Serpentine Page 25

  “Wait, please,” said Mr. Okada urgently. “I’ll go down with you. I just want to use the toilet quickly.” Into the bathroom disappeared Mr. Okada and a moment later out burst two men with pillow cases over their heads. They were André and Van Dam. Before Kecvic could cry out, he was slammed to the floor and a strip of adhesive tape slapped over his mouth. Then Charles stepped out, no longer bothering to disguise himself as Mr. Okada. The Istanbul police report would describe Charles’ demeanor at this moment as “being like a Palestinian guerrilla out to kill a Jew.” Angry that the drug had not stilled his victim, Charles took a syringe and, holding it over Kecvic like a dagger, plunged it three times into the dressmaker’s arm. When Kecvic’s eyes finally closed, Charles stripped away his wristwatch, his wallet, and the cash in his pocket, irritated that he was not wearing the diamond ring. Prudently, Kecvic had placed it in a safety deposit box at the front desk. Charles surveyed the take hurriedly; the proceeds were not anywhere near what he had expected. He improvised a sudden second act.

  Leaving André and Van Dam to watch over the slumbering Kecvic, Charles rushed to the lobby and telephoned Krista. When she answered, Charles put on his Mr. Okada act again. Would it be possible for Madame Kecvic to honor the men with her presence in the lobby? Her husband and Mr. Saito had just concluded a remarkable business deal, and they wished to celebrate with champagne and late supper. A beautiful woman’s presence was necessary to seal the bargain. Succumbing instantly to the flattery and the good news, Krista promised to be down in ten minutes.

  When she appeared in the lobby, Mr. Okada rushed forward with a smile, a bow, and a slight change of plans. The other men had gone to Mr. Saito’s room to sign important documents. They wanted Krista and Mr. Okada to join them there. When the door to Room 410 opened in response to Mr. Okada’s soft knock, Krista saw her husband lying on the floor, his eyes and mouth taped. Before she could scream and rush to him, rough hands tore the fur coat from her shoulders, pushed her onto the floor, and slapped tape across her mouth. Charles ordered her to kneel before him, and he ceremoniously tore enough of her gown to reveal a bare shoulder. The last thing she felt was a needle plunging into her arm, then she fell, beside her husband. Charles pulled the rings from her fingers, rifled her purse, found her room key. He left the others to watch over the drugged couple, rushing to the Kecvics’ room and taking their passports, traveler’s checks, and a watch.

  Just before dawn, Charles, André, and the two other henchmen quietly left Room 410, where within Anton and Krista Kecvic were sleeping deeply. A “Do Not Disturb” sign was placed on the door and the gang left the hotel unnoticed, having several chores to accomplish before all could leave Istanbul on a midmorning plane. André was sent to a smouldering garbage dump to dispose of the pillowcase hoods and the toy pistols and the syringes and the freshly printed calling cards and the book on Eastern mercantile commerce that Pierre le Premier had fortuitously found at the USIA library.

  Charles made a snap assessment of the long night’s proceeds and decided that their efforts had netted between $15,000 and $20,000—about half as much as he had anticipated, but still in all—not bad. The Dutchman and Pierre le Premier were given their salaries, they having committed to the project for flat fees, and Charles asked them to be available several months hence when he would reassemble his group for more work, perhaps in Rome.

  On the taxi ride to the airport, Charles cursed the driver, accusing him of taking a roundabout route and bilking him. “You are a thief!” cried Charles, preparing to do battle over perhaps one dollar until André soothed him. On the flight to Athens, Charles nudged his half-brother and handed him 5,000 French francs. The night before they had been in Anton Kecvic’s wallet. “Now do you see how easy it is to pluck the fruit from these trees?” asked Charles. André nodded, but he could not resist looking at every face on the airline throughout the flight, fearful that a policeman would stare back at him. But such worry did not intrude on Charles, for he rattled on and on, talking of his need for a long rest, throwing up grandiose plans of sending André to college in Hong Kong to obtain a degree in business, of using André as a front man because he had no police record and could thus obtain liquor permits for a string of restaurants and discos in Asia and Europe, touching his younger brother’s arm affectionately and murmuring his vast contentment in having his own blood beside him in enterprise. Someday, vowed Charles, he would bring other members of his family into the business. It was his dream to employ them all—half-brothers, half-sisters, cousins in India, even Song in Marseilles if she could extricate herself from the French lieutenant’s headaches.

  “They will love me,” said Charles. “Don’t you think they will love me?”

  André nodded. At this moment he was not certain that love tied him to his half-brother. But he was nonetheless bound.

  The sister of Krista Kecvic went to the Hilton Hotel on this day for a prearranged lunch. When she knocked on Krista’s door, there was no answer, nor was there response to the telephone. She waited most of the afternoon, her concern mounting. She convinced the hotel management to open the door, and the room was empty. Police were notified; a search of Istanbul ordered.

  But not until thirty-six hours later did a chambermaid report that a “Do Not Disturb” sign had been hanging on the doorknob of Room 410 for almost two days. When this room was opened, the bodies of Anton and Krista Kecvic were discovered, barely alive, still unconscious. Rushed to the hospital where they made a difficult recovery, the couple told fearful stories of having been drugged and assaulted by a brutal Japanese businessman named Mr. Okada.

  Mr. Okada by this time had changed identities. Charles put his own photograph on Anton Kecvic’s French passport and used it successfully, with no problem, to enter Greece. It was either a brazen epilogue to the dramatic crime or a blunder that an amateur pickpocket would not have made.

  Charles and André checked into a small hotel in Athens where the intention was to rest and plan their future. For a day Charles read philosophy books, sitting in a hot tub and sipping tea. The exhilaration of the caper in Istanbul had worn away quickly, and André noticed a conspicuous melancholy wrapping his half-brother. He dared not ask Charles during one of his reflective periods, for he had learned that no intrusion was permitted when Charles was thinking. Instead he wisely left him alone, electing to prowl the streets of Athens, his pockets full of money, in search of taverns and women with large breasts. After two days, sated, his stomach filled with ouzo and his heart mildly stirred by the passions of a Greek waitress who knew sexual tempos beyond his capacities, André returned to the hotel room and discovered Charles morose and snappish. The reasons came immediately. “There’s simply not enough money,” said Charles. He had less than $10,000—not enough to take off half a year or more and hire a lawyer to fight Hélène in Paris for custody of their daughter (or, failing that, to impress Hélène with a documented fortune and buy her back). A map of the world was spread on a table, and several countries had angry red X’s slashed across them, these being those territories where Charles Sobhraj was wanted by the police. Hong Kong, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Istanbul—he had worked his way across Asia, and his wake was a storm of warrants and furious police itching to clamp their hands and their chains about his neck. He told André that he dared not even return to France; his criminal record there and his clouded citizenship would probably result in his being arrested the moment he set foot on French soil. “Europe’s a big place,” ventured André. It was the wrong thing to say. Charles grabbed the map and crunched it into a ball and threw it into a corner. He was afraid of Europe. In the East he could operate. In the East, he could disappear in the awesome stretches of land and the crowds of the major cities. In the East he was a chameleon, able to resemble whatever nationality he chose to resemble. But Europe was different. Police had more sophisticated ways—computers, communication networks, telephones that connected callers in minutes rather than hours or days. And bribes, the “Asian way,”
as Charles called such palm greasing, were not so blatantly negotiated. His destiny was clearly in the East—and yet he could not risk going there again. The next day he bought a map of South America and began studying it.

  That night Charles dressed and left the hotel. He told André he was going to look around. At the Athens Hilton bar he met an elderly Japanese professor of classical literature who was in Greece to worship the ground where Socrates and Euripides had walked. Easily Charles slipped into a new role. He was, at all times, a brilliant actor and, once immersed in a new identity, felt whole again. What a coincidence, said Charles. He, too, was a classicist, teaching now and then at the Sorbonne, but now on long sabbatical, writing a novel based on the tragedy of Medea. The old professor, whose name was Negishi, smiled and bowed his head in respect to a colleague in the groves of academe. They drank a toast to the glory of Greece; they spoke in a curious but workable lingual meeting ground of Japanese, English, and French. Within an hour the men were devoted friends. Charles proposed a day of sightseeing, knowing as he did an excellent guide who could show them portions of the national library that were normally impossible to enter. Professor Negishi glowed in the fortune that had brought him to a hotel bar—when indeed he had planned to stay in his room and retire early—and positioned him next to a colleague of scholarship and goodwill. Then Charles proposed a night on the town. Had his new friend from Japan visited Pláka, the fascinating district of tavernas and cobbled streets, nestled in the lap of the Acropolis, a festival of joyous celebration each night?

  They made their way up steep steps, past cafes whose innards swam with bouzouki music and the laughter of wine, pushing through crowds of tourists that danced under grape arbors, looking up now and then at the soft golden lights that illumined the Parthenon and made the ancient hilltop a crown for the revels. They dined on lamb smothered in garlic and pepper, on rich meat pies, on platters of black grapes and chunks of melons. They sang, they clapped when the strong young Greek men and women locked their arms and danced past their tables, and they drank. Professor Negishi was so overcome by the bacchanal that when his eyes suddenly became heavy he grew apologetic. He was old, and he wore out quickly, and he was sorry to feel fatigue so early in the evening. Charles was tender and understanding. Jet travel is wearying. A new country assaults the body’s habits. All the professor needed was a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow they would be ready for scholarship. Professor Negishi, barely able to nod his assent, fell asleep in the taxi going home. Charles helped him into the Hilton lobby, grateful that it was still crowded at midnight, suspecting that anyone who saw them would guess the young man was helping his inebriated father to bed.

  The next midday, when the elderly professor awoke with a heavy head, he had the faintest memory of his new young friend tucking him in and whispering, “Sleep well.” Then Negishi discovered that his passport, his Nikon camera, his wallet, his watch, his return plane ticket to Tokyo, 10,000 yen and $820 in traveler’s checks were gone.

  And so was Charles’ depression. André saw the gloom lift from Charles, and he knew now that his brother was a hunter. Unless all of his senses were engaged, unless a target was in his sights, he was an empty man. The robbery of the Japanese professor was classic. Quick. Neat. No violence. From start to finish, done within four hours.

  After Charles determined that Professor Negishi had returned to Japan and was no longer around to identify the young “scholar” who had shattered his trust, he ventured boldly again into the Hilton lobby. Touring the public rooms and watching the guests with a casual but piercing study, Charles zeroed in on an Egyptian, Khymal by name, a huge man with a florid face, a damp collar, and a furtive air that suggested to Charles that here was a royalist whose socks were stuffed with gold. After several hours of surreptitious examination, Charles decreed that extra hands would be needed to handle Khymal. The potential victim weighed at least 250 pounds; André was willing to help drag the fat carcass to his hotel room, if necessary. And as Khymal spent most of his time sitting on a well-positioned divan in the Hilton lobby, watching the Western women clatter across gleaming marble floors, their legs under terry cloth robes still dripping from the swimming pool, Charles reasoned that he must provide a provocative bit of bait for this whale. Fortunately, Charles had encountered an old friend in Athens the day before, a ripe, post-hippie American whose name was Mary Claire and whose principal charms were a body six feet in length and a bosom that had once appeared in a girlie magazine extending over two pages.

  Mary Claire had once assisted Charles on an unsuccessful job in Singapore, and now she had fallen on hard times. She was dressed poorly and in need of a hair styling—and money. Charles promised her $250 for a few hours’ work, bought her an inexpensive but well-cut dress that showcased her breasts, cut and combed her hair himself, and sent her forth to perch on the rocks and sing. Khymal discovered her and André in the hotel’s taverna. She smiled provocatively; he moved like a truck getting a green light at a tricky intersection, and within two hours was sprawled unconscious beside the bed in a cheap hotel where Mary Claire had lured him. He would not awake until dawn. But as he slumbered, Charles took the hotel key from his pocket, located his room at the Hilton, and stripped it of 3,000 French francs, $250, an Egyptian passport, and a few German marks. While he looked around the room for anything else worth taking, André’s eyes fell on a doll that Khymal had probably purchased in a souvenir shop. It wore Greek national costume and when pinched on the buttocks made a piercing laugh, like a whore full of ouzo. André laughed and put it in his pocket. Charles thought that such was a waste of effort, but if his younger brother wanted to play with dolls, then so be it.

  With two successful scores accomplished back-to-back in Athens, André assumed that Charles would want to stay in the city for several weeks, it being always crowded with tourists and having many first-class hotels should the Hilton grow too hot for their activities. But in deep November, a stormy day in Athens with dark sheets of rain sweeping over the chalky hills and turning the Aegean churning black, Charles abruptly announced leavetaking. Two policemen had looked at him sternly in Constitution Square this day when he met with Mary Claire to settle her fee. And the political climate of Greece troubled him. Though George Papadopoulos had fallen, and the dictatorship of the colonels shattered, Athens was still heavy with soldiers and police, not a comfortable environment. His eyes were now aimed at Beirut, a pleasant city to pass the winter, more Asian than European, and brimming, rumor had it, with reckless Arabs enriched by oil and eager for hedonistic delights.

  With one of the several stolen credit cards that nested in the false bottom of his attaché case, Charles purchased air tickets for himself and André. Routinely they passed through passport check at the airport, cleared customs, and squeezed onto one of those jammed shuttle buses that would deliver them to the runway where their jet waited. André was also relieved to leave Greece. He was not yet sophisticated enough to overcome the apprehension that he felt every time he presented a false passport to an official. He envied Charles’ ability to drum his fingers impatiently at the counter, feigning annoyance, as if he were a diplomat forced to deal with a bothersome functionary.

  But now, on the shuttle bus, his fear was sliding away and he saw a little girl, three or four years old, standing in front of his seat and swaying. He smiled at the pretty child, she responded with a diffident look. Impulsively, André reached into his flight bag, which contained magazines and a few souvenirs. He found the doll that he had stolen from the Egyptian. Holding it before the little girl, he pinched the doll’s bottom and out burst a cry of raucous laughter. The child was enchanted, begging to try. André showed her where to pinch, and for several moments, the doll and the child and the apprentice thief laughed together.

  But fate was eavesdropping and elected to play an ironic prank. Over the laughter of the doll roared an outraged scream, and through the crowd on the bus lunged the enormous body of an Egyptian with a florid face and a sweating collar.
“It’s him!” cried Khymal. “The one who robbed me!” The shuttle buses at Athens Airport make more than five hundred trips a day from terminal to runway, and transport tens of thousands of passengers, but a force more powerful than coincidence placed victim and assailants on the same one. As Khymal tried to wrap his thick fingers around André’s neck, the younger brother sputtered innocence. But a ring of police with rifles were called to surround the bus. And by nightfall, both Charles and André were in jail, even as Khymal the Egyptian knelt toward Mecca and thanked Allah for the blessings of destiny.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  There was no room for maneuvering. In Charles’ luggage, Athens police discovered four walkie-talkies, several expensive gold watches, one of which had recently graced the arm of Khymal the Egyptian, a gold Dunhill lighter, a radio, two gold Parker pens, assorted currencies, stolen credit cards, and half a dozen passports, the most intriguing two of which were Khymal’s, and a French document belonging to Anton Kecvic but bearing the newly pasted photograph of Charles Sobhraj, looking reasonably like a Turk who had found prosperity in Paris.

  As the news of the Istanbul robbery of the lingerie maker and his wife had received widespread notoriety in the tabloid press of Greece, it was not difficult to connect Charles with the sensational crime. Istanbul promptly began asking the Greeks to turn over the two prisoners so examples could be made of—to use the exact language of a high-ranking Turkish policeman—“these depraved bandits who violate the peace of Turkey by assaulting our tourist guests.”