Thai Horse (14 page)

‘He doesn’t know anything about the money,’ Sloan said, half under his breath. ‘That’s between you and me.’

‘Does he know anything about me?’ Hatcher asked.

‘Yes.’

‘And he approves?’

‘He trusts my judgement.’

Hatcher chuckled. ‘How long has he known you?’

The general’s arrival ended the exchange. Up close, he looked even sicker than from a distance. His color was gray, and his eyes were watery and lifeless and had lost the fire that had once touched even his photographs with electricity. But he still stood erect, and if he was in pain, he didn’t show it.

‘Glad you made it, Harry,’ he said and then turned to Hatcher. ‘You must be Christian Hatcher. It’s a pleasure meeting you.’ He switched his cane to his left hand and offered Hatcher a bony but hearty handshake.

‘My pleasure, General,’ Hatcher said.

‘You served well in the Far East,’ Cody said. ‘Sloan kept me up on you.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

The old warrior seemed shocked when he heard Hatcher’s ruined voice. ‘Let’s get out of the rain shall we?’ he said, quickly covering his surprise. His aide held the rear door open and they got in the limousine. Hatcher sat in the jump seat, facing Sloan and Cody. The old man shuddered from the effects of the cold and rain, and the aide wrapped a blanket around his legs.

‘Thanks, Jerry,’ Cody said, and the aide closed the door, leaving the three men alone in the backseat.

‘Don’t have enough meat left on these old bones to stave off the cold,’ Cody said with embarrassment, then hurried on: ‘Well, sir, Colonel Sloan tells me he’s filled you in on our problem.’

Hatcher nodded.

‘What do you think?’

Hatcher said, ‘Our best bet is the Thai, Wol Pot. If he’s telling the truth and Murph is alive, I can find him.’

‘You sound pretty positive,’ said Cody.

‘I qualified it
—
if
your
son’s alive.’

The general nodded. ‘And what do your instincts tell you about that?’

Hatcher shook his head. ‘Nothing yet. The files are pretty bleak.’

‘Yes, not much to go on. Sorry.’

‘There may be a few leads in there, Hatcher said. ‘You understand the need for discretion,’ Cody said, and it was a statement rather than a question. Hatcher nodded again. ‘Also,’ he went on, ‘there is some urgency in the matter.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Hatcher said.

‘You two were pretty close at the academy, as I recall.’ Hatcher nodded again. ‘We were on the boxing team together. He graduated a year ahead of me.’ He paused for a moment, and added, ‘He was okay, General. A stand-up guy.’

‘Good. I feel a little more comfortable knowing you knew him
—
and liked him.’

‘You and I met once before,’ Hatcher whispered suddenly, ‘at Murph’s wedding.’

The general peered hard at Hatcher, but there was no recognition in his bleak stare. ‘That was a long time ago. I’m afraid my memory isn’t what it used to be.’

‘Hell, mine isn’t anything to write home about, either.’ The general looked at Sloan for a moment, then back at Hatcher. ‘May I ask you a personal q
u
estion?’

‘Sure,’ Hatcher said.

‘Why did you accept this mission?’

Hatcher wasn’t sure how to answer. He thought for a moment, then said, ‘A friend of mi
n
e once asked me if I was a patriot. At the time I said I was
n
’t sure. Now maybe I can find out.’

‘There’s nothing patriotic about
this
job,’ the general said forlornly.

‘I’d like to think there is,’ Hatcher said.

Cody smiled
—
a fey, faraway memory of a smile tinged with sadness. ‘That’s a kind thing to say, Mr. Hatcher. Thank you.’

The old general focused his watery eyes on Hatcher and stared hard at the tall man for several seconds to make sure he phrased his next question properly. ‘I understand you left the brigade and returned to the private sector,’ the general said.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Too bad,’ he said. ‘You were a good soldier, Hatcher.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Mind telling me why you quit?’

Sloan cast a sideways glance at Hatcher, but the tall man ignored it.

‘I was losing my edge, General,’ Hatcher lied.

Cody stared at him for several seconds.

‘Well, let’s hope you have it back,’ Cody finally said with a wry smile.

‘Yes, sir.’

Cody turned to Sloan. ‘Looks like you found us a good man, Harry
—
as usual.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ Sloan said, obviously pleased. ‘Then we’re on?’

Buffalo Bill Cody looked at Hatcher and repeated the question, ‘Well, sir, are we on?’

Hatcher nodded. ‘We’re on,’ his tortured voice answered.

FRAGMENTS

The place was like no other museum in the world. It was called MARS, an acronym for the Museum and Archaeological Regional Storage Facility, and it was in a plain one-story building forty miles south of Washington in a small village in Maryland. It took Hatcher an hour and a half to drive down there in his rented Chevy.

The curator was a young man, perhaps forty, although it was hard to tell, and he was jacketed in blue, like an intern. Sandy-haired, bearded and soft-spoken, he was a man whose task was reflected in an obvious sadness of spirit, for there was about the place a sense of longing and hurt and disquietude. He handed Hatcher a pair of white cotton gloves.

‘We wear these to prevent any further deterioration of the articles,’ he told Hatcher, pointing vaguely in the direction of a plastic bag that held two small identical seashells attached to a simple note: ‘I love you, Charley.’

‘They’re cataloged by position, the panel nearest where they were left,’ he said, leading Hatcher down a long row of gray metal floor-to-ceiling shelves.

Many of those who came to the Vietnam wall seemed compelled by heart or conscience to put something down, to leave a piece of themselves behind. These oddities of the heart, like relics of a history yet
t
be written, were gathered up each day and carried by rangers of the Park Service to the warehouse, where they were sorted, cataloged and stored. Like the fragments of the shattered lives it recorded, the collection was dispa
r
ate: heartbreaking, humorous, touching, and determined entirely by emotion

—
by the love of a child for the father she never knew, the anguish of a lonely parent, by a lover left alone at night, and the guilt of the buddy who su
r
vived. Frustration, sorrow, pride, anger, all were here, in a plain storage room on uniform shelves of gray metal. Here was the pain of the living.

The pieces lay encased in plastic bags, and unexplained. Baseballs. Maps. Flags. Many, many flags, the most inspiring
—
and abused
—
symbol
o
f the war. Hatcher passed one and saw the note
scribbled
across a white stripe: ‘From Kenny, the son-in-law you never met.’

Notes (‘My friends, I pray that our children will never have to go to war but if they do, I pray they will go with all the courage and dignity that you did’). Letters, some still sealed. Poems (‘To my father, killed two months before I was born’).

Toy airplane models, helmets, military patches, medals, high school dance programs and
college
yearbooks, C rations, combat boots, a roll of GI toilet paper, a six-pack of Miller’s, a copper POW-MIA bracelet dated 1973, photographs of automobiles and homes, children never seen, fathers never known. Fragments.

‘Were you in Nam?’ Hatcher asked, following the ranger down the rows of memorabilia.

‘Yep,’ came the answer with a finality that precluded further questions.

It was easy to find specific articles because of the simple code they had devised to catalog these small treasures left behind by relatives, lovers and friends. The man stopped, leaned forward and checked a code number.

‘This is his row. It would be in here, if there’s anything,’ he said and moved away to leave
H
atcher to his investigation. On the shelf was a worn and dirty teddy bear and beside it a Louisville Slugger with a crack in it and a photograph of a cocky-looking teenage couple standing beside a bright-red vintage Th
u
nderbird. There was a withered stem of a corsage with a white ribbon still attached and a wedding ring sewn to the ribbon of a Purple Heart.

Then he found two notes.

The first one was addressed to: Our father, Lt. Murphy Cody, U.S.N. From your loving children, Keith and Sharon.’ It was attached to a photo of two teenagers who looked sad beyond their years.

Beside it was a second note. It read simply: ‘Thanks for everything, Polo. And thank God for Thai Horse. Jaimie.’ It was attached to a green beret. There was nothing else.

Polo.

That’s what this Jaimie called him, Polo. So the nickname had stayed with Cody. Funny, thought Hatcher, I never thought he liked it. But it proved one thing to him. The note was left for Murphy C
o
dy. That couldn’t be a coincidence.

Was it a good-bye note from someone who knew he was dead?

Or was it a thank-you note from someone who knew Murphy Cody was alive?

And there was the reference to t
h
e Thai Horse. To Hatcher that meant only one thing
—
Thailand heroin. China White.

Did Cody provide heroin to his men? Were he and this Jaimie in some kind of smuggling ring together? Was this some kind of coded message? Hatcher unconsciously shook his head. He didn’t want to believe that. And yet, what else could it mean? Could there be some other answer?

The side trip had raised more questions than it answered.

‘No way to track back on this Jai
m
ie, right?’ Hatcher’s hoarse voice asked.

The caretaker shook his head. ‘That’s none of our business,’ he said simply.

Hatcher checked the beret. Inside the lining were the initials ‘J.S.’ Nothing more. Hatcher took out a small notebook and wrote down all the information, such as it was. There was one more piece of data. The beret and note had been recorded fourteen mo
n
ths earlier, on July fourth.

There was nothing else. Whatever the legacy of Murphy Cody, it seemed to end here, with this brief epitaph.

‘Okay,’ he said to the caretaker. ‘Thanks.’

‘Yep.’

Hatcher looked around the room one more time, at the baseball mitts and tattered kites and flowers.

He thought of something Conrad
h
ad written:
‘ . . .
an unselfish belief in an idea
—
something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to.
. .

And he thought of all the restless heroes represented here, butchered and buried or lost
in
an alien place in a war most did not understand but did not question either, deprived of their hopes and drea
m
s in that awesome sacrifice that crown and country seem determined to demand of every generation. Ordinary men who became extraordinary in death. The cold breath of ghosts chilled the back of Hatcher’s neck and he could not get out of there fast enough.

MONTANA

Hatcher disappeared that night with his briefcase full of twenties and the Murphy file, leaving Sloan waiting alone for him in the Occidental Restaurant. Sloan was on his third scotch when the bells went off in his head:
The son of
a
bitch isn’t gonna show up.
A quick call confirmed his fears. Hatcher had checked out of his hotel two hours before. Just like him! And it angered Sloan because he should have known Hatcher would duck out on him. The first way Hatcher’s anger at Sloan would manifest would be for Hatcher to cut loose, flaunt his free-lance status, and show Sloan who was boss.

Well, thought Sloan, we’ll see about that.

‘Will you be ordering soon, Colonel?’ the maître d’ asked after he hung up.

‘Cancel,’ Sloan snapped. He slipped him a five and headed out into the rainy night. Knowing Hatcher, Sloan knew it could be weeks before he heard from him again. He went back to his office and tracked down Zabriski. Zabriski could find anybody. Besides, he was sure Hatcher was traveling under his own name. Hell, he hadn’t changed it so far. Besides, Hatcher wasn’t dodging Sloan, he was ignoring him. Sloan would get a line on him, just to show the son of a bitch.

The next morning he had his report.

‘He flew into Billings, Montana, on an Eastern flight last night, stayed at the Palace Hotel, checked out early this morning and caught a local feeder to Shelby,’ Zabriski reported.

‘Montana! What the hell could he be doing in Montana?’

‘I dunno, sir. But that’s where he went.’

‘Where the hell’s Shelby?’