“Well, it was your presence of mind to pick up on the hint that saved Kawee and me. As soon as I understood that you had heard me, I knew we were going to be okay.”
“Really? I wasn’t all that confident.”
“I told Kawee that you had the information that would free us, and he said yes, he could tell that you were a man who was up to the job because you reminded him of a kind of gay Bruce Wayne.”
“That’s a bit confusing.”
“Anyway, he really was prepared to accept whatever his fate might turn out to be. He said he had long ago accepted that suffering was central to being human, and also why should he be afraid of anything he couldn’t control? His calm in the face of danger was really amazing. And while I didn’t follow all of his logic, I saw how his belief in an ongoing cosmic continuum of life gave him strength and confidence, and just being tied up in the same room with Kawee gave me strength and confidence, too.”
“So those goons didn’t… You know…beat you or anything?”
“No, they didn’t. And they fed us decently, too. I can’t really complain about our treatment. Except for having to crap in a bucket. I wasn’t crazy about that.”
“But the heat and the tedium must have been pretty grueling. What did you and Kawee find to occupy yourselves with in that room for a day and a half?”
“Oh, we just fucked and whatnot.”
“I wondered about that.”
“I thought you might, after that Paradisio episode. No, really, what we did was, we basically just talked about how much we liked our lives and how lucky we had been with so many things in our lives up till that point. Except for one thing, in Kawee’s case. When he was seventeen, he had a boyfriend back in his village who died of malaria. The kid was Burmese and went home to visit his family in Shan state and got sick.
Burma has no health care system to speak of, and the guy was too weak to make it back to Thailand, and he just died. Kawee says this guy, Nonkie, was his great love. Some day, Kawee told me, he wants to visit Shan state, because a Burmese friend who was there told him that Nonkie’s ghost had been asking people traveling to Thailand to find Kawee and invite him to come over. Kawee said he would have gone by now, but it’s hard to get a visa. And anyway once you’re inside Myanmar the military government could grab you and put you on some forced-labor road-building project. He wants to see Nonkie’s ghost, but he doesn’t want to get trapped inside that sad country.”
The sun was gone now, but the entire western sky was aflame over southern Thailand and Lower Burma and the Andaman Sea beyond.
196 Richard Stevenson
I said, “Has Kawee seen ghosts before? He might be disappointed. I know Thais believe in them, but I’ve never actually met a Thai who has run into a ghost.”
“Kawee told me about his uncle who was in the hospital with several cracked ribs after he fell off a logging elephant. The doctor showed the family the uncle’s X-ray, and they all saw his phee on it. That’s his ghost.”
“I wonder if Griswold believes in ghosts. He seems to be a genuine convert to most of the bigger ideas here, both Buddhist and the old superstitions like astrology and numerology that got dragged along when Buddhism spread eastward from India.”
“But if in a previous life Griswold was Thai himself,”
Timmy said, “and was Buddhist, then he’s not really a convert.
The unfortunate diversion from his true path was his being born to Max and Bertha Griswold in Albany. He must have done something really nasty way back when to have been karmically punished by ending up for a while in the steel business in Albany. Oh, you know what? There’s something Kawee said that might help explain it.”
“What?”
“Kawee said Griswold once told him that somebody else in his family had committed a very great sin. It was something so terrible that Griswold himself would have to help compensate for it with offerings and with meritorious works in order to protect his soul and the souls of family members.”
I said, “I don’t think that in Buddhism you can be punished by being born into the wrong family on account of sins that that family hasn’t even committed yet at the time of your birth.
Buddhism is fairer than that, more morally logical.”
“But what if the sin was committed before you were born?
By your parents or grandparents.”
“There’s only one way to figure this out. We have to ask Griswold. It may be part of what set him spiraling off into la-la land six months ago — hiding out and plotting whatever it is he’s plotting.”
“You’re just going to ask him about it outright? Good luck with that.”
“I realize I may have to wait until April twenty-seventh.”
“Donald, that’s twelve days from now. I have a feeling you’re going to have to get a handle on all this well before then.
Surely General Yodying isn’t so dumb and incompetent that he won’t track us down here. And if he does, we might not be so deft and clever and lucky the next time.”
“True. But I’m sure Pugh has a Plan B and a Plan C and a Plan D. It’s how he thinks. To be on the safe side, though, maybe you should head home, Timothy. I’m sure Pugh could get you over to Cambodia, and you could fly home from Phnom Penh, just like Griswold said.”
Timmy looked back at the temple. A couple of elderly monks in their orange robes were walking inside followed by three young novices. The gold leaf on one of the smaller Buddha images in an outside alcove was glowing now in the last tangerine-colored light, and the sea beyond looked so soft that you could float out over it, suspended by particles of light, and drift down for a swim and then have a nice green curry along the beach.
Timmy said, “I may not make it to magical April twenty-seventh. But for now, I want to stick around. Despite what happened to me, I like this place.”
“Me too,” I said. “All we have to do to really enjoy Thailand is keep from being hurled into our next lives prematurely.”
“Okay, let’s do it that way, if we can. Survive first, and then take on whatever pleasant features Thailand has to offer next.”
“Deal.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The two motorcycle guys at the foot of Monkey Mountain were not assassins. They were moto-taxi drivers, and since it was dark now Timmy and I hired them to take us back to the compound. My phone rang just as we reached the house, and it was Bob Chicarelli.
“Can you hear me, Strachey?”
“Perfectly.”
“Good, because you’ll want to know about this. Are you still working for any of the Griswolds?”
“Yes, but not Ellen and Bill. Nothing has changed since they pretty much cut me off yesterday morning. According to Ellen, I’m supposed to tie up any loose ends here and then head home. But now I’m working for Gary Griswold. I’m helping protect him — for the moment anyway. He’s not too crazy about having me around, either, so there’s no telling how long this job — if you can even call it a job — is going to last. Why do you ask?”
“It’s just as well that you’re not counting on Bill and Ellen for fees or expenses. Algonquin Steel has been in total turmoil over the last twenty-four hours. The Albany Griswolds are struggling to retain control of the company, with this offshore group buying up shares by the shitload. Whoever the buyers are, they’re paying premium prices and money seems to be no object to these people. So just do understand that Ellen is going to be plenty distracted until all this comes to a head at the company’s annual meeting at the end of this month, when it is very likely that Bill will lose control of the company. I don’t know whether any of this affects what you’re doing over there, but since I basically got you into this I thought you should be kept up to speed.”