Thai Horse

‘I don’t get you,’ Sloan said.

‘Up until now it really bugged me,’ Hatcher said. ‘It didn’t make sense. If Charlie had the son of the commanding general, they were in a good position to do some hard trading, but they never did. Now we know why. He dumped them, Harry, so they wouldn’t know who he was.’

Sloan’s eyebrows rose. It was obvious that had not occurred to him. ‘You have a real knack for making things work for you,’ he said.

‘I also pinpointed that floating camp called the

Huie-kui. It was located on the Laotian side of the

Annimitique Mountains around a town called Muang.

It was a transition camp for Vietnamese quislings—’

‘Well, shit,’ Sloan snorted in disgust.

‘Let me finish!’ Hatcher whispered. ‘There were also eight or ten American POWs in this camp, a kind of permanent slave labor. I’ve got an eyewitness who thinks he saw Cody up there.’

‘Thinks?’

‘We’re talking ten, eleven years ago.’

Sloan scratched his chin with the back of one hand.

‘What happened to this camp after the war?’ he asked.

Hatcher shook his head. ‘I don’t know. But I do know the commandant was so corrupt he couldn’t go back to Hanoi. He turned rabbit and ran.’

‘So it’s conceivable that if Cody was in the camp, he could have run, too,’ Sloan said.

Hatcher nodded. ‘You got it.’

‘Where did you hear this?’

‘Chin Chin land, from a trader they call the Dutchman. That’s why I went up there. It didn’t have anything to do with Ts’e K’am.’

Sloan’s ego could be stroked. He stared across the table at Hatcher for a long time before he said, ‘It’s still all maybe and could be.’

‘Yes.’

‘So we still don’t have anything positive but Wol Pot.’

‘Right again,’ Hatcher said.

‘This is MIA shit, Hatch,’ Sloan said. ‘I’ll tell you what I don’t think — I don’t think there’re twenty-four hundred missing Americans doing time in Hanoi, or up there teaching the Vietnamese how to play Monopoly or any other damn thing. Maybe a handful wandering around Laos or North Vietnam. Maybe a few turncoats. The rest of them were probably tortured to death or shot or died of malnutrition or disease. Those are the ones who weren’t killed on the spot. Hell, a lot of good people got wasted in Nam, Hatch. Why torture the ones back home with hope. Besides, back in the real world you can get poisoned by a pill from the drugstore, get run down by some drunk on the highway. There’re worse ways to die than serving your country.’

‘Why didn’t you mention that back in Georgia when you were conning me into this trip?’

‘I never said he was alive.’

‘You implied it enough to get me over here.’

‘Well, I’ll say one thing, your attitude is a hell of a lot more positive than it was in Georgia — or even Hong Kong.’

‘Let’s just say we’ve elevated a wild-goose story to a premise.’

‘That’s bullshit. I know you. I can tell when that nose of yours starts working. You’re on to something.’

‘That’s accurate,’ Hatcher said with a nod.

‘You think Cody’s alive?’

‘Let’s just say I think it more than I did in Hong Kong.’

‘Why?’

‘Little things. Intuition.’

‘But nothing you could take to court.’

‘Nope.’

‘Uh-huh. Okay.’

Hatcher had left out several important pieces of the puzzle. That the commandant who had escaped to Bangkok was Wol Pot. That the Dutchman thought the man who could be Cody was on drugs. He didn’t tell Sloan about the hoochgirl, Pai, and he still had not mentioned Thai Horse. Why? he asked himself. Because he didn’t trust Sloan was the answer.

‘The issue is, Is Murphy Cody alive, and if so, what’s he into?’ Sloan said. ‘That’s the issue.’

‘Back in Georgia, you told me if I found Cody there would be no questions asked,’ Hatcher said. ‘The old man just wanted to say good- bye, you said. That was the only issue.’

Sloan lit a cigar, tapped ash off it and watched the wind break it up and twirl it away. He stared out over the