Message From -Creasy 5 Read online

  Message From Hell (v2.0)

  by A. J. Quinnell

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 01

  Chapter 02

  Chapter 03

  Chapter 04

  Chapter 05

  Chapter 06

  Chapter 07

  Chapter 08

  Chapter 09

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  The man was old, and the fingers of his right hand were thin and bony. More of a talon than a hand. The metal glinted as it nestled in his palm.

  "It's a dogtag."

  "I know what it is."

  "It's a US Army dogtag."

  "I know that. Let me see it."

  The talon closed around the metal as though protecting a precious jewel.

  "It's my son's dogtag."

  "Your son is dead. I saw him gunned down."

  "Did you see him die?"

  "No, it was a fire-fight. We'd been ambushed and were getting the hell out; but I saw Jake get hit. He was cut down by machine-gun fire. He was about a hundred metres away and there was no chance to get back to him. I got hit myself and was lucky to get out."

  "I know. But did you see him actually die?"

  Creasy shook his head.

  "No, Mr Bentsen. If anyone did, it was the guys who shot him."

  They were sitting at a corner table in a bar in Brussels. Creasy had dropped in to have a drink with the bartender, who was an old friend. Before he had a chance to take the first sip, the old man had appeared at his shoulder and asked to speak to him. It was a bar much frequented by mercenaries, ex-mercenaries, pretend mercenaries and would-be mercenaries.

  The old man had a stiff urgency. He had said: "Can I talk to you Mr Creasy; privately?"

  Creasy had studied his face. He had a memory for faces, but this one stirred no memory. There was something in the old man's eyes which made Creasy cross the room and sit down at the table. The old man sat opposite, and said: "I'm Jake Bentsen's father."

  With that he had reached into his pocket and pulled out the dogtag.

  "How did you find me?" Creasy asked.

  The old man sighed. "It was not easy. But my neighbour has a cousin who's an analyst with the CIA at Langley. He did some research and told me that if you were still operative you could be located via this bar. I've been here a week, Mr Creasy, and I've been in this bar every day. Of course I asked the bartender, but he told me nothing. I was going home to San Diego on Monday."

  "Well, I'm not operative," Creasy said. "I happen to be in town visiting an old friend. I'm leaving tomorrow. How did you recognise me?"

  "From the description in one of Jake's letters. He described every scar on your face."

  Creasy looked at the old man thoughtfully, and then said: "Show me the dogtag, Mr Bentsen."

  Slowly the fingers uncurled and turned, and the small metal disc dropped onto the table. Creasy reached forward, pulled it towards him and looked at the name and the number embossed on it. He looked at it for a long time, then took another sip of his drink and asked: "Where did you get it, Mr Bentsen?"

  "It was delivered to me two weeks ago at my home in San Diego."

  "Who by?"

  "I don't know, Mr Creasy. At least I don't know his name or where he came from. My doorbell rang. My wife answered it. There was a short man, an Oriental. He handed her a small package and went away."

  "And this was in the package?"

  "Yes."

  "Was there anything else?"

  Again the bony fingers reached into the jacket pocket, and came out with a crumpled piece of brown wrapping paper. He pushed it across the table. Creasy smoothed it out and read the scrawled words. There were just three of them, spelled out vertically.

  CREASY

  NAM

  BODIA

  It was a very small scrap of paper, and the words had obviously been written in haste. Creasy looked up into the old man's worn face. He said gently, "Mr Bentsen, this is probably a dirty kind of joke. It's happened before. Jake was killed on the Vietnam-Cambodian border twenty-six years ago."

  The old man's eyes were fixed on the dogtag and the scrap of paper. Without looking up he said, "I took it to the MIA in Washington. They told me that as far as they could tell it's authentic. Jake's body was never found; or the dogtag. It's not possible to tell if the writing on the paper is Jake's. I took it to a handwriting specialist who compared it with some of Jake's letters home. He said he thought it might be."

  Now he looked up, but could not see into Creasy's eyes. Creasy had leaned forward and was looking down intently at the metal disc and the scrap of paper.

  The old man said: "He used to write about you. Jake never really had heroes. In a way he was his own hero. He lived in his own image. But he looked up to you like no other man. He was twenty-one years old on that day, Mr Creasy, when he was cut down. They never found the body. Nobody went back to look for him, Mr Creasy."

  Slowly, Creasy lifted his scarred face. He reached out and touched the dogtag and then picked it up. His fist closed around it. He said: "And you think that now somebody should?"

  Chapter 01

  "You feel guilty!"

  Creasy sighed, and answered: "It's not guilt."

  "Then what is it?"

  Creasy looked at his friend across the table. He had known Maxie for more years than he liked to remember. As mercenaries, they had fought together at different times over a score of years until Maxie had married and bought his bistro in Brussels and settled down in a sporadic sort of way.

  They were sitting in that bistro now, together with a Dane called Jens Jensen and a small, round-faced, bespectacled Frenchman known always by his nickname 'The Owl'.

  Jensen was the ex-head of the Copenhagen Police's missing persons department. The Owl was an ex-gangster and bodyguard from the Marseille underworld. Some years ago, in a surrealistic series of events, Creasy had matched them togethe
r and they now formed an unlikely partnership as a private detective agency which specialized in looking for anything that was missing, be it a husband or wife, a lost dog or a diamond. The Dane was in his late thirties, slightly overweight with thinning blond hair and a schoolteacher wife and a young daughter. Apart from his family and The Owl, his only other attachment was a portable IBM computer which never strayed more than a few metres from his side. In an era when people were talking about the Information Superhighway and the Internet, Jens Jensen was already locked into them.

  The Frenchman was in his mid-forties, and hid his character behind the thick round spectacles which gave him his nickname. The four people who mattered in his life were Creasy and the Jensen family. He had two other attachments. One was the Sony Walkman which was permanently fixed to his belt and which gave him the only relaxation he ever needed: the sounds of the great classical composers. He was a walking encyclopedia of their works and their lives, and for him God was called Mozart. His other attachment was a MAB PA 15 pistol with the rotating barrel. It nestled in a soft leather holster under his left armpit and, when necessary, he used it with a speed and accuracy that would have turned Wyatt Earp green with envy.

  It was a good partnership. Jens Jensen had a gift for getting into trouble; and The Owl had a gift for getting him out of it. Jens was the brain and The Owl was the gun.

  Jensen and The Owl had been in Brussels looking for the runaway wife of a Danish industrialist. They had located her the previous night, in the bed of a black saxophonist. Since she was clearly content to be there, Jens had merely retrieved the five-carat engagement ring and the heavy gold wedding ring for his client, and phoned through the news that he may as well begin divorce proceedings. He and The Owl had worked with both Maxie and Creasy on previous jobs some years earlier and so they had naturally gravitated to Maxie's bistro for their last supper in Brussels. They had been surprised and pleased to find Creasy in attendance, and together with Maxie had listened to the story of the supposedly dead GI and the mysterious return of the dogtag with the scrap of paper.

  Maxie repeated his statement. "You feel guilty!"

  Creasy shook his head. "Maxie, you know how it is. You've been there dozens of times. You see a guy get hit and you have an instinct which tells you whether the hit was fatal or not. Nine times out of ten your instinct is right. I was running for cover but I saw the kid get hit. He went down like a spinning top. I was also hit, but not badly. I managed to get away."

  "So what are you feeling guilty about?"

  Creasy sighed again with irritation. "I'm not feeling guilty. It's just that, maybe, we should have gone back to make sure. I wasn't hurt bad. I just needed a few stitches and a day at the MASH. Of course we couldn't go back right away, but we could have returned a couple of days later, in force."

  The Dane sipped at his wine and asked: "Were you in command of the unit?"

  Creasy shook his head. "No. It was a US Special Forces patrol. I was attached to it as a very unofficial 'irregular'."

  "So it wasn't your responsibility?"

  "No, but the guy in command was an asshole. Maybe I could have got a few of the other irregulars together and gone back to take a look."

  Maxie was looking at his friend with curiosity. He said: "For God's sake, Creasy. In a situation like that, you don't go back looking for a guy you're almost sure is dead." He gestured at the dogtag lying on the centre of the table. "Twenty-six years later, that turns up with a piece of paper with your name on it. Probably some bent mind, or maybe the guy who delivered them was setting up the kid's father for a con. It's happened before."

  "Maybe."

  Maxie picked up the disc and rolled it through his fingers, and asked: "What was the kid like?"

  Creasy thought about that, and then said: "He was a good kid. A bit different. He was always frightened."

  Maxie laughed in surprise. "Frightened. He'd graduated to the US Special Forces and had been in 'Nam for over a year; and he was always frightened?"

  "Yes. He thought he never showed it. He was the macho type on the outside. I guess he was born frightened, and had spent the twenty-one years of his life trying to prove to himself that he was a hero. He used to follow me around, a bit like a puppy. Always talking tough, but always just a frightened kid underneath. I sort of came to like him. I guess, in a way, like you get attached to a puppy. When things got rough, I tried to keep him a little close, but on that day the asshole platoon commander had put him out on point. He was the first one to get cut down."

  Maxie studied his friend's scarred face. He had been present when some of those scars were inflicted. Quietly he said: "Creasy, there's no way you should feel responsible. You were not even in the fucking US Army. You were a hired irregular whom nobody was even supposed to talk about. You were not in command. You had no responsibility. So they paid you good, but not good enough to risk going back to look for a guy you assumed was dead. Now why don't you go home to Gozo: soak up the sun and put it out of your mind."

  Creasy reached out and picked up the scrap of paper. He said: "Thanks for the advice, Maxie. But 'Nam has opened up again and so has Cambodia." He smiled wryly. "I guess I'll go and look for the puppy."

  In astonishment, Maxie glanced at Jens and The Owl. It was as though he had just heard the Pope announce that he was off to get married.

  The Dane said: "It sounds like a wild goose looking for a needle in a thousand hectares of wheat. Where will you start to look?"

  Creasy was holding his wine glass and slowly swirling the contents. He looked up at the Dane and then at The Owl and asked: "Are you guys busy at the moment?"

  "Not very," Jens answered. "We just wrapped up a job. We figured to take some time off."

  Creasy put down his glass and said: "How would you feel about working with me on this?"

  The Dane and the Frenchman glanced at each other. Then The Owl asked: "Does this kid's father have plenty of money?"

  "I doubt it. He's a retired clerk. I guess he has his pension and no more. If you joined me, I would be the client."

  Again, glances of surprise passed around the table, and Maxie asked: "You'll do this for nothing?"

  Creasy shrugged. "You talked about guilt. The fact is, I'm not feeling guilty, but I am curious. I want to know where that dogtag came from, and why." He looked at the Dane. "I want to hire you and The Owl for at least a couple of weeks. How much do you guys charge per diem?"

  Suddenly, there was a strange noise. It emanated from The Owl. The other three looked at him with concern; then they realized that he was laughing. He controlled himself and said: "Creasy, I never expected to hear such a question from you. Three years ago you came into what I thought was a life and turned it upside down...Gave it a purpose." He gestured at the Dane. "You matched me up with Jens and, in a sense, gave me a family for the first time. Now you have the balls to sit there and ask how much I charge you for what is nothing more than a favour."

  The Dane was nodding thoughtfully. He said: "If it wasn't for you, Creasy, I'd still be sitting in a small office at Copenhagen Police Headquarters pushing papers around. So shut up about money and just tell us what you want done."

  Creasy looked at Maxie, who stated: "It's not a good thing to insult old friends."

  There was a brief flash of anger in Creasy's eyes. Then he relaxed and sat back in his seat. He said to Jens: "You have my thanks. Of course, I'll cover your expenses. And who knows, maybe some money will come out of all this. It often does. If so, we split it three ways."

  "It's a deal," Jens said. "Now what do you need?"

  Creasy thought for half a minute and then said: "The US Army has a permanent Missing-in-Action section based in Washington. It's a big section. The American people are highly sensitive about their Armed Forces personnel who go missing in foreign wars. It's a very emotive issue, so the politicians make a lot of noise about it. They're still trying to find GIs, or their remains, who went missing in Korea forty-five years ago. They still refuse to recogni
ze Vietnam until they've used up every effort to locate their missing persons." He glanced at the Dane. "In a way, Jens, it's the same thing that you and the Owl specialize in, which is why I can use your help. I'd like you to go to Washington and talk to the people at the Missing-in-Action section. Of course Bentsen has been in contact with them about that dogtag, and they think it's authentic. I want you to get as much background as possible. Ask questions; snoop around. Try to get a general impression of the case. Those guys must get all kinds of information, a lot of it purely speculative. The kind of information they cannot pass on to the families of the missing because it may raise false hopes. But that information could be useful to me. Meanwhile I'll head for San Diego. We take it one step at a time. I made some inquiries. The guy who heads up the US Army Missing-in-Action section is a Colonel called Elliot Friedman. Please go talk to him."

  The Dane did something that he always did at such moments. He reached down to his feet and pulled up the small case containing his computer. He laid it reverently on the table and a few seconds later was tapping in a file entitled, 'Puppy'.

  Chapter 02

  Of course it was logical: first find the messenger, and through him find the sender.

  Where to start looking? Obviously, at the place where the message was delivered.

  Creasy sat in the overfurnished living room in the house in San Diego, sipping a Budweiser. The old couple sat opposite drinking coffee, their faces showing anxiety and a little embarrassment.

  The woman said; "We have our savings, Mr Creasy...and we both have pensions. We can afford to pay you something."

  Creasy was deliberately blunt. "Mrs Bentsen, for a job like this I'd normally ask for a hundred thousand up front...and a whole lot more for expenses. But this is not normal. I'm going to spend a couple of weeks to satisfy my own curiosity. Right now I'm flush with money from the last couple of jobs. What I need is not money but your memory. Think carefully, and describe the man who delivered the dogtag."

  Marina Bentsen was old, with a pinched, narrow face, but her eyes were bright and sparkled with intelligence. Those eyes narrowed in concentration as she spoke.

  "He was definitely Asiatic. We have quite a big Asian community here in San Diego. Japanese, Chinese, Korean and of course Vietnamese. For us, it's always hard to distinguish. Not only their nationalities, but their ages. He was not young, I would guess between fifty and sixty...His face was unlined. His hair, of course, was black and quite short... parted in the middle. His eyes were small and very dark. His nose was slightly hooked and his chin was uncommonly narrow. He was wearing dark blue trousers, and a light blue windbreaker. Also sneakers. When he walked away I noticed that he had a slight limp."