Mrs. Pollifax and the Golden Triangle

by Dorothy Gilman

  As if sensing her thoughts he gave her a sympathetic glance. "I want you to know, Mrs. Emily, if your sahmee —your husband, I mean—has the phyot arm-ring with him he will be safe, I promise you, because it also contains a yantra blessed by the abbot of Chiang Rai."

  Mrs. Pollifax was not entirely consoled by this but she thought that the blessings of a Chiang Rai abbot were not to be underestimated, and that it was generous of Bonchoo to tell her this.

  "One thing more," he added as they prepared to leave. "We move very quietly now, this mountain country is dangerous. No speaking!"

  Startled, she said, "Dangerous how? Wen Sa's men?"

  He shook his head. "Bandits."

  "Bandits?"

  "Like the snakes they come out mostly at night but if they hear or see us, and you an American—"

  Nothing had prepared her for bandits. "But who are they? she gasped.

  "Thai naklengs too lazy to work," he said scornfully. "They rob the hill tribes who have no protection, they prey on them like vultures and rob anybody else they find who walks on the trails with no gun. We do not have a gun," he pointed out.

  Mrs. Pollifax thought of the cube of pure gold that she carried in her purse. "You mean we must beware of bandits as well as Wen Sa's men?"

  "And of the hill-tribe people who might think we are bandits."

  "Might think we are bandits," she repeated dazedly.

  He added comfortingly, "It's fortunate that you are a woman, and American; I do not think any opium smugglers will think you a spy and kill you. You do not look a spy at all," he told her happily, his face beaming at having found such reassurance for her.

  "How nice," she said weakly. "This is certainly very different from Bangkok!"

  "Oh—Bangkok," he said dismissingly. "Bangkok is only big showcase. Bangkok sucks the rest of the country dry, it grows rich and big while people in the north grow poorer and poorer. Nothing changes here—nothing!"

  His anger startled her but she said nothing; quiet she would be, and slinging her purse over her shoulder, she tucked the remainder of the precious cola in her pocket and followed him into the dark opening where the trail resumed. They had left no traces of their stop; Bonchoo had even coaxed the grass upright where he'd sat. She was beginning to understand the importance of this as the surrounding forest changed again for her, no longer a deserted and mountainous corner of the north but a place where people pursued dangerous games, followed secret trails, moved across borders, made their own rules and killed or robbed intruders.

  Oh, Bishop, she thought reproachfully, and then, Oh, Cyrus, and she was aware again of how a life could change in the flick of an eyelash, or at a pause beside a water jug in Chiang Mai. On the positive side, however—and she had grown tired of dark thoughts—she had not left a dead Ruamsak behind her after all, and she had her fragment of sardine wrapper to prove that Cyrus had been alive when he entered the jungle. She thought also—not without grim humor—that this was certainly an interesting way to distance herself from the Hong Kong experience; there was nothing quite like the prospect of facing bandits, opium smugglers and hill-tribe people to exorcise an experience in the past. It was reassuring, too, to learn that Bonchoo had a wife and family in Chiang Saen: links of dependency were being forged between them that she hoped would not unravel as they traveled on.

  Or as she tired... there was that, certainly, because Bonchoo was strong, he was a man accustomed to steep mountain trails and to roping together such huge logs of teak as she had seen pass by when she sat on the terrace of the hotel in Bangkok. Since her experience in Hong Kong —say it, Emily, she told herself, you were tortured—she had been something of a convalescent, still doing her yoga and practicing her karate but—she had to admit this, too —allowing Cyrus to pamper her. She was out of condition when she could least afford to be, and if those two young naklengs, as Bonchoo called them, were on the trail behind them now... She did not finish the thought. She had just lifted her eyes to what lay ahead, and as her eyes followed a trail that met the side of a mountain and went up—and then up higher still—she thought in horror, Good God, it's like a ski trail.

  Whether she was in condition or not she understood that she was going to have to push herself mercilessly and pick up the pieces later; there would be time enough to relax once they found Cyrus.

  If we find him, she thought bleakly... if we can ... and discovered that her thoughts were darkening again. She glanced at her watch: time had stopped existing for her but she saw that the time lacked fifteen minutes to two o'clock and they had therefore been climbing up and down these tortuous trails for three hours.

  Courage, Emily, she told herself, and drawing a deep breath, began to climb the hill.

  An hour later, stumbling along behind Bonchoo, Mrs. Pollifax realized that she was nursing a blister on her right heel, as well as a blister on the sole of her left foot. She wondered how many miles they'd walked since they entered the jungle but this scarcely seemed relevant when so much of it had been uphill. Irrationally, even crossly, she found herself remembering her former neighbor Miss Hartshorne, who planned her annual tours around cathedrals and museums and tirelessly photographed them for slides to view with her neighbors once at home. Mrs. Pollifax, wiping sweat from her forehead, wondered what Miss Hartshorne would think if she could see her now, limping along a forest trail, bedraggled, blistered and sweaty, lacking official guides and historic buildings. It was a pity, she thought, that Miss Hartshorne had never known where she went when she vanished periodically to work for Carstairs; Mrs. Pollifax had often been accused by her friend of lacking a sense of adventure, and—later—that she chose such unpleasant places with which to begin her travels, a view shared by her daughter Jane. "Bulgaria?" Jane had wailed. "Mother, how can you choose such an inconvenient place!"

  Jane, she felt, would consider this too an inconvenient place. In fact only her son Roger had ever suspected anything unorthodox behind her sudden departures. It was her son Roger who had told Cyrus with a grin, "I can't tell you how relieved I am to see her marrying you. Those weird trips she's taken, with never a postcard from her and never any photographs of what she's seen, not to mention her return from Switzerland with her arm in a sling, and from China with a broken wrist, and the most improbable explanations!"

  '"Signing her over to me, are you?" Cyrus had asked with a twinkle.

  "Gladly," Roger had said with feeling. "I suspect you know very well what she's been up to but I've never wanted to pry. Now you can do the worrying."

  These thoughts only barely diverted her as she limped along behind Bonchoo. Mind over matter, she told herself, determined not to collapse until Bonchoo did, and having finished that particular train of thought she turned to exercising her fingers for coin palming, and tried not to notice that the blister on her heel had just broken and that it was probably blood that was seeping into her shoe.

  The trail had narrowed, and if they were now several thousand feet above sea level they were also closer to the sun. The accumulated heat of the day had turned the air in the forest oppressive and still. Into this stillness there came a faint rustle among the tangles beside the trail, as if a small and very welcome breeze stirred the leaves.

  Bonchoo suddenly stopped. Staring into the underbrush, he raised both hands and shouted, "Rau penn ploen—rau penn ploen!"

  Disconcerted, Mrs. Pollifax stopped, too, and looked into the forest, seeing nothing at first, and then in the dim light her glance caught the gleam of something long and thin and metallic protruding from the leaves. She thought, That's a rifle, and she stood very still.

  A harsh voice called back, "Rau penn kail"

  Bonchoo began speaking rapidly, lightly, with many shrugs and a wry note in his voice. The tangles parted: the rifle emerged first and then the man, small and wiry, his brown face a network of lines like seams stitching together features that looked almost Tibetan, the cheekbones so high they nearly suffocated his bright and wary eyes. He wore a rusty black shirt, g
ray pants, sandals and a band of ragged cotton around his head. Prom one shoulder hung a game bag and from his waist a machete in a sheath made of reed.

  She said anxiously, "What is he saying?"

  "I've told him we're friends."

  "Yes, but does he believe you?"

  Bonchoo said dryly, "If he believed me he would remove the rifle from my stomach."

  "But who is he?"

  "He's an Akha and he doesn't speak Thai very well. He insists we go with him to his village to see the headman, who does speak Thai. It's about three kilometers from here."

  "But I don't want to go!" she protested.

  "No? We're lucky he didn't shoot first," Bonchoo said. "Apparently there's been some trouble here this week. If I can just convince the headman we're not spies or bandits—"

  "I don't feel at all like a bandit, I just feel tired," she said crossly. "Ask him if he's seen a very large American with two Shan."

  Bonchoo shook his head. "Later, later. Think you can manage three more kilometers?"

  "Uphill or down?"

  He smiled reluctantly. "The Akha never live on hilltops so it will be halfway down the mountain. Maybe half up, half down."

  She sighed. "Let's get it over with then," and wondered why the Akha never lived on the mountaintops.

  This time the Akha led the way, which surprised Mrs. Pollifax because she thought that, if either she or Bonchoo had the energy, they could easily overpower him from the rear. This delusion was dismissed, however, when she clumsily stepped on a dry branch that had fallen across the trail: the man whirled and this time it was she who felt the rifle pressed into her stomach. She gave the man a weak, apologetic smile and they continued.

  She was beginning to feel lightheaded from altitude and exhaustion when the Akha stopped and held up a hand, listening. Turning, he gave them each a hard glance and spoke in a low voice to Bonchoo.

  "We leave the trail," Bonchoo told her. "Fast! And don't speak!"

  Stepping under and over vines and scrub, pushing aside long sweeping branches and tall razor grass, she followed the two men off the trail into the jungle. Mercifully they did not have to go far; reaching a screen of palms they simply stood, Mrs. Pollifax wondering what on earth was happening until, very faintly, she heard a soft plodding of hoofs. Off to her right a cloud of dust drifted in among the trees, and then—on a trail that ran counter to theirs, and no more than twenty feet in front of them—a procession of donkeys began passing their hiding place in a long line, each bearing loaded panniers, the procession led by a man wearing a dusty turban and carrying a stick. He was followed by three other men walking stolidly, silently along the forest trail with no whisper of sound except for the muted thud-thud of the animals' hoofs and a faint creak of leather. It was the silence of their passing that awed her, they seemed to her to be moving in and out of her vision like figures in a dream.

  The dream and the silence were abruptly shattered by shouts behind the caravan. The procession came to a stop and two men hurried up the trail, calling and waving to them.

  Bonchoo nudged Mrs. Pollifax and she nodded: one of the young men wore a bright red shirt and the other a bright yellow shirt: she recognized them both.

  So they're still after us, she thought bleakly, and what astonishingly fast time they've made! I didn't hit Yellow Shirt hard enough, she thought sadly, and deplored her lack of ruthlessness. She could see the faces of the two clearly now through the screen of leaves as they talked and gestured to the men of the caravan. Red Shirt was very young but he looked tense as a coiled spring, face intent, eyes narrowed as he spoke. His companion in the yellow shirt looked less ambitious but less innocent as well: he had a hungry, wolflike face. Something was decided, the four men of the caravan did not look pleased but they nodded and the procession resumed its pace with Red Shirt and Yellow Shirt following in the rear.

  In their hiding place they waited for a long time, which gave Mrs. Pollifax far too many minutes to understand that the two young naklengs had not abandoned their hunt but were working the trails now looking for them, and if the path they had taken was a shorter one, as it had to be, then it meant that they knew the jungle very well. She thought, They must not find Bonchoo. He was her lifeline, he was all that stood between her and the forest's unknowns... She decided fiercely that she must not, would not, allow those two hoodlums to kill him.

  The sounds of the caravan had been gone for some ten minutes before the Akha moved. Leading them across the broader trail, he pushed aside palms and scrub and they entered a footpath that was no more than a thread of a trail, scarcely visible and nearly overgrown.

  To Bonchoo she said in a low voice, "Did the two naklengs ask those men if they'd seen us?"

  He nodded. "Yes, and they came very near to seeing us, too, for which I will burn much incense at the temple—if I live through all this."

  "And the caravan, was that opium?"

  "No, no... guns."

  "I'm so tired, Bonchoo. And thirsty."

  "Another mile," he told her.

  Another mile... Her feet felt to her like bleeding stumps and her horizons had shrunk now to a thin line of red earth on the path in front of her; any future beyond the next moment was beyond comprehension, and the hope of catching up with Cyrus was receding into a distant dream that lay beyond a tougher goal called Survival: surviving collapse, thirst, two young naldengs searching for them, and now this detour to a mysterious village where a mysterious headman would decide if they were dangerous. Time blurred; she counted the pebbles on the path and tried to breathe deeply, which was easier now because the trail had leveled and the endless climbing had ceased. But still the mile that Bonchoo had promised her felt like an eternity.

  Somewhere ahead a dog barked. In the woods a pig grunted. She looked up from counting pebbles and saw a clearing ahead of them, saw the outline of a steep thatched roof and then a dusty compound with a pig scratching in the earth. The path broadened, they entered the compound and the scene was no longer empty as people came into view: half a dozen children came racing toward them, followed more slowly by women in strange, cone-shaped headdresses, the women holding back shyly.

  "We're here," Bonchoo said, and then, seeing her face, he said anxiously, "Are you all right?"

  She looked at him and then at the sunbaked clearing, gold in the afternoon sun. She said in a trembling voice, "If I could just—" She stopped and began again. "If I could just—"

  The words refused to come; she stared at Bonchoo and at the Akha in astonishment, gasped and fell forward. The two men caught her just before she hit the ground.

  CHAPTER

  9

  The news of a coup underway in Thai-land reached Carstairs at seven o'clock Thursday evening and he realized that still another evening would be devoted to affairs in Bangkok. The coup had begun an hour earlier with the capture of Radio Thailand, and it was rumored that First Army Headquarters in the heart of the city had been surrounded and captured. Eleven people were reported dead and thirty-six wounded. According to the meager news given to the U.S. Embassy and the wire services, the coup attempt involved rebel forces in the Thai Army, but led by whom was unknown. The coup had begun at six o'clock on Friday morning.

  In Langley, Virginia, it was still Thursday. "Really spooky, these time differences," Bishop ventured as he returned to his desk to analyze the information reaching them. "Positively mystical, realizing that right now, at this very moment—" He glanced at his watch. "At this very moment it's 7:20 Friday morning over there and people already know what Friday's like, and have also," he added pointedly, "had a charming sleep tonight, which you and I may be denied, and they're actually experiencing a day we've not reached yet."

  "You're being whimsical," growled Carstairs.

  "No, I suspect rather metaphysical," Bishop said, considering this. "Fraught with time and-space speculations, surely? Do you think, by the way, that Mornajay's mysterious flight to Bangkok had anything to do with this coup?"

  Car
stairs said with a wry smile, "The department provides no crystal balls, unfortunately. Of course anything's possible but if news of a pending coup drew him there then everyone Upstairs would know where he was, and above all his assistant. No, my best instincts tell me that something else is afoot."

  "Are you thinking this because of his insistence on using a novice like McAndrews?"

  Carstairs looked troubled. "That, too, is completely out of character for the very efficient Mornajay, but so is his bolting and leaving so many stones unturned."

  "With the possibility of nasty things under those stones?" suggested Bishop. "There—I've said it. I know you swear at him a lot but what's your impression of the man?"

  "A cold and uncomfortable person, all brain and no heart," Carstairs said. "Comes from cold country too— Minneapolis. You heard Holloway describe him: a large man with a large ego to match."

  Bishop shook his head. "Very mysterious, although I have to confess that what worries me most about this coup are the eleven people reported dead, and thirty-six injured, and McAndrews still hasn't turned up a clue as to where Emily and Cyrus might be."

  Carstairs said briskly, "Nonsense, they'd scarcely be—" He stopped, looking startled.

  "Ah, but we don't know where they are, do we?" said Bishop pleasantly. "Dare I remind you of the many times you believed Mrs. Pollifax to be somewhere she wasn't? A few years ago you thought she was stuck in Istanbul and she turned up in prison halfway across the country in Kayseri. You were sure she was in Bulgaria and she telephoned us from Switzerland. You thought her dead in Mexico and she turned up bobbing along in a boat on the Adriatic, so how can you say they're not in Bangkok? Damn it," he said impatiently, "it's been hours since we notified the U.S. Embassy they're missing. Where are they, and why don't we hear from someone?"