Assignment - Bangkok

by Edward S. Aarons

  on in the rambling barracks. A single shot made a dim popping noise through the racket of the traffic, but the bullet went wide.

  Benjie grinned wanly. “Major Luk is not going to be very comfortable when Savag learns of this.”

  “I’m sure Luk has an explanation ready for the general.”

  There was a momentary gap in the convoy. Benjie stepped on the gas and the jeep bounced forward onto the concrete. She swung left, tires screeching, and headed for the city. Durell looked backward, but no one seemed to be following. If he had estimated Uva Savag correctly, however, the general would be turning the town upside down for him.

  “Are you still willing to fly me to Chiengmai?”

  Benjie looked serious. “On my deal. I go with you.”

  Durell considered it. The girl was competent enough. On the other hand, she was a sure tell-tale for General Savag to take him in again. “Can you get a plane to the airport?”

  “There’s a small strip at Lung Moc. I’ll have a Thai Star plane there by dawn. But where will you stay tonight?”

  “Better if you don’t know. I’ll be at Lung Moc before ten in the morning,” Durell decided.

  Headlights flared behind them on the highway, but as they passed into the outskirts of Sampeng, heading for the Chao Phraya River, he saw no special pursuit. When Benjie spoke again, her voice had softened, but her grin was still tough and insolent.

  “Sam, you make me feel like Goldilocks—only, I’m Mama Bear. Do you have plans to crawl into my bed tonight?”

  He looked at her. She was the most un-feminine woman he had met in a long time. He spoke bluntly.

  “Not likely,” he said.

  12

  The young monk, Prajadhipok, was happy. Pra was nineteen, a samanara, a novitiate monk. The sun beat down fiercely on his shaven head as he trudged in the dust to Sampeng, behind Kem. Brother Kem was his idol. Everything about Kem was holy. His spirituality was a moral lesson to all at the little temple on the outskirts of Bangkok, where they lived. Pra carried his begging bowl in both hands as he followed Kem around the corner to their usual stops at the tourist shops which, at this hour, were still relatively empty.

  The day would be hot and dry. The monsoons and the blessed rains from heaven were still one month away, as Buddha willed. Pra was stout for a monk, although he ate sparingly, as all the brothers of the Sangha did. The Wat Kao Po was not a rich or elaborate temple, and it did not attract tourists. Its prangs did not pierce the hard sky, nor were their emerald Buddhas and yellow-tiled roofs meant to provide earthly beauty. True, there were the tripleheaded elephants at the main entrance, and the tall central tower boasted a mosaic of shells dug from the delta mud, reaching for the triple trident of Siva. It was a back-country temple, but wherever Brother Kem lived, that place was sanctified. Now and then Pra worried about the joy in his life. All was a dream in the eye of Buddha that would blend into the next inevitable reincarnation that would lead, eventually, to oblivion in the Universal—if one were holy enough, like Kem.

  Pra had risen from a lowly dek wat, a temple boy, where he received only board and lodging at the monastery. Now, as a samanara, he hoped to become a bhikkhu, a monk who wore the orange-yellow robe. His hair and eyebrows were totally shaven. Life was austere. He had awakened this sunrise to the sounds of prayer and drums, and had washed, swept his cell, helped to broom the courtyard and filtered the drinking water, which was not to kill insects, but to purify it spiritually.

  Trudging behind Brother Kem, he had marched out with the others, with his alms bowl. Already he had collected curry and fruit, which he had accepted with downcast eyes. Never did one give thanks to the donor. It would rob the giver of making merit. After the sun passed the noon hour, he would be allowed to drink only liquids. To eat, he had to push back his robe and bare one shoulder. He would spend the afternoon with Kem in the wat’s pavilion where the resident monks maintained school rooms for the villagers. There was a Buddha image there of crystal, and another of jasper, and he would sit in the class with Kem under the symbols of the Teacher—the Bod-hitree—the sacred serpent and the wheel of doctrine.

  Pra often wondered that Brother Kem, who had seen much of the world and the ways of men, had chosen the little country temple in which to seek holiness and merit. Kem had even seen America, had gone to college there, with the help of certain Americans; but Brother Kem never spoke of that.

  In busy Sampeng, where shopkeepers enjoyed the briefly cool hours before the sun really struck down, Kem moved ahead in his saffron robe with his shaven skull meekly bowed before the great glories of Buddha. It was a day like every other day. But the shops, the dust, the glare of light, the gay splash of blossoms, were all illusions. Trudging behind Kem, Pra saw him turn his gentle eyes toward him, smiling. They passed a clockmaker’s shop and all the clocks in there began to chime the eighth hour of the day since midnight. Kem halted.

  “Wait, Brother Pra,” said Kem. “Mr. Kow Singh always has a few coins for us.”

  The Kow Singh Clock Shop was a dusty haven of quiet in a side alley off one of the busier roads in Sampeng. Brother Kem always went in alone. Pra never questioned this. He knew it had something to do with a vow that Kem had once taken, but what the vow was and why Brother Kem never failed to stop here on his alms-begging rounds was never explained, and Pra never presumed to ask for an explanation. Now, on this morning like every other morning, Kem, his bald head agleam with sweat in the morning sun, smiled again and walked into the shop without bidding Pra goodbye.

  Pra sat down in the dust at the corner, his eyes humbly downcast, his bowl held out at the feet of the busy, worldly shoppers, whores, tourists and children who shuffled by.

  There was nothing unusual about this day.

  Durell had not slept much during the night. He had doubled back after leaving Benjie, and had chosen the sawmill as the safest place until dawn. The hotel was out. Neither did he think it wise to telephone to James D. James. Sooner or later he would have to warn James about the dainty Miss Ku being a police spy for Third Thai Army intelligence.

  The sawmill was deserted when he returned to it. He had spent a tedious hour searching Benjie’s files in the office that overlooked the compound, and it was past midnight when he finished with her desk and the green metal cabinets. He found nothing out of the ordinary. Maybe Mike and Benjie Slocum were innocent of involvement in the opium traffic he was supposed to track down.

  The trade in narcotics in Southeast Asia was highly involved and complicated, convoluted like the coils of a giant serpent. Somehow, he had to find the dragon’s head and cut it off. His body ached and complained when he finished his search. He did not feel particularly like a knight errant seeking a dragon. Sleep engulfed him at once when he stretched out on the floor in a comer facing the stairway. Nothing disturbed him. The night had passed quietly. The only sounds he heard was an occasional splash in the nearby klong, and the croaking and chuckling of geckos in the trees outside.

  Now, at eight o’clock, Durell stood in the shadowed recess in the back of Kow Singh’s Clock Shop, and watched Kem Pasah Borovit’s shadow fall across the sunlit doorway. The clocks ticked and whirred all around him. There was danger here, if James had leaked the drop-contact point within Miss Ku’s hearing. So far, there was no sign of it. And Kem, the monk, was exactly on time in making his daily rounds. Even with his shaven head and Buddhist robe, Durell recognized him.

  He did not move in the ticking shadows when Kem stepped inside, among the dusty shelves and display cases. The monk’s liquid eyes were serene. Mr. Kow Singh had conveniently scuttled into the back room behind the shop, where he lived.

  For a moment, Kem was not aware of Durell’s presence. The bhikkhu stood patiently by with his begging bowl. Then his glance touched Durell’s tall shadow in the rear of the dusty shop. Nothing changed in the monk’s eyes. A brief smile touched his mouth, and then he bowed his shaven head.

  Durell said, “Hello, Flivver.”

  “Is it trul
y you, Nai Durell?”

  “Truly me, Flivver.”

  “It has been many years since I was called by that name,” said the bhikkhu. “Do you really recognize me now?”

  “There is a cloak of sanctity about you that wasn’t there when you raised so much hell as a student at Williams, where you got your nickname, buying that antique Ford you used to tear around in.”

  “That was another life,” said Kem quietly.

  “But you made a promise then,” Durell told him.

  “I have been expecting you. I come here every day.”

  “I need your help,” Durell said.

  “I know that, or you would not be here. I have been waiting for many years. I am not the same man you knew as Flivver when I studied in your country. It was you who turned my life into the paths of holiness. Perhaps you did not intend for me to take the Sangha seriously. Perhaps you only meant to put me here for this day, when you need my help. Today I make tam boon. I make much merit for my soul. I walk only in the ways of holiness.” “You were always a rogue,” said Durell flatly. “You’re still a rogue. I know you, Kem. Don’t forget that.”

  Kem sighed. His face betrayed nothing; his black eyes were fathomless. Perhaps amusement flickered there in the memories recalled by Durell’s words. Then Kem stopped forward and shook hands firmly, instead of giving him the usual wai greeting. Durell was relieved when Kem said, “What can I do to repay you for setting my feet on the path to Infinity? How can I show my gratitude for the blessings you have showered on me and my family?”

  “Flivver, there’s evil in the world, in yours and mine. Your family has been grievously hurt by people I must find and destroy. Your Uncle Hu, your young brother Tinh, your Aunt Aparsa—Aparsa and Tinh are dead.”

  The monk stood unmoving, not a fold of his yellow robe astir. His huge black eyes under his shaven brows regarded Durell for a long, unwinking moment, without any other physical reaction. Then he said quietly, “Blessed be their souls, for they truly sought goodness in their humble lives. It is the way of the Universe, the way of the Infinite Path toward the ultimate end of all our spirits. Was it because of your arrival in Bangkok?”

  “Yes,” Durell said bluntly. “They were killed because of what I must do.”

  “I will not seek vengeance,” said Kem.

  “I don’t ask you for vengeance. I simply need your help. Do you still intend to keep your promise to us?”

  “I am what you made me, Sam. Are you surprised that I accept the blessings of Buddha and am diligent at my worldly tasks? Even the worst rascal can reform, even the most vicious criminal may repent.” The monk suddenly grinned. “When you call me Flivver, you make me wicked again. Those were good days. What can I do for you?”

  “I have to go north, beyond Chiengmai.”

  “I understand. The Communist insurgents are there.” “Not insurgents. Opium.”

  “Ah,” said Kem. “Very wicked.”

  “I need you with me to smooth the way, to talk to the local tribesmen in their own dialects, to exercise the weight of your presence as a bhikkhu."

  “There are thousands of bhikkhus in Thailand. I am only one of many. But I have been in the northern provinces, as I am sure you know. I am sure you have been watching me. Do you think you will be safer in my company? I am a rogue, as you say. I pray daily to God to ease my soul of its remembered wickedness. Why should you trust me? Some monasteries raise their own poppy up there. One even manufactures heroin and sells it to the insurgents who manage to transport it down the Mekong into Laos and Vietnam, for your servicemen. Yes, it is a wicked world.” The monk smiled gently at Durell, his bald eyebrows and skull making his face inscrutable. “How can you trust me, Sam?”

  “Will you come with me, Flivver?”

  “I will pay my debt. On the way, we will talk of the good old days, eh? Come.”

  They stepped out of the clock shop. The narrow streets of Sampeng were more crowded and noisier than before. The sun struck at the traffic and people like hammer strokes. Durell followed closely as the bhikkhu strode purposefully to the first corner. The passersby were neutral, uninterested. At the intersection, the monk paused. A faintly puzzled look crossed his black, slanted eyes as he glanced about.

  “Where is Pra?”

  “Who?”

  “My samanara. A boy who thinks I am even holier than the abbot. He has always waited here for me, every morning, like a faithful little dog.”

  Durell looked at the comer. Two old men were playing mah jongg on a wooden balcony over an awninged porcelain shop. Motorcycles and pedicabs roared and puttered by. He saw nothing unusual. Then a closed black sedan went by, slowing for a bullock cart that creaked across the way. Durell glimpsed the face of General Savag in a back window.

  “Never mind Pra,” he said quietly. “Let’s go.”

  “But—”

  “You won’t see Pra again,” Durell said.

  13

  They left the city by way of the intricate maze of canals and waterways that led into the parched countryside. An old sampan water-taxi man agreed to take them, greeting the monk respectfully. His eyes were dubious as he regarded Durell's tall, Western figure, but Kem assured him the fahrang was on his way to make his respects to the village wat and perhaps give a large donation. They followed a route that few tourists took.

  On the way, Kem sat with his straight back toward Durell, his bald head gleaming in the sun. Away from the Chao Phraya, the canals twisted tortuously this way and that through teeming tenements, water markets, masses of barges, and occasional rice boats. Women washed their laundry on the banks, and children ran and played in the thin shade of the trees or in the shadows under the stilted houses that clung to the water’s edge. They passed river-boats piled high with brown, unhulled rice, tiny Thai houses with roofs twisted and sloped into linear dragons known as “cho fa”—a bunch of sky. There were icecream vendors, women with fiat baskets hanging from carved teak poles, lotus blossoms, filmy black fishnets, small boys diving in the muddy water. Samlaws rattled over the bridges above them, old men sat and spat in the water, old women watched and chewed betel nut, laundry hung from tall poles, and peddler sampans tried to sell baubles and pots and a young girl watched them gravely while eating a green somno with the juice running down her chin.

  The sampan had a small three-horse outboard that puttered slowly and diligently, and the old man who guided them seemed to sleep most of the time as they maneuvered from one canal to the other, going north. Now and then they passed a minor wat, some with elaborate central towers adorned with full-breasted caryatids, teeming with holy monkeys and carved with grotesque giants. The sampan man occasionally rang a small brass bell to warn another boat of their progress. Young girls chattered in the shadows under the innumerable bridges. One shouted something to Durell and laughed and threw him an orange, which he caught and nodded grave thanks for. The girls giggled and fled away as they passed.

  Durell ate the orange, after offering it to Kem and the sampan man. It tasted bitter and strange.

  Pasted to the reed door of the little forward cabin of the sampan was a clipping from the New China News Agency. It showed Peking’s Hsin Chiao Hotel and a huge portrait of Mao. The newspaper was stained and yellowed with age. A packet of rice, presumably the sampan man’s dinner, was wrapped in the Japanese left-wing newspaper, Asahi Shimbun. Durell felt the old man’s eyes upon him and turned to meet his gaze.

  “You American?”

  “Yes,” Durell said. “You Communist?”

  “Yes.”

  The heat was oppressive, and the water level in the canals had dropped far below normal, before the coming monsoon. The sky was the color of brass.

  The sampan man said, “The bhikkhu is a good man. Why do you go with him? He is a saint.”

  “And I am not?”

  “You are capitalist imperialist.” The old man’s eyes glittered briefly. “But the bhikkhu understands nothing of that.”

  On the banks of the
canal, they passed a small chapel where barefooted women came and went, offering flowers before the saffron-robed monks who sat crosslegged facing the wall. Kem asked the sampan-man to stop.

  “I must leave a message for my abbot,” he said. “And make an inquiry about Pra. What do you think happened to him?”

  “Nothing good,” said Durell. “And now you’re on the list, too.”

  Kem’s eyes were beyond depth. “Do you know, it is not good for my spirit, but I believe I enjoy being with you.”

  Durell joined Kem at the little temple. There were many white-robed chees, Buddhist nuns, attending to the women here, coming and going through ornately carved teak doors to the inner courtyard. Kem knew his way. The courtyard was crowded with people going through the ceremonial circumambulation, carrying lighted candles and white lotus blossoms. There were graystone Chinese pagodas and bronze horses and a serene gilded Buddha who gazed down at the happy, jostling worshippers.

  “Wait here,” said Kem. “I will find the abbot.”

  The monk was not gone for long. When he returned, he simply nodded and they walked back to the canal.

  “I have been granted a pilgrimage to the Wat Siddha Thai,” said Kem. “It is up near the northeastern border.”

  “For how long?”

  “Time is of no importance. Where is the old man?”

  The sampan was empty. It rocked a little on the brown canal water, in the wake of a passing rice barge. Durell was not surprised that the sampan-man was gone.

  “Mr. Chuk has a fine organization,” he said quietly. “There are eyes watching me everywhere.”

  “What shall we do? There are no buses from here to the airport you want,” Kem said.