“Do you know why gambling is an illness and not a profession, Harry? It’s because the gambler loves risk. He lives and breathes for that quivering uncertainty.”
He puffed out the smoke in broad rings.
“With me it’s the other way around. I can go to extremes to eliminate risk. What you saw me win today covers my costs and all my effort, and that’s no small amount, believe you me.”
“But you never lose?”
“It gives a reasonable return.”
“A reasonable return? You mean enough for gamblers sooner or later to be forced to hock everything they have.”
“Something like that.”
“But isn’t some of the charm of gambling lost if you know the result?”
“Charm?” Jens held up the wad of money. “I think this has enough charm. It can provide me with this.” He spread an open palm around him.
“I’m a simple man.” He studied the glow of his cigar. “OK, let’s call a spade a spade. I’m a bit short on charm.”
He burst into a braying laugh. Harry had to smile along with him.
Jens glanced at his watch and jumped up.
“Lots to do before the U.S.A. opens. Things are going mad. See you. Give my sister some thought.”
He was out of the door, and Harry was left sitting and smoking a cigarette and giving the sister some thought. Then he took a taxi to Patpong. He didn’t know what he was looking for, but he went into a go-go bar, almost ordered a beer and quickly went out again. He ate frogs’ legs at Le Boucheron and the owner came over and explained in very poor English that he was longing to return to la Normandie. Harry told him that his father had been there during D-Day. It wasn’t exactly true, but at least it cheered the Frenchman up.
Harry paid and found another bar. A girl in ridiculously high heels perched down beside him, stared at him with her large brown eyes and asked if he wanted a blow job. Of course I bloody do, he thought, and shook his head. He registered that they were showing highlights from a Manchester United match on the TV hanging over the glass shelves in the bar. In the mirror he could see the girls dancing on the small, intimate stage directly behind him. They had stuck tiny gold stars on their breasts to cover the nipples so that the bar wasn’t breaking the law against nudity. And each of the girls wore a number on their skimpy panties. The police didn’t ask what it was for, but everyone knew it was to avoid misunderstandings when customers wanted to hire girls from the bar. Harry had already seen her. Number 20. Dim was at the back of four girls dancing, and her tired eyes swept over the row of men at the bar like radar. Now and then a fleeting smile crossed her lips, but it didn’t rouse any life in her eyes. She appeared to have made contact with a man wearing a kind of tropical uniform. German, Harry guessed, without knowing why. He watched her hips grind lazily from side to side, her shiny black hair flick off her back as she turned, and her smooth, glowing skin that seemed to be illuminated from inside. Had it not been for her eyes, she would have been beautiful, Harry thought.
For a fraction of a second their eyes met in the mirror, and Harry immediately felt uneasy. She showed no signs of recognition, but he shifted his gaze to the TV screen, which showed the back of a player being substituted. Same number. “Solskjær” it said at the top of the shirt. Harry woke as if from a dream.
“Bloody hell!” he shouted, knocking over his glass and sending Coke into the lap of his devoted courtesan. Harry forced his way out to the sound of indignant shouts behind him: You not my friend!
36
Sunday, January 19
Two men in green charged through the bushes, one bent low with a wounded comrade over his shoulders. They laid him down under cover, behind a fallen tree trunk, as they raised their rifles, took aim and fired into the undergrowth. A dry voice announced that this was East Timor’s hopeless struggle against President Suharto and his brutal regime.
On the podium a man nervously rustled his papers. He had traveled far and wide to talk about his country, and this evening was important. There might not have been many people in the assembly room at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club Thailand, only forty to fifty in the audience, but they were vital, together they could carry the message on to millions of readers. He had seen the film that was being shown a hundred times, and he knew that in two minutes he would have to step into the firing line.
Ivar Løken started involuntarily when he felt a hand on his shoulder and a voice whispered: “We have to talk. Now.”
In the semi-gloom he made out Hole’s face. He got up and they left the room together, while a guerrilla with half of his face burned into a stiff mask explained why he had spent the last eight years of his life in the Indonesian jungle.