Plausible Denial (34 page)

“Okay,
tell him we’re on our way up there. We’ll be in position tonight. I’ll try to
call you when we’re set up, but the reception is spotty up there. Just keep the
phone close.”

“I
always do. Please be careful, and keep your phone on as well.”

“Okay,
Maggie. Let’s keep this short. I’ll call back later. Bye.”

“Okay,
be careful. Say hi to Culler. Bye.”

Santos
listened intently to Mac’s side of the conversation. When Mac hung up he asked,
“So what’s the deal? Sounds like no change.”

“Yep,
no change. Rothmann confirmed they’re still in the villa. He’s pulled out all
the stops as far as surveillance is concerned. Twenty-four hour satellite,
phone intercepts and the Porter. Soon he’ll have us as well…”

“What’s
the Porter? Is that a plane?”

“Yes.
It’s assigned to the Chiang Mai base to do aerial reconnaissance of the poppy
fields. It’s like a low and slow flying U-2. It takes very high resolution
photos. They’re also listening to every word Khun Ut and his men are saying. At
least as far as telephone and cell communications. Whatever the DDO can do,
he’s doing. But it doesn’t look like he’s made any progress with the Thai
government. They’re still dragging their feet despite all of his efforts
through our liaison contacts in Bangkok.”

“Yeah,
you can bet Khun Ut has  them all on the take all the way up to the Prime
Minister’s office. Have you given any more thought about how we’re going to get
them out of there?”

“Haven’t
stopped thinking about it. We’re just going to have to get up there and take a
look. Maybe create a diversion. I don’t know. I haven’t got a clue what to do
without outside help. Not a clue…”

Chapter One Hundred-Eleven

K
hun
Ut leaned back in his chair, his polished black Wellington boots crossed on his
desk. As usual he was dressed impeccably in a light grey leisure suit, smoking
a cheroot. Ung Chea sat across the desk, dressed in boots, bloused camouflage
pants and a black security tee-shirt.

“You’re
being too kind to her, Ung Chea. I’ve never known you to be so soft in an
interrogation. You’ve had her for almost a week now, and still nothing?”

“But
you told me not to get too physical with her, boss. If you let me get a little
tough, slap her around a bit, maybe we would get better results. She has been
trained to resist interrogation. Sleep deprivation, bright lights, noise,
endless interrogations and all that usual stuff is not working on her. They
teach that in the CIA. She is a professional…”

“But
still, she is a woman. There are special fears a woman has. You need to play on
those special fears.”

“Special
fears, sir?”

Khun
Ut swung his good leg off of the desk, lifted his bum leg down and stood up. He
limped over to the window, looked out over the town below and took a long drag
from his cheroot. He turned to face the Cambodian and exhaled smoke as he
spoke.

“Yes,
special fears. She is a beautiful woman. The fear of disfigurement would be
very strong incentive for a woman like her, like having her nipples sliced off,
or cutting off her nose or ears, or even rape, or being fucked in the ass…being
humiliated…”

Ung
Chea’s eyes widened and he leaned forward on the edge of his chair, scooting it
around to face Khun Ut directly. The scar running from his ear nub to his mouth
reddened. “You want me to fuck her in the ass and cut her nipples off?”

“No,
damn it! I do not want you to do that. It would give you too much pleasure.” He
chuckled, and then got serious. “I want you to threaten her with these things.
And I want you to make her believe you will do these things if she does not
cooperate. You did a good job with the Hmong, now get me something out of her.”

Khun
Ut leaned closer to Ung Chea and gestured with his cheroot, taking on a
professorial air.

“You
see, Ung Chea, the Americans are stupid. They advertise to the world that they
will no longer harm anyone during their interrogation sessions. They advertise
to the world exactly what they can and cannot do during interrogation sessions,
as noted in their famous Army Field Manual. That means no prisoner is afraid of
them any longer. They would never reveal information to them. Why should they?
Prisoners know they can hold out because they know they will not be physically
harmed. So they remain silent, or just give bullshit answers.”

He
returned to his desk and sat down. “But we are not forced to operate under
these foolish constraints. We are smarter than they are. We can do anything we
please to our prisoners. And if our prisoners believe we will do these horrible
things, really believe and fear us, they will sing like sopranos.”

Ung
Chea said, “But these threats did not work on the old Hmong guy, and we smacked
him around pretty good, boss.”

“He
is a different case. Anyway, we already got what we want from him. He is not
important now. You did very good work by tricking him into telling you that the
two
farangs
killed his partner while they were doing something to our
heroin shipment. Maybe he really does not know what the
farangs
were
doing there, but the fact is they were there. That tells me the
farangs
did do something to our shipment. And that is part of the answer we were
looking for. Somehow they poisoned the shipment and that is the reason for our
troubles now.”

Khun
Ut was reflective. “Those two
farangs
are responsible, and the only
question now is who is behind them. That is the information you need to get out
of the woman. The Hmong would not know this information.”

“I
think it is the CIA, Khun Ut. It has to be them…”

“Maybe
yes, maybe no. I agree it appears to be a CIA operation, even though it would
be unusual for the CIA to do something like this. Very unusual. Not their modus
operandi. Not their MO… But what if the
farangs
were hired by one of our
competitors to make it look like a CIA operation? Or what if someone within our
own ranks was behind it? Someone who wants to take over our territory. What
then?”

The
high-pitched whine of a single turboprop aircraft engine screamed overhead.
Khun Ut flinched and then hurried across the room to look up at the sky through
the balcony window.

“That
fucking CIA Porter again. The sonofabitch is flying so low it’s going to knock
the chimney off the roof.”

The
Cambodian joined him at the window. “They are getting very brazen, boss. They
must be looking for the CIA woman. They are coming very close. That plane is
usually only used to photograph the poppy fields around here from a couple
thousand feet up. Now they have it circling your house. They have the house
under constant surveillance. They must know we have the CIA woman here.”

“How
would they possibly know that?” Khun Ut limped slowly back to his desk. He
appeared tired and confused. “No, you are right. They could know. We left two
men dead back at the woman’s villa. Maybe they were not dead. Maybe one of them
talked.”

Ung
Chea joined Khun Ut back at the desk. Softly he said, “There are many ways they
could find out, boss. Many ways.”

“How
could they find out? No one followed us here when we brought the woman. We know
that for a fact.”

Ung
Chea understood the frustration of his boss and spoke in soft, gentle tones.
“The same way we found out about the return of the two
farangs
, Khun Ut,
through informants.”

“Yes,
maybe, but we are still not sure about that. We are not certain these are the
same two
farangs.
”

Ung
Chea dropped his head. He did not like to give his boss bad news, but he would
never lie to him, and he would always give him his unvarnished opinion. “Boss,”
he said softly, “they are the same guys.”

Khun
Ut shook his head slowly from side to side, but Ung Chea continued. “We know
that two
farangs
matching the description of Humphrey and Callahan left
Thailand over the Nong Khai bridge in late August, right after, well, after we
were chasing them. And then, the following day, two identical looking
farangs
named Santos and MacMurphy flew out of Vientiane.”

Khun
Ut nodded. “Yes, I know, Colonel Chatchai Sonthonwet helped them. The
ungrateful bastard, after all we have done for him and all we have paid him, he
helped those two sons of bitches.”

“Yes,
he helped them, and I think he may have helped them again the day before
yesterday.”

Khun
Ut looked surprised and frightened. He drew heavily on his cheroot. “What do
you mean, Ung Chea? What happened? You said nothing to me about this.”

“That
is what I came here to tell you.” The Cambodian dropped his eyes and spoke
softly. “I wanted to check things out first, boss. I did not want to alarm you
until I checked all of my facts.”

“Yes,
go on,” said Khun Ut anxiously.

The
Cambodian took a deep breath and collected his thoughts. “Sunthonwet brought
two
farangs
across the bridge from Vientiane into Nong Khai. One of our
people saw them in Sonthonwet’s police cruiser and reported it to Paiboon.
Paiboon thought it was suspicious and checked the flights coming into Vientiane
over the previous couple of days and, guess what?”

“Yes…what?”

“MacMurphy
and Santos…”

“And
who are they?” asked Khun Ut, suspecting the worst.

“I
do not know about Santos, but MacMurphy is well known to us. We have a dossier on
him. He was stationed at the CIA base in Udorn a few years ago – in the late
nineties. Colonel Sunthonwet was one of his principle liaison contacts back
then. They know each other very well from those days.”

Khun
Ut looked tired. His usual swagger and confidence was gone. But he remained as
defiant as ever. “So it is the CIA.”

“It
sure looks like it, boss. He was a CIA officer back then, so I think it is safe
to assume he still is a CIA officer.”

Deep
in thought, Khun Ut watched the smoke rise from the end of his cheroot. Finally
he said, “I think we must have a talk with Colonel Sunthonwet. Get over there
right away.”

The
Porter returned and buzzed low over the villa once again. They ducked and
looked up at the ceiling and waited until it had passed. Khun Ut’s eyes blazed
with hatred.

“And
take out that CIA Porter, Ung Chea. Use one of the Stingers. Take the fucking
thing out…”

Chapter One Hundred-Twelve

T
he
bright sun was low in the western sky when they passed through the town of Ban
Doi heading west on route 1098. They were just a few kilometers from the
north/south route 110 that would take them on the final leg of their journey up
through Mae Sai to Ban Hin Taek on the northern border.

They
hurried to get there before dark so MacMurphy could do a final reconnaissance
of the town and Khun Ut’s mountainside villa before heading into the jungle on
foot.

MacMurphy
tilted the sun visor down and a red, four inch by eight inch, card fell out and
landed on his lap. He glanced at it and laughed. “Look what we have here, a
free parking card compliments of the police.”

“Cool,”
said Santos. “We can save money at the parking meters, but I don’t think there
will be many parking meters where we’re going.”

 Mac
laughed. “Yeah, we can park anywhere we want and never get a ticket. But
seriously, this might come in handy along with our ‘get out of jail free’ pass
from the colonel. At the very least it will keep anyone from monkeying around
with our car          while we are
up in the hills.”

“Good
point. I wonder if this Land Rover also has any neat police gadgets on it like
Sawat’s car did, like lights and siren.”

“I
didn’t notice anything, but then I didn’t check behind the grill for lights.”
He checked the dashboard for a light or button of some kind. “Here they are.”
He flipped a toggle switch below the dash and the siren wailed. He hit the one
next to it and a signal indicated the blue and red grill lights were flashing.
“Whoops! I guess it does,” he exclaimed. “We’ll have to keep that in mind.”

By
the time they pulled into Ban Hin Taek it was almost dusk. The road dipped
sharply down from the mountains into a long narrow finger valley lined with
small homes, elegant villas and tin roofed commercial buildings. The massive
Doi Tung Mountain loomed up to their right and smaller hills and mountains
bordered the road to their left.

They
passed a large cracked boulder lying in the Mae Kham River which flowed through
the middle of town beside the road.

“Well
I’ll be damned! See that big rock over there?” MacMurphy pointed at the huge
rock. “That’s how the town got its name. Hin Taek means cracked rock in Thai.”

“How
do you know that? Your Thai isn’t that good.”

“I
know the words for rock and cracked, that’s enough.”

“I’m
surprised at how modern the town looks and some of those villas look very
expensive.”

“Yeah,
it looks different on the ground than from the air. It really is pretty nice,
actually. They get a lot of tourists here these days. Not like when Khun Sa
ruled the place. Those villas were probably occupied by his lieutenants.”

They
drove slowly through the center of the town along the river. The surrounding
hills, which under Khun Sa cultivated massive volumes of opium poppy, were now
planted with tea and coffee – poppy was now grown in fields further from the
towns and off the more beaten touristy paths.

Near
the far edge of the town, about mid-way up on a high hill on the left side of
the road, they saw Khun Ut’s mountain villa. It was barely visible from the road,
and the narrow drive leading up to it was blocked at the entrance with a gate
manned by four sentries armed with AK-47 assault rifles.