Turn of the cards

Chapter Nineteen

When Helen Carlysle awakened with Thai daylight blasting through the open French doors like laser beams, she was alone. On the pillow beside her where Belew had lain was a note:

Don’t think ill of me, my child. What I do now, I must do. And what happens next will be for the best.

This was never a game you were meant to play in. “Heaven and Earth are not humane,” Lao-tzu says. “They regard all things as straw dogs.” Go back to your world; fly happy, high, and free. Forget the past, and all else which lies beyond your power to affect. And try – if I may beg a favor – not to think too harshly of me.

Beside the note lay a single red rose.

She rose, walked nude into the bathroom, spent a very long time washing her face. She took a light robe off its hangar and put it on. Then she came back into the bedroom and sat in a chair by the French doors, letting the smell of sun on wet pavement wash across her on the morning breeze.

She was just sitting there wondering whether to cry or not when the phone rang.

O. K. Casaday was a tall man with a tropical-weight suit hung on broad shoulders and a large and extremely round head with a fringe of yellow-white hair set on top of a granite slab of jaw. His eyes he hid behind amber shades.

On the phone he had introduced himself as being “from the embassy” Now he sat across from Helen on the terrace in the shade of a parasol with his long legs folded and drummed his fingers on the white tablecloth as if she had called him here to waste his time.

“Did you call the Governor to confirm my bona fides?” he asked.

She nodded.

“And did they tell you I was in your chain of command?”

“Yes.”

He bobbed his huge head. It reminded her of the spring-mounted heads of those stuffed puppies in the back windows of cars. She started to giggle, clamped down on it. She had a public image to maintain. She was still her father’s daughter, even if she’d killed him.

“Are you all right?” Casaday asked, frowning irritably.

She sipped iced water from a cut-crystal goblet. “I’m fine.”

“The first thing I need to know is, where the hell are those bozos from the DEA?”

“They’re gone,” she said, drawing pictures in the ring of condensation the base of the glass had left on the table.

Casaday’s shades almost fell off. “Gone? Where the hell have they gone off to?”

“Bob said they went to Ankara. In Turkey.”

“I know where Ankara is. Jesus Christ. Whatever possessed those morons to -”

He stopped, swung his head full to bear on her. She still couldn’t see his eyes, but she could feel their awful pressure. “Bob said. Bob who?”

“Belew. J. Robert Belew.” She smiled faintly. “To use your phrase, I guess you could say he’s with the embassy too.”

“I guess not!” Casaday exploded. “What the hell did that crazy cowboy sonofabitch have to do with this investigation?”

“He was with us from the outset. He was the one who got us this far.” Why am I defending him? she wondered. He abandoned me. Like every other man I’ve… cared for. Yet he had never promised more than he had delivered, and he had delivered, in his own way, quite a lot.

Casaday had gone dead pale beneath his Southeast Asia Incipient Cancer Tan. “What did you say?” he asked.

“He was with us from Amsterdam on. He was our CIA contact. He took charge of the team, after Saxon and Hamilton messed up two straight grabs on Meadows.”

Casaday took a deep breath and shook his head. “I don’t know how the fuck stupid you are. Belew is not with Central Intelligence. He had nothing to do with this case. Nothing.”

She was glad of his rudeness, his masculine contempt; it helped her pull together. “Mr. Casaday, I am handling this case under contract to the Drug Enforcement Agency. DEA was satisfied with his credentials. It was neither my place nor my right to question his assignment to the team. Now, I would appreciate it very much if you would retract calling me stupid.”

“Christ, is this bimbo for real?” Casaday murmured under this breath.

A wind began to rise out of the Chao Phrya breeze like Godzilla from Tokyo Harbor. Parasols whipped on their staffs, women cried out as their skirts flew up, a waiter exclaimed as his tray was sucked from his hands in a clatter of breaking china.

O. K. Casaday’s tie wound itself around his throat, seemed to be dragging him up out of his chair. It was not tight enough to strangle him, but try as he might, he could force no air into his lungs.

“I am not a bimbo, Mr. Casaday,” Mistral said, smiling sweetly. “I am a fully accredited agent of the United States government. I am also an ace. Now, would you like to apologize for your rude and completely uncalled-for personal remarks, or shall I leave you breathless until you lose whatever brain cells you may have remaining?”

Casaday started frantically nodding his head, then shook it just as vehemently. One of the parasol spokes above him gave with a musical ping.

“Which, Mr. Casaday? Does that mean you’ll apologize?”

He mouthed the word yes.

The whirlwind stopped. The parasol quit flapping. Casaday fell back into his chair. Immediately he began tearing at his necktie.

Mistral waited primly until he’d cleared himself an airway. “You had something to say to me, I believe?”

A tendril of wind brushed his face. “Yes! I apologize! I’m sorry. Jesus. Believe me, I’m sorry. I take back everything I said about you.”

“Very good, Mr. Casaday. I will probably find it unnecessary to file a sexual-harassment complaint against you when I return to Washington. Now, please explain the situation concerning Mr. Belew to me.”

“Belew is what we call a cowboy. He’s ex-Special Forces, served several tours in ’Nam during the war. Since then he’s done a lot of contract work all over the world, for Central intelligence and freelance.”

“He seems eminently qualified,” she murmured. “I see no reason anyone should have questioned his credentials.”

“He’s a nut, Ms. Carlysle. He thinks he’s the last knight in shining armor and he still sees communists under the bed. More to the point, he is not currently in the employment of the CIA. He has no authorization.”

There was a time, not long past, when she would have crumpled under the weight of Casaday’s revelations. Now she was… amused. I’m beginning to heal, she thought. She knew who had helped her begin the process.

Helen Carlysle lifted the rose from her lap and twirled its thorny stem in her fingers. “The last knight. Yes, Mr. Casaday, I can see why you would have contempt for him.”

“Yeah,” he said, believing she agreed with his assessment. “He was playing some kind of zany game of his own. He was never on this case. And now – please don’t do anything rash here, Ms. Carlysle – now you’re off it too.”

She looked at him.

He pushed a yellow Western Union slip across the table at her. “You’ll find one just like this waiting for you at the front desk. It’s from the Governor, and it confirms what I’ve said.

“Go on back home and spend your paycheck, Ms. Carlysle. Or enjoy beautiful Bangkok a few more days – just as long as you don’t start asking any questions. With all due respect for your professional qualifications – and believe me, I do respect them – you’re out of your depth in the phase this game has entered now.”

He shook his head. “So are Heckle and Jeckle from the DEA. I wonder what on earth happened to those dipshits, anyway?”

At Ankara Customs the neat, swarthy men in tan uniforms and peaked caps that seemed as wide as their shoulders glanced at Saxon’s and Hamilton’s passports and the holders open to show their DEA shields and murmured, “Please follow us.”

The Americans exchanged glances. Saxon shrugged. They followed. Saxon muttered, “We have nothing to worry about. It’s all in the bag; we’re DEA,” to his partner out of the side of his mouth. Hamilton hitched the shoulder strap of his overnight bag up higher on his shoulder and did not look convinced.

They were led to a small room. Though there were only two people in it, it seemed pretty well full already. The man in civilian clothes, fedora, and dark sunglasses didn’t take up much space, but the dude standing beside him – in baggy cloth-of-gold pants, blue-and-red vest over hairy bare chest, and an enormous turban on his head – definitely constituted a crowd of one. Especially since his hygiene seemed a little on the questionable side; it was close in here.

“Check out this geek with the sofa cushion on his head,” Saxon said from the corner of his mouth. He had made a little trip to the bathroom just before landing, and he was feeling fine. Hamilton shushed him frantically.

“I am Colonel Nalband,” the man in civilian clothes said. “This is Yaralanmaz, our Turkish national ace. His name means ‘invulnerable.’”

Yaralanmaz nodded his extensively turbaned head. “We’re honored,” Hamilton said.

“Yeah,” Saxon said, grinning hugely. “Honored.”

His grin shattered when the two uniforms started dipping gloved hands into the pockets of his off-white jacket. “Hey! What the fuck’s going on here? We’re DEA, damn it. This is bogus, man. Completely bogus.”

One of the two uniforms fished out the gold card case Saxon carried but never offered anybody cards from out of his inner pocket, cracked it, glanced inside, and passed it to Nalband. Nalband held up a tiny plastic vial with a bit of white powder drifted at the bottom.

“What might this be, Agent Saxon?”

“Hey, just a sample, you know?” Saxon said, suddenly all smiles again, holding out his palms and being an open, candid guy. “Sometimes we need to, you know, compare, so we can trace the routes the shit’s being carried along -”

“Indeed?” the other uniformed Customs officer said. “And is it necessary to carry so very much of it?” He pulled his hand out of Hamilton’s bag, which lay open on a table. He held a taped glassine packet crammed full of white powder. “There must be two hundred grams here, Agent Saxon.”

Hamilton turned dead white. “That’s not m-mine!” he exclaimed.

“It’s not mine either,” Saxon said, goggling. “Fuck me.”

Colonel Nalband shook his head. “We were warned you would be trying to smuggle cocaine into the Republic of Turkey. This is a very serious matter. Very serious indeed.”

“This is bullshit!” Saxon shrieked. “This isn’t our shit! We’ve been set up. And anyway, we’re the DEA! You got no fucking right -”

“We have every right to interdict criminal activity,” Nalband said solemnly. “And when you try to bring drugs into our country, you are nothing better than common criminals.”

“You towel-head sons of bitches!” snarled Saxon, and leaped at Nalband.

Yaralanmaz stuck out his hand and pushed against Saxon’s sternum. The American flew up into the air and crashed against the wall, his head almost to the dropped ceiling. He hung there for a moment like the Coyote flattened against a cliff by more Roadrunner perfidy, then slid down into a heap.

Nalband produced a compact square-snouted Glock pistol from inside his coat and pointed it at Hamilton. Hamilton held his hands up and said, “No problems.” The uniforms cuffed his hands behind his back, then hauled Saxon to his feet and cuffed him too. They had to hang on to him to keep him from sliding back down on his butt again.

“You have undoubtedly heard much of our Turkish prisons, gentlemen,” Colonel Nalband said. “Doubtless you will find your stay in them instructive.”

Yaralanmaz smiled. His teeth were stained the Turkish national brown from tea and cigarettes. He reached out and tweaked Hamilton’s cheek.

“You’re cute,” he said in a voice like a boulder rolling down a mountain. “You and me will be good friend.”

Mark accepted the invitation to stay in Whitelaw’s flat, which was filled with stacks and stacks of pamphlets and periodicals slowly melting together in the humidity. He still haunted the joker section of the old Chinese quarter Cholon – the joker ghetto, Whitelaw called it – searching for some way to make himself useful.

He was elated to discover there was a clinic in the area. He felt sure it must mirror the function of Tach’s Blythe van Rensselaer Clinic in Jokertown. He would certainly find a place there. He would have much to contribute, both his own biochemical expertise and practical advice from watching his friend the Doctor at work. This clinic was operated by the government, so it would undoubtedly be well funded, well run, and open to all.

What he found looked more like the flophouses he knew too well from his early days on the lam in New York than a hospital, and smelled that way too. And the clinic didn’t even have any jokers in it. It was mainly filled with babies with birth defects and women who had received hysterectomies and were undergoing chemotherapy for chorio-carcinoma. They all came from the southern provinces, which had been heavily dosed with Agent Orange defoliant by the Americans during the war. The intense and articulate doctor who took Mark on a tour bitterly drew the obvious connection.

Mark was saddened by the anencephalic babies and the young girls lying two to a bed or on blankets on the floor, most of them bald from the chemotherapy. But he was already familiar with the problem and the possible effects of Agent Orange.

“What about the jokers?” he asked. “There are already thousands of them in Cholon. They have special needs too.”

“It’s you Americans!” the doctor yelled at him, her glasses almost flying off her face. “You deny us aid! That’s why we don’t have the facilities to care for everybody!”

He beat a hasty retreat out onto the sidewalk and the rain.

The men in pith helmets were waiting for him.