by Jake Needham
“Is that right?”
“It is. We’re going to do one more mile after this le o;
one, then we’re going to walk across the street to the Bull’s Head. When we get there, you’re going to buy me a large Carlsberg draft, and when I’ve had about half of it you’re going to turn to me and you’re going to say, ‘So, Professor, what the fuck you talking about?’“
“That’s what’s going to happen next?”
“That’s it.”
“Huh,” Jello said. “Imagine that.”
The Bull’s Head was unusually quiet when we got there and Jello and I took a table in the back where there was no one else within earshot. After we had each drunk about half of our Carlsberg drafts in silence, Jello wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and leaned toward me.
“So, Professor” he said, “what the fuck you talking about?”
I took my time about it, but I told Jello more or less everything about my encounter with Plato Karsarkis in Phuket, including the dinner at his house. I even told Jello about the dangle from Karsarkis to do some work for one of his companies.
“Did you know Plato Karsarkis was in Phuket?” I asked when I had finished.
“I think I heard something like that.”
“So what are you guys going to do?”
“Do?” Jello sipped at his beer. “About what?”
“About Karsarkis.”
“Why should we do anything?”
“You’re not going to arrest him?” I asked.
“What for?”
“What for? To turn him over to the Americans, of course.”
“They haven’t asked us to do that.”
“Oh, come on. Karsarkis has got to be on the Interpol watch list.”
“Yeah, he is. There’s a red notice out.”
An Interpol red notice was a request to any country that found Karsarkis to detain him.
“Thailand isn’t going to pay any attention to it?”
Jello looked at me over the rim of his glass for a long moment, but he didn’t say anything.
“Oh, it’s like that,” I said.
Jello gave a little shrug with his eyebrows, but he stayed silent.
“What if the American Embassy files a formal request for Karsarkis’ arrest?”
“We don’t have to think about that until they do it.”
“How very Thai of you.”
“Thank you.”
Jello slugged down the last of his beer and waved to one of the waitresses. She came over and gave him a smile that would have melted the McMurdo Ice Shelf.
“One more?” she asked.
“Two more. One for me and…” he poked a thumb in my direction, “one for my dad.”
The girl suppressed a giggle and flashed him another thousand-watt smile before she moved away.
“How come you get the big-eye, goo-goo routine and she ignores me completely?” I asked Jello.
“Women radar stuff. They know whenThew come yo you’re already hooked up and aren’t available.”
“I’m willing to lie.”
“Wouldn’t do you any good,” he said. “They know.”
We sat in silence until the waitress had replaced our empty glasses with freshly drawn drafts, during the course of which I had to endure another round of her flirting with Jello and ignoring me.
When she had gone I cleared my throat and told Jello about meeting Marshal Clovis Ward. Then for good measure I described our night out together in Patong and repeated CW’s appeal for intelligence on Karsarkis’ security.
“You have a funny habit of ending right in the middle of all kinds of shit, don’t you, Professor?”
“It’s a talent.”
“That’s one way to look at it, I guess.”
“So…did you know the US Marshals were in Phuket?” I asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“And it doesn’t bother you they’re there without the embassy having filed an official request to detain Karsarkis?”
“What bothers me isn’t the point,” Jello said.
I shoved my beer glass around in a circle on the tabletop and it left a thin trail of water on the heavily lacquered wood. I reached out and traced the water with my forefinger.
“So what are you going to do?” I asked after a while. “Let the marshals kidnap Karsarkis and hustle him out of the country?”
“It’s not going to come to that.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Look, Professor, whenever your guys think the time is right, I’m sure they’ll make a request for extradition to the prime minister.”
“If they do, what will the prime minister say?”
“No idea.”
“Right.”
“Really. I have absolutely no idea.”
I reached out and tapped my forefinger on the table in front of Jello. “You and I both know Karsarkis didn’t get where he is by being stupid,” I said.
Jello glanced at me, but his eyes bounced off without sticking. Still, there had been a flash of embarrassment there and I had caught it full on.
“Karsarkis isn’t just rolling the dice,” I said. “He wouldn’t be here if he weren’t absolutely certain he has the Thai government in his pocket.”
“Doesn’t really matter,” Jello said, without looking at me. “If your guys really want him, you’ll get him.”
“Watch that, would you? It’s the second time you’ve said it. They’re not my guys. I’m not in involved in any of this.”
“Then just keep it that way, Jack. There’s a lot going on here you don’t understand.”
“That’s what you always say.”
“That’s because it’s always true.”
“Maybe I know more than you think.”
“Doesn’t look that way to me.”
Jello was right, oo wnow morf course. I knew damned near nothing about the intrigues that were no doubt churning like a tornado around Plato Karsarkis’ presence in Thailand, which was exactly why I was sitting with Jello right then trying to bait him into telling me something.
“A United States Marshal trying to recruit me as a spy makes me uneasy,” I said. “I don’t want to find myself in the middle of an international incident.”
“Your guys will come to their senses before they do anything stupid.”
“And if they don’t?”
“We’re not going to fight a gun battle with them at the airport, Professor, if that’s what you’re asking me.”
That wasn’t what I had been asking, of course. All the same, it was good to know.
EIGHTEEN
The Sasin School of Business occupies two buildings on the far northern edge of the Chulalongkorn University campus, a hodgepodge of early Thai and late Stalinist architecture right in the heart of central Bangkok. The first building is pretty good looking. It has a sheltered garden at its entrance and students often gather there at tables scattered in the shade of big oak trees to grab a smoke or drink a coffee. The second building is ugly. Its utilitarian bulk sprouts straight out of a barren concrete pan that soaks up heat and roasts the feet of anyone foolish enough to try to cross it. My office is in the second building, on the sixth floor.
I was still there late the next afternoon, working on a Montecristo and trying to think of something brilliant yet witty to say to the following day’s International Securities Regulation class, when Tommy opened the door without knocking.
“Your secretary’s gone home,” he said. “There wasn’t anyone to announce me.”
“So naturally you just barged right in.”
“Naturally. Occupational habit.”
I had known Tommy for several years. His real name was Tommerat something or another, but everyone I knew just called him Tommy. In the face of all provocation he stuck cheerfully to the story that he held some position in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Regardless, if there was anyone in Bangkok who didn’t know that Tommy actually worked for the National Intelligence Agency, I had nev
er met him.
The first time I had introduced Tommy to Anita, she had been terribly amused at the idea of meeting a Thai spy and had tossed out a couple of pretty snappy one-liners on the subject. I tried to explain to her later that there was absolutely nothing amusing about Tommy, and certainly nothing to laugh about, but I don’t think she really believed me.
Tommy settled into one of the guest chairs in front of my desk without being invited.
“You got any more of those?” he asked, pointing to the cigar I was smoking.
I waved vaguely at the humidor on my desk. “Help yourself.”
Tommy leaned forward and with his index finger carefully lifted the lid of the Dunhill humidor Anita had given me as a wedding present.
“Just these crappy Montecristos?” he asked, inspecting its contents suspiciously. “No Cohibas?”
“Hey, you don’t like ‘em, don’t smoke ‘em.”
Tommy looked genuinely annoyed with me, but he took one of squthe Montecristos anyway. “It’s all you got, Jack. What choice do I have?”
My heart wasn’t in it, but we made polite chit-chat while Tommy cut the cigar, lit it, and puffed it into life.
“You don’t look so good, Jack,” he said after he was done. “Everything okay?”
“Fine, Tommy. Never better.”
“Good,” he said. “Good.”
Tommy nodded and drew on his cigar. I nodded back and drew on mine. My office was fast filling up with nods and smoke.
“Why are you here, Tommy?” I asked when it became apparent he wasn’t in any hurry to tell me. “Is there something specific on your mind, or are you just trolling for gossip?”
“Well…look, Jack, you want to go out? Maybe get some dinner or something?”
“No thanks.”
“There’s a new steakhouse at the Marriott that everyone says is great. All imported American beef, not that Australian shit.”
“I’ll take a rain check.”
Tommy fiddled with his cigar and then abruptly stood up.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist, Jack.”
I took the cigar out of my mouth and leaned forward. “I’m sorry?”
“Hey, if I were you I wouldn’t want to come with me either, but there’s somewhere you need to be. I’m here to deliver you.”
“Whoa.” I dumped the remains of my cigar in the ashtray and put both hands flat on my desk. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Tommy looked grave. “You need to see somebody, Jack, and he can’t come here. You’ve got to go to him.”
“Who is it?”
“Just come with me, Jack.”
Tommy pointed to the ceiling with his right forefinger and cupped his left hand around his ear in a listening gesture.
“Trust me a little here,” he added in the most inane stage whisper I had ever heard a grown man use.
I leaned back in my chair and rolled my eyes. “You’re out of your goddamned mind, Tommy. Do you seriously expect me to believe that my office is bugged?”
“Who knows? Anyway, better safe than sorry, I always say.”
I segued from rolling my eyes into shaking my head. My personal experience with guys in the intelligence business was that most of them eventually went around the bend in one way or another. It looked like it might be time to wave bye-bye to Tommy.
“What have you got to lose, Jack?” he went on before I could say anything else. “Are you in such a big a hurry to get home tonight that you can’t spare an old friend an hour?”
Not surprisingly, Anita had resurrected the issue of the house in Phuket and for the past couple of days had been expressing her unhappiness over my rejection of BankThai’s cream-puff deal in quite colorful terms. I shot Tommy a look to see if his reference to my home life was just a coincidence. His expression gave nothing away so I couldn’t tell. Regardless, he had a point. I certainly wasn’t in all that big a hurry to get home tonight.
“Okay, I surrender.” I raised buo;ave nothoth my hands, palms out. “I’ll go quietly, officer.”
“Good, good,” Tommy nodded.
I collected some books and papers, mostly at random, and jammed them into my briefcase. Then I shut off my office lights and followed Tommy out into the hall.
“Give me the address and I’ll meet you there,” I said as I locked the door behind us.
“It would be better if you rode with me. I’ll bring you back to get your car when we’re done.”
I gave another shrug and followed Tommy down the hall to the elevator. Why not? After what has already happened in the last week, how many surprises could be left in one man’s lifetime?
Later that night, looking back on what happened next, I made a mental note never to ask myself a question like that again.
NINETEEN
A black mercedes was waiting in the circular driveway when we emerged from the building. The driver jumped out and opened the back door for Tommy. While he was getting in, I walked around to the other side of the car and joined him in the back seat. I accomplished that by opening and closing my own door. It really wasn’t all that hard.
“You know, Tommy,” I said as we pulled away, “I’ve never been absolutely clear just what a Thai spy actually does.”
“I’m shocked, Jack. Shocked. I’m not a spy. I’m merely the deputy to the spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”
The Mercedes had pearl-gray curtains on its side windows and I pushed the one on my side of the car back and forth on its chrome rails a few times, trying it out. The car’s windows were already so dark I probably could have fired off a flare gun inside without anyone seeing it, so the curtains seemed a bit much. Still, when they were closed I had to admit that the whole effect was very pleasant. The Mercedes became a dim, cool submarine sliding silently through the debris of the Bangkok streets.
“So anyway, Tommy, what does a Thai spy really do?”
Tommy sighed and seemed momentarily absorbed in studying something outside his window; then he sighed again and jerked his curtain closed.
“Thailand is in an unusual position as nations go, Jack. We are small and unimportant in the great scheme of world politics, and yet not entirely a joke. Much of what matters in the world seems to pass through us in one way or another. You should think of Thailand this way: we are like a hallway.”
“A hallway?”
“No one really cares about a hallway. It’s not a significant room in any building. It’s just a way to get back and forth between the places where the important things happen. But you know, if you stand quietly in a hallway, sometimes you can hear and see extraordinary things. Sometimes you can learn more standing in the hallway than if you’re invited right into the rooms.”
I didn’t quite know how to respond to Tommy’s moving tribute to the importance of hallways, so I just sat and watched his soft, almost pink face in the glow of the lights from outside the car.
Tommy wasn’t very tall. He was slightly overweight and he wore a conservative gray suit with a white shirt and a dark tie. He could be anybody, I thought to myself. If someone told me Tommy was really a Canadian grocery store owner or a Portuguese real uo;av shestate developer, I would have had no reason at all to doubt them. That was exactly what made Tommy such an effective spy.
The big Mercedes left the campus and turned north on Phayathai Road. It edged steadily through the heavy traffic between Siam Square and the imposing bulk of the Mah Boonkrong Center, an eight-story concrete bunker with a huge shopping mall inside it through which thousands of people poured every day of the year searching for cheap mobile phones, pirated software, and knock-off designer clothing.
“You going to tell me where we’re headed?” I asked Tommy, but he didn’t answer. Instead he pushed the curtain on his side open again and sat quietly examining a crowd of university girls gathered under a bus shelter.
The driver punched the accelerator to make the light and I saw we were going east toward the Sukhumvit residential distri
ct, the area where most of the foreigners in Bangkok lived in a forest of luxury high-rises that had sprouted over the last few years from what had not so long before been only rice fields. Those Thais who had the extraordinary good fortune to be the heirs of the farmers who had owned those rice fields had grown wealthy beyond most people’s understanding of the word. Those Thais whose ancestors had owned fields that were just a few hundred yards away in one direction or another had grown envious beyond most people’s understanding of the word.
“What have you been doing with yourself, Jack?” Tommy abruptly asked. “I mean recently.”
“Teaching my classes. Hanging out with Anita. The usual.”
“No adventures?”
“Not so as you’d notice.”
Tommy smiled.
“Miss the action?” he asked.
“No.”
Tommy chuckled, crossed his legs at the knee, and turned his head back toward the window. “You’re full of shit.”
“Possibly,” I allowed. “But not about that.”
Tommy chuckled again.
“Believe me or not, little man,” I said. “It is so.”
“Don’t give me that crap, Jack. You were a player. And now you’re just…well, what? You teach a little? You do some consulting? And you’re happy? Don’t try to shit a shitter, man. You miss the action. I know you do. I’ll bet sometimes you even wonder if you could still cut it in a big game, don’t you?”
That was a little close to the nerve, so I glanced away from Tommy and concentrated on the back of the driver’s head.
“Shit,” Tommy snorted. “I knew it. Once a player, always a player.”
I took a deep breath and turned toward Tommy, staring at him until he stopped fidgeting and held my eyes.
“Listen very closely, my friend, and make notes if you want to, because I’m going to tell you something you ought to remember.”
I imagine I sounded a bit testy and I didn’t particularly care.
“I have a nice life and a woman who loves me, and I will fight you or anyone who threatens to screw it up for me to the death. You hear me, Tommy? To the very fucking death.”
The Mercedes slowed and moved over to the middle lane. It edged past a handcart loaded with straw brooms that a stooped old woman was pushing along next to the curb. Tom thhe Mercedemy didn’t answer me, but I hadn’t really expected him to. Instead he tilted his head back against the seat and shut his eyes.
