“Others will be in danger, also, and will need to join us there. In fact, I must make some calls now. My wife and children will be along, as well as my girlfriend Furnace, a delightful woman you will enjoy tremendously. Furnace will, of course, be housed separately from the rest of us, though with luck your paths will cross. Kawee, you should invite Miss Nongnat to visit. And it might be wise for Khun Gary’s old paramour Mango to attend our seaside holiday also. The general is sure to be ripshit over today’s developments, and his agents will tend toward impatience and extreme violence toward anyone who might be expected to know of our whereabouts.”
Pugh got on his cell phone and made several calls in Thai.
This was the first time since Timmy’s rescue that we could speak with each other without the risk of gunfire erupting, and the first thing I said was, “Okay. Yes. You were right.”
He said nothing.
184 Richard Stevenson
“I’ll spend the rest of my life making this up to you, Timothy. You name it. It’s yours. Plus, of course, I’ll listen to you in the future when you talk sense. Really, I’ll try harder to do that.”
He was breathing evenly but was still sweaty and didn’t smell so great.
I looked across Timmy and said to Kawee, “I’m really so sorry I got you two into this. It must have been very frightening.”
Kawee said, “We think we die.”
“Yes.”
“I tell Timothy he live better life next time.”
“I know he’d like some improvements.”
“He say okay. But he ask if you be there, too.”
“In his next life?”
“Yes, he want next life with you. You his soul mate, he say.”
“That would be my preference also. What did you tell him?
Will we be together?”
“Yes, maybe. But maybe not human. Maybe you both snake.”
“Two snakes?”
“Timothy and Donald spirit in snakes. Or other animals. All depend on karma.”
“If we were mammals, it might be okay. We’d manage.
Mammals with small brains and large penises.”
Timmy was too polite and respectful toward other decent people’s deepest beliefs to roll his eyes, but I knew he was doing it mentally.
Finally, Timmy said, “Kawee was very thoughtful and supportive during our captivity, Donald. He enlarged my perspective.”
I wondered if he had also massaged his prostate, but this was no time for that discussion. I said, “How so?”
“I just have a better understanding now of the way the human mind can both retreat into itself when that’s the only way it can stay safe, and at the same time how any one mind is only a temporary partial manifestation of something far larger and longer lasting.”
“Oh. Well, good. Except, that doesn’t sound Buddhist. It sounds Jungian.”
“You and your Western insistence on labels. God.”
“Are you putting me on?”
“Yes, a little. But, really, Kawee did help me with the whole idea of acceptance. Acceptance of how temporary any one human life is, and how the transitory nature of life should be nothing to fear. There’s actually something quite beautiful about it. All that gorgeous fluidity.”
Pugh was in the front seat with Nitrate, who was driving, and when Timmy said this, Pugh reached over to the steering wheel and hit the horn three times.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The compound where we took refuge in Hua Hin — which, Pugh explained, was spelled Hua Hin but pronounced Wah-HEEN — was a few miles south of the town center near Monkey Mountain. This was a high hill overlooking the Gulf of Thailand where monkeys frolicked on the grounds of an old temple. Pugh suggested that Timmy and I have a look while we were in the vicinity. But he said not to get too close to the greedy and always-quarreling monkeys, a few of whom were deceased former officials from the Thaksin Shinawatra administration.
Timmy said, “Do you really believe that’s true?”
“Of course,” Pugh said. “This is known.”
The compound, a quarter mile off the main road and a few hundred yards from the beach, was owned by an anti-Samak, anti-Thaksin businessman friend of Pugh’s who owned about fifty 7-Eleven franchises and a Hua Hin hotel that catered to German tour groups and, Pugh said, served the greasiest schnitzel south of Bangkok.
Pugh’s friend, Sila Chusuk, was vacationing with his family in Switzerland and we had the run of his two commodious guesthouses. These were rambling, tile-roofed stucco structures with big louvered windows that were sealed shut now for the hot season and with central air-conditioning keeping everything crisp. There was a pool in the palm-fringed flower gardens at the back of the walled compound, with fuchsia blossoms floating in it the color of Kawee’s toenails.
We had stopped in town to buy some light clothes for Timmy and Kawee — Pugh said we would not be calling on Jack and Jackie, so beachwear would do — and some toiletries, and of course, food. The Thais had missed their lunch, so a stop was made out on the main road to pick up soup and rice.
As soon as we arrived at the compound, Pugh and his crew served up the take-out savories and went at them. Nobody had 188 Richard Stevenson a lot to say. They were all just happy to be alive and enjoying another good meal. The same was true of Timmy, Kawee and me — and presumably Griswold, although he had precious few words to offer any of us.
Upstairs, Timmy and I shared a room, Pugh was next door, then Kawee and Nitrate, then Griswold, Egg and Ek. Griswold bore constant watching, Pugh and I agreed. While Timmy took a long shower, I noted on my cell phone that Bob Chicarelli had called from Albany during the rescue while I had left my phone in the van. It was just past four in the afternoon in Thailand, predawn in the eastern United States. I returned the call, but Chicarelli didn’t answer and I guessed he was asleep. I left a message, saying we had rescued Timmy and Kawee from the kidnappers, that Griswold was with us, and we were in hiding until some loose ends got tied up. I didn’t mention that the loose ends included a Thai police general who was intent on blowing all our brains out. For reasons I couldn’t quite articulate to myself, I hesitated before asking Chicarelli to notify Ellen and Bill Griswold that their family member Gary was now safe and sound. But they had to be told — originally I had been hired to find him, after all — so I told Chicarelli to inform the Griswolds we had Gary with us but that there were still plenty of nettlesome unanswered questions as to his past activities and future intentions.
After Timmy’s shower and then mine, we heard a commotion outside our room and went out to find Griswold throwing a hissy fit at Pugh.
“Although I don’t object to your men watching over me to see that I don’t bolt,” Griswold was saying, “you have to understand that I am not going to run off. What I do object to is their listening in on all of my telephone conversations and — good grief! really! — taking notes on whom I speak with and what I say. You are not doing yourself or me any favors by butting in this way, Rufus, and I am telling you that it is a great big pain in the neck.”
Pugh said, “Khun Gary. Do you have secrets from us? We are your friends.”
“It’s not a question of secrets, Rufus. There are no great secrets on my part. It is a matter of simple privacy. I must be in touch with business associates to complete the Sayadaw U project, and some of this involves sensitive information and delicate negotiations involving people who would not be at all pleased to be eavesdropped on.”
“I’m sorry you consider our watchfulness intrusive. We are all in this together, after all. When I say that, I don’t mean the part about your worthy project. I mean the part about keeping you from being hurled from a high place, as well as the part about keeping your head from being made to explode. We do need to be all on the same page in that regard, Khun Gary. So I hope you will indulge us in this small way and let us keep track of your activities in a manner consistent with personal security professional standards.”