Bangkok Burn (5 page)

“That's exactly what a smart ghost would say.”

“Khun Cheep, it's me - the this-life me. I'm alive. We faked the death for reasons I don't have time to explain, but I've got some problems and I need your help.”

“You scared the hell out of me. I nearly pissed myself.” He was half angry now, his voice petulant with indignation.

“Would sending an SMS been better?”

“No. Okay, what's the problem?”

I outlined the situation to Cheep. He was as furious as I was about Lilly and promised to work with Mother to arrange a good funeral. Meanwhile he'd put his boys on canvassing the area to see if we could come up with anything.

“Keep the news that I'm alive to yourself, okay. And tomorrow go get a few phones and some SIM cards Chai will update you with numbers to call.”

“Don't worry, Chance. Your uncle is my best friend in the world. Whatever you want, you call. When we find these people we kill them all. Yes?”

“Yes, Cheep. We kill them all.”

Uncle's Internet history came up with a bunch of investment forums, stock trading sites, news, music, Amazon and eBay. Nothing unusual. I went through his cache. Nothing. It was nearly 1 am. I debated having a drink, but with the painkillers Dr. Tom had given me, I persuaded myself not to. The pain was good for keeping me awake. I went back to the hard drive. More out of hope than conviction, I kept looking.

An hour later I still had nothing. And I had nothing left. Something was nagging at me, something that I knew I should be getting but I wasn't. The thought spun out to the sound of a fishing boat heading out to sea.

Natasha from Odessa

14 May 2010 Phuket 7:15 am

Skype.
The first word in my mind when I woke up. The Lisp had said don't bother trying to trace him because he was using Skype. Was that how they found Uncle Mike? Did Uncle Mike use Skype? I jumped out of bed, excited, heading for the living room. This was what had been nagging at me. A sharp pain in my arm, I turned. The IV drip machine hit me in the face, I'd forgotten to disconnect. I sat back down on the bed and got the plug out of the needle. I taped the needle back up. Not the best start to a day. It was 7:15 am. I was late getting up. I usually get up at 5, gives me more day.

Chai was in the open kitchen of the living room making coffee. It smelled good. The TV was on with the volume muted, Government Spokesman Colonel Sanserm all dimples. Sitting down on sofa, I grabbed the remote and turned the volume up while I booted up my notebook. I hoped that during the night a solution had been found to the political mess we were in. My hope was short-lived as Colonel Sanserm laid out the terms by which protestors had to leave the Ratchprasong rally site or face forceful eviction. To give you Farang a better idea of what was happening here in the Land of Smiles; imagine if a group of armed civilians took over Times Square and then fortified the area they had with a 12 feet high wall of sharpened bamboo stakes and rubber tires. And every now and then someone fired an M-79 grenade launcher at groups of people protesting against those behind the bamboo stakes.

The notebook was up and I switched to Uncle Mike's back up drive. Yes. Skype was there. I disconnected from wireless before I started the app; didn't want anyone knowing that I was in Uncle Mike's Skype. I turned his status to invisible and went straight to the conversations tab. I was working on a single piece of logic. Whoever kidnapped Uncle Mike must have been known to him. His house was hard to approach unnoticed; even the roof had sound sensors on it. Free-spirited he may be, but he wasn't blind to the idea that houses get robbed, especially Farang houses. So his security system was tight and he had a panic room. But nothing was damaged at the house which meant he had let them in or at least one of them. That meant he knew them.

All the conversations between happy_hippy45, and the people he was having them with made sense. Except one. Natasha. Natasha's profile gave me little to go on: female, user_name Natasha_Odessa, Country Russia. But there was a photo. Of a very beautiful woman. Whether it was a real photo, who knew? I went to the hard drive and searched for strings containing Natasha. Three files came up, with an extension I didn't recognize,.sgf. I left Skype on and then Googled “file extension .sgf”. At the top of the list, screen grabber file, a proprietary format of the Screen Grabber application used to capture video from Skype or MSN. I hit the url and landed on their site. A free download, valid for a 30 day trial. Two minutes later it was installed in my hard drive. I clicked on natasha_1st.sgf.

She was real. She was beautiful. And the only thing she was wearing was the microphone she was using to talk to Uncle Mike. She looked like she was in her late twenties maybe early thirties, everything firm and perky. Now call me cynical but True Love is not the first thing that springs to mind when I see a twenty-something hanging off the arm of a sixty-something.

To her credit though she was giving one heck of a performance. It was hard not to get a hard on. I mean it didn't look like she was acting, and us boys are always fascinated with the idea of a woman who loves sex. I focused on the room she was in, but it didn't give anything away. She was sitting in a straight-backed wicker bottomed chair, the walls of the room white. A single painting, I guessed a print of Van Gogh's Sunflowers, hung on the wall behind her above the wooden headrest of a single bed.

So, maybe, Lisp wasn't Scandinavian. Maybe he was Russian. I'm thinking this has “Honey-pot” written all over it. The other two files were more of the same except in the last she was dressed at first and then disrobed. I couldn't hear what she was saying. Apparently Screen Grabber only grabbed video, no sound. That was okay. I had a photo, a direction, and an erection.

I closed the notebook and walked out to the pool. Easing my butt over the edge I slipped in, the water deliciously cool. Conscious of the need to keep the dressing on my eye dry, I floated on my back feeling calmer. So here's what happened: Natasha is searching for a mark. She finds one, Uncle Mike. She eases in. No video at first, just a sexy Russian voice. She didn't dive straight into amateur porn, she waited till the fourth chat. Good on-line girls don't do porn on the first date. She probably hit him with the, “Honey, good news. Guess what? I’m coming to Thailand,” line right after show #4 where she showed him she could be a “good-girl” all dressed up - expensive executive chic.

Could Uncle Mike fall for that? Sure, why not? With her body and looks, any guy with a pulse could.

There was only one problem with the scenario above, and that was how did they get to know about me and the family? Rolled in with that, while I could see Uncle Mike falling for some cute Russian pussy and inviting her for a holiday, I couldn't see him telling her his net worth. Just not his style. I mean some guys like to talk about how much money they've got. Uncle Mike is, sort of, gleefully ashamed of his wealth.

I climbed out of the pool and went in for a shower. Washed the chlorine off. Got dressed. Down to my last t-shirt. I'm thinking to head back to Bangkok. Not likely to find out anything new here. They wouldn't stick around once they'd got their man.

I called out to the living room.

“Chai.”

“Yes”

“We’re heading back to Bangkok. Can you give me a hand with this eye-dressing? We should change it?”

“Yes”

A lot of people think that Chai can't speak English. His language skills are superb. He just doesn't like talking. He likes listening, especially to monks. Donates a fair part of what he earns to restoring temples. Maybe it's insurance.

Chai peeled the eye-dressing away. I was watching his face for any change of expression. Impassive, the dressing off, I waved Chai to one side so I could get a look at the damage. It wasn't pretty. I had a backward L shaped set of stitches running from my forehead near the bridge of my nose, right across my eyelid, just under the eyebrow and finishing at my temple. But it didn't look too puffy and pink, so not infected, just fucking ugly.

A trip to Korea, I thought, and segued into the staring dead eyes of Por's girlfriend.

Chai finished with the dressing.

“Settle up with the front desk.”

He nodded.

While Chai was checking us out of the hotel, I sent a screen capture of Natasha to Mother. She'd get it run through the Immigration Police database. Everyone coming in or out gets their photo snapped. If she was here, then she was there.

I scanned the online versions of The Nation, Bangkok Post, and the Thai dailies. Everyone's prognosis was the same. Bangkok was headed for a showdown. The big question on everybody's minds was whether the whole country would follow. Already, a train full of troops, allegedly headed for the three southern provinces where we have our own little jihad problem, had been stopped and held hostage. Only when the mayor of the town, and the army general in command of the train, guaranteed that the troops were really headed for the south, was the train allowed to continue. There's a fine line between protest and insurrection. It looked to me as if some of the reds had crossed it already. But again nothing is simple in this land. On a simplistic CNN level it was reds versus military. The reality is far more complex: The military may wear green on the outside, but this is Thailand so what they wear is their business, until the time comes when you have to take a side. Talk of watermelons, green outside red inside, and pineapples, green outside yellow inside, abounded on twitter.

The problem with trying to figure out what is happening in Thailand politically is that you have to understand that Thais are masters of deception. The “third hand” or “invisible hand” is there all the time. Oftentimes, more than one, and what looks like an open and shut case is actually a black box packed full of twists and turns, bubbling away in an atmosphere of rumor and vapor. CNN had the colors down to poor underdog red, versus rich elite yellow. Not getting that there are more colors here than a Dulux paint catalog, with a flip-side of shades of gray.

I checked my twitter stream, email, and sms. Nothing from Cheep or Dr. Tom. Chai came back. Stood in the doorway and nodded at me. I held up two fingers, starting to pack up the stuff. He walked over to the sofa I was on and sat down in the easy chair opposite me - the short-barreled Uzi across his knees, the muzzle pointed at the door.

“Chance.”

I stopped packing and looked him straight in the eye. It's an occasion when Chai talks.

“Yes.”

“We're going to kill them, right?”

I thought of Natasha. Heels of her feet on the edge of the straight-backed wooden chair with the wicker bottom, head thrown back, neck long and taut, quivering. I imagined Chai behind her slicing through the white skin with his carbon black K-Bar knife. It wasn't a pretty image.

“Yes Chai, we're going to kill them all.” He had a hint of smile on his lips. Aunt Nings’ Doberman had a look like that. Before it was fed.

Mustang Sally

14 May 2010 Bangkok 5 pm

Uncle Mike had a saying.
“Behind every pair of eyes, there's a life lived.” I was looking at Natasha's. It was research. The notebook on my lap. The red cell phone on the seat beside me rang. A last look; what's your story, Natasha? I closed the notebook. It was five in the evening. We were heading past Pinklao into Bangkok. Traffic was light going into the City, and heavy coming out. Rumors of an imminent military crackdown on the red shirts were all over the net. I answered the phone.

“Chance?”

“Yes, Cheep.”

“People saw a black van yesterday and a white van the day before. The doctor said Lilly died sometime in the morning the day before yesterday.”

“Anyone get a number on the van.”

“On the black van, yes. On the white no.”

“The black van was us. Anything else?”

“That's what I figured. No, nothing else.”

“Check around. See if anyone has heard anything about a Scandinavian or Russian gang doing kidnappings or extortion. I'll send a photo in a minute, but keep it low profile, okay.”

“Sure”.

I hung up. So the morning of the day that I was blown up, Uncle Mike was kidnapped. That was a big coincidence.

The army driver was snoring in the front seat while Chai drove trying to set a new land speed record between Phuket and Bangkok. I ran algorithms on the base stations numbers, listening to the Rolling Stones.