The 38 Million Dollar Smile - Stevenson Richard - Страница 40

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