‘You think the bricks we found might have come from the beacon?’ I asked.
‘Nobody seems certain as to what year the river actually changed its course. As there are no rocks or rapids on this stretch of the river it had always seemed odd to me that there was any need for a beacon at all.’
‘Ah, so you’re hypothesizing that it wasn’t a beacon at all but the remains of a stupa that accidentally found itself in the middle of the new Ping,’ I said.
‘You have a natural bent for this work, my dear. You should give up the folly of being a reporter and come to be my personal assistant.’
‘That’s really tempting.’
‘It is merely a theory of course but it would explain why the experts had found no trace of it. Ah, here it is.’
She produced a green file labelled ‘Burmese King Thado Khoi, 1607 to 1608. After a little thumbing she found what she was looking for.
‘Here,’ she said, and began to read from the file. ‘The light on the spired beacon at Wieng Kum Kam was the signal for King Khoi and his nobles to stop for the night.’
‘Hmm. A spire on a beacon?’
‘Doesn’t it sound a bit like a stupa, to you?’ she asked.
‘Within my limited realm of expertise on beacons, it does suggest the beacon wasn’t lit up to stop boats getting stuck on sandbanks but rather to stop people hitting the beacon. Which in turn suggests it wasn’t a beacon.’
‘Exactly.’
‘So, what do you think? I asked. ‘It was about to fall down anyway from the pressure of the current, and they took it apart?’
‘Perhaps intending to rebuild it.’
‘Do you suppose they went down as far as the foundations?’
‘It would have been exceedingly difficult to excavate under water given the lack of equipment, and it’s unlikely the rumour of Mangrai’s treasure had passed down through the subsequent three hundred years. My guess is they’d give up on the base and build new foundations elsewhere. But due to wars and other distractions, the rebuilding was put off.’
‘So if this was really the Pa Tan temple, the original foundations would still be there at the bottom of the river.’
‘It is a tantalizing prospect don’t you think?’
‘So, let’s go dig,’ I said.
‘I’m afraid after all those years the base of the stupa could be considerably deep. It would have sunk over time and been covered in numerous layers of silt.’
‘So, what do we need?’
‘Nothing short of a dredger,’ she said.
‘So let’s get one.’
Khin laughed. ‘That would be extortionately expensive.’
‘Give me a ball-park figure.’
‘Ooh, I don’t know. It could cost anything up to six thousand baht per day. That’s almost two-hundred dollars American.’
I smiled.
‘You do realize we just saved a movie company several million dollars in overrun costs?’
Chapter 34
“You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
Jaws (1975)
Arny had expressed the opinion that dredgers weren’t likely to be just sitting around waiting to be hired but he was wrong. At the Ao Daeng yard just twelve kilometres downstream from Wieng Kum Kam there were three rust-pitted dredgers moored idle. They’d worked on the weir at Pa Sang then found themselves stranded by it. They came complete with pilots desperate for work. Given the annual floods, the Chiang Mai authorities had no objections to dredging but lacked the funds to pay for it themselves. I was even able to talk the yard owner down to a daily fee of five-thousand baht including fuel and labour.
While Sissy drove the jeep back to Khin’s house, Arny and I travelled upstream on the clunky metal raft. The craft appeared to defy any of the basic rules of aqua-dynamics. There was no recognizable bow or stern. It was a top-heavy basting tray with so much equipment on the deck it was unthinkable that it could float at all. Yet it sat high in the water and seemed to skim over the shallows. Two enormous gear-wheels drove a conveyor loaded with metal scoops. These dug deeper and deeper into the river bottom and carried the mud up to a large hopper. It was a simple design which, Khin informed everyone, hadn’t changed much in the past hundred years.
Neither the boat pilot nor the yard owner had shown any interest in Khin’s qualifications to be conducting the dig. The skipper hadn’t even asked the purpose of the mission. When we arrived at a point parallel to the previous day’s brick heap he was told just to chug up and down in a grid pattern and make shallow inroads until they hit something.
For lunch Sissy brought two cartons of Singha Beer and six pizzas. From there on the afternoon merged into a boozy sing-along boat cruise that didn’t go anywhere.
‘You know, this isn’t half bad,’ Sissy decided. ‘With a bit of luck we might even get in one more day of boating before our dredger contract’s up.’
Khin hadn’t once deserted her post at the hopper. She did accept a bottle of beer but she was up to her shoulders in mud most of the time so didn’t get around to drinking any. She dove into the slushy river slime with the enthusiasm of a grade-schooler at a sandpit. She squeezed out pebbles and rocks and washed them in a bucket of water and discarded them. She spoke to herself constantly in Burmese. She was a woman with a mission. We made several attempts to help but she turned us away. I really felt sorry for her that afternoon. She’d researched so long and tried so hard and every attempt at finding the treasure had hit a wall. I knew she’d never find her prize and I got the feeling she knew it too. Perhaps it was the chase that invigorated her.
We’d emptied ten skips of mud onto the far bank and probably created foundations for a four million baht riverside property above the marshes. But nothing that passed Khin’s gaze inspired her.
‘What exactly are we looking for, Khin?’ Arny asked once, looking over her shoulder into the big tub of mud.
‘Residue of masonry,’ she said. ‘Somewhat similar to the bricks we encountered yesterday but flatter and thicker. If the foundation is indeed here it would begin with a layer of bricks three feet deep.’
‘And then?’
‘Beneath that is a mystery.’
‘Mystery’s your middle name,’ I shouted. ‘Khin Mystery Thein Aye.’
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘But in this particular scenario, the mystery exists because of the personality of the plaster. As I have told you repeatedly, any valuables buried under a stupa would have been encased in some form of plaster or heavy-density clay. In a land-based stupa, gold Buddha images from the twelfth and thirteenth century have been uncovered still embedded in their original plaster cast. But the stupa of the Pa Tan temple would have been under water for centuries. If the casing was plaster, it isn’t inconceivable it dissolved and has been washed away. This would expose the metal artefacts to the ravages of rusting.’
‘So, why don’t you just dredge deeper and get through the bricks sooner?’ I asked.
‘Jimm, Jimm, Jimm! Impatience killed off the tiger. It’s impossible to estimate just how far down we need to go. A conveyor running too deep could cause irreparable damage to a structure or to anything it contained.’
‘Khin.’
‘Yes, Jimm?’
‘Promise me you won’t get disappointed.’
‘About?’
‘If this comes to nothing.’
‘Oh, ye of little faith.’
‘We won’t think any less of you if you don’t find anything. In fact, I doubt we could think much less of you.’
‘You’re too kind.’
The remaining Singha beers were in a net being dragged behind the dredger in the water. This didn’t exactly chill them but it did leave them at what the British liked to call ‘room temperature’. Rooms can get pretty cold in the UK so it was certainly cool enough for us. It went down well with dried river prawns and peanuts and the time kicked along nicely filled with funny conversation, a swim now and then, and awful singing. The boat was booked until six-thirty
and all the next day from eight.
The sun was low enough to peer beneath the smog and make silvery fingerprints on the surface of the water. We had half an hour left on our day’s contract, paid for generously by our movie director, when we heard an ominous metallic crunch from below. The dredger groaned as if it had come upon an old deserted truck fuselage on the river bed. The craft lurched and listed to one side before the motor settled back into its old bronchial rhythm.
‘Was that me?’ Sissy asked.
‘No, it was the boat,’ Arny reassured him.
‘We walked to the amidships where we found Khin leaning over the railing getting her bearings.
‘Quick,’ she shouted. ‘Get a fix. Find yourself a landmark on either flank and commit it to memory.’
‘What’s up, Khin?’ Arny asked.
‘Look,’ she smiled and turned back to the trough of mud. ‘Look what that little prang just now has conjured up.’
She plunged her hand into the gunk and emerged with a small nugget of red brick. ‘We have our foundation.’
Arny hopped with delight. ‘Khin, are you certain?’
‘As certain as I shall ever be.’
My older brother and I exchanged familiar raised eyebrows. Khin was crying wolf again and our little brother had come to gather up the sheep. But he’d learn. He’d learn.
Chapter 35
“Back where I come from there are men who do nothing all day but good deeds. They are called phila ... er, phila ... er, yes, er, Good Deed Doers.”
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
It was May. The rains had arrived on schedule and cleaned up the skies. They’d washed the slopes of the mountain, and brightened the murky moods. The symphony of night-time coughing from dusty lungs had been replaced by the burping of toads. From the deck on Doi Suthep you could see all the way to the mountains of Phayao and beyond. Chiang Mai had become crisp and focused.
Bunny Savage was in Italy filming a love story in Lago D’Orta with Harrison Ford. It would have been an icky, dirty old man – pretty young girl movie if he’d been anyone but Harrison Ford. But the projections suggested the world was in desperate need of love on the big screen and Ford fancied a month in Italy so he was being offered at a discount.
Siam was into post-production and scheduled for a Christmas – New Year release. OB had moved onto his next project – another remake of Fellini’s Roma with De Caprio playing the role of the young Fellini, and San Francisco playing the role of Rome. All the Fellini adoration had probably clouded the fact that Roma was a crap movie to begin with but OB had reached the top step of the pedestal. It gave him a view of the universe and the balls to do whatever he liked. Stuff profits.
Under pressure from the US embassy, the junta had expedited the corruption trial of Ketthai and his cohorts and my brothers and I had been star witnesses for the prosecution. The trials in Bangkok had gone unreported in the national press. Much the same as suicide bombings in Iraq leaving fewer than twenty victims no longer warranted a mention, serious corruption stories in Thailand in May had to start at around a billion baht to deserve a headline. There was a lot of competition. The major was in the minors – unworthy of an editorial. His name vanished from the records at the same time as he disappeared from life on earth. Military run courts had a pragmatic approach to justice.
And then there was that joke. A fat girl, a bodybuilder, a transsexual and a Burmese were sitting on a deck overlooking the shimmering night lights of Chiang Mai. The transsexual turned to the fat girl and said, ‘I’m gone, man.’
‘Where have you gone?’ I asked.
‘Ooh, heaven?’ said Sissy. ‘I don’t know. This is some serious weed, sister. Where’s it from?’
‘Laos.’
‘And doesn’t that just explain why the Lao are so laid back. How’s Khin taking it?’
I looked to my right, past a snoring Arny to a comatose Burmese.
‘She was unconscious as soon as we took it out the plastic bag,’ I said.
‘She still breathing?’
‘There’s a slight movement under her shirt,’ I said. ‘It could be maggots.’
‘No,’ said Sissy. ‘Khin’ll never die. She’s a goddess.’
‘Well, she sure has got herself a condominium and a pile of gold up in heaven,’ I agreed. ‘More than she’s ever going to see down here with us mortals.’
‘You aren’t still sore at her?’
‘You kidding? After all that work we put in to finding her treasure for her?’
‘What did you expect her to do?’
‘I don’t know. Share it with us?’
‘Now, that’s not Khin, and you know it.’
‘Least she could have done was slip us a ruby each as a thank you. When she was documenting the stuff she had lots of chances to slide a ceremonial dagger down her underwear. We could be home-owners – retired – comfortable for the rest of our days. But no. What does she do? Calls the Department of Fine Arts and a dozen witnesses. And what did that get her?’
‘Kudos. Credit.’
‘Not the kind of credit you can spend, I said. ‘She’s back tutoring and relying on us to keep her alive just like the good old days. Meanwhile, a billion baht’s worth of treasure sits down there in a safe in some Bangkok museum. What do you bet it’ll be on some rich collector’s shelf before the year’s out?’
‘I wouldn’t know about that but I’d bet Chiang Mai University finds some way to get her legal and put her on faculty so they can lay claim to the discovery. They’ve already asked her when she’d be available.’
‘Well, there’s a prize. A job at CMU.’
‘It’s what she wants.’
‘She’s nuts.’
‘Yeah. But you’ve got to love her.’
‘Yeah. I know.’
We each took the final puff that would drop us over the edge. We’d made a few resolutions that evening. We promised to ease up on the weed. I promised I’d start referring to Sissy as ‘she’ to avoid further misunderstandings. Sissy decided to work full time on computer scams and say goodbye to acting. And we crooked our little fingers together in a promise that before the turn of the century we would be writing and producing multi-million dollar movies directed by our beloved Clint. We found the strength to slur a few final words before we dropped off.
A fat girl, a bodybuilder, a transsexual and a Burmese were sitting on a deck snoring with surprising harmony on the skirt of Doi Suthep. They dreamed, not of better things, because things could not be better, but rather of the things they had. Too few people appreciated the bird that fluttered in the hand.
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The Amok Runners Page 21