George glanced to his right.
“Yeah, that’s right, mate,” a red-faced, inebriated Australian shouted, pointing at George, “I’m talking to you.” The Aussie looked to be about fifty years old. There were six prostitutes jammed into a taxi with him—young Thai girls no more than thirteen, fourteen tops, giggling and rubbing the man with fast, vigorous hands.
George’s face registered disgust. “What do you want?”
“Well, mate, it’s like this, right. Seems I bit off a bit more than I can chew here, you see. Wanted to know if you wanted to go halfsies.”
“Halfsies?”
“You take three and I’ll take three—unless we want to do an eight-person thing. Kind of a lick-’em and luv-’em orgy. Might be up for that.”
“Degenerate,” George spat.
“Hey, that’s not a nice thing to say,” the Aussie slurred. “ ’Specially as I don’t know what it means.”
The man laughed hysterically at this. The young women (kids really) joined him. The Aussie laughed harder, spurred on by the realization that the girls found him so amusing. The girls, George knew, did not understand a word of English, with the exception of some sexual terminology.
“Go to hell,” George called back.
The light turned green and the tuk-tuk moved onto Charoen Road. It noisily began its journey along the Chao Phraya River. In Thai, wat meant temple or monastery, and Bangkok had more than four hundred temples of breathtaking beauty. Color was the key word in Thai architecture. Red, yellow, green, blue, and most especially gold—all reflecting the bright sun in an amazing kaleidoscope of nature and man.
There was Wat Po, which housed the Reclining Buddha—a statue so immense it stretched across an area larger than half a football field. Another enormous Buddha image, cast in well over five tons of solid gold, sat upon the altar of Wat Traimit, and Wat Arum, the Temple of Dawn, appeared to be suspended above the Chao Phraya River as though held there by the gods, its towering spires reaching up and scratching the very heavens with pointy claws.
But Bangkok’s most spectacular temple was known to the Thai people simply as Wats, though it was far more than just a temple. Tourists knew it as the Grand Palace, though it was far more than that too. The Grand Royal Complex might be a better name. Everything King Rama I, ruler of the Chakri Dynasty, could have wanted was housed within the walls that enclosed his palace, including one of the most sacred images in all of Buddhism—the Emerald Buddha. In this bastion of awe-inspiring color and beauty, the Emerald Buddha stood out only for its rather startling unimpressiveness. The statue was only a few feet high, was made of jade, and showed no real signs of unusually brilliant handwork. You could buy an exact reproduction for a few baht in any Thai trinket store.
“We’re here, boss.”
“Swing around to the other side.”
“Okay, boss.”
At night, spotlights illuminated the many spires and pagodas of the Grand Palace, creating an impression both bright and haunting. In a word: mysterious. Like the most seductive woman, Bangkok hinted at unparalleled delights while always keeping part of itself covered, hidden from view, a secret.
“Stop here.”
“Yes, boss.”
The tuk-tuk chugged to a halt. George paid the driver and crossed over toward the Chao Phraya River. He walked along the river’s edge, watching the wooden rice barges drift lazily by as though they had no particular destination in mind, the drivers still wearing their enormous straw hats though the blazing sun had settled in the west hours ago. The Chao Phraya was more than a river to Bangkok. It was her lifeblood. The waterway was used for transportation, for floating food markets, for bathing. Families had lived for centuries in huts that were more in the river than on it.
Through the darkness a long, narrow sampan glided silently to the shore. The boat—closer to a canoe really—was being steered from the back by a skinny boy. An elderly man with only one arm and a wisp of a mustache sat in the front.
“George?” the man whispered.
Right on time as always. George climbed aboard the sampan, sat and clasped his hands together. He bowed respectfully. “Sawasdee, kap.”
“Sawasdee, kap.”
“How is business, Surakarn?”
“Brisk,” the old man said. “But, alas, we have had to close down our profitable Malaysian operation. Too much heat from the state police. They are not, I’m afraid, as receptive to gifts as they used to be.”
“So I’ve heard.” George looked at Surakarn’s weather-beaten face, his skin brittle like dry brown leaves. The former Thai boxing champion must be nearing seventy now, George thought, and worth countless millions of dollars. Yet Surakarn did not slow down, nor, it seemed, did he do anything with his vast wealth. He still lived in a modest hut along the Chao Phraya, though he had long ago allowed creature comforts to enter his dwelling. From the outside, the hut looked like something from a Vietnam War documentary; inside were two big-screen televisions, VCRs, a GE refrigerator, a dishwasher, a washer and dryer, a microwave, central air-conditioning, the works.
Surakarn smiled. “You’ve been away for a long time, old friend.”
“Too long,” George replied.
Surakarn waved his one arm toward the boy, and the sampan began its slow journey down the Chao Phraya. Surakarn’s other arm had been sliced off in Chiang Rai almost twenty-five years before by a fellow competitor in the smuggling industry named Rangood. Rangood, however, had made the mistake of allowing Surakarn to live. After he captured his nemesis, Surakarn tortured him mercilessly in ways that were beyond imagination. Rangood begged Surakarn to kill him, but Surakarn would listen only to his shouts of agony, not his words. By the time Rangood’s heart gave out several weeks later, his mind had long since snapped.
Surakarn was as trustworthy as they came, but George did not tell even him about Silverman’s kidnapping. This was too big, too risky, to trust anyone. George had decided not to solicit the help of the usual local cutthroats he worked with, despite what he had written in the note to Michael. He had even gone so far as to put a mask on Michael’s face when he sneaked him into the Eager Beaver.
The Chao Phraya area was quiet this evening. The gentle splashing sounds from an occasional boat enhanced the feeling of calm, of solitude. There was no mist in the air, only the stifling humidity, and yet there always seemed to be a fog rolling across the city, as though mist and fog could be detected by some sense other than sight and smell.