by Ed Kovacs
“She’s beyond reproach. Good family background. They’re business-people, very well-connected politically and militarily. Strings can be pulled no questions asked as long as the tea money gets passed around.”
“Tea money?”
“Bribes. Anyway, I’ve known her for years. She’s smart and very discreet. Aside from that, she’s crazy about me, she’d marry me in a second. So we don't have to worry about being sold down the river.”
Hunt hated cockiness. And men who were no better than dogs when it came to marking territory. She found Wilder attractive but didn’t think she could ever sleep with a man with as many notches as she suspected he had on his gun. Jerk, she thought.
“Hey, I don’t want to sound like some jerk, cause I’m not trying to impress you. I met Tasnee on a beach in Costa Rica. She was there on family business, and I'd come to relax after a long haul in the jungle. We became tight, traveled together, I got to know her family in Bangkok. I thought seriously about marrying her. It would be a nice deal for me, knowing she’d always be waiting. But how would it be for her, with me on the road ten or eleven months out of the year?”
He was doing it again! Diana labored to put a “psychic shield” around their activities to protect them from the remote viewers that she knew Forte consulted, but here Wilder intuited her personal thoughts, whether he knew it or not.
“I've found that when you travel constantly, you make friends more easily,” he said. “Otherwise it gets lonely. It would be great to settle down with one person, but how? I don’t even like being indoors that much, I prefer being in the field. And yes, I like women. I don’t have to apologize for that.”
She found his honesty disarming and liked him in spite of herself and their predicament. But she didn’t like being relegated to excess baggage.
“Let’s get back to your question of trustworthiness,” he said. “You told me you suspected a mole in the General’s office. I think that’s a good reason to keep him in the dark if we can until this is over.”
“I’m not opposed to that. He tightened his inner circle. Four people know what you and I are trying to do: you, me, Klaymen, and his personal aide of the last twenty years, a man he trusts with his life and the life of his family, Colonel Tom Yamaguchi.”
“So if Forte shows up while we’re out in the middle of Ninth and Nowhere, who will you think tipped him?”
“Either Yamaguchi, the General... or you.”
Wilder broke up laughing. The noodles arrived and he spooned two heaping teaspoons of sugar onto them, Thai style, to help boost his energy in the humid heat, and mixed in some bright red chili paste. He went to work on the laht nah and didn’t say another word during the meal.
###
Across the cafe, a petite Thai woman in baggy shorts and a teal-colored blouse pushed aside her dish of sweet, spicy, salty, and sour som-tam and rolled up her copy of Lisa, a Thai gossip magazine. She checked out Wilder and Hunt with her peripheral vision hidden behind large Chanel sunglasses, then picked up a portable two-way radio which was a little larger than a cell phone and discreetly exited through the rear of the cafe.
###
Wilder paid out the cost of the meal—eighty baht—about $2.30 at the current rate. Hunt excused herself to use the toilet. Finally, he thought, and as soon as she was out of sight he strode to the SUV and drove off to the west without looking back. He powered the Fortuner up the next grade, passing a slow, smallish bus from Chiang Mai crowded with passengers. When he looked in the rearview mirror, he saw a face. The woman in teal sat in the backseat of his vehicle.
“Pull off the road right now,” she uttered as a threat.
He wrenched the wheel and skidded to a stop on a small turnout. He stoically turned to face the intruder. “So what are you going to do?”
She lunged forward from the backseat, arms around his neck and took to his lips like a thirsting soul to water. He pulled her over the seat—she weighed a hundred pounds dripping wet—and had large, doe-like dark eyes that sparkled bright with life force, intelligence and mischief. Her lips were full, face oval-shaped, plastic-surgery-perfect nose, and her very white, straight teeth bespoke her well-to-do upbringing in Bangkok. Her ears were a little large for her small physique but mostly stayed hidden behind her thick hair cascading down to firm perky breasts. They hadn’t been able to make love last night during their brief rendezvous at the Novotel hotel lobby, so they necked for two minutes like the long lost lovers they were.
“The girl is too pretty. I want to go with you instead,” she said with a smile in her voice, her feminine somewhat sing-song accent tempered by two years at USC where she got her MBA.
“I love you too much for that, Tasnee,” he said, putting the vehicle back into gear and easing onto the road ahead of the approaching bus. “Like I said at the hotel last night, I have to be in and out fast like a ghost in heat. When this is over we’ll stay in bed for a week.”
“Still, I’m jealous.”
“Don’t be jealous. For all I know, she has orders to kill me.”
###
Diana Hunt retrieved her map from the cafe table and saw that the Fortuner was gone. A swirling wave of vertigo started to well up in her gut as she hurried out to the road and looked in both directions. Son-of-a...! Instinctively, she knew two things: one, Sky hadn’t been abducted; two, he wasn’t coming back. She turned back to the cafe. A few customers and the waitress looked away to avert her eyes. She bounded inside and approached two men who sat at the rail, just feet from where the SUV had been parked.
“Excuse me... the man who was here?” she used hand gestures that were meaningless to the Thais as she tried to communicate. “Which way did he go?” She mimicked driving and pointed to the parking spot.
There is a universal survival mechanism called Not Getting Involved In Other People’s Trouble, especially in opium country, and the two men honored that principle today. She got it, and shifted gears, smiling her sexiest smile, like she didn’t have a care in the world and these two men were the best thing she’d ever seen. In the country less than twenty-four hours, she’d still picked up a few words, including, kruna—please. The one missing the front teeth broke ranks and pointed west.
Except for a few motorbikes, the only other vehicle in the lot was a battered old pickup. A rail thin, balding Thai man in his forties slept soundly behind the wheel.
“Excuse me.” The man didn’t stir so Diana gave him a gentle shake. “Excuse me. You,” she pointed to him, “drive,” she pointed to his truck and mimicked holding the steering wheel, “me.” she pointed to herself, then pointed to the west.
“I busy,” he barked, squinting and looking at her askance.
She blinked, a little embarrassed. The accent sputtered thick, but he spoke English. “I can pay.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a hundred-dollar bill, catching the man’s eye.
“You offer one hundred dollar?” he said, squinting. The driver always squinted when he spoke and usually squinted if he thought about something very hard, whether he spoke or not.
“Yes. One hundred dollars.”
“What your name?”
“Amy.”
“My name Dang. Amy,” he asked, squinting more deeply, “you pay gas?”
“I’ll pay for gas and food, Mister Dang.”
“Okay, Amy, we go.”
###
The City of Three Mists disappointed, if it were mists one sought. Wilder and Tasnee barreled into the verdant valley and the provincial capital of Mae Hong Son under an azure sky speckled with only a few white puffs of cloud making the heavily forested surrounding mountain tops visible for a change. The hill tribe farmers yearly slash-and-burn orgy had ended by the first of April; the rainy season was a month away and the morning mists of fall remained far off. So for a change, Mae Hong Son sat mistless.
But this was still the north and life played out differently here, different in a way Wilder liked: the khon muang, or northern Thais acted more laid-b
ack and relaxed, they spoke more slowly, and generally had a more trustworthy reputation than their southern countrymen, although 'trustworthy' in a land where most everything and everyone seemed to be for sale or rent is a relative term.
Mae Hong Son’s veritable isolation until the mid-twentieth century gave it a kind of backwater sensibility, and although the airport handled small commercial jets, planeloads of Germans on sex tours or Japanese on golf tours (or vice versa) didn’t land here; Mae Hong Son was too small and boring for them.
But Mae Hong Son wasn't too beautiful, it was perfectly beautiful. Founded in 1851 by Chiang Mai royalty, the city started life as a training camp for elephants captured in the surrounding jungle. Shan people were imported to train and keep the elephants, and the Shan made up about half the population, which explained the strong Burmese influence on temple and building construction. The rest of the population of about 8000 were Karen or other hill tribes such as Akha and Lisu.
The highway became Khumlum Praphat Road, the main drag through town, and judging from the number of motorbikes on the streets, Wilder figured everybody in town must have one. The rule seemed to be: if you're big enough to ride, go ahead.
Although the roads and sidewalks looked clean, the commercial strip had a rustic feel: dark teak A-frame two-story buildings with zinc roofs invariably featured businesses or shops on the ground floor with sagging awnings overhanging the sidewalks. The second floors were terraced living quarters also featuring deep eaves to shade against the sun. The newer concrete and stucco structures, dingy and uninspired affairs, celebrated function over form. Like shophouse buildings throughout Asia and most of the developing world, they featured ground floors open to the sidewalk to facilitate commerce; corrugated metal doors pulled down from above to secure the premises at night.
“Not much changed in the last six years.” He noticed a troop of about twenty hill tribe women in tunic-like layers of bright blues, reds, pinks and greens, all wearing black sashes, walking single-file off onto a side soi, or street. “Akha?”
“No, Lisu, I think. Probably they will sell things at the night market.” Tasnee picked up the two-way radio and spoke rapidly in her southern dialect, nothing Sky could catch as he only spoke pidgin Thai. “Turn right at the next corner.”
They were “downtown” and approaching the only traffic light in the city. He turned them onto Singhanat Bamrung Road. Tasnee directed him to pull into the walled parking area immediately behind a corner building, the prime corner in Mae Hong Song, housing one of the older two-story teak wood structures. A Thai man holding a two-way radio had been waiting in the small parking area and he quickly closed the heavy wooden gates so the Fortuner disappeared from the prying eyes of anyone on the street.
“Whose place is this?”
“A close friend of my father, I remember him since I was a little girl. We have the whole second floor to ourselves,” she said, almost winking.
The ground floor was a combination convenience store, Internet cafe, coffeehouse and bar, all operating under the name Siam City. The dim decor was a jumble of old license plates, farm implements, pottery, and beer posters. A few pasty-skinned, overweight farangs sat perched on wooden stools into their third ice-cold Chang beer as they talked themselves out of making the hike up to Wat Prathat Doi Kong Mu, a spiritual beacon overlooking the sinful city, Rio de Janeiro / Corcovado-style, from a nearby peak.
Unnoticed, Wilder and Tasnee took the back stairs to the second floor where she unlocked the door to the living quarters. As soon as they stepped inside, he dropped his duffel bag, glanced around and deadpanned, “Well, I guess this will do in a pinch.”
“This place is comfortable and private.” Tasnee tended to be indirect and understated. Some collector or interior designer had spent a fortune meticulously appointing the rooms. Rich dark stains of mahogany and teak, red and black lacquers and gold gilt contrasted sharply but harmoniously with creamy smooth plaster walls and ceilings and ivory-colored tiled floors. Modern art mixed with the finest of Burmese antiques: stupa-shaped lacquerware, boxes, bowls and rice-sifting pans; teak chests and tables, some intricately carved, others solid with heavy iron hardware. There were Buddhas large and small, in part or whole, finely carved, roughly hewn, sitting, walking, standing, reclining, molded in bronze, gilded in gold. The rooms were spotless, the air-con silent. The shabbiness of the exterior suggested nothing of the treasure within.
“The tapestries, the Buddhas... they’re all Burmese. Museum quality stuff.” Sky was drawn to a lead-glazed earthenware plaque in relief, shades of green and red pigment still present, showing two women in suggestive poses. “These pretty ladies must be, what, fifteenth century?”
“Yes but, leave it to you to gravitate toward two daughters of Mara who were sent to tempt the Buddha after he sat under the Banyan tree and vowed not to move until he reached enlightenment. Could you have resisted them?”
Sky held his left hand palm upward across his abdomen and touched the fingertips of his right hand on top of a table. Tasnee smiled; he was mimicking the classic posture of Bhumisparsa, or Touching the Earth, which was the Buddha’s response to the devil’s temptation, touching the earth as a call for nature to witness his resolve of purity.
“Is that right?” she smiled, practically singing, rising to the challenge. “Well let’s see if you can resist this.”
She sidled up to him, stepping out of her shorts seemingly by magic. She wore no panties. One hand deftly unbuttoned his cotton twill shirt and slid onto his moist chest as the other hand found the back of his neck and bowed his head so her full pink lips could touch his. Tongues soon teased each other and he tapped his fingers on the table in mock resolve. Both hands around his neck now, she leapt up and locked her legs around his buttocks, the warmth of her loins rubbing against his. Holding on with one arm she reached down and easily unzipped his khakis, conducting her own site search as a very different kind of archeologist. He tapped his fingers more weakly now.
She eased his cargo pants down until they dropped past his knees enabling the gyrations to begin in earnest. Their kisses sloshed raw: biting slurping sucking as they lost themselves in fluids and flesh. His cracked ribs screamed, then conscious thought departed as they rocked in the unformed moment. There was nothing subtle in this lovemaking, it flexed intense, the way it always did after they’d been separated for a length of time. Tomorrow’s session would be different and the following day, if there would be a following day, different yet. The subtleties came with the gift of time, which now ran in short supply for Wilder.
Indisputably weakened from his recent ordeals, he walked her toward a square, darkly lacquered chair which she grasped for support, relieving him of some weight. Tasnee sensed his diminished capacity and almost gasped when she noticed the bruising and cuts on his torso; she did not seek to prolong the engagement. Both of them drenched in sweat, she almost screaming now, he exploded a thousand suns into her galaxy of creation.
CHAPTER 14
Mr. Dang chain-smoked as he leaned on his pick-up truck parked on a small dirt turnout near the banks of the Pai River. He squinted, trying to see what the crazy farang woman was doing. She had emphatically insisted they stop here, and it was her hundred bucks.
Oblivious to some inquisitive flies, she sat on a patch of very green grass deep in meditation under a rak tree heavy with clusters of five-pointed star flowers. Dang wondered if she selected the tree because it was much-prized by younger Thais, the flowers being woven into garlands and worn around the neck of a bride and groom. The word itself, rak or ruk means love in Thai. But more than all that, this was no temple. What is this woman up to?
###
Hunt knew the psychic shield she had constructed to hide them from Forte’s RV people needed constant reinforcement, so she held a quartz crystal, a tool she occasionally used to help focus her intent. After completing that task, she opened the “back door” to the shield, a little fail-safe trick she’d installed in case she needed to h
unt Wilder down without opening the door wide to anyone surfing the astral dimension. The U.S. government was insisting on back doors for encryption software so they could always have access to digital communications if the need arose, but she didn’t need a court order to use her secret entry, just a quick RV session to give her sharp images of the good doctor's location.
When she got a strong jolt of sexual energy, she broke off quickly, flushed herself with golden light, then rejoined Mr. Dang feeling thirsty, yet confident. As always from an RV session, she had a headache. She wasn’t sure what the sex hit was about. It felt all the more odd, since Diana had been celibate for over five years, since leaving the service of Simon Forte.
She strolled over to Dang's truck, plopped down on the bench seat in the cab, and drank a pint of mineral water in a few gulps. Dang stubbed out his cigarette in the overflowing ashtray.
“Mister Dang, do you know a town in the mountains with a small lake just off the main road, two wats on the lake, and a wat on a hill above town?”
Squinting, he said, “Of course, you talk about Mae Hong Son.”
“How far is that?”
“Maybe few hour. But night come before we get Mae Hong Son.”
“Can you drive in the dark?”
“Okay, I drive in dark. Only small extra charge.”
###
The Algarve was Portugal’s answer to Spain’s Costa Brava or the French Riviera, but less developed and without the over-the-top tackiness. A warm breeze blew in from the Gulf of Cadiz, past the Manueline-style, sun-bleached structures of the beachfront town of Lagos, founded by the Carthaginians in 400 BC. Lagos had once been the base of Prince Henry the Navigator, who dispatched smallish but fast sailing vessels called caravels in the late 1400s to map African coastline and seek trade routes. Even Christopher Columbus stumbled ashore here—literally—after a French-Portuguese man-of-war destroyed his caravel.
