Assignment Bangkok (10 page)

“Who is that?” she asked suspiciously.

“Brother Kem Pas ah Borovit. Otherwise known as Flivver. He comes with us.”

“Don’t tell me he’s another of your spooks?”

“Yes he is.”

Benjie shook her head. She wore dusty yellow slacks and a blue shirt and carried a leather flying jacket over her arm. A battered flight bag was already in the open luggage compartment of the plane. She wore sunglasses pushed up on top of her head, tangled in her red-gold hair, which was still done up in a prim knot. Durell tried to picture her with her hair down, but it was impossible. Benjie’s image wa& too firmly fixed in his mind. He turned to Kem.

“Did you take care of the sampan?”

“I sank it. The old man will not find it, and know where we have gone. It is a sin. I fear my spirit will lose much merit in the coming days.”

Benjie said, “Are you one of those fighting monks I’ve read about?”

“I am a brother of the Sangha. I do what I think is best under the benevolent eye of heaven.”

Benjie stared at the man without eyebrows and hair. “You give me the creeps,” she said flatly.

“You are not an object of beauty to me, either,” said Kem mildly. “But since we are both obligated to assist
Nai
Durell, we should try to maintain a pleasant relationship.” Benjie looked at Durell. “Do we really need him?”

“We do.”

The girl shrugged. “Well, let’s go, before the cops catch up to us.’

At four in the afternoon, the Apache came down to a delicate landing on a strip of field at the logging camp, cut like a narrow ribbon through the dense forest southeast of Chiengmai. During the flight, Durell monitored the radio, while Kem sat in the back. He heard nothing alarming from Bangkok, now safely hundreds of miles to the south.

A mountain breeze blew through the wide, rolling valley, where a shallow river meandered quietly. The dark green of the teak woods was a relieving contrast to the jangled brilliance of Bangkok. The wind was cool. Here and there on the mountainsides were small villages, connected by thread-like roads that followed old elephant trails. Color splashed from the frangipani trees. Their elevation was just a little less than five thousand feet.

Chiengmai, the second largest city in Thailand, lay about fifty miles from the logging camp. The only connection was by a narrow-gauge logging railway and the dusty, sinuous mountain roads. The Slocum teak enterprise was about a quarter-mile from the landing strip, but the plane had been spotted as Benjie flew down the valley, and two battered jeeps racketed into sight as they rolled to a stop.

The momentary stillness, except for the cool, steady wind, was pleasant. Four Thai mountain men, with cloth headbands and heavy logging boots, jumped from the jeeps.

“
Chaiyo
, Miss Slocum. You surprise us!”

“We won’t be here long, Nam. It depends on my friend here.”

“The
bhikkhu
?” Nam looked surprised.

“No, the American.”

“Of course, of course. We have heard of him.” Nam laughed. “The police telephone village. Make much upset of people. Army also. Asking for big American. We say we know nothing.” Nam laughed again. He was missing several front teeth, but he carried an old Sten gun that had survived from World War II, and it was carefully polished and cleaned. A bandolier of clips hung from his meaty shoulders. He was bowlegged, bare-footed, and tough. “Did we do the right thing, Miss Slocum?”

“Exactly right.” Benjie looked worriedly at Durell. “How could they know we were coming here?”

“An educated guess. General Savag isn’t stupid.”

“Have we much time?”

“Less than I’d hoped.”

The teak logger, Nam, made a spitting sound. “General Savag? He comes here?”

“We hope not. Does he worry you?”

“Bad man. Not true Thai. We hate him.” Nam shrugged. “The work goes well, Miss Slocum. We almost finished third quarter section over on Ko Dinh Bong. Two rafts almost ready for river. Old Josie—you remember her?—she very sick, but vet gets her better.” Nam looked at Durell. “Old Josie a logging elephant. We have eight here.”

Durell asked Nam to hide and camouflage the plane, and the bandy-legged man gave quick orders to his three helpers. Then Nam said, “Is Mr. Mike coming here, too?” “We don’t know,” Benjie said.

She turned and walked abruptly toward the jeeps. Her back and shoulders looked stiff and straight.

The logging camp, which looked like a mountain tribal hamlet, was beside a rushing tributary to the river below.

There were large sheds for the elephants, who were out on the forest trails at this hour, and houses of woven bamboo and plaited roofs standing on stilts. The women carried Lao-type habs, with their hair in ornate side knots and tight, dark blue blouses with shining silver buttons that went from waist to collar. Most wore white cotton pasins with their blouses. There was a rundown store, a food commissary, another open shed for tools, two battered trucks, and the sawyers’ machinery. The smell of cut mahogany and teak logs and wood chips fought with the scents of frangipani and the smoke from charcoal stoves in the workmen’s houses. There was always the inevitable effluvium of a mountain settlement. The men in sight, like Nam the foreman, reminded Durell of Southwest American Indians, being taller than most Thai, with bandy legs and high cheekbones.

There were two larger structures, one a Western-style bungalow with a veranda, built of rough boarding, and a tiny wat at the far end of the single street, which followed the stream in typical linear fashion.

“You have a
bhikkhu
here?” Kem asked the foreman. “No, father, not for several months.”

“Do you wish me to perform prayers?”

“If you like, father. Will you be here long?”

Durell said, “Only overnight.”

“Whatever the
bhikkhu
chooses to do will make us grateful,” Nam said to Kem.

Beyond the brook and the bungalow, where Benjie headed with a long stride, were some clearings and fields planted on the terraced mountain slope, growing some rice and tobacco and bananas. Two of the fields looked as if they had been used to grow poppies. Kem asked to be excused and headed down the village street toward the small temple. Durell followed Benjie across a log bridge over the brook to the bungalow. His eye caught the glimmer of aerial wire from a radio antenna, and he traced it to the bungalow roof before he stepped up on the veranda after Benjie.

She was waiting inside, in a small den, her fists jammed on her hips. She looked angry and tired.

“All right, what now?”

“We’re looking for Mike, remember?”

“You’re looking for more than Mike. Tell me about it. All of it, Sam. Don’t hold back, or we’ll be in trouble. I can smell trouble here, already. The place doesn’t feel normal, somehow. Nam talks too much. The women aren’t chattering, the way they usually do. I feel like a stranger here. And I practically built this camp with my own two hands and recruited the local tribesmen myself, and had them trained as loggers. They ought to be here by now, finished with their day’s work. It’s not like these people to put in voluntary overtime. Sam, I’m worried.”

“Where’s your radio transmitter?” he asked.

“What’s that got to do with what I’m asking?”

“Maybe everything. Maybe we can talk to Mike.”

Benjie stared at him. “You don’t give much, do you? You still act as if I’m a suspect, in whatever you’re looking for.”

“It could be,” Durell said. Then he surprised her by crossing the hot, shadowed room and kissing her on the mouth. “You’re also a hell of a good pilot, Benjie.”

Her lips were cold and surprised, hardening under the quick pressure of his mouth. Stepping back, he watched her eyes widen with astonishment, then reflexive anger, then something that was not quite amusement.

“And what was that for?”

“For being a woman,” he said.

“I didn’t think you could tell,” she snapped. She drew a deep breath. “Let’s see to the radio, Sam. We need something to eat, too. And we’re not safe here, as I said.”

“We’re not safe anywhere,” he replied.

Durell worked on the radio while Benjie slammed things around in the kitchen, shouted at a native woman and drove her off in a fine fit of pretended fury. Durell half hoped, as he worked on the transmitter, to hear her break into singing; but Benjie didn’t go quite that far. Nevertheless, after a time, there was a pause in the kitchen, while he smelled rice and pork and sauce bubbling away, and when she returned, her face was scrubbed clean and her eyes shone and her hair was pulled back in a neat bun. He said nothing about it.

“Can you do it? Can you reach Mike?”

“If he’s listening. Can you trust Nam?”

She said, “Like you, Sam, I don’t trust anyone.”

The radio hummed and crackled. Energy came from the camp generator that powered donkey engines and logging machinery at the other end of the village. Durell put on the earphones, and once again heard the ghost voices, the uncertain music, the ranting across the misty lost mountains of the Golden Triangle between Thailand, Burma and Laos.

But he did not hear Mike Slocum’s voice.

Durell knew he was late making the rendezvous, but it couldn’t be helped. He hadn’t known about General Savag when he spoke to Mike last night. And Xo Dong was still over a hundred-mile flight east into the primitive border area.

“Sam, do you think Mike is still all right?”

He looked up from the radio. Her face was flushed. “Mike was okay, last night.”

“Are you out to save him—or kill him?”

He listened to the sighing of electronic waves from the radio, heard nothing but a dim surf of discordant Asian music, and said, “It all has to do with the poppy fields out there, the ones you let your logger families grow.”

“Oh, that. I can’t stop them. Every village around here, all the way up into Burma and over into Laos, grows poppy. Do you think . . . ?” She paused, her fists clenched at her sides. Her green eyes went angry. “You don’t really think we’re part of the Muc Tong, do you? You can’t think..

“Is the Muc Tong the smuggling syndicate?”

“Oh, you bastard,” she whispered. “You cold, mean, cruel man. You kissed me, and yet you think I—”

“Answer me.”

“No, Sam.”

“You have the transport, the men, the whole system.” “No, Sam.”

“You, or Mike.”

“No!”

“But you know something about it.”

Her face was white. “Just the local stuff. What’s happening around here. They put some pressure on us, about a month ago, to use our logging rafts going down the Ping River toward Bangkok. They wanted us to take on their men—hoodlums, mountain riffraff, some Chinese overseers, to transport heroin from a refinery about twenty miles northeast of this valley. It’s a big set-up, sure. But you can’t believe that I’d lend the Thai Star business facilities. . . .?”

“Why not?” he asked. “And if not you, why not Mike?” “But you’re his friend!” she cried.

He shook his head. “Not if he’s, guilty. Not if he uses your business to take money from the Muc Tong to line his own pockets. Maybe you’re innocent, but maybe Mike is not. He could be calling me into a trap, because I’ve got a thread or two of the network in my hands. To him, if he’s in it, I’m an immediate and obvious danger.”

“Call him,” she said desperately. “I want to talk to him.”

“Xo Dong doesn’t answer.”

“I’ll prove to you—”

“We’ll prove it together. I need you, Benjie, and I need Kem to get me into the mountains without every tribesman trying to cut off my head. Since Mike doesn’t answer, he might be dead. I’m trying to be honest with you.” He turned off the radio. “When the Muc Tong came to you, did they just want your rafts, or did they want the planes, too?”

“The whole thing—and my ships, too. I told them to go to hell.”

“Who approached you?”

“A very slick, smooth character, at the sawmill.”

“One of Chuk’s men?”

“I don’t know. No, not Chuk’s hoodlums. Somebody above Chuk. Not the Chinese who led the sawyers last night, either. But someone like him.” She shook her head, her eyes still appalled. “When I refused to have anything to do with them, I was threatened with strikes, fire, and sabotage.”

“You think last night was part of it?”

“Oh, sure,” she said wearily. “It’s been going on for months. If it keeps up, I’ll be wiped out.”

“That’s a good sign,” Durell said. “If Mike threw in with them, they’d have stopped harassing you.”

“Thanks for nothing,” she said bitterly.

Durell turned abruptly. From over the rolling hills came faint popping noises, a dim shouting, thin as a whisper in the distance. He turned, strode out on the bungalow veranda. Long evening shadows lay on the valley. Several of the village women stood very still, looking up through the surrounding teak forest toward the mountain peak. The foreman, Nam, came out of the machine shed and also stared.

Benjie whispered, “It’s gunfire.”

“Speak of the devil. The Muc Tong?”

“They’ve raided the logging crews before. Maybe they know I’ve just arrived. The men won’t work for a week, now.”

“Have you any rifles?”

She turned and ran into the bungalow and came out with two Remington .30-30’s. Nam, the foreman, had gotten into a jeep and came bouncing toward them, raising plumes of red dust in the evening air. The breeze felt suddenly colder. Durell checked the magazines of the rifles and waved Nam down.

“It is trouble, Miss Benjie!”

“I know. The elephants.” She turned to Durell to explain. “We’re logging a strip where we can’t jeep in. Only the elephants can do the work. If the Muc Tong kill them, we’re done for—they’re too expensive to replace and train.”

The logging road led uphill, following the white rushing stream. Above the racket of the engine, they heard more distant gunfire, and then an explosion, as if a grenade had been thrown. Men screamed up there, in the dense green of the forest; but the stately, towering trees made an umbrella over the sky and screened off the camp and the cutting site.

Teak was durable, lasting for centuries, and was not a prey to tropical termites. It was never cut until it was at least two feet in diameter, or about 150 years old. The logging method usually followed girdling to kill the tree, which was then left standing for two years to dry out, to lighten the density of the wood and permit it to float. Elephants were used to fell the trees, most often in the rainy season when the timber did not split easily; but obviously Benjie had been pushing her loggers to work now, even when it was dry. After the loggers trimmed the logs, the massive elephants, using chains guided by their mahouts, dragged the logs either to trucks or a narrow-gauge railroad for the trip over the mountainside to the nearest usable stream, where rafts were made up and regular watch-stations were erected to permit men and elephants to loosen any jams. Where the stream widened, rafts were constructed of the logs, using two or three hundred of them, and tower-huts for the crew, with rudders fore and aft, were set up for the year-long trip down to the delta sawmills.