Pugh and Griswold looked at each other and then at me.
Pugh said, “It would help if a professional did Mr.
Timothy’s chart and blessed it. But even without that, I do believe that there is hope.”
Griswold nodded in agreement. “There’s a good chance that you can pull off a successful rescue. The date today is four-fourteen, a numerologically benign period for a Sagittarius.
However,” he said, “if the rescue doesn’t work, I think I can work something out with these people. I’m quite certain I know who they are — or at least who they represent — and there’s some chance I can make a deal with them and save myself as well as Timothy and Kawee.”
This didn’t sound right. If there was a way for him to negotiate with these people, why wouldn’t he have done it sooner? I said, “So, who are they, and what would this so-called deal be?”
Pugh said, “Please do tell the truth, Mr. Gary. We will be very pissed off if you lie through your teeth and this quickly becomes apparent, which surely it will. Egg won’t like it either, I am thinking.” We all looked over at nicely toned Egg, who sat rock still, glowering at Griswold.
“I’m familiar with the Five Precepts, Khun…?”
“Rufus Pugh.”
“I do understand, Khun Rufus, that to tell an untruth is reprehensible. And much more important than irritating you or your muscular young friend here, it would put me at grave risk of offending the spirit of the Enlightened One.”
Pugh smiled weakly. “Said like a true farang dilettante Buddhist. No Thai would utter any such words. We would say if we lie, we might later turn into a buffalo turd and the ghost of our mother might slip and fall on us and break some bones. But never mind. You seem to get the point about truthfulness being an all-around better approach than going around telling big whoppers. So let’s have it.”
Griswold lay back now and looked up at the ceiling of the van. He was either organizing his true thoughts or he was formulating some cunning net of falsehoods that would have his late mother turning fecal-footed cartwheels in hell.
He said, “I reneged on a financial agreement in which I was to be the prime investor. A number of people had already put money into the same project. And when I unexpectedly decided to pursue an entirely different project and backed out of the original scheme just before I was to transfer my funds, the first project collapsed before others could get their money back and they lost many millions of dollars. And now a major group of losers blames me instead of the group that cheated them. They want me either to reimburse them — which I am not about to do — or they want me to die horribly as a warning to others not to trifle with them. It’s as simple as that.”
True or not, this sounded plausible. “So why,” I asked,
“don’t you simply leave Thailand? If this is such a dangerous place for you, why are you choosing to hang around Bangkok?”
“To complete an extremely worthy nonprofit project,”
Griswold said. “When this project is done, I might leave Thailand for another Buddhist country — Laos, maybe, or Cambodia, despite my having been Thai myself in several past lives. Or I may remain here and let my karma play out in a way that would lead to my remaining safely in Thailand, my truest home, although in a form that might be other than human. To 152 Richard Stevenson the extent to which any of these matters is within my control, I haven’t yet decided how I will choose.”
I noted Griswold’s fine Italian bicycle in the back of the van, scratched and bent from having been whacked by the motorbike, and his helmet on the floor next to him. While I was thinking brain damage, I saw Pugh gazing at Griswold, rapt and solemn. A minute earlier, Pugh had been dismissing Griswold as a silly farang dilettante, and now he was looking at him as if he was some kind of spandexed holy man.
I said, “So what was the scheme that went awry, and who are the people who are mad at you?”
“There is no need for you to hear the particulars,” Griswold said. “It had to do with currency speculation and involved certain insider information. I have to admit that the scheme was ethically borderline, but I saw it as justified by the opportunity to invest the proceeds in meritorious works on a very large scale.”
Timmy’s voice again in my head: “A Buddhist Augustinian. How unusual.”
I said, “And what makes you think you might talk your way out of having these people who think you screwed them make a violent example of you?”
“I can tell them I’m going to cut them in on a new deal I’ve come up with that they will find irresistible. I know these people. The proceeds from this project will mainly benefit humanity. But even twenty percent should be enough to get these people off my case for the time being. And all we need, really, is a little time.”
“And that new deal would be what?”
“I just can’t go into it. Sorry. My partners would consider it a breach of confidentiality. Let’s just say it has to do with international finance.”
I had gotten a C in economics at Rutgers and looked at Pugh for help. I didn’t even know what questions to ask. Pugh was still studying Griswold and looking impressed. Where had all this guy’s Thai street savvy gone?
It hadn’t gone anywhere, for now Pugh looked hard at Griswold and said, “Former Minister of Finance Anant na Ayudhaya. Is that thieving crumb-bum your partner in this so-called humanitarian venture, or was he a partner in the deal that went sour?”
Griswold froze ever-so-briefly. He recovered instantly and said mildly, “Why would you possibly assume anything like that? How bizarre that you would think that.”
I said, “We got into your laptop. There’s a picture of you together with this ex-minister and Khunathip the seer. I expect you know what happened to Khun Khunathip. So what’s the story of you three looking like you’re jollying it up at some Cornell class reunion on Khunathip’s balcony?”
At the mention of Khunathip’s name, Griswold seemed to breathe a little faster. Or was it the mention of a balcony? “That was a social occasion. I’m impressed by your chutzpah, Strachey. Getting into my computer was really an extraordinarily sleazy thing to do.”
“Griswold, I was simply trying to save your dumb ass. That’s what I was hired by your sister-in-law to do. Of course I was going to look anywhere that might offer any clue as to what kind of idiotic mess you’ve gotten yourself into. Anyway, what was your relationship to Khunathip the seer? The police say you turned up in his financial records. You paid him a fee, so-called, of six hundred fifty thousand dollars.”
Now Griswold looked grim. “The fee had nothing to do with the investment. That was simply my payment for a series of readings this extremely keen-minded and profoundly farseeing man did for me over a period of more than a year. His sad fate had nothing to do with any of that. Khun Khunathip should not have died. That was just so, so wrong.”
“Was he killed by the same people who are after you?”
“He was a party to the original currency speculation scheme.
He invested in it. In fact, it was Khun Khunathip who led me to it in the first place. When I came up with a much better investment project — one that was not only financially sound 154 Richard Stevenson but morally uncompromised — and I pulled out of the currency speculation scheme before actually transferring any cash, Khun Khunathip tried to get his money back, too. It was about one million US, I believe. When the original investors refused to give the million dollars back to him — they laughed at him and called it overhead — he became uncharacteristically angry and did new astrological charts for each of them, and then cursed the charts. Then he sent each member of the investment group the cursed charts. Apparently the investors then hired their own astrologer, whose charts indicated that Khun Khunathip would have to be killed in order to erase his curses. I have to admit that I brought a certain amount of naivete to all of this, but I was shocked that Khun Khunathip didn’t know any better than to cross these ruthless and powerful people. This is an aspect of Thai society I failed to appreciate when I came here, and I have to say I still don’t know what to make of it.”