Thai Horse

charged, zigzagging toward the big kite, trying to pass it and get to the chula’s end of the field and win the match. The chula was difficult to maneuver, but its team was expert and they cut across the path of the pakpao, snared its string with their line, and brought the smaller kite auguring to the ground. There was a great deal of cheering and now it was the chula’s turn for insults, and the young man with the pakpao gathered up his wounded flyer and went back to his end of the field in humiliation. Another pakpao, whose kite was purple with a blazing red tail, reeled his bird in tight and got ready for the run.

‘A red on the pakpao,’ Porter said to Gus, the bartender, and slapped a red hundred- baht note on the table.

‘Yer covered,’ the Cockney bartender replied, accepting the five-dollar bet.

The new fellow, who was short and muscular, started running toward the chula team, then let the kite run its string, up, up, almost a hundred feet, and began his drive toward the imaginary goal, moving like a good quarterback breaking field, pulling the purple diamond down, maneuvering it away from the long chula string, then letting it out as he dodged under the threatening dragon kite. He was very good, outsmarting the team players and dipping his kite under the big dragon just as they were about to collide, hauling it in for a second and then letting it glide back up so that it brushed the larger kite for a moment before he ran on to win the match.

‘Way to go, sport,’ Porter yelled gleefully. He turned to the bartender and added, with smug satisfaction, ‘Just take it off my tab, Gus.’

Porter loved the kite fights. He left his post every day at four-thirty, walking a mile across Bangkok’s crowded streets rather than fight the noisy traffic jams, to Queen’s, where he sat in the same corner table with a clear view of Sanam Luang Park and the gleaming spire of the Golden Mount atop Wat Sakhet. Porter had been stationed in Bangkok since the end of the Vietnam war, and he loved the ancient beauty of the city and particularly the Thai people, whose prevailing attitude was Mai pen rai, ‘Never mind.’ He had been a close friend of Buffalo Bill Cody’s for many years, a once proper Bostonian who had, on a summer day in 1968, suddenly chucked his executive job in one of the city’s larger banks, accepted Cody’s offer of a commission and a spot on Buffalo Bill’s Nam staff and gone off to find a purpose for his life in a place most men feared and wanted to avoid.

It was an amazing turnabout, for Porter not only quit but burned his bridges, telling the president of the bank what to do with his job and where to take it once he did it, and giving his wife who was equally appalled by his sudden decision, a variation of the same message. After ten years in the stultifying atmosphere of Back Bay and his debasing daily bank chores, which consisted mostly of disapproving loans and foreclosing on unfortunates, Saigon had been a breath of spring air to Porter. The general had even arranged an assignment for him as intelligence adviser in the embassy at Bangkok when the war fizzled out. Porter’s last visit to the States bad been ten years ago.

Although he was pushing fifty, Porter kept trim on the squash courts, had grown a monumental mustache, which he waxed every day, and had learned the language and customs of Thailand. He had become, for all practical purposes, a native. He also adored the Old Man and considered his assignment — to keep a loose tag on Wol Pot — a privileged responsibility.

Porter was not trained in intelligence work and surveillance, but he had managed to keep up with the Thai informant, although he was getting nervous. Wol Pot had moved twice since he had first discussed the Murphy Cody affair with him. He was obviously jumpy and afraid of something. Could the Thai be stinging them? If so, how did he know about Murph Cody? Why pick him? And why had Wol Pot refused Porter’s offer of protective custody in the embassy? It was obvious the man trusted no one.

He watched the fights until the shimmering fireball of the sun sank slowly behind the Golden Mount, first silhouetting the gleaming gold spire, then etching it against the scarlet sky, and finally surrendering the bell- shaped landmark to darkness. Night began to settle over Bangkok, the lights blazed on, the tourists trekked out of their hotels in pursuit of evening joys, and Windy Porter left Queen’s and hurried another few blocks across town to a park called Bho Fhat across from the Sakhet temple, there to begin his nightly vigil on his customary bench, a bench well hidden by jasmine bushes.

There was no question in Porter’s mind that Wol Pot was terrified of something. After the initial contact, he had turned rabbit. At first, he had followed a loose routine. Porter had followed him once to a junk on the river, to his nightly forays along the klongs, and the strip joints on Patpong Road and particularly to Yawaraj, the Chinese section. The little bastard was addicted to hot Chinese food. Then two days earlier Pot left his rooms and disappeared. Porter had panicked. The little weasel was the only person he knew who might lead them to Murph Cody, if Cody was alive. He had put out the word — all over Thailand — to his informants, his contacts, his friends, and had run down a few leads, which had fizzled out.

Then Porter had lucked out. A priest, a friend of Porter’s for many years, heard that Porter was looking for this man, Wol Pot.

‘It is probably nothing,’ he said, but a man, no longer a youth, has joined the Wat Sakhet, and has been seen to leave the grounds every night.’

Strange behavior, since the discipline at the monastery was quite rigid though purely voluntary.

‘When did he enter the monastery?’ Porter asked.

‘Only two days ago. That is why his conduct seems strange,’ the priest answered.

‘Khob khun krap,’ Porter said, thanking the priest. ‘May I ask you not to discipline him until I check him out?’

The priest agreed. It was a long shot, Porter thought, but certainly a clever deception if it was Wol Pot. Porter was familiar with the demands made upon neophyte monks of Theravada Buddhism. One of the most familiar sights in Thailand was the hundreds of saffron-robed Naen with their shaven heads wandering the streets and meditating in the city’s hundreds of wats, the monasteries or temples that were the most common structures in the country. When he first came to Bangkok, Porter had found the monks an annoyance; they reminded him of the Hare Krishnas who had turned most of the airports in the United States into a bizarre distortion of the wats. But while he did not pretend to understand the mysteries of Eastern religion, he had gradually come to accept and respect these dedicated men.

During the rainy season of late summer and early fall, the ranks of these monasteries were swelled by thousands of young men. It was a tradition for them to enter the wats, sometimes for two weeks, sometimes for six months, and learn the virtues of an ascetic life free of material possessions. While there, they were obligated to adhere to 227 strict rules, abstaining from lying, idle talk, and indulgence in sex, intoxicants, luxuries and frivolous amusements. Their only possessions were the familiar saffron robe and a brass alms bowl, with which they b egged the two meals a day allowed by the order. Their stay was a matter of personal dedication, nothing prevented them