Bleeding in Black and White

by Colin Cotterill

  “So, you’re saying our meddling was responsible for those deaths.”

  “We weren’t to know what kind of people we were dealing with. Nobody could have predicted this. Your plan was sound and well-meaning.”

  “Don’t patronize me, Mr. Rogers.”

  “No, really I’m not. Thanks to you, twenty five women have been rescued. I wouldn’t be surprised if most of them could identify the soldiers who kidnapped them. Filling in the gaps and solving the murder at the missionary lodge shouldn’t be that difficult. Bet’s death will be avenged one way or another.”

  54.

  “Well, what do we do?” Henry asked. He and the Saigon delegation, minus Copeland, had arrived at the plantation a few minutes before Captain Faboir and a unit of soldiers. Mr. Duc of the Montagnard Liaison Center and acting Administrator Desailly followed them in.

  “I don’t believe we have a lot of choice, Inspector,” Billotte said. “You read the letter. The evidence is all there.”

  “Monsieur DeWolff is a very influential man in these parts,” Henry said, shaking his head.

  “Nobody is that important they’re above French law,” Chief Inspector Lacouture reminded him. “If we let him get away with this, there’ll be an international incident. It won’t be long before Copeland finds out about what’s happened here. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if he got a letter himself. Where’s DeWolff?”

  “Inside,” the Captain told him. “He’s ranting quite seriously. He’s apparently trying to implicate the army. He says it was all General LePenn’s idea.”

  “Does he have any evidence to substantiate that?”

  “No. And there are one or two overseers who are straining at the leash to put the blame on DeWolff for anything and everything.”

  “Excellent,” said Billotte. “So, let’s arrest him. If the letter’s accurate, we have the names and addresses of several hundred Moi happy to act as witnesses. That should be enough.”

  “But, what about the plantation?” Desailly asked. It’s an important source of revenue. You can’t just shut it down.”

  “Then, let’s see if the overseers are willing to take it over,” Billotte suggested. I’m sure if they cut the profits and upped the wages they’d be able to find Moi workers without pointing guns at them. We’ll see what they can salvage before the rains ruin everything.”

  Desailly wasn’t sure why, but Billotte seemed delighted to have this opportunity to remove DeWolff. He wondered whether the plantation owner had something on the man from Saigon just as he apparently did on half the male population of Ban Methuot.

  “Ehrr, there’s one other thing,” Captain Faboir said.

  “What’s that?”

  “The overseers — they said the American was here.”

  “Rogers?” Chief Inspector Lacouture asked with a genuine look of surprise on his face. “Doing what?”

  “They say he was the ringleader. He gave a sermon, got everyone worked up, and led them to rescue the women. One or two of the Moi witnesses also back up those statements.”

  “What exactly is that man playing at?” Henry whined. “He’s on the run for murder and he organizes something like this. Is he mad?”

  Lacouture scratched his head. “If he actually were responsible for a murder, I’d say ‘yes’. But this doesn’t strike me as the action of any man with a guilty conscience I’ve ever come across.”

  “Me neither,” Billotte agreed.

  “In fact,” Lacouture smiled. “He sleeps with the Administrator’s wife, the royal consort lies for him, and he overthrows this tyrant. I think I’m starting to admire the fellow.”

  55.

  When they reached the intersection that would ultimately led them to the lake, Hong told Bodge to keep going straight.

  “Are you sure we should be heading toward town?” Bodge asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Isn’t it pushing my luck a little to be driving through military checkpoints?”

  “We won’t be going that far.”

  “I see? You have yet another plan.”

  “Yes.”

  But she didn’t tell him what it was. They were half a kilometer from the first checkpoint when she directed him to take a left at a barely discernable trail. It wound around the rim of a wide gully which opened out to rice fields and dull, featureless landscape. Despite its apparent anonymity, the trail was well drained and graveled. It was barely twenty minutes before the airstrip came into view with the B24 Liberator standing beside the lean-to. Bodge looked at his co-conspirator and smiled.

  “It’s one of the emperor’s secret tracks. They’re everywhere,” she said, not looking at him.

  “Is the plane waiting for me?”

  “Raphael is expecting the emperor. I have to convince him to take you instead.”

  “And how do you plan to do that?”

  “I have a letter in Bo Dai’s hand.”

  “Which he didn’t write.”

  “It’s an easy enough style to copy — standard French calligraphy.”

  “Remarkable. May I ask why you’re going to all this trouble for me?”

  “I have reasons.”

  “Why do I have the feeling there’s more you expect of me in return?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Raphael was pleased to see Bodge and cautiously respectful to the consort who he’d never seen out of the company of her master. He opened the officially sealed letter and read slowly. As he doggedly kept himself outside the walls of expatriate gossip and had spent the past week with his Montagnard wife and children awaiting word of his next mission, it was evident that Raphael hadn’t heard news of the scandal from Ban Methuot. When he reached one point in the letter, the big pilot put his arms around the American and whispered regrets into his ear. Bodge had to assume he’d just learned of Stephanie’s death. When they pulled apart, the eyes of both men were damp with tears. Raphael wiped the back of his arm across his face and read on. He looked up at the consort and smiled.

  “Delighted to have you both aboard,” he said.

  He rushed ahead to ready the plane and Bodge looked at Hong.

  “You’re coming, too?”

  “It’s complicated,” she replied and climbed aboard the plane.

  For the duration of the flight there was no further explanation and Bodge was left to tumble around in his emotions. The desire that he had fashioned in his own mind, merely from viewing three black and white slides of her, had turned to a passion. And the object of that passion had falsified the royal seal and was currently absconding with him in the Emperor’s private aircraft. He was aware that she could be executed for less. In one foolhardy moment she had become even more of a fugitive in her country than he — and he loved her for it. His vanity allowed him a flicker of hope that he might in some small way be the motive for her actions.

  With no conversation forthcoming from Hong, Bodge spent much of the flight up front with Raphael.

  “I’ve been trying to get a message through to the tower,” the Frenchman told him, “but all I get is this.” He turned the volume knob and the ugly crackle of static filled the cockpit.

  “That’s okay. We’ll be in Saigon in half an hour, won’t we?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we aren’t going to Saigon. Her ladyship wants us to touch down in Dalat.”

  “Dalat? What’s there?”

  “My house and my missus. Another Royal residence. Saigon tourists. Important thing is it’s safe and only twenty five minutes from Ban Methuot in case we have to fly back for the Grand E.”

  The journey to Dalat took the transporter directly toward one almighty storm. It became spectacular, like a flight through shards of glass. Bodge had never been so close to lightning, yet he wasn’t afraid. Everything that had happened to him recently had apparently removed fear for his own life. The aircraft bucked like a mule as it rounded down over the lush pine forests. Even with the airstrip directly in front
of them the air currents still conspired to jerk them from side to side.

  Without radio contact Blanc hadn’t been able to get clearance to land. The storm had absolute control of the air waves. But visibility below the clouds was good and the pilot could be certain there was nothing on the runway to hit. The rain hadn’t yet caught up with the complicated storm. Although there were potholes along the dirt strip, there were no puddles. The plane bumped down and Blanc slalomed skillfully around them. The engine was cut, and Bodge slapped the still-smiling pilot on the back for a job well done.

  “Be staying in the royal villa, will you?” Raphael asked with a wink. Bodge ignored the question and ducked through to the back. Hong apparently had a closet on the plane. She was now wearing very Western black stretch slacks and a billowy blouse. A huge pair of sunglasses sat on top of her hair like Mickey Mouse ears. Bodge found this transformation disappointing, but chose to say nothing.

  Dalat was a sad looking, hurriedly put together resort-of-a-town where Saigon residents kept summer houses and weekenders came to escape the heat of the plains. It had been kitted out in a Sino-Swiss ski resort style that didn’t suit it. At three thousand feet, cool breezes would normally skip along the unlaid dust roads. But today, the clouds had it packed in like a tacky oriental vase about to be shipped in the post.

  There was something Hollywood Romance about the pony and trap ride from the airstrip. Bodge felt clear, as if all his troubles had been flushed out and only happiness and joy lay ahead. As if to prove it, here he was with his perfect gal in the back of a wagon. It was only missing a Bing Crosby soundtrack. She leaned close to him and pointed out interesting sights. There was the lake where her dog had once drowned chasing a goose. There was the Salon de Thé where the Emperor had once gone in disguise to hear the gossip about himself.

  When they finally clomped up the grandiose driveway to the Baliverne, Bodge wanted, more than anything, for her to come in with him. But he didn’t have enough teeth to make such a suggestion.

  “Don’t give your real name,” she said as he climbed down and collected his things. “I’ll contact you later. Don’t go anywhere.”

  He felt like an employee. “No, Ma’am. I’ll register under the name of Leon.”

  “Someone you know?”

  “Someone I used to know.”

  He explored his room. The only thing he found worthy of note was a foul smell that rose from the Western toilet. He flushed the creature, lowered the seat, and closed the door. All he’d brought from Ban Methuot was his Bible, and his jacket. He threw them on the bed and lay beside them. Before he could even count the blades on the overhead fan, he was asleep.

  He was woken by a tremendous clap of thunder that seemed to split the world in half. It was dark. He had no idea where he was, or why. Nothing at all stirred in his head. He lay still and tried to force a thought into his mind — even the briefest memory. It was an eerie moment and one he’d experienced often of late. Then, a flash of lightning gave him a glimpse of the room around him, and everything came back.

  He fumbled beside the bed for a lamp. It was the first thing he noticed when he’d arrived — electricity. It had been quite a while since light had been available to him at the flick of a switch. He was worried the storm might have knocked out the power, but one click lit up a humble but effective forty watt bulb. He sat on the edge of the mattress. He felt heavy from his first real sleep in fifty hours. He wondered where Hong was. Why hadn’t she been in touch? Was something wrong? Was she in danger? At last, someone to be worried about.

  He hurried to the bathroom. He needed to get clean. He stood under the tepid shower and scrubbed the unpleasant odors from his skin. He turned off the water and turned to look at himself in the full-length mirror. He was astounded at how slim he’d become, how his muscles had hardened, his hair had grown. He stepped out of the tub and walked closer to his reflection. Now he could see the wounds, the scars, the insect bites. Lou wouldn’t recog…

  He sighed. There was no Lou, but that memory sparked a thought. He wrapped a small grayish towel around his middle and went back to the bed where his Bible lay. There was a letter opener on the desk that someone had honed to a sharp edge. He sat on the mattress and used it to score around the inside of the front cover of the holy book. “God of gods, Lord of kings, and a revealer of secrets”, he said under his breath, trying to match the quote to either Daniel or Luke.

  He peeled back the handwritten Lord’s Prayer and removed a rectangle of card from inside. Between it and the thick cover were his Agency ID, and two twenty dollar bills he’d completely forgotten about. Still, hardly enough to get him back to the States. He repeated the process with the back cover. Only one secret was concealed there, and he wasn’t that certain he wanted to see it. The photo of Lou and his homosexual friends hadn’t lost any of its venom. When Bodge had first seen it, he hadn’t been able to look, not with a critical eye. But if there was anything to be learned from it, he needed to go over it in detail. “Use your mind, Leon, not your gut.”

  The reading glasses in the top pocket of his jacket were for show — but they magnified. He held the picture under the lamplight and scanned the glass slowly across it. “Your mind. Anything odd. Anything at all.”

  He began, gradually, to notice things in the black and white photo. Lou’s pants for example. They were crumpled down by one ankle. They were unquestionably his work slacks and he still wore his black shoes. That told Bodge his friend had stopped off at this…club after work. He would never wear office clothes at the weekend. He hated the style. There was further confirmation of this when Bodge picked out a small pile of material on the couch between the two men. It was striped, and was probably Lou’s necktie.

  “So Lou, you have a tough day at the office, and decide to stop off at one of your hangouts and get yourself serviced. I suppose I can live with that if that was your thing. But, you know, you aren’t a bad looking guy. If there are as many faggots around as they’d have us believe, couldn’t you have found yourself a steady boyfriend?”

  Bodge felt odd even thinking like this, but he had to look at the situation as it was. He couldn’t understand why Lou would subject himself to this public…humiliation. He looked again at the fat old guy beside Lou who seemed just as oblivious to Lou’s presence as Lou was to his. “Don’t you care who’s watching, guys? What kind of place is this?” He scanned the spectacles along the wall behind the men. He decided this was wallpaper, expensive kind, but pretty old. He’d seen something like it before, perhaps at DeWolff’s mansion? It seemed too somber to be a house so he settled on the idea of a private member club.

  He looked up and cricked his neck. The cracking of bones was an unnecessary skill he’d picked up in Vietnam. He’d already found ways of getting percussion from each of his fingers. He flipped over the photograph and once again read the neat handwriting there.

  ‘Time is against us.’

  “What does that mean, Denholm? What are you trying to tell me?” Obviously the policeman was being cryptic. He couldn’t have been sure the state troopers who delivered it wouldn’t go through the package. So there had to be something there. He turned the picture back and reconfirmed to himself there was no clock on the walls. “Time. Time,” he repeated. It was a while before he found it. At the extreme left of the photo was the arm of another chair or sofa in shadow. It had barely made it into the shot. Resting on the arm was a hand. All that was visible were three fingers, the face of a wristwatch, and the rolled up cuff of a white shirt. “Does the time on the watch make a difference?” Bodge got so close to the picture he could smell the developer on the paper. He moved the lens back and forth in front of that small detail. But he couldn’t make out the time on the dial. Then it hit him.

  “The too obvious.” Somewhere in his training Bodge had heard a speaker talking on the subject of looking and not seeing. Once you saw the truth, you couldn’t imagine how you’d ever missed it — how you’d ever seen anything else. The obvious was s
taring straight at him. His mouth fell open and he pulled away from the photograph. He shouldn’t have been looking at the time, but at the watch itself — the battered John Bull on the wrist of Robert Bodge Leon.

  56.

  The tap came at the door, who knows? An hour later? A minute? A few seconds? Bodge had remained hypnotized by the left hand corner of the photograph where he’d suddenly appeared like a late guest. He heard the tapping but didn’t relate it to himself. Perhaps it was just part of the timpani the heavy rain was playing against the window. But then the sound got louder and turned into a clear knock and he slipped the photograph between the pages of the Bible and went to answer the door.

  “Who is it?”

  “Me,” it was Hong’s voice.

  He hesitated. He wasn’t sure he wanted to let her in, not now. There were many reasons he didn’t want to see her. He just couldn’t vocalize any of them. So, he opened the door a crack wide enough to talk, but somehow she sidled in through the gap.

  “Don’t Americans wear pajamas?” she asked, looking down at the serviette that was his only cover. She, in contrast, was wearing an enormous rubber poncho. The legs of her ao dai were splattered with mud. She was wearing too much, he, too little, although it took him a while to realize what she was talking about.