Serpentine

by Thomas Thompson

  Now a midnight curfew was upon him and Vitali hurried back to the Hotel Malaysia. He could not risk being stopped by Bangkok police, for in his pocket were the names of two contacts he was supposed to meet on the morrow. One was a Scot, the other Chinese, and Zazi’s carefully organized plan was that they would come from Burma with morphine and gems, which Charmayne was to courier back to Paris.

  The next day Vitali spent seven infuriating hours looking for the Burma contacts, but the address Zazi had given him was no good. No amount of berating the taxi driver could locate the designated apartment; Vitali returned to the hotel in a grumpy mood. The thought occurred to telephone Zazi in Ibiza, but jet lag and his long first night in Bangkok overwhelmed him. He fell asleep. It was almost dusk the next day when Vitali roused and dressed and went to the lobby to book a call for Ibiza. The operator said it would take several hours, but Vitali pressed some bahts into her hand and pleaded that it be marked “urgent.” The Turk found a Bangkok Post and slumped into a lobby chair. There he was, reading and dozing, when two young men sat down near him. One seemed Oriental, the other East Indian. They were friendly. Small talk passed between them.

  By midnight, the call still pending, Vitali Hakim checked out of his hotel and moved with his luggage into the penthouse of Alain Gauthier and his friend Ajay. The last thing Vitali did before he departed the Malaysia was to leave a message at the desk for Charmayne. He put it in a sealed envelope, marked it “urgent,” and told the clerk that the designated person should be there in a few days. In Ibiza, he had given Charmayne the names of three hotels—one of which he would be occupying. He fretted over Charmayne. He could not risk missing her. She was so naïve at this sort of thing that she might panic and fly right back to Ibiza.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  When Charles appeared with a rambunctious Turk in tow, Marie-Andrée was distressed. Another one! Where was he going to sleep? Every bed and sofa and cushion held a “guest,” and the hours after midnight were ravaged by the sounds of people retching and toilets flushing. For the next day or two, Charles performed complicated choreography. From his actions, it seemed he wanted to get rid of the Canadians so that he could devote full time to Vitali Hakim. The Turk had mentioned wanting to make a “major” gem purchase. Moreover the Canadian dentist was growing irksome, demanding with increasing loudness that his passport and travel documents be returned. He also spoke constantly of wanting to visit Chiang Mai, the northern city of Thailand.

  As had so many others, the Turk woke up presently in the grip of illness, the same malaise that seemed to strike most guests who accepted the hospitality of Charles Sobhraj/Alain Gauthier. The host appeared with comfort and a glass of medicine, after the taking of which Vitali passed out for two turns around the clock.

  Then, miracle of coincidence, Charles informed the Canadian couple that he must leave for Chiang Mai as well and would be happy to give them free transport. The weakened dentist and his wife were grateful to leave their sickbed and quickly packed, pleased that the journey would take place during daylight so they could enjoy the scenery. Then Charles disappeared for what he said would be a few minutes. He did not return until ten that night, clapping his hands and ordering everyone to brace for an immediate leave-taking for Chiang Mai. In a quarter of an hour, the Toyota sped out of Bangkok, bearing Charles, the Canadians, Ajay, and Marie-Andrée, pouting and surly.

  Just before they all left the apartment, Charles appeared in the Canadians’ bedroom with two large glasses of “medicine.” It was imperative that his guests consume the doses, he said, for the road was bumpy and their stomachs might begin to dance. Roger faked taking his, and his wife, Giselle, took a tiny sip. At that precipitous moment, Marie-Andrée called out from the living room and Charles went to see what she wanted. “Give me your glass,” ordered Roger of his wife. He dumped both glasses down the toilet. When Charles returned, he was pleased to see that his medicine had been drunk. “You’ll feel better, I promise you,” he said.

  Now, heading north, Charles drove expertly, dodging wild dogs, making idle talk, turning his head now and then to inspect the Canadians, asking how they felt, wondering how they could still be awake at such a late hour after their long siege of illness. But after four hours and more than two hundred miles, the Canadians were still wide awake and oblivious to the annoyance their chauffeur felt. Charles stopped the car at a garage and told Ajay to come with him to check their directions. The two men returned to the car looking grim. They had apparently been quarreling. Ajay’s manner was usually amiable, polite, the perfect second-in-command, for he worshiped Alain/Charles and hovered at his shoulder to do whatever was bidden. Occasionally he played with a switchblade knife, but there was no menace connected therein, more like a youngster demonstrating his skill.

  But as he got back into the car, Ajay was tight-lipped and solemn. “We took the wrong turn someplace,” snapped Charles. He was lost. The roads were dangerous at this time of night. It was almost 3 A.M. Signals changed. Back to Bangkok. The Canadians were disappointed but they did not protest. Nor did they realize it at this moment, but by staying awake and alert they, perhaps had saved their lives. Later on, as more of the story became known, they would be sure of it.

  Charles sailed into the Canadians’ bedroom with their morning medicine and asked courteously if they would mind being evicted—to a hotel, for only one night. An important “customer” was coming to discuss buying gems and there were too many sick people around. No privacy. Ajay and Monique would escort the dentist and his wife to a hotel and look after them.

  Roger considered the proposal and said, “That won’t be necessary. We’re feeling better.” He asked for his passport and traveler’s checks.

  These tropical illnesses are tricky, warned Charles. Relapses can occur. Bodies grow dehydrated. Convulsions set in. On the living room sofa, Vitali Hakim could have confirmed the prophecies. After sleeping for almost thirty hours, he awoke to find his legs turned to gelatin and his stomach pitching. The Turk had arrived at the apartment full of his customary juices, stories, magic tricks, and astrological readings. Now he was desperately sick. “If I throw up one more time,” he told one of the French youths, “I think I’d rather die.”

  The Canadians were taken to a cheap Bangkok hotel and installed in a room that Charles had prepaid. It filled up quickly. Monique and Ajay stood around awkwardly, like nervous guards, waiting for Charles to appear with instructions. Soon enough he arrived, with Vitali Hakim unsteadily beside him. The scenario had changed again. Now Charles had decided to go to the gem mines at Chanthaburi and the Turk was feeling well enough to go along. Vitali nodded trying to be pleasant despite his weakness. He was looking forward to the trip. Though he had been unable to find the two contacts from Burma, he obviously felt blessed that Alain Gauthier had dropped into his life. Not only was Alain solicitous concerning his health, he knew how to bargain for gems at the source. When Charmayne turned up, he would at least have a packet of precious stones for her to nurse back home to Ibiza.

  Charles made a little nod at Ajay, and the Turk was helped out of the room, downstairs, where he would wait in the Toyota. Charles had one last chore to attend to before he could leave for the mines. He commented that the Canadians were once again pale and shaky. Another dose of his medicine should clear that up quickly. He poured two large glasses—more than he had ever offered before—and handed them to the dentist and his wife. They stared glumly at the tumblers. Marie-Andrée exhorted them to obey. “Take the medicine,” she said. “He knows what’s best for you.”

  “I hate the taste,” said Giselle.

  Charles sat beside the beautiful young woman and put his arm around her. “You’re never going to get strong enough to leave Bangkok unless you take the medicine,” he insisted. Giselle sipped a few drops.

  But Roger refused. “It doesn’t work for us,” he said. “This stuff makes us even sicker.”

  Marie-Andrée took the bottle from Charles and poured herself a glass. She took
a little herself now and then, she said, just as insurance. Do as I do, she was saying, reminding the Canadians that she had been a nurse in Quebec. She often passed herself off as a nurse, even though her credentials had not extended beyond clerical duties.

  Giselle followed her lead and drank her medicine. Marie-Andrée took a large dose, then excused herself and went into the bathroom. Quickly the toilet flushed, but Roger thought he heard Marie-Andrée retching. At that, Roger put his glass down and refused to obey the doctor. Charles shrugged. He grew angry. If the dentist wanted to suffer a severe relapse and spend the winter in Bangkok throwing up, it was all right with him. Then he left, having more important fish to fry. The Turk was waiting downstairs in the car-two hours had passed—and they were going to the gem mines.

  Inside the cheap hotel room, Marie-Andrée sat quietly with her two charges. Giselle was sleepy and trying not to succumb to her heavy eyelids. Roger held his wife against his shoulder. “What’s happening to us?” he asked.

  “You’re sick,” answered Marie-Andrée.

  “But it shouldn’t be lasting this long,” said Roger. He and his wife had been suffering for almost three weeks, the length of time they had known Alain Gauthier and his wife. Just before she passed out, Giselle said to her husband, “I love you.” And he kissed her tenderly. When she fell asleep, he continued to hold her.

  Perhaps their devotion touched Marie-Andrée. Perhaps she was frightened. Perhaps she was not yet as sophisticated in these matters as Charles. Whatever, Marie-Andrée abruptly told the Canadians to come with her back to the apartment. The hotel room was a dismal place to spend the night. Roger agreed. He scooped up Giselle in his arms and carried her down the steps. In the taxi going back to the flat, Roger asked Marie-Andrée if she could return their passports and traveler’s checks. As sick as they were, he wanted to leave on a flight, any flight, this very night.

  That was impossible, said Marie-Andrée. In the morning, when Alain returned, everything would be given back to the Canadians. At that moment, the dentist noted that his hostess seemed torn between conflicting forces. She was. Committed to Charles, she was nonetheless deeply touched by the depth of the love that bound two fellow Canadians in jeopardy.

  Months later, an Interpol detective in Paris would study the case and wonder why in the name of God these poor people—all of them and those yet to come—didn’t figure out what was going on? Someone should have entertained suspicion, particularly with sick people scattered around the two apartments like casualties of war. The detective’s opinion was that the events occurred because of the innocence and naïveté of the victims, and the setting of the tragedies. Bangkok—strange, remote, exotic, a little frightening. “Those poor devils must have been grateful for any hand extended to them,” speculated the Interpol man. “Had these druggings occurred in New York or London, then the victims would have been able to put two and two together.” And there was an X factor—the power and persuasion of Charles Sobhraj.

  It was almost dawn when Charles and Ajay returned to the penthouse from their planned trip to the gem mines at Chanthaburi. As the trip takes six hours each way, it would have been impossible for them to leave past 10 P.M. and return before 6. Vitali Hakim was not with them.

  The dentist heard noises in the flat and went to the living room. Charles looked very tired. Ajay was disheveled, his hair uncombed for the first time that Roger could remember. Both men seemed to have been doing something physical—and wearying.

  “Where’s the Turk?” asked Roger pleasantly. “Did he buy out the place?” The dentist had liked Vitali and enjoyed his boisterous presence until illness felled him.

  The Turk, answered Charles, met some friends in Pattaya. His voice was terse. He did not apparently wish to speak on this subject. But Roger pressed. Why didn’t Vitali return to Bangkok? Charles shrugged. Apparently the Turk had decided on the spur of the moment to start traveling with these friends. He would not be coming back.

  “That’s strange,” thought Roger, keeping a comment to himself that almost came flying out of his mouth impulsively. He had just seen Vitali Hakim’s luggage and clothes. They were still in the apartment. That very minute. Why would he go away without them?

  When his wife awoke, Roger informed her that it was time to leave. Now. Even if it caused an ugly scene. While she packed, Roger summoned his strength and found his host, who was sitting at a desk examining stones, holding them up to a light and peering into their facets. Quietly, but firmly, the dentist asked for his money and travel documents.

  “I don’t think you’re recovered enough to leave,” said Alain, hardly glancing up from his work.

  “I think we are,” said Roger, trying to put steel into a voice that was tissue paper.

  “You must rest a few more days,” said Alain. And take more medicine. It was imperative to take the medicine.

  Suddenly, a voice interrupted. Marie-Andrée intruded, uncharacteristically. “Give them back to him,” she said. “Let them go home.” In her eyes were sadness and resolution.

  The Canadians flew out of Bangkok that night, so grateful to leave that it would be a day or two before they discovered that several blank pages had been torn out of their passports, and about half their traveler’s checks were missing as well. Later, they would count themselves lucky to have lost only paper—and a month of their lives.

  On the morning of November 29, 1975, a group of laborers were walking along a road near the Siam Country Club golf course a few miles outside the beach resort of Pattaya. A rising curl of smoke attracted their attention. It rose from a nearby field and seemed to have no purpose. One of the workers detoured into the field to have a look. Quickly he cried out. The others ran to see.

  A human body was smoldering. Most of it was ashes. A scrap of shirt was the only bit of clothing left unburned. On it was an exploding galaxy and a bit of the sign for Scorpio. It would take many months before an identification was made and authorities determined that the victim was a Turk named Vitali Hakim. He had been slammed in the head with a heavy object, probably a piece of lumber. Then, stunned, but still alive, he was drenched in gasoline and set afire. The pathologist who sifted through the remains commented, “It must have been an excruciating death. And it took at least two people to do it.”

  The apartment at Kanit House was beginning to show the wear of three months’ occupancy by “A. Gauthier, Gem Dealer,” and his entourage. Marie-Andrée decided to redecorate and pried enough bahts out of Charles for paint and brushes. She and Dominique spent several days applying a tasteful and muted beige to the living room walls. When Charles returned from a two-day trip to the gem mines he scowled. He did not like the color. He ordered the walls to be painted again. This time he selected the color. Blood red.

  Marie-Andrée found a demon mask in the Thieves’ Market and hung it on the wall, appropriate to the décor.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  December is the benevolent month in Southeast Asia. The monsoons are over, the earth green and new, the sun less cruel, the nights crisp enough for wool. But in Bangkok, in the apartment where Charles Sobhraj conducted a danse macabre, December began in horror and descended straightaway into hell.

  One midnight, two floors below, Belle heard yelling and slamming doors and sobbing from the penthouse. Curiosity overwhelmed her and she crept to her balcony to hear. Raoul’s voice commanded her back to bed. She obeyed, for she knew that the next day Monique would spill everything when they sunned beside the pool. Belle was the closest thing the Canadian girl had to a friend. And spill it she did, a torrent of pain and angry frustration.

  How could she have believed Alain Gauthier when he wrote her love letters and telegrams professing his passion and need for her? complained Monique. Why did she leave the security of home and work and family in Canada? Belle nodded; she had heard all of this before. But she was polite enough to listen. Monique seemed on the verge of revealing all, the secrets of Apartments 503 and 504. Oh, continued Monique, there were occasi
onal nights, rare as they were, when Alain held her and demonstrated a certain professional capacity for lovemaking. But there had never been two days back-to-back since her arrival in August, when she was certain that the man she loved wanted her for anything more intimate than cooking and ironing his clothes.

  But there was more than this familiar catalogue of frustration, all of which Belle had heard regularly. Her intuition suggested another woman. Was May still around? No, in fact May and Charles had recently staged a yelling match, the Thai girl shouting for all to hear one night, “You’re a liar! You make promises and break them! You cheat people! Nobody should trust you!” Even though he still saw May, it seemed likely that their relationship was finally what Charles had always deemed it—“business.”

  “Then what’s the problem?” asked Belle.

  “He’s got a new one,” sighed Marie-Andrée, anxious to describe her latest rival. She was even there when the first meeting took place, sensing instantly that Charles had found a new play toy. The girl was a Thai, barely twenty, impossibly beautiful, a student and part-time waitress at a hotel coffee shop. Dining with Marie-Andrée one evening, Charles began paying exceptional attention to the slim young girl whose unpronounceable name was about four inches long and who suggested that customers call her Suzy. She slid among her tables with the grace of a temple dancer, as softly as a fold of silk, shy, a giggler. When Suzy brought the check, Charles introduced himself under the name of “Alain” and presented his companion as “Andrée” and revealed they were newlyweds. Marie-Andrée’s mouth flew open, but no one saw it. The other two were busy staring at one another. Suzy was not comfortable in English, but she understood marriage, and she found herself envying this Western woman for having caught an attractive and sensuous man with Oriental blood in his veins.