Authors: Jennifer Kewley Draskau
Helmut Boeckel, the rally driver, was a beer-barrel Bavarian competing in his third Asian Rally. His co-driver had sickened mysteriously in the sticks, in Northern Thailand. It must have been a dodgy curry, because the only other refreshment they’d taken had been tea, served by the Yankee God-botherer. The replacement co-driver slipped aboard seamlessly. Boeckel knew Fleischer had his own agenda, but the guy could navigate, and drive, too, almost like a pro. He looked at Fleischer’s hard lantern jaw and the jutting cheekbone, and recalled, rather anxiously, his legend.
The slogans plastering the rally car’s sides were covered in mud and dust, turning to sludge in the downpour. The powerful headlamps carved the night open. A glistening horde of nocturnal insects encrusted the lamps and windscreens in messy death as inconsequential to Fleischer as the men he’d killed. Fleischer had come up hard: a petty juvenile offender in his mother’s native Guatemala, he’d graduated to adult penitentiary for armed robbery and safe-breaking, and escaped to join the Legion; ill-advisedly revisiting his native shores, not from sentimentality so much as to settle old scores, and recaptured, he’d emigrated to his father’s country, the United States, under a Prisoners’ Aid Scheme in time to catch the draft. He was posted to Vietnam.
Vietnam did not suit many people, but it suited Angel Fleischer. He went in a disturbed, unruly youth and came out a disciplined psychopath. His peculiar talents won recognition. After his tour in Vietnam he was assigned to special duties at the School of the Americas. Prior to his promotion to major and his ‘respectable’ posting to Bangkok as Assistant Military Attaché, he had been briefly seconded to run elite survival training camps in Northern France. Here Fleischer operated under the guise of private enterprise. This arrangement permitted his masters to simultaneously unofficially train their own experts while keeping an eye on terrorists sent from other nations to acquire the skills of murder and mayhem. Fleischer took pride in his expertise. It had brought him the best of both worlds: gotten him a passport to the Land of Opportunity, and saved him from ending up, in Nam, as what he described as either ‘jungle hamburger’ or ‘chicken-in-a-basket.’
As he spun the wheel and the car bucked through craters, rocks bouncing off its sides, Boeckel thought Fleischer looked like a madman.
‘You my nanny, Kraut, or what?’ Fleischer yelled over the engine’s scream. ‘Or are you just another Expendable? ‘
‘What the hell eats you, man?’ Boeckel bawled back.
‘I work alone! I
always
work alone!’
But he had failed to carry out his last assignment. Fleischer raged internally. He must be going soft. Why had his hand faltered when he realised his target was Nat Raven? Sentimentality? The Old Comrades’ fogbound, undiscriminating loyalty? This was an inconvenient time for Fleischer to experience failure. He had several lucrative ventures underway. Working for van Hooten, such as the present operation, came under the heading of official commitments, but there were other profitable sources of income. The pleasant possibility of blackmailing Salikaa, for instance, was a prospect whose attractions had increased a thousandfold with the announcement of her engagement to a member of the royal family. At the thought of Salikaa’s fury and wild threats, Fleischer bared his teeth in amused derision. Salikaa didn’t have a prayer!
Then his grin faded. He had failed the terrifying Colonel Sya. What was happening to him? More importantly, what
would
happen to him? He contemplated an explanation for his momentary and uncharacteristic lapse that might satisfy Sya Dam.
Fleischer muttered a stream of obscenities inside his helmet, fogged with sweating plastic and perspiration, that uniquely personal scent. He brought the car to a halt outside the Lee Bank. The Indian watchman approached them, walking softly on the balls of his bare black feet, his spotless white dhoti giving him an air of saintliness. He radiated helpfulness and a desire for foreign conversation. Boeckel waved the chart at him, crisscrossed and scarred with rally navigator’s notations. Fleischer slipped out quietly on the other side and struck a single blow. Together they bundled the old man up in his robes and left him swinging in his own white hammock, slung between the Doric pillars of the bank’s ornate portal.
Fleischer pulled off his fireproof gloves, adjusted his night-sight goggles. Thirty minutes later, Waddle’s account with the bank—his safety deposit box, his rubies earned for poisoning inconvenient people and surveilling airstrips, had ceased to exist, as had all documentation recording funds deposited by the Bangkok Chinese for transfer to more appropriate destinations. Not too difficult. There were not many records of such transactions in any case, for the Lee Bank conducted much of its business on the principles of honour, reciprocity, and tribalism, combined with a Druidical distrust of the written word. What records existed were expunged. Fleischer’s loyalty belonged to anyone who could pay the price, but, as he enjoyed a little free enterprise, he casually blew a hole in the vault, extracted a few gold bars, and beat an orderly retreat.
They threw themselves and their booty into the car. Fleischer kicked the motor into noisy life. The throbbing snarl of the twin carbs rumbled satisfactorily in the sultry night. The car smeared 500 centimetres of tyre on the grit and tarmac, hurtling toward the Bang Pa In Highway. Fleischer flicked a laconic finger at two packages propped on the dashboard. Boeckel pushed back his visor, licked his fingers, and started counting. The old 100-baht bills, tenderised by years of filth and fondling, were tattered and cellotaped in places.
Boeckel grunted, satisfied, and tucked the money away somewhere under his belly with a seismic upheaval.
‘Keep bloody still, you’ll have us in the fucking ditch!’ Fleischer bellowed, aware of lights on the road ahead. ‘Some fucking truck broken down…no. Sweet Jesus, it’s a fucking roadblock.’
‘Drive on, drive on!’ yelled Boeckel, panicking. ‘It’s maybe demonstration! In India, last rally, peebles demonstrate, shout, throw rocks. Some drivers they have pulled out the cars, some they have killed! Drive on, Fleischer, man! Drive them over! Don’t stop!’
But the warning came too late. Handheld torches flashed them down. The dark bulk of the truck blocked the carriageway. Fleischer, cursing, slammed the brakes home, and the car bucked to a stomach-jerking halt. Outside, lit by questing torches, the muzzles of service revolvers butted at the windows. Uniformed police signalled to them to get out of the car, menacing them with swinging barrels. Fleischer snatched up the unopened envelope, ripped it open, revealing the banknotes. He thrust it out of the window. Gently but firmly it was pushed aside, and at that moment a finger of cold dread traced Fleischer’s spine, as if an icicle had been thrust inside his shirt.
Prodded by the muzzles of the guns, they staggered before the policemen into a small wooden shed. Through a grimy window they watched as khaki-clad police swarmed over the rally car. Helmut Boeckel seized one of the policemen by the lapels and shook him.
‘Get your damned apes out of my car! Let us go,
ihr Scheisskerle
! Immediately I am back in town I complain to German Embassy.
Kapierst du, Idiot
?’
‘Very sorry, Sirmadame, cannot,’ the policeman spluttered, teeth rattling. Boeckel let go and took to banging his fist against the wall, bellowing. The Thais watched him with polite interest. He struck a nail and cursed. He thrust his shredded fist into his mouth and tasted the salty blood on his tongue.
‘You please waiting Colonel Sya,’ the policeman pleaded, as one soothing the ravings of a lunatic. Boeckel turned to Fleischer, throwing his arms wide.
‘What in hell he means?’ he demanded, helplessly.
Fleischer’s face was steely. ‘How the fucking hell should I know? He can’t mean Sya’s coming here in person.’ He snapped at the policeman, ‘Get me a telephone! That’s an order!’
‘So sorry, heartbroken,’ said the policeman as though with genuine regret. ‘Cannot. Telephone no good. You wait. Maybe,’ he brightened, adopting a wheedling tone, ‘you like tea?’
‘Fuck your tea,’ said Fleischer, ‘and fuck you too!’ He sat down beside Boeckel on a wooden bench, his mind racing. He was trapped like a rat. There must be a way out. There had always been a way out before, and Angel Fleischer always found it. Boeckel had begun rocking himself like a huge disconsolate infant, the consciousness of impending disaster finally penetrating his fleshy head.
Fleischer snapped out of his urgent pondering, thinking he heard a noise outside. He sprang to his feet and leapt to the small window, peering out. It was raining heavily. The rally car was parked just beyond his line of vision. By squinting, head pressed close to the pane, he could see the radiator grill. A slim figure moved round the car like a shadow—perhaps a young recruit, sent to guard it. If so, his movements were oddly surreptitious. Then Fleischer’s attention was caught by the sound of an approaching engine. A jeep roared up and jerked to a halt, spraying the hut with mud and pebbles. The driver jumped out and saluted, as another uniformed figure sprang smartly down without touching the step. Through the downpour, the scene had the mesmeric unreality of an underwater ballet. The Thais’ waterproof jungle greens glistened in the headlights. Boots stamped heavily outside the hut and the door was flung wide. Silhouetted against the bright sheets of rain caught in the jeep’s headlamps, and the soft darkness beyond, Colonel Sya Dam stood staring at the captured rally drivers. They stared back in silence. Fleischer’s face was astonished, Boeckel’s apprehensive.
Sya smiled broadly. This did nothing to reassure the prisoners. ‘Sorry for the inconvenience, gentlemen. These men confused your car with the getaway vehicle from a bank robbery that occurred this evening in Bangkok. My apologies. They will be disciplined.’ He looked around appraisingly. ‘Somewhat basic, this place. Maybe we should get them to bring us some tea. Or some whisky? Huh?’
His very calmness, the uncanny lack of emotion, made Fleischer sweat. He took a step forward, then stopped in his tracks.
‘Colonel,’ Fleischer said. ‘It was a glitch. The other business…’ He could not bring himself to name it. He should have blown Nat Raven’s head off. For the life of him he could not think why he had not. ‘It won’t happen again,’ he added lamely.
Sya regarded him coolly. ‘No,’ he said at length, ‘I do not think it will happen again.’ Fleischer experienced then a sensation he had thought he had left behind, in the early days in Nam. The twist in his guts of the icy hand of fear.
‘Colonel,’ he said, and he caught the pleading bleat in his own voice, and was sickened. Sya Dam continued to smile. He gestured toward the door.
‘If you do not wish to take refreshment with me, then you are free to go. No hard feelings, eh?’ He shook their hands in the Western manner, a gesture Fleischer recognised for more than a hint of solidarity. His grip was firm. He met Fleischer’s eyes candidly. ‘Have a good race, Major!’ Boeckel’s heartfelt relief appeared to afford him some amusement, for he smiled good-humouredly.
Fleischer grunted a farewell. As he made his way out toward the rally car, he imagined at every step a heavy hand laid on his shoulder, yanking him back to face some terrible retribution. He winced inwardly, even while he forced his steps to be firm.
March, you old skeleton
, he told himself grimly.
Tremble if you will, but march, damn you.
Nothing happened. No heavy arresting hand, no cold gun barrel thrust into the cheekbone, no angry yells of pursuit. Outside, the jungle night was still going about its business; insects chirruped and whirred, leaves whispered. The car stood there as he had left it. He got in, leaned back in the driver’s seat, and drew a hand down his face, clawing at his skin as relief flooded his veins and he felt his heart judder back to a normal rate. ‘Phew!’ said Boeckel, heaving his bulk into the passenger seat beside him. ‘These guys, they sure give me the creepies! What you think?’
‘Shut up, Boeckel!’ Fleischer snapped. He started the engine with a vicious twist and kick, as if the car were to blame for the delay, and for their humiliation. The engine roared into life and the car throbbed and trembled as they shot off along the dark road. He was still feeling jumpy and confused.
It had been too easy. He could not believe, after a mistake like that, that he had got away with it. That was Asians for you. Impossible to second-guess, even though he knew them as well as any man, or fancied he did. Perhaps, he reflected, his pragmatic nature gradually reasserting itself, Colonel Sya still needed him. He was in the clear for now. There must be no more dumb mistakes.
He knew this road: there was a monster turn coming up, a great sweep to the left, with a punishing gradient, just the kind of obstacle he delighted in negotiating, rejoicing in his own skill and the vehicle’s fine-tuned engineering, the wide lock and powerful road-holding ability. He was almost enjoying himself. Exultant. Always the winner, Angel!
As the road plunged downhill, as usual, he left it to the very last minute before he slammed the brakes home. Boeckel was clinging on. He emitted a guttural squeak of protest. Fleischer grinned malevolently and floored the brake pedal. Nothing! He yanked the handbrake back and felt terror as the brake cable sagged, powerless and flaccid. The car rocketed on, unchecked. Fleischer, cursing, crashed down the gears, but the camber had caught the speeding wheels. Now both men were yelling. The car hurtled sideways in a flying buck and left the road. It bumped violently down the steep scree, doors flung wide like the wings of a night beetle tumbling down a screen. It hit the huge boulder head on. The petrol tank, topped up for the rally and the getaway, exploded into orange flame. Blazing like a torch, the car plunged one last time; then the slow, muddy wallows of the river extinguished it. A vehicle moved slowly out of the scrub on the other side of the road: a large black American car, with a lone driver. The sedan paused for a moment beside the tyre tracks Fleischer’s car had left, then sped away into the night.