by Jake Needham
When I closed the drawer and straightened up I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror above the dresser. Not a pretty sight. I rubbed a hand over the stubble on my face. Christ, I looked like a Nixon impersonator.
A half hour later, I had showered, washed my hair with some shampoo I found in the bathroom, and shaved. I consulted the mirror above the dresser again. We both agreed the improvement was remarkable.
The rest of the day passed quietly. Nothing much happened. That was exactly the way I wanted it. Kate was up late so we never got around to making breakfast, although two pots of coffee did vanish pretty quickly. There are times caffeine matters more than protein. This was one of those times.
We kept the little television set in the kitchen tuned to BBC with the volume down, and now and then I picked up the remote and flipped through the other channels. I saw nothing we needed to be concerned about. The military had kept the news of Kate’s disappearance under wraps, all mention of the explosions at EmQuartier had disappeared, and there was no suggestion on any of the international news services that anything interesting had happened in Thailand at all. If there had been another coup by a different general, the BBC would have it by now so there must not have been one.
So what was going on? It seemed likely that General Prasert was still running the show, but who really knew? The last time I saw him he was out cold. Perhaps I had done more damage than I thought. With Kate in the wind and Prasert out of commission, there would be massive dithering in the upper ranks of the army. Maybe that was why everything was so quiet.
But if the army was leaderless and confused, what were those military convoys we had seen the night before heading toward the American Embassy?
I had a lot of good questions. Too bad I didn’t have any good answers.
WE MADE SANDWICHES for lunch and then passed the afternoon watching television and surfing the internet. Kate found a cache of DVDs in a living room cabinet and we entered into a spirited debate over what to watch. I favored Batman Returns while Kate supported Eat, Pray, Love. The conflict was clearly irreconcilable so I did the only thing I could do. I surrendered abjectly.
Kate said that was gentlemanly of me and I basked for a while in her praise, but a half hour into Eat, Pray, Love I knew it was going to take a lot more than her tossing me a bone to get me through it. I began making snide comments about Julia Roberts and kept them up until Kate got so annoyed she banished me from the room. I love it when a strategy comes together exactly the way I plan for it to.
With nothing more pressing to do, I got a bottle of water from the refrigerator and went back up to the roof deck to see what I could see. I walked to the railing at the front of the deck and scanned the city. The traffic on Witthayu Road looked as if it was moving normally and I saw no signs of military activity anywhere. While I couldn’t see the American Embassy from where we were, I could quite clearly see the American ambassador’s residence and most of its grounds, and there was no sign of any unusual security there. If the Thai military were up to something, surely at least a few of the embassy’s Marine guards would be visible at the ambassador’s residence, wouldn’t they? Their absence gave me some comfort, but not a great deal.
It had been sunny most of the day and the warmth had dried the furniture cushions after the overnight rains. I finished my bottle of water and stretched out on one of the sofas with my hands linked behind my head. It was a pleasant way to pass the late afternoon.
About an hour later, Kate came upstairs to join me. I didn’t mention Batman and she didn’t mention Julia Roberts, which worked out just fine.
That evening she volunteered to cook again, and I graciously consented which saved me from having to admit we’d already had the only two dishes I knew how to make. Kate found some chicken in the freezer and rice in the pantry and with them she prepared a very credible curry. I enjoyed it so much I had two helpings.
After dinner, we went back up to the roof garden again with our coffee and sat and drank it and talked about this and that. After a while we slid away into a comfortable silence, and I sat watching the lights of the city and thought about how I had just passed one of the most pleasant days of my life hiding out from the Thai army in a borrowed house. Who would have thought, huh?
I have always believed the world exists in a kind of cosmic balance. A lucky break this week is balanced by a bad one next week. Good fortune today is paid for with bad fortune tomorrow. A fluke of pure serendipity at noon means a bitterly bad break at midnight.
And that was exactly how Sunday went. On Sunday, I got the bill for Saturday. On Sunday, the world turned to shit.
FORTY-NINE
SUNDAY WAS OVERCAST but dry and not too hot so we decided to have lunch on the roof deck. Our sandwiches were only half finished when we saw the convoy of Humvees pull into All Seasons Place and split off in different directions to block all the exits and prevent any traffic from entering Witthayu Road. I stood up, walked to the railing, and cautiously leaned out. Two Humvees were parked across Soi Tonson up by Ploenchit Road closing the soi to traffic. There wasn’t much traffic on the soi anyway, but now there was none at all.
“What’s happening, Jack?”
“It looks like they’re sealing off this whole neighborhood.”
“You think they’ve figured out we’re here?”
I shook my head.
How could they? Besides, if they did, wouldn’t they just show up in force and haul us out of the house? Why seal off the entire neighborhood around the American Embassy and the American ambassador’s residence? No, it had to be something else. But what?
I walked past Kate to the back of the roof deck and peered down at the alleyway leading out to Soi Langsuan, the roadway about fifty yards behind us. From where I was I could see most of the length of it all the way up to the Marriott Executive Apartments. Other than two motorbikes puttering along Soi Langsuan, I saw no activity at all.
Behind us, it was a typically sleepy Sunday in central Bangkok. In front of us, it looked like the Thai army was massing for an attack. I like behind better.
We spent the rest of the day watching DVDs and occasionally checking BBC and CNN. Kate seemed to have completely lost heart for arguing about which movie to put on so this time she surrendered almost immediately and I got to watch Batman Returns. A couple of times I paused the disk and went up to the roof deck to see if anything was happening, but not much was.
By dusk, the entire length of Witthayu Road was filled with military vehicles, but none of them seemed to be doing much of anything. I leaned out and checked Soi Tonson again, but other than the Humvees blocking entry to it there was no sign of anything happening there either. I walked to the other side of the roof deck and checked behind the house again. Nothing.
So lost in thought was I that I didn’t realize that Kate had come upstairs and was right next to me until she spoke.
“What do you think, Jack? Should we move? It looks clear back here. Surely we could get out without being seen.”
I looked again at the mostly empty expanse of Soi Langsuan going gray in the softness of twilight. There was something awfully inviting about it. Kate was probably right and we could get out without being noticed, but what then? Where would we go? We could hardly bike it over to the Grand Hyatt and ask for a room, not when one of us had probably the most recognizable face in Thailand.
And even if I could think of somewhere else to go to ground, somewhere Kate wouldn’t be seen or recognized, the streets were so quiet we would be too conspicuous out there. If we hit a roadblock or a cop got curious about us, we were done. I was hardly going to shoot our way out of trouble, and trying would just make things worse.
I was counting on the chaos of Songkran to cover our run to the airfield, but that was still two days away. Those two days were all the time we needed, but with about half the Thai army gathering in the streets in front of us, were we going to get it?
I had no idea.
“There’s no reason we shoul
dn’t stick to the plan,” I said. “They don’t know we’re here.”
“Then why are they sealing off the neighborhood?”
I didn’t know, so I just shook my head.
“We’re safer staying where we are, Kate. They’re not going to find us unless they search every house in the neighborhood.”
It was a little after five o’clock on Monday morning when I realized that was exactly what they were doing.
FIFTY
IT WAS THE flashing lights that woke me. The small bedroom on the second floor where I was sleeping faced Soi Tonson and I opened my eyes to disco-like swirls of red and blue spinning across the windows. Except for them, it was still dark outside. I glanced at the clock on the bedside table. It read 5:07am.
I listened intently, but I heard nothing. No sirens, no car doors slamming, no voices. My bedroom had heavy drapes over the windows and I was reluctant to pull them aside in case the movement were noticed. Instead, I pulled on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt and, still barefoot, went out into the hallway and made my way as quietly as possible up the stairs to the roof deck. Bending low, I crept to the front railing and lifted my head far enough to see down into the street below.
Two police cars were stopped in Soi Tonson right in front of the house. The roof lights of both cars were on and it was those lights I had seen dancing on my bedroom window.
I lowered my head and duck-walked away from the railing. When I got far enough to stand up without being silhouetted against the sky, I walked quickly to the back railing and looked in the opposite direction. Another police car, its roof lights rotating as well, sat blocking the alleyway behind the house.
They had us sealed in.
I slumped against the railing and thought about our options. It didn’t take very long, because there weren’t any.
IT SEEMED ODD to me that everything was so silent. From somewhere far away, probably all the way over on one of the main roads, I could clearly hear the sound of a single motorbike puttering along. If the police and the military knew we were here and were about to hit the house, why didn’t I hear activity around us? But there was no sound of running feet, no metallic clanking from equipment being prepared, no shouted commands.
I crept back to the front railing and peered over again.
The two police cars were still in exactly the same place they had been the first time I looked down, and there was still no movement anywhere around them. Very cautiously I leaned out and looked further up Soi Tonson.
The narrow roadway was filled for at least fifty yards back with a convoy of Humvees. Here and there soldiers in battledress stood in groups or leaned against vehicles waiting for orders. About a dozen soldiers were gathered at an apartment building up the road from us. While I watched, six or eight of them broke away and moved to the next building in our direction.
The army was searching each of the structures along Soi Tonson and moving in our direction. We had ten minutes at most before they arrived at our door, perhaps less.
Fleeing wasn’t a practical choice. Not only would we have to get past the police car parked in back somehow, we had no place to flee to.
Fighting didn’t make sense either. I had one 9mm handgun and thirty rounds. They had the entire Thai army and machine guns.
So if we couldn’t flee and we couldn’t fight, what did that leave?
Hiding. It left hiding.
I MOVED SLOWLY away from the rail to avoid attracting any attention and stood in the darkness thinking. It seemed certain they would have looked over all the structures along Soi Tonson before they started searching them. If they had seen the lights we had on before we went to bed, they would know somebody was in the house and ignoring their knocking would be a lousy idea. If no one answered, they would probably break the door down.
And that took me straight back to thinking about the only choice that made any sense.
I would wake Kate, hide her somewhere in the house, perhaps in the empty gallery space, and try to convince whoever knocked on the door that a search was pointless. After all, I was just a clueless foreigner using a friend’s house for a couple of days, wasn’t I? Why would they bother searching it?
Unless I answered the door and discovered they were looking for me, too. If they were, then everything would get really simple really fast.
We would be utterly and completely fucked.
I had my hand on the door handle to go down and wake Kate when I heard voices from down in Soi Tonson. I crept back to the front railing and looked over. One of the Humvees had moved up and was now parked next to the two police cars in front of the house. Beside it, about a dozen soldiers had gathered. Even from up on the roof deck, I could see the automatic rifles slung across their chests. I watched as one of them who looked like the officer in charge pointed at our door and started walking toward it. The rest of the soldiers fell in behind him.
I was halfway down the stairs to the second floor when I heard the pounding on the front door.
Time was up. Hiding Kate was no longer an option. All we had going for us now was my golden tongue and my clueless foreigner routine.
FIFTY-ONE
THE POUNDING WAS so loud by the time I got downstairs I knew they would break down the door if I didn’t answer it.
“Yes! Yes!” I shouted as I crossed the living room, trying to sound like a pissed off foreigner they had woken from a deep sleep. I found that remarkably easy to do.
I jerked the door open.
“What the hell is going on?” I snapped.
Standing in the doorway was a middle-aged man with deeply lined brown skin and eyes so dark they could have been black. His battle helmet rested squarely on his head and his uniform was crisp and appeared freshly pressed. Behind him, seven or eight soldiers stood in two rows like a Greek chorus poised to provide wry commentary on the proceedings. None of them looked nearly as formidable as their leader. They were all very young and appeared slightly bored, but how formidable did you have to look when you had an automatic rifle in your hands?
I recognized their weapons. They were IMI Tavor TAR-21s, Israeli-made assault rifles like the ones carried by the Israeli Defense Forces. Each of them would have thirty 5.56mm NATO rounds in its magazine. These guys wouldn’t need thirty rounds, of course. At this distance, one or two rounds would do the job just fine.
The officer in charge studied me in silence for what felt like an hour but was probably only a few seconds. All at once he slammed his heels together with a noise as loud as a gunshot and snapped off the crispest salute I had ever seen.
“Khun you tee ni rue plao krub?” he barked. Do you live here?
I understood him perfectly well, of course, but admitting I spoke Thai would kick a hole in the clueless foreigner routine I was counting on so I shaped my face into an expression of confusion and looked the guy right in the eye.
“Do you speak English? I have no idea what you’re saying.”
“Ni baan khun rue plao krub?” the officer barked again. Is this your house?
I ratcheted up my confused expression a couple of notches and for good measure threw in a shrug big enough to impress an Italian.
“English?” I said very loudly, over enunciating in that annoying way Americans have of speaking to people they think don’t understand them. “Do you speak English?”
The officer looked at me for a long time. I stared back into those black eyes and tried hard not to blink. Finally he extended his right hand toward me, palm up.
“Kor du passport dai mai krub!” he snapped. “Passport!”
“You want to see my passport? Why do you want to see my passport?”
The man’s open right hand never wavered.
“Passport,” he snapped again.
“It’s upstairs,” I said, and pointing helpfully toward the ceiling in case he hadn’t understood. “Do you want me to go up and get it?”
“Get passport,” he said, pointing toward the ceiling, too. “Now! Get!”
“Okay
,” I nodded. “I get passport. Upstairs.”
I started to close the door, but the army officer took a step forward and put his open hand against it.
“No,” he said. “You get passport.”
“Right. I get passport.”
UPSTAIRS I FISHED John Smith’s Canadian passport out of my duffel bag. I opened the dresser drawer, lifted the stack of towels, and looked longingly at my Sig, but it was a foolish thought and I knew it so I closed the drawer again.
Outside in the hallway I briefly considered waking Kate, but what good would that do? She could hardly make a run for it on her own. No, better leave her asleep and quiet and do my best to get rid of these clowns before she woke up. It didn’t appear they had any way to identify Jack Shepherd, or perhaps they weren’t even looking for me, so I figured that gave John Smith a fair shot at annoying them enough to drive them off.
When I got back to the front door I held out the little blue booklet and the officer in charge took it. He held the photo page right up next to my face, flicking his eyes back and forth between the picture and me. When he had satisfied himself I was the same person whose photograph was in the passport, he began slowly turning each page until he came to the stamp I received when I entered Thailand. Could that really have been less than two weeks ago? It felt now like something that had happened in another life.
The man stared at the stamp for what seemed to me to be an unreasonably long time, but eventually he closed the passport. I noticed he didn’t give it back to me.
“You Canada?”
“Are you asking if I’m Canadian?”
The man just looked at me.
“Okay, yes,” I said, “I’m Canadian.”
He looked at me some more. Finally he said, “You no sound Canada.”
What the hell did that mean?
“I don’t understand,” I said. “What do you think a Canadian sounds like?”
Those black eyes never blinked. Abruptly, he thrust out the passport and I took it before he changed his mind.
