The Amok Runners

by Colin Cotterill

  ‘We just sort of fell in love with her and made her our mascot,’ I told Boon.

  ‘That’s very touching,’ Boon smiled. ‘What say we start tomorrow night? I’d like you three to come over to the hotel for drinks. Say eight?’

  ‘Sounds good,’ I said.

  But for Khin’s constant whining about ‘irregularities’, the afternoon ambush went comparatively smoothly.

  ‘They’re carrying flintlocks, Jimm. Flintlocks. Half a century before the things were conceived. Daft as brushes the lot of them.’

  ‘Just keep limping, Khin, and shut up,’ I said.

  ‘A fine kettle of fish.’

  ‘Relax, girl,’ I said. ‘Enjoy the show.’

  Our mother had failed to make the cut for this scene due to the fact that she was annoying. She’d insisted on telling the acting director what to do. There was also the fact that Mair tended to be a bit dotty from time to time. Movie directors need people who follow orders and don’t burst out laughing when hit by boiling oil. So we put her on a songtaew taxi and sent her home. That was the end of her movie career.

  We remaining ambushees were all daubed in dark foundation that made us look like minstrels. The makeup lady had insisted on applying a layer to Khin. She told her she wasn’t quite chocolate enough to pass for a Burmese. I hadn’t bothered to translate. At the sound of a whistle we doomed stragglers dawdled through the manmade canyon. On the second whistle we looked anxiously to the heavens and scattered as imaginary rocks came raining down upon us. Earlier in the day, my brothers, Arny and Sissy and their fellow American counterparts (all English teachers at the American University Alumni Language Center) had rolled those same imaginary rocks off the cliff and fired their improbable weapons down into the valley below. At some much later stage in a studio, pixilated rocks would be married to the film and theatre audiences would go, ‘ooh’ and turn away as the digital brains of me and Khin squirted out of our crushed skulls.

  The time wasn’t so far off when they wouldn’t need people to push the rocks or locations to push them into. The day would come when home viewers would select their favourite actor, do a right click and there he’d be embedded miraculously in a movie fashioned entirely on a computer. Then there’d be guest appearances. Doris from Oshkosh Wisconsin would find herself beneath the heaving muscular body of Vin Diesel, clawing her nails into his back. But, until that happened there was a need for Khin to throw herself on the ground several times and scream in Burmese. That scream would later be replaced by more convincing Burmese cries in a sound lab in Culver City; one more victim of the ever shrinking dominance of major Hollywood studios.

  Chapter 3

  “If you’re good at something, never do it for free.”

  The Dark Knight (2008)

  When we arrived at the Dhara Dhevi hotel, we weren’t allowed to walk from the car park to reception. We were crammed into a hansom cab – Arny taking up two seats – pulled by some kind of stunted donkey to the front steps. This could be interpreted by some as ‘class’ but we thought it was ludicrous and chuckled the whole two minute journey. The pinkly shrouded receptionist phoned through to the room, spoke in hushed tones, and asked us if we wouldn’t mind taking a seat for a few minutes. Director Boon had visitors.

  A smiling girl brought us sugary bell fruit drinks for our inconvenience and we sat on stuffed seats in reception casting our eyes around that alien planet. It was what you got for anything up to six grand a night; a teakwood spa with your own yoga teacher, shoe shines, whirlpool baths, a working rice paddy with running coolies and abundant photo opportunities, antiques to smash in the comfort of your own room, ten foot ceilings, silk and marble and all the Thai smiles you could absorb in a lifetime. If that was how the other half lived you’d want to cross over to that other side as soon as you could.

  Khin cringed in her seat.

  ‘I think perhaps I should have worn another skirt,’ she said.

  ‘You don’t have another skirt, Khin,’ I reminded her.

  ‘I certainly do.’

  ‘Then why do you always wear that same long pink number?’

  ‘Yes, in fact it’s salmon, and I have three identical ones.’

  Our laughter ruffled the neat atmosphere.

  ‘Holy shit, Khin,’ Sissy slapped her boney Burmese knee. ‘You gotta be the only girl on the planet who owns three unfashionably long pink skirts. You’re a one off.’

  As this was an evening appointment and an occasion of sorts, Sissy was a woman for the night. He wore skin-tight leather pants, heels and a low-cut lavender blouse. His breasts had been let out for the evening. His hair was gelled upright and he’d spent a lot of time on his makeup. When he was a woman he wouldn’t be seen dead without his face on. That was why he always played male extra parts rather than female. They’d never be able to smear mud on my brother as a sister. He was very sensitive as a she.

  Khin, on the other hand, was a difficult woman to insult.

  ‘They were the last three in stock at Mrs. Aye Than’s needlework shop,’ she said. ‘They normally cost a pretty penny but she allowed me a discount as she had been acquainted with my mother. And I must point out, Jimm, you never seem to be complete without your somewhat too small T-shirts designed for a much younger person.’

  Ooh, it hit.

  ‘At least they’re different colours,’ I replied grumpily.

  Arny thought that was hilarious.

  Two short-haired Thai men in grey safari shirts and reinforced shoes strutted through reception on their way out. Sissy gave me a knowing glance. We were familiar with the type. The off-duty garb of men more comfortable in uniform. Private limousine drivers and school principals dressed like this hoping to carry the same menace but it rarely worked. Only men with stripes and ribbons in their closet could make casual wear look like a suit of armor. They’d just passed our seats when one turned around and glared at me. He seemed to know me although I had no idea who he was. I didn’t realize at the time how significant that glare would prove to be.

  After five minutes the reception telephone chirruped politely and the young lady had the bellboy escort us to Director Boon’s suite. I noticed two things when Boon opened his door. Firstly, for a brief second, a different man stood before us – a nervous humorless version of the likeable hero. But as if Boon realized this too, he laughed and his old self stepped out through his skin. It all happened within a blink of an eye but I knew something disturbing had taken place to make him lose grip of his personality.

  ‘Ah, my oddball friends,’ Boon smiled. ‘Come in. Come in.’

  The second thing I noticed was that the director had his left hand hidden behind his back so he couldn’t return our wais. At first I imagined a gun there, or a gift, but when the Thai produced his hidden hand like a conjurer it was wrapped in a white napkin. One or two dots of blood had oozed to its surface.

  ‘What happened?’ Sissy asked.

  ‘They call me Boon the accident prone,’ the director laughed. ‘I slipped in the bathroom, grabbed hold of the doorframe to steady myself, and the damn door slammed shut on me. Don’t think it’s broken. It only just happened so I haven’t had chance to put anything on it.’

  ‘Nor to think of a better story,’ I mumbled in English. I stepped up to Boon and took hold of the hand. ‘Can I take a look at it?’

  ‘It’ll be all right,’ Boon said.

  ‘You should let Jimm take a look,’ Sissy told him. ‘She used to be a brain surgeon.’

  ‘I thought you were an investigative journalist,’ said Boon.

  ‘Yeah, the brain surgery was a weekend job,’ I said. ‘Red Cross, advanced course. Can I see?’

  I removed the napkin. As soon as the pressure from the cloth was released, the cut across the knuckles began to bleed freely.

  ‘That’s one heck of a sharp door,’ I said. The cut was paper thin, not bruised at all. ‘Yup, you could guillotine cardboard with a door like that.’

  ‘Just caught it wrong, I guess,�
�� Boon laughed again.

  ‘You need something on it – some dressing,’ I said. ‘Mind if I call a doctor?’

  ‘Ah, no need to bother a doctor for a scratch,’ he said. ‘Can’t we just ask reception for a first aid box? They’d probably have one here.’

  ‘Place like this’d have its own ambulance,’ Sissy suggested and headed for the phone.

  ‘I say, would anybody mind telling me what’s going on?’ Khin asked.

  Twenty minutes later the fingers were dressed and Khin was up to speed. Arny took a Coke from the mini-bar but we oldies sat around a bottle of Glenlivet. We’d already come to some agreement on Khin’s value as an advisor on regional history but, in return, the director insisted on hearing the treasure hunt story. That one glass of whisky had loosened Khin’s tongue. She happily blurted out her top-secret treasure tale and I began a not particularly simultaneous translation. Sissy filled the gaps on idioms and Khinisms I didn’t get.

  ‘Right off the bat,’ Khin began, ‘I am obliged to say that I shall not be sharing any of my wealth with you all.’

  The listeners considered that fair.

  ‘Very well, then,’ she said. ‘I shall begin with my sources; a prologue as it were. Most of the early history of the region was written on palm leaf by monks. In this climate, a good palm leaf manuscript could survive for around two hundred years. In that respect it is more reliable than paper. When the palm leaf begins to fade, the temple would take it upon itself to transcribe the history onto new palm leaf. Thus we have records that date back to the eleventh century.

  ‘As there were many ethnic groups in the region, a number of languages were used – Mon, Shan and Burmese, to name but a few – and sometimes it was necessary for them to be translated from archaic scripts. Early scholars attempted to collect these records and collate them into what we refer to as chronicles. There were a number of notable chronicles in my country as well as your own. But there are thousands of palm leaf records scattered about willy-nilly in temples and only a fraction of them have been translated. Some of these are written in such obsolete scripts they might very well keep one scholar occupied for a lifetime.’

  Khin gestured for us to refill her glass but Sissy held onto the bottle.

  ‘Don’t want you dropping off before the exciting part, old girl,’ he said.

  ‘Assuming there is an exciting part,’ I added.

  ‘Then I shall cut to the chase,’ Khin continued. ‘Where was I?’

  ‘Translations,’ said Arny who’d always been sucked in by Khin’s stories.

  ‘Quite so. One problem international scholars have is that my woebegone country has a … a little problem, politically.’

  ‘Yeah, and World War Two was a scuffle,’ Sissy laughed.

  ‘To be more accurate, Burma is run by corrupt bastards,’ said Khin. ‘They don’t facilitate access to historical data, not even to we researchers within the country. But since the student massacre of 88 and the subsequent closing of schools, I have been able, thanks to a small university discretionary fund, to sneak off into the Burmese countryside and conduct research of my own. It was as a result of these studies and my unbridled enthusiasm that I was finally given the go ahead to temporarily leave my country and coordinate matters in Thailand.’

  ‘Khin!’ I interrupted.

  ‘I don’ …Yes, Jimm?’

  ‘Where’s the chase?’

  ‘I assure you it is just beyond the next hillock,’ she said. ‘Enter here, King Mangrai.’

  ‘Come in grandpa,’ Sissy pumped his fist in the air.

  ‘King Mangrai was an exceedingly wealthy monarch,’ said Khin. ‘Apart from the natural gems and ores mined in his kingdom of Lanna, he received tribute from all those lesser kings around him. For his second, this time ‘Sovereign’ coronation perhaps at the turn of the thirteenth century, he received one hundred and eight priceless artifacts from the Vietnamese descendents of his own lineage to add to his official regalia. Mangrai was the last king of the Lao Chong succession and the first of the line naturally named after himself; the Mangrai dynasty. In curtailing their lineage he needed to pay tribute to the twenty four kings of the Ngoen Yang, or Tree of Silver, period of history that had preceded him. He needed to make an enormous sacrifice to their spirits.

  ‘According to one of the Pagan chronicles he decided to bury the royal paraphernalia which included the ceremonial Sikanchai dagger - the Sword of Victory - and the royal spear, not to mention the one hundred and eight priceless artifacts, and dedicate it all to his father’s ancestors. Thus the memory of the dynasty would remain intact. So it was that none of the crown jewels were mentioned again at subsequent Mangrai dynasty coronations despite the fact that a number of chronicles go into great detail of all the pomp and circumstance surrounding them.’

  ‘And you think you know where they are?’ Boon asked through me.

  ‘I know where they should be,’ said Khin. ‘You see? They resurfaced at the end of the eighteenth century, sometime around 1790. By then my beloved Burma had seized Lanna and held it for over two hundred years.’

  ‘Bastards,’ Sissy mumbled.

  ‘My humble apologies,’ said Khin. ‘But fear not. King Taksin of Bangkok decided to reclaim Lanna for Siam. His general for this task was called Kawila. To cut a very long story short, as the Burmese resources were rather thin on the ground due a slight altercation with invading British forces, Kawila was able to send our occupying troops back across the Salaween river with relative ease. He began to restore the deserted and almost ruined city of Chiang Mai to its former splendor. Taksin was so pleased with Kawila’s efforts that he appointed him first ruler, then king of Lanna. At Kawila’s coronation, what do you suppose made a return visit from the grave?’

  Arny and I put up our hands but Khin continued unaided.

  ‘The Sikanchai dagger and various other items of Mangrai’s regalia, no less,’ she said. ‘It is mentioned in two chronicles that Kawila wished to recreate the glorious days of Lanna and allow the populace to see the paraphernalia of the great Lao Chong dynasty. I have no idea how they found the stuff but by all accounts it was an impressive collection. One of my main objectives in Thailand has been to track down the manuscript describing King Kawila’s coronation day.’

  Just like me and Arny the very first time we heard Khin’s story, Boon was sucked in hook, line and sinker.

  ‘So, Kawila used Mangrai’s regalia but it didn’t pass down through the rest of the dynasty,’ he said, urging the story forward.

  ‘No, that’s just it,’ said Khin. ‘For several months after the coronation, there were accounts of widespread flooding around the soon-to-be-refurbished city of Chiang Mai. There was unrest amongst a populace forcibly relocated to repopulate her. The flooding brought disease. Disaster fell upon disaster. Kawila’s advisors reminded him of King Mangrai’s intention to honour his ancestors by burying the treasure. They convinced him that by disinterring it they had riled the souls of the Lao Chong kings. There was only one way to placate the spirits.’

  ‘Put it back in the ground,’ said Arny.

  ‘Exactly. There is no mention of the Sikanchai dagger being utilized in any of the subsequent coronations.’

  ‘So, where is it?’ asked Boon.

  ‘Buried somewhere deep in his imagination,’ I mumbled in Thai. Khin had reached her manic stage. There was no stopping her.

  ‘Ah, and here we encounter difficulties,’ she said. ‘I’ll make no bones about it. You see, Kawila didn’t exactly leave a map with a cross on it.’

  ‘Khin’s heading out into the countryside with a metal detector after the movie,’ said Sissy. I translated.

  ‘That would be the equivalent of finding a needle in a haystack,’ Khin confessed. ‘In fact I should be able to narrow matters down considerably before push comes to shove. It was traditional to bury valuables in the base structure of temple stupas. There was an odd belief that we Burmese barbarians wouldn’t think of looking there. In actual fact
we had the same tradition ourselves. Given the importance of the swag, Kawila would have built a rather significant stupa to house it.’

  ‘Then you think it’s under one of the great temples here in Chiang Mai?’ Boon asked.

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Khin, ‘although it isn’t totally out of the question. There was a good deal of building and renovating going on here at that time, but also a lot of eyes. A lot of spies. While they were waiting to move into the refurbished city, Kawila built a fortified encampment at Wieng Pa Sang, now known merely as Pa Sang. It’s about twenty kilometers south. It grew into quite a bustling center. The area we are in was a leading world enclave of Buddhism for many centuries and religious edifices attached themselves to new settlements like leaches to a ripe buttock. It would not have been at all uncommon for such a place to be surrounded with temples. I’m betting my best skirt on one of those stupas being the final resting place of King Mangrai’s treasure.’

  ‘And a very pretty pink skirt it would be to lose,’ said Sissy.

  ‘It’s Salmon,’ said Khin. ‘May I have a drink, now?’

  ‘Certainly, Khin,’ I smiled.

  Arny poured her a generous glass of scotch and watched her squint as she took a sip.

  ‘Okay, I’m sold,’ Boon said.

  ‘You are?’ I said, amazed how easily even knowledgeable people were taken in by treasure stories. I could see the passion in Boon’s eyes.

  ‘Oh, I don’t buy the reality,’ he said, ‘but it’s a cracking story. I’ll buy the rights off her.’

  ‘I’m not sure a Burmese citizen can hold the rights to Thai history,’ I said.

  ‘Well, my guess is this has equal helpings of fiction and fact,’ said Boon, ‘so I’m just buying the tale. And tell her I’ll fund her research for six more months. Let’s see what other juice we can squeeze out of this mango.’