that the guards at one site had been instructed by an agent for the building’s owner, a bank, to take a few days off and had been replaced by unknown amateurs who were described by one security officer as “gangsta boys.”
Pugh put Ek on hold while he took a call from Khun Thunska. While I listened in on an extension, the computer ace reported that nearly a thousand women would turn sixty in Bangkok on April 27. He said he would go over the list more thoroughly over the next few hours, but a preliminary once over showed that only one of these women was wed to a Bangkok big shot. That was Paveena Hanwilai, wife of General of the Royal Thai Police Yodying Supanant.
Pugh got Ek back on the line and said, “Time to move.”
We headed north toward Rangnum Road in two vans. A broad-shouldered youth named Nitrate drove the one with Pugh, me and Miss Aroon. She was dressed in shorts and a tank top and appeared ready to don the costume she would need for the rescue operation. The van following us held Griswold, Sek, Egg and four well-toned young men who normally performed in the gay fuck show at Dream Boys but also moonlighted as muscle boys for Pugh. Pugh said only two of them were gay, but the money at Dream Boys was good, and life in show business beat driving a truck around in the heat. I watched these guys load lengths of rope into their van before we left the office, along with several bamboo poles.
The morning traffic was thick and moved in fits and starts.
Pugh said he remembered that when he was a boy large herds of cattle were driven up Rama IV Road to the city’s main slaughterhouse, and now it often seemed as if the city hadn’t modernized at all but had just substituted Toyotas for cows. We could have taken the speedy SkyTrain up to Rangnum Road, but our flying squad needed more flexibility than that afforded by public transportation.
It didn’t much matter that our progress was slow. We didn’t need to be in place at Rangnum Road, Pugh said, until eleven o’clock, when Ek would arrive with his own captive, the soothsayer Surapol Sutharat. I asked Pugh about seer Surapol’s public prediction that no coup could be expected in Thailand anytime soon, when apparently some change of government that would send General Yodying packing was in the works for April 27.
“It’s disinformation,” Pugh said. “That’s how these guys work. Their charts may show one thing, but publicly they say whatever their clients want the public to hear. It’s soothsayingslash-spin.”
“But this other seer, Pongsak Sutiwipakorn, has forecast a coup before the end of April. What’s his deal? If he has a line to the coup plotters, why are they giving the game away? Isn’t surprise a crucial element in any government overthrow?”
“It’s swagger. When upper-echelon Thais brazenly tip their hands, it’s the same as when lower-class Thai men rip off their shirts and brandish their ogreish tats to give opponents the heebie-jeebies. Much of the time, however, this tactic is bluff.
But you can never be sure if it’s real or not, so you’re never sure how or even whether to respond. It’s part of what makes civic life in Thailand so endlessly fascinating.”
“Griswold is apparently convinced that a coup is imminent.
How else would he know that General Yodying is going to lose his job on the twenty-seventh?”
“Former Finance Minister Anant would know such things if he was involved in the conspiracy. And soothsayer Pongsak would know from consulting his charts. Whether it’s a coup or an unfortunate accident on April twenty- seventh that causes General Yodying to — dare I once again use the word fall? — either way he seems to be a goner, practically speaking.”
I recalled the long-ago days of the old O’Connell Democratic machine that befouled civic life in Albany for much of the twentieth century. It, too, routinely played rough, although surely it would have met its match tangling with Minister Anant, General Yodying and the politico-soothsayers of Bangkok. The civic reformers who finally succeeded at de-corrupting Albany in the 1980s would have been eaten alive by this Thai crew. And tossed over a high ledge near the top of the Al Smith State Office Building.
We parked both vans in a soi a couple of blocks from the condo complex. A Burmese travel agency was on one side of us and a small open-front restaurant on the other. Some of the cooking was being done in raised kettles on the sidewalk, and the air was hot and rich with the aroma of the chilies, cardamom and cinnamon in a Massaman curry. It was only just after ten, so the rescue crew climbed out of the vans and headed to the restaurant for a snack. Despite the tension 174 Richard Stevenson generated by our task, the several men and one woman were kidding around in the Thai manner, joshing one another and casually ha-ha-ing. It was as if all the good food Thais ate produced not just generally good health but good humor, too.
Pugh also got out of the van and found a flower seller nearby. He bought a garland of jasmine blossoms and walked over to the spirit house in front of a store that sold running shoes and flip-flops. Pugh placed the garland before the Buddha figure, wai-ed the statue, and bowed his head for some minutes. He had placed his cell phone next to the garland and other offerings that had been left by others: candles, rice, a cardboard carton of guava juice. He wasn’t planning to leave the phone behind, I surmised, but wanted to have it handy in case Ek called.
At ten to eleven, Ek did call. At Pugh’s signal, the rescue crew quickly gathered around him for their instructions. He spoke to them in Thai. Most of them spoke some English, but it was limited and there was no room for misunderstandings or screwups. And they were no longer kidding around.
The group broke up into units of two each. One pair carried the ropes and bamboo poles. The men wore cargo pants and T-shirts and could have passed for construction workers or window washers.
Pugh, Egg, Griswold, Miss Aroon and I walked a bit ahead of the others on the opposite side of Rangnum Road. When we reached the private soi leading to the abandoned condo complex, my heart began to race and my impulse was to sprint into one of the buildings and tear up fourteen flights shouting Timmy’s name. I took a deep breath of the muggy Bangkok air and maintained my steady pace next to Pugh. I saw Ek’s fourby-four parked up ahead next to one of the tall concrete shells, as well as other vehicles I did not recognize. One was another dark SUV and then a blue Mercedes. A motorcycle was parked behind the Mercedes.
Ek stood in the entryway to one of the buildings with two more of Pugh’s operatives. He beckoned for us to move with him into the shadows. He said, “That one,” and indicated the structure forty or fifty feet across the driveway. We moved forward a few steps and peered up, and I could sense that, like me, everybody was counting to fourteen.
When the men with the ropes and bamboo poles arrived, Ek 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.
