“So you agree with the plan, Jack? We find us an Englishman and hang out with him. We’ll tell him enough to get him spooked, and when British Intelligence hears about two American spies—”
“We’re not spies, Gearheardt.”
“—hanging around Hong Kong after being booted out of the Marine Corps, bam, they’re on us like ducks on a June bug.” He slapped his hands together, waking the fat Chinese businessman across the aisle, who glared at us and then closed his eyes again. He had a mole on his chin with a three-inch hair growing out of it. I had stopped Gearheardt from clipping it when the Chinaman first fell asleep.
“And after we get to British Intelligence?” I said, humoring him.
Gearheardt turned to me and squinted.
“Haven’t you been listening? Then we use British Intelligence to find Juanton. When we tell them what we know about the commie network in British Intelligence, they’ll piss their pants.”
“Why don’t we just find the British Intelligence Headquarters in Hong Kong and talk to them? Why all this ‘finding each other’ talk?” I really didn’t want to think about all this and was already sorry that I had agreed to go to Hong Kong. Gearheardt’s plan—that word again—was asinine.
Gearheardt stopped his drink halfway to his mouth and looked at me. “Jack, sometimes I think you’ll never get this spy business.” He paused, then went on. “Someone in British Intelligence in Hong Kong is in cahoots with Juanton. That much we know. We walk in there and start blabbing about killing Juanton to the wrong guy and we’re in deep shit.” He finished his drink.
“I am not trying to get this spy business, Gearheardt. You told me that Juanton was in Hong Kong. We’re headed to Hong Kong. And there is no shit deeper than what you have already gotten me into.” I turned back to the window and stared out.
On the night train from Udorn to Bangkok, where we had caught the airplane we were now on, Gearheardt had elaborated on our movements in Hong Kong. His plan actually was much more thought out than I had expected. I always had to remind myself that Gearheardt was no dummy. He just didn’t have a lick of subtlety. Everything was black or white and straight ahead.
When I had first questioned him about his attitude, he’d looked genuinely surprised at my lack of understanding. “We’re Americans, Jack. And United States Marines.” This was just before he told me he was also in the Central Intelligence Agency. Admissions like that, spilled over beer in the Schooner Lounge on Pensacola Beach, weren’t particularly troublesome. I didn’t believe him until it was too late.
The way he saw it, we had two missions in Hong Kong. First, we needed to find a way to get close to British Intelligence. Someone there had reported to the bureaucrats in Washington that Gearheardt and I had purposely screwed up the mission to stop the war, and now they wouldn’t let us fight in Vietnam. Exposing the Brit who was Jaunton’s partner would go a long way toward convincing them we were sincere in wanting to succeed in our mission. Then we needed to kill Juanton, a murdering Cuban bastard who delighted in torturing American pilots in Hanoi and thought he had a lock on the beer franchise that was promised to the good Cuban, for helping us. It was complicated.
“See, Jack, we let the Brits think that we’re going to kill Juanton.”
“We are,” I reminded him.
“Sure, but not until we find out who his boss is in British Intelligence.”
“So you think they’ll try to stop us?”
“Just the one that gives a damn about Juanton. That’s how we know. I don’t think the other Brits will care one way or another. Brilliant, right?”
I wasn’t so sure, but it did seem reasonable.
I dozed off as Gearheardt was trying to talk the giggling stewardesses to get in the airplane’s bathroom with him, claiming it would set a world record and make their parents proud. The bump on the runway at Kai Tak, Hong Kong’s airport, woke me, and I was glad that no one was shooting at us as we taxied to the terminal. This was better than Laos. Gearheardt and I had three weeks of feasting, womanizing, fooling Brits, and killing Cubans before we were due back in Laos. He was convinced that was plenty of time. As we left the airplane the captain stopped Gearheardt and told him to never get naked on a Thai Airways flight again. I noticed that one of the stewardesses, nervously laughing behind her tiny hand, was wearing Gearheardt’s T-shirt under her uniform jacket. Unchagrinned, Gearheardt told him to mind his own business; it was part of the mission.
It was decided on the way in from Kai Tak Airport that we would put off killing Cubans or finding British spies until after we had relaxed for a couple of days. In fact, I wondered aloud if it might be a good idea to put off killing Cubans altogether, since it really wouldn’t help us square things with the Marine Corps.
“Short-term thinking, Jack,” Gearheardt said as he ignored the NO SMOKING sign in the Hong Kong taxi. “Sure, we could not kill Juanton. But what about the next Marines that go to Hanoi? And the ones after that? We need to stop Juanton now, or the whole Marine Corps could go down one after another, like dominos. Just because you would rather chase whores and drink beer than do your duty. And I’m not saying I blame you.”
There were times when Gearheardt was too maddening to argue with and this was one of those times.
We were in the canyons of Kowloon. Five- and six-story grimy concrete buildings sprouting laundry from every orifice. Through barred windows we saw the mothers and fathers of Hong Kong bar women living their lives under single light bulbs, colorful plastic bowls dominating the décor. Then up Nathan Road, a million light bulbs sold things and advertised where to get them.
We took the Star Ferry to Hong Kong. Gearheardt thankfully dozed. He normally tried to start fights with the crew, who for some reason irritated him. It might have been their sailor suits.
Greeted in the lobby of the Hilton and up twenty-four floors to clean and air-conditioned near-home. Through the black windows sin danced in neon below and across the Fragrant Harbor. Gearheardt knocked on my door. “Let’s have a drink.” He made his eyebrows dance in a comical way. “These countries have turned their daughters into whores in order to get a better life. We can’t humiliate them by ignoring them. This is what they invented war for, Jack.”
Annie, the mama-san and proprietress of Annie Lee’s Bar & Clean Women, greeted us when we came in early in the evening after a dinner at Jimmy’s Kitchen.
“Geelhot,” she said over the squeals of the bar-girl fans of my friend, “you come sit here.”
“Annie, I want beer and I want girls.” Gearheardt was a bit testy because Jimmy had removed the pickled onions from our table after Gearheardt peppered nearly everyone in the restaurant with them.
Annie waved to a plain girl standing behind the bar. “Bring two beers Geelhot and Jack, Jiang,” she said.
The plain girl, Jiang, was Annie’s sister. Annie had been trying to snag Gearheardt for her sister ever since the first time that he stumbled into Annie Lee’s Bar & Clean Women. He had learned to say, ‘I need beer and woman’ in passable Cantonese. Standing in the door, bruised, near naked, and bleeding from a heated discussion with members of the British Navy, Gearheardt yelled his only Cantonese and caused the bar women to immediately fall in love with him, particularly Annie’s shy younger sister, Jiang.
Now, Annie was saying, “My sister you know, Geelhot. Jiang bring you beer all time.” She seemed to be trying to read Gearheardt’s facial expression. Jiang, having what he called “your little brother’s chest,” was not going to be snagging the Gearheardt I knew.
“You leave bar-girl alone tonight, Geelhot.” Annie pulled up on her sister’s shoulders, straightening her stoop slightly. They left, Annie tucking in the back of Jiang’s blouse as they walked away.
Gearheardt waved to the covey of young girls sitting in the back booth. Two of them jumped up, but I waved them back down. Their little doll faces frowned.
“Hold off on the entertainment for a minute, Gearheardt.” I had been wanting to talk to Gearhear
dt for the past two days. About what we hoped to accomplish in Hong Kong. When we talked about it in Laos it seemed simple, probably because we wanted an excuse to be in Hong Kong. Now, there were a few troubling aspects.
“Gearheardt, let’s say we find Juanton …”
“The asshole.”
“Yes, but let’s say we find him. Do we just shoot him? That didn’t work very well in Hanoi. Maybe we should have a clear plan.”
Gearheardt finished his beer and smiled at Jiang for another.
“The Brits will lead us to him if he’s in Hong Kong, Jack. Then we beat the shit out of him. Then we frog march him into the U.S. embassy and get him to tell the military attaché and the ambassador that we did not sell out in Hanoi. Then we take him outside and shoot him.” He paused as the beer was delivered, then watched Jiang walk away. “You know, that Jiang actually has a pretty nice butt.”
“Here’s the problem with your plan,” I said.
Gearheardt rolled his eyes.
“No, listen, you bastard. Your plan for flying to the Moon would be to build an antigravitational device and then fly it there!”
“Sounds like it might work,” Gearheardt said absently as he made faces at the bar-girl covey.
“But the point is that no one knows how … Oh skip it. What do you plan to tell the attaché is the reason that we didn’t kill Hoche or the Jeepster? Has that detail of squaring ourselves occurred to you?”
Gearheardt looked at me and seemed sober. “Jack, these dickheads in the embassy won’t even know what our mission was. We just need them to hear Juanton admit that we didn’t sell out the U.S.”
He slammed his hands onto the table. “Dammit, I’ve talked long enough.” About three minutes. “I’m getting the girls over here.” He grinned in the direction of the back booth and four squealing girls attached themselves to him like nurse fish on a shark. I saw Annie give a dark look at our table.
“Do you girls know how to play Find Stumpy?” Gearheardt asked as the women nestled around him.
Annie looked at Gearheardt and raised a cautioning finger. “You wait one minute. Jiang bring you one more beer you wait.”
Gearheardt smiled at Jiang who sat the beer in front of him without raising her eyes. “I need a little excitement,” he said. “Got to get my mind off our troubles before we get those British Intelligence folks on our case.”
“Gearheardt, you’ve run fifteen or twenty women through the Hilton, fought with the British Navy, again, and lowered the beer level on Hong Kong Island by fifty percent. Why don’t you just take it easy?”
“I know you disapprove of all the women, Jack. But how else will we find out who wears black panties? Research has always been your weak point.”
“My weak point has always been feeling like you might know what you’re doing and helping you do it. So far, a major weak point. But for some reason I feel the need to protect you in your various missions.”
“And don’t think I don’t appreciate it, Jack. Whatever it is you’re talking about. But don’t duck the black panties initiative that I seem to be the only one worrying about.”
Gearheardt was convinced that Juanton, our nemesis in Hanoi, and his “control” agent in Hong Kong had used black panties as a way to pass messages. Which, according to Gearheardt, meant that Juanton’s British contact was either a woman or a male agent who enjoyed wearing black silk women’s underwear.
“That eliminates not quite half of the agents in Hong Kong, Jack.”
I didn’t argue the ridiculous point. Certainly Juanton, the Cuban asshole, must have had a reason to have a drawer full of women’s black panties. And we were dead certain that Juanton passed the word to British Intelligence that Gearheardt and I didn’t complete our mission in Hanoi because we had been bought off. After that was reported to the CIA and the Marine Corps, Gearheardt and I were brought up on charges so detailed that we knew we had been screwed by the Cuban.
Charge Number Four, Joint USMC/CIA Code of Conduct for Agents DDCIA/ACDC:
Causing with deliberate intent the mastication of testicles belonging to an officer in the Armed Forces of a Country which the United States is not currently attacking with Malice. [Sub-Reference: DDMC 227—Masturbation, malicious]
“See, she goes up there, the message hidden—no, sewn into her pants. Maybe even woven into the lace pattern. He yanks off her panties, no one’s the wiser.”
“You’re amazing, Gearheardt.” I rubbed my eyes, wishing I were not in the smoke-filled Annie Lee Bar with a lunatic. Half hoping that Juanton was not even in town and that we could just drink and find bar-girls and then go back to Laos.
In the early morning hours of the third night, I woke up in a panic. I had been dreaming that I was drifting through a watery space. Everything I approached shoved me back. I couldn’t touch bottom, but I wasn’t sinking. I was taking an oath to support the mission of the Central Intelligence Agency in a bar on Santa Rosa Beach.
The sun began lighting the room, and I moved to the window. Hong Kong squatted beneath, head in hand, saying “Oh shit.” Its hair was matted and its breath was foul. I remembered that Gearheardt had talked me into drinking harbor water and bourbon as a sign of brotherhood with the town when we were floating with bar-women in the little walla-walla he had commandeered. Just before the Harbor Police gave us a stern warning in Chinese.
In my skivvies I walked down the hall to Gearheardt’s room and pounded on the door until I realized it was unlocked. Gearheardt had a fear of being in a locked room.
“Damn it, Gearheardt,” I said, leaning over his bed and grabbing him by his shoulders, “what was that you told me last night about the CIA? How in the hell did you ever convince me I was in the CIA?”
“Who are you?” Gearheardt groaned. He turned face down into the pillow.
I clicked on the lamp. Two naked Chinese women sat huddled together against the king-sized headboard.
I began pummeling Gearheardt’s back, my voice breaking with emotion.
“How do you always get us into this crap? Why do I always listen to you?”
Gearheardt turned his head and opened one eye. Drool ran out of his mouth and puddled on the pillow. He squinted up at me.
“Am I dead?” he asked. “Are you the devil?”
I slumped on the floor, exhausted by the dream, the hangover, the frustration of having lost my commission in the Marine Corps, and a feeling of failure. Why hadn’t I shot Ho Chi Minh? At the bottom of all of my dreams, the question was there.
One of the Chinese women ventured a peek at me.
“You devil?” she asked, peering over the edge of the bed. The other Chinese head appeared beside her. They had evidently slipped to the floor when I was pounding on Gearheardt.
I didn’t want to go back to my room, so the Chinese women and I played poker. We sat at the table, me in my skivvies and the Chinese women naked. They were terrible poker players but seemed to enjoy the game, giggling and screaming shrilly each time they lost a hand, which was fairly often since they didn’t know the numbers from bird doo.
Gearheardt rolled over near nine o’clock in the morning. He rubbed his eyes like a small child.
“Were you in here last night when some maniac tried to beat the crap out of me while I was asleep?” He reached under the covers and pulled out a beer bottle, holding it up to the light to see if was empty.
“I took care of him,” I said. The Chinese women giggled again, and I wondered how much they understood. “It was just the room service guy. Some joker ordered an early morning beat-up. You know how the service is in these hotels. They don’t question a damn thing that foreigners ask for. I’ll speak to the manager and make sure it doesn’t show up on your bill.”
The Chinese women were gathering their clothing. Gearheardt sucked again on the empty beer bottle and nodded toward them. “They with you?”
“Have you ever known me to travel without a couple of naked Chinese women, Gearheardt? Of course they’re not with me. They
were in your bed when I came in here last night.”
“It was you beating on me and yelling, wasn’t it?”
“Of course it was. I need to talk to you.” I paused and indicated the women, dressed and waiting. “Do you owe these ladies money?”
“You mean these women are prostitutes?” Gearheardt almost sounded genuinely distressed. “My God, what have I done?” He pulled the covers over his head.
“It won’t work, Gearheardt. I won’t have you stiffing these women.”
“A tad late for those sentiments, Jack. If you’ll forgive the pun. Give them that bowl of fruit the manager sent up.”
I shrugged and handed it to the women, who seemed pleased.
“Hell, give them the towels too. I can get more.”
The women left with the fruit, the towels, the stationery, the pen, the Gideons Bible, the alarm clock, the telephone book, and, unbeknownst to us at the time, Gearheardt’s shaving gear.
“So what is it that you want to know, Jack? You’re not the kind of guy that pounds people who are sleeping with two Chinese women.”
I stood next to his window and looked below at the grass tennis courts and gardens. Very English.
“I want to know about the CIA, Gearheardt. You talk about them all the time. You claim that we’re both part of the CIA. What the hell are you talking about?”
“What difference does it make, Jack? You know that Air America is owned by the CIA, right?”
“I thought that you told me a Texas construction company owned it. But I’m not talking about now, anyway. I’m talking about when we were in Hanoi trying to stop the war.”
Nam-A-Rama Page 2
