The 38 Million Dollar Smile - Stevenson Richard - Страница 35

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