John Le Carré: Three Complete Novels

by John le Carré

  “Captain say we stay here.”

  “Will he ask the colonel to come to us?”

  “Colonel very busy man.”

  “Where is the colonel?”

  “He next village.”

  “What is the name of the next village?”

  The driver once more collapsed with laughter. “It don’t got no name. That village all dead.”

  “What was the village called before it died?”

  Mickey said a name.

  “Is the road open as far as this dead village?”

  “Captain say military secret. That mean he don’t know.”

  “Will the captain let us through to take a look?”

  A long exchange followed. “Sure,” said Mickey finally. “He say we go. Okay.”

  “Will the captain radio the colonel and tell him we are coming?”

  “Colonel very busy man.”

  “Will he radio him?”

  “Sure,” said the driver, as if only a hideous farang could have made a meal of such a patently obvious detail.

  They climbed back into the car. The boom lifted and they continued along the perfect tarmac road with its cleared shoulders and occasional landing marks. For twenty minutes they drove without seeing another living thing, but Jerry wasn’t consoled by the emptiness. He had heard that for every Communist guerrilla fighting with a gun in the hills, it took five in the plains to produce the rice, the ammunition, and the infrastructure, and these were the plains. They came to a dust path on their right, and the dust of it was smeared across the tarmac from recent use. Mickey swung down it, following the heavy tyre tracks, playing “The lights are always out in Massachusetts” again, and singing the words very loud, Jerry notwithstanding.

  “This way the Commies think we plenty people,” he explained amid more laughter, thus making it impossible for him to object. To Jerry’s surprise he also produced a huge, long-barrelled .45 target pistol from the bag beneath his seat. Jerry ordered him sharply to shove it back where it came from. Minutes later they smelt burning, then they drove through wood-smoke, then they reached what was left of the village: clusters of cowed people, a couple of acres of burnt teak trees like a petrified forest, three jeeps, twenty-odd police, and a stocky lieutenant-colonel at their centre. Villagers and police alike were gazing at a patch of smouldering ash sixty yards across, in which a few charred beams sketched the outline of the burned houses.

  The colonel watched them park and he watched them walk over. He was a fighting man. Jerry saw it immediately. He was squat and strong, and he neither smiled nor scowled. He was swarthy and greying, and he could have been Malay, except that he was thicker in the trunk. He wore parachute wings and flying wings and a couple of rows of medal ribbons. He wore battle-drill and a regulation automatic in a leather holster on his right thigh, and the restraining straps hung open.

  “You the newsman?” he asked Jerry in flat, military American.

  “That’s right.”

  The colonel turned to the driver. He said something, and Mickey walked hastily back to the car, got into it, and stayed there.

  “What do you want?”

  “Anybody die here?”

  “Three people. I just shot them. We got thirty-eight million.” His functional American-English, all but perfect, came as a growing surprise.

  “Why did you shoot them?”

  “At night the C.T.s held classes here. People come from all around to hear the C.T.s.”

  Communist terrorists, thought Jerry. He had an inkling it was originally a British phrase. A string of lorries was nosing down the dust path. Seeing them, the villagers began picking up their bedrolls and children. The colonel gave an order, and his men formed them into a rough file while the lorries turned round.

  “We find them a better place,” the colonel said. “They start again.”

  “Who did you shoot?”

  “Last week two of my men got bombed. The C.T.s operated from this village.” He picked out a sullen woman at that moment clambering on the lorry and called her back so that Jerry could take a look at her. She stood with her head bowed.

  “They stay in her house,” he said. “This time I shoot her husband. Next time I shoot her.”

  “And the other two?” Jerry asked.

  He asked because to keep asking is to stay punching, but it was Jerry, not the colonel, who was under interrogation. The colonel’s eyes were hard and appraising and held a lot in reserve. They looked at Jerry enquiringly but without anxiety.

  “One of the C.T.s sleep with a girl here,” he said simply. “We’re not only the police. We’re the judge and courts as well. There’s no one else. Bangkok don’t care for a lot of public trials up here. That’s the way it is.”

  The villagers had boarded the lorries. They drove away without looking back. Only the children waved over the tailboards. The jeeps followed, leaving the three of them, and the two cars, and a boy, perhaps fifteen.

  “Who’s he?” said Jerry.

  “He comes with us. Next year—year after, maybe—I shoot him too.”

  Jerry rode in the jeep beside the colonel, who drove. The boy sat impassively in the back, murmuring yes and no while the colonel lectured him in a firm, mechanical tone. Mickey followed in the car. On the floor of the jeep, between the seat and the pedals, the colonel kept four grenades in a cardboard carton. A small machine-gun lay along the rear seat, and the colonel didn’t bother to move it for the boy. Above the driving mirror beside the votive pictures hung a postcard portrait of John Kennedy, with the legend “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask rather what you can do for your country.” Jerry had taken his notebook out. The lecture to the boy continued.

  “What are you saying to him?”

  “I am explaining the principles of democracy.”

  “What are they?”

  “No Communism and no generals,” he replied, and laughed.

  At the main road they turned right, farther into the interior, Mickey following in the red Ford.

  “Dealing with Bangkok is like climbing that big tree,” the colonel said to Jerry, pointing at the forest. “You climb one branch, go up a bit, change branches, the branch breaks, you go up again. Maybe one day you get to the top general. Maybe never.”

  Two small kids flagged them down, and the colonel stopped to let them squeeze in beside the boy.

  “I don’t do that too often,” he said with a smile. “I do that to show you I’m a nice guy. The C.T.s get to know you stop for kids, they put out kids to stop you. You got to vary yourself. That way you stay alive.”

  He had turned in to forest again. They drove a few miles and let the small children out, but not the sullen boy. The trees stopped and gave way to desolate scrub land. The sky grew white, with the shadows of the hills just breaking through the mist.

  “What’s he done?” Jerry asked.

  “Him? He’s a C.T.,” the colonel said. “We catch him.” In the forest Jerry saw a flash of gold, but it was only a wat. “Last week one of my police turns informer to C.T. I send him on patrol, shoot him, make him a big hero. I fix the wife a pension, I buy a big flag for the body, I make a great funeral, and the village gets a bit richer. That guy’s not an informer any more. He’s a folk hero. You got to win the hearts and minds of the people.”

  “No question,” Jerry agreed.

  They had reached a wide dry paddy-field with two women hoeing at the centre and otherwise nothing in sight but a far hedge and rocky dune land fading into the white sky. Leaving Mickey in the Ford, Jerry and the colonel began walking across the field, the sullen boy trailing behind him.

  “You British?”

  “Yes.”

  “I was at Washington International Police Academy,” said the colonel. “Very nice place. I studied law enforcement at Michigan State. They showed us a good time. You want to keep clear of me a little?” he asked politely as they trod meticulously over the plough. “They shoot me, not you. They shoot a farang, they get too much trouble
here. They don’t want that. Nobody shoots a farang in my territory.”

  They had reached the women. The colonel spoke to them, walked a distance, stopped, looked back at the sullen boy, and returned to the women and spoke to them a second time.

  “What’s that about?” said Jerry.

  “I ask them if there’s any C.T.s around. They tell me no. Then I think, Maybe the C.T.s want this boy back. So I go back and tell them, ‘If anything goes wrong, we shoot you women first.’” They had reached the hedge. The dunes lay ahead of them, overgrown with high bushes and palms like sword blades. The colonel cupped his hands and yelled until an answering call came.

  “I learned that in the jungle,” he explained with another smile. “When you’re in the jungle, always call first.”

  “What jungle was that?” said Jerry.

  “Stand near to me now please. Smile when you speak to me. They like to see you very clear.”

  They had reached a small river. Around it, a hundred or more males, some even younger than the boy, picked indifferently at the rocks with axes and spades, or humped bags of cement from one vast pile to another. A handful of armed police looked negligently on. The colonel called up the boy and spoke to him, and the boy bowed his head and the colonel boxed him sharply on the ears. The boy muttered something and the colonel hit him again, then patted him on the shoulder, whereupon like a freed but crippled bird the boy scuffled away to join the labour force.

  “You write about C.T.s, you write about my dam, too,” the colonel ordered as they started their return talk. “We’re going to make this fine pasture here. They will name it after me.”

  “What jungle did you fight in?” Jerry repeated.

  “Laos. Very hard fighting.”

  “You volunteered?”

  “Sure. I got kids, need the money. I joined PARU. Heard of PARU? Police Aerial Reinforcement Unit. The Americans ran it. They got it made. I write a letter resigning from the Thai police. They put it in a drawer. If I get killed, they pull out the letter to prove I resigned before I joined PARU.”

  “That where you met Ricardo?”

  “Sure. Ricardo’s my friend. We fought together, shoot a lot of bad guys.”

  “I want to see him,” said Jerry. “I met a girl of his in Saigon. She told me he had a place up here. I want to make him a business proposition.”

  They passed the women again. The colonel waved at them but they ignored him. Jerry was watching his face but he could as soon have watched a boulder back on the dunes. The colonel climbed into the jeep. Jerry got in after him.

  “I thought maybe you could take me to him. I could even make him rich for a few days.”

  “This for your paper?”

  “It’s private.”

  “A private business proposition?” the colonel asked.

  “That’s right.”

  As they drove back to the road, two cement-mixer lorries came toward them and the colonel had to back to let them pass. Automatically Jerry noticed the name painted on the yellow sides. As he did so, he caught the colonel’s eye watching him. They continued toward the interior, driving as fast as the jeep would go, in order to beat anybody’s bad intentions along the way. Faithfully Mickey followed behind.

  “Ricardo is my friend and this is my territory,” the colonel repeated. The statement, though familiar, was this time an entirely explicit warning. “He lives here under my protection, according to an arrangement we have made. Everybody around here knows that. The villagers know it, C.T. knows it. Nobody hurts Ricardo or I’ll shoot every C.T. on the dam.”

  As they turned off the main road into the dust path again, Jerry saw the light skid marks of a small plane written on the tarmac.

  “This where he lands?”

  “Only in the rainy season.” The colonel continued outlining his ethical position in the matter: “If Ricardo kills you, that’s his business. One farang shoots another on my territory, that’s natural.” He could have been explaining basic arithmetic to a child. “Ricardo is my friend,” he repeated without embarrassment. “My comrade.”

  “He expecting me?”

  “Please pay attention to him. Captain Ricardo is sometimes a sick man.”

  Tiu make a special place for him, Charlie Marshall had said, a place where only crazy people go. Tiu say to him, “You stay alive, you keep the plane, you ride shot-gun for Charlie Marshall any time you like, carry money for him, if that’s the way Charlie wants it. That’s the deal and Drake Ko don’t never break a deal,” he say. But if Ric make trouble, or if Ric louses up, or if Ric shoot his big mouth off about certain matters, Tiu and his people kill that crazy bastard so completely he don’t never know who he is.

  “Why doesn’t Ric just take the plane and run for it?” Jerry had asked.

  Tiu got Ric’s passport, Voltaire. Tiu buy Ric’s debts and his business enterprises and his police record. Tiu pinned about fifty tons of opium on him and Tiu got the proof all ready for the narcs for if ever he need it. Ric, he’s free to walk out any damn time he wants. They got prisons waiting for him everywhere.

  The house stood on stilts at the centre of a wide dust path, with a balcony all round it and a small stream beside it and a couple of Thai girls under it, and one of them was feeding her baby while the other stirred a cook pot. Behind the house lay a flat brown field with a shed at one end big enough to house a small plane—say, a Beechcraft—and there was a silvered track of pressed grass down the field where one might recently have landed. There were no trees near the house and it stood on a small rise. It had all-round vision and broad windows not very high, which Jerry guessed had been altered to provide a wide angle of fire from inside.

  Short of the house the colonel told Jerry to get out, and walked back with him to Mickey’s car. He spoke to Mickey and Mickey leapt out and unlocked the boot. The colonel reached under the car seat and pulled out the target pistol and tossed it contemptuously into the jeep. He frisked Jerry, then he frisked Mickey; then he searched the car for himself. Then he told them both to wait and climbed the steps to the first floor. The girls ignored him.

  “He fine colonel,” said Mickey.

  They waited.

  “England rich country,” said Mickey.

  “England a very poor country,” Jerry retorted as they continued to watch the house.

  “Poor country, rich people,” said Mickey. He was still shaking with laughter at his own good joke as the colonel came out of the house, climbed into the jeep, and drove away.

  “Wait here,” said Jerry. He walked slowly to the foot of the steps, cupped his hands to his mouth, and called upwards.

  “My name’s Westerby. You may remember shooting at me in Phnom Penh a few weeks ago. I’m a poor journalist with expensive ideas.”

  “What do you want, Voltaire? Somebody told me you were dead already.”

  A Latin-American voice, deep and feathered, from the darkness above.

  “I want to blackmail Drake Ko. I reckon that between us we could sting him for a couple of million bucks and you could buy your freedom.”

  In the darkness of the trap above him Jerry saw a single gun barrel, like a Cyclopean eye, wink, then settle its gaze on him again.

  “Each,” Jerry called. “Two for you, two for me. I’ve got it all worked out. With my brains and your information and Lizzie Worthington’s figure, I reckon it’s a dead cert.”

  He started walking slowly up the steps. Voltaire, he thought; when it came to spreading the word, Charlie Marshall didn’t hang around. As to being dead already—give it a little time, he thought.

  As Jerry climbed through the trap he moved from the dark into the light, and the Latin-American voice said, “Stay right there.” Doing as he was told, Jerry was able to look round the room, which was a mix between a small armaments museum and an American P.X. On the centre table on a tripod stood an AK-47 similar to the one Ricardo had already fired at him, and as Jerry had suspected, it covered all four approaches through the windows. But in case it di
dn’t, there were a couple of spares and beside each gun a decent pile of ammunition clips. Grenades lay about like fruit, in clusters of three and four, and on the hideous walnut cocktail cabinet under a plastic effigy of the Madonna lay a selection of pistols and automatics for all occasions.

  There was only one room but it was large, with a low bed with japanned and lacquered ends, and Jerry had a silly moment wondering how the devil Ricardo had ever got it into his Beechcraft. There were two refrigerators and an ice-maker, and there were painfully worked oil paintings of nude Thai girls, drawn with the sort of erotic inaccuracy that usually comes with too little access to the subject. There was a filing cabinet with a Luger on it and there was a book shelf with works on company law, international taxation, and sexual technique. On the walls hung several locally carved icons of saints, the Virgin, and the Christ-child. On the floor lay a steel scaffold of a rowing-boat, with a sliding seat for improving the figure.

  At the centre of all this, in much the same pose in which Jerry had first set eyes on him, sat Ricardo in a senior executive’s swivel chair, wearing his C.I.A. bracelets and a sarong and a gold cross on his handsome bare chest. His beard was a lot less full than when Jerry had seen it last, and he guessed the girls had clipped it for him. He wore no cap, and his crinkly black hair was threaded into a small gold ring at the back of his neck. He was broad-shouldered and muscular and his skin was tanned and oily and his chest was matted with hair.

  He also had a bottle of Scotch at his elbow, and a jug of water, but no ice because there was no electricity for the refrigerators.

  “Take off your jacket please, Voltaire,” Ricardo ordered, so Jerry did, and with a sigh Ricardo stood up, and picked an automatic from the table, and walked slowly round Jerry, studying his body while he gently probed it for weapons.

  “You play tennis?” he enquired from behind him, running one hand very lightly down Jerry’s back. “Charlie said you got muscles like a gorilla.” But Ricardo did not really ask questions of anyone but himself. “I like very much tennis. I am an extremely good player. I win always. Here unfortunately I have little opportunity.”