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 new business scheme he was planning along with Thai investors would serve as an endowment for the institution for decades or even centuries to come.
Pugh said, “Your audacious plan is largely meritorious, Mr.
Gary. You are to be commended. It will be compromised, of course, if you are flung off the side of a high building before your project reaches fruition.”
“That’s one reason I’m trying to stay alive. Not just for myself but for the Sayadaw U Winaya project. That’s who the project will be named after.”
Pugh nodded approvingly, but I was in the dark. Griswold saw my puzzlement and explained. “A sayadaw is the abbot of a monastery in Burma. Sayadaw U Winaya was the revered abbot of the Thamanyat monastery in southeastern Burma until his death several years ago. He was a supporter of democrat Aung San Su Kyi and an opponent of the evil junta that rules the country so savagely. After his death, the monk’s corpse was placed in a glass box and put on display in a shrine near the monastery, and was believed by Burmese Buddhists to have supernatural powers. Pilgrims came to Thamanyat from all over 158 Richard Stevenson the country. The paranoid ruling generals feared the dead monk’s magic and were probably behind the theft of the corpse by armed and masked intruders two years ago.
“At U Winaya Park, we’ll have a replica of the great monk’s corpse in a box of glass and gold. It will serve as a place of solace and spiritual power, not just for Thai pilgrims but for millions of Burmese refugees who had fled the horrors of their homeland. It’s just barely possible that this project could go forward without me. But I’m providing most of the financing, and even more importantly the endowment cannot be set up without my guidance. So it’s best, Strachey, that not only should Timothy and Kawee be rescued, but that I also should continue breathing and walking around upright, if at all possible.”
It all sounded grandiose to me, out of scale for a philosophy with simplicity and humility at its moral core. But Pugh was looking thoughtful and approving, so who was I to judge?
“How,” I asked Griswold, “were you planning on overseeing this huge project while you were in hiding? That sounds all but impossible, especially in a business culture that you don’t know as intimately as you know your own.”
“Later this month,” Griswold said with quiet smile, “I won’t be in hiding anymore.”
“Oh? Why is that?”
“On April twenty-seventh, a number of changes will come about in Bangkok. And among those changes will be the effective removal of the leader of the original investment group.
He will no longer be in a position to either hurt me or even hassle me.”
Pugh said, “Nine.”
“Not only,” Griswold said, “will two and seven add up to nine, but my sworn enemy in all of this will on April twenthseventh have been in his present position for exactly six years.
And his wife will turn sixty years old on that day. They are finished. I will be free.”
By now I expected Pugh to swoon over all this numerological mumbo jumbo — lucky nines dueling with unlucky sixes — but he just looked at Griswold peculiarly and said nothing. We were heading up Surawong Road now, nearing Pugh’s office.
I asked Griswold, “How come you’ve been hiding out for six months, not just from these people who are after your ass but from all your friends and family back home? You could easily have been in touch by e-mail or even phoned people once in a while without compromising your safety. Your friends in Key West have been worried sick about you, and so have your brother and sister-in-law in Albany. That all strikes me as unnecessary and, if I may say so, pretty selfish for a practicing Buddhist.”
Griswold’s face hardened now. “Something happened six months ago that changed the way I see my life. This was a personal blow, nothing business related. But afterward I needed time to clear my mind of all the impurities I could possibly rid myself of. I have been mostly meditating for the past six months and attempting to restore a kind of karmic harmony in my life and in the lives of others.”
“Did this have something to do with Mango?” I asked.
Griswold gave me a funny look. “Mango? How do you even know about Mango? Oh, I guess you would. You’ve spoken to Ellen and you’ve broken into my laptop, and you’ve probably been through my tax returns and my garbage pail. No, it had nothing to do with Mango. Mango was a beguiling man I thought for a while I might make a life with, until I found out he had several other lives going on at the same time, including one as a money boy. Another of his lives was accumulating real estate in Chonburi with his Thai lover, a man named Donnutt, who is also a very busy and accomplished money boy. In fact, Mango wasn’t the first Thai man who turned out to be more interested in my bank account than anything else about me. I’m a bit disillusioned in that department, I have to admit. Thais are so sane about sexual orientation but far too casual about relationships. I know I’m an anachronistic joke in this regard, but I want the kind of marriage my parents had, except with a human being of the same sex. Others, I know, share this old
160 Richard Stevenson fashioned view, and it’s what I’m holding out for and what I believe I’ll have some day.”
“Thailand might not be the best place for that, Griswold.
Relationships are far more fluid here,” I said, “more accommodating of human nature and the varieties of human need. Maybe you should have run off instead to North Korea or Idaho. It’s not too late, of course. So what was this life-changing event six months ago, if not romantic?”
The van pulled into a parking garage next to Pugh’s office, and Griswold said, “None of that is anything you need to concern yourself with in the present circumstances. Though you’ll learn about a number of aspects of it soon enough.”
I supposed I was going to have to wait for some more nines to turn up.
Two men met us at one of Pugh’s reserved parking spots, and they along with Egg led Griswold through a passageway to Pugh’s building and up to his office.” Pugh and I followed, and soon he slowed our pace a bit until
