The Big Whatever (17 page)

I looked across at Cathy, still deep in thought. I got up, put the kettle on for a cup of tea.

She snapped out of it. “Last time I saw you over there. Where was that, Saigon?”

“Yeah, I guess so. You had that office. In the Continental Hotel, right? Haven for assorted hoofers, guitar-slingers, urgers and no-hopers.”

“You were one of them.”

“Unkind.”

“Anyway, you'd better listen to this, Mel. I've got some shit to tell you, goes back to then.”

“Go for it.”

“One time there was this big fuck-up with the booking business. We had this guy in Manila used to send us soul and rock groups. They were good bands too, only one drawback: they played all the songs off a single album, nothing else.”

I brought the teapot and cups over to the table. “I remember seeing one of your groups,” I said. “The Saints. They played all of
Rubber Soul
, note for note, but that was it. If someone requested ‘Happy Birthday,' they were fucked.”

“Exactly,” she said. “But they cost way less than Australian or American outfits. Anyway, this trouble with
our Manila connection. We'd sent him money to kit out three new bands, and he'd gone quiet on us. I was in the hotel bar, telling this fellow I knew, a correspondent, about it. How I needed to get over to Manila to sort it out. Out of the blue he says, ‘I'm going there in two days time. Come with me.' Sure enough, on the day he picks me up in a cab, we head off to the airport. But it's not a regular flight. It's a US Air Force transport. One of those C47s.”

I poured the tea and pushed a cup over to her. “He's a spook, right?”

She took a sip. “We get to Manila. He trots off to do whatever. I go see my guy. He's shamefaced. He'd blown the money we'd sent him on cards and hookers, and his wife had booted him out. It was obvious she had the brains, so I got
her
to take over the business. Even got our money back, in time. After three days in Manila, I meet up with my Saigon friend again. He's done what he needed, everything is hunky dory. We fly back to Saigon.”

“Who is this guy?”

She took another sip, lit a cigarette.

“Monty. Shit name, huh? We meet up for a drink from time to time in Saigon. He's a regular at the Continental. Then a month after the Manila jaunt he tells me he has to go to Laos for a couple of days, would I like to tag along? Same deal, American plane. We end up in some town where Monty's doing something with the local mayor, a hill tribe guy. We're at a hotel. Everything's going on in French, which I can't follow, but I can tell things aren't going as planned. The mayor guy is being cranky and difficult. I'm hanging about, pouring drinks, being sweet. So I make a big fuss over the mayor – it's no skin off my nose, right? I lean over to pour his drink, give him a bit of a look-see down my front. The old goat loosens up a bit, starts smiling. Everything ends up good. Monty is very happy.

“We hung out together a lot after that. With correspondents, diplomatic staff. Hustlers and scammers. Military
people too. He was welcomed
anywhere
.”

“Is this guy military?”

“He was
supposed
to be a correspondent for something called the
Far Eastern Affairs Bulletin
. Might have even been a grain of truth in that, though it would've been a CIA front, of course.”

“Of course. Need I point out, my dear Cathy, that they're the evil fucking enemy?”

“Yeah, I know, I know. But it was an education. Amazing. One day we're in Saigon palling around with the foreign correspondents, politicians, military. Next day we're knocking back the cognac poolside with the Lao royal family – who are pretty good fun, by the way. Day after that we're helicoptering off to some mountain village. We went to Thailand and Cambodia too. US Air Force planes mostly. Sometimes South Vietnamese Air Force.”

“Doing
what
exactly?”

“There was business everywhere we went. Wherever we happened to be. Monty would meet local honcho types – lawyers, mayors, doctors, fixers. Priests, too. Anti-communists. Crooks, most of them. Anyone could see that.”

“And you were, what, along for the ride?” I said.

“No need for that judgemental tone. Monty was meeting up with people from the
other
side too: Pathet Lao, even North Viets. Spies and double agents, whoever. Trying to figure out whose side they were really on. And it served his purposes to have me along. He let the cronies and fixers think I was his piece of tail. Maybe he figured they'd respect him more having, let's face it, a spunk like me along. Pouring drinks, lighting ciggies.”

“Doesn't sound like you.”

“Obviously I was just playing along. Thing is, something else was cooking. As well as the spy business, I mean.”

“Meaning?”

“Remember the dope over there?”

“Sure. Best ganja in the world.”

“And . . .” She waited.

“Well, opium of course.”

“That was Monty's real business. Thieu and Ky and the rest – they're all in the opium trade. Have been for years. The Yanks are helping ship the raw opium from the hill plantations to the cities. Monty was helping set up the air transport.” She stopped.

I shook my head. “The Americans flying opium? I don't believe it.”

She shrugged. “The hill tribes are diehard anti-com, and their only way of turning a dollar is growing O. The Yanks figured, help them out, they'd return the favour. Made sense. They built landing strips all through the hills of Laos. Take military hardware in, bring opium out. There are opium poppies growing right there on the hillsides. You see the women and kids doing the weeding, watering. The blokes resting up back at the hut. Then harvest time, tons and tons of the stuff to be got out. There's a whole city up there that's not even on the maps. Has the busiest airport in the world. They were slipping the opium in with the official cargo. Shit, half the time it
was
the official cargo. The CIA didn't care – a bunch of gooks smoking their faces off.”

“Still . . .”

“I saw the opium, Mel. I saw it on the planes. On US planes.”

“You were getting into it too, right?”

“Yeah, but I knew what was what. Monty was into it as well. Our little secret. For him it was a private statement. About not really being part of the establishment. Or something. I forget now. We started doing little bits of skag – chasing the dragon.”

She got up and went to the bathroom, came back a minute later.

“Thing was, the hill tribes were getting hip. For decades they'd been selling their opium harvest to Hong Kong gangsters, who turned it into heroin. Then some of the hill-tribe
hardheads learned how to refine the raw O into morphine base. From there it was no big deal to cook it into number three skag. The crude stuff. The rocks. Once you know how, you can do that in a shed or a lean-to. Easier to transport, obviously, plus a much much better price for the grower. The CIA didn't raise any objections.”

“This is so far-fetched.”

“True, nonetheless. Anyway, the next stage is turning number three into number four. White powder. Twenty times stronger. Maximum value. But not so easy. Takes a proper laboratory, good technicians, the right chemicals. There's a risk of explosion. The Chinese chemists are the best anywhere. They work for the gangs, mostly based in Hong Kong. If the interested parties were going to refine number four, they'd need the Chinese in on the deal.”

“This is Disneyland.”

“Monty's big project was helping set up the first Chinese laboratory. Right there in the Golden Triangle, within cooee of the poppy fields.”

I shook my head. But – dig, chillen – despite my protestations, Cathy's mad rave was making a kind of ghastly sense to your worldly-wise correspondent.

“A few of the spooks were in on it. Some because they were old-school idiot flag-waving patriots, who thought anything was justified in defence of the great blah blah. Others were straight-up crooks who saw big money. With a perfect US government cover.”

“And what did
you
see?”

“I'll tell you what I saw: an earn for myself. I won't deny it. But also for our side. You know – the good side? A big pile of money.”

She went quiet for a moment. “And I was in love,” she said.

She said it so plainly, I held off with any smart remarks. “With Monty?”

“Yeah. He was in love with me, too.”

She was quiet again, for a whole minute, then went on in a small voice. “Early in the piece, we were in Vientiane, supposed to be meeting a Lao official. Monty had this funny turn, an ‘episode.' Wouldn't come out of his room, wouldn't talk to anyone.
Couldn't
. This went on for three days. He was completely off-tap. I knew what had to be done. So I met the official on my own. Just winged it. It went fine. Next day Monty snapped out of it, but the business was already done. He knew what had happened.

“After that we were in it together. Then the deal with the Chinese came up. If we pulled it off, we stood to make a fortune.”

“Yeah?”

A big sigh from Cathy. “It went sour. The Chinese. Their main guy came up to the air base in Laos. The secret one? Monty was to go with him up into the hills, a helicopter trip away. All the spadework had been done. The big boss just had to put the final seal on it.

“We were all staying in a hotel in Luang Prabang, way up north, the swishest place Monty could find. The lab was to be set up near there. The deal was nearly done. But it didn't go well. The guy took exception to me. Some instinctive, gut-feeling thing. He was a little, round, smiling guy, cruellest eyes you ever saw. I was doing my hostess bit, being nice. But he was watching me. At one point he said very simply to Monty, ‘This one listen too much.' He pointed at me as he said it. No attempt to be polite or subtle. Monty didn't try to shit him, or smooth it over, he just went quiet.

“A little later I looked across at Monty. He looked sad. I knew I was in the shit. He saw me looking at him, and he knew that I knew.

“I was bundled out of there the next day. Escorted back to the air base, given sleepers and put on a plane. I woke up in a hotel room in Saigon. An old Viet woman keeping an eye on me. She spoke no English. She didn't know who I was anyway. I figured I'd been out of it for forty-eight hours.
Police came the next day and said my visa was revoked, I'd better get on a plane out of there pronto.

“I went to Darwin, then on to Sydney. Stayed in a share house up on the Peninsula. Didn't tell anyone what had happened. Too weird. Then I heard you and Johnny were running the disco.”

“And what became of Monty?”

“Haven't you worked it out yet?”

“Monty is the Captain.”

She nodded slowly.

“What did he say when he saw you down here?”

“He doesn't know I'm here.”

“How could that be?”

She shook her head.

I thought about it. The Captain had been in the thick of the party scene last year, but Cathy had been away travelling. And he'd been lying low since then. If Stan hadn't mentioned Cathy – and why would he? – then there was no reason their paths would have crossed.

She stood up, started walking around the room. “That white powder . . . it can only mean the lab deal finally came through. Monty would've got a commission for his part.”

She turned to me. “I had a feeling. Remember when all those strung-out Yanks started turning up at the Cross last year?”

“Of course.”

“The white powder has hit Vietnam.” She pointed at the foil package on the table. “And now it's here.”

She looked at me, waiting like a teacher with a dimwit pupil.

“Tomorrow the world,” I said.

“A shitload of number four,” she said, “can only mean Monty did the deal, got the refinery set up – maybe a string of refineries.”

“So he's the dope czar now?”

“Can't see that, somehow. He's too erratic. Maybe he
gets a commission. Or if he got a one-off payment, maybe part of it was in smack. Who knows? But he's holding right now. That's what's important.”

She turned to me with a smile.

“What?”

She shook her head, as if to say, need I spell it out? Then finally leaned over, took my hand, looked me in the eye.

“We rob him.”

The floor fell away beneath me.

“We rob him then get out of here. Take the white powder to Sydney. Give it to the Greeks as a peace offering. Keep a little back to sell, build up a bank. Square up with Johnny.

“Come to think of it,” she said, looking out the window, “I could probably put the Greeks in touch with one of the CIA crooks, which would mean a connection to the Chinese. If that's what they want.

“Holy Jesus fuck!” I said.