The truck bumped along the road due east of Bangkok, intermittently honking its horn at bike riders. The vehicle’s windows were draped with hes-sian bags and Cardinal occasionally stood up to look out.
He and Webb had been in the vehicle since they had arrived in Bangkok seven hours earlier, and both men had tried to catch up on sleep after the nine-hour night flight from Sydney. The road’s undulations ensured that they could only doze.
The truck stopped once at a village half-way to the Kampuchean border. After buying a coke and a watermelon, Cardinal wandered behind the thatched huts to a vegetable farm protected from the sun by long cotton sheets. About a kilometre beyond the farm were the ruins of a Buddhist temple.
Cardinal began to walk towards it.
‘Hey,’ Webb yelled, ‘Gotta go, mate.’ Webb had insisted that they spend the minimum time away from the hidden interior of the truck. Cardinal was certain the ASIO man had a plan. Whenever Cardinal sought information he was told, ‘If you want to see your son, leave the thinking to me.’ It left him little choice and caused him to be sensitive to everything Webb said or did.
Cardinal noticed that he only became interested in the view of rice fields in the last hour of the journey as they approached the Kampuchean border. He often asked a question of their Kampuchean escort, Ank Adum, who rode shot-gun up” front next to the driver, also Kampuchean. Adum was about thirty and tall by Khmer standards. He had a lighter skin than most of his race.
Adum reeked of a Chicago cologne, ‘His’, which Cardinal remembered using twenty years ago.
‘Where’d you learn English,’ Cardinal said.
‘When Americans in Phnom Penh,’ Adum said, in his butchered GI idiom. ‘It was a cool time, man. Lots of dollars, lots of girls.’
Moments after Adum announced they were approaching the border, they could see a roadblock about five kilometres along the flat stretch. Army trucks and jeeps in the fields either side were surrounded by about a hundred soldiers lounging in the vehicles’ meagre shade.
‘Bugger!’ Webb said. Adum slowed down as they approached the roadblock. A Thai soldier holding a rifle stepped in front of them and held up his hand. He wore a yellow singlet under his flapjacket.
Webb held up a military pass. The soldier shook his head.
‘Tax,’ the soldier said. A second soldier came over and banged his fist on the bonnet.
‘Bastards want a donation!’ Webb said, getting out of the truck. He was joined by Adum. Webb spoke aggressively in Thai, which surprised the soldiers. Cardinal watched both men step quickly to the crooked barrier pole, which was pushed aside. The men saluted as the truck roared past on to a muddy, unmade road.
‘What the hell did you say to him?’ Cardinal asked.
‘I told them to pull their fingers out,’ Webb, ‘cause I’m a mate of General Siam’s. He runs this whole border area.’
Adum began to giggle.
Ten kilometres on they were stopped again by soldiers. They kept gesturing with their rifles to a hillier jungle area two kilometres away.
‘According to these fine representatives of the Royal Thai Army,’ Webb said, his voice laced with sarcasm, ‘Vietnamese patrols are camped beyond that hill. There was been fighting there this morning.’
Cardinal looked out over the flat, green plain of rice paddies. Old men could be seen perched on bullock carts. Cardinal could see a long caravan of perhaps fifty horses carrying heavy packs and accompanied by a hundred Thais, including some soldiers. It was wending its way through the rice fields well wide of the jungle area and the Vietnamese.
Cardinal was soon surrounded by swarms of children, some no older than four, carrying plastic bags of rice. He smiled at some of them, brushed away flies and walked a little way along the road to stretch his legs. He found himself close to a long line of adults, most in faded sarongs. He strolled along the queue, conscious of the stares and shy smiles. The line began at a platform piled high with blue cartons and crates containing rusted cans of fruit and meat. Stencilled on the side of the carton in red letters was the sign, ‘Donated by the USA.’
Webb called to Cardinal. They were led through the dustbowl of huts in neat lines beside rough sewage channels. At Adum’s home they were introduced to his diminutive wife, Angfu. She began to assemble two screens. They partitioned off an area for the two foreigners. Adum leaned against a wall smothered by yellowing copies of the Bangkok Post.
‘You CIA?’ he asked Cardinal who glanced at Webb.
‘They think everyone with an American accent must be CIA,’ Webb laughed.
‘Why?’ Cardinal asked Adum. He shrugged his shoulders.
‘No, Adum,’ Webb said sharply, ‘Mr Cardinal is an American art dealer. He is not a spy.’
‘Not a goddamned spy!’ Adum said, giggling.
‘When are the Frenchies due in?’ Webb asked.
‘My friends now say maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow early, okay?’
‘Not really,’ Webb muttered. He began to unlock his suitcase. ‘I was hoping for more precision.’
‘We think they go Bangkok for massage,’ Adum preferred with a truncated giggle.
‘That could be their last,’ Webb said, ‘the fucking idiots!’
A dog began to dig a hole in the earthern floor of the hut. Webb rummaged in the case and took out a thick envelope.
‘Shut the door,’ he snapped, and Angfu obeyed with some difficulty, for the cardboard packing cases the door was made of did not fit easily. Webb counted out twenty American fifty dollar bills and handed them to the young man. His eyes bulged and he thanked Webb.
Cardinal felt uneasy. The man had been telling them that he never received money for work, only trinkets and other ‘things’ which were not easy to barter for food.
Rhonda opened the locked cupboard where she usually stored the cannisters carrying her documentary footage. She rummaged through several shelves. The footage didn’t seem to be there. She fumbled off some cannister lids. Still nothing. Rhonda frowned. She moved to a filing cabinet, where she occasionally left them. There were two in there marked ‘Yellowcake-Laser Connection’, the name she had given her project. She tore off the lids. There was some film in them, but it didn’t look familiar. She held the reel up to the light. It was an off-take from another project. She let the reel fall.
‘Oh, Christ, no!’ she said aloud. She walked quickly to a bookshelf where she stored her floppy discs. The boxes were also gone. Rhonda shut her eyes and took some deep breaths. She phoned her editor.
‘Rob, just tell me you’ve got all the yellowcake story footage,’ she said anxiously.
‘Nuh, sorry darlin’,’ Rob said.
‘I’m going to slit my throat!’
‘Why, what’s missing?’
‘Every reel! Every disc!’
‘Fuck me dead!’
The phone rang. It was Perdonny.
‘Cardinal and Webb are missing,’ he told her.
‘God, that’s all I need!’ said Rhonda.
‘ASIO has not assigned Webb anywhere on any project,’ he reported. ‘I got that from his department head. He doesn’t know where Webb is. No one else seems to know either.’
‘And Ken?’
‘I went to his Bronte home. It was locked up. He did leave a message on my answering machine to say that he would be out of the country for a few days.’
‘Is there any way of checking airlines, and so on?’
‘It’s being done. But it is a bit after the event.’
‘Christ! I need Ken here! Not missing in Kampuchea, if he has gone there!’
‘I’m sorry, Rhonda.’
‘Is there any way I can find out more about Webb?’
‘That would be classified. I can try, but it won’t be easy.’
‘Did he ever hint that he worked for anyone else apart from ASIO?’ Rhonda asked, mindful of Perdonny’s probable extra-ASIO affiliations. She was unnerved and suspicious.
‘Spider left the SAS ten years ago,’ he said. ‘I can only account for the last five years when he made the Darwin-Java run for us.’
‘Could he have had another paymaster in that period?’
Perdonny cleared his throat. ‘It’s possible,’ he conceded. ‘He always acted as if he had plenty of money. He did own that Beachcraft.’
‘just suppose he did have someone else paying him for Intelligence work,’ Rhonda said, with more than a tinge of desperation. ‘Who could it be?’
‘Rhonda, you know I’m not a speculator.’
‘A guess, Robert. M16? The CIA? The KGB? The Mossad? The French? I don’t think he should be called Spider,’ she said. ‘Funnel would be more appropriate.’
‘None of them, all of them, I really wouldn’t want to make a stab at that.’
After the call, her thoughts turned to Bill Hewson. If anyone could fill in the blanks on Webb’s profile, he could.
‘Bastards. Bastards! Bastards!’
Webb was in a temper. He used binoculars along the flat, winding road. Night was turning into a clear day, and the French couriers had not appeared. Lying alongside him was a fully automatic rifle with telescopic sights and six hand grenades. He had been up since midnight, and his eyes had a red ring of fatigue around them.
Cardinal crept along the road from the truck. It had been hidden in a village at a fork in the road. One trail led to Adum’s home at camp site 2, and the other to camp site 8, and the refugee base of the Khmer Rouge, where the people from DGSE – the French counter-espionage service – would be heading, according to Webb’s sources in Bangkok. Cardinal crouched beside Webb, who flung the binoculars at him.
‘Make yourself useful,’ Webb snapped. ‘The Frogs will be in a brown jeep. If you see it, or any firing, yell! I’m going to have a crap!’
‘I wish you would tell me what you have planned,’ Cardinal said. Webb stopped in his tracks holding a roll of toilet paper.
‘I told you, leave it to me,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘I know what I’m doing.’
‘Do you have to murder them?’
‘Who said I was? Christ, you give me the shits! Literally!’ He stormed off to a canal.
Cardinal scanned the road, focusing as far as he could. Then he let his eyes rove over the countryside. There was the odd bullock already being put to work, and the area looked as tranquil as it had the previous evening. He had not heard anything apart from distant muffled gunfire during the night, which had hardly stirred him from five hours slumber. He spotted conical straw hats in the fields to his left. They were still and looked like they belonged to scarecrows. He kept the focus on them and blinked to make sure his eyes were not deceiving him. They began moving through the grass about forty metres from the road. Movement on the other side distracted him too. He looked along the road and could see the object of the excitement. A high-sided vehicle was moving their way.
Cardinal glanced around for Webb and called out for him. There was no reply. Cardinal returned his gaze to the oncoming vehicle. Through the early morning heat haze he could make out the colour. It was the jeep. The binoculars picked out the faces of two men in the front. Two others were in the backseat. Those in front wore smart hats and the one in the driver’s seat had his face against the window as if he were alseep. Cardinal turned again to shout for Webb, but he was a few metres behind him, creeping low and waving his hand to an unseen figure between them and the road.
‘Keep your head right down!’ Webb said. ‘The little brown Frogmobile has arrived!’ He was positioning himself, the rifle ready for firing. Cardinal watched the newcomers and felt the tension tighten. They were slowing down. The driver was leaning forward, his hands close together on the top of the steering wheel, as he peered into the distance. A long sixty seconds later there was an explosion and a puff of smoke from the jeep. Cardinal’s immediate thought was that it had back-fired. But it was pitched sideways, almost in slow-motion, and the full impact of the sound reverberated down the road. There was a hole in the side of the truck.
‘What the hell hit them?’ Cardinal said.
‘One hundred and thirty millimetre cannon,’ Webb said, ‘that’s what!’ He jumped to his feet and ran along the grass.
Several figures were moving towards the van. Cardinal stood up. He could see one, two, and then a third man struggling from the crippled jeep. They were surrounded. One man fell to his knees and fired a hand-gun but was flattened by return blasts from six rifles. The remaining two froze and cringed close to the jeep, their arms held high in surrender. One dropped a hand and appeared to be grabbing at a rifle on the ground. Webb and other gunmen opened up and both men crumpled where they stood.
Cardinal rushed to the jeep. Webb ordered the three bodies stripped and hurled into the jeep’s hole next to the fourth man, who had been blown apart by the impact. Ten Kampucheans struggled to right the vehicle. It would not budge. Webb told Adum to incinerate it.
‘Now don’t say a bloody thing to me!’ Webb said to Cardinal, his voice choked and furious. ‘If those idiots had not had a little fun in Bangkok last night they would not be dead! They were late!’
Cardinal could not speak.
‘Just keep one thing in your skull,’ Webb said, calming his voice a notch as they trotted towards the truck, ‘if we don’t impersonate those guys there is no way you’ll ever know about your son. It had to be done, mate, and that’s that!’
The computer terminal screen was filled with Webb’s profile. Hewson ran his hand over the keyboard with the deftness of a concert pianist.
‘Afraid I can’t let you see this,’ he said sliding the face of the small screen away from Rhonda. ‘In fact, I’m not allowed access to classified material outside the office. Just about all of us use home computers these days, so the rules are bent.’
‘Well,’ Rhonda said, pen poised over a notebook, ‘what can you tell me/’
‘It’s difficult,’ Hewson said. His eyebrows rose above the rim of his glasses.
‘No machine is going to say, “Here is what you don’t know.” You’ve got to give it clues, angles, points of association.’
‘All right,’ Rhonda said, ‘I want your smartarse computer to tell me if he has worked for the French or American Intelligence.’
‘Fine,’ Hewson said staring at the green type on the screen. ‘We have to ask it for American Affiliations.’ He typed in USA-Aff and waited. Seconds later the screen asked: ‘Business, political, sporting, cultural, other . . . ALL?’ Hewson asked for ALL. The machine purred, then typed up the response:
WEBB, P.O.
MILITARY: With special CIA forces, Cambodia, Vietnam, 1966-1969. Action: field patrols. For specifics see CIA file Gluclu 34621. H/T.
BUSINESS: Special operative, silent director, Nugan Hand Bank. Business Consultant Hong Kong, Jakarta.
Hewson repeated what was on the screen.
‘Can we get that CIA reference file?’ she asked.
‘Not without the ASIO director’s authority,’ Hewson said. They waited in silence until a laser printer provided the detail. Rhonda watched him pocket the page. She asked what he intended to do with it.
‘You’ve got me interested in this guy now,’ he said. ‘Would be nice to know more about him.’
‘Could you check on the French link?’
Hewson made the identical request, and the computer made its search. It replied:
POLITICAL: 1979: Visit Paris on assignment to report on remnants/splintering/power Khmer Rouge. Report avail-able ASIO Canberra. Speaks passable French. Reads French.
Rhonda was ecstatic. Hewson tempered her reaction.
‘I can get that assignment,’ he said, ‘and I’ll bet it’s a nothing report. Sounds like he got a little junket for a couple of months in Paris gathering a few facts on the regrouping of Khmer Rouge after they were thrown out of power by the Vietnamese.’
‘Okay,’ Rhonda said, ‘it may not thrill you, but look at the link. He has been in Kampuchea and must have known of the Khmer Rouge as far back as the mid-sixties when they were an extreme left-wing group in the forests and mountains. Then there is this so-called field patrol stuff he was hooked into with the CIA. What is that all about?’
‘I would have to check the CIA file,’ Hewson said. He ran his teeth over his bottom lip. ‘But I can tell you one thing. Field patrol has always been a euphemistic code with us to mean “search and destroy”.’
‘Which means?’
Hewson flicked off the computer as if someone at the other end might be listening.
‘That meant political assassination.’
The truck passed through the town of Aranyaprathet, where the road from Bangkok to Phnom Penh ran into a wall of olive green concrete-filled bags. Cardinal and Webb were riding up front with Adum who was driving. They could hear persistent gunfire a kilometre away around the bridge between Thailand and Kampuchea.
‘Man, it’s thick with Khmer Rouge out there,’ Adum explained. ‘The Vietnamese attack them all the time.’
Thai soldiers, Ml6s by their sides and grenades swinging from khaki belts, were in the town’s concrete shops and standing outside the dung-coloured timbered houses. Aranyaprathet seemed inadequate to cope with the number of foreign-aid agencies concentrated around it.
Webb kept glancing at his lap where there was a manila folder with a file taken from the belongings of the French Intelligence officers. He appeared calm.
By contrast, Cardinal was uneasy. He thought over the plan Webb had divulged to him over the past six hours. Cardinal was to be one of the Frenchmen, and they had been speaking French all day in preparation for meeting the Khmer Rouge contacts. He anticipated being taken into the Cardomom Mountains to the Pol Pot stronghold.
‘How did you know I spoke French?’ Cardinal asked Webb, as they caught the first distant view of site 8.
‘You told me you made art transactions in Paris,’ Webb said. He didn’t look up from the notes in front of him.
‘Anyone dealing with hard-nosed Parisian bastards would have to know their language.’
It was true, Cardinal thought but he had only vague recollections of discussing it with Webb. They slushed by other Khmer refugee sites. Despite the poverty they were bustling and noisy and the children’s laughter brightened the atmosphere. But as the truck approached site 8, Cardinal experienced other feelings and reactions altogether. The place was still. Cardinal could not help remarking on this and the eerie silence.
‘That’s because it’s a military camp, man,’ Adum said. There was a hint of a tremor in his high-pitched voice. ‘There is where the Khmer Rouge recuperate from the fighting.’
No one smiled. Hard-faced young men, many of them leaning on crutches, stood in front of open doorways and watched as the truck slid and splashed its way along the muddy tracks. Cardinal thought their stares suspicious.
The four year Pol Pot regime had left its mark on the faces, Cardinal noted. The Khmer Rouge children, born of the robotic counter-culture, had a sad appearance.
Adum pulled up at the entrance to the biggest hut in the site and sat nervously at the wheel. Cardinal and Webb climbed out carrying briefcases and one suitcase. A Kampuchean in his mid-thirties came out to meet them. He was small with broad features and short-cropped, dark hair. He wore the trademark red-and-white scarf and black pyjama pants of the Khmer Rouge. The man introduced himself as Dunong in faltering French and ushered them into the hut where a dozen other similarly clad men were sitting on the floor or stools.
Webb eased the tension by shaking hands with a few of them and saying some fumbling words in Khmer, which brought grunts of appreciation. Webb squatted in the center of the earthern floor and snapped open the suitcase. All the men crowded around to see the bundles of crisp looking American one hundred dollar bills. Webb tossed them flamboyantly to Dunong, and with his nod of approval, some of the others. They began to count the bundles. Webb accepted a cup of ubiquitous Khmer tea. Cardinal was shown a nearby hut where he and Adum took all their luggage. A few minutes later Webb joined Cardinal and seemed excited.
‘Let’s go for a walk,’ he said. ‘As an off-handed observation, there are a surprising number of amputees about, wouldn’t you say?’
Cardinal shook his head ruefully.
‘There’s an industrious guy in here who’s doing a roaring trade in prostheses.’
‘What’s made you so happy,’ Cardinal asked, ‘in your own cute way?’
‘I’m not kidding!’ Webb smirked. ‘The guy lost a leg and made an artificial limb for himself. Adum says he has made more than a thousand since.’ He stopped to pick up a flat stone and skim it along the canal. ‘You see, even in the heart of this worst of all commie camps, free enterprise flourishes. Gives you hope, doesn’t it?’
‘Dunong and company certainly liked the money you laid out in front of them,’ Cardinal said aridly. ‘Perhaps they’re all capitalists at heart.’
Webb laughed. ‘There was only half a million there. Chicken feed! Trust the Frogs to try it on the cheap. They think they can buy the design for the most powerful technology on the planet for zilch!’
Cardinal noted Webb’s hitherto unexpressed expertise.
‘They could have had more money from the South Africans or the Israelis, or even the Argentinians,’ Webb went on carelessly. ‘They’re all lining up to finance the development since the Khmer Rouge broke off with the CIA.’
‘Then why did they go for the French?’ Cardinal prompted.
‘From the research I did on this at ASIO,’ he said, ‘those three seemed very keen to advance their nuclear laser acquisitions. The Israelis and the South Africans were well advanced. But the Khmers trusted the French more, because the links with Chan and Pol Pot went right back to the fifties. They were both francophiles and the Frogs, like the British, are expedient bastards when it comes to keeping connections with their former colonies.’
Webb paused as children surrounded them. ‘Can’t be too careful, even with the bloody six-year-olds here,’ he said when they were out of earshot again. ‘Pol Pot was a radio electronics student in Paris. Some of his best friends slipped into key political positions when the communists sneaked into French government with the Mitterand regime.’
‘And Chan/’
‘Thought you would never ask,’ Webb remarked sardonically. ‘Chan studied physics in Paris in 1965 and was obsessed with the potential in lasers. He wouldn’t have liked being under the CIA’s thumb. And he would have been uneasy about the Indonesians controlling the laser development. Hence the move to the Cardomon Mountains.’
‘What did you learn from Dunong?’ Cardinal asked, as they re-traced their steps along the canal.
‘They’re going to take us to the mountains,’ Webb said. ‘Probably tomorrow morning.’
‘What about Harry?’
‘Harry?’ Webb said bemused. ‘Harry who?’
Cardinal stared at Webb with contempt.
‘Don’t be a prick!’ Webb said. ‘I couldn’t very well say, By the way, pal, do you have this guy Harry Cardinal working for you? That’s his father over there, and he would like to know!’
Cardinal stopped walking and faced Webb.
‘Look,’ Webb said in a sudden change of manner, ‘if you’re pumped up to believing he’s alive when we get up there, how are you going to feel if it really was him on that cold slab in Sydney’s morgue!?’
Cardinal’s jaw twitched. His eyes narrowed, but he said nothing.
‘Dunong and I did discuss the size of the operation in the mountains very briefly,’ Webb added, ‘and you can bet your bottom dollar there are more foreign scientists up there than just Miss Hartina Van der Holland.’
‘Can we trust Dunong?’
‘I’m not worried about him,’ Webb said. He ran his thumb under four fingers of the other hand. ‘No matter what happens up there or on the way, that little cunt will do his best to get us back alive.’
Cardinal cracked his knuckles.
‘I’ve told him,’ Webb said dropping his voice to a whisper, ‘he gets a big chunk for himself for his services.’
‘I’m in your hands,’ Cardinal said. ‘I want to get up there as fast as possible.’
‘You’ll just have to be patient. Once we’re on the way, it’ll take a day to get to the place in the mountains.’
‘Have you thought about my problem with Chan?’ Cardinal asked. ‘He wanted to kill me at Buru, and . . . ‘
Webb waved a hand dismissively. ‘I was about to tell you something when we were discussing him before,’ he said, ‘but I was holding back.’
‘What are you saying?’ Cardinal demanded.
‘There is no problem,’ he said. ‘Chan suffered a brain haemorrhage at the mountain base.’
‘Is he dead?’ Cardinal said in whisper.
‘Seems he had been exerting too much pressure on himself after being struck in the head by a bullet,’ Webb said, ‘A bullet from an unknown assailant in Jakarta.’
They were distracted by the honk from their truck as Adum drove out of the camp. They only glanced at the departing vehicle.
Webb said, ‘They buried the bugger yesterday!’
The letter was brief, upbeat and poignant.
Dear Rhonda,
Compelled to go away for a few days. Not at liberty to say where. Will be in touch the moment I return. Keep the good work on the documentary going.
I love you.
Ken
Enclosed was a crumpled envelope containing another letter to Rhonda that Cardinal had written during his enforced stay on Buru. It rambled full of emotion and feeling. There was not a word which sought sympathy. The overall tone, and the sentiment in the ‘Love At First Sight’ verse, touched her. Moments after receiving the letter at her apartment, she had a call from her producer. ‘Might be best to forget the project,’ Dunstan said bluntly. ‘Rumor has it that the prime minister has leant on Hartford.’
‘What about our much-publicised “independence”?’ Rhonda said.
‘License renewals come up in a few months . . . ‘
The familiar flashing green light on Rhonda’s answering machine gave her hope. But it was not Cardinal. The cold tone of Bill Hewson’s voice disappointed her. He wanted to have dinner with her. She agreed, and was curious. It was a strange departure for him. Earlier meetings had always been secretive. Now he wanted to meet at a stylish Hawthorn restaurant called Stephanie’s.
‘I can’t say, don’t worry,’ Hewson said, as he drove her to the restaurant, ‘but from what you’ve said Cardinal seems to be a survivor.’
‘There’s no stopping him.’
‘He bought a return ticket to Bangkok,’ Hewson said.
Rhonda stared at him. ‘How did you learn that?’
‘You’ve heightened my interest in Cardinal. We know the hotel he booked into.’
‘Which one?’
‘The Bangkok Palace. We had it checked. He didn’t stay there.’
‘I want to go . . . ‘
‘That would be risky.’
‘Is there any way you could help?’
Hewson didn’t look at her but observed cars passing him as they reached Taronga Road. ‘It’s possible. We have operatives there. They could look after you.’
‘I just want to find him!’ Rhonda said, as he escorted her into Stephanie’s.
‘I’ll see what we can do . . .’
At four Cardinal and Webb were woken by someone kicking at their hut door. Cardinal flicked on his lighter. Webb swung a revolver from under the pack he had used for a pillow. He held it two-handed, aimed it at the door, and sat up.
‘Who is it?’ Cardinal asked in French.
‘Dunong,’ the voice said. ‘Get ready. We go now.’
They heard his footsteps retreating.
‘Let’s go,’Webb said.
‘A little unexpected,’ Cardinal remarked. They dressed in the limited, flickering light.
‘I should have worked it out,’ Webb said. ‘They never do the expected.’
Cardinal left his lighter on as they packed their gear. He noticed Webb was wearing a black glove on his left hand.
‘I cut myself,’ he said. He adjusted his trouser belt.
‘I didn’t know you were packing hardware,’ Cardinal said, his eyes flicking to the case where the gun had been hidden.
‘Yeah, well I’ve got a few surprises myself,’ Webb said.
‘Course, it won’t do much good. They are sure to frisk us before we reach the mountain hide-out.’
‘How did you cut yourself?’ Cardinal asked, as he stood by the door.
‘On a bottle.’
Cardinal didn’t believe him and the glove bothered him.
Two trucks pulled up at the big hut. Dunong asked them to jump aboard. Webb demanded an explanation.
‘Why the change in plans?’ he asked.
‘Get in please,’ Dunong said.
Cardinal took a few paces forward. A dozen men stopped loading the two trucks and watched.
‘This money stays right here,’ Webb said.
Dunong hurried to him and touched his arm. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered, ‘the old plan was scrapped. We have many spies in the camps, especially here at number 8. Everything must be done at the last moment. You will understand, I’m sure.’
Dunong leaned forward and whispered something in Webb’s ear. He winked at Cardinal.
‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘These monkeys aren’t dumb.’
Cardinal could hear the steady beat of a helicopter thumping through the blackness to a spot lit by a man with a torch. The noise of rotors killed any communication except sign language until they were aboard and lifting high above the rice field nine kilometres from camp site 8. Even with its markings painted out, Cardinal knew it was an American Huey, which probably had been commandeered during the US evacuation of Kampuchea in 1975. Cardinal felt a sense of exhilaration as they lifted into the sky and the first bright red rays of the equatorial sun licked the dying night.
As dawn broke, they covered thick forests, fertile plains crossed by rivers and chocolate brown waterways. Cardinal spotted buffalo and even a couple of elephants that steamed in the early morning damp heat.
The pilot sometimes changed the chopper’s course and this coincided with troop movements below. The Khmer Rouge would become excited if they spotted comrades. The enemy, by contrast, only elicited a deathly quiet as the shadow of the chopper caused them to scatter and draw weapons. Four hours later, as they hummed over thick-forested mountains, Webb leaned close to Cardinal.
‘We’re dropping,’ he said in French, and they could soon make out a cleared area looming fast ahead. Let him be there! Cardinal prayed. Let him be there!
Rhonda caught an early morning flight to Bangkok and arrived at Cardinal’s hotel – The Bangkok Palace – in mid-afternoon. An investigation uncovered nothing except that Webb did not appear to have booked a room. If he had, it was under an assumed name. Rhonda wandered around the hotel which was set in former slum land. The view from many of the bedrooms and from the pool was of a motorway. Downstairs there was no view at all except for dull, gray pylons that matched the building – a hideous concrete bunker.
Rhonda grew impatient. She phoned Hewson in Melbourne to see if he had any news of Webb.
‘It’s impossible to get into the CIA file,’ Hewson said. ‘Our director has refused to put in an application.’
‘Can’t you persuade him?’ Rhonda asked, her tone irritable. ‘Surely it’s in your interest to know if this bloke is working for them?’
‘I don’t think you appreciate the enmity between the two agencies right now,’ Hewson retorted.
‘Okay. You’re right,’ Rhonda said, climbing down.
‘I did find something else,’ Hewson said. ‘Webb and Blundell were in Kampuchea at the same time. We’ve ascertained that from a colleague of Webb who was an SAS man too. He is now a captain with our commando strike force. He says the three of them went out on patrols in Kampuchea.’
‘That’s terrific!’ Rhonda exclaimed. ‘Will he be able to say that on camera?’
‘No way. You could only use him as an unnamed source.’ They were both distracted by interference on the line.
‘Where are you staying?’ Hewson asked.
‘The Bangkok Palace,’ Rhonda said. ‘It’s an ugly little hell-hole. Webb must have chosen it.’
‘I’m sure he would have,’ Hewson said. ‘It’s a favorite CIA hang-out. Has been since Vietnam days.’
Rhonda was uneasy.
‘Take great care there,’ Hewson advised. ‘Remember that Blundell is probably behind the move by Webb to take Cardinal into Kampuchea.’
‘You don’t think he would turn up in this place, do you?’
‘Not on his salary.’
‘Have you been in touch with those contacts you promised?’
‘There’s a bar along the PatPong road called Tigers. Go there after ten at night and ask for Denis Bonner.’
‘What do you think Webb will do if they get into the Cardomom Mountains?’ she asked. ‘The Blundell link really worries me.’
‘I’m going to sound pessimistic,’ Hewson said, ‘but you’ve got to understand how put out the CIA are by the breakaway by Chan and his Khmer Rouge. Blundell will either want to bring them back into the fold or . . . ‘ Hewson was hesitant.
‘Isn’t that too late?’ Rhonda prompted. ‘What’s the alternative?’
‘Webb wouldn’t be going into such hostile territory for the hike. His motives won’t be altruistic’