Assignment - Bangkok Read online

  “Where?” Durell asked.

  “Young Tinh, my other nephew, knows where to find his holy brother. They were always close. Tinh is a boxer now. He is very good, they tell me.” The old man closed his eyes briefly. “He fights tonight, at the stadium. Mr. Chuk, who has many interests, also owns him. Mr. Chuk will be watching the fight, too. Go and ask Tinh. He will tell you where to find his brother.”

  Durell finished his tea. He took the cup and put it in a box beside the tiny charcoal stove. He thought of the woman lying dead in the darkened house, with her throat cut, and he wondered how long she had been Hu’s wife. He could offer no condolence, no sympathy. It was one of the difficult aspects of his business, when laymen were involved and innocents were drawn into the dark web of violence in which he lived. Nothing could be done about it. He could give Hu nothing except silence and privacy. He stood up, and the sampan rocked a little under his weight. “I will go to ask Tinh, then,” he said.

  “Do so,” said the old man. “Let nothing be wasted.” Durell stepped from the sampan to the bank of the canal, walked in the shadows of the takhien trees and smelled the jasmine again. He paused before the miniature spirit-house in the garden and took some money from his wallet and stuffed it inside. Uncle Hu would find it. It might not placate the phis who had witnessed tragedy here, but it would help the old man. He would have to arrange his expenses to account for it.

  Turning away, he walked up the lane to find a taxi.

  4

  The taxi took him along the overpass in the Pratunam District, past the BOAC building, then on a run to the Chulalongkorn University and the Chao Phraya River.

  His hotel, the Ubol Duong, fronted the water, distant enough from the concrete and glass architecture of the more modern hostelries to satisfy Durell. The Ubol Duong catered to businessmen, not tourists, and gave him the privacy he needed. The lobby had high, ornate ceilings, cooled with large wooden rotating fans, and the bar had reasonably good bourbon, Mekong whiskey, and a small Filipino combo that hacked out their versions of New Orleans jazz, soul, and an occasional dip into Tahitian-type lullabies. There was a tiny dance floor, and the management provided delicate Thai girls and some Chinese taxi dancers for private entertainment.

  Durell ordered a bottle of bourbon and took it with him. in the open-cage elevator that creaked upward above the potted palms in the lobby. No one among the turbaned Sikhs and West German engineers in the lobby spared him a second look. No kamoys, thugs, waited for him. And no police. He was relieved.

  He showered in scalding water and mixed some of the bourbon with mineral water for a drink, then chose a fresh shirt and dark blue necktie from his battered travel bag. It was not yet ten o’clock in the evening. From the high windows came sluggish traffic noises—samlaw bells, the shuffling of pedestrians along the river front, where elegant white yachts were moored beside water taxis and rice barges. He cleaned his gun and dropped extra cartridges into his pocket, added a small, heavy sleeve knife to his right arm, and then stood on a chair and from the wooden fan in the ceiling, just above the bulky motor, he took down a tiny tape recorder and started it going.

  He spoke quietly into it, recording his attempt to find the sleeper agent, Kem Pasah Borovit, who had been living as a bhikkhu, a Buddhist monk, for four years under K Section’s orders. He noted his imprisonment, his references to Mr. Chuk and his bully boys, and then hid the tiny mechanism again above the fan motor.

  The telephone rang.

  No one, in theory, knew he had checked into this hotel.

  He ignored the rings and examined the two tall windows facing the river embankment, flipped back the cushions on two Bombay chairs, and opened the brown teak wardrobe. The phone kept up its clamor. He felt his way down the back of the high Chinese bed, his fingers moving swiftly. Almost at the floor, he found a small metal attachment and a length of wire. He pulled it loose, saw it was a tiny microphone bug, then tore it entirely free and dropped the transistor into his shirt pocket.

  The telephone had gone silent.

  He picked out a dark blue linen jacket, changed his wet shoes, and was ready to go out again when the phone rang once more. This time he lifted the receiver, but said nothing.

  “Sam?” It was a woman’s voice. “Sam, is it you?”

  “Hello, Benjie.”

  “By Buddha’s navel, what’s the matter with you?” “Nothing, Benjie. How did you know I was in town?” “Everybody knows, Cajun. Listen, I must see you.”

  “I’m busy,” he said bluntly.

  “This is your business, Cajun.” The voice was fairly deep for a woman, crisp and taut, without the usual overtones and inflections that a woman uses when talking to a man. “I must see you and discuss things with you.”

  “Is it about Mike?”

  “Of course it’s about Mike.”

  “I thought you were through with your brother.”

  “I owe him something. Loyalty, maybe. Pity. You name it. It disturbs me, and I’ve got to do something about him.”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  “Good, then. Come see me.” It was an order.

  “Where?”

  “I’m going to the sawmill,” Benjie Slocum said. “The foreman is drunk, and one of the sawyers got his arm sliced off, the idiot. Can you meet me there? You’ve been at the mill before, haven’t you? Remember, a few years ago—”

  “I remember. Have you heard from Mike?”

  Benjie Slocum’s crisp voice hesitated. “That’s the whole thing. You sent him in. He simply hasn’t come back.”

  “No word at all?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Give me a couple of hours.”

  “All right, Sam. It will be good to see you. I’ve got your favorite bourbon.”

  “Mekong will do just fine.”

  She rang off. Durell held the phone for a moment, then cradled it thoughtfully. He stood for a full minute, thinking it out.

  He had no difficulty recalling Benjamina Slocum. It was her inherited money that started her brother Mike here in Thailand, lifting him from a light-hearted, devil-may-care charter pilot in a mortgaged Piper Apache to a big businessman, with interests in rubber down in the Kra Isthmus, teak forests and lumbering up near Chiengmai, a tea plantation in the northern highlands by the Laotian border, and the Thai Star Air & Shipping Co. that had rim Benjie’s stake into millions. Whatever their prosperity, however, Mike remained the same. He did odd jobs for K Section, and two weeks ago, in Washington, Durell had yielded to Mike’s plea for action. Big business bored him, he said. Durell suspected that his efficient, strict older sister also bored him. He had agreed to send Mike into the northeast in a Thai Star plane for the job.

  According to General McFee, there were fresh Chinese incursions from Laos. Among the thirty or more hill tribes, Meo, Karen, Lahu, Musso, and Ko people, each with their distinctive cultures and slash-and-burn agronomy, and with a penchant for growing opium above the five thousand-foot level, there was a growing defiance of Bangkok and a flood of arms that could mean another divided country in Indo-China. It was a mission to gather information, nothing more, according to strict White House directives, McFee had said. Durell still did not know what had gone wrong with it. With Mike’s business connections up

  there, it should have been routine. But Mike hadn’t come back.

  Durell sighed, snapped off the lights, locked his hotel room door, and left.

  5

  “I am ordinarily not a betting man,” said Mr. Chuk gently, “but I have wagered one thousand dollars, Hong Kong, on young Tinh, the boy in the red trunks. A protege of mine, you see.”

  “Why?” Durell asked.

  “Ah. He is a true fighter. In any conflict, the aim is to win, eh? The world is more violent today than in the past. To enter a fight—or a war—without the heart to win is to invite and anticipate defeat.”

  “And Tinh?”

  “He is vicious and single-minded. He wins.” Chuk smiled. “You are sitting in a re
served seat, my dear sir.”

  “I know,” said Durell.

  “You seek me, personally?”

  “You know it.”

  “Ah. Ah.” Mr. Chuk settled himself comfortably in the stadium chair. He was a stout Chinese-Thai, with a high, round belly under his tight white suit. A number of quivering jowls framed his round face. He mopped several of his chins with a lavender silk handkerchief. The air-conditioning in the sports stadium had broken down, and the heat from the avid crowd and the lights from the TV cameras rapidly built up the temperature. Bright reflections of Pepsi-Cola, Yamaha, and Sanyo TV shone in Mr. Chuk’s' hexagonal glasses.

  “You seem to be in good health, Mr. Durell.”

  “Shouldn’t I be?”

  “You are extraordinary. Very direct. You proceed like a charging Hon straight to your goal. Stubborn, too. Nothing turns you aside. And here you are, seeking me out.” “You know why,” Durell said.

  “I admit nothing.”

  “You admit you know my name.”

  “Ah, yes. But I am merely a businessman.” Mr. Chuk smiled apologetically. “I am only a middleman in the teak and rice industries, concerned with the oppressed laborers, you see. I am not one of your luangs, a royal palace official. My life is quite open. Neither am I an agent of the imperialist Mao Tse-tung, a charge to which many Chinese in Thailand are liable. It is the tragedy of our times, sir, that the innocent suffer and evil prevails. My business is simply smoothing the wheels of industry and labor in the mills of Thonburi and Bangkok.”

  “And you run the tong called the Muang Thrup.”

  “Not a tong. A legitimate labor union.”

  “You hire torturers, murderers, and rapists.”

  “Come, come, sir. You can prove nothing.”

  “I can. I will.”

  Mr. Chuk pretended to be appalled. “Nee arai? What’s this? I heard of your arrival. You did not look like a fahrang, a Westerner, assigned to the MDU—the Mobile Development Units who aid our farmers. I am in the rice labor business. Did you know there are almost one thousand rice mills on the canals around Bangkok? No matter. You speak so quietly, Mr. Durell. Men like you never let the mind or body rest, eh? You see all things around you, and are always quick and decisive. You bore directly to the heart of the matter. But you are quiet. Ah, so quiet.” Durell shifted slightly so his gun in its underarm holster could be reached easily. He felt the pressure of Mr.

  Chuk’s fat arm against his, and he knew that the Sino-Thai was shocked by his arrival here. Two young Chinese thugs sat on the other side of Mr. Chuk, their faces impassive. He wondered if they knew by now of the death of one of their comrades, impaled on the canal post. Certainly they were surprised by his escape, his prompt arrival here. Mr. Chuk was the jolly old King Cole of the teak and rice mill labor thugs, and no more, so far as his dossier was concerned.

  A thunderclap shook the stadium as the two flyweight Thai boxers stood in the ring. The rhythm of thudding drums and a shrill Java pipe increased in tempo. The only similarity between Thai and Western boxing was in the leather gloves and trunks and the squared ring. Durell studied the boy in the red trunks, Tinh Jumsai. This was Uncle Hu’s other nephew, he thought; the only one who could locate his brother, the bhikkhu, among the tens of thousands of Buddhist monks in the country. Tinh wore a red charm cord around his upper arm and a sacred headband. As a cymbal clashed, the two boxers knelt and faced the four sides of the ring. Tinh looked tiny, but hard and taut as whipcord. His black eyes were emotionless as he prayed to the spirits of the boxing ring and swung his ropy little torso in time with the screeching music.

  “Nai Durell?”

  “Your boy looks good,” Durell said.

  “He will most certainly win,” Mr. Chuk said blandly. “But you, sir, will only find defeat in your mission here.”

  “What mission is that?”

  “We know you are not an agricultural expert.”

  “Your information service is full of Yunnan fables.”

  “Your arrival here, via Ton Son Nhut Airport in Saigon, did not go unnoticed. Our Don Muang Airport is very crowded. You were lucky, during your wait in Saigon, to escape the nail bomb that was thrown when you were in the Plum Cafe near the Thi Nghe canal. Close to the Bien Hoa highway?” Mr. Chuk was amused. He liked to boast, Durell noted. “Yes, our information service is good. I am a loyal Kuomintang, sir, faithful to Chiang Kai-shek. One of my wives is a Malay girl from Kuala Lumpur. Lovely child. But of course, you are a victim of America’s paranoia and you suspect all Chinese of being Maoist agents. I assure you, I am only a businessman, interested in profits.” Mr. Chuk’s many chins quivered as he smiled again. “Violence disturbs commerce, and who would wish to make Peking hysterical, what with their bombs and vast armies? You really should go home, Mr. Durell.”

  “What do you offer?” Durell asked.

  “Anything. Name it.”

  “No bargaining?”

  “Name your price. Your life alone, sir, must be of some value to you.”

  “Money?”

  “One hundred thousand unmarked, small-denomination American bills,” said Mr. Chuk promptly. “A guarantee of your safe departure. What happened yesterday was a mistake. I see it now. It was not my decision, I pray you to believe me. But it seemed necessary at the time. Now, can we do business?”

  “You’re too late,” Durell said.

  “You hold a grievance?”

  “Let’s just say that I must satisfy my curiosity as to why the murder of innocent people was thought necessary simply because I have arrived in Bangkok.”

  “Sir—”

  The two fighters in the ring were going through the ritual of the Elephant Dance, the Four-Faced Buddha, and making hex signs at each other. The air was gray with smoke. Durell watched young Tinh slide his hands on the ropes to ward off malicious phis. He could not have known about the rape and death of Aparsa, his aunt.

  “Sir,” Mr. Chuk persisted. “I live in Sampeng, Mr. Durell. Please come to see me. It is the Chinese district, and although many Westerners consider the area a hotbed of Communist conspiracy, you will be perfectly safe. We may come to a fine agreement—profitable to both of us.”

  Durell got up and returned to his own seat as the boxing match began. There were no Queensberry rules here. Kicking, kneeing to the groin, elbowing—ail were in demand. The boxers were as agile as dancers, leaping high to aim deadly blows with their heels at chin or knee or belly. Tinh’s naked feet swung like whips, slashing at his opponent’s head. The other youth aimed at Tinh’s leg, missed, and took a kick in the back of the neck that put him down on all fours. He was up at once, dancing back. The fans howled. The tempo of the music increased. The stadium was packed with Thais in Western clothes, some turbaned Indians, and a spray of American uniforms.

  A chant began. “Sok! Sok!” The fans were calling for an elbow ram. The noise reached a crescendo. The TV cameras followed the boxers avidly. Tinh jumped high, aimed his right foot at his opponent’s belly, danced back, came in again, and smashed his heel into the other’s face. Blood gushed. Durell looked down at the back of Mr. Chuk’s head, at ringside. The Chinese was smoking a long, thin cigar; he watched the boxers placidly. Tinh’s adversary had staggered away, bleeding from a broken nose. His eyes were glazed.

  Tinh was merciless. He danced high, jumped, and swung his left foot like a mace. His opponent’s head was almost torn off by the blow. The screams of the fans and the weird thud of drum and Java pipe mingled with a clash of cymbals as Tinh’s enemy went down. The referee pushed Tinh aside. The fight ended.

  Mr. Chuk rose ponderously and moved toward the ring. Durell stood up and went quickly through the crowd on the ramp, found the exit door and a corridor and iron stairs that led to the dressing rooms below the ring. There were other fighters here, with trainers, lackeys, hangers-on. It took a few moments to find the room assigned to young Tinh. There were touts, girls, fans, handlers in his way. He asked a few questions, got some shrugs, and finall
y a pock-marked Malay told him how to find Tinh’s cubicle. It was beyond a long locker room, equally crowded. The place smelled of curry and sweat. Tinh’s door was closed. Durell palmed the knob, stepped inside, and saw Tinh in a dim light, crouched over on a bench near a rubbing table.

  “Tinh?”

  The boxer moved slightly, his head down between his knees. His muscular little back was knotted, and beads of sweat stood out on the nape of his neck and down his spine.

  No one else was in the dressing-room.

  Durell put his hand on the boy’s shoulder, but Tinh groaned and clutched his belly and rocked sidewise, not looking up.

  “Tinh, were you hurt?”

  The boxer looked up. His young, round face was a mask of agony. His eyes looked blind. He dug into his stomach with clawed fingers.

  “Bad water—” he gasped.

  “Where? When?”

  “Xu—my trainer—gave me just now.”

  The boy rocked back and forth in his cramped position. “Look at me,” Durell said.

  Tinh did not look up.

  “Do you remember me, Tinh?” Durell asked.

  Slowly, the anguished face turned to him. Through the glaze of pain in the black, slanted eyes came a whimper of comprehension. “Nai—Durell?”

  “That’s right. Your brother’s friend.”

  “You helped Uncle Hu—and Kem.”

  “Yes, that’s right. I helped Kem. When you were a small boy. Now I am back, and I must find him.”

  “Kem is sacred—belongs to Sangra.”

  “I know that. Which monastery is he in?”

  The boy convulsed and doubled over in a renewed spasm of pain. He was dying. It was a waste of time to go for a doctor. Durell had to learn what he had come to find out.

  “Do you ever see Kem?”

  The boy gasped. His face dripped sweat. He straightened slowly.