Assignment Bangkok (3 page)

The hooting of the siren came nearer. He sighed and walked back to the alley. Police lights flashed on the bridge. A babble of excited voices filled the night.

He turned right and walked alongside the canal and came to the house of Uncle Hu, which he had entered almost twenty-four hours before.

The dark house stood a little apart from its neighbors on the crowded embankment. There was a tiny garden and a doll-like replica of the home, mounted on a pole at eye-level, known to Thais as the sal a phra phum, the abode of Chao Thi, who always faced north in his duties as guardian spirit of the house. It was a jewellike structure with a stone platform on which were offerings of tea and nuts and incense sticks to placate the phi spirits. Durell halted in the shadows just inside the low gate, under the straight trunk and fan-shaped top of an areca palm. Two
klong
jars stood on the porch under the sweeping eaves. The windows were shuttered and dark. A TV antenna marred the exquisite, sweeping lines of the thatched roof.

The front door, built of studded teak planking, was partly open. Darkness yawned inside. Durell moved silently and quickly, a shadow among the shadows, and stepped in.

He smelled cooking, spices, flowers, sweat, and agony. He remembered the room in which he had been attacked, off to the right. The floor with the hatch into the cell was there. He stopped and listened, standing among dark Western and Thai furniture. The scent of jasmine touched him, but he sensed something amiss.

“Uncle Hu?” he whispered.

Something scuttled softly away from him. He heard a patter of tiny rat’s claws, and let out a thin breath between ' his teeth. In the rafters overhead, he heard a thin rattle of dry reeds where little
geckos
croaked.

It was a simple house, but it showed a certain affluence among canalmen. There were empty bottles of Green Spot and Coca Cola and a bowl of
somnos
, green juicy fruits, on the polished wooden kitchen table. There was a refrigerator of dubious vintage that gasped and wheezed on Bangkok’s erratic current. From the kitchen window, light came from the sampans and barges still moving on the canal.

The house was empty. He could feel it. But something was here; he was not sure what. He went into the bedroom.

The woman lay on the bed like a broken doll, her work-worn face suspended in a beam of apologetic light that came between the slats of the shuttered window. It was hot in here. The air smelled. The woman on the bed did not move.

Her name had been Aparsa. She had been wearing a pasabai, a pink blouse of Thai silk, and above the collar her throat had been cut from ear to ear. The bed was soaked with dry, dark blood. Below the blouse she wore nothing. Her skirt of green flowered Chiengmai cotton lay on the floor at the foot of the bed. She had obviously been raped several times.

Durell straightened with a long, slow sigh. He no longer felt any remorse about the man impaled on the canal pole.

He remembered her laughing, smiling, giving him a deep wai when he first met her four years ago. She had been a woman dedicated to sanook, the sheer joy of living.

“
Sawadee
, Aparsa,” he whispered, “goodbye.”

He stepped outside. The incipient thunder of the mango storm had rolled away to the east. The air smelled hot and dry. Something fluttered briefly against the tiny, dark garden, and it had not been there before. He crossed the grass to the sala phra phum. A slip of paper had been weighted down on its offering platform, among the clay dolls and incense sticks. A small jug of rice whiskey held it in place. Durell reached for the slip of paper and read the note in the dim light that came from the nearby houses. He heard a brief blare of Thai music from the nearest house on the canal, then the sound was turned down. A baby cried somewhere. The heat of the night held dry electricity in it.

The note was written in a shaky hand, in English.

“My friend. I rest on my boat. Safe. You know where. I cannot help. What happened is a gift of the 'sonkran'."

Sonkran
was the Thai name for a madness that seized men during this hot, dry season, when thirst clawed at the land and it seemed as if it would never rain again.

Durell put the note in his pocket and walked back to the edge of the canal.

Uncle Hu’s face was seamed and wrinkled and emotionless, and his narrow black eyes showed no tears, showed nothing at all behind their obsidian facade. He gave Durell a wai, his hands veined and callused by his life as a river man. His English was simple, but effective, spoken flatly.

“You have had difficult time,
Nai
Durell.” He wore blue denim slacks and jacket and straw sandals. In his bony temples, two blue veins throbbed. His age could have been forty or seventy. His wispy beard was white. “I apologize for what happen in my humble house.”

Durell stared at him and accepted a cup of tea. The sampan rocked slightly as a boat passed by. The only light came from under the roof of the little cabin in the rear. There was a heap of pottery, piles of straw, and small boxes in the forward area, where Hu usually peddled his wares in the water market during the day.

“You have seen your wife?” Durell asked gently.

“Yes.”

“You know what happened to her?”

“Yes. They made me stand and witness.”

“Have you called the police?”

“Not yet. I know you, sir. I knew you would come back at once. So I waited here.”

“You know it was Aparsa who helped me to escape?” “Yes, I know that. I told her to speak to you, when she had a chance. I was not permitted. It is my fault.”

“One of them is now dead,” Durell said.

The old sampan man blinked, his only reaction. Then he said, “Thank you.”

“These men,” said Durell, “work for a certain Mr. Chuk, a Chinese who heads the labor union, the Muang Thrup.”

“They are all criminals.”

“How did they know I was coming to see you?”

“They did not say. They came only a few minutes before you arrived, and they threatened us, Aparsa and me, and made us keep silent, and when you walked in, they attacked you and threw you into the
klong
jar cellar. Afterward, they did much drinking of Mekong whiskey, and made Aparsa cook for them. One went out and was gone for much time, maybe three-four hours. They ask who you are, what I know about you. I said only that you once befriended my nephew, young Kem, who has been in the Sangra, the Brotherhood, as you directed him four years ago.”

“I’ve come to waken him,” Durell said quietly.

“Yes. Kem said that one day you would need him.”

Durell nodded. “I need him very much. I came to ask you where he can be found. There are so many
bhikkhus
, so many temples. A simple question, and two people are dead.”

Uncle Hu poured more tea with his callused hands. His old eyes blinked briefly. He moved unerringly in the dark shadows of the sampan. In the distance, a police siren hooted, going away.

“I do not know where Kem is. He meditates. He is a good Buddhist, a fine monk. He wishes to stay in the Sangra.”

“He may stay, after he helps me.”

Uncle Hu stirred. His wrinkled old face moved a little, but his black eyes did not turn away from Durell. “Sir,
Nai
Durell, we are all grateful, for the time when I was ill, and young Kem was hurt, and Tinh, his brother, was too young to work. Circumstances would have destroyed us, but you were generous and gave us much money, and we lived again.” The old man halted. “I know that you mourn for Aparsa. You believe it is your fault. But you must not feel so. You are a man who is different from us. Different from most men, I think. Aparsa has gone to another life, a better earthly shell, we believe. You are a stranger, a
fahrang
, to me, but I trust you, and you must carry no guilt for Aparsa. I will attend to the rest of it. You must go on and find Kem.”

“Where?” Durell asked.

“Young Tinh, my other nephew, knows where to find his holy brother. They were always close. Tinh is a boxer now. He is very good, they tell me.” The old man closed his eyes briefly. “He fights tonight, at the stadium. Mr. Chuk, who has many interests, also owns him. Mr. Chuk will be watching the fight, too. Go and ask Tinh. He will tell you where to find his brother.”

Durell finished his tea. He took the cup and put it in a box beside the tiny charcoal stove. He thought of the woman lying dead in the darkened house, with her throat cut, and he wondered how long she had been Hu’s wife. He could offer no condolence, no sympathy. It was one of the difficult aspects of his business, when laymen were involved and innocents were drawn into the dark web of violence in which he lived. Nothing could be done about it. He could give Hu nothing except silence and privacy. He stood up, and the sampan rocked a little under his weight. “I will go to ask Tinh, then,” he said.

“Do so,” said the old man. “Let nothing be wasted.” Durell stepped from the sampan to the bank of the canal, walked in the shadows of the
takhien
trees and smelled the jasmine again. He paused before the miniature spirit-house in the garden and took some money from his wallet and stuffed it inside. Uncle Hu would find it. It might not placate the phis who had witnessed tragedy here, but it would help the old man. He would have to arrange his expenses to account for it.

Turning away, he walked up the lane to find a taxi.

The taxi took him along the overpass in the Pratunam District, past the BOAC building, then on a run to the Chulalongkorn University and the Chao Phraya River.

His hotel, the Ubol Duong, fronted the water, distant enough from the concrete and glass architecture of the more modern hostelries to satisfy Durell. The Ubol Duong catered to businessmen, not tourists, and gave him the privacy he needed. The lobby had high, ornate ceilings, cooled with large wooden rotating fans, and the bar had reasonably good bourbon,
Mekong
whiskey, and a small Filipino combo that hacked out their versions of New Orleans jazz, soul, and an occasional dip into Tahitian-type lullabies. There was a tiny dance floor, and the management provided delicate Thai girls and some Chinese taxi dancers for private entertainment.

Durell ordered a bottle of bourbon and took it with him. in the open-cage elevator that creaked upward above the potted palms in the lobby. No one among the turbaned Sikhs and West German engineers in the lobby spared him a second look. No
kamoys
, thugs, waited for him. And no police. He was relieved.

He showered in scalding water and mixed some of the bourbon with mineral water for a drink, then chose a fresh shirt and dark blue necktie from his battered travel bag. It was not yet ten o’clock in the evening. From the high windows came sluggish traffic noises—
samlaw
bells, the shuffling of pedestrians along the river front, where elegant white yachts were moored beside water taxis and rice barges. He cleaned his gun and dropped extra cartridges into his pocket, added a small, heavy sleeve knife to his right arm, and then stood on a chair and from the wooden fan in the ceiling, just above the bulky motor, he took down a tiny tape recorder and started it going.

He spoke quietly into it, recording his attempt to find the sleeper agent, Kem Pasah Borovit, who had been living as a
bhikkhu
, a Buddhist monk, for four years under K Section’s orders. He noted his imprisonment, his references to Mr. Chuk and his bully boys, and then hid the tiny mechanism again above the fan motor.

The telephone rang.

No one, in theory, knew he had checked into this hotel.

He ignored the rings and examined the two tall windows facing the river embankment, flipped back the cushions on two Bombay chairs, and opened the brown teak wardrobe. The phone kept up its clamor. He felt his way down the back of the high Chinese bed, his fingers moving swiftly. Almost at the floor, he found a small metal attachment and a length of wire. He pulled it loose, saw it was a tiny microphone bug, then tore it entirely free and dropped the transistor into his shirt pocket.

The telephone had gone silent.

He picked out a dark blue linen jacket, changed his wet shoes, and was ready to go out again when the phone rang once more. This time he lifted the receiver, but said nothing.

“Sam?” It was a woman’s voice. “Sam, is it you?”

“Hello, Benjie.”

“By Buddha’s navel, what’s the matter with you?” “Nothing, Benjie. How did you know I was in town?” “Everybody knows, Cajun. Listen, I must see you.”

“I’m busy,” he said bluntly.

“This is your business, Cajun.” The voice was fairly deep for a woman, crisp and taut, without the usual overtones and inflections that a woman uses when talking to a man. “I must see you and discuss things with you.”

“Is it about Mike?”

“Of course it’s about Mike.”

“I thought you were through with your brother.”

“I owe him something. Loyalty, maybe. Pity. You name it. It disturbs me, and I’ve got to do something about him.”

“That’s why I’m here.”

“Good, then. Come see me.” It was an order.

“Where?”

“I’m going to the sawmill,” Benjie Slocum said. “The foreman is drunk, and one of the sawyers got his arm sliced off, the idiot. Can you meet me there? You’ve been at the mill before, haven’t you? Remember, a few years ago—”

“I remember. Have you heard from Mike?”

Benjie Slocum’s crisp voice hesitated. “That’s the whole thing. You sent him in. He simply hasn’t come back.”

“No word at all?”

“Nothing.”

“Give me a couple of hours.”

“All right, Sam. It will be good to see you. I’ve got your favorite bourbon.”

“Mekong will do just fine.”

She rang off. Durell held the phone for a moment, then cradled it thoughtfully. He stood for a full minute, thinking it out.

He had no difficulty recalling Benjamina Slocum. It was her inherited money that started her brother Mike here in Thailand, lifting him from a light-hearted, devil-may-care charter pilot in a mortgaged Piper Apache to a big businessman, with interests in rubber down in the Kra Isthmus, teak forests and lumbering up near Chiengmai, a tea plantation in the northern highlands by the Laotian border, and the Thai Star Air & Shipping Co. that had rim Benjie’s stake into millions. Whatever their prosperity, however, Mike remained the same. He did odd jobs for K Section, and two weeks ago, in Washington, Durell had yielded to Mike’s plea for action. Big business bored him, he said. Durell suspected that his efficient, strict older sister also bored him. He had agreed to send Mike into the northeast in a Thai Star plane for the job.