Hatcher ordered fresh orange juice, coffee and an English muffin. When the waiter left the table, he took off his glasses and laid them carefully on a corner of the table.
There was no smile on Sloan’s face, although his voice was as soft as usual. ‘You’ve been having yourself quite a time over in the colony,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’
Sloan smiled condescendingly. ‘Just so you understand, I’ve got a fire under my ass in Madrango. I don’t need a shoot-out on Victoria Peak, cops getting blown up, a Goddamn tong war between Cohen and Tollie Fong, a shoot- out upriver with half the Ts’e K’am Men Ti getting knocked off. What I’m saying, all of a sudden the priorities have shifted. Madrango is what’s important right now.’
‘You’re a little confused, Harry,’ Hatcher’s wrecked voice answered just as softly. ‘I didn’t draw a line in the ground and dare them to step over it. They were trying to kill
‘Nobody expects that.’
‘Then let me do my job.’
‘You know how important it is to keep the brigade quiet, particularly now. There’s too much at stake. Here, in Central America, in the Middle East. Hell, I’ve got cards all over the table.’
Hatcher stared across the table at Sloan. He shook out his napkin and dropped it on his lap as the waiter brought his coffee.
‘You knew the risk when you brought me into this,’ Hatcher said, doctoring his coffee with generous amounts of cream and sugar. ‘And we both knew I was in trouble the minute that son of a bitch Varney showed up at your door. As you always say, if one person knows, everybody knows. Of course, it didn’t help that the bastard was on Fong’s payroll.’
‘The late bastard, I hear.’ The smile returned, the slick tone of voice was back. ‘Just remember, in the future these things can be negotiated.’
‘There wasn’t time for that. They didn’t ring Cohen’s doorbell and suggest a little pow-wow first —, Sloan’s words suddenly sank in and Batcher stopped for a moment, staring at him. ‘What do you mean, they can be negotiated. You can’t negotiate anything with the Chiu Chaos.’
Sloan leaned across the table. ‘I can handle it,’ he said nonchalantly.
‘How?’
‘We do business with these countries. When we need to put the squeeze on assholes like Fong, there are ways of doing it.’
‘Harry, nobody puts the squeeze on assholes like Fong.’
The waiter came with their breakfast. Sloan had ordered eggs, bacon, toast, fruit. Other guests began drifting into the restaurant.
‘What the hell happened upriver?’ Sloan asked as he salt-and-peppered his eggs.
‘I was looking for information, ‘ Hatcher said.
‘I hope what you got was worth the body count.’
‘When did you start worrying about body counts?’ Hatcher said sarcastically.
Sloan leaned across the table. ‘Did you find out anything or not?’ he said.
‘I got some leads.’
‘That’s it? All I get out of this breakfast is that you got some leads.’
‘We’ll talk about it if they pan out.’
Sloan leaned back and sighed. He looked back over the river, arranging his thoughts.
Hatcher said very matter-of-factly, ‘Harry, I came over here to find Murphy Cody and that’s what I’m going to do. And I’m going to do it my way, which doesn’t include giving you progress reports every thirty seconds. I said I’d be alive for breakfast today, and here I am. What the hell do you care whether I get into it with the Ts’e K’am or Fong or anybody else? That’s my problem. I don’t even work for the brigade anymore, I’m just a private citizen looking for an old pal.’
‘I admire your talent at oversimplification,’ Sloan said and then chuckled. ‘Well, I’ve got some bad news for you, and some worse news for you after that. Which would you like first?’
Hatcher sighed. ‘Why do you smile when you say that?’ he asked.
‘I can be just as perverse as you,’ he said. ‘The worse news is that they found Cody’s dog tags on the site of the crash.’
Hatcher scowled at him, letting the information sink
‘When did you hear that?’
‘Last night. They turned up when the site was checked back in ‘76. It wasn’t in the report because he was already declared dead and the government file was closed when they were found.’
‘How did you find out?’
‘You know Flitcraft, he doesn’t miss a base. He sent a routine inquiry to the POW commission and the insurance company after we got Windy’s report. The information on the dog tags was buried in an insurance wrap-up but was never added to the government file. They couldn’t have cared less by then.’
Hatcher thought a moment. Actually it was good news to him. It resolved a problem he had in dealing with Cody’s identity in the prison camp. ‘That could explain why the Vietcong didn’t exploit him.’
