Blood Is a Stranger

by Roland Perry

  ‘Apologies, ma’am,’ Bonner said. ‘I was meeting somebody else who knows me by another name.’ Rhonda tried to gather her wits as Hewson pulled out a chair for her. ‘And what are you doing here?’

  ‘Thought you might need some help,’ he said with a strange smile. ‘We have some good news. We’ve located your friend.’

  ‘Ken! Where? Is he all right?’

  ‘Everything’s fine. He’s at a little town on the Thai -Kampuchean border. We’re going to drive there today.’

  ‘Can I come?’

  ‘Sure. There shouldn’t be any trouble.’

  ‘Should I check out of my hotel? I have one suitcase.’

  ‘We’ll be busy this morning,’ Hewson said, glancing at Bonner. ‘Could you bring your case here and put it in our car. It’s a Ford stationwagon in the basement.’ He scribbled the registration number on a piece of paper and handed it to her. ‘Meet us here at noon, sharp.’

  They woke to the sound of a Ghetto Blaster playing rock music. Khmer Rouge soldiers were doing exercises up on the plateau.

  ‘Bit dangerous, isn’t it?’ Cardinal said. ‘Couldn’t that be heard a long way?’

  ‘Dunong says if you are a kilometre away it’s impossible to locate the sound,’ Webb said. He began to put his pack together. Cardinal noticed him turning his back to slide on the black glove.

  A soldier was at the door. He told them that they were to join Harry and Hartina for breakfast before the Huey would take them back to site 8.

  ‘Have you seen Dunong?’ he asked the man. He shook his head.

  They were ushered into a mess hut guarded by six soldiers. Cardinal noted a jumpiness in Webb that had not been apparent before as they sat in front of Harry and Hartina at a wooden table. Soldiers and several Khmers in non-military gear sauntered in and out taking breakfast from staff. Harry asked for coffee, toast and fresh fruit to be brought to their table. Cardinal found it difficult to look his son in the eye, such was his contempt, but he could not help thinking what a most attractive couple Harry and Hartina were. He was more than a hundred and ninety centimetres and strongly built. He had blond, male model looks, and pea green, intense eyes. She was dark, with high, flat cheekbones. Her body was sensual and slim. She carried herself with a haughty look at times, and he wondered if it was a cover for shyness. Intellectually, they were also impressive. But Cardinal was depressed by their lack of humanity. They were indifferent to the consequences of their activities. Cardinal was ashamed. Yet he had made this clear and the time for recrimination was over. Nothing more was needed to be said. At that moment he didn’t care if this was the last time he saw his son.

  ‘Thank you for delivering the money,’ Harry said, raising his glass of juice to both men. ‘No real harm done apart from the death of the Frenchmen. Will be a bit difficult to explain. But I suspect the French will accept our explanation that bandits struck them. After all, they will get their technology. 1 will see to that.’

  Dunong walked in. He was edgy.

  ‘Everything all right with the chopper?’ Harry asked. The Khmer nodded and went to another table. Harry beckoned him over.

  ‘Join us, comrade,’ Harry said. ‘Coffee?’

  Cardinal noticed that Dunong’s hand was quivering, that he would not look up at him or Webb.

  Hartina stood up and excused herself. She shook hands with Cardinal.

  ‘Some day,’ she said, ‘I hope you will understand.’

  Cardinal heard the Huey being warmed up. Dunong wanted toast. Before Harry could signal staff, he stood up.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ he said.

  Cardinal watched Webb. The gloved left hand was lying on his lap out of sight of Harry. From Cardinal’s angle it seemed in an unnatural position. He could see it touching his belt. Cardinal glanced at his son whose eyes were wide as he watched Webb.

  Suddenly Webb began to whip a razor sharp garrotte free from his belt.

  ‘Dunong! Now!’ he shouted as he looped the belt out with the gloved hand. He went as if to swing it over Harry. But the younger man was quicker. He kicked up the table and fired two bullets from an unseen hand-gun into Webb’s chest. The garrotte looped over the gun that was wrenched from Harry’s hand as he fell over Webb.

  Cardinal picked up the gun, and aimed the gun at Webb’s head, but a spreading pool of blood around his shirt above the heart made another shot superfluous. Cardinal stood over his son and levelled the gun at him as he lay clutching his bleeding hand. He seemed about to fire when he glanced about him. Soldiers had entered the hut. Their weapons were trained on Cardinal and Dunong, who cowered by a food counter.

  Cardinal helped Harry to his feet and examined the cut that had split the webbing on his hand to the bone between thumb and forefinger.

  ‘Webb wanted to kill you too,’ Harry said, putting an arm around his father. ‘We wrung that out of Dunong last night. Blundell wanted no witnesses to his schemes, which he now wants to abort. So be careful of him. And there’s somebody else. Dunong says Blundell was using another agent to help Webb in clearing up the problem the Khmers had caused the CIA.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Harry handed him a small canvas bag. ‘There’s some food and things in there you might need on the trip.’

  Webb’s hand gun was in the bag.

  Cardinal saw the thumbs up sign from the pilot, and he hurried to join the chopper carrying six Khmer soldiers. Even when the chopper was high above the valley and winging out of the mountains, he could not bring himself to look back.

  Cardinal reached the border at noon, and was met by Ank Adum, who was under orders to escort Cardinal on the return truck ride to Bangkok. He sat up front this time, and Adum drove.

  They stopped at a roadside village, and Cardinal managed to phone the Palace to make sure he had a room for the night.

  The receptionist at the Palace, under instructions from Rhonda should Cardinal ring, gave him the message: ‘Coming to meet you at border. With two friends. Blue Ford Stationwagon. Reg. HEW 717. Leaving Noon.’

  How did she know where he was? Cardinal wondered.

  They drove through the heat and humidity past the intermittent lines of refugees, which thinned as they distanced themselves from the Kampuchean border.

  ‘Why don’t you rest, man,’ Adum said with a broad grin.

  ‘I want to sit here,’ Cardinal said, the canvas bag on his lap.

  ‘Anything wrong, man?’

  Cardinal looked at his watch. It was just two. He reached for a road map and opened it.

  ‘If a car travelling at about seventy-five kilometres an hour left Bangkok at noon,’ he said, ‘where would it be now?’

  Adum took one hand off the wheel and ran his forefinger along the line representing the route they were then on. ‘Maybe there, at the village, Lai-Fa. Do you expect anyone?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘Trouble?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘If you want to stop somebody, maybe I can arrange it.’

  Cardinal lit a cigar. ‘You want to get somebody, like you did the French?’

  Cardinal looked across at Adum. ‘I wasn’t responsible for that!’

  ‘It was Spider?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What happened to Spider?’

  ‘He joined the Frenchmen.’

  Adum didn’t show any animation. ‘I liked Spider. He was tough – cruel maybe — but he paid well.’

  Cardinal puffed as he thought. Adum kept glancing at him. Several minutes later they approached a small village.

  ‘How would you stop a car?’ Cardinal asked.

  ‘At about three-thirty, they come to a big village -Maipey. Are they foreigners?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘All foreigners stop there. Food, drink, gas. I could arrange to have tyres let down. Dirt in gas tank.’

  ‘When do we get to . . .?

  ‘Maipey? At four-thirty, four if we are lucky.’

  Cardinal hande
d him a piece of paper with Rhonda’s car registration and description. ‘Try to have this stopped, could you?’

  At the village, Adum spoke to a local vegetable dealer.

  ‘The army has a post up the road. We can use a phone to Maipey from there . . . ‘

  Rhonda began to feel uncomfortable two hours into the drive. Hewson seemed nervous. He couldn’t answer all her questions about Cardinal and his whereabouts. The ASIO man had got away with evasiveness at all their other meetings; now it was worrying.

  Rhonda was more conscious than ever of how little she knew about him. It was more than a little disconcerting to hear Bonner refer to Hewson as ‘Bob’. ‘Why does he call you Bob?’ she said.

  ‘The Americans have always called me that,’ he said. ‘It started as a mistake and stuck. It can in our business.’

  ‘What’s in a name, anyway?’ Rhonda said. ‘But I guess it’s better than being called Sue!’

  Hewson was following a map, and both men seemed concerned with getting off the main road. Rhonda experienced the first twinge of concern.

  The Kampuchean border was hours away, and that was where Hewson had first said Cardinal was. Why would they want to divert from the quickest way there so early she wondered? Bonner compounded the doubt. He was indifferent. Why won’t you look me in the eye, you bastard, Rhonda thought. She noted that when he and Hewson discussed a route, Bonner had the final word.

  By the time they reached busy Maipey, Rhonda’s hesitation had hardened to suspicion. ‘I’m really looking forward to seeing Ken,’ she said. ‘Yeah,’ Bonner said, ‘aren’t we all.’

  Bonner thought they should get food and drink because of uncertainty of food supplies at the border. He asked Rhonda to wait in the car.

  ‘I’d like to go to the toilet,’ she said. This was her chance, she thought.

  ‘Do you have to go?’ Bonner asked.

  ‘A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do!’

  Bonner waited until she moved off to the toilet before he walked to the restaurant.

  Rhonda made a snap decision. I’ve got my money and passport, she thought, I’ve got to get away. The toilet had a back stairs, which she stepped down. Rhonda broke into a trot to a warren of stalls and barrows in the local market. Beyond that was a rice paddy field at the end of a track. Run, you fat bitch! Run! she thought.

  After five minutes, Bonner and Hewson hurried to the toilet. Bonner’s eyes darted from the market to the fields beyond, and he spotted her half a kilometre away. He cursed and dashed to the stationwagon. He started it up and skidded it in the direction of the track, only to lose control and crash into a stall of crated chickens. Both tyres on the passenger side were flat. Bonner scrambled out, ignoring the chaos around him as the birds fluttered free. He dragged a golf bag from the trunk, and pulled a rifle from it. Then he ran to the track to give chase.

  Cardinal saw the stationwagon the moment they entered the village. He ordered Akum to drive the truck to it. Hewson was pulling a suitcase from it. He looked startled.

  Cardinal called him. ‘Where is she? Where’s Rhonda?’

  Hewson pointed into the field. Cardinal caught a glimpse of Bonner jogging through the market, rifle at his side.

  ‘Go that way!’ Cardinal ordered Akum, pointing at the track.

  The truck lumbered towards the rice field. Bonner was struggling up and down the furrows. Cardinal squinted at the horizon and caught sight of a figure bobbing towards a hut. It was Rhonda.

  Cardinal jumped from the truck as it slid to a halt at the end of the track.

  Bonner stopped and looked around.

  ‘Hey!’ Cardinal yelled. ‘You!’

  Bonner propped and fired. Cardinal dived forward. The bullet missed and cannoned into the truck’s grill. Cardinal removed the gun from the canvas bag he was still holding.

  Bonner’s attention turned to Rhonda. He took careful aim through a telescopic sight. Cardinal fired and shouted but was too far to hit. A rifle shot rang out, and Cardinal looked in horror at Rhonda in the distance. She had dropped out of sight. Then Bonner fell to his knees. He was struggling to find his feet. Another rifle shot was heard, and Bonner sprawled into a ditch. Cardinal turned to see Hewson, leaning against the side of the truck, a rifle still at his shoulder. Cardinal ran and stumbled towards the spot where Rhonda had fallen. He called her name. No reply. He yelled again. Nothing. He broke into a sprint, and stopped on the edge of a ditch. She was there lying face down breathing heavily. She struggled to her feet. He rushed to her.

  ‘I checked on Bonner after I told you to contact him,’ Hewson said on the return to Bangkok in Adum’s truck. ‘That’s when I learnt he was working for Blundell. I flew here straight away.’ He turned to Cardinal. ‘Bonner claimed to know where you were. On the ride I realised he was lying. I suspected he might try to kill Rhonda and me. His manner at Maipey gave him away.’

  They reached the Marriott after dark. Rhonda and Hewson entered the lobby. Cardinal noticed a limousine parked in the shadows about fifty metres from the hotel entrance. Two men got out as the truck revved away. They stood there for several seconds as Cardinal reached the entrance’s revolving door. The men returned to the front of the limousine, which began to crawl towards the hotel. Cardinal hesitated. The vehicle picked up speed. As it cruised under a street light opposite the entrance Cardinal recognised a figure in the back seat. It was Blundell.

  Epilogue

  Three weeks after Cardinal returned to New York, Rhonda Mills’s documentary was made but shelved indefinitely. The network caved in to pressures from the US, Australian, Indonesian and French governments. Rhonda resigned and joined a rival network to become its New York correspondent.

  Days before she was to fly to the US and just two months after her visit to Thailand, there was an explosion just north of the Vietnamese town of Tay Ninh near Highway 22 and the Kampuchean border. First satellite reports suggested it may have been caused by a nuclear explosion about the size of the one dropped on Hiroshima. An apparent news black out buried the incident, which was difficult to verify. It had occurred in a war zone.

  Author’s note

  I would like to thank Richard Joslin; Michael Haggiag; Diana Georgeff; Sandy Grant; Teresa Pitt; Jane Arms; and James Cardinal, from whom I plundered chunks of personal character, biography, and his son’s name.