Serpentine

by Thomas Thompson

  Enter now a key figure in the case, and an unlikely one at that. His name was Herman Knippenberg, second secretary of the Netherlands Embassy in Thailand, possessor of a boyish face with hair slicked down diplomatically, chipmunk teeth, and a sensual, fleshy caste. He looked rather like one of the younger town guilders in Rembrandt’s Night Watch, and had he lived in the seventeenth century, surely he would have been guardian of the strongbox. Not only was Herman honest, he was dogged to the point of nuisance. His intellectual credentials were strong: fluent in several languages, working in 1976 on a long-distance PhD from Johns Hopkins University in political science. The problem with Herman, his detractors said, was that he was querulous and abrasive, two qualities not calculated for diplomatic giant steps. Usually Herman said just what he wanted to say, and from time to time was reprimanded for bullheadedness.

  Why destiny chose to weave him into the tapestry of Charles Sobhraj was a question he did not explore. But before his involvement with the case was over, Herman found his marriage to a lovely and equally brilliant young woman named Angela severely shaken, his career in crisis, and his life in danger. It is fair to say that Herman was one of the good guys—and high time that one showed up.

  A routine request from The Hague to locate Henricus Bintanja and Cocky Hemker landed on Herman’s desk in early February, the kind of unimportant, pain-in-the-ass chore passed down to second secretaries. But Herman did not kiss it off; indeed he approached it with the approximate zeal he would have put into representing his government at a summit meeting. Within ten days, Herman had assembled three disturbing pieces of information:

  1. The missing young couple definitely entered Thailand, in early December, according to landing cards found in the immigration files at the Bangkok airport.

  2. Mail from home was waiting for the couple at the poste restante in Bangkok. It was never picked up. Strange.

  3. The passports of both Bintanja and Hemker were close to expiration. They should have come to the Dutch Embassy for renewal. They did not.

  All of this struck one practical Dutchman as being unusual behavior for two of his methodical countrymen. He then turned to the file of unidentified dead bodies that every foreign embassy keeps, news clippings and the like, in case something like this mystery turns up. At any given moment there are more than six hundred unidentified corpses in the Bangkok morgue, and it would be difficult not to mention gruesome to inspect them. But as Herman perused the clip file, he kept returning to the photograph and article concerning two charred corpses found outside Bangkok on December 16, roughly the time period when Bintanja and Hemker were supposed to be in Thailand. He telephoned the morgue and determined that the original belief that these remains were of an Australian couple was incorrect. The Australians had surfaced somewhere in the East, and the two burned bodies in Bangkok were still unidentified. On a hunch, Herman asked The Hague to forward dental records of Bintanja and Hemker. Then he located a Dutch woman dentist in Bangkok who was a Seventh-Day Adventist missionary. She agreed to undertake a grisly task. The Thai police dispatched a strong young officer to escort Herman and the woman dentist to the morgue, warning that the experience would be unpleasant.

  An understatement. When they entered the examining room of the police hospital morgue, the two bodies were laid out on tables. An overwhelming smell rushed at them in waves, mingling the sticky heat of Bangkok and the powerful fumes of Lysol and preservative. The corpses were scarcely more than chunks of charcoal hanging from exposed bones; with the passage of time, everything had shrunk and decomposed. The policeman assigned to assist Herman and the woman dentist promptly fainted, keeling over on the tile floor. Herman was almost grateful, for it gave him a reason to turn away from the horror spread before his eyes. The dentist went about her job with cool precision, so efficiently that it took her but a few minutes to make positive identification. Yes, she nodded. In her strong face was sudden sadness. The bodies were definitely those of Henricus Bintanja, who wanted to be a doctor, and his lover, Cornelia Hemker, a very good nurse.

  Anger, not sorrow, filled Herman, and from that plateau his rage would grow. When he returned to the embassy and made his report that would be cabled home to The Hague and thence to the families, Herman received a nod for his detective work. “Too bad about the kids” was the attitude. They must have encountered some native Thai bandits. Case closed. Now Herman could return to economic indicators and visa applications. Obediently Herman returned to his desk, but the stack of Indonesian newspapers he was required to cull somehow seemed unimportant. He suspected that unless somebody applied sufficient pressure to the Thai police, then the killer(s) of his two countrymen would go uncaught, unpunished.

  Nothing impulsive is appropriate in the diplomatic business, certainly not among the Dutch. Nonetheless Herman defied the protocol of his position and charged over to the Thai police Crime Suppression Bureau. Having no trouble sounding very official and ambassadorial, Herman presented his case. Two Dutch citizens had been brutally murdered in Thailand. Surely the Thai police would want to launch an immediate and massive search for the maniac who did this. In response, Herman received polite smiles—the patented kind Orientals give to Westerners—and nothing else. Although the officer indicated the matter would be studied, Herman left Crime Suppression Division knowing full well that he had not lit a fire.

  Any diplomatic officer worth his pinstripes would have let the matter drop at this time. A dossier would not be enriched by the notation that a representative of Queen Juliana was pressuring a foreign government’s police department. But Herman had no room for graceful withdrawal in his makeup. He decided to be his own detective, to build a case so compelling that the Thai police would be forced to act. But where to begin?

  He reread Cocky Hemker’s letter to her family, mailed from Hong Kong. The name “Alain Dupuis” leaped out at him. If indeed the murdered couple had kept their rendezvous with the gem dealer in Bangkok, perhaps he could provide leads as to their activities in the city. It shouldn’t be hard to locate “Alain Dupuis,” Herman reasoned. There couldn’t be many French gem dealers in Bangkok. But after checking with police, immigration authorities, the gem dealers’ association, and the French community, Herman came up zero. Puzzled, he sent a query to the Dutch Embassy in Hong Kong to check the guest ledger of the Hyatt Regency Hotel during the December period when he was supposedly in residence and entertaining the Dutch people. Back came an answer: Nobody named “Alain Dupuis” stayed in the Hyatt Regency during December. Now Herman’s curiosity was whetted. Did “Alain Dupuis” really exist? Or was he a fake man?

  Then, a break. Or a tease of fate. Whatever its origin, Herman was given a piece of interesting, albeit convoluted good fortune. One night he joined a friend named Armand from the Belgian Embassy for drinks. The colleague had a bit of delicious gossip to share. It seemed that one of the low-level diplomats in the Western community of Bangkok was caught up in a silly little scandale, the kind that sends shudders through the people of protocol. This young diplomat, according to Armand’s gleeful telling, was in a Bangkok hotel noted for its bar girls, lifting glasses with a tempestuous French businessman named Artur Gabreaux. The diplomat was a few sheets to the wind by curfew and made a lavish proposition to one of the bar girls, suggesting a fee far above market value for such services. Artur Gabreaux, quite drunk, criticized his companion for spoiling the market with such lavish payment. Hot words broke out. Soft punches missed. Soon thereafter an advertisement appeared in a Bangkok newspaper. Placed by the Frenchman, it stated that he had been insulted and he wished an apology. All it lacked was the name of his second and a choice of weapons.

  Hearing the tale, Herman laughed. Then, casually, he asked: What did this Artur Gabreaux do for a living? “Oil, exports, gems,” came the answer.

  “Gems?” echoed Herman. He wrote down two names on his cocktail napkin: “Alain Dupuis” and “Artur Gabreaux.” Both French. Both gem dealers. Curious.

  Quickly Herman ran a discre
et background check on Gabreaux, and for a few heady days he felt he had a promising suspect. In December, Gabreaux had been in Tokyo on business. Perhaps, theorized Herman, he stopped off in Hong Kong on his way back to Bangkok. Perhaps he met the Dutch people there. One more intriguing fact tantalized Herman: Artur Gabreaux reported his passport missing or stolen to the French Embassy in Bangkok, about the same time that the murders occurred.

  With that, Herman felt close to cracking the mystery. The way he interpreted it, this Gabreaux person was in Hong Kong, met Bintanja and Hemker, invited them to stay with him in Bangkok, murdered them, got nervous, reported his passport stolen so he could claim someone was impersonating him. Unfortunately, it was only conjecture. Word came down from indisputable sources that Artur Gabreaux was legitimate, well connected, had no police record, and aside from occasional emotional outbursts when too oiled with good whisky, was a solid citizen. Moreover, he had not been in Hong Kong during the critical period. He had flown directly from Tokyo to Bangkok.

  Up to this disappointment, Herman’s superiors at the embassy had tolerated their second secretary’s zestful detective work. But now that he was becoming troublesome, suspecting a prominent French citizen of double murder, he stood on the threshold of diplomatic embarrassment. Herman was summoned to a superior’s office and told, in stern language, to cease and desist. Herman’s response was characteristic of his nature:

  “Goddamnit, with all due respect, somebody’s got to do something. Two good kids—Dutch citizens—were brutally murdered. I want the bastard who did it. I want him hung—or shot.”

  Once more Herman was told to leave police matters to the police. And return posthaste to the duties for which his government employed him.

  Perhaps Herman would have bowed to his superior after this meeting, for he realized that his patience was very thin. But then he received a telephone call from an informant, one of the many tipsters he had all over the diplomatic community. The caller wanted to tell Herman that during the investigation of Artur Gabreaux another name had risen once or twice. And the funny thing about this other name was that it also was French, and also bore the initials “A.G.”

  “And who is this man?” asked Herman.

  “Somebody named Alain Gauthier,” was the answer.

  “And what does Alain Gauthier do for a living?” asked Herman.

  “Gem dealer.”

  Herman gripped the telephone tightly. “Do you have an address?” he asked, a current of excitement building within him.

  “Yes.”

  With that, Herman would one day recall, “I almost jumped through the ceiling. Somehow I knew we had our man.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  “Belle! Comment vas-tu?”

  She froze. The voice behind her was as unmistakable as the edge of a sharpened knife. She was sitting in the lobby of the Indra Hotel in Bangkok, waiting for a luncheon companion on the midday of February 13, 1976. There was nothing for her to do but turn around and smile and pray that her panic did not bleed through her false mask of friendship.

  Charles and Marie-Andrée greeted her warmly with abundant kisses and embraces. They seemed completely normal. No menace hid in their eyes; no blood dripped from their hands. They had returned to Bangkok after several weeks of travel and had decided to take a room in the hotel for a few days before returning to their apartment. This struck Belle as strange—Kanit House was not far away—but she gathered that Charles wanted to sample the climate before venturing back to his home turf.

  “Well, be sure and call when you get back to Kanit House,” murmured Belle, making fast excuse to leave their company. Charles stopped her. He gripped her arm. What was the hurry? They could all go home together.

  “But … but I have a lunch date,” stammered Belle.

  Charles said he and Marie-Andrée would be glad to wait.

  Later in the afternoon, sharing a taxi, Belle kept her hand on the door handle, prepared to leap out if necessary. And in the elevator rising to their apartments, her body wedged against Charles, her heart beat so loudly that it threatened to reveal her terror. But aside from a few more questions about the mysteriously vanished French boys—Dominique et al—Charles did not seem concerned. In fact, he invited Belle and Raoul for dinner that night. She declined, but she knew that the choice was either to resume her friendship with these people or else cut them off and arouse their suspicions. Each night thereafter she slept with a heavy chair propped against the door and a stomach heavily sedated with Valiums. Otherwise, she would have awakened a hundred times before dawn.

  Charles and Marie-Andrée had just come from Hong Kong, where, it would later be discovered, one of their more successful accomplishments was achieved. The victim was an American schoolteacher in his mid-thirties, a man from Iowa named Robert Paul Grainer. For years he had saved money for a trip around the world and was happy to be in Hong Kong for the Chinese New Year in January 1976. Grainer’s only misfortune was to push his way into a street crowd watching a lion dance. He found himself standing next to a friendly and helpful French-speaking couple who invited him to join them for a tour of the festive city, its skies erupting with Roman candles and exploding stars.

  The last thing Robert Grainer remembered was being in the couple’s room at the Sheraton and watching an American movie on television. Two days later he awoke. Wearing only his underwear, he staggered in shock along a corridor of the hotel, fell into a chambermaid’s arms, so disoriented that for several hours he could not remember his name or his citizenship. His own room, in another hotel, had been ransacked. Everything was gone—luggage, clothes, money, a letter of credit for $4,000, a valid round-the-world air ticket.

  “They were so nice,” Grainer told Hong Kong police. “Especially the woman. She was Canadian, and she spoke so longingly of going home …”

  In the dead of an early March midnight, a knock shattered Belle’s shallow sleep. She sat up in fear. The knock came again. It was time for Raoul to be home. Perhaps he had forgotten his key. Cautiously she opened the door, secured by a chain. A strange man stood on her threshold. A scream rose within her. The man smiled and quickly flashed his identification. He was from the Belgian Embassy and in his face were strength and legitimacy. “Don’t worry,” said the man. “I’m here to help you. Get ready in five minutes. We’re taking you and your husband to a safe house.”

  Belle began to stammer. The man bade her to obey. “We believe you,” he said. “It’s time to stop these killings.”

  Outside Kanit House, on a side street, a black Mercedes waited to speed the housewife and her husband to a secluded home in a remote section of Bangkok. Once there, a young, boyish man with a toothy smile opened the door in welcome. “My name is Herman Knippenberg,” he said, presenting his credentials. One of his tipsters had put him onto Belle and Raoul as being possible sources of information. Herman introduced a half-dozen other men in the room. They were all junior men from various Western embassies in Bangkok, a gutsy and risk-taking group who would soon call themselves the “Action Committee.”

  For the better part of two days and nights, Belle and her husband were “debriefed.” They told their story a hundred times, with Beethoven playing loudly from a stereo to confound bugs or eavesdroppers. Belle knew more than Raoul, and she told it well, a catharsis for her fear. She spoke of the young people who came and got sick and vanished, of the Dutch couple seemingly imprisoned, perhaps bound, of the passports she had glimpsed in Alain Gauthier’s portable safe. Herman was an excellent interrogator, dredging up bits and pieces of what seemed trivial—Marie-Andrée’s affection for her white fluffy dog, Frankie, for example. But later on, this would become a vital clue that would help connect the gem dealer and his girl friend to the drugging and robbing of the newly-wed Lapthorne couple from Australia.

  When Belle mentioned Alain’s sudden pre-Christmas trip to Katmandu, Herman snapped his fingers. His embassy duties included reading most English-language newspapers in Asia, and he instantly recalle
d an account of the two December murders in the Nepalese capital.

  At the end of the marathon, Herman thanked Belle for her courage. One of the other committee members asked her why she had not come forward with this horrible story earlier. “But I did,” said Belle. “In January I went to the British Embassy and they didn’t believe me. Neither did the French. I showed the Englishman a page from Cornelia Hemker’s diary.” Herman was furious. The next day he reported the cavalier attitude of the British to one of his superiors, who promptly rang an English counterpart to complain. “This is unbelievable,” said the Dutchman. “Don’t you people communicate with Common Market members?”

  Belle’s testimony was helpful and illuminating, but Herman knew that he needed much more before the Thai police could be persuaded to make arrests. “We’ve got to have photographs of these people, and a day-by-day account of what goes on up there,” he told Belle. “I know this is a lot to ask anybody, but you’re the only one who can do it.” Anxiously Belle looked toward her husband. Prudently he demanded to know what protection could the Action Committee offer?

  “I promise never to be more than five minutes away,” said Herman. “Everybody in this room will either come to your assistance instantly, or send security people from their embassies.” Raoul asked for a moment of privacy. He and Belle went to a corner and spoke in whispers. Watching them, Herman did not envy these people. Their lives had collided with what he believed to be a fiend—there was no other word in Herman’s vocabulary—and now their options were between slim and none. They were decent and lawful citizens, the chef and his wife, and now they were in jeopardy no matter what they did. Or did not do.

  Belle agreed to become a spy. Over the next several days, she kept a journal of everyone who rode the creaking elevator up to the fifth floor, of the tenants’ every exit and entrance. She visited Marie-Andrée often, using the pretense of girl talk or the need to borrow something, but in truth making mental notes of the apartment’s floor plan. Thus was Belle able to draw elaborate diagrams of the two apartments leased by Gauthier, with arrows marking strategic places such as where the safe was kept, where she had seen the big cardboard box that seemed to contain documents of the dead people. On secluded balconies of the apartment house Belle hid and snapped long-lens photographs. Marie-Andrée was easy to capture, lying as she so often did beside the pool. She caught Ajay Chowdhury emerging from the garage. But Charles eluded her lens, save for a blurred and half-figure image, as if he could sense and confound the offending instrument aimed at him.