Fonko Go Home: Jake Fonko, #7

By B. Hesse Pflingger

SERBIA, 1992. At the annual Bilderberg Conference, former Army Ranger Jake Fonko bumps into an old flame from his Cambodia adventure, and one thing leads to another.

And another. And another. Until he finds himself caught between the Russian Mafia, a Hong Kong crime family and both sides in the Serbian Civil War.

• Language: English
• Publisher: B. Hesse Pflingger
• Release date: Aug 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386548072

Book preview

Chapter One

Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.

During my adventure in Serbia, the venerable home of my ancestors, I found that adage to be only half-accurate. There is no place like the Balkans, that’s for sure. But humble? I doubt the Serbo-Croatian language has a word for the concept. That mare’s nest of ethnic strife and conflict hits you square in the face the moment you set foot there and just keeps landing blows until you depart…provided it leaves you alive and capable of walking out, that is.

We’ll return to that chaotic, bloodthirsty, screwball mess shortly, and I’ll show you what I mean, but the concept of home had a more immediate bearing on me before I embarked on my Serbian fiasco. Let me bring the twists and turns of my life up to date. I returned from my escapade in Kuwait and Iraq to find Dana Wehrli in residence at my Malibu place, thereby converting my bachelor pad into a home. After eight hair-raising, knife-edge months far removed from the comforts of California that was a happy and heart-warming happenstance. I love that woman dearly, you see, and a man couldn’t ask for a better welcome-home present than to find a loving blonde goddess under his roof and 800-thread-count sheets on the king-size. Dana’s TLC soon blotted away all the travails and tribulation—the months in Abu Ghraib prison, the Highway of Death, the night commando raids on Iraqi soldiers and all the sordid rest of it. The massive paycheck I collected from my Kuwaiti sponsors helped ease the pain too, of course. Within a couple weeks I could look back and conclude that, all in all, it was a pretty interesting experience.

However, it wasn’t long before life with Dana began settling into a routine, and I’m not a routine kind of guy. Having her there changed our sex life, for example. Not that it ever has been anything but glorious to snuggle up with her, but before I left for Kuwait we’d had our separate places, me in my Malibu beach house, and she in a nice condo near Burbank, where she produced shows for ABC’s 20/20. My so-called career as a free-lance whatever followed no semblance of a schedule. I could be dispatched out of the country on a moment’s notice for an indeterminate period, or kept pursuing an assignment without warning. Dana’s job required her to be on the road half the time, and to pull all-nighters meeting deadlines. Thus our time together—her place or mine—was precious, looked forward to, and cherished.

Dana in the house changed that. Her new job with Roadkill Films was closer by, but as erratic as ever. Mine continued on as before. I suppose, with the kitty overflowing after Kuwait, I could have slacked off but I had a solid list of clients to whom I owed service if I wanted to keep them, and I needed meaningful activity. I can hang out and party just so much. So when we were both home she was just there, with no change of scene or eager anticipation to spice up the evenings. When I was out and about I felt expected to be home at dinnertime and uneasy when I couldn’t make it. When she was out of town or called home to say she’d be working late, I felt a little abandoned. I sort of expected her to be there too, I guess.

And it put a crimp in my social life. Not that I was tomcatting all over Hollywood, but I did enjoy those free-wheeling nights out with the guys and occasional gals. When Dana was home I couldn’t just take off and leave her behind. She of course told me it was all right with her if I did, but with an unspoken warning that I’d better not do it too often. When she was out on the road with a film crew my mind wasn’t always at ease either.

Such are the implications of home. Dana was never a pain in the ass or anything. A man couldn’t ask for a more considerate and compatible roommate. We didn’t lack good times. We had his and hers surfboards, and we’d don our wetsuits and go out with a bunch of other old surf-rats to bob in the swell, chat and occasionally ride a roller in. It was easier to throw parties and have people over. I never had cause for actual complaints, just felt that my life had gone a little out of line, like buttoning my shirt one buttonhole off. Settling down with a wife, kids and a lawn to mow had never been one of my ambitions, and my first spate of a settled lifestyle didn’t change that. As it happened, my domestic situation sorted itself out in a few months, and we’ll catch up with that shortly.

Let’s move on to my Yugoslavian escapade/fiasco, the topic of this story. It commenced out of the blue in an unlikely location, though at the time I had no inkling where some not-so-innocent events would ultimately lead.

Once I settled in after returning from Kuwait in March 1991, my assignment flow picked up. Scarcely had Dana and I gotten ourselves sorted out when a gig took me to Baden-Baden, Germany, for that year’s Bilderberg Conference. There’s a lot of buzz among the conspiracy-prone that Bilderberg is a secret society that controls the world from behind the scenes. Actually it’s not much of a secret, considering that Bilderberg now has a website. They claim to be an annual private conference of 120 to 150 people of the European and North American political elite, plus experts from industry, finance, academia, and the media (I know, I know…but what if they’re lying?). What is secret is who attends the conferences and what is said and discussed. As far as I could tell, neither the Rockefellers nor the Rothschilds nor the International Zionists were on hand to manipulate the levers of global power via the New World Order. But come on, what diabolical evils could a four-day conference accomplish that its participants couldn’t bring off without it?

I was there as personal security for one of my clients, a Hollywood media mogul who swings a lot of weight without insisting on public credit. One of those men who draws an eight-figure salary for deciding what the whole world will be clamoring to see two years hence. You’d not recognize his name, and you’ll not hear it from me—I’d lose a client and never attend another Bilderberg if I disclosed who he was. In any event, he’s an unlikely assassination or kidnapping target, so why did he engage my services? The usual Hollywood one-upmanship. If the competition drives a BMW, your ride has to be at least a Porsche if not a Maserati. If the next guy’s house has 20,000 square feet, a five acre lot and a swimming pool, you’ve got to boast 30,000 square feet, a ten acre lot and an indoor pool and Jacuzzi. If your rival drags along a bodyguard, you bring a private security specialist. Back in those days my rep as an international man of mystery with two (undeserved) CIA jockstrap awards and prominent names to drop qualified me as trophy private muscle, so my client hired a week of my time in early June. We flew out via private jet, and I delivered him to the Badischer Hof, a quietly elegant old white hotel sitting amidst formal, manicured gardens. It fell short as a party-time resort, but the invitees weren’t there to get wasted. Like most conferences the point was touching base, schmoozing and networking, not to mention basking in the prestige of having been invited, and it suited those purposes just fine. Conference guests filled the rooms on site, so they housed us, the help, at other inns around town.

Official security was tight and comprehensive, justifiable given the eminence of conference attendees. Therefore I was superfluous and had no hard duty for most of the week—it was an arm-candy gig. My client told me to leave my SIG Sauer at home and pack my best conservative suits instead. I tagged along for show at some of the parties and soirees, but during the day he sat in on discussions and meetings leaving me on my own. Could hardly complain.

Baden-Baden is the one of the oldest and most elegant of spa towns in Europe. It sits nestled among low hills leading into the Black Forest, a region of Germany lushly abloom in late spring. The sun was bright, the days were long, and the air was crisp and clear and pine-scented. Wooded slopes spilled into the town, and early each morning I took long runs over well-laid mountain trails with a couple other security guys I knew, through scenery that looked as if the trees were dusted, the undergrowth trimmed and the ground raked clean before every weekend. Palatial estates we trotted past put all but a few Beverly Hills spreads in the shadows.

I took in the sights in the picturesque town, much of which hadn’t changed since European nobility flocked there during the previous century. It was easy to imagine horse-drawn carriages delivering silk-hatted and begowned toffs to imposing portals. These days, despite the surface elegance, any citizen could spend as much time and money there as he liked. During our four days I popped into a couple bier halls, which I always make a point of doing in Germany—their suds are so much better than ours that it’s embarrassing. I gathered from conversations I struck up that Baden-Baden had taken no Allied bombing damage during World War Two, preserving it as a pristine garden spot. The French occupation army used it as their headquarters during the post-war partition period. The upper crust may no longer congregate there to take the waters against their gout and vapours, but it still stood out as a destination for a dignified holiday.

Friday afternoon I wandered into the Kurhaus Casino, the gambling joint that busted Dostoyevsky and inspired him to write The Gambler. I enjoy a game of poker or blackjack at a table of buddies, but I’m no casino plunger. The games aren’t fixed, but the house odds are, so going home a loser is all but inevitable, unless luck intervenes. I figure I need all the luck I can muster for my line of work, so saw no point wasting any of it on pointless games.

The Casino’s imposing façade features a roof overhanging the porch supported by eight tall white columns with fancy, gilded cornices. My desk clerk cautioned me to bring my passport, that there was an admission charge, and that gentlemen must wear coat and tie. Even with the warning, the salon set me back. My previous casino exposure mostly was to the Las Vegas style—sprawling, glitzy, and noisy, closed off from the outside world, with seas of slot machines hazed by mists of cigarette smoke and with waitresses dispensing drinks to obsessed crank-yankers. The Kurhaus Casino sported a spacious central hall giving off to smaller rooms to the sides. Glittering crystal chandeliers hung halfway down below a lavishly ornamented and frescoed ceiling high above. Large dark oil paintings and scarlet, flocked wallpaper covered the walls where there weren’t ornate arches, doors and windows with lavishly carved framing. According to their brochure the casino rooms were modeled after the palace of French royalty at Versailles. I’ve never been there, but if that was true I could understand why the French peasants had chopped the heads off their sybaritic masters.

The roulette, blackjack and poker tables, spaced around the room, were busy with quietly intent, well-dressed players. Table minimums weren’t especially high—five euros—but it was no place for yahoos in designer workout togs and baseball caps, or blue haired, day-tripping biddies in clamdiggers and flip flops. I wandered from one room to another, kibitzing and observing gamblers’ foibles. One fellow, following some system, carefully recorded each roulette throw on a note pad, played bets out of different pockets in his coat, and split stacks of chips into the same pockets when he won. A flustered matron hurriedly laid such a variety of bets across the table that no matter where the ivory ball dropped she invariably won, but lost even more. Try as I could to spot them, there seemed to be no tuxedo-clad international spies and villains having it out with mountains of chips. But the Kurhaus was the kind of place that might have private rooms for high rollers, so who knows?

Hey American guy, you same one paint-face guy Jake Fonko from Phnom Penh or no?

That voice! It wasn’t loud enough to be overheard but was loud enough to freeze me in my tracks. I turned around and there she was—her Bailey’s Irish Cream complexion framed by heavy dark Asian hair curving down below her pert little chin.

Soh Soon? I ventured, though unmistakably it was her.

Her blank expression broke into a warm smile. Ha ha, got you there, Jake, she said, tapping my chest with a graceful index finger.

You caught me by surprise, that’s for sure, I said. I looked her up and down. Since I’d last seen her in 1975 she’d filled out a little but still had her willowy shape. She wore a well-tailored beige silk dress suit, pastel silk blouse and a complementary necklace of jade set in Chinese gold. Though only 5’7" in her Italian heels she stood statuesque.

Well, you surprised me too, she said. I wasn’t sure at first it was you, as your face has a way of blending you into crowds, but I couldn’t mistake your moves. Even after all these years, you’re still a paint-face guy. What brought you to Baden-Baden?

(I should explain here that I did a tour in Nam as an NCO with the Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols, The Men with the Painted Faces, otherwise known as Lurps.)

I’m just a lowly hired gun for one of the guys at the conference, I said. I had the afternoon off, so I thought I’d check out the Casino. Your greeting took me back sixteen years, but you sound like you’ve lost your Pidgin English.

Four years at UCLA knocked that out of me, right enough. By the time I graduated they’d made a regular valley girl out of me. Like, gag me with a spoon, fer sure, she added with a chuckle and a grimace.

I guided her over to a quiet corner of the salon. So what’s your story? Baden-Baden’s quite a ways from Hong Kong. You’re still in Hong Kong, I take it?

Yes, still slaving away for my father in the Fragrant Harbour. That’s why I’m here. I came with him. He’s not officially a participant at the Bilderberg meeting, but several of the official attendees needed to confer with him. While he’s engaged in that, he sent me to check out the Casino and see if they have any ideas we can use.

Use? In what way?

If I tell you, it is strictly confidential, okay?

My loose lips will sink no ships. What gives?

Macau has been a Portuguese colony on the Chinese coast for more than four centuries. You must be aware that in 1999 they are going to cede Macau to the Chinese. At present Macau is a shabby gambling haven, mostly servicing Hong Kong. It has always been closed to mainland Chinese. When it becomes part of China the floodgates will open. My father is evaluating the possibilities of opening a Casino there. We estimate it will be a gold mine, perhaps the biggest money-maker of our businesses. Chinese are fanatical gamblers, you know. It’s not for nothing that gambling is tightly controlled in all Chinese nations—not only the PRC, but also Hong Kong and Singapore. You should see the human flood surging across the mouth of the Pearl River—ferries, hydrofoils, hovercrafts, private yachts, speedboats—I wouldn’t be surprised if people row over. Las Vegas and Atlantic City in your country actually fly in wealthy gamblers all the way from Asia, their coveted high rollers. They comp them with rooms, meals, entertainment, top-shelf liquor, women, everything their hearts desire…

…because they’re such colossal losers, I put in, to keep up my end of the conversation.

Yes, exactly! she agreed. I’ve interviewed some of them by way of research. In a way it’s quite touching. They say the comps make them feel important, wanted, welcomed. Of course they’re expected to lose more than enough to cover all expenses—that’s their importance, that’s why the casinos want them—and they do their duty, in the millions. For the gamblers it would be far more economical just to pay for everything out of pocket and limit their gambling losses, but they don’t see it that way at all. Our question is: why should they have to fly to an American desert or a shabby seaside resort town to lose their money? What a waste, all those millions going into overseas pockets! We see an opportunity to provide the same experience closer to the customer base and more geared to Asian tastes. Her eyes were beaming with love-light, reflecting her lifelong affection for money.

I’ve long known which side of the table to be on, I said. So, what useful intel have you picked up in Baden-Baden?

Let’s go walk around the grounds, and I’ll tell you, she said. I’d just as soon not be overheard.

We left the building in favor of the Kurhaus’s elegant, sun-dappled gardens. Such a beautiful place this is, she said, yet so wrong-headed.

By which you mean…?

I don’t think they take making money seriously here, she said. "In so many ways they fail to seize their opportunities. For example, the roulette wheel here has the green slot, 0. The wheels in America have two green slots, 0 and 00. So the house odds in America are 5.3%, whereas here the house odds are 2.7%, only half as much. What’s the point of that? The gamblers don’t notice or even care. If they were that sharp they wouldn’t be betting on roulette in the first place. So we will undertake to use the American system.

"Now consider the floor layout in the Kurhaus. The rooms are small, but still they could easily get fifty percent or more tables in that floor space, with slot machines along the walls. Look at the way the gambling rooms are decorated. It’s as if you have been ushered into some royal palace where you must behave yourself and show proper reverence. NO! Away from home Chinese gamblers want to be wild men, cowboys. The last thing they want is to behave themselves. They crave action and excitement. They don’t want to look at big oil paintings, illustrated ceilings, gilded window frames. It would just distract them, slow them down. And consider the expense of all that decorating and all this landscaping. Simply money thrown away!

I think we will do better with the American concept—flashy, brassy, noisy, crowded, vulgar. American casinos have bells and flashing lights on their slot machines that go off when a player wins something, to stir the excitement. But one could fall asleep in this silly Kurhaus. Yes, it’s all very elegant, historical and sentimental, but we Chinese have millennia of history that we’d just as soon forget, especially the more recent decades. The Chinese government is coming to that conclusion and looking forward. The mainland will soon embrace capitalism and commerce on a scale the world has never seen. A modern casino in Macau will be ideally situated to meet the needs that will be unleashed.

Soh Soon’s world view had changed even less than her appearance. As alluring as ever, and as money-obsessed. You haven’t lost your intel instincts, I said. You saw things in that building that I missed. Has your father set a construction launch date yet?

Not yet. We’re still scoping the situation out, and if we do decide it’s a go, there are so many unknowns. The PRC hasn’t yet settled on a new scheme of governance, so we’re in the dark on permitting, permissions, palms to grease, egos to stroke, go-betweens, labor arrangements, the whole bloody construction thing. It’s looking more and more like we’ll push on with it—the possibilities are just too ripe. But except for finding out what not to do, my time here has been a waste. The queen of Europe’s gambling salons? Phhwa! I was planning next to drop in on Monaco, but now that I’ve seen Baden-Baden I expect it won’t be much different. Well, not entirely a waste, for at least I bumped into you, Jake. I’ve thought about you many times over the years. My father hears things from time to time, so I know you’ve been doing well for yourself. Living on the beach at Malibu, are you? That must be pleasant.

Can’t complain, I said. I managed to find something to do with myself after I was RIF’d out of the Army.

Oh, the Army was never for you, she said. I always knew you were destined for better than that…though you were so expert at jungle warfare, I remember. My, the adventures we had…Listen, how much longer will you be here in Baden-Baden?

Leaving Monday morning, is what I’ve been told.

I’d like to spend a little more time with you. Are you free one of these evenings?

I’m tied up tonight and tomorrow, but I’m free Sunday evening.

"That’s fine. We’re staying at the Belle