Escape (27 page)

The snatch was on schedule until the gunmen’s minivan broke down at a busy Chiang Mai intersection. A traffic policeman soon asked the driver why he had three terrified
farangs
in his van. The traffic cop was answered by two bullets to his chest but did not die before returning the compliment to the assistant gunman. These exchanges did not help the flow of traffic and within an hour the scene was transformed. Many police, reporters; even a TV crew from Channel 3, the military-owned channel.

By lunchtime a locally famous and respected Buddhist abbot had grandly negotiated the release of the children. This left the lone gunman in the minivan with the American wife. To ensure that there could be no further misunderstandings the gunman had bound the trigger of his revolver with copper wire so that only his thumb kept the gun’s hammer from discharging a round into his hostage’s head.

News of the bungled kidnapping displeased Uncle Lou who immediately made fresh arrangements. The abbot would now substitute himself as hostage and the woman would be released. Then, using another vehicle, the abbot and the gunman would travel to Chiang Mai Airport. I suppose any plan would appeal to the gunman after seven hours stuck at a set of traffic lights with a dead accomplice and a lethal hostage. Uncle then commissioned an army commander to surround the area with a special unit. Unfortunately the Americans had earlier reacted by insisting that the army make every effort to have the gunman taken alive. Accounting for this, Uncle Lou ordered in a sniper team attached to the Chiang Mai police with its seconded rifleman bearing special instructions.

All this had taken time and the afternoon heat in the minivan was extreme. Just as the abbot approached to offer himself the sweat upon the thumb of the gunman allowed the hammer to trip. The wife of the American DEA agent was killed immediately by that unplanned shot. Less than a second later the gunman too was killed by a single shot, fired from the rifle of the man from uncle.

‘So no one knew who was behind it.’ Tommy was now emphatic. ‘The gunman dead, just like when Kennedy was killed.’

‘Or nothing
like
, Tommy.’ I felt sure of a connection with his uncle’s death. ‘Don’t you know the Americans will never forget that? They can’t let it go.’

‘What do you mean?’

I tried to bridge an East–West divide. ‘Why do you think you’ve had so much trouble over the years? Your uncle was arrested in a big way in a Thai–DEA operation. When that wouldn’t stick he was killed by agreement with his underlings—I don’t suppose they wanted the curse extended to them. This killing of the wife of an agent. It’s unforgivable, as they see it. You put a foot wrong and you’ll be buried, too. And everyone close to you will get hammered.’

Tommy was shaking his head but he was taking this in.

‘Tommy. Something you must understand about Westerners, this tribe from the north. We never forgive, even if it kills us.’

So there was no grand conspiracy with me at its centre. A dark deed had been done many years ago and still we descendants felt the vengeance of inherited ritual instructions. Uncle Lou eventually paid for the deaths he’d ordered, Tommy would soon be immobilised by drip-fed terror and I—well, I was fixed to be swatted with the casual brutality by which any marksman might strike a gadfly that obscures his sights.

Some faces became clearer: the guest Australian policeman at Chinatown as I was taken in; his look of mild wonder. Not at me but at the speed and accuracy of the technology. That in a land still wire-tangled that the DEA could call him within minutes to say Tommy had just phoned Large Raj at his travel agency to warn that David would be there within the hour. Such restrained delight as this foreign liaison officer could call his Thai counterpart to announce the future: ‘We have information that ...’And then glow in the magic by withholding the source of knowledge.

Another face: Abe Souzel’s drunken ecstasy of revenge when telling his new clients, ‘You’ll meet that Westlake out there. He didn’t listen. He’s for the drop!’

Before Dr Tommy left he offered this prescription for hope: that after my trial, then after my higher court appeal and a commutation of death to life imprisonment; after a decent interval he would make sure that the Supreme Court of Thailand reversed the earlier conviction. Five, six years at the most, he said. I did not take this medicine well. I told him that if he wanted to be one of us this feeble assurance was not good enough. That we did not treat each other this way. It was not for me to listen to his words, I said, only to see him act. Tommy and I argued. I might have been harsh in that way a person can be when there is nothing left to ask. It’s not worth recollecting the details.

Chas was waiting for me with lawyer Montree on the tenth floor of the courthouse a week later as I clinked across the foyer in chains with my bored guard.

‘This is unexpected,’ I said to Chas as I stopped at the benches. ‘I thought courthouses are on your list along with zoos and funerals as places never to visit?’

‘I almost never made it.’ Chas watched Montree obligingly distract my guard with gossip. ‘I went out to the prison by mistake.’

I sat on the bench while Chas told me how he’d arrived at Klong Prem on foot. That he’d found himself by the south wall, took a wrong turn and walked 600 metres, only to find himself behind the prison.

‘Completely lost, as usual,’ Chas said as though it happened often. ‘The moat on all sides, I suppose twenty-five yards across in places. Reminds me of when I took a swimming certificate sponsored by some newspaper when I was a kid. That was a twenty-five yard swim.’

Blundering on Chas had to walk along a narrow path some 700 paces before the next turn east. ‘Stupid really, Charlie had told me the guards live in houses along that side. Damned if I could see them, what with all the tall reeds growing along my side of the moat.’

Chas had not long finished his most detailed account of his morning’s errors when we were separated. My day’s hearing was about to start.

‘I think you’ll find you have another visitor this afternoon,’ Chas called as I was taken to the courtroom. ‘So I’ll see you at the jail tomorrow.’

The visitor of the afternoon was Rick. The prison was closing its main gates as I returned from court so I had no time to have my chains removed and only a few minutes to hear Rick’s tales of misfortune.

He had flown to Singapore on the night of his release. Singapore immigration officers refused him entry and so Rick then flew to Hong Kong. This much I knew. What I did not know was that Rick had been issued with a new passport by the British High Commission within forty-eight hours and had returned to Thailand that same week. That was six weeks ago.

‘I’ve been trying to get out to see you ever since I got back. I’d even arranged it with the chief. Didn’t he tell you?’ Rick held up two bags of groceries. ‘I got you some stuff. Clothes, cigs, food.’

‘Don’t suppose there’s a key in the cake?’ I joggled the string holding my chains aloft.

Rick pushed a finger into one of the shopping bags as though making sure he hadn’t been robbed in the queue. ‘I put some Cheerios in here. The thinking man’s Frootloop, you know.’

‘Great.’

‘Well, sorry, all right! I lost the damn key thing. All that flying about. It was touch and go even getting back here.’

‘You get to meet Chas?’ I had less than a minute to talk as loathsome Eric, the visit trusty, was making faces.

‘Only for a few seconds I was on my way somewhere. Seems like a good man.’ Rick put the packages before me and searched for his car keys. ‘I’ll be out again soon. I gave the credit card to your friend. Anything you need?’

To that I chuckled. ‘You’d better go, Rick. They’re closing the gate. Don’t want to get stuck in here again.’

Chas was puzzled about Rick. We’d been accounting for all the bit players in conversation the following day at Klong Prem.

‘I understand the Dean Reed thing, I think, but I can’t figure this Rick. Why give him a credit card? Did you really expect anything from him?’ Chas moved closer to the bars to avoid the noonday sun.

‘Not much, I suppose.’

I signalled Eric who was nine metres away grinning at a Thai woman visitor. ‘Rick is no informer and he has a good ear. You should hear him tell about the British liaison officer when he was arrested. The story’s not important but the thing is Rick recalled every word, every look. He’s a good barometer. More than that, Rick has that house at Naklua. Stable, always there. If the day ever came—’ I broke off as Eric was nearing.

Chas nodded toward Eric, asking in a low voice, ‘Who’s that woman he’s talking to? She’s sobbing now.’

‘She’s the sister of some poor doper kid the trusties sat on last week. She came to visit this morning before you arrived. Now she’s been told the brother’s dead—’

Eric had arrived.

‘Everything all right over here?’

‘Not really, Eric. We need to move over to the other side. Somewhere out of the sun.’

As I walked along the pen from my side and Eric escorted Chas, the visit trusty tried to amuse us with the story of the sister. She had arrived for the visit as usual, waited, bought her brother two bags of food from the prison shop, waited and then, after two hours, had been told that her brother was in the cooler of the morgue. Eric had added something imaginative about her brother’s drug use and she had begun to cry.

‘Silly woman.’ Eric guided Chas to a quiet corner in the shade. ‘I told her, “Don’t worry Madame, the prison shop will refund the money for the food you bought. Don’t upset yourself.” Ha ha!’ Eric found his own wit incomparable.

After Eric had lurched away snickering I told Chas about my consultation with Tommy and my belief that the intense heat had its origin in the vengeance demanded by the Americans upon all connected to the man who shot the DEA agent’s wife.

‘No disrespect, David,’ Chas thought nevertheless. ‘You’re pretty far down the line from Uncle Lou.’

I couldn’t see anything else. ‘When you salt the earth, nothing should grow.’

‘Yes, I suppose there’s the point that the DEA is, after all, a volunteer force—normally not even front line—and governments have to be seen as loyal to their volunteers. Then again, you might simply have been the only game in town when the moment came to test some new toys. The secret phone gear, in this case. Who can resist testing the latest equipment when it arrives? You know, on that basis they’ve smart-bombed the power grids of no fewer than two countries I can think of back to the age of steam. No reason to think that they’d hesitate to blow a small fuse in your case to test a new system—if you’ll forgive the analogy.’

Chas then went on to tell of Dean Reed’s failed attempts to get started in a new career. ‘He tried to get a visa for Australia in Kuala Lumpur. Bowled out in the first over. I don’t think he had more than six months left on his passport. Went on to Singapore where the US Embassy took his old passport and gave him a one-year temporary. Apparently Dean didn’t like the idea of going back to the US, which will be the only place he’ll be issued with a full passport.’

‘Is that normal?’ I wondered.

‘There’s something in the closet there but I don’t think it changes things. If you wanted the opposition to think all your hopes are down to Dean Reed then he’s the man to keep them bamboozled all right.’

‘Not for long. I can’t keep my case dragging on for much longer—it’s been over a year now.’

Chas began rolling up 1,000-baht notes and threading them through the wire. He said, ‘I’m heading home for Christmas at the end of the week. Next year I’ll be flying through on my way to Sri Lanka. I’ll have a few days here—’ Chas paused to check that no one was watching. ‘I think Michael is sending you a Christmas parcel.’

‘Yes, I’d sent him a Dear Santa.’ I unrolled and pocketed the THB18,000. ‘No sense giving Eric a commission on this lot. Although some of this might be spent arranging a Chrissy present for my favourite trusty.’ I narrowed my eyes, hinting at making life unpleasant for Eric.

‘With my blessings,’ said Chas.

Charlie Lao had left for Vientiane to visit old family and Chas had returned to Australia to see new family, for he’d been told of the birth of another grandchild. Sten and I did our best to ignore Christmas while worrying about whom to elect to room #57.

‘What about Steve, the new English kid?’ I suggested.

‘The disco-biscuit king of Khao San Road?’ Sten groaned.

Young Steve was facing trial for selling ecstasy tablets. His last days of freedom came as he moved upmarket into the clubs patronised by Bangkok’s
dèk Hi So
(high-society offspring), especially the glossy daughters of the newly rich Thais. The Thai papas didn’t immediately thank this knobbly-kneed foreign git Steve for corrupting their children. In fact they had him arrested.

‘No, not him in the room,’ Sten pleaded. ‘Talks too much. Anyway he’s only here for a shit and a shave—not more than twelve, fifteen years. We don’t want some flibbertigibbet like that.’

‘Maybe your friend Eric wants to move to the room.’ Jet was at his easel, contentedly pencilling chubby babies on commission although he still had spare attention for sarcasm. Eric, the visit trusty, had fallen from favour. Stripped of his profitable job and then sent to Building Five where he held a thin line between one hundred Nigerians and ranks of angry Thais. In a related incident some
farang
troublemaker beyond Klong Prem’s walls had aided the sister of the dead junkie with a newspaper contact. A private autopsy had been funded and a prison doctor and the box-factory guard had taken leave. (Before anyone should become misty-eyed over this, be assured that messing with Eric was only a diversion on my part as I had extra funds that month. However, I shall not speak for Chas.)

I made a suggestion for our room space. ‘How about Calvin? He’s been asking to come back from Two.’

‘He’s the short one,’ said Sten. ‘Sleeps a lot?’

So we agreed on Calvin, our American friend. Calvin had found the heroin overpowering while living among the many Westerners of Building Two. More than a temptation, a quite affordable vice, for the dope was just cheap enough and Calvin just rich enough to balance an eternal addiction. ‘Nineteen shillings and sixpence per annum,’ as Martyn had said. He would transfer to Building Six as soon as he could pay the fee. The addition of Calvin would make only four foreigners and Jet in #57.