Mrs. Pollifax and the Golden Triangle

by Dorothy Gilman

  Bishop nodded but as he walked toward the door to his office he paused beside the map of Thailand on the wall and stared at it. If Mrs. Pollifax and her companion had never passed the police blockade, he was thinking, then somewhere between Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai they had vanished from a highway that ran through the mountains and was surrounded by jungle, and because he could see no secondary roads entering that highway he had the uneasy feeling that she must have forsaken the road for the jungle, or for reasons unknown had been forced into it. He placed his finger on the general area where she had disappeared, and then he moved his finger to the village of Chiang Saen and drew a line between it and the route that Mornajay would take to enter Wen Sa's territory, and his uneasiness deepened. With a passion that surprised him he hoped that if Mrs. Pollifax had entered the jungle she was not going to encounter a man whose desperate attempt to escape had already claimed its first victim.

  CHAPTER

  16

  The path wound lazily down to the Shan camp through scrub and grass, with only a few trees to screen their advance. It made for a terrifyingly exposed approach, but like a lion she would be, vowed Mrs. Pollifax, and she took the lead, keeping an eye on the guard seated by the door to the hut. He seemed oblivious to them, his foot tapping the ground as if to some cosmic music until, as they drew nearer, she saw the cord running to his ear and understood that Walkmans had arrived here, too. They were fortunate: they had actually reached the base of the hill before the guard sensed movement, turned his head and saw them. With a shout he jumped to his feet, his fellow soldiers shouted back, the door to the hut opened and by the time she and Bonchoo reached the center of the compound a circle of rifles and men brought them to a stop.

  The soldiers looked more like boys than men but she could see that they took their work very seriously. She said firmly, in a loud voice, "I have come to ask if my husband is here," and she was pleased to discover that her voice did not tremble in the least.

  She was stared at blankly; their only response was to press several rifles deeper into her back, making uncomfortable inroads on her spine.

  "I do not think they speak English," Bonchoo whispered. "Let me try Thai, Koon Emily."

  She shook her head; obviously there was only one solution, and clearing her throat of dust, Mrs. Pollifax shouted, "Cyrus!... Cyrus?"

  Rifles dug more aggressively into her spine, and there were troubled, angry mutterings but from a distance, muted but unmistakably familiar, there came a shout, "Emily... ? My God, Emily?"

  "Cyrus!" she gasped. Recklessly she pushed away rifles and men, broke out of the circle and ran toward the long hut with the closed door. Shouts followed her, a bullet whistled over her head and another one kicked up the dust to the left of her. She flung open the door, momentarily blinded by the darkness of the interior. "Cyrus?" she faltered.

  A wonderfully familiar shape started toward her from the shadows, took several steps and then tripped over a rope that tied him to a post. "Emily!"

  He held out his arms and she flew into them, bursting into sobs of relief as she tightly hugged the warmth of him. "Oh, Cyrus," she sobbed, "I thought—I was afraid—I thought any minute they might—"

  "Not yet," he said, kissing the top of her head. "Waiting for someone who speaks English to find out who I am."

  "Thank heaven they waited," she gasped. "Thank God they didn't shoot you first."

  "Wouldn't find out who I am, then," he pointed out reasonably.

  She laughed through her tears. "Understatement!" Flinging back her head to look into his face, she said, "But are you all right, Cyrus, they didn't harm you?"

  "Hell of a long walk," he said gruffly. "A little tired— and damn hungry, I can tell you." He looked down at her tenderly. "Worried terribly about you, Emily. Afraid you'd follow, afraid you wouldn't... the more distance we traveled the more I worried—no place for you alone in these mountains."

  "But I wasn't alone," she told him. "1 didn't know they waited for someone who speaks English, and you didn't know that I traveled with Bonchoo. Bonchoo's outside, Cyrus, he's been such a friend—although actually, of course, he's Ruamsak."

  "He is?"

  "Was," she amended, "because Ruamsak's dead."

  Cyrus laughed. "Not sure I quite follow that. My God, Emily, I thought I'd never see you again, except—"

  "Yes?" Her eyes adjusting to the darkness now, she could see that his face had sobered. "What is it, Cyrus?"

  He shook his head. "Have to tell you, m'dear, I've thought and thought—plenty of time for that here—and can't see any way out of this. And now you here, too, and this Ruamsak—"

  "No, Bonchoo," she reminded him.

  "—and that's three of us. No embassy to appeal to, no police, no one knowing where we are..."

  The door opened and four soldiers strode in, filling the space with khaki and rifles. The word out was unknown but their rifles spoke for them; untying Cyrus, they separated them, poked, prodded and pushed them to the door, and now it was the bright sunlight that made Mrs. Pollifax blink as she left the dark hut. Shading her eyes, she looked for Bonchoo and saw him sitting despondently on the bench where the original guard had sat; he was staring gloomily at two rifles trained on him by a pair of zealous young soldiers, but at sight of Mrs. Pollifax his face brightened.

  "I try to tell them why we are here but they do not speak much Thai, either." His gaze moving to Cyrus, he said, "Oh—big, very big!"

  Since it was to this bench they were being taken, Bonchoo moved over to make room for them. "Much bigger than last seen!" he announced.

  Startled, Cyrus said, "You've seen me before?"

  "Yes, yes—pushed into blue van in Chiang Mai, sir."

  "You've been together that long, then!"

  Bonchoo started to reply but from the hill on the Burma side of the compound a voice shouted, "Hii!"

  "Hii," shouted back a soldier and all of them snapped to attention as two men rode into the camp, one on horseback, one on a donkey, one of them in uniform, the other—

  "Red Shirt!" gasped Mrs. Pollifax.

  "Trouble," groaned Bonchoo.

  "Let's hope one of them speaks English," Cyrus said fervently.

  "The other is very big-shot officer," Bonchoo said. "Look, he rides a horse."

  "Wen Sa?" she suggested.

  "Somebody high up—see his leather boots, real leather they look. No sandals for him! Pu yai ban."

  "Who's Wen Sa?" asked Cyrus.

  "Ssh," counseled Mrs. Pollifax, and solemnly quoting Bonchoo, "not a name to be spoken loudly here."

  "Then who's Red Shirt?" asked Cyrus patiently.

  The officer was dismounting, the dust settling around him, his men surrounding him and one of the soldiers tethering the horse to a post. "Well," began Mrs. Pollifax, seeing that attention was still focused on the two new arrivals, "that young man in the red shirt has tried twice to kill Bonchoo, once on the road to Chiang Rai and once in the jungle, except the poisoned arrow he aimed at him in the jungle hit Mr. Mornajay instead—a man who joined us at the Akha village—which is how we spent our second night in a lost monastery with a holy man."

  Cyrus gave her an appreciative glance. "Emily, you've been busy as hell," he said. "If we ever get out of this—"

  Red Shirt had suddenly seen the three of them seated on the bench and even from a distance Mrs. Pollifax could see his eyes narrow in anger. He spoke to the officer, who looked at him questioningly, and Red Shirt pointed. Now the officer stared at them, too. He was small and trim, bareheaded but otherwise perfectly uniformed in khaki tunic and pants, a highly polished leather belt, leather boots and a gun in a leather holster. He wore a thin mustache across his upper lip and dark glasses over his eyes, which dismayed Mrs. Pollifax because she depended upon eyes: she spoke to a person's eyes, she estimated reactions by their eyes, and character by their expression. Beside her she could feel Bonchoo stiffen.

  "Like a lion," she reminded him in a whisper.

  Having
examined Cyrus, Mrs. Pollifax and Bonchoo, roe officer strode toward them and came to a stop in front of Bonchoo. "So you remain alive," he said in impeccable clipped English. "You appear to live a charmed life, orders were given—"

  "You speak English, thank heaven," broke in Mrs. Pollifax.

  "Orders were given," he continued curtly, "that you be executed for informing on us."

  "But I'm not an informer!" cried Bonchoo. "You think I walk miles to come here if I am guilty? I wasn't kidnapped and brought here like Koon Emily's sahmee—" He pointed at Cyrus. "I came here to tell you I am not an informer."

  Brows lifted skeptically over the dark glasses. Turning to Cyrus, he asked, "And who are you?"

  "American citizen kidnapped in Chiang Mai," he snapped, "and who are you, damn it?"

  "Please—no offensive language, my ears are very delicate. I am Colonel Lu of the Shan Liberation Army." He bowed slightly and turned back to Bonchoo. "You were saying?"

  "I am saying Jacoby must have told lies of me, it has to have been Jacoby who tells you such lies!"

  "You deny you were selling information about our camps and supply lines?"

  "I do," Bonchoo said with dignity, "and I have walked all these mountains to say this. I do not deny information but the information was political, it is about a coup—there is to be a coup in my country, it was about that, only that!"

  The Colonel's brows had lifted again. "About what?"

  "A coup—the government in Bangkok to be overthrown, and if Jacoby told you different he lies. Colonel, I have a wife and five children, how can I live in peace if your men keep trying to kill me? I ask you—"

  The Colonel brushed this aside impatiently. "You can prove this?"

  Bonchoo pointed to Cyrus. "1 think he has the information I try to sell to Americans."

  Cyrus looked startled and then uneasy. He said, "I really don't think—I'm sorry to say that I've not the slightest idea what he's talking about."

  "Well?" said the Colonel.

  Desperately Bonchoo said, "I would ask him to empty his pockets, please!"

  "Very well, empty your pockets," the Colonel told Cyrus.

  Cyrus began emptying his pockets. From the one he brought out coins and a roll of Thai money, and from the other he brought out a used roll of film, a pencil, a pen and a wide lacquer-and-yarn bracelet.

  "There," cried Bonchoo, "the phyot arm-ring, see? That's it, that's it!"

  "That?" said the Colonel skeptically.

  "Let me show you!" Bonchoo seized the arm-ring, his hand moving toward his pocket; abruptly he stopped. "If I may borrow a knife?"

  Mrs. Pollifax breathed a sigh of relief; he had come very close to drawing out his Shan murder knife, which would have been tactless, to say the least. The Colonel spoke to his men, rifles were lifted, a knife produced and then rifles lowered to again point at the three of them.

  Gripping the knife, Bonchoo cut away the woven yarn, exposing and then unfolding the rolled-up tube of paper. Cyrus stared at it in astonishment. "Good God, that's what they were after? Thought it one of Emily's souvenirs!"

  Bonchoo held out the letter. "It's written in Vietnamese, Colonel, written by a Thai general named Lueng, and just as I tell you, it is about a coup."

  "I will see for myself, I know some Vietnamese," the Colonel said coldly. He removed his dark glasses, tucked them into a pocket of his tunic and brought out a pair of reading glasses. Scanning the letter, he said, "But this is about a coup!"

  "Yes yes," Bonchoo said eagerly.

  The Colonel, reading it more carefully, smiled. "And with such tact—and yes, a charming touch of acid—the officer in Laos refuses to help this Lueng with his coup. Oh, very good! He ends with, 'Revolution will come by itself when the workers and the peasants demand to be heard.'" He looked up from the letter to say crisply, "The coup began yesterday morning in Bangkok."

  "Already?"

  "Yes. This is dangerous information but it is late, very late." He handed it back to Bonchoo. "It is amusing to see but it is of no interest to us, we are Shan fighting for our liberation from the Burmans." He shrugged. "It may, however, be of interest to the Americans—take it back."

  Bonchoo said, "What I would most like to take back is my name as honest teak smuggler."

  "Take that, too," the Colonel said, and turned to speak to Red Shirt. With a nod to Bonchoo he said, "I have told Phibul here that all orders for you to be killed are now canceled and that Jacoby made a very grave mistake."

  Bonchoo made a wai. "I am most grateful."

  "And now can we go, please?" asked Mrs. Pollifax eagerly.

  His gaze rested on her thoughtfully. "You have certainly come a long way. One wonders how you found us."

  "Yes."

  "And certainly it is an inconvenience to have you here."

  Cyrus said calmly, "Then we'll be delighted to relieve you of our presence, and since you've already established Mr. Bonchoo's innocence and assured him—"

  The Colonel interrupted. "I see that you don't perfectly understand. For myself, I toy with the attractions of letting you go, since we break camp this afternoon and will no longer be in this area should you carelessly speak of us being here. However, this is impossible."

  "Why?" asked Mrs. Pollifax.

  "Because we expect a helicopter shortly with a very high-level person to join us who might not look so kindly on such an act of benevolence. I have met this man, he is not a Buddhist and I might add that he lacks a playful attitude. It will be up to him to decide."

  "Decide what?" asked Cyrus.

  He shrugged. "Whether you will be free to go. My own interest is in fighting a war but his interests are different, very different."

  "And what if he says not?" demanded Cyrus.

  He looked surprised. "Why, then, you would be killed and buried here, of course."

  "Killed!" cried Mrs. Pollifax. "But what have we done?"

  "It's not what you've done, it's what you've seen," he said stiffly, and walked away.

  "But what have we seen?" she cried after him in protest.

  Watching him go, Bonchoo said bitterly, 'To me he gives with one hand and takes away with the other. Of what use to clear my name if instead of the naklengs killing me somebody else does?"

  "But what have we seen?" repeated Mrs. Pollifax. "How can he speak of killing like that?"

  "Steady, m'dear," Cyrus said, reaching for her hand and holding it. "It's probably what I've seen and you've not had time to notice. Behind us, in that long open shed."

  She turned her head to see that under the shed's thatch roof stood row upon row of cloth sacks, perhaps a hundred of them, neatly packaged like bags of flour. "Oh," she faltered. "Opium?"

  "Don't look," Bonchoo pleaded after he, too, had looked.

  "Is it opium?" she demanded of him.

  He sighed. "It would be morphine, Koon Emily, there must be their refinery very near, maybe over that hill. In the refinery they cook opium down into morphine and dry it in the sun, which makes it very small and light to carry. Those bags must be waiting for pack animals to carry them down from the mountains."

  She said indignantly, "Well, their morphine would surely be long since gone by the time we reached Chiang Mai!" She glared at the young man who was guarding them. "If we're going to be killed for that—"

  "Could be other reasons," Cyrus suggested. "Know what you're thinking, m'dear, but I've not a single match with me, have you?" When she only shook her head he said quietly, "It's your great talent for optimism that we need very much just now."

  "Optimism," she repeated and was silent, wondering where it had gone. She was very tired, of course, but she realized that after hearing Colonel Lu's announcement she felt utterly drained of optimism and rather frightened. It was true that she had pursued Cyrus with a great deal of optimism and with a one-track mind as well, but she had not looked beyond the joy of finding him. Cyrus had taken a much shrewder measure of their situation than she: he had seen how cheap human life could be in
this world of smugglers, warlords and drug merchants, where even their being American was a strike against them. She supposed that she had entertained too many assumptions and expectations: she had assumed that they could leave, and then she had learned that it was not to be that simple, that a stranger would arrive in a helicopter to decide their fate, and this was a shock to her expectations.

  She did not speak; they were each of them silent, absorbed by the unpleasant news that they might not survive this day. Several feet away from her their guard watched them closely and with obvious curiosity: she noticed that each small movement, each gesture was observed and cataloged as if he'd never seen Americans before, but his eyes held no hostility. She felt that under other circumstances he would want to ask many questions of them: whether Americans knew about the Shan people, whether all Americans wore shoes of leather, as Cyrus did—his gaze went to them frequently—and what had brought them here, but his rifle remained steadily pointed at them and his eyes alert; he was young and he was conscientious and she had no doubt that he would shoot them if they made any reckless moves. Beyond him three of the soldiers had begun dismantling the hut in which she'd found Cyrus. Prefabricated housing had come early to the jungle, she thought, watching them detach each wall of woven bamboo from its post and roll it up like a carpet. Under a tree the Colonel had set up a radio and was speaking into it, with glances at the sky and an air of expectation. To the right of him a soldier squatted on the ground with an opened betal box. She watched him place a leaf in the palm of his hand and delicately extract powders from his box which he mixed on the leaf; when this had been done he placed the leaf in his mouth and began to chew slowly, methodically and with much pleasure, occasionally spitting a stream of red to the earth.

  She said at last, "Who do you suppose this person is that we're waiting for, this man who decides whether we live or—or—"

  "Or die," Cyrus said gently. "Say it, m'dear, get the word out."

  "All right—die," she said, naming it.

  His hand tightened in hers. "We've had a good run for it, you know, a damn good one, Emily."