The 38 Million Dollar Smile - Stevenson Richard - Страница 49
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giving steel fabricating and the home- and building-supply
business a backward glance. Now you not only want to get back
into the family business in a big way, but you want to force your brother out of it and replace him with yourself and a group of
Thai investors that perhaps includes former finance minister
Anant na Ayudhaya. Griswold, what’s going on?”
Now the machine wasn’t beeping and flashing so much, and
the drooping line on one of its electronic graphs looked like the Dow Jones was having a bad day. Still Griswold said nothing.
I said, “It looks like you’re taking over Algonquin Steel to
finance the Sayadaw U project. Algonquin’s earnings will make
a nice endowment for the Buddhism center. If this is the case,
why not just say so? It’s no skin off my nose.”
After a moment, Griswold croaked out, “Who told you this
crazy shit?”
“Nobody, but it makes sense. I heard from Albany that
there’s a hostile takeover of Algonquin Steel under way.”
216 Richard Stevenson
“And people in Albany think I’m behind it?”
“Not as far as I know. My source — who is not one of your
family members — just alerted me to the takeover but said
nothing about opinions in Albany on who the buyers might
be.”
“Do you have any idea if my brother thinks that’s what I’m
doing — grabbing the company out from under him?”
“I don’t know. Should I feel him out? I could talk to your
ex-wife and see what she and Bill know or don’t know. I’m
working for you now, not them. I think.”
Griswold shook his head and then grimaced from the pain
of moving it. “What a goddamn screwup. And it’s your fault.
Though why am I surprised? You may not be aware of it,
Strachey, but I had trouble with you in Thailand once before.”
“You were here in the seventies? I don’t remember you.
What were you? Army? State Department? Viet Cong?”
“No, it was the eighteen fifties. Apparently you have not
taken the trouble to examine your past lives. But I have
examined mine and I remember you distinctly. You came from
London ostensibly on a trade mission but basically you wanted
to get your hands on a number of Siamese antiquities, including
an emerald Buddha you were planning on grabbing for a private
collector in East Kent.”
Pugh was just inside my peripheral vision and I thought I
picked up his suppressing a smile.
I said, “Well, Griswold, this is your second concussion from
flying off a bicycle and whacking your head. But apparently this concussion did not reverse the effects of the last one.”
Now Pugh actually chuckled. Griswold just looked at me
hard and said, “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking
about.”
I said, “I heard that one of your aims with the Sayadaw U
project is to atone for a great sin that was committed by one of your family members. It must have been a pretty spectacular sin
if it’s going to take a project costing tens of millions of dollars to set things right in your family, karma-wise. Would you like to THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 217
shed some light on all that? I’m a skeptic on these matters, but Khun Rufus is likely to be impressed.”
Pugh said, “Well put. I’m all ears.”
“No,” Griswold said and shut his eyes again.
“No, what?”
“No, I will not shed some light on something there is no
need for you to know about, and if you did know you would
just go charging around standing in the way of justice.”
“Charging around and standing. Weird.”
“I have a headache. Please go away.”
“What do you mean by justice? Karmic? Legal?”
“Karmic and Hebrew. They are sometimes similar. It would
be hard to say, in fact, which one can be the more interestingly lurid.”
“You referred to your brother Bill as evil. How come?”
Griswold looked at me directly. “Don’t mess with my
brother. Believe me, you’ll regret it. You aren’t planning to tell him any of this, are you?”
“No,” I said. “I’m not. Were the two seedy Americans who
visited you six months ago your brother’s pals or
representatives? The bleach blonde and the other guy who were
staying at the Malaysia Hotel and then moved to the Grand
Hyatt? Did they come to Thailand with some kind of
information or threat from Bill?”
Griswold’s machine got excited again — bleep bleep bleep bleep
— and his Dow Jones graph jumped around some more.
“April twenty-seventh,” Griswold said. “That’s all you need
to know. Now please let me rest. I am so, so exhausted.” He
closed his eyes and turned his head away.
Out in the corridor, I described the encounter to Timmy. He
said, “You’ve nailed it. Jeez, Don, you’ve figured it out.”
“Maybe. But even if I have, what is it that I’ve figured out?”
218 Richard Stevenson
Pugh said, “Khun Don, perhaps it would all be clearer if you
understood the dynamics of your last troubled encounter with
Mr. Gary. Back in the court of King Mongkut.”
“I’ll work on that. I may have to fly back to Key West and
talk to a woman named Sandy. Though I suppose you have
people here in Thailand, Rufus, who could help me out in that
regard.”
Pugh laughed. “Mr. Don, I do believe that you think all of
us Thais have fallen off our bicycles and landed on our heads.”
“Not at all. Buddhism is in your DNA, Rufus. It’s not in
Griswold’s.”
“How can you be so sure? In our belief system, a man can as
easily return to earth as an Upstate New York American steel
magnate as a Thai rice farmer or a rat in the sewers of
Vientiane. It all depends on the man’s karma, which is dictated
by his behavior in present or past lives. A man could even
return to earth as a silly farang dilettante dabbling in Buddhism in a shallow way that’s embarrassing both to true Buddhists and
to skeptics such as yourself. Which is the case with Mr. Gary? I am undecided about that.
“I must say,” Pugh went on, “that it is unusual for Thais
such as former Minister Anant to accept unquestioningly the
Buddhism of any foreigner. Most Thais are skeptical themselves
of the genuineness of farang Buddhism beyond the proven
benefits of meditation and of course the adoption of decent
ethical practices. And many traditional Thais are skeptical of —
even hostile to — grandiose semicommercial schemes such as
the one Mr. Gary is planning out by the new airport. I’m a bit
surprised, actually, that Khun Anant, an old-fashioned man in
many ways, is up to his eyebrows with a foreigner in this
supposedly deeply spiritual project. It has occurred to me, in
fact, that somehow Khun Anant is not out to assist Mr. Gary
but perhaps to fleece him.”
Ek had been on his cell phone, and now he interrupted
Pugh and me and spoke in an urgent tone to Pugh in Thai.
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 219
Pugh said to me, “We have to get Mr. Gary out of here.
Fast.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
One of Ek’s cop friends had tipped him off that a Hua Hin
senior officer with personal loyalties to General Yodying had
noted Griswold’s name on the police blotter and had been
asking questions about him. It was reasonable to assume that
this officer had heard that Yodying was searching for Griswold
— and for us — and that word would soon come crackling
back from Bangkok to have us all rounded up.
Pugh had a doctor friend who ran a private clinic off the
main southern road only a mile or so from Monkey Mountain.
Griswold could be treated and well cared for there. The trick
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