by Jake Needham
I hadn’t been waiting more than a minute or two when a shiny black Mercedes rolled in from Sukhumvit and stopped right in front of me. I don’t know one Mercedes model from another, but it was one of the big ones and it had windows all around that were so dark no one could possibly see who was inside. A man jumped out of the driver’s seat and looked me over warily.
“Mr. Smith?” he asked.
“Yep, that’s me. John Smith. It surely is.”
That did very little to de-stress the fellow. I hadn’t meant it to.
The driver wasn’t a young man. I thought he was probably in his sixties. He was a bit chunky with leathered brown skin, and he wore the dark safari suit that was practically a national uniform for Thai drivers.
The man looked at me without expression for a moment, no doubt trying to decide what to make of this crazy foreigner, but he quickly decided such judgments were beyond his pay grade. He inclined his head and brought his palms together in front of his face, the tips of his fingers reaching to the bridge of his nose.
It was a traditional gesture that Thais call a wai, and I have always thought it a uniquely warm and elegant form of greeting that makes the western handshake seem gawky by comparison. Of course, the wai is also a profoundly nuanced signal of relative social standing and the way Thais wield it often leaves me bewildered. The inferior wais the superior, and the younger wais the older. That much I understand, but I still screw up my response most of the time because I am never entirely certain how to deal with the subtleties inherent in that equation. In this case for instance, how should I respond to a wai from a driver who is old? What carries the greater weight, the age or the station?
I’m just a foreigner, of course, so no Thai ever expects me to get it right and it isn’t that big a problem. Besides, I long ago established my own personal policy for dealing with wais that seems to me to be appropriately egalitarian. I wai no one. If someone wais me, I nod pleasantly and smile at them. Problem solved the American way.
The driver held open the rear door of the Mercedes and I got in. He returned to the driver’s seat, pulled away, and did exactly what I guessed he would do. Instead of entering the Sheraton’s garage, he took the driveway around behind the building and returned to Sukhumvit Road. We bumped west through the stop-and-go traffic on Sukhumvit until the driver found a place to make a U-turn and then we bumped east through the stop-and-go traffic. The driver didn’t appear inclined to break the silence in the car so eventually I did.
“You are taking me to meet Kate?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“How long will it be before we get there?”
“Not long.”
“Where am I meeting her?”
“Nowhere.”
Nowhere? What the hell did that mean?
And I thought the conversation had been going so well up until then.
“Look, I think I’m entitled to—”
“She at dinner. I pick her up. You talk in car. Safer that way.”
Okay, now I was onboard. Kate and I were going to have a conversation while Mr. Loquacious here drove us around the streets of Bangkok in a car with windows so dark no one would know we were inside it. That was about as close to a completely secure conversation as it was possible to have in Bangkok.
I wish I had thought of it myself.
TWENTY-FOUR
PHILIPPE’S RESTAURANT IS an institution among Bangkok restaurants, which is to say it’s been in business for more than a few years and is still popular. Philippe’s goes back more than two decades. In Bangkok restaurant time, that makes it almost prehistoric.
It probably helps that there really is a Philippe. He’s a Corsican by birth and runs the kitchen personally. Every now and then Philippe will appear in his chef’s whites and tour the dining room shaking hands and accepting compliments, but he’s a chef first and most of the time he’s in the kitchen. You don’t go to Philippe’s for a warm greeting from the proprietor. You go for the food.
Philippe’s has a loyal following among certain Thais who are referred to as high-so’s. The term is a bastardization of the expression high society, of course, but that isn’t exactly what it means in Thailand. High-so’s are the people in Bangkok who matter. That might be because they have social status, or money, or political power, or not infrequently all three together, but they are the people who run the country and tell everyone else what to do. It’s as simple as that. I was anything but surprised to find Kate having dinner at Philippe’s.
We turned off Sukhumvit into Soi 39 and the driver poked at a speed dial on his telephone and muttered something so softly that I missed it. I assumed he was announcing our arrival, and as it turned out that was exactly what he was doing. The moment we stopped in front of Philippe’s, Philippe himself opened the front door and inclined his head politely as Kate emerged followed by three women, none of whom I recognized. Two unsmiling men in dark suits who couldn’t have been anything but security guys followed the four women closely.
By the time Kate had taken a few steps, the driver was out of the car holding open the rear passenger door for her. Kate stopped at the door, smiled and waved over her shoulder at the three women with whom she had apparently had dinner, and then turned back and smiled at the driver. I watched the two security guys get into a smaller Mercedes the valet delivered, and then Kate ducked her head and slid into the backseat next to me.
“Hello, Jack,” she said. “Now what the hell is this all about?”
Kate was wearing a dark green silk suit exactly the color of a '57 MG I once owned. It had a broad-shouldered jacket with big white buttons down the front and a straight skirt that ended just at the tops of her knees. She wore no jewelry other than a single strand of gray pearls and a gold watch with a brown leather strap, a model so exclusive I had no idea what it was. Her legs were smooth and bare and slightly tanned, and she had on a pair of green pumps that matched her suit.
The last time I saw Kate she told me she was going to change her hair, and she had. Instead of her shiny black hair being closely cropped all around to hug her head like a helmet, she now wore it in a neatly shaped bob that fell softly around her shoulders. It was a much less severe look than I remembered, and I liked it.
An old girlfriend whose name I have long forgotten once told me that when a woman changes her hairstyle she is changing something else, too. As the years passed, I suspected more and more that she had been telling me the truth about that, but it did very little to help me understand what else had been changed, or was about to be changed, each time a woman I knew appeared with a completely different hairstyle.
“Hello, Kate. It’s good to see you.”
She hesitated, ducked her head slightly, and smiled. Kate had a great smile. I always had to work really hard not to read anything into it.
“It’s good to see you, too, Jack.”
The driver pulled away from the entrance to Philippe’s and the two security guys in the other Mercedes closed up right behind us.
All at once Kate sighed heavily and her face fell into a look of weariness.
“I’m sorry about sounding so impatient,” she said. “It’s been a long day. Can we start over?”
And then she did something I never would have expected. She bent toward me, brushed her lips across my cheek, and ruffled my hair with one hand.
“Really. I am sorry. And it is wonderful to see you again, but I’m guessing this isn’t entirely a social call.”
“It isn’t. Some friends of yours asked me to talk to you.”
“You mean Alisa?”
“I only just met Alisa. I was told to go through her to see you without being too public about it.”
“Who was it—” Kate stopped and interrupted herself. “Never mind. It doesn’t really matter. What do these people want you to talk to me about?”
“They’re concerned for your safety.”
“So Jack Shepherd has been recruited to ride in on his white horse, sweep me off my feet, and carr
y me safely out of the country?”
“I wouldn’t put it exactly like that.”
“It does sound awfully romantic, Jack. I’ll admit that right now. But I’m not going anywhere.”
“You’re not concerned?”
“Not in the slightest.”
“Then what are those guys doing back there?” I asked, indicating the trailing security car with a tilt of my head.
“You don’t recognize Mutt and Jeff?”
Mutt and Jeff were the nicknames I had given to the two security guys who trailed Kate everywhere when she was prime minister. I had no idea what their real names were, but they were two extremely tough guys, one short and heavy and one tall and thin exactly like the cartoon characters, and their personal loyalty to Kate was beyond question. They were about the only security she would put up with, which was a good thing since they wouldn’t let her go anywhere without them. When Kate and I got into a tight scrape once upon a time, I’d been awfully happy to have Mutt and Jeff around.
“No, I didn’t,” I said. “They look… well, older, I guess.”
“Don’t we all, Jack?”
I smiled at that and glanced back at Mutt and Jeff again. I felt better for Kate knowing they were there.
“What about this trial?” I asked. “What do you think is going to happen?”
Kate gave a small shrug.
“General Prasert has charged me with knowing that two of my ministers had a scheme going to profit from our agricultural subsidy program. He claims I did nothing to stop it and that makes me as corrupt as my ministers.”
“Is that true?”
“You know as well as I do that sort of corruption goes on all the time here. But I didn’t know anything about it, at least not then. I haven’t done anything wrong, Jack. I’m not going to be convicted of anything.”
“I know people who think different. They claim this is all a show. That it doesn’t matter what the evidence is, you will be convicted and sent to prison.”
“General Prasert wouldn’t dare.”
I nodded and waited for Kate to go on, but she didn’t. I glanced out the window over her shoulder and saw the car had turned north on Soi Thonglor.
“You don’t ever think your confidence might be misplaced?”
Kate shook her head.
“Then you haven’t ever thought about leaving?”
“This is my home, Jack. I’m not going to let army thugs bully me into running away from it.”
“Have you been okay since the coup?”
“What do you mean?”
“No harassment, no surveillance?”
“Not really. I have to get permission if I want to leave Bangkok, but other than that there are no restrictions on where I can go or what I can do.”
“Then you can leave the country if you like?”
“I could ask for permission, but I don’t think I’d get it. I doubt General Prasert believes I’d come back.”
“Could your bail be revoked anytime?”
“I suppose so, technically.”
“So they can put you under house arrest anytime, or even jail you if they want?”
“They’re not going to do that.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“General Prasert may have forced me out of office, Jack, but he hasn’t forced the people to love him. I still have a huge amount of support all around the country. He’s not going to risk stirring that up. I’m in no danger from him.”
“If you’re in no danger from him, why are we having this conversation in a dark car driving around Bangkok trailed by two security men instead of sitting together at a nice table at the Oriental Hotel having a couple of drinks?”
“I think this is a lot more romantic,” Kate smiled. “Don’t you, Jack?”
“Do you want me to let you get away with ducking the question like that?”
“Okay, counselor, I give up. It’s like this. Alisa believes it’s possible you’re on General Prasert’s enemies list, and if not his then probably somebody else’s here. You’ve made enemies of a fair number of people around here and Alisa thought that it might be better for both of us if we didn’t make either of our lives more complicated than they already are.”
I would have liked to have told Kate she was wrong, but she wasn’t. I was a pretty unpopular fellow in certain quarters in Thailand, and I wasn’t even certain I knew for sure what all of those quarters were. It was probably a good choice by Alisa to keep my contact with Kate below the radar. In her position I would have made the same call.
“So let me be sure I understand what you’re telling me here,” I said. “You’re going to let the army put you on trial and you’re assuming you’ll walk away when it’s all over.”
“I’m not running, Jack. That’s out of the question. I’m sorry my friends have wasted your time.”
“They haven’t. I had to come down here for something else anyway.”
I could have kicked myself the moment the words were out of my mouth and I saw the flash of hurt and disappointment pass through Kate’s eyes. She may not have wanted my help, but she wanted to know I was there to give it to her.
Kate slipped forward in her seat and leaned toward the driver. “Vinai, let’s take Mr. Shepherd back to his hotel.”
Of course, the driver knew me as Mr. Smith and now Kate was calling me Mr. Shepherd, but he never blinked. He was probably used to things like that.
“I’m here for a few more days, Kate. Can we at least have dinner before I leave? I’m willing to eat in the car.”
Kate laughed at that, which pleased me beyond all measure.
“I’m sure we can work something out. Let me see what I can do and I’ll call you. Same number as before?”
“I’m not using my Hong Kong number here. Everybody seems worried that might connect you to me so Alisa gave me a local SIM card to use to arrange this meeting. She told me to destroy it afterwards.”
“Have you?”
“Not yet.”
“Then don’t. Give me that number.”
I took out my telephone and fiddled with the buttons until I figured out how to display the number, then I held it up for Kate to see. She punched the number into her own phone.
“Okay,” she said as she returned her telephone to her purse. “That’s enough about me for tonight. Now I want to talk about you. I want to hear about all of Jack Shepherd’s fabulous adventures since the last time I saw you.”
And the rest of the way back to the Sheraton that was exactly what we did: we talked about me. I told some stories about Hong Kong and Macau, and maybe I even dressed them up a little to make myself sound more interesting than I really am. Men are helpless when they have the attention of a beautiful woman. We preen with self-importance. We might feel a little embarrassed doing it, but we do it anyway.
But you already knew that, didn’t you?
TWENTY-FIVE
IT WAS SATURDAY and I didn’t have a single thing I needed to do. Chasing down the missing Malaysian money was on hold until Monday when Mr. Wang had promised to produce the keys to the kingdom, or a reasonable facsimile, and Kate had been clear with me she was not in need of a rescue regardless of what Jello claimed.
I got up late and killed the day the same way most business travelers who are between commitments kill a free day. I spent some time in the hotel gym and napped by the pool. Then I went back to my room, answered a little email, and idly surfed the internet for a while on my phone.
By evening, I was bored out of my mind and hungry for food not being served by a hotel. But where to go? Nothing interesting came immediately to mind, but I figured I would think of something if I went out and started walking.
I stood on the sidewalk in front of the Sheraton and considered my options. Sukhumvit Road offered only two: right or left, east or west. More or less at random, I chose left and west.
Only a hundred yards or so along I passed a few sidewalk food vendors, but I kept walking. Bangkok is world famo
us for its street food, but the concept doesn’t much appeal to me. When Alisa took me to that food vendor on Surawong Road, I hadn’t known where we were going or I would have suggested we grab a cab for the Four Seasons instead.
At least the prawns Alisa ordered were served on the same little wooden skewers on which they were grilled and that kept me from wondering about the cleanliness of the utensils with which I was eating. I’m simply too much a product of American culture to be happy eating food off communal plates with utensils that have barely been rinsed since the last customer ate with them.
It was a pleasant night for walking, warm and moist, so it didn’t bother me that the only place I saw that had air-conditioning and actual tables was a Starbucks. Like that was going to happen.
Tropical countries are beguiling to me after dark. Getting through the sweaty days might be hell, but strolling in the sultry nights is a joy. The air is heavy and warm and it nuzzles your ear like a lover, whispering promises of sensual adventures lurking only steps ahead.
But I wasn’t thinking about sensual adventures right then walking on the sidewalk alongside Sukhumvit Road. I was looking for a Thai of average height and build who was wearing jeans, sneakers, and a light tan windbreaker. I knew it was stupid, but I did it anyway.
I still couldn’t believe someone had really been following me before. People walked up and down Sukhumvit Road all the time. Seeing the same man twice could easily have been a coincidence. If I were better at spotting people, I’d bet I would have been able to pick out at least a few other people twice, too. That didn’t mean they were all watching me. Well, probably not.
Besides, who would want to put me under surveillance? Somebody in Thailand’s military government? That was just too far-fetched to be true. First, they would have had to connect me with my John Smith passport, and that seemed unlikely. But even if they had made that connection, why would they care? Jack Shepherd might be on the government’s radar, but surely not as a big enough deal to call for surveillance.
Could Alisa have someone keeping an eye on me? That was just as hard to believe. Why would she do that?