Occasionally, police came by and arrested someone for being naked, or for smoking hash openly in the town. But these unpleasantries were washed away by such events as Christmas 1975, when the Royal Rock and Roll Hut contained two thousand young people, crowded around a Christmas tree built from bamboo, with a gigantic cloud of hashish smoke hovering overhead like fallout from a bomb. The party went on for days, warm days, golden days, with crisp nights perfect for campfires and for lovers on the soft sand.
Later, there came an ugly period, a drug war. “The vibes turned evil,” remembered Barbara. She hitchhiked to Bombay, intending to find work sufficient to finance a venture into Thailand and Malaysia. Two minor tragedies befell her in quick order. The first came when she foolishly left her remaining money, $300, in her rucksack at a student hostel. She only went down the hall for a wash, but when she returned, every penny she had was stolen. Then, while walking outside in heavy grief over her loss, a monsoon broke from the skies and drenched her, and her passport. Barbara took the wilted, sopping document to the British Embassy and asked for a replacement. She was told it would cost 250 rupees, an impossible sum. Could she pay it later? No. Could she sweep floors or clean toilets to earn the fee? No. Barbara stumbled out onto the streets of Bombay, frightened and desperate. “There is nothing more scary than being alone in India, without a penny, and with a mutilated passport.” On this very day she met Hugey Courage, who took her to the cafe for tea, and there she collided with Charles Sobhraj.
Charles’ new plan was, as police would one day charge, audacious—the making of a silk purse from a sow’s ear, the transformation of Hugey Courage from a beach rat with crumbling teeth and opium-shrunken cheeks into a sleek and affluent diplomat. It would be both a variation on Pygmalion and on the Ashoka Hotel jewel theft in which La Passionara was an unwilling star.
This one would take some doing.
First Hugey soaked in a steaming bathtub for a solid hour until he emerged pink and glowing—and wrinkled as a mummy. Then Barbara cut his hair short and dignified. Two suits of clothes appropriate for a diplomat were commissioned at a good Bombay tailor. One was gray pinstripe, the other funereal black. Jean Dhuisme, the most cultured member of the group, was ordered to teach Hugey how to speak—no simple task since the Belgian conversed normally in a weird mélange of Flemish, French, Portuguese, and Hindi, often employing all four in one sentence. For days, Dhuisme patiently drilled Hugey on how to speak certain basic sentences, “How much is that necklace?” or “The price is too high.” Finally Henry Higgins announced, wearily, that his Liza Doolittle had broken through the language barrier.
In a fortnight, a dress rehearsal was staged. Charles went out into the corridor of their hotel and knocked. Presently Barbara Smith, astonishingly lovely in a crimson hostess gown, opened the door imperiously and summoned Hugey. The new diplomat shuffled awkwardly into the room wearing his pinstripes and attempted a look of hauteur. So far Charles was pleased. But then Hugey attempted a line of dialogue and, fumbling, broke into a clownish grin. He had forgotten his speech, it being no more challenging than “Hello, how are you? … Thanks for coming.” Charles cursed. Not only was Hugey the worst actor east of Paris, each time he opened his mouth the shortage of teeth made him look like a boxer who had hit the canvas face first in every bout.
A cut-rate dentist was located who in a few moments fashioned a cheap set of wooden teeth that fitted over Hugey’s stumps precariously. “They hurt, man,” complained Hugey, whose words now came out coated in mush.
Charles ordered him to speak rarely, softly, and avoid smiles. As long as Hugey kept his mouth shut, he at least looked like a diplomat. The girls laughed and applauded and could not wait for opening night of this novel playlet.
The logical place to pull the job in Bombay was the Taj Mahal Hotel, for almost a century the citadel of the rich and celebrated traveler. But one day when Charles slipped cautiously into the lobby to check out the principal jewelry store, a man who was obviously a house detective eyed him with more than casual interest. Quickly Charles made an exit. Due to his previous sojourns in Bombay—there were periods when he had made the Taj a semi-permanent base of operations—his visage and methods were too well known.
Incredibly he ordered his group to move to New Delhi—the city where he was already wanted for the Ashoka Hotel gem theft in 1971, and for escape from the hospital following that, and—though the connections had not yet been made—for the theft of money and valuables from three French tourists in the YMCA Hotel only a few weeks earlier. In retrospect it was a foolish decision. But as one Delhi cop would later say, “Sobhraj needed money. Desperately. He was spending it fast. He had a big family to support. Charles decided to try Delhi. Delhi was the place where the action was.”
Mary Ellen and Barbara were sent ahead via Air India with instructions to check into the three-star Lodhi Hotel. Then they were to study jewelry shops in the city’s better hotels and at the same time look for tourists who might be suitable for Charles’ needs. In a merry mood the girls flew out of Bombay, caught up in the heady excitement of the charade.
The silver Citroën bore Charles and Marie-Andrée and Jean Dhuisme and Hugey Courage up the face of the subcontinent, a grueling journey of two days broken when they reached Agra and collapsed for a few hours sleep in a cheap motel near the Taj Mahal. Marie-Andrée was ill, her stomach churning at every rut in the road.
In Delhi, Barbara and Mary Ellen had a little good news to report. They had not been able to discover a wealthy tourist who might enjoy the hospitality of Charles Sobhraj, but they had found what seemed a promising jewelry store in the Imperial Hotel, an old and gracious white Colonial relic with elegant lawns where dowagers still took tea at a quarter to five. Already the girls had been in the shop, browsing over trays of rubies and sapphires and mentioning that a diplomat friend of great wealth might possibly be journeying to Delhi and probably would want to make a major gem purchase. Discretion was necessary, they had whispered to the merchant, for the diplomat demanded exceptional secrecy and protocol.
Upon hearing this, Charles was moderately pleased. So far, so good. The plan had to work, for he was nearly broke. It was nearing the end of June and Delhi reeled under the scorching heat that is prelude to monsoon season. One day the thermometer reached 114 and forty people dropped dead on the capital’s streets. Marie-Andrée told Charles she could not endure more than a few days in the city, for she teetered on the edge of collapse. “Then take a nap,” he snapped. “You’re not much good for anything anymore.”
Hugey Courage was also complaining. In Bombay, a city he knew well, the Belgian was reasonably comfortable playacting the role of diplomat. But in Delhi, he was developing the coldest of feet. He confessed his fear to the new girls. Nobody was going to buy his performance, and, besides, he knew nothing about jewelry. He could be presented with a pearl made from putty and he might pronounce it perfect. Overhearing this, Charles erupted. His patience was thin; he had spent too much already. All Hugey had to do was stand there in a pinstripe suit, keep his mouth shut, look rich, and wait for Charles to step out of the bathroom. Any idiot could do it. Hugey’s face turned dark with worry and he muttered something about needing a drink.
Something else was troubling Hugey, something that Charles did not know. Hugey had telephoned his wife in Goa and she had screamed at him like a woman buried alive in a collapsed building. The children were hungry, the beach cafe was falling apart, bill collectors were leaping out from every tree. If Hugey did not hurry home to Goa, she would notify the police, the Belgian Consulate, and Indira Gandhi if necessary. Between a rock and a hard place, Hugey agonized for another day or so, donning the diplomatic clothes and standing in front of the mirror and trying to smile feebly. Each time he rehearsed he felt worse.
One morning Marie-Andrée told Charles she had to telephone her family in Canada because her father had a heart condition and she was anxious to hear how he was doing. At that moment Charles was occupied with somethi
ng else and could not escort her to the telephone office. He had forbidden her to speak with anyone unless he could monitor the conversation. But she pleaded and wept and finally Charles agreed, ordering Hugey to go along and make sure the woman did not say something unfortunate.
While Marie-Andrée was inside the telephone cabine, struggling to communicate with an overseas operator, Hugey waited outside, wondering if he should also call home. Then he noticed Marie-Andrée’s purse, which she had left on the counter with a request that Hugey watch over it. At that moment Hugey made his decision. He could not continue in the role of diplomat or partake in a jewel robbery. But he needed funds to get back to Goa. Snatching up Marie-Andrée’s purse, which contained $150 in cash, four passports, a gold chain, and a watch, he ran out. Suspecting that the others were probably out in the city by now looking for tourists, Hugey dared to go to their room in the Lodhi Hotel. Finding it empty, he scooped up everything he could stuff in a suitcase—a few hundred dollars, a camera, a radio, assorted valuables—and fled Delhi.
Home by nightfall, two thousand miles away, Hugey embraced his wife, whereupon she withdrew and slapped him. At that, his wooden teeth fell onto the floor with a clatter, and for the first time in a long while, Mr. and Mrs. Hugey Courage laughed together.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Rooted not so much in loss but in betrayal, Charles’ anger was awesome. “But he needed me!” cried Charles, slamming the butt of his palm into the hotel room wall. He cursed Hugey Courage in several languages. Summoning Jean Dhuisme, the two men flew immediately to Goa and spent two frustrating days searching for the traitor. Wisely Hugey had never revealed exactly where he lived. When they could not find him, Charles, furious, ordered a return to Delhi. His situation was bleak. He had spent more than $3,000 in custom-tailored suits, false teeth, and travel expenses. There was little left.
Hardly had Charles left Goa when word reached Hugey that someone had been in town looking for him. Hugey knew that he could not hide forever. Someday Charles would return and be waiting for him in the darkness. Frightened, Hugey brooded for a few days, then he went to a favored private place next to the sea and sat down on a jagged rock and wrote a painful letter. Crossing his fingers, he mailed it to Delhi.
Interpol is a name that conjures much more than its franchise. True, it is the world’s only organization of international police, but Interpol is little more than a post office. Headquarters in St. Cloud, an affluent suburb of Paris, is an anonymous-looking gray cement building of no architectural interest, save gardens and terraces planted with tulips and azaleas, and a fine view of Paris with the Longchamps racetrack close enough to view the horses through binoculars. The only element that marks the building as something more than an insurance office is a forest of antennae on the roof, the hub of a sophisticated communications network that can receive and transmit information anywhere in the world within seconds. Interpol, surprisingly, has no power. It cannot make arrests or question suspects, nor does it have agents in trench coats to prowl the subterranean world of espionage and international danger. But it does have several able detectives on the payroll, one of whom found several cables from Bangkok on his desk on a late May afternoon in 1976.
Paul Delsart is a veteran French homicide cop and he suits the image well. An excitable little man, he has a face that flushes easily and animated hands that gesticulate theatrically when recalling a particularly choice murder. He is the possessor of an analytical mind to rival the detectives of literature. If Hercule Poirot and Inspector Maigret were seated at a bistro table, Delsart would fit neatly beside them.
The first thing that Paul Delsart did was to expedite Bangkok’s murder warrants and descriptions of the suspects to police departments from Paris to the Philippines. And he asked each country if it had unsolved crimes similar to the ones being investigated in Thailand. Then he ran the name “Alain Gauthier” through the Interpol identification computer, repository of the world’s recognized criminals. The computer obediently belched forth two or three men by that name in the world, but none remotely resembled either in physical characteristics, age, nationality, or modus operandi the man wanted by Thailand’s police.
In the next several days, cables and telexes poured in from Hong Kong, Katmandu, New Delhi, and Karachi, so many that Delsart was stunned. “There seemed to be a new murder every day when I got to work,” he would later recall. “The case was maddening—incredibly complex. We didn’t know if we were looking for Alain Gauthier, or Henricus Bintanja, or Laddie DuParr, or Robert Paul Grainer, or Eric d’Amour, or all of them. It seemed a United Nations of murder.”
Inspector Delsart considered his mental card file to be as dependable as, if not more so than, the computer. After a quarter of a century dealing with criminals and their methods, he owned a substantial index in his head. Putting his feet up on his desk, he took a large yellow note pad and began scribbling, listing several names that he personally knew of, names of criminals who specialized in the general category of “drug and rob.” Then, if the name did not belong to an Asian face, he crossed it off. If a name did not deal in false passports, it was eliminated. Finally but a half-dozen names remained on the pad. He studied the list for the better part of a day. One name and one name only seemed to fit all the specifications of the “Alain Gauthier” wanted so badly in Bangkok. Delsart called for a certain dossier and when the folder hit his in-basket he suspected strongly that his hunch was accurate.
When he read the file, he was almost certain. Interpol had sent out a “WANTED” flyer on the man in 1973. The suspect was known to have used at least a score of names, often those of his victims. He had an Oriental face. He operated mainly in Asia. And his real name was Hotchand Bhawnani Gurmukh Sobhraj. Unfortunately, the inspector was not confident enough to flash a worldwide alert. He decided instead to let his hunch ferment for another day or two. It was July 1, 1976.
While Charles and Jean Dhuisme were searching in vain for Hugey Courage, the girls cased Delhi. As directed, they lounged about the airport lobby, looking for tourists, specifically French tourists. At a tourist information center, they picked up the interesting rumor that a large tour group from France was en route to Delhi, estimated to arrive around July 1. Perhaps as many as sixty French men and women were due. When Charles received the news—Barbara Smith would remember—his face “lit up like a Roman candle.”
To a man in need of funds, this seemed as opportune as finding the keys to a bank vault. But alas, even in Charles’ line of work, it takes money to make money. The group needed new clothes, a new collection of gemstones to sell. There would be hotel bills and bar tabs and restaurant checks to pay. An affluent façade would have to be presented to the French tourists, else they might dismiss Charles as just another street hustler trying to sell brightly colored bits of glass. The cash flow in Charles’ camp must have been at crisis point. Marie-Andrée asked him for a hundred rupees (about twelve dollars) to make another call to Canada, but he said there was not enough money for breakfast. The turndown lit a flash fire in Marie-Andrée that raged for most of a day, she contending that he had stolen her $2,000 nest egg, he countering that her constant demands for jewels and high living had drained his coffers. “Did you ever give me something that I was allowed to keep for more than two weeks before you took it back and sold it?” she shrieked.
The group had been changing hotels almost daily, and at the end of June took rooms at the respectable, three-star pink- and cream-colored Ranjit Hotel. All used fake names. Police would theorize that Charles needed to accomplish one more robbery before moving in on the sixty-person French tour group. The ill-fated subject for his maneuver turned out to be a lone young Frenchman named Jean-Luc Solomon, a thin, bearded man in his mid-twenties. Testimony would later reveal that Charles dispatched his twin sirens, Mary Ellen and Barbara, to meet Solomon at the bar of the hotel. On the last night of June, the Frenchman was delighted to take dinner at a restaurant near Connaught Circle with a brunette on one arm, a blond
e on the other, with Charles as charming and gracious host. Charles recommended chicken curry, and when it came he deftly poured a vial of clear liquid onto Solomon’s portion. The Frenchman’s night began to blur. Groggy and stumbling, he was helped back to the hotel, where he had expected to pass the postmidnight hours in the arms of Barbara Smith.
Instead, Jean-Luc Solomon was discovered two mornings later by a room service waiter. Naked, sprawled on the balcony of his room, an arm outstretched in vain for help, he was clinging to life by a thread. Taken to a hospital, he was dead by sundown.
And Charles now had the funds to finance what would be his coup de foudre. He directed his companions to pack quickly and hurry into the silver Citroën for the three-hour drive to Agra. Sixty French tourists were soon to be standing in front of the Taj Mahal. None of them could know that destiny had put them on a collision course.
The telephone rang in the office of N. Tuli, a policeman of legendary stature in India. He was head of Delhi’s Crime Branch, an elite group of police who specialized in difficult and important criminal cases. On the line was a diplomat friend from the Canadian Embassy. He had just received the most curious letter. From Goa. “I can’t make the damn thing out,” said the Canadian official, “but I think you people might want to take a look at it.”
“By all means send it over,” said Tuli.
Hugey Courage had written in his mélange of Flemish, Hindi, Portuguese, and French, but the tenor was disturbing. Obviously seeking to extricate himself from Charles & Company, Hugey was informing the Canadian Embassy that an international gang of thieves was planning a major robbery of a Delhi jewelry store or, failing that, a bank. Why Hugey chose the Canadian Embassy to receive his letter is something he never revealed. But his words accomplished his purpose—and more. Police everywhere receive crank letters like Hugey’s seemed to be, and they usually are filed in the nut drawer. But fate stepped in once more and routed the warning to N. Tuli, a cop with an extraordinary sixth sense. Something in the back of his head told him to find the writer of this letter. The cables from Interpol describing the murders in Thailand had reached his desk, but at this point he did not make a connection. At least consciously.
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