Escape (21 page)

‘No, no. I mean she is taking my spirit and putting something bad from her into my mind. Like she is a witch, you know. This was
too
bad. I wanted to throw her off the train. I did not. She got off at Innsbruck. There was something wrong with this girl. Some reason she was there. Now there’s this magazine,’ he trumped, proof upon proof.

‘Magazine?’ I was talking to the Czech, Karel Stendak, serving thirty years for the usual 2.7 kilos. Stendak sometimes arrived at my desk when Jet was not around to warn me.

‘Yes. The magazine,’ Stendak began, confident in his evidence. ‘I was not in my chair in the factory. I think somebody called me away. So I come back and on my chair is this magazine. Catalogue, really. For some clothes. And, of course, I see her picture there—the same girl. So. It’s no accident, eh? And on my chair. You know who put this magazine? Maybe you saw someone?’

‘I don’t suppose you still have it?’ I saw Jet carrying something he’d found back to our office so began signalling for help.

‘No. Of course, somebody took it after they made me see it.’ Stendak lowered his eyes, rather disappointed I hadn’t guessed. ‘Because anyway, I don’t realise it is the same girl until later. Too late by then, they know. But, you see?’

‘My teacher.’ Jet had arrived. ‘The chief wants to talk to you about your cat. He says your cat’s shit!’

‘Really, Jet. We’ll have to see about that!’ I stood, turning to Stendak. ‘You’ll have to excuse me. The chief. The cat, you know. The shit.’

‘Okay, my friend.’ Stendak rose from the ice-chest seat but didn’t move so I began poking through cupboards as though searching for a weapon to deal with the troublesome chief. ‘You are very quiet here, David. It must be good. Can I move into your room? We can talk at night?’

‘We’ll talk about that sometime,’ I said escorting him to the gate.

Once Stendak was out of sight I doubled back to the office and stared at Jet who was laughing.

‘Jet—“The chief says my cat is shit.” Was that the best you could think of?’

Karel Stendak had alerted me to the conspiracies against him before. Unhappily schizophrenics can spot me from a great distance and they see a friend. Karel told me of the card players secretly plotting against him aboard a ferry from Caligari and the little boy on a rollercoaster in Plze
who had transferred his toddler’s fear to Karel by some dark magic. Most of these revelations came during travel in large machines. The key to these mysteries had been inserted during an emergency operation he’d had under general anaesthetic following a motorcycle accident, 1,000cc. He was sure the doctors had placed a microchip in his ankle which had since been transmitting voices into his brain. Stendak’s imprisonment was, of course, all part of the conspiracy.

I had been discouraging visitors to the office that month as I was working on the latest escape plan.

Sten, Swiss Theo and I were to let ourselves out of our cell late at night and then head for the wall. The challenge would be to walk along the corridors without the trusties and other informers forming a chorus of alarms as we passed. Our armour would be in our appearance for we would be dressed as United Nations medics: Sten and I wearing blue caps, white tunics and UN insignia. We would carry Theo on a stretcher. Theo would be mostly covered by a blanket decorated with red crosses. We would wear surgical masks to protect us from a mystery virus.

The safety of such an apparition in the Building Six corridors might not seem feasible at first—or even second—thought but it would play to our audience and keep those watchers silent as we would move toward the sleeping guard of Six. In addition with each stop at any wakeful guard the option of taking an alternative uniform would present itself. However, none of us saw any value in trying to appear as a Thai guard. Sten and Theo were too big to squeeze into most of the uniforms and that illusion would work only at a great distance.

The stretcher upon which Theo would lie could conceal the spars for a ladder that we would assemble at the wall near the hospital building.

‘What about an assault through the main gate?’ Theo had suggested after we’d calculated the time it would take to tape together an eight-metre ladder.

‘A few more there than you might think.’ Sten had found this out after questioning his friends about late-night releases for deportations. ‘Sure, there’s only four, maybe five guards on front-gate duty after midnight but half the guards in the prison get down there to play cards and drink. Plus the local cops call in all hours to join the party. We’d have our hands full.’

‘And what about the key to our cell?’ Theo rightly saw the cell door as the main barrier. ‘Are you sure that’s going to work, Dave?’

I was not, especially as the key would be made from old clock parts and epoxy resin. As well access to the cell door’s keyhole was blocked by a large steel plate on our side of the bars. I was making a device of wooden gears and levers that could be operated by hand from within the cell. Operated blind and adding stress to the key held in its grip. For all that I had yet to manage a few minutes alone with the real key to take an impression.

‘The UN doctors making house calls?’ Sten shook his head but was still smiling. ‘What if the elephant man sticks his leg out for treatment?’

‘It wouldn’t fit.’ I had to defend the plan. ‘I’m talking about a glimpse and even then just by a few prisoners as we pass. The uniform, the symbols, the stretcher, the sight of high authority, international stuff, the outbreak of disease. Just flash and filigree. They’ll be excited but respectfully quiet. And Theo, you won’t have to do a thing until we get to the wall. Just lie there.’

That sounded good to Theo until, ‘What if a guard stops us?’

‘Exactly,’ I pronounced as if it were all simple. ‘You spring from under the blanket and throttle him!’

That week I had an unpleasant visit from an Australian federal policeman, Jonathan Snapes. We sat opposite each other in the executive-visits hut. Like all police from Western embassies he carried a blue diplomatic passport as immunity from arrest. Snapes placed his business card on the table for me to take. I took it as the Fedpol logo was not yet in my collection.

‘There are just one or two things we would like to clear up.’ Snapes was slightly flabby and sweated within his suit. ‘For the sake of completeness, you understand.’

‘Completeness?’

‘Yes. Of course, we know pretty much everything already. And you’ll be here for some time. Twenty years, most of us agree. Over that time, well, your memory may fail.’

‘Fail?’ I would ask him to explain everything.

‘Yes. Now look, the heroin from Tommy Marchandat. Only 200 grams. Not much use to you?’

‘No use at all.’ As Snapes was alone I presumed he was wired for sound.

‘I mean, packed properly you could take more. In some stuffed toy, for example.’ Snapes must have been told about the Steiff bear I had given Tommy.

‘A bit old fashioned, don’t you think?’ I frowned in disapproval.

The policeman leaned onto his interlocked fingers. ‘What’s it like in here? Pretty tough, so they say.’ Snapes had had enough of my being coy. ‘No chains, I see.’ He looked to my file as though searching for an explanation of this oversight.

‘Don’t worry.’ I had to lead him away from that. ‘They’ll go back on once I’m sentenced.’

‘Good to see you’re being realistic. Ah, now, one last thing,’ Snapes said clarifying a trifle. ‘Your mobile phone. The one you use in Melbourne. Who has that now?’

‘Gosh, I couldn’t possibly say. They seem to have a life of their own, don’t they?’ Evidently Michael had made the red-herring call, not that it had done any good. ‘I say, Snapes, on your way out I don’t suppose you could stop at the prison shop and buy me a jar of instant coffee?’

I told myself that I wanted to give the impression that in Klong Prem I had few resources, although I knew the image of Jonathan Snapes battling with the ornery prison guards’ wives who ran the shop would make for an easier night. Snapes would not refuse; such time-honoured courtesies to the defeated were universal. This Snapes might resent the act of kindness but would tell everyone at his embassy of his magnanimity.

I was a few minutes late arriving at our room #57 that night as I’d found some excuse to talk to the key boy. He’d been making up the bed used by the night-duty guard. The guard slept in a room with an oblique view of our cell door. Crouching to where the guard’s head would rest I could see that his view of #57 would be just blocked by a low dividing wall.

When I walked into our cell Bruce the Pakistani was finishing his account of the latest from the Nigerian front.

‘No passports, no tickets, nothing.’ Bruce propped pillows against his wall and leaned back, hands behind his head. ‘So they are very angry, very upset.’

‘What have I missed?’ I undraped Dinger the kitten from my shoulder and placed her at the foot of my bed. She was still limp from some encephalitic cat flu and had stopped eating the previous week.

Bruce then detailed the misfortunes of those Nigerian prisoners who’d thought their time had finally come. After many visits with the special delegation of Nigerian consular officials from Lagos, the funds had been raised for airfares home. All the passport photos had been taken, the forms completed. To earn their release money some had convinced girlfriends and family members to run brown dope to Morocco. Others had traded, fought and clawed together the funds from within the prison. Then the silence.

The consular officials had disappeared. Checked out of their hotels. Emptied the bank accounts. Flown. Today news had been delivered by one of the local dealers that these officials had no connection with the Lagos foreign office. Or any office for they were conmen who had spent the past months fleecing the Nigerian inmates and their supporters. They had used phoney letterhead to contact the prison and fake diplomatic passports to gain entry.

‘I must say I am not surprised. This is not a new idea,’ observed Bruce, a historian of frauds. ‘Some years ago—during the civil war in Lebanon, Mister David—officials arrived at Manila to set up an embassy for the first time. They rented villas, an office. Hired secretaries, leased limousine automobiles. With those little flags of the cedar tree, you understand?’ The fake ambassadors lived in the Philippines for two months collecting bribes for promised visas for Lebanon. Issuing bogus passports, which in turn gained bogus visas for Europe. The legation collected relief funds for those dispossessed by war. ‘They were the toast of the Lebanese expat community but, you know, when they disappeared, they hadn’t paid for the house lease, or the cars, or anything.’

Bruce later felt he’d revealed perhaps too much expertise in such matters. After we had dined on Blow-Job’s Singapore noodles, he crept over to speak to me in confidence as I force-fed Dinger liquids.

‘You know, Mister David, I am not like those people. Not at all.’ Bruce rocked his head from side to side. ‘As soon as I am out next month I shall begin work on your matter. I will not rest.’

Gesturing with the glass eyedropper in my hand, I dismissed Bruce’s kind offer. ‘That’s good of you but that position is already taken,’ I said pointing at English Rick in his corner, carelessly allowing a few drops of milk to fall on Bruce’s knee. Perhaps those two would talk the next day.

The night guard was unbooted and in his vest by ten that night but kept wandering about talking to his favourite crooks.

‘Do you think he’s a drinker?’ Theo asked Sten quietly.

Sten shook his head. ‘We’d never get rid of him if we started buying him bottles of Blue Eagle every night. Anyway the fucker might start singing.’

‘And he doesn’t look like the type to drink alone,’ I added.

Rick and I were playing Scrabble near the door so that I could watch. Rick, with his English love of dissembling, had devised new rules for the board game. In addition to the two real blank tiles in Scrabble, Rick’s version allowed any number of blanks to be played by placing one’s dud letters face down. The opposing player could then challenge the veracity of the blank but, if wrong, would lose a turn. Side bets were made on the issue of whether the phoney blank might, in fact, be the letter it represented. These bets would follow poker-betting rules and would be multiples of our respective word scores.

‘Rick, old bean.’ I frowned at the board. ‘What might that word be?’ Although I was down by 68,507 points, the board was already a coma-ward of blanks.

‘Why, that’s “crypt”, of course,’ Rick greedily added his new score. ‘Unless you doubt my word?’ Unchallenged blanks carried a triple-letter value.

‘Never entered my mind,’ I conceded even though the board showed only _R_P_. ‘As long as you give me your word as a gentleman.’

Beyond the gangway the night guard removed his trousers, climbed into bed and closed his faded mosquito net. It was just after eleven-thirty. I leaned toward Theo next to me and tapped his watch. Theo nodded but then twisted his hand questioningly. He was asking about the key.

‘Friday,’ I answered, not wanting to say more.

‘I believe in fate,’ Theo began as he returned to his bed mat. ‘I’ll tell you why. Things happen to me. Unusual things, special things. You know what I was just thinking, remembering?’