by Jake Needham
“I did.”
“Why?”
Now it was my turn to glance at her. “You know the answer to that.”
“Did you really believe I was in danger?”
“I did. And you still are.”
“I don’t know whether to believe Jello or not.”
“Believe him.”
“So you came here on a mission to rescue a damsel in distress.”
“I wouldn’t put it exactly like that.”
“So how would you put it?”
“Look, Kate, what are we really talking about here?”
Kate picked up her box of Dunhills, but as soon as she did she put it down again and leaned back and folded her arms.
“I don’t want to think you’re here because Jello made you feel obligated to come.”
“Jello didn’t try to make me feel anything. He just told me about the danger you’re in. He knew I’d want to do whatever I could, and he was right.”
“You put yourself in a great deal of danger doing this.”
“I know that.”
“You would be in danger even if you hadn’t attacked General Prasert. But now…”
Kate trailed off. I waited for her to finish the thought, but eventually she just gave a little shrug and left it at that.
“Now that you’re here,” she asked instead, “how do you feel about it?”
“Feel about what?”
“Bangkok. Is it like you remembered it, or has it changed?”
I thought back to the night I went looking for the Grand Hotel and discovered it had been replaced by a Marriott. No, Bangkok wasn’t like I remembered it, and it would never be like that again. But that wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have with Kate. She didn’t need reminding that her country was turning into something even she might not recognize in a few years. I was sure she knew that well enough already herself. So I kept my answer short.
“It’s changed,” I said.
“How?”
“Well, for one thing, the whores are fatter.”
“Must be the American influence.”
I laughed. But she was probably right about that.
KATE POURED ME more coffee, and then she poured some for herself, and I was enjoying the silence so much that I was reluctant to break it. Eventually Kate did, and what she said surprised me.
“Am I doing the right thing, Jack?”
I didn’t know what she meant at first, and my puzzlement must have shown when I looked at her.
“I mean about leaving the country,” she explained. “Rather than staying here and facing General Prasert down.”
“There’s nothing to face down, Kate. The army is the government. They own the courts. They own the police. And they own them because they have the guns. General Prasert is going to see that you are convicted of corruption and sent to prison. Then he’s going to arrange for somebody in that prison to kill you. What’s to face down?”
“So why do I feel like a coward?”
I couldn’t answer that question, and I didn’t try.
“There are people here who are trying to stand up against them,” Kate went on after a moment. “If I leave, I’m deserting them.”
“Are you talking about this group called the resistance?”
Kate nodded slowly.
“Alisa told me you’re not involved with them.”
“I’m not. Not really.”
“But you know about them.”
“Of course I do. You know about Alisa and Jello, but there are others. A lot of others.”
“And what have they accomplished? What progress have they made so far in restoring democracy?”
Kate cut her eyes at me, but she didn’t say anything.
“Exactly what I would have guessed,” I said.
“Thais are bamboo, Jack. We bend, we endure, we survive.”
“Isn’t that another way of saying that Thais won’t stand up for anything? That they won’t fight back no matter what’s done to them?”
“That’s a little harsh.”
“Is it? What Thais are good at, what they’re really good at, is stoic acceptance. No matter what outrage is visited on them, they accept it. The people of Thailand have let Prasert get away with it. He put the army in the streets, told people to obey him, and they do.”
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe that’s exactly why I should stay.”
“But if you’re not involved with this resistance group, what difference does it make whether you stay here or not?”
“I was the last elected prime minister, Jack. I’m a symbol of what we’ve lost. The resistance sees me as what they have to fight for if Thailand is ever going to be free again.”
“Are you telling me the goal of these people is to restore you as prime minister?”
“No, I’m telling you the goal of these people is to restore somebody as prime minister. And if the last one this country elected turns tail and runs before they can do it, it makes their cause look pretty hopeless.”
“You being dead would make their cause look even more hopeless.”
“I’m not completely certain that’s true.”
“For God’s sake, Kate—”
“Never mind, Jack. I didn’t mean that. At least I don’t think I did.”
Kate leaned forward, shook another cigarette out of the Dunhill box, and lit it. After she snapped the lighter shut, she pointed her index finger at me.
“That’s my ration for tonight,” she said. “If you see me reach for another one, you have my permission to take the box away.”
I smiled, rolled my Montecristo in my fingers, and took a long draw. I held the sweet smoke in my mouth for a moment and released it, watching it rise into the darkness and vanish.
Kate and I fell back into the quiet after that. We each had another cup of coffee, she finished her cigarette, and I finished my cigar. It was an easy and comfortable silence. We lazed in its embrace and I found myself wondering how long peace like this could last.
Something caught my eye on Witthayu Road in front of All Seasons Place. I watched for a while, and soon I had my answer.
It had just ended.
FORTY-SEVEN
I GOT UP and walked to the railing at the front of the roof deck and leaned against it watching Witthayu Road. After a few moments, Kate got up, too, and came over and stood next to me. She must have sensed something in the way I was looking toward All Seasons Place.
“What did you see, Jack?”
“Maybe I was mistaken.”
“What did you think it was?”
“A column of military vehicles. Five or six of them. I saw it moving in the direction of the American Embassy, but it disappeared behind those buildings and I don’t know where it went.”
I pointed to the two office buildings between the American ambassador’s residence and the embassy, each rising at least thirty stories and blocking our view of Witthayu Road for several hundred yards.
“Maybe General Prasert thinks I might try to get into the American Embassy,” Kate said.
“I can’t imagine why he would think that. They’ve done nothing to help you. Nothing at all.”
I thought back to my conversation with Pete Logan, but I didn’t see any reason to mention it to Kate now. What purpose would that serve?
“We both knew this would happen, Jack. They’re going to turn the city upside down looking for me.”
“Knowing it would happen and watching it happen a few hundred yards in front of us are two very different things.”
“If I were General Prasert, I’d probably keep an eye on the embassies, too. Wouldn’t you?”
I shrugged. “Maybe.”
“He has no idea what I’m going to do. Maybe he figures I’m planning to pull a Julian Assange, take refuge in some friendly embassy and make speeches to the international press from a balcony.”
“Even if you were going to do that, the Americans would never let you use theirs.”
“General Prasert can’t be sure of t
hat.”
“Whether he is or not, he must know the Americans will never stand for the Thai army blocking off access to their embassy.”
“Of course not, but the army only has to hold their ground for a few days. General Prasert understands very well that he has to find me before Songkran or all bets are off. What’s he going to do, cancel the whole festival? Take democracy away from Thais and they yawn. Take away their holidays and they lose their minds.”
Kate pointed toward the American Embassy.
“If General Prasert doesn’t get me by Songkran, he’ll simply pull his troops back and apologize to the Americans. We Thais are good at apologizing. We never mean it, of course, but we do it really well because we’ve had so much practice at it.”
A FLASH OF light off to the left caught my eye. Three sets of headlights turned into Soi Tonson and rolled slowly toward us. I couldn’t see the vehicles behind the lights, but I didn’t have to. It wasn’t hard to guess what they were. Random civilian vehicles didn’t travel in convoys.
Kate followed my eyes and saw the lights, too.
“More military?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Probably.”
“You think they’re coming here?”
“No. I’d think they’re going to the American Embassy, too.” I pointed off to the right where Soi Tonson disappeared behind trees. “There’s a back gate up there. It’s not open to the public, but someone might bring you through it if they were trying to get you inside without anyone knowing that’s what they were doing.”
“You really believe General Prasert thinks the Americans might be helping me?”
“Who knows?” I shrugged. “I’m an American. He knows now that I’m helping you. Maybe he thinks I work for the CIA or something.”
“Do you?”
I glanced at Kate and saw a small smile on her face.
“I’m glad that wasn’t a serious question.”
“I’m not sure,” she said. “Maybe it was.”
When the three vehicles passed below us, we both instinctively leaned back from the railing although it would have been impossible for anyone to see us up there in the darkness. Sure enough, all three vehicles were Humvees painted in military camouflage. The first vehicle was completely closed, but the one in the middle had a large spotlight in the center of the roof and a soldier in battledress stood in an open hatch swinging it back and forth over the buildings along Soi Tonson. The third vehicle was the scary one. It had a machine gun mounted on the roof with another soldier in full battledress behind it.
All three Humvees passed by without slowing down. Soi Tonson came to a dead end at the back gate of the American Embassy. That didn’t leave much doubt where they were going.
“Maybe somebody’s staging a counter-coup,” Kate said. “If you hurt General Prasert worse than you think or maybe even killed him, that would create an opportunity for some other general to step in and take over. Maybe those vehicles are under the command of somebody else.”
“Like who?”
“Could be anybody. One general’s as good as another. Thailand’s just another banana republic now, Jack. Only we’re mostly bananas and not much republic.”
Kate was right about that, of course, but it seemed unnecessarily cruel to agree with her so I said nothing.
“You don’t think they know we’re here, do you?”
“No, but maybe we should go downstairs anyway,” I said. “I don’t like spotlights. And I don’t like machine guns even more.”
“They can’t search every building in Bangkok, Jack.”
“They can try. And these guys are a little too close for comfort. If they think you might be trying to slip into the American Embassy, they might start with searching the buildings around here first.”
“If they do, they do,” Kate shrugged. “There’s nothing we can do to prevent it.”
“Three days,” I said. “Just three fucking days. That’s all we need.”
“Don’t worry about it. In three days you’ll either be under arrest or we’ll be heading for that airfield and I’ll be out of cigarettes. I figure you’re equally screwed either way.”
I laughed and Kate walked back to where we were sitting and began collecting our coffee cups. She glanced back over her shoulder at me.
“I wasn’t kidding,” she said.
She probably hadn’t been.
WE TOOK OUR cups and the coffee pot down to the kitchen. Kate washed, and I dried.
I flipped on the little television on the counter again and tried the local channels. After that I checked CNN, BBC, and the other international services, too, but there was no news about Thailand on any of them. Nothing about Kate’s disappearance. Nothing about a counter-coup. Nothing at all.
“I’ve been intending to ask you something,” Kate said as she put the cups away in the cabinet. “Why are my clothes stacked on one of the couches in the living room and yours are stacked on the other?”
At that moment my attention was fully focused on something I had stumbled across on CNN. It was an NBA game that had erupted into a brawl, and who doesn’t love to watch multimillionaires with runaway pituitary glands waling the bejesus out of each other? I started to answer Kate’s question without really thinking.
“I wasn’t sure where to put your clothes,” I said, “so I just left them there. The house has a master bedrooms and two smaller bedrooms upstairs, and I didn’t know—”
All at once I realized what I was about to say and stopped talking. I cut my eyes quickly from CNN to Kate, but her face gave nothing away.
“You didn’t know whether to put both your clothes and mine in the master bedroom or to put them in separate bedrooms?” she asked. “Was that what you were about to say?”
“No,” I responded quickly, way too quickly. “That’s not what I was going to say.”
But of course it was exactly what I was going to say, and I could see Kate knew it.
She turned toward me, leaned back again the kitchen counter, and gave me a sad little smile.
“You said once that we missed our chance, Jack. Is that still what you think?”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I didn’t say anything.
“Do you regret it?”
“Only when I think about it.”
Kate looked down at her hands. For a long while neither of us spoke.
“I’ll take one of the small bedrooms,” Kate eventually said, keeping her eyes down. “Why don’t you put your things in the master bedroom?”
“No, you take the master. I’ll be embarrassed unless you do.”
“Embarrassed? Why?”
“You’re the prime minister. I’m only the hired help.”
“I’m certainly not the prime minister anymore, and I didn’t realize you were getting paid for this.”
“Figure of speech.”
All at once Kate walked over and kissed me on the cheek.
“I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, Jack. I appreciate it more than I can ever tell you. I’ll be in your debt forever.”
“You know how you can pay me back?”
Kate’s eyes took on a wary cast. She stepped back, watching, waiting for me to go on.
“Take the master bedroom,” I said.
Kate laughed, and it was real and warm and for a moment it filled the kitchen with affection and kindness.
“Goodnight, Jack.”
“Sleep well, Kate.”
At the door to the living room, Kate suddenly stopped and looked back over her shoulder.
“There aren’t a lot of men who could have done what you’ve done,” she said.
I shrugged and tried to shape my face into an expression of suitable modesty.
“You did it by being resolute and decisive, by not being afraid of consequences, by seeing what you needed to do and simply doing it.”
“Now you are embarrassing me.”
“Why? It’s true, Jack. I’ve never known a more determi
ned or purposeful man.” Kate paused. “What a shame you can’t apply those same qualities to your personal life.”
Then Kate smiled again and pushed through the door. It swung shut behind her and she was gone.
I slumped against the kitchen counter, balled my right hand into a fist, and hit myself in the middle of my forehead over and over.
FORTY-EIGHT
IT RAINED THROUGH the night on Friday. On Saturday morning I was up before Kate and I made coffee and took a cup up to the roof deck. I stood for a while drinking it quietly and looking out over Bangkok. The rain had smothered the city and drained it of color. Bangkok looked like a black-and-white photograph in a tourist brochure from the era of BOAC and Pan Am.
I didn’t see any sign of the military convoys Kate and I had watched the night before moving toward the American Embassy. Either they were somewhere out of sight or they were gone. I hoped they were gone, of course, but I knew this was not going to be nearly that easy.
When I went back down to the kitchen for more coffee, I noticed my Sig in its holster on the table near the front door where I had put it the night before and I gave myself a good kick for my carelessness. I wasn’t expecting any visitors, of course, but leaving a gun lying around in plain sight was a really lousy idea, regardless. Thailand was awash with firearms, both legal and illegal, but it was nearly impossible for a foreigner to have a handgun legally in Thailand. And me leaving one lying on a table in the living room was downright stupid. If anyone came through the front door, it would be impossible for them not to see it.
I put my empty coffee cup in the kitchen and took the Sig upstairs to my bedroom. There was a big dresser facing the bed and I pulled out drawers until I found one where Laura had stored some spare bath towels. I lifted up the stack of towels and shoved the Sig, the holster, and the spare magazine underneath it. It seemed unlikely the house would be searched by anyone but, if it was, I would be probably so screwed by then it wouldn’t matter if they found a rocket launcher and keys to a tank. Still, as long as the Sig was in the drawer under those towels I could claim it wasn’t mine and maintain I was only a guest in the house. That wasn’t much, but I’d only had one cup of coffee and it was the best I could come up with on such a modest amount of caffeine.
