Thai Horse

‘And this Hatcher is dangerous?’

‘He’s wasted half of Hong Kong in the last forty-eight hours. The guy’s a walking plague.’

‘Would you like a suggestion?’

‘Don’t I always?’

The Honorable dipped his finger in wine, turned the page of his book and licked his finger. ‘Arrange for him to come here,’ he said. ‘Check him out up close and on friendly territory.’

‘That’s a little dangerous, isn’t it?’ Earp said. ‘Bringing him right into the living room?’

‘If he’s as dangerous as you say and he’s here to assassinate Thai Horse, he’s also very smart. He’ll wind up here sooner or later anyway.’

The Honorable looked up and what might have passed for a smile crossed his lips.

‘As the Thais say, “It is easier to kill a friendly tiger than a mad dog.”

KRUNG THEP

Hatcher stirred as the 747 banked sharply and swept over Bangkok on its approach to the city and the flight attendant announced their approach to Don Muang airport. Still half asleep, Hatcher remembered Bangkok as a city of gold and silver temples, of spires and domes, and delicate, beautiful women, as fragile as china, swathed in radiant silk.

He pulled back the curtain arid it was like looking down on a painting. Even in the gray predawn light with the sun a shimmering promise on the horizon, Bangkok was like a gleaming jewel in the palm of Buddha’s hand, and the Chao Phraya River was an endless life line stretching from little finger to thumb. Hundreds of golden domes and spires reached through the morning mist like flowers seeking the sun. It was these holy places and the canals which coursed through the city that defined Bangkok’s character and personality. Centuries ago there were no roads in Bangkok; its streets were dozens of canals called klongs that wound through it, their banks draped with flowers arid trees. Progress had changed that. A few major water arteries still served the city; the rest had been filled in to become boulevards and lanes. But the flowers remained and the streets were demarcated as much by orchids, bougainvillea and palm trees as they were by gutters and sidewalks. Through the mists of morning, Hatcher occasionally caught a glimpse of the canals jammed with slender, long-tailed hang yao laden with fresh fruit, flowers and wares as the river people made their way to the floating markets on the banks of the main river.

As the plane began its descent the sun rose over the horizon, and the morning mist, set ablaze by the fires of dawn, turned to steam, vanished, and revealed in stunning glory a sparkling city of gold.

This was a land so alien to Westerners that it was like flying into another planet. The tourists ‘oohed’ and ‘aahed’ at the sight. Everything below them seemed clean and fertile and seductive. And yet he knew that beneath the beauty there was also the agony of great poverty, that children bathed in their own refuse and were sold on the streets, that heroin was part of the rate of exchange, that there were sixty or seventy homicides a month, that the cold steel and mirrored glass towers of the Westerners were slowly corrupting Bangkok’s ancient and exquisite beauty, and that automobiles were polluting the city’s air. Perhaps, he thought, the Thais would tire of the foreigners and throw them out, as their ancestors had done two hundred years before when the farang had tried to replace the gentle compassion of Buddha with the rigid, intractable arrogance of Christianity.

To survive as a farang in Bangkok, Westerners had to accept its philosophy even if they did not understand it. Here Buddha was the benevolent saint. Rich Thais bought buttons of gold leaf and pressed them on temples and icons. The poor covered statues with broken teacups. Everyone paid tribute and came to pray, to ask for favors from Buddha, for the Thais thought nothing of asking for a big fish on their line or a winning lottery ticket or a beautiful woman for the night or a handsome man to curl up with when the sun vanished. The subtleties were lost to those from the West whose God, modeled by pompous, arrogant, self-appointed intermediaries, was an angry God, less compassionate, less forgiving, and devoid of any sense of humor. To the Thais, who believed the smile was born in their country, Buddha was a kind and generous God, capable of impish tricks, laughter and infinite joy, a God who asked nothing, demanded nothing, and smiled on those who laid tribute at his feet.

Perhaps that is why, to the Thai, arguing was a sin, raising one’s voice was an insult, and anger was intolerable. One had to love a people whose philosophy of life was summed up by their reaction to almost everything: Mai pen rai— ‘Never mind.’ While Hatcher did not begin to understand the intricacies of Hinayana Buddhism, one thing he did understand was that Buddhists believed that our temporary existence on earth was uncertain at best; that concern was folly and anger was futile; that confrontation was an embarrassment, anxiety was a sin, and life was a process of forgiving. It was a philosophy be had tried to embrace, but there were psychological responses so ingrained in Westerners that it was difficult for a farang to ignore them.

And while Hatcher had understood and tried to practice the Thai philosophy in the past, this time it was not working for him. He was overwhelmed with anxiety, and what he feared most was what he would learn about Cody in Bangkok. The closer the plane got to the airport, the more his anxiety grew. Even identifying his former friend would be a major problem. Would he still recognize Cody? It had been almost twenty years since he had last seen his friend. And he had probably changed his name.

But Hatcher’s greatest fear concerned Cody himself. What was he doing here, and why had he kept his identity a secret all these years? Was he a collaborator? A junkie? A drug smuggler? If he was smuggling drugs, was he tied in with Tollie Fong and the Chiu Chao triads? Or was there some even darker secret that Hatcher could not imagine?

Was Cody actually dead? Even if he had escaped the plane crash fifteen years ago, Cody could have died in the prison camp or in any of a dozen other ways. Fifteen years was a long time.

Hatcher also remembered that there was no such thing as a fact in Thailand. Truth was a crucible for what was real and what was imagined, what was veritable and what was spiritual. At best, a fact in Bangkok was an abstraction of reality, a perception of the individual. Truth was often an illusion and things were never what they appeared to be.

Yet try as he might, Hatcher could not come up with a single positive reason for Cody to remain in hiding.