A Haunting Smile

by Christopher G. Moore

  “Yes, quite a mouthful. But it’s actually simple. It is a combination of ancient Chinese techniques with the best of Japanese and American research and development, some of which has been earmarked for top-secret military and space projects.”

  Crosby had insisted that the eggs should be delivered sunny side up, saying that anything less would deeply distress him. When the eggs arrived as they had been ordered, he had made out his case as an eye surgeon. An eye surgeon who has been sent to Thailand to teach the Thais how to perform a delicate surgical procedure on rich people. Crosby had spoken loudly enough to attract the attention of other passengers in First Class and the attendants. He had described the operation in great detail, slowly bringing up his knife as one specialized instrument and his fork as another. He had practiced using a knife and fork as the surgical instruments in many London restaurants. At the crucial moment, he allowed both knife and fork to slip, slashing through the runny yolk, showering the aisle and several people with flecks of yolk. A small knot of air stewards and passengers who had been watching jumped as if hit with a sting ray. One or more people ripped out their sick bags and vomited.

  “Why did you do that?” asked the Senior Steward.

  “I was a little nervous,” Crosby had replied. “First Class stage fright.”

  “You have disturbed everyone,” the Senior Steward had said.

  “You think I might have another gin and tonic before you write your report?”

  The Senior Steward had stormed away, murmuring that Crosby was mad.

  “You see the kind of reaction people have to my technique.”

  “You could hardly call that technique.”

  “I lacked the right tools,” Crosby had said.

  “Why did you do that?” his seat mate had asked.

  Crosby had grinned.

  “Because I have a business proposition for you.”

  “What kind of business?” His seat mate had pulled back.

  “The T-shirt imagination business. I can get people to buy just about anything. Take a look around. How many people do you know who could convince First Class to believe this yellow stuff is the same as the human eye? First Class passengers vomiting in air bags because my knife cut into an egg yolk. Think of the effect on the tourist class. They would be jumping out of the plane. I can sell thousands of T-shirts because I can make them look at the shirt.”

  His seat mate had taken a small silver case from his pocket, opened it with his thumb nail and removed an engraved name card.

  “Next week, make an appointment with my secretary and we can discuss the T-shirt business.”

  Crosby had glanced at his watch.

  Next week seemed so far off in the T-shirt business. But he would wait. He had a notebook going back ten years with Snow’s one-liners. His time was about to come. And he really wished he could find a way to get another gin and tonic. He had reached up and pressed the call button and watched the flashing red light. It reminded him of Patpong, and that made him happy; gambling, whores, gin and tonic, and T-shirts were the ingredients required to lead a full, productive life. Crosby was thankful that early in life he had been granted a deep understanding of the great mystery of the universe—it was a vast cosmic T-shirt in search of a slogan.

  He wondered how long it would take to restore order in First Class, with people going back to normal activities and conversation. He had created chaos. On a long-haul flight with all the essential ingredients on the ground there was no alternative but to make everyone else as miserable as he felt. There was great satisfaction in a scheme which infused people with fear and loathing and allowed him to close a business deal at the same time. During the several months he had been living in England, Crosby had cracked up and made scenes in public places: the tube station, bank and hotel lobbies, restaurants, and the cinema. If he had been a foreigner, the authorities would have likely deported him. Instead, he had deported himself. A feminist with a powerful right hook had punched him in the mouth in the Oxford Circus tube station during the morning rush hour. He had been wearing a Pussy Alive T-shirt—Fucking a white woman is a step away from homosexuality. The punch in his face was as close as Crosby had come to a sexual encounter in London. Having discovered the first mystery of the universe, he had discovered the second mystery of the universe while in England—the essential ingredients of life were available in only one place on the planet—Bangkok. He was returning to Bangkok to humanize himself. The West succeeded in making animals out of normal people, Crosby thought. He had become a sulking monster. All of a sudden on the flight back, he had felt things were about to return to normal. He could relax, breathe...and just as he closed his eyes the Senior Steward returned and accidentally on purpose spilled a gin and tonic over Crosby’s head. The passengers in First Class applauded and the Senior Steward took a modest bow.

  9

  HARRY PURCELL HAD built himself a powerful image at HQ. Smoking his Havana cigars and dressed from head to toe in black silk, he moved silently. He appeared as if he had come like a mist through the floor. But Harry was no ghost. He was a polyglot: his language fluency included English, Chinese, French, German, Spanish, Thai, Lao—and enough Vietnamese to discuss weapon system operations. At school he had received high marks for his knowledge of weapons and dead languages—Latin and Greek. His Eurasian features gave him a dark, mysterious, and from the profile, alien appearance of an abductor from a UFO hovering above an operating table. He easily had passed as Greek, Italian, Jewish, Turkish—and had the passports to support the nationalities; his face and solid, short body blended a dozen cultures. Purcell’s face was difficult to place—it was a face which lacked a certain identity and it was impossible to forget. Harry wore his white hair in a long mane which tumbled over his collar, and his eyebrows were bushy and white like two-hundred-year-old bird’s nest bleached in the sun. He had a studied, self-possessed ironic expression as if he were in the audience of a local production of The Tempest. Even this was an inadequate description of the feelings Harry Purcell invoked. The way he smiled, rolling his Havana between his fingers as someone else talked. There was the hint of a man who knew the location of a secret passage and as soon as the collapse started, panic in the streets, he would slowly rise from the table and disappear through the passage and exit into a safe haven with huge bank accounts, expensive houses, cars, cigars, wine, and women.

  Tuttle found Purcell sitting on the veranda of his house, drinking a cup of coffee and reading the newspaper. He was turning the page when he caught sight of Tuttle, who looked tired, haggard. Tuttle had been back in Bangkok two nights and so far had not found Daeng.

  “Papa Tuttle,” Purcell said.

  “Don’t you start.” Tuttle sat down at the table opposite Purcell and a maid appeared a moment later with another cup of coffee. Was it possible that Purcell never slept? He looked as if he had been refreshed by eight hours of sleep, sitting relaxed, reading his newspaper.

  “Your son-in-law is making quite a mark on the radio.”

  “He’s not my son-in-law. Asanee’s only living with him.”

  Purcell paused, looking at Tuttle’s wrinkled clothes with the splattered blood.

  “Had a rough night by the look of your clothes,” said Purcell.

  “What’s going on in Bangkok? Can you explain it? Why, Harry, why is the Army doing this?”

  Purcell carefully folded the newspaper and laid it on the table. He stretched his arms and cupped his hands behind his head of white hair. “Once my father was with a customer. I was about ten at the time. And the customer who was French asked my father if East and West would ever meet. My father pointed at me and smiled. ‘That meeting’s being held inside Harry’s head.’ After the customer left, my father put his arm around my shoulders and said, ‘Harry, that man just spent ten million dollars for weapons and he knows even less about life than you do. So if you put your mind to it, by the time you reach sixteen I want a full report on my desk and in that report you write down what’s been h
appening in this meeting between East and West going on between your ears.’”

  A Thai girl came out onto the veranda and wrapped her arms around Harry Purcell’s neck. He looked up and kissed her gently on the cheek. She wore a red silk robe with the initials HP stitched above the pocket. Tuttle recognized Aow as one of his English language students; she was nineteen, twenty years old. She had long smooth, tapered fingers—not the hands of someone who had been working in a factory or the fields.

  “My personal barber,” said Harry Purcell. “Say hello to Khun Robert, Aow.”

  She waied him. “Khun Robert is my teacher.”

  “Is that so?” asked Harry Purcell, smiling.

  A moment later Aow disappeared off the veranda and back into the house. From the veranda, Tuttle picked out the fast-paced tempo of Denny Addison’s voice on Radio 108.3 but the words were lost as Harry spoke.

  “Women are such a dangerous species,” said Purcell. “It takes years before you know whether a woman is a cupcake. Whether she will turn out to be good or evil. You have no way of knowing.”

  “Did you give the report to your father on your sixteenth birthday?” asked Tuttle, glancing through the window and watching Aow dancing to Denny Addison’s selection of music for Radio 108.3 listeners—Pink Floyd’s The Wall.

  “Of course. I was at Cambridge. I was the youngest undergraduate in more than one hundred years to be admitted in my college. But my father had his report. But what you really want to ask is about the blood on your clothes and why people are getting themselves killed in Bangkok. And why families like the Purcells have made a business of arming them. Demographics explains a great deal, Robert. Take one square kilometer of England. What do you find inside? Nine adults, three dogs, six children, a couple of pubs and a church. Now take one square kilometer of Asia. You find three thousand families, eight hundred dogs, two hundred monks, and four hundred generals. Everyone is bunched up; squeezed together; stepping on each other’s feet. You can’t move without someone noticing. You can’t raise a concern without causing someone offense. And the person you offend may have power. Remember the four hundred generals part of the equation. The social arrangements are compromised to make certain you don’t cause offense. So you don’t complain; you don’t criticize; you learn not to see problems. The most efficient way of living is to move with great caution; if you step forward from the spot where you stand, always remember that people are watching you. Never move quickly forward or backward without honoring the cardinal rule of the East—yield to those more powerful than you. Spontaneous behavior is dangerous. You must take your time, one step at a time so those in power don’t become anxious. You learn to test the water slowly, putting in one toe at a time. It’s better to lose a toe than a foot. And it’s better to lose a foot than a leg. You master the art of moving without causing offense. One small, measured step, and you stop and count your toes every step along the way. That’s how you survive with all those people living on top of each other in one square kilometer of Asia. If you try to run through the territory like it’s a Western foot race, then you’re in trouble.

  “Now we are talking about the how and the why to explain the blood stains on your clothes. Why did the generals order their troops to open fire on demonstrators? It’s totally obvious to an Asian. Of course the Army would give an order to shoot to kill. The demonstrators refused to yield to the generals. This isn’t America. The demonstrators broke the unwritten covenant. Generals never allow this to happen if they can prevent it. Because if they did, then the generals would lose all of value that they possess—the power to make the others fear and obey them. The demonstrators own cars, mobile phones, condos and this deceived them into thinking they had the power to march in the street and that they had the power to change the Army. So the Army is teaching them a lesson about power and fear. Taking a foot, a leg, and the rest.

  “The Purcell family has supplied weapons to five hundred years of generals. We know how they think, react, and what it takes to keep them satisfied. So I wrote my father a report when I was sixteen. It was very short. I wrote that the line where West meets East has never been identified. The exploration has been a trip wire for the unguarded and unwise and I was not about to join their ranks. But I had some thoughts about the family enterprise and terms of credit policy which applied to Asia, Africa, Europe, South America. The mentality of those who desire to retain power is to be careful to watch, observe, notice those who would steal it. They are paranoid about usurpers. Those who succeed in the power game have shown their willingness to force others to yield to them and on their terms. The education system is constructed to teach the people to fear the generals; that language and culture are sacred gifts passed from generation to generation through the blood of the father to the son, the mother to the daughter. Proving that twelve years of school is more damaging to the average person than twelve years of prison. In Asia, the uprisings are blood feuds about the meaning of history and continuity of power. Whatever the price or cost of crushing a challenger is nothing compared with the loss of power and being subject to yield to another. The one with power has the sacred gift. He channels the blood. Generals who combine deceit and ruthlessness usually win. In the gun-running business, this was, I felt, the basis of granting credit: a general with a vast intelligence agency and many spies in the market place, and who never bothered about the blood he let, you gave credit. The others paid cash up front.”

  “What was your father’s reaction to all this?”

  “He put me on the board of directors as my seventeenth birthday present,” said Harry Purcell, sipping his coffee and grinning over his cup. “Now why did you come here?”

  “I’m looking for someone.”

  “We’re all looking for someone, Robert. Most of the time it’s ourselves.”

  10

  “THIS IS YOUR favorite DJ and film freak Denny Addison broadcasting live at Radio Bangkok 108.3 where we are bringing you music and passing on the news we have gathered from the front lines around Banglamphu. We have more reports of the Army opening fire at Wat Bovornwet. The Army has been spotted sweeping through the area around Democracy Monument. Thousands of protesters have been arrested by the Army in the Ratchadamnoen area. We’re hearing reports of soldiers hitting people who are laying flat on the ground. We’re talking rifle butts in the head. Soldiers are beating protesters with rifles, making them strip to the waist, and then loading them into trucks. Silom and Sathorn Roads are deserted. The buses have stopped running. Robinson, Central Department Store, and Foodland have called it a day and sent their employees home. There are guards out front to stop vandals. One of the generals was just on the TV. Get this, he says he’s sad about what is happening and the Army is using restraint and patience. But these rioters—that’s what the demonstrators are now called by the Army—have been called communists. The Army has announced a communist alert. So what are we talking about? Treason? Thailand is under threat of a communist takeover? Get serious. Whatever drugs these guys are using, I want a double order delivered to the sixth floor where we are broadcasting live. We are talking some very freaky images rolling around the city. Communists in Thailand? Have the generals been living in a time-warp or what? The Cold War’s over, fellahs. Don’t you read newspapers? Do they sit in a war room and say, ‘Hey, man, we got about 100,000 Marxist radicals occupying Sanam Luang. These commies showed up in their BMWs. So maybe we should blast them.’ Wow, let’s round up the usual suspects. Never mind that there is no more Soviet Union. Or there is no Berlin Wall. You never know, these rioters might bring back the 1950s. Give it up. If the generals are looking to sell the world that there are rioting communists in Bangkok they’re gonna have a rough time finding an audience. Final word before we play some more music. We have reports of 20,000 people around Ramkhamhaeng University. More people are pouring into the area and there are ugly rumors circulating around town that the Army will be moving in after them. Now there’s an idea. If soldiers are at Ramkhamhaeng, they mi
ght want to check out some courses on history, current events, and logic. Now to ease your mind let’s play some music. Radio Bangkok 108.3 brings you the Everly Brothers’ Bye Bye Love.”

  PART 3

  THE INTIMATE FRIEND

  1

  THE INTIMATE FRIEND

  A Short Story

  by

  Robert Tuttle

  THE JEEP DRIVER cut the engine, then switched off the head lamps. In darkness, the Army jeep coasted along on the quiet, narrow soi with cars parked on both sides. Squeezed in the back of the jeep were three soldiers in combat dress, clutching their M-16s. On the passenger’s side, an officer held a pair of special night vision binoculars, scanning the windows of some shacks about twenty meters away. The officer dropped his hand and the jeep pulled to an abrupt stop beside the curb. No one inside spoke. The officer had ordered his men to maintain strict silence before they had turned into the soi. His men always followed orders. They were taught to respect command. Loyalty to an officer was the highest loyalty a soldier could hope to offer in a combat zone. Bangkok was at war. Communists, troublemakers, rioters, and the Third Hand were out in force to disrupt the country for their own malevolent purposes. Their officer was taking them on a mission. They would never question the mission or their officer’s orders. They sat, waiting further orders, as the officer continued watching through the binoculars.

  After several minutes, a Thai male aged thirty-four emerged from one of the shacks. He was well-dressed, wearing a white shirt, a tie, black trousers and polished shoes. His BMW was parked four meters in front of the jeep. Leaning in the door of the shack stood a young woman, her head cocked to the side, combing her hair. She looked wistful dressed in a white silk night gown. She could have been no more than twenty-two. She licked her red lips, the back light revealing her breasts, hips and legs through the white silk.