‘Escape?’ Hatcher’s green eyes glittered dangerously.
‘It’s just a formality,’ Pratt said hurriedly. ‘They won’t try to extradite you or anything like that. I mean, nobody’s even going to know you’re out, know what I mean?’
‘Where’s Sloan?’
‘You’ll see him when you get to Washington.’
‘Washington?’
‘Right. We’re going to hustle you right on out of the country, yes siree. . . . He’s, uh, dying to see you.’
Hatcher stared at him again. He was intrigued by the man’s face, by the layers of fat that seemed to reduce his features to miniatures. A little face peering out of a big, fat head.
‘How’d you get mixed up in this?’ he growled to Pratt.
‘I’m a career diplomat,’ Pratt said, trying to sound proud of it.
‘Some things never change,’ Hatcher whispered.
They could see pillars of black smoke rising from the city when they were still twenty miles away.
‘It’s got a fires!’ the captain said, pointing upriver.
‘It’s got a fires,’ Pratt mimicked, shaking his head. He stood up and looked over the bow, toward the capital city. ‘My God, there must have been a counterattack on the city,’ Pratt wailed. ‘The whole place is burning up.’
‘What do we do now?’ Hatcher snarled anxiously.
‘I’ll try to radio the embassy,’ Pratt said and disappeared below. Hatcher kept watching the towers of black smoke as they got closer to the city. He could hear explosions and gunfire. When Pratt returned, he was smiling.
‘They’re going to send a chopper to the pier. It’s in friendly hands,’ he said excitedly. ‘They’ll fly us straight into the embassy.’
‘Why’re you doing all this for me?’ Hatcher demanded.
‘I, uh, I really don’t know, sir. They didn’t tell me that. They just said to go down with the papers, bribe the warden, and bring you back. If you want to know the truth, Mr. Hatcher, they don’t ever tell me anything.’
‘I drop you off and scramming,’ the captain yelled to them.
‘Yeah, right,’ Pratt said. ‘You scramming. Know what they told me? The captain speaks perfect English, that’s what they told me. See what I mean?’
As they neared the pier they saw the chopper, a four-passenger job, sweep over the warehouses along the edge of the river and hover over the bank, churning up the water below it. Pratt stood up and waved to them. The captain guided the scow along the pier and bumped it gently. So he couldn’t speak English, Hatcher thought. He sure knows how to run a boat.
‘You go now, good luck, señors,’ he yelled.
Pratt scrambled to get up on the railing, and as he did, a shell exploded a hundred yards away, tearing out the corner of a building. A naked woman ran down the street with her hair burning. A jeep squatted on flat tires, burning furiously, the charred body of the driver still sitting behind the wheel. Pratt stopped, his face bulging with horror.
‘Let’s go,’ Hatcher yelled, and pushed him onto the dock. The boat roared back into the middle of the river.
‘My God, look at this, it’s horrible, horrible. . . .‘ Pratt whined as the chopper swept over and settled down twenty feet away. Hatcher ran to open the hatchway. A young marine, who looked scared to death, helped him scramble aboard. Behind him, Pratt waddled across the dock towards the chopper. The pilot, a captain, looked at him in horror. ‘Christ, we can’t take him, we’re overloaded already,’ the pilot yelled. ‘Close the hatch, Corporal.’
‘Sir,’ the corporal yelled back and slid the door shut.
Stranded on the dock, Pratt screamed as he saw the hatch slide shut. ‘No, no, you can’t leave me here,’ he screamed, beating on the side of the helicopter. It shuddered and lifted off as he slammed his fist over and over against the side. Then the wind began to buffet him, he was showered with dust, stinging his eyes, and the chopper lifted off. Pratt fell to his knees, his hands covering his head, and began to sob uncontrollably.
Hatcher and the young marine stared down at the huge man and watched as he grew smaller and smaller. Another explosion erupted behind him and part of the dock disintegrated, but Pratt did not move. He knelt like a Buddha, cowering with fear, unable to move.
‘It’s madness,’ the young marine cried out and Hatcher began to laugh for the first time. He had been a companion to madness for so long it all seemed perfectly normal to him.
BANGKOK
SIX MONTHS LATER
MALAY CROSSING
From the air the dark blue Mercedes could be seen slowly moving through the crowded streets of Bangkok. It appeared to have no particular destination. It drove at a crawl, slowing down as it passed the mouth of each alley as it zigzagged the streets, until it finally stopped.
The alley was narrow and teeming with people. Although it was early in the day, music blared from a nightclub nearby adding to the cacophony of people talking and horns blowing and the din of the large, crowded city.
A bulky Chinese got out of the Mercedes and headed into the alley. He had a florid face seamed down one side by a long, thin scar. He threaded his way through the steady stream of people to a tiny, pitifully scrawny woman wearing a turban. She was huddled over a baby. She was barefoot, with dirt ingrained in her callused feet, and her sunken cheeks and hollow eyes told the whole story. A young woman, one of thousands of prostitutes, known as e-san, who was a Laotian from northeast Thailand whose father had sold her into prostitution at the age of twelve, had a child and now, unable to cope, was slowly starving to death. There were hundreds like her. Dozens of unwanted babies were born every week.
The driver of the Mercedes, a lean, short man in a gray business suit, leaned on the fender, smoking, and watched his partner talking to the small woman with the child. The big scar-faced man leaned over and spoke quietly with his hands folded in front of him. The woman shook her head. The man took out a thick wad of bills, held them close to his body, and counted out several, but the woman continued to shake her head. He counted out a few more, folded the bills and, holding them between his two middle fingers, pointed them toward her. She hesitated but still shook her head. The man with the scar slipped his hand into his suit pocket and took out a packet of white powder. He folded it among the bills that he put in her hand.
The car driver watched as the big man took the child and walked back up the alley. The driver held the door open for him.
The gleaming point of the needle dipped into the dab of rich, green paint. The client was a powerfully built Chinese in his mid- to late-thirties. When the tattoo needle pierced the skin of his arm, he did not flinch or blink. He was naked from the waist up and was sitting in an ornate antique chair. He stared straight ahead without emotion. His arm was outstretched with the forearm facing up. Kneeling on a ruby-red pillow, an elderly Chinese leaned over the young man’s arm, etching his work of art into the young man’s forearm. He did not use the newer, electric- type tattooing needle but instead did it the old way, tapping the drawing into the skin with deft, quick strokes. He worked quickly but with great care, ‘etching into the skin a thin green dagger with a purple snake entwining the blade, its yellow head peering around the handle.
When the old man finished the job, he leaned back and appraised his work. Satisfied, he nodded to his client and the younger man finally looked down at the dagger. It was a work of art, beautifully executed and conveying a sense of menace. A hint of a smile cracked the young man’s inscrutable expression. He stood and walked across the room to a large gilt-framed mirror and stood in front of it, glaring coldly at his reflection. There was only a hint of self-adulation on his face. He turned to the old artist.