Suddenly Yai was listening closely on his phone and nodding. He soon said something to Pugh in Thai. Pugh smiled amiably and said — I knew this much Thai — “ Capkun kap, Khun Yai.” Thank you so much, Mr. Yai.
Then Yai narrowed his eyes and hissed out two or three more brief sentences. Pugh shrugged and said something that from his look could have been “I’ll take note of that.”
Pugh said to me, “Mr. Yai has informed me that today the general is going to release all of us. But by the end of the month he will have killed every last one of us. What do you think of that?”
“I find that pronouncement unsettling, Rufus. What do you think of it?”
“Well, I think the general has another think coming.”
Griswold had followed all this with a look of bemused fascination. Kawee looked more or less relaxed by now, too.
Timmy just looked queasy.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The first shots were fired at our minivan no more than fifteen minutes later as we drove south on Ratchaprasong Road.
Nitrate sensed what was about to happen when motorcyclists pulled up on either side of us simultaneously. As he gunned the engine, I caught just a millisecond’s glimpse of the raised long-barreled revolver pointed at my side of the van. Nitrate did an instant U-turn — southbound traffic was heavy, northbound lighter — and shot northward. The second van in our convoy followed, and I could hear shots fired behind us.
Ek, in the seat behind me, had shoved open his window and was ready to fire at anybody within sight who was firing at us, but Pugh said something in Thai and Ek held his fire. Pugh told me, “We’re not gonna kill anybody on the street. We’ll get on the expressway. No motos are allowed on the expressway.”
Pugh was on his cell phone now, consulting the second minivan, driven by Egg. Griswold was in the second van, Timmy and Kawee were in ours. Kawee was taking all this in with a look of intense curiosity. Timmy just looked numb.
Still on his phone, Pugh said to us, “Egg’s van took fire, but no one was hit.”
Timmy was next to me, clutching my thigh. Kawee, on the other side of Timmy, was hanging onto an armrest and looking this way and that.
One of the motos came at us again from the left. As the driver raised his arm, Ek veered into him hard, and the attacking moto went over on its side and slid at high speed into the oncoming southbound traffic. There was a lot of crashing and banging behind us, but Ek straightened out the minivan and sped ahead. The other minivan was close on our tail, with the expressway entrance just ahead.
At the last second, Nitrate swerved onto the freeway, where motorcycles were not permitted. The second van was keeping pace with us, and so was the second moto guy, not a law
182 Richard Stevenson abiding citizen. As we shot down the ramp and onto the expressway, the gun-wielding cyclist was making a pass at the van Egg was driving. I turned around and watched as Egg slowed briefly, and an object shot out the side window of the second minivan and hit the moto gunman hard on the side of the head. The object splattered and the motorcycle flipped end over end, its driver doing cartwheels parallel to the vehicle, a horrifying choreography of metal and flesh dancing in tandem along a long ribbon of concrete.
Kawee exclaimed, “Oi, oi, oi. He in hell now.”
Timmy had been looking more traumatized by the minute, though I knew he would survive all this when he peered over and said to me, “I feel as if I’ve gone to the movies for a picture I really wanted to see, and first I had to sit through an entire day and a half of noisy, stupid trailers for movies I would not dream of paying money to look at.”
“It’s the story of your life with me, Timothy. You moved in with Marcello Mastroianni and woke up with Bruce Willis.”
He laughed lightly.
I asked Pugh, “What was it that hit that guy on the bike?”
“Miss Aroon’s durian. Normally I discourage my employees from carrying this large, spiky, melonlike fruit along on operations. Some Thais find its pungent smell enchanting, and some Thais — like most farangs — consider its stench revolting. But Miss Aroon needs her durian and usually has one stowed under the seat of the vehicle she’s in. She had one along today, and of course, she has a strong right arm and impeccable aim.”
One of the Thais in the car said something in Thai that made the others guffaw. Pugh said, “He asked, ‘How do we know she used her arm?’”
We had slowed to a normal speed now and the other minivan was close behind as we moved steadily eastward and then, I noted on the overhead signs, southward. Pugh’s phone sounded and he spoke briefly and then instructed Ek to pull over to the shoulder of the highway. He did so, and the second minivan followed us. I looked back to see the guardrail-side door open on the other vehicle, and the soothsayer Surapol Sutharat step out and stand by the roadside. Then the door closed and both vans drove on.
I said, “Do you think Khun Surapol predicted this turn of events, Rufus?”
“He would have had an inkling. The man is not stupid. He’s corrupt, but not entirely incompetent with his charts.”
“So now what? Do we ride around on the freeways of Bangkok until April twenty-seventh? We’ll run out of gas.”
“Nope. Not necessary. What I think is, we all deserve a few days at the seashore.”
“Sounds good. Can we pick up our bathing suits at the hotel?”
“No, Khun Don. I am sorry. We must proceed directly to Hua Hin. It is a pleasant town a few hours’ drive south of Bangkok on the Gulf of Thailand. Hua Hin is such a desirable getaway spot that Jack and Jackie themselves have quite an impressive palatial hideaway there.”
“Well, if it’s good enough for Jack.”
“Others will be in danger, also, and will need to join us there. In fact, I must make some calls now. My wife and children will be along, as well as my girlfriend Furnace, a delightful woman you will enjoy tremendously. Furnace will, of course, be housed separately from the rest of us, though with luck your paths will cross. Kawee, you should invite Miss Nongnat to visit. And it might be wise for Khun Gary’s old paramour Mango to attend our seaside holiday also. The general is sure to be ripshit over today’s developments, and his agents will tend toward impatience and extreme violence toward anyone who might be expected to know of our whereabouts.”
Pugh got on his cell phone and made several calls in Thai.
This was the first time since Timmy’s rescue that we could speak with each other without the risk of gunfire erupting, and the first thing I said was, “Okay. Yes. You were right.”
He said nothing.
184 Richard Stevenson
“I’ll spend the rest of my life making this up to you, Timothy. You name it. It’s yours. Plus, of course, I’ll listen to you in the future when you talk sense. Really, I’ll try harder to do that.”
He was breathing evenly but was still sweaty and didn’t smell so great.
I looked across Timmy and said to Kawee, “I’m really so sorry I got you two into this. It must have been very frightening.”
Kawee said, “We think we die.”
“Yes.”
“I tell Timothy he live better life next time.”
“I know he’d like some improvements.”
“He say okay. But he ask if you be there, too.”
“In his next life?”
“Yes, he want next life with you. You his soul mate, he say.”
“That would be my preference also. What did you tell him?
Will we be together?”
“Yes, maybe. But maybe not human. Maybe you both snake.”
“Two snakes?”
“Timothy and Donald spirit in snakes. Or other animals. All depend on karma.”
“If we were mammals, it might be okay. We’d manage.
Mammals with small brains and large penises.”
Timmy was too polite and respectful toward other decent people’s deepest beliefs to roll his eyes, but I knew he was doing it mentally.
Finally, Timm
y said, “Kawee was very thoughtful and supportive during our captivity, Donald. He enlarged my perspective.”
I wondered if he had also massaged his prostate, but this was no time for that discussion. I said, “How so?”
“I just have a better understanding now of the way the human mind can both retreat into itself when that’s the only way it can stay safe, and at the same time how any one mind is only a temporary partial manifestation of something far larger and longer lasting.”
“Oh. Well, good. Except, that doesn’t sound Buddhist. It sounds Jungian.”
“You and your Western insistence on labels. God.”
“Are you putting me on?”
“Yes, a little. But, really, Kawee did help me with the whole idea of acceptance. Acceptance of how temporary any one human life is, and how the transitory nature of life should be nothing to fear. There’s actually something quite beautiful about it. All that gorgeous fluidity.”
Pugh was in the front seat with Nitrate, who was driving, and when Timmy said this, Pugh reached over to the steering wheel and hit the horn three times.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The compound where we took refuge in Hua Hin — which, Pugh explained, was spelled Hua Hin but pronounced Wah-HEEN — was a few miles south of the town center near Monkey Mountain. This was a high hill overlooking the Gulf of Thailand where monkeys frolicked on the grounds of an old temple. Pugh suggested that Timmy and I have a look while we were in the vicinity. But he said not to get too close to the greedy and always-quarreling monkeys, a few of whom were deceased former officials from the Thaksin Shinawatra administration.
Timmy said, “Do you really believe that’s true?”
“Of course,” Pugh said. “This is known.”
The compound, a quarter mile off the main road and a few hundred yards from the beach, was owned by an anti-Samak, anti-Thaksin businessman friend of Pugh’s who owned about fifty 7-Eleven franchises and a Hua Hin hotel that catered to German tour groups and, Pugh said, served the greasiest schnitzel south of Bangkok.
Pugh’s friend, Sila Chusuk, was vacationing with his family in Switzerland and we had the run of his two commodious guesthouses. These were rambling, tile-roofed stucco structures with big louvered windows that were sealed shut now for the hot season and with central air-conditioning keeping everything crisp. There was a pool in the palm-fringed flower gardens at the back of the walled compound, with fuchsia blossoms floating in it the color of Kawee’s toenails.
We had stopped in town to buy some light clothes for Timmy and Kawee — Pugh said we would not be calling on Jack and Jackie, so beachwear would do — and some toiletries, and of course, food. The Thais had missed their lunch, so a stop was made out on the main road to pick up soup and rice.
As soon as we arrived at the compound, Pugh and his crew served up the take-out savories and went at them. Nobody had 188 Richard Stevenson a lot to say. They were all just happy to be alive and enjoying another good meal. The same was true of Timmy, Kawee and me — and presumably Griswold, although he had precious few words to offer any of us.
Upstairs, Timmy and I shared a room, Pugh was next door, then Kawee and Nitrate, then Griswold, Egg and Ek. Griswold bore constant watching, Pugh and I agreed. While Timmy took a long shower, I noted on my cell phone that Bob Chicarelli had called from Albany during the rescue while I had left my phone in the van. It was just past four in the afternoon in Thailand, predawn in the eastern United States. I returned the call, but Chicarelli didn’t answer and I guessed he was asleep. I left a message, saying we had rescued Timmy and Kawee from the kidnappers, that Griswold was with us, and we were in hiding until some loose ends got tied up. I didn’t mention that the loose ends included a Thai police general who was intent on blowing all our brains out. For reasons I couldn’t quite articulate to myself, I hesitated before asking Chicarelli to notify Ellen and Bill Griswold that their family member Gary was now safe and sound. But they had to be told — originally I had been hired to find him, after all — so I told Chicarelli to inform the Griswolds we had Gary with us but that there were still plenty of nettlesome unanswered questions as to his past activities and future intentions.
After Timmy’s shower and then mine, we heard a commotion outside our room and went out to find Griswold throwing a hissy fit at Pugh.
“Although I don’t object to your men watching over me to see that I don’t bolt,” Griswold was saying, “you have to understand that I am not going to run off. What I do object to is their listening in on all of my telephone conversations and — good grief! really! — taking notes on whom I speak with and what I say. You are not doing yourself or me any favors by butting in this way, Rufus, and I am telling you that it is a great big pain in the neck.”
Pugh said, “Khun Gary. Do you have secrets from us? We are your friends.”
“It’s not a question of secrets, Rufus. There are no great secrets on my part. It is a matter of simple privacy. I must be in touch with business associates to complete the Sayadaw U project, and some of this involves sensitive information and delicate negotiations involving people who would not be at all pleased to be eavesdropped on.”
“I’m sorry you consider our watchfulness intrusive. We are all in this together, after all. When I say that, I don’t mean the part about your worthy project. I mean the part about keeping you from being hurled from a high place, as well as the part about keeping your head from being made to explode. We do need to be all on the same page in that regard, Khun Gary. So I hope you will indulge us in this small way and let us keep track of your activities in a manner consistent with personal security professional standards.”
“Rufus, you’re quite the bullshit artist. Did anyone ever tell you that?”
“Let me think.”
I said, “Griswold, I, for one, don’t trust you at all. You have a track record of flying off the rails and causing all kinds of ridiculous trouble, and you are definitely going to be monitored.
So get used to it.”
“I’m a little unclear,” Griswold said, “exactly what your current role is here, Strachey. As I recall, didn’t my sister-in-law shit-can you? I think you told me that yourself. Hence, your extortionate request for fifty thousand dollars to underwrite what looks to me increasingly like a mere seaside vacation.”
Now Timmy spoke up. “Well, it certainly has not been any kind of sun ’n’ sand holiday for me, Gary. Or haven’t you noticed that?”
“Well, I am sorry about your being kidnapped. Really, I am.
It must have been a horrible ordeal. But the fact is, Timothy, you did not need to come to Thailand in the first place, and I can’t imagine what you thought you were getting yourself into.
Surely you must have done enough research to know of the violently inclined criminal elements in Thailand and about the 190 Richard Stevenson corrupt police forces. Or didn’t your friend Donald inform you about any of that?”
Timmy snorted with what could have been amusement.
“What’s so funny, Timothy? And you know, you both are now free to leave Thailand at any time. Khun Rufus could drive you over to the ferry terminal and put you on a boat for Sihanoukville in Cambodia, and you could travel on to Phnom Penh and be on your way out of Southeast Asia by this time tomorrow. There’s really nothing holding you here as far as any of the Griswolds are concerned. Am I right?”
Pugh said, “We’ve got your fifty K, Khun Gary. You hired us to protect you until April twenty-seventh. Remember?”
Griswold bristled, but before he could tell us all to take the fifty thousand dollars and shove it, I said, “Griswold, were you in Cambodia about two and a half weeks ago?”
“Yes, I was. Why?”
“What were you doing there?”
“Why do you ask? How would you even know that?”
“Elise Flanagan saw you.”
“That was Elise Flanagan. Oh God! I thought I saw her and she spotted me. At the Aranya Prathet border post. What the hell was Elise do
ing entering Cambodia? She can barely find her way from Key West to Homestead.”
“Elise was on her way to Angkor Wat with a tour group.
And you?”
“I was on my way back into Thailand on a visa run.”
“A what?”
“It’s hard for foreigners to obtain a long-term visa in Thailand. The Thais like to be able to keep the worst of the riffraff from overstaying their welcome in the Land of Smiles
— penniless ravers and druggies and notorious pedophiles and so on. So in order to stay here, most farangs must have the means to leave the country every three months and then reenter with a new visa. It’s a kind of racket, actually. The government charges you for the visa, and airlines and tour operators make out even better. Me, I just hop on a van at Ekamai, read for a couple of hours, and then cross and recross the border. You can do it really fast by paying an extra twelve dollars for VIP treatment, so-called. That means the Thai operators stand in the visa queue for you and bribe the Cambodian immigration officials for fast service. In hot weather like this, it’s a bargain.”
“Well, it’s the only way your friends in Key West knew you were even alive,” I said. “They were hugely relieved, but confused too. Anyway, what happened six months ago that sent you careening into oblivion? It would certainly help us decide what to do next if we had a clearer picture of what precipitated all this weird to-ing and fro-ing in the first place.”
Griswold’s look darkened, and he was about to say something and then didn’t.
I went on, “You e-mailed Janice Romeo that you had had a disturbing reading from a soothsayer. Was that Khun Khunathip?”
Griswold nodded. “Yes. It was.”
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