Sisamone was eager to show the women how valuable he could be. He had a brainwave right there in front of 'em. He reckoned they should let the local radio station know where they was staying. That way the kidnappers would know they was in town and how to find 'em. That was a real smart move.
57
"Hi."
"How you doing?"
"You must be Waldo."
"Well, that's right. How in tarnation you know that?"
"I came to Mukdahan to rescue you."
"Is that right? That was very nice of you. Thank you. What's your name?"
"Demetria." Waldo thought about it for a bit.
"That's a real pretty name."
"Thank you."
"You're welcome. Would you like some cake?"
Waldo and Demetria got on real good at the kidnappers' place. She got over the shock of herself getting kidnapped real soon, with Waldo soothing her nerves. It had shook her up some to see five guys in masks at the end of her hotel bed at five in the morning.
Her and the general had been in some tough spots in her life. But she never had to look down the barrel of a gun before. Not even in New York where she was born, and that's gotta be some kind of a record.
I guess Waldo didn't have no choice but to be nice to her, seeing as he was responsible for her being there. When the boys heard on the radio there was someone from the United States Embassy in town, he dropped in the suggestion that they might as well kidnap her too. So they did. He figured two hostages was better than one, and someone from the embassy had to be worth more than him. Couple of the guys started calling him, 'boss' already.
58
If Laurel and Hardy would of been Laos, they would of been Suk and Sivilai. You ain't never seen two funnier looking Asians in your life. Suk had a waist that was somewhere down around his knees. He had so many chins, one of 'em was his belly. The only meat on Sivilai was his tongue. You see them two together and you think some guy's been separated from his skeleton and he's walking around with it figuring how to get it back in.
But, man, them two was dedicated to the Pathet Lao. They sure was. There wasn't a thing they wouldn't of done for Porn and Souk. It's just that the PL couldn't use 'em much on account of the way they looked. Secret agents gotta be invisible. It don't help if they give the impression they're gonna launch into a comedy routine. It was heartbreaking for the two guys stuck in an office doing paperwork.
So you can imagine how delighted they was when they got their first mission. They was Thai-based PL with legal, well, almost legal, Thai papers, so they was perfect for the job Porn give 'em. After the briefing, they went up to Mukdahan and met up with the Lao/American girl and she give 'em the background.
Both of 'em fell head over heels in love with Saifon, but thanks to their loyalty to each other neither of 'em confessed their feelings. Suk knew Saifon would of chose him and it would of crushed his friend. Sivilai knew the same thing only in reverse.
They was camped out in their van down from the compound on the Ubon road when the truck come out. There was two guys to do the driving and it stopped at the first gas station and filled up. You never filled up in the northeast less you was planning a real long trip. It was a box truck but Suk climbed up on the roof of their van and could see that there was vents open on the top. That had to be the dispatch they was watching for.
Suk and Sivilai shared the driving and kept their distance just like they'd seen at the movies. Next morning they found they was coming into the outskirts of Bangkok. A couple of times they almost lost the truck in crazy traffic. The deeper they got into the city, the crazier it got.
At nine in the morning that old truck stopped in front of a pair of fancy iron gates at a big, dumb-looking mansion near the docks. It pulled inside, the gates shut, and the boys knew they'd just done a real good job of spying. For sure, they was going on to bigger and better things.
59
Things started to get serous when the pictures the commie boys took arrived at the embassy a day later. In fact you could probably say the situation got a little out of hand. The guy that did the developing sent off the whole frigging lot of 'em, alive and dead. He didn't really get the part about saving the post-mortem Waldo till later. But the effect was real effective.
It soon become clear to everyone at the embassy that them kidnappers wasn't kidding. Look what they'd done to the poor old guy. He was laying there dead in a pool of blood like a french fry in tomato ketchup. (The tomato ketchup part was right.) Them pictures was shown to the cops and the secret service. To the military, they was a prayer come true.
You see, if you wanna keep control on people, you gotta give 'em something to be afraid of. In Thailand's case it was 'communism'. Commies was the boogy men that ate your kids, and did unmentionables to your grandmother. It wasn't unknown for 'em to creep in your bedroom at night and bite your head off.
Course they never did none of that stuff, but the army wanted everyone to think they did. And this set of pictures was living color proof that them commies was cold-blooded murderers. Somehow, them pictures accidentally got leaked to every newspaper in the country.
And that's how Saifon found out Waldo was a goner. She was on the train to Bangkok and a lady come through the carriage selling newspapers. Waldo's bugging-out eyes and flapping-out tongue was right there on Waldo's head that was lying in a pool of blood. Even the black and white newspaper picture was gory as hell.
Saifon probably wouldn't confess to how she really felt when she saw that picture. She didn't do emotions too good. She never let herself get too close to no one so her feelings didn't get a lot of exercise. She thought she'd run out of tears long before she hit sixteen.
But Waldo was different. She'd let him in all right, the big gumball. She done everything she could to keep him outside in the snow but that fool shoveled his way through it. Once he was in, she didn't have no choice but to love him.
"You okay, miss?"
The two ticket collectors was looking at her like she was a leak in the washroom.
"Course I ain't rather okay. You goons think I'd be sitting here bawling my rather eyes out if I was rather okay? You rather fucking idiots." But she said all that in English so they didn't have a frigging clue what she was talking about. They snipped the corner off her damp ticket and left her to her ranting. It took her all the way to Bangkok. She was full of that lump you get that ain't explainable in no medical way. She cried till there weren't nothing left. Every hill the train went past reminded her of him. Her landscape was flat without him. I thought of that. Pretty ain't it.
-o-
She got to the capital determined that Waldo's death wasn't gonna be in vain. Bangkok had even more surprises waiting for her. Mrs. Porn's driver was there to meet her at the station and take her back to the house on Ngam Duphli Street. By the time she got there, she'd already decided not to tell no one about Waldo. She really hated people feeling sorry for her.
"Great news." The old lady met her at the door and kissed both her cheeks like the French people do. You always worry if you cleaned your face properly in the morning, when that happens. Mrs. Porn couldn't wait to tell Saifon her news so she put her arm round her waist and dragged her through the house to the garden. She couldn't see the misery behind Saifon's sunglasses. She didn't know then that Saifon's horizon didn’t have no hills on it. "Our men kept track of the van all the way to Bangkok. It dropped the girls off at a house near Klong Toey, at the docks."
They sat in the gazebo and the same maid bought the same drinks out that Waldo liked so much. Saifon hadn't slept all night but she was pushing herself to keep a focus on the lady's story.
"Do we know who lives there?"
"The owner of the house works for a shipping company. By rights, if we look at his position, he shouldn't have a big house and a nice car but he has both. He also has a bar and one or two minor wives. So he obviously isn't living off his salary alone."
"You found all that out in twenty-four hours?"
"Oh, my dear, it's so nice to be presented a problem that's small enough to take control of." Funny. Saifon didn't see the problem being small at all. "There are two ships attached to that particular line leaving tomorrow, a tanker and a freighter. We'll be watching the house very closely. I imagine they'll take the children on board early, before the dock workers get on duty."
Saifon thought about the girls and recalled something one of her street sisters told her once. She was teaching Saifon how to cheat at cards and there was this one tactic where you lose a couple of hands even if you got good cards. This makes the mug you're playing think you're crap and bet heavier. She said,
"Sometimes you gotta sacrifice a few soldiers to win the war." She thought that was good advice, less you happened to be one of the soldiers. The four kids they was sacrificing on the boat was all gonna end up a mess like she did. They'd be on the tanker, tired, stinking and confused. None of 'em knew where they was going. They wouldn't understand why everyone knew they was there but didn't do nothing to help 'em. Winning the war didn't mean a frigging thing to them.
"I'll need the address," she told Porn. "For when I call the CIA guy." That's what she said, but she needed it for another reason too. She wanted to let the girls know they was gonna be alright.
During the afternoon, she had a long talk with an old guy in a suit that Mrs. Pornsawan dragged in from some Ministry. The old lady must still of been somebody. She told him everything about the trafficking and what she knew from Mukdahan. She didn't say nothing about Waldo. He seemed real interested and wrote stuff down and promised he'd get the guys that was running the business.
She wondered why this important-looking guy would come himself and not send some secretary. Porn put her straight once he'd left. The Thais was keeping an eye on things in Laos and it still wasn't clear what side they should be on. So they played on both of 'em.
After the calls was all made and the plan was all set, she had a nap and a think. At six, she lifted some unfashionable clothes from a closet and went for a taxi ride.
-o-
Knock. Knock.
"Hello?"
"I'm here to see Mr. Jaroon."
The maid didn't bother asking what she wanted. She was a maid, not a doorman. She unlocked the gate and stepped back to let this over-powdered young woman in dark glasses into the yard. The dogs sniffed at her like she was dinner.
She got took into this grand new house that had more concrete than the Lincoln Memorial. Concrete was all the rage then for folks rich enough to build with it. Mrs. Porn was right. You didn't get a house like this on seventy three dollars a month.
The maid left Saifon in a kind of expensive holding pen and went off to find the boss. The room was a mess of styles that didn't match. Money can buy you stuff, but it can't buy you taste. There was an ugly mirror by the door so guests could look at themselves and decide if they was good enough to be there.
She looked in it. She was sure Mrs. Porn's men wouldn't recognize her in her glasses and hat. She'd worked out a cover story that wouldn't blow the whole operation and she'd run enough scams in her life not to be nervous. In fact there was only one thing that could of happened to screw everything up.
When Jaroon the shipping company guy come in she felt like she'd been hit over the head with a baseball bat. He come out of her memory like an old sink unit being ripped out of a wall. He'd been in there hiding for fifteen frigging years and she didn't know it. He wasn't changed at all from the little guy that ran his smelly hand over her chest when she was eight. His hair was sitting further back on his head and his belly was rounder, but there wasn't no doubt.
"Can I help you?" She couldn't bring herself to say nothing. "Miss?" Them few stalled seconds dragged out for what felt like a goddamned hour before she could make her voice work.He was getting restless.
"Ah, yeah. I'm with … I'm with the Jehova's Witnesses."
"The what?"
"We're an international religious organization that spread …"
"How did you get in here?"
"Your maid let me in." She'd lost the desire to playact. She just wanted to get out. All them years and he was still there. She imagined how many petrified little girls he'd manhandled. How much money he'd made from the flesh of children. She wanted to kill him right there.
"She shouldn't have done. I've got better things to do. I don't have time for rubbish like this. She'll show you out." He turned his back on her rudely and walked out. Her legs was wobbly. She heard him bark and growl at the maid before the girl come running back in with tears in her eyes.
"The boss says you gotta go. Now." She led her back to the gate, unlocked it, and almost pushed Saifon out into the street. She knew the watchers was around somewhere so she walked a block and turned a corner before she stopped to catch her breath. She'd never felt nothing like it, but she knew already that what she'd been pretending was a load of bunk. She wasn't doing all this just to help them kids. She had her own angry inside her that needed clearing out too.
60
Demetria and Waldo was getting on okay. I don't mean nothing romantic mind. They was both in love with dead people. But they'd been sharing a room for forty-eight hours and you get to know someone pretty good when you're stuck in a little space together. There certainly was some electricity.
"Waldo. Do you think we should consider escaping?"
Well, of course he didn't think that. He was in cahoots with the kidnappers. The last thing he wanted was for the hostage to get away. He tried to convince her they wouldn't be in no danger as long as they didn't do nothing stupid. But she was a feisty broad who'd married into the army. She'd watched a lot of training movies.
"Demetria. Just relax, girl. Think of this as a couple of days paid vacation."
"Right. I always put myself through stress if I need to relax. I always take my vacations in rooms without windows in the middle of God knows where."
"So I guess you're used to it then, Demetria?"
See? That was another reason there hadn't been no romance. Demetria was as deep as Lake Michigan. Waldo … well, Waldo wasn't.
-o-
Sisamon, the secret service guy was going nuts. It was his first big assignment. They'd sent him to the northeast to rescue a kidnap victim. That victim was horribly murdered. His only ever idea led to him also losing a high ranking US embassy official. She would likely get chopped up like the first guy.
The story was all over the local papers. Thai journalists was crawling all over the place. And foreign war correspondents sick of being fed bullshit in Bangkok, had come up for this juicy little piece too. It was a sneaky way to write about the secret war without writing about the secret war, if you know what I mean. 'US Embassy Official Kidnapped by Thai Communists.' What could they possibly be protesting against?
Sisamon's career was on the line. He had to find Waldo's remains and Demetria before the press did. He started hanging out with 'em in the hotel bar at night, scrounging for tid bits. He got the lead he wanted from a very well known reporter whose grasp on secrets got looser the more drinks he had inside him.
"Have another bottle, Athit."
"Well, just the one more I suppose. Got to hang on to the little money they give me in Bangkok. Now, if I had a Washington Post budget, I'd have kidnapper's banging on my hotel door at three AM too."
"The Post talked to the kidnappers?"
"They sure did. But this is just between you and me young …what's your name again?"
"Kwun."
"Right. They got a world exclusive for a mere four thousand bucks. Can you believe it?"
"I didn't see that in the Post."
"Ah. They're hanging on to it. The reporter wants to skip town before it's published. He doesn't wanna be tortured by them Thai secret service pigs. You wouldn't believe what those animals do to you to get information."
"You'll have to tell me sometime - when we're alone. What makes this reporter think the kidnapper's genuine?"
"He had
a note signed by the first victim, and the embassy broad's ID."
"So, what's stopping the reporter from leaving? He's got his story."
"Not all of it. He sent a bunch of questions back to the gang. He'll meet his contact for the answers tomorrow."
"Is that so?"
-o-
He went to see the Post guy for a friendly chat at 3AM. They'd have to fix the lock later. He took his press liaison officer, Mr. Kritijak with him. His job was to hold the knife at the Post guy's throat while they discussed sources. Press freedom didn't ever make it to Mukdahan.
So when one of the student kidnap guys went to meet the Post guy for a follow up, he got jumped by half a dozen military guys.
61
"Mr. Waldo, can you come with us please."
"Oh no. What are you going to do with him? Leave him alone. Hasn't he suffered enough?"
"Now, Demetria. Settle down. I'll be fine. They just want a little chat, I guess. Isn't that right boys?"
They took him out to the kitchen and sat him down.
"We've got a problem, Waldo."
"A big one."
"What's up?"
"They grabbed one of our men, the Thai army."
"Now that's too bad. What do you think they'll do to him?"
"They'll torture him. Make him tell 'em where we are."
"You think he'll talk?"
Pool and its Role in Asian Communism Page 17
