Serpentine

by Thomas Thompson

  Then Ajay Chowdhury materialized, having been dispatched on a business errand by Charles to the jewel mines of Chanthaburi. Somehow Ajay had managed to accumulate a packet containing a few hundred carats of rubies and sapphires. Of middling quality, they nonetheless gave Charles the notion for a new venture—one that would reap substantial profit and at the same time allow the group to remove themselves from the attention of Asian police. They would all fly to Europe, explained Charles, where the stones could be sold for perhaps as much as $40,000. And once there, Charles promised, Marie-Andrée could obtain a new passport from the Canadian Embassy. “If you really want to,” he told her, “you can fly home to Canada.” The promise was so seductive that Marie-Andrée forgot about Suzy.

  As they flew out of Asia, Marie-Andrée noticed that Ajay Chowdhury was not present. She knew that Jean Dhuisme had taken a separate flight, with instructions to rendezvous in Geneva. But what happened to the handsome Indian who had been so devoted to Charles—and to her—since he became part of their lives the previous autumn? Would he meet them in Geneva? Or Paris? Charles brushed off the question, ignoring Marie-Andrée, burying his nose in a paperback mystery. “Where is Ajay?” pressed Marie-Andrée. The night before their departure, the two men were overheard speaking hotly about money and precious stones, but it had not seemed overly serious.

  Lifting his attention from his book, Charles silenced Marie-Andrée. His eyes told her not to ask those questions again. Marie-Andrée shut up. She assumed the Indian had fallen from grace. Several months later, when police were assembling the tale and its characters, the theory was that Ajay had filled his purpose, that he was dead, that he was buried in a Malaysian jungle. Whatever his destiny, he was not heard from, nor seen, again.

  En route to Paris, Charles elected to stop over briefly in Karachi, the port city of Pakistan. The unexpected delay irked Marie-Andrée, but she was so thrilled to be on the final leg of her bizarre odyssey that she did not protest. At least their direction was west.

  Karachi has a spectacular beach at Banks Bay with a colony of foreigners living in cheap huts and bathing in the Arabian Sea. Mostly young and frugal travelers, they were under frequent scrutiny by fanatically puritanical Moslem authorities. One morning Charles took Marie-Andrée to Banks Bay, where they strolled and sunned. There Charles discovered a promising young woman stretched out on the sand. Blond and robust, she wore a tiny gem in her nostril and was possessed of an earthy sensuality. Her name was Mary Ellen Eather, a dropout nurse from Australia, running away from a broken love affair.

  Sensing Marie-Andrée’s hostility, Charles insisted that he had no interest in the girl save as a possible employee when and if he returned to Asia from Europe. If she were bathed, and coiffed, dressed and bejeweled, mused Charles, she could turn the head of a maharaja. Quickly Charles introduced himself, went to Mary Ellen’s hut for tea, made his basic “courier” pitch, received mild interest in return. “We are on our way to Europe for business,” said Charles. “We will be back through here in a few weeks. Can you be ready to leave—quickly?”

  Mary Ellen nodded. She needed work. She was broke. “I’ll wait for you,” she said, not really expecting more to come of it.

  As the plane lifted out of Karachi and headed across the great body of Asia, bound for Switzerland, Charles was in fine spirits. In his pockets were gems worth $40,000, and waiting for him in Karachi was a ripe young woman of immense potential.

  Alas, he had also, as time would tell, made a grave misjudgment of a woman’s character.

  Resembling more an affluent couple on a grand tour of Europe than a man and woman suspected of multiple murder, Charles and Marie-Andrée flew to Geneva using stolen passports and credit cards and were met by Jean Dhuisme in a terribly expensive new Citroën—silver and gleaming like the Swiss franc. Using the method he had once mentioned to Belle, Charles guided his associates across the border into France, then across the awakening greenness to Paris.

  His first call was to Félix d’Escogne. His patron, ex-prison visiteur and “best friend,” was startled to hear the voice that had plagued him for a decade. What was Charles doing in Paris? Unspoken was the reminder that Charles had been officially thrown out of France years ago, with his citizenship revoked. And he was still wanted on old criminal charges. Nonetheless, Félix invited Charles to his apartment and greeted him warmly. Immediately Félix observed that Charles was neither attentive nor particularly proud of his “bride.” Marie-Andrée was left to fend for herself in a corner chair—like a senile old aunt—and not brought into the conversation unless Félix asked her something. Quiet, shy, and in some sort of anguish, she made scant impression at all on d’Escogne. Rather rudely, thought Félix, Charles asked if there was news of Hélène and his daughter, now nearing six. “None,” answered Félix. “That chapter is closed, Charles.”

  Was there news from the rest of Charles’ family? “I really haven’t kept up,” answered Félix. But he did possess one piece of good information. The half-brother, André, had been freed from the Turkish prison in what he called a “miracle.” After serving only a few months of the eighteen year sentence, for the Istanbul Hilton crimes, André was pardoned as the first act of a new government that ordered a general amnesty.

  Charles was delighted. Where was his little brother?

  “I don’t know,” answered Félix, fudging. In truth he knew well that André was in Paris, looking for work, trying to shape a new life, apparently chastened by his swim in murky waters beside Charles. Félix prayed the younger man would not encounter the half-brother who almost destroyed him.

  The next day, Marie-Andrée went to the Canadian Embassy and stood outside for a long while. Had she summoned the courage to cross the threshold and tell a clever lie, or even confess the truth and beg for mercy, perhaps destiny would have permitted a return to the healing of anonymous life in the little town on the wrong bank of the St. Lawrence. But at this crisis point she could not locate the will to act. Perhaps another day. She found a taxi and bade the driver to hurry her back to Charles.

  During her absence, Charles was alone with Félix. Privacy did not ease the discomfort felt by both men. Félix had quickly grown weary of trying to smoke Charles’ pipe dreams. He suspected that something was gravely wrong. “How is your life, Charles?” he asked. “I mean, let’s have the truth. How is it really?”

  “My life is very complicated,” answered Charles. “Many people depend on me. Many people need me.” Then, as if to blunt further intrusions, Charles telephoned Jean Dhuisme and instructed him to bring the silver Citroën. They must be leaving. A chasm had developed between Charles and Félix. It could not be bridged.

  When they left, Félix d’Escogne stood at the window of his flat and watched the expensive car hurry away. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. The dark forces still raged within his nemesis. “Adieu,” he murmured. “Adieu, Charlot.” And he made a mental note to change the locks on his doors.

  In a Paris suburb, Hélène’s mother was dying. Her family gathered to attend her last hours. Exhausted after the long flight from her new home in the United States, Hélène sat beside her mother’s bed until the others insisted she slip away for a little sleep. As she left the hospital she heard the familiar voice behind her “Chérie,” said Charles, “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  Hélène whirled and tried to be composed. How had he found her? She tried to run for help, but Charles gripped her arms and led her toward a cafe. They ordered apéritifs, spoke routinely for a few minutes. Hélène told Charles of her new life. She was remarried. To an American. Nice man. Good to Shubra. A kind, lawful, hard-working, legitimate businessman.

  Hélène begged him to forget her. She had a new name, a new world, no one knew of her past. “What of my daughter?” demanded Charles. Hélène nodded. He had a right to know of Shubra. She produced a recent snapshot, the child now radiantly beautiful, brunette, a coquettish smile, a face of elegance and cheer.

  “Does she reme
mber me?” asked Charles.

  Hélène shook her head. “I have another child, too,” she informed him. Both of her daughters recognized only their American father.

  She rose to leave; a taxi stood empty outside the cafe. Perhaps she could escape. Charles spoke quietly, but his words contained a threat. Someday, he warned, his daughter would know her real father, acknowledge her real blood.

  Hélène cried out, “If you love her, leave us alone!”

  “I think you still love me,” he taunted. “Isn’t that so?”

  She freed herself and ran to the taxi. Charles did not follow.

  She was crying; Charles took heart in that.

  “Mama?”

  “Who is this?” Song did not recognize the voice on the telephone that had summoned her from her garden on a fine spring morning in Marseilles. She had been pruning her lemon trees when the call came; she rushed inside so that the noise would not awaken her husband and set off a tirade.

  “It’s Charles, Mama.”

  Charles! What was he doing in Marseilles? Song had not heard from, or in truth barely thought of her firstborn son, in years. Her assumption was that he was in jail—somewhere.

  Just beyond the half-century mark, Song was an alluring woman, still given to tight dresses with slits and brightly painted toenails and large quantities of jewelry that filled her arms and neck. A few crinkles marked her dark eyes, but her almond skin was clear and soft, and when she wore pedal pushers and a peasant blouse to the outdoor market, men turned in approval. Now, hurriedly, she dressed in a red silk gown and splashed perfume on her shoulders and put a fresh yellow rose in her hair. She stood at her window and watched a long silver Citroën stop outside her tiny house. Out of it bounded Charles, dressed like a model in a Paris fashion magazine, carrying an attaché case and looking like a man whose life careened from private jet to corporate boardrooms.

  Song rushed to kiss her son and he held her tightly. He whispered in her ear, “My friends are coming in. I want you to tell them you are my wife, not my mother.”

  “Your wife?”

  “Please do as I say, Mama.”

  But once Marie-Andrée and Jean Dhuisme were inside and accepting drinks from Song, the strange order never was mentioned again. Whether Charles was playing some cruel trick on Marie-Andrée or else giving vent to a chronic fantasy, Song never knew. It simply became another entry in the troubling book of memories she had for her firstborn child.

  The visitors stayed for three days, three unpleasant days. Song disliked Marie-Andrée intensely, found her rude, lazy, and given to lying on the daybed in the living room and dispensing orders. Get me a Coke. Get me a tissue. Get me a pillow. Get me breakfast. The house was filled with conspiratorial whispers. Song would enter a room and find Charles and Marie-Andée in the midst of an animated conversation which would immediately cease and be replaced by false smiles. “Charles was constantly on the telephone,” Song remembered later on. “There was always talk of money—and gems—and airplane schedules.” The third member of the group, Jean Dhuisme, was very polite and flattering to Song, but she wondered why a solid, educated family man would be clinging to the dangerous coattails of her son.

  Alphonse Darreau could not tolerate all the commotion in his home. The sound of a bird singing could drive him into intense pain and anger. Three visitors who were constantly on the telephone and slamming doors brought him to the brink of total collapse. On the fourth day, Song went to her son and told him to leave. Hotels were nearby—and inexpensive. She gathered that despite the rich clothes and fancy automobile parked outside Charles was in need of money. Marie-Andrée had even asked to borrow twenty francs to buy cosmetics.

  The eviction notice broke the dam of hurt and anger pent up in Charles. His mother, he charged, had rejected him all his life. “You never loved me,” he accused. “I could feel it as a child.”

  Song shook her head. “I loved you the most of all,” she countered. “But I never knew how to show it.” Once, she pointed out, she had bribed a newspaper reporter to keep his name out of the paper. “That wasn’t to help me,” said Charles bitterly. “That was to protect your name.”

  A lifetime of grievances spilled out of Charles, lashing his mother like strokes from a whip. She had abandoned him in Saigon, she made him feel the “outsider,” she exiled him to boarding school, she locked him in his room, she tied him up with rope, she threw him across half the world. “Whenever I needed you, Mama, you were not there. That is my legacy from you.”

  Song would not accept any of it. “Leave this house and get out of my sight,” she ordered. “The reason I have such a tiny house is that I had to pay so many lawyer bills and stowaway fares for you.”

  Marie-Andrée tried to be peacemaker. She suggested they take leave. Song watched her son hurry toward the Citroën and she cried, “Don’t come here again! Forget that you have a mother!”

  “What is there to remember?” Charles shot back. The silver car dug its tires into the dirt road and disappeared in a cloud of reddish dust.

  Sometime later, Song received an officious letter from a Marseilles lawyer. It stated that one Charles Sobhraj had swindled a woman in a jewelry deal recently in the city, and he was now being sought. Unless he presented himself, charges of grand theft would be filed with the police.

  Song read the letter many times and carried it inside her blouse so that no one could find it. Then she wrote back a simple reply. “The name of Charles Sobhraj is not known to me. He is not a member of my family.”

  Thus rejected, in his view, by his best friend, his first love, and his mother, Charles ordered Jean Dhuisme to turn the Citroën toward the East. And Marie-Andrée, out of wasted love, or fear, or sympathy, or perhaps the promise of more adventure and money, took her seat beside him. Once again she would forget about Canada.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  As ostentatious a choice of chariots as Hannibal’s elephant, the silver Citroën flashed across half the world, through villages in Turkey and Iraq and Pakistan so primitive that a bicycle would bring people running from their huts to look. The journey must have been tense. All three passengers must have panicked at the sight of a policeman or border guard, wondering if just beyond the next curve in the road was a barricade. But this was not true. Later investigation revealed that the trip was quick—three weeks—and comfortable, the Citroën being celebrated for the soft embrace of its cushions, with French disco music serenading the soon-to-be accused killer, his lovesick woman, and the foolish designer.

  By early June, the trio reached Karachi, where, surprisingly, Mary Ellen Eather was still stretched out on the sand, stoned but ready and willing to find a seat in the Citroën. And thus they were off, a handsome quartet on holiday, bound for Thailand.

  Just outside of Karachi they finally encountered a roadblock—of sorts. Marie-Andrée was browsing through a stack of magazines and newspapers that Charles had purchased. Thumbing idly through Asia Week, she came across an article that made her blood turn cold. There, in black and white, the horrors were made real, for all the world to see, like a deadly spider suspended in a transparent cube. It was complete—names, dates, deaths, and the stomach-churning news that Thai police were preparing murder warrants for the arrests of “Alain Gauthier” and his girl friend, “Monique,” believed to be a Canadian nurse. She threw the article into Charles’ lap and he perused it while driving. No sign of concern, not the barest trace, came to his face. All he did was shrug and whisper, so that the others in the back seat could not hear, “It’s a bunch of lies. They just make this stuff up to sell newspapers.”

  “But what are we going to do?” whined Marie-Andrée.

  Charles smiled. His name was not really Alain Gauthier, nor was hers Monique. Why worry, then? Police were looking for other people. But there were photographs of Charles and Marie-Andrée! How could they avoid getting arrested by some ambitious and alert border guard? “Trust me,” said Charles. “This is Asia. I know how to operate in the Asi
an way.” He dictated an immediate change of itinerary. Instead of Thailand, they would go to India. Rest. Take stock. Make some money. It seemed of no more importance to Charles than a rock that had tumbled into his path, easily stepped around. After India, they would either return to Bangkok if the heat had cooled, or proceed to Taiwan. Or the Philippines. Marie-Andrée begged Charles not to re-enter India. She had a premonition that trouble was waiting there.

  “Go to sleep,” he countersuggested. He threw the article out the window, somewhere near the Pakistani-Indian border.

  Looking back, and applying the standards of American journalism, it seems incredible that not a word concerning the suspected killers reached public print until well over half a year following the Thailand murders. In May 1976, Herman Knippenberg received a call from a Bangkok Post reporter who had heard rumors of the Action Committee and its sleuthing. He wanted an interview. Cautious now, several times burned, Herman declined, trying to throw the reporter off the track. He was well aware that foreign service officers are not supposed to get their names in the paper unless they have completed a treaty for cotton tariffs or have thrown an especially good party for the birthday of Queen Juliana. But then he began to chew on the matter and decided that if nothing else, a newspaper account might give warning to Gauthier & Company, and perhaps to potential victims.

  On May 7, the following headline stretched in sensation across eight columns of the Bangkok Post:

  VICIOUS FOREIGN KILLERS MAY BE INVOLVED

  YOUNG DUTCH COUPLE WERE BURNED ALIVE

  English language newspapers in the Far East are rarely more than sycophants for their governments, but the Post showed remarkable courage, going out on a very slender limb. The article told of “horrific evidence” that had been uncovered in the mysterious adjoining apartments in Kanit House, and that after the deaths of the two Dutch young people, “Gauthier was seen returning to the apartment carrying a gasoline can.”