by Jake Needham
When Jungle Jim arrived on the scene, of course, all that changed. The attention and loyalty of the natives shifted from the old traders to Jungle Jim, not only because he was clean-cut and handsome and decent, but also because he was… well, new.
At first, the old traders usually claimed to want to make common cause with Jungle Jim, but by the end of the episode you always discovered it was these jokers, not the locals, who were the real threat to him. His arrival in the village put their little scam at risk. The original white guys on the scene had to get rid of Jungle Jim somehow or they would never get back to being the big cheeses or, even more important, ever have all those babes to themselves again.
Bangkok is exactly like that.
TWENTY-SEVEN
THEY CAME FOR me the next day right after lunch.
The guy at Nana Plaza must have told somebody in the prime minister’s office about the Canadian named John Smith who looked just like Jack Shepherd. After that, all they had to do was check the photograph taken of every foreigner when he passes the immigration checkpoint coming into the country and see that John Smith really was Jack Shepherd. Then a quick check of hotel registrations would have brought them right to my door.
There were two of them, both army officers in full dress uniforms.
The older one had two gold stars and a crown on his shoulder boards as well as a lot of gold scrambled eggs on the bill of his hat. I assumed that meant he was some flavor of general. On the other hand, the Thai army has more generals than any other army in the world so the odds are in your favor if you assume every Thai army officer is a general. He looked to be about fifty, very thin, with a long, narrow executioner’s face and deep set eyes that were almost black.
The other man was younger, short and compact with a jowly face, and he was a lot tougher looking. He appeared to be about half muscle and half fat, and I made him for the guy tasked to do whatever heavy lifting might be necessary. He had a crown on his shoulder board, too, but without the star. Not a general probably, but doubtless of some high rank.
As soon as I opened the door, both men snapped off salutes so sharp I almost felt like I should applaud. Thais are good at saluting. They get a lot of practice at it.
“May I help you?’ I asked.
Both men reversed their salutes and clasped their hands behind them in a parade rest posture. They moved in such perfect synchronization I almost laughed out loud. Fortunately, I didn’t. These guys didn’t look like they had a great sense of humor.
I waited for one of them to say something, but they only stood there examining me with what seemed to be far more care than I warranted. They didn’t seem to like what they saw very much.
“Are you Professor Shepherd?” the older man finally asked. He had a commanding voice and spoke English with a flat American accent.
I didn’t see any point in denying it. That would accomplish very little and no doubt piss them off. So I nodded and waited some more.
“General Prasert extends his compliments. He would be most pleased if you would call upon him.”
Now that was interesting. General Prasert wanted me to come calling, did he? That was very interesting.
“When would he like me to do that?”
“Now.”
“Now?”
“We will escort you. We have a car downstairs.”
Ah-ha.
Although I had never heard of foreigners being included, press reports were common about the Thai army picking up dissidents and carting them away to military bases for what were somewhat bizarrely called attitude adjustment sessions. Whenever I saw that phrase used in a news report, I thought of Hank Williams Jr. and wondered if one of the Thai generals was a secret fan.
It was an attitude adjustment
Oh I went along peacefully
Attitude adjustment
Oh they made me clearly see
Cause my head is black
And my legs are blue
And both kneecaps are bent clean through
It was an attitude adjustment
It made my whole outlook brand new
THE IDEA HAD been quite amusing while drinking coffee in Hong Kong and reading the Bangkok Post online. But now… uh, maybe not so much.
“Can’t this wait until tomorrow?” I asked, mostly to see what they would say.
They didn’t say anything. Didn’t even blink.
“Okay, I get it,” I sighed. “Give me a moment to change.”
What did one wear to meet a repressive military dictator these days? I wasn’t sure, but probably not the gray sweatpants and Georgetown t-shirt I was wearing right then. I closed the door, half expecting one of the army officers to reach out and stop me, but neither did.
After giving the matter a little thought, I put on a long-sleeved white shirt with a button-down collar, khakis, and a blue blazer. No tie, and I picked a pair of khakis that were wrinkled and needed cleaning. Perhaps it wasn’t much of a statement, but it was something.
Downstairs at the Sheraton’s main entrance a black Mercedes with extremely dark windows idled waiting for us. I was starting to think Mercedes had shipped its entire production run of big black sedans with extremely dark windows to Thailand. There was apparently a hell of a market here for them.
I got in the back and one of the army officers slid in on each side of me. As soon as the doors closed, the driver put the car into gear and rolled out into Sukhumvit Road.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
Neither of my two escorts said a word.
“Okay, I get it. You want to surprise me, right?’
Nothing. Not a word. Not even a glance.
“Did anyone ever tell you guys you talk too much?”
The short one, the one with the mixture of fat and muscles, slowly rotated his head toward me like a wind-up toy lurching into motion. And then he spoke for the first time.
“Shut up, farang,” he said.
The Mercedes rolled west on Sukhumvit until it reached the entrance to what was optimistically called the Expressway, a four-lane roadway so clogged with traffic day and night that the name had long since become the punch line to a joke for Bangkok people. I was anything but surprised when the car turned into the entrance for the northbound lanes because, not many miles in that direction, lay Don Mueang Airport.
The western half of Don Mueang is a civilian airport. Not long ago, it was Bangkok’s only airport, but after the new international airport opened in a swamp east of the city, Don Mueang became Bangkok’s second airport serving mostly domestic flights and a few discount international flights. Still, I doubted we were flying to Phuket for the weekend so I was pretty sure we weren’t going to the western half of the field. We would be going instead to the eastern half of the field. That was a military base shared by the army and the air force that included such amenities as a VIP air terminal, a private golf course, and a CIA torture facility, possibly abandoned. Or maybe not.
I didn’t really believe I was being taken into military custody or sent to the CIA’s torture chamber to have my attitude adjusted. As far as I knew, that was an honor reserved strictly for Thais, at least so far.
That wasn’t because farangs had special status in Thailand. Thais simply didn’t like dealing with us. We could be messy and loud, and they never knew for sure when one of us might turn out to be connected to somebody important enough to make trouble for them. No Thai wanted to come on strong pushing some foreigner around, then find out the President of the United States had been this foreigner’s college roommate. That could turn into a serious loss of face, and if there was one thing every Thai struggled to avoid at all costs, it was loss of face.
On the other hand, if the army wasn’t taking me into custody, what in the world was going on here? I didn’t believe for a moment General Prasert really wanted to talk to me. That had to be something they said to get me to come along quietly and not make a fuss. I simply couldn’t see General Prasert lowering himself to meet with a foreigner
of my modest stature. If he wanted me jerked around a little, he would have somebody do it for him. Somebody like the two clowns who had me scrunched into the middle of the back seat of this Mercedes.
The drive took just over twenty minutes, fast for traffic conditions on the Expressway. The traffic obviously knew enough to get out of the way of a big, black Mercedes with extremely dark windows heading in the direction of Don Mueang.
The car rolled through the main gate of the base without slowing down. As it drove along the roadway inside, I saw uniformed men on both sides of the road snapping to attention and saluting. I doubted they were saluting me.
The car made several turns and I lost track of where we were, but when it pulled to a stop I saw through the windshield the airfield’s two parallel runways and the golf course that lay between them. Just on the other side of the golf course was the commercial terminal. If things turned nasty, maybe I could put on some loud pants, grab a golf bag, and head that way.
My two escorts got out. The general closed his door behind him, but muscles stood there and held the other door open so I slid out of the backseat in his direction.
The car was parked in front of a nondescript one-story brick building right on the edge of the airfield. It looked like a medium-sized suburban house. Grassy front lawn, drapery covered windows, and a concrete sidewalk leading to a modest porch at the front door. I followed the general up the sidewalk and muscles trailed behind us. When we reached the front door, the general opened it and entered without knocking.
Inside was a hallway lined with more doors, all of them closed. The general walked straight ahead, but I hesitated and muscles put a hand in the middle of my back and gave me a shove. It wasn’t a particularly gentle shove.
When we reached the end of the hallway, both my escorts stopped, removed their hats, and tucked them under their arms. The general rapped sharply on an unmarked door that looked exactly like all the other doors.
Then he opened it without waiting for a response.
TWENTY-EIGHT
GENERAL PRASERT WAS slouched in a brown leather wingback chair with his feet up on a coffee table. It looked like my escorts had been telling the truth about the general wanting to see me after all, but it didn’t really make any more sense now than it did when I thought they were bullshitting me.
The general was alone. He was watching a golf tournament on the biggest flat screen television I had ever seen. The thing looked more like a movie screen than a television set. He turned his head slowly in the direction of the door and examined me with a neutral expression. My two escorts stopped behind me and, of course, snapped off crisp salutes. The general offered a halfhearted salute in return and waved the two men away. He didn’t speak until the door clicked shut behind them.
“Professor Shepherd,” General Prasert said. He continued to look me over and, like my two escorts, he seemed a bit disappointed in what he saw. “Sit down, please.”
There were two other wingback chairs around the coffee table where the general was sitting and I walked over and sat in the one facing the door. I wasn’t sure what good that did me, but I thought it was better to see anything that came through that door than not see it. General Prasert picked up the remote control from the table in front of him and turned off the television.
“Would you like coffee or tea?” he asked. “Perhaps a beer?”
I shook my head. “No, thank you.”
General Prasert’s English sounded fluent, hardly surprising since so many Thai military officers had trained in the United States. But unlike the general who picked me up at the Sheraton, his Thai accent was pronounced and I heard something else in his English as well. Perhaps a touch of Australian accent on some words? Maybe he trained in Australia as well, or went to school there before joining the army.
General Prasert continued to study me in silence and I studied him in return. Unlike my two escorts, he was casually dressed in what I gathered were Thai army fatigues. While there was a collection of gold stars and crowns on each shoulder, the general wore no other insignia or decorations.
He looked shorter to me than he did in his photographs, but he was certainly a handsome man. He made me think of a silent movie villain. Jet-black hair slicked straight back, sharply etched cheekbones, a prominent chin, and small, deep-set eyes. I thought his eyes made him look mean. Or perhaps he looked mean because he really was.
“I have heard a good deal about you,” the general eventually said.
His voice was surprisingly soft, and I fought the impulse to lean toward him to hear better.
“I don’t know why you would have,” I said.
“I have people whose job it is to tell me about my enemies.”
“I’m not your enemy, sir.”
“But you are a strong supporter and ally of Kathleeya Srisophon, are you not?”
“I wouldn’t put it that way.”
“Oh?” Prasert seemed genuinely surprised. “How would you put it?”
“Kate and I were friends once.”
He nodded slowly. “I have heard you were very good friends.”
“If you are suggesting Kate and I have ever been romantically involved, that isn’t true.”
The general smiled slightly as if he was agreeing to keep my secret. I felt a stab of annoyance at his smugness, but I said nothing.
It was his country, his game, his rules. All I could do was wait and see what this was really all about.
I didn’t have to wait very long.
“Why are you in Thailand, Professor Shepherd?”
“I am here on business for a client.”
“And who is that?”
“Respectfully, sir, I am an attorney, and I am expected by each of my clients to keep our relationship confidential.”
“Is your client Kathleeya Srisophon?”
“No, sir.”
Prasert seemed to consider that for a moment and shifted his weight in his chair.
“Why does the Immigration Department have no record of you entering Thailand, Professor Shepherd?”
Oh Christ. In all the excitement of being scooped up by the army from my hotel, I had forgotten about that. Damn, damn, damn.
“Is it perhaps because you entered the country using a Canadian passport in the name of John Smith?”
I didn’t know what to say. There really wasn’t anything I could say. So I just waited and, for once in my life, kept my mouth shut.
“I’m sure you understand, Professor Shepherd, that entering Thailand illegally is a serious crime under our laws. I hear that in America entering the country illegally has become common and is treated as something of a joke, but here in Thailand we still take that sort of thing very seriously. We send people to prison for it.”
Prasert picked up the television remote control again and rolled it around several time in his hand without looking at me.
I said nothing.
“If you can explain your presence in Thailand to me in an acceptable way,” he eventually continued, “perhaps I will consider letting the matter go.”
The bastard had me. And he knew it.
I cleared my throat. “I represent a ministry of the Malaysian government. It is trying to trace a large sum of money missing from the Malaysian Development Fund. My particular expertise is international banking and money laundering, and they hired me to track down the missing money.”
“How much money is missing?”
I hesitated.
“Come now, Professor Shepherd,” Prasert chuckled. “You are in no position to be coy with me.”
I cleared my throat again. “About a billion dollars.”
Prasert flashed a half smile. “Seriously?”
“Yes, sir.”
“A billion United States dollars?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you think it is here in Thailand?”
“No, sir, I don’t. There is a Chinese businessman in Hong Kong who may have been involved in moving and laundering the money. A m
an who once ran his IT operations has left his employment and is now here in Thailand. That man appears to be willing to help me track and recover the missing money, and I came here to talk to him.”
“The revenge of an angry employee?”
“Something like that.”
“Is this man a Thai?” the general asked.
“No, sir,” I said.
I had no idea, of course, but that seemed to me to be the correct answer to General Prasert’s question regardless of what country’s passport the guy carried. Apparently I guessed right since Genera Prasert only nodded and continued playing with the television remote, his face expressionless.
“I don’t see the connection between what you are telling me now and you entering Thailand on a false passport.”
Neither did I actually, mostly because there was no connection, but I obviously couldn’t tell Prasert the real reason I had used that Canadian passport.
Time for a little tap dance.
“The Malaysian government is extremely embarrassed about this whole affair,” I improvised, “and they are trying hard to keep anyone from finding out about it. That’s why they came to me rather than use their own people to recover the money. They provided me with the Canadian passport and told me to use it while I was tracing the money to avoid the existence of a paper trail that might tie me to them.”
That didn’t entirely make sense. I understood that. But a lot of things governments did made even less sense than that.
What I was really afraid of was that a billion dollars in the wind might grab Prasert’s attention in a big way, and I wondered if I was only digging the hole I was in deeper by telling him about it. I was relieved to see he didn’t seem all that interested. His mind seemed to be on something other than money. Maybe when you’ve stolen an entire country, a billion dollars isn’t all that significant.