The Grey Man

by John Curtis

  To a depressed, directionless unemployed ex-student and former soldier the money was an amazing windfall, and the first step on a path that I still didn't know had been chosen for me. Suddenly, I had a cause – that had come to me from nowhere – and some money. I did some research on the internet and found that child prostitution and the selling of children into sexual slavery was a problem far greater than I could have imagined. A third of the world's people trafficking occurs in south-east Asia and Thailand is the biggest player in this illegal industry, mostly because it is at once a source, transit and destination country for trafficking. I decided I would use the money to go to Thailand.

  It wasn't an uplifting moment, though. I was still at a very low point in my life and I was borderline suicidal. I had a purpose at last, but I didn't see it as something worth living for. In fact, when I made my arrangements to leave Australia for Asia I thought of myself as embarking on a one-way trip. I had my cash, but it wasn't really enough to live on for an extended period. My plan, such as it was, was to go to Thailand and try to do some good. I imagined that it would be risky, infiltrating a criminal underworld, but that didn't faze me. I fully expected to end up dead in an alley with a bullet in my head. In a way, I was looking forward to it; one way or another I did not expect to be coming back to Australia alive.

  I had no high hopes or expectations, nor romantic notions of going down fighting. I planned to do my best and if I died in the process then I would be comforted at the end with the knowledge that at least I had tried to do something meaningful with my life. Death held no fear for me as I just wanted it all over with. I recalled having an operation in hospital during which I'd been knocked out with a general anaesthetic. I'd been completely unconscious; no dreams, nothing, and when I woke up I remembered thinking, ‘Wow, if death is like that, it wouldn't be so bad’. This end to consciousness could have been what I was subconsciously seeking.

  It sounds a bit melodramatic, I know, but I think it was more fatalistic, and I think my mindset was a symptom of my depression. I took out a life insurance policy and made out a will in which I left everything to Emma. I saw this venture as a last roll of the dice for me. My one regret about leaving on this mission would be saying goodbye to Emma, and it took me some time to steel myself for that.

  I went to see her at Anna's and sat her down on her bed. She tilted her head, raising her little face to look up at me. I felt my heart begin to melt, but I was not about to change my mind. ‘Emma, Daddy has to go away for a while.’

  ‘For how long?’ she asked.

  ‘I don't know.’ I'd told Anna I would be away for six weeks, so she didn't freak out, but I was being far more honest with my daughter.

  ‘Why are you going away? ‘

  ‘There are girls like you in Asia who are suffering, honey. Bad things are happening to them. What I'm going to do is rescue five of those little girls for you.’ I had no idea where the figure came from, but I felt quantifying it might make it easier for her to understand, and put a finite limit on this venture, even though I was sure I wasn't coming back.

  ‘I'll miss you, Daddy.’

  Emma was the most wonderful child, and she still is to this day. She's beautiful, intelligent, kind, gutsy and quirky, and she seems completely unaffected by being the inspiration for what was to come.

  THREE

  Thailand

  In September 2004 I tidied the last of my affairs and left my car with a mate of mine. ‘If I'm not back within three months, sell it and keep the money,’ I said, sure that he would never see me again.

  I was still depressed as I boarded the plane to fly out of Brisbane, but at the same time I felt strangely powerful – even invulnerable. I was ready to die for my newfound cause, and as a result I felt like nothing anyone could say or do could scare me.

  My sister worked for Emirates Airlines, and she had come through with a flight to Singapore; business class, no less. When I got there I bought an onward flight to Thailand. I had decided to go to Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand rather than to Bangkok, as I'd learned that Chiang Mai was a hub for trafficked kids.

  Flying into Chiang Mai I could see rugged bush-covered hills that stretched away to the border with Burma. The ground was a patchwork of shades of that vivid emerald green that is so peculiar to Asia. This is a wilder part of Thailand; tourists come to the north to get closer to nature, rather than lie on beaches. You could trek through the jungle, ride an elephant and, if you were that way inclined, you could buy a child.

  The city itself is a jumble of the old and new, office blocks and shopping centres interspersed between tin-roofed shacks, bars and traditional Thai teak houses. The city is surrounded by walls – ancient fortifications built to keep invaders from Burma out – and while these have largely crumbled, some sections and key gates have been preserved. A moat also runs around the outside of the city, giving it something of an exotic feel.

  Reading my guidebook on the plane I learned that Chiang Mai city has a population of nearly one million people, more than half the total population of Chiang Mai province. Its name means ‘new city’, although it's anything but. King Mengrai founded the city in 1296, and it succeeded Chiang Rai as the capital of the Lanna kingdom. These days Chiang Mai is a thriving, bustling regional city with bars and late-night restaurants everywhere, but clustered in particularly large numbers on either side of the moat's eastern flank, in the Thapae Gate area along Loy Kroh Road.

  I got a tuk tuk from the airport into town and booked myself into a room in a traditional teak guest house where a number of different Thai families and couples lived. My room cost me the equivalent of about sixty Australian dollars a month. At the time the average wage in Thailand was the equivalent of about a hundred and sixty Australian dollars a month. A meal might cost about $1.20. I had decided to go for traditional accommodation as I didn't want to have anything to do with western backpackers and I wanted to limit my contact with expats; I needed to immerse myself in the local culture and start learning the language as soon as possible.

  My lodgings were spartan but clean. Each pair of rooms shared a bathroom, consisting of a squat toilet and hand-held shower. Each room had an internal door providing access to the bathroom. To avoid embarrassment, the trick was to latch the neighbour's door when you entered the bathroom so that you wouldn't be disturbed, and then unlatch it when you were finished, locking your own door when you were back in your room. Unsurprisingly, all of the residents, including me, sometimes forgot to lock or unlock the door. I had Thais burst in on me a couple of times and at other times I couldn't get into the bathroom because the next-door people had latched my door shut when they were in there and then forgotten to unlock it. It was as comedic as it was frustrating.

  Unfortunately, I soon learned that Thai people love television. They watch it all day and all night, at high volume. Sometimes I'd lie in bed with the pillow over my ears trying to drown out the noise coming through the thin wooden walls at three in the morning.

  Near to my guest house was a travel agency that doubled as a language school. I met one of the English teachers, a Thai woman who called herself Anne (Thais sometimes anglicise their names), and asked her to start teaching me Thai. I tried to speak the language at every possible opportunity and slowly I began to make progress.

  On arriving in Thailand I had decided not to contact the Thai police and tell them what I wanted to do; I made this decision because I'd been told by other expats that all Thai police were corrupt. It's not just the expats who believe this: police and politicians are the least trusted people in Thailand and they're often part of the problem rather than the solution to crime. Some cops even own brothels and I have heard of kids being trafficked in police vehicles.

  However, over time I learned that there are many highly principled Thai police officers, and that the issue of corruption is not as cut and dried as we view it in the west. Police are not well paid and so low-level corruption, as we would think of it, does take place. A police of
ficer will often ‘buy’ a beat or a promotion in order to move to a bigger or more profitable part of the country. Profit comes through charging protection money from businesses in the beat or district, who, from what I was led to understand, generally go along with all this. For his or her part, the officer in charge enforces the law of the land and protects his clients. The system seems to work well, as long as the officers are ‘honest’ and don't take money from criminals to turn a blind eye to their activities, which of course happens far too often. This does not mean, though, that the officer in question would take money from a drug dealer or paedophile or a trafficker to avoid prosecution – some would, but not all. It's a grey area. The Grey Man now works closely with the police in every country in which it operates.

  If I wasn't going to work with the police in those early days I realised I needed to make contact with other people who could help me fulfil my mission. If I found an underage girl in a bar or brothel I couldn't very well front up with her at a police station, as I had no legal authority to be rescuing kids. Likewise, until I had established my bona fides with some organisation or other I was at risk of being compromised – or even accused of being a paedophile myself – if someone took exception to my presence.

  Hoping to give myself a bit of cover, I found a number for the Australian Federal Police liaison officer in Chiang Mai. The AFP maintains a presence there because Chiang Mai is close to the Burmese border and the ‘Golden Triangle’ – an area covering northern Thailand, eastern Burma and western Laos that is famous for opium growing. Chiang Mai itself is a hub for drug smuggling as well as people trafficking. I called the AFP office a few times and left messages, but no one returned my calls.

  To start orientating myself I began going out at night and exploring the seedier side of Chiang Mai. Many of the brothels are located in an area called Santi Tam, although others are dotted throughout the city. The brothels are distinct from the bars and go-go clubs, mostly clustered near Thapae Gate, which also provide girls. The brothels had rooms on the premises for customers to use the girls' services, whereas the go-go bars had no rooms. Go-go girls dance with numbers on their bodies and male customers ask the mamasan to have a drink with girl number such-and-such. If the customer wants to then have sex with the girl he takes her back to his hotel room, or a local place the girl knows.

  I actually hate bars and their cigarette smell. I rarely drink alcohol, but I'd sometimes nurse one while I sussed a place out. The bar girls would hit on me, and although I found some of the girls appealing, I was there for another purpose. As well as carrying out reconnaissance I used these visits to practise my Thai with the girls, asking them questions about their lives and their work.

  In the first few weeks, I had no clear direction in my mind other than that I was there to rescue kids, but I was getting the lay of the land and attempting to suss out from pimps and bar owners where I might go to find a young girl. No one in the bars seemed overly suspicious of me or my requests, but nor was I getting anywhere.

  By day I was approaching as many charities and NGOs as I could, to see if anyone could use my services. I was getting a very lukewarm reception and some were probably suspicious of me and my motives. One group that did give me a decent hearing ended our meeting by telling me that they might be able to involve me in their work, but they were a bit busy at the moment and I should get back to them in March. This was in September. Great, I thought; I could be dead by March.

  I was starting to get pissed off. I was cashed up and offering to pay my way and support whatever programs people wanted to involve me in, but I was getting turned away at every step. Now that I run a charitable organisation myself, I know that it's not always easy to find work for new volunteers at the drop of a hat, and often people don't deliver despite their initial keenness. Still, this was getting ridiculous.

  Meanwhile I was coming into contact with more and more westerners, many of them expats living in Chiang Mai. Some of the foreigners who had settled permanently in Thailand had interesting backgrounds. I met a Canadian guy who had been barred from Vietnam after being accused of being a CIA agent. His girlfriend was a member of the Vietnamese intelligence service but he didn't know that when he met her. An American I met had flown SR-71 spy planes during the Vietnam War and another had flown U-2 spy planes with Francis Gary Powers, who had been shot down over Russia during the Cold War. I also came across former Foreign Legionnaires and plenty of other people with military backgrounds. I'm sure some of them were bullshitters but there was never a dull day in Thailand.

  Many of the expats I met were trying to live a western life transported to Thailand, and I thought that was crazy. Things do move at a different pace in Thailand and people who can't handle that slower pace of life exhibit a kind of old-world colonial smugness and disdain for the locals that I found infuriating. The fact is that many expats are in the country because they either couldn't make it in business in the west, their income is minimal and they need a cheap lifestyle, or they're there for cheap sex – or all of the above.

  Some of the westerners I met, of course, had simply fallen in love with the place, but I was amazed to meet people who had lived in Thailand for ten or twenty years and could barely order a beer in the local language. I'm not boasting by saying that I could hold a reasonable conversation in Thai within a couple of months of being there – it was simply because I took the time to learn the language. I was also surprised, given their long-term connections with the west and westerners, that more Thais weren't fluent in English. Some who purported to have master's degrees in English couldn't speak it well at all. However, I found no shortage of locals – often complete strangers – happy to converse with me and help me learn. I found that if you took the time to try to learn about the local culture, people were incredibly welcoming and friendly.

  I loved the climate in Chiang Mai. There was an enveloping warmth, but being in a valley it tended to trap pollution, of which there was no shortage, largely from the tuk tuks. I also liked the city itself, although I still don't know exactly why. It's got nothing in particular to recommend it – it's a large city nestled in a natural geographic bowl surrounded by mountains with no beach and no pristine rainforest or anything like that – but it had a certain feel to it. I liked its tumbledown streets that give it a tangible sense of history, and walking those streets I was almost overpowered with that quintessential smell of Asia, a heady, almost sickening sweet-and-sour smell of flowers, spices and rotting refuse.

  I also did some exploring outside of Chiang Mai, mostly with Peter, the Canadian guy who had been kicked out of Vietnam. He could speak ten languages, most of them Asian, and had been in the Peace Corps. We visited Chiang Rai, about two hours' drive north of Chiang Mai, and also the town of Mae Sai on the Thai-Burma border, which I would discover was a key transit point for children to be smuggled into Thailand to work as sex workers, child labourers or beggars.

  On one of our trips Peter and I hired a car in Chiang Rai but when we were way out in the sticks a terrible whining, rattling noise started coming from the engine. It sounded like it was about to explode, so I quickly pulled off the road. I popped the bonnet and fiddled around a bit, but I don't really know very much about cars at all. I walked over to a man who was sitting outside a small roadside workshop and asked him in my basic Thai if he would have a look for us. He came over, got into the car and started the engine. The noise returned immediately and I was sure the engine would conk out at any second. He looked at me, his face blank, and then studied the car's dashboard. He reached over and pushed the air-conditioning button, turning it off. The noise stopped. I was so grateful I gave him 500 baht (about A$20), although I felt like an idiot.

  Back in Chiang Mai I tracked down yet another NGO, Kids Ark. I went to visit the people who ran the charity, an elderly Swedish couple named Rita and Allan Holm Gustafsson They were lovely people and I warmed to them immediately. Better still, they seemed to think I could help them. Allan was a former Swedish Army ranger
and I had met a number of rangers at the Swedish Army's Survival School, so we had a bit in common.

  The mainstay of Kids Ark's work was supporting AIDS orphans in the hill tribe villages in northern Thailand. AIDS has had a severe impact on those communities, perhaps because of a lack of health education, and there were many children who had been orphaned. At the time when I went to visit, Kids Ark were looking after between 200 and 300 kids.

  The hill tribes have been discriminated against in the past because of their different ethnicity: physically and culturally they have more in common with people in Tibet and Mongolia than with the rest of Buddhist Thailand. The Lahu and other tribes in the region were virtually stateless people: their clans spanned the border and people would often move freely from Burma to Thailand. As well as not being automatically entitled to Thai citizenship, government resources taken for granted elsewhere in the country, such as schools and healthcare, were thin on the ground in the hill tribe communities. Kids Ark had managed to address these issues to some degree.

  Both Burma and Thailand have been happy to keep the tribes at arm's length and this marginalisation is one of the reasons many of the tribespeople had drifted into crime. People without papers, who could move freely across borders, could also easily move drugs and other contraband. Alarmingly, it also became clear to me that their children were easy prey for traffickers for the same reason. It was easy to make a child who had no documentation and was not enrolled at a school disappear into the underworld.