Mrs. Pollifax and the Golden Triangle

by Dorothy Gilman

  The village of Chiang Saen in northern Thailand lies along the Mekong River near the apex of the Golden Triangle where Laos, Burma and Thailand meet. Its main street is shadowed by palms and by a long line of thatched roofs under which shops have proliferated, and where the public commerce of the village takes place. There are guesthouses where more private transactions take place, and a restaurant where one can lunch and gaze across the broad calm Mekong, watch the occasional long-tailed boat motor up or down the river and observe the low line of trees and yellow sand on the opposite Laotian shore. There are also two wats for tourists to visit, if interested in the history of the area: the Wat Pa Sak, and the Wat Prathat Chom Kitto, which dates back to the tenth century when Chiang Saen was the site of a very ancient kingdom.

  In one of the thatch-roofed guesthouses, on a certain afternoon in October, a man stood ransacking the desk files of an American farang who lay curled up on a nearby low couch. If the resident farang saw the intruder he gave no indication of it: his wide-open eyes were unfocused and their pupils dilated, the expression on his face intent on an interior world of fantasies and delusions. As the intruder found and read certain papers in the file he grunted, giving sidelong glances at the man on the couch, and then he very carefully replaced the papers. Only one of them captured his attention to the end; it held an address that he copied in pencil on a slip of crumpled paper, forming the letters with care.

  Walking noiselessly across the room, he helped himself to a pen, an envelope, a handful of Thai stamps and a sheet of writing paper before he left the house, closing the door quietly behind him. Presently, seated comfortably under a tree by the river he copied out the address on the long white envelope. It read:

  Mr. James T. Carstairs, P. O. Box 4023, Baltimore, Maryland, USA

  Nibbling thoughtfully at the tip of the pen, he began to write his message on the sheet of paper. When he had finished—it was a long message—he took out a pad of ink, rubbed his thumb across it and added his fingerprint to the note, which he signed in block letters ruamsak.

  With the letter stamped and sealed he held it for a moment in his hand as if testing its weight, but actually he was weighing the arduous path that he was about to take: to post a letter to the United States in Chiang Saen would be dangerous, inviting comment and attention, which meant that he would have to drive to Mae Sai or even as far as Chiang Rai to post it, and then he would have to frequently check the receiving address as well. He sighed as he reflected on how very inconvenient all this was going to be for a busy man, but his sigh was followed by a shrug; he had already learned what kind of money was being paid for information and he had asked himself why others should be paid for what he knew. He would insist on being paid in gold, and to propitiate the phi-spirits he would give a little money to the monks and take a garland of flowers to his house-shrine, phraphuum.

  It was decided. It would be done.

  Tucking the letter into his belt, he rose and set out for Mae Sai to mail his letter to a distant Baltimore. It would be postmarked October 17, and he thought the information he was sending would please the Americans very much and assure him of a reply.

  CHAPTER

  1

  Sunshine poured like melted butter across oak floors; ice melting from the roof produced rhythmic and musical pings on the terrace outside. It was January, and Mrs. Pollifax, list in hand, looked doubtfully at the pair of suitcases standing by the front door and said, "Are you quite sure we've not forgotten something?"

  Cyrus Reed said dryly, "Emily, you've gone over that list four times this morning. Between my legal mind and your imaginative one, how could anything have been overlooked?"

  "It's the imaginative half that worries me," she told him frankly. "I know I packed your precious survival food— those six tins of sardines—but now I'm wondering if I packed my malaria tablets, and if so, where?"

  Cyrus replied by grasping her by the shoulders and steering her into the kitchen. "Breakfast, Emily," he said firmly. "Scrambled eggs are waiting. My God, Emily, after all the traveling you've done—"

  She smiled up at him sunnily, an act that required a major tilt of the head because Cyrus was well over six feet tall. "Traveling, yes," she reminded him, "but you know I've never been a real tourist before. Only a pretend one for Carstairs and the Department."

  "Yes, I know," he said, amused. "Getting bashed over the head by an assassin in Zambia—"

  "Well, I'd never have met you if—"

  "—not to mention sniffing out the KGB in China."

  She noticed that very wisely he was not including her last adventure, when the odds had caught up with her and she had endured the nearly worst that could happen. "Well, it does seem strange," she mused, taking her place at the table. "A real holiday, not a care in the world... Delicious eggs," she told him, fork in hand. "What did you put in them this morning?"

  "Garlic, parsley and a pinch of salt," he said, pouring coffee.

  "I'll try to remember that when it's my turn. Do you suppose I tucked the malaria tablets in with the vitamins, Cyrus? We leave in four hours," she reminded him.

  He smiled and lifted his glass of orange juice. "To Thailand, m'dear—and to malaria tablets definitely packed with your vitamins."

  "Good," she said, and nodded happily, still very aware that she'd nearly lost all this, as well as her life, in Hong Kong a few months ago, and grateful that she could still look at Cyrus across the breakfast table each morning, at his thatch of white hair, the broad shoulders, his sleepy smile and the eyes set so oddly in his face that he resembled a Chinese mandarin. "To temple bells and dancing girls and elephants," she said, touching her glass to his, and then as the doorbell stridently rang she put down her glass and sighed. "Now who on earth can that be at ten o'clock on a Sunday morning!"

  "Only one way to find out," Cyrus told her.

  "I'll go—you made breakfast," she said, and pushed back her chair and hurried into the living room, annoyed that whoever was ringing their doorbell seemed determined to continue until acknowledged. Circumnavigating the suitcases, she opened the door and drew in her breath sharply: an attractive sandy-haired man in a sheepskin jacket stood beaming at her, attaché case in hand.

  "Thank God you're still here," he said, and removed his finger from the doorbell.

  "Bishop?" she faltered. "Bishop?"

  Cyrus, following her to the door, said doubtfully, "Bishop? Met you last June, didn't I? Bishop, isn't it?"

  "I seem to have trouble establishing my identity this morning," said Bishop cheerfully. "You're making me feel like an apparition from the spirit world but I'm quite alive, thank you, although in danger of freezing to death standing here. May I come in?"

  "Coffee," said Mrs. Pollifax, nodding. "Come in at once, Bishop, although you must admit—" Abandoning her sentence, she led him into the living room and divested him of his coat, her mind already racing with thoughts of what his appearance meant, because Bishop was assistant to Carstairs of the CIA, and although she and Bishop were excellent friends they never met face to face without its signaling a new adventure.

  Except what an inopportune moment, she thought, when they were leaving in less than four hours for the airport and their flight to Bangkok; they would have to refuse him, of course, any change being absolutely impossible when she and Cyrus had spent so many weeks planning this holiday.

  "No eggs left," Cyrus told him. "Settle for half a Danish and coffee?"

  "The gods are smiling," said Bishop, following him into the kitchen and rubbing his hands together. "Oh—handsome," he said, glancing around appreciatively. "Lots of sunshine."

  "Sit and revive," Mrs. Pollifax told him, coffeepot in hand.<
br />
  Cyrus presented him with what remained of a large Danish pastry and sat down facing him. He said bluntly, "Should tell you we're leaving on holiday in four hours."

  Bishop, crumbs dropping all around him, smiled and nodded his head. "So Emily says," he said, his mouth full. Swallowing, he took a sip of coffee and leaned back in his chair. "Nothing like a transfusion of coffee, is there? I'm really getting too old for this sort of rushing around but I've caught you in time, thank Heaven, which I must say is satisfying. I had to move so fast there wasn't time to phone."

  "Hard to believe," said Cyrus, looking amused.

  "On the contrary I left Virginia at 3 a.m.—that's three o'clock in the morning" he emphasized. "Enough to infect anyone with martyrdom."

  He didn't look martyred, thought Mrs. Pollifax, nor did he look at all old from rushing about; he was wearing a shirt open at the neck and a soft blue sweater over it, and he looked astonishingly boyish in spite of the frenetic life he lived as Carstairs's aide and the years that she'd known him. "What," she asked, "has produced this wild urge to have coffee with us?"

  "Thailand," he said.

  Mrs. Pollifax stared at him blankly. "Did I mention it to your'

  "Of course—in your Christmas note. 'P.S.,' you wrote, 'Cyrus and I are off to Thailand January 12th, and for nothing but a holiday, isn't that amazing?'"

  Cyrus said dryly, "I take it no longer?" Despite his cryptic manner of talking and his sleepy eyes the air of laziness that he exuded was totally deceptive; Mrs. Pollifax knew that he was already probing Bishop's psyche adroitly and shrewdly.

  Bishop smiled disarmingly. "Well—here you are, all packed and ready to go, which is too splendid a coincidence to be overlooked when we need a pair of Innocent Tourists for Thailand in a hurry—in fact, needed them practically yesterday. Damn providential, actually." He added politely, "Just where do you plan to go first?"

  "We intend to browse," Mrs. Pollifax told him. "A few days in Bangkok and then we'll fly to Sukotai—the old kingdom, you know—and inspect all the temples, and then go on to Chiang Mai... I understand that venturing farther north isn't safe yet for tourists."

  Bishop put down his cup of coffee and shook his head. "Now there you're wrong, you must have an out-of-date guidebook. It's perfectly safe now in the north so long as you don't wander off the beaten paths. The area's been opened up in the past few years, thanks to a road built clear up to the Laotian and Burmese borders. It's no longer isolated: schools are being built, the border patrol's active... All beside the point, however, because all we'd ask, if you could slightly rearrange—"

  "Still opium?" interrupted Cyrus.

  "Opium?" Bishop said blankly. "Oh, the Golden Triangle, and all that. Well, of course opium's not easily eradicated when the hill tribes in the north have grown it for generations but things are changing, you know. The King's been active in that, researching and promoting substitute crops—coffee, tobacco, that sort of thing—and there's a limit now on how many acres of poppies the hill tribes can plant for their own use. And then of course—as you've probably read—the United States subsidizes raids on the poppy fields when any of them get out of hand." He shrugged. "Of course a lot of the stuff still comes into the country from Burma so no one can say there's not still a problem but that needn't concern you. If you could rearrange your—"

  Mrs. Pollifax, having done her homework, nodded wisely. "The Shans."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "The Shans in Burma, just over the mountains, the ones still rebelling against joining the union of Burma."

  "You do seem informed," he said appreciatively. "Yes, they're pretty much the culprits where drug smuggling's concerned—still wanting an autonomous state and to be independent of Burma, and of course the only way they can buy weapons to fight their war is to sell their opium for guns."

  "In Thailand," contributed Cyrus.

  "Yes, but this has nothing to do with—look, it's Chiang Mai we hope you can get to as quickly as possible," he explained, "and Chiang Mai, I can assure you, is nearly a hundred miles from the Golden Triangle. Could you— would you—consider rearranging your itinerary by going to Chiang Mai first? On a very small errand," he added.

  Cyrus chuckled. "So small you've come all the way from Virginia on a Sunday morning?"

  "Small for you, important for us," Bishop told him brightly. "Strictly a matter of picking up a packet of information on Thursday morning from a chap in Chiang Mai named Ruamsak."

  "How on earth do you spell that? asked Mrs. Pollifax.

  Bishop spelled it for her. "Very mysterious chap, we don't know a thing about him except that twice he's sent us surprisingly valuable and accurate information."

  Cyrus, regarding Bishop steadily, said, "Not sure that Emily—after the Hong Kong misadventure—ought to tackle anything for you so soon. Just getting over it, you know. This trip—pure holiday—is actually to—"

  Bishop's face sobered as he turned to Mrs. Pollifax. "Still nightmares?"

  She shook her head. "Not now, no." She smiled. "Cyrus recommended some wonderful therapy for me, I've been taking lessons in magic from a retired magician."

  Bishop whistled. "Good heavens! Karate, yoga and now magic... Have you sawed anyone in half yet?"

  She grinned. "No, but I'm growing rather clever at palming coins."

  He nodded. "Okay, you no longer have nightmares and you can palm coins but how is your back?"

  "Healing."

  Bishop looked at Cyrus and then at her and shook his head. "I must be losing my grip but I suddenly realize I can't push this Chiang Mai errand no matter how uncomplicated it is. The Department can be quite ruthless, you know, but damn it I can't. If you're still recovering from Hong Kong I'll cease and desist and leave quietly."

  Mrs. Pollifax considered this thoughtfully. "On the other hand," she said softly, and hesitated. "On the other hand don't they say that when a person has fallen off a horse the best prescription is to climb back on the horse at once? If it's just a small errand—"

  Cyrus said, "It wasn't a horse you fell off, Emily."

  "No," she admitted, "but—is that all? Just collect a small package?"

  Bishop nodded. "That's all."

  In the silence that followed Cyrus said pleasantly, "Isn't your department already well represented in Thailand, what with the country providing air bases for the United States during the Vietnam War, and it being friend and ally, bastion of freedom and all that?"

  "Well—it's all a bit tricky," Bishop said cautiously. "Actually we're not that popular anymore. At their insistence we pulled out of Thailand in 1976—removed our radar listening posts, our planes, soldiers, et cetera, and they at once began signing friendship pacts with China, Laos, Cambodia—or Kampuchea as it's called now. You might say for survival, because—well, just look at any map: to the west lies Burma, their traditional, centuries-old enemy—Burma in the old days plundered and occupied Thailand—and to the north lies China, which in 1976 was supplying Thai insurgents in the north with weapons at the same time it was signing that friendship pact with the Thai government in Bangkok. To the northeast is Laos, now taken over by Hanoi, while on their eastern border lies Cambodia—sorry, Kampuchea—into which the Vietnamese have moved, precipitating certain hells along that border, as you know, and a flood of refugees.

  "Thailand is thus surrounded. Presumably the government at some point decided they couldn't fully trust us to protect them, in spite of our having a number of treaties with them, so they opted for the ASEAN and their own resources." He sighed. "I might add that Thailand keeps reaching for a democracy that it can't manage yet—the army dominates the government—and this has resulted in umpteen coups in the past. The governments come and go... only the King and Buddhism keep things glued together... so far.

  "Under such circumstances," he added with a faint smile, "we try to keep open private channels of information so we know what's going on behind the scenes. Very unofficially, of course."

  "Of course,"
said Mrs. Pollifax dryly. "But—why us, Bishop?"

  "Well, to be absolutely frank with you—"

  "Yes, do be," she told him cordially.

  "To be absolutely frank we don't want anyone, Thai or American, to hear about this—er—connection. Ruamsak's new, and shows signs of being too valuable an informant to risk anyone learning about him, for his sake as well as ours."

  "Ah, an informer," said Mrs. Pollifax, nodding pleasantly. "Cyrus, what do you think?"

  He said firmly, "Has to be up to you, m'dear. Sounds simple enough, of course. As usual," he added dryly.

  "And Cyrus would be with you," Bishop added, a note of hope returning to his voice.

  After a glance at his wife's face Cyrus said, "Just what is it we'd be picking up?"

  "Information effectively disguised, but how we don't know. We've been told it's a very incriminating document too dangerous to mail, so it will be turned over to you disguised as some sort of tourist souvenir. We've also been told that Ruamsak can't linger for more than a few hours in Chiang Mai—it has to be Thursday morning."

  Mrs. Pollifax thought about this. She could detect none of Bishop's usual tension when any assignment proposed to her held the possibility of danger. She decided that she believed him when he described it as a very small errand, and certainly his precipitous arrival on their doorstep implied a definite need. Looking at Cyrus, she said, "I suppose we could manage that easily enough. Would you mind our mixing business with pleasure?"

  Cyrus studied her face; apparently he was reassured by what he saw. "Of course I wouldn't mind. So long as you feel comfortable about it, keeping that horse analogy in mind, no problem."

  Bishop drew a deep sigh of relief. "Wonderful," he said, and opened his attaché case. "Somewhere I've a map of Chiang Mai for you..."

  Cyrus frowned. "Hearing you say Chiang Mai has been ringing bells." His frown deepened. "Didn't John Lloyd Matthews disappear in Chiang Mai on a visit there?"

  Bishop looked at him in surprise. "But that was years ago—nearly ten years ago, surely! What a memory."