It was a very small scrap of paper, and the words had obviously been written in haste. Creasy looked up into the old man’s worn face. He said gently, ‘Mr Bentsen, this is probably a dirty kind of joke. It’s happened before. Jake was killed on the Vietnam-Cambodian border twenty-six years ago . . . ’
The old man said: ‘He used to write about you. Jake never really had heroes. In a way he was his own hero. He lived in his own image. But he looked up to you like no other man. He was twenty-one years old on that day, Mr Creasy, when he was cut down. They never found the body. Nobody went back to look for him, Mr Creasy.’
Slowly, Creasy lifted his scarred face. He reached out and touched the dogtag and then picked it up. His fist closed around it. He said: ‘And you think that now somebody should.’
A. J. Quinnell is the pseudonym of the author of ten novels including Man on Fire which was made twice into Hollywood Films - most recently directed by Tony Scott for Twentieth Century Fox in 2004, starring Denzel Washington, Christopher Walken and Dakota Fanning. The book sold more than eight million copies in paperback and was translated around the world.
Full list of titles:
Man on Fire
The Mahdi
Snap Shot
Blood Ties
Siege of Silence
In the Name of the Father
The Perfect Kill
The Blue Ring
Message from Hell
Black Horn
Message From Hell
A. J. Quinnell
First published in Great Britain by Orion in 1996
Copyright © 1996 A. J. Quinnell
Published by CLLA
The right of A.J. Quinnell to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
ISBN: 978-1-908426-12-3
For
Mormor
In
Memoriam
Author’s Note
My thanks to Sgt. Mik Allen for leading me through dangerous places.
Content
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
EPILOGUE
Prologue
The man was old, and the fingers of his right hand were thin and bony. More of a talon than a hand. The metal glinted as it nestled in his palm.
‘It’s a dogtag.’
‘I know what it is.’
‘It’s a US Army dogtag.’
‘I know that. Let me see it.’
The talon closed around the metal as though protecting a precious jewel.
‘It’s my son’s dogtag.’
‘Your son is dead. I saw him gunned down.’
‘Did you see him die?’
‘No, it was a fire-fight. We’d been ambushed and were getting the hell out; but I saw Jake get hit. He was cut down by machine-gun fire. He was about a hundred metres away and there was no chance to get back to him. I got hit myself and was lucky to get out.’
‘I know. But did you see him actually die?’
Creasy shook his head.
‘No, Mr Bentsen. If anyone did, it was the guys who shot him.’
They were sitting at a corner table in a bar in Brussels. Creasy had dropped in to have a drink with the bartender, who was an old friend. Before he had a chance to take the first sip, the old man had appeared at his shoulder and asked to speak to him. It was a bar much frequented by mercenaries, ex-mercenaries, pretend mercenaries and would-be mercenaries.
The old man had a stiff urgency. He had said: ‘Can I talk to you Mr Creasy; privately?’
Creasy had studied his face. He had a memory for faces, but this one stirred no memory. There was something in the old man’s eyes which made Creasy cross the room and sit down at the table. The old man sat opposite, and said: ‘I’m Jake Bentsen’s father.’
With that he had reached into his pocket and pulled out the dogtag.
‘How did you find me?’ Creasy asked.
The old man sighed. ‘It was not easy. But my neighbour has a cousin who’s an analyst with the CIA at Langley. He did some research and told me that if you were still operative you could be located via this bar. I’ve been here a week, Mr Creasy, and I’ve been in this bar every day. Of course I asked the bartender, but he told me nothing. I was going home to San Diego on Monday.’
‘Well, I’m not operative,’ Creasy said. ‘I happen to be in town visiting an old friend. I’m leaving tomorrow. How did you recognise me?’
‘From the description in one of Jake’s letters. He described every scar on your face.’
Creasy looked at the old man thoughtfully, and then said: ‘Show me the dogtag, Mr Bentsen.’
Slowly the fingers uncurled and turned, and the small metal disc dropped onto the table. Creasy reached forward, pulled it towards him and looked at the name and the number embossed on it. He looked at it for a long time, then took another sip of his drink and asked: ‘Where did you get it, Mr Bentsen?’
‘It was delivered to me two weeks ago at my home in San Diego.’
‘Who by?’
‘I don’t know, Mr Creasy. At least I don’t know his name or where he came from. My doorbell rang. My wife answered it. There was a short man, an Oriental. He handed her a small package and went away.’
‘And this was in the package?’
‘Yes.’
‘Was there anything else?’
Again the bony fingers reached into the jacket pocket, and came out with a crumpled piece of brown wrapping paper. He pushed it across the table. Creasy
smoothed it out and read the scrawled words. There were just three of them, spelled out vertically.
CREASY
‘NAM
‘BODIA
The old man’s eyes were fixed on the dogtag and the scrap of paper. Without looking up he said, ‘I took it to the MIA in Washington. They told me that as far as they could tell it’s authentic. Jake’s body was never found; or the dogtag. It’s not possible to tell if the writing on the paper is Jake’s. I took it to a handwriting specialist who compared it with some of Jake’s letters home. He said he thought it might be.’
Now he looked up, but could not see into Creasy’s eyes. Creasy had leaned forward and was looking down intently at the metal disc and the scrap of paper.
The old man said: ‘He used to write about you. Jake never really had heroes. In a way he was his own hero. He lived in his own image. But he looked up to you like no other man. He was twenty-one years old on that day, Mr Creasy, when he was cut down. They never found the body. Nobody went back to look for him, Mr Creasy.’
Slowly, Creasy lifted his scarred face. He reached out and touched the dogtag and then picked it up. His fist closed around it. He said: ‘And you think that now somebody should?’
Chapter 1
‘You feel guilty!’
Creasy sighed, and answered: ‘It’s not guilt.
‘Then what is it?’
Creasy looked at his friend across the table. He had known Maxie for more years than he liked to remember. As mercenaries, they had fought together at different times over a score of years until Maxie had married and bought his bistro in Brussels and settled down in a sporadic sort of way.
They were sitting in that bistro now, together with a Dane called Jens Jensen and a small, round-faced, bespectacled French-man known always by his nickname ‘The Owl’.
Jensen was the ex-head of the Copenhagen Police’s missing persons department. The Owl was an ex-gangster and bodyguard from the Marseille underworld. Some years ago, in a surrealistic series of events, Creasy had matched them together and they now formed an unlikely partnership as a private detective agency which specialized in looking for anything that was missing, be it a husband or wife, a lost dog or a diamond. The Dane was in his late thirties, slightly overweight with thinning blond hair and a with a school-teacher wife and a young daughter. Apart from his family and The Owl, his only other attachment was a portable IBM computer which never strayed more than a few metres from his side. In an era when people were talking about the Information Superhighway and the Internet, Jens Jensen was already locked into them.
The Frenchman was in his mid-forties, and hid his character behind the thick round spectacles which gave him his nickname. The four people who mattered in his life were Creasy and the Jensen family. He had two other attachments. One was the Sony Walkman which was permanently fixed to his belt and which gave him the only relaxation he ever needed: the sounds of the great classical composers. He was a walking encyclopaedia of their works and their lives, and for him God was called Mozart. His other attachment was a MAB PA 15 pistol with the rotating barrel. It nestled in a soft leather holster under his left armpit and, when necessary, he used it with a speed and accuracy that would have turned Wyatt Earp green with envy.
It was a good partnership. Jens Jensen had a gift for getting into trouble; and The Owl had a gift for getting him out of it. Jens was the brain and The Owl was the gun.
Jensen and The Owl had been in Brussels looking for the runaway wife of a Danish industrialist. They had located her the previous night, in the bed of a black saxophonist. Since she was clearly content to be there, Jens had merely retrieved the five-carat engagement ring and the heavy gold wedding ring for his client, and phoned through the news that he may as well begin divorce proceedings. He and The Owl had worked with both Maxie and Creasy on previous jobs some years earlier and so they had naturally gravitated to Maxie’s bistro for their last supper in Brussels. They had been surprised and pleased to find Creasy in attendance, and together with Maxie had listened to the story of the supposedly dead GI and the mysterious return of the dogtag with the scrap of paper.
Maxie repeated his statement. ‘You feel guilty!’
Creasy shook his head. ‘Maxie, you know how it is. You’ve been there dozens of times. You see a guy get hit and you have an instinct which tells you whether the hit was fatal or not. Nine times out of ten your instinct is right. I was running for cover but I saw the kid get hit. He went down like a spinning top. I was also hit, but not badly. I managed to get away.’
‘So what are you feeling guilty about?’
Creasy sighed again with irritation. ‘I’m not feeling guilty. It’s just that, maybe, we should have gone back to make sure. I wasn’t hurt bad. I just needed a few stitches and a day at the MASH. Of course we couldn’t go back right away, but we could have returned a couple of days later, in force.’
The Dane sipped at his wine and asked: ‘Were you in command of the unit?’
Creasy shook his head. ‘No. It was a US Special Forces patrol. I was attached to it as a very unofficial “irregular”.’
‘So it wasn’t your responsibility?’
‘No, but the guy in command was an asshole. Maybe I could have got a few of the other irregulars together and gone back to take a look.’
Maxie was looking at his friend with curiosity. He said: ‘For God’s sake, Creasy. In a situation like that, you don’t go back looking for a guy you’re almost sure is dead.’ He gestured at the dogtag lying on the centre of the table. ‘Twenty-six years later, that turns up with a piece of paper with your name on it. Probably some bent mind, or maybe the guy who delivered them was setting up the kid’s father for a con. It’s happened before.’
‘Maybe.’
Maxie picked up the disc and rolled it through his fingers, and asked: ‘What was the kid like?’
Creasy thought about that, and then said: ‘He was a good kid. A bit different. He was always frightened.’
Maxie laughed in surprise. ‘Frightened. He’d graduated to the US Special Forces and had been in ‘Nam for over a year; and he was always frightened?’
‘Yes. He thought he never showed it. He was the macho type on the outside. I guess he was born frightened, and had spent the twenty-one years of his life trying to prove to himself that he was a hero. He used to follow me around, a bit like a puppy. Always talking tough, but always just a frightened kid underneath. I sort of came to like him. I guess, in a way, like you get attached to a puppy. When things got rough, I tried to keep him a little close, but on that day the asshole platoon commander had put him out on point. He was the first one to get cut down.’
Maxie studied his friend’s scarred face. He had been present when some of those scars were inflicted. Quietly he said: ‘Creasy, there’s no way you should feel responsible. You were not even in the fucking US Army. You were a hired irregular whom nobody was even supposed to talk about. You were not in command. You had no responsibility. So they paid you good, but not good enough to risk going back to look for a guy you assumed was dead. Now why don’t you go home to Gozo: soak up the sun and put it out of your mind.’
Creasy reached out and picked up the scrap of paper. He said: ‘Thanks for the advice, Maxie. But ‘Nam has opened up again and so has Cambodia.’ He smiled wryly. ‘I guess I’ll go and look for the puppy.’
In astonishment, Maxie glanced at Jens and The Owl. It was as though he had just heard the Pope announce that he was off to get married.
The Dane said: It sounds like a wild goose looking for a needle in a thousand hectares of wheat. Where will you start to look?’
Creasy was holding his wine glass and slowly swirling the contents. He looked up at
the Dane and then at The Owl and asked: ‘Are you guys busy at the moment?’
‘Not very,’ Jens answered. ‘We just wrapped up a job. We figured to take some time off.’
Creasy put down his glass and said: ‘How would you feel about working with me on this?’
The Dane and the Frenchman glanced at each other. Then The Owl asked: ‘Does this kid’s father have plenty of money?’
‘I doubt it. He’s a retired clerk. I guess he has his pension and no more. If you joined me, I would be the client.’
Again, glances of surprise passed around the table, and Maxie asked: ‘You’ll do this for nothing?’
Creasy shrugged. ‘You talked about guilt. The fact is, I’m not feeling guilty, but I am curious. I want to know where that dogtag came from, and why.’ He looked at the Dane. ‘I want to hire you and The Owl for at least a couple of weeks. How much do you guys charge per diem?’
Suddenly, there was a strange noise. It emanated from The Owl. The other three looked at him with concern; then they realized that he was laughing. He controlled himself and said: ‘Creasy, I never expected to hear such a question from you. Three years ago you came into what I thought was a life and turned it upside down . . . Gave it a purpose.’ He gestured at the Dane. ‘You matched me up with Jens and, in a sense, gave me a family for the first time. Now you have the balls to sit there and ask how much I charge you for what is nothing more than a favour.’
The Dane was nodding thoughtfully. He said: if it wasn’t for you, Creasy, I’d still be sitting in a small office at Copenhagen Police Headquarters pushing papers around. So shut up about money and just tell us what you want done.’
Creasy looked at Maxie, who stated: ‘It’s not a good thing to insult old friends.’
There was a brief flash of anger in Creasy’s eyes. Then he relaxed and sat back in his seat. He said to Jens: ‘You have my thanks. Of course, I’ll cover your expenses. And who knows, maybe some money will come out of all this. It often does. If so, we split it three ways.’