The 38 Million Dollar Smile - Stevenson Richard - Страница 40
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signaled for them to follow one of his team into our building.
Miss Aroon joined this group now and was handed a bulging
Central World shopping bag by Ek. I watched as all of them
entered a stairwell and disappeared.
We were far enough off Rangnum Road that passersby
would not be aware of anything out of the ordinary going on in
the complex. We had the privacy we needed to do what we
needed to do. Just as the kidnappers had the privacy they had
needed to hold Timmy and Kawee captive for the previous
forty hours, and the privacy they would need to hurl them off a
fourteenth-floor balcony after sunset.
I said to Pugh, “Where’s the seer? He’s up where Ek is
heading?”
“Khun Surapol was snatched as he approached Wat
Mahathat, his neighborhood temple, for morning prayers. He
was told that he was needed to bless a construction project and
would soon be released and even amply rewarded. Then Ek and
his lads hauled him over here and marched the eminent seer up
to the fourteenth floor of this building. Its balcony looks
directly across to the balcony of the condo where the captives
are being held.”
I stepped into the sunlight and looked up again, and
wondered if we shouldn’t be rigging circus trapeze nets around
the building across the way. I guessed, though, that no net
would support an adult plummeting from fourteen floors up. I
said, “Wouldn’t the kidnappers have spotted us by now?”
“It doesn’t matter. They may phone General Yodying, but
he will be neutralized within a matter of minutes.”
“Rufus, I’ll have to trust you that you can get away with
this.”
Pugh said, “Ih.”
176 Richard Stevenson
After a few minutes, Pugh’s cell phone chirped. He spoke
briefly in Thai, then said to me, “That was Ek. It’s time to make our move.”
At Pugh’s signal, Sek and Egg accompanied Griswold out
from the shadows. Both men wore shoulder holsters containing
long-handled Chinese revolvers. We walked across the
unfinished driveway and entered the second unfinished
apartment building.
Pugh said, “Let’s you and I, Khun Don, lead the way and
make a memorable first impression on these boorish fellows.”
In what would have been the lobby of the apartment
building, we passed the two openings to the empty elevator
shafts. All around us was raw concrete with its limestone smell.
It was damp in the Bangkok pre-monsoon humidity and
smelled like the inside of a wet cave. It took me back to my
spelunking days in college, and I wondered what in the world I
had in mind back then crawling around in those claustrophobic
spaces, cold and muddy, and in danger in the rainy spring
months of being crushed or, more likely, trapped and drowned.
Which was the most awful way of dying? Drowning? Being
compressed and suffocated? Falling? As we climbed upward
and passed the exposed elevator shafts on each floor, I thought
to myself, Don’t fall, don’t fall, don’t fall.
We were all getting winded in the heat, except for Griswold,
the manic cyclist. He was more fit than any of us and probably
had never smoked. Pugh, Sek, Egg and I were soon panting,
and I finally got to see a Thai perspire. I thought of Timmy and Kawee, who two days earlier had been force-marched up these
same stairs, probably unsure whether once they got to where
they were going, they might be hurled down an elevator shaft or
off a balcony.
Pugh was quietly counting off the floors. When he got to the
twelfth, he said, “Fourteen is next.”
Sek and Egg had drawn their revolvers by now and were
following Pugh, me and Griswold closely. As we turned onto
the stairs leading to the fourteenth floor, four men appeared
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 177
above us and we stopped. Two of them held guns, and the
other two held good-sized bamboo canes.
There was a rapid back-and-forth in Thai between Pugh and
one of the men holding a revolver. He was large and sullen, and
I thought, yes, finally, the knocker-over of Austrian tourists.
As we climbed the final flight of stairs, I said to Pugh,
“That’s Khun Yai?”
“The one and only.”
We were led into what would have been — and I assumed
what might one day still become — a large fourteenth-floor
apartment. The place was set up like a campsite. Camp stoves
were on a table in one corner next to a portable refrigerator. I could smell the soup in a pot. Straw mats were spread around
on the floor. There were gas lanterns atop a pile of crates next to a card table with stools around it. Apparently we had
interrupted a poker game, for four hands lay facedown around
the table with a pile of bahts in the middle..
With two of their men pointing guns and two of ours doing
likewise, any shoot-out would have been short and ugly.
Everyone in the room must have been acutely aware of this,
though nobody lowered his revolver.
I saw no sign of Timmy and Kawee and figured they were in
another section of the apartment.
Pugh said something in Thai, and Yai apparently indicated
that one of his goons should go and fetch the captives. One of
them kept looking at Griswold and then down at a photo he
had, apparently to make sure we had not delivered a fake
Griswold. It was plain that Pugh had done what he had told me
earlier he was going to do. In Thai, he had informed these men
that we were turning Griswold over to them in return for
Timmy and Kawee. He said Griswold was not resisting because
he now realized it was his fate to pay for his sins. He had caused important men to lose both money and face, each an
unforgivable violation in the Thai moral universe. And he knew
he would have to pay, and he was prepared to do so.
178 Richard Stevenson
Griswold said nothing. Apparently he was fluent in Thai, for
he followed the conversation with a look that was fascinated
though faintly bug-eyed.
Big Yai got on his cell phone to somebody — General
Yodying? — and seconds after he rang off, one of the gang
came back leading Timmy and Kawee. Their hands were tied
behind their backs and they were bound at the ankles too, so
they had to take little dainty steps. They weren’t in the clothes I had last seen them in but were in cargo shorts and T-shirts.
They were both sweating. Timmy’s hair was a rat’s nest and
Kawee’s lip gloss looked chewed off. On the front of Timmy’s
yellow T-shirt were the words Thailand — Land of Smiles.
When Timmy and Kawee saw us, their faces fast-forwarded
through shock, relief, joy, apprehension and fright. Then they
just stared at us, hyperalert.
I said, “We’re getting you guys out of here. It won’t be long
now.”
“And with hours to spare,” Timmy said. “Thank you for
that.”
Yai indicated that his gang should free Timmy and Kawee
from their bonds. They quickly did so, using sharp knives from
the food preparation area to slice through the ropes. Timmy
and Kawee began rubbing their wrists and moving their legs
about, as if they were warming up for a ping-pong tournament.
Next, Yai directed two of his men to tie Griswold up.
That’s when Pugh said something in Thai that made Yai
look out the door to the balcony with a start.
We had a clear view across the way to the second building in
the condo complex. From the balcony opposite us, two people
were dangling. Each was upside down. Ropes were tied around
their ankles, and the ropes were attached to bamboo poles held
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