‘Yes, sir. They all went missing in 1972. Here’s something else: the journalist, Paget? He disappeared the same day and in roughly the same place as Gallagher.’
‘Anything else?’
‘One more thing. Both Gallagher and Riker were in trouble when they disappeared.’
‘What kind of trouble?’
‘Riker for striking a fellow officer and Gallagher for grand theft. He ran a service club in S-town and was skimming off booze and cigarettes, then selling them on the black market.’
‘Flitcraft, you ought to get a medal.’
‘Thank you, sir. I’m still checking on Wonderboy and Corkscrew.’
‘Forget it. This is all I need.’
‘I might still turn up something on them.’
‘Don’t need it,’ whispered Hatcher.
‘Thank you, sir.’
Hatcher lay back down on the floor with his hands folded over his chest. His heart was racing. Suddenly the pieces of the jigsaw were beginning to fall in place. A picture was beginning to form in Hatcher’s head, but two major questions still plagued him.
How exactly did Murph Cody and Thai Horse fit into the puzzle?
And he still wasn’t sure whether Cody was dead or alive.
Perhaps the answer to those two questions lay at the end of the plane ride to Surat Thani
FONG
Daphne Chien lived in one of the high-rise apartments at the foot of Victoria Peak, its split-level, two-story living room looking across the harbor toward Kowloon. Its balcony was a jungle, dripping with plants and ferns.
She usually worked late in her office two blocks away on the top floor of one of the glass banking towers, leaving for home at about 7 P.M. On this day she was even later. The sun had already dropped behind the western mountains and the streetlights were burning when she took the elevator to the street, where her limousine was waiting. She was dressed as she usually dressed for work, in a man’s gray silk double-breasted suit, a dark blue shirt open at the collar with a red scarf tied around her throat.
As she got in the limo she was watched from a Ford car half a block away. It was equipped with a cellular phone. Before the limo left the curb, the man watching Daphne dialed her home phone number.
The phone in her apartment rang twice and stopped, one ring before the answering machine intercepted it. A moment later it rang again, this time only once.
Tollie Fong stood in the shadows of the apartment. He smiled. She was on her way. He went back up to the bedroom and checked it out. There were four long strips of silk tied to each corner of the bed. He drew a stiletto from his sleeve and placed it on the dresser next to a pair of pantyhose. He put the tape recorder on the nightstand beside the bed.
Then Tollie Fong went back down and stood behind the front door of the apartment and waited.
When Daphne came in, Fong moved so fast she was still reaching for the light switch when his powerful hands wrapped around her neck and his fingers pressed deep, felt the nerve, felt her stiffen and then go limp. He caught her before she hit the floor, lifted her, and carried her up the stairs to the bedroom. He laid her on the bed spread- eagled and tied her feet and hands with the silk cords. He turned on the tape recorder and picked up the stiletto and waited for her to regain consciousness.
THE HUNTERS
Old Scar was napping in a bog at the foot of a tall banyan tree when he heard the trucks coming. Earlier he heard the elephants, grunting and snorting and blowing dirt on themselves, but he ignored them. But then when the vans came and there was the sound of many voices, he sat up suddenly, grimacing and opening the ducts in his cheeks, lifting his nose and smelling the wind, but it came from behind him and he couldn’t get a whiff of the group that was perhaps two hundred yards away.
Old Scar knew he was up against dangerous enemies. No young buck tiger, this. This was a whole army. His yellow-green eyes flashed ferociously and his lips pulled back from his teeth in a fanged snarl as he strolled slowly and arrogantly through the trees, away from the vans and people and toward the stand of bamboo and tall grass west of the lake, a mile or so away’, where his fiery orange and black stripes would blend in with the tall, dry grass.
He wasn’t in a hurry. His shoulders and legs hurt. The arthritis was worse than usual this morning and he was hungry. And he was too old and tough to be scared of anything.
Fresh pugs led toward the lake_ The Thai guide, Quat, had found them an hour or so earlier. He laid his hand in one of the paw marks. The perimeters of the print were a good inch or two greater than the hand.
‘Cat’s on the prowl,’ Early told the hunters. ‘I sent a man on down to the village. The townsfolk will stay inside until this is over.’
