Each night Belle reported to the Action Committee, now meeting at Herman’s own home, delivering whatever she had learned. At every session, Belle was asked if Alain was catching on. Not that she knew of, answered Belle, who, in truth, was enjoying the danger and intrigue of her adventure. Both Alain and Marie-Andrée seemed normaux to Belle, save a distinctive hardening in the Canadian girl’s manner. She was growing, in Belle’s eye, tough and cynical. One afternoon Belle was witness to a flash quarrel between the couple in which Alain accused Marie-Andrée of stealing a few gems from his strongbox. Readily, almost eagerly, she admitted it. Belle told the committee that Marie-Andrée snapped angrily at Charles: “Yes! Absolutely! I’ve been with you almost a year and what do I have to show for it? If I’d stayed in Canada, I would have made a salary. Here I work harder—I’m the perfect slave!—and I get nothing. You’re damn right I took them. I’ll take whatever I can get.”
Belle next reported the arrival of a new man who seemed neither potential customer nor victim. In fact, he appeared miscast, completely out of his element. He was a French businessman named Jean Dhuisme, about thirty by Belle’s guess, with a prissy mustache and a weary expression and eyes as sad as a basset hound’s. In brief conversation, Belle discovered him to be quiet, shy, a well-educated architect who had made substantial money by purchasing old houses outside Paris and remodeling them. He had a wife and a child in Paris and did not appear to have a larcenous or murderous bone in his body. Yet he seemed to be a valued addition to the entourage who ate and slept in the apartment and often left with Alain on “business.” Ajay Chowdhury, noted Belle, was not overjoyed at the arrival of Jean Dhuisme. His stature was lessened, his role as second-in-command to Alain seemed usurped. Dhuisme had come to the Far East to buy fabrics and objets d’art for his remodeling business, and at a hotel bar in Bangkok encountered Charles Sobhraj. Obviously he succumbed to oft-sung songs of glitter and wealth, for he abandoned plans to return to Paris and moved into Kanit House. He also loaned enough money to Charles to lease office space at a respectable Bangkok building. In early March, Belle heard continuing talk in the apartment about a planned “grand opening” of Gauthier’s long-dreamed-of jewelry store.
“I don’t understand why a man like Jean Dhuisme is attracted to Gauthier,” said Belle to her husband. “He seems too sensible to fall for his sales pitch.”
Raoul did not find it unusual. Not at all. “It’s the lure of a fast buck,” he suggested. “Nobody is immune to that disease.”
Herman hardly slept, his juices at full flow. He was consumed with the case, so much so that he usually reported for work at the embassy with flaming eyes from lack of rest. Pleased with Belle’s sneak photography, he asked if she dared slip a small 35-mm camera into her purse and attempt to take pictures inside Gauthier’s lair. “Don’t try it if there’s the slightest bit of danger,” counseled Herman. Belle answered sensibly, “Of course there’s danger, but I’ll see if it’s possible some morning when Alain is gone.”
The next day Belle waited at her window until she saw Gauthier and his new adjutant, Jean Dhuisme, leave Kanit House. Then she hurried upstairs unannounced to take coffee with Marie-Andrée. While there she slipped into the bedroom on the pretense of using the toilet. With trembling hands she hurriedly snapped photos of a pile of odds and ends in a corner. Clearly visible in the developed picture was what appeared to be Cornelia Hemker’s brown leather shoulder bag. That might be a valuable piece of hard physical evidence, mused Herman after congratulating Belle. He asked if she could steal it on her next visit. “It’s too risky,” she said. “I think they may be watching me. When I came out of the toilet after taking the pictures, Marie-Andrée was looking at me curiously. Maybe I’m imagining it.”
On March 10, Belle dropped by the apartment for morning coffee and encountered Charles hurrying out. She overheard him murmur something to Marie-Andrée about packing and reservations. When he was gone on his morning prowl of the city, Belle casually asked Marie-Andrée if the couple were going away. “Who knows?” answered the Canadian girl testily. “He changes his mind ten times between breakfast and lunch.” Yes, they had been discussing a trip to Malaysia. But she would not believe it until the airplane left the ground.
Belle fidgeted a few moments, then “remembered” an important appointment. Fairly flying out of Kanit House, she raced on foot to the Dutch Embassy to tell Herman. He was stunned at the news. Their case was growing, promising, but not yet strong enough to throw a rope around anybody’s neck. Nonetheless he had no other choice. He had to move now, this instant, or else risk losing the suspects. Cursing, he dialed the Crime Suppression Bureau, got through to a General Suwit, and put on a voice equivalent to that used by United Nations delegates outraged by territorial encroachment. A gang of killers was operating brazenly in Thailand, revealed Herman, knocking off visitors and threatening to destroy the valuable tourist trade. The general was impressed enough by Herman’s story to send over a pair of junior officers. They listened attentively to the story, read Herman’s meticulous almost hour-by-hour report of his investigation, looked at Belle’s photographs, perused autopsy reports and diagrams. When they were done, they looked up, impressed. Herman said, softly, “Raid the bastards.”
They made plans until late in the night, Herman and his committee and the Thai police. It was a time of supreme excitement.
The next afternoon, at the stroke of four, seven Thai policemen rode the elevator to the fifth floor of Kanit House. One was wearing a paratrooper’s uniform and on his feet were thick-soled shoes capable of kicking down a door, if necessary. A few blocks away, in his office at the Dutch Embassy, Herman waited, staring at the telephone. The strategy had been rehearsed a dozen times. As soon as police broke into the apartment and arrested the suspects and took them away, one of the officers would call Herman and put Act Two in effect. At that moment, Herman, his wife Angela, and Belle would enter the apartment and fine-tooth-comb the rooms, searching for evidence. They were more familiar with what might be found than the police. The legality of such a joint undertaking might be arguable, but Herman cared only that the objects of his fanatic attention did not manage to squeeze out of custody for lack of proof.
As Herman watched his telephone, and waited, he fingered the small weapon that he would carry in his pocket. It was a gun called “Cobra,” so named for its three-holed shaft, like the mouth and fangs of Asia’s most deadly serpent.
It was not necessary for the paratrooper to kick down the door of Charles Sobhraj. It was standing wide open. When the seven officers rushed in with drawn guns, they encountered a scene of domestic tranquillity. In a chair, Marie-Andrée was reading philosophy. Nearby Charles was sitting at the kitchen counter, working on his gems, holding up stones to a work light and examining their character. At first sight of the police, Charles thought it was a robbery and leaped up in a karate stance to fight. But when the invading force yelled, “Police!” Charles simply turned and murmured to Marie-Andrée, “Call me Robert.” Apparently he made a snap decision to try and pass himself off as Robert Grainer, the American whose passport he had stolen in Hong Kong.
For three hours the raiding party turned Charles’ apartment upside down, scattering papers, stripping bed linens, pulling pots from the kitchen shelves. Marie-Andrée was sobbing, Charles protesting bitterly the “barbaric” and “illegal” raid, demanding to see a search warrant. Didn’t the police realize he was a responsible American citizen, in Bangkok to do “business” and enrich Thailand’s economy? Shortly after 7 P.M., the police took the suspects and the portable safe to headquarters. The safe resisted their attempts to open it on the spot. And no one thought to telephone Herman unil 10 P.M. For six hours he sat in his office stewing, pacing, fingering the gun, resisting the impulse to rush over and see what in hell was going on.
Finally, his phone rang. Herman snatched it eagerly. On the line was a member of the Thai police posse. His English was broken, but his message was clear. And shocking. The conv
ersation, as Herman would remember it, went like this:
“Have you got them?” asked Herman excitedly.
“Yes, they’re here now,” said the officer. “Two men and a woman.”
“Well, what’s happening to them?”
“There’s a mixup, I’m afraid,” said the officer. “The man you said was Alain Gauthier turns out to be an American named Robert Paul Grainer.”
“An American!” Herman’s voice was incredulous.
“Yes, an American.” The Thai cop said he was looking at the passport that very moment, and it was genuine and it showed that Grainer had been in Sri Lanka at the time of the Dutch murders in December.
“What did you find in the apartment?” begged Herman.
“Nothing of interest.”
Herman began to stammer. “How do you know the passport is real?” In times of stress, his words stuck together and now his anger was mounting.
“Because we checked it.”
Herman felt reeling disappointment. This couldn’t be! Too much work had gone into building a house of brick only to have it come crashing down like a thatched hut at the first stirring of a new wind. “This man deals in stolen passports,” he fairly yelled. “He changes his identity like I change shirts. I urge you, I beg you—check him out further. Get somebody from the United States Embassy over there!”
The officer responded politely. “We have checked the passport. The decision has been made to send these people home until tomorrow.”
Herman almost dropped the phone. “Send them home! My God, that’s that last you’ll ever see of them!”
The officer hastened to explain. No one had been able to open the safe (presumably due to the mutilation of the lock committed by Yannick on the December night when he first told Belle of his suspicions). It was agreed that everyone would reassemble the next morning at ten-thirty when a police safe expert would be available.
“What if there’s forty-five pounds of heroin in that safe right now?” demanded Herman. “Do you really think they’ll be back tomorrow? What if there are two dozen stolen passports belonging to corpses?”
“They’ll be back,” said the Thai. “They promised. We confiscated their passports. They can’t go anywhere.”
Herman made one last plea. At least keep “Robert Grainer” and his friends in custody until someone from the U.S. Embassy could be found to determine the validity of the passport. The officer refused. “The general has personally ordered their release,” he said. “We cannot do anything else.”
The line went dead. Herman stared at the telephone dully. But he was not yet ready to give up. For two hours he searched the city by phone trying to locate Bob Jacobs, a consular officer at the American Embassy who had been an occasional member of the Action Committee. Jacobs was working on the disappearance and death of Jennie Bolliver. He had been interested in Herman’s snooping, but he was not as consumed by the case as his Dutch colleague. Near midnight Herman reached Jacobs and said, “The man they arrested carries an American passport in the name of Robert Paul Grainer. Either Alain Gauthier stole his passport and is using it, or else Robert Paul Grainer is murdering people.” The development was interesting enough for Jacobs to promise and dispatch someone from his office to Thai police headquarters on the morn.
Then Herman called Belle and told her of the bizarre developments. She already knew. She had heard the suspects return to Kanit House. Lights burned even now in their apartment. “They’re probably destroying evidence,” said Herman morosely. Belle did not care about evidence. She was terrified. Half of her furniture was piled against the front door. It was her intention to drink coffee until sunrise, and then, if push came to shove, flee Bangkok on the first flight.
With composure and an attitude of substantial annoyance, Charles appeared as ordered the next morning at police headquarters. Marie-Andrée and Ajay were at his side. The police locksmith broke open the small safe. It yawned empty. Nothing was inside. Charles nodded and rose. Could he go now? An important luncheon meeting must be attended. Impatiently he tapped on his gold watch. Then an American strolled into the Crime Suppression Bureau. He was Sam Anson, from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, one of thirty agents on continual duty in Bangkok, headwaters for a river of heroin that flowed from Asia to Europe and America. Anson scrutinized the U.S. passport—Charles had substituted his own photograph—and eyed its owner, “Robert Paul Grainer.” Casually, Anson asked several questions, all of which Sobhraj/Gauthier/Grainer answered helpfully. He offered himself as a language teacher; he had emigrated from Asia to the United States as a small child; he now lived in Iowa. He had no idea why the Thai cops were hassling him, but he was delighted to encounter a representative of his own government. Surely this unpleasant mess was now straightened out.
But Sam Anson had one more question. Where was Grainer’s home town? Quickly Charles replied, “Oak Park.” That was a blunder. In his homework, Charles had correctly memorized the street address in Grainer’s home town, but at this tense moment he had mistakenly given it as the city where he lived.
“I think something fishy’s going on here,” said Anson to the Thai chief investigator. “The passport looks funny, but I can’t be sure. It’s not my department. Keep this guy on ice until somebody from Consular can get over and check him out.”
An hour later, when a U.S. consular representative arrived to examine the passport, the three suspects were nowhere to be found. Charles and his companions had been instructed to sit quietly on a bench in the corridor outside the Crime Suppression Bureau. Nobody watched them. The hallway was busy, with police and clerks and complaining citizens bustling to and fro. To request Charles Sobhraj to sit on a bench and await further investigation was like ordering a bird to stop flying. When the suspects were discovered suddenly missing from their bench, the not-overly-chagrined police theorized they simply got up and strolled out—against orders. And by nightfall, the gang, not unexpectedly, was fleeing the country.
When Herman received the incredible news, he crashed his fist onto the desk. “I can’t believe the Thais let these people get away,” he told his wife. “I wonder how many more people are going to die!”
Angela Knippenberg shared her husband’s crushing disappointment, yet she was also relieved. For weeks her marriage had been dominated by talk of death. Pictures of corpses littered her table. Ghosts of the murdered young haunted her rooms. She told Belle in a private moment that even her tears had to be hidden from Herman because she believed in what he was trying to do and did not want her pain to inhibit his cause. Rumbles were being picked up that Herman was the subject of derisive cocktail party talk. And now that he had pointed an accusing finger at someone who Thai police said was the wrong man, and an American at that, Herman’s career was in jeopardy. An erroneous rumor had even leaked out that the Action Committee had discussed hiring a hit man to assassinate Alain Gauthier. Indeed one of the junior diplomats had mentioned such a possibility, but the idea was flip, made in jest. Never before in their marriage had Herman and Angela quarreled, but lately they had begun snapping at one another, weary and exhausted from his obsession with murder.
Herman was summoned to the decorous office of the Netherlands Ambassador to Thailand. The dressing down was elegant, but its intent clear: Herman was tired, Herman was overworked. It would be appropriate for Herman to take a brief “leave of absence,” get out of town for a while, find some sun, catch some fish. This Herman translated correctly to mean: Stop Playing Detective and Stop Making a Fool of Yourself.
At that moment, Herman’s temptation was to resign. The thought had occurred to him before. Frustration had been his reward for trying to solve the murders of two Dutch citizens. He told his boss, “We are supposed to look after the interests of our people abroad … How can we stand by and let our citizens get popped off without doing something? Those kids were valuable. One was going to be a doctor. The other was a nurse. They weren’t hippies. We educated them, maybe they would have made a contributi
on to our world … I’m not a moralist, but this is too much for me to stomach …”
Nonetheless, directed the senior man, Dutch interests would best be served by Herman’s discreet withdrawal from Bangkok for a while. That night, very upset, Herman typed up a thirty-page report documenting his committee’s efforts and dispatched it around to the Western embassies. He had the notion that other bodies were probably buried in Southeast Asia, the remains of people whose last moments were spent in the company of the man he knew as Alain Gauthier. Then Herman left town, as directed, feeling his ears burning, like a child sent to his room.
During Herman’s enforced holiday, the question that tormented him most was: How did Charles Sobhraj and the others manage to stroll casually out of police headquarters? A few days later Belle learned the answer.
Her telephone rang one afternoon and on the line was Charles. His voice was calm, he spoke warmly. He revealed that his group was in Malaysia, lying low until the heat cooled in Bangkok. Belle listened in astonishment and later told Herman what was said. Her recollection of Charles’ version:
“The Bangkok police are crazy. They accused me of robbing and drugging people. If only they knew how many people I nursed back to health! … Somebody must have made a false complaint. It might have been a customer who lost $18,000 worth of sapphires. A massage girl probably robbed him … Well, don’t worry about us. We’ll be back soon … I gave the grand chef some money to weaken his memory … Soon everything will be just as it was …”
Serpentine Page 49
