Back to the road, then. Doggedly, he headed south.
Half an hour later he was given a lift by the driver of a beat-up lorry packed high with attap straw, the type used for roofing houses in the villages along the border. The driver was little and old, a man who had made non-communication into an art form.
‘Awak pergi kampong?’ You go to the village?
‘Betul.’ That’s right.
‘Okay.’
Greg climbed up into the cab. The smells of the attap straw and the rank tobacco the driver was smoking were very strong. The driver shoved the gear lever forward. The clutch engaged. The truck clattered and wheezed its way down the road.
The driver dropped him off at the first houses in the village. They hadn’t talked at all; they didn’t talk now. Not what you could call talking.
‘Terima kaseh,’ Greg said as he dropped down from the cab. Thank you.
Not even a nod. The truck drove away, leaving a blue cloud of diesel fumes on the air.
Greg walked through the village, smelling the smoke from wood fires, the pungency of cooking oil, the hundred scents of a tropical village coming to life at the beginning of another day.
Three young Chinese women, dressed in the silky pyjama-type clothing known as samfoo and wearing conical hats to protect their faces from the sun, passed him on bicycles, chattering shrilly to one another. For all the notice they took of him, Greg might have been invisible.
CHAPTER 51
He went into a coffee shop. In the street the morning sun was gaining strength but inside the shop the air was still cool. It smelt of strong coffee, freshly washed plastic-topped tables, a residue of garlic. Two old men sat silently in a corner; they saw him but ignored him.
The shopkeeper came from an inner room. A Chinese man, young and burly. He looked at Greg and in one glance saw all there was to see of him.
‘Help you?’
He spoke in English; Greg replied in the same tongue.
‘Coffee with milk and two savoury bao.’
He knew the steamed buns would come stuffed with minced pork, pieces of hard-boiled egg and chives; the coffee would be as black as midnight and sweetened with condensed milk; Greg had drunk it often over the years and had acquired a taste for it.
The shopkeeper nodded. Greg sat down to wait. Sitting in the almost-empty shop he was acutely conscious not only of his situation but his vulnerability; one word to the authorities and his bid for freedom would be over.
The shopkeeper brought his buns and a mug of coffee.
‘They say the river is running very high at the moment.’
‘I know nothing about the river,’ Greg said as he tucked into his buns. He was famished, by God he was. He didn’t mind the man talking as long as it didn’t interfere with his eating.
‘Swimming across when the water is high is a dangerous business. Some would call it downright foolish.’
‘I imagine it could be.’
The shopkeeper gestured at the two old men sitting in the corner. ‘They do not speak English.’
He was probably right; they did not look as though they could speak it, or anything at all, but it was impossible to be sure.
‘I am told conditions in Thai jails are very bad.’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ Greg said. He drained his mug and finished the first of his buns.
‘Allow me to get you another coffee,’ the shopkeeper said.
‘Thank you.’
While he waited he set to work on the second bun.
When he brought the fresh coffee, the man said: ‘My heart goes out to people in trouble. I like to help them if I can.’
‘That is commendable,’ Greg said.
‘When my father came from China many years ago, he had troubles very similar to yours.’
‘I have no troubles.’
‘Of course not. But it is unusual to see westerners in this part of the country walking alone at this time of the day. Such a person tends to be, shall I say, conspicuous. And your clothes, forgive me for mentioning it, are still wet. An observant police officer might see these things and start to ask questions.’ He smiled, very sure of himself.
Minefield country.
‘What sort of questions might such a police officer ask?’
‘What a foreigner is doing in this part of the country, all alone and without transport. Where he has come from and why his clothes are wet. He might well ask to see the foreigner’s papers. To make sure everything is in order, you understand.’
‘My papers are fine.’
‘If you say so I am sure you must be right. But if your papers were fine there would have been no need to swim across the river. The bridge would be an easier route and much safer. And there would have been no need to get the clothes wet.’
He had two choices: get out as quickly as he could, knowing he still had hundreds of kilometres to go, or trust this man.
‘What would you suggest?’ he said.
‘That depends.’
‘On what?’
‘On whether you have papers. On whether you are in trouble or not.’
‘You say you like to help people. How would you be able to help a man who was in the kind of difficulty you suggest?’
‘Papers can be provided, if this man had need of papers.’
‘For a price.’
‘Nothing is for nothing. But the price would be reasonable.’
‘And where would this man stay while he was waiting for the papers to arrive?’
‘There are rooms in the village.’
‘And all the village would know.’
‘There is no police post in the village. And people here have no love of the police.’
‘Nor, I dare say, of westerners.’
He knew this area along the border had been a hotbed of anti-British terrorist activity back in the 1950s.
‘You are thinking of the days of the Emergency. But those days are long gone.’
‘Some have long memories.’
‘Those days are long gone,’ the shopkeeper repeated. ‘No one will talk.’ He smiled, and Greg saw that this was a tough man who meant what he said. ‘My name is Chin. Everyone knows me. And I would make sure there would be no foolish talking.’
Greg thought while he made a show of finishing off the crumbs of his second bun.
‘Excuse me.’ The shopkeeper, who had been sitting at the table beside him, got to his feet. ‘One minute, please.’
Greg’s innards spasmed, knowing he was in this man’s hands, but he said nothing. If the shopkeeper intended to phone the police there was nothing he could do about it, nor could he get far enough away to escape if the police came after him.
The man came back with a third savoury bun. ‘I thought you could do with this,’ he said. ‘On the house.’
Greg had felt sick with apprehension; now he felt sick with relief.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘With regard to papers …’
‘Yes?’
‘I would welcome your help. But I do not know how much it would cost.’
‘You are English?’
‘Australian.’
‘Better still.’
‘How much?’
‘Two thousand dollars Australian.’
As Mr Chin had said, it was a not unreasonable price. The trouble was that, reasonable or not, Greg didn’t have it.
‘That is no problem,’ Mr Chin said. ‘I have a cousin living in Melbourne. You will give me your address and he will contact you on your return.’
He stayed in the village for four days while things were arranged. There was a small cabin at the rear of the shop and he slept there.
Mr Chin told him he should not go out in daylight. ‘At night it will be safe enough but not in daylight.’
‘I thought you said people here had no love of the police.’
‘A wise man always takes precautions,’ Mr Chin said.
One day he told Greg that the police had been making enquiries.
&nbs
p; His heart lurched. ‘About me?’
‘The Thai authorities say a dangerous drug criminal, a westerner, has escaped and they think may have crossed into Malaysia. The police are saying that anyone who knows anything of this man has a duty to inform the authorities.’
‘Has anyone?’
‘All of us are naturally anxious to assist the police in every way we can. That is our duty, not so?’ Mr Chin smiled gently. ‘Unfortunately, nobody in this place has any knowledge of such a man.’
On the third day photographs were taken; the following morning Mr Chin handed him his fake Australian passport in the name of Walter Rove, place of birth Sydney.
‘This passport will not get you into Australia,’ Mr Chin warned. ‘But it will be enough to get you past any local police check.’
He had a friend, a truck driver, who would take him to the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur.
‘Give him a hundred ringgit,’ he said. ‘He will be more than happy.’
‘I am very grateful,’ Greg said.
‘My cousin will be in touch. And, if anyone enquires, we have never met.’
‘Of course. You have my word.’
CHAPTER 52
The truck driver dropped him at the point where the Seremban road branched off the main thoroughfare into the city. A kilometre further on he picked up a cab that took him to the Australian high commission offices in Yap Kwan Seng Road.
With the sense of someone walking to his own execution, he went inside and told a smartly dressed woman at the enquiry desk that he needed to speak to someone about his missing Australian passport.
He was told to wait. He did so, twiddling his toes for half an hour before he was escorted to the office where he was told the appropriate officer would deal with him.
The appropriate officer was thin and sharp-faced, a fair-headed man in his late forties. A plaque on his desk said his name was Adam Sinclair.
‘You told them downstairs that you’ve lost your passport?’
‘I said it had gone missing.’
‘You want to explain to me how that happened?’
He still hadn’t smiled but Greg had the feeling that Adam Sinclair was not as antagonistic to him as Avis Willoughby had been in Bangkok. He certainly hoped so, because he’d thought about little else on the journey and had resolved to tell the truth about everything that had happened to him. It was important that this official should be capable of thinking that it was at least possible that his version of events might be the truth; with Avis Willoughby, he doubted she would have believed him had he told her the sun rose in the east.
He told him everything. About his plans for Nirvana, the resort on Laem Thong island in the Andaman Sea. How, to obtain the backing of the necessary government officials, he had brought in two local businessmen who he now believed had framed him with a suitcase of cocaine which the Thai authorities were saying he had attempted to smuggle into the country.
‘I didn’t do it!’ he told Adam Sinclair. ‘I’ve never had anything to do with drugs …’
Except with marijuana, but nobody took that seriously nowadays. And even then he had never traded in it.
‘And that prison … They call it the remand prison, for people who’ve not even been charged, for heaven’s sake, but it’s like hell on earth, believe me. And people say the Bang Kwang prison, the one they call the Big Tiger, is even worse. And they were talking about twenty years or even longer, for something I’d never done …’
He was close to weeping. He knew he sounded desperate and that he should have despised himself for showing such weakness but he did not, because he was desperate. Even the thought of being returned to Thailand, with the near certainty of a long prison term in the Big Tiger, drained the strength from his body.
Adam Sinclair had been writing notes with a gold pencil on a small pad.
‘You are saying your family in Tasmania put up a ten-thousand-dollar bond and you were granted bail. On the understanding that you would make no attempt to leave the country. A condition that you proceeded to break the moment you were free.’ Adam Sinclair looked at him. ‘You make a habit of breaking your word so easily?’
Greg gave him look for look. ‘In my position, bearing in mind I’d been falsely accused, I believe you would have done the same as I did.’
‘I’ve spoken to our people in Bangkok. Their feeling was that you were guilty as charged. What d’you say to that?’
Terror made Greg brave. ‘A woman from the embassy called Avis Willoughby came to see me in prison. She made it clear she was more concerned with keeping in with the Thai authorities than in looking after my interests. In my opinion, Mr Sinclair, I don’t think she gave a damn what happened to me.’
Sinclair’s face was a blank page. He said:
‘Are you aware that the Thai authorities have requested us, if we have any knowledge of you, to return you to Thailand as quickly as possible? Did you know that? I suppose they thought this was the first place you’d come.’
‘I’m in your hands,’ Greg said. ‘I did not do what they claim. I wasn’t trying to smuggle cocaine into the country. I had no idea it was in the case. When I saw it in Singapore, it contained the electrical gear I’d gone there to collect. I collected the equipment from a German company called Helmut Kraus in Jurong. I am sure they will confirm what I am telling you.’
‘You are suggesting Helmut Kraus are involved in some way in this business of the cocaine?’
‘Not at all. The components were there; I saw them. I think the switch took place in Bangkok. I guarantee, if they take the trouble to check, that my fingerprints aren’t on any of those packets. Also, I haven’t been charged with any offence under Thai law.’
‘Yes,’ Adam Sinclair said. ‘I noticed that.’
Sinclair’s office window was three paces from his desk. He got to his feet, walked across to it and stared up through the glass at the blue sky, as though there he might find a solution to what was undeniably a problem.
Greg did not move on his hard chair. He barely breathed.
Standing with his back to the room, Sinclair said:
‘We are well aware of the conditions in the Thai jails. I am betraying no secrets when I say that we would not wish to see any Australian citizen incarcerated in them on the basis of charges that have not been laid.’ He turned and walked purposefully back to his desk. He sat down and stared at Greg, his face stern. ‘However, Australia enjoys good diplomatic relations with Thailand and would not wish to see them damaged. As they certainly would be if we simply ignored their request.’ He thought some more, his fingertips drumming the desktop. He sighed, looking once again through the window at the blue and enigmatic sky, then back at Greg, his mouth firm.
Greg felt his heart stop for an instant, knowing that Adam Sinclair had come to a conclusion.
If you send me back, I’ll die.
He thought to say it but, in the end, did not. He waited.
‘I am prepared to issue you with a temporary passport that will enable you to return to Australia—’
What a relief!
But Sinclair had not finished.
‘It will be subject to certain conditions. It will be valid for one journey only, which means you won’t be able to leave Australia. And we shall tell the Thai people that if they want to interrogate you at any time in connection with their investigations, we shall assist them to do so. In Australia.
‘I shall need you to sign a statement to that effect, confirming you will co-operate fully with them should they wish to question you. I take it you have no objection to this procedure?’
‘Do I have a choice?’
‘Indeed, you have a choice. You can refuse, but if you do it might cause us to question whether you are as innocent as you claim. And I should remind you not only that this building is on Australian soil but that Australia has an extradition treaty with Thailand.’
‘Meaning you might send me back.’
‘I believe co-operation is your wisest course
,’ Adam Sinclair said.
As he had said, what choice did he have?
Greg had to wait while the letter was prepared; when twenty minutes later it was put in front of him, he read it with the greatest care, pondering every word. He was afraid that after he’d signed it, the letter might prove to contain some concealed traps that would result in his being sent back to Bangkok, but there was nothing. It said exactly what Adam Sinclair had said and no more. Which did not stop him, as he signed, from feeling that he was putting his head into a noose of the high commission’s devising.
He hated the arrogance of these so-called public servants who seemed to think you were there to do their bidding, but he signed the letter with a flourish, making it as defiant a gesture as he dared. He put down the pen and stared at Adam Sinclair across the desk. ‘Is that it? Am I free to go now?’
‘Not quite.’ Sinclair smiled, comfortable in his knowledge that the coils of the public service were not evaded so easily. ‘You will need the travel document. Then you will be escorted to the airport and put on the next flight to Melbourne.’
It made Greg feel like a prisoner but that, he supposed, was what he was. For the moment; it would be a different story once he was home. Never mind what that letter said; if Adam Sinclair really thought, after everything he’d been through, that he would be willing to sit down and talk with the Thai authorities about his involvement in what had been no more than a put-up job, he could think again. He would be willing to talk, all right, but not about that. No, indeed! He would want to talk about other things: like what they were planning to do to bring to justice the true criminals in this case—Somchai and Mongkut and whoever in the Thai authorities had conspired with them to frame him for something he hadn’t done. Oh, yes, he would be happy to talk to them about that! How they planned to compensate him for the loss of the island and the Nirvana resort: he’d be happy to talk to them about that, too. Yes, indeed!
Adam Sinclair was scrutinising him across the desk, giving him the unpleasant feeling that this public servant was able to read his thoughts.
Stars Over the Southern Ocean Page 31