“You never heard of Colonel Vikorn before yesterday?” He shakes his head. “And you thought he was just some fancy-pants city slicker who would throw money at you, then let you resell Baker back to Baker, or Immigration, or whoever, and come up with some flimsy excuse like he broke out of his cell last night and managed somehow to cross the border, and isn’t it terrible how insecure these rickety little country holding cells can be. Right?”
The idiot blinks and nods: Isn’t that what everyone does? I also nod thoughtfully. There is really nothing for it but to call Vikorn and confess that I’m not masterminding his pornography venture right now but rather moonlighting on police business. The sergeant watches with slow, frightened eyes while I fish out my cell phone.
To Vikorn, I gloss over my dereliction of duty and come to the main point: the local cops are making a fool out of my Colonel. They’ve taken his money and then allowed Baker to bribe them to let him go, probably in cahoots with Immigration, whom Baker would also have had to bribe. I figure the pressure on the line has reached about a thousand pounds per square inch when I hand the phone over to the sergeant. I watch with interest while his face turns red, then white, then gray. He is blubbering Yes, yes, yes, and the hand holding the cell is shaking violently when he gives it back to me. Now he grabs the desk telephone and dials a number that seems to consist of three digits. He starts yammering down the line in Khmer and very quickly ratchets himself up to a full-throated scream. I have no Khmer at all, but I’m willing to bet Fort Knox against a jackfruit he’s saying, “Fucking get him fucking back or we’re all fucking finished.” Or words to that effect. Now he’s beckoning me to follow him with an impatient gesture, as if I’m the cause of delay. I follow him out the back of the police station to a carport, where a four-by-four is parked. It’s not a battered old police Toyota, though, such as we have to put up with in Krung Thep; no sir, this is a Range Rover Sport TDV6 4WD in metallic russet. Five minutes later I can see why he might need a real off-road four-by-four. The brand-new, metaled road leading to the border post is for wimps, obviously; this guy charges down a well-worn set of ruts that cut through dense jungle. In less than five minutes we have passed through a broken razor-wire fence and ignored a skull-and-crossbones warning about illegal border crossing, and we seem to be heading toward the border post on the Khmer side. Just as we draw up, an officer of the Thai Immigration service arrives in his Range Rover Sport (in metallic gray). He immediately identifies me as the source of his problem and scowls. On the other hand, he dashes into the Khmer border post. When the sergeant and I arrive inside the small building, we see the Immigration officer leaning over a desk and yelling in Khmer at one of the Cambodian officers. Once again I am reliant on intuition to interpret.
Thai Immigration officiaclass="underline" Give him back immediately. We have a problem.
Cambodian Immigration officiaclass="underline" Go fuck yourself. We’ve been paid, and we’ve stamped his passport.
Thai: It’s a false passport.
Cambodian: Well, I know that. Why else would he have bribed us?
Thai: Do you realize this could sink the whole scam?
Cambodian: Only for you, bud. Your successors aren’t going to be any more honest than you are.
Thai: Please.
The Cambodian looks out the window at the two Range Rovers.
Thai: Which one do you want?
Cambodian: Both of them.
Thai: How are we going to get back?
The Cambodian nods at two mopeds parked near the four-by-fours and smiles.
Thai: Can the farang walk?
Cambodian, mulling the question for a moment, then: We’ll give you a lift.
Outside the Cambodian Immigration post, I watch while the two rather worn mopeds are stashed in the back of one of the four-by-fours; then they bring Baker out from some dank place under the building. It takes two of them to hold Baker up, and even then his head lolls and rolls dangerously. There is a large angry bruise on the left side of his face, under the eye. “Fucking Cambodians,” the Thai Immigration officer says to me in standard Thai. But the Cambodian also speaks Thai. “They did this,” he says, pointing at the Thais.
“We didn’t do that,” the Thai says, pointing at the bruise. “We use telephone books -no signs of bruising. Only you barbarians do stuff like that.”
“So why couldn’t he walk last night when you brought him over?
You knew who he was. The only point of beating him up was to get more money out of him.“
When they have laid Baker in the front seat of the four-by-four, I check his pulse, which seems surprisingly robust. Other vital signs show promise, and now I’m wondering if he, also, is not engaged in some kind of strategic pantomime. Maybe his health is not as bad as he is making out? “Just lie doggo until we’re out of here,” I tell him in a whisper.
We take the same route back through the jungle and arrive at the rear of the Thai police station in five minutes. I watch while they drag Baker out and prop him up against a wall while they unload the mopeds. The Thais are looking pretty sour when the Cambodians take their remaining four-by-four back over the border. Suddenly the sergeant has got his balls back. “Get him out of here,” he says. “You’ll have to pay for a taxi -we don’t have any transport.” He looks dolefully at the mopeds.
Now I’m looking at Baker and wondering if he’s up to a twelve-hour journey back to Krung Thep. “I need some painkiller,” I say. When the sergeant merely scowls, I threaten to call Vikorn again.
“What about opium? It’s all we’ve got out here.”
I shrug. The sergeant pops back into the station and returns a few minutes later with a long pipe with tiny brass bowl, a wedge of black opium between two transparent plastic squares, and a few pills. The pills are paracetamol, which he grinds up with the opium to make the drug less viscous; then he places a tiny drop on the side of the bowl, heats it with a butane lighter until it fizzes and bubbles, takes one toke himself, then hands the pipe to Baker, who sucks on it with unexpected enthusiasm. Baker keeps up the malingering for fifteen pipes until he can no longer disguise the feeling of supreme well-being that has overwhelmed him. “I guess he’s ready to travel,” I tell the cop, who helps me slide him into the back of the taxi.
Baker is deeply into his opium dream by the time we reach the country station, and I have to pay the driver to help me drag him to the train and dump him on a bench in the first-class compartment. It’s a relief when the train starts and I pull the blinds over the door. A few hours later Baker shows no sign of forsaking paradise for this sterile promontory, so I insert the name Damrong into his dream by whispering it slowly and clearly over and over again in his ear. Suddenly his eyes open full of that light which has not been much seen in farang since the sixties, and says:
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety. Other women cloy The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry Where most she satisfies; for vilest things Become themselves in her, that the holy priests Bless her when she is riggish.
“School play,” he adds with a smug smile. “I was Enobarbus.” And closes his eyes again.
It is not until we are on the outskirts of Krung Thep that the drug’s high tide begins to recede. He starts to rub the angry bruise under his eye and other parts of his body where they beat him. His mind seems to be working on a more powerful distraction than pain, though, when he begins to narrate his inner journey: