But there was another Manila, another Philippines. Most Westerners rarely saw it, if at all. It was the Manila of rusting corrugated metal shacks and strings of shanties made of packing crates and tarpaper. This was the Manila that Marcos had made a career of ignoring, and Aquino had built a career making promises to. If any of those promises had been kept, it was a closely held secret.
Not that Aquino was entirely to blame. You don't hold one person responsible for centuries of misery. But the forgotten people were still there, packed into their slums like gunpowder, just waiting for the spark. He wondered if the attack at the airport was the overture of a new rebellion, one to make the New People's Army look like Boy Scouts and the Huks like pacific idealists. The potential was there that was a certainty.
In the back of Bolan's mind was the faint glimmer, dim as a penlight at the bottom of a mine shaft, that Charles Harding had come with the same notion, maybe to set that spark or maybe to piss on it and put it out. But Harding's background, sketchy as it was, suggested that he was not a disinterested observer in the Filipino political process.
It was here, after all, that Lansdale had cut his eyeteeth, honing those theories that had gone so badly astray in Vietnam.
The cab suddenly swerved to the left and rocked to a halt. Bolan looked out at the ultramodern glass-and-brass facade of the MacArthur Hilton. He paid the hack, then eased out of the cab. The clean pavement, flecked with glittering flakes of mica catching the sun, looked as if it had just been laid. He pushed through the revolving door as the cab lurched away, leaving the scent of burnt rubber hanging in the humid air.
Bolan checked in quickly, and was surprised when the clerk said that someone had been asking for him. Bolan waited, watching the clerk curiously. He expected one of those ubiquitous pink papers with a phone message scribbled on it, but was instead surprised to hear the clerk page Frank Henson.
He turned to see a man in a rumpled suit making a beeline for the desk. It had to be Henson.
"Now what?" Bolan muttered.
5
Frank Henson slipped behind the wheel of his Land Rover and leaned across to open Bolan's door. The big guy climbed in and dropped his bag over the seat into the back.
"They give you a hard time today?" Henson asked.
"I've had worse."
"They say anything about Harding?"
"Collazo referred to him obliquely, but didn't really give much away. I don't know what he knows, but I don't think it's much. It was more like he was trying to pump me than anything else."
Henson laughed easily. "Son of a bitch! I'd love to know where the holes are. We're leaking like a sieve. And everybody in Manila seems to know what we know before we know it. Guy I bought this rattletrap from, some damn assistant something or other at the British embassy, told me about Harding two days before I heard his name from anybody else."
"You think it's on your end or back in D.C.?" Bolan watched Henson carefully while the older man composed his answer. It would be easy to blame it on the other guy. That was the way in any bureaucracy.
"I wish to Christ I knew," Henson said, laughing again. "I'd like to blame it on Washington. Those bastards are always looking for something to talk about at their cocktail parties. But I just don't know."
Bolan made a mental note to be circumspect in his dealing with Henson. It wasn't that he didn't trust the man, but if there was a leak in Manila, it could get him killed. In the back of his mind was the not so sneaking suspicion that the airport scene had not been a coincidence. He also had to consider the possibility that he himself had been the target.
Henson negotiated the traffic with a casual hand, flowing with it rather than trying to outrun it. Like most Far Eastern capitals, it combined the slowest of traditional commerce with the frenzy of blaring horns.
"I think we can talk more freely at my place," Henson said. "I have it swept a couple of times a week. Had it done this afternoon, as a matter of fact."
"I'm beginning to think this thing is a lot more complicated than Walt Wilson told me."
"That's Rosebud for you. Walt's a crackerjack, but he's never liked to tell a guy more than he has to. In this case, I think, probably even less."
"Tell me what you know about Charles Harding."
"First off, Harding's just the tip of the iceberg. I don't know where the hell he gets his money, but he's got backing, big backing."
"But what does he do here?"
"What I know, or what I think?"
"Both."
"I know he fronts some sort of political action organization out in the boondocks. They're on some sort of paramilitary trip. They got more guns than the NPA, more money than you can shake a stick at, and they are plugged into the Philippine Army six ways to Sunday. There's a dozen laws, at least, against what he's doing, but he's never even gotten a parking ticket, so far as I know."
"What sort of politics?"
"I know what you're asking and, no, no way he's a Communist front. If you know anything at all about the guy, you know he's out there on the fringe, somewhere between Tricky Dick and Attila. No, that's the puzzle, really. I mean, most of these right-wing diehards sit home running beer companies and shit. They send money, but they don't put their asses on the line. Harding's different. He's out there with the grunts. Except nobody really knows where there is." Henson rapped on the horn to nudge a particularly slow-moving truck along. "And that, my friend, brings us to the end of what I know."
"What about what you think?"
"Ah... what I think... that's something altogether different. That is very scary stuff indeed."
Bolan waited patiently while Henson thought about how to begin. Finally Henson cleared his throat.
"Okay, here's what I think. I think Mr. Harding is a madman. I think he wants to see Cory take a pratfall and lay there in the mud with her skirt up around her hips. I think he is working for that very thing, and I think he will stop at nothing, including provoking a civil wart to get it done."
"What's the percentage?"
"Hey, am I a madman? How the fuck should I know? He's one of these guys looks under his bed every night, and not just to see if the maid did the floor. You know what I mean?"
"Still, why here?"
"Why here? That's an easy one. Charlie-boy did his time in Southeast Asia. He's a domino player from the old school. You look at a map of the Pacific, and what do you see? Who controls it? From Hawaii on to India, the Philippines is basically what we got. You lose Subic, you're stuck with Australia and New Zealand, and neither one of them wants nukes in port on three day leave. That creates a power vacuum in the Pacific basin. And not just for Mr. Charles Harding, either."
"So you think he wants to install a government that will let us keep Clark and Subic? Is that it?"
"That's part of it. Part of it's some weird megalomania, though. I think he thrives on chaos. There's been a gradually escalating terror campaign in the big cities, especially Manila. I'm convinced he's behind it, but I can't prove it. And I'll tell you something else. If anybody's running him, he's got his hands full. There is no way in hell to control this guy. He's too flaky. I'd rather play football with a bottle of nitroglycerin than try to ride herd on Harding."
"Where's the NPA fit in?"
"Good question. I've been getting reports that they're suffering heavy losses in the mountains. But there hasn't been any significant army action up there in months. Aquino has too much else to worry about. They go on punitive expeditions if there's been a serious assault by the NPA, but there hasn't been one that amounted to anything since last year."