by Terry Morgan
CHAPTER 13
Every few weeks or so, Jim Smith would ride his motorcycle into Kanchanaburi, the provincial capital, and then catch an early morning bus to Bangkok. Sometimes he would stay for a night or two in a cheap hotel and use the time to replenish his stock of paper, paint and brushes. He would buy copies of English language newspapers and sometimes eat in an Italian restaurant to remind himself of European food. And he would sometimes sit in a roadside bar off of Sukhumvit road, watch the passing nightlife, drink a beer or two and, if he felt people were looking at him too closely, hide behind the pages of the newspaper or move away.
It was on one of his first trips to stock up on paint materials that he had felt someone tap him on the shoulder. "James?"
The voice that accompanied the tap on his shoulder was somehow familiar but, nevertheless, it made him jump and prepare himself to deny everything. Jim's hair was longer than it had ever been. It was shoulder length and, together with a heavy sun tan, beard, grubby tee shirt, khaki shorts and sandals he was surprised that anyone recognised him. "James? Jim? Jim Smith?" Jim ducked further behind his paper but then turned to see who it was.
Standing, looking down at him was Colin Foreman, the Chairman of a business group, the Federation of European Small Enterprises, at whose annual conference Jim had spoken a year before. "Jim, I hardly recognise you. It is you, isn't it?"
What followed was a discussion that went on until the early hours of the next morning - a discussion with, perhaps, the only person that Jim could have hoped to have met by pure chance. By midnight a plan was already being hatched.
"I decided soon after arriving here that I would, somehow, find a way to prove what I had been saying," Jim told Colin as he began to relax in the unfamiliar company of a fellow Englishman. "But I'm not precisely sure what to do yet. I toyed with the idea of going back to the UK but frankly I'm worried that I'd be targeted all over again. And what would I now say to Margaret, my wife? Beg for forgiveness for something I've not done? Crawl back promising to give it all up and go bird-watching and hill walking? I could not do that, Colin. I don't want to return home like a guilty dog with its tail between its legs and then abandon it all. I just can't do it.
"But I feel I'm living under a type of stigma - a stigma that goes with knowing you were once looked upon as highly successful but were then seen for what you really were - an incompetent failure. I can't live with that either. And I don't want to return home to be shunned or be the subject of yet more mocking cartoons about my failed marriage and my style that does not fit the image they expect. I believe in free speech but I honestly believe I will continue to be treated as an idealistic oddity hung up on matters which others find unimportant, irrelevant or downright untrue. So, as I don't want to go home just yet, I want to find a way of dealing with it from here."
"So you live here in Bangkok, Jim?"
"No," Jim said. "It's too noisy, too crowded, too cluttered and too easy for someone with connections and resources to track me down and deal with me in whatever way they decide."
"Is it that dangerous, Jim?"
"Oh yes." Jim replied and took a mouthful of the beer that lay on the table in front of him. Then he took a deep breath. "Yes, I do think it's that dangerous. I had begun to touch some very sensitive nerves although I think they thought I knew more than I did. But I left behind a big pile of unfinished business. It's not revenge, Colin. I'm above that. This is about proving I am right about the extent of corruption that exists. It's about showing how vindictive campaigns can be launched by people in power to stop someone from exposing the truth. It's about doing what is right despite the risk. But if I am to wage war on powerful individuals with no limits to their resources and no limits to the extent they'll go to silence someone, then I think it would be a lot safer waging it from somewhere other than London or Europe. But it's still unfinished business and I've never ever walked away from a job half done. I owe it to myself and to the many, like you, who believed there was something behind what I was saying.
"So I still feel I let them down by appearing to run away. But I had no choice and all I intended to do was to go abroad for a few days to think, to decide on a strategy. I had no idea I'd end up here where days have stretched to months, but I do not want to be associated with cowardice or with lacking a will to persevere. That, on top of the character they painted of me as an incompetent fool, is not one I can live with. So, yes, I will stay here until I find a way to continue what I started. Then I might return home."
"So you live here alone, Jim?"
"Yes," he replied.
They had moved from the noisy roadside bar to Colin's hotel on Sukhumvit Road and in the plush, air-conditioned lounge bar, Jim was shivering. "You feeling cold, Jim?"
"Yes," he admitted, "I suppose I've grown used to heat."
"So do you live without air-conditioning?"
"Yes."
"Good lord. It's been like a furnace here today. It's a house? An apartment?"
"A house."
"Here in Bangkok?"
"No."
"So where, Jim?"
"I'd rather not say, Colin. In fact it might be better for you if you don't know. It's remote because I appreciate countryside, peace, solitude and the satisfaction that comes from quiet contemplation - meditation if you prefer."
"You make it sound as if you've become a hermit, Jim - a monk. And what do you think about when you're.....meditating?"
Jim looked up at the huge, glass chandelier that hung in the centre of the hotel lobby. "I suppose I've become a sort of Buddhist - not of the temples, chanting, ringing bells, rituals and burning incense sort, but closer - at least I like to think so - to the original concept. I was very angry when I arrived. Living here alone has calmed me."
Jim leaned back, closed his eyes. "Revenge causes ‘angry minds’ - that is how it is put in Buddhist writings," he said quietly. "There is a delightful saying by a monk called Shantideva who wrote: 'This enemy, this anger, has no function other than to cause me harm. There is no evil like anger and no virtue like patience.'
"I have become a more patient man, Colin. But patience itself takes many forms including the patience of not retaliating and the patience of voluntarily enduring suffering. Yes, I've done a bit of suffering here and it's not all been voluntary. All I want is a chance to prove I was right all along."
Colin had relaxed into the back of his chair. "Mmm. So what do you do with your time, other than.....other than this meditating?"
"I paint. I came to Bangkok to buy more materials."
"And you're not bored, Jim? You used to be so busy, so dynamic."
"I am very, very busy," Jim said, defensively. "It is a continuation of how I always lived my life - by commitment and self discipline. Other than that unfinished business, I am very content. I have no need of material things. I never did. Money is nothing. It never was. I made a lot but to me it was a measure of my success in business - a yardstick. I didn't really want it or need it. In fact I still find it difficult to spend money unless for food or things to do with work.
"I look, see something, decide I don't really need it and move on. Others seem to worship money and possessions. There is a gross unfairness in a society where those that already have money steal from the millions of their fellow beings who have actually created the wealth in the first place. Greed perpetrated by these people just because they have acquired the status or the means is true corruption. Though, perhaps, they are to be pitied for believing that money will buy them the happiness and contentment they crave If so then they have failed to understand the transience of life and the finality of death and for that I blame our religious leaders. Perhaps, too, they are so ashamed of appearing unsuccessful that they use fraud and corruption as the solution. The only shame I felt was in being associated with incompetence, naivety and failure. That is now what drives me. I want to prove I was none of those things - that I was right all along.
"I am content with what I have but cannot forget what h
appened to me because it could happen to others and perhaps it already has. But it plays on my mind. I cannot forget Margaret. I cannot forget how the press treated her. I still remember the TV pictures of her when those photos of me were published. It was a lie, Colin. Someone with powerful connections was paying to circulate fictitious lies. It was a clever and complete character assassination deliberately designed to destroy me. Someone, somewhere had the money to pay for stories to be invented - deliberately. They wanted to destroy me and my marriage and if I had not gone away, if I had still persevered with my campaign and dug still more deeply into what I suspected was going on, then I just wonder how far they might have gone. I think they believed I knew far more than I'd made public."
"And do you know more that you made public?" Colin Foreman asked.
Across the coffee table from Colin, Jim leaned back into the soft comfort of the five star hotel's easy chair, wrapped his bare arms around himself and shivered again. "I have my suspicions, Colin. My suspicion is that it goes to the very top and is even more widespread than I suggested. And I also believe that it will become more and more difficult to detect and prove as time goes by as they use more sophisticated technology and become increasingly expert at using threats, bribery and blackmail to stifle any attempts to expose it."
Jim took a deep breath.
"I think there is a structure in place specifically aimed at hiving off huge amounts of international economic aid and humanitarian aid money. Governments and newspapers like to blame African despots and militant groups for stealing foreign aid money, building palaces, buying weapons and expensive cars, spreading extremism and living lives of five star luxury far removed from the poverty of the people they govern, or for whom the aid was intended. There is no doubt they do, but I think they should look more closely to home. It is also wrong that billions of Euros and Dollars of international aid money from hardworking taxpayers finds its way back to criminals, politicians and bureaucrats working in public bodies and operating in a way that benefits its protectors, not at all dissimilar to the mafia. It is a well known fact that the greatest percentage of world wealth is now held by a tiny fraction of individuals. That is not right, but it is particularly wrong that the so-called hard working tax payer is ripped off by politicians and the vast bureaucracy that they have deliberately created for their own protection."
"You really think it is as organised as that, Jim?" asked Colin.
"Yes," said Jim, "Because I myself was approached.
"Not so long ago I lost several big contracts to sell water purification equipment to West Africa. The purchases often depended on international aid money - all perfectly proper, legal and correct. But in all cases there was a last minute change to the tender specifying the equipment. We couldn't match it. In fact I didn't know anyone who could. But who gets given the contract? An unknown company. Did they deliver? No, suddenly they declare insolvency. What happened to the money? Disappeared. Did anyone check what went wrong? Yes, half-heartedly. Did I check? You bet. What did I find? The audit trail of the bid tampered with and, clearly, the company who got the business had not been properly checked out. Its trading history? Artificial. Its references? Forgeries. And who is in just the right position to interfere with due diligence and proper adjudication process? Bureaucrats. And who sits behind the bureaucrats? Politicians. You want me to go on?"
"Christ!" said Colin. He had been sitting well forward as Jim was speaking so quietly. "And who approached you?"
"Before I got elected and before I'd sold the business, someone with a Dutch accent phoned me. He didn't give his name but asked if I wanted to guarantee we got more business. Already smelling a rat I thought for a minute but then said yes. I was then invited to meet someone called Philippe in London - the Intercontinental Hotel, Park Lane no less. I asked who Philippe was. I was told that Philippe would explain at the meeting. So, I check this name out and, yes, there's a fellow called Philippe Eijsackers who was then head of the so-called pre-qualification team. Still smelling a rat, I wander along to Park Lane and stand around for thirty minutes. Then I get approached. Was he Philippe I ask. No, says the man in the same Dutch accent as on the phone. Sorry, Philippe couldn't make it but would I come upstairs to a room he'd booked.
"Up we go. I find I'm talking to a guy who won't give his name but claims he can fix it for Smith Technology to get a share of the next few suitable aid bids that go in. I ask how. I get told not to ask too many questions, but as long as I put a thirty three percent commission his way on signing the contract he'd sort it and much more as well. And so it goes on for thirty minutes. At the end I say I'll think about it and go back to my office. Next day, a DVD arrives in the mail - a nice quality recording of my conversation at the Intercontinental Hotel but with a slight crackling sound at the end and a Dutch voice saying thanks for agreeing to the commission arrangement.
"Now does that sound to you like the start of some sort of blackmailing or an attempt to mess me and my business about, Colin?"
Colin shook his head. "And you've not told this to anyone?"
"No. You are the only one - so far. And where is that original DVD now? Who knows. But you can bet it was to be the next phase in their attack on me. I still have a copy. It's with a solicitor, but it wouldn't do me a lot of good in a court of law."
They ordered coffee and while they waited for a waitress to serve, Colin asked what he could do. Jim waited for the waitress to finish, then leaned forward again and pushed his long hair back behind his ears. To Colin it looked tidier that way. but Jim was still talking through the beard.
"I'm still looking for someone," Jim said. "Not a private investigator but someone who might work with me on this. It could be someone in a company familiar with the way international aid and public sector funding bids operate - especially European and US funds. The person would need to understand that there would be serious repercussions for them if it became known that they were involved with me. In other words, I'm looking for someone a bit special."
Colin put his cup down and looked at Jim. "There is someone that immediately comes to mind, Jim. I know him well. He's a member of FESE and was at the conference you spoke at. I also know he liked what you'd been saying. He's another one who is inclined to get mad with the system. And there's more to him than meets the eye."
Jim stayed silent. He could see Colin thinking deep and hard. Then: "Walton Associates, Jim. The guy who started the firm is Jonathan Walton."
"Never heard of him," said Jim.
"In that case, leave it with me. I'll tell Jon just a little bit and see where it all leads."