, Jake,” Sonarr urged as the loudspeaker announced my flight’s boarding call. “Don’t shut the door on us entirely. Think about my offer. We need you, Jake, we really do. I’m fully confident that in time you’ll come around to realizing that the CIA is the outfit where you truly belong.” He reeked of Glenfiddich, as usual.
“Todd, count on it, the CIA will always command a prominent place in my thoughts,” I said. And I meant it. Much as I might like to expunge completely from my brain cells that hare-brained ordeal they’d inflicted on me, I recognized it to be a vain hope.
“Glad to hear you say that, Jake. The country needs more guys like you doing those tough jobs that really count. I’ll stay in touch. Anything else I can do for you?”
“Can’t think of a thing. Say, thanks for the time in Bangkok. After that mess in Cambodia, I needed the R and R.”
“If anyone ever deserved it, soldier…” he said, his voice detouring around a lump in his throat. He shook my hand and clamped a paw on my shoulder. He was showing a surprising amount of emotion, certainly more than I was feeling just then—geez, tug my heart strings, Sonarr. I bade him a manly farewell, pumped Kevin’s hand a few times, slung my flightbag strap over my shoulder and fell in with the herd of tourists, businessmen and corrupt Thai officials trooping onto the plane.
I rounded the first corner into the boarding corridor and pulled away the mask. The prospect of putting half the globe between me and Indochina charged my face with such utter joy and relief that my fellow passengers gave me suspicious looks and a wide berth. “Missing in Action for five years, finally going home to beautiful, sunny California!” I blurted excitedly to the matronly half of an elderly American tourist couple who’d started edging away from my electrified grin. Well, if you check my Army records, that’s what you’ll find there. It allayed the concerns of all within earshot, though everyone seemed at a loss as to how to respond to it. Fine by me. I’d been looking forward to a quiet and undisturbed flight across the Pacific, and I wasn’t disappointed. Still striving to lure me into the Company by every means possible, Sonarr had sprung for First Class, and up there people respect your privacy.
To my surprise, Mom and Evanston met me at L.A. International. They spotted me as I came out the customs gate and intercepted me en route to the rent-a-car counters. Quite a change from my departure in 1968, when I couldn’t butt out of town fast enough to suit them. The early June southern California evening air felt glorious—high 60s and crisply dry. Heaven, after three months of sweating away in Southeast Asia. Evanston sped us up the Coast Highway in his new Mercedes 450SEL. He deftly wound through the familiar curves of Sunset Boulevard to the same Pacific Palisades spread where I’d spent my high school and truncated college years. It was a nice enough house, but a few weeks stay in the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok has a way of making any place short of the Taj Mahal seem ticky-tacky by comparison. I did my best to exchange pleasantries with them in the family room, but thirty hours in airplanes and transit lounges, plus nine time zones’ worth of jetlag, had zonked me beyond coherence. Mercifully Evanston soon noticed it, and he had Mom usher me into my old room, all neatly fitted out for my homecoming, even with my UCLA pennant on the wall. I crawled into the rack, flicked off the bedside lamp and was asleep before the light faded from the room.
I slept halfway around the clock. A wake-me-up shit, shower and shave restored a modicum of mental clarity. Coming downstairs for something to eat, I discovered the origins of my warm welcome. Mom was fluttering around the carved rosewood telephone table in the living room, jawing with one of her buddies. .”..flew in just last night!” she exclaimed, broadcasting her half of the conversation around the corner, down the hallway and halfway up the stairs. .”..from overseas, that’s where! No, I can’t tell you exactly where he was…yes, I know where, but I can’t tell you…” She dropped the pitch of her voice to the low, confidential tone social climbing matrons reserve for disclosures guaranteed to score major envy points off their so-called friends. “Edna, I really shouldn’t tell you. It might get me arrested by the FBI…yes, arrested! It really might, you know how they worry about national security…oh, I couldn’t—it’s top secret. Top secret! Well, if you promise not to tell a living soul…swear it, not a word to anyone…” Then, with a stage whisper that rattled the row of crystal wine goblets on the cherrywood sideboard: “He’s a secret agent! He was on a secret mission in, oh, you’d never guess in a million years…no…no, not Russia either…well, I’ll tell you, but keep it strictly to yourself…promise, now! We don’t want to spend the rest of our lives in jail, do we? Cambodia…isn’t that something! Where’s Cambodia? Well, of course it’s overseas…right across from Asia, I think…”
Good old Mom. All those years I’d been away she’d stayed true to her priorities with saint-like devotion. Image, status and appearances remained her unwavering beacons. With James Bond flicks the big rage, what could boost her society stock higher than having a genuine Secret Agent in the family? After the disgrace I’d heaped on her in 1968, my Ranger tab hadn’t fazed her, likewise my Distinguished Service Cross (she thought it had something to do with driving ambulances and bandaging the wounded). Getting my officer’s bars moved me ahead not one inch in her eyes. But a genuine Secret Agent! Now, that was negotiable. Doctors, lawyers, hedge fund managers, government officials—how she must have envied her canasta buddies whose broods sported those trophies (nobody swapped stories about their family beach bums, dropouts, druggies, jailbirds and retards, of course). But had any of them borne an actual Secret Agent, who went on actual Secret Missions? Not…too…likely.
Neither had she, of course, but why spoil her fun? What puzzled me was, where did she get that idea? My Top Secret Cambodian fiasco had turned out to be about as secret as the center divider on the Hollywood Freeway. But how did the leak reach Mom’s eager ears?
I found out that very evening. Evanston and I had never gotten along well—stepfathers and stepsons often don’t. Dad was a newspaper man, and Evanston was some kind of lawyer. Those two temperaments get along about as well as oil and water, and I tended in Dad’s direction. So Evanston and I co-existed under a mutually wary truce after Mom married him. The stupid stunt that got me thrown out of UCLA and into the Army had, I thought, foreclosed me from his good graces forever.
However, that first evening back home he took me into his study, along with a bottle of Wild Turkey and a couple glasses. Sitting me down in one of the cordovan leather arm chairs, he poured us drinks and hauled its mate over into man-talk range. Evanston had breached 50 a few years ago, and his narrow, well-tanned face sported more laugh-lines and sag than I remembered. The start of a bald spot on the back of his head showed through his kinky-waved, greying hair. He’d played basketball in college, back when 6’ 2” qualified a man as tall enough. I doubt that he’d gained fifteen pounds since then, and he still had an athlete’s moves. After swapping notes on the weather and the prospects of the Dodgers that season (doing very well—leading the Western Division of the National League with a .600 record), he veered toward Serious Stuff.
“So, do you have any plans for your future?” he asked.
“Nothing definite yet. I’d been counting on an Army career, but the Reduction in Force scotched that and
left me on the beach. I figured to take a little time and see what else I might do. I’d like to stay on the West Coast; but I don’t know what kind of civilian job combat experience and military intelligence training would qualify me for. Maybe there’d be something in one of the defense companies.”
“Sometimes it takes a man a while to find himself, after he’s seen hard service,” he allowed, with a tone that signaled he knew whereof he spoke. “Adjustments back to civilian life aren’t always smooth. How are you fixed financially? I mean, do you have enough to tide you over? If you’re short, I’d be glad to help get you over the hump.”
Definitely not the same Evanston I’d always known. He had plenty of money, and the house, cars and club memberships proved he didn’t hesitate to spend it…but offer to give it to me? Something must have happened, to bring about such a radical change. Besides, I didn’t need money. Did he make the offer knowing that? That would be more like Evanston. “Actually, I came away from Cambodia with a pretty decent stake,” I said. He seemed genuinely cordial, and I don’t think it was just because the Wild Turkey had mellowed my mood. What the hell, he was family, sort of—take a chance. “That’s a very kind offer, but I don’t need money. What you could give me, and I’d really appreciate it, is a little advice. The fact is, I’ve got more cash than I know what to do with. Do you know anything about investments?”
“A little. How much money are we talking about?” For starters, I told him about the brick of $100 bills Sarge had gotten for my investment diamonds. He sat up straighter in his chair.
“Where did you get diamonds worth that kind of money?” he asked. It was not any kind of accusation, nor did he seem especially surprised, just curious.
The Jake Fonko Series: Books 1 - 3 Page 24