Thai Horse

‘No, you do it and forget about it. I think about it.’

‘Ah bullshit. You’re a soldier. You did what soldiers do.’

‘You’ve been telling me that for years. I didn’t do what soldiers do, I did what you told me to do.’

‘Why the hell did you come over here anyway?’ Sloan asked.

‘I thought I was doing something decent for a change, a sense of responsibility to an old friend. I’m talking about Cody, not you.’

Sloan said, ‘Ahh,’ and waved the remark off with his hand. There was a moment of awkward silence and then Sloan said, ‘You were the best, the best I ever had. The perfect shadow warrior.’

‘Trouble is, you ran out of soldiers, didn’t you, Harry. One double cross too many, one lie too often, and one morning you woke up and you didn’t have any warriors left. They were either dead, crippled or had quit. That’s why you made your deal with Fong.’

Sloan leaned over and pressed his side harder and groaned with the pain that was burning deep in his side. ‘Just tell me one thing,’ he asked. ‘Is Cody alive?’

‘No, he’s dead,’ Hatcher whispered. ‘He died a long time ago.’

‘I’ll be damned,’ said Sloan. ‘All this fuss for nothing.’

‘It wasn’t for nothing. It was a payoff trip’

‘payoff to who?’

‘You were paying off Tollie Fong.’

‘You’re crazy. Why would I owe Tollie Fong anything. Because I smoked a little of his pipe?’

‘No. Because he took our place. When you ran out of soldiers, you had an execution squad made to order — Fong and his Chiu Chao assassins. He got rid of Campon for you in Atlanta because Campon was too independent, too corrupt. Sooner or later it would have come out and the boys in the State Department would’ve had fits dealing with that. On the other hand, Cosomil was nice and safe.’

‘And he didn’t have half of Madrango’s treasury in bank accounts in Switzerland,’ Sloan added.

‘And Cosomil would be a good little boy and take his orders from the White House,’ said Hatcher.

Behind them, two dozen yards away, Tollie Fong swam out of the darkness and grabbed a ladder on the dock. His arm was burned and his face was scorched. He started up the ladder and heard the voices, He cautiously peeked over the lip of the wharf. Hatcher and Sloan were fifty yards away.

‘I know you too well,’ Hatcher was saying. ‘I’ve done the same things for you too many times. In Paris you were in real top form. You not only got rid of three ambassadors that were giving us a bad time about our bases in Europe, you laid it off on the Hyena and got rid of him too. You always were resourceful. Always looking to cover two or three bases at a time.’

‘Well, that’s the mission, isn’t it?’

‘That’s a matter of interpretation.’

‘Call it whatever you want. ‘The enemy never sleeps, pal, don’t forget it. You want to turn namby-pamby, go right ahead, but let me tell you, if I can get rid of a piece of shit like Hadif and I have to bend the rules a little, you bet your ass I’ll do it. It’s my job. Sure, I made a deal with Fong. He was on the same side we’re on.’

‘He may have been on your side, Harry. He sure as hell wasn’t on mine.’

‘I had that under control.’

Fong clung to the ladder and sneered as he listened to Sloan’s confident explanation.

‘He raped and murdered Daphne Chien in cold blood just to get even with me,’ Hatcher said hoarsely. ‘He was about to hand you your brains. He was training antiterrorists upriver, that’s what ex-SAVAKs and Tontons were doing up there.’

‘He was training them for me,’ Sloan said bluntly.

Hatcher shook his head. ‘And what was the big payoff, Harry? Were you going to set him up so he could smuggle a thousand keys of 999 past customs?’

‘What the hell, if it wasn’t him it’d be somebody else. It’s good for the economy.’

‘Fifteen years ago you sent me upriver to get rid of the Chiu Chao dope smugglers. Now you’re in bed with them.’

‘Water under the bridge, laddie,’ said Sloan. ‘You’ve got Paris, New York, Chicago, your buddy in the insurance company. I’ve got Thailand. What the hell’s the diff?’

Hatcher stood up.

‘For years I thought you had mined me into a judge, jury and executioner. It finally got to me in Los Boxes, when I had nothing else to think about. Now I know I was never judge and jury — that was your job. I was just the executioner. Anyhow, somebody else will have to judge you. I’m through with all of that.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Home.’

‘What about me?’

‘Tell Buffalo Bill his son died honorably on the field of battle. He can die in peace. See you, Harry.’

Hatcher turned and walked away.