Hatcher, lulled by the low, rambling conversation, was suddenly jerked awake. He tried not to show his surprise when Prophett said the name. Taisung! Wol Pot’s real name.
Before he could continue, Prophett was cut off. ‘Hey!’ Wilkie called from down the bar and Prophett looked up, startled. Wilkie moved quickly back up to them. ‘Easy, kid,’ he said, rather sternly. ‘Save it for the book.’
Hatcher looked around at the Hole in the Wall. Vaguely, behind the veil of beads, he could make out a woman among the seven players at the table.
The woman playing poker got up and left the game, standing just behind the curtains for a moment while she counted a handful of bahts, then proceeding into the main room. She was a handsome woman, big-boned and broad-shouldered, with hardly any waist at all. Her blond hair was turning white, belying her features, which placed her under forty. She was wearing a loose-fitting white cotton blouse and a skirt of turquoise Thai silk and thong sandals.
Hatcher remembered her from pictures as being smaller, more delicate, a woman dwarfed by the camera equipment and canvas bag slung over her shoulder. Saigon, toward the end. Melinda Prewett had won a Pulitzer Prize for her pictures of destruction, fear, hatred and pain. When the war ended, she had left a lucrative job with Life magazine and vanished. ‘My camera has nothing else to say,’ was her swan song.
She walked directly toward him, stuffing the fistful of bahts in her skirt pocket and stopped when she got to Johnny Prophett. She put her arm around his shoulder and whispered, ‘Hi,’ in his ear. His face lit up and he laid his cheek against the back of her hand.
‘Howdja do?’ he asked.
‘Made midgets of ‘em all,’ she said softly in his ear. ‘Time for your medicine.’
‘Right,’ he said, his speech beginning to get worse. ‘Meet Hatch. He’s on vacation from the world.’
‘That’s nice,’ she said. She stared hard at Hatcher for several moments, then smiled and said, ‘Welcome to Tombstone, Mr Hatch. Enjoy your stay.’
LEG WORK
Taisung!
The mention of the prison camp commandant by Prophett was definitely a break, but how did it fit in? Obviously Prophett had known the commandant of the Huie-kui prison camp before he had changed his name to Wol Pot. That could mean only one thing to Hatcher
— Prophett had been in the camp or knew people who were.
Several questions troubled Hatcher. Did Prophett know where Taisung/Wol Pot was now? Did any of the other regulars know him? Did any of them know Cody? And who or what was Thai Horse and did he — or it — fit into this picture anywhere?
Hatcher took an ice-cold shower to kill the effects of the afternoon of beer drinking. He thought about Ron Pelletier. They had worked in the brigade together many times. Sloan had told him Pelletier was working immigration out of Chuang Mai, which was in the hill country 430 miles to the north of Bangkok. Pelletier had been in Thailand for two years. Perhaps he knew something, anything, that would help unravel the riddle of Murphy Cody. Pelletier was an old friend and a man he could trust. He made a call to the night number of the Immigration Service and left a message for Pelletier, knowing it was a long shot.
He stretched out on the floor, naked under the ceiling fan, watching the shadows whirling above him as images galloped through his brain: the painted face of Wonderboy as he sat in the corner singing; one-legged Johnny Prophett, reeling around the bar; Gallagher hot-footing it across the room; the Honorable sitting in the corner dipping his finger in wine and turning the pages of his book while Earp with his cannon watched over everyone.
His thoughts kept going back to Prophett and he opened his ch’uang tzu-chi, picturing the emaciated writer as he tried to remember where he had heard that name. All he really knew about him was that he was a writer and had lost a leg in a jeep accident.
Then suddenly he sat up.
Paget!
It wasn’t the name that was familiar, it was the face. But it didn’t fit the name Johnny Prophett. His name was James Paget. He had seen Paget’s byline and picture many times during the war.
Why had he changed his name to Prophett? And if he had changed his name, had others among the regulars changed theirs? And why? Hatcher decided to take another long shot. It was 9 P.M., 9A.M. in Washington. Flitcraft would be in the office by now. He put in the call and went through the security drill.
‘I’ve got some names I’d like you to check on,’ he told his Washington contact. ‘I don’t have much else, but let’s see just how good you really are. One of them is a civilian. James Paget. A journalist . .
He dictated the other names of the regulars he had committed to memory: Max Early, who had been attacked in a tunnel by bats and now lived on a farm because he couldn’t stand closed-in places; Potter, who, with Corkscrew, had held off a whole company of Vietnamese but lost Corkscrew’s brother while they were at it; Eddie Riker, who was the best damn slick pilot in Nam; Gerald Gallagher, who walked like a man on hot coals; and Wyatt Earp, a great-grandson of the real Wyatt Earp, who had been a full colonel in CRIP and had done four tours back to back. Bits and pieces.
‘I’ve also got two nicknames — real long shots,’ Hatcher said, giving Flitcraft Wonderboy and Corkscrew.
‘I’ll get back to you,’ said Flitcraft, unfazed by the skimpy information Hatcher provided on these men.
Hatcher ordered a salad and coffee to the room. As he was eating, the phone rang. He snatched it up, thinking perhaps it was Flitcraft.
‘Hello?’
‘Hatch?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Pelletier . .
The big man sat hunched over the corner of the bar. He was well over six five, with the beefy shoulders and chest of a professional football player. His right sleeve was tucked in the pocket of his field jacket. His remaining hand was enormous and his wrist was the size of a hawser. Time and duty had ravaged and scarred his face. His gray-flecked mustache was trimmed below the corners of his mouth, and his black hair was balding at the temples and turning white around the edges. Dark brown eyes glared unflinchingly from behind slightly tinted, gold-rimmed glasses. A mean- and dangerous-looking man, he did not smile easily, nor was he prone to casual conversation. When he did have something to say, he said it in a deep, flat, clipped monotone.
Hatcher had worked with Pelletier many times and in many places through the years arid knew him to be a staunch and loyal ally and a relentless enemy. Before joining the brigade, Pelletier had been a career marine and had once carried two wounded men at the same time for a mile through the South Asian jungle. Big men. Pelletier looked up as Hatcher entered the bar, and what might have passed for a smile crossed his lips. He offered the enormous hand.
‘Original bad penny,’ he said, ‘Good t’see you, mate.’
‘And you,’ Hatcher’s ruined voice answered sincerely.
‘Glad you’re alive. Heard all kinds of rumors,’ Pelletier said, his eyes boring in from behind the glasses.
‘Like what?’
‘You were dead,’ said Pelletier. ‘Knew that was shit.’
‘What else?’
‘Sloan dumped on you. Did a bad stretch in Los Boxes. He sprang you. You did a Judge Crater.’
‘That’s pretty accurate.’ Hatcher nodded.
‘That son of a bitch. ‘N’you’re still in bed with him?’
‘Not really, I’m doing a little free lance involving an old friend.’
‘Anybody I know?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Hatcher answered, and the big man dropped the subject immediately. Years in the brigade had taught both men not to ask too much about any mission unless they were personally involved. ‘You look pretty rough yourself, Ron. What happened to the arm?’ Hatcher asked.