The colonel thought for a while and said, “The cost will be at least sixty thousand baht.”
“A hundred thousand will be transferred to your account.”
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” he asked, obviously happy with the amount he was being paid.
“I hope so.”
“Do you know that your friend Mike was murdered?”
“Yes. I was taking a shower upstairs in his spare bedroom when they killed him.”
“Maybe you should leave Thailand for a while.”
“So people keep telling me.”
“Don’t go getting yourself killed just for the sake of being stubborn. I’ll miss our business deals if you leave, but I don’t make anything from you if you are dead.”
“I am not planning to die.”
“You won’t have a choice. If they want you dead you’ll die. You are a farang and they are Thai.”
“Nobody will ever let me forget I am a farang. That is what I have going for me right now and why they won’t see me coming.”
“You are talking nonsense. Are you drunk?”
“Not yet.”
Colonel Pornchai went back to the bar and Carl went the other direction via the kitchen sinks and left by the back door. He saw the car immediately. It was as close to the exit as was possible. George had kept the lights off but left the engine running. Carl looked up and down the street to make sure there was nothing out of the ordinary. All appeared normal so he got in the car and lay down on the back seat.
George drove through Bangkok for half an hour and parked the car outside Boonchoo’s house. Boonchoo was their taxi surveillance man. Boonchoo lived with his family in one of Bangkok’s oldest housing estates. The houses were very old but they all had small gardens, which made them more pleasant than most of the cheaper housing that the outskirts of Bangkok offered.
They got out of the car and rang the bell on the gate. Boonchoo and his son opened the rusty gate and greeted the pair with big old-fashioned genuine Thai smiles. Carl was always uncomfortable about his height around the people from the provinces as they were even smaller than the Bangkok Thais. Carl and George were a foot taller than Boonchoo and felt clumsy. Boonchoo’s home was old and built for people like him, not giants like Carl and George.
He took them both by their hands and led them into the garden where a stone table with stone benches on each side had been prepared for them under a flame tree. They squeezed their large legs under the stone table and sat with their knees pressed against stone and buttocks partly hanging off the back of the bench. It was not a problem as long as neither one of them moved.
“Welcome to my house.”
“Thank you Khun Boonchoo. I’m sorry it is the middle of the night.”
“For you and Khun George any time is a good time.”
The table was covered in small plates of food. A bucket full of ice and bottles of beer had been placed at the centre of the table. They were an old-fashioned north-eastern Thai family and while the men sat in the garden eating and drinking the women and young girls ran backwards and forwards to the kitchen carrying buckets of ice and plates of food.
They were nice people and they all looked after each other. Out of everybody in Carl’s circle, Boonchoo was probably the most content. Carl and George spent a pleasant hour talking, eating, and drinking beer with ice cubes in it. Carl almost felt normal for a while.
After the meal Carl took the old man to one side and explained what he needed him to do. Carl told him George would be overseeing everything and offered to pay him up to date and for the days ahead.
“I know you have troubles so you don’t have to pay me. I will do whatever is needed.”
“Thank you Khun Boonchoo I know I can always rely on you. Money’s the least of my worries at the moment so please take it.”
He took the money reluctantly. Carl had always known that, in Thailand, the people with the least were always the most generous. They had some more drinks, then they both thanked him and his family politely for their hospitality and left. It was two in the morning.
Once inside the car George asked, “I’ve arranged a safe house like you asked. Do you want to go there?”
“Is it peaceful?”
“Quiet as a guilty conscience.”
“All right chauffeur, stop by the hotel to pick up my stuff then drive me home.”
They picked up Carl’s meagre possessions and drove north for almost an hour. Then George turned off the highway onto dirt roads that meandered beside canals and fruit orchards. He stopped the car at a big wooden gate with a seemingly endless hedge on one side. He jumped out of the car and opened the double gate. Carl followed him out of the car so he could close the gates after George took the car in.
The driveway was very long and had a hedge on the right and a green field full of trees on the left. Carl walked after the car taking in the country smell of the place. The driveway ended at an old Thai style teak house that could not be seen from the dirt road. Carl walked around in the moonlight. It was very large and surrounded by orchards and ponds. Carl could hear the sounds of birds and animals all around him.
“It is incredible, you really are a wizard George.”
“It belongs to a very old Englishman. It was to be his dream retirement home. Unfortunately it took so many years to build that by the time it was finished he was too old and sick to live so far away from a modern hospital. He lives in a small apartment with a view of Bumrungrad Hospital now. His children rent this place out to Thai television for their latest ghost series. I told them I had a Hollywood production team on a location hunt and they gave me the place for a few days so I can show it. Do you want to see the special rates they created for our Hollywood production?”
“I assume they are double what Thai TV are paying.”
“Triple actually. Nice to see you haven’t lost your cynical grip on reality.”
“Contact them tomorrow and tell them that the scout is very excited and can’t wait for the director to get here next week. A week should do us.”
“Already did. I called them this afternoon.”
“Hiding out in a ghost house!” Carl laughed out loud. “Pure genius. Even the assassins in this country are scared of ghosts.”
They opened up the house and turned on some lights. At the back of the upstairs sitting room was a door that opened onto a very large wooden deck that ran the length of the entire house. To the side of the deck was a wooden stairway that went down to a pond that occupied the entire back section of the land. It was home to various kinds of birds and plants. It was straight out of old Siam, all except for Carl’s favourite inhabitants, a pair of imported white swans that glided around the surface of the water like luxury yachts. They were imports.
“This is absolutely fucking wonderful George.”
“You want to hear the best bit? A Canadian lived here for a while. He rented the whole place for forty thousand baht a month. The Thais won’t live here because on television it’s full of ghosts and the foreigners don’t like it because it’s in the middle of nowhere.”
“Let’s have a drink George. But when this is all over I want to rent this place.”
“I’ll go find a bottle of whiskey and a couple of glasses,” Georgesaid as he went into the house.
There were mosquitos but for once Carl didn’t mind. This house was where he wanted to be. George came back and they sat drinking under the deck and looking at the private world of the old house bathed in moonlight.
When they had become comfortably numb George asked Carl, “How come you never talk about my wife?”
“Would it help if I did?”
“No it wouldn’t, in fact it would make it worse.”
“That’s why I don’t talk about it.”
“I figured that was the reason,” George said and then didn’t feel like talking any more.