“We are bank robbers, right? This is a robbery! In fact, to be more precise, this is a ‘robbery in progress’. That means now is not the time to sit down and map out all of the possible future implications. This is the time where we take all the loot we can carry and get out of here as fast as we can. I’m the one with the most experience at this game. Believe me, any other course of action would be deviant from the code of being a robber.”
Mr Kheng did not agree. He was not committing this act in the capacity of a normal bank robber. His calling had a higher purpose. However, clearly he’d made an oversight when initiating his first ever heist. He’d assumed everyone in the gang would be thinking in the same way as him. After all, it wasn’t as though he’d come up with this plan all on his own. It could be argued, from some perspectives, that it wasn’t really his idea at all. Now he realised that a key preparatory step had been missed out before he and his colleagues should have embarked on their first job. There had been a real need to reach a clear agreement on just how much they were going to steal, way before they should have even thought of breaking in. This was quite a clash of ideologies to come up now, considering how far they had already come. Clearly, the problem would need to be resolved before they could proceed any further. Indeed, the consequences of not reaching an agreement, and fairly soon, could be utterly disastrous.
3. Papa Han’s Funeral
Three weeks earlier…
The firecrackers exploded into life. Several ear-rattling rockets shot up into the air, whizzing enthusiastically in all directions. Some flew skywards, some skewed sideways, some narrowly missed the heads of honoured guests. Some narrowly missed the heads of non-honoured guests. Ducking from wayward funereal fireworks was one of the great social equalisers.
Kheng had positioned himself exactly where he needed to be to view the afternoon’s spectacle. This wasn’t his first attendance at the funeral of a respected community member by any means, and so he knew what to expect. The elaborately tiered wooden coffin that contained the body of Old Papa Han had been positioned near the middle of the crematorium area, which was really just a big field on the outskirts of town.
Kheng had made sure that he was one of the first of the onlookers to step forward and place his lighted incense sticks on the funeral pyre. He had then retreated from the incense placing formalities to stand on a small mound of earth towards the back of the gathering crowd. This would ensure he had the best seat in the house. The other mourners solemnly added their own incense sticks to the side of the coffin to pay their respects. The monks chanted while the family members laid plank after plank against the sides of the funeral pyre to construct a great lumber-yard timber cocoon. Once the pyre was completed, a prominent monk doused the arrangement with several jerry cans of petrol to ensure the up-coming ignition designed to spirit Papa Han to his next incarnation would not suffer from any false starts. Whilst the more traditional elements of the ceremony were being played out – monks, incense, flammable liquid and that sort of thing – a couple of enthusiastic men were working diligently nearby to set up the pyrotechnics.
A wooden post had been rammed almost squarely into the ground. Strapped to the top of it in a haphazard and rather overburdening manner was a large array of firecrackers and rockets. The head monk indicated to the firework man that all was ready. Having received his cue, the man who had the great fortune to be allowed to hold his lighter to the lowest string of firecrackers performed his duty with the appropriate balance of solemnity and glee that the task called for. The gunshot-like explosions were soon accompanied by the enthusiastic swoosh of rockets taking their preferred and individualistic routes. As the penultimate rocket fired up and then shot sideways in the direction of the governor’s 4x4 on the edge of the field, the upward fizzle of the lighted fuse connected with the final rocket. It was the only one on the post for which a clear direction had been assigned. Once ignited, the remaining rocket whizzed horizontally and at high speed, guided along the shoulder-height strand of metal wire to which it had patiently hung. Shortly after its guided departure it careered into a second large wooden post in the middle of the cemetery. This one was laden with even more firecrackers and rockets. The resultant firework display that erupted from the second post was even more fantastic than the first. As with the original set of explosions, a further wire-guided rocket was eventually launched. This one also followed its intended route and slammed straight into the petrol infused funeral pyre. With a final bang the coffin and planks roared into a fiery blaze and the cremation began. Old Papa Han had received the elevated pomp and ceremony that was essential for him to be reborn again in style.
Kheng smiled. It was sad to lose Old Papa Han. He was a good man. However, everybody has their time and Papa Han had led a long and respectable life. Meanwhile, with a send-off like that, with two posts laden with fire crackers, his old boss couldn’t want for a better start to his next incarnation. Kheng began to wonder what form Papa Han’s new life might take. Papa Han had never been one for a lot of physical activity and so that ruled out much of the usual pre-departure wish list, like a magnificent bird or a majestic tiger. These were creatures that were obliged to do a lot of exercise and put considerable effort into their daily pursuits. No, a large stoic tree in a great forest would be a fitting incarnation for a man of Papa Han’s character and standing. He’d enjoy that. Looking important and not having to do very much. If it was the case that he became a mighty tree in the forest, in practical terms Papa Han would be able to replace some of the huge pile of wood that had been needed to get him on to the next cycle of life in the first place. There seemed to be a whole karma element to the tree reincarnation option as well. Deep down Papa Han had been a bit of an old rascal, so he would fit in very well with some of the more mischievous tree spirits that inhabited those darker more foreboding places in the depth of the forest.
Kheng decided that he wanted to be a bird when he came back in the next reincarnation. Nothing special. Not too colourful or imposing. He certainly did not want to become one that was big enough to be of interest to a hunter or to be considered a pest to the farmers. Just a normal bird, living each day with the freedom to fly through the upper canopy of the forest, enjoying the breeze and the delights of the freedom that having wings must bring. He’d even got his own firecrackers and rockets ready for the start of the journey, and kept them in a locked metal box underneath his stilted house. He wanted to make sure he got a good and note-worthy shove in the direction of his next life, in case such a momentous beginning to the journey loaded the deck in his favour. It would be unusual for someone of his mediocre standing to have such pomp and ceremony at a final send-off. Such pyrotechnic grandeur was usually the reserve of high up government officials. However, when he’d been in the army he’d been deployed for quite a while up near the border. During that time he’d met a foreign trader who was keen to offload a considerable quantity of black powder before returning back through the check points. It was a long while back now, but after an extensive service in the military Kheng knew about explosives and pyrotechnics reasonably well. Well enough to know that the inexpensive gun-powder in his rockets would keep for years if stored properly and would make for a fantastic funeral.
Once the fire for Papa Han’s coffin was lit, and the petrol-fuelled whoosh had quickly simmered down to a burning pile of planks and lumber, the funeral ceremony was effectively over. The family and monks had been making preparations and ceremony for much of the day while the invited guests had looked on. Now the ceremony was complete. The well-wishers and mourners milled around for a short while and then gradually made their way back into town, by car, motorbike or by walking. Kheng walked. It was a nice afternoon and he didn’t have to be back at the bank for a couple of hours for his guard duty. It was a little strange thinking about going back to the bank now that Old Papa Han was on his journey in the next stage of his cycle of life. Papa Han had been at the Maklai Provincial Bank as long as Kheng could remember. In a way, Kheng
thought of the bank and Old Papa Han as almost the same thing.
4. The Guard
The first rays of the sun began to glint from behind the leaves of the mango tree that grew over the wall in the garden at the side of the bank. The air felt fresh, a slight breeze began to rustle in the leaves. The gentle noise suggested that the wind would take the edge off the heat from the rising tropical sun. It was the first day that Papa Han had been truly gone from them, and it felt like a new beginning. Kheng got out of his hammock, stood up, stretched his back and observed the familiar surroundings. For Kheng this was the best part of the day, before the heat and humidity began to build, and before the rest of the town woke up and disturbed all of the dust that had spent a whole night trying to settle down.
Kheng untied the end of his hammock from the trunk of the old jackfruit tree at the rear of the bank’s compound. With a swift pull on the thin rope it slipped away from its moorings, and he carefully rolled it up and put it in his bag. The way of tying-up his hammock was something he’d learned a long time ago in the army. If the enemy was nearby while you were camped out in the forest you could quickly pull away the hammock without fiddling with complicated knots, and then silently disappear into the undergrowth without being spotted. It was surprising that his old combat skill had become a useful life-skill that he could apply to his current career as the guard at the bank. Kheng had long since retired from the army. He’d been barely a man when he was signed up, but had stuck with the life and somehow survived more than thirty years of service. He finally left once he felt he was too old to keep going. He wasn’t connected or educated to become an officer with a desk job, and wasn’t quick enough to keep up with the younger blood. Besides, the war was long since over and there was a comfortable peace to the country. So, most of all, he hadn’t felt he needed to serve any more. He would have long since retired from all work if it wasn’t for his wife constantly nagging at him while he was at home. His having a job seemed to calm her down a bit, whilst simultaneously reducing the contact time available for her to be irritated by him.
For the last seven years, Kheng had quietly been performing the duty of the night guard at the Maklai provincial branch of the Khoyleng Bank. The bank didn’t have a day guard. Old Papa Han had managed the branch for the last thirty years and had never seen the point in having one. Maklai was a respectable sleepy provincial town with respectable and sleepy people. They would never show such unpatriotic disrespect towards the establishment of their country as to denigrate one of their great financial institutions. For Papa Han, there was very little point in wasting money on a guard that wasn’t needed. The bank was supposed to look after money, not squander it needlessly. Papa Han had only employed Kheng due to the pressure from the head office in the capital to show at least some tokenistic acknowledgement of their security policies.
Kheng would arrive for work every afternoon, just as the bank employees were locking up at 4.30pm. After a long night of guard duty, once Mr Tann, the head bank clerk, had returned to the bank and opened up the front doors at 8.00am each morning, he would head home. Kheng had been in the job for seven years now, and it was a lifestyle that suited him perfectly. Officially, his task was to patrol the compound around the bank throughout the night and then report any problems to the head clerk the next morning. For seven years Mr Tann observed that Kheng had arrived on time each evening, and left on time the following morning. As a result of this devoted service, every month Mr Tann handed over the slim envelope with Kheng’s basic salary. They had both stuck fastidiously to this routine and Kheng was regarded as a highly reliable member of staff and an asset to the provincial branch. However, in Kheng’s entire time at the bank, no one had ever actually checked up on him during the night to see if he was okay, or that he was even present. Kheng was by no means a slow-witted man, and had quickly picked up on this gap in the bank’s HR management process.
When Kheng had first started in the job, each day he would bring his dinner with him in his old army rucksack. After a few months of the job, Kheng had got into the habit of packing his tattered standard issue hammock in the small rucksack as well. By 9.00pm, if not before, his part of the street was always very quiet, and he could set up his sleeping arrangements in the compound at the back of the bank. This way he could get in a good night’s sleep and wake up with the rising sun and the crowing of the neighbouring cockerels. He would be packed up long before anyone started using the street again. The town’s early risers would see the diligent guard dutifully guarding the premises, once they’d left their homes to vie for the freshest and best cuts of meat from the Maklai market.
By the end of his first year of employment, Kheng had also concluded that the total lack of supervision over him meant that there was little point in bothering to bring his dinner with him either. When he had started in the job he had always brought with him a small series of metal pots that linked together. The first was filled with sticky rice, the next had some vegetables and the last a small piece of meat or a boiled egg. That way, as it got dark he would be able to sit and eat his meal before putting up his hammock. After a while he just brought the rucksack with the hammock. Once it was dark, around seven o’clock, he could simply slip out through the front gate, put the padlock back so it looked like the bank’s entrance was still secure, and sneak home for his dinner. This would conveniently remove the drudgery of having to prepare something himself in the afternoon, put it in pots, bring it to work, eat his semi-cold food and then wash everything up with the outside tap. It was much easier to return and join the family at the time that his wife did the cooking. He had told his wife that the dinner break had all been agreed with the head clerk at the bank, and that Old Papa Han also approved. After all, the old man was a reasonable and respected gentleman who could see how unfair it was to make an employee work during a meal time when the regular daytime bank employees got a two-hour lunch break. After giving his food an hour or so to settle in his stomach Kheng would scuttle discreetly back to the bank, through the main gate, and relock the padlock. He’d been doing this for more than six years now, and no one had ever noticed. More importantly to Kheng, it had never mattered either. Old Papa Han had been right, Maklai was an uneventful and peaceful little town and the need for a guard was at best an extravagance. Of course, the occasional disreputable person stole the occasional disreputable chicken from the occasional yard, or sent their kids to pilfer the fruit from a neighbour’s garden, but that was all part of normal life, it wasn’t really seen as crime. No one would ever dare to dream of committing a real crime like a bank robbery. When fruit went missing from a well-tended custard-apple tree, people muttered under their breath a bit and whinged in closed circles about their miscreant neighbours. A bank robbery on the other hand had serious consequences. A person could be ostracised from their community, become an embarrassment to their family, or even go to jail. Worse still, the wife of such a ne’er-do-well of questionable morality might have to start going to a different market to avoid the shame of facing her regular cronies at the vegetable stalls. An even more terrible fate beyond that could involve your mother-in-law deciding to move your wife and family back in with her while you were behind bars and unable to prevent her from doing so. She might well help your wife to sell off your house and all your belongings whilst you were doing time and were powerless to do anything about it. Dealing with these matriarchs, particularly from the perspective of one whose unlawful activity had put the matriarch to the trouble of dismantling their son-in-law’s life to maintain their social position, was not worth the aggravation for even the most hardened criminal. No, the likelihood of somebody committing grand-theft from a bank in the middle of the night was as improbable as a mother-in-law failing to bring up the subject of your limited salary each time she visited. It was a comfort to know that defending a provincial bank from armed robbers was the lowest-risk guarding job you could ever have in Maklai. It was undoubtedly for this reason that over the years Mr Tann had been quite astute
in not bothering to waste his time checking up on Kheng.
Now that the sun was rising higher in the sky, the street outside the entrance of the bank was bustling with life. The throng was mainly people going to the market, to either sell or buy. It was a daily activity that was at the heart of a life that didn’t demand people to plan beyond the immediate. Tomorrow was too far off to think about today. The people with office jobs wouldn’t be venturing out for another hour or so. As Kheng’s shift was nearing its end he positioned himself beside the coconut palm that grew at the side of the pillar of the main gate. There was an old plastic chair that he used to sit on and observe the main street as the townsfolk woke from their slumber and gradually brought renewed life to the emptiness and quietness.
Just after seven o’clock the workmen that were assigned to the road works in the street outside the bank would be back to their labours and bring Kheng some added entertainment. Recently the town’s streets had been getting a revamp, and new large concrete storm drains were being installed in deep trenches at the sides of all the roads and streets. For some reason this work had started at the beginning of the rainy season and the residents had suffered considerable disruption. The process involved digging up the old dirt roads, grading the roads, putting down soil, digging that back up, re-grading it again, digging up old drains, piling pre-cast concrete rings in the lanes, and then digging unconnected parts of huge deep trenches as the mood took them. The work-teams would then move their excavation circus to the next street along, with the intention to return and put everything back together at an undetermined date in the distant future.
Those residents next to these roads suffered the extremes of either flooding, as the earthworks prevented the flow of storm water away from their house, or finding that they now had a water-filled moat across their threshold where the trench excavation team had been better resourced than the drainage team, and got digging several months ahead.
The Feiquon Heist Page 2