The 38 Million Dollar Smile - Stevenson Richard - Страница 35
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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?
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 153
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.”
The van was stalled now in a big jam-up at Silom and Rama
IV Roads. We had been stuck for several minutes, but there was
no honking and there were no muttering drivers sticking their
heads out their windows to see what in God’s name the bloody
holdup was. People sat quietly in their air-conditioned cars or in their fuming tuk-tuks. A low-fare, un-air-conditioned municipal
bus idled nearby, and the steaming passengers sat by the open
windows uncomplainingly inhaling that evening’s portion of
each person’s annual allotment of small particulates.
Pugh said, “Khun Gary, welcome to Paradise. Like any
paradise where human beings are present, Thailand is
complicated. Mark Twain said, ‘Heaven for climate, hell for
society.’ Here the two exist in a kind of rough harmony. As you
seem to have discovered.”
I said, “What about Geoff Pringle? You know about him, I
take it.”
“I read about him online in the Key West Citizen. For reasons of keeping up appearances for the farang tourists, I suppose,
there was no report of Geoff’s death in the Bangkok
newspapers, either Thai or English editions. I was very, very
sorry to learn of Geoff’s passing. He was once a good friend of
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 155
mine. It was Geoff who turned me on to Thailand in the first
place. But he was one of the people who lost money in the
currency speculation scheme. He blamed me, which was totally
fair. I had gotten him into it originally. Geoff, however, made
the mistake of pestering both the Ministry of Justice and the US
embassy about his losses — he believed that he had been
swindled, and of course he had — and it must have become
apparent that he was going to be a troublemaker on a scale
somebody high up didn’t want to be bothered with. So Geoff
had to go. It’s one of the Thai business practices that I have to say I’ll never get used to.”
I said, “And now back to former Minister Anant. Where
does he fit in here? Was he one of the participants in the
original currency speculation scheme that was called off, or is he involved in the new project that’s going to accumulate both vast wealth and karmic merit?”
I could all but see the wheels turning inside Griswold’s head.
Before Griswold could come up with some half-truth or bald-
faced lie, Pugh said matter-of-factly, “It was both. Khun Anant
was involved with both schemes, the dubious one that was
abandoned and got two people killed, and the supposedly
worthy project that is ongoing and hasn’t gotten anybody killed
just yet. Am I right, Khun Gary?”
Griswold peered down at his handcuffs and said nothing.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Up in Pugh’s office in Surawong, Griswold described for us
his worthy project. It was a massive complex of temples,
monasteries, and Buddhism study and meditation centers to be
built on a drained cobra swamp on the outskirts of Bangkok
near the new airport. A kind of Buddhism theme park would
adjoin the main campus to help educate many of Thailand’s
fifteen million yearly foreign tourists about Buddhism. The
monks from next door would participate in “monk chats” with
the visiting farangs, explaining the tenets of Buddhism.
Griswold said he had borrowed this last idea from an existing
monastery in Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand, but his monk
chats would be conducted on a much larger scale. Griswold
himself would finance the construction of the complex, and the
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