Blood Is a Stranger (39 page)

The TV monitor in the network's Melbourne studios showed Dr Andrew Coombes demonstrating how the laser worked. The editor was talking, but Rhonda had lost concentration. She was thinking about Cardinal. She had left several messages on his answer machine in the last twenty-four hours. He had responded to the first two but had missed her, then there was nothing. He had promised he would come to Melbourne to stay with her and be ready for any additional questions she wished to ask him on camera. Rhonda half expected him to turn up and surprise her.

As the second day without any communication began, she became worried.

Rhonda rang Perdonny.

‘No, he said.' I haven't heard from him. I have been trying to catch Webb, and I haven't heard from him, either. Did Cardinal say anything to you about him?'

‘Only that I should mention to his “uncle” that Webb had helped save his life,' Rhonda said. ‘And that's another thing. Willow Wilson says he has no nephew. Webb lied.'

‘That doesn't surprise me.'

‘Why do you say that?'

‘I have never trusted him,' Perdonny said. ‘I had to force him to help me get Cardinal off Bum.'

‘Why? Was he frightened?'

‘Fear is not one of his emotions,' Perdonny said. ‘And that was what bothered me about his reluctance to fly in. I had to point a gun at him in the end.'

‘That doesn't explain his motives.'

‘I was suspicious when Cardinal was caught on Ambon,' he said.

‘What do you mean?'

‘I can't believe that Bakin would arrest Cardinal and let the pilot helping him escape go free. And it was strange that I was put under house arrest at the same time.'

Rhonda was anxious. ‘You don't think that Webb would have tried to get into Kampuchea with Ken?'

‘It's possible.'

‘Could you find out if Webb has been given an assignment?'

‘I'll do it now.'

‘Robert, get back to me as soon as you know.'

The truck bumped along the road
due east of Bangkok, intermittently honking its horn at bike riders. The vehicle's windows were draped with hes-sian bags and Cardinal occasionally stood up to look out.

He and Webb had been in the vehicle since they had arrived in Bangkok seven hours earlier, and both men had tried to catch up on sleep after the nine-hour night flight from Sydney. The road's undulations ensured that they could only doze.

The truck stopped once at a village half-way to the Kampuchean border. After buying a coke and a watermelon, Cardinal wandered behind the thatched huts to a vegetable farm protected from the sun by long cotton sheets. About a kilometre beyond the farm were the ruins of a Buddhist temple.

Cardinal began to walk towards it.

‘Hey,' Webb yelled, ‘Gotta go, mate.' Webb had
insisted that they spend the minimum time away from the hidden interior of the truck. Cardinal was certain the ASIO man had a plan. Whenever Cardinal sought information he was told, ‘If you want to see your son, leave the thinking to me.' It left him little choice and caused him to be sensitive to everything Webb said or did.

Cardinal noticed that he only became interested in the view of rice fields in the last hour of the journey as they approached the Kampuchean border. He often asked a question of their Kampuchean escort, Ank Adum, who rode shot-gun up” front next to the driver, also Kampuchean. Adum was about thirty and tall by Khmer standards. He had a lighter skin than most of his race.

Adum reeked of a Chicago cologne, ‘His', which Cardinal remembered using twenty years ago.

‘Where'd you learn English,' Cardinal said.

‘When Americans in Phnom Penh,' Adum said, in his butchered GI idiom. ‘It was a cool time, man. Lots of dollars, lots of girls.'

Moments after Adum announced they were approaching the border, they could see a roadblock about five kilometres along the flat stretch. Army trucks and jeeps in the fields either side were surrounded by about a hundred soldiers lounging in the vehicles' meagre shade.

‘Bugger!' Webb said. Adum slowed down as they approached the roadblock. A Thai soldier holding a rifle stepped in front of them and held up his hand. He wore a yellow singlet under his flapjacket.

Webb held up a military pass. The soldier shook his head.

‘Tax,' the soldier said. A second soldier came over and banged his fist on the bonnet.

‘Bastards want a donation!' Webb said, getting out of the truck. He was joined by Adum. Webb spoke aggressively in Thai, which surprised the soldiers. Cardinal watched both men step quickly to the crooked barrier pole, which was pushed aside. The men saluted as the
truck roared past on to a muddy, unmade road.

‘What the hell did you say to him?' Cardinal asked.

‘I told them to pull their fingers out,' Webb, ‘cause I'm a mate of General Siam's. He runs this whole border area.'

Adum began to giggle.

Ten kilometres on they were stopped again by soldiers. They kept gesturing with their rifles to a hillier jungle area two kilometres away.

‘According to these fine representatives of the Royal Thai Army,' Webb said, his voice laced with sarcasm, ‘Vietnamese patrols are camped beyond that hill. There was been fighting there this morning.'

Cardinal looked out over the flat, green plain of rice paddies. Old men could be seen perched on bullock carts. Cardinal could see a long caravan of perhaps fifty horses carrying heavy packs and accompanied by a hundred Thais, including some soldiers. It was wending its way through the rice fields well wide of the jungle area and the Vietnamese.

Cardinal was soon surrounded by swarms of children, some no older than four, carrying plastic bags of rice. He smiled at some of them, brushed away flies and walked a little way along the road to stretch his legs. He found himself close to a long line of adults, most in faded sarongs. He strolled along the queue, conscious of the stares and shy smiles. The line began at a platform piled high with blue cartons and crates containing rusted cans of fruit and meat. Stencilled on the side of the carton in red letters was the sign, ‘Donated by the USA.'

Webb called to Cardinal. They were led through the dustbowl of huts in neat lines beside rough sewage channels. At Adum's home they were introduced to his diminutive wife, Angfu. She began to assemble two screens. They partitioned off an area for the two foreigners. Adum leaned against a wall smothered by yellowing copies of the Bangkok Post.

‘You CIA?' he asked Cardinal who glanced at Webb.

‘They think everyone with an American accent must be CIA,' Webb laughed.

‘Why?' Cardinal asked Adum. He shrugged his shoulders.

‘No, Adum,' Webb said sharply, ‘Mr Cardinal is an American art dealer. He is not a spy.'

‘Not a goddamned spy!' Adum said, giggling.

‘When are the Frenchies due in?' Webb asked.

‘My friends now say maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow early, okay?'

‘Not really,' Webb muttered. He began to unlock his suitcase. ‘I was hoping for more precision.'

‘We think they go Bangkok for massage,' Adum preferred with a truncated giggle.

‘That could be their last,' Webb said, ‘the fucking idiots!'

A dog began to dig a hole in the earthern floor of the hut. Webb rummaged in the case and took out a thick envelope.

‘Shut the door,' he snapped, and Angfu obeyed with some difficulty, for the cardboard packing cases the door was made of did not fit easily. Webb counted out twenty American fifty dollar bills and handed them to the young man. His eyes bulged and he thanked Webb.

Cardinal felt uneasy. The man had been telling them that he never received money for work, only trinkets and other ‘things' which were not easy to barter for food.

Rhonda opened the locked cupboard where she usually stored the cannisters carrying her documentary footage. She rummaged through several shelves. The footage didn't seem to be there. She fumbled off some cannister lids. Still nothing. Rhonda frowned. She moved to a filing cabinet, where she occasionally left them. There were two in there marked ‘Yellowcake-Laser Connection', the name she had given her project. She tore off the lids. There was
some film in them, but it didn't look familiar. She held the reel up to the light. It was an off-take from another project. She let the reel fall.

‘Oh, Christ, no!' she said aloud. She walked quickly to a bookshelf where she stored her floppy discs. The boxes were also gone. Rhonda shut her eyes and took some deep breaths. She phoned her editor.

‘Rob, just tell me you've got all the yellowcake story footage,' she said anxiously.

‘Nuh, sorry darlin',' Rob said.

‘I'm going to slit my throat!'

‘Why, what's missing?'

‘Every reel! Every disc!'

‘Fuck me dead!'

The phone rang. It was Perdonny.

‘Cardinal and Webb are missing,' he told her.

‘God, that's all I need!' said Rhonda.

‘ASIO has not assigned Webb anywhere on any project,' he reported. ‘I got that from his department head. He doesn't know where Webb is. No one else seems to know either.'

‘And Ken?'

‘I went to his Bronte home. It was locked up. He did leave a message on my answering machine to say that he would be out of the country for a few days.'

‘Is there any way of checking airlines, and so on?'

‘It's being done. But it is a bit after the event.'

‘Christ! I need Ken here! Not missing in Kampuchea, if he has gone there!'

‘I'm sorry, Rhonda.'

‘Is there any way I can find out more about Webb?'

‘That would be classified. I can try, but it won't be easy.'

‘Did he ever hint that he worked for anyone else apart from ASIO?' Rhonda asked, mindful of Perdonny's probable
extra-ASIO affiliations. She was unnerved and suspicious.

‘Spider left the SAS ten years ago,' he said. ‘I can only account for the last five years when he made the Darwin-Java run for us.'

‘Could he have had another paymaster in that period?'

Perdonny cleared his throat. ‘It's possible,' he conceded. ‘He always acted as if he had plenty of money. He did own that Beachcraft.'

‘just suppose he did have someone else paying him for Intelligence work,' Rhonda said, with more than a tinge of desperation. ‘Who could it be?'

‘Rhonda, you know I'm not a speculator.'

‘A guess, Robert. M16? The CIA? The KGB? The Mossad? The French? I don't think he should be called Spider,' she said. ‘Funnel would be more appropriate.'

‘None of them, all of them, I really wouldn't want to make a stab at that.'

After the call, her thoughts turned to Bill Hewson. If anyone could fill in the blanks on Webb's profile, he could.

‘Bastards. Bastards! Bastards!'

Webb was in a temper. He used binoculars along the flat, winding road. Night was turning into a clear day, and the French couriers had not appeared. Lying alongside him was a fully automatic rifle with telescopic sights and six hand grenades. He had been up since midnight, and his eyes had a red ring of fatigue around them.