“Yes, really really really. What’s wrong with you?”
“And if we don’t get it, you’re going to have us executed for narcotics trafficking?”
“Sure.”
“So we don’t have any choice?”
“Right.”
“Just tell me one thing. Are you really connected to a Burmese general named U-Tat?”
“He would corroborate if I needed him to,” Xie said. “Or I’d send some men to talk to him. He does what I want.”
“Okay,” Vikorn said, “I can get it for you by tomorrow night. Before midnight, anyway. But I have to make phone calls.”
“Only one,” Xie said.
“Okay,” Vikorn said with a sigh.
Which was when he called me.
“Hey, Sonchai, we’ve been kidnapped. It’s okay, they only want two million dollars, but it has to be in used notes. I want you to get the money from the bank and bring it. You have to come alone, unarmed.
Got it?”
I knew what to do. Once, a long time before, he had called me into his office and said, “If you ever get a call from me to say I’ve been kidnapped and held for ransom and I use the words You have to come alone, unarmed. Got it? you go to my bank-you know the one I mean? — and you tell them you want to speak to Mr. To on behalf of Colonel Vikorn.”
The bank in question was a mid-ranking Chinese merchant bank based in Hong Kong with an outlet in Chinatown, not far from the Chao Phraya River. I took a motorbike taxi and arrived within thirty minutes of putting the phone down on Vikorn. At the same time I used my cell phone to book a flight to Lijiang City. The travel agent doubted that I would be able to arrive before midnight the next day, but she would do her best.
The banking hall was of the Chinese-gaudy school, clearly intended to outmarble any rival in the area. When I asked for Mr. To at the information desk, the Chinese receptionist checked her computer and told me there was nobody there of that name.
“So, what are your instructions for when someone like me arrives and says I’m from Colonel Vikorn and need to speak urgently to Mr. To?”
She nodded and plugged the question into the software. “Just a minute please. I will try to get you Mr. Ng.”
Within minutes a uniformed security guard led me to a private lift, which took us up to the top floor. When the lift doors opened, two more uniformed guards took me down a corridor, where a third man in a suit waited. He looked a lot more dangerous than the guards.
“Are you Mr. To?”
“No,” he said with a smile.
“Ng?”
“No,” he said, and knocked on a door. A male voice said something in Chinese. The man in the suit said something back that included the name Vikorn. The voice in the room said something that must have meant “come in.” We entered. The man in the suit left, closing the door behind him.
It was a small room with a small desk crowded with old-fashioned file covers bulging with documents. Behind the desk sat a very thin Chinese man in his forties with thick straight black hair and a black moustache and a bright smile full of optimism. On either side of him sat two women who seemed to be secretaries. One was very thin and boyish, the other about thirty and voluptuous with black-rimmed glasses.
“Are you Mr. To?” I asked.
“No,” he said with a sparkling smile, “I am not.”
“Ng?”
He shook his head. “Not Ng either, but what can I do for you?”
I told him all I knew, which was almost nothing. He thought for perhaps two seconds, said, “Won’t you please sit down,” in perfect English, and stuck a finger in the air to shut me up when I tried to say something more. Then he spoke rapidly to the boyish secretary, who grabbed a pad and pencil and scribbled in Chinese script while he spoke. “Please tell me where you have been told to make contact in Yunnan.”
“At Lijiang City airport.”
The man who was not Mr. To nodded and seemed to repeat this to the secretary, who wrote it down. Then he spoke to the other woman, who took out a cell phone and used it to take a photograph of me. Then she asked me to stand up. She took a ruler from the desk and made a rough calculation as to my height. Then she seemed to describe me and my clothes to her colleague, who wrote down the details. The man stood up.
“Thank you, that will be all.”
“D’you have the money now? I’ve got about an hour to get to the airport,” I said.
He looked surprised. “Oh, no. You do not go anywhere. You stay in Bangkok.”
“But Colonel Vikorn said-”
“No, no, no, no, no. You forget Colonel Vikorn. You stay here. Your job is over.”
In addition to being a very skinny man, he was also quite short, but I wouldn’t have disobeyed him for the world. He walked around his desk to escort me to the door and gave me a name card with no name on it, only a number. I looked at the number and said, “Thanks. Who should I ask for if I need to use it?”
“Ask for Mr. To,” he said. Just before he closed the door on me, he added, “There will be no need to use it immediately. It’s simply in case of unforeseen contingencies in the future. We like to be thorough.”
The next day Vikorn and Ruamsantiah arrived back from Yunnan looking sheepish but somehow pleased with themselves. Neither would speak about their escapade save to say that they appreciated my help. They behaved as if nothing had happened, except that, according to Manny, Vikorn spent the whole of the next day at his bank, talking, I presume, to the man who was not named To.
It was a good six months later that the media ran a story about a Red Army general based in Yunnan who had confessed, under interrogation, to smuggling morphine into and out of China. The hook for the story was his execution by single bullet in the back of the head the day before. His name was Xie. It seems he had been held in solitary confinement for half a year, after a commando raid on his Lijiang City HQ by the army’s internal security unit. The rumor that he had been holding two Thai fat cat narcotics traffickers hostage at the time was vigorously denied both by the army and General Xie (according to the army after Xie’s death).
So, here I am halfway down our soi with my cell phone in my right hand and that nameless name card in the left trapped between the pinkie and the finger of the sun so I can use my left index to plug the number into the keyboard (because my model is too broad for my delicate little Eurasian hand to hold and thumb simultaneously with the right-I knew you were wondering, DFR). “Hello,” a woman’s voice answers on the third ring.
“May I speak to Mr. To, please?”
Silence, then the ringing tone. When I try again, I get the engaged tone. On my way back to the hovel, I realize I left out the most important part of the formula: I should have said I was calling on behalf of Colonel Vikorn. Now there’s only one man left to call, but it will have to wait until tomorrow.
20
By way of small talk I say, “Can you get me some more dope? I’m totally out.”
Sergeant Ruamsantiah opens his cheroot tin and picks one of the thin dark sticks, which he holds to his nose and rolls as if it were a Havana. The girl behind the bar looks unhappy because he’s already given her a big tip and a lot of smiles so she doesn’t want to tell him he’s not allowed to smoke in here, but Ruamsantiah takes out his police ID and the girl looks at it and grins. Everyone likes to have at least one cop as a friend. She even finds a butane lighter behind the bar, which she holds for him.
Now the sergeant is merrily puffing on the cheroot, making the other smokers in the bar jealous as hell. Nobody says So how come he’s allowed to smoke and not me? because they’ve all guessed why the girl lit the cigar. One farang lifts his nose and tries to follow the fragrant trail as it diffuses. It’s not often you see a Westerner awed
