Rich People Problems (43 page)

CHIANG MAI, THAILAND

After landing in Chiang Mai, the ancient Thai city known as the “rose of the north,” Nick was driven by Jeep to an estate nestled in the foothills of Doi Inthanon. Like so many of the great houses hidden in these parts, the walled compound was tucked away up a long, steep road and virtually invisible from the outside. But past the tall, fortresslike gate, Nick found himself in a sybaritic paradise that defied description.

The residence was comprised of eight wood-and-stone pavilions built in the traditional Royal Lanna Thai style around an artificial lake, all interconnected by a series of bridges and walkways. As Nick was led through the lush gardens and onto a wooden walkway that floated on the lake, a thin layer of mist hovered over the still waters, adding to the feeling that he had stepped back in time.

At an open pavilion overlooking the center of a lake, an elderly man nattily dressed in tweed trousers, a maroon cardigan, and a peak cap was sitting at a beautiful wooden table, cleaning the inside of an old Leica camera with a tiny brush. On the table rested three or four other old cameras in various states of repair.

The man looked up as Nick approached and grinned widely. Nick could see that the hair under his cap was snow-white, and though he must have been in his early nineties, his face still retained its handsome features. He put down the camera and got up with an agility that surprised Nick.

“Nicholas Young, what a pleasure! Did you have a good journey?” the man said in English tinged with the slightest British accent.

“Yes, Your Highness, thank you.”

“Please call me Jirasit. I hope I didn't rouse you too early?”

“Not at all—it was great to get an early start, and your plane landed just as the sun was rising.”

“I had your aunt Catherine arrange it for you this way. I think the mountains are at their most beautiful right at dawn, and I must confess, I am a very early bird. At my age, I'm up by five and quite useless by midafternoon.”

Nick simply smiled, and Jirasit clasped Nick's hands in his own. “I am glad we are meeting. I've heard so much about you over the years!”

“Really?”

“Yes, your grandmother was inordinately proud of you. She talked about you all the time. Come, sit, sit. Do you take tea or coffee?” Jirasit asked as a flurry of servants appeared with trays of refreshments and food.

“Coffee would be great.”

Jirasit uttered a few words in Thai as the servants began setting up an elaborate breakfast on the wide stone ledge of the pavilion. “You'll have to excuse the mess, I have been indulging in my favorite pastime,” Jirasit said, as he moved his cameras to one side of the table to make room for the coffee service.

“That's quite a collection you have there,” Nick said.

“Oh, they're all rather obsolete at this point. I prefer shooting with my digital Canon EOS these days, but I do enjoy cleaning these old cameras. It's very meditative.”

“So you were in quite frequent contact with my grandmother, then?” Nick asked.

“Off and on, over the years. You know how old friends are…we would skip a year here and there, but we did try to stay in touch.” Jirasit paused for a moment, staring at an old Rolleiflex twin lens on the table. “That Su Yi…I shall miss her.”

Nick took a sip of his coffee. “How did you two become acquainted?”

“We met in Bombay in 1941, when we both worked at the British India Office.”

Nick sat forward in his chair, surprised. “Wait a minute, is this the Indian branch of the War Office? My grandmother worked there?”

“Oh yes. She never told you? Your grandmother started out in the code-breaking office, and I was in the cartography department, helping to create a detailed map of Thailand. The cartographers didn't really know Thailand well, especially in these remote northern parts near the border, and we needed accurate maps in the event of an invasion.”

“How fascinating. I always pictured her luxuriating away in some maharaja's palace during the Japanese occupation.”

“Well, she did that too, but the British, you see, enlisted her to do some…sensitive diplomatic work as soon as they realized what she was capable of.”

“I had no idea…”

“Your grandmother had a certain allure that's hard to put your finger on. She was never one of those typical beauties, but men just fell at her feet. It came in very useful during the war. She was good at influencing those rajahs in certain directions.”

Nick reached into his satchel and took out the leather box that Su Yi had entrusted to him, placing it on the table. “Well, the reason I'm here is because my grandmother wanted me to return these to you.”

“Ah, my old Dunhill case! I never thought I'd be reunited with it after all these years,” Jirasit said like an excited child. “You know, your grandmother was a very stubborn woman. When she insisted on returning to Singapore during the height of the war—complete madness, I tell you—I gave her a few of my most valuable possessions. My father's Patek and these gold sovereigns, and a few other things, I can't remember what. I thought she would need them to bribe her way into Singapore. But see, she hardly needed them after all.” Jirasit began winding the pocket watch, and then he held it up to his ear. “Listen? Still ticking perfectly after all these years! I'm going to have to tell my friend Philippe Stern about this!” Jirasit picked up the packet of old envelopes tied in ribbon and studied them for a moment. “What's this?”

“I have no idea. I assumed they were yours, so I didn't open them,” Nick said.

Jirasit untied the ribbon and began sifting through the letters. “My goodness! These were my letters to her after the war. She saved every last one of them!” His pale gray eyes clouded over with tears, which he flicked away quickly.

Nick had brought with him a prospectus of his Tyersall Park buyback scheme, and he was about to take it out of his satchel to show Jirasit when the man abruptly stood up and announced, “Come, let us attend to the matter at hand!”

Nick had no idea what he was talking about, but he followed Jirasit as he strolled swiftly toward a pavilion on the other side of the lake, marveling at his pace. “Jirasit, I hope I'll be as agile as you are when I'm your age!”

“Yes, I hope so too. You seem quite slow for your age. Do keep up! I picked up yoga when I lived in India, and I've never stopped my daily practice. Also, it's important to keep your body alkaline, young man. Do you eat chicken?”

“I love chicken.”

“Well, stop loving it. Chickens reabsorb their own urine—and so their meat is extremely acidic,” the man said as he quickened his pace. When they reached the glass-walled pavilion, Nick noticed two guards flanking the entrance.

“This is my private office,” Jirasit explained. They entered the room, which contained nothing but an ancient gold statue of Buddha inset into a niche on one wall and a beautiful black-and-gilt desk facing a window onto the lake. Jirasit went to a door against the back wall, and placed his hand on the security scanning pad. A few seconds later, the deadbolt unlocked automatically and he gestured for Nick to follow him into the room.

Inside, Nick found a space that resembled a walk-in vault with built-in cabinets along every wall. At the corner was an old antique Wells Fargo safe that had been bolted into the floor. Jirasit turned to Nick and said, “Here we are. The combination please?”

“I'm sorry, you want
me
to give you the combination?”

“Of course. This is your grandmother's safe from Singapore.”

“Um, I have no idea what it is,” Nick said, surprised by this turn of events.

“Well, unless you're good at safe-cracking, you're going to need the combination. Let's see, why don't we call Catherine in Bangkok and see if she knows what it is?” Jirasit took out his phone and moments later had Catherine on the line. The two of them spoke animatedly in Thai for a few moments, and then Jirasit glanced up at Nick. “Did you bring the earrings?”

“What earrings?”

“Your grandmother's pearl earrings. The combination is on them.”

“Oh my God! The earrings! Let me call my wife!” Nick said in astonishment. He quickly called Rachel's cell phone, and moments later she answered in a sleepy voice.

“Honey, sorry to wake you. Yes, I'm in Chiang Mai now. Remember those earrings I gave you? The pearl earrings from my grandmother?”

Rachel crawled out of bed, went over to the dressing table and opened the drawer where she kept her jewelry.

“What am I looking for exactly?” she asked, still half asleep.

“Do you see any numbers carved on the pearls?”

Rachel held a pearl stud up to the window light. “Nothing, Nick. It's totally smooth and luminous.”

“Really? Can you look again?”

Rachel closed one eye and squinted at each pearl as closely as she could. “I'm sorry, Nick, I see nothing. Are you sure we're talking about these earrings? They are so tiny, I can't imagine where someone would hide any information, unless it's
inside
the pearl.”

Nick thought back to what his Ah Ma told him when she had handed them over.
My father gave these to me when I escaped Singapore before the war, when the Japanese soldiers had finally reached Johor and we knew all was lost. They are very special. Please look after them carefully.
The words took on a whole new significance now. He stared at the safe, wondering what it could possibly hold. Would there be gold bullion bars, stacks of old bonds or some other type of financial documents that would help him secure Tyersall Park? What was in there that was so valuable to his grandmother that she would go to such great lengths to protect it?

“Rachel, I'm sure those are the earrings. Maybe we do need to crack them open. Or maybe the numbers appear if you put them in water? I dunno, try anything,” Nick said in frustration.

“Well, before we destroy these lovely pearls, let me try the water thing.” Rachel went into the bathroom and turned on the tap to fill the sink. She looked at the earrings again—they were simple pearl studs on gold posts, each with a little gold disk as backing. Before dipping one of the earrings into the water, she decided to pry the backing off the stud. Suddenly she gasped. There, on the underside of the backing were tiny Chinese characters carved into the gold. “Nick, I never thought I'd ever get to say these words, but…
EUREKA, I'VE FOUND IT!
There are Chinese characters carved into the backing of the earrings!”

Rachel quickly deciphered the numbers: “9, 32, 11, 17, 8.” Nick turned the dial to the corresponding numbers, his heart pounding as each of the locks seemed to click into place one by one. When he finally turned the lever to open the safe, he held his breath, wondering what he would find inside.

The safe door creaked open, and when Nick peered inside, all he saw were small red leather-bound books, neatly arranged in stacks. He took one of them out and began flipping through its pages. Every page was written in Chinese, and Nick realized he was looking at his grandmother's private diaries, beginning from the time she was a child to her adulthood.

“Why are these here?” Nick was completely mystified.

Jirasit gave Nick a serene smile. “Your grandmother was a very private person, and I think she felt that this was the only place she could leave them for safekeeping, without the risk of anyone seeing them or censoring them after she was gone. She never wanted them kept in Singapore, and she never wanted them to leave this compound. You are the historian, from what I'm told, so she wanted you to have access to them. She told me you would one day come.”

“Is this all there is? These diaries?” Nick asked, bending down to peer more closely into the dark safe.

“I believe so. Was there something else you were looking for?”

“I don't know. I guess I had imagined that she would have some other valuable treasures stored away in here,” Nick said a little disappointedly.

Jirasit frowned. “Well you should read them, Nicholas. You may find a great many unexpected treasures within those pages. I'll leave you be, and perhaps we can meet up again for lunch at noon?”

Nick nodded, as he took a stack of journals out to the desk. Deciding that the best thing to do was read the journals chronologically, he reached to the bottom of the pile for the oldest journal. As he opened the cover gently, the leather binding cracking after decades of stillness, he began to hear his grandmother's young voice in her handwritten words.

March
1
,
1943

It feels like we have been riding for a week, but Keng tells me it has only been three days. Whenever we reach a new outpost I ask him if we are still on the estate and he sighs frustratedly. Yes, we are. Apparently, my mother's family is the largest landowner in West Sumatra, and it would take a full week on horseback to traverse the estate. The highlands are glorious—rugged with a strange wildness to everything. On another trip, it might have even seemed romantic. If I had only known we would be spending so many days riding just to get to my brother's house, I would have brought my own saddle!

March
2
,
1943

Finally arrived. They take me upstairs to see Ah Jit, and at first I don't understand what is going on. My brother lies unconscious, his handsome face so swollen and purple I can hardly recognize him. There is a deep, bloody gash on his right jaw that they are trying to keep from being infected. I asked what was going on? I thought the cholera was under control? “We didn't want to tell you till you got here. It's not cholera. He's bleeding internally. He was tortured by Japanese agents. They were trying to get him to give up the locations of some key people. They broke his body, but they couldn't break him.”

March
5
,
1943

Ah Jit died yesterday. He was awake for a while, and I know he was happy to see me. He tried to talk, but I stopped him. I held him in my arms and kept whispering into his ear, “I know, I know. Don't worry. All is well.” But all is not well. My darling brother is gone now and I have no idea what is to be done. This morning I walked outside into the garden and saw that all the rhododendron trees have bloomed overnight. Suddenly they are bursting with flowers, in shades of pink I never knew could exist. Blooms so thick, they brushed against my face as I walked through the garden weeping uncontrollably. Ah Jit knew how much I loved these flowers. He did this for me. I know he did.