“I’m taking a breather, Jon. Thinking things through. Spending time with Kate. Resting.”
“Bullshit,” Rawson said. “That’s bullshit. You better come right back in.”
“OK, Jon. OK. We’ll come back today.”
“Where are you?”
“Kellner’s place. With his girl.”
“For Christ’s sake, Frank. Anybody could be watching you over there. Anybody could come in there.”
“I was careful coming in.”
“I’m going to send someone over there right now,” Rawson said.
Delaney looked over at Kate, still lounging happily in the bed. She smiled at him. He knew Rawson had a point.
“OK, Jon, that would be good. Give us an hour or so.”
They had a quick breakfast with Mai and the cats on the balcony. She didn’t want them to go.
“Stay with me,” she said. “Let’s live here all together for a while.”
“Nice idea,” Kate said.
“Nathan would have said so too,” Mai said.
“It’s a nice idea, Mai, but not possible,” Delaney said. “We’ve got to get going.”
His mobile rang. It was the watchman, agitated, saying a car with two Westerners had pulled up outside. Immediately after Delaney hung up, it rang again. Ted Green this time. Waiting outside with a driver in an embassy car.
They went back into the guest room and threw their few things into bags. Delaney stopped for a moment, looked over to Kate, looked over at the armoire where he had found Kellner’s field gear when he first searched the apartment weeks ago. He hesitated and looked back at Kate again.
“What is it, Frank?”
“Rawson’s got me worried, with all of his Canadian worrying,” Delaney said. “Should we be worried?”
“I’m not sure I should have brought you over here now,” he said.
“It’s perfect,” she said.
“It’s not all finished yet,” Delaney said. “I don’t think so anymore.”
“So, we’ll finish it up together,” Kate said. Delaney went to Kellner’s armoire and pushed aside the hanging camouflage pants and vests. Hidden down at the bottom among the combat boots and a flak jacket and a helmet and running shoes was a wooden case. It contained a black Walther .38 pistol and a box of bullets. Delaney had seen the gun last time. He pulled it out and checked that the magazine was empty.
“Frank, what’s that for?” Kate said.
“I’m going to bring it with us down south,” he said.
Kate the policewoman was dubious.
“Those things can make a bad situation worse, Frank,” she said. “Do you know how to use it?”
“Yes,” he said. “I’ve been around these things a fair bit.” A vision of Natalia lying dead of gunshot wounds in a snowy Quebec forest flashed before him. And a memory of him using a gun to deadly effect that day in the snow, and again months later in a Rome back street on the rogue Vatican agent who had killed her.
“We may need this, Kate,” he said, wrapping the weapon in a T-shirt and putting it in his bag. “You just don’t know in a situation like this. Rawson’s got me anxious.”
Kate looked unconvinced.
“A gun can make things worse,” she said again. That was exactly what Ben Yong had tried to tell him outside Mae Sot.
Rawson, it seemed, spent most of his professional life looking aggrieved in hotel lobbies. He was waiting for them when they got back to the Oriental.
“Bad move, Francis. Very bad,” he said. To Kate he said: “Officer Hunter, I would have thought RCMP training would have led you to advise our Francis against going to ground like that in this situation.”
“I’m off duty, Mr. Rawson,” she said, shaking his hand.
“Well, I’m not. My job is to get this man, and now you, it seems, back to Canada in one piece. As soon as possible. We could go tomorrow if the Thais agree they’ve got everything they need.”
“We’re going to take a beach break,” Delaney said. “Don’t get upset.”
“A beach break? No chance,” Rawson said.
“A short one,” Kate said.
“No chance,” Rawson said.
“Let’s talk about this tomorrow, Jon,” Delaney said.
Delaney wanted to find Cohen before they left. He didn’t want Kate to come with him. She agreed, reluctantly, to stay in their hotel room to rest. They ate an early dinner and he gave her his mobile number.
“Should I be a true Canadian and start worrying now?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “It’s just a visit to Cohen, if I can find him, and I’ll get the last bits that I need on this. You rest here tonight. Then we go south. Without Rawson and Company.”
“OK, Frank. Are you going to carry that gun tonight?”
“No. I’m going to use the Thai driver tonight. He’s a cop.”
“Will he be in with you everywhere you go?”
“Outside. Close by.”
“Is he any good?”
“I’d say. They wouldn’t assign him to us if he weren’t.”
“All right, Frank.” she said. “But I’d rather go with you. Mountie escort. The best in the world.”
“No chance. You’ll cramp my style. And Cohen’s.”
Rawson started his search at the Chivas Bar. Some of the regulars there said Cohen had not been in for a while. They suggested another small bar farther down the Patpong strip. It was called Lace. Sometimes Cohen met dope contacts there, they said.
The sex show had not started at Lace when Delaney went in. It was too early for a place like that. Tough-looking Thai guys in their twenties were lounging around, waiting for tourist marks to come in later and get into trouble of various sorts. No one had seen Cohen there either.
Delaney’s driver took him over to the Dusit Thani Hotel. Delaney went up to the top floor to the press club. He had two things to do there. One was to check for Cohen and to find out where else he might be.The second was to put a notice on the bulletin board about Ben Yong’s death. A lot of correspondents had known Ben, had used his services.
Delaney had tapped out a short notice on his laptop earlier and printed it out in the Oriental’s business centre. It read: “The foreign correspondents’ community in Thailand has lost a valued colleague and a dear friend. Benjarong Yongchaiyudh, known to all here as the best of drivers, was killed in May 2001 while on assignment in Mae Sot. He was 57. He was a journalist in spirit and in deed.”
Delaney pinned the notice up, along with an old ID picture of Ben. A couple of early drinkers came over to look. Word would spread quickly around the club and Delaney knew that later, when the usual crowd arrived, there would probably be an impromptu journalists’ wake.
Chris Hislop, the Voice of America man in Bangkok and a press club stalwart, said as Delaney turned away from the bulletin board: “That’s a damn shame. Ben was a top driver.” “The best,” Delaney said.
“What’s the story?” Hislop asked. “Was he with you?”
“It’s a long one, Chris. I’ll tell you another time, OK? Tonight, I’ve got to find Mordecai Cohen. Something urgent. You seen him around?”
“No, not for days. We figure he’s hooked up with some girl or he’s scored something special to smoke and he’ll turn up eventually.”
“Where does he go, when’s he’s on one of those?”
“He usually just stays home. He’s got a terrible little local-style place down by one of the canals way over in Thonburi. Terrible place. No air con. Nothing. Cheap and cheerful. No one bothers him there.”
Delaney got full directions. Cohen’s place was not accessible by car. He would have to take one of the narrow longtail river boats, powered by huge American automobile engines directly attached to a combination rudder and drive shaft. They raced at all hours up and down the Chao Phraya River and
its maze of adjacent canals.
Delaney’s driver clearly didn’t like the idea at all. He seemed unsure whether it was his duty to stay with the car at the dock or to come along with Delaney in the longtail. He opted to stay with the car. That suited Delaney fine.
Delaney took a boat all to himself. The boat driver manoeuvred the craft as fast as he possibly could through the heavy river traffic, leaving a trail of spray, a V8 roar and a haze of oil smoke behind him. He seemed to know where he was going.
The canals got very narrow eventually and the boatman had no choice but to slow down to a crawl. The huge engine growled and backfired in protest. They passed old teak houses on stilts, with yellow lantern light coming from the windows. Delaney wondered how much, or, more to the point, how little it would cost Cohen to rent one of these sagging canal houses. Surely he would be the only Westerner in the area.
Eventually they pulled up to a house flying a Jolly Roger pirate’s flag on a small pole out front. Crates of empty beer bottles were stacked on the deck. Delaney gave the driver 20 dollars and asked him to stay. He climbed up the rickety wooden stairs to the deck. Psychedelic music from the sixties wafted from an open window. Delaney smelled opium and fresh popcorn. Cohen was clearly at home.
Delaney didn’t bother to knock. He pushed open the low door and went inside into the lantern light. Cohen was dozing in a hammock hung near a small table laden with beer bottles, smoker’s paraphernalia and photography magazines. His eyes snapped open immediately when Delaney shook him, and he tried to leap out of the hammock and head for the door.
“Cohen, for god’s sake take it easy. It’s me, Delaney.”
“Delaney, what are you doing here, man? You almost killed me.”
“Why so jumpy, Mordecai?” Delaney said, as Cohen adjusted his sarong and collapsed back into a low rattan chair. He wore no shirt.
“You almost killed me, man, waking me up like that. What are you doing here?” Cohen fumbled for a Marlboro, lit it with a vintage Zippo.
Delaney saw no reason to ease in. He stood next to Cohen in the lamplight.
“Kellner’s dead, Mordecai,” he said.
Cohen stiffened, took a long drag on his cigarette. His hand was shaking. “No way,” he said.
“In Burma. The generals killed him.”
“No,” Cohen said.
“Yes, Mordecai. I saw his body in a Rangoon morgue.”
Cohen suddenly started to cry. He sobbed like a schoolboy, covering his face with both hands, cigarette still grasped between index and middle finger of his left.
“No way,” Cohen said. “No way.”
“It’s your fault, Mordecai,” Delaney said. “And Ben Yong is dead too because of you.” “No,” Cohen said. “No, no way.”
He stubbed out his cigarette and hugged his knees. He looked wistfully over at his table of drugs and beer.
“Who did you tell?” Delaney said. Cohen lit another cigarette, said nothing. “Who, Mordecai? The Burmese? Why would you do that?”
“I didn’t tell the fucking Burmese anything,” Cohen shouted. “Who then?”
“The Aussies. The fucking Aussies,” Cohen said.
“Why them?”
“Because Kellner was going to rip them off. Because the whole idea was stupid and I figured I’d stop it that way. I told them they were going to get ripped off, that’s all. They slipped me some cash. I needed the cash and I figured the whole Suu Kyi thing would fall down if the rip-off messed up. That’s it. It would have been better that way. That’s all I did. Nothing about Suu Kyi.”
“You stupid pathetic asshole,” Delaney said.
“Then Kellner disappeared and everything fell apart,” Cohen said, he hugged his knees and started crying again. “I need a joint,” he said.
“You pathetic asshole,” Delaney said.
“The Aussies wouldn’t have killed him,” Cohen said.
“But the generals would.”
“I didn’t tell the generals.”
“But the Australians did. They must have.”
“But only about the rip-off, man. That’s all they could have said. No way they knew about the Suu Kyi thing.”
“For Christ’s sake, Mordecai, you know what that regime is like. The generals take Kellner in to ask him some questions and the way they work he would have told them everything, anything. Then they killed him. And stood back and watched it all unfold in Mae Sot, Mongla and then Rangoon.”
“Jesus, Frank. Jesus. Give me a break. I never meant for them to kill him. No way. It was just a little gig for me on the side.”
Delaney felt anger welling up from somewhere deep inside. He suddenly felt glad he had not carried a gun that night. He understood, as he had on only a few other occasions in his life, the impulse to attack, to injure, to murder.
“And you told those mercenaries Ben and I would be heading up to Mae Sot,” he said.
“Give me a break, Frank, come on. I didn’t think they would hurt you. I thought they’d just throw you the hell out of there. I didn’t want you to get pulled into it, so I told them you were on your way.”
“They killed Ben Yong.”
Cohen hugged his knees and rocked in his chair. He wiped tears away with the back of his hands.
“And now you’re hiding out in this hovel, stoned and worthless and hiding,” Delaney said. “There’s guys following me, Frank.”
“Good. People are following me too.”
“They’re going to take me out, Frank.”
“Good,” Delaney said.
“Come on man, you can’t mean that,” Cohen said.
“I mean it. You’re lucky I don’t kill you myself.”
Chapter 17
Rawson warned him as they went by embassy car to police headquarters the next day that General Kriangsak Chatichai was not a happy man.
“He’s a cop’s cop,” Rawson said. “He’s been made to understand by his superiors and by the political people that this is not a standard case and that there’s an international diplomatic dimension. He knows something very strange was going on in Mae Sot, but he’s been told to ease off because most of what actually happened, happened in Burma and because the Thai side simply doesn’t want this to blow up any bigger. But he’s not a happy man, because a Thai citizen ended up dead at Kellner’s place up there, and was buried up there, and no senior policeman worth his salt, even in Thailand, would want to just let that go. So he’ll go through the motions today, just for his own self-esteem, but there’s not a hell of a lot he can do on this one because he’s been told to stand back and because the guy who killed your driver is already dead.”
General Chatichai was indeed an unhappy man. He frowned deeply when an aide brought Delaney and Rawson into his large office. He did not get up from his black leather swivel chair. He waved at two straight-backed wooden chairs placed in front of his massive, glass-covered desk. He did not offer his guests any tea, although a large tea flask and an array of cups sat on a tray close at hand.
“I understood that I would speak to Mr. Delaney alone, Mr. Rawson,” Chatichai said.
“I am representing the Canadian government during this interview with Mr. Delaney today, General,” Rawson said. “I think my embassy has indicated this to your colleagues.”
“I have not been told,” Chatichai said.
“My apologies,” Rawson said. “I am just here to observe.”
“There is no need for observers,” Chatichai said. “This is routine police business.”
“That is not quite how my government sees it, General,” Rawson said.
Chatichai’s frown deepened. He turned to Delaney.
“Mr. Delaney, I have read your written statement about what happened in Mae Sot last month. I appreciate your detailed description. You are a journalist and used to reporting what you have seen. I need you to tal
k to me today about what you apparently did not see. Your report is not clear on some matters of importance to the police.” “I’m happy to help,” Delaney said.
“You say that a group of foreign mercenaries abducted you when you went to the farm outside Mae Sot. You say one of the men shot Mr. Benjarong Yongchaiyudh and then they abducted you. Is that correct?”
“Yes it is,” Delaney said.
“Why did they not shoot you also?” Chatichai said.
“We were separated at the time. Mr. Yongchaiyudh was waiting for me on the road and I was still on the property. The men came back and saw him there and they shot him.” “You were still on the property?”
“Yes.”
Chatichai looked at Delaney’s typewritten statement.
“With another of the men you say were mercenaries.”
“Yes.They were definitely mercenaries, General.”
“Why had you not gone out to the road with Mr. Yongchaiyudh? Why did you stay back? Your statement does not speak about this.”
Delaney hesitated.
“I was trying to find out where Nathan Kellner might be. That’s why I went to his farm. I stayed to look around some more.”
“You were searching his place.”
“Yes.”
“You entered illegally.”
Rawson said: “General, Mr. Delaney’s statement says clearly that he entered the farm in the hope that his friend would be there. He did not enter illegally. He simply entered the farm property and the house to see if anyone was there.”
“And the person you say was a mercenary was there and he attacked you and Mr. Yongchaiyudh and then you, as you say in this report, subdued him,” Chatichai said. “You hit him with a chair and tied him up.” “Yes,” Delaney said.
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