Message from Hell (A Creasy novel Book 5) Page 4

  Creasy chuckled. ‘I don’t mind as long as it’s less than ten bucks.’ He thought for a moment, and then said: ‘The next thing is to find out whether he’s still in the city; and if so, what happened to him after the communists took over.’

  ‘You want me to get on with that and sniff around?’

  Again Creasy paused for thought, then said: ‘Give me a couple of days. I know he was in San Diego recently. Maybe he got to the US as a refugee. I can probably check that out. I’ll get back to you . . . Thanks, Jens. It was good work.’

  He put down the phone and walked out of the kitchen onto the broad terrace. It was one of his favourite spots on earth, high on the hills above the city with the wide sweep of the bay below. Sitting at the solitary table was his closest friend. He and Guido Arrellio had first met in the French Foreign Legion during the Algerian war of independence in the early sixties. They were in the second R.E.P., and had been kicked out after their battalion had joined the Generals’ Putsch. Fighting was all they knew, so they had teamed up as mercenaries and fought in a series of wars in Africa and the Far East. Finally Guido had met a Maltese girl, married her and bought the Pensione Splendide in Naples. He and Creasy had gone their separate ways until Guido’s wife died in a car crash. In his turn Creasy had married her younger sister, who had also died tragically. That shared bond drew them even closer. Neither of them made friends easily, and the casual observer would have found it impossible to see their closeness. They were not men who showed affection or emotion; but they had served together for many years, and Creasy had come to Naples to discuss the mysterious dogtag and the man who had delivered it in San Diego.

  He sat down, saying: ‘That was Jens from Copenhagen. He discovered that the man, Van Luk Wan, survived the shooting.’

  ‘What was the range?’ Guido asked.

  ‘About five metres.’

  Guido glanced at his friend and raised an eyebrow. ‘You missed him at five metres?’

  ‘I didn’t miss. He went down like he was poleaxed. I had no time to make sure.’

  Guido looked out across the bay. An American frigate was swinging slowly at anchor. That night the sailors would be drunk and brawling in Naples’ red light district. Some would be robbed and some would take home a communicable disease. He turned back to Creasy.

  ‘I agree with Jens and The Owl. You’re being set up. This guy Van is just the bait. Why don’t you go home to Gozo and enjoy your retirement?’

  Creasy took a sip of wine and answered: ‘That’s the sensible thing to do . . . But then, I was never famous for doing sensible things. This is nagging away at my head. It won’t go away whether I’m sitting here or in Gozo.’

  ‘So you’ll go to ‘Nam?’

  ‘Yes; but first I’ll phone Jim Grainger in the States. He has the connections to find out through immigration whether Van Luk Wan entered the US as a tourist or a refugee. If he was given refugee status they’ll have his address. In that case I’ll go and pay him a visit.’

  Guido poured more wine. ‘The season is over here and I’m getting a little bored. If you go to Saigon I’ll go with you.’ He smiled briefly. ‘It’ll be like old times.’

  ‘I hope not,’ Creasy answered, in the old times a lot of guys were trying to shoot our asses off.’

  Chapter 9

  The Dutchman lost his temper.

  Piet de Witt had fought in many wars and many places and on the whole had been well-paid; but he decided that if God ever wanted to give planet Earth an enema, he would put the tube into Cambodia. It was not the countryside, which was beautiful, or even the average Cambodian who, on the whole, were gentle people. It was just that his present employers had sunk below even de Witt’s bottom line.

  He turned to the small, brown-clad figure of the Khmer Rouge officer beside him. ‘Fuck you! It’s impossible to clear that minefield before sunset. Not without risking the lives of my men.’

  ‘They risk their lives every day,’ the officer replied. ‘So do all our men. That’s what war is all about.’

  The Dutchman laughed hollowly. He looked down the green, lush valley and said: ‘Most wars are stupid. This one is simply crazy.’ He had a map in his left hand. He jabbed a finger at it. 'It was you people, the Khmer Rouge, who planted those mines six years ago. Two thousand of them right in that valley. You didn’t even keep proper grid references or mark down the clear lanes. Now all these years later you want to send a convoy of troops through the same valley. Why don’t you send them by another route?’

  The Cambodian looked up at the giant Caucasian beside him. ‘Because in those days we mined every valley in this area. Of course sometimes maps and grid references got lost. That’s why we pay you ten thousand dollars a month to train our men to clear them when we have to.’ He glanced at his watch, 'It's six hours to sunset, by which time the trucks will be ready to roll. We need a clear way through that valley by then. Those are our orders.’

  The Dutchman swore under his breath. ‘Maybe you’d better tell her it’s impossible. I’ve only been here two months and I’m the only expert you’ve got. I’ve trained twelve of your people but they’re still amateurs. You tell her that.’

  The Khmer Rouge officer replied: ‘You can tell her yourself. She’ll be here two hours before sunset and will expect to ride with that convoy through the valley. I suggest you and your squad get started.’

  The Dutchman worked for his money, and he worked from the front in the classic V-shaped mine-clearing procedure. The mines were mostly the Chinese K3000 antipersonnel variety, interspersed with the occasional Russian DOM K2 anti-tank mines. They worked at a total width of fifty metres. Two of his squad came behind at the peripheries, planting small red flags to delineate the cleared path. After two hours one of the squad made a mistake and had his right leg blown off. An hour later there was another mistake, this time fatal.

  Two hours before sunset they were just halfway through the minefield. The Cambodian officer who was walking a cautious fifty metres behind shouted out: ‘You have to go faster! The field has to be cleared by darkness.’

  The Dutchman turned on his knees and was about to shout back an obscenity when he saw the line of trucks approaching behind the officer. The lead truck halted and the tall, slim figure of the woman jumped down from the passenger seat. She was wearing camouflaged combat gear and carrying an AK47 rifle. She spoke a few words to the officer and then walked forwards as though taking an evening stroll down the Champs Élysées. The Dutchman had heard all about her but never met her. In spite of his anger he was intrigued.

  She gave him a smile, held out her hand and introduced herself. ‘I am Connie Lon Crum and I’m pleased to meet you at last. I hear very good reports about your work. We’re grateful.’

  The Dutchman was susceptible to women, especially tough, beautiful women. He took her small hand in his big paw. His anger was forgotten, but he found himself tongue-tied.

  She continued: ‘Is there any way you can clear a track through before darkness?’ With that technical question his military mind clicked back into place and he found his tongue.

  ‘The only way would be to mount an intense artillery bombardment which would set off most of the mines. My squad could then clear the remainder. The only problem is we don’t have the artillery to mount such a bombardment. Miss Crum, there’s no other way.’

  For the first time he saw the steel in her eyes; and then, a different kind of smile on her face.

  ‘There is always another way.’ She turned and shouted an order. From the front of three trucks men began to jump down or be pushed down. Most of them had their hands tied behind their backs, the others were Khmer Rouge guards holding bayoneted rifles.

  ‘Government soldiers,’ she said. ‘We captured them two weeks ago near Siem Reap. They will dance a path clear for us.’

  The Dutchman watched speechlessly as the prisoners were organised into three lines, each prisoner about a yard from the next, and then roped together. The guards pushed them forwar
d to the edge of the mine field.

  Then it began. First the guards had to jab them with their bayonets and then fire at their feet. They did literally dance as they moved forwards. The air was filled with the noise of their screams and then the roars of the explosions as, one after another, the mines exploded.

  The Dutchman had thought he had become immune to atrocities. He had seen them in the Congo, Biafra, Angola and Mozambique; but he had never seen anything like this. The woman took his arm and urged him along behind the dying prisoners. She turned to the officer behind her and said: ‘Be sure our friend here has a woman to sleep with tonight.’ She smiled up at the Dutchman. ‘We have a saying here in Cambodia: “a soft woman is like a soothing ointment for both body and mind”.’

  Chapter 10

  ‘So you are from Holland?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then why do they call you the Dutchman?’

  Piet de Witt sighed, and said as though repeating a litany: ‘I’m from South Africa. An Afrikaaner of Dutch descent. For some reason, everybody calls Afrikaaners Dutchmen.’

  He was lying on his back looking up at the white mosquito net. She lay in the crook of his arm with her long black hair across his chest.

  Connie Crum had been right. This girl had soothed both his body and his mind. It amused him slightly to think that his mind needed such treatment. He prided himself on being a hard man in every sense. During his life and his work he had committed many acts of violence, some of them mindless. He had learned that early, from his rugby coach at school who had told him ‘always get your retaliation in first’. That had become his doctrine in life. If he was in a bar and someone threatened him with a fight, he always struck first; and he kept striking until the fight was over. Under such conditions he had the ability to flick a mental switch and go on to auto-pilot. That ability created fear among his peers.

  But during the events of the evening he had not been able to flick that switch. Somewhere deep down he did have a bottom line. He had never tortured anybody or deliberately killed an innocent. He had seen it done many times. And although he had not intervened, he had never felt the repulsion that a normal human being should have. He reflected that he might be getting old; might even be getting soft. He felt a strange tenderness for the slim girl lying by his side. It was an alien feeling. He had used women in much the same way as he had used weapons or eaten a plate of food. He had not even loved his mother.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he asked the girl.

  ‘Tan Sotho,’ she answered.

  ‘You’re Vietnamese?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

  Her voice was wistful. ‘My family had lived here for generations. We had our own land. When the Khmer Rouge came they killed all the men and the old women and the male children. They kept the young women and girls alive, mostly to use as forced labour. But some of us were put in this brothel.’ She turned her head and looked up at him. ‘We’re more or less slaves.’

  ‘You never tried to escape?’

  ‘No. A friend of mine tried and they caught her. I won’t tell you what they did to her, but it was enough that the rest of us never tried.’

  There was a long silence while he looked out of the mosquito netting around the almost bare room. She said: ‘I hear you clear the mines.’

  ‘That’s my job.’

  ‘It’s very dangerous.’

  ‘They pay me well.’

  She lifted her head in surprise. ‘They pay you?’

  He laughed. ‘Of course they pay me. Otherwise, why would I risk my life?’ He looked at her face and saw the disbelief in her eyes. ‘Is that so strange?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes . . . they never paid the others.’

  ‘The others?’

  ‘Yes. The Americans.’

  Now the surprise was in his eyes. ‘They had Americans here?’

  ‘Yes. There were three of them. I suppose like me they were slaves.’

  ‘Where the hell did they come from?’

  ‘They came from the war, of course. They were captured by the Vietnamese. In those early days they co-operated with the Khmer Rouge. I think they were sold to the Khmer Rouge.’

  Full of curiosity, he pushed himself onto his elbow and looked down on her oval face. ‘What happened to them?’

  ‘They died,’ she said. ‘One by one, in the minefields. The last one died two years ago, on the seventeenth of November.’

  ‘You knew them?’

  ‘Yes. The only pleasure they had in their lives was to be allowed to come here once a month. I liked them all. I suppose it was because we were trapped in the same hell.’

  He lay back against the pillow and abruptly a noise intruded into his thoughts. It was a child crying. The girl said: ‘Please excuse me.’ She slipped out of the bed and under the mosquito net.

  He watched as she padded across the floor towards a wooden door. She went through and switched on the light, leaving the door open. He could see the child lying in a cot. She bent over it, whispered some words and stroked the child’s face. The crying stopped. Ten minutes later she returned to the bed with a warm wet towel. Slowly and carefully she wiped all of his body, kneeling beside him.

  ‘The child is yours?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. He’s my son.’

  ‘How old?’

  ‘He’ll be three next month. They were angry when they found out I was five months pregnant. I was able to conceal it until then. But they let me keep him. He is the only thing I possess.’

  She was wiping his face with the towel, gently probing into the sockets of his eyes. She asked: ‘How long have you been a mercenary?’

  ‘Too long. I guess about twenty-five years. This is going to be my last job. Then I’ll buy a farm in the Transvaal and raise cattle.’

  ‘Did you fight in many places?’

  ‘Too many.’

  ‘Did you ever meet a man called Creasy?’

  She felt his whole body stiffen and the towel was pulled from her hand. His head lifted from the pillow and she winced as he gripped her arm.

  ‘What did you say?!’

  ‘I just asked if you knew a man called Creasy. He was a mercenary like you.’

  His voice was like sandpaper. ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘No. It’s just that I heard about him from one of the Americans.’

  He relaxed. His head dropped back onto the pillow and he released her arm. She looked down at his face, curiously. His eyes were far away. She asked: ‘Did you know him?’

  ‘I knew him.’

  ‘Is he still alive?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She was slowly stroking his chest in a way that was almost maternal. She asked: ‘What kind of a man is he?’

  He lifted a hand and put it over hers to stop her movements, and answered: ‘He is death.’

  Chapter 11

  She hated Vietnam; the more so, because it fascinated her. It was a land of both sadness and poignancy. It was like an axe that cut a cleft between her heart and her mind; and it constantly drew her like a moth to a flame.

  The Thai Airways plane from Bangkok dipped its nose and banked for its final descent into Ton San Nut airport. She closed the lid of her IBM Notebook and reached for her briefcase under the seat. Her mind was on the report she had just read on the small screen. She had read it several times since it had been loaded into her computer two days ago.

  It was the FBI report on the Danish detective Jens Jensen. It had linked him with a mercenary called Creasy. That in itself did not ring any alarm bells for either herself or her boss Elliot Friedman. What did ring a shrill alarm was a suffix at the end of the report. It stated that any inquiries made to the FBI which involved a mercenary called Creasy would be automatically referred to Senator James Grainger, the senior Senator from Nevada and the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, a very powerful individual. She happened to be in Friedman’s office the next morning when the expected call came
through. Friedman had glanced at her and then flicked the phone onto the conference speaker.

  The conversation was fairly typical of that between a very powerful politician and a moderately senior army officer. The politician was at first polite in the extreme. He complimented the colonel on the fine work he was doing under such difficult circumstances. For two or three minutes they chatted about the missing-in-action problem; And then Senator Grainger said: 'It's come to my attention that yesterday you requested a report on a Dane called Jens Jensen.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I assume you have received it.’

  ‘Yes. It’s on my desk at this moment.’

  ‘Why your request, Colonel?’

  ‘It’s routine, sir. He came to see me the day before yesterday together with his associate. He’s a private eye who specializes in missing persons. A very pleasant guy, I guess we have something in common in our work.’

  ‘What did he want, Colonel?’

  ‘He had the dogtag of a MIA. It had been delivered to the MIA’s parents’ house in San Diego. We extracted the relevant file and I have to say, Senator, I broke the rules a mite and let him read it.’

  Susanna heard the Senator’s chuckle through the speaker. ‘I guess some rules are just there to be broken, Colonel. Were you able to help Jensen?’

  ‘No, sir. Not beyond showing him the file. I asked him to keep me informed and to come back to me if he needed any further assistance.’

  There was a silence. Even the phone’s speaker seemed to be thinking; then the Senator’s voice came through it. ‘What was the code on the FBI’s report?’

  Colonel Friedman pulled the papers towards him and read out loud: ‘CN/D/404082A.’

  Another silence. Susanna thought she could actually hear the shuffle of papers through the phone. Then the senator said: ‘That report refers to a man called Creasy.’