He turned to Somporn. “You’re going to let her go now.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a statement, though Turk needed some reassurance. Somporn nodded. “One of my men will drive you into town. But if you make a noise or attract the police, he has my permission to shoot you. Understood?”
“Understood.”
Turk turned and waved to Sheila. It looked like she smiled at him, but he couldn’t be sure.
Saksan waded out into the water and helped Somporn land the boat. Kittisak and another man then joined them. Somporn told them to take the money back to Bangkok and divide it there. He didn’t know if the police were after them, or the Army, or what, but the last thing they needed was for any of them to be caught in town spending U.S. dollars. He told them about the explosion. Kittisak nodded and, with Saksan’s help, began transferring the wet stacks of greenbacks into a ratty-looking canvas sack. They had already arranged for a fishing boat to ferry them to the mainland in an hour. After that a train would take them north to Bangkok, where they would melt into the metropolis.
Somporn looked up and saw that Turk was walking toward Sheila. He decided to give them a minute alone, after which he would have them taken into town.
…
Turk couldn’t hug her because she was still bound to the tree, so he just stood in front of her for a moment, not really knowing what to say. Finally, he said, “Hi.”
Sheila nodded. “I didn’t think you’d come.”
Turk scratched his head. “Sorry, it got kind of complicated.”
“It got kind of complicated here, too.”
He moved closer to her.
“You smell like beer.”
Turk shrugged. What could he say? Smelling like beer was kind of his chronic condition.
“You want me to untie you?”
…
Captain Somporn watched as his men scrambled to get their belongings collected. He was going to leave by boat; hopefully any law enforcement that might be watching would follow him. He promised to meet them back in Bangkok when things cooled off. Somporn told them to make sure the American rock star and his wife made it back to town safely. It was important that the Americans were returned unharmed.
Somporn gave his men a salute, got back in the boat, and motored off into the darkness.
…
Sheila looked for the Captain, but he was nowhere to be seen. There would be no tearful good-byes, no promises to call or write or get in touch; there were just a couple of men with machine guns shoving her and Turk into the back of a tuk tuk and roaring off into the night.
It was pitch black. There were no lights on the road, no houses or stores; it was just a deserted two-lane illuminated by the single dirty headlight of the tuk tuk. As the tuk tuk whisked them toward the distant glow of Phuket Town, the warm night air—filled with the sweet scent of tropical flowers mixed with the acrid blast of unleaded exhaust—swirled around them. In any other circumstances it might’ve been romantic, like a horse-driven carriage ride through Central Park. Sheila reached over and took Turk’s hand in hers; she turned to him with a heartbreakingly sincere expression on her face.
“I think I want a divorce.”
Turk didn’t blink.
“Okay.”
Seventeen
PHUKET
Heidegger was at the back of a long line of tourists—they all seemed to be German—going through passport control. He was looking forward to getting to the hotel. He needed a cocktail and a shower, not necessarily in that order, and had arranged for a tailor to meet him in his room and measure him for some tropical-weight clothes. Some trousers and short-sleeved shirts. Maybe a nice seersucker suit. That’s what you did in Thailand—you had clothes custom-made by expert tailors for next to nothing. The big companies that moved their factories to Southeast Asia knew what they were doing.
Heidegger was expecting Marybeth to meet him at the airport; he was not expecting Marybeth to be accompanied by someone else. Especially not a woman that she was sneaking kisses to.
Heidegger got his passport stamped, picked up his little carry-on, and walked into the main lobby. Marybeth and the woman—Heidegger had to admit she was lovely—were standing side by side, arms intertwined as if they were schoolgirls.
When Marybeth saw him, she let out a squeal and rushed to hug him.
“About fucking time you got here.”
She jumped into his arms and gave him a squeeze. Marybeth’s smile was infectious, and Heidegger found himself grinning from ear to ear like a schoolboy with a really good secret.
“Who’s your new friend?”
Marybeth blushed a deep red and stammered as she introduced Wendy. “Uh, Wendy. This is my boss, Jon.”
Wendy clasped her hands in front of her and bent forward in a wai. Heidegger imitated the movement, then extended his hand. His eyes met hers, and he understood right away what was going on. Like the perfect couple on the plane, love was in the air.
“Nice to meet you.”
Wendy shook his hand. “Marybeth has told me a lot about you.”
Heidegger cocked an eyebrow and shot a look at Marybeth. “She hasn’t told me anything about you.”
Marybeth stood there getting more and more embarrassed. “I’ve been busy.”
Heidegger grinned; he couldn’t help himself. “I bet you have.”
…
Turk had wanted to go straight to the police. In fact, when he saw one of the Thai Tourist Policemen—easily identifiable in their jaunty berets—standing outside of a beer hall, he waved to him. But Sheila refused to have anything to do with the police. She wasn’t going to tell her story. She wasn’t going to press charges or file a complaint. All she wanted was to go back to the hotel, eat a meal, and sleep on a soft bed. Alone.
…
There was no celebration when the taxi dropped them off at the hotel. No crowds of reporters, no paparazzi. There were no champagne corks popping, no ticker tape parade; just two tired and dirty people—the fat one smelling faintly swampy—hobbling out of a car and walking into a hotel.
Sheila went to the front desk and asked for a room. There was some clacking of keyboards and signing of papers and then a key was slid across the counter. Turk stood by and watched. He reached over and put his hand gently on Sheila’s shoulder.
“You okay?”
Sheila nodded. “I’m really tired. We can talk tomorrow.”
He watched her follow the bellhop toward her room.
…
Marybeth and Wendy—discreetly holding hands under the table—sat with Takako and Heidegger in the hotel restaurant. If Heidegger was concerned about Turk’s safety, he didn’t show it. He ordered a martini and a green papaya salad. Wendy suggested they get an order of kaeng pladuk chuchi, which was, apparently, a dip made out of dry curried catfish and chilis. Heidegger, still hungry from his long nap on the plane, also wanted some pad thai, and Wendy had told the waiter—in Thai, of course—that they should use fresh shrimp and not the frozen kind so often pawned off on unsuspecting tourists. This would be followed by a spicy crab curry and bowls of steamed rice.
But Marybeth was worried about Turk. He should’ve been back hours ago. Not that she knew what the plan was after he dropped off the money—maybe the kidnappers had dumped Turk and Sheila on some deserted beach somewhere—but she still didn’t think it should take this long. Takako too, was concerned. She had wondered aloud if they shouldn’t make a police report, just so the authorities would be on the lookout for a stranded American couple.
All of the anxiety—spoken and unspoken—lifted when Turk ambled into the bar looking for a cold beer.
“Turkey!”
Marybeth jumped out of her chair and gave Turk a hug. “I was so worried about you.”
“I’m okay.”
She detected something in his voice that made her pull her head back and look at him. “What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Is Sheila okay?”
; Turk nodded. “I really need a beer.”
Turk broke away from Marybeth and moved toward the table. Heidegger stood and gave him a bear hug.
“You’re a fuckin’ hero, man.”
Turk shrugged. He didn’t feel particularly heroic at the moment. “Good to see you, man. Thanks for coming.”
He bent forward, giving Wendy a wai. “Hey, Wendy. Good to see you.”
Heidegger looked from Turk to Wendy to over where Marybeth was getting a beer at the bar. “I obviously missed something.”
Turk slumped, exhausted, into a chair. “Yeah, bro, Thailand rocks.”
…
Sheila entered the hotel room and locked the door behind her. She sat on the bed and stared at the floor. She was free: no longer a prisoner, no longer subject to the humiliations, degradations, and perversions of the pirate captain. She could do what she wanted, when she wanted, and no one could stop her. She could return to her old life of privilege and haute couture. She could eat the freshest sushi and take Pilates classes; she could spend all day getting treatments at a groovy day spa and then go out and drink the best wines California could produce; she could go first-class all the way back to her big Spanish-style hacienda in Los Angeles and live in air-conditioned splendor swathed in the finest cotton sheets from Italy.
She could go home and be miserable.
Sheila went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. She didn’t need to worry about conservation now; the hot water never runs out in a five-star hotel. She carefully took off her clothes and folded them, placing them on a little settee near the bed. When the water was hot, almost scalding, Sheila entered the shower and slowly, deliciously, began soaping her body.
She missed Captain Somporn’s watchful eye.
…
Takako Mitsuzake was pissed. She went back to her room, opened up her laptop, and tried to go online. It took her several tries with a variety of adapters to finally get the dataport on the little desk up and running. A half hour later she had the necessary dial-up codes installed—don’t these people have DSL?—and was listening to the old-fashioned growling-beeping-swirly sound of her modem connecting. She was pissed, because she knew she’d be up all night dropping emails to her various contacts telling them that the juicy scoop she’d promised would need to be delayed. Takako needed to start sowing the seeds of damage control immediately. She couldn’t just come out and tell them that it looked like Turk Henry and his supermodel wife were headed for Splitsville. That was the kind of information she wanted to keep out of the papers. Yet without some kind of happy ending to the kidnapping story, well, where was the story? All good stories need a beginning, middle, and end. It was preferable, with stories like this, that it be a happy ending. No one wants to see the hero rescue the girl and then get shit on by her. That’s not uplifting or redemptive.
Takako was also pissed because she ate a lot of that spicy food that Heidegger had ordered and now her guts were burning like she’d swallowed a lit hibachi.
As she was typing up her e-mails, Takako had a brainstorm. She didn’t care if Turk and Sheila got divorced; she didn’t care if Sheila hated his guts. All she needed was for Turk and Sheila to stay together—at least in the short term—for a couple of photos and an interview or two. What’s that? A month? Maybe six weeks? Takako realized she’d have to sell the idea to Heidegger, not to mention Turk and Sheila, but she thought it could be done. Why throw away a great story? What was the point of that? Where was the upside? What did Turk and Sheila have to lose by pretending to stay together for a little while? People in Hollywood did it all the time; marriages of convenience, marriages for promotional purposes, marriages to hide the fact that both the husband and wife would prefer to be with members of their same sex. She just needed to convince them to stay together until Turk’s CD was recorded. Then Takako would craft and manage the announcement of their separation and divorce and blame it on “post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of her abduction.” Oh, yeah. The world’s eyes would fill with tears, hearts would pang, and Kleenex stock would jump over that one. Turk’s CD would leap ten spots on the Billboard chart and Heidegger could negotiate the official, as-told-to, ghostwritten autobiography of Turk Henry for mid-six figures. Heroism and heartbreak went well together. Just not on the same day.
…
If beer goggles really existed, if they were a kind of ocular device that balanced on your nose and warped your perception of the world, then Turk was wearing a pair that was as thick as a Coke bottle.
After Wendy and Marybeth had kissed him good night and gone off for a reunion of their own, Turk sat in the bar and ordered what might as well have been his two hundredth beer.
He had decided to get drunk. He had his reasons. He drank to silence the swirl of questions, the jumble of thoughts and dog pile of feelings in his head. He drank to numb his body; he had a variety of aches and pains from wrestling with a wet suitcase and a mangrove swamp. He drank because he was beyond understanding what was happening. Whatever Sheila thought or felt, whatever made her want a divorce; it didn’t matter. A couple is a pair. Both people have to want to be in the partnership or it won’t work out. It’s not a tulip or a daffodil; you can’t force it to grow. You can nurture it. You can urge it forward. But ultimately it has to happen because both people want it to.
Turk drank because he was relieved. The marriage thing, the monogamy, it just wasn’t his thing. Sheila asking for the divorce had saved him the trouble of having to ask for one himself. The relief he felt made him feel guilty. Was he finally succumbing to the catalytic environment? Was he falling off the sexual sobriety wagon like a big bale of hay?
It was too much, too fast. Too many questions with answers that were difficult or painful or just out of his reach at the moment. Turk realized—with the woozy lucidity of the beer-goggled—that beer itself was a kind of answer to many of life’s questions. Unless, of course, the questions were about weight loss.
Heidegger sat with him, drinking a tiny thimble of hot sake. Turk let out a long, low, extended beer belch solo. Heidegger shook his head. “Nice.”
Turk grinned. “Remind you of a song?”
“Not one I care to recall.”
Turk finished his bottle of beer and wiggled it in the air to get the waitress’s attention. When she looked at him he flashed two fingers, not in an effort to buy a round for himself and Heidegger, but to get the waitress to save herself a trip and bring him two at once.
“I’ve got some new songs.”
Heidegger sat up in his chair. “Really? That’s excellent news. Did you lay down some tracks?”
Turk pointed to his head. “I’ve got ’em up here.”
Heidegger laughed. “Well, don’t wash them out with a beer tsunami.”
Turk looked at him, suddenly serious. “Don’t joke about the tsunami. Not around here.”
Heidegger, who was three sheets to the wind, waved his hand in the air. “My apologies to the people of Phuket. I’m truly sorry. I meant no harm.”
Satisfied, Turk put a beer to his lips and nursed like a starving infant. Heidegger leaned forward. “What are you going to do about Sheila?”
Turk goggled his head around. Belched. “Sheila?”
“Yeah, your wife.”
Turk thought about it. “I’m gonna do what I always do.”
“What’s that?”
“Give her what she wants.”
…
Roy had been enjoying his life of leisure. With Ben away on some kind of cloak-and-dagger mission, he had nothing to do. He’d convinced a colleague to take his backup ID card and swipe it through the time clock for him. That way it looked like he had come in on time.
With the annoyance of punctuality taken care of, Roy would spend his evenings drinking beer and dancing at discos and clubs before rolling into his brothel of choice, where he would stay drinking whiskey and having sex with Chinese prostitutes—for some reason Roy refused to pay a Thai girl for sex—until sunrise. Then he’d
grab a fortifying breakfast of thick congee or Vietnamese pho before rolling into the embassy around ten o’clock. He’d spend his workday in Ben’s office, the door locked, sleeping on the couch.
He knew that this minivacation from work wouldn’t last forever, but he was hoping he could stretch it for a few more days. So he was understandably grumpy and annoyed when Bussakorn—everyone called her “Nat”—banged on Ben’s door around noon. Roy blinked awake and stumbled forward, taking a moment to blast a shot of breath freshener into his mouth, before opening the door. Nat informed him that the Defense Attaché Office had been looking for Ben and, when the search had proved futile, decided they needed to talk to Ben’s assistant. Nat looked at him and asked in Thai, “What are you doing?”
Roy scratched his head and replied in English, “I was sleeping.”
It’s one thing to be sent to the principal’s office for talking during a lecture or making out with a girl in the closet of the biology lab; it’s another thing to be called into your boss’s office and asked what the hell you were doing sleeping on the job; but it is a unique and rarefied kind of torture to be riding the crest of a crushing hangover, with only two hours of sleep, and find yourself in a conference room with a team of pissedoff military professionals who want to get to the bottom of something you know nothing about. The latter situation was the one in which Roy now found himself.
After three hours of grilling by the Americans—during which Roy was accused more than once of sniffing glue on the job—it was finally decided that he would be sent to Phuket to retrieve his boss. The DAO case officer had traced Ben’s credit card to a hotel there. They assumed he had met some girl and gone on a bender. It had happened to others before.
Despite the uncomfortable chair, intense glares, and bad breath of his inquisitors, Roy had somehow managed to not tell them about the tactical kit, the hand grenade, or Ben’s strange blathering about “black ops.” Roy really didn’t know what Ben was up to, but he was sure it had nothing to do with a woman.
Salty: A Novel Page 22