Bangkok Burn

by Simon Royle

  “You know how far you fell? The boys told me it’s at least forty meters to the ledge. One hundred and twenty feet. Your amulets are going to be worth a fortune.”

  I smiled. It was true. The only thing I was wearing, the whole time I was in the container and on the run, was my amulets, the three of them given to me by Por, Joom and Uncle Mike. I sat in the back seat of the Cherokee, Chai next to me, Uzi on his knees, and we looked out of the window as we wound down the mountains towards Chumphon.

  There was one thing that puzzled me. Why hadn’t Lisp just taken the money? Why did he need to take me? Was he planning on running the same kidnap routine on me with Mother? It didn’t fit. You’ve got the money, you put a bullet in my head, and you’re home free. Why go to all the trouble of a tranquilizer gun and more kidnapping? One hundred million was more than enough for anyone. It didn’t fit. Just another fragment of a mosaic where none of the pieces fit and the picture remains unclear.

  On the outskirts of Chumphon, Lilly’s phone rang. I answered it.

  “Who is this? Who is this?” Lisp was excited.

  “Chance.”

  “Ah, so you’re alive.”

  “No, they have cell phones in hell.”

  “Don’t get funny.”

  “Funny – I thought we were going to make an exchange – that is until you decided to get funny.”

  I heard a woman say, ‘Leon’, in the background, and the sound from the phone cut off. Silence for a few seconds. I looked at the phone, signal strength strong. Lisp spoke again, his voice quieter, almost calm.

  “You want your Uncle Mike?”

  “Yes. I want Uncle Mike, and I want to speak to Uncle Mike.”

  “You can talk but not now. You go to Koh Kong, on Cambodian border, have the money with you. Keep this phone with you. When you get there you can talk to Uncle Mike and we make exchange. Straight exchange this time, no tricks. You go now.”

  “Not today. I broke my arms I need treatment. It’ll be tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow.” He hung up.

  Leon. What sounded like a woman had opened a door and called Lisp, ‘Leon’. A break, a lucky break. A lot can be done with a first name. Assuming of course he was using his real first name. Something nagged at me about the woman’s voice. That feeling you have when you leave the house and know that you’ve forgotten something but ignore it – and you get halfway down the street when you realize you’ve left your wallet at home.

  Shades of Gray

  19 May 2010 Pak Nam 6 pm

  We stayed out of the city and disembarked on the Samut Sakhon side of the river. Mother owned the land opposite her and Por's house. Her boat, a Bertram 42, was waiting for us. Even from here I could see the pall of black smoke rising above Bangkok.

  The redshirt encampment had been stormed by the army about the time I was waking up on the ledge. In the early afternoon, the stage where the red shirt leaders were making their last speeches was reached and some were arrested and some escaped. A foreign journalist and at least ten others were killed in the day’s fighting. Over forty buildings had been set on fire and looting in the department stores next to the redshirt encampment had been widespread. Pockets of resistance held out and a curfew, at six pm, had just gone into effect. There was trouble in other provinces in the north and northeast. Muted whispers circulated of the potential for civil war, mostly from Farang, posturing from pseudo-intellectual backgrounds who didn’t know shit about what was happening on the ground.

  I learned all of this in the backseat of the Cherokee, using twitter and the net. On the cell phone, I learned of deals made behind the scenes. Only naïve CNN and BBC reporters pitched this as a battle between rich and poor, the elite versus the downtrodden. Even the dumbest Thai knew it was a lot more complicated. Elite versus elite, each with a tapestry of past and present favors and feuds, captains and foot soldiers, all with their own agenda, to be executed with a weather eye on the way the wind was blowing. Shades of gray.

  Money, cold hard cash, close to the amounts I’d just hauled around Thailand had been spent and made. Bosses putting their boys on the street for a payment to a Swiss bank account. The fight on the street had been fierce, close, and was ongoing. Points were being made, scored, and tallied. This phase, the phase of a medieval fortress in the middle of downtown Bangkok, was over, bar the curtain being dropped. The Fat Lady had sung.

  There was little need to play dead now that I knew Big Tiger was the force behind the Cambodians trying to kill me. He was high on my list of priorities but first task was resting up and getting Uncle Mike back safely.

  Mother and Pim came across in the Bertram. Standing in the cockpit, Pim a good few centimeters taller than Mother, it struck me how similar they looked. Not in looks but in stance. The boat boy maneuvered in and the boys waiting on the dock gathered in the lines, tying the boat off. Mother and Pim stepped off and the boys immediately made a human chain, the heavy blue plastic bags in a pile by the dock.

  Mother walked over and stood in front of me. I saw a look of shock flash across Pim’s face as she got close enough to see my mine. I smiled. Pim looked even more horrified. Mother reached out, held my jaw, and turned my face left and right. I had a flashback to when I was eight. She looked in my eyes – we shared the flashback. Thais are conservative by nature. We avoid “overt” public displays of affection, such as kissing or hugging. Mother hugged me, squeezing me tight. She stood back and shot a glance at Chai. It lasted a second but froze the far side of the river for a while. Chai shuffled his combat boots and studied the ground between them.

  “It wasn’t Chai’s fault, Mother. He was just following me.” The flashback merged with the present, to the word.

  “I ought to give the both of you a good spanking. What the hell did you think you were doing driving around on your own with that kind of money? You ought to know better.” She rounded on Chai, “and since when did you think that you were to follow his orders?” Chai wisely, did not answer this, and did not grin. I was not so wise.

  “And what are you smiling about? Your father’s in a Cambodian hospital with his leg blown off, your Uncle Mike is in the hands of a sadistic madman and you’re driving a forklift truck loaded with a hundred million off a cliff. Oh yes, don’t look surprised. Of course I know what happened. I had a full report from the colonel before you left for the site.” Pim’s mouth had dropped open. Fifteen grown men, stood perfectly still, me included, and I got rid of the grin. Mother was pissed off. She turned to face the others.

  “Get busy loading the money,” she said quietly.

  There was a mad scramble to load money and be spared the wrath of Mother. I thought about joining in but decided against it. Looking at the way Chai was sneaking sideways glances at the boat, I could tell he’d had the same thought. Mother turned her attention back to us.

  “Since it appears that you have forgotten, let me remind you both. Your job, Chance, is to make sure this family is safe and healthy, and your job, Chai, is to make sure he is safe and healthy. Are we clear on what our jobs are?” She had her hands on hips. Pim was grinning. I fought the urge. I‘m not suicidal.

  “Yes, Mother!” Chai and I said in unison. She turned her back on us and stalked off to the boat. Chai and I shared a grin. For all the times we’d been there. Then Pim climbed in.

  “What are you two grinning about? This isn’t fucking funny. Did I hear Mere Joom say you drove a forklift off a cliff? With all the money? And you were on a boat waiting for him. While he drove around Phuket with a hundred million in cash. Is that it?”

  “Well no, it wasn’t exactly like that, and it wasn’t a very high cliff.”

  “I have to go help Mother.” Chai grinned at me and escaped. Coward.

  “Pim, it’s done. It’s past. It was a complete fuck up but no one got killed and we still have the money. Well actually, one guy might have been killed but he was on their side.”

  “You mean you’ve killed another person? That’s three in a week.” Her m
outh was hanging open again.

  “Let’s talk about this later. Now’s not the time. Okay? It looks like Mother’s ready to head back.” I nodded at the boat, the last of the bags on board and Mother standing in the stern.

  Pim nodded, the news of my latest killing quieting her questions for the moment. In the space of a week the Chance side of my life had pretty much wiped out the half she thought Samuel Harper had been. She looked like she was trying to figure out if what remained was the half she wanted.

  Despite Joom’s mood, the river was not frozen over and we made swift time to the opposite shore. Ba Nui who’d answered and dropped the phone looked at me with terror. Mother stopped and assured her I was not a ghost and encouraged her to take a feel of my arm to be sure. It looked as if Ba Nui was not convinced on the first and declined absolutely on the second, grabbing Mother’s hand bag, and taking off up the path to the house.

  As we reached the top of the path and walked around the pool, Mother turned.

  “You’re staying here tonight. I’ve prepared your room. Pim, of course you will stay again tonight. The guest room is yours for as long as you need it.” It wasn’t a request or a suggestion.

  “Yes, Mother.” There was no way that Mother would let Pim and I share a room in her house if we weren’t married. Never spoken but understood by all. Cultural rules telepathy. Thailand is a very male dominated society. Run by women. We all know that.

  My room was on the second floor at the back of the house overlooking the river, down the hall from Mother and Por’s room. Pim was in one of the guest rooms on the third floor. My room had a window seat. It was my favorite place to read. I hadn’t been back there in ages. After a long hot soak I lay in the window seat, lights reflecting off the river. I looked around the room: a silver gun Mother had bribed me with to get me to go to the dentist when I was six; my degree on the wall - the joy in their faces when I looked out for them in the crowd after receiving it; the .22 air rifle - Por telling me never to point it at anything I didn’t mean to destroy. The movie of my life played scenes queued by the objects in the room.

  I thought of Pim. Her intelligence, beauty, strength of character and I thought of the choice I had to make. I felt guilty that my planning to leave the family had brought this bad luck upon us. Irrational I know, but only if you’re a Farang. If I left the family, Mother and Por would be heart broken. If I didn’t leave the family, Pim would leave me. The look on her face when she’d learned I’d killed again, a look I didn’t want to see again.

  There was a soft tap on the door. Pim. She sat down on the polished teak wood floor next to the window seat, didn’t say a word, looking out at the river, her right ear waiting for words from me.

  “I don’t enjoy killing.”

  “I know.”

  “Only when it is a matter of life and death. Yes, I’ve killed. Last one was an accident. He was behind the door of the container when I crashed it with the forklift. He may have survived but I doubt it. If someone came to harm you, I would kill them before they had the chance, if I could.”

  “How many people have you killed?”

  “Six including the last guy.”

  She nodded. A tear swelled up from the eye I could see and rolled down her cheek, making a spot the size of a one baht coin on the white cotton of the seat's cushion.

  “I killed a kitten once, in London, outside my flat in Kensington late one night. We’d just come back from the pub. The kitten was in the gutter next to the pavement. It had been run over by a car, its back and hind legs crushed. It was crying in agony. I was the designated driver, only had one glass of wine all night. Stone cold sober. I drove my mini over the kitten. I still feel the bump the car made when it ran over the kitten. I still think about it. How do you live with it?” Her voice was barely above a whisper. She laid her head on my thigh. I stroked her hair.

  “It’s done. It is the past. They were situations. Me or them. Karma. I carry the faces of all of those I have killed and I’ve thought countless times about each one. Could I have done it differently? I can live with it because I am alive. It’s the only answer I’ve come up with.”

  A Mickey Mouse Exchange

  20 May 2010 Trat 8:30 am

  It was a three hundred and seventy-five kilometer drive from Mother’s house to Hat Lek, Little Beach, in Trat province. We left just after five in the morning, three black Lexus RX350’s, each carrying 33 million dollars. Red siren lights and two BMW police cars led the charge. We made the distance in just under three hours.

  There were nine of us, excluding the cops, all we could fit in the vehicles. Chai, Tum and me traveled in one, Cheep and his boys in the other two. The rest of our crew was on full alert back in Bangkok as rumors of a redshirt protest surfaced. When I left, Mother was telling organizers of both red and yellow shirts that if anyone came to her district to cause trouble, they’d be getting a beating. So far no one had shown up. The red shirts might take on the army and the government, but Mother was a whole new level.

  Pim and I had shared a muted goodbye, a strange dreamy look still in her eye. It kept surfacing in my mind all the way to Trat. We had pulled over before the town of Trat and removed the sirens from the vehicles. Now we were just a caravan of “Poo Yai” – big shots – on our way for a weekend’s gambling at the Koh Kong Casino. Next to the casino was‘Safari World’ with its crocodile show. We’d supplied the crocs and the training for the show. But all that was on the Cambodian side of the border where gambling was legal.

  Hat Lek is one of the quieter border crossings with Cambodia. A seaside town, more fishing than tourist boats, with most buildings single story and made of wood. The main road split the heart of the town in two, continuing right to the border crossing. A trickle of tourists, bent double with backpacks, made their way to the border crossing. We had taken over a small restaurant about three hundred meters from the border. The restaurant backed onto the sea. I sat at a rear table with Chai and Cheep. The view looked out over the Gulf of Thailand. On the table in front of me, Lilly’s phone, signal strong. Silent.

  Three cups of bad coffee later, the phone rang.

  “So you made it. You don’t look as pretty as you used to. Maybe your HiSo girlfriend will find another man.”

  “Let’s skip the bullshit and get to the point. Where and when?”

  “Right now, Koh Kong bridge.”

  “That’s in Cambodia. We’ll never get across with all this cash.”

  “One vehicle, two people, already cleared. Thai and Cambodian checkpoints. Just drive through.” I hadn’t expected that. Lisp or Leon had more clout than I’d imagined. “But leave now.” He hung up.

  I picked up the phone, nodded at Cheep.

  “Get everything loaded in one car. You stay here and stay on the comms. If we change route or have an issue, I’ll call you. Chai you come with me.”

  The car was over its maximum payload so Chai was taking it easy. We crawled through the Thai and Cambodian checkpoints, the officers turning the other way as we passed. Koh Kong bridge was seven and half kilometers from the border. Driving in Cambodia - anywhere, but especially Cambodia - with a hundred million in cash was not a low risk proposition.

  Keyed up, talking to Cheep and keeping him informed of progress, Chai and I eyes moved left right to see any threats, keeping the speed low. A couple of taxis overtook us but apart from that we were alone. We reached the bridge fifteen minutes later. Chai lifted his Steiner 7 X 50s.

  “There’s a car parked about three hundred meters up. Three people inside. One’s wearing a hood. The others have caps and cartoon masks on.”

  Lilly’s phone rang.

  “Looks like the guy in the car is talking on a phone.”

  Chai answered Lilly’s phone and held it to my ear. We guessed they might be watching us and I was wearing the plaster box I’d had made last night. It fitted up to my shoulders and could be broken apart with a twist of the wrist. Inside was just big enough for the two Berettas. It was heavy an
d itched but might give us an edge.

  “Get out of the car, and I’ll get out of mine. We will start walking with your Uncle Mike. You give me your car keys and the money. I give you my car key and Uncle Mike.”

  “You take the hood off Uncle Mike.” Chai swapped hands with the phone and the binoculars. Watching. There was a delay.

  “They’re taking the hood off. It’s Uncle Mike. He looks okay. They’ve put the hood on him again now.”

  “So now you see. You walk. We walk. We pass each other on the bridge. Simple.” He hung up.

  “We walk across. Swap car keys in the middle.”

  Chai nodded, did a quick weapons check and climbed out. He walked around and opened the door for me. I climbed down.

  “Cheep, can you hear me?”

  “Yes, Chance. I can hear you.”

  “We’re making the exchange now. Keep the line open.”