Turn of the Cards w-12 Read online

  Helen Carlysle lifted the rose from her lap and twirled its thorny stem in her fingers. “The last knight. Yes, Mr. Casaday, I can see why you would have contempt for him.”

  “Yeah,” he said, believing she agreed with his assessment. “He was playing some kind of zany game of his own. He was never on this case. And now — please don’t do anything rash here, Ms. Carlysle — now you’re off it too.”

  She looked at him.

  He pushed a yellow Western Union slip across the table at her. “You’ll find one just like this waiting for you at the front desk. It’s from the Governor, and it confirms what I’ve said.

  “Go on back home and spend your paycheck, Ms. Carlysle. Or enjoy beautiful Bangkok a few more days — just as long as you don’t start asking any questions. With all due respect for your professional qualifications — and believe me, I do respect them — you’re out of your depth in the phase this game has entered now.”

  He shook his head. “So are Heckle and Jeckle from the DEA. I wonder what on earth happened to those dipshits, anyway?”

  At Ankara Customs the neat, swarthy men in tan uniforms and peaked caps that seemed as wide as their shoulders glanced at Saxon’s and Hamilton’s passports and the holders open to show their DEA shields and murmured, “Please follow us.”

  The Americans exchanged glances. Saxon shrugged. They followed. Saxon muttered, “We have nothing to worry about. It’s all in the bag; we’re DEA,” to his partner out of the side of his mouth. Hamilton hitched the shoulder strap of his overnight bag up higher on his shoulder and did not look convinced.

  They were led to a small room. Though there were only two people in it, it seemed pretty well full already. The man in civilian clothes, fedora, and dark sunglasses didn’t take up much space, but the dude standing beside him — in baggy cloth-of-gold pants, blue-and-red vest over hairy bare chest, and an enormous turban on his head — definitely constituted a crowd of one. Especially since his hygiene seemed a little on the questionable side; it was close in here.

  “Check out this geek with the sofa cushion on his head,” Saxon said from the corner of his mouth. He had made a little trip to the bathroom just before landing, and he was feeling fine. Hamilton shushed him frantically.

  “I am Colonel Nalband,” the man in civilian clothes said. “This is Yaralanmaz, our Turkish national ace. His name means ‘invulnerable.’”

  Yaralanmaz nodded his extensively turbaned head. “We’re honored,” Hamilton said.

  “Yeah,” Saxon said, grinning hugely. “Honored.”

  His grin shattered when the two uniforms started dipping gloved hands into the pockets of his off-white jacket. “Hey! What the fuck’s going on here? We’re DEA, damn it. This is bogus, man. Completely bogus.”

  One of the two uniforms fished out the gold card case Saxon carried but never offered anybody cards from out of his inner pocket, cracked it, glanced inside, and passed it to Nalband. Nalband held up a tiny plastic vial with a bit of white powder drifted at the bottom.

  “What might this be, Agent Saxon?”

  “Hey, just a sample, you know?” Saxon said, suddenly all smiles again, holding out his palms and being an open, candid guy. “Sometimes we need to, you know, compare, so we can trace the routes the shit’s being carried along —”

  “Indeed?” the other uniformed Customs officer said. “And is it necessary to carry so very much of it?” He pulled his hand out of Hamilton’s bag, which lay open on a table. He held a taped glassine packet crammed full of white powder. “There must be two hundred grams here, Agent Saxon.”

  Hamilton turned dead white. “That’s not m-mine!” he exclaimed.

  “It’s not mine either,” Saxon said, goggling. “Fuck me.”

  Colonel Nalband shook his head. “We were warned you would be trying to smuggle cocaine into the Republic of Turkey. This is a very serious matter. Very serious indeed.”

  “This is bullshit!” Saxon shrieked. “This isn’t our shit! We’ve been set up. And anyway, we’re the DEA! You got no fucking right —”

  “We have every right to interdict criminal activity,” Nalband said solemnly. “And when you try to bring drugs into our country, you are nothing better than common criminals.”

  “You towel-head sons of bitches!” snarled Saxon, and leaped at Nalband.

  Yaralanmaz stuck out his hand and pushed against Saxon’s sternum. The American flew up into the air and crashed against the wall, his head almost to the dropped ceiling. He hung there for a moment like the Coyote flattened against a cliff by more Roadrunner perfidy, then slid down into a heap.

  Nalband produced a compact square-snouted Glock pistol from inside his coat and pointed it at Hamilton. Hamilton held his hands up and said, “No problems.” The uniforms cuffed his hands behind his back, then hauled Saxon to his feet and cuffed him too. They had to hang on to him to keep him from sliding back down on his butt again.

  “You have undoubtedly heard much of our Turkish prisons, gentlemen,” Colonel Nalband said. “Doubtless you will find your stay in them instructive.”

  Yaralanmaz smiled. His teeth were stained the Turkish national brown from tea and cigarettes. He reached out and tweaked Hamilton’s cheek.

  “You’re cute,” he said in a voice like a boulder rolling down a mountain. “You and me will be good friend.”

  Mark accepted the invitation to stay in Whitelaw’s flat, which was filled with stacks and stacks of pamphlets and periodicals slowly melting together in the humidity. He still haunted the joker section of the old Chinese quarter Cholon — the joker ghetto, Whitelaw called it — searching for some way to make himself useful.

  He was elated to discover there was a clinic in the area. He felt sure it must mirror the function of Tach’s Blythe van Rensselaer Clinic in Jokertown. He would certainly find a place there. He would have much to contribute, both his own biochemical expertise and practical advice from watching his friend the Doctor at work. This clinic was operated by the government, so it would undoubtedly be well funded, well run, and open to all.

  What he found looked more like the flophouses he knew too well from his early days on the lam in New York than a hospital, and smelled that way too. And the clinic didn’t even have any jokers in it. It was mainly filled with babies with birth defects and women who had received hysterectomies and were undergoing chemotherapy for chorio-carcinoma. They all came from the southern provinces, which had been heavily dosed with Agent Orange defoliant by the Americans during the war. The intense and articulate doctor who took Mark on a tour bitterly drew the obvious connection.

  Mark was saddened by the anencephalic babies and the young girls lying two to a bed or on blankets on the floor, most of them bald from the chemotherapy. But he was already familiar with the problem and the possible effects of Agent Orange.

  “What about the jokers?” he asked. “There are already thousands of them in Cholon. They have special needs too.”

  “It’s you Americans!” the doctor yelled at him, her glasses almost flying off her face. “You deny us aid! That’s why we don’t have the facilities to care for everybody!”

  He beat a hasty retreat out onto the sidewalk and the rain.

  The men in pith helmets were waiting for him.

  Chapter Twenty

  A fist slammed into the side of Mark’s face. He felt his cheek split. His head snapped sideways until the tendons of his neck stopped it. His brain just kept spinning.

  Mark had seen lab rats, picked up inexpertly, frantically propeller their tails in circles. Unless they had their semi-prehensile tails curled around something, they felt unmoored, unsafe. Mark felt that way now inside his own head.

  Cotta keep conscious, he thought, though he knew deep down that keeping or losing consciousness was a symptom, not something in his control. If you go all the way under after blows to the head, it’s a bad sign; it usually means there’s some crockery broken in there, the movies notwithstanding. Subdural hematoma: brain implosion time.
r />   “You should truly thank us for our grandmotherly kindness,” an astringent voice said in precise Vietnamese-accented English, from beyond the blaze of lights that was going to be all Mark could see once he got his eyes open again. “Minh is really being quite gentle with you, comparatively speaking. We have among us as guests, citizens of the former People’s Republic of Germany who, betrayed by their countrymen, find themselves unable to return home. They are experienced in interrogation, and they have a good deal of frustration to work out.”

  A pause for a movie-torturer drag on the cigarette Mark could smell. “You don’t want to meet them, let me assure you.”

  Well, you’ve gone and done it this time, a disapproving voice said from the roaring ringing depths of his skull. I’ve always known it would happen.

  It was just Mark’s luck that being to all intents and purposes fucked would have the effect of producing in the conspicuously cowardly Cosmic Traveler a curious calm, so that instead of cowering in the back of Mark’s head and yammering in terror, he criticized.

  Mark tried to hold his head up, but it dipped and wobbled like a kite in the wind, so he let his chin drop to his bare chest. “I don’t even know what you want from me,” he said through swollen lips.

  “The truth.” This voice was vibrant, passionate, and All-American. “Who sent you here?”

  “Nobody.”

  Wham. Lights flashed, buzzers went off. The guy with the ham hand must have won a free game with that one.

  “That’s ridiculous,” the All-American said earnestly. “You can’t seriously expect us to believe that. Now, let’s take it from the top: Who are you?”

  “M-Mark,” he managed to say. “Mark Meadows.”

  “What are you?”

  “I’m a biochemist. No, don’t hit me again — I — I’m an ace too.”

  “And what were your powers?” the Vietnamese asked.

  “I called myself Captain Trips. I had … friends.”

  “If you’re Trips,” the American said, “where are your potions?”

  You had to play it smart, didn’t you? the Traveler’s voice sneered. You left us behind. We’re safe here in Vietnam, you thought…

  Well, so he’d fucked up again; it wasn’t as if it was a new experience or anything. He really did figure he’d be all right stashing what remained of the powders he’d whipped up after his Athens score in Whitelaw’s digs, and he was wrong again. On the other hand, God alone knew what the minions of the notoriously blue-nosed Socialist Republic would be doing to him now if they’d caught him with a fanny-pack full of the most outlandish concatenation of outlaw pharmaceuticals they’d ever seen.

  He shook his head. “Don’t … have any. Gave it up.”

  A deep chuckle in the voice that belonged to the American. He felt breath on his face, lightly flavored with anise, for God’s sake.

  “If you are the notorious American ace,” the Vietnamese voice hissed in his ear, “who sent you here to spy on us?”

  “Nobody, man! I keep telling you. I’m — just — a refugee —”

  Time for another allegro for face and fists, fortissimo. This is another fine mess you’ve gotten us into, the Traveler put in between beats of the beating.

  For Christ’s sake, Trav, J. J. Flash responded, show some originality. Meadows at least has the sense to play dumb, and God knows he’s got practice.

  Do not be cruel, came Moonchild’s voice, black silk and silver. Are we not all one?

  Great, Flash said. Just what we need: inscrutable Eastern wisdom. If the East’s so goddamn wise, how come its anointed representative is doing a bang-tango on our corporate head?

  … Mark became aware the debate was no longer being accompanied on percussion. And there were voices speaking outside the bruised box, his skull.

  “— all bullshit, Vo, I’m telling you,” the All-American was saying confidently. “He’s no ace.”

  Mark heard a click, smelled a cigarette coming alive, coughed. “We still await the results of the blood tests, Colonel,” the Vietnamese interrogator said.

  “No, no, no,” the All-American said confidently. “I know aces. They’re arrogant bastards. No ace would put up with this kind of treatment, I can promise you. Besides, this Captain Trips character is known to be a major druggie. This guy isn’t holding squat.”

  Mark could feel the wind off his headshake. “He’s not Captain Trips. He’s some random hippie burnout on the run.”

  A smoky sigh. “As you say, Colonel Sobel. I bow to your superior experience. Very well, Minh: get rid of him.”

  And just like that he was out on the sidewalk again. Oh, they threw some water over him before they threw him out, and they threw his shirt at him as he stood swaying on the sidewalk in front of the former French villa, blinking in the hot rain and feeling the eyes of passersby all over him.

  It could have been worse, he assured his various selves, as he struggled his arms into the sleeves and started buttoning his shirt up crooked. When Vo had told his silent partner with the heavy hands to get rid of him, Mark assumed that meant he was going for a swim in the Saigon River with a brand-new smile beneath his chin. Sometimes it was a relief to be wrong.

  “Oh, mama,” Flash crooned, “could this really be the end?

  “To be stuck in Ho Chi Minh City with the Bangalore Blues again.”

  “‘Bangalore?’” Mark asked aloud. The pedestrians and bicyclists streaming nearest him glanced at him and streamed a little quicker. It was not propitious to tarry near those encountered bloody-headed and talking to themselves in front of this particular address. “I thought that was in India.”

  You got bangs galore back inside there, wouldn’t you say?

  Funny, Flash. Real fucking funny.

  Oh, dear, Moonchild thought. I believe we’re going to throw up.

  Colonel Vo Van Song, People’s Public Security Forces, drew smoke through his black-lacquer cigarette holder. He turned in his chair to gaze out the blinds at the broad, tree-lined avenue outside, and let the smoke out.

  “So he is the ace called Captain Trips, after all,” he said.

  Folded into an uncomfortable French wooden chair, O. K. Casaday grinned. “Don’t be too hard on our boy Charles. He’s a halfwit, sure. But who’d know Meadows is a real ace just from looking at him?”

  Colonel Vo turned to regard his visitor. He had large black eyes, sad and heavy-lidded. His cheeks were hollow, so that the cheekbones formed a tau with his jaws. He had a mouth very reminiscent of a carp’s. Jocularly pointing out the resemblance in the mess was not a way for young officers to secure rapid advancement in their careers. Colonel Vo believed in the axiom better police for a better police state, and he believed surveillance begins at home.

  Vo and Casaday went back a long way. They had been actual antagonists, back in what both of them, ironically, thought of as the good old days — when they were not so tightly bound about by rules, unlike today, when you had to file a request form two weeks in advance to take a leak.

  He had started out as an up-and-coming battalion political officer in a division working the wrong side of the DMZ. It was a job he hated. You faced the same risks as the grunt riflemen, but you got extra headaches. Lots of them.

  To be sure, he enjoyed the sinister powers attributed to commissars in Western popular fiction. But the popularizers didn’t tell you the downside. There were the constant political meetings and self-criticism sessions he had to run, for example, which, not being a complete imbecile, he found as boring as everybody else in the PAVN. He also combined the roles of chaplain and guidance counselor, which meant that everybody in the battalion who had a problem whined about it to him. Finally, he was responsible for the performance of the unit in combat as well as out, which meant that his neck was at risk from the blunders of the actual unit commanders, whom he found to be a succession of alternately glory-hungering psychotics and dolts who didn’t know which end of Vietnam Hanoi was in.

  His own indoctrination had not ad
equately prepared him for this.

  His luck came in at the battle for Hue in 1968. His battalion got chewed up with great revolutionary panache — its current commander was the psychotic type — and he himself took a shell fragment in his shoulder from one of his own side’s 130mm field guns — the battery commander was a dolt. It was what the Americans would call a million-dollar wound. It wasn’t all that serious, though it hurt like a bastard the first few weeks, and it impressed the higher-ups enough to win him the transfer to Intelligence he’d been maneuvering for.

  After some more training, he spent the rest of the war in the south, living undercover, playing spymaster, and generally having the time of his life. Much of his effort had gone into setting up loyal South Vietnamese so that the joint CIA and Special Forces Phoenix program would assassinate them for being part of the NLF infrastructure. O. K. Casaday had been with the Phoenix in those days.

  He’d had more hair then.

  “It will presumably be more difficult to enlist Dr. Meadows’ willing participation,” Colonel Vo murmured.

  Casaday barked a laugh. He barked everything in fact. He reminded the slim, precise colonel of some kind of great ungainly Western hound.

  “Now, Colonel. Sobel may not be the swiftest runner in this foot race, but give the devil his due: he’s a charismatic son of a bitch. Some of those monsters of his are right off the Rox, and they think the only good nat’s an entree. He’s got them eating out of his hand. He can bring Meadows around.”

  The mirth left his face and he gave Vo a stare hard and flat as a basalt slab. “He’d better, Vo. And if there’s any little thing you can do that might give him an edge in recruiting Meadows, you might give serious thought to doing that little thing. My superiors feel Meadows is too prize an asset to let him just slip through their fingers. And with the Soviets withdrawing aid, and the Chinese openly arming your nut-cutting enemies the Khmer Rouge, and your own rebels running wild out in the Delta and up in the Highlands, this is not a time to be losing influential friends, is it, old pal?”